Galatians 1 and 2
(I was to preach on Galatians 2 last week and thought it would be a good idea to spend my quiet time on the text and that was why the devotion for Week 43 was on Galatians 1 and 2. Here is the text of my sermon. It is about 6 pages long, so be warned. đ )
Good morning.
The passage given to me to preach on is Galatians 2 but Galatians 1 is important to the context and that is why I have included it. Chapters 1 and 2 are fairly long and so I have decided rather than read all two chapters, I will give you a broad summary of the flow of thought and along the way focus on 3 areas of what Paul shared.
âI am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospelâwhich is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.â (Galatians 1:6-7)
The occasion for the letter is that many of the Christians in the church in Galatia have been swept by the teaching that as Christians it is important for them to obey the Law, ostensibly because it is Godâs Law and therefore Godâs will; how else can they ever hope to be acceptable to God? As a first step towards this, they should be circumcised, complying with what God had required of the Jews. Most of these Christians are Gentiles and it is not difficult to persuade them that they should listen to these Jewish Christians who should know the Scriptures better.
Paul characterised this âGospel plusâ teaching â put your faith in Jesus Christ, which will then get you past the first step, and then you must do (something else) so that you will get the real thing, the full experience, the victory, etc. â as a false Gospel.
He tells them that the only voice that should matter is the voice of God and so when he became a Christian he even made sure that he listened to only the voice of God and spent 3 years just studying the Scriptures and learning from God.
âBut when God, who set me apart from my motherâs womb and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, my immediate response was not to consult any human being. I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went into Arabia. Later I returned to Damascus.â (Galatians 1:15-17)
The point is that other voices are fallible and imperfect and so they must never be allowed to supersede the voice of God. And if these voices should ever try to pervert Godâs word, may God curse them!
âBut even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under Godâs curse! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under Godâs curse!â (Galatians 1:8-9)
There is no greater danger than when Christians subcontract out the task of knowing the voice of God in their minds and hearts. It is not easy to learn the Scriptures but in Paulâs view, it is vital that we do so. It is not that people are always teaching the wrong things; it is that when they do so you can tell because you recognise the voice of God, and at the very least you can say, âSomething is not right here.â âMy sheep knows my voice,â Jesus said.
Paul used strong language; in fact he cursed them: âAs we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under Godâs curse!â The implication is that these people, who were teaching these things and leading the Galatian Christians into the path of Jewish practices, away from Jesus Christ, should be treated as enemies of the church.
But when you look closer into what Paul shared, things were not so clear-cut. These Jewish Christians, who were pushing the Church in these directions, were well-connected and they were influential. And so when some of them came to Antioch, which was a part of Galatia, the Apostle Peter stopped eating together with the Gentiles and separated himself from them. Paul writes:
âFor before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.â (Galatians 2:12-13)
In other words, Paul was not dealing with heresy that the Church recognised and rejected; he was dealing with teaching that stood side-by-side with the Gospel, by people who had standing within the community and that brings me to the first point I wish to make:
A. Perversion of the Gospel of Christ arises because we let the voices of man rise above the voice of Christ. Man is culture-bound and there is always the danger that cultural norms are assimilated as Christian truths. Confusion results.
Why was this the case? It is because Jewish Christians have been immersed in the Jewish culture and that culture has shaped their mind and values. In those days, Jewish Christians were often the ones to teach and set principles and practices and it is only a further step before cultural norms become embedded into theology.
Jews were taught from young that they must obey the Law to be right with God. It is only natural for them to bring this into Christianity. There is nothing wrong with circumcision and obeying the Law. But nowhere in Scripture do we read that Christians should be circumcised and follow the Jewish Law and customs. To bring these ideas into the church and teach that these practices will make you more acceptable to God is to pervert the Gospel. The broader truth must also be appreciated: Paulâs view that any attempt to distort the Gospel by adding elements to it must be treated as a perversion of the Gospel.
What are some of todayâs cultural norms that have been allowed to shape (and I would say distort, or in Paulâs words, pervert) Godâs truth?
- The scientific approach to knowledge
The scientific approach to all knowledge is to gather knowledge and synthesise and distill that knowledge into propositional statements. Then we use these propositional statements to deal with the world around us.
Modern Christianity unfortunately has adopted this approach as well. It is too much to spend time studying the bible and listening to the voice of God. It is much easier to learn key statements and accept them as truth and live by them. And there are plenty of people willing to do that for you.
