Category: Galatians (Page 2 of 2)

We never considered adopting Anthony or Tina.  Just foster-parenting them.   But, we soon realized we couldn’t do even that.  Stress on our own three-child family and frustration with the byzantine bureaucracy became unbearable.

In Galatians 4:4-7 Paul tells us a happier story.  God redeemed us “so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:5).
God’s redemption-aim was to adopt us!  We’ll unpack that next post.  For now, let’s follow Paul’s words as he concludes his argument against “the circumcision party” (2:13).  They were the Jews troubling the Galatia churches (Acts 13:13-14:48), insisting that circumcision and law-keeping (think:  Ten Commandments) must be added to faith in Christ to be justified.  No, cries Paul.   ‘ , , , if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law” (3:21).  Rather,  ” . . . the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith.”  Faith in Christ plus works of law?  No.  Faith in Christ alone.

Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.   [for] You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus,  for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.  There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise (3:25-29).

Faith’s coming was an objective, historical event.  We can mark it, date and place.  We know that because Paul’s words in Galatians 4:4 are parallel to his words in 3:25—“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son . . . ”  When Christ came, faith came.  And when faith came, law’s supervision ceased.

I’d have expected Paul to write, “Now that faith has come . . . . you are all justified through faith in Christ Jesus.”  Wouldn’t you?  After all, justification has been his topic.  Instead, however, he writes, “Now that faith has come . . . you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. 

Imagine a courtroom.  Now a family room.  That’s the difference between justification and adoption. In justification God grants us right “legal” standing before him.  He declares us “NOT GUILTY” for our sin.   He gavels the decision final. Justification is a courtroom word.  In adoption God makes us members of  his “household”.   He WELCOMES us home from our lost-ness.  His arms open to pull us close.  Adoption, therefore,  is a family word.   Even though Paul doesn’t use the word “adoption” until 4:5, it lies behind Paul’s announcement here:   “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.”

Like justification, adoption comes by faith.  We express this faith in baptism, which, Paul writes, is like clothing ourselves with Christ.   Was Paul thinking of the prophet when writing that?  “I delight greatly in the LORD; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness . . .  ” (Isaiah 61:10).  By faith expressed in baptism, the Lord strips off the filthy rags of our “righteousness” and dresses us up in Christ’s.  His righteousness becomes ours.  

When I read this image I see the dozens and dozens I baptized as a pastor.  Every one I pulled up—whether in a lake, pool or baptistry—came back out dripping, covered with water.  By faith expressed in baptism, Christ covers us with himself.   He is the Son of God; we become sons of God.  Members of our Father’s family with Jesus as our older brother.  Jesus the “natural” Son, we the adopted, through him.

Suddenly our identity is changed.  Secondary now is our race, social standing, sex.  We’re still Jew or Greek or German or American.  Still free or a prisoner of an unjust economic system.  Still male or female.  But first we’re Christ’s.  The distinctions that divide us are swallowed up by the Son.

And this family is big.  Bigger than our church.  Bigger even than the world-wide church today.  We have brothers and sisters from all times and places, even way back to Abraham.  For ” . . .  now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are his heirs, and now all the promises God gave to him belong to you” (NLT).

I can think of two problems with all of this.

One, we’re sin-nature-wired not to believe.  Or, we’re sin-nature-wired to work.  It’s hard for us to trustingly accept the free gifts of justification and adoption.  Maybe it’s our pride.  Can I really be so lost that there’s nothing I can do to save myself?  We’re always wanting to tinker a bit with what God is doing, so we feel as if we’ve contributed.  But we have nothing to bring but our sinful selves.  All is God’s grace in Christ.

Two, God’s family seems insignificant in the grand scheme of things.  The church in American society is of no account.  Fellow believers aren’t always the cream of the crop.  But we are still waiting for our “adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:23).  Meanwhile, “the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God” (Romans 8:19).   Let’s not be fooled into thinking that what we see of God’s family now is all we’ll ever be.  There’s a day coming when the Son of God will come again.  Then we will all be like him, “because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).

Let’s end this on a majestic note.  Celebrate in praise with the video above!

In 1992 Daniel Fuller authored The Unity of the Bible to show that Genesis to Revelation tell one overarching narrative.  That’s often hard to see when we open that big 66 book Book.  It  can seem  rather disjointed, even contradictory.  Take, for example, the apparent disconnect  between promises to Abraham to believe and commandments to Moses to obey.  Well, which is it—faith or obedience?  Can we just pick and choose the passages we prefer?  Or,  is there an overarching narrative, a unity which we can trust?

Judaizers (professed Christian Jews who preached justification  with God comes through faith in Christ plus Jewish circumcision and law-keeping) were troubling the new Galatia churches (1:6,7).   Paul passionately pushed back.  Look at Abraham, father of the Jewish nation, he said.   He “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness . . . Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham” (3:6,7).  And  ” . . . we (Jews, descendants of Abraham) know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified” (2:16).   Justification comes by faith alone in Christ alone, as God’s covenant with Abraham (before circumcision and the law) reveals.

Brothers, let me take an example from everyday life. Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case (2:15).

Paul illustrates from the legal system of his day.  Once a man-made covenant was ratified it was unmovable and unchangeable, written (we might say) in stone.  So, says Paul, with God’s covenant with Abraham.  Righteous-standing with God comes by faith in God’s promises.

Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring; it does not say,                                
“And to offsprings,” as of many; but it says, “And to your offspring,” that is, to one person,
who is Christ. My point is this: the law, which came four hundred thirty years later,
does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to nullify the promise.
For if the inheritance comes from the law, it no longer comes from the promise;
but God granted it to Abraham through the promise.(2:16-18).

Even though God promised Abraham offspring as uncountable as the stars (Genesis 15:5,6), Paul pointedly uses “offspring” “to one person, who is Christ.”    (Check Matthew’s non-exciting genealogy that starts with Abraham and culminates in Christ–Matthew 1:2-16.)  Paul claims that when God made promises to Abraham, he made them also to his offspring, Christ.

Remember the Judaizers are trying to dump law-keeping into the justification mix.  So Paul makes his point about Abraham plain.  “My point is this:  the law, which came four hundred thirty years later (through Moses) , does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God (see Genesis 15), so as to nullify the promise.”  Righteousness/justification/right-standing with God– comes through God’s promise to Abraham culminating in Christ.

But why the law?  If the Scripture narrative is a unity and runs from promised justification through faith to Abraham to promised justification through faith in Christ, law seems to intrude and shatter the unity.  No, Paul insists.  The four-centuries-later law doesn’t annul God’s covenant with Abraham.

What, then, was the purpose of the law? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come. The law was put into effect through angels by a mediator.  A mediator, however, does not represent just one party; but God is one.  Is the law, therefore, opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not! For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law.  But the Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe.  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 (3:19-24).

Through Moses the law was added, the Ten Commandments forming                                                                                                           
the core (Exodus 20:1-17).  The Lord gave this preamble to Moses
on the mountain:  “You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians,
and how I bore you on eagles’ wing and brought you to myself.  Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:4-6).

Though the Lord had saved them from slavery by his grace, if the Hebrews were to live as his treasured possession they had to obey the law of the covenant.  Worse than telling a seven year-old child who’s been coddled and cuddled he has to start doing chores to be part of the family.  Abraham:  promises by faith.  Moses:  promises by obedience.

In this paragraph Paul explains critical distinctions about the nature of God’s law.  First, it was temporary.  “[The law] was added . . . until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come.”    Second, “[The law] was added because of transgressions.”  By that I take Paul to mean, “The law was added so I might know my transgressions.”  This is what he wrote later in Roman 7:7— ” . . . if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.  For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet’.”

Third, the law was “put in place through angels by an intermediary.”  The role of angels in giving the law appears to exalt the law.  But Paul means the opposite.  In some way God used angels to mediate the law to Moses who then announced it to the people.  But when God made his promises to Abraham, he spoke directly to Abraham.  Thus the promises hold a “holier” nature than the law.

Does the law, then, interrupt God’s narrative unity.  Is Moses an intruder?  Not at all.  God’s concern here is not to demand obedience to law but to “impart [a righteous, justified] life.”  Law cannot do that.  A lawfully-given speeding ticket may lighten my foot on the accelerator for a while, but soon I’m doing 60 mph in a 50 zone again.  And even when keeping the limit, my insides are frustrated by the ticket and crying, “Speed it up!”

Paul gives us two final purposes for the law.  Fourth, law “imprisoned everything under sin.”  “Imprisoned” suggests sin is a power we can’t overcome.  Prison bars restrain.  Lock us in.  No escape.  God gives Ten Commandments and, in almost no time at all, we realize we not only don’t keep them, we can’t. 

The fifth purpose for the law flows from the helplessness of the fourth.  The law is a guardian.  The NIV translation above translates the Greek noun, paidagogos, as a verb to describe its function.  A paidagogos was a slave who conducted a freeborn boy to and from school.  The ESV translates, ” . . . the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.”  The law kept us reasonably on God’s right path.  It identified danger and sin.  It promised blessings and reward.  But it left us fallen short.  The road to right-standing with God wound up to a high and rugged holy mountain.  Our very nature rebelled against it (to say nothing of the devil stalking us every step of the way).

