I was in the Navy from mid 1974 to late 1976. The first several months I was in training in San Diego and San Francisco. Then I spent the remainder of my time on a ship, the USS Piedmont. But all that time, in all the different jobs I did, I lived in anticipation of getting out. During my last 3 months or so, I had a calendar that I used to check off each day, and I regularly showed that calendar to some of the lifers in my department to make sure they knew I was getting out soon (lifers are people who make a career out of the Navy). I was living in anticipation of getting out, being free of the Navy.
On the day when I was discharged, I went around to say goodbye to my friends on the ship, and one of the lifers I’d worked with said to me, “you’ll be back in 6 months, Rinard; it’s really bad out there.” For him, the Navy was a secure place, a place where he didn’t have to worry about finding a job or making ends meet. The thought of life on the outside was terrifying to him. He even told me some stories about people who had gotten out and then reenlisted a few months later because things were so bad on the outside. One commentator points out that this even happens with people who’ve spent a lot of time in prison. Prison is a lousy place, but they learn how to function there; it becomes a place f security for them, and transition to the outside world is extremely difficult: “The first days and weeks of the free life are perilous. Many do not survive them. Recidivism is extremely high among discharged prisoners. They do not know what to do with their freedom. They have been conditioned by another way of life. After a few attempts and failures, they often relapse into old ways and return to the security of the prison” (Eugene Peterson, Traveling Light, p. 137). We want to be free, but we also want security, and often these two things come into conflict. Freedom doesn’t always feel safe, and sometimes we’re willing to sacrifice our freedom for the sake of security and safety.
That’s the appeal of legalism. The Galatians were departing from the freedom of the gospel because the legalistic religion of the Judaizers gave them safe, secure answers. It told them what to do, and as long as they did these things they could be assured that everything was fine. They didn’t have to struggle with what it means to live a free life in Christ. They were bringing themselves into bondage, but bondage felt more secure than freedom. Slavery is what we’re used to. We’re used to living in bondage (although we don’t usually see the reality of our condition). The gospel is a message of freedom, and when we’re first set free by turning to Jesus Christ it’s wonderful. But what do we do then? How do we live with our new freedom? “The first days and weeks of the free life are perilous. Many do not survive them.” Slavery is what we’re used to, and unless we’re careful we’ll very quickly end up living as slaves again, like the Galatians were doing. When Christ sets us free, then He calls us to follow Him in learning to live as free people. And part of that is resisting the enemy’s attempts to draw us back into the slavery of legalism.
The first step in resisting the enemy’s attempts to lure us back into slavery is in vv. 1-6: be determined to preserve your freedom in Christ. Be jealous in guarding your freedom. Of course, that means that we need to understand the truth, that the gospel is a message of emancipation. If we’re fuzzy about that, we’ll be easy prey to his deception. The gospel is not a message about what style of clothes to wear, or what kind of hairstyle we’re to have, or what kind of music to listen to. There’s a place for discussing some of these kinds of things, but this is not what the gospel is about. The gospel is a message of deliverance. Here’s what Jesus said at the beginning of His public ministry: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19). Or Colossians 1:13: “He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.” The gospel is a message of deliverance to people who are in slavery.
We need to understand that faith and law are mutually exclusive. The temptation is to do the sort of thing the Galatians were doing. We present the gospel and get people in the door by faith, then we present them with a list of demands, and as long as they keep within these boundaries we assume everything is fine. But if they step over these boundaries we question their salvation. American evangelicals admire C.S. Lewis, but I’m not sure most evangelical churches would be comfortable having him around: he smoked, drank alcohol; he was committed to liturgical worship and was at least open to the possibility of purgatory as a time of cleansing and perfection after death. He doesn’t fit into categories that we’re comfortable with, and I’ve known some evangelicals who had real trouble with that. We believe in the necessity of faith to get in the door, but then we expect people to order their lives in ways that we’re comfortable with (I’m not talking here about sin, but cultural, theological and liturgical differences). If they don’t, we often doubt the genuineness of their faith. Surely if they really believed they’d live and worship like we do. Faith gets us in the door, but then we need to live by the laws of our evangelical subculture to remain in good standing with God.
