Musing 95

So .. . I thought it had only been a week since my last time in Galatians. Turns out it’s been 2. Time flies when you’re not feeling great.

Anyways - moving on to Galatians 3:1-9

After Paul reminds the Galatians of the importance of Christ’s death, his frustration boils over. He finds it incomprehensible to see the crucified Christ, profess faith, and then turn away from that unless there is a demonic force at work. Let that sink in for a moment. In a day where we often minimize the importance of theological distinctions, we must remember that gospel boundaries do exist for both justification and sanctification such that if you cross them, you are abandoning Christ. While we usually focus on antinomianism, going the opposite direction is also a frequent occurrence.

Because the Gospel of Christ gives no room for man’s glory, no rules to say “hey, I worked the system better than those schmucks”, sinful pride looks for ways to wage war on the gospel in us. And we have to be so careful because it can take on so many forms. For example, among the intellectual types, it’s perfection of doctrine. For others, it’s “keep these rules to show you’re saved”.

Verse 3 is the death knell for any view that says there can be addition of rules to the Christian life to guarantee sanctification. Remember, Paul’s foes would not have argued for rule keeping to the exclusion of faith. They believed in the necessity of faith. But they thought faith was insufficient for both justification and sanctification. While Paul’s foes focus on circumcision (and so too often modern readers limit the application to Judaizing groups), Paul’s rebuttals are equally applicable to any system that adds anything to the gospel.

Since it’s been a while, the initial temptation might be to reply “but Paul, I know that the Law is insufficient, that’s why we need faith in God. But that faith alone isn’t enough. To really show that we’re faithful, we have to have these rules so we can be seen to be holy”. But understand that Paul’s response is “the attempt to add rules to salvation is a rejection of the work of the Spirit and to attempt justification or sanctification by works. It doesn’t matter if it’s the Mosaic Law, or something you made up 10 minutes ago, it’s the same error.”

And the remainder of this section builds on the centrality and sufficiency of faith - only those who have faith are sons of Abraham, it is through faith that Abraham is a blessing to the nations and it is by faith that we are blessed along with Abraham.