Listen to this message:
Edward Donnelly
All of Paul’s letters are pastoral letters. They are all written by a pastor to churches in specific contexts. What can we learn as pastors for our work from the way Paul the pastor does his work? I would like for us to look at Paul’s letter to the Galatians. The theme that we are going to look at I have entitled “Contending for the Gospel.”
Contending for the Gospel
We are gospel ministers. Paul writes to the Romans saying that he and we have been “set apart for the gospel of God” (Rom. 1:1). He says to the Thessalonians, “we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel” (1 Thess. 2:4). And as gospel ministers there is no book of the Bible more vital than Paul’s letter to the Galatians. The commentators fall over themselves in trying to describe it in exalted and graphic terms. It has been called the “Magna Carta of religious freedom”: the Christian declaration of independence, the battle cry of the Reformation. Luther said, “The epistle to the Galatians is my epistle; to it I am as it were in wedlock. It is my Katherine.” John Bunyan wrote that Luther’s commentary on Galatians was his favorite book, next to the Bible.
Galatians tells us of a titanic battle which was waged in the early church. If that battle had been lost it would have halted the expansion of the Christian faith forever and Christianity would have been a subset of Judaism. But more than that, Galatians warns us of a constant, ever-present danger with which we all must deal.
I am taking this letter as having been sent to the churches in Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe, established by Paul and Barnabas on the first missionary journey, and therefore having been written shortly before the Jerusalem Council of 48-49 A.D. I am not going to spend time trying to establish the reasons why I hold to the South Galatian theory as opposed to the North Galatian theory, not because I think it is beyond dispute, but because it doesn’t really matter much in terms of interpreting the epistle.
Attacks on the Gospel
I want us to look first at the gospel being attacked as it was in this epistle. We note immediately that the gospel was being attacked from inside the church, and that is important. That is the great lesson of history. The Christian gospel has not been damaged by the pagans. The Christian gospel has not been damaged by the atheists, or by those outside the church. The Christian gospel has been damaged by those who are inside the professing church. It has been wounded in the house of its so-called “friends,” and to the present day the most destructive attacks on Christianity are not coming from outside, but from within. So we have to be alerted to that right at the beginning: danger will always come from within.
The Messenger
There was a three-fold assault being made on the gospel in Galatians. First of all, the messenger of the gospel was being attacked, the Apostle Paul. It was being claimed that he was not a true apostle. He had not been one of the twelve, he had never met the Lord Jesus during his earthly ministry, he had not been a disciple of Jesus, he had not been properly appointed: he was not a true apostle. Why were these people attacking Paul? Why were they doing this? It was because Paul was the founder of these churches. The people trusted him, they loved him, they had confidence in him. He was influential, and if the false teachers were to get their way, they had to neutralize the leader. They had to destroy him and get him out of the way. He was the barrier to the error that they wanted to introduce. So they attacked the messenger of the gospel.
Brethren, realize Satan’s strategy. He is not interested in you or me. We are not important. We don’t matter. He is interested in our message, in our ministry, in what we preach and what we stand for. And no matter how personal most of his attacks on us may be, the target is our ministry, the gospel we preach. His strategy is that he damages us solely so that he will damage our message. So the way to resist Satan is to keep on preaching, no matter what you feel like, how battered you are, how bleeding you are, or how tired you are. You must get up into that pulpit and preach, no matter what is going on. Everything may be falling to pieces around you. You realize the strategy, and as long as you are up there keep preaching the gospel. Whatever else he does is a comparative failure.
The Message
Secondly, they attack the message of the gospel. The false teachers seem to be in a group of Jewish Christians or professing Christians, and they are teaching that faith in Jesus as the Messiah is not enough; something needs to be added to it. There is a contemporary reference to these people in Acts 15:1. It is obviously during the same time, just before the Council of Jerusalem. It is about the same sort of people. Some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers that “unless you’re circumcised, according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved. You may believe in Jesus, but that’s not enough. You must be circumcised.”
