First Presbyterian Church         June 6, 2010

         Over the next few weeks I’ll be preaching from the book of Galatians and I thought it would be helpful for you if I gave you some background about the letter and what was happening in the churches in Galatia and why it matters to us. 

         This letter is written by Paul.  No one disputes this, which is highly unusual because scholars love to debate who actually wrote something in the Bible.  Galatia was located in what is now Turkey and these churches were actually begun by Paul as he reached out to spread Christianity not just to the Jews but to Gentiles like us --- a Gentile was the name the Jews gave to anyone who wasn’t Jewish.  

Now all the letters we have that were written by Paul were written for one basic reason – there was a major problem going on in their churches or in the early church in general – and that was what was happening in Galatia.  Their conflict wasn’t over what color to paint the nursery.  It was over an issue so important that it would fundamentally shape all of Christianity forever.  Galatians and Romans were the two most influential books ever written.

So what was the problem?  Paul taught that one became a Christian through the grace and love of God given to us by the teachings, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.  It was not limited to any one group but is available to us all.  Listen to these verses you know so well from the gospel of John:  “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.  For God did not send His Son into the world to destroy the world but that the world might be saved through Him.”  

Notice the language because it is of ultimate importance.  John does not say God sent His Son for the Jews, for the chosen, but for all the world – which led Paul to teach that you did not need to become a Jew first in order to become a Christian.  And Paul based his entire ministry on the core belief that salvation is NOT earned by obeying the law, the Torah, but through Christ Himself.  Paul maintains that we are saved by God’s grace and love alone – not by what we do or who we are. 

That seems obvious to us, but it wasn’t to the early church.  There were a powerful group of teachers who said no.  Jews are the chosen people of God.  They alone have been chosen and anyone who wanted to become a Christian must first become a Jew and live under Jewish law which they firmly maintained was not their law but God’s. 

This also meant that Christians were not saved by God’s grace alone but just as importantly, to some even more importantly, was the fact that we are finally saved by the way we live our lives in obedience to the Law. 

The basic argument of Christianity hung in the balance: grace or Law; was our obedience to the Law our response to God’s love and grace or was the law the way we obtained God’s love and grace.  Do we choose God or does God choose us?

Think of it as a teeter totter with one end being grace and the other law.  There is a point of perfect balance between the two, but it is very difficult to achieve and almost impossible to maintain.  One comes down more heavily on the side of grace or on the side of law. 

That’s still an argument that plagues Christianity today – and the extremes are just that --- extreme.  On the extreme side of grace is the position that being a Christian has absolutely nothing to do with how we live, how we respond to God’s grace.  They would maintain that being saved gives us the right to do anything we want without penalty or guilt.  There are no instructions on how to live a Christian life that matters.

On the other extreme are those who say if you do not obey the laws of the Torah you cannot enter the kingdom of God.  Your salvation is in your own hands, in how you live your life.  Since so much depends on living by the law, that law must be totally black or white. 

You must not work on the Sabbath. But what precisely is work?  Is laying out a meal to eat “work” or must that be done the night before?  Is reading a book “work” or “rest”  --- and does it make a difference if what you read is a novel or the Bible? 

Some of you are very familiar with this because you grew up when rules like this were the law of the land. If you were sick you could not buy medicine on Sunday because drugstores couldn’t be open --- that would mean the pharmacist would have to work – and that would break God’s law.  The only “entertainment” allowed on Sunday was to go to church --- and it wasn’t all that entertaining, but attendance skyrocketed because at least you saw your friends. 

But the rule of Law for many Christians still goes on.   In order to be saved you must belong to this particular denomination and you must be baptized in a particular way using a certain amount of water.  Women cannot teach a class that men attend. They can serve in the kitchen but not the session.  You cannot dance or play cards on Sunday --- or for that matter --- ever.  You may recognize these “laws” or know someone who lives by them. 

There is even a new phenomenon among some radical fundamentalists called the “Messianic Jew” movement.  Its followers are sometimes referred to as “completed” Jews or even “perfected” Jews.  These can be Jews who have become Christians or, in most cases, Christians who have also embraced the laws and customs of the Jewish faith and identify themselves as among God’s “chosen” people.  Their mark is the Torah and the customs of the Jewish people.  Their number is growing and now there are up to 500,000 who call themselves “messianic Jews” and they use the same arguments as the early church did in Acts.  One must be a Jew --- a member of the chosen people --- to truly be a Christian. 

The Galatians --- like us --- were caught in the middle of the argument.  Which side would they choose and how far would they go?  That’s the purpose behind Paul’s letter and that’s what we’ll be looking at over the next few weeks.