A New Identity (Galatians 2:20)
Pastor Bo
Someone I trust and admire issued a challenge that has caused conflict in my soul. He said this: “At the risk of generalization, I think it is fair to say that Christianity in America is not challenging the ‘habits of the heart’ and ‘habits of the mind’ that dominate American culture, meaning both the so-called high culture and the popular culture” (Richard John Neuhaus, “Christ Without Culture,” First Things, April 2007, 57).
Sermon from June 10, 2007
Someone I trust and admire issued a challenge that has caused conflict in my soul. He said this: “At the risk of generalization, I think it is fair to say that Christianity in America is not challenging the ‘habits of the heart’ and ‘habits of the mind’ that dominate American culture, meaning both the so-called high culture and the popular culture” (Richard John Neuhaus, “Christ Without Culture,” First Things, April 2007, 57).
His challenge has caused conflict, because it’s hard to disagree with it, and it’s hard to know what to do about it. Where do we start? How do we get any leverage with ingrained cultural habits? How do we avoid being overwhelmed by politics?
Let’s read Paul’s letter to the Galatians with that conflict in mind. Christian life and ministry build on foundation stones, which the Church has quarried from this letter. I want you to see how they help me to put this conflict in proper perspective. I want you to see how they define what the Church can do to challenge “the ‘habits of the heart’ and ‘habits of the mind’ that dominate American culture.” Let’s begin with background that helps us understand this letter.
A Tough Decision and Its Aftermath
Turn first with me to Acts 15 for essential historical background in Luke’s story of the early Church. It reveals the underlying issue of Galatians. Verses 1-2a: Some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers: “Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.” This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them.
Verse four: When they (Paul and Barnabas) came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and elders, to whom they reported everything God had done through them. They reported how Gentiles had been converted but had not been required to observe Jewish law about circumcision and other distinctive Jewish acts of obedience like Sabbath observance and keeping a kosher table.
Verse five: Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, “The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to obey the law of Moses.” That defined the decision the apostles had to make. To make it they convened the first general council of the Church.
Verse 19 gives James’s summary of the decision they made: “It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God.” In other words the apostles gave Paul and Barnabas their blessing to continue establishing Gentile churches that did not observe time-honored Jewish laws.
Their decision did not end the debate. In fact, it started new troubles for Paul. A vocal and determined segment of the Jerusalem Church disagreed with the apostles. They disagreed so sharply that some of them became missionaries. But they did not go out to start new churches; they went to churches Paul and Barnabas had started and tried to persuade them to observe Jewish law about circumcision and other distinctive Jewish acts of obedience in order to become real Christians.
Among the Galatian churches it looked like they might succeed. Someone told Paul what was happening. He may have taken other courses of action to prevent his work from being undermined. We don’t know. We do know that he wrote a very strong, well-reasoned letter to the Galatian churches, urging them not to place themselves under Jewish law. We have that letter in the New Testament. We begin reading it together today. Would you join me in chapter one?
Paul’s Past
Alone of all Paul’s writings, Galatians does not begin with thanksgiving, a sure sign of his displeasure. His displeasure showed itself in another way right from the start. Verses 6-7a: I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – which is really no gospel at all.
His language in verse eight could not be stronger. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! So much for gentle persuasion! And just in case they missed it, he repeated it in verse nine.
Paul may have been angry, but anger did not distort his ability to think clearly. He begins in verse eleven and continues through chapter two to build a barrier between the Galatian churches and the people, who were trying to persuade them to observe Jewish laws in order to become real Christians.
Throughout chapters one and two he answered one question: where did the gospel I preach come from? He gave his short answer in verses 11-12: I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ. “By observing Jewish laws in order to become real Christians you’re not turning your backs on me but on Christ. Is that what you want?”
But how did they know he received it by revelation from Jesus Christ? How did the Galatians know Paul didn’t make up the gospel he preached? Paul answered by telling them a story about his past. Verse 13 begins the story: I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. Verse 14: I was advancing in Judaism beyond many Jews of my own age and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers.
“I know all about these people, who are trying to persuade you to live under Jewish law. They couldn’t hold a candle to me. I was more zealous for the law than they are. But at my conversion on the Damascus Road all that changed. I changed. God changed me.” Verse 16: God was pleased to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles. “Despite my orthodox, zealous Jewish past, ministry to Gentiles became my task from the very start. Only God could do that.”
No man could do it. Verses 16b-17: I did not consult any man, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went immediately into Arabia and later returned to Damascus. “I had to rethink my whole life, and the deserts of Arabia, away from everything and everyone I knew, seemed the best place to come to terms with the unlikely ministry to Gentiles God had given me.”
Then after three years, say verses 18-19, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Peter and stayed with him fifteen days. I saw none of the other apostles – only James, the Lord’s brother. “They told me the story of Jesus. They told me their experiences with Him. They answered my questions. But Peter and James didn’t try to influence me to preach a gospel of keeping Jewish law. I’ll say more about that in a minute.”