There is another reference in Acts 21:20—and it is something I think many students of the New Testament overlook. There are many thousands among the Jews of those who have believed, and they are all zealous for the law. Keep in your minds brethren that there are thousands and thousands of new Christians in Jerusalem who are passionate about observing the Old Testament law. This is something the early church has to deal with. In shorthand form we call them “Judaizers.”
The Old Testament had taught that the Gentiles were to be included in the blessings of Israel. Nobody argued about that; that was clear. But the presupposition was that this involved becoming a Gentile Jew, becoming a proselyte, being circumcised. The rabbis referred to circumcision as “taking on the yoke of Torah.” I believe that Paul is probably using their language about circumcision when he talks about a “yoke of bondage” in Galatians 5:1: “Don’t take on a yoke of bondage.”
Observing the Torah and participating to the full in the Jewish institutions and ceremonies were their teachings, and it was directed against these new Gentile Christians. It was very persuasive. They said, “Paul’s preaching is true. Jesus is the Messiah. What he tells you is correct as far as it goes, but it is incomplete. He has not told you the full story. We can’t blame Paul. He never heard Jesus directly. He didn’t have the opportunities that some of us have had.” I think one of their catch phrases was “Jerusalem our mother; mother-church.” Paul talks about “Jerusalem, our mother,” and the Jerusalem that is our mother is the Jerusalem that is above. But they said, “Paul isn’t in touch with mother-church. And do you know that there are thousands and thousands of believers in mother-church in Jerusalem, and they are all circumcised! Every one of them! But if Paul had been in touch with mother-church, the church could have helped him into the fullness of our rich inheritance and devotion, and all the ceremonies and rituals, instead of this bare, incomplete, austere, faith-alone message.” It sounds familiar, doesn’t it? They are changing the message of the gospel into faith plus works. And that is the basic attack: every form of salvation plus works.
I remember hearing Francis Schaeffer on tape many years ago in his high, reedy voice, talking about “faith plus nothing; faith plus zero.” He would not have a plus added on to faith. So, here we are really looking at all other religions. We are looking at Romanism and all non-evangelical versions of Christianity. The religion of the man on the street, the arrogance of humanism, all these things, they all deny the grace of God.
The Results
They attack the messenger of the gospel, they attack the message of the gospel, and thirdly, these people were attacking the results of the gospel. They are saying, “Paul’s teaching is antinomian. Paul’s teaching that you are saved by faith alone will lead to careless living, to disobedience to God. Paul is well-meaning. He wants to bring Gentiles into the community; that’s a good thing. But what he’s doing is he’s lowering the bar. He’s making entrance as easy as possible. He’s”—to quote Paul’s version of their accusation in Galatians 1:10—“‘seeking the approval of man.’ He’s trying to please man.” And Paul says, “I’m not trying to do that. Why am I being persecuted if I’m doing that?” Yet their accusation is, “He’s well-meaning, but he’s lowering the bar, and this is going to lead to lawlessness, immorality, and moral chaos. Salvation by faith alone will lead to careless antinomianism.” That is the charge which dead religion has always brought against the gospel in every period. That is the charge against evangelical Christianity: cheap grace. And tragically we have to admit that there is a great deal of supporting evidence for that charge.
So these ideas have been finding acceptance among the immature Gentile believers in Galatia. This was the charge that was being brought, and it sounded very scriptural. It held out the enticing promise of more. People love that: if you can promise them something more and new, to get further in, a higher blessing. It also offered an escape from local Jewish hostility. Paul says categorically in Galatians 6:12, “Those who want to make a good showing in the flesh, would force you to be circumcised, only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ.” And the Galatians are on the verge of capitulating. They are allowing themselves to be circumcised, and are committing themselves to keeping the Law of Moses. The attack is proving to be extremely successful, and such attacks often are. Again and again the gospel has been seriously damaged, and people’s souls have been ruined. In a sense we are constantly living on the edge of a potential crisis.