And so we bend and shape Godâs truth to fit into statements that we can then disseminate and teach and live by. I call these statements âformulasâ. They are not wrong completely but they distort. Let me give you an example.
Calvinism is a formula. There is even an acronym, TULIP, for Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace and Perseverance of the Saints.
Most of us would not understand the biblical underpinnings of these formulas, but we all know âonce saved, always savedâ. That is also a formula.
When I was in Form 6 a girl who was curious about the Gospel told me that for some reason she could not believe, and wondered if perhaps she was not chosen by God. That notion did not come from me but someone must have told her that or she read it somewhere.
There are many more formulas, some more unacceptable than others: you must pray out loud for your prayers to be effective, you must go into specific details when you ask for something, you must undergo a second baptism, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, otherwise you remain a carnal Christian. You must speak in tongues because it is the sign that the Holy Spirit indwells in you. You must ask for forgiveness and include sins forgotten or unconfessed because Scripture teaches that you must confess all your sin.
Rather than spend time becoming familiar with the word of God, spend time knowing him in relationship, we prefer to go to the Christian supermarket (also known as Youtube) and shop for the latest idea, the latest practice, or we go to the basement for rock bottom bargains.
When we practise Christianity by formula we substitute Christ for a set of principles to live by and there will come a point when we no longer know his voice. Paul wrote to the church in Galatia to say âI am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospelâwhich is really no gospel at all.â
- Live for today
We live in a world that is focused on the here and now. The pursuit of power, popularity, wealth, health and comfort, and the worship of those who are at the pinnacle of these pursuits define our age. Or perhaps the acronym, YOLO. Since this is where peopleâs hearts are, the church is framing its relevance in the here and now because otherwise no one will accept our message and we will not have the numbers. God can solve your problems. God promises to bless and all Christians are blessed people and so you can expect wealth and success if you follow God. God can heal your disease; believe in him.
The Christian faith however is about the hereafter. If people become Christians for the here and now during the time of the early church, then no one would become a Christian, because in those days becoming a Christian meant suffering, persecution, poverty, death. You wonder how many of us will be faithful to our Lord should we undergo such trauma.
The Christian faith is about sin and how we can overcome it. It will turn your life upside down and change your lifestyle and all your priorities. But our Gospel focuses on how we donât have to do anything because Christ has done it all. And of course, once saved, always saved seals the deal. All you need to do is to pray the prayer of repentance and faith and you will be saved.
- The worship of the individual (or the âmeâ generation)
Culturally we all believe that everyone has the right to choose and determine what they want. Even in the way we bring up our children we are told to be sensitive to them and what they want. Today the politician tells us that we must not shield our children from the realities of the world. How else can they make an informed choice?
And so when it comes to the Christian faith and the church we are faced with people who think that it is wrong to be dogmatic about what we must be doing as Christians. After numerous attempts it comes to a shrug of the shoulders and âwhat can we do? We cannot force peopleâ.
The way the modern Christian act towards their faith reflects this: whether to be in fellowship as a church on Sundays is my choice, which church I will attend is also my choice, how much to involve ourselves is my choice, whether to spend time with God and the bible is my choiceâyou get the idea. If people donât like something they just stay away.
In todayâs Christianity we have come to accept that the individual is at the centre and Christ is at the side asking politely whether he can have our time.
These are all distortions and perversions that saps away the spiritual vitality of the Christian and the Church.
This is why Paul was so passionate about opposing the circumcision faction, even though he was in the minority at the time. This is what he says:
âAm I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.â Galatians 1:10
Here is the second point I wish to raise:
B. To fight against perversion and distortion of the Gospel of Christ, we must listen to Christ and his concerns, rather than man.
Just as our fundamental source of truth must be from God, so too it must be God who is our primary concern and Master. Just as it is the voice of God we recognise, it is the will of God we prioritise and it is the way of God we follow. When we wish to serve God we must serve him according to his ways and his wisdom, and not with our own ideas of how we can succeed.
Just as Paul says we should subject all voices, no matter who they are, those held in high esteem, even an angel, all voices must be subject to the voice of God, so too we must not let these people, and their concerns, muddy the concerns of God.
However, in the modern church we are very concerned about the feelings of others; we are rarely as concerned about the feelings of God about his truth, about his church and about how we are shepherding his flock.
Paul opposed the Apostle Peter, the one commissioned by Jesus to lead the Church, to his face, publicly, and called what he did hypocrisy.