The law and the gospel are mutually exclusive. The law brings us into bondage, whether it’s the law of the Judaizers or the law of the evangelical subculture. If our position before God is determined by obedience to the law, we’re going to end up in bondage. Listen to verse 4 in The Message: “The person who accepts the ways of circumcision trades all the advantages of the free life in Christ for the obligations of the slave life of the law.” Once we step into the realm of law, we’re in a place where absolute perfection is demanded of us. (That’s one reason why churches are so often guilty of shooting their wounded. We’re living under the law and we expect perfection. We’re not willing to live by the gospel of free grace and mercy). The bondage of the law is a bondage of guilt; we’ve broken the law and there’s nothing we can do to make it right. So we determine to do better next time, but nothing we do can erase the condemning power of our guilt. The gospel speaks to us in our guilt. It addresses us as people who’ve been disobedient to the law. It acknowledges the worst about us and then grants us forgiveness. The gospel is a message of freedom from the bondage of guilt before the law. We need to know that and resist all attempts of our enemy to talk us out of it.
The second step in resisting the enemy’s attempts to lure us back into slavery is in vv. 7-12: refuse to listen to false teachers. Too many people fall under the influence of false teachings because they think, “I’ll just listen awhile and see what he has to say.” I’ve had friends who came under the influence false teaching for awhile; many of these teachers are very deceptive and manipulative, and it’s easy to get caught. If you’re not adequately prepared, it’s easy to get in over your head. It’s not that these teachers have the truth; it’s that they’re able to present their ideas in a very persuasive way. It sounds good when you’re listening to them. So Paul wants the Galatians to stop listening. We don’t owe everyone a fair hearing.
Paul says three things about these false teachers in vv. 8-10. 1) Their teaching is not from God: “That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you” (v. 8). Paul spent considerable effort, in the early part of this letter, establishing that he had received the gospel directly from Jesus Christ. The teachers who’ve been leading the Galatians astray got their ideas from another source, and the church needs to stop listening to them. 2) This false teaching will increasingly permeate the life of the church if they don’t get rid of it: “A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough” (v. 9). The harmfulness of the teaching will increase over time. It will work its way through the teachings of the church and bring corruption into every area. And it will do harm to more and more people over time. They can’t afford to let it remain in their midst. 3) Those who are spreading this false message–who are undermining God’s message of liberty–are going to face a penalty: “The one who is throwing you into confusion will pay the penalty, whoever he may be” (v. 10). False teachers are going to be judged; if the Galatians don’t want to fall under the same condemnation they need to stop listening and following these people.
The third step in resisting the enemy’s attempts to lure us back into slavery is in vv. 13-15: Resist the temptation to misuse your freedom. Here’s v. 13 in The Message: “Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom.” When we misuse our freedom, we end up destroying it in the end. We celebrate our freedom from the bondage to the law by doing whatever we want. But then we find that we’re in bondage to our own desires. We’re not free at all; we’re just in a different kind of bondage.
The freedom Paul is talking about in Galatians is not the freedom to do whatever we want. It’s the freedom to live as God created us to live. We weren’t created to live without boundaries. God created us to live in obedience to His sovereign lordship. When we refuse to submit to His lordship, we put ourselves into bondage to something less than God. That’s the point of the Bob Dylan song I quoted earlier in this series: “It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” The gospel sets us free to be human, to be the kind of people God created us to be.
Paul is especially concerned about the way they’re acting toward one another. When we abuse our freedom, when we try to live by doing whatever we want, whatever we feel like doing, we end up cultivating selfishness, which brings us into conflict with one another. The churches in Galatia may be experiencing two different extremes. One the one hand, there are those who live as strict moralists. They think they’re keeping the law, but there’s a hard edge to their spirituality. They’re self-righteous and look down on those who are less strict in their behavior. They can’t tolerate a person like C.S. Lewis in their midst. On the other hand, there are those who recognize that legalism is contrary to the gospel, but they go to the opposite extreme and say: “in Christ we’re free to do whatever we want.” So they freely indulge their desires. Both of these extremes lead to disunity. Those who think they’re obeying the law need to hear this word: “The entire law is summed up in a single command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” And those at the opposite extreme need to hear these words in verse 13: “You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.” And then, in verse 15, Paul points to what is actually going on in their midst: “If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.” Both extremes, legalism and unrestrained libertinism, result the destruction of community. The freedom they’ve been given in the gospel is the freedom to “serve one another in love.”
