Considering the Gospel in Galatians 3

Yes, it has been awhile. Perhaps too long since I read Galatians through over a month ago. I also have plenty of 2 Corinthians in my brain these days as I work through it while on vacation. Hopefully I can finish blogging through the Gospel in Galatians while on vacation.

In Galatians 1 Paul hits the main points of the Gospel. In Galatians 2 Paul hits an implication of the gospel which leads us into the dynamics of the gospel: faith and union with Christ in His death and resurrection. In Galatians 3 Paul begins to defend the gospel from Scripture against his opponents, the Judaizers.

The Conversion of Saint Paul, Caravaggio

Paul said in Galatians 1 that he received the gospel he proclaims by a revelation from & about Jesus. He didn’t go into the details of that here. He met the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascus but there is no mention of the good news about Jesus itself.

In 2 Corinthians 3-4 we see some important information. Paul is speaking no only theologically but also experientially.

³ And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. ⁴ In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. ⁵ For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. ⁶ For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians 4

The gospel was veiled to Paul when Stephen preached it to him (as a member of the Synagogue of the Free Men). Stephen used the Scriptures. The true meaning and glory of Scriptures were veiled, obscured and hidden, from Paul. He could not see the light of the gospel because Satan had blinded him in unbelief.

The Spirit has removed the veil. God has shed the Light that overcomes the darkness into Paul’s heart. He’s seen the double glory of Jesus as the image of God and the gospel.

He now understood the Scriptures of the Old Testament and all they say about Jesus’ person and work.

Paul begins this section of Galatians with a rebuke:

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. ² Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? ³ Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? ⁴ Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? ⁵ Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith— ⁶ just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”?

They are foolish. They don’t understand. They are unwise.

They are bewitched. They are charmed and led astray.

Paul had painted the verbal picture, like a placard, of Jesus crucified. He did this publicly. It was not hidden, secret thing. They were all (at least many of them) there. They got the same information.

His next questions get past the who did this to you and focus on their experience of the gospel dynamic. Did the Spirit come upon you because you kept the law or because you heard and believed the message? You began in the Spirit (they heard and believed) but are now trying to mature in the power of the flesh? Was God at work in you because you worked the law or heard and believed? Were you like Abraham?

Paul begins his series of quotations with Genesis 15. He goes there in Romans 4 as well. This is one of his great proofs that it was NEVER by the working of the law but always by faith. “Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Abraham was justified by faith. God worked in him because he believed. Abraham kept messing up: lying about his relationship with Sarah, taking Hagar to get an heir by fleshly means instead of trusting God’s promise. Abraham kept putting the promise of the seed of the woman (Gen. 2:15) at risk because of his sin. Father Abraham is the model of faith, not obedience.

⁷ Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. ⁸ And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” ⁹ So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

The true son of Abraham are those who believe, not those who are born in by blood. Some are related by blood, but they believe. The son of Abraham are sons by faith, not law. Paul refers back to the original promise to Abraham in Genesis 12 to see that God would save Gentiles by the same faith that Abraham had. Abraham had the gospel given to him in the promise.

Are you a man (or woman) of the law, or of faith in God’s promise?

¹⁰ For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” ¹¹ Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” ¹² But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.” ¹³ Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— ¹⁴ so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.

Want to be a man of law, even God’s law? You are in trouble. You are under a curse according to that law if you don’t do them. If you choose to live under the law to gain acceptance by God you are condemned because you don’t keep the law.

The righteous, on the other hand, live by faith (Habakkuk). From beginning to end it is by faith. Faith looks to Jesus who redeemed us from the curse by becoming a curse for us. As we see in 2 Cor. 5, Jesus was without sin but became sin so we might become the righteousness of God. Paul is getting at imputation: our sin imputed to Christ in His death, and His righteousness imputed to us by faith in that death and resurrection.

The promised blessing of Abraham comes to Gentiles with they believe. It doesn’t come when they “become Jews” by taking on the law. The Spirit is given to Gentiles when they believe, not when they are circumcised and keep the law. It was perfectly clear to Paul now, and it need to be clear to them (and us).

He shows from Genesis 12, again, that the promise was to Abraham and his seed or child. Not plural but singular. There was a Promised One, the Messiah, a greater Isaac, to be expected. That Messiah is Jesus. He is the Seed of both Genesis 3 and 12.

