Epistle for June 19, 2022

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Galatians 3:23-29
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

The Apostle Paul begins to make some applications of the doctrine of justification by faith to the church at Galatia.  He briefly addresses the tension of law and grace, and then makes a startling claim that has broad socio-economic and racial implications.

We are mistaken if we draw the conclusion that the Apostle Paul was anti-law. He tells the Roman church that the law is a kind of mirror that reveals our sinful nature because it reveals the holy standard of God’s nature:

What then should we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin (Romans 7:7).

In today’s lectionary passage from Galatians, Paul elaborates on the purposes of the law.  The law was a guard and a disciplinarian prior to the coming of Christ.  It is faith in Christ that justifies, not the law.

This suggests that the purpose of the law was not only to convict but also to prepare the believer for faith.  The word that the NRSV translates as disciplinarian is the Greek word paidagogos.   This word is the root of our English word pedagogue — one who is a strict teacher or trainer.

This is not necessarily a negative connotation — the pedagogue raises the bar of expectations for a student or an athlete by demanding the best from them.  The dilemma is that the law raises the bar of expectations but cannot fulfill those expectations.

The advent of faith accomplishes what the law could not do:

But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.

In the verses prior to our passage, Paul has explained that the righteousness of Christ has fulfilled the demands of the law through his death and resurrection:

 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us…. (Galatians 3:13).

This echoes the famous declaration from 2 Corinthians 5:21:

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

The righteous, sinless one becomes a curse, and becomes sin by fulfilling the just requirements of the law on our behalf.  This is the work accomplished by Christ on the cross.  And this righteousness is accessed by us through faith.

In our baptism, then, we are represented as having been identified with Christ by faith:

 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

This is part of that new life that Christ now invites us to live with him as we are crucified with Christ and raised to life with Christ — and as a result Christ lives his righteous life in us when we live by faith (cf. Galatians 2:20).  Baptism is a sign of death to sin and resurrection with Christ.

And then, in an unexpected application of the effect of this new life that is the result of faith in Christ, Paul makes a few very radical statements about the effect of such new life in social and cultural terms:

 There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

It is so easy for readers in the 21st century to miss just how radical this statement is.

• Jews in Paul’s time considered Greeks and Gentiles to be cursed, and ineligible for covenant with God; and many Greeks regarded non-Greeks as barbarians. And yet, these two groups are now one in Christ Jesus!
• Slaves were regarded as living tools who could be used as their owner pleased, and could even be killed by their masters without consequences. Yet slave and free are one in Christ Jesus!
• Women were subjugated to the authority of men, and regarded as useful for breeding purposes and pleasure, but with little status in the Jewish or the Roman world of the day. Yet male and female are one in Christ Jesus!

Clearly, this was a radically counter-cultural statement for Paul’s time, presaging the end of class distinctions in the church to be sure, but also looking ahead to the permanent end of slavery and to women’s equality in countries influenced by Christianity in the future.

And finally, Paul repeats a theme that appears also in Romans 4:13-17, that those who follow the example of the faith of Abraham are his true heirs, rather than those who share his DNA:

And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

APPLY:  

The great doctrines of the Christian faith, derived from Scripture, are not simply dogmas that appear in our creeds — these great doctrines have very practical applications in our lives.

We can be grateful for the law that acted as a strict pedagogue and harsh disciplinarian in our lives — the law helped us realize that we can never be “good enough” by obeying the law.  While the law is holy and just and good (Romans 7:12), when we look into the mirror of the law we see just how unholy and unjust and evil we really are in comparison.

As John Wesley would say, the law ‘drives us to Christ.’  Christ fulfills the law on our behalf , and gives us grace in the form of his own righteousness.  This grace we receive by faith.

And here are some of the results of this faith:

• We become children of God through faith (verse 26).
• We are united as one in Christ — Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, male and female, black and white, first world and third world — our unity in Christ transcends socio-economic-racial-national differences.
• We become the true heirs of the promises to Abraham because our faith emulates his faith.

So, perhaps we should begin acting like the children of God, the one body in Christ, and the heirs of Abraham!

