6:30pm Service
Sunday 19th June 2016
St Mary's Church, Bury St Edmunds
Preacher: Dorothy Haile

Galatians 3:1-14

‘You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?’

I am astonished … [1:6]; I fear for you … [4:11]; I plead with you [4:12]; I am in the pains of childbirth [4:19]; I am perplexed about you [4:20];

This letter to young churches in part of what is now Turkey contains some strong language. It is obvious that Paul is deeply concerned about what is happening to people who had come to faith in Christ during what we usually call his first missionary journey. But this is all a long time ago and a long way from Suffolk. Is it relevant to us?

The New Testament letters were written to address specific issues in specific places, which leaves me with a question: why has this particular letter been preserved for us? I think it is because it is relevant way beyond its original context. How?

The simple answer is that Paul is convinced that the people of the Galatian churches have been deceived into a position that denies what Paul calls ‘the truth of the gospel’, and we can be deceived into that position too. Paul uses several different words and phrases for the ‘the truth of the gospel’, such as

• Faith in Jesus Christ
• Justification
• Justified by faith in Jesus Christ
• Righteousness
• Receiving the Spirit
• Being redeemed

These different words and phrases are all describing the same thing: we would often call it ‘becoming a Christian’. So Paul is telling us how a person becomes a Christian, and making it 100% clear that it happens through believing in Jesus, not by believing in Jesus plus observing ‘the law’. At that time ‘the law’ was the Jewish law, because there was a group of people from among the Jews who had become Christians who believed that Gentiles who became Christians – like most of the people who were getting this letter – had to come to the Christian faith via the Jewish faith; they had to be circumcised and keep the Jewish law as well as believing in Jesus. So it was Jesus plus.

Why is this so important to Paul? He has the absolute conviction that the true gospel is based on faith and not on keeping the law. His own experience is really on the line here. After all, his conversion to Christ involved a complete reversal of belief and action (often humanly speaking an embarrassing thing). He had persecuted the church intensely because of his utter commitment to Judaism, then he met Christ on the road to Damascus and found that he had been completely wrong; with a changed life and total commitment to Christ he started to fulfil his calling to bring the gospel to Gentiles; he had been chased out of Damascus and Jerusalem because of his fearless preaching of Jesus as Messiah, the one through whom God’s salvation plan was brought about; he had opposed a senior church leader, the apostle Peter, to his face, in public, which was extremely risky and really counter-cultural in a situation where leaders and elders were treated with respect. All because of what he believed about the gospel. So this is vital to Paul’s life and ministry.

In verses 1-5 Paul also points out that if the Galatians have started to add observing the law to believing in Jesus they are contradicting their own experience. He emphasises that they began their Christian life through faith in Jesus, not by observing the law, in other words not by human effort. So it made no sense to continue their Christian lives by observing the law.

Then in the next section, verses 6-9, Paul explains that this is not a new idea, as some of the Jewish Christians may well have thought: Abraham’s own righteousness with God had come through faith (Genesis 15:6), and the same applied to Gentiles: Scripture ‘foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith’ (v8, referring to Genesis 12:3, where the Lord had told Abraham that ‘all peoples on earth will be blessed through you’), and Paul even says later in v8 that God had announced the gospel in advance to Abraham. So there is a sense in which the early church should have known that faith was the way to salvation, as it had been for Abraham. In fact Paul says that those who have faith are the legitimate descendants of Abraham.

In these first 9 verses, the noun ‘faith’, the word ‘believing’ and the verb ‘to believe’ occur seven times. It must be very important.

Paul continues in verses 10-14 to underline the consequences of the other position. People who rely on observing the law – the plus in other words – are in deep trouble (he calls it ‘under a curse’) because it means you have to keep the law perfectly, which is impossible. The punishment for failing to observe the law perfectly is death, and after that no relationship with God is possible. Christ’s death on the cross paid that price on our behalf. The good news of Jesus is that justification (bringing us back into relationship with God) comes by grace alone through faith alone, but Paul’s opponents were saying that this was not enough.

Therefore, Paul is emphasising very strongly that to change the gospel is completely unacceptable. It is a change that makes Christ’s death on the cross inadequate, which is really an insult to Christ and to God who loves us so much. The good news is that Christ has done everything that is necessary so that we can come into a personal relationship with God, as we accept forgiveness by grace through faith. In a way it sounds too good to be true. It is a gospel of grace (God’s free gift) and God accepts us because of his love, not a gospel of works through which we do enough to be accepted and get over the line, as it were.

This letter to the Galatians was probably written shortly before the Council at Jerusalem which is described for us in Acts 15. The result of that Council was a clear statement that Gentiles did not have to be circumcised and obey the Jewish law in order to be Christians. So was the issue tackled and settled? Yes, it was tackled, but the controversy went on and on in the history of the early church, because, I think, Jesus plus appeals so much to our human instincts. In fact all through church history this issue has come up again and again – Martin Luther tackled the same problems in the church of his day. There’s always the tendency to add a gospel of works to the gospel of grace. I think it is because we really don’t like to feel that we aren’t contributing anything to something important.

English proverbs include: There’s no such thing as a free lunch, God helps those who help themselves, and You can’t get something for nothing. Even that suggests that we don’t think we can get something for nothing. But the gospel gives us salvation by grace alone – something for nothing in fact.

What about us? No one is now suggesting that we have to become Jews in order to become Christians. What could our gospel of works be? We could think about lots of things, but in this context tonight it is worth noting that the Jewish Christians who were teaching a gospel of Jesus plus were saying that the plus was religious good works. We can apply this to ourselves: our religious acts, whether it is coming to church regularly, giving our offerings, even singing in the choir, don’t earn us any points with God. Our salvation is by grace through faith, God’s gift to us secured by the death of Christ. Does this mean we can forget about all those good and faithful things? Not at all. They are a result of our salvation, not a contribution to it. But this result of our salvation changes our whole lives, determines our priorities, and challenges us to live in a different way, as Paul goes on to explain later in his letter. God has plenty of ‘good works’ for us to do, as Paul writes in his letter to the people of Ephesus:

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

I spent most of yesterday at the Ten Year Celebration of Town Pastors ministry in Suffolk. Several VIPs told us how valuable it is. I believe it is a ‘good work’, but I don’t spend a night in the Prayer Base every month in order to contribute to my salvation account I do it as a result of my salvation.

We are constantly tempted to add a plus of some kind to God’s good news. I have been a Christian for many years now, and I can tell you that temptation doesn’t ever go away. But as I read of the extent of God’s love and grace I am also constantly reminded that I have got something for nothing, to be thankful, and challenged to live in light of what God has done.