The Gospel Defended
A Passionate Defense
That brings us to our second main section: the gospel defended. Paul defends the gospel in several ways. He defends the gospel passionately. Galatians is a vehement, angry piece of writing. Paul is angry as he writes this letter. The address to the church is as brief and curt as it is possible to be. “…To the churches of Galatia” (Gal. 1:2): that is all he says. There is no thanksgiving or any section where he says, “I thank God”—nothing like that; not a word. He plunges straight in: “I am astonished… let him be anathema… let him be anathema…. O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you… Are you so foolish? … I am perplexed about you… who hindered you from obeying the truth?” From the beginning to the end Paul is aggressive and confrontational.
In his lecture notes on Galatians, Gresham Machen says that “the first word after his name is a resounding ‘no.’” “Paul, an apostle (not from men…” (Gal. 1:1)
Secondly, it is desperate because the spiritual well-being of the Galatians is at stake. Look at chapter 5, verses 2 and 4: “Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you… You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.”
The gospel is at stake, the spiritual well-being of these people is at stake, and thirdly, the results of Paul’s own ministry are at stake. In Galatians 4:11 Paul says, “‘I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.’ I may have been wasting my time. All this work may have come to nothing.” It is a passionate response. Men, are you passionate? Are you passionate about the gospel? Are you passionate about your Lord? Are you passionate about your people? Are you passionate about your ministry? Can you get angry? Can you really get furiously angry? Can you sit and weep? May God have mercy on churches whose pastors are always composed and cool. We should pray for Calvin’s burning heart. Here is a man who cares about these people, and he shows that he cares. He cares about his Savior and his ministry. His response is passionate.
A Rational Defense
Secondly, Paul defends the gospel rationally. What I mean is that he uses reason and argues. He is feeling deeply. His emotions are excited, but that does not make him lose control. Sometimes when we get excited we splutter incoherently, and we are not thinking clearly; we are just angry and upset. Paul’s anger makes him ice cold, and his brain goes into overdrive. He starts to think profoundly and deeply. And Galatians is a model of lucid, cogent reasoning. It is one of the easiest of Paul’s epistles to outline. As with Romans, you can explain the basic structure of Galatians to a group of young people in 15 minutes, and they will remember it for the rest of their lives. The outline is beautiful.
He sets out his case like a lawyer and answers one by one the three charges brought against him: the attack on the messenger, the attack on the message, and the attack on the results of the gospel. First of all, from 1:11 to 2:21 he defends himself. He defends his apostolic authority. “I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel preached by me is not according to man. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1:11-12). And he sets out three reasons. Look at chapter 1:13-24. It is as if he said, “I was serving as an apostle to the Gentiles for years, before I had any contact with the Jerusalem apostles. I didn’t need to go like a little boy, cap in hand, and get there imprimatur. Jesus appointed me, Jesus put me into the work, I went into Arabia, and then along the coast of Asia Minor for year after year after year. I ministered the gospel of God by the authority of God.”
Then in 2:1-10 we find his second argument. He says, “When I went up to Jerusalem I met these apostles; these great authorities of yours; these people you appeal to; these ‘pillars of mother-church.’ And how did these apostles greet me? They greeted me as a fellow apostle. They recognized that I had divinely given authority which was received independently of them and was equal to their authority.” And he puts in a thrust here. He says, “There were false brothers even then, but I didn’t give in to them for a moment.” Why? Look at chapter 2, verse 5: “…so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.”
