Here are ten helpful lines from Tim Keller’s new expository guide, Galatians For You:
1. “If you say people are saved by being good, then only ‘the good’ can come into God’s feast. The gospel offer becomes exclusive, not inclusive.”
2. “The gospel gives us a pair of spectacles through which we can review our own lives and see God preparing us and shaping us, even through our own failures and sins, to become vessels of His grace in the world.”
3. “God does not love us because we are serviceable; He loves us simply because He loves us. This is the only kind of love we can ever be secure in, of course, since it is the only kind of love we cannot possibly lose.”
4. “Christ will do everything for you, or nothing. You cannot combine merit and grace. If justification is by the law in any way, Christ’s death is meaningless in history and meaningless to you personally.”
5. “Salvation means much more than forgiveness. We do not simply have our slate wiped clean; we also become perfect in God’s sight. And we stay perfect in God’s sight. We go on as we began, having our hearts melted and molded by knowing and trusting Christ crucified.”
6. “’God sent the Spirit’ as well as ‘God sent his Son’. The Son’s purpose was to secure for us the legal status of our sonship. The Spirit’s purpose is to secure the actual experience of it.”
7. “For a child of God, there is confidence and boldness every day. We don’t walk in fear of anyone or anything; our Father owns the place! We live with heads held high.”
8. “The gospel devours the very motivation you have for sin. It completely saps your very need and reason to live any way you want. Anyone who insists that the gospel encourages us to sin has simply not understood it yet, nor begun to feel its power.”
9. “The main problem in our heart is not so much desires for bad things, but our over-desires for good things. When a good thing becomes our ‘god’, it creates ‘over-desires’ that drive and control us.”
10. “We are saved by faith, not by growing fruit; but we are not saved by fruitless faith. A person saved by faith will be a person in whom the fruit of the Spirit grows.”
Until the end of next month, if you buy a copy of Galatians For You, we’ll give you a free copy of the accompanying group Bible-study Guide, Gospel Matters: The Good Book Guide to Galatians. You can also download Dr Keller’s personal study notes on Galatians through the Explore app.