Steven Sim

Message shared at BM Gospel Centre - 12 October 2008

Freedom In Christ (Gal 5:1-15)

Whenever we come to the letters of Paul, I get very excited. 

Not merely because Paul had something to teach us about the gospel and god and the church, but because there is always a story behind each of his sentences. 

Understanding Paul – Clerks, Context and Cost

But our problems begin when we think we understand Paul too well.

First before I go into Galatians 5 proper, I would like to share a few thoughts on Paul and his epistle to the Galatians and hopefully ultimately leading to chapter 5 and to discuss our title today Freedom in Christ. 

First thought, we have always suffer or rather make Paul suffer from the “lone ranger syndrome”. Our impression of Paul is a bearded wise old man, a little bulky sitting on a thick wooden desk, with a quill on his hand writing on a scroll, the would-be Sacred Scripture. And sometimes, we imagine him pausing to put his left hand over his forehead as if in a moment of inspiration before the writings flow again.

But if I may break that romantic notion a bit, Paul didn’t usually do that when writing his letters. No Paul didn’t write alone most of the time. He probably had a small group of brothers and sisters coming together in a cozy room and as they sat down to listen to one another about rumours and news of say the Church in Galatia or the Church in Rome, they would discuss the proper response and someone would take down notes and write the letter.  

I have a breaking news for you (or at least for me when I first discovered it)…Paul didn’t write the epistle to the Romans. See Romans 16.22. Some chap called Tertius wrote it under Paul’s dictation.

And what about Galatians? Paul probably wrote this letter himself as he mentioned in Galatians 6:11. Do you see a problem with that verse? “See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand”. If most of the letters he sent to the churches are hand written by him, it is indeed weird that he should inform the Galatians that this letter was written by him personally. And Galatians is not really a large letter, compared to Romans or 1 and 2 Corinthians. But it is considered large because as it is, Romans and 1 and 2 Corinthians were most probably written by a “clerk” and not by Paul himself.

Why am I saying all this?

I think most of the time, we missed the human elements of Scripture and the story of the first century church and the characters in the story, the people, Paul, Peter, Jesus when we fail to look at the humanity in them and proceed straightaway to look above and beyond into the white clouds and see angels floating around. Because if we fail to see the human effort, the brainstorming, the discussion, the dispute, the argument and the debate behind the letters of Paul, we will fail to appreciate the study of these documents. If we imagine the letters flow easily like rivers of inspiration from Paul’s mind, then we will likewise take them as easy-going as they came to us.

Paul did not write letters for the sake of writing Scripture, if I may say. No. He wrote it because he felt a burden in his heart for the churches, especially those that he planted. Not only there were discussions and brainstormings (someone wrote that letters such as 2 Corinthians probably took a few days to write), there were also the cost of writing - obtaining the writing materials, then writing the letters and afterwards dispatching them. 

Paul didn’t have emails like us. In fact he didn’t have courier services or even postal services. What I want to say, to put it simply is this, it cost more, much much more for Paul to send a letter in the first century than now. 

And if we take all these into considerations, the clerks and the cost, we must realized more than ever that writing a letter is no joke nor even a past time hobby in Paul’s term. No, he didn’t write to the Galatia because he woke up one day and think, well, I have no tents to make this afternoon why not write a letter to my good friends in Galatia. No, Paul didn’t write like we did to our pen pals. 

Given the costs and efforts require to write and send a letter, when Paul writes, there must be a huge issue at hand. And in order to understand Paul’s letter, we have to understand why he spent so much efforts and money to write his letters. That’s the context. The story behind. 

Paul’s Context

What was the story behind Paul and his letters, especially Galatians?

Let me repeat what I’ve said earlier, our problem is when we think we understand Paul too well. Before we can let him speak for himself, we are very quick to say, “Aha! Paul, grace, justification by faith not by works, salvation apart from the law, against the Jews and Judaizers”.

Jewish Paul & Elijah, Prophet of Israel

But let us remember one thing, Paul was a Jew, a Pharisee-trained Jew, speaking from a Judaistic background. And a Jew like him, it was expected that he spoke as one passionate about the Jewish race and religion. See Romans 9, how he anguished for his brothers, those of his own race, the people of Israel (v. 1-4). We cannot make him into an enemy of the Jewish religion or race as Christians often made Paul. No…in fact, the interesting thing about Galatians, if you notice, Paul actually saw himself like a Jewish prophet, in the likeness of one of the greatest Prophet of Israel, Elijah.

See his pattern:

Paul was a Jew in the tradition of “zeal”, almost like the Zealots but not quite. And he was persecuting the church, to the extend of killing and destroying them. But when he was converted, he went to Arabia and then to Damascus…(Gal 1: 13-17)

Arabia? Damascus? What’s that for? And why did Paul bother to tell us?

See Elijah in 1 King 19:

Elijah was a Jew in the tradition of “zeal”. After killing the prophets of Baal out of zeal for YHWH, Elijah fled to Mt. Sinai (Horeb), the mount of god and received instruction from god to go to Damascus

Where of Arabia? Paul himself gave the answer in Gal 4:25 - Mt. Sinai in Arabia.

Paul traced his own pattern of ministry like that of Elijah - 

zeal, to the extend of killing

Mt. Sinai, probably as a pilgrimage to where it all began, and finally was commissioned to

Damascus, to declare the new King

Paul and The Law

The reason why I took a long de-tour on Paul and his thought in Galatians is to shake us a bit from our protestant post reformation understanding of Paul’s position in regards with Judaism and the law. 