RESPOND: 

The story is told that when the evangelist Billy Graham preached an historic crusade in Montgomery, Alabama, he insisted that the mass choir be integrated.  The local newspaper editor was appalled, and wrote an editorial that declared “Billy Graham has set the church in Alabama back one hundred years.”

Billy Graham’s response was wonderful .  He said, “If that’s the case, I failed in my mission.  I intended to set it back two thousand years!”

If we truly believe, as I do, that the Scriptures are the revealed Word of God, then we need to go back before we can go forward.

Do we see churches today where sinners are transformed into saints, filled with holy love for God and neighbor? Where there are no distinctions between races and socio-economic classes? Where people are truly being equipped to become disciples and to make disciples?  Where there is real, substantive ministry to the poor and the homeless that offers dignity, and doesn’t depend upon the government?

I would love to be a member of that church!

Lord, I believe that you have given guidance to your church through your holy Word.  But I confess, our application of your Word has been selective at best, and corrupt at worst.  As we place our faith in you, break down the barriers of division and make us one in Christ. Amen. 

 PHOTOS:
"Galatians 3.28" by Baptist Union of Great Britain is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.

Epistle for June 23, 2019

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Galatians 3:23-29
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

The Apostle Paul begins to make some applications of the doctrine of justification by faith to the church at Galatia.  He briefly addresses the tension of law and grace, and then makes a startling claim that has broad socio-economic and racial implications.

We are mistaken if we draw the conclusion that the Apostle Paul was anti-law. He tells the Roman church that the law is a kind of mirror that reveals our sinful nature because it reveals the holy standard of God’s nature:

What then should we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin (Romans 7:7).

In today’s lectionary passage from Galatians, Paul elaborates on the purposes of the law.  The law was a guard and a disciplinarian prior to the coming of Christ.  It is faith in Christ that justifies, not the law.

This suggests that the purpose of the law was not only to convict but also to prepare the believer for faith.  The word that the NRSV translates as disciplinarian is the Greek word paidagogos.   This word is the root of our English word pedagogue — one who is a strict teacher or trainer.

This is not necessarily a negative connotation — the  pedagogue raises the bar of expectations for a student or an athlete by demanding the best from them.  The dilemma is that the law raises the bar of expectations but cannot fulfill those expectations.

The advent of faith accomplishes what the law could not do:

But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian,  for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.

In the verses prior to our passage, Paul has explained that the righteousness of Christ has fulfilled the demands of the law through his death and resurrection:

 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us…. (Galatians 3:13).

This echoes the famous declaration from 2 Corinthians 5:21:

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

The righteous, sinless one becomes a curse, and becomes sin by fulfilling the just requirements of the law on our behalf.  This is the work accomplished by Christ on the cross.  And this righteousness is accessed by us through faith.

In our baptism, then, we are represented as having been identified with Christ by faith:

 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

This is part of that new life that Christ now invites us to live with him as we are crucified with Christ and raised to life with Christ — and as a result Christ lives his righteous life in us when we live by faith (cf. Galatians 2:20).  Baptism is a sign of death to sin and resurrection with Christ.

And then, in an unexpected application of the effect of this new life that is the result of faith in Christ, Paul makes a few very radical statements about the effect of such new life in social and cultural terms:

 There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

It is so easy for readers in the 21st century to miss just how radical this statement is.

• Jews in Paul’s time considered Greeks and Gentiles to be cursed, and ineligible for covenant with God; and many Greeks regarded non-Greeks as barbarians. And yet, these two groups are now one in Christ Jesus!
• Slaves were regarded as living tools who could be used as their owner pleased, and could even be killed by their masters without consequences. Yet slave and free are one in Christ Jesus!
• Women were subjugated to the authority of men, and regarded as useful for breeding purposes and pleasure, but with little status in the Jewish or the Roman world of the day. Yet male and female are one in Christ Jesus!

Clearly, this was a radically counter-cultural statement for Paul’s time, presaging the end of class distinctions in the church to be sure, but also looking ahead to the permanent end of slavery and to women’s equality in countries influenced by Christianity in the future.

