Category: Bible Study

Intro to Jude (Part 1)

• Jude
• 1 Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James: To those who are the called, loved by God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ. 2 May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you. 3 Dear friends, although I was eager to write you about the salvation we share, I found it necessary to write, appealing to you to contend for the faith that was delivered to the saints once for all. 4 For some people, who were designated for this judgment long ago, have come in by stealth; they are ungodly, turning the grace of our God into sensuality and denying Jesus Christ, our only Master and Lord. 5 Now I want to remind you, although you came to know all these things once and for all, that Jesus saved a people out of Egypt and later destroyed those who did not believe; 6 and the angels who did not keep their own position but abandoned their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains in deep darkness for the judgment on the great day. 7 Likewise, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns committed sexual immorality and perversions, and serve as an example by undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. 8 In the same way these people—relying on their dreams—defile their flesh, reject authority, and slander glorious ones. 9 Yet when Michael the archangel was disputing with the devil in an argument about Moses’s body, he did not dare utter a slanderous condemnation against him but said, “The Lord rebuke you!” 10 But these people blaspheme anything they do not understand. And what they do understand by instinct—like irrational animals—by these things they are destroyed. 11 Woe to them! For they have gone the way of Cain, have plunged into Balaam’s error for profit, and have perished in Korah’s rebellion. 12 These people are dangerous reefs at your love feasts as they eat with you without reverence. They are shepherds who only look after themselves. They are waterless clouds carried along by winds; trees in late autumn—fruitless, twice dead and uprooted. 13 They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shameful deeds; wandering stars for whom the blackness of darkness is reserved forever. 14 It was about these that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied: “Look! The Lord comes with tens of thousands of his holy ones 15 to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly concerning all the ungodly acts that they have done in an ungodly way, and concerning all the harsh things ungodly sinners have said against him.” 16 These people are discontented grumblers, living according to their desires; their mouths utter arrogant words, flattering people for their own advantage. 17 But you, dear friends, remember what was predicted by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. 18 They told you, “In the end time there will be scoffers living according to their own ungodly desires.” 19 These people create divisions and are worldly, not having the Spirit. 20 But you, dear friends, as you build yourselves up in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, 21 keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting expectantly for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ for eternal life. 22 Have mercy on those who waver; 23 save others by snatching them from the fire; have mercy on others but with fear, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh. 24 Now to him who is able to protect you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of his glory, without blemish and with great joy, 25 to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority before all time, now and forever. Amen.
  • Jude is a bewildering undertaking for most, unless you get to the background and context of the letter. There are two verses which are well-known at the end of the letter, but outside of verses 24 and 25 (read above), Jude is largely unknown and seldom read
  • The reason for its difficulty is that it is written out of a background of thought, against the challenge of a situation, in pictures and with quotations, which are all quite strange to us. Without doubt, it would hit those who read it for the first time like a hammer-blow. It would be like a trumpet-call to defend the faith
  • James Moffatt calls it a fiery cross to rouse the churches. But, as J.B. Mayor, one of its greatest commentators has said, “To a modern reader it is curious rather than edifying with the exception of the beginning and the end.”
  • When we understand Jude’s thought and disentangle the situation against which he was writing, his letter becomes of great interest for the history of the earliest Church and by no means without relevance for today. There have indeed been times in the history of the Church, and especially in its revivals, when Jude was not far from being the most relevant book in the NT. Let’s start with the substance of the letter
  • Meeting the Threat
    • It had been Jude’s intention to write a work on the faith which all Christians share; but that task had to be laid aside in view of the emergence of people whose conduct and thought were a threat to the Church. In view of this situation, the need was not so much to expound the faith as to rally Christians to its defense. Certain individuals who had insinuated themselves into the Church were busily engaged in turning the grace of God into an excuse for open immorality and are denying the only true God and Jesus the Lord. Theses people were immoral in life and heretical in belief
  • The Warnings
    • Against these intruders, Jude marshals his warnings. Let them remember the fate of the Israelites. They had been brought in safety out o fEgypt, but they had never been permitted to enter the promised land because of their lack of belief. Despite receiving the grace of God, it was still possible to lose eternal salvation by drifting into disobedience and faithlessness
    • Some angels with the glory of heaven as their own had come to earth and corrupted mortal women with their lust; and now they were imprisoned in deepest darkness awaiting judgement. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and their destruction in flames is a dreadful warning to everyone who similarly goes astray
  • The Evil Life
    • These intruders are visionaries of evil dreams; they defile their flesh, and they speak evil of the angels. Not even Michael the archangel dared to speak evil even of the evil angels. Michael had been given the task of burying the body of Moses. The devil had tried to stop him and claim the body for himself. Michael had spoken no evil against the devil, even in circumstances like that, but had simply said: “The Lord rebuke you!”
    • Angels must be respected, even when evil and hostile. These evil people condemn everything which they do not understand; and spiritual things are beyond their understanding. They do understand their physical instincts and allow themselves to be governed by them as irrational animals do
    • They are like Cain, the the murderer; like Balaam, whose one desire was for gain and who let the people into sin; they are like Koran, who rebelled against the legitimate authority of Moses and was swallowed up by the earth for his arrogant disobedience
    • They are like the hidden rocks on which a ship may come to grief; they have their own in-group in which they mix with people like themselves, and thus destroy Christian fellowship; they deceive others with their promises, like clouds which promise the longed-for rain and then pass over the sky; they are like fruitless and rootless trees, which have no harvest of good fruit; as the foaming spray of the waves casts the seaweed and the wreckage on the beaches, they cast up shameless deeds like foam; they are like disobedient stars which refuse to keep their appointed orbit and are doomed to darkness. Long ago, the prophet Enoch had described these people and had prophesied their divine destruction. They grumble and speak against all true authority and discipline as the children of Israel murmured against Moses in the desert; they are discontented with the lot which God has appointed to them; they are dictated to by their lusts; their speech is arrogant and proud; they pander to and flatter the great for the sake of gain
  • Words to the Faithful
    • Having made clear his disapproval of the evil intruders in this torrent of denunciation, Jude turns to the faithful. They could have expected all this to happen, for the apostles of Jesus had foretold the rise of evil people. But the duty of all true Christians is to build their lives on the foundation of the most holy faith, to learn to pray in the power of the Holy Spirit, to remember the conditions of the covenant into which the love of God has called them, and to wait for the mercy of Christ
    • As for the false thinkers and those who indulge in loose living, some of them may be saved with pity while they are still hesitating on the brink of their evil ways; others have to be snatched like pieces of burning wood from the fire; and Christians must have that godly fear which will love the sinner but hate the sin, and must avoid contamination from those they seek to save
    • There will be with them the power of God who can keep them from falling and can bring them pure and joyfully into His presence
  • The Heretics
    • Who were the heretics whom Jude blasts, what were their beliefs, and what was their way of life? Jude never tells us. He was not a theologian, but a plain honest leader of the church. He denounces rather than describes the heresies he attacks. He does not seek to argue and refute. But from the letter itself, we can deduce three things about them
      • They were antinomians—people who believed that the moral law did not apply to them
        • Antinomians have existed in every age of the Church. They are people who pervert grace. Their position is that the law is dead and they are under grace. The prescriptions of the law may apply to other people, but they no longer apply to them. They can do absolutely what they like
        • Grace is supreme; it can forgive any sin; the greater the sin, the more the opportunities for grace to abound (Romans 6). The body is of no importance; what matters is the inward heart. All things belong to Christ, and, therefore, all things are theirs. And so, for them there is nothing forbidden
        • So, Jude’s heretics turn the grace of God into an excuse for flagrant immorality; they even indulge in shameless unnatural conduct, as the people of Sodom did. They defile the flesh and do not consider it to be a sin. They allow their animal instincts to rule their lives. With their sensual ways, they are likely to wreck the Love Feasts of the Church. It is by their own lusts that they direct their lives
      • The Denial of God and of Jesus
        • Of the antinomianism and blatant immorality of the heretics whom Jude condemns, there is no doubt. The other two faults with which he charges them are not so obvious in their meaning. He charges them with denying Jesus Christ, our only Master and Lord. The closing is to “the only God our Savior”, a phrase which occurs again in Romans 16:27 and I Timothy 1:17. The reiteration of the word only is significant
        • If Jude talks about our only Master and Lord, and about the only God, it is natural to assume that there must have been those who questioned the uniqueness of Jesus and of God. 
