In 2009 I began to read the Bible alphabetically (see here for my rationale), reading each book at least three times and trying to get into the mind of the original author and readers as well as listen to God’s message for today. Here’s what I’ve discovered from reading Galatians.
I am reminded of the kind of dispute which can plague any organisation where two sides are vehemently disagreeing. Both sides are well-meaning, both sides are accusing the other of base motives, both sides employ spurious and irrelevant arguments to make the others look bad, both sides argue that they are only thinking about the welfare of the organisation and its members when in fact they are worried about their own standing and reputation. My sense of fair play means that only hearing one side of a debate (in this case a letter) doesn’t allow for an even-handed appreciation of the issue.
HOWEVER. Despite this letter sounding like the above situation, and without wanting to gloss over Paul’s failings, strong emotions and all too human approach, I need to keep in mind a few facts.
a) In some disputes one party actually turns out to be right and the other wrong.
b) When the early church were collecting together a number of documents which they felt expressed the Christian faith they chose to include this letter, meaning that its contents were regarded as being more important than the (absent) view of Paul’s opponents.
c) if I believe that Scripture is inspired by God, then I must accept that this letter contains a message which God wants us to hear and through which he still wants to address the world.
Bearing in mind the author is an angry and frustrated apostle desperate to persuade his fellow Christians to reject heresy and turn back to their true faith, I don’t wish to treat every aspect of this letter as a perfect example of how to present an argument. Rather I want to understand the difference between what Paul regards as the true and false gospels. I want to understand why he is so passionate about it. And I want to hear what God is saying today through this letter.
My attempt to summarise the message in this letter.
What was Paul trying to persuade the Galatians to do, to be or to believe? (And by extension, what is God trying to persuade us today to do/be/believe?)
Starting point: Jesus rescued us from this evil world (see Paul’s opening remarks). He did it through offering himself as a sacrifice for our sins and God wants everyone to experience that rescue. The key thing to note is that there is something wrong with our world from which we need to be rescued. From other parts of the letter the wrong thing seems to be that people do evil and hurt each other. The solution? ‘Stop doing wrong’ of course. But that’s easier said than done.
Does it help to have a set of rules which everyone abides by? No. Not really. Paul describes his own experience and admits that all his law-keeping wasn’t working. In the first part of the letter his emphasis is on how God took the initiative, something he planned to do ever since Paul was in his mother’s womb, and diverted Paul’s energies from trying to stamp out the Christian faith. Instead God helped Paul realise that Christ was the divinely-chosen way for rescuing the human race. God, through Jesus, revealed this message directly to Paul and not through some human intermediary.
Paul wants people (especially non-Jews) to share his experience – that trying to be good didn’t work and that putting his trust in Jesus did. The world still isn’t perfect and neither is Paul (yet) but he is ‘on-side’ with God, he is part of God’s plans and purposes and not working against them. He puts a lot of emphasis on how he is trying only to impress God and doesn’t really care about human validation. Although at the same time he does want to stress that the key leaders in the church have approved him and his message. (A case of wanting to have your cake and eat it. But hey, no problem. It shows Paul is only human.)
The Galatians had begun by trusting God. Their ‘conversion’ or ‘salvation’ or ‘transformation’ was achieved by simply accepting the free gift of what God had done in Jesus. Why then are they now trying to finish the process by trying to keep the rules instead? If God is the one who begins the process of changing lives, shouldn’t we trust him to keep on doing so?
I can relate to this folly. My faith as a young keen Christian was all about relying on God. My faith today is more about getting things done. They are ‘Good Things’ (leading worship, pastoral care, teaching, administration etc.) but nevertheless my life has become much more about keeping self-imposed (or church-imposed) rules than trusting God to use me, mould me, fill me. I know (and God knows) that certain things connected with the role of ministry have to be done. I can’t escape admin. And there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with being organised and efficient in managing my time. But the underlying foundation of my daily life ought to be “I’m yours, Lord. How do you want to use me today?” I ought to be saying “Let’s do something exciting together, Lord” rather than “Help me to get lots of tasks accomplished so that I don’t feel guilty at the end of the day because I’ve done too little.”
The later chapters are about how the Christian life should be lived. Maybe the law has no power to save us, but neither is it useless and irrelevant. David Pawson says this letter is about true liberty in Christ. He describes twin dangers (like walking on a path between two dangerous drops) – one is to fall into legalism where we trust in keeping the law to save us, the other is to fall into license where we think our behaviour doesn’t matter any more.
The freedom we have in Jesus sets us free from rule-keeping and allows us to focus instead on loving people. Paul’s antipathy towards the Galatians getting themselves circumcised is not just because he regards it as pointless, but it actually opens up a whole avenue of dangerous thinking and behaviour. Setting up any system of laws (whether circumcision or anything else) and proclaiming it as the right and only way to behave puts the focus back on rules instead of freedom. But this freedom is not licence to do anything you want, it’s licence to love freely and to allow the Spirit to grow in you all kinds of good ‘fruit’. In chapter 2, Paul describes freedom as “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” This is one of the many paradoxes in the Christian faith. It is only by letting Jesus take over our lives that we find true freedom to live.
Miscellaneous postscript.
The middle section of the letter is chock-full of interlocking illustrations:
* Once a will is made it cannot be changed. God’s promise to Abraham can’t be changed.
* The Law looked after us as “wards of discipline” (Moffat’s translation) until the time came where we became sons.
* An heir who is underage is effectively a servant in the household. When he reaches maturity he becomes a son. Once we were servants to the ‘elemental spirits of the world’ but now we are sons of God.
* Abraham had sons through two women. Hagar (a slave woman) and Sarah (a free woman) represent two covenants, based on the Law and the Promise respectively. We are like the son of the free woman rather than the slave woman.
I’m not on Paul’s wavelength at all when he starts quoting Scripture to support his argument (see 3:10-14 for example). I’m mystified by the relevance of v.12. Maybe I’m trying too hard to be logical. But I do get the main point of his letter. In Jesus things have changed. We have a new (and far better) status. Why should we want to go back to the old ways?
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