âWhen I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, âYou are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?ââ Galatians 2:14
I donât think this means that this is the only way to deal with such issues but when we decide how we should approach such matters what is our motivation? Godâs glory? Godâs church? Or manâs face and manâs pride?
I remember, when I was in Bangsar in the 80s, an occasion when Mr Chew Kam Pok, a well-respected elderly man, made some questionable remarks during a sermon. I cannot remember those remarks, only that I would question them. The next week he was given time on the pulpit and he apologised to the congregation and clarified his remarks and meaning. At that time I was just thinking, poor man, having to apologise to everybody but now I applaud the fact that the elders took the trouble to point out his error and when he asked, allowed him the pulpit to correct his error so the congregation is not confused.
Who are we serving?
In those days I was told that Mr Cooke, then the elder of Jalan Imbi Chapel, used to shut the doors of the chapel when the time came for the worship meeting to begin. At Bangsar the ushers would hold latecomers back until there was no activity and even then they were cautioned not to disturb the atmosphere as people focused their thoughts and attention on God. That was our way of expressing our respect for the occasion.
Who are we focused on? Who are we serving?
In the modern church, issues are usually swept under the carpet. The pastor who had committed adultery is quietly asked to leave. Some people leave the church but we are not told why. All we know are rumours and whispers. People who put themselves over the interests of others in service are tolerated. Different people in positions of leadership are hypocritical in their actions but people turn a blind eye. Pastors and other church leaders preach their own thoughts while paying lip service to the Word of God but no one protests. Churches turn to this book, this methodology, this way of discipleship, this famous personâs sermons, all seeking revival, but they do not challenge their own congregation and discipline them to walk according to God’s truth, to let the voice of Jesus reign supreme in their minds and hearts. We pander to the people, we avoid difficult issues, we let all sorts of voices sound out from our pulpit, yet we pray for revival. Do we pray that God will revive us first and set us to be right examples for the congregation?
C. At the heart of the Gospel is this: we die and in our place, Christ lives. Therefore we must live by faith in him, listening to him, responding to his concerns, making his voice the most important voice in our heart.
Finally, Paul asserts his experience of the Gospel of Christ:
âI have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.â Galatians 2:20
This is the Gospel truth. At its heart is Jesus Christ. In fact what the Gospel is doing is to let me die so that Christ may live in my place. I am not all there as yet but that is what I will be when he comes again. For now, the life I live in the body now I live by faith that it will be so, I live by faith in the Son of God: I listen to him, I respond to his concerns, he is the most important voice in my heart, more important than my own. I do this because I believe that he loved me and gave himself for me, and he loves me and all he wants of me is ultimately that I may have life and have it abundantly. This is what it means to be a Christian.
True Christianity is Christ at the centre of our mind and heart.
The problem with Christianity by formula is that we start listening to the voice of whoever is selling us the formula. In any case, Christ is not a formula.
The problem with Christianity for the here and now is that Jesus becomes our servant to grant us a good life and solve our problems.
The problem with individualistic Christianity is that the self replaces Christ as king.
The problem with Christian leaders who are mindful of man rather than God is that they perpetuate the distortions of the Gospel, creating confusion among Christians.
True Christianity is Christ at the centre of our mind and heart.
I titled this sermon âThe Gospel of Death and Resurrectionâ to help us focus on what it means to be a Christian: we die and in our place, Christ lives.
The picture that Paul paints for us here is this: âI no longer live, but Christ lives in meâ.
Another picture is in the words of John the Baptizer, âHe must increase, but I must decrease.â
And in the words of our Lord Jesus, âWhoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.â
Let me end with another picture which has resonated with me. The Christian is one on their knees daily praying,
Speak, O Lord, as we come to You
To receive the food of Your holy word
Take Your truth, plant it deep in us
Shape and fashion us in Your likeness
That the light of Christ
might be seen today
In our acts of love
and our deeds of faith
Speak, O Lord, and
fulfil in us all your purposes
For Your glory
Teach us Lord full obedience
Holy reverence, true humility
Test our thoughts and our attitudes
In the radiance of Your purity
Cause our faith to rise
Cause our eyes to see
Your majestic love and authority
Words of power that can never fail
Let their truth prevail over unbelief
Speak, O Lord, and renew our minds
Help us grasp the heights of Your plans for us
Truths unchanged from the dawn of time
That will echo down through eternity
And by grace we’ll stand on Your promises
And by faith we’ll walk as You walk with us
Speak, O Lord, till Your church is built
And the earth is filled with Your glory
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubRlJj8xkds)