As we continue in our exposition of Galatians 1:1–5, we are reminded of the key issues driving this epistle: Do Gentiles need to become Jews in order to be justified? Or is Christ all sufficient as our righteousness? Thankfully, we have the answer in Galatians. Gentiles do not need to become Jews, and Christ is indeed our all-sufficient righteousness before God. This is confirmed because the risen Christ has sent his apostle to preach his gospel. And his gospel has a divine blessing, source, purpose, and goal.

First, let us consider the divine blessing: grace and peace: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (Gal 1:3).

Dear saints, this is not a throwaway greeting. We might say in an email, “Hello, how are you doing? Hope you are well.” Such words are common and may or may not be sincere. But Paul is intentionally speaking gospel words of divine blessing. Paul takes a common Greek greeting and a common Hebrew greeting, adapting and combining them into a uniquely Christian gospel greeting. The Greek word used for the common greeting is chaire, basically “Hello!” Paul changes that to charis, “Grace!” The Hebrew greeting shalom translates directly into Greek as eirene, “Peace!”

These are wonderful gospel words from God. Your pastor may use them at the beginning of your worship service. He may also close your worship service with a gospel benediction—a good word from God. Why do pastors do that? We have come to worship the God who is holy, holy, holy. And yet we still have sin in our hearts and in our lives. So, we need to be reminded of the grace and peace we have from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We need to hear and believe these gospel words as we come to worship our holy God, that he welcomes us in Christ with grace and peace.

Martin Luther explains Paul’s greeting this way: “These two words, ‘grace’ and ‘peace,’ contain a summary of all of Christianity. Grace contains the forgiveness of sins, a joyful peace, and a quiet conscience. But peace is impossible unless sin has first been forgiven, for the Law accuses and terrifies the conscience on account of sin.”¹

Sometimes we define grace as “God’s undeserved favor.” But this is an incomplete definition. Grace is “God’s undeserved saving favor freely given to us who deserve His disfavor.” In other words, grace comes to us—and surprises us—in the context of our sin and guilt before God. Grace is a redemptive category—good news for sinners like us!

First, gospel peace is objective. As Paul says in Romans 5:1, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Why do we need, first, this objective peace with God? Because by nature we are rebels against God and His rule. This is what our sin is—rebellion and transgression. It means we are at enmity with God. But God himself has made the way of peace as he justifies us by faith in his Son. Christ is our peace by the blood he shed for our sins on the cross. More on that in a moment.

But Luther is right. There is also a subjective peace of conscience. It results from this objective peace with God. But we live in a different age from Luther. People of his age knew and feared the judgment of God. The fear of God and the reality of hellfire were part of the public consciousness in the sixteenth century. Consciences were uneasy, restless, convicted of the reality of sin—desperately seeking peace. But sadly, like Luther in the monastery, many sought that peace of conscience in all the wrong places.

What about today? It seems we live in an age of sleepy and sometimes hardened consciences. The popular notion of God is that he is safe. And the church, sadly, is complicit in painting this dangerous and unbiblical portrait of God. A Christian sociologist studied what evangelical youth think of God, thanks to the teachings of their youth pastors and their senior pastors. To sum it up, this sociologist came up with the label Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. This “safe god” wants you to be good (moralistic). He wants you to be happy (therapeutic). And in the Bible, he has given you the principles you need to be good and happy. But he has left it up to you to apply them to yourself. You do not really need him. You just need his principles (this is Deism).

There is a line in the Lynyrd Skynyrd song “Sweet Home Alabama”: “Does your conscience bother you? Tell the truth!” If it never does, this means you first need to hear the law of God in all its severity before you understand why you need the gospel. If your conscience is sleepy, God’s law will wake it up with a blaring alarm! It demands of you perfect righteousness. It threatens you with eternal hell. Whether you feel guilty or not, the law of God tells us we are guilty—objectively—before our Maker. The law accuses our consciences that we are sinners deserving of God’s judgment. And so it shows us our need of Christ and the peace of his gospel. We need to hear the law—clearly—before we will see our need for the gospel.

If you say you believe in Jesus, why do you? Because Jesus was a good person who shows you how to be a good person? Because Jesus promised to make you happy in this life? Because Jesus gave you Bible principles on how to be good and happy? Or do you believe because you know you are a sinner, and Jesus is the only Savior of sinners? The last is the only true option. Grace from God and peace with God are found in Christ alone.

Next, let us consider the divine source of the gospel, Christ’s saving substitution by God’s will: Christ “gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father” (Gal 1:4).

How are this grace and peace secured for us? By the Lord Jesus Christ, “who gave himself for our sins.” This is why we freely receive grace and peace from God. This is the heart of the gospel. This is the centrality of the cross. This is why Jesus came in the flesh.

First, notice that our Lord Jesus “gave himself.” This means he did so voluntarily. Jesus was not forced against his will by his Father. His life was not taken from him by the Jewish leadership or the Roman authorities. As Jesus says in John 10:18, “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.”