And finally, Paul repeats a theme that appears also in Romans 4:13-17, that those who follow the example of the faith of Abraham are his true heirs, rather than those who share his DNA:

And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

APPLY:  

The great doctrines of the Christian faith, derived from Scripture, are not simply dogmas that appear in our creeds — these great doctrines have very practical applications in our lives.

We can be grateful for the law that acted as a strict pedagogue and harsh disciplinarian in our lives — the law helped us realize that we can never be “good enough” by obeying the law.  While the law is holy and just and good (Romans 7:12), when we look into the mirror of the law we see just how unholy and unjust and evil we really are in comparison.

As John Wesley would say, the law ‘drives us to Christ.’  Christ fulfills the law on our behalf , and gives us grace in the form of his own righteousness.  This grace we receive by faith.

And here are some of the results of this faith:

• We become children of God through faith (verse 26).
• We are united as one in Christ — Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, male and female, black and white, first world and third world — our unity in Christ transcends socio-economic-racial-national differences.
• We become the true heirs of the promises to Abraham because our faith emulates his faith.

So, perhaps we should begin acting like the children of God, the one body in Christ, and the heirs of Abraham!

RESPOND: 

The story is told that when the evangelist Billy Graham preached an historic crusade in Montgomery, Alabama, he insisted that the mass choir be integrated.  The local newspaper editor was appalled, and wrote an editorial that declared “Billy Graham has set the church in Alabama back one hundred years.”

Billy Graham’s response was wonderful .  He said, “If that’s the case, I failed in my mission.  I intended to set it back two thousand years!”

If we truly believe, as I do, that the Scriptures are the revealed Word of God, then we need to go back before we can go forward.

Do we see churches today where sinners are transformed into saints, filled with holy love for God and neighbor? Where there are no distinctions between races and socio-economic classes? Where people are truly being equipped to become disciples and to make disciples?  Where there is real, substantive ministry to the poor and the homeless that offers dignity, and doesn’t depend upon the government?

I would love to be a member of that church!

Lord, I believe that you have given guidance to your church through your holy Word.  But I confess, our application of your Word has been selective at best, and corrupt at worst.  As we place our faith in you, break down the barriers of division and make us one in Christ. Amen. 

 PHOTOS:
"Galatians 3.28" by Baptist Union of Great Britain is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.

Epistle for June 19, 2016

START WITH SCRIPTURE:

Galatians 3:23-29

CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

The Apostle Paul begins to make some applications of the doctrine of justification by faith to the church at Galatia.  He briefly addresses the tension of law and grace, and then makes a startling claim that has broad socio-economic and racial implications.

We are mistaken if we draw the conclusion that the Apostle Paul was anti-law. He tells the Roman church that the law is a kind of mirror that reveals our sinful nature because it reveals the holy standard of God’s nature:

What then should we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin (Romans 7:7).

In today’s lectionary passage from Galatians, Paul elaborates on the purposes of the law.  The law was a guard and a disciplinarian prior to the coming of Christ.  It is faith in Christ that justifies, not the law.

This suggests that the purpose of the law was not only to convict but also to prepare the believer for faith.  The word that the NRSV translates as disciplinarian is the Greek word paidagogos.   This word is the root of our English word pedagogue — one who is a strict teacher or trainer.

This is not necessarily a negative connotation — the  pedagogue raises the bar of expectations for a student or an athlete by demanding the best from them.  The dilemma is that the law raises the bar of expectations but cannot fulfill those expectations.

The advent of faith accomplishes what the law could not do:

But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian,  for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.

In the verses prior to our passage, Paul has explained that the righteousness of Christ has fulfilled the demands of the law through his death and resurrection:

 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us…. (Galatians 3:13).

This echoes the famous declaration from 2 Corinthians 5:21:

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

The righteous, sinless one becomes a curse, and becomes sin by fulfilling the just requirements of the law on our behalf.  This is the work accomplished by Christ on the cross.  And this righteousness is accessed by us through faith.

In our baptism, then, we are represented as having been identified with Christ by faith:

 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

This is part of that new life that Christ now invites us to live with him as we are crucified with Christ and raised to life with Christ — and as a result Christ lives his righteous life in us when we live by faith (cf. Galatians 2:20).  Baptism is a sign of death to sin and resurrection with Christ.

