One of the phenomenons of our modern, technological world is what I will call the ‘scream-mail,’ the written-late-at- night-in-a-fit-of-emotion, obviously with no second reading, ranting email. I’m sure you know what I am talking about. I’ve gotten my share over the years and I’d bet many of you have as well. Someone is upset with someone or something, they can’t sleep so they get up, turn on the computer, furiously type out an email that says things they probably would never say to anyone’s face and then rather than waiting until the morning when they are rested and in a better frame of mind to reread what they’ve written, they make the mistake of hitting send and going back to bed. Now, I’m not saying that their frustration is unjustified; they may be absolutely right, but I learned a long time ago that if an email is sent to me anywhere between 12:30am and 4:00am I’m probably going to have to disregard much of the way things are said and look for the core of their message. Well, today we are looking at our second letter of Paul in our Dear Church series and we’ll be looking at Paul’s letter to the churches in Galatia or as this letter is generally referred to now Galatians. Now please hear me, I’m not saying that this letter is like a scream-mail, but, of all of Paul’s writings it is the closest to being a late night rant than any of his other letters. It is rant-like for very good reasons and once we get into the letter I think you’ll see what I mean. Here’s some context.
Paul was somewhere far from Galatia, which was a large Roman provincial area mostly in what is now Turkey; where Paul was, we don’t know, but what we do know is that he’d heard from reliable sources that the churches in the southern region of Galatia, (this would mean the churches he’d started in the towns of Antioch, Iconium, Pisidian Antioch, Perga, Lystra and Derbe and an aside, there is a great deal of information about Paul starting these churches chapters 13 and 14 in the Book of Acts)… Paul hears that these churches have been invaded by so-called Jewish authorities, most likely Pharisees from Jerusalem, who were traveling around Galatia telling everyone that if gentiles truly want to surrender to Jesus and follow him… if they want to become God’s children, they first of all, have to start following all of the Jewish religious laws and there were a lot of these laws and they touched on every aspect of life; and secondly, any man who wants to follow Jesus has to be circumcised. Paul was infuriated by this because it hadn’t been that long ago that he’d gone to Jerusalem himself to consult with the leaders of the Jerusalem church about this very issue of circumcision for gentiles. And after much discussion with people like Peter, one of the original disciples, and James, Jesus’ brother, they’d all come to the conclusion together that circumcision wasn’t necessary for following Jesus. You can read all about this decision in chapter 15 of Acts. I’m sure that Paul figured the issue was behind him; after all, he’d personally delivered news of this decision to these very churches in Galatia and the Book of Acts tells us that they’d received this decision with joy. Yet now he hears that the same issue has raised its ugly head once again and to make matters worse, these Jewish ‘authorities’ were claiming that Paul didn’t have any right to call himself an apostle in the first place. They were saying that apostleship came with credentials that Paul didn’t have. To be called an apostle you had to have been with Jesus from the early days of John the Baptist right through to his ascension and you also had to be an eye witness of Jesus’ bodily resurrection from the dead. Since Paul hadn’t done any of these things they were saying, ‘Just ignore Paul. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’ So, here is Paul, a world away from Galatia, being attacked, first, for his teaching that Christ followers weren’t obligated to follow the law and secondly, for not having the proper credentials… And, boy, is he mad! I can see him pacing back and forth thinking about how he should respond. Finally, he contacts his secretary, someone who can write a letter in Greek for him (and we know he had a secretary and he dictated this letter. We’ll talk about this in a minute)… and he starts firing off his letter to the Galatians. Now, I’m fairly certain that Paul’s secretary probably asked him many times during the writing of this letter something like, ‘Paul, are you sure that you want to say that? Maybe you ought to think about that for a minute.’ But Paul wasn’t going to be deterred; he knew that literally everything was hanging in the balance. If this letter didn’t turn the direction of the churches in Galatia back to the true message of God’s grace then following Jesus would simply become a matter of obeying Jewish rules and this was something that Paul was not going to allow to happen. Paul knew he needed sent a fiery letter, one with great emotion and attitude because he was addressing the core truth of the Gospel of Jesus. He knew that the law may have shown people what sin was, but Jesus’ death and resurrection did away with us having to try to obey all of the rules and regulations of the Law and he wasn’t going to let anyone, no matter who they were or where they were from, say that isn’t true. Let’s turn to this letter, It’s interesting that his very first words tell us that he is angry… we can see this in what he says and how he says it right from the start. The reason we know this is that all polite 1st Century letters were supposed to begin with a ‘thanksgiving,’ an ‘I am thankful for you, my friends’ part at the beginning. This was the expectation and you see it in Paul’s other letters. But Paul skips this obligatory thank you all together and goes after it. He wasn’t in an ‘I’m thankful for you’ mood. No, first Paul wants to go after the personal attacks. Verse 1 says, ‘Paul an apostle- sent not with a human commission nor by human authority, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead’ Galatians 1:1. Now, later in this letter Paul is going to defend his apostleship in great detail but he wanted to get this out there right away; his first sentence says, “I’m Paul and I’m and apostle and my commission and authority came directly from Jesus Christ and God the Father… directly from them so don’t be messing with me on this one.’ And then Paul gets right to the most important of all the issues in what may be the most important sentence in his letter when he says in verse 3, ‘Grace and Peace to you from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age according to the will of our God and Father to whom be glory forever and ever, Amen.’ Now, you may wonder why I think this is one of the most important statement in his letter. It looks like a greeting… and it is… but we have keep in mind the big spiritual issue that Paul was addressing. He was addressing an attempt by some to force the Galatians to obey a whole host of very detailed rules and regulations, to even make physical changes to their bodies, all in the attempt to please God enough for him to accept them into his family. The bottom line was this: either the Gospel of Jesus is something that results from God’s Grace to us or our salvation is the result of our own effort. These Jewish interlopers were clearly teaching that human effort is the biggest part of finding your way to God and Paul knew they were wrong. He knew that core of the gospel is God’s Grace. He also knew that if these Jewish teachers had their way, if Grace was set aside and following rules became the message, then Christians would always be wondering things like, ‘Am I being good enough to please God?’ ‘Am I obeying the law as completely as I should?’ ‘What more do I have to do to earn God’s approval?’ Paul knew that this kind of life was a constant struggle; he’d lived it and he knew that when you are constantly worrying about keeping the rules to please God you will never be at Peace. Paul had always preached the good news that it was God’s grace that made us children of God and he’d also always preached that we could have peace because God’s grace freed us from worrying about trying to keep the rules. This is why he said, ‘Grace and Peace to you, dear Galatians.’ He wanted to get it out there right away that he wanted the Galatians to have the Grace and the Peace but that they could only be found through faith in Jesus.
And what is this Grace he was talking about? Well, the Greek word that gives us grace is charis. It is a word with lots of uses and meanings and all of them are important. It can simply mean a gift… something someone gives to someone else. It can also mean the thanksgiving we express when we’ve been given a gift… we still often call communion the Eucharist meaning the ‘thanksgiving meal.’ But in its most spiritual use, the way that Paul uses it here in this letter it is a word implies that someone in a position of power gives an unearned gift to someone without position and the gift will completely change their lives. There is a standard definition you’ll often hear: grace is unmerited favor. I guess that is okay, but I don’t believe it gets to the heart of the word. The word implies not simply that someone gives someone something they haven’t earned or deserve… it also means that the one who receives the gift is about to have the direction of their life altered. God’s grace is that he offers us salvation through faith in Jesus and when we surrender to him and receive his Grace, it is a gift that is meant to change everything. And the message of this grace, this gift from God, was Paul’s message. A message that he’d received straight from Jesus. Listen to what he says in chapter 1:11-12. ‘I want you to know brothers that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. I did not receive it from any man nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Christ.’ and then for about 24 verses he tells the facts about his pathway to proving his apostleship and his right to preach this message and then he sums up his message once again for absolute clarity in 2:15-16. “So, 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 and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified.” He couldn’t have been any clearer!
Now, I have to be honest. This letter is not a paragon of rhetorical virtue. It jumps around, changes subjects, goes off on tangents, quotes scripture in ways that you have to work hard to figure out… but that is all okay because in the midst of all of this back and forth, which you would expect from someone who was really worked up, you can still feel Paul’s two deepest passions: his thankfulness for God’s grace and his love for the Galatians. Yes, you can feel his anger and frustration but you can’t escape the fact that he’s going to all of the trouble out of love. And it is this love that drives him to speak with such confidence that the Grace that God offers is not only real but it’s the only way we will ever be set free from sin. And being set free from sin, finding freedom, is exactly the point of much of what Paul says in his letter. He knew that being obligated to be obedient to every aspect of the law wasn’t freedom. He starts down this road in verse 21 of Chapter 4 where he asks this question. ‘Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says?’ He’s asked a very important rhetorical question… Do they really know what trying to follow the law is going to be like? He’s pretty sure they don’t. But then, like a man whose mind is racing at 200 miles per hour he runs down a 10 verse rabbit trail about Abraham and Abraham’s sons and those sons mothers… now his purpose in this rabbit trail was to show us in a roundabout way that God wants his children to live in the freedom of his Grace … which is absolutely true, but finally he comes back around to his initial question in the first verse of chapter 5 where he states what I feel he really intended to say 10 verses earlier: ‘It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Of course, this ‘yoke of slavery’ was the burden of obeying all 613 laws the religious leadership had found in the Old Testament along with the almost uncountable additional regulations they’d imposed to keep people from ever getting close to breaking the 613 Old Testament laws. We all know that we are not obligated to these rules today, but here is the truth… if not for this letter and its stern rebuttal of these ‘agitators,’ as Paul calls them in verse 12 of Chapter 5, Christianity just might be a set of 613 rules that have to be followed to earn God’s acceptance. The gospel might have simply been, “Here is the rule book. Good luck.” All I can think to say is, ‘Thank you, Lord that this isn’t the case.
