Drifting Away - Gospel Freedom in Galatians - October 25 Readings: Galatians 1:6-10

 

Gospel Freedom in Galatians  

Background: What was the key issue in the early church? Race. Culture. Issues that are still with us today. The church at its inception on Pentecost was essentially 100% Jewish and the Apostles and the church in Jerusalem seemed content to keep it that way. Then God called a Pharisee named Saul to salvation and set him aside as an Apostle to the Gentiles. Over the next 30 years, the church became primarily Gentile with a Jewish minority, and many Jews fought it. 

Galatians was Paul's first letter, written at the end of his first missionary journey when Gentiles began to come to Christ in droves. A group, sometimes called Judaizers and sometimes the circumcision party, opposed the inclusion of Gentiles in the church. If they were to be part of the church, they needed to become Jewish - follow the law and Jewish rituals. Paul fought them tooth and nail his entire ministry. The gospel was for the whole world. 

Galatians is a powerful argument for a gospel free from the works of the law. 

As often as time allows, the reader is encouraged to read the entire book - it will not take more than a few minutes. Each day we will work our way through the book passage by passage. 

Today's Reading:  Galatians 1-6  Focus Passage - Galatians 1:6-10

I am amazed that you are so quickly turning away from him who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7 not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are troubling you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, a curse be on him! 9 As we have said before, I now say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, a curse be on him!

10 For am I now trying to persuade people, or God? Or am I striving to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Through the Bible Readings: Lamentations 1, 1 Thessalonians 5, Psalm119:49–52, Proverbs 26:5–6 

If you wish to read through the Bible in a year, follow these readings. 

Devotional: Drifting Away    

Henry Blackaby said that all human beings, even those who have been redeemed, have a natural tendency to depart from God. We are held by God's grace and our salvation is secure in Christ, but we have that inborn tendency to drift from our walk with the Lord back into the ways of the world and into sin.

Paul recognized a similar problem among the Galatians - a tendency to drift away from the gospel of grace and return to some form of works-based, law-focused salvation.

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. Galatians 1:6-7

There is only one gospel that saves, Paul assured them, but they were still turning aside from the grace of Christ to a false gospel, one based on human works, one that could never save.

Deep inside of each of us is the idea that we ought to do something to earn the favor of God, that we need to change to please him, do something to make him love us more, or perform some heroic act to be worthy of God's grace.

But that is why we call it grace. You can't earn it and you will never deserve it. Nothing you can do will make God love you more and your sins do not make him love you less. That is not an excuse for sin, but a great comfort. It is by grace we are saved and it is by grace that we live.

Listen, my friend, your relationship with God is based on who Christ is and what he has done, not on who you are or your merit. You need to always resist that inner voice that says you've got to earn God's love. You ought to walk in holiness because God loves you, not so that he will love you. You need to fight that inner voice that says God must not love you anymore when you have failed. You resist sin out of gratitude for God's unmerited favor not out of a desire to earn it.

Like the Galatians, we have a constant tendency to slip away from grace and fall back into a works-based mentality. Since our salvation and our lives are all of grace, we must fight that tendency every day.

Father, I thank you that you have done for me what I could not do for myself. Help me to revel in your grace and never fall back into the works of the law. 

Think and Pray:

Do you tend to depart from grace and live according to works of the law, trusting in yourself rather than in Christ?
Do you often forget that your "hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness?"

In prayer, thank God for your standing in Christ's grace and renounce the flesh!