|
Galatians |
||||||
| Chapter 1 | Prayer | Devotional | Chapter 4 | Prayer | Devotional | |
| Chapter 2 | Prayer | Devotional | Chapter 5 | Prayer | Devotional | |
| Chapter 3 | Prayer | Devotional | Chapter 6 | Prayer | Devotional |
Prayers
God of Glory, You have sent us apostles to speak to us the truth of Christ. Help us to hold fast to the gospel that we have received, that message of the good news of our redemption through Jesus. We want to please You and serve You in this one gospel. We would not want to use our gifts as instruments of wickedness as in former days. Help us to look to You as our Master and our Father, and to glorify You with lives of obedient love and joy.
Father God, You lead us in paths of gospel service, for You have redeemed us for Your purposes. We do not want to yield even for a moment to false doctrines that deny the good news of Christ. We lift up to You those who are in need, and pray that we might be of some use to others today. Make our conduct to be in accord with the gospel that we believe. We know that we are not justified by our service or by any other works of the Law. We have died to the Law in Christ that we might live to You. Help us to live and serve others by faith, for by faith in Your great Son we have been justified.
Great Protector of Your Children, keep us in the faith that has been proclaimed to us. Fill us with Your Spirit as we hear Your Word. We follow in the faith of Abraham of old, the man of faith. He believed and it was credited to Him as righteousness. Your Son died for us, so that in Him we would obtain the blessing of Abraham. Your promises to Your Son have been secured by His blood. Your Word is sure and eternal. The great Seed of the woman has come and has accomplished our redemption. Righteousness is by faith in Him. Keep us captive to this gospel, that we might have the true liberty of Your children. We remember our baptism this day, for we are one in Christ, and have been cleansed and forgiven as heirs according to Your promise.
Lord God, what a wonderful truth it is that we have been adopted into Your family. Thank you for the gift of Your Son. We have now received even the Spirit of Your Son, and we cry out to You as our heavenly Father. Help us to resist the temptation to return to foolish and dead works that can save no one. Give us again hearts of true charity based on the excellent message of the gospel. Together with Your church throughout the world, help us to live by faith in Christ. We are partakers of a better covenant. We are citizens of the Jerusalem that is above and children of the promise. Help us in the day of persecution to be faithful to Your Son and to the message of truth that we have received.
Almighty Father, thank You for the freedom that we have through Christ. Thank You that we have been freed from bondage to the Law. Grant us now a true faith that works through love. Help us to hold to the truth of the freedom that we have through the victory of the cross of Christ. Protect Your church from false teaching, and help us to love one another. Teach us to walk by the Spirit, and keep us from being led by the flesh. We turn away from godlessness. Grant us the fruit of the Spirit in increasing measure. We belong to Jesus Christ, and we are thankful for Your everlasting love.
Merciful Lord, keep us from the pathway of temptation, and help us to rescue those who wander from the truth. Lord, if we sow to our own flesh, what kind of good will we reap? We want to do what is right, and to resist evil. We turn away from false displays of religious superiority. Our boast is not in our own works, but in the cross of Christ. Grant to us a kind of resurrection life that is the evidence of a new creation that could only have come from You.
Devotionals
Galatians 1
If you have a challenging message to deliver, it helps to have a high degree of
confidence in the truth of that message, and in the one who sent you to speak on
his behalf. It also helps to know who you are, and who you are not. The
Apostle Paul needs to have a strong word with the Christian churches in the
region of Galatia. He believes in the message of Christ, and He believes in the
Christ he represents. He knows that he is an apostle, someone who has been sent
by God to speak His Word boldly throughout the world. He is one of a handful of
men who are responsible to preach the Word and to oversee the planting of the
first churches proclaiming a Jewish Messiah in a world full of Gentiles. He
also knows what he is not. He is not serving at the pleasure of men, either
those who are involved in sending him, or those who will hear him.