The gospel is a message of freedom. Paul made that clear back in chapter 1: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age” (1:3-4). In Christ we’ve been set free, by sheer grace, to live the kind of life we were intended to live. Charles Swindoll says “I know of nothing that has the power to change us from within like the freedom that comes through grace” (The Grace Awakening, p. 5). And because the message of freedom through grace is so wonderful and transforming, Satan will do everything he can to undermine it. Let’s determine that we will, with His help, stand firm in the freedom Christ bought for us, that we’ll refuse to listen to those who come to us with different “gospels,” and that we’ll resist the temptation to misuse the freedom God has given us.
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Sunday, May 4, 2014
Children of the Promise, Galatians 4:12-31
In 1976, when I was stationed on a ship in Norfolk, Virginia, some friends and I were talking about getting an apartment together onshore. We were all Christians, and one of the things we discussed was seeking to live as a Christian community, with mandatory times of corporate prayer each day. One of the guys in that discussion became very angry at the suggestion that anything should be considered mandatory. He didn’t object to the idea of praying together, but he strenuously objected to the idea that people would be required to meet together for prayer. He bristled at the thought that he might be deprived of his freedom in this area. He stated his concern in terms of Christian liberty; he said this kind of requirement was legalistic and contrary to the freedom of the gospel. But I suspect his objections had more to do with his being a contemporary American. Freedom is very important to us in America, and freedom in our contemporary society has increasingly been defined as the ability to do whatever I want whenever I want to do it. And we bristle at the thought that someone might want to deprive us of this freedom.
In the early 1980's, Bob Dylan recorded a song called “You’re Gonna Have to Serve Somebody.” He was saying to contemporary Americans, “You’re not really as free as you think you are.” We’re not created with the ability to exercise complete freedom. And when we try to live in that way we end up being enslaved. Dylan said, “It may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” He was making an observation about the way we’re made, as creatures in the image of God. We may object to the whole idea, and we may try to fight against it, but in the end we’ll still be servants. We can’t escape our nature. If we won’t acknowledge God’s lordship, we’ll serve something less than God.
It’s also true that as humans we have to trust in something or someone. We don’t have complete knowledge about anything, so no matter which direction we go we have to act in faith. This is how Eugene Peterson describes the message of the false teachers in Galatia: “The religious product being promoted by Judaizing interpolators was more self-control, more self-determination. If we engage in particular rituals and keep certain rules, we always know where we stand. If we know what we can do that will make us more acceptable in God’s eyes than a person who doesn’t do them, we, by doing them, can advance our status. Such a religion puts us in control. We no longer have to live by faith, trusting to God to accept us in mercy. We no longer have to live in love toward our neighbor, trusting, often against all appearances, that that neighbor is God’s child. What we are being offered is a security system in which we do not have to live by faith, will not have to trust in God, but can trust instead in ourselves” (Traveling Light, p. 128). In the past, the Galatians have trusted in the gospel of grace, and now they’re beginning to trust in themselves. They’re beginning to rely on their own ability to do things that will make them acceptable in God’s sight.
We might ask, “does this really make such a big difference?” Of course, we know Paul was pretty worked up about it, but, after all, he was a Pharisee; all his training in the law had caused him to be obsessed with theological questions. What difference can these ideas possibly make in our daily lives? Paul shows here that this basic shift in the Galatians’ allegiance is having a major effect on their daily lives. We’re made in such a way that we have to trust in someone or something, and the object of our trust will affect the way we live.