Then in 2:11-21 he gives his third argument. His authority as an apostle was so unquestioned that he was even able to rebuke Peter, the chief of the Jerusalem apostles, publicly; to correct him before all the people. And the great Peter, the intimate companion of Jesus, accepted the rebuke of Paul and took it to heart. And here is another thrust: he said to Peter in 2:14, “…how can you force Gentiles to live like Jews?” Do you see the brilliance of this man? That is exactly what these false teachers were doing. They are coming into the church forcing Gentiles to live like Jews. They said, “This is what Jerusalem wants. They want you Gentiles to live like Jews.” Paul says, “Listen, I talked to the head of the Jerusalem church and I told him off in public, and I said ‘how can you force Gentiles to live like Jews?’ and Peter had the grace and humility to say, ‘Brother, you’re right and I’m wrong.’” Paul defends his apostolic authority.
Then in the second main section of the epistle, from 3:1 to 5:12 he defends his gospel. He argues from experience. He argues from Scripture. He argues from their new status as sons. He argues from their past relationship with him. He argues from the results of the false teaching. He says, “You Galatians, you were saved by faith, not by the law. Abraham was saved by faith, not by the law. The law can condemn, but it can’t save. God’s covenant rested on a promise and faith, and the law came along much later, after the covenant had been established. The law was useful for training infants, but we are not infants. We are sons, we are heirs, we are free-born.” Look at Galatians 4:9, “…how can you turn back again…?” I like the illustration of one commentator. He said, “It’s like someone who, when they were a child, couldn’t breathe properly, and they were put on an artificial respirator. And then they outgrew that and they were perfectly healthy, and someone comes along to them as an adult and says, ‘You know, the only proper way to breathe is through an artificial respirator. Would you go back and hook yourself up to the artificial respirator?’” How can you turn back again? He says, “The choice is you can either save yourself by keeping the law, or be saved by Christ. There is no common ground. We can’t have both. ‘If you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you.’”
There is not much humor in Galatians; perhaps not any. However, I wonder if there is irony in Galatians 5:1: “‘It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.’ Has Christ set us free to lock us up? Has Christ set us free to put us in a prison? Why do you set people free? For freedom.” Paul defends his gospel.
And then thirdly, in 5:13-6:10 he defends the results of his gospel. He makes a very simple point: the false teachers are ignoring one person in all of this when they say salvation by faith alone leads to antinomianism, the Holy Spirit. There are 149 verses in Galatians, 16 references to the Spirit, once every 9 verses. “‘If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law…walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.’ It won’t lead to antinomianism. You’re changed. You are born again. ‘Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.’” It is remorseless, compelling logic.
As Christian leaders we need to think. We need to teach our people to think, to evaluate, to discern, and understand. We need to outthink the opponents of the gospel. “Love the Lord your God with all your mind.” Our faith is reasonable. It can be defended. We need to learn to do far better than little clichés. Paul is a thinker. But there is far more here than clever reasoning.
A Scriptural Defense
Paul does not just defend the gospel in a passionate and rational manner. Supremely, he defends it scripturally. Throughout he is engaging with Scripture on a very deep level. He is penetrating to the core of the Old Testament. He is dealing with profound issues, such as the law, righteousness, faith, covenants, Christ, and the work of the Spirit. Is our relationship with God a divine gift? R.E.O. White says, “Is God ultimately a passive bookkeeper…concerned only to tally the relative merits of His creatures? …Does God act in strange and unexpected ways, or is He locked into His own past?” Paul knows his Bible far better than his opponents. He meets them on their own ground and defeats them. He uses their own quotations and midrashic arguing systems against them. There are a number of midrashic arguments in Galatians, and this is from his training as a rabbi. He knows all this stuff. And he takes it and uses it against them. He can get down to precise exegetical details—“is a noun singular or plural?” In Galatians 3:16 Paul says, “Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, ‘And to offsprings,’”—or seeds—“referring to many, but referring to one, ‘And to your offspring,’ who is Christ” [emphasis added]. “This is not a plural noun, it is a singular noun,” he says. There is the detail of exegesis. But he can also take the broad sweep and see the whole picture.