His message has everything to do with One who has risen from the dead, but more than that, the One who is above Paul in this mission is that resurrected Man. It is a special task to be the representative of the true resurrection Man. There is something happening in the message of faith that Paul proclaims that is more than any power that the kingdoms of this earth possess. There are many frightening people on this earth. They may have large armies working for good or for evil. They may have great wealth and tremendous resources of might at their command, but have any of these men risen from the dead?
It is through the Man Jesus Christ that victory over death can be announced with the greatest credibility. He brings a message of the richest mercy for those who were deserving of God’s eternal punishment. Because that message involves the highest eternal blessing to those who were under the deepest eternal curse, there has never been a message more worthy of the descriptive word “grace” than that which the apostle brought to Jews and Gentiles everywhere. Every other supposed grace is much smaller than the grace of God given to us in Jesus Christ. We must never take anything away from that message, and we must never add anything to that message. The peace that is ours from God in all its dimensions is far beyond anything that the world can offer. It comes to us with the seal of God’s throne in heaven. It is bountiful and sure.
For this reason, it is absolutely shocking when people who have heard the truth of this best of all messages, and who have seemed to receive it, give it up for some other supposed gospel, as if there is some other gospel than the one that Paul preached. The good news of Christ is not just one among many religious messages. Every substitute is a product of this evil age, a man-made message of grace and peace that simply cannot compare with the glorious truth of Christ.
Yet there are always those who will bring a lesser message as if it is the new best thing. Paul makes it clear that the Galatian churches need to stand firm in the message preached in their midst, the message of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, the only Lamb of God. This Jesus obeyed the Law of God for us, and then died the cursed death of the cross on our behalf. He alone is the fulfillment of all true biblical expectations of a coming Redeemer. It makes no difference who the messenger may be, if he brings a different message than that, he brings a message from hell and not from God. Did an angel bring some other message? Was it some great figure from the past or someone from the present or even the future? Was it Paul himself who brought a different message? Paul’s assessment is emphatic and the same regardless of who would speak these other words of a supposed way of grace and peace. “Let him be accursed.”
Some of the messages that we might hear in any era would be completely different religious systems that have arisen from the traditions and imaginations of men and women. Other false messages are distortions of the true message of Christ through some deletion, or as is often the case, through some addition. Is there some new holy book? Is there some practice with a recommended antiquity or a fashionable novelty that shows you something beyond faith in Christ and obedience to His revealed will? All of these are extremely dangerous distractions from the simplicity of the most important Word that could ever be spoken and received by men.
Why would anyone deviate from the beauty of Jesus Christ alone? Some seek the approval of men rather than God. If some other system will turn away vocal opposition or win large crowds, they will readily make adjustments in the truth that comes from God. It should be obvious that we have no right to do any such thing. This Word has come to us by divine revelation through the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Nothing less than the fact of Jesus Christ alone will fit the preparation we have in the Hebrew Bible and the proof of the New Testament.
What Paul received by the most persuasive revelatory experience fits solidly with the Scriptures of God that were already known to be God’s Word in that day. Paul knew Christ, he knew the truth about Jesus, and he had come to know who he himself was as a messenger of Christ. He also knew the message itself was the message of heaven, and he was unwilling to see the church so quickly deceived by false messengers bearing a false message. May we cling to the Christ of the true gospel, and refuse any messenger who would claim to bring us a superior grace and peace than the one that has come to us through the revelation of the Son of God. May we love that message, and live that message, and thus glorify God with the days that He grants us in this passing age and in the age to come.
Galatians 2
As we begin the second chapter of this letter, we are provided with more details
about the message that Paul considers such an attack upon the gospel in the
churches of Galatia. It has something to do with circumcision, but not just
circumcision. Because of the book of Acts and other letters from Paul, we are
not surprised to find that there are some outsiders who are making the claim
that the Gentiles must be circumcised in order to be ceremonially right before
God.
