The Only Way to Freedom (Monday Morning Mail)

Good morning!

Yesterday, we began a new series in Paul's letter to the Galatians, with Gal 1:1-10. It's a letter I haven't heard preached very often, but it has a lot to teach us about how God sets us free in Christ and about the centrality of the gospel.

I've written a bit about the background to Galatians, and how we can tell that it was written during the events at the start of Acts 15 here. For now, the important features are that Paul had only recently planted the churches in Galatia (cities like Iconium and Lystra), but that he heard they were already abandoning the gospel and following a different message. Paul couldn't visit them because he had an urgent visit to make to Jerusalem to find out where the different message was coming from, so he wrote Galatians to them instead.

The passage has a lot to say to our culture, where we often like to think that the detail of what we believe doesn't really matter and where we often let our right generosity, humility, compassion and love towards others spill over into an acceptance of society's lie that all religions are basically equivalent.

Paul gives two big reasons that it isn't so:

First, he points out that the gospel comes from God. Paul doesn't see himself as someone pushing his own ideas, or even someone else's ideas. Paul has been personally commissioned and sent by God himself with the message that he is preaching. And Paul isn't just like any number of people throughout history who claim to be on a mission from God – he's on a mission that God has also authenticated himself by raising Jesus from the dead. The Resurrection is like God's signature on the gospel – it's something that only he can do that shows that the message is true.

So when the Galatian Christians reject the message Paul has brought them, they're actually rejecting God himself (v6).

Second, it matters because the gospel is good news about a rescue. Lots of people see religion as about how to live a good life or how to get to an experience of the divine. And doubtless many religions are. But real Christianity is not like that – it is the good news that Jesus died for our sins so that we can be rescued (v4). There aren't multiple ways to be rescued – there is only one. It is like we are all on a sinking ship, and in Jesus, God has provided the only way for us to be rescued. Jesus has sent Paul out with that good news, but when people preach a different message they are like people giving false directions for how to reach the lifeboats – it puts people's lives in danger. That is why Paul gets so angry with them! (though the 1984 NIV goes too far in translating v8 & 9 "eternally condemned" - KJV "accursed" or 2011 NIV "under God's curse" is better).

And that way that God has provided for us is about his grace – God's Riches At Christ's Expense. It is not about what we can do to get to God – it is about what he has done in giving Jesus to die in our place on the cross. Let's praise him for his rescue this week, and let's ask him to help us to value his gospel more!

God bless,

John