One of the most important beliefs we hold within the Protestant church is that we’ve been “justified by grace through faith.”  This means that by Christ, through Christ and in Christ, we are declared righteous by God, even though our record is far from it.  It is an all-encompassing statement that touches upon so many theological truths.  Fully understanding all this encompasses frees us to enjoy a relationship with Jesus Christ.  Failure to understand leads us into futility, frustration and error.

Make no mistake about it, Paul’s letter to the Galatian churches deals almost exclusively with this doctrine, teasing out all of its many facets and issues.  For if we’re justified by grace through faith, then it necessarily means that the work of being justified, well, it isn’t ours.  But whose is it?  And what role does the Mosaic Law have in all of that.  These were front-and-center issues to Paul and to the churches he founded, just as they are important to us today.

We’ve spent the last couple of weeks, closely examining Paul’s Letter to the Galatians.  In so doing, we’ve had ample opportunity to talk about all sorts of false gospels.  Last week, we discussed further about a particular false Gospel that is really dominant in today’s society at large.  I’ve called it several things, the Gospel and, the Me Myself and I Gospel but the one that I Think captures it the best is the Do-It-Yourself Gospel.  This variant tells us essentially that all we really need to be happy is US.  That somehow, WE alone are enough.  That happiness, heck, the meaning of life is found in pursuing our own best interests.  March to the beat of your own drum.  Feel good about yourself no matter what, these are some of the slogans and maxims of the Do-it-Yourself Gospel.  IT’s out there.  I’m getting old but Natalie and I heard something on television which was a perfect recapitulation of this false Gospel but wouldn’t you know it, I didn’t write it down and forgot about it.  I’ll remember it at some point, probably 2am in the morning tonight.  If I do, I’ll include it in the newsletter. But here’s the thing.  If you actually LISTEN to the messages you hear throughout the course of your day, you’ll hear it.  I mean, it’s out there, big time.

Believe it or not, the Do-It-Yourself Gospel is what Paul is fighting so desperately against here in Galatians.  In fact, he’s rather mad about it.  In the course of Galatians, Paul uses some pretty salty language to refer to the people who are advancing this false Gospel.  These antagonists have been called Judaizers by scholars because they sought to promote the belief that adherence to the Jewish law was necessary for Christians to remain in a state of righteousness before God.  In essence, the belief was that God got you started with Grace BUT THEN you had to apply yourself to stay in that state.  How best to apply yourself?  The Jewish laws, of course.

Now remember, this outlook then as now has a certain plausibility to it.  To begin with, a faithful Jew would remember that the Law was a gift from God at Sinai.  So, it can’t be a bad thing, right?  And it isn’t.  Please keep that in mind.  The Law itself is of God and was meant to guide us in the days before Jesus Christ.  But then, as now, the Law became a problem in the hands of a sinful humanity.  Over time, people assumed themselves righteous BECAUSE they were following the Law.  But the problem is that this made them more confident IN THEMSELVES and ultimately less faithful to God.

Well, to begin with, we need to understand what righteousness is, according to the Bible.  So, what is righteousness?  According to Timothy Keller, “Righteousness is a validating performance record, which open doors.  It is a validating performance record which opens doors.  For example, you want a job, you get out a resume. That resume is a vocational record.  It should have all your accomplishments and your experiences.  And if you want a job you take it to the employer or whoever you have to apply to and it’s your validating performance record and you say, this means I’m worthy of the position, accept me.  And if your performance record is good enough, if you’re good enough, the door opens.”

So, the Judaizers and all those who believe in the Do-it-yourself Gospel, ultimately believe that what makes them righteous is what they’ve done.  As in, their works of the Law.  But, again, the Law doesn’t make one righteous.  In short, the Law is good.  How Jews at the time employed it was bad.

You see, the fact of the matter is, then and now, is when people assume that somehow they’re the ones responsible for their own righteousness, they drift further and further away from God.

Paul wants us to know that our righteousness isn’t from ourselves.  In fact, Paul will declare that, left to our own devices, we are the absolute opposite of righteous.  We are in fact SINNERS.