One of the (many) super-cool things we’re involved with at our church at the moment is reading huge chunks of scripture.

Rebekah has been promoting, leading, and encouraging a highly focused regimen of Bible-study for several years. And now, for 2013, we’re following a guided “Read through the Bible in one year” routine.

In a corollary initiative, my Everyday Christianity Sunday-morning study group is tackling the entire New Testament, looking at the books in the order in which they were written. Consequently we read First Thessalonians last week, and then the whole letter to the Galatians for today’s study.

EMOTIONAL IMPACT! Most of us more typically read the Bible in short sections. A verse here; a story there; a passage with the Sunday sermon; a quote or two to accompany a devotion or meditation.

But when you read a complete book at one sitting – as I just did with Paul’s Letter to the Galatians – then the experience is completely different. The emotional impact of Paul’s exasperated combination of scolding, theology, and encouragement is really quite riveting..

So it’s with some hesitation that I’m quoting just one or two passages in this post. But I’m doing it anyway, because I want to encourage each one of you to sit down for 20-30 minutes sometime later today, and read the entirety of Galatians in one sitting.

ONE IN CHRIST: The passage I have in mind comes from the end of chapter 3. Paul is bolstering his argument that the Gospel is about following Jesus, not about how well people follow any given set of rules. There are no gradations, no hierarchies, no “holier-than-thous” any more. Doing a (supposedly) better job of following the law doesn’t make a hill of beans worth of difference, Paul insists. Christ is the answer, period. Christ is sufficient. All who follow Jesus are “heirs according to the promise.”

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. (Galatians 3:26-29)

MY COMPLICITY: And I can’t help but think, with shame, about the exceptions, modifications, and caveats I have worked into that list during my lifetime, about my complicity when it came to perpetuating the lie that people who fail to fit into certain narrow definitions of acceptability are somehow on the outside, while those of us who “get it right” (according to us) are closer to God.

“Are you so foolish?” Paul asks rhetorically – and cuttingly – at the beginning of the chapter. “After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?”

• The only standard is to trust Jesus.
• The only requirement is faith in Christ.

FREEDOM! Now listen to what Paul writes in chapter five! Read this short excerpt, but then take the time to read the entire book!

You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

The Gospel is about following Jesus, and about serving one another, humbly and in love.

As Paul said back in Galatians Chapter One, “Any other Gospel is really no gospel at all!” – DEREK