Putting On Christ (Galatians 3) 7/22/12

          We have been taking a look at the Book of Galatians. Galatians is thought by many scholars to be the oldest published work of the apostle Paul. Except for the book of James, Galatians may be the oldest book in the New Testament, written about 48 A.D. Paul wrote it as a letter to the churches in Galatia, a region in Asia Minor that he visited during his first missionary journey. In our first lesson, we noted that Paul was upset about the false gospel that he said was being spread by Judaizers. It was a teaching that encouraged these Gentile Christians to observe and follow the rules and customs of Judaism, including circumcision. Paul angrily and emotionally appealed to his converts to follow the only true gospel. In our second lesson, Paul continued to remind his flock that the law—or works—cannot get us to heaven. Paul argued that the only way to salvation was to be justified by faith through the grace of God. In that way, it would be just as if we had not sinned. We become justified.

          Today, we look at the third chapter of Galatians, a chapter rich with ideas. Theologian William Barclay divided it into five major subsections in his Study Bible series in an attempt to analyze its many points. Barclay’s divisions are the gift of grace, the curse of the law, the covenant that cannot be altered, shut up under sin and the coming of faith. We could easily spend several lessons just on chapter 3 of Galatians, so this message is nothing more than a highlight reel.

`        Chapter 3 of Galatians is of great importance to understanding the Christian faith and of understanding the call of God to all his people. Paul speaks of the Abrahamic covenant. It was a dual promise of seed and nations. The nation of Israel had looked to it for hundreds of years as its sacred birthright. Abraham was to be the father of nations! His seed is traced by Matthew all the way to Jesus. From Abraham came Isaac. From Isaac came Jacob. From Jacob came the twelve tribes of Israel. You know the rest of that story. By the time of the Exodus, the male heirs of Abraham numbered over four hundred thousand! And yet in Galatians 3, Paul declares that the seed to which God referred is not genetic at all, at least not in a bloodline.

Paul tells us that the covenant of God with Abraham was much bigger even than the one to which the Jewish nation had been wedded.  Paul says that the real covenant was a covenant of faith. The admission ticket to coverage under God’s covenant is not blood. It is not lineage. It is not ethnicity. It is faith.  And Paul says that this covenant is and always has been just what he describes. As surely as Abraham could not and did not reach God through his acts or even his obedience, but rather through his simple faith, so then, faith is the heritage passed down and made available to all people.

Paul argues that the offspring of Abraham is not all the generations of Jews, but Christ and Christ only. He goes on to remind us that the covenant preceded the law. The covenant was a unilateral promise from God and it came before and stayed long after the law. Where is the inheritance? asks Paul. The inheritance is God’s promise. It was made to a man, but not dependent on any act of that or any other man. The promise is from God. It is binding and unbreakable.

Now I know something about covenants. The law is full of covenants. Contracts are basically a recital of covenants. My law school professors taught me that a covenant is a promise; that a contract is a promise for a promise. They taught me that no contract can be enforceable unless there is mutual consideration. There must be a thing for a thing.  So a covenant given unilaterally -–from one person to another with no consideration—is a non-binding contract. It’s like saying that there must be some condition to be fulfilled in order for a covenant to work. Well that is certainly true in the civil law, but God needs no law for his covenants to be binding. God needs no conditions to hold him to his word.  Paul reminds us that God is not like us. God can covenant with himself. He doesn’t need a mediator to stand between him and us.  He has no need of our agreement or even of our faithfulness. He can and does supply it all.        Man-made covenants need consideration. There must be a trade-off of some sort. God-made covenants have no such needs.

So the law becomes a method of revelation. If you don’t have a set of rules of some sort, a guideline, a manual, then how do you know when you have crossed the line? If no line is ever drawn, there is no place we may not cross, no limit beyond which manners or courtesy or tact or humanity draws us back. In faith Abraham followed God. In faith, Moses delivered from God to us a set of ten rules of life. In their search for the proper application of these broad rules of life, the Israelites codified them into hundreds more man-made regulations. Before we get too stuffy about those silly religious regulations, we might want to see what we Gentiles have done. The new Book of Order in PCUSA numbers 217 pages and there are about 60 more pages of Appendices. My law office contains about twelve board feet of shelving just to house the North Carolina General Statutes. Man’s attempt at self-governance is noble but severely flawed.

What is Paul’s answer? It is not by the law that we are saved. It is not by its knowledge, nor by its application. To know the law is to recognize something about what it is we are not to do. To know God through faith in Christ is to recognize what it is we are to do.

I love the seasons. They are the annual promise of both constancy and change. Here in the upper South, we can normally enjoy a real taste of each and every season not only on the calendar, but also on the thermometer. Judging by my wife Cindy, I think women may relish the change of seasons even more than men. For me, fall is football and gathering leaves, winter is a taste of snow and the Super bowl, spring is newness all around and flowers and birth to all creation. Summer brings the heat, and mowing and the green of summer. It is vacations and picnics and trips to anywhere with water, from the lake to the river to the ocean. For Cindy, it is all that, but it is also a change of wardrobe. Closets exchange their inhabitants as sweaters and coats make way for sandals and shorts.

The apostle Paul could certainly have appreciated all this fuss about the change of seasons. He was a man on the move and weather more than once made him change his plans or even spared his life. But when it came to faith, there was only one change of clothing for Paul. Paul said to his beloved Galatians as he says to us as well, that when we are baptized into Christ, we have “put on Christ.” The Greek verb here is enouw which, in addition to meaning “put on,” means “to clothe.” When you are baptized, when you believe, when you have faith, you clothe yourself in Christ. It is your uniform.  Neither Jew nor Greek. No more male or female. Neither slave nor free, says Paul. One in Christ. No more ethnicity, no more gender, no more class system.  We share a common faith. That is the real promise of God, revealed all the way back to Abraham! By faith we are saved through grace. No matter how many times we say the words, they become no less miraculous, no less loving. And that, friends, makes us all heirs—heirs according to the promise. Isn’t it nice to know that you are included in His will!