Fifth Sunday in Lent, 2014
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Eldridge Cleaver was a major leader in the Black Panthers in the 1960’s and 70’s. He became notorious for advocating rape as a political act, admitting that he had at first raped black women for practice but then focused on white women. He saw this as an act of insurrection against an unjust, racist political system. In the late 60’s he fled the United States after provoking a shootout with police in Oakland, CA. He had a falling out with Huey Newton, another leader in the movement, because Newton thought violence was harming their cause and Cleaver believed in the necessity of armed conflict. He was a brutal, violent man, a criminal and a self-confessed rapist, a person who victimized vulnerable human beings.
But in 1975 he returned to the States claiming to be a born-again Christian. He confessed his sins and renounced the things he had said and done in the past. Shortly after his conversion to Christ became public, I was talking to someone who said, “well, why should he be forgiven?” Why should he be able to get away with all the things he had done and then receive forgiveness from God (and, by implication, from God’s people)? He was a despicable human being; aren’t we, by accepting him as a believer, saying that what he did was OK? For this person who was talking to me there was something scandalous, even immoral, about God forgiving such a man. Maybe it’s OK for God for forgive people who are guilty of gossip, or backbiting, or hating their neighbors, normal, socially-acceptable sins, but certainly not hardened criminals like Eldridge Cleaver. It’s one thing to forgive people for the kinds of “little sins” that we’re comfortable excusing, but it’s quite another to offer forgiveness to someone who’s committed real crimes, who’s done inexcusable, reprehensible things. And yet, in the words we’re looking at this morning, Jesus puts forgiveness of sins at the very center of our relationship with God. We may not appreciate it when God forgives a notorious criminal any more than Jonah appreciated God’s mercy toward the Ninevites, but the fact remains that forgiveness of sin is at the very heart of the Christian message.
The first thing I want to point out is that this phrase in the Lord’s Prayer says something about us: it says that we are all constantly in need of forgiveness. Not just notorious sinners, but all of us. This follows immediately after “give us, this day, our daily bread,” which suggests that it’s something we need to be praying every day, just as we pray every day for the provision of food to meet our physical needs. Much of Eastern Orthodox spirituality is based on the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” This prayer recognizes that everything we receive from God comes to us through his mercy, that we are not worthy to claim anything from Him and need to be constantly crying out to Him for mercy and grace.
In the denomination where I pastored, there were some who were influenced by the doctrine of entire sanctification, a form of perfectionism loosely connected with John Wesley but having little to do with his actual teaching. People who bought into this teaching believed that if they acquired the right experience they would be lifted out of the realm of struggle, that they’d become people who no longer sinned, who no longer felt pulled in the direction of sin. Their sin nature had been eradicated. I knew a number of people who grew up under this teaching, and it tended to result in two different tendencies. Some were able to convince themselves that they’d received the experience and had been delivered from the realm of sin. I’ve heard stories, although not very convincing ones, about people who claimed to have this experience. Smith Wigglesworth was a Pentecostal evangelist in the early 20th Century. One of my college professors told a story about Wigglesworth preaching against this doctrine. After the service, a woman stormed to the front of the church and informed him that he was wrong, that she herself had received the experience of full sanctification and was no longer tempted to sin. He had a glass of water in the pulpit with him, so as she was talking he picked up the glass and threw the water in her face; her response was a graphic demonstration that her sinful nature had not been entirely eradicated, which is why he did it. Those who persuade themselves that they have this experience end up embracing a counterfeit (and usually not a very impressive or convincing one at that).
The second group is more honest; these people recognize that they still struggle with sin; they’re deeply aware of their imperfection. They know that they still struggle with temptation and fall into sin. And it tortures them, because they think there’s something within them that’s blocking the experience. One deacon I knew had grown up in a church with this emphasis. He was a good man, a committed follower of Jesus Christ who went out of his way to help people in need. But he wasn’t perfect, and he knew it. He couldn’t live with his imperfection, because he had been taught that perfection is the normal state for Christians. It became so bad at times that he had to be hospitalized. I visited him in the hospital where he was being treated for depression; but his depression wasn’t the result of a congenital mental illness; it was the result of bad theology. He had been taught, in his early life, to expect something that God has not promised. In fact, Jesus has told us implicitly not to expect perfection in this life by instructing us to pray every day, “give us, this day, our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors.” People whose sinful nature has been eradicated don’t need to pray in this way. It’s a good and healthy thing that we begin our worship with confession and crying out for mercy.
When we pray as Jesus instructs us here, we’re confessing that we are “debtors.” In the traditional form of this prayer in English, we say “forgive us our trespasses,” which is a mistranslation popularized by the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. There’s nothing wrong with using this form, but it’s not the right translation of this passage in Matthew. The word here is the common word for debts, and the parallel passage in Luke uses the common word for sins. Our sins have placed us in debt, have put us in a position where we owe more than we can possibly pay, even if we had all of eternity to do so. We are “debtors;” we are finite people with an infinite weight of debt.
The second thing to notice about this phrase is what it says about God: He is a God of mercy who is eager to forgive. Last year, Iron Men read a book by A.W. Tozer, but unfortunately it wasn’t one of his better ones. Tozer, at his best, had a great gift for teaching Christians how to grow spiritually. Here’s something he said about the danger of thinking that God is just waiting for an opportunity to pounce on us for our sins: “Nothing twists and deforms the soul more than a low or unworthy conception of God.” He was especially concerned about our tendency to lose sight of God’s goodness. He goes on a little later: “Much Christianity since the days of Christ’s flesh has... been grim and severe. And the cause has always been the same–an unworthy or an inadequate view of God. Instinctively we try to be like our God, and if He is conceived to be stern and exacting, so will we ourselves be” (“God is Easy to Live With,” in The Root of the Righteous, p. 14). God isn’t waiting eagerly to punish us for our sins. John says “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1). God’s desire is that we stop sinning, that we not continue acquiring debt. But he has not only paid the penalty for our past debts, He has also provided for our future debts. Our debt of sin has been marked PAID IN FULL, and the payment is more than adequate for all of our debt, past, present and future.
The third thing is that this part of the Lord’s Prayer says something about how we, having received mercy, ought to respond to others who are in need of mercy. The great danger is to internalize our faith and not allow it to impact the way we live our lives. Joseph Valachi was a Mafia hit man who became a government informant. He told of being ordered by a mob boss to eliminate an enemy. He and another hit man had been unsuccessful, and when they reported to the boss what had happened, he said, “that’s OK, we’ll get him later, Then he asked them, "'Did you boys go to Mass today?' (It was Sunday." Why, no, said Valachi. They had been too busy trying to assassinate Bugs Rafferty (and, besides, Valachi had no use for religion). The old man shook his head. 'Rubbing out Bugs is important for business,' he said, 'but going to Mass on Sunday is important for your soul'" (reported by Thomas Day in Why Catholics Can’t Sing, p. 115). Responding to the Gospel of Jesus Christ is connected with every part of our lives. A few years ago I was meeting with a bishop in the ELCA; he had read two of my sermons and commented, “well, you know we Lutherans get nervous when people talk about discipleship because we’re concerned that it will lead to works righteousness, that it will undermine the doctrine of justification by faith alone.” I have to admit that he and I never did warm up to each other. But it’s important to point out that this way of thinking doesn’t do justice to the Lutheran Confessions, which speak at length and repeatedly about the necessity of good works. They just make it clear that good works flow from saving faith and are not the foundation of our acceptance before God.
Receiving and giving forgiveness are directly connected. But we need to be careful about this. First of all, forgiveness is not minimizing a person’s guilt, saying “oh well, it’s not such a big deal; let’s just forget about it.” The first step toward forgiving someone is acknowledging that what the person did was wrong. God doesn’t minimize our guilt. Our sins cost Him the death of His only Son. If we want to know what God thinks of our sins, the place to look is Jesus on the cross, crying “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
The second thing to keep in mind is that forgiving others is often a process, and if someone has deeply wronged us we probably won’t be able to forgive all at once. If we try to offer forgiveness too quickly and lightly, we may end up deceiving ourselves and accepting a counterfeit. The question is how to get from where we are to where we know we should be. And this begins with a recognition of the truth about ourselves. If we’re angry and bitter, if we just can’t let go of the wrong, we need to begin by admitting this in God’s presence. The Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann suggests that making use of the Vengeance Psalms, these Psalms that Christians often struggle with because of their anger and violence, can, surprisingly, be the first step toward learning forgiveness: “The articulation of vengeance leads us to a new awareness about ourselves.… John Calvin describes the Psalms as ‘An Anatomy of all Parts of the Soul.' And so they are. They tell us about us. The Psalms provide space for full linguistic freedom in which nothing is censored or precluded” (Walter Brueggemann, Praying the Psalms, p. 58).
Praying the Psalms, including those psalms where the authors are crying out for vengeance, provides a context for facing the truth about what is in our hearts. As much as we want to be like Jesus in asking forgiveness for those who hate us, we can't get there without acknowledging what we really feel. Eugene Peterson, the author of The Message, says the same thing; praying these difficult Psalms can actually point us in the direction of forgiveness: “For those who are troubled about the psalms of vengeance, there is a way beyond them. But that way is not easy or ‘natural.’ It is not the way of careless religious goodwill. It is not the way of moral indifference or flippancy. It is, rather, the way of crucifixion, of accepting the rage and grief and terror of evil in ourselves in order to be liberated for compassion toward others.... My hunch is that there is a way beyond the psalms of vengeance, but it is a way through them and not around them. And that is so because of what in fact goes on with us. Willy nilly, we are vengeful creatures. Thus these harsh psalms must be fully embraced as our own. Our rage and indignation must be fully owned and fully expressed. Then (and only then) can our rage and indignation be yielded to the mercy of God. In taking this route through the Psalms, we take the route God has gone. We are not permitted a cheaper, easier, more ‘enlightened’ way” (Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer, p. 68).
But we need to ask one more question. When we pray “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” does this imply that God only forgives us to the extent that we forgive others? We really don’t know fully what is in our hearts. We may think that we’ve forgiven someone, only to find anger and resentment welling up that we didn’t know was there. If we say that we are forgiven only to the extent that we fully and completely forgive others, we’re essentially saying that we can’t be forgiven; we’re setting an impossible standard. In this case, we’re not justified by faith through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ; we’re forgiven by exercising forgiveness. Our forgiveness of others becomes the primary thing, the condition upon which God forgives us. But really the movement goes in the opposite direction. God forgives us fully and freely, and then we are called to forgive others in the same way. If we refuse to forgive we’re showing that we haven’t truly understood what it means for God to forgive our sins.
But struggling, and often failing, to forgive those who have wronged us is not the same thing as refusing to forgive. We’re called to cultivate forgiveness, to cry out to God for grace to forgive, to take steps in the direction of forgiving those who’ve wronged us; but our forgiveness at its best is an imperfect imitation of the forgiveness that God has granted us. Here’s how Paul says it in Colossians: “Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other, just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive” (3:13). The Gospel of Jesus Christ first brings healing to our relationship with God, but then it also begins healing our relationships with one another. And this begins when we show others mercy because God has shown us mercy.
The truth about us, as fallen human beings, is that we are debtors and can never, even if we had all eternity to do it, pay off our debt. Paul says that by nature we have “no hope and [are] without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). Our condition, as fallen human beings, is absolutely hopeless; but Paul continues after this with one of his great phrases: “But now….” This was once true of you, but now everything has changed because of God’s mercy and grace. “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:13). We can pray these words from the Lord’s Prayer in confidence because Jesus has paid in full the debt for our sins, a debt that we were incapable of ever paying. The Christian music group, Glad, has a wonderful song about this: “Be ye glad, oh, be ye glad, every debt that you ever had has been paid up in full by the grace of the Lord, be ye glad be ye glad be ye glad.” Every debt has been paid up in full by the grace of the Lord. Surely this is a reason for gladness. John Newton, that notorious slave trader who experienced God’s mercy, said near the end of his life, “Although my memory’s fading, I remember two things very clearly: I am a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior.”
Sunday, April 6, 2014
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
Children of God, Galatians 3:26-4:11
When I was a pastor in Collegeville, while I was sitting in my office trying to come up with an idea for how to begin this sermon, a man stopped by the church and said he wanted to talk to me. So I walked into the sanctuary with him (that was where he wanted to talk), and within a few minutes he started asking me what I thought about particular Bible verses that had to do with healing. When he first showed up, I thought he had something urgent to talk about, but as it turned out, he was only interested in converting me to his theological position. He wanted me to believe that sickness is always contrary to God’s will, and that it is always God’s will to heal us if we simply ask in faith. After a few minutes, I told him that I was familiar with this teaching and really wasn’t very interested in discussing it, but that if he wanted to make an appointment I’d be willing to talk to him when I had more time (and then I briefly told him why I thought his ideas were foolish and unbiblical and misleading).
There are false teachers everywhere, and most of the time they seek to defend their teachings by appealing to Scripture. This man quoted one Bible verse after another. But all of his verses were taken out of context, without any attempt to look at them in the light of the general teaching of Scripture. And when I pointed that out to him, he showed no interest; he just quoted a few more verses. He wasn’t interested in discussion. He only wanted to convert me (or make himself feel good by trying to convert me). He even tried to intimidate me by informing me that he’d read the New Testament 20 times and the Old about 10 times or so, and then asking me: “and how many times have you read the Bible?” When I said that I’d read through the Bible at least 20 times (although I'd read the New Testament and Psalms far more than that, since the Bible reading plan I follow goes through them twice a year), he was taken aback and didn’t know what to say.
When people come to us with novel teachings like this, they’ll use all kinds of tactics to persuade us to follow them: intimidation, endless quotations from Scripture, bullying, trying to make our position look foolish. Probably the teachers at Galatia were doing all these things, and the Galatians were being overwhelmed.
Remember that the teachers who’d come to Galatia were telling the churches there that if they wanted to be saved they needed to receive circumcision and begin following the Law of Moses. They were telling the churches that their primary relationship with God is through the Law. This letter is Paul’s response. The Galatians think they’re supplementing the gospel, that they’re following a teaching which will raise them to a higher level spiritually, and Paul responds that this teaching actually amounts to a defection from the message of grace. If they follow this teaching they’ll be departing from Jesus Christ.
The Galatians, in listening to the false teachers, have forgotten who they are. They’ve gotten disoriented; maybe these teachers have bullied and intimidated them. But, in any case, they’ve forgotten who they are in Jesus Christ; otherwise they wouldn’t have taken this new teaching seriously. So Paul reminds them that their relationship with God is not primarily defined by the law; if it were, they would still be in a condition of slavery. That’s what their situation used to be, before they responded to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now that they’ve responded to the gospel of grace, they are children, part of God’s family. They’ve been redeemed from slavery and adopted as God’s own children. This truth that we are adopted as God’s children, as part of His family, says something about our personal identity, about who we are; it says something about our corporate identity, about where we belong; and it says something about our future, what we have to look forward to.
First, our personal identity. In the story of the prodigal son, the thing that I most often think about is the phrase in verse 17: “When he came to his senses....” (Luke 15:17). Henri Nouwen has a wonderful book about this story (and a painting Rembrandt did of it). Nouwen points out that it’s a realization of his sonship that first causes the prodigal son to return to his senses: “The younger son’s return takes place in the very moment that he reclaims his sonship, even though he has lost all the dignity that belongs to it. In fact, it was the loss of everything that brought him to the bottom line of his identity. He hit the bedrock of his sonship. In retrospect, it seems that the prodigal had to lose everything to come into touch with the ground of his being. When he found himself desiring to be treated as one of the pigs, he realized that he was not a pig but a human being, a son of his father” (The Return of the Prodigal Son, p. 49). When the prodigal son went away and wasted his inheritance, part of what was happening was that he had forgotten his identity; he didn’t remember who he was (whether he was intentionally walking away from his identity or whether he was just caught in the fog of his own desires).
