Sometimes
we conduct a series of sermons on some book of the Bible, like for instance a
Gospel or Epistle, and we very slowly work our way through the book. If I
remember correctly, we spent a whole year—or two?—studying Romans on Sunday
mornings.
I have
nothing against such an approach, but I'm also a proponent of variety! And this
is one of the reasons why I plan to deliver three sermons on three epistles:
Galatians, Romans and Hebrews. But the more substantial reason is that these
three epistles, taken together, pass on the story of a certain crisis in the
early Church, a crisis I suspect most of us don't know about. But it's
important for us to know about it, because knowledge about this historical
crisis will definitely help us, in the first place, to better read Holy
Scripture with understanding and, consequently, to apply the meaning of these
events in our lives.
The basic
method of interpretation I apply here can be called "mirror reading".
When I look into a mirror, I see what the mirror reflects. Likewise, when I
read a letter, I see what situation the letter reflects. For example, if I find
a letter on the ground, pick it up, and take a peek to see what it says, maybe
I read:
Dear John,
No, no, a
thousand times no. I love another. Forget me.
Maria
Although I
don't know Maria or John, I already know a lot about them, and about the
situation that this letter reflects. It tells me that, probably, John asked
Maria to marry him, and not just once. It tells me he loves her. It tells me
that, quite likely, she had some feelings towards him as well, or he'd probably
not have been so persistent. But in the end she decided she loved another more
(maybe he was rich).
Such a
method of interpretation can be called "mirror reading", or simply
"reading between the lines"! And this method is an important part of
interpretation. In fact, it's common sense!
I have a
whole course that I teach on Galatians at the seminary. But we don't have time
here and now to conduct the whole course. So rejoice! There won't be any tests
or papers. Today I'm going to share with you the most essential and key
conclusions of my course, and I hope they will be illuminating to you. Maybe
even shocking.
First, I
want to tell you the generally-accepted interpretation of Galatians. It goes
like this: After the apostle Paul preached the news of Jesus Christ to the
Galatians and they became Christians, there came false teachers preaching
Judaism, preaching the Law. They wanted the Galatians to depend on rules and
laws rather than grace and faith. Therefore, Paul wrote this epistle to
persuade them that grace is enough, that "by grace we are saved, not by
works", and law mustn't be added to grace.
Though
there are legitimate elements in this interpretation, it is all the same
insufficient, and slightly distorted.
And now, on
the basis of the Epistle to the Galatians, here is the story of a terrible
crisis that took place in the earliest Church of Jesus Christ:
After Paul
and his co-workers brought the good news of Christ to the inhabitants of
Galatia and established churches there, there came other Christian missionaries
from Jerusalem—Hebrew-Christians, too, like Paul—and told the Galatians that
Paul had preached an illegitimate gospel to them. Moreover, they claimed that
they were authorized and sent by the very Mother Church, Jerusalem. The true
Gospel, according to them, went like this: "Inasmuch as Jesus perfectly
fulfilled all the requirements of the holy Law, and besides that took away our
judgment for our non-fulfillment of it, now the door is open for all to become
the children of Abraham, true Jews, receiving the Law and becoming members of
the Jewish nation." There's their "gospel".
Notice, for
them it wasn't a question of adding laws and rules to grace—no, for them the
question was: who is a true son and daughter of Abraham and member of the
chosen people? For these Jerusalem missionaries, the Galatians believers had
not yet joined the number of Abraham's children and chosen nation. To them, the
objective of the Messiah's coming was that finally all the families of the
earth could observe the whole Law as the Way of Life.
The
generally-accepted interpretation of Galatians says that these false
missionaries wanted to add law to grace, to supplement grace with law—grace
wasn't "enough", but grace-plus-law would be enough. But no, in point of fact, they were saying
quite the opposite: they wanted to add Jesus Christ to the Law! To "fill
out" their Judaism with "Christianity". To them, the Law had
always been "enough", only inaccessible because of our human
imperfection. But now, thanks to Messiah, the Law is accessible to all. You
catch the difference? In their theology, the Law ends up superior to Christ.