        • As so often in the NT, we are again in contact with the type of thought which came to be known as Gnosticism. Its basic idea was that this was idealistic universe, a universe with tow eternal principles in it. From the beginning of time, there had always ben spirit and matter. Spirit was essentially good; matter was essentially evil. Out of this flawed matter, the world was created. Now, God is pure spirit, and could don’t possibly have contact with matter because it was essentially evil
        • How then was creation brought about? God put out a series of divine powers; each of these were further away from Him. At the end of this long chain, remote from God, there was one who was able to touch matter; and it was this distant and secondary god, who actually created the world
        • As they grew more distant from God, they grew more ignorant of Him—and also grew more hostile to Him. The one who created, at the end of the series, was both totally ignorant of and hostile to God
        • Having gone that far, the Gnostics took another step. They identified the true God with the God of the NT, and they identified the secondary, ignorant, and hostile god with the OT. As they saw it, the God of creation was a different being from eh God of revelation and redemption. Christianity, on the other hand, believes in the only God, the one God of creation, providence, and redemption
          • This was the Gnostic explanation of sin. It was because creation was carried out, in the first place, from evil matter, and in the second place, by an ignorant god, that sin, suffering, and all imperfection existed
          • This Gnostic line of thought had one curious but logical result. If the God of the OT was ignorant and hostile to the true God, it must follow that the people whom that ignorant God hurt were in fact good people. Clearly, the hostile God would be hostile to the people who were the true servants of the true God. The Gnostics, therefore, turned the OT upside down and regarded its heroes as villains and its villains as heroes
          • So there was a sect of these Gnostics called the Ophites, because they worshiped the serpent of Eden; and there were those who regarded Cain, Korah, and Balaam as great heroes. It is these very people whom Jude uses as tragic and terrible examples of sin
          • Not only did these heroics deny the oneness God, they also denied our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ. That is to say, they denied the uniqueness of Jesus. How does that fit in with the Gnostic ideas as far as they are known to us? According to Gnostic belief, God put out a series of divine powers between Himself and the world. The Gnostics regarded Jesus as one of these divine powers. They did not regard Him as our only Master and Lord; He was only one among the many who were links between God and human beings, although He might be the highest and closest of all
        • One other hint that alludes to the Gnostics. In verse 19, Jude describes them as people who “create divisions and are worldly, not having the Spirit.”
          • Gnostic thought put divisions between those who were ignorant and those who could fully understand God. And the ones that could fully understand God were the elite. It is clear that this kind of belief inevitably produced spiritual snobbery and pride. It introduced into the Church the worst kind of class distinction
        • So the heretics whom Jude attacks were people who denied the oneness of God and split Him into an ignorant creating God and a truly spiritual God. They denied the uniqueness of Jesus and saw Him as only one of the links between God and human beings, and they created class distinctions within the Church and limited fellowship with God to the intellectual few
      • The Denial of the Angels
        • It is further implied that these heretics denied and insulted the angels. It is said they reject authority, and slander glorious ones. The words authority and glorious ones describe ranks in the Jewish hierarchy of angles. Verse 9 is a reference to a story in The Assumption of Moses. If Michale, the archangel, on such an occasion said nothing against the prince of evil angels, clearly no one can speak evil of angels
        • The Jewish belief in angels was very elaborate. Every nation had a protecting angel. Every person had an angel. All the forces nature, the wind, the sea, fire, and all the others were under the control of angels. It could be said that every blade of grass has its angel
        • Clearly, the heretics attacked the angels. It is likely that they said that the angels were the servants of the ignorant and hostile creator God and the Christians must have nothing to do with them. We cannot quite be sure what lies behind this; but to all their other errors, the heretics added the despising of the gangles, and to Jude this seemed an evil thing

Galatians 6

• Galatians 6:1-5
• Brothers and sisters, if someone is overtaken in any wrongdoing, you who are spiritual, restore such a person with a gentle spirit, watching out for yourselves so that you also won’t be tempted. 2 Carry one another’s burdens; in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. 3 For if anyone considers himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. 4 Let each person examine his own work, and then he can take pride in himself alone, and not compare himself with someone else. 5 For each person will have to carry his own load.
  • Paul knew the problems that arise in any Christian society. The best people can slip up. The word Paul uses does not mean a deliberate sin; but a slip that might come to someone on an icy road or a dangerous path
  • Now the danger of those who are really trying to live the Christian life is that they are apt to judge the sins of others harshly. There is an element of hardness in many good people
  • There are many good people to whom you could not go and sob out a story of failure and defeat; they would be bleakly unsympathetic. But Paul says that, if people to slip, the real Christian duty is to get them on their feet again
    • The word he uses for restore is used for making a repair and also for the work of a surgeon in removing some growth or in setting a broken limb. The whole atmosphere of the word lays the stress not on punishment but on cure; the correction is thought of not as a penalty but as putting something right
    • And Paul goes on to say that when we see someone make a mistake we do well to say: “There but for the grace of God I go”
• Galatians 6:6-10
• 6 Let the one who is taught the word share all his good things with the teacher. 7 Don’t be deceived: God is not mocked. For whatever a person sows he will also reap, 8 because the one who sows to his flesh will reap destruction from the flesh, but the one who sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit. 9 Let us not get tired of doing good, for we will reap at the proper time if we don’t give up. 10 Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us work for the good of all, especially for those who belong to the household of faith.
  • Paul now becomes intensely practical
    • The Christian Church had its teachers. In those days, the Church was in a very real way a sharing institution. No Christian could bear to have too much while others had too little. So Paul says; “If someone is teaching you the eternal truths, the least you can do is share with that person such material things as you possess.”
    • He goes on to state a grim truth. He insists that life holds the scales with an even balance. If we allow the lower side of our nature to dominate us, in the end we can expect nothing but a harvest of trouble. But, if we keep on walking the high way and doing the fine thing, in the end God will repay
    • Christian never took the threat out of life
      • The Greeks believed in the goddess of retribution, Nemesis; they believed that, when people did wrong, immediately Nemesis was on their trail and sooner or later caught up. All Greek tragedy is a sermon on the text; “The doe shall suffer.” What we do not always remember is this: it is blessedly true that God can and does forgive us for our sins, we still have to bear the consequences of those sins
        • If people sin against their bodies, sooner or later they will pay in ruined health—even if they are forgiven. John B. Gough, who had lived a reckless early life, used to declare in warning: “The scars remain.” And Origen, the third-century Christian scholar and a universalist, believed that, although all would be saved, even then the marks of sin would remain
        • We cannot trade not the forgiveness of God. There is a moral law in the universe. If we break it, we may be forgiven; but, nonetheless, we break it at our peril
        • Paul finishes by reminding his friends that sometimes the duty of generosity may be very trying, but—as Ecclesiastes 11:1 states “Send your bread on the surface of the water, for after many days you may find it.”
• Galatians 6:11-18
• 11 Look at what large letters I use as I write to you in my own handwriting. 12 Those who want to make a good impression in the flesh are the ones who would compel you to be circumcised—but only to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ. 13 For even the circumcised don’t keep the law themselves, and yet they want you to be circumcised in order to boast about your flesh. 14 But as for me, I will never boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. The world has been crucified to me through the cross, and I to the world. 15 For both circumcision and uncircumcision mean nothing; what matters instead is a new creation. 16 May peace come to all those who follow this standard, and mercy even to the Israel of God! 17 From now on, let no one cause me trouble, because I bear on my body the marks of Jesus. 18 Brothers and sisters, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.
  • Usually, Paul added only his signature to the letter which the scribe wrote to his dictation; but in this case his heart is running over with such love and anxiety for the Galatians that he writes this whole last paragraph. The large letters he refers to may be due to three things
    • This paragraph may be written large because of its importance, as if it were printed in bold type
    • It may be written large because Paul was not used to writing with a pen, and it was the best that he could do
    • It may be that Paul’s eyes were weak, or that he was suffering from a blinding headache, and all he could produce was the large, sprawling handwriting of someone who could hardly see
  • He comes back to the central point. Those who wanted the Galatians to get themselves circumcised did so for three reasons
    • It would save them from persecution
      • The Romans recognized the Jewish religion and officially allowed Jews to practice it. Circumcision was the indisputable mark of a Jew; and so these people saw in it a passport to safety should persecution arise. Circumcision would keep them safe from both the hatred of the Jews and the law of Rome
    • In the last analysis, by circumcision and by keeping the rules and regulations of the law, they were trying to put on a show that would win the approval of God
      • Paul, however, was quite certain that nothing that individuals could achieve for themselves could win salvation; so, once again, pointing them to the cross, he summons them to stop trying to earn salvation and to trust to the grace which loved them like that
    • Those who wanted the Galatians to be circumcised did not keep all the law themselves
      • No one could. But they wanted to boast about the Galatians as their latest conquests. They wanted to glory in their power over people whose they had reduced to their own legalistic slavery. So, Paul once again lays it down with all the intensity of which he is capable that circumcision and uncircumcision do not matter; what does matter is that act of faith in Christ which opens up a new life
    • “Because I bear on my body the marks of Jesus” Two possible meanings
      • The stigmata has always fascinated people
        • It is told of Francis of Assisi that once, as he fasted on a lonely mountain top, he seemed to see the love of God crucified on a cross that stretched across the whole horizon, and as he saw it a sword of grief and pity pierced his heart. Slowly the vision faded, and Francis relaxed; and then, they say, he looked down and there were the marks of the nails in his hands, marks that he bore for the rest of his life. Whether it is truth or legend, we don’t know, for there are more things in this world than our matter-of-fact philosophy dreams of; and some think that Paul had passed through an experience of crucifixion with his Lord so real that he, too, bore the prints of the nails in his hands
      • Often a master branded his slaves with a mark that showed them to be his
        • Most probably, what Paul means is that the scars of the things he had suffered fro Christ are the brands which sho him to be Christ’s slave. In the end, it is not his apostolic authority that he uses as a basis of appeal; it is the wounds he sustained for Christ’s sake. Paul said: “My marks and scars I carry with me to be my witness to him who will now be my rewarder.”