And then, in an unexpected application of the effect of this new life that is the result of faith in Christ, Paul makes a few very radical statements about the effect of such new life in social and cultural terms:

 There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

It is so easy for readers in the 21st century to miss just how radical this statement is.

• Jews in Paul’s time considered Greeks and Gentiles to be cursed, and ineligible for covenant with God; and many Greeks regarded non-Greeks as barbarians. And yet, these two groups are now one in Christ Jesus!
• Slaves were regarded as living tools who could be used as their owner pleased, and could even be killed by their masters without consequences. Yet slave and free are one in Christ Jesus!
• Women were subjugated to the authority of men, and regarded as useful for breeding purposes and pleasure, but with little status in the Jewish or the Roman world of the day. Yet male and female are one in Christ Jesus!

Clearly, this was a radically counter-cultural statement for Paul’s time, presaging the end of class distinctions in the church to be sure, but also looking ahead to the permanent end of slavery and to women’s equality in countries influenced by Christianity in the future.

And finally, Paul repeats a theme that appears also in Romans 4:13-17, that those who follow the example of the faith of Abraham are his true heirs, rather than those who share his DNA:

And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

APPLY:  

The great doctrines of the Christian faith, derived from Scripture, are not simply dogmas that appear in our creeds — these great doctrines have very practical applications in our lives.

We can be grateful for the law that acted as a strict pedagogue and harsh disciplinarian in our lives — the law helped us realize that we can never be “good enough” by obeying the law.  While the law is holy and just and good (Romans 7:12), when we look into the mirror of the law we see just how unholy and unjust and evil we really are in comparison.

As John Wesley would say, the law ‘drives us to Christ.’  Christ fulfils the law on our behalf , and gives us grace in the form of his own righteousness.  This grace we receive by faith.

And here are some of the results of this faith:

• We become children of God through faith (verse 26).
• We are united as one in Christ — Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, male and female, black and white, first world and third world — our unity in Christ transcends socio-economic-racial-national differences.
• We become the true heirs of the promises to Abraham because our faith emulates his faith.

So, perhaps we should begin acting like the children of God, the one body in Christ, and the heirs of Abraham!

RESPOND: 

The story is told that when the evangelist Billy Graham preached an historic crusade in Montgomery, Alabama, he insisted that the mass choir be integrated.  The local newspaper editor was appalled, and wrote an editorial that declared “Billy Graham has set the church in Alabama back one hundred years.”

Billy Graham’s response was wonderful .  He said, “If that’s the case, I failed in my mission.  I intended to set it back two thousand years!”

If we truly believe, as I do, that the Scriptures are the revealed Word of God, then we need to go back before we can go forward.

Do we see churches today where sinners are transformed into saints, filled with holy love for God and neighbor? Where there are no distinctions between races and socio-economic classes? Where people are truly being equipped to become disciples and to make disciples?  Where there is real, substantive ministry to the poor and the homeless that offers dignity, and doesn’t depend upon the government?

I would love to be a member of that church!

Lord, I believe that you have given guidance to your church through your holy Word.  But I confess, our application of your Word has been selective at best, and corrupt at worst.  As we place our faith in you, break down the barriers of division and make us one in Christ. Amen. 

 PHOTOS:
"Galatians 3.28" by Baptist Union of Great Britain is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.

Epistle for June 12, 2016

START WITH SCRIPTURE:

Galatians 2:15-21

CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

Paul consistently declares the doctrine of justification by faith and salvation by grace.  In the letter to the Galatians he is intensely concerned about their drift toward legalism under the teaching of so-called “Judaizers.”  The Judaizers were attempting to persuade the Galatians that Christianity required a “both/and” approach to salvation — they were told that they were indeed saved by Christ, but they were also required to fulfill all the laws dictated by Moses, including circumcision.

Paul counters this by presenting a contrast between Jews by birth and Gentile sinners.  He returns to this contrast again and again in his epistles, but here he only briefly alludes to the difference between Jews and Gentiles — Jews are already members of the covenant with God by virtue of their special status as the “chosen people.”  Therefore, Gentiles are de facto sinners because they were once excluded from the covenant.

