Today’s reading is Galatians 5:1-6:18.

“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16).

I want to quit sinning. I want to quit gratifying the lusts of my flesh. I want to overcome those temptations. I’m tired of the strife and turmoil sin causes. I’m tired of how sin wreaks havoc in my relationship with my family, friends, neighbors, etc. I’m tired of how sin destroys my faith in and fellowship with God. I want to get over all this. But I keep coming up short.

Paul explains the key in Galatians 5:16. I need simply to walk by the Spirit. I need to let the Spirit guide me. Instead of trying to be justified by law, which will only cause me to be severed from Christ (Galatians 5:4), I need to seek justification by the grace of God’s Spirit. I need to be led by the Spirit, not law (Galatians 5:18). That means I need to crucify my flesh, with its passions and desires. I need to put it to death and quit letting it lead me. It twists the law and leads me back into sin (Romans 7:8-11). I need to put away my conceit, my reliance upon me and the competition it produces with others. Instead, I need simply to surrender my life to the Spirit today and what He says I should do. Why? Because God’s way works.

Keep the faith and keep reading,

ELC

PS. What struck you in today’s reading?

PPS. How do you think we walk by the Spirit?

Today’s reading is Galatians 1:1-2:21.

“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

I think I get it now. I’ve not allowed this verse to have its full impact in my life. I was baptized, crucified with Christ (cf Romans 6:1-6). Since then I’ve been telling Christ, “Watch this, see how I can live my life for You.” I was certainly sincere in this. I have wanted to serve Christ. I’ve been doing my best. But wasn’t that the problem that led me to Christ in the first place? My best only put me right back into sin (cf Romans 7:14-24). Why would it do any different now?

Paul doesn’t say to tell Jesus, “I’ll do my best to live for You.” Rather, Jesus is saying, “Quit trying to live. I’ll live my best for you.” I need to quit trying to live my life and simply start letting Jesus live through me. What does He want? Do that. Of course, that is going to take faith. Jesus won’t treat me like a puppet. It’s my choice to let Him live through me by my faith. But I have to make a conscious decision to quit trying to live my life, even if I’m trying to live it for Him. Instead, I need to let Him live my life through me. I need to surrender myself to Him, His will, His goals, His life.

Keep the faith and keep reading,

ELC

PS. What struck you in today’s reading?

Today’s reading is Galatians 1:1-2:21.

These chapters, or rather the end of these chapters, brings up a question for me. Galatians 2:15-21 says no man is justified by works of law. I’m no Greek scholar, but what little I know demonstrates that the article “the” is not in the original text. It doesn’t actually read “by works of the law no one will be justified” but “by works of law no one will be justified” (Galatians 2:16).

My common approach to this passage has been to say that no one will be justified by works of the Old Law. However, now we have a new law that does justify us. I do know there is a law of Christ, to which I must submit myself. Paul wrote about it in I Corinthians 9:21. But what is its place in my justification?

As I read these verses in Galatians 2:15-21 again, I have a really hard time seeing this passage as saying, “by works of the Old Law no one will be justified, but by works of the New Law will everyone be justified.” Instead, it seems to be saying, “we won’t be justified by works of law, old or new, but by faith in Jesus.” Don’t misunderstand, this faith is not merely a mental assent to some facts. Galatians 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” This faith is an increasing surrender to Christ and His will. Yet, when it is done is this just semantics? “No we aren’t save by keeping the new law, we are saved by faith, but by faith we really mean keeping the new law”? I can’t see this as just a semantic wordplay. Paul is saying we aren’t justified by keeping the law. We are justified by faith in Jesus.

What exactly is the point? What does it really say about law? What does it say about the place of the New Law in my justification?

Right now, I think Paul’s point is the same here as it was in Romans 9:30-10:4. Yes, there is a New Law. Yes, Christians submit to the New Law. However, the law’s purpose is not to justify us. Because of our weakness, God cannot provide a law that can justify us. If He could, then law would have done it (Galatians 3:21). All law does is demonstrate how we violate law and therefore are not justified (Romans 3:20). Thus, the more we focus on the law aspect of the New Testament, the more likely we are to sin, rebuilding what we have torn down and proving ourselves transgressors (Galatians 2:18). The problem with the Old Law was it had nothing that justified. Under the New Law, we still see God’s laws, but we have Jesus’ whose death justifies us and sets us free to live God’s will. But how do we attain that? Do we attain that by trying harder to simply keep the legalities of the New Testament? No. We accomplish that by increasing our faith in Jesus. The more we increase our faith in Jesus, the more God will work in our lives, the more God will strengthen us according to the gospel and preaching of Jesus, the more we will actually submit to God’s will.

