EPISODE 75 GALATIANS CHAPTER 4 "Don't Go Back"

Paul reminds us that as followers of Christ, we are all equal, Jews and Gentiles alike, masters and slaves. But how can that be? Well, in Galatians 4, the focus will bring clarity to that and so much more. Let's get started. Paul? Galatians chapter 4.

Don't go back. One of the worst problems mankind has struggled with over the centuries is prejudice and racism. I don't need to tell you this. Some refer to it, in fact, in America as our original sin. This has not only been an issue in the United States, though, resulting from the enslavement of Africans in the days prior to our Civil War. As we've already seen, examples of racism come up on the pages of Scripture.

Like, for example, the Samaritan people who lived right in Israel's heartland but were treated as unclean by their Jewish neighbors. Nearer our time, think about the theory of racial superiority of the Aryan people embraced by the Nazis and the tragic outcome that produced. Or I still remember the ethnic cleansing that took place in Central Africa in late 20th century. And even in our day, the Chinese seem to want to enslave or eliminate the Uyghur people, one tribe or race of people hating another, treating them as inferior or even worse. It comes from something deeply wrong in us, no? No matter how modern or supposedly sophisticated we get, humans, I mean, this kind of hatred based on the feelings of superiority of one group over another just keeps reoccurring.

I don't want to slide past this really big idea that comes up at the end of chapter 3, which I ran out of time to discuss last time. But in chapter 3, verses 26 through 29, the apostle Paul wrote this. So, in Christ Jesus, you are all children of God through faith, for all of you were baptized into Christ and have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither now Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, nor male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and you are heirs according to God's promises. Paul is not suggesting that there aren't different races or stations in life or genders.

Of course not. He is underscoring that in the Church of Jesus Christ, there is spiritual equality between all members because we are all part of God's family. We are all indwelt by the Holy Spirit, he said. We're all clothed in Christ's righteousness the same way. There's no place among believers for the sinful idea that one ethnic or social group or gender is superior to another. What brought this to Paul's mind, I'm sure, is how the Judaizers had taught the Galatians that even with their faith in Christ, they were still culturally and spiritually inferior to Jews.

They said to be fully accepted among God's people, the Galatian Christians had to also become essentially de facto Jews. Why? Because those Jews who came to Galatia from Jerusalem obviously believed they were superior, putting the shoe completely on the other foot. How many today hold anti-Semitic views and believe that it's Jews who are somehow inferior and need to be marginalized or worse? All this kind of thinking is very wrong and among Christians, completely unacceptable. I spent several years in the American South during my college and graduate school days.

Coming from Pennsylvania, I was surprised to see that even among Bible-believing Christians there, racism was still very much alive. When I pointed that out, that the New Testament teaches that this is out of place and there can't be any room for this kind of thinking in the body of Christ, I was scoffed at by people who should have known better. Although I didn't understand a lot at 20 years old, I did understand the apostle's point here. The gospel is for the whole world, and God does not see distinctions between the races or classes of people who can join His church. All those who respond to the gospel, who accept Jesus as their Savior and Lord, are equally members of the body of Christ with the same standing, the same promises as anybody else. Believers are all equal, no matter where we come from.

We all stand on level ground at the foot of the cross. Followers of Christ should have always been the first and best at overcoming racism, seeing and treating everyone equally, because the apostle Paul was keen to be sure this happened from the very outset here in the first century. As that century wore on, and the early churches were planted and developed in cities across the Roman Empire, this principle that Paul states here in Galatians 3 about equality in the body of Christ was one of the very things that drew people to the faith. The Christian fellowships were unique in this regard. People had, of course, always come together and formed organizations for this reason or that reason, for that purpose or this purpose, but it was usually with people like them. The point of the groups was always what people had in common in this life.

You know what I mean? People came together because they worked in the same trade, or came together around common political beliefs or objectives, or because they had similar interests and a certain sport or hobby. Religions were even localized. People in different cities had their own gods they believed were special to them and only to them. Remember Artemis of the Ephesians? But when Christianity came along, it was different.

It taught that there is only one true God and that everyone everywhere, no matter who they were, could become a part of His family, the Christian movement through faith in Jesus Christ, the Savior of the whole world. So among the early Christians at their gatherings, believers who were of different races and classes worshiped together as brothers and sisters in Christ. And imagine this, even slaves and their masters worshiped together, recognizing each other as spiritual equals. That's very hard to even fathom, isn't it? But that was the unique ethos of Christianity. What drew people together, what united them was spiritual factors in common, not stuff in this world.

Spiritual factors which transcended earthly distinctions that normally divide people. This made the Christian fellowships very attractive to all kinds of people who not only found hope in Christ for the future, but were hungry to belong and to feel valued now. And it should still be like that. As Paul wrote, In Christ Jesus, you are all children of God through faith. That is, you are all part of one spiritual family, which he calls elsewhere the household of God. That's the best way to think of a good local church, by the way.