But, of course, while we may be free from these Old Testament laws, legalism, the notion that there are certain rules that we have to follow in order to earn God’s favor, is still alive and well. And I am certain that this is the case because Grace, God’s gift of salvation through faith in Jesus, is still hard to comprehend fully. It’s just hard to believe that it’s true; it’s so counter intuitive; so unlike the ways of our world where merit and earning your own way rule so much of life. And yet this letter tells us that God’s Grace is the fact and the possibility of earning your way to God is the fiction. Galatians at its most basic is Paul’s ‘Don’t be stupid’ letter. It’s his ‘Don’t listen to people who want to enslave you to their rules and take you away from Jesus’ Grace’ letter. And I, for one, am so glad that Paul couldn’t sleep and that he had to get this one out there. I can’t imagine how different the world would be if the Holy Spirit hadn’t moved Paul to send a letter to Galatia… and then convinced the Galatians that Paul was absolutely right and that they kept the letter and copy it and gave it to others… and now this letter has ended up being a cornerstone of the truth about God’s grace to us. We are not worrying about circumcision today like they were in Paul’s day but his letter continues to remind us that we are to stay as far away as we possibly can from becoming judgmental legalists who set up our own systems of rules and regulations and we are to live in the wonder of God’s amazing Grace. This will always be a very important message. Again, all I can think to say is, ‘Thank you lord, thank you.’
It’s not unusual for something that starts with one purpose in its own day ends up having a major impact in other times in other ways. We can see this in the production of Les Miz here at Grace. The novel was originally meant for a 19th Century audience; the author, Victor Hugo, was hoping to change the social and political world of France. And yet today through this amazing story and the musical that grew out of the novel people are now coming face to face with the fact that the grace we see extended in the story only begins to mirror the great Grace that God offers to us… we have seen over and over in the last two weeks: that through the Lez Miz story people have been drawn to the goodness of the Grace of God. And again, all I can say is, thank you Lord, thank you.
I know that one of the great tensions of our faith is the back and forth that we feel between the need for justice in the world, justice that rights obvious wrongs and fixes broken places and the fact of God’s Grace… his unearned gift of forgiveness and the opportunity to start anew. It is a legitimate tension. And to be honest, I often find it hard to see why, let’s say, the members of the leadership of ISIS are deserving of the Grace of God. And yet who am I to say that God’s desire isn’t to see these men coming to a place where they accept his gift of forgiveness and reconciliation with him through faith in Jesus… accepting his gift of Grace. I suppose what I really wish for myself is that I had half of the bulldog attitude about protecting the message of the Grace of God as Paul had. We know he was a bulldog about this. Right at the end of the letter in verse 11 of Chapter 6 Paul actually grabs the pen out of the hand of his secretary and starts writing himself. And what he writes absolutely sums up his whole letter… listen to the Message version of this passage. I think it is the best look at what Paul was saying anywhere:.Now, in these last sentences, I want to emphasize in the bold scrawls of my personal handwriting the immense importance of what I have written to you. These people who are attempting to force the ways of circumcision on you have only one motive: They want an easy way to look good before others, lacking the courage to live by a faith that shares Christ’s suffering and death. All their talk about the law is gas. They themselves don’t keep the law! And they are highly selective in the laws they do observe. They only want you to be circumcised so they can boast of their success in recruiting you to their side. That is contemptible! For my part, I am going to boast about nothing but the Cross of our Master, Jesus Christ. Because of that Cross, I have been crucified in relation to the world, set free from the stifling atmosphere of pleasing others and fitting into the little patterns that they dictate. Can’t you see the central issue in all this? It is not what you and I do—submit to circumcision, reject circumcision. It is what God is doing, and he is creating something totally new, a free life! All who walk by this standard are the true Israel of God—his chosen people. Peace and mercy on them! Quite frankly, I don’t want to be bothered anymore by these disputes. I have far more important things to do—the serious living of this faith. I bear in my body scars from my service to Jesus. May what our Master Jesus Christ gives freely be deeply and personally yours, my friends. Oh, yes! MESSAGE: Galatains 6:11-18. Now that reads like a late night email doesn’t it? A good one but a full of fire one… And that is the fire that I want to have because the gospel of Jesus’ Grace is far too important to let stand as one option in a myriad of choices… it is too huge and all encompassing. It is too life giving. It is too wonderful not to keep me awake at nights. Just think: God offers us freedom from the guilt of our sin and freedom from slavery to sin. He offers us an opportunity to enter into his Kingdom, to serve the one who rules the universe and to be an active participant in his mission to bring healing to this broken world. And God’s offer to be a part of all of this is a gift… a grace… a grace that when we receive it will change the trajectory of our lives for eternity. I want to be a bulldog for this and I’m asking you to join me in taking this good news to the world.