Paul shows, first, that the Galatians have become suspicious and distrustful of the wrong people. In verses 12-16, he contrasts their current attitude toward him with the way they treated him when he was there. It seems that his intention was not to minister in Galatia, at least initially. He says, “As you know, it was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you.” We don’t know exactly what this illness was, but it was something that detained him and kept him from going where he intended. It forced him to spend time in Galatia, and while he was there he preached the gospel and founded a church. Some commentators have suggested that Paul caught malaria while he was on the coast of Pamphylia and sought relief on the mountainous plateau of Galatia (see John Stott, Only One Way: The Message of Galatians, pp. 113-14). In any case, it was because of an illness that Paul ended up in their region.
Paul also makes it clear that this illness was a trial for them. It made him repulsive to them. The great apostle Paul didn’t come to them in full control of his faculties, taking charge and impressing them with his ability. He came to them in weakness, needing their hospitality. And they gave it to him: “And don’t you remember that even though taking in a sick guest was most troublesome for you, you chose to treat me as well as you would have treated an angel of God – as well as you would have treated Jesus himself if he had visited you?” (The Message). He goes on to say “There were some of you then who, if possible, would have given your very eyes to me – that is how deeply you cared!” (The Message).
That’s how they responded to Paul in the past. But now their attitude toward him has changed: “What has happened to the satisfaction you felt at that time?” (The Message); or “What has happened to all your joy?” (NIV). Something has happened to them; their whole attitude toward life has changed. They were able to joyfully serve Paul when he was there and in need, because they were living out of a foundation of trust in God. Now that they’ve begun trusting in themselves, they’ve changed their attitude toward Paul. Now he’s become their enemy, because he’s been speaking the truth to them. They’ve become suspicious and distrustful of the wrong person.
That leads to the next point, which is that they’ve begun trusting in people who shouldn’t be trusted. In verses 17-20, Paul contrasts his own motives with those of the false teachers in Galatia. Several years ago, Annie and I went into a furniture store looking to buy something. As we were looking, a salesman came over, sat down on one of the couches, and started talking to us. He was warm and friendly and interested in our lives. He wanted to help us find what we needed. He seemed like a great guy. A few days later I went back to ask him a question and this same man was rude and cold. He could see he wasn’t going to make another commission from me, so he turned off the act. The first time we met, he had been warm and friendly and interested in our lives because he was trying to get something from us. Paul is saying that the false teachers in Galatia are like that: “Those heretical teachers go to great lengths to flatter you, but their motives are rotten. They want to shut you out of the free world of God’s grace so that you will always depend on them for approval and direction, making them feel important” (The Message). The Galatians are being manipulated by people who want something from them.
Paul’s motives are just the opposite. His concern is to see Christ formed in them: “Do you know how I feel right now, and will feel until Christ’s life becomes visible in your lives? Like a mother in the pain of childbirth. Oh, I keep wishing that I was with you. Then I wouldn’t be reduced to this blunt, letter-writing language out of sheer frustration” (The Message). The false teachers are trying to gain a following for themselves; Paul wants them to follow Jesus Christ. The false teachers are serving themselves; Paul is serving Jesus Christ. This is a good test to apply to a Christian leader: ask yourself whether that leader is seeking to direct you to Jesus Christ, or to himself. Is that leader truly concerned about your spiritual welfare (even when it won’t benefit him personally), or is he seeking to gain a following? The Galatians should be distrustful and suspicious of the new teachers among them; but, for the moment, they’ve gotten everything backwards. They’re distrustful of Paul, who’s seeking their spiritual good, and they’re trusting these flatterers who are out for their own benefit.
Because of all this, because they’re trusting the wrong people, the Galatians are being deceived, they’re being conned into giving up their priceless inheritance for the privilege of returning to slavery. In verses 21-31, Paul draws another contrast: he compares the children of slavery with the children of the promise, then, at the end of the passage, he says “Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman.
