I’ve always found Galatians 2:21 to be a powerful verse. It says, “I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die” (NLT).
I preached a series through Galatians back in 2017; when we read Galatians we find that the church in Galatia had been confronted with a false teaching that said, “In order to have eternal life, a person must be saved by Jesus and be circumcised.” In other words, it wasn’t enough to be saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, you also had to be circumcised. The Apostle Paul called this, “a different gospel – which is really no gospel at all” (Galatians 1:6-7, NIV).
It’s important to always remember that the Bible teaches that there is nothing that we can do to be saved. Now, it is true that once we are saved we live our lives for the Lord – Christ makes us a new creation and we are called to be sanctified by the Holy Spirit throughout our lives, living a life of repentance from sin – but our good works cannot make us right with God. Only Jesus’ perfect and sufficient payment for our sins can give us peace with God. This is why we are called to repent of our sins and believe on Jesus Christ for salvation.
The fact of the matter is this: we owe an impossible debt for our sins, Jesus paid that entire debt for us, and now we are called to receive His free gift to us by trusting solely in Him for salvation. What makes adding anything to Jesus’ payment so dangerous is that by adding something to Jesus’ payment we declare that His payment for our sins wasn’t enough, and therefore we are no longer trusting in Jesus for our salvation but instead we are trusting in ourselves and what we can do.
It was necessary for our salvation that Jesus Christ die for our sins. And if you have turned from sin and self to trust in Christ alone as your payment for sins, then rest assured that you are saved and that the Holy Spirit lives within you, empowering you to live for the Lord.
Chase Thompson 