Paul wants the Galatians to know that they are children of God. That hasn’t always been true of them. “Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods.” We saw in the last sermon that the law was a custodian (something like a protective escort) to lead them to Christ. But as long as they were under the care of this custodian, they were essentially in bondage. The law is incapable of freeing us from sin; all it does is reveal our failure. So Paul has been telling them that when they were under the law they were in constant bondage to a system of demands which they were incapable of fulfilling. “As long as the heir is a minor, he has no advantage over the slave. Though legally he owns the entire inheritance, he is subject to tutors and administrators until whatever date the father has set for emancipation. That is the way it is with us: When we were minors, we were just like slaves ordered around by simple instructions (the tutors and administrators of this world), with no say in the conduct of our own lives” (The Message).
That’s where they were. But now everything has changed. “But when the time arrived that was set by God the Father, God sent his Son, born among us of a woman, born under the conditions of the law so that he might redeem those of us who have been kidnapped by the law. Thus we have been set free to experience our rightful heritage” (The Message). Paul uses the word redeem to describe how this change has come about. In using this word, he is pointing to a practice that people would have been familiar with. “Sometimes a slave caught the attention of a wealthy free person and for some reason or other – compassion, affection, justice – the free person decided to free the slave. The free person would then go to the temple or shrine and deposit with the priests the sum of money required for manumission. The priests would then deliver an oracle: The god Apollo has purchased this slave so-and-so from owners such-and-such and is now free. The priests then passed the redemption price on to the recent owner. The exslave who all his or her life had been treated as an inferior, useful only for purposes of running someone else’s errands, doing someone else’s work, was no longer subject to such evaluation. The person was free. No price could be put on that head again” (Eugene Peterson, Traveling Light, p. 116). In redemption, the slave was bought and paid for, then set free. Christ was born under the law, lived without ever violating it, and then died to pay the price to redeem us from the law. He paid our redemption price. But then God went even further; He not only redeemed us from the law, He also adopted us as His children. We’ve not only been set free from bondage to the law, we’ve been adopted into God’s family. We’re no longer slaves; we’re not even mere free citizens. We’re part of God’s family.
That’s our personal identity. We’ve been adopted as God’s children and are no longer slaves. We may still feel like slaves sometimes. No doubt when slaves were redeemed in the ancient world it took a long time for the reality of the change to sink in. We easily fall into old patterns and begin thinking of ourselves as slaves in bondage to the law. But Paul wants us to know the truth about who we are: the price has been paid in full, and we’ve been adopted as God’s children. We now belong to Him.
That leads to the next point, which is about our corporate identity. We aren’t adopted as “only children.” Often evangelical teachers make so much of the personal nature of faith that they undermine the importance of the Church. We aren’t redeemed and left on our own. We’re redeemed as part of a body; we’re made part of God’s family: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Listen to this verse in The Message: “In Christ’s family there can be no division into Jew and non-Jew, slave and free, male and female. Among us you are all equal. That is, we are all in a common relationship with Jesus Christ.” In this world that is so full of discord and hatred and alienation, God has given us a place where we belong. He’s made us part of His family. We may not always feel a strong sense of belonging in the church, but the truth is that this is our family; we’re united in Jesus Christ. As we’re increasingly transformed into His image, we’ll experience a growing bond with His people. But whether we feel like it or not at any particular time, the Church is a place where we belong. It’s not that we’ve decided to get together with others who think like we do; it’s that God has adopted us together as part of His family and has called us to grow together into His image.
The third point is about our future. Our life in Christ is not primarily about things that are happening in the present moment. We’re living in an in-between time. The price for our redemption has been paid, but we haven’t entered into our full inheritance. We’re looking forward to the time when we will experience the fullness of what Christ has purchased for us. “Also, since you are Christ’s family, then you are Abraham’s famous ‘descendant,’ heirs according to the covenant promises” (The Message). We don’t always feel like people who’ve been set free. We don’t always feel like we belong in the Church. But we look forward to a time when we will feel these things, when we will experience the reality of these things. We won’t always be living by faith. As God’s children, we are also His heirs: “So you are no longer slaves, but God’s children; and since you are his children, he has made you also heirs.”
Who are we? We’re God’s children; we’ve been redeemed from bondage to the law and have been adopted. Where do we belong? We’ve been made part of God’s family, a body of people who are being transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. And what do we have to look forward to? Our full inheritance as God’s children. Paul said our future inheritance is so glorious that it can’t even be compared to the sufferings we experience in this life: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18).
The man I mentioned at the beginning of the sermon was teaching things that lead to bondage. That’s what false teachings do. They lead us to forget who we are. If we think God always gives physical healing, then when we don’t experience healing we’ll question our relationship with God. We’ll be in slavery; whether or not we’ve received physical healing will become the foundation of our relationship with God. False teachings always lead us into bondage in one way or another.
We are no longer slaves. We are God’s adopted children. This outlook determines everything. It’s meant to transform every area of our lives: our sense of personal identity, our sense of where we belong, and our understanding of what we have to look forward to in the future. The price has been paid in full. We’ve been redeemed from slavery and adopted as God’s own children. The hymn "Day By Day," begins with these words: “Day by day and with each passing moment, strength I find to meet my trials here; trusting in my Father’s wise bestowment, I’ve no cause for worry or for fear.” Then, in the next verse: “The protection of His child and treasure is a charge that on Himself He laid....” God, our Father, has adopted us as His children and has committed Himself to care for us. He is a perfect Father, and we belong to Him. He is everything we expect fathers to be (but which we all fail to be in one way or another). We’re not slaves; we’re adopted children of our heavenly Father.
There are false teachers everywhere, and most of the time they seek to defend their teachings by appealing to Scripture. This man quoted one Bible verse after another. But all of his verses were taken out of context, without any attempt to look at them in the light of the general teaching of Scripture. And when I pointed that out to him, he showed no interest; he just quoted a few more verses. He wasn’t interested in discussion. He only wanted to convert me (or make himself feel good by trying to convert me). He even tried to intimidate me by informing me that he’d read the New Testament 20 times and the Old about 10 times or so, and then asking me: “and how many times have you read the Bible?” When I said that I’d read through the Bible at least 20 times (although I'd read the New Testament and Psalms far more than that, since the Bible reading plan I follow goes through them twice a year), he was taken aback and didn’t know what to say.
When people come to us with novel teachings like this, they’ll use all kinds of tactics to persuade us to follow them: intimidation, endless quotations from Scripture, bullying, trying to make our position look foolish. Probably the teachers at Galatia were doing all these things, and the Galatians were being overwhelmed.
Remember that the teachers who’d come to Galatia were telling the churches there that if they wanted to be saved they needed to receive circumcision and begin following the Law of Moses. They were telling the churches that their primary relationship with God is through the Law. This letter is Paul’s response. The Galatians think they’re supplementing the gospel, that they’re following a teaching which will raise them to a higher level spiritually, and Paul responds that this teaching actually amounts to a defection from the message of grace. If they follow this teaching they’ll be departing from Jesus Christ.
The Galatians, in listening to the false teachers, have forgotten who they are. They’ve gotten disoriented; maybe these teachers have bullied and intimidated them. But, in any case, they’ve forgotten who they are in Jesus Christ; otherwise they wouldn’t have taken this new teaching seriously. So Paul reminds them that their relationship with God is not primarily defined by the law; if it were, they would still be in a condition of slavery. That’s what their situation used to be, before they responded to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now that they’ve responded to the gospel of grace, they are children, part of God’s family. They’ve been redeemed from slavery and adopted as God’s own children. This truth that we are adopted as God’s children, as part of His family, says something about our personal identity, about who we are; it says something about our corporate identity, about where we belong; and it says something about our future, what we have to look forward to.
First, our personal identity. In the story of the prodigal son, the thing that I most often think about is the phrase in verse 17: “When he came to his senses....” (Luke 15:17). Henri Nouwen has a wonderful book about this story (and a painting Rembrandt did of it). Nouwen points out that it’s a realization of his sonship that first causes the prodigal son to return to his senses: “The younger son’s return takes place in the very moment that he reclaims his sonship, even though he has lost all the dignity that belongs to it. In fact, it was the loss of everything that brought him to the bottom line of his identity. He hit the bedrock of his sonship. In retrospect, it seems that the prodigal had to lose everything to come into touch with the ground of his being. When he found himself desiring to be treated as one of the pigs, he realized that he was not a pig but a human being, a son of his father” (The Return of the Prodigal Son, p. 49). When the prodigal son went away and wasted his inheritance, part of what was happening was that he had forgotten his identity; he didn’t remember who he was (whether he was intentionally walking away from his identity or whether he was just caught in the fog of his own desires).
Paul wants the Galatians to know that they are children of God. That hasn’t always been true of them. “Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods.” We saw in the last sermon that the law was a custodian (something like a protective escort) to lead them to Christ. But as long as they were under the care of this custodian, they were essentially in bondage. The law is incapable of freeing us from sin; all it does is reveal our failure. So Paul has been telling them that when they were under the law they were in constant bondage to a system of demands which they were incapable of fulfilling. “As long as the heir is a minor, he has no advantage over the slave. Though legally he owns the entire inheritance, he is subject to tutors and administrators until whatever date the father has set for emancipation. That is the way it is with us: When we were minors, we were just like slaves ordered around by simple instructions (the tutors and administrators of this world), with no say in the conduct of our own lives” (The Message).
That’s where they were. But now everything has changed. “But when the time arrived that was set by God the Father, God sent his Son, born among us of a woman, born under the conditions of the law so that he might redeem those of us who have been kidnapped by the law. Thus we have been set free to experience our rightful heritage” (The Message). Paul uses the word redeem to describe how this change has come about. In using this word, he is pointing to a practice that people would have been familiar with. “Sometimes a slave caught the attention of a wealthy free person and for some reason or other – compassion, affection, justice – the free person decided to free the slave. The free person would then go to the temple or shrine and deposit with the priests the sum of money required for manumission. The priests would then deliver an oracle: The god Apollo has purchased this slave so-and-so from owners such-and-such and is now free. The priests then passed the redemption price on to the recent owner. The exslave who all his or her life had been treated as an inferior, useful only for purposes of running someone else’s errands, doing someone else’s work, was no longer subject to such evaluation. The person was free. No price could be put on that head again” (Eugene Peterson, Traveling Light, p. 116). In redemption, the slave was bought and paid for, then set free. Christ was born under the law, lived without ever violating it, and then died to pay the price to redeem us from the law. He paid our redemption price. But then God went even further; He not only redeemed us from the law, He also adopted us as His children. We’ve not only been set free from bondage to the law, we’ve been adopted into God’s family. We’re no longer slaves; we’re not even mere free citizens. We’re part of God’s family.
That’s our personal identity. We’ve been adopted as God’s children and are no longer slaves. We may still feel like slaves sometimes. No doubt when slaves were redeemed in the ancient world it took a long time for the reality of the change to sink in. We easily fall into old patterns and begin thinking of ourselves as slaves in bondage to the law. But Paul wants us to know the truth about who we are: the price has been paid in full, and we’ve been adopted as God’s children. We now belong to Him.
That leads to the next point, which is about our corporate identity. We aren’t adopted as “only children.” Often evangelical teachers make so much of the personal nature of faith that they undermine the importance of the Church. We aren’t redeemed and left on our own. We’re redeemed as part of a body; we’re made part of God’s family: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Listen to this verse in The Message: “In Christ’s family there can be no division into Jew and non-Jew, slave and free, male and female. Among us you are all equal. That is, we are all in a common relationship with Jesus Christ.” In this world that is so full of discord and hatred and alienation, God has given us a place where we belong. He’s made us part of His family. We may not always feel a strong sense of belonging in the church, but the truth is that this is our family; we’re united in Jesus Christ. As we’re increasingly transformed into His image, we’ll experience a growing bond with His people. But whether we feel like it or not at any particular time, the Church is a place where we belong. It’s not that we’ve decided to get together with others who think like we do; it’s that God has adopted us together as part of His family and has called us to grow together into His image.
The third point is about our future. Our life in Christ is not primarily about things that are happening in the present moment. We’re living in an in-between time. The price for our redemption has been paid, but we haven’t entered into our full inheritance. We’re looking forward to the time when we will experience the fullness of what Christ has purchased for us. “Also, since you are Christ’s family, then you are Abraham’s famous ‘descendant,’ heirs according to the covenant promises” (The Message). We don’t always feel like people who’ve been set free. We don’t always feel like we belong in the Church. But we look forward to a time when we will feel these things, when we will experience the reality of these things. We won’t always be living by faith. As God’s children, we are also His heirs: “So you are no longer slaves, but God’s children; and since you are his children, he has made you also heirs.”
Who are we? We’re God’s children; we’ve been redeemed from bondage to the law and have been adopted. Where do we belong? We’ve been made part of God’s family, a body of people who are being transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. And what do we have to look forward to? Our full inheritance as God’s children. Paul said our future inheritance is so glorious that it can’t even be compared to the sufferings we experience in this life: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18).
The man I mentioned at the beginning of the sermon was teaching things that lead to bondage. That’s what false teachings do. They lead us to forget who we are. If we think God always gives physical healing, then when we don’t experience healing we’ll question our relationship with God. We’ll be in slavery; whether or not we’ve received physical healing will become the foundation of our relationship with God. False teachings always lead us into bondage in one way or another.
We are no longer slaves. We are God’s adopted children. This outlook determines everything. It’s meant to transform every area of our lives: our sense of personal identity, our sense of where we belong, and our understanding of what we have to look forward to in the future. The price has been paid in full. We’ve been redeemed from slavery and adopted as God’s own children. The hymn "Day By Day," begins with these words: “Day by day and with each passing moment, strength I find to meet my trials here; trusting in my Father’s wise bestowment, I’ve no cause for worry or for fear.” Then, in the next verse: “The protection of His child and treasure is a charge that on Himself He laid....” God, our Father, has adopted us as His children and has committed Himself to care for us. He is a perfect Father, and we belong to Him. He is everything we expect fathers to be (but which we all fail to be in one way or another). We’re not slaves; we’re adopted children of our heavenly Father.
Sunday, March 2, 2014
The Purpose of the Law, Galatians 3:15-25
At one point in Jesus’ ministry, the people asked Him a question that was very important to them: “what must we do to perform the works of God?” “What do we need to do to become people who are pleasing to God?” And Jesus gave them a surprising answer: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (John 6:28-29). It wasn’t what they expected; it wasn’t what they were looking for, and as the discussion continued, many of His own disciples turned away and no longer followed Him. They wanted something more tangible, something they could do, that everyone could see and know that they were people who performed the works of God.
The Galatians, at this point, were asking a similar question, and they were receiving a very definite answer from some teachers who had come into the area. They were asking “what must we do to perform the works of God,” and these teachers were telling them: “be circumcised and submit to the Law of Moses.” The people who questioned Jesus were looking for this sort of answer; it’s just the kind of thing they were hoping for: “If you want to perform the works of God, do this and everything will be fine.”
This question doesn’t seem as urgent to us, living at the beginning of the 21st Century. We live in a very different kind of society, and “doing the works of God” is not as high on our agenda. But here’s a question we do ask: “how can I be successful?” “What do I need to do to become a success?” It really doesn’t matter what kind of success we’re concerned about: financial prosperity, personal happiness, a fulfilling career, a good reputation, or a leadership position in the church. We want to be successful; we don’t want to be failures. We want to know that our lives have counted for something. And when we come into God’s presence, very often the most pressing question on our minds is this: “what do I need to do to become successful?” That’s one reason there are so many self-help books in Christian bookstores. We want to know how to succeed in life.
Eugene Peterson makes this interesting observation: “Among the apostles, the one absolutely stunning success was Judas, and the one thoroughly groveling failure was Peter. Judas was a success in the ways that most impress us: he was successful both financially and politically. He cleverly arranged to control the money of the apostolic band; he skillfully manipulated the political forces of the day to accomplish his goal. And Peter was a failure in ways that we most dread: he was impotent in a crisis and socially inept. At the arrest of Jesus he collapsed, a hapless, blustering coward; in the most critical situations of his life with Jesus, the confession on the road to Caesarea Philippi and the vision on the Mount of Transfiguration, he said the most embarrassingly inappropriate things. He was not the companion we would want with us in time of danger, and he was not the kind of person we would feel comfortable with at a social occasion” (Traveling Light, p. 95).