God had promised Abraham that his descendants would inherit the land, and that all families of the earth would be blessed through him. And Abraham believed God. But then nothing had happened. Year after year had passed by, and Abraham and Sarah had grown old without ever having children. So they decided to take things into their own hands, since God obviously wasn’t doing what He’d promised to do. Sarah gave her servant girl, Hagar, to be Abraham’s wife, to provide an heir for him. Ishmael had been born through Hagar, but then, several years later, Sarah had conceived and given birth to Isaac. This is the story Paul is referring to: “one son was born because God had promised, the other son was born because Abraham and Sarah doubted. Ishmael was a product of human impatience, the human trying to do God’s work for him; Isaac was the result of God doing his own work in his own time.... The great disaster of Abraham’s life was that he used Hagar to get what he thought God wanted for him; the great achievement of his life was what God did for him apart from any programs or plans that he put into action. The lesson of that old piece of history is clear enough: the moment we begin manipulating our lives in order to get control of circumstances, we become enslaved in our own plans, tangled up in our own red tape.... The life of freedom is a life of receiving, of believing, of accepting, of hoping. Because God freely keeps his promises, we are free to trust” (Peterson, pp. 131-32). If ever there was a time when it looked like God wasn’t going to come through with His promises, it was when Abraham grew old without a son. But God freely keeps His promises, even when things look impossible. Because of that, we are free to trust in Him.
The choice is not between trusting and not trusting. The choice is between freedom and slavery. If we choose not to trust God, we’ll end up trusting someone, or something, other than God, which will lead us into slavery in one way or another. The Galatians were being taught to trust in themselves, in their own ability to do things that would make them pleasing to God. Paul is saying that what they’re doing is aligning themselves with Abraham in his misguided attempt to do God’s work for Him.
We’re going to end up trusting in something, or in someone. We can’t help it; it’s the way we were made. So the choice is between freedom and slavery. We either trust in God, which leads us into freedom, or we turn ourselves over to a life of slavery. And, of course, those who are in slavery will resent our freedom. That’s the point Paul makes in verses 28-31: “Isn’t it clear, friends, that you, like Isaac, are children of promise? In the days of Hagar and Sarah, the child who came from faithless connivance (Ishmael) harassed the child who came – empowered by the Spirit – from the faithful promise (Isaac). Isn’t it clear that the harassment you are now experiencing from the Jerusalem heretics follows that old pattern?” (The Message). The false teachers who’ve been trying to win them over are jealous of the freedom of the gospel. They themselves are living in slavery and they want to enslave the Galatians also.
Outwardly, people trusting in themselves and people trusting in God do pretty-much the same things. But they do it all in a different spirit. Those who are trusting in their own ability to live in a way that pleases God are in slavery. They’re fulfilling their duty, but there’s no joy in it. They’re suspicious and cynical; there’s a hard edge to their spirituality. They’re closed in on themselves, trying with all their might to do something they’re incapable of doing. “The life of freedom is a life of receiving, of believing, of accepting, of hoping. Because God freely keeps his promises, we are free to trust.” When God is at the center, we can relax and trust in Him to continue His work. It doesn’t depend on us. We’re not children of slavery; we’re children of the promise. The most important thing about our lives is not what we’re doing, but who we’re trusting.
In the early 1980's, Bob Dylan recorded a song called “You’re Gonna Have to Serve Somebody.” He was saying to contemporary Americans, “You’re not really as free as you think you are.” We’re not created with the ability to exercise complete freedom. And when we try to live in that way we end up being enslaved. Dylan said, “It may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” He was making an observation about the way we’re made, as creatures in the image of God. We may object to the whole idea, and we may try to fight against it, but in the end we’ll still be servants. We can’t escape our nature. If we won’t acknowledge God’s lordship, we’ll serve something less than God.
