Galatians

December 31, 2015:I'm not sure exactly why I wanted to start with Galatians. The article that I read suggested reading each book twenty times, and beginning with the shorter books. I believe it provides a table of the shortest to longest. I know there are shorter books, but Galatians seems manageable at six chapters. I was thumbing through and decided to start there. I've read it three times today, and I'm having another run-through while I write my thoughts on it here today. I might not have another day of thinking great thoughts before I get through it twenty times. I'm not really sure what to expect.  We'll see!

The first thing that caught my mind was Galatians 1:4, where Paul mentions "the present evil age." Every age feels evil. We always think the sky is falling, the oppression and the way the world is heading is as bad as it can be, that we're risking everything living in these times. People have been saying it forever. Paul's age was full of evil. Our age is full of evil. It's full of inexpressible joy and beauty. Paul wrote this one in the evil age of a corrupted gospel, to a church losing its way. 

I know something about that - I know about the worry that my children are accepting a corruption of the gospel in a way that might suit them. I know that the world will always be essentially hostile to God's truth, and that when you're on God's side, it can certainly feel like you're oppressed.  (I also know that in my sheltered North American reality, I have a pretty sunshine and roses life of worship, when it comes down to it - but the hatred and the challenges are always there, and I figure they're only going to get more serious.

Galatians 1:15 and the next couple keeps taking me aback. It's so confident - but it's about moving forward in authority with divine revelation. Paul's looking back over more than 15 years of preaching at that point, I know, but still.  "I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was."  He just started preaching.  My brain honestly pauses to think, "Crazy people do that!"  Crazy people consider themselves set apart, and just start preaching on their own authority, mistaking it for God's. But then I think, yes, but I hear that we're through the age of revelation. This was the real deal, and is described in pretty stunning detail, with named witnesses, if without their account.  But the confidence, I'll admit, still staggers me.

Confronting Peter - my first response was a genuine appreciation for Peter - because he messed up so many times, and just kept moving forward in faith. I like so much that it was Peter, not Paul, who got the keys to the church. Peter, who was the first Pope. I like it because the whole infallibility issue just seems so ludicrous, really - if there was anything that Peter wasn't....and here's Paul - and truthfully, I don't like always like Paul. I try to fight that off, but he can sure frustrate me at times. Here's Paul, the newbie, correcting Peter, and of course, Peter takes it and admits he's in the wrong, because Peter is Peter. And he sees it when he messes up, and that's the kind of person I want to be. So Paul points it out, and yeah, he's right, but I just love Peter more for it. Even when he makes mistakes.

Galatians 3 - I noticed with intrigue right away that Paul has it pinned at 430 years from Abraham (okay, Jacob, to whom the promise was last extended again), to the giving of the Law through Moses. I'm not sure I ever noticed that before. I like those precise elements, though.I stumbled over the bit about the Law being entrusted to a Mediator, and that a Mediator works between parties. God is apart, but the mediation was between God and man, though Moses. Okay...what's he getting at here? "A mediator, however, implies more than one party; but God is one."

I'm just not sure what that's about.  Need to think about that some more (I did, lower down! - MacArthur helped me untangle that a bit!).

If we believe in Christ, we're all heirs to the promise, through the Seed, who is Christ. Descendants of Abraham or not, we're adopted into the line.

Galatians 4 - This is the bit that caught me about the children of Hagar and how they aren't heirs to the promise - it's not because they aren't of Abraham's line - because of course, they are. It's because they're the line he created stepping out of faith in the promise of God to bless him with a child through Sarah. They're the children of doubt, of a lack of faith. Everything about them is cast off, thrown away, wasted. But they aren't excluded forever, because they can be reunited themselves, through faith in Christ, at which everyone is adopted as an heir.  Okay.

And it's got that echo back to Isaiah 54:1 - a promise that the children of the desolate woman will be more numerous than those of the married women.  Isn't that the tragic truth - marriage is disappearing, and we have strings of children born to women with their "baby daddies."  God, how I hate that term and the transience and lack of relationship it involves.  Absolutely heartbreaking - and it robs God's children of the promise, because they're being created outside of faith and trust in God's plan.  

