Author: Bryan Richardson

Re:Verse passage – Galatians 5:16-26 (day three)

“Against such things there is no law.”

The law turned on the light so Israel could see both the way God lives – goodness, beauty, righteousness, and love, which is the eternal kind of living – and their own patterns of not living that eternal way. Because God desires his creation to live eternally, his law is therefore against this non-eternal way of living, which is what sin actually is. Conversely, the law is not against anything that produces in human beings a desire for that eternal kind of living. When the Spirit’s movement produces such a desire in a person, the law is not against that desire, but for it. The law’s prescriptions for purity are then unnecessary for that person, because the Spirit is already producing what the law agrees with. The Spirit’s work is so good that the law’s work is done.

Re:Verse passage – Galatians 5:1-15 (day three)

“I wish that those who are troubling you would even mutilate themselves.”

Is Paul the one still writing this letter? Just a few sentences back, he spoke eloquently of faith making itself evident by way of love. Now, he’s envisioning a scenario in which the ones who’ve make so much of the saving power of circumcision get bonus points with God by doing some extra slicing. That goes way beyond what one normally associates with the legacy of the apostle Paul. But he gets your attention, doesn’t he? Paul’s jolting crudity is a marker that this isn’t some kind of ivory tower theologian’s debate. It’s either Christ’s sufficiency, or it’s Christ’s irrelevance. Paul unequivocally declares that the one who suffered under Pontius Pilate and died a criminal’s death did all the bleeding that will ever be necessary for the human race.

Re:Verse passage – Galatians 4:21-31 (day three)

“Tell me, you who want to be under law, do you not listen to the law?”

Paul’s question here presupposes a crucial point: it is not the law that is the enemy of the gospel, but rather an abuse of the law. The law is the word of God. It proceeds from the mouth of God. It is altogether lovely. It is God’s revelation to human beings. But what is the law’s rightful function? It takes us to Christ who fulfills it. There is then nothing left for the law to do because Christ has done all that the law requires —and he is the only one who could do so. The law’s magnificence and brilliance now emanate from its wonderful accomplishment of having heralded the Christ. To declare that it has any other purpose is to misread it. Its work is done.

Re:Verse passage – Galatians 4:12-20 (day three)

“I beg of you, brethren, become as I am, for I also have become as you are.”

What Paul proposes here suggests something more beautiful than a meeting of the minds. He sets forth a vision of oneness, a knitting together of hearts that will open up a way to see the way of Christ together. Paul stands in a place of humility in conveying such a vision. He has no need to prevail if by prevailing one means winning the argument. Paul speaks against a false gospel, but he does not champion his perspective as if he’s battling the Galatians. Rather, his concern is that they become one. That’s how powerful Paul knows unity is. That’s why the Lord made it the centerpiece of his prayer in John 17. God is one, and when we are one, we will see God together.

Re:Verse passage – Galatians 4:1-11 (day three)

“You observe days and months and seasons and years.”

Shall we now dispense of liturgical calendars? Fortunately, Paul’s not suggesting that. When seasonal signposts go away, rhythms of life get confused. The experience of disorientation of one’s sense of time regarding events of the past several years (e.g.: did I talk to that person recently or was that pre-Covid?) is due to the pandemic’s disruption of the regular ways a society marks times and seasons and years. Similarly, holy markers matter. For instance, does Easter acknowledge only Jesus’s resurrection, or does it also signify that there is now a new possibility for the human body and the human spirit because of that resurrection? The Lenten season will help you contemplate both. That’s what liturgical seasons and holidays (“holy days”) do. A calendar isn’t a savior, but it reminds us of One.

Re:Verse passage – Galatians 2:11-21 (day three)

“When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.”

The account Paul relates here foreshadows his statement later in this epistle that life with Christ transcends the categorical divisions that have defined civilizations and societies and groups and families. Peter [Cephas] made the politically expedient decision to distance himself from the gentiles while Jews were present. But Peter’s maneuvering amounted to a denial of Christ’s way every bit as vehement as his denial of his friend on the night before the cross. Paul confronted a man who was heading right back into yet another denial of Christ. If ethnic group still separates from ethnic group, if men still lord it over women, if the powerful still enslave the weak — if these distinctions still define the way one person regards another — the church has nothing left to say.

(Credit to Aaron Hufty for pointing out to me the consistent pattern in Peter’s behavior)

Re:Verse passage – Galatians 2:1-10 (day three)

“Then after an interval of fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem…”

What happened to Paul in that interval of fourteen years? Scholarship is of several opinions. Timelines are sometimes notoriously thorny in biblical studies. But overall, one can see that a substantial amount of time elapsed between Paul’s cataclysmic life-rearrangement and his full engagement with the church. Why? Because change happens in one’s life at the speed of trust. What appear as instantaneous existential shifts have in fact been long in the making. Moses fearlessly faced Pharoah only after he had spent 40 years in desert exile contemplating his life (which prepared him for the burning bush encounter). Abraham ascended Moriah only after he had known God for the better part of a century. Whether 100 years, 40 years, or 14 years, change takes time in you. That doesn’t bother God.

Re:Verse passage – Galatians 1:11-24 (day three)

“For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.”

“The Revelation of St. John the Divine” is the heading of the last book in all the old King James Bibles. Turns out St. Paul clocked in a little ahead of St. John in the revelation experience. Paul had given his whole life to the pursuit of his faith. From boyhood, he learned the scriptures from Gamaliel. Paul studied diligently to become a scholar of scholars, literate in the most influential philosophical and theological bodies of knowledge the world had ever produced. He put all that intellectual and spiritual fire into making the world safe from the Jesus Way. His encounter with Jesus completely undid him. It took Jesus himself to bring Paul through that trauma and into God’s work.

Re:Verse passage – Galatians 1:1-10 (day three)

“…a different gospel; which is really not another…”

What makes the good news good? In a word, welcome. Heaven receives you as is, not as you or somebody else would prefer you to be. If the invitation from God comes with a checklist, it’s not the gospel. It’s just another person’s low regard for you. But when God sees you, he sees someone he made and loves. You talk about accepting Christ, but the gospel is Christ’s accepting you. And this is where repentance arises: the welcome itself so speaks to your deepest longings that you would do anything – anything – to leave behind your old way and live in something as comforting and healing as God’s reception of you. The welcome, the open arms, precede anything else. The good news is actually that good.