  • After the storm, stress, and intensity of the letter comes the peace of the benediction. Paul has argued, rebuked, and persuaded; but his last word is grace, for him the only word that really mattered

Galatians 5

• Galatians 5:1-12
• For freedom, Christ set us free. Stand firm, then, and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery. 2 Take note! I, Paul, am telling you that if you get yourselves circumcised, Christ will not benefit you at all. 3 Again I testify to every man who gets himself circumcised that he is obligated to do the entire law. 4 You who are trying to be justified by the law are alienated from Christ; you have fallen from grace. 5 For we eagerly await through the Spirit, by faith, the hope of righteousness. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision accomplishes anything; what matters is faith working through love. 7 You were running well. Who prevented you from being persuaded regarding the truth? 8 This persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. 9 A little leaven leavens the whole batch of dough. 10 I myself am persuaded in the Lord you will not accept any other view. But whoever it is that is confusing you will pay the penalty. 11 Now brothers and sisters, if I still preach circumcision, why am I still persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished. 12 I wish those who are disturbing you might also let themselves be mutilated!
  • It was Paul’s position that the way of grace and the way of law were mutually exclusive. The way of law makes salvation dependent on human achievement; those who take the way of grace simply cast themselves and their sin upon the mercy of God. Paul went on to argue that if you accepted circumcision, one part of the law, logically you had to accept the whole law
  • Suppose there are people who want to become naturalized citizens of a country and who carefully carry out all the rules and regulations of that country as these affect naturalization. They cannot stop there but are bound to accept all the other rules and regulations as well
    • So Paul argued that if a man were circumcised he had put himself under an obligation to the whole law to which circumcision was the introduction; and, if he took that way, he had automatically turned his back on the way of grace, and, as far as he was concerned, Christ might never have died
  • To Paul, all that mattered was faith, which works through love
    • That is just another way of saying that the essence of Christianity is not law but a personal relationship to Jesus Christ. The Christian faith is founded not on a book but on a person; its dynamic is not obedience to any law but love of Jesus
  • Once, the Galatians had know that; but now they were turning back to the law
    • A little leaven leavens the whole batch of dough. For the Jews, leaven nearly always stood for evil influence. What Paul is saying is: “This legalistic movement may not have gone very far yet, but you must root it out before it destroys your whole religion.”
  • Paul ends with a very blunt saying
    • Galatia was near Phrygia, and the great worship of that part of the world was of Cybele. It was the practice that priests and really devout worshipers of Cybele mutilated themselves by castration. Paul says: “If you go on in this way, of which circumcision is the beginning, you might as well end up by castrating yourselves like the priests of this goddess.” It is a grim illustration, at which we might raise our eyebrows; but it would be intensely real to the Galatians, who knew all about the priests of Cybele
• Galatians 5:13-15
• 13 For you were called to be free, brothers and sisters; only don’t use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love. 14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement: Love your neighbor as yourself. 15 But if you bite and devour one another, watch out, or you will be consumed by one another.
  • With this paragraph, Paul’s letter changes its emphasis
    • Up to this point, it has been theological; now it becomes intensely ethical. Paul had a characteristically practical mind. Even when he has been scaling the highest heights of thought, he always ends a letter on a practical note. To him, a theology was not the slightest use unless it could be lived out
    • In Romans, he wrote one of the world’s great theological treatises; and then, quite suddenly, in chapter 12 the theology came down to earth and developed into the most practical advice. The NT scholar Vincent Taylor once said “The test of a good theologian is, can he write a tract?” That is to say, after all the flights of thought, can a theologian reduce it all to something that the ordinary person can understand and do? Paul always triumphantly satisfies that test, just as here the whole matter is brought to the acid test of daily living
  • Paul’s theology always ran one danger
    • When he declared that the end of the reign of the law had come and that the reign of grace had arrived, it was always possible for someone to say; “That, then, means that I can do what I like; all the restraints of are lifted and I can follow my desires wherever they lead me. Law is gone, and grace ensures forgiveness anyway.”
    • But for Paul, there were always two obligations
      • One he doesn’t mention here, but it is implicit in all his thinking. It is the obligation to God. If God loved us like that, then the love of Christ puts us under constraint. I cannot bring discredit to a life which God paid for with His own life
      • There is the obligation to our neighbors. We are free, but our freedom loves its neighbor as itself
    • Christian freedom is not license, for the simple but tremendous reason that Christians are not men and women who have become free to sin, but people who, by the grace of God, have become free not to sin
  • Paul adds a grim bit of advice. “Unless you solve the problem of living together, you will make life impossible.” Selfishness in the end does not bring people respect; it destroys them
• Galatians 5:15-21
• 16 I say, then, walk by the Spirit and you will certainly not carry out the desire of the flesh. 17 For the flesh desires what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit desires what is against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you don’t do what you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19 Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, moral impurity, promiscuity, 20 idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions, 21 envy, drunkenness, carousing, and anything similar. I am warning you about these things—as I warned you before—that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
  • No one was ever more conscious of the tension in human nature than Paul
  • For Paul, it was essential that Christian freedom should mean not freedom to indulge the lower side of human nature, but freedom to walk in the life of the Spirit. He gives us a catalog of evil things
    • Sexual immorality
      • It has been said that they one completely new virtue Christianity brought into the world was chastity. Christianity came into a world where sexual immorality was not only condoned, but was regarded as an essential part of everyday life
    • Moral Impurity
      • The word that Paul uses can be used for the puss of an unclean wound, for a tree that has never been pruned, for material which has never been sorted. In its positive form, it is commonly used in housing contracts to describe a house that is left clean and in good condition. But its most significant use is that it is used of that ceremonial cleanness which entitles people to approach their gods. Moral Impurity is that which makes people unfit to come before God, the contamination of life with the things which separate us from Him
    • Promiscuity
      • It has been defined as “readiness for any pleasure. Those who practice it have been said to know no restraint, but to do whatever any whim and lack of respect may suggest. The Jewish historian Josephus ascribed it to Queen Jezebel when she built a temple to Baal in Jerusalem. The idea is of people who are so bound up in their own desire that they have ceased to care what others say or think
    • Idolatry
      • This means the worship of gods which human hands have made. It is the sin in which material things have taken the place of God
    • Sorcery
      • This literally means the use of drugs. It can mean the healing uses of drugs by a doctor; but it can also mean poisoning, and it came to be especially connected with the use of drugs for sorcery, of which the ancient world was full of
    • Hatred
      • The idea is that of the individual who is characteristically hostile to other people; it is the precise opposite of the virtue of the love of Christians for one another and for all people
    • Strife
      • Originally, this word had mainly to do with the rivalry for prizes. It can even be used in a good sense in that connection, but much more commonly it means the rivalry which has resulted in quarreling and wrangling
    • Jealousy
      • This word  that we get our word zeal from, was originally a good word. It mean emulation, the desire to attain to nobility when we see it. But it degenerated; it came to mean the desire to have what someone else has, wrong desire for what is not ours
    • Outbursts of Anger
      • The word Paul uses means bursts of temper. It describes not an anger which lasts but anger which flares up and then dies
    • Selfish Ambition
      • This word has a very illuminating history. It originally meant the work of a hired laborer. So it came to mean work done for pay. It went on to mean canvassing for political or public office, and it describes the person who wants office, not from any motives of service, but for what can be got out of it
    • Dissension
      • Literally the word means a standing apart. After one of his great victories, the British Admiral Lord Nelson attributed it to the fact that he had the happiness to command a band of brothers. Dissension describes a society in which the very opposite is the case where the members fly apart instead of coming together
    • Factions
      • This might be described as clearly focussed disagreement. The word is where we get our word heresy, and originally was not a bad word at all. It comes from the root which means to choose, and it was used for a philosopher’s school of followers or for any group of people who shared a common belief. The tragedy of life is that people who hold different views very often end up by disliking not each other’s views but each other. It should be possible to hold different views and yet remain friends
    • Envy
      • This word is a mean word. The Greek dramatist Euripides called it the greatest of all diseases. The essence of it is that it doesn’t describe the spirit which desires, nobly or ignobly, to have what someone else has, it describes the spirit which grudges the fact that the other person has these things at all. It does not so much want the things for itself; it merely wants to take them from the other. The Stoics defined it as “grief at someone else’s good”. The 4th century Church father Basil the Great called it “grief at your neighbor’s good fortune”. It is the quality not so much of the jealous but rather the embittered mind
    • Drunkenness
      • In the ancient word, this was not a common vice. The Greeks drank more wine than they did milk; even the children drank wine. But they drank it in the proportion of 3 parts water to 2 parts wine. Both Greeks and Christians would have condemned drunkenness as a thing which turned people into animals
    • Carousing
      • This word has an interesting history. It was a group of friends who accompanied the victor of the games after his victory. They danced, laughed, and sang his praises. It also described the devotees of Bacchus, god of wine. It describes what in England in the early decades of the 19th century would have been called a rout. It means unrestrained revelry, enjoyment that has degenerated and is out of control
  • When we get to the root meaning of these words, we see that life has not changed so very much
• Galatians 5:22-26
• 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. The law is not against such things. 24 Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.