The teachers at Galatia are telling the churches there how to become successful before God, but they’re off track because they don’t really understand the purpose of the law in God’s plan of redemption. They’re telling the Galatians how to become successful by using the law, when the purpose of the law is to show them their failure. The law has a place in God’s work of redemption, but it’s different than they’ve been assuming. The law, in God’s purposes, is not the main thing. God’s primary way of dealing with His people is through the promise; the purpose of the law is to show us our neediness. The purpose of the law is not to give us the secrets of success; the purpose of the law is to underscore our failure and show us our need.
The first point Paul makes, in verses 15-18, is that the promise was given long before the law. Paul was being accused of starting a new sect. The false teachers were accusing him of departing from the teaching of the Old Testament, of laying aside God’s revelation in the past. So Paul wants the Galatians to know that this is not true at all. God dealt with Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, on the basis of promise, not law. And God not only made a promise to Abraham, but to his descendants as well. The law, which was given more than 400 years later, can’t override God’s promise to Abraham and his descendants.
Listen to how this section reads in The Message: “Friends, let me give you an example from everyday affairs of the free life I am talking about. Once a person’s will has been ratified, no one else can annul it or add to it.... A will, earlier ratified by God, is not annulled by an addendum attached 430 years later, thereby negating the promise of the will. No, this addendum, with its instructions and regulations, has nothing to do with the promised inheritance in the will.” The Judaizers who were teaching in Galatia were assuming that law is God’s primary way of dealing with His people. They had made obedience to the letter of the law the fundamental thing that defined their relationship with God. So Paul shows here that they’re off track. God’s primary way of dealing with His people is through the promise. The law can’t be the primary thing, since it was added so much later. God is faithful to His Word; when He gave the law to Moses, He wasn’t canceling out His promises to Abraham.
Why do we have binding contracts drawn up by lawyers who exercise great care trying to eliminate loopholes and escape routes? Why are so many marriages disintegrating in our society (which means that people who’ve taken a solemn vow to remain together ‘till death do us part’ have decided to lay aside their promises)? Why are so many children embittered toward their parents for promises they’ve made but haven’t kept? We’re not faithful to our promises. We say we’re going to do something, but then we find that it’s not as easy as we expected, so we change our minds. Sometimes we fail to keep our promises though simple human weakness; we find that we’ve promised to do something that we’re unable to do. But much of the time we’re just unfaithful. God isn’t like this. He is true to His word. He’s not going to change His mind in the future, and He’s not going to be hindered by weakness in the way we are. God began His work of redemption with a promise to Abraham and his descendants. When He gave the law, 400 years later, it wasn’t that He said to Himself, “well, I can see that this isn’t working; I’d better try something else.” The law doesn’t cancel out the promise in that way. God’s fundamental way of dealing with people in this fallen world is through the promise.
There’s a reason God doesn’t deal with us through the law. Paul makes this point in verses 19-22: “if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law.” The problem is that the law can’t impart life. But the problem is not with the law. The problem is with us: “What, then, was the purpose of the law? It was added because of transgressions.... But the scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin.” The law can’t give us life, because we are sinners; we’re people who are guilty of violating the law. The law can’t save us, because we’ve broken it.
Suppose we could take hold of ourselves and begin faithfully obeying the law from now on until the end of our lives. That’s the idea of legalism: we save ourselves by faithfully observing the law, without any lapses, until we stand before the judgment seat of Christ. Well, suppose we could do that. Would it do any good? We’ve already broken the law, so what we’re hoping is that our obedience in the future will outweigh our disobedience in the past. But the law doesn’t give us that hope. The law condemns us as sinners. The law shows us how many times we’ve failed to keep it. Even if we obey more than we disobey over the course of a lifetime, the law calls us to account for our disobedience. There’s no provision in the law that says “five acts of obedience cancel out one sin.” And, of course, the problem is not only with past sins. No matter how hard we try, we continue to fail in our attempts to obey the law. When we try to save ourselves by obeying the law, we only lead ourselves into deeper condemnation. The law is always there to show us how many times we’ve failed to keep it.
So, what is the purpose of the law? If it was given so much later than the promise, and if it’s unable to rescue us from our sinful condition, why did God give it at all? Paul explains this in verses 23-25: “Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith.” The purpose of the law is to lead us to Christ.
Paul uses an interesting word to describe the law’s function: “He calls the law a custodian: ‘The law was our custodian until Christ came.’ The meaning of the Greek word paidagogos that lies behind the English word custodian often loses something in translation. Greek families that were well enough off to have slaves chose one of them, usually an old and trusted slave, to be in charge of their child or children from the ages of six to sixteen. This custodian went with the child to school to see that no harm or mischief came to him. He was not the schoolmaster. He had nothing to do with the actual teaching of the child. It was only his duty to take him safely to the school and deliver him to the teacher. That, says Paul, is how the law works: it delivers us to the place of faith, to Christ” (Peterson, Traveling Light, pp. 104-105). This idea comes across clearly in The Message: “Until the time when we were mature enough to respond freely in faith to the living God, we were carefully surrounded and protected by the Mosaic law. The law was like those Greek tutors, with which you are familiar, who escort children to school and protect them from danger or distraction, making sure the children will really get to the place they set out for.” The purpose of the law is to keep us oriented to God, and to point out our need, our failure, which points us to our need of grace and mercy through Jesus Christ. The purpose of the law is to lead us to faith in Christ.
Maybe you’re not asking the question, “what must I do to work the works of God.” If you’re like many today, you’re far more interested in learning how to live successfully. Here are some phrases from church advertisements I’ve received in the mail: “What if there was a church... where... real life issues are discussed?” “Real life issues,” not all that religious stuff that most churches talk about. “At [our church] we believe that finding real answers for life’s toughest problems is important” (and the context of this phrase makes it clear that they’re talking about the practical “how-to’s” of ordering our lives successfully. This same church sent out another brochure advertising a new sermon series: “How to Succeed at the Speed of Life.”
The message of the gospel is not “how to succeed.” The message of the gospel is “you’ve already failed in more ways than you know, and you’re going to fail again in the future (and you’ll fail even more if you try to do anything worthwhile), but God in His mercy has provided for this. Listen to the law, and acknowledge the truth about yourself, then come to Jesus Christ to receive mercy and grace. Trying to pretend that you’re a success (either at obeying the law or at having all of life figured out) will lead only to bondage.” The Galatians were being told how to be successful in God’s sight, and it was leading them into bondage. The free life of the gospel is a life lived in recognition of the truth about ourselves.
Eugene Peterson sums it up like this: “There we live by faith and failure, by faith and forgiveness, by faith and mercy, by faith and freedom. We do not live successfully. Success imprisons. Success is an unbiblical burden stupidly assumed by prideful persons who reject the risks and perils of faith, preferring to appear right rather than to be human” (p. 106). People who are obsessed with success are also inordinately concerned with appearances. Too often how we appear is more important to us than the truth of what we are.
In the middle of the 20th century, A.W. Tozer made this observation: “Much that passes for Christianity today is the brief bright effort of the severed branch to bring forth its fruit in its season. But the deep laws of life are against it. Preoccupation with appearances and a corresponding neglect of the out-of-sight root of the true spiritual life are prophetic signs which go unheeded. Immediate ‘results’ are all that matter, quick proofs of present success without a thought of next week or next year. Religious pragmatism is running wild among the orthodox. Truth is whatever works. If it gets results it is good. There is but one test for the religious leader: success. Everything is forgiven him except failure” (The Root of the Righteous, pp. 8-9).
The Corinthian church was full of pride. They were a “successful” church. So Paul decided to remind them of the truth: “Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of ‘the brightest and the best’ among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these ‘nobodies’ to expose the hollow pretensions of the ‘somebodies’? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have – right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start – comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, ‘If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God” (1 Corinthians 1:26-31, The Message). We’re not successes, and when we pretend otherwise we dishonor God. God is glorified when we acknowledge the truth. God’s way of redemption is to lead us to salvation in Jesus Christ by first showing us our failure to keep the law.
“This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (John 6:28-29). “There we live by faith and failure, by faith and forgiveness, by faith and mercy, by faith and freedom.” The law brings us into bondage, whether it’s the Mosaic law or a current Evangelical law about how to live a successful and happy middle class American life. Life in this world is full of sorrow and failure. Our vision of the Christian life needs to be in touch with this reality, and the foundation of our Christian lives is this: God has dealt with us, not as successes, but as failures. God knows all the truth about us. We don’t need to pretend. The law condemns us, but it doesn’t leave us in a state of condemnation; it leads us to a life of freedom in the grace of Jesus Christ: “But now you have arrived at your destination: By faith in Christ you are in direct relationship with God. Your baptism in Christ was not just washing you up for a fresh start. It also involved dressing you in an adult faith wardrobe – Christ’s life, the fulfillment of God’s original promise” (The Message). That’s the most fundamental reality of our lives as Christians. It’s not that we’ve learned the secret of living successfully. It’s that we’ve been reconciled to God and are in a relationship with Him which begins in this life and will continue throughout eternity.
The Galatians, at this point, were asking a similar question, and they were receiving a very definite answer from some teachers who had come into the area. They were asking “what must we do to perform the works of God,” and these teachers were telling them: “be circumcised and submit to the Law of Moses.” The people who questioned Jesus were looking for this sort of answer; it’s just the kind of thing they were hoping for: “If you want to perform the works of God, do this and everything will be fine.”
This question doesn’t seem as urgent to us, living at the beginning of the 21st Century. We live in a very different kind of society, and “doing the works of God” is not as high on our agenda. But here’s a question we do ask: “how can I be successful?” “What do I need to do to become a success?” It really doesn’t matter what kind of success we’re concerned about: financial prosperity, personal happiness, a fulfilling career, a good reputation, or a leadership position in the church. We want to be successful; we don’t want to be failures. We want to know that our lives have counted for something. And when we come into God’s presence, very often the most pressing question on our minds is this: “what do I need to do to become successful?” That’s one reason there are so many self-help books in Christian bookstores. We want to know how to succeed in life.
Eugene Peterson makes this interesting observation: “Among the apostles, the one absolutely stunning success was Judas, and the one thoroughly groveling failure was Peter. Judas was a success in the ways that most impress us: he was successful both financially and politically. He cleverly arranged to control the money of the apostolic band; he skillfully manipulated the political forces of the day to accomplish his goal. And Peter was a failure in ways that we most dread: he was impotent in a crisis and socially inept. At the arrest of Jesus he collapsed, a hapless, blustering coward; in the most critical situations of his life with Jesus, the confession on the road to Caesarea Philippi and the vision on the Mount of Transfiguration, he said the most embarrassingly inappropriate things. He was not the companion we would want with us in time of danger, and he was not the kind of person we would feel comfortable with at a social occasion” (Traveling Light, p. 95).
The teachers at Galatia are telling the churches there how to become successful before God, but they’re off track because they don’t really understand the purpose of the law in God’s plan of redemption. They’re telling the Galatians how to become successful by using the law, when the purpose of the law is to show them their failure. The law has a place in God’s work of redemption, but it’s different than they’ve been assuming. The law, in God’s purposes, is not the main thing. God’s primary way of dealing with His people is through the promise; the purpose of the law is to show us our neediness. The purpose of the law is not to give us the secrets of success; the purpose of the law is to underscore our failure and show us our need.
The first point Paul makes, in verses 15-18, is that the promise was given long before the law. Paul was being accused of starting a new sect. The false teachers were accusing him of departing from the teaching of the Old Testament, of laying aside God’s revelation in the past. So Paul wants the Galatians to know that this is not true at all. God dealt with Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, on the basis of promise, not law. And God not only made a promise to Abraham, but to his descendants as well. The law, which was given more than 400 years later, can’t override God’s promise to Abraham and his descendants.
Listen to how this section reads in The Message: “Friends, let me give you an example from everyday affairs of the free life I am talking about. Once a person’s will has been ratified, no one else can annul it or add to it.... A will, earlier ratified by God, is not annulled by an addendum attached 430 years later, thereby negating the promise of the will. No, this addendum, with its instructions and regulations, has nothing to do with the promised inheritance in the will.” The Judaizers who were teaching in Galatia were assuming that law is God’s primary way of dealing with His people. They had made obedience to the letter of the law the fundamental thing that defined their relationship with God. So Paul shows here that they’re off track. God’s primary way of dealing with His people is through the promise. The law can’t be the primary thing, since it was added so much later. God is faithful to His Word; when He gave the law to Moses, He wasn’t canceling out His promises to Abraham.
Why do we have binding contracts drawn up by lawyers who exercise great care trying to eliminate loopholes and escape routes? Why are so many marriages disintegrating in our society (which means that people who’ve taken a solemn vow to remain together ‘till death do us part’ have decided to lay aside their promises)? Why are so many children embittered toward their parents for promises they’ve made but haven’t kept? We’re not faithful to our promises. We say we’re going to do something, but then we find that it’s not as easy as we expected, so we change our minds. Sometimes we fail to keep our promises though simple human weakness; we find that we’ve promised to do something that we’re unable to do. But much of the time we’re just unfaithful. God isn’t like this. He is true to His word. He’s not going to change His mind in the future, and He’s not going to be hindered by weakness in the way we are. God began His work of redemption with a promise to Abraham and his descendants. When He gave the law, 400 years later, it wasn’t that He said to Himself, “well, I can see that this isn’t working; I’d better try something else.” The law doesn’t cancel out the promise in that way. God’s fundamental way of dealing with people in this fallen world is through the promise.
There’s a reason God doesn’t deal with us through the law. Paul makes this point in verses 19-22: “if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law.” The problem is that the law can’t impart life. But the problem is not with the law. The problem is with us: “What, then, was the purpose of the law? It was added because of transgressions.... But the scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin.” The law can’t give us life, because we are sinners; we’re people who are guilty of violating the law. The law can’t save us, because we’ve broken it.
Suppose we could take hold of ourselves and begin faithfully obeying the law from now on until the end of our lives. That’s the idea of legalism: we save ourselves by faithfully observing the law, without any lapses, until we stand before the judgment seat of Christ. Well, suppose we could do that. Would it do any good? We’ve already broken the law, so what we’re hoping is that our obedience in the future will outweigh our disobedience in the past. But the law doesn’t give us that hope. The law condemns us as sinners. The law shows us how many times we’ve failed to keep it. Even if we obey more than we disobey over the course of a lifetime, the law calls us to account for our disobedience. There’s no provision in the law that says “five acts of obedience cancel out one sin.” And, of course, the problem is not only with past sins. No matter how hard we try, we continue to fail in our attempts to obey the law. When we try to save ourselves by obeying the law, we only lead ourselves into deeper condemnation. The law is always there to show us how many times we’ve failed to keep it.
So, what is the purpose of the law? If it was given so much later than the promise, and if it’s unable to rescue us from our sinful condition, why did God give it at all? Paul explains this in verses 23-25: “Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith.” The purpose of the law is to lead us to Christ.
Paul uses an interesting word to describe the law’s function: “He calls the law a custodian: ‘The law was our custodian until Christ came.’ The meaning of the Greek word paidagogos that lies behind the English word custodian often loses something in translation. Greek families that were well enough off to have slaves chose one of them, usually an old and trusted slave, to be in charge of their child or children from the ages of six to sixteen. This custodian went with the child to school to see that no harm or mischief came to him. He was not the schoolmaster. He had nothing to do with the actual teaching of the child. It was only his duty to take him safely to the school and deliver him to the teacher. That, says Paul, is how the law works: it delivers us to the place of faith, to Christ” (Peterson, Traveling Light, pp. 104-105). This idea comes across clearly in The Message: “Until the time when we were mature enough to respond freely in faith to the living God, we were carefully surrounded and protected by the Mosaic law. The law was like those Greek tutors, with which you are familiar, who escort children to school and protect them from danger or distraction, making sure the children will really get to the place they set out for.” The purpose of the law is to keep us oriented to God, and to point out our need, our failure, which points us to our need of grace and mercy through Jesus Christ. The purpose of the law is to lead us to faith in Christ.