This seems counterintuitive to me. What Paul seems to be saying is the more we focus on keeping God’s law, the less we will do so. However, the more we focus on believing Jesus and relying on His death, the more we will actually follow God’s law. Keeping God’s law doesn’t justify us, after all, we are sinners and not sinning today doesn’t take away our sins of yesterday. However, Jesus’ death does take away our sin and increased faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior gives us the strength to do God’s will.

What do you think?

Keep the faith and keep reading,

ELC

P.S. What struck you in today’s reading?

Today’s reading is Galatians 5:1-6:18.

I’m in the middle of getting ready for a funeral right now. One of our beloved sisters in Franklin, Tennessee went to be with the Lord this weekend. It is a time of joy and sorrow. However, it leaves me little time to say much here. Today, I provide a brief post.

I am almost always drawn to Galatians 6:7-8, when I get to this reading. We reap what we sow. If we sow to the flesh. We’ll reap corruption. If we sow to the Spirit, we’ll reap life. 

Something that struck me as I read it today is, if I’m not actively sowing to the Spirit, then I am sowing to the flesh. That is, sometimes I’m not out there actively doing things that give the flesh strength in the battle. However, I’m not actively doing things that turn my life over to the Spirit either. Here is what I have found. When I think I’m just coasting, I’m not. Even if only through omission, if I’m not working on surrendering to the Spirit, I am surrendering to the flesh. The fruit of that may not come immediately. But it always comes. I fall and wonder how it happened when I used to have such strong commitment. 

What does that mean for today? I can’t coast. I can’t rely on sowing to the Spirit yesterday. I have to sow to the Spirit today. I have to be active and purposeful about it.

***Question: How do you sow to the Spirit?

Keep the faith and keep reading,

ELC

Today’s reading is Galatians 3:1-4:31.

Some housekeeping first: Sorry about missing posts on Thursday and Friday and being late today. In addition to being under the weather last week, I’m having some access problems through Charter who is my ISP at home. For some reason I can’t access my sites through them right now. I’m working on that. That kept me from getting posts up last week. I’ll have to make sure to get all my posts up from my office computer. I’ll do my best to stay on top of it from here.

On to today’s reading.

Today, I’m dealing with a struggle. I clearly understand that there is a New Testament law which we must follow. Since sin is lawlessness, if there is no law, there would be no sin (cf. I John 3:4; Romans 5:13). Paul himself explains we Christians are under a law in I Corinthians 9:21. Hebrews 7:12 does not say there was an eradication of law, but simply a change of law along with the change of priesthood. We Christians have a law. Most certainly, we must follow it and violating it is sin.

However, in today’s reading, the text clearly demonstrates that keeping the law doesn’t save us. While the main thrust throughout the chapter is about the Old Law, I don’t think Paul is saying, “The Old Law doesn’t save, but the New Law does.” Look at Galatians 3:21–”For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law.” If a law could give life, God would use a law to give life. The point being there is no law that gives life, either Old or New. Thus, even under the New Covenant, it is not the law of the New Covenant that gives life. 

These chapters do not say that the Old Law does not give life, but the New Law does. Rather, they say that no law gives life, but faith in Jesus does. However, the text is not saying, it doesn’t matter what I do only what I think or believe. After all, Abraham is listed as our example of faith. However, he wasn’t a man of faith simply because of what he believed in his head and heart. He was counted as a man of faith because he did what he was told. If we want to be sons of Abraham and, therefore, heirs of the promise, we need to be of the same kind of faith. This ties in with Galatians 2:20. Living by faith does not mean having a mental assent to the facts of Jesus while living how I want. Living by faith means believing Jesus so much that I simply let Him be in charge. I just do what He says.

Enough rambling. The struggle for me is clearly we must obey the New Law. Yet, obeying that New Law doesn’t appear to give us life. How then can we say we are to obey it? Why not simply dispense with it? 

