Today read Galatians 4:8-11 and compare to Romans 6:15-23. In both passages Paul uses the illustration of slavery in order to emphasize the freedom of those who are in Christ – but he is addressing two different problems in these passages.

Questions for reflection:

1. What are the different problems being addressed in Galatians 4 and Romans 6?
2. How is Paul’s argument similar in both? How is the outcome of his argument similar on both even though he’s addressing different problems?
3. Given these passages, what do you think Paul might mean by Christians having “freedom?” Freedom from what? Freedom for what?

Paul has made a strong argument that righteousness has always been “by faith,” and he points to Abraham – the father of the Jewish faith – as proof, quoting Genesis 15:6, “He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” In other words, observing the laws of the Torah was never what made Jews righteous it was always faith, therefore observing the laws of the Torah now (as either Jewish or Greek Christians) still won’t make you righteous.

At this point anyone (especially a Jew) might stop Paul and say, “Well then, what was the point of having the law?” The Jews have spent the better part of the last several hundred years being cursed for their disobedience to the law, and the better part of the last several generations trying to strictly adhere to it so they might be restored to their former prominence as the blessed people of God. Was all that for nothing?

Paul addresses this question. Today read Galatians 3:19-25 and compare to Romans 5:20-21 and 7:7-10.

Questions for reflection:

1. Based on these passages what seems to have been the purpose of the law of the Torah for the Jews?
2. How might these purposes have been related to grace?
3. How might these purposes have contributed to the coming promise of blessing given to Abraham?

Yesterday we read quite a bit about how the law, or Torah, demonstrated the sinfulness of both the Jews and the Gentiles – the Gentiles for not having it, and the Jews for not being able to keep it. So, if the promised “blessing” of God is that God himself would be the reward of a new people descended from Abraham (Gen 12 and 15), then the law demonstrates that everyone is “cursed” because of sin.

For Paul the answer to this curse is “faith/faithfulness.”

Today we’ll read a key passage in Habakkuk that is quoted three times in the New Testament. First Read Habakkuk Chapters 1 & 2. Then compare it to Gal 3:11, Rom 1:17, and Heb 10:38.

Questions for reflection:

1. What is going in in Habakkuk? What is the context in which God says, “The righteous will live by faith [or faithfulness]” (Hab 2:4)?
2. How does this context of Habakkuk compare to the three passages in the NT where it is quoted? That is, what do they share in common?
3. We’ve talked about how the Hebrew mind didn’t make a distinction between “faith” and “faithfulness” the way Western Greek thinking does. How do these passages help you bring these concepts together?

Today we continue our closer look at the “works of the law” or “observance of the law” from Galatians 2:16. This is important because ever since the Reformation it has been widely proposed that Paul was refuting a Jewish belief that a person was “saved” by earning their salvation through good works, and that those good works are what Paul meant by “works of the law.” Nowadays, we extend that same formula to condemn any attempts to “be good” or do good things as a form of “legalism.”

The problem – as any informed Jew will tell you – is that the Jews never taught a form of works-based righteousness. In other words, they were never trying to “earn their way into heaven” (and I would argue hardly anyone today, Jew or otherwise, is trying to do so either).

• Read Psalm 143, paying special attention to verse 2.
• Read Galatians 2:11-21, paying special attention to verse 16.
• Read Romans 3:9-20, paying special attention to verse 20.

Paul is quoting a variety of OT sources (he quotes Psalm 143:2 in both Gal 2:16 and Rom 3:20) that echo the Jewish understanding that none were righteous in God’s eyes.

So, if Paul isn’t coming against an early form of earning salvation by good works, what might he be speaking against? This is not an easy question to answer, but look for clues in Galatians chapters 1-2. As yourself, what is the issue at hand? Is it doing good deeds or something else?

Last night we had a great discussion about what it means to be a community of faith and what some of our challenges might be. This week I’d like to use this website as a way to anchor that ongoing discussion.

This will be the only major post this week. I’ll add a few brief quotes and links over the next few days that hopefully with stir the pot a bit, but for the most part this is the critical discussion we need to have in depth.

Last night I suggested that community life together is where discipleship actually occurs most powerfully. I would add that it’s only in our community relationships with one another that we encounter biblical “salvation.” If you want to dig in a little right now, here are some key biblical narratives for gaining a vision of how the people of God are to live out salvation concretely in community:

Yesterday I said everything we do is spiritual, which is why Paul says that true Christian “worship” is not a visit to the temple or time spent in prayer, singing to God, or reading scripture, but rather the sacrifice of one’s whole life to God:

Therefore I urge you brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship” (Rom 12:1).

Worship is not merely the religious acts we commit at religious times. Worship is the natural act of devoting ourselves to something in which we find value or worth (worth-ship). Remember, whatever we do with our bodies is always the result of our spirit. Always. We always act in accordance with the deep values and beliefs that direct our decision-making. We simply can’t help it. We may be motivated by faith or fear, we may even have competing beliefs that cause bizarre, erratic, or contradictory behavior, but our spirit – however fragmented and compartmentalized – dictates our actions nonetheless.

Read Matthew 7:1-6 and do the following exercises:

• Perhaps more than anything else, Christians are known in our culture for being judgmental and hypocritical – two of the very things Jesus condemns in this passages. Why do you think that is?
• All of Chapter 6 could be summed up with the words “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness” (6:33). How does Jesus’ teaching about seeking God above all else provide a logical foundation for being the kind of people that don’t judge?
• Read Romans Chapter 14 and 1 Corinthians Chapter 5. What are the similarities with Jesus’ words? What are the tensions? How can we reconcile the tensions between Jesus and Paul’s words in Matt 6/Rom 14 on the one hand and Paul’s words in 1 Cor 5 on the other? How do we know when it is and isn’t appropriate to judge?
• Take some time to write out the ways you tend to judge others inappropriately. How can “seeking God’s kingdom first” help you let go of these issues?

The realization that Jesus “baptism” was actually an explicit instruction about how to make disciples should lead us to an inevitable conclusion: Human transformation cannot occur in isolation. We must be immersed in a life permeated with God’s work, and because God most often does his work through and among people, the only way to be “baptized” in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is to live in and among a community of other Jesus-followers.

We first see this truth most strikingly in Jesus’ own ministry, where students were folded into the life of a larger community that was actively seeking transformation of themselves and the world around them. Paul also exhorts us to radically commit ourselves to the “body” of Christ (Rom 12; 1 Cor 1; Eph 4), his vivid metaphor for the community of believers.