Galatians 2:17-21

Pastor Russell Johnson opened with Eli Manning's walk-on tryout at Penn State in disguise, as an awkward, soft-looking quarterback named Chad Powers who then threw perfect spirals on a rope. The players were looking at Chad and watching Eli. One word sums up the passage, Pastor Russell said: substitution. Most of us hold the first half, that on the cross Jesus died the death we deserved. The half most Christians never grab hold of is that He also lives in our place. Using Dave Anderson's outline of Galatians, he showed the text turning from justification by faith to sanctification by faith: the gavel comes down once and your relationship with God is settled, while the growing up takes every day. Three times in verse 16 Paul says no one is justified by works of the Law. When the charge comes that grace will make people sloppy, Paul never takes any grace back; he answers with who is living in you now. Verse 18 names the real lawbreaker as the man who rebuilds what the cross tore down, and verse 21 says that if the Law could make us righteous, the cross was pointless.