Paul’s Allegorical Argument
Let me give you just two flavors of the exhilarating power of Paul’s exposition and application of Scripture. First of all, there is his famous allegorical argument in chapter 4:21-31. The great cry of these false teachers was, “We are sons of Abraham!” The great thing is to be a son of Abraham. Paul says, “I agree with you 100%. But it is written, ‘Abraham had two sons.’ Ishmael: born as a result of human effort and human activity; born by works; a slave under the bondage of rules and regulations; hostile towards his younger brother; ultimately driven out of the family. That is one son. Isaac: born by a miracle of grace; free; persecuted; receiving the full inheritance. Abraham had two sons. Which son do the Judaizers resemble? Their descent from Abraham is natural, not spiritual. Their trust is in what man can accomplish, not what God has promised. They view the Christian life as bondage, a slavish keeping of rules.”
And here is where his analysis becomes quite devastating. These Jews have utter contempt for the Arab peoples, the Ishmaelites. The last people on earth they want to resemble in any way, the most deadly insult you can offer them—even today—would be to say that they are Ishmaelites. They call the Arabs “sons of Hagar.” And Paul says, “But the center of their religion is a mountain. Where is it? It’s in Arabia. It’s called Sinai; that’s their holy place. Their persecution of the Christians, their hatred and hostility to their younger brothers, shows that they are Ishmaels; they are not Isaacs. Abraham had two sons.” That is powerful.
“Who do the Gentile believers resemble? God came to an elderly, barren woman, and beyond all expectation He gave her a child.” He quotes Isaiah 54. God came to a ruined and forsaken Israel: “O barren woman.” And he says, “I am going to give you new children.” So God had sent the gospel into these dark provinces, and from nowhere, from nothing, from death, He had made sons and daughters! And these sons and daughters are free from their burdensome law. Their status as children of God is secure. “You, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise…not of the slave but of the free woman” (Gal. 4:28, 31). He says, “What are you listening to persecuting Ishmael for! Why are you following him?” He turns the argument around on them.
The Disastrous Results of Legalism
Another example of Paul’s exposition and application of Scripture is found in chapter 5:7-12. Here we find four disastrous results of legalism. First of all, it is a harmful impact on the growth of believers. Look at verse seven: “You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth?” Legalism doesn’t produce mature Christians; it produces stumbling, wobbling, falling Christians.
The second result is found in verse nine. The infection of legalism spreads through the whole church. “A little leaven leavens the whole lump.” You only need two or three forceful people in your congregation saying, “Oh, should we be doing this? Should we be doing that?” And then the timid people get intimidated, you have to start discussing it in your church discussion group, and you are caught into a whole thing about nonsense. It is some little scruple that someone has brought in. And people are vexed and troubled about some little peripheral matter. It is not worth two minutes. “A little leaven leavens the whole lump.”
The third example is found in verse 11. Legalism produces a spirit of hostility against the gospel. “If I still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted?” The people in the church who hate the gospel most are the religious legalists, not the openly immoral people. The respectable, upright, decent people are the people who hate the gospel.
Fourthly, Paul says in verse 10, “The false teachers come under the judgment of God. ‘The one who is troubling you will bear the penalty.’” This is where perhaps something should be said regarding Paul’s notorious statement in 5:12.
“I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves!” This is not a piece of ill-tempered vulgarity, nor is it even irony or sarcasm. I used to think it was. I used to think Paul was saying, “Look men, if you are all that keen on an operation on the organs of reproduction, why not go for a really big operation?” But he is not saying that. He is making an immensely solemn point. The men in those days who were castrated were pagan priests who castrated themselves in the service of their god. And you know from Deuteronomy that such men could not belong to the people of God. Deuteronomy 23:1 says, “No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the LORD.” Paul is saying, “In your efforts to make these people more Jewish, you are in fact making them heathen. In your desire to bring them into the people of God, you are excluding them from the people of God. You are disqualifying yourself from the true Israel. You are shutting yourself out from the true Israel, and you might as well follow it through to its logical conclusion.” The crisis is as serious as that. There is not a bit of humor, irony, vulgarity, or anything like that in that statement. I think many of his readers would have instinctively understood that at once. They knew about castrated men.
