The Text in Context
This morning’s scripture is particularly dense and fraught with background. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul regularly refers to cultural and religious dynamics with a word or a phrase, dynamics that are very particular to his time and place and can be easily lost on us in our time and place. I thought it might be helpful this morning to offer some occasional, immediate commentary as I read the scripture. If you’re following along, just know that there will be several stops along the way when I will unpack what Paul is saying with a little bit of commentary.
1:13 You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it. A couple of weeks ago, we read about the stoning of Stephen at the hands of angry mob. We learned at the conclusion of that episode that a certain young man, a rising star among his people, had overseen the vigilante execution and was also imprisoning other Christ-followers among the Jewish people. That young man was Paul, the writer of today’s scripture (or Saul as he was known at that time).
14 I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors. In his letter to the Philippians, Paul reports that he belonged to the Pharisees, the nationalistic branch of Judaism that was intent on restoring the standards of the Mosaic law as standards for all of life. Paul recounts in Philippians that his zeal for the tradition was so great he was “blameless” under the law. One can only imagine how threatened he would have felt by Christ-followers who declared that the law had been fulfilled through a rabble-rousing rabbi, a renegade who ate with tax collectors and violated the Sabbath and ended up crucified. What kind of example was that to follow? A man like that neither honored the law nor had done anything to make Israel great again.
15 But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased 16 to reveal his Son to me so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles—Do you remember Paul’s conversion story? How on the road to Damascus, he encounters a blinding light and hears a voice, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”—I did not confer with any human being, 17 nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus. It’s easy to miss what Paul is saying here between the lines. How did he finally encounter God? What brought him face to face with God? It was not through following the law blamelessly, all 613 precepts. It was, instead, “through [God’s] grace.” Which is to say, his encounter with God was a gift. He did nothing to deserve it. In fact, he did everything to not deserve it, but God gave it anyway. This becomes the foundation of Paul’s faith and unlocks the meaning of everything else he says.
2:11 But when Cephas—i.e., Peter—came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned—that is, he was betraying what he himself knew to be true.
12 For until certain people came from James—James was a brother of Jesus and the leader of the church in Jerusalem—he [Peter] used to eat with the Gentiles. Peter, if you remember, has a life-changing dream about a sheet descending from heaven, on which all sorts of animals are spread out, and he hears a voice, telling him to eat what is on the sheet, even the animals that by Jewish law are impure, unkosher. Soon afterward, he receives an invitation to a centurion’s home, where he witnesses with his own eyes the Holy Spirit descend upon the uncircumcised Gentiles. That is the moment when it all clicks for Peter. God’s favor is not achieved through maintaining a set of laws, maintaining a religious or cultural purity. God’s favor is a gift, and it is being given to everyone. Just as his lord had once taught, that God is all-merciful, his care descending upon everyone indiscriminately, like the rain, like the sun. And so Peter begins to eat with Gentiles. Just as people said about Jesus, “This man eats with tax collectors and sinners,” I imagine they began to say about Peter, “This man eats with Gentiles.”
But after they came—that is, the people from James—he [Peter] drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction. While the details here are hazy, the bigger picture is clear enough. These visitors from Jerusalem still adhere strictly to the Jewish laws (such as circumcision and the dietary restrictions) and believe that others need to do so also, if they want to join the inner circle of God’s people. To put this a little more bluntly, these visitors from Jerusalem, the “circumcision faction,” believe that to follow Christ means also to become Jewish just as Jesus was Jesus, to submit fully to the Jewish law. But the Gentiles with Paul have not submitted fully to the Jewish law; they have not been circumcised, they do not follow the dietary restrictions. When Peter, who’d previously been eating with everyone, suddenly stops and only eats with fellow Jews, presumably so that the visitors will think well of him, we can only imagine how upset Paul is. For Paul, the table was a powerful symbol of how different people were joined together in the one body of Christ—Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, male and female (cf. Gal 3:28). When Peter separated from the Greeks, the Gentiles, he was tearing this symbol apart and reinstating an old division and an old way of thinking—namely the idea that you had to fulfill certain obligations to earn God’s favor.
13 And the other Jews joined him [Peter] in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. 14 But when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?”
15 We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners—here Paul is clearly addressing himself to the Jewish side of the audience. By using the expression “Gentile sinners,” he is not saying Gentiles are morally deficient but culturally or religiously deficient; he’s referring to a Jewish idea that because Gentiles do not have a covenant with God, they do not know what the right way to live is.
16 Yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through the faith of Jesus Christ. Many translations have traditionally rendered this “faith in Jesus Christ,” but the simpler, more literal rendering is “the faith of Jesus Christ.” How does this change the meaning? Ultimately, I would like for you to ponder that question for yourself—although I will tip my hat to my own interpretation soon enough.
