SOULJournal

Galatians 5

SCRIPTURE
5:¹⁶ So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.

OBSERVATION
There is such a tension here between outward acts that we use to measure holiness and simply standing passively on the sidelines and saying that the Holy Spirit will do everything for us.  So what does it mean to live by the Spirit?

UNDERSTANDING
The more we attempt to live by rules and regulations the more we stifle the work of the Holy Spirit. Although Bible study, prayer, worship, witnessing, and other behaviors are commanded of believers and are necessary to faithful Christian living, spirituality cannot be measured by how often or how intensely we are involved in such things. To use them as measures of spirituality is to fall prey to legalism, whose only significance is in the outward, the visible, the humanly measurable. To live just by a set of laws is to live in self-righteousness and hypocrisy and to suppress the Spirit, who alone is able inwardly to produce works of true righteousness. Holiness comes only from the Holy Spirit.

Yet in emphasizing the central work of the Holy Spirit in the believer’s life, some Christians have lost the tension between the human and the divine 

The power for Christian living is entirely from the Holy Spirit, just as the power of salvation is entirely in Jesus Christ. But both in the justifying work of Christ and in the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, man’s will is active and commitment is called for. We are not to sit on the sidelines and just watch the Holy Spirit do battle for us. We are called to consider that we are “to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus,” to refuse to let “sin reign in [our] mortal body,” to resist presenting “the members of [our] body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness,” and to present them “as instruments of righteousness to God” (Rom. 6:11-13).

If we are led by the Holy Spirit we must be willing to go where the Spirit sends us and do what the Spirit leads us to do. To claim we are surrendered to the Holy Spirit but not be personally involved in God’s work is to call Jesus, “Lord, Lord,” and not do what He says (Luke 6:46).

PRACTICAL APPLICATION
A life led by the Holy Spirit is one where we are continually conscious of His presence in our lives and we are desiring to let Him mold and shape us in the image of Christ.  We are willing to obey Him.  We are committed to letting Christ be glorified in our lives and that only happens as we are open and obedient to the promptings of the Spirit.  We must constantly tend the garden of our heart so that the fruit of the Spirit can develop.  We cannot become good by what we do but in the willingness to listen and respond to the Spirit (walking in the Spirit) we are made in the image and likeness of Christ.

Lord I will live by the Spirit.

Galatians 4

SCRIPTURE
4:^18-20It is a good thing to be ardent in doing good, but not just when I am in your presence. Can't you continue the same concern for both my person and my message when I am away from you that you had when I was with you? Do you know how I feel right now, and will feel until Christ's life becomes visible in your lives? Like a mother in the pain of childbirth.

OBSERVATION
I totally identify with Paul and his passion for the people under his spiritual care.

UNDERSTANDING
Paul, up to this point, has been pretty upset with the direction the Galatians had been going in listening to the Judaizers.  He spends the first three chapters laying out the doctrine very carefully so that they understood.  But he is careful to remind the Galatians that the reason for this impassioned writing is because of his deep love for them.  It is important that as leaders, parents, those in authority, we remember our motivation for correction.  It should always be generated by a deep love and concern for those we are leading.  And we must always remind them that it is because of that love and concern that we have to bring correction.

LIFE APPLICATION
Lord, help me not to just get frustrated because people aren't "getting it" and so I respond in anger motivated by that frustration.  Instead let me continue to love the people that you have entrusted me with so that even in correction they can be assured that there is a deep love and concern for them.

Galatians 3

SCRIPTURE
3:²⁶ You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, ²⁷ for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. ²⁸ There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. ²⁹ If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

OBSERVATION
Let grace rather than the law be our guide for living in Christ.

UNDERSTANDING
Wherever Paul went and established churches he was trailed by “Judaizers.” These were Jews—sometimes Jewish believers—who came to the newly founded churches and taught that to be a real Christian one must submit to Old Testament Law and in effect convert to Judaism. This did have a certain logic. Jesus was a Jew, and the roots of Christianity were undoubtedly Jewish. So many new Christians followed the teachings of the Judaizers. Paul rejected their “faith/works” Gospel and writes urgently to explain why mixing works with faith robs the Gospel of its power in the believer’s life.

Through faith in Christ we are released from bondage and given a unique “freedom” which enables us to be and do what is truly good.  Paul tells us that struggling in our own strength to do what is right is futile. He reminds us that God renews us from within and embracing that freedom enables us to be people who are right with God, and it also spills out into loving acts that express the reality of Christ alive in us.

LIFE APPLICATION
As people who have been saved by grace we need to let grace rather than law be our guide.  As children of God we must live as ones who are heirs and not as those who are still outsiders somehow trying to still earn the favor of the Father.  

