Galatians 6:1-5
It has been said that people in our world love Jesus but can’t stand the church. Several books have been dedicated to this recently, including such titles as, “I Love Jesus: I Hate the Church,” and “Damage Control: How to Stop Making Jesus Look Bad.” When people read about or hear about Jesus, they recognize something there that they find attractive and even beautiful. True, the deeper their understanding of Jesus goes, the more they should understand their need for repentance, but there is something beautiful about Jesus nonetheless. On the other hand, their interactions with Christians have turned them off to Church and commitment to Christ. They like what they see in Jesus, but they know too many Christians.
In all reality, we will never be perfect. The church is not a collection of jewels of perfection, it is a collection of people healing and growing in Christ. But we are too often guilty of eating our young and killing our wounded. Paul goes to great lengths at the end of Galatians to describe a different kind of life that is available to the believer. God’s kind of life at work in his people is more healing than it is wounding, it puts together more than it tears apart, it restores more than it destroys.
Paul begins this application of God’s life by describing someone in one of the most vulnerable positions possible.
“Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.” (vs. 1)
What was once private has become public. What someone has tried hard to conceal has become known. In many ways, this person is now at the mercy of those who know their secret. Thus, Paul calls on the most mature among us. He wants those who are literally “spirit-led” to oversee the management of this brother or sister. And what he says next should come as a kind of thunder clap.
Our natural inclination when someone falls is to mock or shun. Whether to their face of behind it, we are accustomed to looking down on someone, or proclaiming that we are too smart for their too-obvious and atrocious error. We are more likely to gossip about them and build fictional scenarios of their past and evil path that led them to their exposure. We are even more likely to take our new-found position of moral power to control and manipulate. So the thunderous command from Paul is, Restore!
And we do so gently, even meekly. We are to keep diligent regarding our own potential failures and our own brokenness. If we think more of ourselves – if we consider ourselves above the fray or morally superior – we deceive ourselves. If we are not clear about our own frailty, we are lying to ourselves. If, however, I have an honest assessment of how much I need God’s constant forgiveness and grace, we will react in a Christ-like way when a brother or sister is caught. Instead of derision we will react in humility before God and grace toward the fallen.
What do you see when you see a broken soul—any broken soul? What do you see when you see a brother or sister in Christ caught in sin? What do you see when you watch the world tumble along caught in its own sin? Do you see junk? Do you see a wasteland of useless humanity? Do you see a member of your congregation that needs to go?
To be sure, restoration requires that the restored recognize their sin and need for forgiveness. But my job is to give the grace God gave me. My job is to give the kind of forgiveness that requires God’s life at work within me. If you have the opportunity to reach out to a broken and fallen human, restore!
Monday, March 30, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
Sons and Daughters of God
Galatians 4:1-7
When the Galatian believers turned away from the gospel of Christ and began following the false teaching of legalism, they had no idea what they were giving up. Paul strains to make the riches available only in Christ as obvious to them as he possibly can in order to convince them to return to the free grace and life of Christ. In this passage, Paul tells a common story to make his point.
Even though an infant heir is born to his father’s estate, and even though he will one day receive the riches available to him, he is completely powerless to lay hold of that inheritance until the day he comes of age and his father grants him his right. And until that day, he has no different access to the estate than the slaves of the household, even the most trusted of the slaves.
In the same way, Paul says, while we were infants we were enslaved to the basic principles of this world. Before Christ came and changed things for the Galatians, not only were they no better than the infant in the estate, they were, in fact, enslaved by the things of this world. Being a slave to anything is language we don’t like to use, but we have to come to terms with it in order to understand the true state of things between the human without Christ and the moral and spiritual structure of this world.
The things of this world enslave us. Enslavement means coercion. It means your passions and brokenness make you do things you “don’t want to do.” It means they build and shape your desires and as such they cause you to do things. Enslavement means less of me and more of my captor. As my flesh and sinful desires do their work, they become my thoughts, emotions, actions and words. My captor runs me and I fade into the shadows. Enslavement means captivity without hope of freedom. The principles of this world without Christ have no intention of holding onto me for a season and then moving on. This is a lifetime project they are on, and unless something happens I will die enslaved to them.
But there is another option to being an infant or a slave in the household: you can be a son. In one of the more powerful twists in the book, Paul writes:
“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.” (4:4-8)
An infant doesn’t have the power in themselves to become the heir, so their Father needs to do the work. And that is exactly what God did. In his eternal wisdom, God sent his Son, the second member of the Trinity, into this world to live this life in this flesh, to die this death, and to conquer it all for God’s children. Then he sent the Spirit of his Son, the third member of the Trinity, to reside within us to secure our relationship and inheritance. As a child of God, we call our Creator, Abba.
The work of Christ in this life was to redeem us and give us the adoption as sons. Christ bought back our lives; he paid the price necessary to put us back into right relationship with God. Then, and only then, do we become God’s sons and daughters.
God walked through the orphanage, picked you, paid the price, signed the papers, and took you home. You are a child of God, and the riches of his life and presence are available to you now and for all of eternity.
When the Galatian believers turned away from the gospel of Christ and began following the false teaching of legalism, they had no idea what they were giving up. Paul strains to make the riches available only in Christ as obvious to them as he possibly can in order to convince them to return to the free grace and life of Christ. In this passage, Paul tells a common story to make his point.
Even though an infant heir is born to his father’s estate, and even though he will one day receive the riches available to him, he is completely powerless to lay hold of that inheritance until the day he comes of age and his father grants him his right. And until that day, he has no different access to the estate than the slaves of the household, even the most trusted of the slaves.
In the same way, Paul says, while we were infants we were enslaved to the basic principles of this world. Before Christ came and changed things for the Galatians, not only were they no better than the infant in the estate, they were, in fact, enslaved by the things of this world. Being a slave to anything is language we don’t like to use, but we have to come to terms with it in order to understand the true state of things between the human without Christ and the moral and spiritual structure of this world.
The things of this world enslave us. Enslavement means coercion. It means your passions and brokenness make you do things you “don’t want to do.” It means they build and shape your desires and as such they cause you to do things. Enslavement means less of me and more of my captor. As my flesh and sinful desires do their work, they become my thoughts, emotions, actions and words. My captor runs me and I fade into the shadows. Enslavement means captivity without hope of freedom. The principles of this world without Christ have no intention of holding onto me for a season and then moving on. This is a lifetime project they are on, and unless something happens I will die enslaved to them.
But there is another option to being an infant or a slave in the household: you can be a son. In one of the more powerful twists in the book, Paul writes:
“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.” (4:4-8)
An infant doesn’t have the power in themselves to become the heir, so their Father needs to do the work. And that is exactly what God did. In his eternal wisdom, God sent his Son, the second member of the Trinity, into this world to live this life in this flesh, to die this death, and to conquer it all for God’s children. Then he sent the Spirit of his Son, the third member of the Trinity, to reside within us to secure our relationship and inheritance. As a child of God, we call our Creator, Abba.
The work of Christ in this life was to redeem us and give us the adoption as sons. Christ bought back our lives; he paid the price necessary to put us back into right relationship with God. Then, and only then, do we become God’s sons and daughters.
God walked through the orphanage, picked you, paid the price, signed the papers, and took you home. You are a child of God, and the riches of his life and presence are available to you now and for all of eternity.
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