It’s also true that as humans we have to trust in something or someone. We don’t have complete knowledge about anything, so no matter which direction we go we have to act in faith. This is how Eugene Peterson describes the message of the false teachers in Galatia: “The religious product being promoted by Judaizing interpolators was more self-control, more self-determination. If we engage in particular rituals and keep certain rules, we always know where we stand. If we know what we can do that will make us more acceptable in God’s eyes than a person who doesn’t do them, we, by doing them, can advance our status. Such a religion puts us in control. We no longer have to live by faith, trusting to God to accept us in mercy. We no longer have to live in love toward our neighbor, trusting, often against all appearances, that that neighbor is God’s child. What we are being offered is a security system in which we do not have to live by faith, will not have to trust in God, but can trust instead in ourselves” (Traveling Light, p. 128). In the past, the Galatians have trusted in the gospel of grace, and now they’re beginning to trust in themselves. They’re beginning to rely on their own ability to do things that will make them acceptable in God’s sight.
We might ask, “does this really make such a big difference?” Of course, we know Paul was pretty worked up about it, but, after all, he was a Pharisee; all his training in the law had caused him to be obsessed with theological questions. What difference can these ideas possibly make in our daily lives? Paul shows here that this basic shift in the Galatians’ allegiance is having a major effect on their daily lives. We’re made in such a way that we have to trust in someone or something, and the object of our trust will affect the way we live.
Paul shows, first, that the Galatians have become suspicious and distrustful of the wrong people. In verses 12-16, he contrasts their current attitude toward him with the way they treated him when he was there. It seems that his intention was not to minister in Galatia, at least initially. He says, “As you know, it was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you.” We don’t know exactly what this illness was, but it was something that detained him and kept him from going where he intended. It forced him to spend time in Galatia, and while he was there he preached the gospel and founded a church. Some commentators have suggested that Paul caught malaria while he was on the coast of Pamphylia and sought relief on the mountainous plateau of Galatia (see John Stott, Only One Way: The Message of Galatians, pp. 113-14). In any case, it was because of an illness that Paul ended up in their region.
Paul also makes it clear that this illness was a trial for them. It made him repulsive to them. The great apostle Paul didn’t come to them in full control of his faculties, taking charge and impressing them with his ability. He came to them in weakness, needing their hospitality. And they gave it to him: “And don’t you remember that even though taking in a sick guest was most troublesome for you, you chose to treat me as well as you would have treated an angel of God – as well as you would have treated Jesus himself if he had visited you?” (The Message). He goes on to say “There were some of you then who, if possible, would have given your very eyes to me – that is how deeply you cared!” (The Message).
That’s how they responded to Paul in the past. But now their attitude toward him has changed: “What has happened to the satisfaction you felt at that time?” (The Message); or “What has happened to all your joy?” (NIV). Something has happened to them; their whole attitude toward life has changed. They were able to joyfully serve Paul when he was there and in need, because they were living out of a foundation of trust in God. Now that they’ve begun trusting in themselves, they’ve changed their attitude toward Paul. Now he’s become their enemy, because he’s been speaking the truth to them. They’ve become suspicious and distrustful of the wrong person.
That leads to the next point, which is that they’ve begun trusting in people who shouldn’t be trusted. In verses 17-20, Paul contrasts his own motives with those of the false teachers in Galatia. Several years ago, Annie and I went into a furniture store looking to buy something. As we were looking, a salesman came over, sat down on one of the couches, and started talking to us. He was warm and friendly and interested in our lives. He wanted to help us find what we needed. He seemed like a great guy. A few days later I went back to ask him a question and this same man was rude and cold. He could see he wasn’t going to make another commission from me, so he turned off the act. The first time we met, he had been warm and friendly and interested in our lives because he was trying to get something from us. Paul is saying that the false teachers in Galatia are like that: “Those heretical teachers go to great lengths to flatter you, but their motives are rotten. They want to shut you out of the free world of God’s grace so that you will always depend on them for approval and direction, making them feel important” (The Message). The Galatians are being manipulated by people who want something from them.