  • As in the previous verses Paul set out the evil things characteristic of the flesh, the lower side of human nature, so now he sets out the lovely things which are the fruit of the Spirit
    • Love
      • The NT word for love is agape. This is not a word which is commonly used in classical Greek. In Greek there are four words for love
        • Eros means the love between the sexes; it is the love which has passion in it. It is never used in the NT at all
        • Philia is the warm love which we feel for our nearest and dearest; it is love from the heart
        • Storgē rather means affection and is especially used of the love of parents and children
        • Agape means unconquerable benevolence. It means that, no matter what people may do to us by way of insult, injury, or humiliation, we will never seek anything else but their highest good. It is therefore a feeling of the mind as much as of the heart; it concerns the will as much as emotions. It describes the deliberate effore—which we can make only with the help of God—Neve to seek anything but the best even for those who seek the worst for us
    • Joy
      • The characteristic of this word is that it most often describes that joy which has a basis in religion. It is not the joy that comes from earthly things, still less from triumphing over someone else in competition. It is a joy whose foundation is God
    • Peace
      • This word had two interesting usages. It was used of the serenity which a country enjoyed under eh just and generous government of a good emperor; and it was used of the good order of a town or village. Usually in the NT it stands for the Hebrew shalom and means not just freedom form trouble but everything that makes for a person’s highest good. Here, it means that tranquillity of heart which derives from the all-pervading consciousness that our times are in the hands of God
    • Patience
      • The word is used by the writer of I Maccabees to say that it is how the Romans gained control of the world, and by that he means the Roman persistence which would never make peace with an enemy even in defeat, a kind of conquering patience. Generally speaking, the word is used of patience not in relation to things or events but in relation to people. John Chrysostom said that is the grace of those who could revenge themselves and don’t, people who are slow to anger. The most illuminating thing about it is that it is commonly used in the NT of the attitude of God towards us. If God had ben like us, He would have wiped out this world long ago; but He has that patience which puts up with all our sinning and will not reject us. In our dealings with one another, we must reproduce this loving, forbearing, forgiving, patient attitude of God toward ourselves
    • Kindness and Goodness
      • Kindness and Goodness are very closely related words. In fact, the Greek word that is translated as kindness, is often also translated as goodness. So we’re going to take them together. Kindness speaks of a person’s loving disposition toward others. People can show this temperament because God’s actions toward humanity provide the ultimate example. Goodness is an attribute that marks the collective people of God. The concept might imply a willingness to do good for others by acts of radical generosity. Such fruit addressed the difficult work of building right relationships among believers and establishing appropriate witness to unbelievers.
    • Faithfulness
      • This word is common in secular Greek for trustworthiness. It is the characteristic of people who are reliable
    • Gentleness
      • This is that most untranslatable of words. In the NT, it has three main meanings. It means being submissive to the will of God. It means being teachable, being not too proud to learn. Most often of all, it means being considerate. Aristotle defined it as the mid-point between excessive anger and excessive angerlessness, the quality of the person who is always angry at the right time and never at the wrong time. What throws most light on its meaning is that the adjective is used of an animal that has been tamed and brought under control; and so the word speaks of that self-control which Christ alone can give
    • Self-control
      • Plato uses this of self mastery. It is the spirit which has overcome and controlled its desires and its love of pleasure. It is used of the athletes discipline of the body and of the Christian’s control of sex. Secular Greek uses it of the virtue of an emperor who never lets his private interests influence the government of his people. It is the virtue which enable people to have such control of themselves that they are fit to be the servants of others
  • It was Paul’s belief and experience that Christians died with Christ and rose again to a life, new and clean, in which the evil things of the old self were gone and the lovely things of the Spirit had come to fruition 

Galatians 4

• Galatians 4:1-7
• Now I say that as long as the heir is a child, he differs in no way from a slave, though he is the owner of everything. 2 Instead, he is under guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. 3 In the same way we also, when we were children, were in slavery under the elements of the world. 4 When the time came to completion, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. 6 And because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba, Father!”7 So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then God has made you an heir.
  • In the ancient world, the process of growing up was much more clearly defined than it is today
    • In the Jewish world, on the first Sabbath after a boy had passed his 12th birthday, his father took him to the synagogue, where he became a son of the law.
      • At that point, the father said a blessing: “Blessed are you, O God, who has taken from me the responsibility for this boy.” The boy prayed a prayer in which he said: “O my God and God of my fathers! On this solemn and sacred day, which marks my passage from boyhood to manhood, I humbly raise my eyes to you, and declare, with sincerity and truth, that henceforth I will keep your commandments, and undertake and bear responsibility of my actions towards you.” There was a clear dividing line in the boy’s life; almost overnight he became a man
    • In Greece, a boy was under his father’s care form the age of 7 until he was 18. He then became what was called a cadet, and for two years he was under the direction of the state
      • The Athenians were divided in to 10 clans. Before a boy became a cade, at a festival called the Apatouria he was received into the clan; and in a ceremonial act his long hair was cut off and offered to the gods. Once again, growing up was quite a distinct process
    • Under Roman law, the year at which a boy grew up was not definitely fixed, but it was always between the ages of 14 and 17
      • At a sacred festival in the family called the Liberalia, he took of the toga praetexta, which was a toga with a narrow purple band at the foot of it, and put on the toga virilis, which was a plain toga worn by adults. He was then escorted by his friends and relatives down to the forum and formally introduced to public life. It was essentially a day on which the boy attained manhood. There was a Roman custom that, on the day a boy or girl grew up, they offered their toys to Apollo to show that they had put away childish things
    • When a boy was an infant in the eyes of the law, he might be the owner of a vast property, but he could take no legal decision; he was not in control of his own life; everything was done and directed for him; and, therefore, for all practical purposes he had no more freedom than if he were a slave; but, when he became a man, he entered into his full inheritance
    • So—Paul argues—in the childhood of the world, the law was in control
      • But the law was only elementary knowledge. To describe it, Paul uses the the word originally for a line of things; for instance, it can mean a line of soldiers. But it came to mean any elementary knowledge, like the teaching of the alphabet to children
      • Paul says that when the Galatians—and indeed all men and women—were mere children, they were under the tyranny of the law; then, when everything was ready, Christ came and released them from that tyranny. So, now they are no longer slaves to the laws; they have become heirs and have entered into their inheritance. The childhood which belonged to the law should be past; the freedom of adulthood has come
      • The proof that we are God’s children comes from the instinctive cry of the heart
        • In our deepest need, we cry: “Father!” to God. Paul uses the double phrase, “Abba! Father!”
        • Abba is that Aramaic word for father. It must have often been on Jesus’ lips, and its sound was so sacred that the original language was retained. This instinctive cry of the heart Paul believes to be the work of the Holy Spirit. If our hearts cry out in this way, we know that we are God’s children, and all the inheritance of grace is ours
        • For Paul, those who governed the lives by slavery to the law were still children; those who had learned the way of grace had become mature in the Christian faith
• Galatians 4:8-11
• 8 But in the past, since you didn’t know God, you were enslaved to things that by nature are not gods. 9 But now, since you know God, or rather have become known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elements? Do you want to be enslaved to them all over again? 10 You are observing special days, months, seasons, and years. 11 I am fearful for you, that perhaps my labor for you has been wasted.
  • Paul is still basing his thinking on the conception that the law is an elementary stage in religion, and that the matter adult is the person who takes a stand on grace
    • The law was all right in the old days when people did not know any better. But now they have come to know God and His grace. Then Paul corrects himself: we cannot by our own efforts know God; God reveals himself to us through His grace. We can never seek God unless He has already found us
      • So, Paul demands; “Are you now going back to a stage that you should have left behind long ago?”