Galatians 5:3 - "Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law."  You think you're okay because you follow this one mainline teaching of tradition?  But you're going to fall apart - you can't keep the whole Law. No one can. It's only THERE to show you how miserably you fail if you try to save yourself.

"A little yeast works through the whole loaf."  Why is yeast always so bad in the Bible?  What's this about?  Bread doesn't like me, no matter how much I like it.  Is it just an analogy?  Why always the unleavened bread?  Too superficial a thought?  Too "What Would Jesus Eat?"

We hit the fruits of the spirit at the end of this chapter - and I think about an article I read a few weeks ago - not sure I can find it again. But in it, the author mentioned something really neat about the fruits of the spirit being divided into three groups of three.

Fruits from God:  Love, joy, peace - these are really like the seeds God plants in us.
Fruits from within:  Patience, kindness, goodness - the fruit we grow with the first three seeds.
Fruits directed outward: Faithfulness, gentleness, self-control - the growth that extends outwards when we nurture the first six.
I'm not sure I'm recapturing that perfectly, but I really loved it. I'll try to find the article.

Galatians 6:  The one who receives instruction in the word should share every good thing with the instructor. Yeah!  Now, I admit, I think that means something more substantial, but my first take on this was in the nature of praise reports, which would encourage the instructor by revealing the spiritual growth in the protege, and that's beautiful!  Encouragement of a dear pastor has been much on my mind of late.

Not boasting about anything but Christ's cross.  Absolutely. I'm a little prone to boasting, and it bears using caution. One of the reasons I hesitate to share the blog at all. I don't want to do it out of pride. (Not that I'm even confident it will be anything worth being prideful over!)

And then I ran into the phrase, "even to the Israel of God"....and that stumped me a bit, because of the tone.  I need to figure that out. A quick Google search tells me there's some controversy. I will dig a little.That's what I have on four read-throughs. I'm not sure if I'll actually read exactly 20 times, or just "several," we'll see. I'll probably start off by giving it a try, and maybe I'll do a few days of thinking.  We'll see how things unfold. 

January 1, 2016:

I've done a little looking on the "even to the Israel of God," and my print version is about the only version I find that has the word "even." My audio recording, which is still NIV, doesn't have it. None of the other usual versions have it - and it makes a huge difference. Without "even," it's a perfectly normal statement, no surprises - we're all the new Israel, as heirs to the Promise through faith.  

I couldn't sleep early this morning, and listened several more times. I've been through the book thirteen times now, and I'm honestly feeling a bit puzzled as to whether I think it's worthwhile to do these consecutive readings. Or rather, to do them this way - without any study, just for impressions, as the article suggested. It doesn't feel very rewarding or insightful. 

It makes me think a lot about the Law, though, and our freedom - and then it makes me question all the rules that Paul lays in place that cause so much dissension in the Church.  We're free, we're neither slave nor owner, neither male nor female, Gentile or Jew - but then there's all the Corinthians stuff about the rules for our hair, head coverings, positions in the church, roles within a marriage - and I just sit there thinking less about inspired word of God, and more about the entitlement of Paul as a Roman citizen, and a male, Messianic Jew.  It's all very easy for him to sit there and tell us to be silent in church, isn't it?  But how are we do decide, really, when he's talking to a culture and a specific church, or to the 21st Century world at large?  What is a message to unseemly conduct, and what isn't?  What of the Law carries forward and what doesn't?  Clearly, there's a lack of consensus - it's a big part of the differences in denominations, isn't it?  How does one person decide what to believe about that?  How much freedom do I have in Christ - and how best can I exercise that freedom, in the Spirit God intends for me?

I don't think I can really do this, and enjoy it, without spending some time in a commentary, or working with a concordance. I'm going to pull out a few here and there (online) to see if there are things that haven't occurred to me. The article I'm basing this plan on said that I would be able to do that with my Bible study - well, I'm not in one. I'm not in a small group, and I don't have anyone who works through these things with me - more shame to me, I suppose, and I should really try to figure out how to do that as a shift worker, but I never have quite managed it. In fact, under my new schedule, I'm not even going to make it to church very often - working 3/5 Sundays during the day. This annoys me to no end. It could even drive me to an earlier church service somewhere else so that I can go before work in the morning.  I don't really want to go anywhere else, but I don't want to neglect church, either.