 

Galatians 2

SCRIPTURE
2:^15-16We Jews know that we have no advantage of birth over "non-Jewish sinners." We know very well that we are not set right with God by rule-keeping but only through personal faith in Jesus Christ. How do we know? We tried it—and we had the best system of rules the world has ever seen! Convinced that no human being can please God by self-improvement, we believed in Jesus as the Messiah so that we might be set right before God by trusting in the Messiah, not by trying to be good.

 ^17-18Have some of you noticed that we are not yet perfect? (No great surprise, right?) And are you ready to make the accusation that since people like me, who go through Christ in order to get things right with God, aren't perfectly virtuous, Christ must therefore be an accessory to sin? The accusation is frivolous. If I was "trying to be good," I would be rebuilding the same old barn that I tore down. I would be acting as a charlatan.

 ^19-21What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn't work. So I quit being a "law man" so that I could be God's man. Christ's life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not "mine," but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that.

OBSERVATION
We cannot work our way into God's good graces, our salvation is given to us by God through Jesus.

UNDERSTANDING
(Concise Theology J.I.Packer)

The main theme of the gospel is salvation. It is the understanding of rescue from jeopardy and misery into a state of safety. The gospel tells us that the God who saved Israel from Egypt, Jonah from the fish’s belly, the psalmist from death, and the soldiers from drowning (Exod. 15:2; Jon. 2:9; Ps. 116:6; Acts 27:31), saves all who trust Christ from sin and sin’s consequences.

As these earthly deliverances were totally God’s work, and not instances of people saving themselves with God’s help, so it is with salvation from sin and death. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8).

What are we saved from?
From the wrath of God, the power of sin, and the power of death (Rom. 1:18; 3:9; 5:21);
from our natural condition of being mastered by the world, the flesh, and the devil (John 8:23-24; Rom. 8:7-8; 1 John 5:19);
from the fears that a sinful life creates (Rom. 8:15; 2 Tim. 1:7; Heb. 2:14-15),
and from the many vicious habits that were part of it (Eph. 4:17-24; 1 Thess. 4:3-8; Titus 2:11-3:6).

Our salvation involves, first, Christ dying for us and, second, Christ living in us (John 15:4; 17:26; Col. 1:27) and we living in Christ, united with him in his death and risen life (Rom. 6:3-10; Col. 2:12, 20; 3:1).

Believers are saved from sin and death, but what are they saved for?
To live for time and eternity in love to God and to their neighbors. The source of love for God is knowledge of God’s redeeming love for us, and the evidence of love for God is love for our neighbors (1 John 4:19-21). God’s purpose, here and hereafter, is to keep expressing his love in Christ to us, and our goal must be to keep expressing our love to to God by worship and service in Christ.

LIFE APPLICATION
I did not do anything to impress God and somehow win my salvation, I simply accept that through what Jesus did on the cross I can be set free if I will believe in Jesus and His complete work.  In believing that I have been saved, I no longer live as a person who is governed by my sinful nature but as one who is governed by God - so I do the best I can to live according to God's ways.  It is imperfect at best but I press on nonetheless. 

Father may my life be one that demonstrates my deep gratitude for what you have done for me.  May I worship and serve You by loving you, your family and the world around me.

Galatians 1

SCRIPTURE
1:⁴We know the meaning of those words because Jesus Christ rescued us from this evil world we’re in by offering himself as a sacrifice for our sins. God’s plan is that we all experience that rescue.

OBSERVATION
Paul tells us that the words grace and peace are words he knows the meaning of.  Do we, as believers who have experienced the same rescue, really KNOW the grace and peace of God or is it a theory?  If we know the meaning of those words then are our actions and decisions based on that knowledge? 

UNDERSTANDING
Grace
-good will, loving-kindness, favor
-of the merciful kindness by which God, exerting his holy influence upon souls, turns them to Christ, keeps, strengthens, increases them in Christian faith, knowledge, affection, and kindles them to the exercise of the Christian virtues
Peace
 security, safety, prosperity, felicity, (because peace and harmony make and keep things safe and prosperous)
 of the Messiah’s peace
 the way that leads to peace (salvation)
 of Christianity, the tranquil state of a soul assured of its salvation through Christ, and so fearing nothing from God and content with its earthly lot, of whatsoever sort that is

We have been given the great gift of salvation, not because we deserve it, not because we earned it, not because we are somehow more special than others,   Because of God’s grace (that undeserved favor) we now can have the peace of mind that nothing can take it from us.  We don’t gain any better salvation because we jump through some “doing good” hoops.  We don’t lose it either if we don’t jump through the “doing good” hoop.  We also have the peace and assurance that God is always with us, that He is in control and that all things in our lives will work out for His good.

LIFE APPLICATION
If I truly know this grace and peace then it will show in my actions.  I will not live worried about the future all the time.  Because I have experienced the free and undeserved gift of salvation I will live with a sense of gratitude, my life given to the One who gave Himself for me.