I have been doing a Freedom in Christ Course with a couple of people and encouraging them to think about what they believe; about themselves and about what God thinks about them. Often we have a mismatch – God thinks one thing and we think another. Guess who needs to change, or needs helping to change? Not God, that’s for sure.
A couple of days ago I started reading Galatians again. I think it was the first epistle I read after becoming a Christian and to be honest it didn’t make much sense to me at the time. Galatia sounded a bit like a Latin name to me and Latin was my most hated subject at school. I used to sleep through the lessons. On top of that, there is a lot of talk about the Law. In my former life I had had experience of the Law, and I didn’t like it.
Even until recently, reading Galatians seemed like reading about an odd problem that they had, not much connected with our experience (keeping new moon festivals and going back under the Jewish Law) mingled in with some things I could get hold of like the fruits of the Spirit and the fact that “Christ lives in me”.
That last phrase comes from the first verse that I ever memorised:
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved meand gave himself for me.
Galations 2v20
It dawned on me as I re-read Galatians (I am a slow learner) that the trouble for the Galatians was about what they believed, and it is often our trouble too.
They had become Christians after Paul had told them about Jesus; about the fact that He had gone willingly to the cross and died to set them free from sin and death and that He was happy to do that without any guarantee that they would accept what He did and follow Him. (While we were still in our sin, Christ died for us – Romans 5 v 8)
They heard that Jesus did all this because of His love for us, long before we even thought about Him, much less turned towards Him. This was His Grace. There is a song that goes:
“I couldn’t earn it, and I don’t deserve it, still you give yourself away. Oh the overwhelming, never-ending reckless love of God. When I was your foe, your love fought for me. You have been so so good to me”
That is the nub of the gospel they heard and responded to. This is what they first believed. They understood that they could never earn what Jesus did. What we believe is important and affects what we do.
(The song by the way is Reckless Love by Cory Asbury – worth a listen)
The Galatians problem is that later on they decided to believe something different. They had come to Jesus knowing that He did everything necessary to save them out of His vast love for them…..and for us too. They could never earn that love. There was nothing they could do to make Him love them more. But now they were led astray by people who told them that Jesus’ love for them depended on what they did. Suddenly what they did became more important than what they believed. Then the issue becomes, who decides what we need to do to make Jesus love us more, or keep loving us, or not stop loving us. All of a sudden Christianity became about behaviour instead of relationship.
The whole thing had been turned on it’s head. Following Jesus had become a matter of doing certain things in order to earn/keep/not lose Jesus’ love. The truth is the opposite. Because we know we already have His love, we choose to follow Him.
This is a problem just as much for us these days if we are not careful. What do we really believe? That we need to behave in certain ways in order to earn/not lose/keep His love?
Or do we know that we can never earn His love, that we already have it, and because we are beginning to enjoy and experience His love, we are free – free to live differently, free to hang out with Jesus and do cool stuff with Him, free to find out that He has changed us radically. So much so that Jesus is joined to me, lives in me and through me and this is fun. Better than the old life. Better than a life of trying to impress. It’s a better life. A whole new life.
Have fun with your new life. Enjoy it. We are meant to.
Church is out there 