January 31, 2014 1212pm
That's Stupid
Elevating a man, any man to godhood, is well, stupid. James in his pithy manner was quick to say, "Elijah was a man, with a nature like ours." Period.
But
those who allowed that spirit(s) on them, well, they built on a bad
foundation, allowed themselves to be seduced by spirits, allowed
themselves to be brought back into bondage and overly identified with a
man (as children do). “Now I say this, that each of you says, “I am of
Paul,” or “I am of Apollos,” or “I am of Cephas,” or “I am of Christ.”
Is Christ divided? (I Corinthians 1:12-13)
It’s interesting how much the
childish human race likes labels! We want to associate ourselves, our
children, our churches, our families, our work and so many other areas
of our life, with a label….something that we can quickly use to define
ourselves…..to distinguish ourselves from others. Where do all the
celebrity & athlete posters hang? On the walls of children,
adolescents & adults who have yet to or ever will form mature self
identities. “When I was a
child, I
spake as a
child, I understood as a
child, I thought as a
child: but when I became a man, I put away
childish things.” (I Corinthians 13:11)
Children
when they have grown up, they can see their parents with mature eyes
and realize their parents’ lack of perfection—”What! You mean there is
no santa claus, and you don’t know everything?” It’s sad to see the
collapse of Galatians church members right before our eyes. Just read
that one book and you can see what is happening today within our ranks.
If
you notice, the Epistles of Paul were often written to call out evils
in the churches which he had planted and later called for correction.
That letter to the Galatians is not an exception. At a period not long
after his second visit tidings came to him that excited his alarm and
indignation. That restless wing of the church which clung to Judaism
(legalism, the Gospel plus something else, the cult of man worship &
will worship) which had troubled the church at Antioch (Acts 15:1),
which had made necessary the council at Jerusalem (Acts 15:5–30), whose
evil work at Corinth we note in both Epistles, but especially in the
second, whose continual warfare made one of Paul's sorest afflictions
“perils among false brethren,” had sent its emissaries into Galatia and
had taught that it was needful that the Gentile Christians be
circumcised and submit to the law of Moses in order to be saved. If you
trace the history of the many early message emissaries and missionaries,
you will see this same pattern.
The Galatians were (modern ones
still are) attracted to the law because it gives them specific moral
guidelines that they can apply to their practical problems. The Jewish
law teachers were renowned for their ability to develop applications of
the law for every conceivable situation. There seems to be a sense of
moral security in such well-defined codes of conduct. In comparison,
Paul's command to "live by the Spirit" seems to leave everything up in
the air. Lazy & immature people want a very specific list of steps
to follow. They say, "Tell me exactly what to do and what not to do, and
then I will feel safe; I'll know how to act." But this approach to the
Christian life is in danger of repeating the Galatian error. It is an
attempt to live under law rather than under the direction of the Spirit.
Highlights of the Issues at Galatia:
The
eager abandonment of the gospel of grace for a pseudo gospel by the
Galatians was astonishing to Paul, even though some were agitating them
and attempting to pervert the gospel of Christ 1:6
Expressing
his amazement, Paul accuses the Galatians, who were called by Christ's
grace, of abandoning God for a different gospel 1:6
The message,
presented by those who were troubling the Galatians, was not an
additional gospel but an attempt to reverse or undo the gospel of grace
1:7
Justification has always been by faith and since
the Law is unable to make anyone righteous, Christ died to redeem those
who were under the Law making them heirs and sons of God as children of
Abraham according to promise 3:1
As justification is obtained by
faith (as evidenced by the reception of the Holy Spirit) so
sanctification is also experienced by faith 3:1
The Galatians have been beguiled because the crucifixion of Christ was explained to them 3:1
Israel is no longer to be a slave-like son under the bondage of the Law, but an adopted heir of God with full privileges 4:1
1. A child - heir is subject to those in authority over him 4:1-2
2. Israel, like children, were under bondage to the regulations of the Law 4:3
3.
But at the proper time God sent His Son, who was subject to the Law,
to redeem the Jews enabling both Jews and Gentiles to be adopted as
adult sons 4:4-5
4. To His sons God sent the Spirit of Jesus Christ
to unite them with the Father and change their position from that of
slaves to heirs 4:6-7
In view of their new position, Paul asks why the Galatians have returned to the bondage of the Law 4:8-11
1.
Since the Galatians know God and more importantly God knows them, Paul
asks why they want to enslave themselves to the powerless and useless
practices of Judaism as evidenced by their observation of feasts,
festivals, and holy days 4:7-8
2. Paul fears that his ministry to the Galatians has been fruitless in terms of Christian living 4:9
Paul pleads with the Galatians to not abandon the teachings of faith and agonizes over their spiritual growth 4:12-20
Initially,
the gospel was received with great readiness; but later the Galatians'
immaturity and need for an identity and self-aggrandizement (boasting)
led to the apostle himself being welcomed as “an angel of God” (Gal.