      • He calls the elementary things, the religion based on law, weak and poverty-stricken
        • It is weak because it is helpless, It can define sin; it can convict a person of sin; but it can find neither forgiveness for past sin nor strength to conquer future sin
        • It is poverty-stricken in comparison with the splendor of grace. By its very nature, the law can deal with only one situation. For every fresh situation, a fresh law is needed; but the wonder of grace is that there is no possible situation in life which grace cannot match; it is sufficient for all things
      • One of the features of the Jewish law was its observance of special times. In this passage, the days are the Sabbaths of each week; the months are the new moons; the seasons are the great annual festas like the Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles; the years are the Sabbatic years, that is, every seventh year, which was a special year
      • The failure of a religion which is dependent on special occasions is that almost inevitably it divides days into sacred and secular; and the further almost inevitable step is that, when people have meticulously observed the sacred days, they are liable to think that they have discharged their duty to God
      • Although that was the religion of legalism, it was very far from being the prophetic religion It has been said that the ancient Hebrew people had no word in their language to correspond to the word religion as it is commonly used today. The whole of life as they saw it came from God, and was subject to His law and governance. There could be no separate part of it in their thought labelled religion. Jesus did not say, “ I have come that they may have religion,” but: “I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” To make religion a thing of special times is to treat it as something that is external to life. For real Christians, every day is God’s day
      • It was Paul’s fear that those who had once known the spender of grace would slip back to legalism, and that men and women who had once lived in the presence of God would only think of God on special days
• Galatians 4:12-20
• 12 I beg you, brothers and sisters: Become as I am, for I also have become as you are. You have not wronged me; 13 you know that previously I preached the gospel to you because of a weakness of the flesh. 14 You did not despise or reject me though my physical condition was a trial for you. On the contrary, you received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus himself. 15 Where, then, is your blessing? For I testify to you that, if possible, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me. 16 So then, have I become your enemy because I told you the truth? 17 They court you eagerly, but not for good. They want to exclude you from me, so that you would pursue them. 18 But it is always good to be pursued in a good manner—and not just when I am with you. 19 My children, I am again suffering labor pains for you until Christ is formed in you. 20 I would like to be with you right now and change my tone of voice, because I don’t know what to do about you.
  • Paul makes not a theological but a personal appeal
    • He reminds them that for their sake he had become a Gentile; he had cut himself off from the traditions in which he had been brought up and become what they are; and his appeal is that they should not seek to become Jews but might become like himself
  • Here we have a reference to Paul’s thorn in the flesh. It was through illness that he came to them the first time. There are many different theories of what Paul’s thorn in the flesh was. Persecution, or the temptations of the flesh, etc. The oldest tradition is that it was violent headaches. From this passage itself, there emerge two indications
    • The Galatians would have given him their eyes if they could have done so. It has been suggested that Paul’s eyes always troubled him because he had bee so dazed on the road to Damascus, that afterward he could only see dimly and painfully
    • You did not despise me literally means you did not spit at me. In the ancient world, it was the custom to spit when encountering an epileptic in order to avert the influence of the evil spirit which was believed to be resident in the sufferer; so, it has been suggest that Paul was an epileptic
  • If we can figure out just when Paul came to Galatia, it may be possible to deduce why he came. We might find that in Acts 13:13-14; 13 Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia, but John left them and went back to Jerusalem. 14 They continued their journey from Perga and reached Pisidian Antioch. On the Sabbath day they went into the synagogue and sat down.
  • Paul, Barnabas, and Mark (John) had come from Cyprus to the mainland. They came to Perga in Pamphylia; there Mark left them; and then they proceeded straight to Antioch in Pisidia, which is in the province of Galatia. Why did Paul not preach in Pamphylia? It was a heavily populated district. Why did he choose to go to Antioch in Pisidia? The road that led there, up into the central plateau, was one of the most difficult and dangerous in the world. That is perhaps why Mark went home
  • Why, then, this sudden flight from Pamphylia? The reason may well be that, since Pamphyla and the coastal plain were districts where malarial fever raged, Paul contracted this sickness and his only remedy would be to seek the highlands of Galatia, so that he arrived among the Galatians a sick man. Not, this malaria recurs and is accompanied by severe headache which has been likened to a red-hot bar thrust through the forehead. It may well have been that it was this acute pain which was Paul’s thorn in the flesh and which was torturing him when he first came to Galatia
  • He talks about those who were deliberately being attentive to and making much of the Galatians; he means those wo were seeking to persuade them to adopt Jewish ways. If they were successful, the Galatians would in turn have to seek approval from them in order to be allowed to be circumcised and enter the Jewish nation. The sold purpose behind this flattery was to get control of the Galatians and reduce them to subjection to themselves and to the law
  • In the end, Paul uses a vivid metaphor. Bringing the Galatians to Christ cost him pain like the pain of childbirth; and now he has to go through it all again. Christ is in them, as it were in embryo; he has to bring them to birth
  • No one can fail to see the deep affection of the last words. My children—diminutives in Latin and Greek always express deep affection. John often uses this expression, but Paul uses it nowhere else; his heart is running over with emotion. We do well to note that Paul did not scold with bitter words; he had nothing but affectionate concern for his straying children. The accent of love will penetrate where the tones of anger will never find a way
• Galatians 4:21-5:1
• 21 Tell me, you who want to be under the law, don’t you hear the law? 22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave and the other by a free woman. 23 But the one by the slave was born as a result of the flesh, while the one by the free woman was born through promise. 24 These things are being taken figuratively, for the women represent two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai and bears children into slavery—this is Hagar. 25 Now Hagar represents Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. 26 But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. 27 For it is written, Rejoice, childless woman, unable to give birth. Burst into song and shout, you who are not in labor, for the children of the desolate woman will be many, more numerous than those of the woman who has a husband. 28 Now you too, brothers and sisters, like Isaac, are children of promise. 29 But just as then the child born as a result of the flesh persecuted the one born as a result of the Spirit, so also now. 30 But what does the Scripture say? “Drive out the slave and her son, for the son of the slave will never be a coheir with the son of the free woman.” 31 Therefore, brothers and sisters, we are not children of a slave but of the free woman. For freedom, Christ set us free. Stand firm, then, and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery.
  • When we attempt to interpret a passage like this, we must remember that, for devout and scholarly Jews, and especially for the Rabbis, Scripture had more than one meaning; and the literal meaning was often regarded as the the least important
    • For the Jewish Rabbis, a passage had four meanings
      • Peshat, its simple or literal meaning
      • Remaz, its suggested meaning
      • Derush, the meaning deduced by investigation
      • Sod, the allegorical meaning
      • The first letters of these four words—prds—are the consonants of the word paradise; and when a Rabbi had succeeded in penetrating into this four different meanings, he reached the joy of paradise
    • It is to be noted that the summit of all meanings was the allegorical meaning. It therefore often happened that the Rabbis would take a simple bit of historical narrative from the OT and read into it inner meanings which often appear to us fantastic but which were very convincing to the people of their day
    • Paul was a trained Rabbi; and that is what he is doing here. He takes the story of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael, and Isaac, which in the OT is a straightforward narrative, and he turns it into an allegory to illustrate his point
      • The outline of story is as follows; Abraham and Sarah had both reached an advanced age, and Sarah had no child. She did what any wife would have done in the one patriarchal times and sent Abraham in to her slave girl, Hagar, to see if she could bear a child on her behalf. Hagar had a son called Ishmael
      • In the meantime, God had come and promised that Sarah would have a child, which was so difficult to believe that it appeared impossible to Abraham and Sarah; but in due time Isaac was born 
      • That is to say, Ishmael was born as a result of the ordinary human intones and urges; Isaac was born because of God’s promise; and Sarah was a free woman, while Hagar was a slave girl. From the beginning, Hagar had been inclined to gloat over Sarah, because barrenness was a matter of great shame to a woman; there was an atmosphere charged with trouble
      • Later, Sarah found Ishmael mocking Isaac—this Paul equates with persecution—and insisted that Hagar should be cast out, so that the child of the slave girl should not share the inheritance with here freeborn son. Further, Arabia was regarded as the last of the slaves where the descendants of Hagar lived
      • Paul takes that old story and allegorizes it. Hagar stands for the old covenant of the law, made on Mount Sinai, which is in fact in Arabia, the land of Hagar’s descendants. Hagar herself was a slave, and all her children were born into slavery; and that covenant whose basis is the law turns men and women into slaves of the law. Hagar’s child was born from merely human instincts; and legalism is the best that human beings can do
      • On the other hand, Sarah stands fro the new covenant in Jesus Christ, God’s new way of dealing with us no try law but by grace. Her child was born free, and all his descendants must be free; he was the child not simply of human desire but of the promise of God 
      • As the child of the slave girl persecuted the child of the free woman, the children of law now persecute the children of grace and promise. But, as in the end the child of the slave girl was cast out and had no share in the inheritance, so in the end those who are legalists will be cast out from God and have no share in the inheritance of grace
      • Strange as all this may seem to us, it contains one great truth. Those who make law the principle of their lives are in the position of slaves; whereas those who make grace the principle of their lives are free. It is the power of that love, and not the constraint of law, that will keep us right; for  love is always more powerful than law

Introduction to Galatians and Galatians 1:1-24

• Introduction to Galatians
