Unit 3: Liberating Letters
Key Verse:
Galatians 3:29 NLT
29 And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children[a] of Abraham. You are his heirs, and God’s promise to Abraham belongs to you.
Fini…!
What you need to know
Galatians 1:1 NLT
1 This letter is from Paul, an apostle. I was not appointed by any group of people or any human authority, but by Jesus Christ himself and by God the Father, who raised Jesus from the dead.
Fun Fact: The Book of Galatians is one of the first two books written in the New Testament, with the other being The Book of James, according to most theologians. It was written to the Church at Galatia, which is near present-day Turkey. It was written to a group of Christians who were being poisoned, either from within or without, by a false interpretation of the gospel. Paul is writing to the Chuch at Galatia in order to reassert his apostolic authority and to clear up their misunderstanding of the Gospel of Christ.
Galatians 1:8-10 NLT
8 Let God’s curse fall on anyone, including us or even an angel from heaven, who preaches a different kind of Good News than the one we preached to you. 9 I say again what we have said before: If anyone preaches any other Good News than the one you welcomed, let that person be cursed. 10 Obviously, I’m not trying to win the approval of people, but of God. If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ’s servant.
The reason Paul asserted himself in his greeting was because of the seriousness of the matter at hand. Paul’s gospel message seemingly had no requirement of obedience to the structured religious practices previously observed by the followers of Judaism. In many people’s minds, that was inconceivable. That is still the case today. Subsequently, these Judaizers taught that now that these gentile Galatians had believed in Christ, they needed to adhere to the Mosaic law in order to fulfill God’s requirement of righteousness.
Paul understood this to be poisonous to the grace that God offered to those who had received salvation by faith alone. Like Jesus, Paul understood that the leaven of legalism would spoil the entire loaf. Beloved, God’s gift lies outside of our finite understanding, and that’s okay. God asks us to trust Him. He no longer requires a sacrifice. Christ paid it all.
Galatians 3:1 & 5 NLT
1 Oh, foolish Galatians! Who has cast an evil spell on you? For the meaning of Jesus Christ’s death was made as clear to you as if you had seen a picture of his death on the cross.
5 I ask you again, does God give you the Holy Spirit and work miracles among you because you obey the law? Of course not! It is because you believe the message you heard about Christ.
Paul had to change the minds of the Galatians. Human nature automatically defaults to a works-based religious model, where righteousness has to be maintained by doing something to be something. It’s still a problem in the Church today. Paul needed to make clear, the distinction between the law and grace. The law brings death. Grace brings life.
The Lesson
Genesis 15:4-6 NLT
4 And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “This one shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir.” 5 Then He brought him outside and said, “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” 6 And he believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.
Galatians 3:17-18 NLT
17 This is what I am trying to say: The agreement God made with Abraham could not be canceled 430 years later when God gave the law to Moses. God would be breaking his promise. 18 For if the inheritance could be received by keeping the law, then it would not be the result of accepting God’s promise. But God graciously gave it to Abraham as a promise.
Here, Paul makes a distinction between the law and grace. Grace came as a result of a promise. The law was given to document an agreement between God and His chosen people that would allay God’s wrath until the promise made to Abraham would be fulfilled in Christ.
Galatians 3:19 NLT
19 Why, then, was the law given? It was given alongside the promise to show people their sins. But the law was designed to last only until the coming of the child who was promised. God gave his law through angels to Moses, who was the mediator between God and the people.
Beloved, the law acted as a mirror. It displayed to us what was evident to all of Heaven, that mankind was marred by sin. Made imperfect in such a way that disqualified all of humanity from eternal peace. But, the law also served as a telescope. With the sacrificial system that God placed alongside the spiritual and civil law given by Moses, God pointed to a future time when the promise to Abraham would be fulfilled. Forgiveness attained by sacrifice was only temporary. Righteousness was only implied through sacrifice but never given. Additionally, the law required a mediator; Moses. Moses was God’s chosen mediator between God and the people of Israel. God’s requirement for holiness was so absolute that He could not speak directly to the people. Moses acted as God’s mediator. In fact, Moses was even one step removed from that position, in that Aaron, his brother, actually spoke for Him officially, as Moses had an apparent speech impediment.
Galatians 3:20 NLT
20 Now a mediator is helpful if more than one party must reach an agreement. But God, who is one, did not use a mediator when he gave his promise to Abraham.
But God had spoken to Abraham directly, not requiring a mediator. God spoke to Abraham directly on many occasions. In fact, not only did God speak to Abraham, but He elevated Abraham in the sight of all of Heaven and earth, changing his name from Abram to Abraham, thus signifying that His Spirit (Hawm = Breath of God) would not be separable from the man Abraham. The promise God made to Abraham had eternity written in it. Just as He does for believers today, God sealed His promise to Abraham by the Holy Ghost.
2 Corinthians 1:21-22 NKJV
21 Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us is God, 22 who also has sealed us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.
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Galatians 3:21-22 NLT
21 Is there a conflict, then, between God’s law and God’s promises?[l] Absolutely not! If the law could give us new life, we could be made right with God by obeying it. 22 But the Scriptures declare that we are all prisoners of sin, so we receive God’s promise of freedom only by believing in Jesus Christ.
