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July 2004, Page 2.
Index of articles:
by subject,
by date.
In this issue:
(July 2004)
Galatians,
Chorltons,
Clergy employment.
Question.
An introduction to St Paul's letter to the Galatians, which we're reading in our morning services this month.
Going off the rails?
St Paul's letter to the Galatians is one of those letters where you get more clue what's going on if you start at the end. He wrote it by dictating it to a scribe, and when it was all finished and I guess the scribe had gone home, he must have asked himself - "I wonder if I've made this too hard for them?" So he gets the pen and adds a few lines at the end. "Do you see these big letters? This is my own handwriting ..." (Gal 6:11) And so he recaps the main point, just to be sure they've got it.
Here's the main point: there are some people who are trying to get you to be circumcised. They want you to become Jews in order to be true followers of Jesus. They want you to obey all the rules and regulations of the Old Testament. They want you to qualify to be God's people, instead of relying on Jesus to make you into a child of God. They want to turn you into a religion instead of a friend of Jesus.
Why are they doing this? Two reasons (Gal 6:12). The first is they want to "give a good impression". The world does not understand that being right with God could come just as a free gift out of the goodness of God's heart. The "gospel" that Paul is so keen on - the good news that all we have to do is to put our faith in Jesus - is not something the world likes very much. The people of the world like to think they can "earn" a place in God's favour by being good, and they resent the idea that we're all so corrupt we can't do that, and therefore God has to rescue us. It makes a bad impression if you tell folk they aren't good enough for God by themselves.
And the second reason they do this is "to avoid persecution." In those days in the Roman empire, you could follow the Roman religion, or else you could follow a recognised other religion, like Judaism. But "Christianity" wasn't a recognised other religion, and there was a risk that the Roman authorities would clapm down and repress it. So "they are doing this to avoid being persecuted" (Gal 6:12).
You might expect Paul would campaign to get Christianity recognised as an "official" religion. But he isn't interested in that. "Religion" is a bad thing in his eyes - what counts is being a "new creation" (Gal 6:15) having a relationship with God through Jesus, being filled with God's Spirit, and so finding love and peace (Gal 6:16). Worth passing a few pubs for!
John Hartley