Before you Gentiles knew God, you were slaves to so-called gods that do not even exist. So now that you know God (or should I say, now that God knows you), why do you want to go back again and become slaves once more to the weak and useless spiritual principles of this world? 

The Tuesday morning study group I meet with has been reading and talking our way through the entire collection of scriptures known, collectively, as The Bible. This week we were in the middle of Paul’s letter to the Galatians.

I think that what makes this study work is the Big Picture view we are developing – as opposed to considering one isolated passage at a time.

So what Paul is saying to the Galatian church is best understood against the backdrop of the covenant God made with Abraham and Sarah, the struggle of their descendants to forge their identity as a people, slavery in Egypt, Exodus, the establishment of Mosaic Law, occupying the Promised Land, times of Judges and times of Kings, capitulation and exile, prophets calling Israel back to God, occupation by Rome, the coming of Jesus, Christ’s invitation into a new and living way and the new understanding of covenant that includes gentiles too.

The gentiles, Paul points out, while not chained by Mosaic Law had been slaves to gods of their own invention. And now, having tasted the freedom given by Jesus, he cannot begin to understand why they would even consider trading their freedom for Mosaic Law – what he calls “weak and useless spiritual principles…”

Control

One of the appeals of adopting a system defined by rules and regulations is – of course – the idea of control. Grace is in God’s hands and oppression is in ours.

We could talk more about that but today I am more interested in a phrase we ran out of time to discuss when we met Tuesday morning. “So now that you know God (or should I say, now that God knows you).”

The Law had driven a wedge of separation between humankind and the Creator, but Jesus confers us with the status of family, (“Now you are no longer a slave [to the law] but God’s own child. And since you are his child, God has made you his heir” Galatians 4:7). Paul is saying that God knows us and receives us as sons and daughters. Jesus has opened up the possibility of relationship!

This is unprecedented and glorious freedom! The consistent message of both Old and New Testaments is that God delights in knowing us (read Psalm 139). But opting “to go back again and become slaves once more” effectively stiff-arms the relationship from our end.

No wonder Paul was so upset!

Today, the “so what” for us is simple. Recalibrate our lives to enjoy the beauty of freedom! Freedom from anything and everything that can enslave us: Rules and regulations, guilt, selfishness, work, money, stuff, anger, alcohol, debt, power….

We are children of God. We are heirs. We are forgiven. We are loved without reservation. We are free. And we don’t have to earn any of this, it is a gift from Jesus. God knows us and God loves us anyway.

To walk away from this gift is to choose the shackles again. And that – to me – is beyond incomprehensible – DEREK