Paul’s rebuttal of the heresy is superb and overwhelming. Surely it is a challenge to us to achieve a greater mastery of Scripture. True preaching is always the best defense of the truth of God.
The Gospel Preserved
That brings us thirdly and lastly to what I have called “The Gospel Preserved.” Galatians is in Scripture because it speaks to a permanent danger. The gospel is always under attack; the gospel always needs defenders. God’s purpose is that it be preserved in the world, and that is our responsibility. How shall we discharge it? I will make four points and spend the most time with the last.
The Magnitude Involved
First of all we need to understand the magnitude of the issues involved. These Judaizers were orthodox believers, or at least orthodox confessors, in many respects. Their view of Christ and their view of God were orthodox. There was no problem with it. What they were adding was the problem. And Paul saw, more clearly than anyone else in the world, the implications of what they were saying. What is the harm in adding? We are not taking anything away; we are just adding. They were saying, “Unless you are circumcised you cannot be saved.”
Imagine two anonymous, Gentile men. They are brothers and both believe in Jesus Christ. One of them is circumcised, the other is not. According to these false teachers, one will arrive in heaven, the other won’t.
“Why are you here?” the circumcised brother is asked.
“I believed in Jesus Christ”, he responds.
“But that can’t be the reason. Your brother believed in Jesus Christ and he’s not here! What’s the only thing that distinguishes you?” the circumcised brother hears in reply.
“I was circumcised.”
So you stand in front of the throne room of God to all eternity and your song is, “I was circumcised! I was circumcised!” That is the issue. You take all the glory of salvation away from Christ and you put it onto some little human accomplishment, or ritual, baptism, sacrament, ceremony, or law; and it is that that saves you. It’s the “plus” that eventually counts. We must display the same clear-eyed logic and determination. Understand the magnitude of the issues involved.
A Commitment to Preach the Gospel
Secondly, we must be committed to preaching the gospel thoroughly and regularly; not just as part of a message. We must preach gospel sermons. For this past year, on the first Lord’s Day evening of every month, I have started preaching a gospel sermon. I was convicted. I was preaching through series and expositions. The gospel was there, it wasn’t absent. But I was not taking these great gospel texts and preaching a gospel sermon. And the congregation knows that that is a good night to bring their friends, because they know that every first Lord’s Day evening of the month there will be a gospel sermon. We have to preach the gospel thoroughly. This idea of a gospel preacher as someone who has a few little cute stories and anecdotes, ties everything together, and that there is nothing much to it is wrong. Galatians shows us the need to explain, to teach, and to be profound, over and over again; to impress on our people the dimensions of the gospel so that it will build them up and equip them.
We must be aware of new threats to the gospel. You have to realize that it is very possible that many of the modern commentaries on Galatians are going to be almost useless. E.P. Sanders (covenantal nomism), his followers, his disciples, and the new view on justification: this is affecting the commentaries that are coming out. I have one new commentary in my home that says it is not about justification. The writer says, “It’s not about how you get in, it’s about how you stay in. It’s a boundary marker to identify those who are already the people of God.” So, be careful with these commentaries. Look out for this sort of thing. We have to preach the gospel.
Drawing Lines
Thirdly, we must be willing to draw lines. Machen says, “A fundamental law of the human mind is this: all definition is by way of exclusion. You cannot say clearly what a thing is without contrasting it with what it is not.” He goes on to say, “When that fundamental law is violated, we find nothing but a fog.” All definition is by way of exclusion. You can’t say what a thing is without saying what it is not.
But people today like the fog. They like foggy, misty churches and sermons. They don’t like clarity. They don’t like men saying, “If this is true, that is false. If this is the case, that cannot be the case.” We can’t just teach truth; we have to define and expose error.
