Galatians 5:1-12 Grace (Works Can't COMPARE)

The Judaizers couldn’t stand the thought of the human heart unrestricted by the law.  It had to run wild without it, they thought.  They were misunderstanding the freedom Paul was speaking about.

 

He knew that once the Holy Spirit took control of a life and enabled the Christian to obey out of love and not out of fear, not trying to be good in their own strength, God’s grace would supply them with all that they needed.  They’d be free from the checklist mentality of the Judaizers, who could never ever be sure they’d been good enough to earn their way to heaven.  They’d been trying to convince the new believers that they were missing something and that they could be more spiritual if they practiced the law.

 

My commentary used an illustration of a driver deliberately running a red light, then defending himself before the officer by saying, “I know I ran that red light – but I have never robbed anybody.  I’ve never killed anybody.  I’ve never cheated on my income tax.”  “The policeman smiles as he writes out the ticket, because he knows that no amount of OBEDIENCE can make up for ONE ACT OF DISOBEDIENCE.”  The legalists knew they hadn’t kept all of the law, but still defended their beliefs!  Grace was the only answer to the sin problem.

 

Father, I am a sinner.  I can do nothing on my own to overcome that fact.  It’s only by Your grace in sending Your Son to die for me that I can know that I will live with You.  Never let me believe that I can do any better than that on my own.

 

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Galatians 4 -- Lots To Boil Down In This Chapter

Boiling down this whole chapter into a few paragraphs is impossible, but some important things from my commentary stuck out:

 

“The New Testament word for adoption means “to place as an adult son”.  It’s more about our position that our condition, it said.  “Under grace, the believer is a son of God with adult standing in God’s family … Like the prodigal son, the Galatians wanted their Father to accept them as servants, when they really were sons … Since we are adopted – placed as adult sons in the family – we may begin drawing on our inheritance right now … The son has a future, while the servant does not … The Galatians were dropping out of the school of grace and enrolling in the kindergarten of law!”

 

“We must lay aside childish things.  How easy it is for us to hold the toys of our earlier Christian days and fail to lay hold of the tools of the mature believer.  The child does not enjoy being weaned, but he can never become a man until it happens…”

 

“God began with grace, not law.”  He clothed Adam and Eve in grace before giving the law.

 

“Legalism is one of the major problems among Christians today.  We must keep in mind that legalism does not mean the setting of spiritual standards; it means worshipping those standards and thinking that we are spiritual because we obey them.  It also means judging other believers on the basis of those standards.”

 

Father, help me to digest all of this and apply it to my life.  Remind me that You have adopted me as an adult son into Your family.

 

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Galatians 3:15-29 How The Law And God's Covenant Of Grace Cooperate

Paul was an excellent Jewish lawyer and debater, and God had shown him amazing truths that the Judaizers had never considered.  They thought the law was the end-all, be-all of their existence.  He showed them that it could not override or overrule the covenant God made with Abraham centuries earlier.  That covenant, between God and Abraham and Abraham’s seed (singular, not plural – Christ) could not be altered by the law given through Moses centuries later.  There were no “if’s” in God’s covenant, either.  It was entirely of grace, and the law had a terminus point, “until the Seed (Christ) shall come,” my commentary said.

 

The Judaizers saw conflict between the two, while Paul saw cooperation.  The law could not give life, but they were worshiping it as if it could.  All it could was reveal sin.  It was acting much like a child guardian slave that people were used to seeing back then – instructing the children and even disciplining them – but the slave was never the father of the children he guarded.  He trained them for adulthood.  That’s what the law did as well.  It trained them to be adult sons of God.  Through Christ, we become heirs and adult sons of God, not through the law, and that makes us Abraham’s seed as well.

 

Father, thank You for reminding me that I am an adult son in Your family – an heir of Yours!  Help me, as my commentary said, to draw on my inheritance.  Remind me often that I am Yours!