Maybe you’re not asking the question, “what must I do to work the works of God.” If you’re like many today, you’re far more interested in learning how to live successfully. Here are some phrases from church advertisements I’ve received in the mail: “What if there was a church... where... real life issues are discussed?” “Real life issues,” not all that religious stuff that most churches talk about. “At [our church] we believe that finding real answers for life’s toughest problems is important” (and the context of this phrase makes it clear that they’re talking about the practical “how-to’s” of ordering our lives successfully. This same church sent out another brochure advertising a new sermon series: “How to Succeed at the Speed of Life.”
The message of the gospel is not “how to succeed.” The message of the gospel is “you’ve already failed in more ways than you know, and you’re going to fail again in the future (and you’ll fail even more if you try to do anything worthwhile), but God in His mercy has provided for this. Listen to the law, and acknowledge the truth about yourself, then come to Jesus Christ to receive mercy and grace. Trying to pretend that you’re a success (either at obeying the law or at having all of life figured out) will lead only to bondage.” The Galatians were being told how to be successful in God’s sight, and it was leading them into bondage. The free life of the gospel is a life lived in recognition of the truth about ourselves.
Eugene Peterson sums it up like this: “There we live by faith and failure, by faith and forgiveness, by faith and mercy, by faith and freedom. We do not live successfully. Success imprisons. Success is an unbiblical burden stupidly assumed by prideful persons who reject the risks and perils of faith, preferring to appear right rather than to be human” (p. 106). People who are obsessed with success are also inordinately concerned with appearances. Too often how we appear is more important to us than the truth of what we are.
In the middle of the 20th century, A.W. Tozer made this observation: “Much that passes for Christianity today is the brief bright effort of the severed branch to bring forth its fruit in its season. But the deep laws of life are against it. Preoccupation with appearances and a corresponding neglect of the out-of-sight root of the true spiritual life are prophetic signs which go unheeded. Immediate ‘results’ are all that matter, quick proofs of present success without a thought of next week or next year. Religious pragmatism is running wild among the orthodox. Truth is whatever works. If it gets results it is good. There is but one test for the religious leader: success. Everything is forgiven him except failure” (The Root of the Righteous, pp. 8-9).
The Corinthian church was full of pride. They were a “successful” church. So Paul decided to remind them of the truth: “Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of ‘the brightest and the best’ among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these ‘nobodies’ to expose the hollow pretensions of the ‘somebodies’? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have – right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start – comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, ‘If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God” (1 Corinthians 1:26-31, The Message). We’re not successes, and when we pretend otherwise we dishonor God. God is glorified when we acknowledge the truth. God’s way of redemption is to lead us to salvation in Jesus Christ by first showing us our failure to keep the law.
“This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (John 6:28-29). “There we live by faith and failure, by faith and forgiveness, by faith and mercy, by faith and freedom.” The law brings us into bondage, whether it’s the Mosaic law or a current Evangelical law about how to live a successful and happy middle class American life. Life in this world is full of sorrow and failure. Our vision of the Christian life needs to be in touch with this reality, and the foundation of our Christian lives is this: God has dealt with us, not as successes, but as failures. God knows all the truth about us. We don’t need to pretend. The law condemns us, but it doesn’t leave us in a state of condemnation; it leads us to a life of freedom in the grace of Jesus Christ: “But now you have arrived at your destination: By faith in Christ you are in direct relationship with God. Your baptism in Christ was not just washing you up for a fresh start. It also involved dressing you in an adult faith wardrobe – Christ’s life, the fulfillment of God’s original promise” (The Message). That’s the most fundamental reality of our lives as Christians. It’s not that we’ve learned the secret of living successfully. It’s that we’ve been reconciled to God and are in a relationship with Him which begins in this life and will continue throughout eternity.
Monday, February 17, 2014
The Foolishness of Legalism, Galatians 3:1-14
A few months after I became a Christian, I was in the airport in San Diego, California, and a young man approached me with a handful of literature. I told him I was a Christian, and he said, “oh, I believe in Jesus; if it weren’t for Jesus, I’d be dead now.” He didn’t explain what he meant, but I assumed that he was a Christian and took some of his literature. I later discovered that he was a member of a group called the Children of God. Over the next several years I encountered these people many times: all over the United States; in various parts of Europe, and even in Kathmandu, Nepal.
The Children of God were started by a man named David Berg. Berg’s father was a Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor, and for awhile Berg served as a pastor in that denomination. But in 1950 he had a falling‑out with church leaders and resigned. After that he became embittered and had a growing distaste for organized religion. Berg believed God had a special destiny and mission for him, and started calling himself a "prophet for this generation." In 1968 he moved to Huntington Beach, California, with his wife and four children and began a small community there. Early in 1969 he was convinced that an earthquake would soon destroy the California coastal cities, so he and about fifty followers left for Arizona. In Arizona they disrupted church services and condemned organized churches; they saw themselves as prophets. Members of the group began wandering through much of the United States and Canada staging demonstrations and urging others to join. By this time they were completely alienated from churches, and they took the name "Children of God." Berg called himself Moses David (The Handbook of Texas Online).
Berg believed that God had a special destiny for him, that he was a prophet for his generation. He was convinced that all the other churches were off track, and that God had given him a special message for the day. Early in the history of the Children of God, David Berg started cheating on his wife. The universal testimony of Scripture and the Church is that this is the sin of adultery, but Berg had rejected the Church and saw himself as a prophet, so rather than repenting of sin, he received a revelation telling him that he was to leave his wife and stay with his mistress. He even had a theological explanation for the significance of the change. From this point, Berg and the Children of God fell into deeper and deeper deception, and the later history of the movement is truly repulsive.
Paul tells the Galatians that they are being foolish, but he doesn’t mean that they are simply too stupid to see what they are doing. He’s accusing them of wrongdoing. The word he uses has a moral, as well as an intellectual, element. The word “indicates a folly which is the outgrowth of a moral defect” (Vincent, Vincent’s Word Studies of the New Testament, vol. 3, p. 110). Foolishness in Scripture generally has this moral overtone. A fool is someone who is trying to live in God’s world as if God didn’t exist (“the fool has said in his heart, there is no God,” Psalm 14:1). A fool is someone who is trying to rebel against the very fabric of his existence, who’s trying to live in ways that are fundamentally at-odds with the way we were created. A fool, in Scripture, is someone who’s bent on self-destruction, but it’s not because he’s stupid and doesn’t know any better. There’s something attractive about this foolishness, some short-term benefit to be gained. David Berg gets to go on living like he wants to and can still call himself a prophet. The Bible calls this sort of thing foolishness, but it’s not innocent.
Remember that the Galatians have been listening to false teachers, who are trying to persuade them of a different gospel. That’s the whole reason that Paul has written this letter. The Galatians haven’t given in completely to this new teaching, but they are in danger of doing so. The whole tone of this letter suggests that the situation is very serious. He wants to know, in verse 1, who has “bewitched” them. They’ve come under the delusive power of false doctrine.
Paul addresses the problem of false teachings in other places. Listen to these words from 2 Thessalonians: “The coming of the lawless one is apparent in the working of Satan, who uses all power, signs, lying wonders, and every kind of wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion, leading them to believe what is false, so that all who have not believed the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness will be condemned” (2:9-12). There are two steps in this process: 1) they reject the truth, and 2) they come under the power of delusion. David Berg rejected the authority of the Church and of Scripture, then he increasingly came under the power of lies. I suspect that if he could have seen, in the early days of his ministry, where he was going to end up, he’d have been horrified. False teachings gain power over us when we reject the truth, and the longer we persist in this direction the less we’re able to free ourselves from deception. Paul wants the Galatians to know that what they’re doing is foolish. It doesn’t make any sense. In turning back to the law, they’re trying to go against God Himself. And the longer they persist in this direction, the more they’ll come under the power of deception. The lies they’re listening to will lead them, by small steps, further and further from God.
The first thing to notice is that this false teaching is inconsistent with the way God began His work in their lives. That’s the point in verses 1-5. The idea comes across clearly in The Message: “Let me put this question to you: How did your new life begin? Was it by working your heads off to please God? Or was it by responding to God’s Message for you? Are you going to continue this craziness? For only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God. If you weren’t’ smart enough or strong enough to begin it, how do you suppose you could perfect it?” Salvation is a work of God; it’s not something we accomplish by our determined efforts. The Galatians had recognized this and had experienced the saving power of God’s Spirit. But now they’re going in a different direction and are trying to carry on by their own efforts. Paul is saying that this is absolute insanity. If they didn’t have the ability to begin the process, what makes them think they can now carry it through to the end? Listen to verse 1 in The Message: “You crazy Galatians! Did someone put a hex on you? Have you taken leave of your senses? Something crazy has happened, for it’s obvious that you no longer have the crucified Jesus in clear focus in your lives. His sacrifice on the Cross was certainly set before you clearly enough.” What they’re doing is insane; it makes no sense at all. God began a work in their lives, and now they’re trying to take things into their own hands. They think they’re capable of completing what God began.
Of course, they might object that Paul was all wrong to begin with, that, yes, it’s true they are going in a different direction, because the things Paul taught them were wrong. They might argue that Paul has gone off track, that he’s part of a sect, that he is the one who’s undermining the work of God. So Paul’s next point is that the direction the Galatians are going is inconsistent with God’s work in Abraham. This is a serious charge; the false teachers at Galatia are Judaizers, people who are telling Christians that they need to become Jewish proselytes and live under the Old Testament law. If they’re at odds with Abraham, they’re in serious trouble, because the whole nation of Israel looked to Abraham as their spiritual father. Paul shows that Abraham wasn’t made right with God by obeying the law; he quotes from the Old Testament to prove it: “Just as Abraham ‘believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,’ so, you see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham.”
The Galatians are being deceived and manipulated, so one of the things Paul calls them to do is to think. The false teachers are seducing them, appealing to their feelings; the way to resist this is to think seriously about Scripture. So Paul quotes this passage from Genesis 15:6: “And [Abraham] believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Paul is saying to them, “listen to what this verse is saying. It’s saying that Abraham was counted righteous because he believed God. Even Abraham himself didn’t earn his salvation by obedience to the law.” When we hear something that strongly appeals to our emotions, when we feel ourselves powerfully drawn by any particular teaching, it’s always wise to stop ourselves and think about whether this teaching is consistent with God’s Word. The Galatians weren’t using their minds, and they were leaving themselves open to deception. I often think of these words by A.W. Tozer in this context: “we would do well to cultivate a reverent skepticism. It will keep us out of a thousand bogs and quagmires where others who lack it sometimes find themselves. It is no sin to doubt some things, but it may be fatal to believe everything” (“In Praise of Disbelief,” in The Root of the Righteous, p. 119). The direction the Galatians are going is inconsistent with God’s work in Abraham; if they’d pay careful attention to what Genesis says about him they’d see this.
But there’s one more step in Paul’s argument. The Galatians are trying to turn Christianity into a legalistic religion. They still want to be called Christians, but they also want to make themselves acceptable to God by obeying the law. So Paul tells them that the direction they’re going is inconsistent with the work of Jesus Christ. Living under the law leads to nothing but bondage: “And that means that anyone who tries to live by his own effort, independent of God, is doomed to failure. Scripture backs this up: ‘Utterly cursed is every person who fails to carry out every detail written in the Book of the law.’ The obvious impossibility of carrying out such a moral program should make it plain that no one can sustain a relationship with God that way” (The Message). Living under the burden of the law, trying to make ourselves acceptable to God by our obedience, leads to nothing but failure and bondage. The law shows us that we are guilty of sin, but it doesn’t do anything to remove our guilt.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is a message of freedom. Listen to these words from the Song of Zechariah, this prophesy that John the Baptist’s father gave when his son was born: “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel; he has come to his people and set them free. He has raised up for us a mighty savior, born of the house of his servant David.” They’ve been living in bondage, and now God has come to set them free. Then, the song ends this way: “In the tender compassion of our God the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.” Jesus Christ came to deliver us from bondage, and the Galatians are twisting the gospel into a message which will once again bring them into bondage. It’s just the opposite of what Jesus came to do.
Here it is in The Message: “Christ redeemed us from that self-defeating, cursed life by absorbing it completely into himself. Do you remember the Scripture that says, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’? That is what happened when Jesus was nailed to the Cross: He became a curse, and at the same time dissolved the curse. And now, because of that, the air is cleared and we can see that Abraham’s blessing is present and available for non-Jews too. We are all able to receive God’s life, his Spirit, in and with us by believing – just the way Abraham received it.” Jesus has taken our curse upon Himself and has set us free from living under the burden of legalism. We’re acceptable in God’s sight, not because we’ve kept His law, but because Jesus kept the law perfectly and then endured the punishment for our disobedience: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.”
Legalism is foolish, because it’s contrary to everything God has done for us. Why are we so often attracted to it? Why do we so easily gravitate towards legalism? At least part of the answer is that legalism enables us to take some credit for ourselves. The gospel says our situation is so bad that our only hope is God’s offer of free grace. The gospel treats us as spiritual beggars: we come to God with empty hands and receive His offer of grace and mercy. Legalism enables us to make a contribution; maybe it’s not much, but at least we’re able to do something for ourselves. It appeals to our pride.
The problem is that it puts us in a position that can’t possibly be pleasing to God. God has made us new creatures by giving us His Spirit, but when we turn to legalism we’re saying “thanks for getting me started; I’ll take it from here.” We’re also cutting ourselves off from God’s people. Abraham himself “believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and everyone since that time has been accepted in the same way, by receiving God’s free gift of mercy and grace. And we’re cutting ourselves off from Jesus Christ, who became a curse for us, because when we turn to legalism we’re saying that He died for nothing. We start out thinking we’re going to please God in our own way, and we find ourselves completely cut off from Him. We set out on our own, thinking we’ll be free, but we end up in bondage to sin, and in bondage to the question of whether we’ve been obedient enough.
The Children of God were started by a man named David Berg. Berg’s father was a Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor, and for awhile Berg served as a pastor in that denomination. But in 1950 he had a falling‑out with church leaders and resigned. After that he became embittered and had a growing distaste for organized religion. Berg believed God had a special destiny and mission for him, and started calling himself a "prophet for this generation." In 1968 he moved to Huntington Beach, California, with his wife and four children and began a small community there. Early in 1969 he was convinced that an earthquake would soon destroy the California coastal cities, so he and about fifty followers left for Arizona. In Arizona they disrupted church services and condemned organized churches; they saw themselves as prophets. Members of the group began wandering through much of the United States and Canada staging demonstrations and urging others to join. By this time they were completely alienated from churches, and they took the name "Children of God." Berg called himself Moses David (The Handbook of Texas Online).
Berg believed that God had a special destiny for him, that he was a prophet for his generation. He was convinced that all the other churches were off track, and that God had given him a special message for the day. Early in the history of the Children of God, David Berg started cheating on his wife. The universal testimony of Scripture and the Church is that this is the sin of adultery, but Berg had rejected the Church and saw himself as a prophet, so rather than repenting of sin, he received a revelation telling him that he was to leave his wife and stay with his mistress. He even had a theological explanation for the significance of the change. From this point, Berg and the Children of God fell into deeper and deeper deception, and the later history of the movement is truly repulsive.
Paul tells the Galatians that they are being foolish, but he doesn’t mean that they are simply too stupid to see what they are doing. He’s accusing them of wrongdoing. The word he uses has a moral, as well as an intellectual, element. The word “indicates a folly which is the outgrowth of a moral defect” (Vincent, Vincent’s Word Studies of the New Testament, vol. 3, p. 110). Foolishness in Scripture generally has this moral overtone. A fool is someone who is trying to live in God’s world as if God didn’t exist (“the fool has said in his heart, there is no God,” Psalm 14:1). A fool is someone who is trying to rebel against the very fabric of his existence, who’s trying to live in ways that are fundamentally at-odds with the way we were created. A fool, in Scripture, is someone who’s bent on self-destruction, but it’s not because he’s stupid and doesn’t know any better. There’s something attractive about this foolishness, some short-term benefit to be gained. David Berg gets to go on living like he wants to and can still call himself a prophet. The Bible calls this sort of thing foolishness, but it’s not innocent.
