The Self-Esteem Mirage - Gospel Freedom in Galatians - November 19 Readings: Galatians 6:3-5

 

 

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 6:3-5

For if anyone considers himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. 4 Let each person examine his own work, and then he can take pride in himself alone, and not compare himself with someone else. 5 For each person will have to carry his own load.

Through the Bible Readings: Ezekiel 43-44, Hebrews 11:1–14, Psalm 126, Proverbs 28:12–14

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

Devotional:  The Self-Esteem Mirage   

When we get to heaven, I am going to have to pull Paul aside and give him an earful. Evidently, he did not get the memo that the biggest human problem is low self-esteem and that the answer to all of our problems is to love ourselves and have high self-image. He labors under these crazy ideas that we are sinners who need to be saved from ourselves and fixed by God. 

Get a Bible and read it from cover to cover. With a red pen, underline every time the Bible warns us about pride, about esteeming ourselves too highly, and how often it warns us to humble ourselves in the eyes of God. Then take a green pen and mark every verse than advocates exalting yourself and promotes the importance of his self-esteem. Your Bible will be filled with red marks and you will only have a green mark or two by stretching hermeneutics to their breaking point (for instance, pretending that the admonition to love your neighbor as yourself is first a command to love yourself). 

Paul couldn't be clearer here. If you think you are something, when you are nothing, you are deceiving yourself. This is not a command to demean yourself, but a recognition that sin leaves us spiritually broken and unable to fix ourselves. The solution to human problems is not greater self-esteem, but humbling ourselves before God, repenting of our sin, and seeking him with all our hearts. 

Too often, we whisper about sins that the Bible shouts about. To us, pride and self-glory are honorable traits, necessary to get ahead. It was precisely that pride that the Serpent evoked in the Garden when he told Adam and Eve they would be like God (or become gods themselves - either translation is possible). God humbled proud Nebuchadnezzar and he said over and over again in the Word - "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble" - in a variety of ways. 

If you want worldly success, perhaps aggression and self-promotion are the way. But if you want to be great in the kingdom of God, you must humble yourself before the Father and declare your absolute dependence on him. 

Father, without you, I can do nothing. I need you today. Every day. For everything 

Think and Pray:

Have you bought into the worldly way of self-promotion and self-glory, or are you humbling yourself before God? 

Examine your heart for pride and all its destructive tentacles.