  • The letter to the Galatians has been likened to a sword flashing in a great warrior’s hand. Both Paul and his gospel were under attack. If that attack had succeeded, christianity might have become just another Jewish sect, dependent upon circumcision and on keeping the law, instead of being a thing of grace. It is strange to thin that, if Paul’s opponents had had their way, the gospel might have been kept for Jews and we might never had had the chance to know the love of Christ
  • It is impossible to possess a vivid personality and a strong character as Paul did and not encounter opposition; and it is equally impossible to lead such a revolution in religious though as Paul did and not to be attacked. The first attack was on his apostleship. There were many who said that he was no an apostle at all
    • From their own point of view, they were right. In acts 1:21-22, we have the basic definition of an apostle. Judas had to be replace. The one to be chose is described as someone who must be “one of the men who have accompanied us throughout the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us beginning for the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us” and “witness with us to His resurrection”. To be an apostle, it was necessary to have been with Jesus during His earthly life and to have witnessed His resurrection. That qualification Paul did not fulfill. Further, no so very long ago, he had been the chief persecutor of the Church
      • In the very first verse of the letter Paul answers that challenge. Proudly, he insists that his apostleship is from no human source and that no human hand had ordained him to that office, but that he received his call direct from God. Others might have the qualifications demanded when the first vacancy in the apostolic band was filled; but he had a unique qualification—he had met Christ face to face on the Damascus road
    • Further, Paul insists that for his message he was dependent on no on. That is why in chapters 1-2 he carefully details his visits to Jerusalem. He is insisting that he is not preaching some second-hand message which he received from a human source; he is preaching a message which he received direct from Christ. But Paul was no anarchic. He insisted that, although the message he received came to him in a unique and personal way, it had received the full approval of those who were the acknowledged leaders of the Christian Church. The gospel he preached came direct from God to him; but it was a gospel in full agreement with the faith delivered to the Church
    • But that gospel was under attack as well. It was a struggle which had to come and a battle which had to be fought. There were Jews who had accepted Christianity; but they believed that all God’s promises and gifts were for Jews alone and that no Gentile could be admitted to theses precious privileges. They therefore believed that Christianity was fro Jews and Jews alone. If Christianity was God’s greatest gift to men and women, that was all the more reason that only Jews should be allowed to enjoy it. In a way, that was inevitable. There were some Jews who arrogantly believed in the idea of the chose people. They could say the most terrible things: “God loves only Israel of all the nations he has made.” “God will judge Israel with one measure and the Gentiles with another.” “God created the Gentiles to be fuel for the fires of Hell.” This is the spirit which made the law lay it down that it was illegal to help a Gentile mother in giving birth, for that would only be to bring another Gentile into the world. When these particular Jews saw Paul bringing the gospel to the despised Gentiles, they were appalled and infuriated
    • There was a way out of this. If Gentiles wanted to become Christians, let them become Jews first. What did that mean? It meant that they must be circumcised and take on the whole burden of the law. That was the opposite of a ll that Christianity meant. It meant that a person’s salvation was dependent on the ability to keep the law and could be done by an individual’s unaided efforts, whereas, to Paul, salvation was entirely a thing of grace. He believed that no one could ever earn the fair of God. All that anyone could do was accept the love God offered by making an act of faith and appealing to God’s mercy. A Jew would go to God saying: “Look! Here is my circumcision. Here are my good deeds. Give me the salvation I have earned.” For Paul the essential point was not what we could do for God, but what God had done for us.
      • “But the greatest thing in our national life is the law. God gave that law to Moses, and on it our very lives depend.” Paul’s reply was that the founder of the nation was Abraham, to whom the greatest promises of God were given. And then he asked how Abraham gained the favor of God? Because he could’t have gained it by keeping the laws that was given 430 years after he was alive. He gained it by an act of faith. When God told him to leave his people and go, Abraham made an act of faith and went, trusting everything to Him. It was faith that saved Abraham, not law; and  it is faith that must save everyone, not deeds of the law. The real child of Abraham is not someone racially descended from him but one who makes the same surrender of faith to God
    • If all this is true, one very serious question arises: What is the place of the law? It cannot be denied that it was given by God; does this emphasis on grace simply wipe it out?
      • The law has its own place in the scheme of things. First, it tells us what sin is. If there is no law, we cannot break it and there can be no such things as sin. Second, and most important, the law really drives us to the grace of God. The trouble about the law is that, because we are all sinful, we can never keep it perfectly. Its effect, therefore, is to show us our weakness and to drive us to a despair in which we see that there is nothing left but to throw ourselves on the mercy and love of God. The law convinces us of of our own insufficiency and in the end compels us to admit that the only thing that can save us is the grace of God. In other words, the law is an essential stage on the way to that grace
      • In this epistle, Paul’s great theme is the glory of the grace of God and the necessity of realizing that we can never save ourselves
• Galatians 1:1-5
• Paul, an apostle—not from men or by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead— 2 and all the brothers who are with me: To the churches of Galatia. 3 Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father. 5 To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.
  • To te church of Galatia, some people had come who said that Paul was not really an apostle and that they need not listen to what he had to say. They based this attempt to belittle Paul on the fact that he had not been one of the original twelve; that he had been the most savage of all the persecutors of the Church, and that he held no official appointment for the leaders of the Church. Paul’s answer was not an argument; it was a statement. He owed his apostleship not to any human appointment but to a day on the Damascus road when he had met Jesus face to face. His authority and his task had been given to him direct from God
    • Paul was certain that God had spoken to him. No on can make another person a minister or a servant of God. Only God Himself can do that. The real test of Christians is not whether or not they have gone through certain ceremonies and taken certain vows; it is have they seen Christ face to face? 
    • The real reason for Paul’s ability to toil and suffer was that he was certain his task had been given to him by God. He regarded every effort demanded from him as a God-given task
      • It is not only people like Paul who have a task from God; to each one of us God gives a task. It may be one about which everyone will know and which history will remember, or it may be one about which no one will ever hear; but in either case it is a task for God. Many humble tasks are a divine commission
      • Paul’s God-given task was to evangelize a world; to most of us, it will simply be to make disciples
  • At the very beginning of the letter, Paul sums up  his wishes and prayers for his friends in two tremendous words
    • He wishes them grace
      • There are two main ideas in this word. The first is that of sheer beauty. The Greek word means grace in the theological sense; but it always means beauty and charm; and, even when used in a theological sense, the idea of charm is never far away from it. If the Christian life has grace in it, it must be a lovely thing. Far too often, goodness exists without charm and charm without goodness. It is when goodness and charm unite that the work of grace is seen. The second ideas is that of undeserved generosity, of a gift, which is never deserved and could never be earned, given in the generous love of God. 
    • He wishes them peace
      • Paul was a Jew, and the Jewish word shalom must have been in his mind, even as he wrote the Greek word eirene. Shalom means far more than the mere absence of trouble. It means everything which is to our highest good, everything with will make the mind pure, the will resolute and the heart glad. It is that sense o love and care of God, which, even if our bodies are tortured, can keep our hearts serene
    • Finally, Paul sums up in one sentence of infinite meaning the heart and the work of Jesus. “Gave himself for our sins to rescue us…”
      • The love of Christ is a love which gave and suffered
      • The love of Christ is a love which conquered and achieved. IN this life, the tragedy of love is that it is so often frustrated; but the love of Christ is backed by an infinite power which nothing can frustrate and which can rescue its loved one from the bondage of sin
• Galatians 1:6-10
• 6 I am amazed that you are so quickly turning away from him who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7 not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are troubling you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, a curse be on him! 9 As we have said before, I now say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, a curse be on him! 10 For am I now trying to persuade people, or God? Or am I striving to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.
  • The basic fact behind this letter is that Paul’s gospel was a gospel of free grace. He believed with all his heart that nothing anyone could do could ever earn the love of God, and that therefore all that people could do was fling themselves on God’s mercy in an act of faith. All they could do was take in wondering gratitude what God offered; the important thing was not what we could do for ourselves but what God had done for us
  • It was this gospel of the free grace of God that Paul had preached. After him, there came others preaching a jewish version of Christianity. They declared that, if people wanted to please God, they must be circumcised and then dedicate their lives to carrying out all the rules and regulations of the law. Every time a deed of the law was performed that was a credit entry in a person’s account with God. They were teaching that it was necessary to earn the favor of God. To Paul that was utterly impossible
  • Paul’s opponents declared that he was making religion too easy and was doin so to make himself look better to others. In fact, that accusation was the opposite of the truth. After all, if religion consists in fulfilling a set of rules and regulations, it is possible to satisfy its demands; but Paul is holding up the cross and saying: “God loved you like that”! Religion becomes a matter not of satisfying the claims of law but of trying to meet the obligation of love. We can satisfy the claims of law, for they have strict and statutory limits; but we can never satisfy the claims of love, for if we gave our loved ones the sun, the moon, and the stars, we would be left feeling that that was an offering far too small. But all that Paul’s Jewish opponents could see was that he had declared that circumcision was no longer necessary and the law no longer relevant
  • Paul denied that he was trying to just make himself look better with others. It was not other people he was serving: it was God. It made no difference to him what people said or though about him; his master was God. And then he brought forward an unanswerable argument: “If I were trying to gain favor with other people, I would not be the slave of Christ.”