Remember that the Galatians have been listening to false teachers, who are trying to persuade them of a different gospel. That’s the whole reason that Paul has written this letter. The Galatians haven’t given in completely to this new teaching, but they are in danger of doing so. The whole tone of this letter suggests that the situation is very serious. He wants to know, in verse 1, who has “bewitched” them. They’ve come under the delusive power of false doctrine.
Paul addresses the problem of false teachings in other places. Listen to these words from 2 Thessalonians: “The coming of the lawless one is apparent in the working of Satan, who uses all power, signs, lying wonders, and every kind of wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion, leading them to believe what is false, so that all who have not believed the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness will be condemned” (2:9-12). There are two steps in this process: 1) they reject the truth, and 2) they come under the power of delusion. David Berg rejected the authority of the Church and of Scripture, then he increasingly came under the power of lies. I suspect that if he could have seen, in the early days of his ministry, where he was going to end up, he’d have been horrified. False teachings gain power over us when we reject the truth, and the longer we persist in this direction the less we’re able to free ourselves from deception. Paul wants the Galatians to know that what they’re doing is foolish. It doesn’t make any sense. In turning back to the law, they’re trying to go against God Himself. And the longer they persist in this direction, the more they’ll come under the power of deception. The lies they’re listening to will lead them, by small steps, further and further from God.
The first thing to notice is that this false teaching is inconsistent with the way God began His work in their lives. That’s the point in verses 1-5. The idea comes across clearly in The Message: “Let me put this question to you: How did your new life begin? Was it by working your heads off to please God? Or was it by responding to God’s Message for you? Are you going to continue this craziness? For only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God. If you weren’t’ smart enough or strong enough to begin it, how do you suppose you could perfect it?” Salvation is a work of God; it’s not something we accomplish by our determined efforts. The Galatians had recognized this and had experienced the saving power of God’s Spirit. But now they’re going in a different direction and are trying to carry on by their own efforts. Paul is saying that this is absolute insanity. If they didn’t have the ability to begin the process, what makes them think they can now carry it through to the end? Listen to verse 1 in The Message: “You crazy Galatians! Did someone put a hex on you? Have you taken leave of your senses? Something crazy has happened, for it’s obvious that you no longer have the crucified Jesus in clear focus in your lives. His sacrifice on the Cross was certainly set before you clearly enough.” What they’re doing is insane; it makes no sense at all. God began a work in their lives, and now they’re trying to take things into their own hands. They think they’re capable of completing what God began.
Of course, they might object that Paul was all wrong to begin with, that, yes, it’s true they are going in a different direction, because the things Paul taught them were wrong. They might argue that Paul has gone off track, that he’s part of a sect, that he is the one who’s undermining the work of God. So Paul’s next point is that the direction the Galatians are going is inconsistent with God’s work in Abraham. This is a serious charge; the false teachers at Galatia are Judaizers, people who are telling Christians that they need to become Jewish proselytes and live under the Old Testament law. If they’re at odds with Abraham, they’re in serious trouble, because the whole nation of Israel looked to Abraham as their spiritual father. Paul shows that Abraham wasn’t made right with God by obeying the law; he quotes from the Old Testament to prove it: “Just as Abraham ‘believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,’ so, you see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham.”
The Galatians are being deceived and manipulated, so one of the things Paul calls them to do is to think. The false teachers are seducing them, appealing to their feelings; the way to resist this is to think seriously about Scripture. So Paul quotes this passage from Genesis 15:6: “And [Abraham] believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Paul is saying to them, “listen to what this verse is saying. It’s saying that Abraham was counted righteous because he believed God. Even Abraham himself didn’t earn his salvation by obedience to the law.” When we hear something that strongly appeals to our emotions, when we feel ourselves powerfully drawn by any particular teaching, it’s always wise to stop ourselves and think about whether this teaching is consistent with God’s Word. The Galatians weren’t using their minds, and they were leaving themselves open to deception. I often think of these words by A.W. Tozer in this context: “we would do well to cultivate a reverent skepticism. It will keep us out of a thousand bogs and quagmires where others who lack it sometimes find themselves. It is no sin to doubt some things, but it may be fatal to believe everything” (“In Praise of Disbelief,” in The Root of the Righteous, p. 119). The direction the Galatians are going is inconsistent with God’s work in Abraham; if they’d pay careful attention to what Genesis says about him they’d see this.
But there’s one more step in Paul’s argument. The Galatians are trying to turn Christianity into a legalistic religion. They still want to be called Christians, but they also want to make themselves acceptable to God by obeying the law. So Paul tells them that the direction they’re going is inconsistent with the work of Jesus Christ. Living under the law leads to nothing but bondage: “And that means that anyone who tries to live by his own effort, independent of God, is doomed to failure. Scripture backs this up: ‘Utterly cursed is every person who fails to carry out every detail written in the Book of the law.’ The obvious impossibility of carrying out such a moral program should make it plain that no one can sustain a relationship with God that way” (The Message). Living under the burden of the law, trying to make ourselves acceptable to God by our obedience, leads to nothing but failure and bondage. The law shows us that we are guilty of sin, but it doesn’t do anything to remove our guilt.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is a message of freedom. Listen to these words from the Song of Zechariah, this prophesy that John the Baptist’s father gave when his son was born: “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel; he has come to his people and set them free. He has raised up for us a mighty savior, born of the house of his servant David.” They’ve been living in bondage, and now God has come to set them free. Then, the song ends this way: “In the tender compassion of our God the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.” Jesus Christ came to deliver us from bondage, and the Galatians are twisting the gospel into a message which will once again bring them into bondage. It’s just the opposite of what Jesus came to do.
Here it is in The Message: “Christ redeemed us from that self-defeating, cursed life by absorbing it completely into himself. Do you remember the Scripture that says, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’? That is what happened when Jesus was nailed to the Cross: He became a curse, and at the same time dissolved the curse. And now, because of that, the air is cleared and we can see that Abraham’s blessing is present and available for non-Jews too. We are all able to receive God’s life, his Spirit, in and with us by believing – just the way Abraham received it.” Jesus has taken our curse upon Himself and has set us free from living under the burden of legalism. We’re acceptable in God’s sight, not because we’ve kept His law, but because Jesus kept the law perfectly and then endured the punishment for our disobedience: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.”
Legalism is foolish, because it’s contrary to everything God has done for us. Why are we so often attracted to it? Why do we so easily gravitate towards legalism? At least part of the answer is that legalism enables us to take some credit for ourselves. The gospel says our situation is so bad that our only hope is God’s offer of free grace. The gospel treats us as spiritual beggars: we come to God with empty hands and receive His offer of grace and mercy. Legalism enables us to make a contribution; maybe it’s not much, but at least we’re able to do something for ourselves. It appeals to our pride.
The problem is that it puts us in a position that can’t possibly be pleasing to God. God has made us new creatures by giving us His Spirit, but when we turn to legalism we’re saying “thanks for getting me started; I’ll take it from here.” We’re also cutting ourselves off from God’s people. Abraham himself “believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and everyone since that time has been accepted in the same way, by receiving God’s free gift of mercy and grace. And we’re cutting ourselves off from Jesus Christ, who became a curse for us, because when we turn to legalism we’re saying that He died for nothing. We start out thinking we’re going to please God in our own way, and we find ourselves completely cut off from Him. We set out on our own, thinking we’ll be free, but we end up in bondage to sin, and in bondage to the question of whether we’ve been obedient enough.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is a message of freedom. “Christ redeemed us from that self-defeating, cursed life by absorbing it completely into himself.” Here it is in the hymn "My Hope is in the Lord": “My hope is in the Lord who gave Himself for me, and paid the price for all my sin at Calvary. Not merit of my own His anger to suppress. My only hope is found in Jesus’ righteousness. For me He died, for me He lives, and everlasting life and light He freely gives.”
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Crucified with Christ, Galatians 2:11-21
In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis, four children crawl into a wardrobe in their uncle’s house and find themselves in another world, called Narnia. They end up staying in this world for a long time and become kings and queens; but when they return to their uncle’s house in England they find that no time has elapsed. All their adventures in the land of Narnia have taken place in only a few moments of time in this world. In other books of the series the children return to Narnia and are known as Kings Peter and Edmund, and Queens Lucy and Susan.
In the final book of the series, The Last Battle, Peter, Edmund and Lucy return to Narnia for the last time. And while they’re there, someone asks Peter, “‘If I have read the chronicles aright, there should be another. Has not your Majesty two sisters? Where is Queen Susan?’ ‘My sister Susan,’ answered Peter shortly and gravely, ‘is no longer a friend of Narnia.’ ‘Yes,’ said Eustace, ‘and whenever you’ve tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says ‘What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children’” (pp. 134-35). Susan had really been with them in their adventures, but now she doesn’t want any part of it. She’s “no longer a friend of Narnia.”
I’ve known a lot of people who made a good start in the Christian life and who traveled some distance following Jesus Christ, but then have turned away. Some of them become disillusioned and turn away, some dry up over time and just drift away. But the end result is the same. Once they were followers of Jesus Christ, and now they’re not. They’re no longer friends of the kingdom of God.
This hasn’t happened yet to the churches of Galatia, but Paul is concerned that they’re headed in that direction. They’ve been listening to false teachers who are undermining the true message of the gospel, the gospel that Paul received directly from Jesus Christ. So Paul, very early in the letter, says this: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel” (1:6). They’re headed in a direction which will lead them away from Jesus Christ; if they keep going in this direction, they’ll no longer be friends of the kingdom of God.
We saw, in the first half of this chapter, that the Galatians probably thought they were aligning themselves with Peter, the apostle to the Jews. So Paul shows them that this is not true at all, that he and Peter both preached the same message. He wants the Galatians to know that if they were to visit a church in Judea they’d hear the same gospel that Paul preached. And now, in the second half of chapter two, he shows that Peter himself fell into an error very similar to the one the Galatians are struggling with. But when Paul confronted him about it, Peter accepted Paul’s rebuke. This leads into a discussion on the centrality of the cross in our lives as Christians. The problem with the Galatians, and the problem with Peter in the story Paul tells, is that they’ve gotten sidetracked from the cross of Jesus Christ. They’re focusing on what they can accomplish in obedience to the Law, rather than joyfully accepting what God gives freely through the cross of Jesus Christ.
The first thing to notice here is that great spiritual experiences don’t prevent us from getting off track in the future. Peter had been there at Pentecost when the Spirit was poured out on the Church; through his preaching that day over 3,000 believers were added to the Church. A few weeks before Pentecost, Peter had denied Christ three times, because he was afraid of the authorities. But at Pentecost he became a bold witness, and afterward we see him boldly testifying to the resurrection and refusing to be silenced. A little later, Peter had been arrested, and Herod’s intention was to have him put to death; but Peter was miraculously freed from the prison.
But all these experiences didn’t prevent him from getting off track. “But when Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him publicly, speaking strongly against what he was doing, for it was very wrong. When he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile Christians, who don’t bother with circumcision. But afterward, when some Jewish friends of James came, Peter wouldn’t eat with the Gentiles anymore because he was afraid of what these legalists would say. Then the other Jewish Christians followed Peter’s hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was influenced to join them in their hypocrisy” (New Living Translation). He fell into the same weakness he had shown at the trial of Jesus, denying the truth because he was afraid of other people. And because of his prominent position among the believers, others were led astray by his example. Great experiences are no guarantee that we won’t get off track in the future.
The second thing is this: humility and the willingness to accept correction will prevent our errors from becoming permanent. Listen to how Peter refers to Paul some years later, in his second letter: “Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish; and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation. So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him” (3:14-15). “Our beloved brother Paul.” Peter and Paul are engaged in the same work, and Peter wants those receiving his letter to pay attention to the things Paul has written. When they were together in Antioch, Peter was the chief of the apostles, and Paul, who didn’t even become a Christian until after the ascension of Christ, rebuked him publicly. It would have been easy for Peter to say, “who do you think you are, correcting me in public like this?” But he accepted Paul’s rebuke; it enabled him to get back on track. He wasn’t concerned about maintaining his image; he wanted to follow Jesus Christ till the end, and Paul’s correction helped him. So rather than being filled with resentment, Peter accepted the rebuke and came to love Paul as a “beloved brother.”
We all get off track at times and need correction. But there are two things which are especially deadly, and which can cause our errors to become permanent. The first thing is avoiding fellowship with those who are likely to confront us. Peter got off track, but he continued in the fellowship of the Church, and it was there that he was corrected. It’s in the Church that others in the body will notice that something is wrong, and it’s in the Church that we can find help to get ourselves back on track. One of the first signs that something is wrong is that a person starts avoiding fellowship. (That’s one reason sporadic attendance is so dangerous; you’re not getting the help you need in your spiritual life, and because you don’t attend regularly anyway it takes awhile before people notice that you’ve stopped altogether.)
The second danger in this area is pride. It’s a hard thing to accept correction from someone else. We always want to defend ourselves. We may cry out to God and confess that we are miserable sinners, but when another person confronts us about a specific area of sin in our lives we don’t seem so ready to confess. It hurts our pride, and it’s difficult to swallow. But this pride is dangerous, and if we allow it to continue growing it will destroy us. I don’t doubt that Peter was tempted by pride when Paul confronted him; surely he was tempted to put that upstart in his place. But Peter humbled himself and accepted the correction. Humility and the willingness to accept correction will prevent our errors from becoming permanent.
This leads to the last point: the crucifixion is central to our ongoing relationship with God. The cross is absolutely central to our lives as disciples of Jesus Christ. Paul says, about himself, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” It’s important for us to remember this. When Paul came to Corinth, he said this about his ministry: “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). Not “Jesus Christ risen from the dead,” although he did preach the resurrection. The central focus of his message was “Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”
When we look at our Christian lives only in terms of the Resurrection and Pentecost, we tend to have unrealistic expectations. We forget that self-denial and suffering are central to our redemption. We expect our lives to be filled with success and easy victory. I’ve heard people boast about living in “resurrection power.” Surely things will go well for us; after all, God is our Father and we are King’s Kids. The One Who has given us the Spirit possesses all power in heaven and on earth. Then, when things start going wrong in our lives we wonder what’s happening. Is it because of a lack of faith or because there’s unconfessed sin in our lives? Or maybe God just isn’t taking care of us.
I often think about Mary in this context. The angel Gabriel said to her, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you” (Luke 1:28). Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, said to her “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.... And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord” (Luke 1:42, 45). Mary had extraordinary faith, and when Gabriel told her what God was going to do, she responded, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word” (v. 38). She had great faith; she submitted to God’s will; an angel told her the Lord was with her and that she was highly favored; and then Elizabeth, speaking under the influence of the Holy Spirit, told her she was blessed among women. Her response is a model of how we, in the Church, are called to respond to God: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
And where did all this get her in the short term? She was suspected of cheating on Joseph, to whom she was betrothed. When Jesus was about to be born, with all the physical and emotional turmoil that goes with the end of a pregnancy, she and Joseph looked all over Bethlehem in vain for a place to stay, then finally had to settle for a stable. The offering she and Joseph brought when they presented Jesus in the temple showed that they were poor, that they couldn’t afford the usual offering. Shortly after Jesus was born, they had to flee for their lives to Egypt. And then, when her Son was grown, this Son who had been miraculously born, she had to watch Him being flogged, crowned with thorns and mocked, and then crucified. Is this what it means to be highly favored with God? Yes, in the short term. Of course, that’s not the whole story, but when we’re in the middle of things it’s easy to lose our perspective and forget about the great things that are coming in the future. Next time you’re tempted to think that God has abandoned you, that He’s not taking care of you, think about Mary. She was highly favored by God, but suffering and grief had a prominent place in her life.