Was it the Lord’s will that Gentiles would be brought into “Israel” and that the new expanded Israel would continue to pursue all of the ceremonial requirements of the Old Testament Law even though the Passover Lamb had come and had shed His blood, or was there strong indication that the way of the Old Covenant was coming to a final end in the destruction of the temple that Christ had spoken of in the gospels? Was there further proof in Moses and the prophets (see Jeremiah 31) that the Old Covenant era of the Law would be superseded by a new era of the Spirit, yet still maintaining the continuity of grace from the promise to Abraham, and even before that, the promise to Adam? These were questions that troubled the church. Those who would welcome Gentiles once they became ceremonial Jews had in their favor the weight of their communal experience that was life as they had always known it, now with Jesus and certain additional practices like the Lord’s Supper. Those who saw that the age of resurrection had started in Christ and that the era of the gospel and the Spirit had now broken down the dividing wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile had in their favor a right understanding of the Scriptures. The former way of living according to the weight of tradition has always led to an extra-biblical fundamentalism that is disruptive of the peace of the church and corrosive to the message of grace. The latter answer is the only one that is consistent with the eternal purpose of God, not to restore Old Covenant life in Canaan, but to unite all things in the renewed heavens and earth in Jesus Christ.
Paul notes some facts here in support of his case. He reminds the Galatians that Titus was not forced to be circumcised in order to have fellowship with the apostles in Jerusalem, and that Paul had received apostolic encouragement for his ministry. Despite efforts on the part of the other party to bring the New Covenant churches among the Gentiles into the bondage of Old Testament ceremonial Law, Paul had held firm in the past, and had even confronted Peter to his face when that great apostle had succumbed to the outside pressure of these Jewish visitors.
In the process of that confrontation, Paul said this: “We 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.” These terms require some definition. To be “justified” is to be counted as righteous before God. This happens only through “faith in Jesus Christ” who is the long anticipated Substitute for sinners. In particular, our right standing with God does not come through our observance of the “works of the law,” that combination of tradition and biblical precept that was the way of the Pharisees so familiar to the old Saul of Tarsus. Paul is very explicit that no one will be justified through their own obedience to that Pharisaic way of life.
In fact, no version of fundamentalistic rules has the capacity to bring us peace with God. This must be considered regularly as we make efforts to bring our life into accord with the way of love that is the fulfillment of the Law. While the true eternal moral law of God concerns outward and inner realities, it is always easier to do outward things seen by men than it is to have the fruits of a renewed heart in fuller measure. This is frustrating to those who are unwilling to rest upon the grace of God. They long for a list of rules that they can clearly do, so that they will have no doubt, and others will have no doubt, concerning their right standing with God.
The problem with this kind of approach of “Yes we all agree about Jesus, that’s a given; but we need to make sure we also all do these other things if we are to be right in God’s eyes,” is significant. We don’t all agree about Jesus. We easily move away from Jesus in favor of rules that we can keep and involve some obvious outward display. Justification for sinners comes in Christ alone. Anything other than that message is not consistent with the Old Testament Scriptures, and cannot have the approval of the Lord who died to save us.
This does not mean that the Ten Commandments have been repealed, or that there is no Law of love, of life, and of liberty that is to be earnestly pursued. It does mean that the first step toward real progress in holiness and obedience is to fully rest upon the One who is our justification. In the Law we are dead, but now we live again through the death and resurrection of Jesus, so that we might live to God. We have died with Him who took the death that we deserved. Now He lives in us to the glory of God. Our life of obedience is by faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us. If justification could ever come through some system of rule-keeping, then Christ would have died for no purpose.
Galatians 3
It is an amazing fact that many people do not want to embrace the truth of the
gospel. The substitution of Jesus for us before God is such very good news, and
the way of life before us in Christ is so meaningful and good, though involving
suffering. There is no better way of life than the gospel life, and there is no
savior who can conquer death for us except Jesus Christ. Yet millions have not
heard the good news of Christ, and millions more have rejected it as if it were
a message that they should despise. Again, it is an amazing and sad fact that
so many have not heard of Christ, and that many people who hear do not want to
embrace His gospel.