And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law. Paul seems to be acknowledging here that no one is perfect. If the law is how we win God’s favor, we will all of us fall short. There will always be a bit of a scowl on God’s face, because no one will be able to live up to the standard. 17 But if, in our effort to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have been found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! In other words, if we live to Christ instead of to the law, but we still sin, does that makes Christ responsible for our sin? Does Christ make us to sin? Paul’s answer is no, of course. For Paul, what Christ eradicates (initially, at least) is not sin but our notion of perfection and meritocracy, our idea that we have to get everything right to receive God’s favor.
Before I go any further, I have to acknowledge these last few verses are very dense. Rather than try to explain everything, I’m going to focus on where I hear the gospel right now in my life.
18 But if I build up again the very things that I once tore down—that is, if I start following the Jewish law again—then I demonstrate that I am a transgressor—that is, by setting up the law as the standard for living, I make myself necessarily a failure once again. I can’t possibly uphold all the laws all the time! 19 For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. Paul is signaling here that the law is no longer a priority for him. It only ever made him a failure. It didn’t help in the long run. But something—or rather someone—did help. I have been crucified with Christ; 20 and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. We might remember Jesus inviting his followers to take up their cross daily, suggesting that the cross on which he would die is actually symbolic for a fundamental practice. Here, we get Paul’s interpretation of that practice. To take up the cross, to be crucified with Christ, is to relinquish his old life of achievement and self-sufficiency, his old life of trying to be pure and blameless, his old life of trying to earn merit before God.
And the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul writes about love as the greatest gift of all. And he writes specifically that “love…believes [has faith in] all things.” So when I hear Paul say that he lives now “by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me,” what I really hear is Paul saying that the new center of gravity in his life is Jesus believing in him. Not because of what he did. Indeed, he had been doing the exact opposite of what Jesus wanted, but even so, Jesus believed in him. And loved him. And gave himself for him.
21 I do not nullify the grace of God—or gift of God; for Paul, it’s all about the gift. For if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.
From Hiss to Purr
The very first word my cat Etty spoke to me was a hiss. Poe didn’t say a word. He was cowering in the corner of their shared cage at the animal shelter. When Etty gave me her sour greeting, the shelter volunteer reminded me it was nothing personal. They were rescue cats, so it’s possible they were carrying with them a few kitten traumas after having been born into a big, scary world of cars and big birds and unpredictable humans. Now locked up in cages and surrounded by the barking of animals bigger and more boisterous than them, they would have felt intimated and afraid and always on the defensive.
When I think about that first day, I marvel at the
transformation of Etty and Poe. I guess they’re still scaredy cats, but Etty’s
vocabulary has expanded considerably, and now when she meets someone new, she rarely
resorts to her former word choice. Poe will venture out from hiding to sniff a
visitor and maybe even give a little head-butt greeting.
If you have pets, I wonder if you can trace a similar arc of transformation.
It strikes me as a powerful metaphor—or even reflection—of the gospel that Paul is proclaiming. What transformed Etty and Poe? From hiss to purr? Ultimately it was that, one day, I walked through the doors. Chose them. Believed in them (which is to say, had faith in their goodness). Loved them. And gave myself to them. It was all grace. A gift. Etty speaks a different language because I had faith in her. My faith changed her.
Those of you who have pets, consider how they live today. Their mannerisms. Their games. Their quirks. Their traits. Consider how much of this has evolved as a direct result of their relationship with you. Consider the possibility that when they run or jump or bring you a toy or snuggle against you, you are a large part of what motivates them. You are what has given them life. If our pets could speak, part of me wonders if they might say something like, “It’s not just I who live, but it is my human who lives in me. … I live because my human believed in me, had faith in me, loved me, and gave themselves for me.”
I’m mindful that this is, in the grand scheme of things, a trivial example. But I can’t help but think that its truth is gospel truth, entirely scaleable to size. We live in a big, uncertain world, where it seems almost natural that we learn a defensive posture and the language of the “hiss.” We might, like the young Paul, seek order and refuge in a world of laws and rules that help to make sense of things, but that doesn’t fundamentally touch our hearts or change us. There still lives in the core of us a frightened child, defensive and ready to curse. What fundamentally changes us—and the world—is not law and order, but love. A gift. What changes us (and others) is having someone else walk through the door and choose us. It is having someone believe in us (have faith in us), love us, and give themselves for us. And that someone, for Paul at least, is Jesus Christ. And this good news becomes Paul’s life mission. To let others know—no matter their religious tradition, no matter their national identity, no matter their race or gender or ideology or anything else in the world—that God believes in them (has faith in them), loves them, and gave God’s very self for them.
Prayer
Even when we do or say
What is contrary to your desire,
Contrary to your kingdom—
Lead us with Paul, Peter, and other Christ-followers across the ages
To be transformed by the gift of your love
…
To see the world not through the frightened lens
Of our nation or political party or religion or any other group,
But rather through the trusting lens of your love.
In Christ, who loved us and others and gave himself for us all: Amen.
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