Henry: Welcome To Immerse: The Daily Bible Reading Experience.
Day 27.
immersed in Galatians,
the super apostles in Corinth weren't the only ones trying to discredit Paul
in the Roman province of Galatia, a region in Asia minor, modern day Turkey.
Some troublemakers were bringing a different version of the good
news about Jesus into the church.
Paul had founded.
They were teaching that even those who had faith in Jesus needed to
obey certain parts of the Jewish law, particularly circumcision.
These false teachers evidently claimed that Paul had learned this from the other
apostles and was teaching this elsewhere.
Even though Paul was about to leave for Jerusalem, he recognized
the urgency of writing a letter to the Galatians right away.
The meaning of the gospel itself was at stake.
In his letter, Paul sets the record straight regarding what he taught,
where he learned it, and what following Jesus really involves.
We can tell immediately that Paul is upset by what's happening in Galatia.
A standard feature of Paul's letter is an opening word of Thanksgiving
for the recipients, but Paul skips it and goes straight to his reprimand.
I am shocked that you are turning away so soon from God.
You are following a different way that pretends to be the good news.
But is not the good news at all.
Paul first explains that he received the gospel message directly
from Jesus, not the apostles.
He goes on to say that the apostles in Jerusalem believe the same thing he does.
Gentiles who follow Jesus don't need to keep the Jewish law.
Next, Paul describes a confrontation he had with the
apostle Peter over this issue.
Peter had stopped eating meals with Gentiles because of pressure from
some Jewish believers who thought all Gentile believers should be circumcised.
This struck at the heart of God's revelation that there is a new single
family based on faith in Jesus.
Paul had challenged Peter publicly because he was not following
the truth of the gospel message.
Paul then devotes the bulk of this letter to explaining why it isn't necessary
for Gentiles to keep the Jewish law.
He reminds the Galatians that God gave them the Holy Spirit
and worked miracles among them.
As soon as they believed the message about the Messiah.
They already had signs of God's new world existing in their community,
so why should they now think they needed to follow Jewish observances?
Paul provides an in-depth discussion of Israel's history, including the crucial
sequence of Abraham, the giving of the law under Moses, and then the coming of Jesus.
Although Abraham lived before the Jewish law was established, he received God's
promises of land and a worldwide family, and he believed those promises by faith.
Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.
Paul argues that the later coming of the Jewish law can't undo
the covenant made with Abraham.
The law was given to God's people only for a period of time as a
guardian until the Messiah came.
Now that Jesus has come, everyone who has faith in him becomes
a true child of Abraham and an heir of the promises made to him.
The dividing line between Jew and Gentile are dissolved, and now one
family of Abraham exists through faith in Jesus because of their
equal status in God's family.
Starting to follow the requirements of the Jewish law would be a giant
step backward for the Galatians.
God's story has already moved on.
All people are now welcome to receive Jesus and join the family without having
to become Jewish or follow Jewish law.
Now, just one question remains, if the Gentiles don't follow the Jewish law, what
will keep them from living immoral lives?
Paul emphasizes that God's holy Spirit living in them empowers them to
follow the good ways of God's kingdom.
As Paul says, in closing, it doesn't matter whether we
have been circumcised or not.
What counts as whether we have been transformed into a new creation?
May God's peace and mercy be upon all who live by this principle.
They are the new people of God.
The letter to the Galatians,
this letter is from Paul and 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.
All the brothers and sisters here join me in sending this letter
to the churches of Galatia.
May God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace.
Jesus gave his life for our sins just as God our father planned in order to
rescue us from this evil world in which we live all glory to God forever and ever.
Amen.
I am shocked that you are turning away so soon from God who called you to himself
through the loving mercy of Christ.
You are following a different way that pretends to be the good news,
but is not the good news at all.
You are being fooled by those who deliberately twist the
truth concerning Christ.
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.
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.
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.
Dear brothers and sisters, I want you to understand that the
gospel message I preach is not based on mere human reasoning.
I received my message from no human source and no one taught me.
Instead, I received it by direct revelation from Jesus Christ.
You know what I was like when I followed the Jewish religion, how I
violently persecuted God's church.
I did my best to destroy it.
I was far ahead of my fellow Jews and my zeal for the traditions of my ancestors.
But even before I was born, God chose me and called me by his marvelous grace.
Then it pleased him to reveal his son to me so that I would proclaim the
good news about Jesus to the Gentiles.
When this happened, I did not rush out to consult with any human being, nor
did I go up to Jerusalem to consult with those who were apostles before I was.
Instead, I went away into Arabia and later I returned to the city of Damascus.
Then three years later, I went to Jerusalem to get to know Peter,
and I stayed with him for 15 days.
The only other apostle I met at that time was James, the Lord's brother.
I declare before God that what I am writing to you is not a lie.
After that visit, I went north into the provinces of Syria and Saia, and
still the churches in Christ that are in Judea didn't know me personally.
All they knew was that people were saying the one who used to persecute us as now
preaching the very faith he tried to destroy and they praise God because of me.
Then 14 years later, I went back to Jerusalem again.
This time with Barnabas and Titus came along too.
I went there because God revealed to me that I should go.
While I was there, I met privately with those considered to be leaders of the
church and shared with them the message I had been preaching to the Gentiles.
I wanted to make sure that we were in agreement for fear that all my efforts
had been wasted and I was running the race for nothing, and they supported me
and did not even demand that my companion be circumcised, though he was a gentile.
Even that question came up only because of some so-called believers there.
False ones really who were secretly brought in.
They sneaked in to spy on us and take away the freedom we have in Christ Jesus.
They wanted to enslave us and force us to follow their Jewish
regulations, but we refuse to give in to them for a single moment.
We wanted to preserve the truth of the gospel message for you, and the
leaders of the church had nothing to add to what I was preaching.
By the way, their reputation as great leaders made no difference
to me, for God has no favorites.
Instead, they saw that God had given me the responsibility of
preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, just as he had given Peter the
responsibility of preaching to the Jews.
For the same God who worked through Peter as the Apostle to the Jews, also worked
through me as the Apostle to the Gentiles.
In fact, James, Peter and John, who were known as pillars of the
Church, recognized the gift God had given me, and they accepted
Barnabas and me as their coworkers.
They encouraged us to keep preaching to the Gentiles while they
continued their work with the Jews.
Their only suggestion was that we keep on helping the poor, which
I have always been eager to do.
But when Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him to his face
for what he did was very wrong.
When he first arrived, he ate with the gentile believers
who were not circumcised.
But afterward, when some friends of James came, Peter wouldn't
eat with the Gentiles anymore.
He was afraid of criticism from these people who insisted on
the necessity of circumcision.
As a result, other Jewish believers followed Peter's
hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.
When I saw that they were not following the truth of the gospel message, I said to
Peter, in front of all the others, since you are Jew by birth, have discarded the
Jewish laws and are living like a Gentile, why are you now trying to make these
gentiles follow the Jewish traditions?
You and I are Jews by birth, not sinners like the Gentiles.
Yet we know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not
by obeying the law, and we have believed in Christ Jesus so that we might be
made right with God because of our faith in Christ, not because we have
obeyed the law for no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law.
But suppose we seek to be made right with God through faith in
Christ, and then we are found guilty because we have abandoned the law.
Would that mean Christ has led us into sin?
Absolutely not.
Rather, I am a sinner.
If I rebuild the old system of law, I already tore down for
when I tried to keep the law.
It condemned me.
So I died to the law.
I stopped trying to meet all its requirements so that I might live for God.
My old self has been crucified with Christ.
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.
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.
This concludes today's immer reading experience.
Thank you for joining us.