Therefore,
the epistle to the Galatians isn't an argument between law and grace; it isn't an argument between faith and works—not at all! It's an argument between two gospels, between two missions, between the mission of Paul and the mission of
these preachers from Jerusalem. And the essence of the argument goes: how can we
become genuine children of Abraham and heirs of God's eternal promise according
to His holy covenant? Paul's answer is simple: "Dear (but foolish!)
Galatians, you already have become!"; the answer of the Jerusalem
preachers is: "No, not yet, not until you enter the Jewish nation."
Now, we're
going to take a look at the whole epistle, to pinpoint Paul's arguments for his
position, for his Gospel.
More likely
than not, the Jerusalem missionaries were saying this to the Galatians:
"Paul wants to say that he was the one sent by the mother church and that
she authorized his gospel, but don't believe him!" But Paul stuns
everybody when he responds "non-programmatically", saying (Read Gal.
1:1-2; 11-13; 15-17). Paul isn't about to play their game: "who did the Jerusalem
Church give the green light to and who didn't she give the green light to…."
No, he openly announces: God revealed Christ to me and authorized me to reveal
Him to you. My gospel isn't from man.
More likely
than not, the Jerusalem missionaries were saying this to the Galatians:
"Paul came to Jerusalem and promised there that he'd preach our gospel,
but he immediately broke his promise." We read about this conference in
Acts 15:4-5 (read); there's the faction in the Jerusalem church; this was
definitively a political crisis.
And what
does the apostle Paul say about this? (Read Gal. 2:1-2). A word about the last
assertion: Paul is not saying here that he met in private with the apostles in
order to make sure he hadn't been preaching the gospel in vain. Nothing of the sort. Nowhere in the entire New
Testament does Paul ever suggest that he had doubts about his gospel, that he
suspected his preaching might be a waste of time. And why would he suddenly do
so here, in this epistle of all places? No. He means that he insisted on a
private meeting with the apostles to make sure first that they were going to
stand with him and his gospel in the open conference, in front of everybody.
Otherwise his having come to Jerusalem at all would have been a complete waste
of time (idiomatically, "running in vain"). In that case, Paul was ready to say, "So long! I'm outta here.
I'm not wasting my time with this" and go back to the work God appointed
him to. But Paul never even contemplated the idea of abandoning the Gospel
revealed to him by God Himself.
And as we
know, the apostles responded to him by… (read 2:9-10).
More likely
than not, the Jerusalem missionaries were saying this to the Galatians:
"Your precious Paul offended, insulted, Peter himself, and all because
Peter—by the way, a Jew!—was observing the Law! How dare he!" Probably the
Galatians anticipated a response from Paul like, "No! Never! I would never in my life do something so awful!" But again Paul is an unorthodox
disputant. What does he write? (Read 2:11) "Yes, I opposed him—he was
wrong! Until the faction from Jerusalem showed up, Peter was happily hanging
out with the Gentile brothers in Christ, but as soon as they showed up, he shunned
them. That was wrong, and I told brother Peter so."
What do you
think? Was it painful to Paul to do that? Of course. Did his reputation among
the churches suffer because of it? Of course. Did the false teachers take
advantage of it to spread slander about him? Of course. This was a real crisis
in the early Church; it was a theological crisis, a political crisis, a
spiritual crisis, a soul-searing crisis.
In the
third chapter, the apostle adduces the essence of his argument (3:2-3); in
other words, "Dear Galatians! You already received the Spirit!!" This
one concrete fact concludes the whole thing. God wouldn't have given His Spirit
to those who weren't His children. But he did it, when all you had done was
believe in Christ. End of argument. There's nothing left to figure out. Paul
was within in his rights to end the letter right here—if he could be sure the
Galatians would get it. But with a broken heart he says, "Oh, foolish
Galatians" and teaches on. He reminds them that God's law never justified
anybody, that the promise was given by God when there was no law, that the Law
was given to lead us to Christ (while those other preachers were saying the
opposite—listen to this, because it's a horror: Christ was given to lead us to
the Law!), and Paul again reminds them in chapter four (read 4:4-7); "You
already received the Spirit, the Spirit of the very Son; that means you are
sons, His children." Then Paul, in heartbreaking terms begs the Galatians:
(read 4:12-16).