But here’s the catch: — although Paul was a Jew, and as he tells us elsewhere, prior to his conversion was very zealous for the law, he has come to understand that:

a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.

Just in case the Galatians missed his point, he stresses again that:

 no one will be justified by the works of the law (emphasis mine).

As he will later demonstrate in Galatians, and also teaches in Romans, the law is insufficient to justify us (make us right with God). This isn’t because the law is bad — not at all!  He tells us in Romans that:

 the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good (Romans 7:12).

The only problem with the law is that neither Jew nor Gentile can keep it perfectly:

For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the things written in the book of the law.” (Galatians 3:10. Emphasis mine).

That’s why Paul admits that:

if I build up again the very things that I once tore down, then I demonstrate that I am a transgressor.

In other words, if he as a Jewish Christian returns to insisting on the strict adherence to the rules and regulations of ceremonial, ritual and dietary law as the means of justification, then he himself is dead wrong!

Then he comes to the heart of his message:

 For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God.

Because Paul’s obedience to the law — as zealous and strict as he was — was insufficient, the law led him to the realization that he could not be saved by his own efforts.  Therefore the law brought him to spiritual death so that he could be raised to life through grace.

So, when he comes to faith in Christ, he identifies with Christ, and Christ begins to live his life in and through him.  Justification is not about what we do, but what God in Christ does in us and through us:

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.

This death and resurrection motif  becomes the pattern of the Christian life. The Christian life begins in baptism and continues daily as the Christian lives the Christian life. The Christian is one who has died to sin and is raised to new life in Christ:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. . . We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin (Romans 6:3-4, 6).

After these lofty and soaring thoughts that point to a life lived with Christ, in Christ, and through Christ, he returns to his argument against seeking justification by the law:

I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification  comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.

Paul has thrown down the gauntlet to the argument of the Judaizers — if fulfilling the law is a necessary addition to justification, then why was it necessary for Jesus to die? The answer is that Jesus, not we, has fulfilled the law perfectly in his life, death and resurrection.

As Colossians says:

And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God  made you  alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses,  erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross (Colossians 2:13-14).

APPLY:  

Anyone who has ever attempted to live the “sinless” life can appreciate the blessing offered by the doctrine of  justification by grace.

I can remember at one time in my Christian life deciding that I was going to live a “perfect” life one day — in my personal habits and diet, in my relationships with family and church members, in thought, word and deed.

You can imagine how that worked out.  Not only did I fail because I became obsessed with the myriad rules and regulations that might characterize the “perfect” life, I also became intensely self-absorbed.  I was profoundly concerned with my righteousness, and my obedience to the law.

I was no longer looking at God, or even neighbor.  I had become intensely narcissistic!

When we turn to Christ in faith, and are justified (made right with God) through grace, the emphasis is no longer on ourselves.  The source of our life and character is Christ!

Then those soaring words of Paul become a source of hope and life for us as Christians:

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.

RESPOND: 

What a relief that salvation, living the Christian life, and overcoming sin is not my accomplishment, it is the work of Christ.  As I come to him daily in faith, I identify with his crucifixion and resurrection.  This means that through him I can die to sin, be raised to new life, and live the adventure that he has for me to live.  It’s not my accomplishment, but his.

How often we get that wrong, and miss the true source of God’s grace and abundant blessing!  I recently heard someone say — with very good intentions — that we must “forgive ourselves.”  I know that he meant that to be a word of comfort, but I didn’t find it comforting at all.  My response to that is that if I could forgive myself I wouldn’t need a Savior!  If I could forgive myself, then my salvation would be based, like that of the Judaizers, on what I do, rather than on what Jesus does.

If I know anything from Scripture and my own personal experience, I cannot save myself and I cannot forgive myself.  I can receive salvation and forgiveness as a gift from God by trusting in him.

Lord, I am so grateful that my salvation doesn’t depend on me; it depends on you.  If my salvation required that I follow the law, then that would mean I must obey it perfectly, and consistently — and you already know that I can’t do that.  I need your grace and mercy, and I am profoundly grateful that you have done for me what I cannot do for myself. Please live your life in and through me.  Amen.

 PHOTOS:
"Galatians 2:20" by Sapphire Dream Photography is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.