The coming of the law did not supplant the promise. God did not erase the covenant of promise made with Abraham (Gen. 15 & 17), Isaac and Jacob when the covenant of Sinai was ratified.

The next question in their minds would be: then why make the covenant at Sinai, a covenant of law, in the first place?

It was put in place through an intermediary until the Seed came on account of transgressions, the word that describes sin as breaking boundaries. It came to constrain a wayward people until the Promised One came. They were still to believe the promise but need to see the true conditions of their heart, the true character of God including Messiah, and see what Messiah would do for them.

This lead to a further question Paul anticipates:

²¹ Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. ²² But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

The law is not contrary to the promises. It was never intended to be an alternative method of justification, or gaining of eternal life. Life and righteousness necessary for life can’t be gained by the law. The Judaizers misunderstand the whole purpose of the law. It was not to set us free but to lock us up, trap us in the corner, due to sin (this time to miss the mark). Life and righteousness come to those under the power of sin through faith that Jesus is the dying and rising Messiah.

²³ Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. ²⁴ So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. ²⁵ But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, ²⁶ for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. ²⁷ For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. ²⁸ There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. ²⁹ And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

He drives it home. We were backed into a corner or penned in (vs. 22 & 23), and under guard (vs. 23) until Messiah came. The law functioned as our guardian and tutor until Messiah came. Children don’t need a guardian when they become adults, and we don’t need the law as our guardian because we believe in the Messiah.

It’s not about circumcision, but baptism. If you’ve been baptized into Messiah you have put on Christ like a new robe (see Joshua the high priest in Zechariah). We wear Jesus as our righteousness, replacing the soiled robes of our own.

This means that the distinction between Jew and Gentiles ceases to determine our relationship to God and one another. This means that the legal distinction between slave and free no longer determines our relationship to God and one another. The gender distinction between male and female no longer determines our relationship to God, and one another in some ways. We are united in Messiah. There are no levels of salvation or acceptance. Our acceptance before God is wholly based on Jesus, not our ethnic background, socio-economic class or gender. (The context here is justification, not church office).

If you are in Christ, the Seed, by faith, once again, you are Abraham’s seed. You received the promise, you are an heir regardless of ethnicity, class or gender. We are all equal before God at the cross.

Read Full Post »

Considering the Decline in American Church Attendance

I’ve had a tab open in my browser for weeks now. I have been meaning to get to it, but keep forgetting when I had an opportunity. I looked very important to me.

That tab had the Communio Nation-wide Study on Faith and Relationships. The executive summary at the beginning notes that there have been great concern for the last 40 years about the decline in church attendance in America. Christianity has had an increasingly diminished affect on American life. They note that many reasons have been put forth which are “wrong, or at best, incomplete.”

Their study hoped to get to the root reasons, not simply the symptoms. We must treat the “disease” not just the symptoms if we are to cure it.

The sample size was 19,000 people who attended worship on Sundays across 13 states in 112 evangelical Protestant and Roman Catholic congregations. Here was their bottom line:

“The Communio Nationwide Study on Faith and Relationships reveals that the collapse in marriage and the resulting decline in resident fatherhood may offer the best explanation for the decline of Christianity in the United States.”

The decline in membership does not simply correlate with the decline of the nuclear family but is created by it. I should note that we should recognize this as a vicious cycle or spiral. They discovered that 80% of the people attending those congregations grew up in intact families. Both biological parents were present in the home during their childhood.

For years I’ve heard two things:

1. Most people come to faith before the age of 19.
2. If you get the father, you get the family long term. A faithful mother won’t mean faithful adult children.

In some ways this parallels the work of sociologists like David Popenoe I read in the 1990’s. Intact families are important for the foundation of faith to stand firm. The presence of the father, in particular, is vital. Fathers set boundaries that help children move toward maturity.

They looked at the never-marrieds who attend church as adults. 80% of them came from an intact family. This despite about only 50% of families being intact at the time. There is a disproportionate number of children from intact homes that end up in church as adults, even if they don’t have kids “to raise in the church”.

“Family decline appears to fuel faith decline. This study concludes that the overall population of the religious nones is unlikely to stabilize until 25-30 years after family structure has stabilized.”

Category after category bears this out. Having an intact families doesn’t mean you’ll end up at church, but you will be far more likely to end up in church. You will experience less loneliness.