 

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Galatians 3:1-14 More About The Fight

Paul was in a battle for the hearts and souls and minds of those Christians he loved in Galatia.  The enemies – the Judaizers – were trying to capture their hearts with their Gospel+ arguments, and Paul was going to fight hard to get them back.  He first asked them about what they’d personally experienced.  They’d been bewitched into forgetting what it was like when they became Christians – the burden that had been lifted from them.  They’d been seduced by the legalists’ tantalizing proposal that their experience wasn’t complete – that there was something more to do.  Who’d want to miss out by skipping an important step, after all?  That’s what got them – a lack of trust that Christ was all they needed.

 

My commentary says, “Since the Judaizers wanted to take believers back into the law, Paul quoted the law!  And, since they magnified the place of Abraham in their religion, Paul used Abraham as one of his witnesses!”  The law said God’s righteousness was credited to Abraham’s account only because he believed God’s promise.  The Judaizers that their physical relationship to Abraham guaranteed their salvation.  They failed to understand that “God has no grandchildren,” my commentary said.

 

Paul also noted that the law mentioned that Abraham’s blessing was going to be for the Gentiles as well, who weren’t physical descendants of Abraham.  So how was that going to work in their arguments?

 

Paul also quoted from the law, “Anyone will be cursed who does not always obey what is written in the Book of the Law.”  None of the Judaizers could dare claim that they’d always obeyed everything in the law, so those teaching legalism were clearly cursed!

 

Paul wasn’t finished with them.  He was just getting started.

 

Father, thank You for showing me plainly years ago how much You loved me by setting me free from all of the demands of the law.  You weren’t giving me a license to sin.  You were instead giving me a reason not to sin – the love of You and Your Son shown to me on the cross.  And love is a much better reason to obey than a curse.

 

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Galatians 2 Continued -- Not Really Paul vs Peter

Paul had to take Peter to task for retreating on the issue of legalism.  He traveled to Jerusalem and met with Peter, James, and John, then with the Jerusalem church.  My commentary wondered how different Christianity would have been if Paul’s philosophy had been “peace at any price”.  Would we have just become a minor sect of Judaism?

 

Paul decided that God was directing him and once he shared his firm beliefs with the council, they agreed.  My commentary also said, “The leaders recognized that God had assigned different areas of ministry to different men.”  Paul to the Gentiles and Peter to the Jews, much like some men do an excellent job working with you while others are much better with adults today.  It’s not about competition, but cooperation in spreading the Gospel.

 

Father, please continue to direct me to that group that You have uniquely gifted me to serve.  Show all of us where You want us working.

 

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Galatians 1-2 What Was Worrying Paul

Paul is showing anxiety over the Christians in Galatia.  Something has changed quickly and for the worse!  They’d allowed themselves to be swayed by legalism and that argument had caused them to think they had to earn grace, when it was a free gift of God.

 

Paul is saying, “This isn’t how I raised you!” in effect.  He goes back to his own life to show them how the power of Christ had led him to do a 180.  They’d also made a change, but they were allowing themselves to be persuaded by others to change again – for the worse.

 

Father, I don’t know how this happens, but I’ve watch it myself.  I know the anxiety Paul is feeling and the anguish in his heart that those he’s taught and won to Christ should turn from what they knew in their hearts.  Protect those I love from the lies of Satan that attempt to pull them away from You, Father.  What they see as harmless, let them understand to instead by eternally deadly.

 

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Exodus 38-40 Getting It Exactly Right

The appointed craftsmen fashioned everything for the Tabernacle just as God had commanded.  Moses then personally inspected every piece to make sure that it conformed to God’s design.  “God could not and would not dwell in the Tabernacle unless everything was done according to the pattern He showed Moses on the mount.  Too many sincere people have tried to do God’s work their own way and then have asked God to bless it.  But ministry doesn’t work that way.  First we find out what God wants us to do, and we do it to glorify Him.  If we obey His will and seek to honor His name, then He will come and bless the work with His powerful presence,” my commentary said.

 

Once it was all assembled, on their New Year’s Day, the glory of God filled the Tabernacle and abode there.  “So powerful was the presence of God’s glory that Moses wasn’t able to enter the Tabernacle!” my commentary added.

 

Father, I know things are different now that Jesus has come, died, and been raised to life and the Holy Spirit now indwells believers.  Please let the abiding of the Holy Spirit in our lives be as awesome as the abiding of Your glory here in this chapter – filling us up so there is no room for sin!

 

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford