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Once while travelling I was in a place where there was plenty of Reggae music to be heard. I found myself spotting false doctrinal, Rastafarian lyrics, while enjoying the great Caribbean rhythms and melodies. One of Bob Marley’s songs began playing, and as usual, I listened to the words.....
“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery – none but ourselves can free our minds…”
Sorry, Bob. ‘Enjoyed the music but I could not disagree more with the message. None but Christ and the Holy Spirit can emancipate us from slavery, mental or otherwise. Marley’s statement - though quite popular and widely accepted - is a message of salvation by one’s own works, which is opposed to the Gospel and to Christ.
Lots of "nice songs" are great popular hits… Lots of “nice sayings” are untrue yet widely accepted and revered.
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On to Galatians 4 & 5
Here in Galatians chapters 4, Paul continues his correction and exhortation of the wayward Galatians by pointing out the difference between freedom in the Spirit on one hand, and slavery to lesser “elementary” principles of the world, on the other hand (4:3). These lesser principles may be various religions, systems, “gods,” and ways of belief that spring up among men quite naturally, but have nothing to do with, and nothing in common with, faith in Christ. (Bob Marley’s self-emancipation is a small example). Paul thought the Galatians had been set free and emancipated from religious slavery to the Law to a new and pervasive freedom in the grace of Jesus Christ, but now Paul realizes he might have overestimated the situation.
Slaves, Heirs, Employees & Business Owners
Paul compares a slave to an heir who is not yet freely in possession of his inheritance. Like a slave, the heir lives under strict rules and restrictions (analogous to the Law), until his father releases the inheritance to him outright (analogous to the coming of Christ and the establishment of the life of faith). The time of the Law was the great placeholder between the unconditional promise to Abraham and its fulfillment, the incarnation and salvific work of Christ.
In our day, the analogy might be described a little differently, because a “slave” in Paul’s day had different connotations than in our own. We might say that a son works as an apprentice or entry level employee in his father’s business, subject to all the rules and regulations of a low level employee, until one day the father relinquishes ownership and control of the business altogether to his son. The son is no longer an employee, but has been elevated to the freedom of ownership.
As any business owner will immediately recognize, freedom comes with responsibility. A business owner, or an heir of a fortune, or anyone else who has stepped into a position of privilege, bears responsibility commensurate with that privilege and position. Those who are set free in Christ also bear a new and great responsibility to live in the Spirit, as Paul’s Letter to the Romans explains very well beginning at chapter 12. If we are privileged to be in Christ, then we bear a responsibility to live accordingly and to grow in our privileged role by being disciples of His. How we do so is spelled out in the scriptures, via the commands of Christ, and is a large part of the Spirit-empowered process we sometimes call “progressive sanctification.”
Here in Galatians, however, Paul is reacting to a more basic issue, not of free people shirking their responsibilities as free people – for that we can read 1st Corinthians – but of free people walking back into slavery of their own accord, having allowed themselves to be talked into it by those who are still slaves. This may be the worst kind of irresponsibility for free people to commit – to walk willingly back into the jail from which they were emancipated, thinking wrongly that slavery and incarceration is preferable to freedom.
We are reminded of the Israelites, God’s people who, having been emancipated from slavery in Egypt, despised their newfound freedom and lamented it, wanting to return to Egypt where things were more familiar and felt more secure. They foreshadowed the Galatian Christians who, having been freed from slavery to the Law (circumcision, animal sacrifice, temple rituals, tithing, religious feasts and festivals, and all manner of adherence to thousands of laws and regulations of the Jewish religion), now desired to walk back into that same slavery rather than embrace and live in freedom which comes through faith acting in love by the power and grace of the Spirit of Christ.
Paul teaches that when we placed our belief and trust in Christ, we received adoption as full sons and heirs, and we received the Spirit by which we may call God our “Daddy” or Dear Father (4:6). In Christ, then, we are no longer slaves, but free heirs and sons (v.7). Using the above described analogy, when Christ came to redeem us from law, sin and the flesh, we were brought into co-ownership of the business, whereas until that time we were, at best, low level employees. Employees can be hired, fired, and put on probation. Owners, though they bear great responsibility as owners, are no longer employees but enjoy a great freedom. How can they and why would they then willingly hand the keys over to another and become employees again? To do so would, for one thing, indicate they never really accepted being elevated above the status of employees (or slaves).
For interesting insights and a larger Biblical context, pause here and read Exodus 16:2-3, 17:3, 19:5-6, 20:2, 32:1, 32:7-14.
Slave Traders
The Galatians had been slaves of the world, and by entertaining the Judaizers’ insistence that in order to be “real” Christians they must submit to the Old Covenant Jewish Law, the Galatians willingly walked right back into slavery, and back to the “weak and worthless” principles of the world (v.9). They seem also to have been observing various pagan religious holidays (v.12), distressing Paul who feared he might have ministered the Gospel to them for nothing.
Paul reminded the Galatians how good it had been between them when Paul ministered the true Gospel of Christ, and when the Galatians greeted it with joy and with loyalty to Paul as their teacher and as the voice of liberation. Then, soon after Paul departed Galatia, along came the Judaizers who pretended to hold the Galatians in high esteem, only to pervert the Gospel of Christ by placing them back under the yoke of the Law. In other words, the Judaizers marched in and demanded that the business be handed back over to them. These Judaizers patronized the Galatians, stroking their egos in order to captivate them and make them “slaves” again (v.14-20).
Various (often immensely popular) so-called “evangelists” and “teachers” are doing the very same thing today, but in a far more sweet and subtle way. The pitch is basically the same: First, they hold up a Bible, but seldom dig into it, aside from perhaps occasionally using a verse out of context here or there to “prove” a point they are making; next, they tell heartwarming stories of human victory and tales of people overcoming obstacles, stories of perseverance and human goodness; they create success stories, warming the humanistic hearts of their listeners and causing them to feel all warm and fuzzy, as hope erupts that maybe they too can overcome if they only grit their teeth and try harder to keep all the rules and regulations.
Finally, they teach that if we only apply the same heartwarming, selfless techniques, formulas and approaches as these victorious folks have done, God will give us the same great victory – and the same tangible blessings. If we do this, God must do that. After all, He loves us and wants the best for us, and we shall have it for sure if we only believe we will have it and then work hard enough for it.
Victory (success, prosperity, deliverance) is as good as ours! Or at least, so say modern day false prophets.
These false teachers pitch (and write countless books about) a false gospel of works, without anything to say about human depravity, the fall, our depravity and our eternally lost and hopeless state without the emancipation which is only in and by Christ, and the work of grace and mercy which God has done to free us from the just consequences of all our failing and sin. The actual Gospel of Christ pales their heartwarming anecdotes into trivial inconsequence.
We should beware of this sort of "teaching." Slavery can be made to look quite beautiful and desirable. To paraphrase a modern day prophet, “It smiles, but behind our backs, it hisses.” The way to tell if the image is false is to check to see who or what is in the center of it. If we and our works and accomplishments are in the center, we are still slaves; and if the smiling, oh-so-pious speaker himself (or herself) is in the center, run for your life! In fact, if anything but Christ and the Gospel is in the center, move on quickly!
Hagar & Ishmael, Sarah & Isaac
The example of Hagar and Sarah is particularly interesting and powerful. Paul seems to be analogizing Abraham’s “slave” offspring, who was Ishmael by the slave woman Hagar, to the Judaizers and to “Jerusalem,” the people of the Law. But the free woman, Sarah the wife of Abraham, is the mother of those whose faith is in Christ. The Promise (Christ) came through Abraham and Isaac, the free son, not through Ishmael.
Paul stresses here that the Christians of Galatia, like Isaac, are children of promise – that is, they are children of the Promise to Abraham, and children of grace, and of freedom and of faith, not of slavery, and therefore not of the Law. Paul invokes Old Testament scripture in commanding the Galatians to reject and cast out the Judaizers (the slave woman and her son) and to become full heirs, free in Christ (v.30-31).
Here (Gal. 5:1) we encounter an oft quoted verse: “For freedom Christ has set us free.” In context, the meaning is quite clear. “We,” whose faith is in Christ and not in the keeping of laws, nor in the “elementary principles of this world,” have been set free from law and works in order to live in freedom, not to revert back to regulations and pop religious ideas, or some cheap notion of “spirituality,” or mysticism, or piety masquerading as Christianity, or the “gospel” of a smiling “be all you can be” false teacher. Paul wrote, “Stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
Is This Too Radical?
These might seem like radical ideas to some. Are we not supposed to delight in the Law of the Lord? What about all the Psalms in which David exalts the Law? What about Jesus saying not one word of the Law will be removed until all is completed? Are we not supposed to quote the Law to pagans? Are we not to point out transgressions of the Law by unbelievers and believers as well? Are we not to hate lawbreakers and have nothing to do with them? And aren’t we supposed to exalt the really good and wonderful things human beings do for themselves and for one another?
It would take a long time to dig into all of these questions thoroughly, but they are vitally worth digging into. In short and for what it may be worth, I can summarize my own discoveries as follows:
1. Yes, we can delight in the moral Law of the Lord, for it reflects His nature and character, and it defines the (legal) goodness of our Savior, who lived righteously under the Law. We can also delight in the fact that all human morality and ethics, insofar as they are not perverted in our depravity, are objectively sourced in the character and nature of God, just as His laws are also sourced in Him. But this does not mean we are “under” the Law, or that we are obligated to keep the Law in order to win or to keep our salvation. This is, in fact, a complete contradiction of ideas. Because in fact He saves us FROM the Law of sin and death, keeping the Law can never be a condition of our being saved;
2. David rightly exalted the Law. When he wrote the songs we call Psalms, David - unlike ourselves – was living squarely under Old Covenant Law, some thousand years before the incarnation of the Savior. If David was saved, then he was saved by faith in the coming Savior, not by keeping the Law;
3. Jesus did in fact say that nothing of the law would be removed until all things are completed; then, on the cross He said, “It is finished!” At that point, He had fulfilled the law (Old Covenant), and the night before, during the “Last Supper,” He announced a brand New Covenant of grace in His own blood;
4. No, we are not to be identified as the “people of the Law.” Paul makes this abundantly clear in his correction of the Galatians. The fact that most people outside the faith THINK of us as believing ourselves to be "people of the Law" should disturb us, because it shows we have not clearly represented the Gospel of Christ. It is a good thing for unbelievers to see us working out our salvation in love towards one another; however, until outsiders commonly say, “Those Christians are people of faith who devote themselves to one another in love, rather than spending their energy trying to be people of the Law – they believe God does not count their sins against them!” we have failed to communicate the Gospel.
We should be praying that our toughest challenge with unbelievers will be to represent and explain salvation by grace through faith, not to assert, defend and demand the keeping of the Law in order to be considered righteous by God;
5. No, we are not commissioned by Christ to roam through the land and point out sin. This only causes us (at the very least) to look like hypocrites and Pharisees in the eyes of unbelievers, and it also has the dastardly effect of convincing ourselves that we are people of the Law who are under the law, and that we had better pretend to keep it ourselves and enforce it in others in order to secure our own place under it. None of this has the slightest thing whatsoever to do with the Great Commission or the preaching of the Gospel of Christ. We are not commissioned to go out into the world and be God's legal police force. As a “witnessing” tactic, we would do well to abandon our diatribes against homosexuality, removal of religion from the public square, dishonest politicians, unjust laws, etc., and turn them into Christ-centered discussions about the grace and mercy of God who alone can solve our REAL problem;
6. No we are not supposed to hate lawbreakers. I have heard all my life that God hates sin and loves sinners, and I have heard almost as often that we are supposed to hate sins and love the sinners who commit them. There is certainly weight and truth to this; however, we walk a very fine line trying to manage these “hates” and “loves” without inflating ourselves into modern day Pharisees and insinuating falsely that we keep the Law, which not one of us manages to do. If we mean that we hate our own sin and strive by the Spirit of Christ to root it out, not being any longer under condemnation as unworthy slaves, then we are onto something worthwhile; and
7. Finally, any true goodness expressed by people towards themselves or to others is a mere reflection of the image and goodness of God. So no, we are not to exalt our own goodness and our own wonderful acts of generosity or charity. When the warm fuzzy stories of our wonderful works are told and our response is the feeling that we truly ARE good, deep down, and entitled to all good things from God, then we are in serious error.
Spirit, Flesh & Law
Paul, at Galatians 5:16, begins his commentary on walking by the Spirit. He says that to walk by the Spirit is not to be under the Law. We know that the way not to be under the Law is to place faith and trust in Christ, who alone fulfills and removes the penalty of sin and enslavement to the Law. He also says the one who walks according to the Spirit does not gratify the desires of the flesh, that is, does not carry out the “works of the flesh,” examples of which are listed at 5:19-21. In reverse, those who live to carry out the works of the flesh are all about gratifying its desires, and are therefore not walking by the Spirit, and thus may not even truly believe in Christ or the Gospel of grace. Unbelievers are still in their sins, and unbelievers are still unbelievers, even if they act like believers on religious holidays, on odd Sunday mornings when hanging around believers, or when answering religious survey questions.
It is important to note here that given the nature of the Gospel - namely that it pardons believers from sin - Paul cannot possibly be saying that for one to commit any of the listed “works of the flesh” places them back outside of salvation and returns them to eternal condemnation. Such a thing would mean there is no salvation at all, because there is no person who has managed to avoid committing all of the sins listed, particularly as sin has been defined by Jesus (Mathew 5, for example). It would also mean Paul is suddenly arguing the exact opposite of his entire emphatic message to the Galatians, namely that they should by all means believe in the efficacy of the completed work of Christ, and not place themselves under the law, the “yoke of slavery.”
No, the redeemed in Christ, believers who are no longer under the Law, are to walk according to the Spirit, which is exactly what Paul is exhorting the Galatians to do: believe in Christ alone for their righteousness, and thereby receive the Spirit and walk in it. Is it possible to believe, receive the Spirit, and not walk in it? Certainly believers have lapses and fail to walk in the light they have been given - that is what sin is. But there is a large difference between "lapses" and walking in the flesh as a normal, continuous, acceptable lifestyle.
I used to hear the verse, “Walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh,” and I thought it meant, “If you want a technique that will enable you to avoid committing any fleshly sin, here it is: walk by the Spirit!” I took it (way out of context) to mean that if I frequently enough spoke in tongues and engaged in mystical reverie, I would not gratify the desires (lusts) of the flesh, and I would be able to keep the Law! The object of it all was keeping the Law, or so I thought. I understand now that the object of it all, center of it all, answer to it all, and final end of it all is nothing and no one else but Christ.
If we could simply choose to walk in the Spirit, as though it were a choice everyone could freely make, then righteousness by works would be just the ticket. What need would there be for a Savior, if we could simply and freely choose to “walk by the Spirit” and thereby make ourselves righteous? Ours would be a religion of pietism and/or mysticism, not Christianity. The fall would be without effect, we would overcome our own depravity, and there would be no need for a Savior.
The meaning is more like this: “Believe and trust Christ for all your righteousness, and forgiveness of all sins, and then - being no longer under the Law but in the Spirit - you will no longer live to gratify the desires of the flesh; instead, you will live in the Spirit of God, where there is pardon, life, sanctification, growth, and eternal citizenship in the Kingdom of God. As you live in the Spirit, walk in it!”
This meaning seems in line with the context of the Letter to the Galatians as a whole, and also with the context of the rest of the New Testament.
Pietism vs. Piety
There is a form of belief we might call “pietism” which holds basically that Christian doctrines and Biblical principles are essentially useless and unimportant, because all that matters is having “Jesus in our hearts,” loving God, and loving people. Any details beyond that may be “true for you” but “not for me,” or so goes the thinking. On one hand, this seems quite inviting and has the advantage of being very simple to state and to grasp. On the other hand, it has some fatal problems.
I would sum up the problems by saying that such a philosophy substitutes our own efforts at “goodness” and our own supposed spiritual depth and piety, for the historic, factual message and reality of the work and accomplishments of Jesus on our behalf, without which we are lost in our sins. And if we are lost in our sins, all of our attempts at “goodness” are futile. I would add that the “true for you” but “not for me” part is completely incoherent, and that to love God with 100% of everything we are, and our neighbor completely as ourselves, has not been accomplished by one person, ever, except Christ – which should send us right back to the Gospel and to the truths of Christ and biblical doctrine, not to our own piety and nysticism.
Christianity consists essentially of belief and trust in (1) something that happened long, long before we came along, (2) the Person who did it, (3) the message that chronicles it, and (4) the fact that all this applies to us personally because God decides it does. It does not consist of our own wonderful love for God and fellow man, though these will be increasingly reflected in a sanctified life. To the extent we are growing in such love, it results from grace, as the Spirit of God does for and through us immeasurably more than we can do. Pietism, as I am using the term, tends to define Christianity as consisting of things we supposedly do, and is therefore essentially a religion of works.
Piety, by contrast, when it is a part of the process of sanctification, is a good thing. It is good when it results from grace, not when we suppose it is the main event, mustered up from our own supposed goodness. Then it becomes pietism. The “ism” part is where we go off the tracks.
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