Okay, let's have another look at Chapter 1, where Paul says that the "other gospel" is no proper gospel at all, Wesley points out that a gospel is (literally) GOOD news - and that renewing a doctrine of salvation through the Law is bad, bad news, indeed. And he recognises the sneakiness of the false teachers - because he warns them to the extent that if an angel straight from heaven teaches them false doctrine, they're accursed.

He goes on to point out most severely the dangers of trying to please both men and God. This one had me stop a few times - sometimes I think Paul is too proud of his disinterest in pleasing men. I like to connect with people, I like to think that pleasing man and pleasing God doesn't have to be something that's mutually exclusive.

On Paul confronting Peter - how common is it for people to fall back on legalism to prove that they're really "religious?" What is legalism, and where does our true freedom lie - how far does it go? How far should it go? I mull this over and over, and wonder again about all Paul's legalism...

Ooh! I just clicked on the Expanded Bible - that's pretty cool - lots of possible translation options are shown.

A phrase keeps running through my mind - "I am a child of the Promise."  I'm not much of a name it and claim it kind of girl - but that's well worth claiming.  I have friends who choose key words for the year, as a theme - Promise - that sounds like my 2016 word, for sure. It jumps to mind and won't leave.

I had paused over "I became like you," and wasn't sure what he was getting at - a different translation note makes that clear - he lived like a Gentile to win them over.  

Fourteen trips through the book, in two days. Possibly I'm rushing. I don't to rush - I just like to dive in headlong. 

Oooh, now John McArthur's commentary - that's some exciting stuff right there.  Listen to some of these things! He talks about it forming Luther's starting point for the entire Reformation!Dr. Tenny says, "Christianity might have been just one more Jewish sect, and the thought of the Western world might have been entirely pagan had Galatians never been written."

Another thing that catches my attention is in the mention that Paul doesn't really have anything nice to say here. He's upset. He's on the attack!  Well, okay, he says they were nice to him when he came to them in illness. That's about it!

McArthur is adamantly defending Paul's right as an apostle (as Paul does, in this letter) to convey God's authoritative, inspired words.  And again, that leaves me wondering, what about Corinthians, what about the legalism?

I begin to feel like Corinthians (both of them) are coming next....with McArthur along for the ride on this new trek through the Bible with me this year.

I've just spent some time at Amazon, wanting McArthur's Bible Commentary and Handbook.  I'd like the Study Bible, too, because I gave mine away, and I don't really love the one I lug around these days. We have a McArthur Study Bible, but technically it's Caroline's. John is going to go find out what version it is, because I really am an NIV girl at heart.  NIV, anyone?

I feel I've been going on ridiculously about Galatians, and it's not even well-organised anymore, and I just don't know what else I can pull out right now.

Okay. One of the translations uses the word Anathema for 1:7 - "accursed."  McArthur teaches me something about "anathema." It means devoted for destruction.  It's used for big-time things.  Jericho. I am reminded uncomfortably of what happened when someone tried to salvage something from a city set apart and devoted for destruction.

And false teachers.  God really, really has it in for false teachers. In fairness, this is Satan's realm - false doctrine. It's certainly what frightens me the most in my children's walk with God.  

Best quote ever:  "...if any of you are working on developing lessons in being a preacher or something, the wonderful thing about always using Scripture to illustrate Scripture is that whatever you're using, you can teach with.  If you just illustrate Scripture with little stories, you're not teaching.  You're just telling stories.  But if you illustrate Scripture with other Scripture, you're teaching while you're illustrating."

I love this so much, because when I'm studying the Bible, I always say I want to leapfrog around - people in the bible studies I've attended want to plonk themselves into one book and stay there, but I like to see what's proven through other scripture. It changes EVERYTHING FOR ME.

Judaizers vs/ Messianic Jews.  Interesting - because you know, I've caught myself in the past, thinking that I missed out on something special, not being part of the Jewish faith first - chosen before being adopted.  Strange, perhaps, but it's certainly occurred to me.

