A few years ago, just after midnight, three ladies driving their rental car through Bellevue, Washington found themselves underwater as the car’s GPS mistakenly directed them to take a turn onto a boat launch and into Mercer Slough!
Though all three women were able to escape safely, the car was a total loss (but it made for good headlines because of the eerily familiar moment when Michael Scott made almost the exact same mistake on The Office!)1
What was the ultimate problem there? Other than the obvious, the destination which was entered into the GPS was wrong, thus the directions that took these ladies into the lake veered them off course. In the same way, in our theology and practice, if we don’t have the right destination, then it doesn’t matter how pragmatic or novel our methods may be; they will ultimately take us into a direction that could lead to our own destruction.
Who, more than the legalist, has the wrong destination in mind?
The legalist is one who genuinely believes God is impressed with how they keep the law, and in the end desires to be saved by perfectly keeping the Mosaic covenant by either disregarding, overlooking, or minimizing the work of Christ in our redemption.
Sadly, the path that leads many of us there ends up sinking us into despondency, discouragement, and emptiness—and into many arbitrary, man-made rules that define righteousness. Legalism will either build up our pride or leave us in despair, but either way, it is a dead end into a murky slough. We need the right destination, and that is an understanding of the true Gospel of grace. Thankfully, grace has the final word!
The apostle Paul had gone on his first recorded church planting mission through modern-day Turkey with an apostolic band of men to establish elders and leaders in various regions and cities and towns. One of the regions they eventually reached was an area called Galatia (Acts 13-14). If we had a map, our eyes would rest on the land mass between Israel and Greece, the area north of the Mediterranean Sea (think modern-day Turkey). Galatia was not a city, but a region like, “the South.” The churches in this region seemed to start healthy, but years later Paul gets the word that some men had gotten ahold of the church and had led some of their core doctrinal beliefs astray, teaching that “You may say you are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, but you still have to obey the Old Testament Mosaic law to a ‘T.’ You have to do everything prescribed by Moses in the law—including the Abrahamic sign of circumcision—in order to be saved.“ So Paul, fearing that his kids had let a stranger come and walk them down to an inner city drug house, writes one of the first letters we have written to the early church to correct this false teaching.
The tone therefore of Galatians is not light, upbeat, nor encouraging—but is written to rebuke and correct. Paul does not come home with a trophy but a paddle, taking the church and her leaders behind the woodshed for some proper discipline. Paul greeted every church in every epistle with thanksgiving, except Galatia.
- Paul thanked God that the Romans’ faith was being proclaimed in all the world.
- He thanked God for the grace of God that had been given to the Corinthians.
- Paul had heard of the faith and the love for all the saints in the Ephesian church and he could thank God for that.
- It was for their partnership in the gospel that Paul thanked God for the Philippians.
- For the Thessalonian church, Paul was grateful to God for their work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in Jesus.
Yet to the churches in Galatia, Paul has no commendation, only concern. Why? Because they had so easily departed from Christ.
The flow of Galatians moves from greeting (1:1-2) to gospel (1:3-12), from Paul’s defense against the gospel (1:13-14) to his defense for it, even against church pillars like Peter if necessary (1:15-2:14). Paul builds a case for justification by faith by bringing up the example of Abraham (2:15-4:20), comparing Sarah and Hagar as metaphors for freedom versus bondage (4:21-5:1), and concluding his case for grace and Spirit-enabled freedom from adding the works or requirements of the law to our faith in Christ (5:2-12). He finishes his letter communicating what a community of grace looks like: a renewed and free people empowered by the Spirit (5:13-6:18).
Every Christian needs to read Galatians because as Warren Wiersbe declares, “Galatians is God’s strongest word against legalism.“2 We need grace for our justification, our sanctification, and our glorification. We all feel the lure Paul describes in Galatians 3:3, of having begun by the Spirit but somehow believing we can now be perfected by the flesh. We, like the Reformers centuries ago, need a reminder that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. We may be slow to admit it, but we all have an inner attorney who rises up to our self-righteous defense and makes the case for why we deserve something that God gives without merit. We are beggars who are desperate for grace, starved and hungering for mercy, but often who are too prideful to ask or receive it. We do not need more legalism or law—what we need is God’s grace!
In a series of articles, we are going to review three key passages in Galatians to understand the importance of how grace triumphs over legalism: chapter 1:1-11 (how grace can be neglected and abandoned, aka ‘the problem’), 3:1-10 (how grace is given to sons, not slaves, aka ‘the solution’), and 5:1-15 (how grace can only truly be understood in community, aka ‘the outcome’). Then we will learn three ways that this letter can apply to our lives today as we truly understand grace. I pray that through these posts you will come to learn that grace—and grace alone—has the final word!
References:
1 Staff, Seattle Times. (June 15, 2011). Women trust GPS, DRIVE SUV into Mercer Slough. The Seattle Times. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/women-trust-gps-drive-suv-into-mercer-slough/.
2 Wiersbe, W. W. (1992). Wiersbe’s expository outlines on the New Testament (p. 515). Victor Books.