The thing about us is that we often think about the law as something negative, a remnant of the old religion of Judaism. And Paul was preaching a new thing called grace where you do away with the laws. But as Galatians have demonstrated, Paul thought of himself as a Jew, and in the ministry of Elijah, one of the greatest Jewish prophets. 

And a good standing Jew will not consider the Law as something bad or negative. If Paul the Jewish Apostle has regarded the Law as a no-entry sign for salvation, then he would have a hard time answering questions from fellow Jews about how Israel was saved before Jesus came. I have, more and more, come to think that Paul did not mean that. 

Freedom In Christ?

So why did Paul pitted the law against freedom in Christ?

I believe when Paul spoke about Freedom in Christ, he had in mind three things:

1.Paul was saying salvation is not only limited to Jews alone but is now open to all and sundry. That is to say in Christ, the old religion of the Jewish people is freed from ethnic-exclusivity. Consider Gal 3:23-28.

Paul was speaking about the law in vv. 23-24. We would expect that Paul would say, “now that faith has come…as many of you as were baptized into Christ, you were saved by grace”. Instead Paul went on to say, “there is neither Jew nor Greek…”. The gospel, brothers and sisters, is not that we are justified by faith. But rather, the gospel is “Jesus is Lord”. The OT again and again state that when the Jewish Messiah comes, YHWH the Jewish god will fulfill his promise to Abraham to bless the whole world through him (Gal 3:8). So then, if Paul believed Jesus was the true Messiah and he was made Lord, Paul knew and taught that the time for the Abrahamic blessings is here -  we are set free from an exclusive religion, a religion restricted to a certain kind of race and gender and social position. This is the new Freedom in Christ.

2. Secondly, Paul was saying that we are now not restricted to worshiping god in one narrow perspective. That is to say, in Christ, we are freed to worship god beyond the traditional expression of Judaism. 

We should not forget that Israel of old did consider their election by YHWH god is solely by his grace. The Psalms has plentiful expression of god choosing Israel because of his pleasure and not because of any good deeds in them. The Law was given as a form of badge to wear AFTER Israel was chosen by god to be his people. This means, the Law was an expression of honouring god, a mark of BEING in the covenant rather than the mark to GET into the covenant. It is the Israel part of the agreement. God chose them, they obey god’s law. Not vice versa, we can forget about our protestant baggage for a while. 

But when Christ came, Paul was in effect saying, look, now don’t worry about honouring god through keeping the law. Through eating a certain food or through circumcision. It’s a New Age now. That’s a key point, please put your finger on the phrase: It’s a New Age now. We’ll come back to that later. Paul was saying, you no longer do this to honour god, in fact your stubborn insistence that one CAN only honour god through the law has become a stumbling block to others. And your preoccupation with keeping the outdated laws is enslaving you. You are challenging the work of Jesus. Because when the Messiah comes, these things will end. 

Then what is the substitute for this keeping of the law? Paul seemed to indicate in Gal 5:6 that the way forward is not circumcision OR even non-circumcision, but rather a new dynamics is at work: Love

3. Which brings us to my third and final point, that is, Paul was saying that in Christ we are freed to accept and love one another. 

If we look at the issue of law and justification by faith and freedom and MERELY focus on them as though all Paul was saying was about Salvation, then we may risk missing the point. I am not saying Paul didn’t have any thing to say about Salvation here, but rather I want to invite us to also look at these themes and consider about Church. In a more technical word, instead of solely thinking about Soteriology, let us consider Ecclesiology as well. 

The gospel, as I have stressed earlier in this message and elsewhere many times, is Jesus is Lord, the Jewish Messiah is Lord. That was the whole expectation and hope of Israel, either god will become king or his annointed one will become king. Different groups of people interpreted the OT slightly differently but they hover between these two poles, god himself becoming king or the Messiah becomes king. And of course, needless to say, when the Messiah is king, YHWH himself will rule all in all. 

What does all this means to us and more importantly to Paul and Israel of his time and of all time?

When YHWH finally gets down to do serious business, the whole earth will experience his blessings and salvation (Isaiah 52:10). The whole world, not only the Jewish people will come to know god, that was god’s promise to Abraham. I have demonstrated this above. But now so what? When the Messiah comes, or when YHWH finally acts, the New Age will arrive (there’s the word your finger is on). New Age or in the words of Paul, New Creation (Gal 6:15). In this new Creation it is not merely the opening up of the covenant to include non Jews and the abrogation of the Law but most importantly, there is this new powerful source of inspiration, Love. 

Consider the flow of Galatians,

1. Criticism and attack against those who stubbornly cling to the old way of the Law

2. Expounding our freedom over and against the old way

3. The way forward to love, and love and love…

That’s the only way brothers and sisters. We are already in, how do we do church then? How do we evangelize? Do we like the Judaizers in Galatians insist on our METHODS of belief and worship? Do we stubbornly insist that all who wants to come to god be made into “christian-jews”? Do we stubbornly insist that they must follow and take part in some of our traditions - please think about tithing, our worship style, the dress we wear, the language we talk? 

I want to repeat, consider again Paul not merely talking about Soteriology, but about Ecclesiology. How do we invite people into the covenant with god and once they are in, what should we do with them? Paul, after writing such a large letter spent his last few paragraph insisting on love. Because now, in Christ, we are freed to accept and love others. And why must we do that? Because the Law (notice Paul didn’t think that we can throw away the law), because the Law is summed up in one word: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. And Paul here used the greek word: Agape, Love, which in Romans (13), the same Apostle said is the fulfillment of the Law.