GALATIANS 2: 17-21 THE POWER TO LIVE A RIGHTEOUS LIFE [Romans 8: 1- 4] What are the lifestyle implications of the gospel

of justification by faith in Jesus life, death, and resurrection? Is salvation through grace by faith in Jesus Christ alone a promoter of sin? Is setting people free from adherence to the law going to cause people to sin more? Absolutely, definitely not! When a man by the power of the cross dies to sin, dies to his old way of believing, to his old way of thinking, and to his old way of living, he can then live in Christ and in the power of Jesus resurrection. By the same power that raise Christ from the dead, he can receive a new way of believing, a new way of thinking, and a new way of living life. This new life lived by faith through the grace of God will be a righteous life. It is the power of Christ that truly enables one to live righteously, not the personal power of attempting to keep the law (CIM). I. DOES THE GOSPEL PROMOTE SIN? 17 & 18. II. JOINT DEATH GIVES JOINT LIFE; 19 & 20. III. CHRIST GIVEN RIGHTEOUSNESS; 21. Verse 17 wants to know if we need to return to the yoke of the law in order to keep ourselves from sin. But if, while seeking to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have also been found sinners, is Christ then a minister of sin? May it never be! [First class conditional phrase, or assumed true; if & we are] While seeking to be justified in Christ by grace, are we set free to indulge our own natural sinful inclination? Does being set free from the restraint of the law because more sin to occur? If so then Christ who freed us from the law would be a promoter of sin. May it never be! Let it not come into being. Let it not even be thought in your mind. The Jews understood that because of the falseness of man, man is inclined to sin. They saw the law as what keeps us from sin, as what checks unrestrained living. If the law is removed in Christ doesntt that cause us to be release from what keep us from sin? Is it justification by faith in Christ alone going to release people into lawlessness? Yes, Christ taught that it was not what enters a man that defiles him but He also taught that sin comes from what proceeds out of the heart (Mt 15: 1-20). Yes, He taught all meats were clean (Mk. 7:19), but He also taught that man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes out of the mouth of the Father (Mt. 4:4). [The grace of Christ changes the inside, the law is for external agreement as to what is right and wrong. It is the Spirit of the Living God, not legal regulations that change the inner life of man (5:13-26).] The Jewish alternative to trusting only in Christ and receiving His all-sufficient grace was obedience to the law. But the New Covenant not only supersedes the Old Covenant, it replaces it, as verse18 states. For if I rebuild what I have once destroyed, I prove myself to be a transgressor. Peter, unknowingly, was starting to rebuild a law keeping or a works oriented salvation by reverting to keeping the ceremonial law under the peer-pressure of those from Jerusalem. But Peter and Paul knew

this was transgression because in rebuilding the doctrine of salvation by works or law they were casting down the most fundamental doctrine of salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone. Paul was