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There's a story about two newspaper editors who had been involved in a bitter feud of words and ideas for years. When one of the editors finally died, the other one took the opportunity to get in one last dig; he published the first editor's obituary under "Public Improvements."

Controversy has always been around, especially in religion and theology. Someone once said that if you put two theologians together in the same room and ask them a question, you wind up with three different opinions.

This passage from Galatians proves that controversy even touched the life of the early Church. It deals with one of the oldest controversies that the Church faced. This passage deals with the issue of law versus faith. The question was, "By which are we justified?" The answer Paul gives became a watershed decision which shaped the future of the Church.

The Law Versus Grace

What was going on here? Well, to boil it all down, Peter couldn't decide how he was supposed to live. When he was with the Jewish Christians, he followed all the Jewish laws and customs. But when he was with the Gentile (non-Jewish) Christians he didn't. That doesn't seem like too big of an issue at first, does it? Paul said we should be all things to all people. Peter did have that vision about reaching out to the Gentiles. And he did carry it out. But the issue grew because of the expectations of both groups. The Jewish Christians expected all Christians to be like them and to follow all the Jewish customs and practices.

And their argument makes some sense. All the disciples were Jewish. Jesus was Jewish. They all followed Jewish customs and practices. Therefore, everyone else should, too. And that meant following the letter of the Jewish law.

But the Gentiles didn't know the customs and didn't understand the customs. Besides, they had accepted Christ, experienced the forgiveness of their sins, and been baptized without the law. Why should they turn around and suddenly have to have something new and strange thrust upon their relationship with God? It would sort of be like us saying to new members three months after they join, "Oh, by the way, we forgot to tell you, that after your first ninety days you have to shave your head and memorize a chapter of Revelation a week until you have the whole book memorized." Ridiculous, isn't it? (By the way -- that letter goes out to new members next week.)

The real issue was, how do you become a Christian? Is it through following the law or is it through faith in Christ? The Jewish Christians were saying it was through following the law. And Peter was arguing on their side.

Paul was on the other side, arguing for faith and grace. Basically he says, "Look, I was a Pharisee all my life. No one knew the law better than I. I obeyed the law in all things. I was a Pharisee's Pharisee. But it didn't work."

"Instead of getting me closer to God, it only showed how much further away I had drifted. It wasn't until my encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus that I understood the significance of faith and grace in my relationship with God."

Paul goes on to say, "No one will be justified by the works of the law." We are "justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law." So, what does Paul mean?

When we try to experience salvation through "doing the works of the law," basically that means we've developed a checklist of sorts. This checklist is full of those things that we have to do or accomplish in order to be saved or to assure our place in salvation. Once we finish the list, then we're done; our place is assured. Right? Unfortunately, with the law, it almost seems that for each item you check off the list, ten more appear. So, you find yourself running around in circles, out of breath, out of steam, never able to know whether or not you've made it or if you're even close to making it. Your faith becomes a chore not a joy.

Paul then goes on to say that if our salvation is based on a checklist of "doing the works of the law," then why did Jesus die on the cross? Either Jesus died so our sins can be forgiven and the relationship between us and God is healed or we can do the checklist thing and save ourselves through "doing the works of the law." But, we can't have it both ways. It really has to be one or the other. Is it the law or grace through faith in Christ? Is it the cross or the checklist? It can't be both. We know where Paul stood. He said, "If justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing."

So, how did this controversy turn out? Well, look at the altar. You don't see a checklist, do you? You see a cross.

Justification

We are justified by grace through faith in Christ. Let me repeat that. We are justified by grace through faith in Christ. Justification is a printers term and an old legal term. In printing you can see it today in word processing programs and in the newspaper. Notice the newspaper columns and how smooth the edges of each column are. The text has been justified. All the rough edges have been straightened out.

In old legal terms justification means to absolve or for the unrighteous to be made righteous by the judge.

Through our faith in Christ, the grace of God smoothes out our rough edges and evens up the ragged edges of our lives. Through our faith in Christ and the grace of God, God forgives us and absolves us of our sin and declares us righteous. It is not us who does this but God through Christ who does it for us.