The Galatians needed to know one more thing about his past. Verses 22-24, I was personally unknown to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. They only heard the report: “The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” And they praised God because of me. “They were Judean churches, Jewish through and through with circumcision, kosher tables and Sabbath observance. They assumed I was an observant Jew, just like them. They had no idea about the commission God had given me to preach the gospel to the Gentiles. They might not like it, if they knew. Be that as it may, it should be obvious that I certainly did not learn my gospel from them.
“My zealous Jewish past, my self-imposed exile in Arabia, my very limited exposure to the apostles in Jerusalem, and the joyful endorsement by Jewish congregations in Judea – all bear witness that I did not receive the gospel I preach, the gospel you believed, from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.
“I say again: by observing Jewish laws in order to become real Christians you’re not turning your backs on me but on Christ. Is that what you want?”
Paul Among the Other Apostles
So much for Paul’s hidden years. In chapter two Paul told the Galatians two remarkable stories about the Jerusalem apostles. They made the barrier truly became impenetrable between the Galatian churches and the people, who were trying to persuade them to observe Jewish laws.
First, he told the story of a second visit he paid to Jerusalem 14 years after the previous one. The end of verse one reports an inflammatory act: I took Titus along also. Verse three explains what made it inflammatory: Yet not even Titus, who was with me, was compelled to be circumcised, even though he was a Greek. “How do you Galatians explain that?”
Verse nine tells how Paul explained it. James, Peter and John, those reputed to be pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the Jews. The apostles of the Mother Church had given their blessing to Paul’s understanding of the gospel, which did not require Gentiles to observe Jewish law. Peter’s courage confirmed the validity of Paul’s gospel.
Paul had one more story to tell. Let’s just read it and be amazed. Verses 11-14: When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. (How awkward was that?) Before certain men came from James, he (Peter) used to eat with the Gentiles (not a kosher thing to do). But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles (a very kosher thing to do) because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group (not a nice thing to say about the great Peter). The other (Christian) Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas (who helped Paul establish the churches of Galatia) was led astray.
When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?”
Peter had shown courage, when he joined James and John to affirm Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles. Then, Peter had shown hypocrisy by his behavior with the Christians at Antioch. Both stories reinforce the validity of the gospel that Paul had preached to the Galatians. They needed to listen to him. After all, did the Galatian congregations want to follow Peter’s courage or his hypocrisy?
The Pastoral Center of Gravity
What compelled Paul to confront Peter like that? Why did he put Barnabas in a bad light with the Galatian churches that Barnabas had founded along with Paul? Why did Paul say those who contradicted his gospel should be eternally condemned? Verse 21 goes to the heart of his motives.
I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing! The shadow of the cross fell across everything Paul said and did. It fell across the first great debate that threatened to tear the young Church asunder.
“Why,” Paul seemed to ask, “do you think Christ died? Do you think His death was nothing more than an execution, assassination, or tragedy?” If that’s all it was, then people might have hailed Him as a hero and remembered Him for a generation or more, and His death would have taken an honored place in folklore; but His death would not be the gospel. What makes it the gospel?
One word in verse 21 answers that: righteousness. You will understand this word in Paul’s writing, if you remember that it means a right relationship with God. Verse 21 says: if a right relationship with God could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing! If circumcision, Sabbath observance and kosher meals could make the world right with God, then Christ did not need to die.
But He did die, because humanity had no other way to be reconciled to God. The people who troubled the Galatian churches had not entered deeply enough into the mystery of the Cross. Paul, reeling from his experience on the Damascus Road, meditating all those years in Arabia, and challenging the status quo in the Jerusalem Church – Paul entered more deeply into that mystery, and as a result the Church could preach that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world, not just the Savior of the Jews.
If “Christianity in America is” going to challenge “the ‘habits of the heart’ and ‘habits of the mind’ that dominate American culture,” then we have to live in a way that allows the shadow of the Cross to fall across those habits and that culture.
Those habits and that culture pose to the Church the decisive question of our generation. Can you Christians lead lives that are worthy of Jesus Christ in an American culture that invites and encourages you to do anything you can get away with?
Doing anything we can get away with appeals to us, because we think doing it will make us happy.
The crucifixion of Jesus Christ tells a different story. Let me tell that story briefly and bluntly. If doing anything we can get away with could save us from our sins, then Christ died for nothing. But it doesn’t save us from our sins. It doesn’t even make us happy for long. It is profoundly selfish and chains us to our sins.
The message of the cross proclaims that self-sacrifice is the way of God in this world. That is why I encourage us, summon us, challenge us to ask of the next person we meet, “How can I put the legitimate personal needs of this person ahead of my own?”
I have heard stories of how you’ve been doing this. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. I believe many more of you have been doing this. That’s how we can live worthy of Jesus Christ in an American culture that invites and encourages us to do anything we can get away with. That’s how we allow the shadow of the cross to fall across the habits of the heart and habits of the mind that dominate American culture.
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