If you are like me, sometime in your life you have received a letter from some place you did not expect and you wondered, “What in the world is this?”
A couple of years ago, we received a letter from city Code Enforcement. All kinds of questions went through our heads. What had we done? Is our property run-down? Is our grass too long? We weren’t sure we wanted to open the letter.
When we did, we got the surprise of our lives. Our house had been chosen for a Lima Pride award and we were being asked to appear at a mayor’s press conference. What an unexpected outcome!
Now just so you know, we have also gotten the kind of letters that were not welcome!
In about 50 A.D., someone in the village of Galatia received a small packet addressed to the churches in that area. We don’t know who opened it or what their reaction was, but it was this letter called Galatians, now in our Bibles, from the person we call “the apostle Paul.”
They must have noticed almost immediately the change in handwriting at the end of the letter (6:11). Paul’s letters were usually dictated to someone who wrote down his words. But in this letter, Paul writes the last words with his own hand to emphasize the importance of his message.
There is something else about this letter. After the traditional greeting, Paul always wrote a word of thanks to the churches he was addressing. For example, in Philippians, after his greeting, Paul says, “I thank my God every time I remember you.”
But in this letter to the Galatians, he did not include his thanks. Instead he started by scolding them for falling away from the Gospel. “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…” These were rather sharp words with which to begin a letter.
So, we ask, how did it happen that Paul felt compelled to write such a letter? What brought it about? And for that we need to turn to the document itself.
When we read verse 6, we see two words that give us a clue. First, we see the word “deserting.” The charge is that this church in Galatia is turning away from Jesus to a different gospel than the one Paul proclaimed. There were other preachers, teachers, missionaries – we don’t know who they were – who were confusing the people in this church by preaching a false version of the gospel, or maybe we should say a perversion of the gospel, that did not reflect the true Gospel.
That happens today as well. Maybe you have run into such false understandings of the gospel such as:
• the prosperity gospel that says believing in Jesus will make you rich (especially if you send money to certain TV preachers)
• a patriotic gospel that implies that God only blesses the United States
• a personal gospel that says all you need to do is believe in Jesus and what you do after that doesn’t matter.
• a works gospel that says if you are nice to people and do good deeds, God will save you.
It is this last one that comes closest to the concern Paul had for the church in Galatia, the idea that if you follow certain rules do the right things, God will save you.
Paul makes clear that these false versions of the gospel won’t get you anywhere. And that is when we come to the second important word in V. 6, the word GRACE. Paul writes about “the one who called you in the grace of Christ.” This word grace is the foundation for understanding the Gospel Paul was preaching.
The word GRACE pops up five times in the first two chapters. It was something Paul had experienced. He knew he didn’t deserve it. Only God’s grace makes it possible to live in favor with God. Have you experienced God’s grace in your life? If so, you know what Paul was talking about.
The heart of Paul‘s message can be found in 2:19-21. He wants his listeners and readers to understand that the gospel is an expression of God’s grace, God’s love, expressed in Jesus Christ, that believers are justified by faith alone, not by the merit of following Old Testament rules and regulations.
I know someone who doesn’t like to listen to long explanations of things and he often asks me to summarize by saying, “Can you just nutshell it for me?” I hope you recognize that sometimes short summaries just aren’t possible. It’s kind of like asking someone to give the history of the universe in 200 words or less. You can find such a history on the internet, but it is not very satisfying.
And that is kind of where we are with the book of Galatians. It is kind of hard to nutshell it. We need background. We need information to understand why Paul was writing as he did. And there are some things we can’t even find out about with certainty.
We don’t know exactly what Paul was up against. We don’t know the names of these preachers. We don’t know the details of their accusations against Paul were. We don’t know how this conversation started or how it ended. All we know is that it was important enough for Paul to write this letter. And he goes into more detail than we have time to examine today. As with all letters, both the writer and the reader know things that we don’t know because we were not part of the conversation. We are separated by many years since it was written and lots has happened since then.
But, having said that, we do know some things about Paul. For example,
• as he says in 1:13, he had been a violent persecutor of the church when it began. He tried to destroy it.
