LENTEN READINGS AND REFLECTIONS

DAY 30

Reading:Galatians 1:1-6:18

Matt has had a pretty exhaustion week so I'm offering up a few thoughts on Paul's Letter to the Galatians in his place.

As you read through Paul's letters you'll notice that for the most part he offers a prayer of thanksgiving for the church he is addressing. However, in his letter to Galatia (a letter that was meant to be circulated among several churches) he launches immediately into a frustrated lecture.

The cause of his frustration, and indeed anger, is that a false teacher has infiltrated the church, teaching the Galatians that they must undergo circumcision to be Christian. The underlying struggle is between ‘judaising' Christians—those who wanted gentile converts to live as Jews, that is keeping kosher, being circumcised, keeping the law—and Paul and his gentile churches. Well, not just Paul. You'll remember from Acts that Peter had a vision of many unclean animals dropping from heaven. Peter learned very quickly that God planned to bring gentiles into the church, that being Jewish was not a prerequisite to being Christian.

But it was Paul's particular mission to bring the gospel to the gentiles. He says so in 2:7-10. But it is not just a matter of circumcision or uncircumcision. The heart of the gospel is at stake. How are we saved? By faith or by works according to the law? Paul is scathing, “You foolish Galatians,” he writes, “who has bewitched you?”

Because it is bewitching, the idea of being able to earn God's pleasure. Every humanly derived system of religion is ultimately oriented around an earned salvation. Through discipline, work, effort, the sweat of your brow, you can earn or acquire a different state of being, a measure of favor. I think at some primeval basic level this desire to work and be recognized by God is what drives people away from the church or keeps them from coming in the first place. If we could walk up a hill every day and live for eternity, most of us would aim to walk up the hill every day. We want to be independent, self-sufficient. But at the root of self-sufficience is pride. And pride has no place in the site and presence of God.

You cannot earn what God alone can give you. It is faith in the work of Christ alone that makes it possible for us to be saved. Anything else, says Paul, is another gospel. That is, anything else leads you away from Christ and ultimately back to yourself.

Paul admonishes, chastises, pleads with the Galatians to come to their senses and in the last half of the letter emphasizes the freedom they have in Christ. If you live not according to the law, to work for something impossible to earn, but according to faith, to receive a free gift from God, than you are free. Free, not to live according to the flesh, that is, to live in a destructive and sinful way, but free to live in the Spirit. That is, in Christ, you are free to experience love, joy, peace, patience…all those things the world cannot give.

This is a strange kind of freedom. It is a freedom to know God unencumbered by sin. It is a freedom to love people without needing anything in return. It is a freedom to give everything you have and are for other people, ultimately for God, because you don't need or lack for anything. It is a freedom to be at peace with yourself, to be forgiven and healed of all the things that torment the human soul. It is the freedom of Christ himself.

As we head into Holy Week and walk with Jesus through the last days and hours of his life, I hope that you will lay everything at his feet and experience the real true freedom of his love, his grace, his salvation.

Home  Sermons Contact Us  Links  Last Week's Article