Evangelical pastors routinely use Galatians to teach their congregations that salvation hinges purely upon “faith” (passive belief or trust) in Jesus. Through faith, we receive Jesus’ righteousness & are justified (declared to be righteous) before God. Our salvation is thereby secured. Evangelical pastors emphasize that our own behavior (“works”) makes absolutely no contribution to our salvation. They solemnly warn that “works” based righteousness is a dangerous distortion of the gospel.
As we’ve noted over the last few weeks, this entire framework is deeply flawed.
It’s imperative to recognize that the entire epistle of Galatians revolves around the ugly incident which Paul describes in Galatians 2:11-14. The church at Antioch was the first place where a significant number of Gentiles had been welcomed into the new covenant family of God. For a time, Jews & Gentiles enjoyed table fellowship together, a powerful sign of their shared identity as loyal followers of the Messiah. But then something changed. Peter & his fellow Jews began to separate themselves from the Gentiles. Peter was essentially refusing to acknowledge that the Gentiles were full members of the church unless they became Jews by becoming circumcised.
Paul was not confronting Peter for insisting that altered behavior was necessary for the Christian life. Rather, Paul was apoplectic because Peter was dividing the family of God by limiting covenant membership to Jews alone. Paul’s response was that justification now comes to all people who give their full allegiance (“faith”) to Jesus. If justification were by “works of the law” then only Jews could benefit.
Through his death & resurrection, Jesus had been enthroned as the Messiah, God’s anointed king over all creation. Paul went about the ancient world declaring the gospel, which is quite simply the royal announcement that Jesus is the Messiah. People of every nation were now called to submit themselves in loyal obedience (“faith”) to King Jesus. All those who did so were gladly welcomed into God’s new covenant family.
For Paul, the unity of God’s people was a powerful symbol. It demonstrated that there was one true God who had created all things & that this God had established his kingdom through the one Lord Jesus the Messiah. By refusing to eat with Gentile Christians, Peter was effectively denying the gospel – the world-wide reign of the Messiah.
How, then, does our behavior fit into this discussion? In order to answer that question, we must reflect a bit upon the nature of salvation.
Unfortunately, most Christians think of salvation as a grand evacuation maneuver. The creation has been hopelessly by dark & evil forces. God must therefore snatch his people away to “heaven” while the world careens off to disaster. This scenario is terribly misleading.
The first pages of Genesis describe how God created human beings so that they might reflect his image & govern the creation wisely, allowing the world to flourish. But humans tragically rebelled against God’s commands. Because of their disobedience, the image of God in humankind was corrupted. And by cutting us off from the source of life, sin inevitably brings about the ultimate corruption of death.
Salvation isn’t about the abandonment of God’s handiwork, but its rescue & redemption. It requires restoring God’s original purposes. True salvation, therefore, requires conforming human beings to the image of God so that they might fulfill their crucial vocation of exercising dominion over the world.
This task can only be accomplished by remaking people into the likeness of Jesus. Jesus is the genuine human being who perfectly reflects God’s image. By sheer force of logic, this goal simply cannot be attained by “faith alone.” If we are to become models of Jesus himself, there must be radical changes, not just in our beliefs, but in our words and actions.
Let’s now complete our study of Galatians 2 by examining Paul’s concluding words in verse 21: “I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, the Messiah died for nothing!”
Like much of the rest of Galatians, evangelicals have badly misunderstood this verse. They’ve created a false dichotomy, whereby righteousness can only come through passive “faith” in Jesus. Our own efforts (“works”) avail for nothing.
Why couldn’t righteousness be gained through the law? We must (again) remind ourselves that when Paul writes about “the law,” he’s always referring to the Torah – the covenant law given to the people of Israel at Mt. Sinai. Paul is manifestly not making a general statement about all behavior or conduct. This distinction is absolutely vital if we are to have any hope of understanding Paul.
Paul always held the Torah in high regard: “…the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good.” (Romans 7:12) The Torah correctly pointed out the pathway to life & blessing. God’s covenant with Israel required genuine worship & obedience: “Keep my decrees and laws, for the person who obeys them will live by them.” (Leviticus 18:5)
Jesus fully embraced the principle that salvation requires obedience. When an expert in the law once asked how he might inherit eternal life, Jesus immediately affirmed the core commands of the Torah: love of God & neighbor. “Do this and you will live.” (Luke 10:28)
This passage is frequently butchered by evangelical pastors, whose “interpretations” insist that Jesus couldn’t really have meant what he said! They bizarrely propose that Jesus was pulling a bait-and-switch. He was only pointing to the demands of the law so that the lawyer might recognize his hopeless inability to live righteously and would instead receive Jesus’ righteousness passively through “faith.”
Thankfully, Paul shows us a much better way forward. Paul indeed recognized that a crucified Messiah meant that Israel, as she stood, could not attain righteousness through the Torah. But the problem wasn’t the obedience which the law demanded but the people to whom the law had been given. Like the rest of humanity, Israel was “in the flesh”; that is, deliberately sinful & rebellious. Paul would heartily agree that human beings, unaided by God’s grace, cannot possibly offer God the obedience which he requires. The long history of Israel had proven this beyond a shadow of a doubt.
But now, through the death & resurrection of the Messiah and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, God had opened up the road to righteousness. Human beings can now be justified because of the “faithfulness of Jesus the Messiah.” And this righteousness comes to all people who submit themselves to King Jesus in loyal obedience.
Crucially, justification is not merely a declaration that someone is righteous (though that is true enough). Rather, justification refers to the fact that humans can truly be “set right” or “made righteous” again. It cannot be repeated too often: Pauline justification involves the complete rescue & rehabilitation of the human race, so that we might at last fulfill our vocation of reflecting God’s image & thereby bring life & blessing to the whole creation.
God doesn’t merely offer us an abstract status of righteousness while we remain hopelessly mired in our sins. Rather, he offers us real, genuine, concrete righteousness. Jesus’ atoning death has indeed secured our forgiveness. And (of course!) forgiveness remains vital & central to the Christian faith. But we must not mistake the part for the whole. Evangelicals have long attempted to construct a full soteriology based only on the death of Jesus & the forgiveness of sins, received passively by “faith.” But this framework is doomed to failure. True salvation requires the risen life of Jesus the Messiah, who now pours out his Spirit upon his people. Those who devote themselves in loyal obedience to Jesus are empowered to live righteous lives pleasing to God.
Evangelicals routinely insist that “grace” is a purely passive concept, automatically excluding any response on our part. Granted, there is a sense in which Christians look away from ourselves and marvel at what God has done. He alone took the initiative in salvation. While we were helpless in our sins, God loved us and sent his Son to die on our behalf.
But grace cannot be reduced to passive acceptance. Rather, God’s grace transforms us. It conforms us to the likeness of Jesus so that we might again bear the image of God. This is not a matter of “doing it yourself” or “trusting in your own efforts.” That was precisely what Peter was doing by reverting back to the age of Israel living under Torah. Peter was essentially rejecting the grace of God which had come through Jesus the Messiah and the Spirit.
Christians must learn that obedience is no less necessary under the New Covenant than it was under the Old. Those who give their loyalty to Jesus have been united with him in his death & resurrection. Our old, corrupt humanity has been put to death, and we’ve been raised to “walk in newness of life.” We’re now filled with the Holy Spirit, who empowers us to offer God the obedience he requires. That’s the road to righteousness.