4:14). Factually though Paul was an “angel”, a messenger, this was not
the purpose of the Galatian to use such a term. They weren’t content to
be an “ordinary” believer who would be called a mere “Christian” -- they
wanted more than to say they had believed on Jesus based upon the
preaching of a man even as great as Peter (Cephas), or Appollos — they
wanted to say they had received their revelation from an angel. Does
this sound at all familiar?
In summary, undermining the power of the Spirit by an overstress on the law, Paul said, is "stupid."
The
Galatian church was a non-Jewish community that had no ties to the law.
It had been evangelized in the power of the Spirit but later had been
influenced to put itself under the power of the law in a way that
undermined the integrity of the original Gospel that Paul had
proclaimed. The fact that the Galatians had been so easily seduced to
come under this law rather than remaining in the Spirit elicited Paul's
term for them as "stupid."
The Greek word for "stupid,"
anontos, is used six times in the New Testament. Galatians uses it twice.
Thus,
while Paul envisioned a new order in the world through the church
(Galatians 3:25) wherein there would be neither Jew nor Greek, and a new
global way of being a church that transcends all forms of ethnicity.
Where the Gospel proclaimed by Paul challenged categories of slave or
free, Galatian-type (Message) people seem obsessed with controlling our
faith so that theological freedom is denied, resulting in slavery to
laws around works of the flesh rather than promoting the fruits of the
Spirit.
For many years I have bemoaned the fact that the church
seems composed of children who have not grown up in the faith. Knowing
so much truth and then not walking in it is
stupid, and indicates
a person has been beguiled, seduced, deceived, bewitched and/or in
bondage. We need a maturation of faith based on a personal relationship
with Jesus Christ. I believe that if we would be grounded in this kind
of faith, we could begin to get our priorities in order. This would
start with the realization that it's more important to have vibrant
church communities than preserving a man-made law (taking things a good
or Godly man said in his flesh, as a personal conviction and not a
universal imperative) that results in clannish behavior, splits and
schisms.
Out of curiosity, if someone asked you to name the very
first book written of the 27 books contained in the New Testament, what
would your answer be? Many, might suggest "Matthew." After all, it
appears first in the listing of books, therefore some assume it must have been
written first. The
first book to be written was
Galatians, and I am firmly convinced this was providential. The very first declaration of inspiration was a proclamation of
Freedom in Christ, the very message the world, and even the church, needs to hear today!
Paul's letter to the Galatian brethren has often been heralded as the "
Magna Charta of Christian Liberty." The
Magna Charta
("Great Charter") was a document issued by King John of England on June
15, 1215. Abuses by King John caused a revolt by nobles who compelled
him to execute this recognition of rights for both noblemen and ordinary
Englishmen. People long to be free, and very few will long tolerate
the oppression of those who would presume to lord it over them.
Revolution and reform may at times be slow in coming, but come they
will. The first message the young church of our Lord Jesus needed to
hear -- a message just as needed by the church today -- is that we are
free. We have been liberated from the tyranny of
law, and we abide in a state of
grace.
"It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing
firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery" (Gal. 5:1).
There were some in Paul's day, and many in ours, who sought to enslave
the disciples of Christ to a legalistic system. Law is
not the
basis of our fellowship, unity or salvation, and yet some were (and
still are) teaching this fallacious and stupid doctrine. Thus, before
any other book of the New Testament was ever penned, the apostle Paul,
by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, sent out this
Great Charter of Christian Liberty in Christ.
The
great reformer Martin Luther (1483-1546) regarded the epistle to the
Galatians as a type of "battle cry for Christian liberty." He felt this
inspired writing called him "to fight Paul's battle for the liberty of
the Gospel all over again" against the oppressive legalisms he perceived
in the
Roman Church. Luther once wrote, "The Epistle to the Galatians is
my
epistle; I have betrothed myself to it; it is my wife." Those
discerning disciples who love and cherish their freedom in Christ have
long loved and cherished the truths proclaimed by Paul in this marvelous
first book of the New Testament canon.
"Not many books have
made such a lasting impression on men's minds as the Epistle of Paul to
the Galatians, nor have many done so much to shape the history of the
Western world. Galatians has been called the 'Magna Charta of Christian
Liberty,' and this is quite correct. For it rightly maintains that
only through the grace of God in Jesus Christ is a person enabled to
escape the curse of his sin and of the law and to live a new life, not
in bondage or license, but in a genuine freedom of mind and of spirit
through the power of God. Because of this powerful truth, Galatians was
the cornerstone of the Protestant Reformation" (
The Expositor's Bible Commentary, vol. 10, p. 409).