Yet there is another fact that is more surprising than this. Many who have seemed to embrace the Lord Jesus Christ, and have even tasted something of the goodness of the life He has for those who trust Him, have then rejected the purity of the way of the Lord’s mercy, and exchanged that message for the polluted waters of some half gospel and half law mix that is no gospel at all. It is more shocking to reject the fullness of grace after seeming to embrace Christ, than to reject Christ without adequate and serious consideration. Should I prefer crabgrass to gold? Of course not! How much more foolish is it to throw away the gold that I had as a gift in my hand in order to have the privilege of picking up more crabgrass!
This is what the Galatian churches were doing as many people were accepting a false message containing the old rules of Pharisaic Judaism. “Who has bewitched you?” This is Paul’s question. These were people who had been presented with the true meaning of the cross. These were disciples who seemed to receive the Holy Spirit through hearing that word of the cross with faith. These were Gentiles who had been willing to suffer for their newfound Lord, and who had been given special manifestations of the Spirit of God in this groundbreaking ministry throughout an entire province of the Roman Empire. Was it possible that they would now decide that all that was just the appetizer of their spiritual meal, and that the main course would be the Law of Moses?
The way of full grace through trust in God’s provision is nothing new. It is older than Moses. Abraham believed God, we are told in Genesis 15, and it was counted to him as righteousness. The circumcision party is trying to make the Galatian believers better sons of Abraham through a ritual whose time has come and gone. The real way to follow Abraham is to follow Jesus. It is through this one descendant of Abraham that all the nations (the Gentiles) were to be blessed, not through Jesus as chapter one, and Moses as chapter two. Jesus is the whole book of salvation. Our growth as believers is in Jesus, and not in the customs of a covenant administration that is now obsolete.
The one who wants to be under the law in part will find the law to be a very demanding taskmaster. You can’t just take a sign from the Old Covenant like circumcision without some serious consideration of what that sign is all about. The Law was all about doing the commandments in order that one might then live. Can we stand under that kind of system? The Law says, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” None of us can have eternal life before God on the basis of the Law, except One, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the One who not only obeyed, but who, by His death on the cross, took the curse of the Law that was against us. He alone was able to be our Sin-bearer. Christ is the only way to blessing for any man, whether Jew or Gentile.
It is through Christ that we have received the earlier promises made to Abraham. Did God promise His presence in the Land of blessing? We have this gift supremely through Jesus, who has given us His Spirit, and has brought us into heaven itself through our union with Him. Why was the Law even given? It was given because of transgression, so that we would see our imprisonment under sin, and receive the good word of redemption from sin’s bondage through faith in Jesus Christ. The Law was a part of the plan of God, but it could never bring life to those who disobeyed. We needed the obedience of Christ and the grace of God through His merciful provision of the true Lamb.
The Law also functioned as a guardian for the people of Israel, until the time when the one true Son of Abraham came. Now is not a time to return to the Old Covenant ways, but to hear the words of the prophets that press us forward in the grace that is ours through the long-expected Messiah, the suffering Servant, and the only Savior of the true chosen people of God, a people that includes both Jews and uncircumcised Gentiles. In Jesus, we are sons of God through faith. If we have Christ, all other lesser distinctions that were once very important according to the Law have faded far into the background of an old day in the glorious light of this most important of all questions: Am I in Christ? This is the central question of identity for us, not our gender, not our economic status, not whether we are counted as Jews or Gentiles by those who want us to be circumcised, but only this: Am I in Christ? If you are in Christ, you are Abraham’s offspring, an heir of heavenly blessing, and a recipient of the ancient promises of God to His people. The land of heaven with the fullness of the blessed presence of God is ours only in Jesus Christ. This is the good news that you have heard and embraced. Never cast away the truth of salvation in Christ alone.
Galatians 4
The time of our adolescence had to come to an end. The elect of God, His
worshipping people who call upon His Name, were once a church under age. They
were under the guardianship of the Old Testament Law. They were sons of God,
but they had not reached the point of their maturity. This was all according to
the eternal plan of God. The date of maturity had been set by the Father. When
the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son. The life of Jesus of
Nazareth on this earth was the turning point in this great coming of age.