  • What is in his mind is this: slaves had their master’s name and sign stamped on them with a red-hot branding iron; Paul himself bore on his body the marks of his sufferings, the brand of slavery of Christ. “If I were out to gain favor with others, would I have these scars on my body?” The fact that he as marked in this way was the final proof that his aim was to serve Christ and not to please others
  • It is when people see that we are prepared to suffer for the faith which we say we hold that they begin to believe that we really hold it. If our faith costs us nothing, others will value it at nothing
• Galatians 1:11-17
• 11 For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel preached by me is not of human origin. 12 For I did not receive it from a human source and I was not taught it, but it came by a revelation of Jesus Christ. 13 For you have heard about my former way of life in Judaism: I intensely persecuted God’s church and tried to destroy it. 14 I advanced in Judaism beyond many contemporaries among my people, because I was extremely zealous for the traditions of my ancestors. 15 But when God, who from my mother’s womb set me apart and called me by his grace, was pleased 16 to reveal his Son in me, so that I could preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone. 17 I did not go up to Jerusalem to those who had become apostles before me; instead I went to Arabia and came back to Damascus.
  • It was Paul’s contention that they gospel he preached was not simply something he had heard from others; it had come to him direct from God. That was a bold claim to make, and it demanded some kind of proof. For that proof, Paul had the courage to point to himself and to the radical change in his own life
    • He had been a fanatic for the law
      • And now the dominant center of his life was grace. This man, who had with passionate intensity tried to earn God’s favor, was no content in humble faith to take what God lovingly offered. He had ceased to glory in what he could do for himself, and had begun to glory in what God had done for him
    • He had been the chief persecutor of the Church
      • He had devastated the Church. The word he uses is the word for utterly destroying a city. He had tried to make a scorched earth of the Church; and now his one aim, which he was prepared to devote himself to and even to di for, was to spread that same Church over all the world
      • By the laws of cause and effect, everything that happens must have an adequate cause. When someone is proceeding headlong in one direction and suddenly turns and proceeds headlong in the opposite direction; when quite suddenly all values are reversed so that that person’s life turns upside down, some explanation is required. For Paul, the explanation was the direct intervention of God. He had laid his hand on his shoulder and stopped him in mid-career. That is the kind of effect which only God could produce. It is a notable thing about Paul that he is not afraid to recount the record of his own shame in order to show God’s power
  • He has two things to say about that intervention
    • It was not unpremeditated; it was in God’s eternal plan
      • God sends every individual into the world with a part to play in His purpose. It may be a big part or it may be a small part. It may be to do something of which the whole world will know of ro something of which only a few will ever know
    • Paul knew himself to be chose for a task
      • He though of himself as chose not for honor but for service, not for an easy life but for battles. It is for the hardest campaigns that generals choose their best soldiers and for the hardest studies that teachers choose their best students. Paul knew that he had been saved to serve
• Galatians 1:18-24
• 18 Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to get to know Cephas, and I stayed with him fifteen days. 19 But I didn’t see any of the other apostles except James, the Lord’s brother. 20 I declare in the sight of God: I am not lying in what I write to you. 21 Afterward, I went to the regions of Syria and Cilicia. 22 I remained personally unknown to the Judean churches that are in Christ. 23 They simply kept hearing, “He who formerly persecuted us now preaches the faith he once tried to destroy.” 24 And they glorified God because of me.
  • When we look at this passage alongside the last section of the preceding one, we see just what Paul did when the hand of God stopped him in his tracks
    • First, he went away to Arabia
      • He went away to be alone, and for two reasons. First, he had to thing out this tremendous thing that had happened to him. Second, he had to speak with God before he spoke to other people
      • There are so few who will take the time to face themselves and to face God; and how can anyone meet the temptations, stresses, and strains of life without first thinking things out and thinking them through?
    • Second, he went back to Damascus
      • That was a courageous thing to do. He had been on the way to Damascus to wipe out the Church when God intervened—and all Damascus knew that. He went back at once to bear his testimony to the people who knew best what he had been
    • Third, Paul went to Jerusalem
      • Again he took his life in is hands. His former friends, the Jews, would be out for his blood, because to them he was a deserter. His former victims, the Christians, might well ostracize him, unable to believe that he was a changed man
      • Paul had the courage to face his past. We never really get away from our past by running away from it. We can deal with it only by facing it and defeating it
    • Fourth, Paul went to Syria and Cilicia
      • That was where Tarsus was. It was there that he had been brought up. There were the friends of his youth. Again he chose the hard way. They would no doubt regard him as quite mad; they would meet him with anger and mockery. But he was quite prepared to be regarded as a fool for the sake of Christ
  • In these verses, Paul was seeking to defend and prove the independence of his gospel. He got it from no human source; he got it from God. He consulted no one else; he consulted God. But he unconsciously presented himself as the man who had the courage to witness to his change and preach his gospel in the hardest places of all

Introduction to Philemon

• Philemon 
• 1 Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother: To Philemon our dear friend and coworker, 2 to Apphia our sister, to Archippus our fellow soldier, and to the church that meets in your home. 3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 4 I always thank my God when I mention you in my prayers, 5 because I hear of your love for all the saints and the faith that you have in the Lord Jesus. 6 I pray that your participation in the faith may become effective through knowing every good thing that is in us for the glory of Christ. 7 For I have great joy and encouragement from your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, brother. 8 For this reason, although I have great boldness in Christ to command you to do what is right, 9 I appeal to you, instead, on the basis of love. I, Paul, as an elderly man and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus, 10 appeal to you for my son, Onesimus. I became his father while I was in chains. 11 Once he was useless to you, but now he is useful both to you and to me. 12 I am sending him back to you—I am sending my very own heart. 13 I wanted to keep him with me, so that in my imprisonment for the gospel he might serve me in your place. 14 But I didn’t want to do anything without your consent, so that your good deed might not be out of obligation, but of your own free will. 15 For perhaps this is why he was separated from you for a brief time, so that you might get him back permanently, 16 no longer as a slave, but more than a slave—as a dearly loved brother. He is especially so to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord. 17 So if you consider me a partner, welcome him as you would me. 18 And if he has wronged you in any way, or owes you anything, charge that to my account. 19 I, Paul, write this with my own hand: I will repay it—not to mention to you that you owe me even your very self. 20 Yes, brother, may I benefit from you in the Lord; refresh my heart in Christ. 21 Since I am confident of your obedience, I am writing to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say. 22 Meanwhile, also prepare a guest room for me, since I hope that through your prayers I will be restored to you. 23 Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends you greetings, and so do 24 Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke, my coworkers. 25 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.
• The Unique Letter
  • In one respect, this little letter to Philemon is unique. It is the only private letter of Paul which we possess. Doubtless Paul must have written many private letters; but, of them all, only Philemon has survived. Quite apart from the grace and the charm which pervade it, this fact gives it a special significance
• Onesimus, the Runaway Slave
  • There are two possible reconstructions of what happened
  • One is quite straightforward; the other is rather more complicated and certainly more dramatic. Let’s look at the simple view first
• The Simple view
  • Onesimus was a runaway slave and very probably a thief, “If he has wronged you in any way or owes you anything, charge it to my account” Paul writes in 18-19. Somehow the runaway had found his way to Rome, to lose himself in the crowded and busy streets of the city; somehow he had come into contact with Paul, and somehow he had become a Christian, the child to whom Paul had become a father during his imprisonment
    • The something happened. It was obviously impossible for Paul to go on harboring a runaway slave, and something brought the problem to a head
    • Perhaps it was the coming of Epaphras. It may be that Epaphras recognized Onesimus as a slave he had seen at Colossi, and at that point the whole story came out; or it may be that, with the coming of Epaphras, Onesimus’ conscience moved him to make a clean break of all his discreditable past
  • Paul sends Onesimus Back
    • In the time that he had been with him, Onesimus had mad himself very nearly indispensable to Paul; and Paul would have liked to keep him with him. “13 I wanted to keep him with me, so that in my imprisonment for the gospel he might serve me in your place.” But he will do nothing with the consent of Philemon, Onesimus’ master. So he sends Onesimus back
    • No one knew better than Paul how great a risk he was taking. A slave was not a person but a living tool. A master had absolute power over his slaves
    • “He can box their ears or condemn them to hard labor—making them, for instance, work in chains upon his lands in the country, or in a sort of prison-factory. Or he may punish them with blows of the rod, the lash, or the knot; he can brand them upon the forehead, if they are this or runaways, or if they prove irreclaimable, he can crucify them.”