A good local church should feel like a family that comes together to worship and learn together, serves its community together, brothers and sisters in Christ who look out for one another, people from different backgrounds and stations in life coming together around one Lord, one faith, one baptism. No matter who we are elsewhere, who we are in other relationships in our life, in the body of Christ, we are spiritual equals, all part of the family of God. I hope you've gotten to experience that. If you're not in a church that feels like that, you may want to consider finding a better one. Okay, let's take a look at chapter 4 now. The apostle is returning to his running analogy from chapter 3 about the incompatibility of merit-based religion and the gospel of Christ, which is based on grace.

He makes an analogy here comparing those opposing concepts with a difference in their world between slaves and sons. In his analogy, slaves represents those who try and live under a merit-based system, who are trying to earn God's favor by keeping laws. Sons are those who accept God's grace and are trusting in Christ as their Savior. Those born into God's family, the sons, Paul says here, are heirs of the heavenly Father. They've received the Holy Spirit, who is the down payment on our inheritance, that is, everything that God has planned for us in heaven, everything He has promised to us. To sons, he says, God is like our daddy.

That's what he means by verse 6 where he says, Abba, Father. We have a personal, loving relationship with God as His own sons and daughters. On the contrary, those who are living under the wrong idea they must earn God's favor won't receive any inheritance because they are like slaves, slaves to the law, not sons. Based on this distinction between slaves and sons, Paul is asking the Galatians why they, who have been born into God's family by faith in Christ, would ever want to go back and live like slaves again. Whether it's going back to the paganism where they were before they heard the gospel, or whether it's putting themselves under a bunch of Jewish laws and customs as the Judaizers were requiring of them. In both those situations, they would be in some kind of bondage to fear.

They could never be sure they were okay with God. So he's saying, Why would you want to go back to that? he asks incredulously here. Don't go back to that. Don't go back to fear. Don't go back to bondage, trying to save yourself by living perfectly under the law, keeping religious rules.

Live as children and heirs of God through faith in Christ, as I do. That's what he's urging them at verse 13. In verse 14, Paul reminds them, and these are his words, It was because of a bodily illness that I preached the gospel to you the first time. That sounds like Paul's lengthy stay in Galatia, places we learned about in Acts chapters 11 and 12, Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and so on, was due to his being unwell when he reached there on his first missionary journey. So he had to stay there for longer than he expected to recuperate. Or maybe he had fallen seriously sick there while he was ministering to them.

Speculation of scholars is that he had something like malaria. He says that even though he was not well when he was with them, the Galatians received him as though he were an angel of God, almost like they would have received Christ himself. They loved and appreciated him because he had brought them the good news of the gospel. So Paul asks, What's happened since? What's changed? How could you let those false teachers, referring to the Judaizers, turn you against me?

In verse 19, Paul appeals to these believers in Galatia as his own children, softening his earlier sharp tone as he reminds them how close their relationship had been at the beginning. You can tell by Paul's words here he's conflicted inside. He feels kind of terrible at what's happened between him and these people. He considered them his children in the faith, and he's hurt by them now. Maybe his illustration about slaves and sons seems a little distant from us because, fortunately, most of us, probably all of us, haven't lived in a slave society like the one that dominated first-century Rome. But let me offer another illustration that may help you feel him, as the kids say today, an illustration from our time.

In America, it has become pretty hard to adopt children because the costs involved and the government red tape required. Frankly, also because, as a result of abortion being legal, there are fewer children who need adopted. This has caused many childless couples to look abroad. I personally know a few different families who have adopted children from faraway places, from very bad situations in poor countries. I won't describe how bad the stories that I've heard from them, but in many places there are large orphanages with little individual care, very little hygiene, and inadequate medical attention. The children abandoned there have little hope of a good life without a miracle.

So imagine if a couple who badly wants to have a child of their own go to the expense and the travel and the time involved to essentially rescue a child out of this very bad situation. I know some parents who've done exactly that, invested years of their time, gone to great expense to adopt such a child. Then imagine they bring this little child back to their loving home, give him all they can give him of the best, give him the best social life, the best medical care, the best education. The adopted child, in every sense, has been their own loved son or daughter. But when they grow to adolescence and then into a teenager, they become rebellious. They're more influenced by others than their loving parents.

They don't show, or maybe even have, any appreciation for all that's been done for them. No appreciation for where they likely would be if it had not been done for them. I've personally seen some loving parents so hurt by foolish, ungrateful kids they've adopted. It's made me just want to grab those kids by the shoulder and say, Don't you have any idea what your parents have done to make you their child? Have you ever even thought about where you would be if they had not done it? Can you feel a parent in that situation's heartache?

