I’m sure that you remember that great curmudgeon, Archie Bunker, along with his wife, Edith, daughter Gloria, and son-in-law Michael, a.k.a. Meathead, in Archie’s parlance. Can’t you just see Archie in his recliner and hear him shouting to Edith in the kitchen, “Edith! Get in here! I’m having to defend God all by myself!” That would be the result of some conversation Archie was having with Michael.
I suspect that we have all felt that way at some point in our lives. Someone has made a statement about God, or denigrated God, or denied God, and there’s no one around besides ourselves to take up God’s side of the discussion.
An additional picture comes to my mind. God is in the heavenly office. All of a sudden God calls out, “Jesus, where are you? Holy Spirit, get in here! You’ve got to hear these ridiculous things people are saying in my name. Where do they get this stuff? Don’t they read my Book – all of it and not just their pet verses?” “I know, Dad,” says Jesus. “They say things about me and I wonder whom they are talking about. Don’t they read my blog? Aren’t they following my Twitter feed?” And the Spirit just blows the curtains with its exasperated sighs.
If the apostle Paul were in the room, he would chime in, “Tell me about it. You know how many times I preached in those churches I started, and how many times I’ve had to straighten out their thinking. Their brains are like used up lint roller sheets. No sooner do I tear off a no-longer-sticky sheet and the new one gets clogged with every sort of misinformation imaginable.”
That’s where Paul is as he quickly dives into the heart of his correspondence with the Galatians, not even taking time for his usual prayer of thanksgiving for the readers and their faithfulness:
“I’m amazed that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ to follow another gospel. It’s not really another gospel, but certain people are confusing you and they want to change the gospel of Christ.” (Galatians 1:6-7)Even in his words of greeting, we can sense that Paul was impatient and annoyed:
“From Paul, an apostle who is not sent from human authority or commissioned through human agency, but sent through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead.” (Gal. 1:1)When challenged, Paul based the credibility of his teaching on the authority of Jesus Christ. In other words, he claimed to be consistent with what Jesus said and did. Those who questioned his message or methods were in danger of questioning Christ’s own message.
Undoubtedly Paul had heard that there were some among the Galatians who were calling his teaching into question. Paul wasn’t going to let that go by unchallenged. Paul carefully worded his rejoinder to them: I was “not sent from human authority or commissioned through human agency.”
That was part of his defense against the Judaizers, the people who kept trying to reintroduce Jewish religious beliefs and practices into the avenues of faith inaugurated by Jesus’ death and resurrection. “Who are you going to believe?” says Paul. Paul, whose authority came directly from Christ, or the people who kept trying to bind up Christ for their own purposes. From whom did they take their authority? Paul confronted the Galatians and told them that they needed to develop a more discerning approach to those who claimed to speak for God.
Paul had spent a goodly amount of time with the fledgling Galatian church to be sure that they knew the full gospel which he was called by Christ to deliver to the Gentile world. This gospel emphasized the new creation which had been brought about through the cross. The sacrificial and atoning death of Jesus Christ was the key to the gospel.
Paul really did preach a new creation. So much was new and transformed and so many of the details of the old, the Jerusalem-based, peculiarly Jewish, cultic practices were simply left behind. These included male circumcision, special dietary restrictions, particular practices for the Sabbath, and conventions about relationships among genders, economic classes, and ethnic origins. All of them had been utterly reinterpreted or done away with by the event of the cross.
The essence of God and the grace of the Christ event simply could not be contained by the cultic practices of the faith that Paul had grown up in. These practices and attitudes were not vessels or means to the grace of Christ; they were, in fact, utterly irrelevant in the context of this non-Jewish, Galatian Christian setting. Moreover, they stood in the way of Christ’s grace.
The perverse ideas of the gospel which other so-called believers brought to the Galatians after Paul had moved on to other mission fields were more than misinterpre-tations of the nuances of the gospel. Paul claimed that they presented a whole new “gospel.” Paul did not posit this accusation lightly. He knew that there was little “good news” in a system of belief that reverses the freedom of Christ, saps the strength of the Spirit, and refastens the shackles of the law.
Paul was adamant that the result of Jesus’ gift of himself was to deliver us from the present evil age. The Greek word for “deliver” can also be translated “rescue.” This is the work of Jesus. He sets us free, rescues us. That was his purpose. Christ not only gave himself for our sins; he also delivers us from the helpless condition where we cannot resist sin (our present evil age) and welcomes us into his kingdom where he is Lord. Paul wanted his brothers and sisters in Galatia to be alarmed that they had exchanged their freedom in Christ for slavery under a system based on human effort.
All the rituals that had been foisted on the Galatians after Paul’s first time with them did not square with the gospel which Paul had preached and taught and lived for them and among them.
We could wonder if Paul thought that he had failed to teach them strongly enough. We could wonder if the Galatians had been paying sufficient attention to Paul, that they had only caught some of the topmost ideas but hadn’t drunk in the deep meanings of Paul’s teaching. We could also wonder if the Galatians were by nature a bit gullible or capricious, blowing in the wind of whatever the latest ideas were circulating. After all, if those ideas came from someplace out of town, they had to be right.
Whatever the cause, it seems apparent that the Galatians had failed to fact-check the gospel ideas that were presented to them after Paul had left them. In their euphoria for Christ they seemed to take in everything that came along. Paul was amazed at how easily the Galatian believers had deserted the good news of the gospel of Christ for the bad news that they subsequently had been taught. Paul’s use of the word “deserted” was well placed. It was a military term meaning AWOL (absent without leave). The people who were deserting the true gospel were deserting Christ. They were turning away from the discipline of grace to the undisciplined world of works – rituals, practices, meaningless activities that simply fill time and space. The other gospel was without grace, without hope, and ultimately without Christ.
Paul wasn’t worried about alternative viewpoints of interpretation; he was warning the Galatians about turning from the truth to lies, from what was right to what was wrong. The apostle wasn’t fazed about competing in popularity with other messengers. He wanted it understood that once the truth of the gospel had been declared, all amendments were false. C. S. Lewis wrote, “One of the great difficulties is to keep before the audience’s mind the question of Truth. They always think you are recommending Christianity not because it is true but because it is good.”
Jesus Christ has made the gift of salvation available to all people, not just to Jews. And faith in Christ is the only requirement for salvation. Beware of people who say that we need more than simple faith in Christ to be saved. When people set up additional requirements for salvation, they deny the power of Christ’s death on the cross, Paul says to fact-check the gospel. Accept no substitutes. The grace of Christ is more than enough for everyone of us. We need nothing else.
Thanks be to God.
General Resources: Gregory H. Ledbetter, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), Year C, vol. 3, 87-91; Life Application Commentary, “Galatians.”
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
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