• As he says in 1:14, he was devoutly religious, trying to follow all the traditions and laws of the Pharisees. They thought that complete obedience to the religious law would give them life.
• As he says in 1:15, in the middle of all this, God called him. And we learn from the book of Acts that it was on his way to Damascus that this blinding light struck him down and he met Jesus, who changed him completely.
• Then, as he says in 1:16, he embraced God’s call to proclaim Jesus to the Gentiles. And as we know from Acts, he traveled all over the map preaching about Jesus and establishing churches. But here is where he ran into trouble.
Since Jesus was a Jew, and since the Gospel came to the Jews first, there were some who thought that if Gentiles were going to follow Jesus, they needed to become Jews first. In other words, they needed to embrace the Old Testament law and experience circumcision as a sign of Jewish identity.
But that is not the way Paul understood God’s call. The result was that Paul and some of the leaders of Christian Jews disagreed for awhile, but amazingly, they reconciled as we see in 2:9 and in other places in the Bible. As Paul wrote in Ephesians 2, Christ has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall.
So when we get to Galatians 2:19 we find a summary of the Gospel that recognizes that when it comes to living up to God’s expectations everyone has missed the mark. That is what sin is, missing the mark. As Romans 3:23 says, We have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
The wonderful thing is that Jesus died in order to deal with our sin. When Paul says, “I have been crucified with Christ,” in Galatians 2:19, he means that as believers we identify with Christ in his death and as a result we have died to our ways of going against God. The fact is, no effort of following strict rules and obeying laws and doing good deeds will get us to a right relationship with God, no matter how hard we try.
So now, according to v.20, those who identify with Christ in that way, not only have died to their old way of living, but they now live in Christ’s way. In other words, Christ lives within them.
Story.
A man dies and goes to heaven. Of course, St. Peter meets him at the pearly gates.
St. Peter says, "Here’s how it works. You need 100 points to make it into heaven. You tell me all the good things you’ve done, and I give you a certain number of points for each item, depending on how good it was. When you reach 100 points, you get in."
"Okay," the man says, "I was married to the same woman for 50 years and never cheated on her, even in my heart."
"That’s wonderful," says St. Peter, "that’s worth three points!"
"Three points?" he says. "Well, I attended church all my life and supported its ministry with my tithe and service."
"Terrific!" says St. Peter, "that’s certainly worth a point."
"One point? Wow. How about this: I started a soup kitchen in my city and worked in a shelter for homeless veterans."
"Fantastic, that’s good for two more points."
"TWO POINTS!!" the man cries, "At this rate the only way I get into heaven is by the grace of God!"
"Come on in!"
This is just a story, of course, but we need to ponder its message. Again and again we run into people who have not understood Paul’s message to the Galatians.
Some don’t seem to realize that their sin separates them from God. They seem to think they are OK the way they are.
Some seem to think they can earn their way into God’s favor by acting nice and doing good deeds for other people.
Some seem to think that showing up in church once in a while makes them look good in God’s eyes.
But the Bible makes clear that it is not what we do that gives us merit, it is what we are because of the blood of Jesus. And that change only happens because of God’s grace.
Does that mean it doesn’t matter what we do? Absolutely not. We find a rather surprising line in 2:10 about remembering the poor. There were Christians in Jerusalem who were in poverty. The story is too long to explain today, but both the Gentile Christians and the Jewish Christians understood that when God meets your spiritual need through the gift of his grace, you turn and shower grace upon others who are in need. They understood that faith was not just something that happens in your heart; faith is expressed with your hands by sharing with others.
The foundation for our ministry to others comes from our experience of God’s grace. Whether we live in Galatia or in Lima, we recognize that it is God’s love and grace that changes us and motivates us. The message to the Galatians reminds us that as his people, we put away our sins by identifying with the death of Christ and that we experience life because he lives within us. If that is your experience, you are invited to his table of communion.
(Resource: Dieter Luhrmann. Galatians. Continental Commentary 1992)
