Galatians #10 & #11 - The Manner of Life - Galatians 5:2-15 & 5:16-26

 


Paul is pointing the way for the Galatian Gentile Christians to live.  This is a two-fer post because of being under the weather.  The common cold morphed into something else that took my mind away from functioning properly to type out a blog post.  On the mend enough to catch us up on our trek through the book of Galatians.

Galatians has basically 3 parts.  Chapters 1 & 2 are about the man, Paul.  Chapters 3 & 4 are about the message, the Gospel.  Chapters 5 & 6 are about the manner, the manner of life.  We have started this 3rd part.

How then shall we live as Christians?  What does a Christian's life look like?  How do we navigate as "free in Christ fully justified by Him" in a world that is in "slave to the curse of the law and unjustified by works?"

The first illustration is found in 5.7 (NIV, 1978) - "You were running a good race.  Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth?"  We, freed in Christ, have a lane we are running in that we need to stay in.  5.10a (NIV, 1978) has become a favorite verse of mine for the book so far.  "I am confident in the Lord that you will take no other view."  Paul has been preaching that there is no other salvation than in Christ alone.  You cannot add to it and you cannot take from it.  This is the lane we are in.

The lane has boundaries on each side and one is this faith in Christ alone comes from the love of God and is expressed in love back to Him.  The other side is that this love is expressed through our service to others.  This is the Christian life that is devoted to the One who saved them to love Him and serve others.  When the church gets out of this lane it starts to diminish its Great Commission to proclaim Christ to the world.  It's solution to life can become something other than Christ transforming a life by changing his or her heart.  The solution might be having all the right rules or making sure everyone is included.  These solutions seem to always diluted the Church's and Christian's message.

The second sermon deals with walking in the Spirit, being led by the Spirit and walking in step with the Spirit.  There is the sinful nature and there is the Spirit and the two do not mix.  The sinful nature for the Christian is to be crucified to the tree.  We are to acknowledge that Jesus' crucifixion paid the price for our sins and when we sin, we rise up grabbing the hand of Jesus.  

We are given another list of the acts of the sinful nature that are obvious, evident, and known.  Those who live this way habitually will not inherit the kingdom of God.  Why?  Because there hearts have not been transformed to walk, be led, and keep in step with the Spirit.  But, and this is a big "but", the list that comes next is a description of those whose hearts have been transformed by God.  We receive and express a love, joy and peace that has come from God.  We display patience, kindness, and goodness toward others.  We practice faithfulness, gentleness, and self control coming from within ourselves.  

It is within this environment the individual Christian and also the body of Christ that we experience spiritual growth and maturity.  The more we allow into the body of Christ the ways of sinful nature and make them not evident and obvious, the farther we wander out of our running lane of "Christ alone."  We live in a time when our world sees these acts of sinful natural as not obvious and actually are normalizing them.  We also live in a time when church denominations are taking some of these acts of sinful nature and are painting them to be acceptable alternatives.  The true Christian and the true Church body will have a manner of life that takes God's words seriously.

Adam





A simple man serving a great God and the local pastor of Stillwater Community Chapel (stillwater-chapel.org). We are in our 38th year of full time ministry. God directed us to this local body of believers on the Western Range of the Rockies to grow with them in mission and mindedness of Christ.

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