Then Paul
compares these two gospels, that is, the true Gospel of Jesus Christ and the
so-called gospel of this faction. The comparison goes from 4:21 to the end of
the chapter. We don't have time to examine this in detail. I just want to say
that here, where Paul talks allegorically about Sarah and Hagar, about two
covenants—the covenant of flesh and the covenant of promise—about two
Jerusalems… he is not comparing God's Law and grace; he is not comparing the
Old Covenant and New Covenant; he is not comparing Judaism and Christianity. He
is comparing his mission, his calling, his gospel and its fruits, with the
mission, the gospel and its fruits, of those Jerusalem missionaries. The
"present Jerusalem" he talks about here isn't the Law—it is, in fact,
the church in Jerusalem! At least, it's the faction from Jerusalem that wants to give birth anew to slaves. Let me say that again: the faction from Jerusalem,
claiming the authority of the Jerusalem church, wants once again to give birth
to slaves. But we, Paul says, thanks to Christ, belong to the heavenly
Jerusalem, we inherit the heavenly promise that resounded once to our
father-by-faith Abraham, and like him we have received the promise by faith,
thanks to the Son who fulfilled all and unfolded the promised new creation.
That’s why,
precisely in light of everything he just said, the apostle exhorts (read 5:1),
and also (5:6).
More likely
than not, the Jerusalem missionaries were saying this to the Galatians:
"Paul summoned you just to believe! But what about how you should live?
How are you supposed to know the way of righteousness?"
But Paul
answers: (5:16) and again (5:19… etc.). Paul doesn't list all the possible sins
here; he's giving them a 'for-instance.' And again (5:22… etc.), Paul doesn't exhaust the list here; again, it's a 'for instance'; he's saying, "All this should
be obvious to you; why would you need the Law to know this?".
You see why these words are written here, at the end of this epistle? If they were written
in a different epistle, they'd still mean something, but not what they mean
here. This isn't just "the practical section", like we usually say,
as if Paul wrapped up the "theological part" and now he says,
"Oh, by the way, here's a general list of rules for your life", or as
if he totally decided to change the subject (!). Nothing of the sort. If we
want to understand chapters 5 and 6 of Galatians right, we have to understand
that this whole epistle is one, single theological argument, and the last two
chapters are the essential part, where the apostle calls on the Galatians to
finally manifest this life that will prove their election and inclusion in
God's nation by grace. And that's how the Galatians will finally shut the
mouths of the Jerusalem missionaries—they'll be left with absolutely nothing
more to say.
By the way,
the real climax of the whole epistle is 6:7-8 (read). In other words: Choose!
Either the way of the Spirit, Whom you received as per my gospel, or the way of
the flesh, as per their 'gospel'—because their pseudo-gospel is in point of
fact the way of the flesh, not the way of God's promise, election and new
creation.
This is
absolutely the climax of the argument. And Paul is ready to sign his name. He
seems exhausted. He says ("That's it…", read 6:17) and also (6:14),
but he adds one last "punch" for his opponents (read 6:16); it's
perfectly obvious in the light of the whole argument he's just made that this
"Israel of God" is none other than all believers who've received the
true gospel whatever their ethnic origin may be—they are all now "God's
Israel". This closing "punch" indubitably drove the Jerusalem faction
wild with fury. It's a total negation of their whole pseudo-gospel.
And with
love the apostle concludes his epistle, (read 6:18).
Oh, if only
that were the end of the crisis. But next time we will see how the continuing
crisis compelled Paul to write a letter to… the Romans.