God’s Son was born of a woman, and He was born during the era of the Law. He was circumcised as a Jew according to the Law of Moses. He came to that low condition to free those who were under the bondage of the Law because of sin. He came as the eternal Son of God and the expected Son of Man in order that we might receive the adoption as sons redeemed by His blood.
Now this same Jesus has ascended into heaven, and from that exalted place at the right hand of the Father, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts. We have Christ in us by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, and great things are happening in our lives. The time of preparation is over. We are tasting the day of liberty now by the Holy Spirit, that we might be joyfully conformed to the character of the One who gave Himself for us. Because of Jesus, we are able to call God our Father with the intimacy of those who are actually counted as the children of God. It is the Spirit of His Son within us that is crying out to the Father, so that God looks at us as His own, and not merely as those who are acquaintances, neighbors, or good workers. We are now really sons of God. We know that because we are in His will. We are heirs of God, through God the Son.
This was not always our condition, or the condition of even the Jewish believers or Gentile God-fearers in Galatia. We were once in the spiritual bondage of idolatry, enslaved to things that are not gods. Only the true God could rescue us from that condition. But even now, if we add ceremonial laws to our faith, whether old or new, we sign up for the old bondage again. Paul uses the example of the Old Testament sacred calendar, and says that it is a very serious error to bind oneself to the observance of those kinds of rituals that are no more. He says, “You observe days and months and seasons and years! I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.”
Paul appeals to the Galatians at this point to remember the love and care that they displayed for him in the past. Their willingness to give themselves to Him was wonderful. He apparently had some serious trouble with His eyes, and in some ways he was a burden to them. Yet they received Him as a messenger of God. Why did they show such affection for this man? Were the Galatians just very nice people in their treatment of a stranger? Something else was going on through the message of Christ and the cross. New relationships of love were being forged because of the reality of our common adoption into the same family of God.
Yet what had happened since these new meddlers came from Jerusalem? Had the Galatians forgotten the message that they loved? Paul reminds the Galatians of their sacrificial care for him as the messenger of Christ so that they might recall again the message that made his ailing body seem beautiful to them. Could it be that they would make themselves his enemies now by becoming enemies of the simple message of Christ?
What of these others who come with a new message? What are they really after? Are they concerned with Christ and the cross, or are they trying to impress people? Paul says that they just want the Galatians to “make much of them.” What we want is for people everywhere to make much of Christ.
People who have found the love of Christ should know the difference between spiritual slavery and the true freedom that the Lord has purchased for us. To return to the covenantal arrangement of the Law of Moses is to return to something less than God’s best for us. Do you want to be the free child of the promise, Isaac, who was born to Abraham’s wife Sarah (allegorically speaking, the New Covenant life), or do you want to be a child of a slave woman, Hagar (meaning a return to old ceremonies)? When Christ died for us, we were freed from our obligation to the Law. To insist on obedience to the laws of circumcision and other rituals is wrong on so many levels. Here we need to especially see that such a move back to the old ways of the time of preparation is to walk back into bondage after we have been granted the liberty of the sons of God in Christ.
Paul, as a nursing father to this church, longs to see Christ formed in them. This is the direction that our desire for obedience should take, and not some return to the old ceremonies of Israel. Those who stay with the old Jerusalem of the Old Covenant days continue in old ways that cannot save anyone. But those who abide in Christ choose the Jerusalem that is above, in heaven. This is the real land of the free, and it is our home country in Jesus.
Galatians 5
Why would Paul equate an ordinance of God, such as circumcision, with slavery?
Circumcision was a sacrament of the Old Covenant. It had a meaning that was
something like this: May I be cut off from the people of God if I do not keep
the law of God perfectly. Who would ever go along with such a ritual that seems
destined to fail? We will not fully obey the Law. Surely we will be cut off.
The only way that anyone should have received circumcision or allowed their
children to be circumcised would be based on faith in God. The content of faith
at its best would have been something like this: I trust that God will provide a
true Keeper of the Law for me, who will be cut off from the Lord’s people for my
sake. My only hope is in Him.
