May God's peace guard your heart. May God's truth guide your heart. May His love cocoon your heart and keep you ever on course towards Him and His people through the grace of your Lord Jesus Christ and the communion of the Holy Spirit (see 2 Corinthians 13:14 KJV).
And as we turn our eyes to the letter the Apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians may God's grace and peace continue to be with you. Let's not be diverted from God's truth that will always set us free should we embrace it and guard against false teachings.
Let us not be diverted from the truth we originally were taught, instead, grow in the faith delivered to us to deliver us from this ...
" ... present evil world" (Galatians 1:4 ESV).
When those domineering or even passive agressive people come among a congregation of followers of Jesus Christ, demanding all to follow their way, don't become manpleasers. This will turn you away from being a servant of Christ.
Your personality will not be so Christlike but become that personlike; that one, or group of false teachers'-like. You are not free then.
What the Son reveals and sets you free from, don't become entangled in again. Don't glorify those leaders who will lead you astray. This is idolatry of another kind.
Glorify God.
The apostle Paul went through many excruciating experiences as he strove to bring the truth to the Gentiles, the Galatians included. His beginnings was that of a man who hated the Jesus people and he tried to exterminate them. But He was arrested by God. He was directed to Jesus! He was humbled. He was given his mission to preach Jesus to the Gentiles!
He received this commission,
"through a revelation of Jesus Christ" (Galatians 1:11-12).
And this was NOT a "man's gospel"!
His credentials, were pristine. He'd become an apostle,
"not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father ... (Galatians 1:1 ESV).
What further proof of his authority and right to preach and teach and guide them into God's truth could they want? After all that, how could they desert Paul and
"turn to a different gospel" (vs 6) -
and that, one that chained them up again!?
Furthermore, all the stories other churches of Judea had heard about Paul's former life - the life as a persecutor, but who was now
"preaching the faith he once destroyed" (vs 23 ESV),
and they marveled over it.
"And they glorified God because of [Paul]" (vs 24 ESV).
Was this enough evidence, do ya think? It looks like Paul continued in the vein of establishing his credentials in order to kick some sense, graciously, yet firmly, into the Galatians hearts and minds. He wanted them to think it through. Whom had the unadulterated truth? Was it what Paul brought and taught to them, or was it those trying to chain them up again with rules of which there may well have been many unwritten ones binding the believers in fear to keep them under the thumb of the domineering false teachers. Like a power play to keep the rest subordinate and subservient.
I really like verse 24,
"and they glorified God because of me."
Paul's change of heart, and shall we loosely say, 'personality' because he'd gone through so much but still had become more and more like Christ, is what caused the churches of Judea to glorify God and how He'd worked it out in and through Paul.
Paul preached the faith he once persecuted. Only God could have wrought such positive and permanent change in a person.
Do you feel like dancing and praising the Lord too?
After all, we benefit from this change in Paul. We have the letters he wrote that have taught believers all down through the ages since Paul's time to ours!
God is so amazing to preserve all of this for us now. We ought not to waste it. Examine God's Word. Let it change us from the inside out and then we can preach it.
Let it also alert us to the false teachers that creep into our lives and congregations. Our churches need 'lerts'.
Be a - lert!
~ ERC July 2026 ~
Based on Galatians 1 ESV.
Sing, All My Boast Is in Jesus Christ, along with Matt Papa and Keith and Kristyn Getty.
No comments:
Post a Comment