But note the narrative unity here.  God’s promises righteous by faith to Abraham and ultimately to Christ.  He gave us law so we could see our wretched transgressions against his holy and good will and to lead us to the only One who could put us in right-standing  with the holy God—Jesus Messiah.

So, you see, not only is the Bible one overarching narrative, so is the Gospel of our salvation.  It began when God gave his promises to Abraham.  Continued when he gave the law through Moses.  And it climaxed in the coming of Christ.  “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law . . . ” (3:13).  “And, if you are Christ’s then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (3:29).

Galatians1:6-9 is one of the most politically incorrect texts in the New Testament.   Offends everyone, except (hopefully) Bible-believing Christians.

In it, Paul is clearly shook up.  No warm greeting to the converts made and churches planted.  No from-the-heart thanksgiving and prayer for them..  So stunned by events in the Galatian churches, he slams right into the subject.

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel–which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.  But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!  As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned! 

I see two politically incorrect points  in Paul’s words . . .

THERE IS ONE GOSPEL:  “JUSTIFIED BY FAITH”.

Soon after Paul and Barnabas left their newly-planted churches in Psidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe (Acts 13:13-14:28). itinerant Jewish Christian preachers showed up.  According to Paul, they were “throwing [the new converts] into confusion and trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.”  Consequently, many were “turning to a different gospel–which [was] really no gospel at all.”

Later in the letter, two texts make clear what this “different gospel” was . . .

We who are Jews by birth and not ‘Gentile sinners’  know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified (Galatians 2:15,16).

Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all (Galatians 5:2).

There’s the difference.  These itinerant preachers insisted justification (being declared righteous before God) required faith in Jesus plus circumcision and devotion to Jewish law.  For Paul, not only was circumcision unnecessary; it made Christ valueless.  They were deserting God who had called them “in the grace (unmerited favor, undeserved love) of Christ”.  Attempting to be justified by faith plus law. they were losing the very justification they had by grace through faith.

The false preachers’ equation looked like this . . .

FAITH IN JESUS CHRIST + CIRCUMCISION + LAW-KEEPING = JUSTIFICATION

The gospel Paul preached—the one gospel—looks like this . . .

FAITH IN JESUS CHRIST + NOTHING = JUSTIFICATION

Or, to say it another way . . .

GOD’S GRACE IN CHRIST ALONE + (OUR) FAITH ALONE = JUSTIFICATION

The second politically incorrect point I see in this text  is  . . .

The Preacher of a Different Gospel:  “Be Damned”.

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!  As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned! 

Politically incorrect.  Not only does Paul insist on one gospel; he damns the preachers of another.  “Damned” is my synonym for “eternally condemned”, which is the NIV’s translation of the Greek anathema.  Let him come under God’s curse!  Let God pour out his wrath on him!  Let him be eternally condemned!

Not a breath of tolerance!  Paul is so agitated and this doctrine so foundational,  he wishes its opponents condemned forever.  But since this is Holy Spirit-inspired writing, it can’t be just Paul’s anger; it must be God’s too. His gospel must be uncorrupted.  His adopted children must be protected.  Therefore, gospel-corrupters and child-abusers must be condemned.  It’s the height of political incorrectness.

Offensive Christians.

I’ve met a few obnoxious Christians over the years   By their attitude, word choice and demeanor, they seem to delight in offending.  I’m not talking about them here.  By “offensive Christians” I mean Christians who offend  because they believe and speak and practice the politically incorrect gospel.

To say there is one gospel of justification by faith offends because popular “gospels” claim many roads to God.  And because our prideful sin-nature insists we can “work” at rituals or commandment-keeping or something (in addition to believing) to be right with God.

A gospel so narrow that it damns preachers of “a different gospel” offends the popular mantra that chants “God is love, God is love; he won’t send anybody to hell.”  Surely we can be tolerant of other belief-systems!  D. C. Carson (Reformed theologian, author and research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) titled one of his recent books, The Intolerance of Tolerance.  In it he argues that the old tolerance (respect everyone’s right to hold their own beliefs) has been swallowed up by the new tolerance (everyone’s belief is true for them and debate with them is intolerant.)  In other words, the new tolerance is actually intolerant toward all who reject their definition!

We may mock “political correctness”, but must take care that we don’t surrender to it.  None of us wants to be branded or shunned.  But let’s face it:  the gospel of Jesus is politically incorrect.  If we let ourselves be “corrected” by another “gospel”—a gospel that preaches faith in Christ plus any meritorious efforts on our part—we will have a different gospel, “which is really no gospel at all.”

Remember my swimming buddy Ernie who panicked in deep water and thrashed about on top of me?  We would both soon drown.  Ernie needed the lifeguard to save him.  There was nothing he could do to save himself.  And once the lifeguard came, there was nothing he needed to do.