Let's see if we can explain it this way. Imagine a family that likes dogs. In this family, both Mother and Father liked dogs. Mother always wanted a pretty little house dog. A "foo foo" dog as some people call them. Father always had hunting dogs. He loved to hunt rabbit and quail. At various times the family had beagles or bird dogs or both. Father believed that his dogs had to be purebred, and that meant they had to have papers. A dog just wasn't a good dog unless it had papers.

One summer morning the twelve-year-old son woke up and walked into the dining room. He saw bacon, scrambled eggs, and toast on the table, but there wasn't anyone around. He looked out the window into their backyard and, lo and behold, there, sleeping in one of the lawn chairs, was a puppy, about five or six months old. The boy grabbed a couple of pieces of bacon from the plate on the table and went outside. What the boy didn't know was that his grandmother, who was living with them at the time, had gone to get the father to chase this dog away.

When the boy approached the dog, it hardly moved at all. The dog's tail started wagging, but he just lay there, content in the lawn chair. When the boy presented the bacon, the dog finally lifted his head. The boy fed the dog the bacon, one small piece at a time. That was when it happened. The boy looked into the eyes of the puppy and the puppy looked into eyes of the boy and something clicked. The dog and boy were bonded for life. The boy named him Poochie.

The boy's parents weren't very thrilled about this bond at first. The boy didn't blame them. The dog had seen better days. Poochie was dirty. It looked like Poochie had been on the losing end of a fight. He had one chewed-up ear and a couple of cuts on his hindquarters. He had a piece of rope for a collar. And he didn't have papers. Mother and Grandmother both thought this dog was the ugliest thing they had ever seen. Grandma even tried to get the boy to name the dog "Ugly" instead of Poochie.

But to that boy, Poochie was the most wonderful dog in the world. He was the most beautiful dog he had ever seen, and despite the parents' best efforts, Poochie and the son became inseparable. They went everywhere together. Poochie's favorite game was fetch. Poochie loved to chase the ball and bring it back. He even became the center fielder when the children in the neighborhood played baseball. Poochie would bring the ball to whoever was at second base.

Poochie wasn't supposed to sleep in the house. He wasn't supposed to sleep on the boy's bed. But after awhile Poochie slept on the foot of the boy's bed every night. He became a part of the family and would curl up next to the boy whenever he laid on the floor watching television.

The only time Poochie's place was ever in jeopardy was when he ate the rocking chair that belonged to the boy's little brother. Poochie didn't really eat it, he just chewed up the end of one of the rockers while teething. Well, actually he chewed off the end of one of the rockers. Father had to replace it because the little brother kept falling over. Despite all that, Poochie was a part of the family.

Poochie's story isn't a faith story, but it illustrates what happens through our faith in Christ. You see, Poochie was nothing but a scraggly, old, lop-eared mongrel. He was a stray hound fit for the pound. He was worthless to Father because he didn't have papers. He wasn't purebred and he couldn't hunt. He was worthless to Mother and Grandmother because they thought he was so ugly. But in the eyes of that boy, he was the greatest dog that ever lived; a cross between Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, and Benjie.

And that's what counted. That's what was important and made all the difference to the parents. They judged Poochie harshly because he didn't meet all the criteria of their checklists. But that young boy looked at that dog through his heart. In a sense, that boy was Poochie's savior. It was his heart that bought Poochie's salvation. It was his heart that changed the parents' hearts and the way they looked at Poochie.

And that's exactly what Christ does for us. Looking through the eyes of the law, we can never measure up. We're just mongrels without papers or training. Looking through the eyes of the world we're ugly, scraggly, and lop-eared. Many of us don't measure up to even the lowest level of acceptability. We can't even begin to check off all the checks on those checklists.

But through our faith in Christ, God's heart is changed. God sees us through the eyes of the Son. God sees us and loves us because Christ loves us. We are "justified by faith in Christ." We are forgiven and made right with God and called righteous through that faith. That is both a very private and a very public improvement.

Our challenge is not to be consumed with the checklists of the law but rather to trust in Christ. Our challenge is to have faith in the one who changes God's heart. Look at the altar. There's no checklist there. But there is a cross. We are justified by grace through faith in Christ.