In any case this sacrament was for the time of shadows. Now, out of the shadows, the answer to the longings of faith has come. He has a name – Jesus. He is the Messiah who brings us true freedom in His perfect Law-keeping and in His death for our sake. If we have this freedom, why would we put on the yoke of the Law again, since the coming of Christ and His death on the cross are settled events that were necessary? Why necessary? Because no one can be justified before God by the deeds of the Law.
The church cannot have it both ways. We cannot have Christ, and a system of works whereby we hope to have peace with God. If you choose circumcision as your next step toward Christian perfection, you reject Christ and the gospel. Many in the church may be genuinely Christians and have been deceived by this false message as a matter of confusion. Paul is making the matter clear to them. Make a choice: Christian perfection through circumcision and the Law, or the progress of love by the way of grace in Christ alone.
You cannot take the sign of the Mosaic Law as your defining religious symbol without getting the whole system with it. More than this, you cannot receive circumcision as practiced in the Pharisaic tradition without taking up the whole Pharisaic system. Circumcision is an initiatory rite. Through this kind of ceremony someone is being brought into something. What were the Galatians unwillingly being made a part of? Whatever it was, it was not the church of Jesus Christ, since you are not brought into the church through circumcision. You cannot be part of Christ and part of a new Gentile-changing system of Pharisaic Judaism. You cannot even be part of the New Covenant and also a part of the good system that was designed to prepare people for a savior who had not yet come. You cannot not be justified by Christ and justified by the Law.
If you sense that there is something that you must do now that you have been saved by grace, you are absolutely correct. That something you must do is what Paul calls here, “faith working through love.” Faith working through love is the goal of any of the eternal ethical demands of God’s people for those in relationship with Him in any era. The ceremonial demands of the Law, like circumcision, were temporary. To return to them now implies that there is something lacking in Christ and the cross that we must do to earn our right standing with God. Faith working through love is different. It is the fruit of our salvation. A work like circumcision is not Christian fruit, it is a root treatment that will kill the whole plant if we are not careful.
So what is happening in Galatia? A little bad leaven is beginning to have a bad impact on the thinking of many, and it must be purged from the house of God. Paul is not talking about baking here, but using an illustration about people. False teachers from Jerusalem who are “not from Him who calls you,” Jesus, have entered into the church and are turning them in a dangerous direction. This is spiritual warfare, and Paul is fighting for the beloved of Christ.
Whenever we have some new practice that is pressed upon us, distracting our attention from the primacy of Christ, the cross, and the resurrection, however subtle the pressure may be, the danger to the church is real. The new law may be a good thing, but when we begin to consider the matters of first importance as something we need not focus on quite so much any more, know that we are in danger. Is the spiritual teaching that has made us so passionate a part of the ancient and best creeds of Christianity or is it a new move of law? Even if you are fully persuaded that the new move of law is only faith working itself out through love, you must run back to the central facts of the gospel, and especially to Christ Himself, even if that choice may mean persecution from the new law party.
Systems of new law will not bring you the fruit of the Spirit. Despite the appearance of a clean life that may come from them, they so quickly lead to people biting and devouring each other, and even to surprising deeds of grave immorality. This is because distractions from Christ are the anti-love, and they really seek the desires of the flesh. Put any such new movement in a petri dish and let it grow for a few years and you will find enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, and envy. That we almost expect. But did you expect to find sexual immorality, idolatry, and drunkenness? This is not the kingdom of God.
Stay with Christ, and see what fruit He brings by His Spirit: His love working through you, His joy in you, peace from His perfect works, His patience, His kindness, His goodness, His faithfulness, His gentleness, and His self-control. He is the fulfillment of the Law. Let Him work through you, and through the church. Belonging to Christ Jesus is the only way to start with victory. In Him you have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Let us abide in Him, and not in any other system of law that men would press upon us. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. In Christ alone we have the true way of new life.