The Galatians have forgotten the centrality of the crucifixion. They’ve gotten sidetracked from the cross of Jesus Christ. They’re focusing on what they can accomplish in obedience to the Law, rather than joyfully accepting what God gives freely through the cross. They’ve become self-confident, trusting in their ability. Paul wants them to know that the Law does nothing but point out their sin; it brings them into condemnation. Their only escape from the condemning power of the Law is in the cross of Jesus Christ. “I have been crucified with Christ.”
A.W. Tozer described very well what it means to be crucified: “The...cross is a symbol of death. It stands for the abrupt, violent end of a human being. The man in Roman times who took up his cross and started down the road had already said good-by to his friends. He was not coming back. He was going out to have it ended. The cross made no compromise, modified nothing, spared nothing; it slew all of the man, completely and for good. It did not try to keep on good terms with its victim. It struck cruel and hard, and when it had finished its work, the man was no more. The race of Adam is under death sentence. There is no commutation and no escape.... God salvages the individual by liquidating him and then raising him again to newness of life.... God offers life, but not an improved old life. The life He offers is life out of death. It stands always on the far side of the cross” (Man, The Dwelling Place of God, pp. 43-44).
The cross cuts across every area of our lives. It brings to an end all our self-effort to save ourselves: “because no one will be justified by the works of the law.” Our relationship with the Law has been ended by death; we’ve been “crucified with Christ.” But the cross also brings to an end our right to do whatever we want with our lives. One of the criticisms the false teachers leveled at Paul’s gospel was that it leads to loose living, that if people are accepted by the grace of God, apart from the works of the Law, they’ll just continue living disobedient lives and expect God to accept them by grace. But Paul everywhere says this is false. “For through the law I died to the law” not so that I can do whatever I feel like doing, but “so that I might live to God.” He’s been set free to live in obedience to God. His old life is finished. He’s now living on the far side of the cross. The Galatians have forgotten all that and are trying to get back to the old arrangement, forgetting that in Christ they have died and are risen to a completely new way of life. They are beginning to live as if “Christ died for nothing.”
On the day of Pentecost, the Spirit was poured out upon people who were finished with their old lives. They were crucified with Christ, they had died to the law so that they might live for God. Their lives were no longer their own, because they had been bought with the precious blood of Jesus Christ. The Spirit doesn’t empower us to carry on with our selfish lives, just doing what we want and asking Him to bless and empower us. The Spirit empowers us to continue living in the light of the cross, to humble ourselves when we receive correction from others, to do what God is calling us to do, whether we feel like it or not, to be willing to endure hardship and loss and difficulty in the name of Jesus Christ, who went to the cross in our place. As we do this, we’re able to say, with Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
In the final book of the series, The Last Battle, Peter, Edmund and Lucy return to Narnia for the last time. And while they’re there, someone asks Peter, “‘If I have read the chronicles aright, there should be another. Has not your Majesty two sisters? Where is Queen Susan?’ ‘My sister Susan,’ answered Peter shortly and gravely, ‘is no longer a friend of Narnia.’ ‘Yes,’ said Eustace, ‘and whenever you’ve tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says ‘What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children’” (pp. 134-35). Susan had really been with them in their adventures, but now she doesn’t want any part of it. She’s “no longer a friend of Narnia.”
I’ve known a lot of people who made a good start in the Christian life and who traveled some distance following Jesus Christ, but then have turned away. Some of them become disillusioned and turn away, some dry up over time and just drift away. But the end result is the same. Once they were followers of Jesus Christ, and now they’re not. They’re no longer friends of the kingdom of God.
This hasn’t happened yet to the churches of Galatia, but Paul is concerned that they’re headed in that direction. They’ve been listening to false teachers who are undermining the true message of the gospel, the gospel that Paul received directly from Jesus Christ. So Paul, very early in the letter, says this: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel” (1:6). They’re headed in a direction which will lead them away from Jesus Christ; if they keep going in this direction, they’ll no longer be friends of the kingdom of God.
We saw, in the first half of this chapter, that the Galatians probably thought they were aligning themselves with Peter, the apostle to the Jews. So Paul shows them that this is not true at all, that he and Peter both preached the same message. He wants the Galatians to know that if they were to visit a church in Judea they’d hear the same gospel that Paul preached. And now, in the second half of chapter two, he shows that Peter himself fell into an error very similar to the one the Galatians are struggling with. But when Paul confronted him about it, Peter accepted Paul’s rebuke. This leads into a discussion on the centrality of the cross in our lives as Christians. The problem with the Galatians, and the problem with Peter in the story Paul tells, is that they’ve gotten sidetracked from the cross of Jesus Christ. They’re focusing on what they can accomplish in obedience to the Law, rather than joyfully accepting what God gives freely through the cross of Jesus Christ.
The first thing to notice here is that great spiritual experiences don’t prevent us from getting off track in the future. Peter had been there at Pentecost when the Spirit was poured out on the Church; through his preaching that day over 3,000 believers were added to the Church. A few weeks before Pentecost, Peter had denied Christ three times, because he was afraid of the authorities. But at Pentecost he became a bold witness, and afterward we see him boldly testifying to the resurrection and refusing to be silenced. A little later, Peter had been arrested, and Herod’s intention was to have him put to death; but Peter was miraculously freed from the prison.
But all these experiences didn’t prevent him from getting off track. “But when Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him publicly, speaking strongly against what he was doing, for it was very wrong. When he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile Christians, who don’t bother with circumcision. But afterward, when some Jewish friends of James came, Peter wouldn’t eat with the Gentiles anymore because he was afraid of what these legalists would say. Then the other Jewish Christians followed Peter’s hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was influenced to join them in their hypocrisy” (New Living Translation). He fell into the same weakness he had shown at the trial of Jesus, denying the truth because he was afraid of other people. And because of his prominent position among the believers, others were led astray by his example. Great experiences are no guarantee that we won’t get off track in the future.
The second thing is this: humility and the willingness to accept correction will prevent our errors from becoming permanent. Listen to how Peter refers to Paul some years later, in his second letter: “Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish; and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation. So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him” (3:14-15). “Our beloved brother Paul.” Peter and Paul are engaged in the same work, and Peter wants those receiving his letter to pay attention to the things Paul has written. When they were together in Antioch, Peter was the chief of the apostles, and Paul, who didn’t even become a Christian until after the ascension of Christ, rebuked him publicly. It would have been easy for Peter to say, “who do you think you are, correcting me in public like this?” But he accepted Paul’s rebuke; it enabled him to get back on track. He wasn’t concerned about maintaining his image; he wanted to follow Jesus Christ till the end, and Paul’s correction helped him. So rather than being filled with resentment, Peter accepted the rebuke and came to love Paul as a “beloved brother.”
We all get off track at times and need correction. But there are two things which are especially deadly, and which can cause our errors to become permanent. The first thing is avoiding fellowship with those who are likely to confront us. Peter got off track, but he continued in the fellowship of the Church, and it was there that he was corrected. It’s in the Church that others in the body will notice that something is wrong, and it’s in the Church that we can find help to get ourselves back on track. One of the first signs that something is wrong is that a person starts avoiding fellowship. (That’s one reason sporadic attendance is so dangerous; you’re not getting the help you need in your spiritual life, and because you don’t attend regularly anyway it takes awhile before people notice that you’ve stopped altogether.)
The second danger in this area is pride. It’s a hard thing to accept correction from someone else. We always want to defend ourselves. We may cry out to God and confess that we are miserable sinners, but when another person confronts us about a specific area of sin in our lives we don’t seem so ready to confess. It hurts our pride, and it’s difficult to swallow. But this pride is dangerous, and if we allow it to continue growing it will destroy us. I don’t doubt that Peter was tempted by pride when Paul confronted him; surely he was tempted to put that upstart in his place. But Peter humbled himself and accepted the correction. Humility and the willingness to accept correction will prevent our errors from becoming permanent.
This leads to the last point: the crucifixion is central to our ongoing relationship with God. The cross is absolutely central to our lives as disciples of Jesus Christ. Paul says, about himself, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” It’s important for us to remember this. When Paul came to Corinth, he said this about his ministry: “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). Not “Jesus Christ risen from the dead,” although he did preach the resurrection. The central focus of his message was “Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”
When we look at our Christian lives only in terms of the Resurrection and Pentecost, we tend to have unrealistic expectations. We forget that self-denial and suffering are central to our redemption. We expect our lives to be filled with success and easy victory. I’ve heard people boast about living in “resurrection power.” Surely things will go well for us; after all, God is our Father and we are King’s Kids. The One Who has given us the Spirit possesses all power in heaven and on earth. Then, when things start going wrong in our lives we wonder what’s happening. Is it because of a lack of faith or because there’s unconfessed sin in our lives? Or maybe God just isn’t taking care of us.
I often think about Mary in this context. The angel Gabriel said to her, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you” (Luke 1:28). Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, said to her “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.... And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord” (Luke 1:42, 45). Mary had extraordinary faith, and when Gabriel told her what God was going to do, she responded, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word” (v. 38). She had great faith; she submitted to God’s will; an angel told her the Lord was with her and that she was highly favored; and then Elizabeth, speaking under the influence of the Holy Spirit, told her she was blessed among women. Her response is a model of how we, in the Church, are called to respond to God: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
And where did all this get her in the short term? She was suspected of cheating on Joseph, to whom she was betrothed. When Jesus was about to be born, with all the physical and emotional turmoil that goes with the end of a pregnancy, she and Joseph looked all over Bethlehem in vain for a place to stay, then finally had to settle for a stable. The offering she and Joseph brought when they presented Jesus in the temple showed that they were poor, that they couldn’t afford the usual offering. Shortly after Jesus was born, they had to flee for their lives to Egypt. And then, when her Son was grown, this Son who had been miraculously born, she had to watch Him being flogged, crowned with thorns and mocked, and then crucified. Is this what it means to be highly favored with God? Yes, in the short term. Of course, that’s not the whole story, but when we’re in the middle of things it’s easy to lose our perspective and forget about the great things that are coming in the future. Next time you’re tempted to think that God has abandoned you, that He’s not taking care of you, think about Mary. She was highly favored by God, but suffering and grief had a prominent place in her life.
The Galatians have forgotten the centrality of the crucifixion. They’ve gotten sidetracked from the cross of Jesus Christ. They’re focusing on what they can accomplish in obedience to the Law, rather than joyfully accepting what God gives freely through the cross. They’ve become self-confident, trusting in their ability. Paul wants them to know that the Law does nothing but point out their sin; it brings them into condemnation. Their only escape from the condemning power of the Law is in the cross of Jesus Christ. “I have been crucified with Christ.”
A.W. Tozer described very well what it means to be crucified: “The...cross is a symbol of death. It stands for the abrupt, violent end of a human being. The man in Roman times who took up his cross and started down the road had already said good-by to his friends. He was not coming back. He was going out to have it ended. The cross made no compromise, modified nothing, spared nothing; it slew all of the man, completely and for good. It did not try to keep on good terms with its victim. It struck cruel and hard, and when it had finished its work, the man was no more. The race of Adam is under death sentence. There is no commutation and no escape.... God salvages the individual by liquidating him and then raising him again to newness of life.... God offers life, but not an improved old life. The life He offers is life out of death. It stands always on the far side of the cross” (Man, The Dwelling Place of God, pp. 43-44).
The cross cuts across every area of our lives. It brings to an end all our self-effort to save ourselves: “because no one will be justified by the works of the law.” Our relationship with the Law has been ended by death; we’ve been “crucified with Christ.” But the cross also brings to an end our right to do whatever we want with our lives. One of the criticisms the false teachers leveled at Paul’s gospel was that it leads to loose living, that if people are accepted by the grace of God, apart from the works of the Law, they’ll just continue living disobedient lives and expect God to accept them by grace. But Paul everywhere says this is false. “For through the law I died to the law” not so that I can do whatever I feel like doing, but “so that I might live to God.” He’s been set free to live in obedience to God. His old life is finished. He’s now living on the far side of the cross. The Galatians have forgotten all that and are trying to get back to the old arrangement, forgetting that in Christ they have died and are risen to a completely new way of life. They are beginning to live as if “Christ died for nothing.”
On the day of Pentecost, the Spirit was poured out upon people who were finished with their old lives. They were crucified with Christ, they had died to the law so that they might live for God. Their lives were no longer their own, because they had been bought with the precious blood of Jesus Christ. The Spirit doesn’t empower us to carry on with our selfish lives, just doing what we want and asking Him to bless and empower us. The Spirit empowers us to continue living in the light of the cross, to humble ourselves when we receive correction from others, to do what God is calling us to do, whether we feel like it or not, to be willing to endure hardship and loss and difficulty in the name of Jesus Christ, who went to the cross in our place. As we do this, we’re able to say, with Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Sunday, January 26, 2014
The Community of Faith, Galatians 2:1-10
When I was a new Christian, still living in Northern California, I used to pick up hitchhikers, because it was a good opportunity to witness to the gospel. I had a lot of good conversations with people that way, but one response came up again and again. People would tell me things like: “I believe in Jesus, but not in organized religion. I believe in Jesus, but not in the Church; the Church is full of hypocrites.” I remember being startled at how regularly that objection came up. People seemed to have a vague sense of goodwill toward Jesus, but wanted nothing to do with His Church.
I still notice a similar tendency. People want to have a spiritual relationship with Jesus, but they see the Church as more-or-less optional. And, of course, if the Church is optional, as soon as something happens that they don’t like, they stop going. I’ve met people like this, who haven’t attended church in years but who still profess to have some sort of relationship with Jesus Christ.
Here’s something I came across a few years ago. It’s a list of the 10 top reasons one preacher gave for no longer attending sporting events:
10. My father took me to a game every weekend when I was growing up and it was awful.
9. I don’t want to take my children to a sporting event because I want them to choose for themselves what sport they like best when they get older.
8. Every time I go to a sporting event they ask for money.
7. The bleacher seats are too hard and uncomfortable.
6. The people sitting around me on the bleacher seats aren’t very friendly.
5. The games are scheduled at times when I want to do something else.
4. Every now and then a game goes into overtime and I’m late getting home.
3. The pep band plays songs that I don’t recognize and I can’t sing along with them.
2. The coach never comes to visit me in my home between games.
1. And the number one reason that this preacher no longer goes to sporting events: the referees make decisions with which I disagree (taken from a printed sermon by Dr. Robert Ives, “My Heart, Jesus’s Home,” at Elizabethtown BIC Church, May 12, 2002).
I used to use the same excuses that I’ve heard others use. I remember saying, before I was a Christian, “the Church is full of hypocrites.” I’d heard others say it, and it sounded like it must be true. Of course, I didn’t know many Christians at the time, so I really didn’t know what I was talking about. The thing I’ve noticed over the past 29 years is that there are lots of hypocrites around, and some of them are Christians. There are lots of people who pretend to be something that they’re not. People in sales, or politics, or advertising are especially tempted in this way; people in leadership often feel like they need to present a certain “image” to be successful, and often that image is a lie. People who do that habitually are hypocrites; they’re phony’s, pretenders, people who are pretending to be something they’re not. The thing that hasn’t been clear to me is that these kinds of people are more plentiful in the Church than they are anywhere else.
We saw, last week, that Paul is concerned about more than his individual relationship with Jesus. He’s part of something bigger than himself; he’s involved in more than just his own spiritual journey. St. Cyprian, writing in the early 200's, said that “Without the church as mother one cannot have God as father” and “Outside of the church there is no salvation” (quoted by Roger Olson, The Story of Christian Theology, p. 114). That sounds strange to us in the early 21st century, because we’re so used to thinking of salvation in individualistic terms. But the truth is that God does not deal with us individualistically. He graciously calls in the context of our daily lives, and then as we turn to Him we find that we are part of His Church, the bride He’s preparing for His Son. God is building His Church, and He mercifully and graciously includes us.
