FRIDAY 6th
Galatians 2:15-21
NIV (v16) – ‘. . . know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.’
ESV (v16) – ‘. . . yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.’
I ended yesterday’s devotion with the words of Paul in Romans 1:17, ‘For in it (that is in the gospel) the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.’ In our text for today, Paul is presenting more of the same, the important truth concerning the gospel that a person is justified not by works but by faith in Christ, that is active faith in the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ at Calvary.
Yesterday we also looked at the rebuke that Paul had given as a result of some of them moving away from the true gospel, and he continues his defence of the gospel through the verses that follow arriving to where we are today with what has become an important tenet within the Christian faith, ‘Justification by faith alone in the Lord Jesus Christ.’
The sad reality in Church history is that even though Paul had given clear teaching on doctrine concerning salvation, (and other doctrine) we find the Church soon slipped into error and eventually the influence of Rome which pervaded what was considered to be the Church. But even though the times were dark, the light of the gospel was not snuffed out, but it continued to flicker until we get to the 15th and 16th Century, where truth that had been hidden or suppressed became awakened by the fan of the Holy Spirit blowing into the hearts of men who became spiritually awakened themselves to the truth of the Word of God and they began to realise the error of the then darkened Church and among other things rediscovered the truth of this important Scripture ‘the just shall live by faith’ and as a result the time of the Great Reformation began. Men such as John Wycliffe (Oxford) and Jan Hus (Prague) had already shown dissatisfaction toward much of the practise within the Papal Church in the 1400’s, later men such as Martin Luther and John Calvin along with others also began to be dissatisfied with the practise of the Church and thus the light instead of flickering began to shine brightly again leading to the reformation of truth and the formation of the Protestant Movement, bringing the Scriptures to the masses and bringing about a fresh understanding of the truth, that man is not justified by works but by faith alone in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now I am not in any way a specialist on the subject of the reformation, so I include what I have here out of my limited knowledge, but suffice for us to know that we are able today to freely give voice to the gospel and especially to preach, teach or share the good news that there is One who has done all that is necessary for us to come to salvation, one who has fulfilled the law on our behalf, one who willingly offered himself as the atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world so that we simply need to come to him and to be justified by faith through believing that he has done all that is needed to bring us eternal redemption. The words of one of the older hymns we used to sing and need still to be singing are ‘Saved by grace alone, this is all my plea, Jesus died for all mankind, and Jesus died for me.’ Words that echo for us the truth of Ephesians 2:8 ‘For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.’