Right now, here is my solution to the struggle and I look forward to your thoughts on the matter. The problem is if our motivation is from the law, then we are still relying on ourselves. We are trying to find all the rules and declaring that we are strong enough to keep them all. Whether we are using the New Law or the Old Law, the problem here is the same. We simply won’t keep the Law. Unless God just dispenses with law, we will always violate it somewhere. If we are going to rely on law and our keeping of it, then the only way to be saved is through perfect adherence. We’ve already blown it. We must not have some idea that the Old Law couldn’t be followed by man, so God replaced it with an easier law that man could follow. The whole point of any law was to demonstrate that we sin and cannot save ourselves.

What then saves us? Turning to Jesus. If we believe in Jesus, if we believe Jesus, we will be saved. If we rest on faith, then we will be saved. The pragmatic side of this says, the more I trust Jesus and His strength, the more I actually submit to His law. If I’m focused on me keeping the law, I’ll fail. If, however, I focus on Jesus’ righteousness, Jesus’ strength, Jesus’ power and I believe Him, by the Spirit of God and His grace, I’ll succeed.

So, we don’t want to dispense with the New Law as if keeping the law doesn’t matter. However, perhaps we need to take a new look at it. Usually, when we see someone violating God’s law, we talk about how if they want to be saved they need to start obeying that law. Perhaps instead we need to see that disobedience is an indicator that they don’t trust Jesus. They don’t have faith. Instead of just saying, “You need to obey that law.” We need to realize that getting them to make a change on that law won’t save them. If we are focusing them on their own strength to keep a set of rules, there will always be some place they fall short. Instead, we need to point out the indication of weak, shallow, or non-existent faith and encourage them to work on trusting Jesus. When they do that, Jesus will live through them and they will keep those laws.

Finally, this does say something about the arrogance we sometimes have when we keep laws and patterns. We need to recognize that if we are in line with God’s will while someone else is not, it is not because of our own strength as if we can boast. If God left us to our own strength, we would fail like everyone does. When we are being successful it is only because God is working through us. When we believe that we’ll have success. The moment we think we are standing by our own strength, is the moment we’ll fall (cf. I Corinthians 10:12).

***Question: Why do you think focusing on the law side of things causes us to fail while focusing on the faith side of things causes us to grow and overcome?

Keep the faith and keep reading

ELC

Today’s reading is Galatians 5:1-6:18.

I don’t want to keep pounding this law stuff, but here in Galatians it just keeps coming. First, I find it interesting that in Galatians 5:18, it says “But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.” Once again, the article is missing in the Greek, so it essentially says we are not under law. However, Galatians 6:2 says, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Somewhere this discussion is speaking accommodatingly. We are not totally free from law but yet need to fulfill a law at the same time. That bears some thinking about.

However, what really caught my attention in light of yesterday’s discussion is Paul’s discussion about the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. I’ve thought a bit about this before, but it really hit me today. Notice those two different nouns. Paul talked about the works of the flesh. Not the fruit of the flesh, but the works of the flesh. That is, these are the things the flesh does. These are the actions of the flesh. When we do these things we are pursuing the flesh. On the other hand, he didn’t talk about the works of the Spirit, he talked about the fruit of the Spirit. That is, he didn’t say here are the things we need to work on in order to follow the Spirit. Rather, when we follow the Spirit’s lead, these are the things that will be produced.

In other words, Paul didn’t say, “Go work on love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Then you’ll be following the Spirit.” Rather, he is saying if we follow the lead of the Spirit, this is what we’ll find in our lives. This is the fruit the Spirit will produce in us as we follow Him. 

Once again, we get that kind of counterintuitive point. If we establish these virtues as the law we are to pursue, we won’t make it. We will find that we always fall short. However, if we simply surrender ourselves to faith in Christ and His Word (the revelation of the Spirit), these fruit will start to develop. 

We also need to make a rigorously honest point here. We need to do some real soul searching and heart digging. If these qualities are not ours, we need to honestly recognize we are not following the lead of the Spirit. These are not simply things Christians should work on. They are what will be in the Christian’s life when submitting to the Spirit. If they’re not in our lives, we are not surrendering to the Spirit. No doubt, it’s a growth process. But we’ll only grow if we are honest about this.

Keep the faith and keep reading,

ELC

P.S. What did you get out of today’s reading?