Paul is demonstrating to the Galatians that he is a true apostle. The churches there have been under the influence of false teachers, and one of the areas these teachers have been attacking is Paul’s apostleship. They want to undermine his message, and one way to do that is by saying that he is not a genuine apostle at all. Paul is at a disadvantage, in many ways, because he came along after all the other apostles and began his relationship with the Church as a persecutor.
The whole reason Paul has written this letter to the Galatians is to defend the true gospel and to undermine the influence of these false teachers. But part of that task is defending his own calling as an apostle, because the authority of his message is tied to that calling. That’s why he stresses so strongly that he wasn’t taught the message by another person but received it directly from Jesus Christ. The message he preached at Galatia was a message from God Himself, because Paul is a true apostle, one set apart by God and sent out to deliver a message.
So he’s demonstrating to the Galatians that he is a true apostle, but his purpose is not to denigrate the other apostles. Paul isn’t asserting his independence. He’s not saying, “these people have no right to tell me what to do or say.” He’s showing the Galatians that he is part of the group, that he and the original 12 apostles preach the same message. Peter was the apostle to the Jews, and it’s likely that the Galatians thought they were aligning themselves with Peter. They wanted to follow the teaching of those who said it was necessary for salvation to put themselves under the ceremonial law of the Old Testament. And, no doubt, they thought they were in good company. Surely Peter, the apostle to the Jews, would be in agreement with them.
Paul’s point is that this is simply not true. It’s not that the Galatians are aligning themselves with Peter. The Galatians are departing from the apostolic message. If they keep going in this direction, they’ll be cutting themselves off from the Church, the Church founded by the apostles. They’ll become a cult, a heretical sect cut off from the body of Christ. Paul wants the Galatians to see, not his independence from the other apostles, but that he and the other apostles preach an identical message. Paul wasn’t taught by them, but Jesus gave him the same message that He’d given to the original twelve. When Paul met with them and told them the message he was preaching to the Gentiles, he says “those men added nothing to my message.” They saw that his message was the same as theirs, that there was nothing missing. So he goes on: “On the contrary, they saw that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, just as Peter had been to the Jews.... James, Peter and John, those reputed to be pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go the the Gentiles, and they to the Jews.” They’re part of the same One Church, preaching the same gospel; if the Galatians follow these false teachers, they’ll be putting themselves out of the Church, and it’s the Church that has the message of salvation.
We need the help of the Church to stay on track spiritually. The Bible is our only infallible authority, but people often misread the Bible. Most false teachers claim to be getting their messages out of Scripture. And not everyone has the time or the gifts to examine and refute every false teaching that comes along. That’s why we’re part of a larger body; and it’s as we all make use of our gifts that together we make up the body of Christ. But that body includes many who are now in the Lord’s presence. Charles Hodge was a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary in the 19th century who had some helpful things to say about the importance of listening to these people who went before us in the Church: "Protestants, in rejecting the doctrine of tradition, and in asserting that the Word of God as contained in the Scriptures... is the only infallible rule of faith and practice, do not reject the authority of the Church as a teacher. They do not isolate themselves from the great company of the faithful in all ages, and set up a new faith. They hold that Christ promised the Holy Spirit to lead his people into the knowledge of the truth; that the Spirit does dwell as a teacher in all the children of God, and that those who are born of God are thus led to the knowledge and belief of the truth.... Any doctrine, therefore, which can be proved to be a part of the faith... in all ages of the world, must be true. It is to be received not because it is thus universally believed, but because its being universally believed by true Christians is a proof that it is taught by the Spirit both in his Word and in the hearts of his people.... From the faith of God's people no man can separate himself without forfeiting the communion of the saints, and placing himself outside the pale of true believers" (Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, pp. 249‑250). Paul wants the Galatians to know that the gospel he preached to them is the same message they would hear in the churches of Judea, the same message they would hear from the apostle Peter.
Paul wants the Galatians to know that “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all” (Ephesians 4:4-6). They can’t abandon the gospel without also putting themselves outside the Church. Are there hypocrites in the Church? Yes. Will people in the Church let us down? Yes. Paul goes on to show, a little later, that even Peter, the leader of the original 12 apostles, continued to fail in significant ways. The Church is made up of people who believe the gospel, who are in the process of being transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. But the process isn’t complete, so the people of the Church are imperfect. But here’s the important thing: we don’t have the right to leave the Church because of that imperfection. And if we do leave, we’re cutting ourselves off from the body that Paul calls the “pillar and foundation of truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). We’re cutting ourselves off from the body of Christ. Leaving the Church because of the failings of others is like jumping out of the ark because you’re sick and tired of dealing with Noah and his family. You’re abandoning the only safe place because you’re irritated with some of the other people who’ve found refuge there.
The Galatians were on the verge of abandoning the Church by believing a different message. But people leave the Church for all different kinds of reasons then try to persuade themselves that they’re still on track spiritually (I'm not talking about leaving one particular church and going to another, I'm talking about abandoning the church altogether). Paul had one of the most brilliant minds in the ancient world, and he also had an exceptionally strong personality. I suspect he had his share of personality conflicts in the Church (we know that he and Barnabas split up their missionary team over a conflict). He was a great thinker. But he didn’t set out on his own. He preached the message he’d been given as a part of the one true Church, the body of Christ. And his commitment to the Church is a model for us. The Church of Jesus Christ is the ark of salvation. It’s the only safe place of refuge in this fallen world.
I still notice a similar tendency. People want to have a spiritual relationship with Jesus, but they see the Church as more-or-less optional. And, of course, if the Church is optional, as soon as something happens that they don’t like, they stop going. I’ve met people like this, who haven’t attended church in years but who still profess to have some sort of relationship with Jesus Christ.
Here’s something I came across a few years ago. It’s a list of the 10 top reasons one preacher gave for no longer attending sporting events:
10. My father took me to a game every weekend when I was growing up and it was awful.
9. I don’t want to take my children to a sporting event because I want them to choose for themselves what sport they like best when they get older.
8. Every time I go to a sporting event they ask for money.
7. The bleacher seats are too hard and uncomfortable.
6. The people sitting around me on the bleacher seats aren’t very friendly.
5. The games are scheduled at times when I want to do something else.
4. Every now and then a game goes into overtime and I’m late getting home.
3. The pep band plays songs that I don’t recognize and I can’t sing along with them.
2. The coach never comes to visit me in my home between games.
1. And the number one reason that this preacher no longer goes to sporting events: the referees make decisions with which I disagree (taken from a printed sermon by Dr. Robert Ives, “My Heart, Jesus’s Home,” at Elizabethtown BIC Church, May 12, 2002).
I used to use the same excuses that I’ve heard others use. I remember saying, before I was a Christian, “the Church is full of hypocrites.” I’d heard others say it, and it sounded like it must be true. Of course, I didn’t know many Christians at the time, so I really didn’t know what I was talking about. The thing I’ve noticed over the past 29 years is that there are lots of hypocrites around, and some of them are Christians. There are lots of people who pretend to be something that they’re not. People in sales, or politics, or advertising are especially tempted in this way; people in leadership often feel like they need to present a certain “image” to be successful, and often that image is a lie. People who do that habitually are hypocrites; they’re phony’s, pretenders, people who are pretending to be something they’re not. The thing that hasn’t been clear to me is that these kinds of people are more plentiful in the Church than they are anywhere else.
We saw, last week, that Paul is concerned about more than his individual relationship with Jesus. He’s part of something bigger than himself; he’s involved in more than just his own spiritual journey. St. Cyprian, writing in the early 200's, said that “Without the church as mother one cannot have God as father” and “Outside of the church there is no salvation” (quoted by Roger Olson, The Story of Christian Theology, p. 114). That sounds strange to us in the early 21st century, because we’re so used to thinking of salvation in individualistic terms. But the truth is that God does not deal with us individualistically. He graciously calls in the context of our daily lives, and then as we turn to Him we find that we are part of His Church, the bride He’s preparing for His Son. God is building His Church, and He mercifully and graciously includes us.
Paul is demonstrating to the Galatians that he is a true apostle. The churches there have been under the influence of false teachers, and one of the areas these teachers have been attacking is Paul’s apostleship. They want to undermine his message, and one way to do that is by saying that he is not a genuine apostle at all. Paul is at a disadvantage, in many ways, because he came along after all the other apostles and began his relationship with the Church as a persecutor.
The whole reason Paul has written this letter to the Galatians is to defend the true gospel and to undermine the influence of these false teachers. But part of that task is defending his own calling as an apostle, because the authority of his message is tied to that calling. That’s why he stresses so strongly that he wasn’t taught the message by another person but received it directly from Jesus Christ. The message he preached at Galatia was a message from God Himself, because Paul is a true apostle, one set apart by God and sent out to deliver a message.
So he’s demonstrating to the Galatians that he is a true apostle, but his purpose is not to denigrate the other apostles. Paul isn’t asserting his independence. He’s not saying, “these people have no right to tell me what to do or say.” He’s showing the Galatians that he is part of the group, that he and the original 12 apostles preach the same message. Peter was the apostle to the Jews, and it’s likely that the Galatians thought they were aligning themselves with Peter. They wanted to follow the teaching of those who said it was necessary for salvation to put themselves under the ceremonial law of the Old Testament. And, no doubt, they thought they were in good company. Surely Peter, the apostle to the Jews, would be in agreement with them.
Paul’s point is that this is simply not true. It’s not that the Galatians are aligning themselves with Peter. The Galatians are departing from the apostolic message. If they keep going in this direction, they’ll be cutting themselves off from the Church, the Church founded by the apostles. They’ll become a cult, a heretical sect cut off from the body of Christ. Paul wants the Galatians to see, not his independence from the other apostles, but that he and the other apostles preach an identical message. Paul wasn’t taught by them, but Jesus gave him the same message that He’d given to the original twelve. When Paul met with them and told them the message he was preaching to the Gentiles, he says “those men added nothing to my message.” They saw that his message was the same as theirs, that there was nothing missing. So he goes on: “On the contrary, they saw that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, just as Peter had been to the Jews.... James, Peter and John, those reputed to be pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go the the Gentiles, and they to the Jews.” They’re part of the same One Church, preaching the same gospel; if the Galatians follow these false teachers, they’ll be putting themselves out of the Church, and it’s the Church that has the message of salvation.
We need the help of the Church to stay on track spiritually. The Bible is our only infallible authority, but people often misread the Bible. Most false teachers claim to be getting their messages out of Scripture. And not everyone has the time or the gifts to examine and refute every false teaching that comes along. That’s why we’re part of a larger body; and it’s as we all make use of our gifts that together we make up the body of Christ. But that body includes many who are now in the Lord’s presence. Charles Hodge was a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary in the 19th century who had some helpful things to say about the importance of listening to these people who went before us in the Church: "Protestants, in rejecting the doctrine of tradition, and in asserting that the Word of God as contained in the Scriptures... is the only infallible rule of faith and practice, do not reject the authority of the Church as a teacher. They do not isolate themselves from the great company of the faithful in all ages, and set up a new faith. They hold that Christ promised the Holy Spirit to lead his people into the knowledge of the truth; that the Spirit does dwell as a teacher in all the children of God, and that those who are born of God are thus led to the knowledge and belief of the truth.... Any doctrine, therefore, which can be proved to be a part of the faith... in all ages of the world, must be true. It is to be received not because it is thus universally believed, but because its being universally believed by true Christians is a proof that it is taught by the Spirit both in his Word and in the hearts of his people.... From the faith of God's people no man can separate himself without forfeiting the communion of the saints, and placing himself outside the pale of true believers" (Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, pp. 249‑250). Paul wants the Galatians to know that the gospel he preached to them is the same message they would hear in the churches of Judea, the same message they would hear from the apostle Peter.
Paul wants the Galatians to know that “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all” (Ephesians 4:4-6). They can’t abandon the gospel without also putting themselves outside the Church. Are there hypocrites in the Church? Yes. Will people in the Church let us down? Yes. Paul goes on to show, a little later, that even Peter, the leader of the original 12 apostles, continued to fail in significant ways. The Church is made up of people who believe the gospel, who are in the process of being transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. But the process isn’t complete, so the people of the Church are imperfect. But here’s the important thing: we don’t have the right to leave the Church because of that imperfection. And if we do leave, we’re cutting ourselves off from the body that Paul calls the “pillar and foundation of truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). We’re cutting ourselves off from the body of Christ. Leaving the Church because of the failings of others is like jumping out of the ark because you’re sick and tired of dealing with Noah and his family. You’re abandoning the only safe place because you’re irritated with some of the other people who’ve found refuge there.
The Galatians were on the verge of abandoning the Church by believing a different message. But people leave the Church for all different kinds of reasons then try to persuade themselves that they’re still on track spiritually (I'm not talking about leaving one particular church and going to another, I'm talking about abandoning the church altogether). Paul had one of the most brilliant minds in the ancient world, and he also had an exceptionally strong personality. I suspect he had his share of personality conflicts in the Church (we know that he and Barnabas split up their missionary team over a conflict). He was a great thinker. But he didn’t set out on his own. He preached the message he’d been given as a part of the one true Church, the body of Christ. And his commitment to the Church is a model for us. The Church of Jesus Christ is the ark of salvation. It’s the only safe place of refuge in this fallen world.
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
The Transforming Power of the Gospel, Galatians 1:11-24
I've been thinking about some of the friends I had in elementary school. The first one that comes to mind is Rudy. He and I were friends for awhile, but two memories stand out when I think of him. One day, when he and I were sitting together, a teacher asked him a lot of questions because he had so many bruises and scrapes. She was clearly concerned that he was being abused (though I didn’t realize that at the time). Rudy said he got the bruises from wrestling with his brothers, but I‘ve often wondered, since then, whether that was true. The other memory I have of Rudy is that he and I were sitting together at lunch when the principle came in and announced that president Kennedy had been assassinated.
I don’t remember much about him after that. His family moved out of the area shortly afterward and I didn’t see him again until high school. He appeared at our school in my junior or senior year, and everyone was afraid of him. He didn’t seem to care about anything; we got the impression that he would, without hesitation, kill anyone who got in his way. He got expelled from school within less than a week, so I didn’t see much of him. Shortly after this, he left town. After I got out of high school, I heard that he was in prison.
About 15 or 20 years ago, another friend, Marc, called me. Marc and I had grown up together but hadn’t been in contact since high school. We had been best friends for a long time, but his home situation was really unstable, and after high school he had left the area and was wandering around the west coast doing drugs. Anyway, he had contacted my mom, who gave him my phone number, and was calling to tell me what had happened with his life. When he left Sonoma, his whole life was wrapped up in drugs, but after awhile he had come to the end of himself and had gone to Teen Challenge looking for help. And through that ministry he had become a Christian.
He told me about another friend of ours. Dwayne had been a good friend all through elementary school and into high school, but he became disillusioned with life after his parents’ divorce and during high school had immersed himself in the drug culture. While we were still in school, he had dropped out and left home. But Dwayne had also come into contact with Teen Challenge and had committed his life to Jesus Christ. He had then received a high school diploma, gone to Bible College, and is now a pastor.
But Marc also had news about Rudy. Marc and Dwayne were messed up and confused, but Rudy was a hardened criminal. Marc told me that Rudy had become a Christian while he was in prison and is now a prison chaplain. God has completely turned his life around. All four of us, Marc, Dwayne, Rudy and me, were friends in elementary school. None of us had any involvement in church as kids. All of us were headed in one direction, then God intervened and turned us around, all independently of each other.
How do you explain these kinds of changes? These stories could be multiplied millions of times, because the gospel is, as Paul says in Romans 1, “the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith.” The gospel is a message that has power to transform our lives. In this passage in Galatians 1, Paul points to the complete change of direction in his own life, but he’s not just telling the story. He’s saying that this change needs to be explained, that it didn’t just happen in the natural course of events. He’s saying that this change is evidence of the divine origin of the gospel. The gospel that he preached, and that the Galatians believed, is not of human origin. It’s not something he came up with in his studies. It’s something he received from God. It’s a message from God that has the power to transform, because it is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith.”
