Good morning. If you have your Bibles, please open them to Galatians. Galatians,

Galatians, Chapter 2.

Subject this morning is the subject of legalism. And legalism is a broad topic, can often be a difficult one.

And if I was to give you a simple boiled down definition of legalism,

it is the misuse and misapplication of the law of God.

The misuse and misapplication of the law of God.

It happens in a number of ways. One of the ways that we

misuse and apply the law of God is that we confuse or conflate law and gospel.

And we trust the law to do that which only the gospel can do.

So we trust the law to save us.

We believe that in order for us to be saved,

we must in part or in whole keep the law sufficiently to be justified before our holy and righteous God.

That is both an overestimation and an underestimation of the law. First, it's an overestimation of the law because we're

trusting the law to do something that it cannot. It's also an under-estimation of the law

because anyone who thinks that they can keep the law

doesn't think highly enough of the law of God. Amen. There's a couple of

passages of scripture.

I want us to look there.

And then we'll spend some time in the Second London Baptist

confession and also the Westminster larger catechism

to try to give a theological underpinning for this

and then have some time for us to deal with questions afterwards.

...