I do wonder about some of the people and their churches since it sounds like a fair number were cohabitating. Those who were cohabitating, surprise, were far more likely to struggle in that relationship. Women, either married or cohabitating, are far more likely than the men to be struggling in the relationship. By nature of our design, women are more likely to focus on the relationship itself than men are. Women’s magazines are often about relationships. Men’s magazines are about themselves, their hobbies (like fishing, shooting), cars and sex. (Richard Phillips makes this observation in The Masculine Mandate).

Communico argues that the time line indicates that the sexual revolution with the attendant increase in divorce and children born out of wedlock precedes the decline in church attendance. They see it fueling the decline, not simply correlated with it, as a result.

“Causation is notoriously difficult to prove. However, the overall homogeneity in the families of origin from church goers in various generations (Gen Z all the way
through the youngest Baby Boomers) is striking. The absence of a proportionate number of church attendees who grew up in homes without married parents across all recent generations suggests movement in family structure is at the heart of the decline in church
participation.”

Non-resident fathers are far less involved in the lives of their children: whether by divorce or having the children outside of marriage. Those children are far more likely to experience adverse childhood events including poverty, abuse and are more likely to struggle as adults.

This information is very contrary to the narrative pushed by agendas on the left. Black Lives Matter, for instance, use to have ending the nuclear family as one of their agenda items. The LGBTQ+ agenda also seeks to destroy the family. The War on Poverty decimated the black middle class by destroying the black family. Statists continually push for the diminishment of parental rights in favor of the state (no notification for abortions, transgender care etc.).

Theologically, we see Satan has been trying to destroy the family from the beginning. He uses promiscuity, adultery, perversion, abuse, divorce and more to break up families. The family is a building block of society and if you tear them down you tear down the society.

Other studies indicate that children with absent fathers are more likely to fall into cults, New Age “religion”, or atheism because they were not able to properly bound with their father, affecting all authority relationships.

Christians of all traditions must find ways to restore healthy marriages to our families, to
our churches, and throughout society more broadly if the gospel can hold and again gain
ground in America and across the rest of the West.”

They provide ten takeaways for the church focused on fostering healthy marriages. We should help people see marriage as a cornerstone to a good life, not the capstone (final piece). We should address the gender gap in attendance. In other words, our men should be evangelizing men. We need to win men to Christ. This will mean discipling them to be godly men. Men’s ministry is more important to church health than some people think. We should also focus on the health of the marriage in our churches. This can be through instruction, discussions during shepherding by the elders, seminars and the examples of leadership being present at home to nurture their wives and children. Marriage should be an important focus of our discipleship.

Read Full Post »

Considering Biblical Critical Theory: Sin and Autonomy

This week I’m preaching on the incident with the golden calf, or bull. This is a good example of autonomy: the people of Israel wanted to decide for themselves how God was to be worshiped instead of submitting to God’s Word about how He was to be worshiped.

This chapter in Biblical Critical Theory is also very important to our understanding of the Fall, what is wrong in the world. Let’s get to the questions.

1. Hot Take: Think of one friend or family member who might be encouraged or helped by something in this chapter. Compose an email or message to them right now that begins “Hey, I’ve just read this and thought I’d share it with you …”

When we talk about sin we tend to think about actions. We can get hung up on particular actions, especially ones that are now culturally acceptable. When we look back at the account in Genesis, we see that she wanted to know good and evil. This can be understood to mean determining for herself what is good and what is evil. This is autonomy: self-law. Our sin is really sitting upon the thrones of our own lives. It can summed up in a statement by a nephew: “You aren’t the boss of me.” People don’t like to be told what to do. They don’t feel instructed, but judged (because they feel guilty!). The bad acts are just symptoms of this far deeper problem in the soul of each of us. We want to be God, and take His place. The act may not seem very bad but it flows from the attitude of rebellion, tossing God off the throne. It is, as Sproul says, cosmic treason.

In doing so we exchange the truth for a lie (calling evil good), the Creator for the creature (we rule!) and His unapproachable glory for our pseudo-glory. In Romans 1 we see that He gives us over to our autonomy. It is the worst thing that can happen to us. It can be the best if our resultant misery in getting our own way leads us to repentance.

Genesis 3	Romans 1	Exodus 32
Deceived by the serpent.	Suppress truth by unrighteousness.	Declared the bull calf to be YHWH.
Delighted by the fruit more than by God.	Exchanged glory of God for images of creatures.	Exchanged the glory cloud for the statue of the bull calf.
Wanted to decide what is good and evil.	Exchanged the truth of God for a lie.	Declared the bull calf brought they out of Egypt and worshiped it.
Autonomy: serving self, not God	Served creatures instead of the Creator.	Pretended the calf represented YHWH. Served it.
	Exchanged natural relations for unnatural relationships.	Rose up to play (engage in immorality).

