Breakfast with Galatians

So, I was off work on Monday, waiting for the electricity meter man (he does have a name and Jesus knows how many hairs are on his head, but I didn't find out either) and decided to embark on this adventure through the apostolic literature by reading Galatians whilst eating breakfast.

Galatians is possibly the shortest epic ever written, containing the most one-liners and guaranteeing that you will definitely feel better by the end of it than you did when you started.  My favourite one-liner used to be 3:1:

"O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?"

 The gist of the letter, you see, is that the church in Galatia had replaced a grace-only approach to salvation with a Jesus and... salvation.  All of sudden, someone, or something, had bewitched them and seemingly convinced them that Jesus alone was not enough to guarantee salvation.  How could God accept someone who doesn't 'do good'?  Surely there needs to be some amount of good works?  God seemed all for a works-based salvation in the Old Testament.  Wasn't that what the law was?  To understand the letter to the Galatians we must first consider its context.  The early church was dogged by a debate about whether Gentile (non-Jewish) converts to Christianity had to first become Jews and sign up to the law (through circumcision for the blokes) and adhere to all the food laws etc.  The Circumcision Party, as they were called, were the louder group and it took quite a lot of persuasion for them to realise that salvation by faith in Jesus didn't require adherence to the law.  Peter even fell into their trap, and although he had had his food revelation and visited Cornelius the Roman Gentile, he still 'pretended' to be a good little Jewish boy in front of the scary big-wigs of the Jewish church.  Paul had no hesitation in pulling him up on that one (Gal 2:14).

So, what for us?  My first point is that although Paul calls the Galatians foolish, if they had got grace based salvation first time, Paul would never had had to write this, and we would be much worse off for it.  So, thank you foolish Galatians.  Secondly, I think it is very easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we can earn our salvation.  Deep down we know that we are only saved by Jesus, but it is very tempting to think that God will love us a bit more if we do lots for him and before long we start to rely on what we do for Jesus and find our identity in that.  Well, I have news for you:  You have been crucified with Christ and it is now no longer you who lives, but Christ who lives in you (Gal 2:20, Ben Taylor).  There is nothing you can do to make God love you more.  Nothing.  I'm not dissing good works, they are important; James tells us that faith without works is dead (James 2:17), but works without faith is a road to nowhere.

The choice the Galatians had to make was a bit like choosing between being given a house free of charge, or getting the same house, but buying it with a mortgage and indebting yourself to a bank for 25 years.  A no-brainer, don't you think.  I'd take the free house every time.  So why should salvation be any different?  It may seem too good to be true, but God, the awesome creator of the universe, perfect and holy one, is the author of this salvation.

Why not have breakfast with Galatians on Saturday?  Have it with a bacon sandwich.