A little bit of analysis about the "I marvel that you are so soon removed..." - it's not a passive verb. It's an active verb. I wonder that you are decamping so soon - that you are turning coats, turning traitor. Heavy.  And removed from what?  From GOD. Not from teaching, not from doctrine. From GOD.

Etymology. There's etymology. John McArthur, why am I even blogging? Why don't I just read what you have. "Perversion." LITERALLY, turning around, reversing.  Add works/Law to Grace and you undermine and pervert the entire Gospel.

Interesting food for thought here - the postmodern society has no trouble understanding grace. They just don't understand any need for it. How can you convince them of the value and worth of Christ's sacrifice when they have no concept of anything as arbitrary as sin? 

"The Scripture advocates that we must convince men and women, in every culture, in every society, that there is truth, there is authority, there are rules and there is a judge.  And they must understand, to put it this way simply, law before they'll ever understand what?  Grace.  If ever there was a time for the proclamation of law and sin and the need for repentance and forgiveness, it is in this society.  Sadly, it is at this very juncture in society when the church is largely abandoning that emphasis."

Why the law?  McArthur says, "To develop a great expectation and necessity for the Redeemer by revealing human sinfulness to the degree that it would create the desperation in men that drives them to the Savior. "   He repeats it twice. Grace is meaningless, without awareness of sin, without repentance, without a reliance on a Saviour. The summit of the Mosaic covenant is the crucifixion, he says. The summit of the Abrahamic covenant is the resurrection.  

And he deals with one of the recurring questions next:

"Now that brings us to the present.  How do we view the law in the present?  In the past, it is addition.  As to the future, it is insertion.  As to the present, it is instruction.  It is instruction.  You say, well, if the whole ceremonial law is now set aside, what's left?  What’s left is God and God's moral standards haven't changed.  They were true before Abraham, they were true in the four hundred and thirty years between Abraham and Moses, and they're still true.  But, of course, we have the benefit of all of them being written down for us, not only in the pages of the Old Testament where God's moral law is clearly indicated, but repeated and repeated and repeated over and over on the pages of the New Testament.  And the law is now given to us for some very important reasons."

I am stunned.  I just learned that the "foolish" word that Paul uses is anoētos - and what does it mean?  INCONCEIVABLE!!  So stupid, so foolish, so unwilling to use your brains, your heart to see the truth...

"Follow your head, not your emotions.  And that's what gets people into trouble; that's why people get wrapped up in false systems.  Not because...not because they’ve been intellectually convinced but because they’ve...they’ve been emotionally victimized.  Think it through." 

I'm at the point now where I'm simply restating and quoting John McArthur.  

I like the definition of "bewitched," too, that he offers - "fascinated," - who has tickled your fancy. Who has enticed you away. Because that's what happens, isn't it?  Your heart gets caught up in an exciting idea and you follow it, leaving your head behind. You don't want to examine it thoughtfully. You don't want to be transformed by genuine thought, reflection, assessment. You want to fall in love with an idea. With me, when I was a teen, it was the idea of reincarnation. I always admitted that I couldn't quite believe it, but I loved the idea so much that I immersed myself in readings, anyway. I was led away, quite with my own consent - because it was attractive and fascinating. 

You want to believe something new and great and wonderful and call it Christianity because it's more comfortable?  Then you better get reading, and not just commentaries - you better get in there, check Scripture against Scripture, and see if it holds up. Test it, and be honest and straightforward, and don't play games, because - there it is, in Galatians 6, God is not mocked.  Sow as you choose, without intellectual honesty, and you'e going to reap it disastrously.  

Delving and delving, but it's the commentary and insight and etymology that's grabbing me now. That's the food I need in a study, and I can't just read 20 times without digging. It's the food I don't get anywhere else.

January 2, 2016:  I think I've probably hit 20 times by now. I wasn't enjoying it till I pulled out the John McArthur commentary.  Now I'm revelling in all the context and etymology, and life is good. 

I'm definitely ordering his Bible Commentary massive book.