Galatians 3:11–12 “Now
it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for ‘The
righteous shall live by faith.’ But the law is not of faith, rather ‘The one
who does them shall live by them’”.
Faith
that invests itself wholly and completely in God and His promises alone is the only
faith that pleases the Lord. I read that when, in the seventh century BC,
Habakkuk could not understand how God could use the evil Babylonians to
chastise His people, when it seemed
from a human perspective that the Lord’s purposes for Israel had failed and that
His faithful servants would not be vindicated, God responded that those He
regards as
righteous live by faith (Habakkuk 2:4).
That is, those who are righteous in His sight continue trusting Him and do not
rely on what they can see from a human perspective or what they can do to
vindicate their own righteousness. Dr. R.C. Sproul explains: “Anybody can believe in God. What it means to
be a Christian is to trust Him when He speaks, which does not require a leap of
faith or a crucifixion of the intellect. It requires a crucifixion of pride,
because no one is more trustworthy than God”.
Sproul’s
key point that God-pleasing faith means crucifying our pride. This is another
way of saying that we give up trying to attain our own righteousness before the
Lord. The righteousness of God revealed in the gospel is ours by faith alone,
for it is God’s gift to His people, the result of His saving acts that fulfill
His promises to redeem His flock. To say that the righteous live by faith does
not mean only that God’s people believe Him but also that those whom the Lord
declares to be righteous trust in Him alone. The essence of such faith
is believing God in contrast to doing works of obedience. Galatians 3:10–14 contrasts these ways of establishing our
relationship with the Father. No one can be declared righteous before God by
obeying His law, for the law demands perfect obedience for our
justification—our right standing before Him—and no sinner can obey God perfectly.
Hoping even a little in our good works of obedience puts us under the Lord’s curse.
Our only hope is to trust Christ alone. In so doing, we are redeemed by
His death from God’s curse for breaking His law, and Christ’s righteousness is imputed
to our account, making our standing before the Lord all of grace.
Galatians 3:11-12 “But
that no one is justified by the law in the sight of God is evident,
for “the just shall live by faith.” Yet the law is not of faith, but “the
man who does them shall live by them.”
Attempting
to earn our right standing before God is the stance of pride, the arrogant assertion
that our sin-tainted good works can meet His perfect standard. It is not the stance
of faith, which rests wholly in Christ alone for His righteousness. We can
say with certainty that the one temptation that all people have in common is
the temptation to believe we can make ourselves right with God, that our
efforts, even when done with His help, are good enough to meet His standards.
But the Lord does not ask us to be “good enough”; rather, we are to be perfect
(Matthew 5:48).That means that only
Christ’s perfect righteousness can suffice to put us in a right relationship
with the Father. We must trust in Him and in Him alone.
Blessings.
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