Notice, first of all, how Paul describes what has happened in his life. He doesn’t say: “I came to the end of my rope, so I sat down and weighed my options and decided the best course of action was to become a Christian.” He hasn’t embarked on a program of self-improvement in an effort to get his life on track. It’s not, primarily, that Paul has made a decision. It’s that God has intervened in Paul’s life: “But when God, who had set me apart before I was born....” Before it ever entered Paul’s mind that he might be fighting on the wrong side, God was there. God had set him apart from before his birth. God had an interest in Paul’s life, even though Paul was bent on destroying God’s people.
Paul wasn’t at the end of himself. God calls us all in different ways and at different points in our lives. People like Marc, Dwayne, and Rudy came to the end of themselves, and then they were willing to listen attentively to the message of the gospel. But it doesn’t always happen like that. Paul was doing well, humanly speaking. He says “I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors.” Among his peers, Paul was someone to be reckoned with. His life was on track. But then something unexpected happened. This God, who had set him apart from before his birth, called him: “But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles.” Jesus met him on the road to Damascus, when he was on his way to arrest and kill more Christians. Paul was rushing headlong in one direction, and Jesus stopped him in mid course and turned him around. But the explanation for that change of direction is God. It’s not that Paul did something to get himself on track. It’s that God stopped him and called him to turn around.
The second thing is that Paul was not completely passive in this process. I’ve noticed a contrast in the way people look at their spiritual lives. They make a lot of the fact that following Christ is their decision. The primary way they describe their conversion is in these terms: they heard an invitation and made a decision to follow Jesus. But after that initial decision, they wait for God to do something extraordinary to make them grow. They go forward in revival meetings, and they spend year after year praying and waiting for God to do something, to make them more spiritually engaged, to cause them to begin following more diligently. They were very active at the beginning: they took charge and received the gift that was being offered; but now they’re passive, just waiting for God to do something apart from any effort on their part.
Paul is just the opposite. God took hold of him in the beginning and did something that was no part of his intention. And then he responded by actively following. The first thing he did, according to this passage in Galatians, is go away into Arabia. He says that he didn’t consult with other people. Paul had no one to turn to at this point, so he went away into Arabia, to give himself time to assimilate and adjust to the things he’d just learned.
Eugene Peterson has a good description of what Paul was doing: “Paul was in no hurry to get back to work. He didn’t have to be in a hurry for he knew that God was at work. God didn’t need him; he needed God. Arabia was his place and time for the leisurely, contemplative training in which he got used to this new way of life in which God was at the center, in which he himself was accepted, and in which he could travel light” (Traveling Light, p. 52).
I’m convinced that the reason many people don’t grow in their Christian lives is that they don’t give themselves time to assimilate the message. They make a “decision for Christ,” then they rush back into their frenzied lives and the Word never sinks in. If we want to grow as Christians, we need to be ruthless in this area. We need to give ourselves time in God’s presence, in prayer and in His Word and in corporate worship. And anything that keeps us from doing these things is harming us, whether it’s excessive work to maintain our lifestyle or excessive time in recreational activities. If we don’t give ourselves time to cultivate this new way of life with God at the center, we’ll spend our lives floundering.
Thomas Merton says our modern, fast-paced life dehumanizes us: “The world of men has forgotten the joys of silence, the peace of solitude which is necessary, to some extent, for the fulness of human living.... If man is constantly exiled from his own home, locked out of his own spiritual solitude, he ceases to be a true person. He no longer lives as a man. He is not even a healthy animal. He becomes a kind of automaton, living without joy because he has lost all spontaneity. He is no longer moved from within, but only from outside himself. He no longer makes decisions for himself, he lets them be made for him. He no longer acts upon the outside world, but lets it act upon him. He is propelled through life by a series of collisions with outside forces. His is no longer the life of a human being, but the existence of a sentient billiard ball, a being without purpose and without any deeply valid response to reality” (quoted by Peterson, in Traveling Light, p. 52). What he is saying is really not much different than what Jesus said in the Parable of the Sower: “As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing” (Matthew 13:22). Jesus is describing people who are so wrapped up in the things of this world that they don’t have time to cultivate this new way of life with God at the center. So the Word ends up being choked, and their spiritual life dwindles into nothing. The condition Merton is describing has the same effect.
The third thing to notice is that Paul’s conversion was part of a larger work of God. Jesus confronted him individually, and he went into a time of solitude to give himself time to assimilate the change that had taken place. But when he responded to the message, Paul found that he was part of a larger body. Paul is emphasizing, in this passage, that he didn’t learn the gospel from one of the other apostles. It’s important for him to do this, because the Galatians were questioning the legitimacy of his claim to be an apostle. Paul shows that he is truly an apostle, that he has received the message directly from Jesus Christ. But then, having received the message, he doesn’t remain in isolation. We see him, in these verses and into the next chapter, recognizing that he is part of the Church.
He tells us that he eventually went to Jerusalem and spent 10 days with Peter: not enough time to have been discipled by him, but enough time to establish a friendship, enough time to recognize their common bond in Christ. The churches in Judea didn’t know him, but they were hearing reports about his ministry and they glorified God because of him (v. 24). And Paul was called to use his gifts in the church, proclaiming Jesus among the Gentiles (v. 16). It’s not just Jesus and Paul. Jesus calls Paul to be part of the Church. God is building His Church, and He’s called Paul to be part of it.
St. Cyprian, writing in the early 200's, said that “Without the church as mother one cannot have God as father” (Roger Olson, The Story of Christian Theology, p. 114). That sounds strange to us as American Evangelicals in the early 21st century, because we’re so used to thinking of salvation in individualistic terms. But the truth is that God does not deal with us individualistically. He graciously calls in the context of our daily lives, and then as we turn to Him we find that we are part of His Church, the bride He’s preparing for His Son. I said earlier that many people don’t grow spiritually because they don’t give themselves time to assimilate the message. Many others don’t grow because they don’t see the importance of the Church. It’s through the ongoing ministry of the Church that we first hear the message, and it’s within the context of the Church that we are nurtured spiritually. When we’re negligent about corporate worship, we’re sabotaging our own spiritual lives. It’s not just us and Jesus. Jesus calls us to grow as part of His Church by entering into corporate worship, receiving the sacraments, hearing the Word preached, and using our gifts to serve one another in His name.
The gospel is the “the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith.” But responding to the gospel involves every area of our lives. God graciously calls us to Himself, and then He says to us: “You were bought with a price; your life is no longer your own to do whatever you want.” So, when He calls us to Himself, He’s also calling us to order our lives in ways that enable us to grow. When we, over an extended period of time, allow our spiritual lives to be crowded out by the cares and pleasures of this life, we’re being disobedient. And when God calls us to Himself, He calls us to enter into the life of the Church, to be faithful in worship and to be diligent in exercising our gifts in service to one another. When God calls us to Himself, He lays claim to our lives in every area. It’s as we accept and respond to this claim that we are transformed into His image.
I don’t remember much about him after that. His family moved out of the area shortly afterward and I didn’t see him again until high school. He appeared at our school in my junior or senior year, and everyone was afraid of him. He didn’t seem to care about anything; we got the impression that he would, without hesitation, kill anyone who got in his way. He got expelled from school within less than a week, so I didn’t see much of him. Shortly after this, he left town. After I got out of high school, I heard that he was in prison.
About 15 or 20 years ago, another friend, Marc, called me. Marc and I had grown up together but hadn’t been in contact since high school. We had been best friends for a long time, but his home situation was really unstable, and after high school he had left the area and was wandering around the west coast doing drugs. Anyway, he had contacted my mom, who gave him my phone number, and was calling to tell me what had happened with his life. When he left Sonoma, his whole life was wrapped up in drugs, but after awhile he had come to the end of himself and had gone to Teen Challenge looking for help. And through that ministry he had become a Christian.
He told me about another friend of ours. Dwayne had been a good friend all through elementary school and into high school, but he became disillusioned with life after his parents’ divorce and during high school had immersed himself in the drug culture. While we were still in school, he had dropped out and left home. But Dwayne had also come into contact with Teen Challenge and had committed his life to Jesus Christ. He had then received a high school diploma, gone to Bible College, and is now a pastor.
But Marc also had news about Rudy. Marc and Dwayne were messed up and confused, but Rudy was a hardened criminal. Marc told me that Rudy had become a Christian while he was in prison and is now a prison chaplain. God has completely turned his life around. All four of us, Marc, Dwayne, Rudy and me, were friends in elementary school. None of us had any involvement in church as kids. All of us were headed in one direction, then God intervened and turned us around, all independently of each other.
How do you explain these kinds of changes? These stories could be multiplied millions of times, because the gospel is, as Paul says in Romans 1, “the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith.” The gospel is a message that has power to transform our lives. In this passage in Galatians 1, Paul points to the complete change of direction in his own life, but he’s not just telling the story. He’s saying that this change needs to be explained, that it didn’t just happen in the natural course of events. He’s saying that this change is evidence of the divine origin of the gospel. The gospel that he preached, and that the Galatians believed, is not of human origin. It’s not something he came up with in his studies. It’s something he received from God. It’s a message from God that has the power to transform, because it is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith.”
Notice, first of all, how Paul describes what has happened in his life. He doesn’t say: “I came to the end of my rope, so I sat down and weighed my options and decided the best course of action was to become a Christian.” He hasn’t embarked on a program of self-improvement in an effort to get his life on track. It’s not, primarily, that Paul has made a decision. It’s that God has intervened in Paul’s life: “But when God, who had set me apart before I was born....” Before it ever entered Paul’s mind that he might be fighting on the wrong side, God was there. God had set him apart from before his birth. God had an interest in Paul’s life, even though Paul was bent on destroying God’s people.
Paul wasn’t at the end of himself. God calls us all in different ways and at different points in our lives. People like Marc, Dwayne, and Rudy came to the end of themselves, and then they were willing to listen attentively to the message of the gospel. But it doesn’t always happen like that. Paul was doing well, humanly speaking. He says “I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors.” Among his peers, Paul was someone to be reckoned with. His life was on track. But then something unexpected happened. This God, who had set him apart from before his birth, called him: “But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles.” Jesus met him on the road to Damascus, when he was on his way to arrest and kill more Christians. Paul was rushing headlong in one direction, and Jesus stopped him in mid course and turned him around. But the explanation for that change of direction is God. It’s not that Paul did something to get himself on track. It’s that God stopped him and called him to turn around.
The second thing is that Paul was not completely passive in this process. I’ve noticed a contrast in the way people look at their spiritual lives. They make a lot of the fact that following Christ is their decision. The primary way they describe their conversion is in these terms: they heard an invitation and made a decision to follow Jesus. But after that initial decision, they wait for God to do something extraordinary to make them grow. They go forward in revival meetings, and they spend year after year praying and waiting for God to do something, to make them more spiritually engaged, to cause them to begin following more diligently. They were very active at the beginning: they took charge and received the gift that was being offered; but now they’re passive, just waiting for God to do something apart from any effort on their part.
Paul is just the opposite. God took hold of him in the beginning and did something that was no part of his intention. And then he responded by actively following. The first thing he did, according to this passage in Galatians, is go away into Arabia. He says that he didn’t consult with other people. Paul had no one to turn to at this point, so he went away into Arabia, to give himself time to assimilate and adjust to the things he’d just learned.
Eugene Peterson has a good description of what Paul was doing: “Paul was in no hurry to get back to work. He didn’t have to be in a hurry for he knew that God was at work. God didn’t need him; he needed God. Arabia was his place and time for the leisurely, contemplative training in which he got used to this new way of life in which God was at the center, in which he himself was accepted, and in which he could travel light” (Traveling Light, p. 52).
I’m convinced that the reason many people don’t grow in their Christian lives is that they don’t give themselves time to assimilate the message. They make a “decision for Christ,” then they rush back into their frenzied lives and the Word never sinks in. If we want to grow as Christians, we need to be ruthless in this area. We need to give ourselves time in God’s presence, in prayer and in His Word and in corporate worship. And anything that keeps us from doing these things is harming us, whether it’s excessive work to maintain our lifestyle or excessive time in recreational activities. If we don’t give ourselves time to cultivate this new way of life with God at the center, we’ll spend our lives floundering.
Thomas Merton says our modern, fast-paced life dehumanizes us: “The world of men has forgotten the joys of silence, the peace of solitude which is necessary, to some extent, for the fulness of human living.... If man is constantly exiled from his own home, locked out of his own spiritual solitude, he ceases to be a true person. He no longer lives as a man. He is not even a healthy animal. He becomes a kind of automaton, living without joy because he has lost all spontaneity. He is no longer moved from within, but only from outside himself. He no longer makes decisions for himself, he lets them be made for him. He no longer acts upon the outside world, but lets it act upon him. He is propelled through life by a series of collisions with outside forces. His is no longer the life of a human being, but the existence of a sentient billiard ball, a being without purpose and without any deeply valid response to reality” (quoted by Peterson, in Traveling Light, p. 52). What he is saying is really not much different than what Jesus said in the Parable of the Sower: “As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing” (Matthew 13:22). Jesus is describing people who are so wrapped up in the things of this world that they don’t have time to cultivate this new way of life with God at the center. So the Word ends up being choked, and their spiritual life dwindles into nothing. The condition Merton is describing has the same effect.
The third thing to notice is that Paul’s conversion was part of a larger work of God. Jesus confronted him individually, and he went into a time of solitude to give himself time to assimilate the change that had taken place. But when he responded to the message, Paul found that he was part of a larger body. Paul is emphasizing, in this passage, that he didn’t learn the gospel from one of the other apostles. It’s important for him to do this, because the Galatians were questioning the legitimacy of his claim to be an apostle. Paul shows that he is truly an apostle, that he has received the message directly from Jesus Christ. But then, having received the message, he doesn’t remain in isolation. We see him, in these verses and into the next chapter, recognizing that he is part of the Church.
He tells us that he eventually went to Jerusalem and spent 10 days with Peter: not enough time to have been discipled by him, but enough time to establish a friendship, enough time to recognize their common bond in Christ. The churches in Judea didn’t know him, but they were hearing reports about his ministry and they glorified God because of him (v. 24). And Paul was called to use his gifts in the church, proclaiming Jesus among the Gentiles (v. 16). It’s not just Jesus and Paul. Jesus calls Paul to be part of the Church. God is building His Church, and He’s called Paul to be part of it.
St. Cyprian, writing in the early 200's, said that “Without the church as mother one cannot have God as father” (Roger Olson, The Story of Christian Theology, p. 114). That sounds strange to us as American Evangelicals in the early 21st century, because we’re so used to thinking of salvation in individualistic terms. But the truth is that God does not deal with us individualistically. He graciously calls in the context of our daily lives, and then as we turn to Him we find that we are part of His Church, the bride He’s preparing for His Son. I said earlier that many people don’t grow spiritually because they don’t give themselves time to assimilate the message. Many others don’t grow because they don’t see the importance of the Church. It’s through the ongoing ministry of the Church that we first hear the message, and it’s within the context of the Church that we are nurtured spiritually. When we’re negligent about corporate worship, we’re sabotaging our own spiritual lives. It’s not just us and Jesus. Jesus calls us to grow as part of His Church by entering into corporate worship, receiving the sacraments, hearing the Word preached, and using our gifts to serve one another in His name.
The gospel is the “the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith.” But responding to the gospel involves every area of our lives. God graciously calls us to Himself, and then He says to us: “You were bought with a price; your life is no longer your own to do whatever you want.” So, when He calls us to Himself, He’s also calling us to order our lives in ways that enable us to grow. When we, over an extended period of time, allow our spiritual lives to be crowded out by the cares and pleasures of this life, we’re being disobedient. And when God calls us to Himself, He calls us to enter into the life of the Church, to be faithful in worship and to be diligent in exercising our gifts in service to one another. When God calls us to Himself, He lays claim to our lives in every area. It’s as we accept and respond to this claim that we are transformed into His image.
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