2. What is meant by autonomy in this chapter? What is it such an important dogma for the Enlightenment? What are some of the main points to make in a biblical assessment of the concept of human autonomy?

Autonomy is choosing to live by our own law. Adam and Eve chose to do this in Genesis 3 despite living in the world and Garden God made and put them in.

The Enlightenment removed God from the equation. Someone or something had to decide what was right and what was wrong. They didn’t want kings or Popes to do that. They located the source of authority within us. Watkin notes that Schleiermacher rejected autonomous intellect in favor of autonomous feeling. Both are centered in us, not anything or anyone outside of us. In matters of faith, if we want to entertain the idea of the possibility of God, we set the terms for accepting His existence and arbitrate the truth rather than submit to the truth.

In Kant’s essay “An Answer to the Question: What is the Enlightenment? he says the following:

“Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred in this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! “Have courage to use your own reason!”- that is the motto of the enlightenment.”

This is seen as intellectual, and moral, maturity. To accept guidance from others is seen as childish. This means, of course, no one has the right to tell anyone else what to do. Yet, those who espouse this idea do in fact tell others what to do. Sometimes they are right (racism is evil), and sometimes they are not (adultery is okay as long as the other spouse isn’t upset). Kant denies the Creator-creature distinction which plunges us into irrationality since there is no difference between taking God at His word and you at yours.

It moves beyond autonomous reason to autonomous dignity. I have dignity because I say so, not because God gives me dignity. Life will essentially become more about power. I have the power to assert my dignity against some people, but not others. Both autonomous reason and dignity depend on circular reason: I appeal to my own reason and dignity. There is nothing outside of me that supports this assertion.

In Scripture we see God as Creator. We exist due to the will and work of God. Our faculties of reason are a gift from God. We are to use our brains, but the things revealed belong to us (Dt. 29:29). We are to think, asking God to give us insight (2 Tim. 2:7). Our reason is subject to God. In Gen. 2 we see God telling Adam (who then told Eve) what was right and wrong. The Psalms, particularly 25, 32 and 119, show godliness as submitting to God’s revealed will: reason under submission.

3. Explain the significance for our understanding of autonomy that “the God-human relationship is inassimilable to the human-human relationship.”

The Creator-creature distinction comes to the forefront of this discussion. God stands above us as infinite, eternal and unchangeable. He knows all, and the connections between the all He knows. His knowledge is interconnected, He sees the relationship between each thing He knows to be true. He alone can bear the weight of determining good from evil. God and I are not equals. I am far inferior in my knowledge, wisdom and insight.

The human-human relationship is between equals in most ways. Our knowledge is finite. Our understanding is limited, and our experience (and therefore wisdom) is limited as well. We also have biased created by experience and desires. Our self interest can drive our determination of good and evil. If I like group sex, I will have a bias against any view of morality that restricts my sexual experience to wedded monogamy. We see this in the Romantics: they wanted no restrictions on their desires.

What happens when my autonomy runs into your autonomy? If my moral values clash with yours but neither is grounded in nothing aside ourselves then we must have a power struggle. The minority (if we’re talking groups) or weaker person will lose. Recently in Philadelphia a Pride Parade met with a Pro-Palestinian group at an intersection. As some say, this illustrated the problem of intersectionality. They might agree on supporting Palestine but sharply disagree on sexual morality.

4. What is the rational-irrational dialectic, and what are its implications for modern thought?

Autonomous reason is radically irrational. “In denying that God has the authority to decide between good and evil, they are forced to see a ground for their judgment somewhere inside the created order (for God alone is outside creation; everything else, including the serpent in the garden, is a creature and part of the created universe).” No created thing or person can bear that weight. Creation doesn’t and can’t generate a “normative and authoritative metadiscourse about itself”. It all begs the question.

Watkin quotes Lewis’ preface to Paradise Lost in that when Satan says “Evil be thou my good” it includes “Nonsense be though my sense.” He also refers to Van Til’s argument that in arguing for rationalism he puts Eve in an irrational position. “On his assumption of his own rationality is the product of chance. On his assumption even the laws of logic which he employs are products of chance. The rationality and purpose that he may be searching for are still bound to be products of change.”