Why did he voluntarily give himself up for—that is, on behalf of—our sins? The alternative is that we would be left in the guilt of our sins. And this means eternal damnation. What is sin? Westminster Shorter Catechism 14 gives us a brief and biblical definition: “Sin is any lack of conformity to or transgression of the law of God.” But why is sin such a big deal? Because sin is against the infinite goodness and holiness of God. Our sins deserve hell—forever and ever.

Because he is the God-man, Jesus is alone qualified to pay the penalty for our sin. Because he is true man, He is qualified to represent us and be punished in our place. Because he is true God, he is qualified to pay the infinite penalty for our sin.

And Jesus was willing to do so because he loves us. This is the wonder of the gospel. In Galatians 2:20, Paul personalizes, appropriates, and lives in light of what Jesus did for him: “The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” And we must do the same. Faith trusts in Christ and His sacrificial death on behalf of our sins. Faith receives the love of the Son of God who gave himself for us. The life we live in our mortal flesh we are to live— every day—by faith in the self-giving love of the Son of God for us.

The cross of Christ is also “according to the will of our God and Father” (Gal 1:4). The cross is not an accident or a tragedy. This is God’s eternal plan, his will, brought about in history for the salvation of his people. This is why the apostle Peter preaches these words on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2:23: “This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.”

The cross is the greatest human crime in all history. A truly innocent man—infinitely more than that, the righteous God in the flesh—was murdered by lawless men. Our sins nailed him to the cross. We are responsible for the crucifixion of God’s beloved Son. And yet no one took Jesus’s life from him. This is all in accord with the eternal will of our God and Father for the forgiveness of our sins and to bring us into adoption as sons of God. The Son of God loved us and laid down his life for us. And his act of self-giving love reveals God’s eternal love for us despite our sinful hatred of God. His love conquers and forgives our self-destructive hatred of him.

This gospel of God’s grace and peace has a divine purpose as well: deliverance from this evil age. Jesus Christ “gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age” (Gal 1:4).

What is meant by “the present evil age”? This is the world of fallen humanity corrupted by sin. It is hostile to God. And by nature we are born into and enslaved to its darkness. We are helplessly imprisoned and need to be delivered, like Israel was delivered out of slavery from Egypt.

By the cross of Christ, we are not only forgiven the guilt of our sins, but we are liberated from this rebellious world, which is passing away. We are now part of a new creation, a new humanity. We are heirs of a new heaven and a new earth that Jesus will bring when he returns. In the coming world, there will be no more sin, no more evil, no more cancer, no more death, no more war, no more abortion, no more murder, no more suffering. God himself will wipe away every tear from our eyes.

This age to come has already broken in with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. As one commentator explains the overlap of these ages, “We are delivered from sin but are not sinless. We are perfect in Christ but not yet perfected. Hence, we must remain vigilant so that we do not become captive to a false gospel that actually panders to our selfishness and pride, even after we become Christians.”²

And last, this gospel of grace and peace has a divine goal: the eternal glory of God the Father. This is all according to the will of our God and Father, “to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen” (Gal 1:5).

Have you noticed? This gospel is all the work of God and the grace of God by the will of God to the glory of God. There is nothing here about what you have to do to earn your salvation, even a little bit. Philip Ryken puts it this way:

These facts do not contain a single word about anything we do. They simply document what God has done in human history through Jesus Christ. The gospel is not about what we do for God; it is about what God has done for us. God the Father is the one who came up with the gospel plan. God the Son is the one who made the willing sacrifice, in keeping with the Father’s will. God the Father is the one who raised Jesus from the dead. Together the Father and the Son accomplished our salvation through the cross; together they announce it to the world through the teaching of the apostles; and together they apply it to our hearts through the Holy Spirit. Therefore, all the glory goes to God, which is precisely how Paul ends the beginning of his letter: “To whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.”³

As recovering Pharisees, we need this antidote to our inborn self-righteousness that the Holy Spirit provides for us in Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians. We must repent of any trust in our good works to win or keep our acceptance with God, and rest only in the doing and dying of Christ for us. He fulfilled all the righteousness of the law on our behalf. He gave himself for our sins. And this is according to the will of our God and Father. Do you want to know and do the work God requires of you for salvation? Then heed the words of his Son from John 6:29: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him who he has sent.”

Notes

1. Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann, vol. 26, Lectures on Galatians, 1535, chapters 1–4, (Concordia Publishing House, 1999), 26.
2. Thomas R. Schreiner, Galatians, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Zondervan, 2010), 80.
3. Philip Graham Ryken, Galatians, Reformed Expository Commentary, ed. Richard D. Phillips, Philip Graham Ryken, and Daniel M. Doriani (P&R, 2005), 13–14.

©Tony Phelps. All Rights Reserved.

Part One

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Post authored by:

• Tony Phelps

  

  Tony grew up in Rhode Island. He was educated at University of Rhode Island (BA) and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He worked in the insurance industry for ten years. He planted a PCA church in Wakefield, RI where he served for eleven years. He has pastored Covenant Reformed Church (URCNA) in Colorado Springs (2015–18), and  Living Hope Presbyterian Church (OPC) in Allentown PA (2019–25). He is currently pastor of Christ Our Hope Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Charlestown, RI. Tony is married to Donna and together they have three children.

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