Thursday, November 5, 2020

One in Christ - Gospel Freedom in Galatians - November 5 Readings: Galatians 3:27-29

 

Gospel Freedom in Galatians  

Background: What was the key issue in the early church? Race. Culture. Issues that are still with us today. The church at its inception on Pentecost was essentially 100% Jewish and the Apostles and the church in Jerusalem seemed content to keep it that way. Then God called a Pharisee named Saul to salvation and set him aside as an Apostle to the Gentiles. Over the next 30 years, the church became primarily Gentile with a Jewish minority, and many Jews fought it. 

Galatians was Paul's first letter, written at the end of his first missionary journey when Gentiles began to come to Christ in droves. A group, sometimes called Judaizers and sometimes the circumcision party, opposed the inclusion of Gentiles in the church. If they were to be part of the church, they needed to become Jewish - follow the law and Jewish rituals. Paul fought them tooth and nail his entire ministry. The gospel was for the whole world. 

Galatians is a powerful argument for a gospel free from the works of the law. 

As often as time allows, the reader is encouraged to read the entire book - it will not take more than a few minutes. Each day we will work our way through the book passage by passage. 


Today's Reading:  Galatians 1-6  Focus Passage - Galatians 3:27-29  


 For those of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ 28 There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; since you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to the promise.

Through the Bible Readings: Ezekiel17-18, 2 Timothy 3:1–4:8, Psalm 119:121–128, Proverbs 27:4–6

 

If you wish to read through the Bible in a year, follow these readings. 

Devotional: One in Christ     


Human beings have a natural compulsion to divide. It is part of our fallen nature, I suppose. Sometimes it is harmless - like the way we divide up on fall Saturdays and Sundays to cheer for our favorite teams (and to hate our rivals as well). Sometimes, it can be pretty serious, such as political divisions. Sometimes, division is shameful, like the social and economic divisions that politicians prey on so often - us vs. them, rich vs. poor. Sometimes those divisions become downright evil. Hitler divided the world between the Aryan and non-Aryan races. For hundreds of years, American society treated blacks as just a little below human. Division is a part of our nature.

It is nothing new. Paul addressed these divisions in Galatians 3:27-29. 

When Christ enters a life, human divisions mean nothing before the Cross. There was an ancient hostility between Jews and Greeks, but in Christ, the enmity falls away. Jews are still Jews and Greeks are still Greeks, but racial divisions become less significant than spiritual unity. In Christ, the slave and the free came together in unity. The slaves (generally an economic structure in that culture) did not automatically become free when they came to Christ, but the unity that Christ brought meant more to them than the economic structures that divided them. Men and women were still men and women, but in Christ, they are one. This does not negate other biblical teachings about the roles of men and women, but it teaches that at the foot of the Cross, whether one is a man or woman matters not at all. What matters is that you belong to Christ. 

In the church, that which unites us - our common experience in Christ - ought to matter more than anything in this world that tears us apart. 

Would that it were so. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 3 that division and schism are markers of immature Christianity. If that is so (and it is), then American Christianity is badly in need of maturity. We are so quick to divide based on human factors rather than uniting around our spiritual experience in Christ. We elevate cultural preferences to the status of biblical mandates. We exalt our denominational differences to extreme levels. 

A friend of mine, Alan Cross, made a point that is very important. We sometimes talk about "building unity in the Body of Christ." That statement misses an important biblical reality. Christ died to redeem One Body. We have unity in Christ - we are joined together as the redeemed in our city, in all the world, even in all of time. We are united in Christ unless we allow our sinful and divisive nature to take over and we divide what God has united. We don't build unity, Christ does. We destroy unity when we allow the flesh to do its work. 

In Christ, human and cultural factors are never allowed to divide the redeemed. If we divide, it is because we are walking in the flesh instead of in the Spirit. When we do that, we destroy the unity of Christ in the church. 

Father, thank you for the unity we have in Christ. May I do nothing do destroy the unity in the Body that your Son died to build. 

Think and Pray:

Are you an agent of unity in the Body of Christ? 
Do you seek Christ and his kingdom or do you magnify human distinctions? 




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