Paul’s motives are just the opposite. His concern is to see Christ formed in them: “Do you know how I feel right now, and will feel until Christ’s life becomes visible in your lives? Like a mother in the pain of childbirth. Oh, I keep wishing that I was with you. Then I wouldn’t be reduced to this blunt, letter-writing language out of sheer frustration” (The Message). The false teachers are trying to gain a following for themselves; Paul wants them to follow Jesus Christ. The false teachers are serving themselves; Paul is serving Jesus Christ. This is a good test to apply to a Christian leader: ask yourself whether that leader is seeking to direct you to Jesus Christ, or to himself. Is that leader truly concerned about your spiritual welfare (even when it won’t benefit him personally), or is he seeking to gain a following? The Galatians should be distrustful and suspicious of the new teachers among them; but, for the moment, they’ve gotten everything backwards. They’re distrustful of Paul, who’s seeking their spiritual good, and they’re trusting these flatterers who are out for their own benefit.
Because of all this, because they’re trusting the wrong people, the Galatians are being deceived, they’re being conned into giving up their priceless inheritance for the privilege of returning to slavery. In verses 21-31, Paul draws another contrast: he compares the children of slavery with the children of the promise, then, at the end of the passage, he says “Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman.
God had promised Abraham that his descendants would inherit the land, and that all families of the earth would be blessed through him. And Abraham believed God. But then nothing had happened. Year after year had passed by, and Abraham and Sarah had grown old without ever having children. So they decided to take things into their own hands, since God obviously wasn’t doing what He’d promised to do. Sarah gave her servant girl, Hagar, to be Abraham’s wife, to provide an heir for him. Ishmael had been born through Hagar, but then, several years later, Sarah had conceived and given birth to Isaac. This is the story Paul is referring to: “one son was born because God had promised, the other son was born because Abraham and Sarah doubted. Ishmael was a product of human impatience, the human trying to do God’s work for him; Isaac was the result of God doing his own work in his own time.... The great disaster of Abraham’s life was that he used Hagar to get what he thought God wanted for him; the great achievement of his life was what God did for him apart from any programs or plans that he put into action. The lesson of that old piece of history is clear enough: the moment we begin manipulating our lives in order to get control of circumstances, we become enslaved in our own plans, tangled up in our own red tape.... The life of freedom is a life of receiving, of believing, of accepting, of hoping. Because God freely keeps his promises, we are free to trust” (Peterson, pp. 131-32). If ever there was a time when it looked like God wasn’t going to come through with His promises, it was when Abraham grew old without a son. But God freely keeps His promises, even when things look impossible. Because of that, we are free to trust in Him.
The choice is not between trusting and not trusting. The choice is between freedom and slavery. If we choose not to trust God, we’ll end up trusting someone, or something, other than God, which will lead us into slavery in one way or another. The Galatians were being taught to trust in themselves, in their own ability to do things that would make them pleasing to God. Paul is saying that what they’re doing is aligning themselves with Abraham in his misguided attempt to do God’s work for Him.
We’re going to end up trusting in something, or in someone. We can’t help it; it’s the way we were made. So the choice is between freedom and slavery. We either trust in God, which leads us into freedom, or we turn ourselves over to a life of slavery. And, of course, those who are in slavery will resent our freedom. That’s the point Paul makes in verses 28-31: “Isn’t it clear, friends, that you, like Isaac, are children of promise? In the days of Hagar and Sarah, the child who came from faithless connivance (Ishmael) harassed the child who came – empowered by the Spirit – from the faithful promise (Isaac). Isn’t it clear that the harassment you are now experiencing from the Jerusalem heretics follows that old pattern?” (The Message). The false teachers who’ve been trying to win them over are jealous of the freedom of the gospel. They themselves are living in slavery and they want to enslave the Galatians also.
Outwardly, people trusting in themselves and people trusting in God do pretty-much the same things. But they do it all in a different spirit. Those who are trusting in their own ability to live in a way that pleases God are in slavery. They’re fulfilling their duty, but there’s no joy in it. They’re suspicious and cynical; there’s a hard edge to their spirituality. They’re closed in on themselves, trying with all their might to do something they’re incapable of doing. “The life of freedom is a life of receiving, of believing, of accepting, of hoping. Because God freely keeps his promises, we are free to trust.” When God is at the center, we can relax and trust in Him to continue His work. It doesn’t depend on us. We’re not children of slavery; we’re children of the promise. The most important thing about our lives is not what we’re doing, but who we’re trusting.
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