We also have to be willing to draw practical lines. This I think will be more costly for those of you who live in small towns, or suburban communities. In the cities nobody cares what you do. This is where it affects the interchurch meetings, where all the local ministers meet together on a regular basis. Some of those men don’t believe gospel; they don’t teach the gospel. They are not Christian men, and you are not going to be able to be part of those fellowships. You are not going to be able to sit down with those men. They are not your brothers! They are anathema! Paul says, “Let them be anathema.” And you are going to be known as a narrow-minded, arrogant little bigot who thinks they are too good to meet with anybody else. Some of your people may resent your exclusiveness, and think, “Why does our pastor not join them?” Those men will have their 9/11 services, their war remembrance services (in Britain), and social and civic occasions, to which you cannot attend. You cannot be together with those men. They are not your brothers. They are preaching another gospel. And that is something for men who are in the big, mixed, pluralist denominations to consider. I have never been in that position, but how is it that you can sit in a synod or in a church council—how is that treating them as anathema, as accursed? We have to be prepared to draw lines.
Lastly, we have to constantly be aware of the temptation to add to the gospel. This study so far has been much too comfortable, and we are much too pleased with ourselves at the moment because we are “the good guys.” And everything we have heard has bolstered our own position; we have defended our own practice. You agree, I hope, with everything I have said. We can read Galatians at this level and feel good about ourselves. We can think “these are the people that want to add to the gospel; we don’t want to add to the gospel. These are the people who don’t want to be true to the gospel; we do. We are on Paul’s side. We are the good guys here.” But friends I think we are not feeling the force of the Scriptures. I think we need to go deeper and use our imaginations. We need to enter into the situation with imaginative sympathy, and if we do so we will find it much more unsettling, and disturbing than we imagine.
Let me put it this way: the Judaizers had a very good case. The Judaizers had a lot of sense and logic. I think there’s a strong possibility that I would have lined up with the Judaizers. They were cautious, conservative men. They had been part of the people of God for centuries. Their ancestors had been faithful to the law; faithful to death. They had died under torture, and had their martyrs. Antiochus Epiphanes was only 210 years earlier. On the whole, Jewish morality was high, and now they have a flood of Gentiles pouring into their churches. They are coming in by the hundreds swamping the Jewish members. And what sort of people are these? They are immoral people with degraded backgrounds, perverts, criminals, not even God-fearers, and ignorant of Scripture.
Let us suppose you have a congregation of 50 people, and 5 people from the inner city are converted and come to your church. You are delighted. But let us suppose 150 people from the inner city were converted, turned up in your church the next Lord’s Day morning, and said, “We want to come to this church.” (Your people would be sitting in a little frightened group in the middle.) Would you be nervous? I would be very nervous; I would be a worried man. Would it not be a good idea to construct some sort of framework to keep these people up to the mark? We can just get them into our ways and traditions that have served us well for centuries. We have to prevent this from getting out of control. We are proud of our church. There is godliness and order, and we don’t want all this spoiled. I have been working here for years and all these people could change our church to the point that it is unrecognizable. And they are being persecuted.
In the late 40s the zealots were increasing in influence and power in Jerusalem. Two of the sons of Judas the Galilean, James and Simon, had just been caught and crucified by the Roman procurator. Everything was alright as long as the Gentiles became Jews. There was no big problem; that had happened throughout history, proselytes. But when the Gentiles don’t become Jews, when what happens at Antioch goes on, can you have sympathy with Peter? Peter goes down from Jerusalem. All of his friends are in Jerusalem. They are witnessing there, and they are having a hard time facing persecution. And they send a message down to Antioch saying, “Peter, you are making life very difficult for us. We are hearing all these reports, and you are sitting here, eating with these Gentiles. You are risking our lives. You are bringing the Jewish mission to a halt. We are not going to be able to reach these people if they hear what’s going on in Antioch.” Is it not possible that Peter said, “Well, I have to be all things to all men. I don’t want to put any stumbling block in people’s way. Maybe it would be the part of wisdom for me to compromise in this situation”? Am I making a good case? Paul says in 6:13, “They desire to have you circumcised so that they may boast in your flesh.” That is, to the non-Christian Jews. It is so they can say to their friends and neighbors, “Look guys don’t get excited. These people are good Jews. They may boast in your flesh. They have become Jews. It’s not a big deal.”