    • The Roman lawyer and satirist Juvenal draws the picture of the mistress who will beat her maid servant at her whim and of the master who delights in the sound of a cruel flogging, deeming it sweeter than any siren’s song, who is never happy until he has summoned a torturer and he can brand someone with a hot iron for stealing a couple of towels, who revels in clanking chains
    • Slaves were continually at the mercy of the whims of a master or a mistress
    • What made it worse was that the sales were deliberately repressed. There were 60,000,000 slaves in the Roman Empire, and the danger of revolt was constantly to be guarded against. A rebellious slave was promptly eliminated. And if a slave ran away, at best he would be branded with a. Red-hot iron on the forehead, with the letter F—standing for fugitivus, runaway—and at the worst he would be put to death by crucifixion. Paul was well aware of all this and that slavery was so ingrained into the ancient world that even to send Onesimus back to the Christian Philemon was a considerable risk
  • Paul’s Appeal
    • So Paul gave Onesimus this letter. He makes a pun on his name. Onesimus in Greek literally means profitable. Once Onesimus was a useless fellow, but now he is useful. Now he is not only Onesimus by name, but also by nature
    • Maybe Philemon lost him for a time in order to have him forever. He must take him back, not as a slave but as a Christian brother. He is now Paul’s son in the faith, and Philemon must receive him as he would receive Paul himself
  • Emancipation
    • Such was Paul’s appeal. Many people have wondered why Paul says nothing in this letter about the whole matter of slavery. He does not condemn it; he does not even tell Philemon to set Onesimus free; it is still as a slave that he would have him taken back
    • There are those who have criticized Paul for not seizing the opportunity to condemn the slavery on which the ancient world was built. The NT scholar J. B. Lightfoot says: “The word emancipation seems to tremble on his lip, but he never utters it.” But there are reasons for his silence
      • Slavery was an integral part of the ancient world; the whole of society was built on it. Aristotle held that it was in the nature of things that certain men should be slaves to serve the higher classes. It may well be that Paul accepted the institution of slavery because it was almost impossible to imagine society without it
      • Further, if Christianity had given the slaves any encouragement to revolt or to leave their masters, nothing but tragedy could have followed. Any such revolt would have been savagely crushed; slaves who took their freedom would have been mercilessly punished; and Christianity would itself been branded as revolutionary and subversive. Given the Christian faith, liberation was bound to come—but the time was not ripe; and to have encouraged slaves to hope for it and seize it would have done infinitely more harm than good
      • There are some things which cannot be achieved suddenly, and for which the world must wait, until the leaven works
  • The New Relationship
    • What Christianity did was to introduce a new relationship between individuals in which all external differences were abolished. Christians are one body whether Jews or Gentiles, slaves or free. In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave or free, male or female. In Christ there is neither Greek no Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free
    • It was as a slave that Onesimus ran away, and it was as a slave that he was coming back; but now he was not only a slave, he was a beloved brother in the Lord. When a relationship like that enters into life, social grades and classes cease to matter
    • The very names of master and slave become irrelevant. If masters treat slaves as Christ would have treated them, and slaves serve the masters as they would serve Christ, then the terms master and slave do not matter; their relationship does no depend on any human classification, for they are both in Christ
    • In the early days, Christianity did not attack slavery; to have done so would have been disastrous. But it introduced a new relationship in which the human divisions in society ceased to matter
    • It is to be noted that this new relationship never gave slaves the right to take advantage of it; rather it made them better slaves and more efficient servants, for now they had to do things in such a way that they could offer them to Christ
    • Nor did it mean that the master must be soft and easy-going, willing to accept bad work and inferior service; but it did mean that he no longer treated any servant as a thing, but as a person and a brother or sister in Christ
    • There are two passage in which Paul sets out the duties of slaves and masters—Ephesians 6:5-9 and Colossians 3:22-4:1. Both were written when Paul was in prison in Rome, and most likely when Onesimus was with him; and it is difficult not to think that they owe much to long talks that Paul had with the runaway slave who had become a Christian
    • On this view, Philemon is a private letter, sent by Paul to Philemon, when he sent back his runaway slave; and it was written to urge Philemon to receive Onesimus, not as a master who was not a Christian would, but as a Christian receives a brother
• The Other View of this Letter
  • We may begin with a consideration of the place of Archippus. He appears in both Colossians and Philemon. In Philemon, greetings are sent to Archippus, our fellow soldier; and such a description might well mean that Archippus is the minister of the Christian community in question
  • He is also mentioned in Colossians 4:17; “And tell Archippus, ‘Pay attention to the ministry you have received in the Lord, so that you can accomplish it.’”
  • Now that instruction comes after a whole series of very definite references, not to Colossi, but to Laodicea. might not the fact that he appears among the messages sent to Laodicea imply that Archippus must be at Laodicea too? Why in any even should he get this personal message? If he was at Colossi, he would hear the letter read, as everyone else would. Why has this verbal order to be sent to him? It was surely possible that the answer is that he is not in Colossi at all, but in Laodicea
  • If that is so, it means that Philemon’s house is in Laodicea and that Onesimus was a runaway Laodicean slave. This must mean that the letter to Philemon was, in fact, written to Laodicea. And, if so, the missing letter to Laodicea mentioned in Colossians 4:16 is none other than the letter to Philemon
  • Let us remember that in ancient society, with its view of slavery, Paul took a considerable risk in sending Onesimus back at all. So it can be argued that Philemon is not really only a personal letter. It is indeed written to Philemon and to the church in his house
  • Furthermore, it has also to be read at Colossi. What is Paul doing? Knowing the risk that he takes in sending Onesimus back, he is mobilizing church opinion both in Laodicea and Colossi in his favor. The decision about Onesimus is not to be left to Philemon; it is to be the decision of the whole Christian community
  • It so happens that there is one little, but important, linguistic point, which is very much in favor of this view. In verse 12 Paul writes that he is sending him back. The verb is the regular verb—more common in this sense than in any other—for officially referring a case to someone for decision. Verse 12 should most probably be translated; “I am referring his case to you’—that is, not only to Philemon but also to the church in his home
  • There is a lot to be said for this view. There is only one difficulty. In Colossians 4:9, Onesimus is referred to as one of you, which certainly looks as if he is a Colossian. But E. J. Goodspeed, who states this view with such scholarship and persuasiveness, argues that Hierapolis, Laodicea, and Colossi were so close together, and so much a single church, that they could well be regarded as one community, and that, on of you need not mean that Onesimus came from Colossi, but simply that he came from that closely connected group. If we are prepared to accept this, the last obstacle to the theory is removed
• The Continuation of the Story
  • Goodspeed does not stop there. He goes on to reconstruct the history of Onesimus in a most moving way
    • 13-14, Paul makes it quite clear that he would very much have liked to keep Onesimus with him. He reminds Philemon that he owes him his very soul. Is it possible that Philemon could have resisted this appeal? Spoken to in such a way, could he do anything other than send Onesimus back to Paul with his blessing. Goodspeed regards it as certain that Paul got Onesimus back and that he became Paul’s helper in the work of the gospel
• The Bishop of Ephesus
  • Let us move on about fifty years. Ignatius, one of the great Christian martyrs, is being taken to execution from Antioch to Rome. As he goes, he writes letters—which still survive—to the churches of Asia Minor. He stops at Smyrna and writes to the church at Ephesus, and in the first chapter of that letter he has much to say about their wonderful bishop. And what is the bishop’s name? Onesimus; and Ignatius makes exactly the same pun as Paul made—he is Onesimus by name and by nature, the one who is profitable to Christ. It may well be that, with the passing years, the runaway slave had become the great Bishop of Ephesus
• What Christ did for Me
  • If all this is true, we has still another explanation. Why did this little slip of a letter, this single papyrus sheet, survive; and how did it ever get itself into the collection of Pauline letters? It deals with no great doctrine; it attacks no great heresy; it is the only one of the letters universally accepted as having been written by Paul that is addressed to an individual
  • It is practically certain that the first collection of Paul’s letters was made at Ephesus, about the turn of the century. It was just then that Onesimus was Bishop of Ephesus; and it may well be that it was he who insisted that this letter be included in the collection, short and personal as it was, in order that all might know what the grace of God had done for him
  • Through it, the bishop tells the world that once he was a runaway slave and that he owed his life to Paul and to Jesus
  • Did Onesimus come back to Paul with Philemon’s blessing? Did the young man who had been the runaway slave become the great Bishop of Ephesus? Did he insist that this little letter be included in the Pauline collection to tell what Christ, through Paul, had done for him? We can never tell for certain; but it is a lovely story of God’s grace in Christ—and we hope that it’s true!