So, as we have said before, righteousness was never a product of keeping the law of Moses. The very presence of the sacrificial system placed within the commandment demonstrated that nothing man could do would achieve right standing with God. Additionally, as previously stated, sacrifice only allayed God’s wrath until the appearance of Christ and His subsequent death, burial, and resurrection. Righteousness is only available through faith in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:23-25 NLT
23 Before the way of faith in Christ was available to us, we were placed under guard by the law. We were kept in protective custody, so to speak, until the way of faith was revealed.
24 Let me put it another way. The law was our guardian until Christ came; it protected us until we could be made right with God through faith. 25 And now that the way of faith has come, we no longer need the law as our guardian.
So then, what was the purpose of the law? God used the law to set boundaries for His people. Cultural boundaries. God shaped a people who had been slaves for four hundred and thirty years. As slaves, they had been regarded as less than human by their captors. God had to chase the smell of slavery off of them. He did that by the law. God fashioned for Himself, a peculiar people, a people set apart by the culture that He imparted to them by the law of Moses. As such, the law served as a guardian until the promise of Christ could be attained by faith. Beloved. we church folk act like we do because the influence of the Word of God changes our behavior. The Word transforms us through the renewing of our minds. Or, at least, that’s what’s supposed to happen, if we will let it. Things I used to do, I don’t do no more. The Word of God is responsible for that change in my behavior.
Galatians 3:26-27 NLT
26 For you are all children[m] of God through faith in Christ Jesus. 27 And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes.
For now, we are all God’s children, adopted into His eternal family through faith in Jesus Christ. We are now able to walk in the inheritance that God promised Abraham. And what is the greatest of the gifts that God has set aside for us as our inheritance? Relationship. Intimacy with God, face-to-face, into-me-see relationship that brings me into a place where, in humility, I can experience the Presence, the Majesty, and ultimately, the Love of God through Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:28 NLT
28 There is no longer Jew or Gentile,[o] slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.
And so now, God makes no distinctions. He makes no distinction between Jew and Gentile. Though God set apart a people for Himself, now in Christ, their Jewishness afforded them no special privileges over the people they had formerly regarded as dogs.
In addition, God no longer makes a distinction between slaves and free. There is no third world in God’s eyes. There’s only one world. Jesus died for all, regardless of nationality or ethnicity. And, unlike those who would lay hold to their claim of manifest destiny as a right to behave as lords over people groups that they subjugated and, in some cases, exterminated. There are no big ‘I’s or little ‘you’s in God’s Kingdom. We need to stop trying to make it so.
Finally, there is neither male nor female in God’s eyes. Sadly, the church has missed the point in this regard too. There remains a strain of patriarchism in the Church that misplaces men to a pedestal of imagined higher standing in the eyes of the Lord. Read that again, slowly. Somehow, much of the church still struggles with the revelation that God brought forth in the second chapter of the Book of Acts, where Peter recognized, under the unction of the Holy Spirit, just what was happening in the pandemonium that occurred on that wonderful day of Pentecost. Peter proclaimed that the day had come when, in fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel, “your sons and daughters would prophesy”. Peter signified that there was a place for women, as equals, in ministry. In Peter's day, many understood this truth. Today many churches operate with that same understanding, despite opposition from the old patriarchal system, another form of legalism that Paul is warning of in this very letter.
I’ll go further. Paul clearly tells us in the verse above that, in Christ, there is no recognition of gender. I’m here to tell you that God doesn’t judge by our outward appearance. God judges the heart. Paul’s use of the word neither, a disjunctive participle, disconnects gender from what God sees when He sets His gaze on us through Christ’s shed blood. I’m here to tell you that our brothers and sisters who identify as LGBTQ are not to be regarded as less than, or other. God sees our hearts, Beloved. All of our hearts. There is room at the cross, the very entrance to glory, for all, including those who identify as members of the LGBTQ community. Jesus confirmed this in a conversation with the Sadducees when He said the following:
Matthew 22:29-30 NLT
29 Jesus replied, “Your mistake is that you don’t know the Scriptures, and you don’t know the power of God. 30 For when the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage. In this respect they will be like the angels in heaven.
Beloved, God is not asking us to pull down our pants so that He can see what we are. We are fearfully and wonderful made. He knows that. He loves us…all.
Psalm 139:14 NKJV
14
I will praise You, for [a]I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Marvelous are Your works,
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Galatians 3:29 NLT
29 And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children[p] of Abraham. You are his heirs, and God’s promise to Abraham belongs to you.
So then, nothing disqualifies us from God’s abiding love. We are his children, all of us who have believed. We can walk in love because we have experienced His great love. There is no greater love. Let us walk in it. Let me close with one last passage from the twenty-second chapter of the Book of Matthew:
Matthew 22:26-40 NLT
36 “Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?”
37 Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’[e] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[f] 40 The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”
Beloved, these two commandments sum up the entirety of the requirement of God for each of us. We are to love God wholeheartedly and love our neighbors, all of them, as we love ourselves. Let us be found striving to achieve those lofty goals when Christ returns for us.
Selah,
wb
Galatians 2:20-21 NLT
20 My old self has been crucified with Christ.[e] It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die.
1 Corinthians 11:1 NLT
1 And you should imitate me, just as I imitate Christ.
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