The life of walking by the Spirit is not necessarily an easy life, or a life without some dangerous twists and turns. Even Jesus, we are told in Luke 4:1-2, being “full of the Holy Spirit, … was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil.” Though He faced all kinds of temptations, He never sinned. The rest of us may fall into a ditch from which we cannot readily remove ourselves. In Galatians 6, Paul advises the more spiritual ones among the churches there to look for those who have fallen, perhaps into this false message of circumcision, and to restore them in a spirit of gentleness. This is not without its own dangers, because even those who are strong in the gospel of Christ may themselves be tempted and may fall. We all need to recognize our weakness, and care for each other. This is a way to bear one another’s spiritual burdens, and thus it is one of the ways that we are to love, fulfilling the law of Christ.
The proud leader who is harsh toward others, and who thinks that he is something in the gospel, has forgotten that the good news is all about our rescue based solely on the merits of someone else. No matter how much growth we may experience by the Lord’s grace, the facts of divine care for us cannot change. The most eminent Christians are still saved entirely by the work of our Redeemer, Jesus Christ.
That is not to say that we don’t have work to accomplish for the Lord, but it is all proceeding from God’s grace, and we need to have a vigilant care for our own souls as we do the soul work of caring for those who have fallen into entangling sin. Every one of the Lord’s workers will have his labors tested by God when the Day of Judgment comes, and we will see how profitably we have used the treasures He granted to us. Until that day, we would be wise to do some honest testing of our own work without too much self-congratulation.
Positively speaking, we should be thankful for the work of those true servants of the Lord who bring us the word for our spiritual good. If someone has been called to teach the word as his calling, we should be happy to help with his financial support. We are not talking about those who would presume to be teachers, but those who have not been called by the churches to that task. Paul is not suggesting that the churches in Galatia should support the circumcision party, though those visitors from Jerusalem may be insisting that they are worthy of such blessings.
True ministers of the Word who have been recognized as such by the church, men who are called by God to this task, should receive the material blessings of the church so that they can focus on that work. To do less than this is to mock God. If we say that we are profiting from the message of Christ and the cross and then are unwilling to give so that the man who preaches can eat, this fools no one, least of all Almighty God. To support gospel work is to sow to the Spirit in expectations of a spiritual harvest. This may not be easy, but we can trust God that in due season we will reap a good reward for this kind of faithful giving and living.
In every opportunity for service we can use this principle: If we sow to the flesh, we gain only the flesh. If we sow to the Spirit, we can expect a spiritual reward. And God knows how to take care of His people. In everything before us, we should aim to be faithful with the time, energy, ability, and wealth that the Lord has given us. The Lord will not be mocked. We need to care for the household of faith as a first priority, but seek to help those in need all around us.
Paul ends this letter by taking the pen out of the hand of his trained scribe to make his own mark, with his own large letters expressing the intensity of his feelings concerning the true gospel of Jesus Christ, and those who have been troubling the Galatian churches with strange adjustments to the perfection of the message of the Lord’s grace through His Son. He exposes the hypocrisy of those who have come all this way from Jerusalem just to preach circumcision. They do not fool him for a bit. They claim to want to preach Christ, but they have found a way to do it by avoiding the persecution of Jews who are insisting on the Pharisaic way. Jesus had to fight such persecutors. Paul has his own battle scars from them. Have these new teachers from Jerusalem found a way to make everyone happy with their insistence on circumcision and the Law?
What are such men giving up when they settle on that kind of message? Isn’t it a fact that the most vehement defenders of circumcision cannot themselves keep the Law? Have they decided to boast in the number of their converts to this laceration of the gospel? Paul will have no part in any such boasting. His boast is in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world’s approval has been crucified to him, and he to the world’s approval. He has come to the conclusion that it is only through the cross of Christ that the great purposes of God can ever be accomplished. The cross needs none of our help to be meaningful, powerful, and full of divine wisdom and love. It is only the cross that can bring about the new creation of resurrection life. That new life, the life of faith working itself out through love, this is worth pursuing in the power of God, and not some old or new outward ritual. This is worth living for and even worth dying for. Men like Paul who are committed to Christ, the cross, and the resurrection, are willing to bear on their bodies marks of suffering more significant than the marks of circumcision. They have heard the good news of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and they will accept no other word than this news, the message that has made our spirits alive with the presence of Almighty God.