Welcome! We’re currently reading through the book of Galatians together as a church! We’ll be reading a chapter each week day, beginning on Friday the 15th of May, and concluding on Friday the 22nd. We’re following the reading plan in the CBR Journal, which can also be found HERE.
Each day a member of the Redeemer family will be sharing with us some thoughts in video form, which can be seen above, previous days videos can be found on our Youtube channel. We’ll also be publishing blogs with more thoughts on the passages we’ve read, along with some ideas for those who want to study the passage further. We’re really looking forward to seeing God bear fruit in and through us as a church as we read his word, even during this challenging time.
Today Pete will be sharing with us his thoughts on Galatians 6.
All through his letter to the Galatians, Paul has been alluding to a division between members of the church, in this, the final chapter of the book, he directly confronts the division, and brings his emphasis on freedom into a specific context.
In this situation, the freedom that the Holy Spirit brings is a freedom to love! When we are filled with the Holy Spirit it increases our capacity to love others, it compels us to humble ourselves and carry the burdens of others, and it causes us to seek to do good to others, especially others who believe.
There will always be temptation to live to please ourselves, to ‘sow to please the flesh’ as it says in verse 8. Especially during this time the easiest thing to do is often to focus on ourselves, and what we’re going through, but in the opening verses of this final chapter Paul is calling on us to look to others, and to see where they may need our love and our compassion. But I also want to encourage you today, if you are carrying burdens of your own, to seek out others in the Redeemer family! We are all called to carry each others burdens, which is especially important in this time. None of us need to go through anything alone.
In the second half of this chapter Paul goes on to conclude his argument against the false teachers. Throughout the letter he has been emphasising, again and again, through his own experience and the experience of the Galatians, that freedom and adoption into God’s family comes by faith, and not by works. Now he presents the Galatians with the choice, between him and the other teachers, he tells them how the false teachers are focused on the flesh, whereas he himself is focused on what we should all be focused on - the cross of Jesus Christ.
False teaching will always look appealing, because it will always try to obscure the cross, the most scandalous act of grace in all of history. But in doing this, it lacks any sort of real weight when held up against the true gospel. When we choose to follow the true gospel, we choose to come to the cross, we join with Christ in his rejection and suffering, we choose not to put our trust in this world, but in the everlasting new creation which has begun with the resurrection of Jesus.
In this time of confusion, frustration and despair for many of us, we can still choose to look back at the cross and the empty grave, the turning point of history, and know that because of Jesus, and only Jesus, we are free, and living with an eternal hope.
Further Study
Tim Keller is a world renowned Christian author and teacher, and he delivered the message below on Galatians 6, at the Gospel Coalition conference in April 2017.