Can you imagine yourself doing what Peter did? I can. There is something in us that is afraid of grace. There is something in me that is afraid of the sovereign freedom of God. When I hear that “the wind blows wherever it pleases” (John 3:8), I feel like saying, “Well, Holy Spirit, there are just a couple of places where I think it would be great if you didn’t blow there.” I feel threatened by that. There is something in me that wants to domesticate what God is doing; to keep it under control, within parameters that I can feel secure with. Most of us by conviction and experience are cautious men, and that is a good thing. We have to be cautious men. It keeps our churches safe. But brethren, can you be too cautious? Can you be too careful? Are we living consistently in the freedom for which Christ has set us free? Are we in danger of producing conformists?
Let us imagine that two men come to one of our conferences. One man is charismatic and has all sorts of ideas. He comes dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. The other guy has been listening to Trinity tapes, read the right books, and talks about our Reformed Baptist distinctives and the regulative principle of worship. He fits in perfectly! What do you really know about those men? Is Christ being formed in them, or is he just pressing our Reformed Baptist buttons, our Reformed Presbyterian buttons? You may say, “Oh that’s fine! He’s one of us.” Why is he one of us? Externals. Why is the other guy not one of us? Externals. Is that not the sort of thing Paul is dealing with? You can kill a baby not only by neglect, but also by smothering it. Are we in danger of smothering God’s work? Are we quenching the Spirit? Is this one reason for our lack of growth? Are we too cautious?
Listen to what Jim Domm says, “Are we saying to our young people, ‘Read the right books, say the right words, do the right things, and we welcome you?’” Could we lose the gospel in the next generation? I don’t think anybody ever wanted to lose the gospel. I don’t think any generation of Christians ever said, “We are going to set about losing the gospel.” But again and again, sound churches have lost the gospel. They didn’t want to, nor did they intend to. They said, “We are saved by Christ plus…” The next generation said, “We are saved by plus.” We are saved by Christ plus baptism. The next generation says, “We are saved by baptism.” I don’t have the answers. But I feel I ought to raise the questions. I hope you don’t misunderstand me. I am very cautious and conservative, but Galatians is a very unsettling book, and we need to be unsettled.
And yet in the end, here is the place of safety: Galatians calls us back to the gospel.
Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God. From now on let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus. (Gal. 6:14-17)
These men were shouting about the mark on the body. “You have to have the mark on the body. You are no good if you don’t have the mark on the body.” Paul says, “I have marks on my body.” I wonder if he took off his shirt.
Brethren, can you imagine the ruined state of that man’s back? You could die from one Jewish beating. There was a statement in the law that said that the person wielding the whip was innocent if the victim died. Paul had been beaten five times. His nerves were destroyed. His spine was twisted. His body was covered in scar tissue from the nape of his hair to his buttocks. He had been stoned and left for dead. He had been beaten with rods. You talk about a mark on the body. Paul would have said, “I have marks.” Brethren that is what we should look for in each other, shouldn’t we? The scars of faithfulness to Jesus. When I see a man who has his scars, he is my brother. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen
Let us bow briefly in prayer:
Help us, oh Lord, to reflect on these matters. Guide us aright we pray. Keep us from error, but give us courage to follow your Holy Spirit into the liberty with which Christ has made us free. Bless our fellowship together, for Jesus’ sake. Amen
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