If so, maybe you can feel something about what Paul was feeling emotionally as he wrote this letter. Those in Galatia who were his spiritual children, who when they were with him and knew in their faith had shown so much love and appreciation, now are like rebellious teenagers who have listened to other voices and influences and turned their hearts away from him. Anybody who's been in the ministry for very long probably understands a little bit of this. It should never happen. Sometimes people you have led to Christ and whose lives you've greatly benefited spiritually allow other people's opinions or some kind of slander they've heard or unfounded pride to turn their hearts away from you. And when that happens, man, it feels like betrayal.

It hurts badly. By the way, if you have ever allowed that to happen in your heart towards someone who led you to Christ or helped you spiritually or in some other significant way benefited your life, you should go back and apologize and try to make that right. Paul's hurt is obvious here, and it's understandable and it's warranted. He traveled hundreds of miles, took great risks at great cost, persevered through serious sickness, sounds like, and more to bring the light of the gospel to these people in Galatia. And now, some of them at least, have allowed those false apostles, the Judaizers, to drive a wedge between them and turn their hearts away from him. And that should never have happened.

Yet there's a bigger issue at stake than Paul's feelings here. So in verse 21, he turns to another analogy. He comes at it this way. Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave woman was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through a promise.

I'm not going to go into great detail to explain this whole messy situation he's alluding to that developed in Abraham's household. You can find the whole story back in Genesis chapters 16 through 21. It's something that really happened, and Paul says it should serve us as a teaching analogy. That's what he means when he wrote, slightly sarcastically, I think, You want to go back and live under the Old Testament law of Moses? Check out this account in the law of Moses, which is what the Jews called the first five books of the Old Testament. Abraham had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac.

Ishmael, Abraham's firstborn son, was conceived as a result of Abraham and his wife not believing God's promises and trying to work out producing an heir another way, on their own. They came up with a really bad plan to conceive a child through a surrogate, Sarah's servant woman, whose name was Hagar. And Ishmael was the son born of that union. Afterward, Abraham's legal wife, Sarah, although well past her fertile years, got pregnant just as God had promised them, and she too had a son who they named Isaac. Paul is pointing out that Abraham and Sarah's attempt to produce an heir on their own through Hagar was a really bad idea. Their human effort to accomplish something God had already promised to give them another way ended calamitously.

Abraham and Sarah's plan ended up creating a rivalry between Ishmael and Isaac, and between Sarah and her servant woman. In time, things became so bad in that household that Hagar and her son Ishmael had to be removed for any peace to return. Believe it or not, that rivalry and bad blood in Abraham's family Paul's writing about here, which occurred 4,000 plus years ago, is still with us today. The son born of the slave woman, Ishmael, became the father of the Arab nations, while his second son, the son of promise by Sarah, his legitimate son, Isaac, became the father of the nation of Israel. Understanding the history of that bitter division that started way back then explains a lot about the seemingly endless problems in the Middle East today.

If you'd like to understand the difficult and dangerous situation going on between the Jews and Arabs right now in Gaza, which involves the whole Middle East, really, we have an insightful blog article on that you might want to check out at www.sharetheword.org. It's called Israel and Palestine in Biblical Focus. Check it out. It explains a lot. Like Ishmael and Isaac, who could not coexist in Abraham's household, Paul's point is that these two opposing theologies, that is, salvation by believing in God's promises, which Paul had taught the Galatians, and trying to earn salvation through human merit, which the Judaizers had taught the Galatians, were completely incompatible. God's plan of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus is far, far better.

So Paul is strongly urging his spiritual children in Galatia, and through this window into early church history, God is still urging us today: turn away from any false gospel of human merit, law-keeping, religious sacraments, the whole idea of trying to earn God's favor, and rather fully trust in God's plan and promise to save those who put their faith in Jesus. That's the only true gospel. A final word. Did you know that most of the time Paul dictated his letters like this one? The clues suggest that his up-close eyesight was a problem for him. But he writes at the end of this letter, See with what large letters I have written to you in my own hand.

He had written this letter to the Galatians himself. I doubt if any scribes could have kept up anyway. Apparently, when he got the report about the Galatians and the Judaizers, he wasn't going to wait to try to find somebody to help him write a letter. He wanted to respond as soon as possible, so he sat down and wrote in his own hand. He was agitated, and the words and ideas just poured out of him as he made no attempt to hide his emotions or the state of mind he was in. The issue at stake was too important for that, and it's still just that important.

That's why this inspired epistle was preserved and is in our Bibles today, so there would be no confusion on this most critical question: How can sinful people like us be justified, made right in a holy God's eyes? Answer: Justification in His sight is only possible on the basis of grace through faith in Jesus. It is not achievable through human efforts. Period. Thanks, Paul. You know, the change in a person's condition, moving from state of sin to state of righteousness, we talk about the doctrine of justification that pronounces us as guilty sinners, that when we turn our trust to Jesus Christ and accept Him as Lord and Savior, we are forgiven of our sins.

We're acquitted of all charges and declared morally upright in God's sight. But it's only through Christ, only through Christ alone that we're given grace, not the law. What a great episode to listen to again and again. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.