Galatians 3: 23-29

I am growing more and more concerned that we have lost the RADICAL SUBVERSIVENESS of God’s Word and the above passage is a prime example.

When I talk about God’s Word – I mean the message of Christ – the Gospel (Good News) – John 1 talks about Jesus as The Word – Jesus is the embodiment of the Word of God.

Everything in the OT points forward to Christ

Everything in the NT points back to Christ

“Christ is in the old concealed
Christ is in the new revealed”
– Rex Mathie

Somehow we have become so focussed on the container that we’ve missed the contents (or as Martin Luther said – so focussed on the cradle we miss the baby lying in it).

The bible contains the Word of God (Christ) – somehow we’ve come to believe that the bible is Christ => it’s all about Jesus!!! We’ve missed the content.

Now, I know this sounds radical but think about it – do you think Jesus was treated like he was by the religious leaders of the day because his message was a comfort to them. No, his message made them uncomfortable. He was accused over and over again of blasphemy and eventually crucified for blasphemy.

In the passage we read it appears as if Paul is effectively saying that you can leave out a large part of the bible – many people would have believed he was compromising the Word of God – watering it down – sound familiar?

2000 years later nothing has changed – those who attempt to interpret the Bible through Christ are accused of compromising God’s Word. Those who believe that the bible (and especially The Law) only finds it’s meaning in Christ are accused of watering the bible down or worse of being heretics.

Paul argues that he is, in fact, taking scripture seriously. Abraham is his example (3:6-9). Abraham found favour with God before there was any such Law. The promise to Abraham was not just for the nation of Israel but for all the world. Gentiles come to favour with God not on the basis of keeping the Law, but simply as Abraham does: by faith.

Paul the goes on to explain the purpose of the Law:

His explanation is quite negative. The Law was designed to expose people's need of God by showing how they fail (3:10-14, 19-22). Even though given by God, it played a very indirect role. It was not set up to offer an alternative to Abraham's way of responding to God. Its function was to drive people to the point where they saw Abraham's way of responding to God as the only way forward.

The Law, he suggests, puts a curse on us and traps us in guilt and failure. For Paul, the death of Jesus was an act whereby he took the curse on himself in our place and released us from it.

God treats us the way he treated Abraham and expects from us only what he expected from Abraham.

The Law is not meant to enslave us or to create superior/inferior people – it’s there to show us our need for God. To show us that nothing we can do can win us favour with God – God has done it all through Christ and we rely on that by faith.

For it is by God's grace that you have been saved through faith. It is not the result of your own efforts, but God's gift, so that no one can boast about it. (Eph 2:8-9)

So, in Christ, (through our faith in him) we are all the same (in terms of our status with God) but we remain unique individuals.

We put Christ on like a coat (v. 27) but we don’t lose our identity.

We become one with Christ. We enter the sphere of his power and influence, especially understood as love.

As God's love flowed in Christ, so that river continues to flow and in baptism we celebrate our new relationship with him by diving into the river, as it were (or by placing our infants in that stream where it is flowing in the community of faith)

We don’t have to all be the same. We don’t have to all agree. We mustn’t try to force others to conform to our standards.

God is at work in all of us transforming all of us so that we can begin to bear the fruit of the spirit (Gal. 5: 22). The problem is that when I look at the Church I very often don’t see this fruit but the opposite – condemnation, conflict, intolerance, judgmentalism, etc.

Let’s focus on producing the fruit of the Spirit in our lives and let’s stop judging the lives of others – we can leave that to God.

With acknowledgement to William Loader for some of his thoughts that I borrowed http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/CEpPentecost5.htm