This is why we see so much change in what is right and wrong, what is true and false. In 2020 Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation and to be disregarded. In the last few days it was presented as authentic and the basis for charges against him. Justice and truth become putty noses we shape according to our own desires.

Watkin reiterates the argument this way: “I am using my reason to prove that reason is authoritative, at the same time as I admit that this same reason is a product of evolutionary chance that has not evolved for the purpose of disclosing the truth but of helping me survive.” Earlier we see Heraclitus’ principle of of discontinuity (we never step in the same river twice) and Permenides’ monism (all is one and therefore continuous). It shows up on Aristotle who held to the irrationality of prime matter but the rationality of the forms. He quotes Frame on “Hegel’s rationalism … entails irrationalism. … if one must be omniscient in order to know the book on the table, or the pen with which one is writing, then knowledge is impossible.”

Waktin brings us from philosophy to pop culture with Michael Jackson’s Beat It. The enemies are tightly bound by one hands, but hold knives in their other hands. They can’t walk away from one another. They can’t make peace with each other (unless both drop the knives, but one has to trust his sworn enemy to do so, so …). This is a picture of our world of warring principles.

If nothing, enjoy Eddie’s solos. This was the first “dance off” to solve our problems.

He brings in Bahnsen who asserts that the rationalist and irrationalist only differ in how they argue for autonomy.

“The more comprehensive the reign of the rational, the greater the irrationality of the rational self, in the sense that it becomes its own end, a self-justifying system detached from human reality and need.”

Sounds like the arguments for communism and other ideologies. They become increasingly irrational, ignoring reality to achieve their unachievable goals.

5. According to this chapter, why does an insistence on autonomy foster the ethic of violence? Do you agree or disagree, and why?

As I noted above, autonomy is necessarily filled with conflict as each person defines their own morality. If there is no authority outside of me that is greater than me to challenge my lawmaking (personal morality), then none resides outside of you. Fundamental differences can’t be settled peaceably. I can’t live like my stuff belongs to me, and my wife is exclusively mine if you keep trying to take my stuff and seduce my wife. We have an unresolvable conflict. One must yield, or be forced to yield. We must use physical force or submit to a common law (created by the majority which can shift and change so that the meaning of marriage or legality of marijuana change over time). In Leviathan, this common rule is supported by brute force.

Augustine looks rather to the “absolute personality theism” for an answer. Love binds the City of God together. The citizens of that city love God and one another. The City of Man knows only private love, love directed by their own judgment. Life in the City of Man is war. In the City of God it is peace produced by love and self-sacrifice.

How does this play out? The irrationality of the Covid response has become increasingly clear. Much of what we were told has been discovered to be wrong, and it was known to be wrong. There was a lab leak. Masks, aside from N95, didn’t stop the virus. The shot was not a vaccine: you could still get and spread Covid. The 6-foot rule was arbitrary.

To enforce these irrational responses the government and media used shame, fear and eventually brute power with mandates. People lost their jobs if they didn’t get the “vaccine” over legitimate fears of side effects. Things we discovered were true initially were labeled misinformation, and people went after the licenses of doctors for disagreeing. People were cancelled, and censorship ran amuck.

Love, on the other hand, protects the vulnerable. It doesn’t live lies or charades. It lets people choose the best ways to protect themselves rather than strong arm dissent.

6. How does the Bible’s account of Christ’s relationship with the Father expose the shallowness of modern ideas of autonomy?

The relationship between Father and Son (as well as Spirit) is one of openness, intimacy and mutual love. In terms of the Son’s role as Messiah or Redeemer, He submits to the Father. He does only what He’s told to do. He says only what He’s told to say. Yet the Son was filled with joy and enjoyed His relationship with the Father. He also enjoyed His relationship with His disciples even though they submitted to Him.

Gone was the use or abuse of power. Jesus endured the abuse of power from “autonomous” men in order to free people from the irrationality of autonomy as part of the sin and curse upon humanity. Jesus suffered due to their irrational desire to destroy the one person telling them the truth. His alienation was from sinful humanity, not the Father He loved and served. He provides a model of living under the authority of the Father who wants good for us. We can entrust ourselves to Him and submit our minds and knowledge of good and evil to Him without losing dignity, value and our identity.

I’ll be on vacation, and am not bringing the book. So this will continue in July.

Read Full Post »