In my journey of reading each section of the Bible 30 times and researching grace versus works I’ve been really eager to get to Galatians. There is so much emphasis on not being saved by works, I wanted to see where Paul went with it. I had absolute faith that the requirements of keeping the Law of Christ that I’ve seen in the other books I’ve read would be included. And I was right.
Galatians 2:16 says, “So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.” This is one of the verses often used to say that one only needs to accept as true that Christ is the only way to be justified by God and that actions do not matter. But once again, it is first, a reliance on the English translation of the word and second, taken out of context.
The producers of the BEMA podcast are working to deepen our understanding of the Bible by looking at the mindset of the culture. Marty Solomon says, “The Bible was written to an ancient audience in an ancient context. They’re Eastern, and most Christians in our culture are Greek or Western in their thought. We just think about the world in a much different way than the people of the Bible do. What that means is that when we go to read the Bible, a lot of what it’s doing is lost on our culture. Then as we try to explain it through a Western lens, we get even more lost, and it even gets more messy.” He continues, “There’s nothing wrong with being Greek in our mindset, but we’re going to try to remember that we’re dealing with a Hebrew book, Hebrew authors, and a Hebrew audience. We’re going to learn how to ask some of those questions so that we can understand it and apply it into our Western world so much better.” (To look more into this go to https://www.bemadiscipleship.com.)
The New Testament was written by Hebrews with Hebrew mindsets in the Greek language
The Greek word used for faith, pistis (Strong’s 4102), means not just a credence, but reliance upon Christ, constancy and fidelity. The Greek word for justified, dikaioo (1344), means “to deem to be right” and “declare to be righteous.” Justification is “primarily… by faith, subsequently and evidentially by works.” (1)
The Greek word for righteousness is dikaiosune (Strongs 1343) has to do with character and actions. The faith in Christ that brings righteousness when “exercised brings the soul into vital union with God in Christ, and that inevitably produces righteousness of life, that is, conformity to the will of God.”
Galatians can be summarized in three points. 1. Greeks and Jews are both saved by faith in Christ alone, not works of the Mosaic law (2:15, 21, 3:7-9, 3:26-27, 5:6). 2. Circumcision and all other works of the Mosaic law not only do not contribute to salvation, but are also contrary to salvation because it binds people to the Mosaic law rather than salvation in Christ (2:10-13, 5:2-4). 3. In order to inherit the kingdom of heaven we are not to do whatever we want but must walk in the Spirit and not give into desires that are contrary to the Spirit (5:13-25).
It is very common for people to accept that we are saved by grace alone and not the works of the law but Western culture has gone so far from what is required of us to remain in that grace, I think it is of key importance to emphasize it.
Galatians 5:13b-25 says, “Do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh… Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh… you are not to do whatever you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God… Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”
Galatians 6:7-8 says, “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.” The Greek word for mocked, mukterizo (3456), means basically to ridicule. It “does not mean that men do not mock” God. It's a contrast of “the essential difference between God and man. It is impossible to impose upon Him who discerns the thoughts, the mocking and intents of the heart.” In other words, nothing we say or do can change the morality that God has established and the consequences of ignoring it.
One of the things I hear people say is that when Christ came he completely negated the Old Testament law, also known as the Mosaic law. But Christ says, ““Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17). The sacrificial law of the Old Testament that was implemented to cleanse sin was abolished with Christ because he became the ultimate sacrifice. But the moral law is still in place, now called God’s Law, Christ’s Law, and the Law of the Spirit.
Paul says specifically that though he is free from the old law, he is still bound by God’s laws (Romans 7:22, 8:2, 1 Corinthians 9:2). Christ died so that “the righteous requirement of the law,” that which is for godly living, “might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Romans 8:14). Christ died so that we would live for him in righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:15, 1 Thessalonians 5:10, 1 Peter 2:24). If we do not, then Christ died for nothing and we “have believed in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:2).
Galatians explains this more. The law was given “because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come” (3:19). In other words, it was given to show us what sin and godly living are. “The law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith (3:24). In the case of an inheritance “the heir is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father” (4:2). Once we became heirs through Christ the guardianship of the law was no longer required because now we live for the Father through grace, rather than through the law. But we must act in accordance. As it says in Hebrews, “We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end” (3:14).
In the BEMA podcast introduction Marty says, Easterners “think about eternal life as something completely different. For the Westerner… eternal life is something detached from this world. It’s something that starts when this world is over.” But, he says, “For an Easterner, eternal life is in this world, and every world that could possibly exist anywhere. Eternal life is a quality of life, not a quantity of life. It’s life lived in harmony with God in whatever world you could find yourself in, in whatever dimension, anywhere. Whenever you are living in harmony with God, you have eternal life.”
The other thing he talks about is the concept of sin. He says, “For the Western thinker, sin is about wrong belief or incorrect thinking. It emphasizes what a person knows when you’re thinking about error… For the Easterner, error and sin is about wrong behavior, and emphasizes what a person does.” Marty’s friend in Jerusalem, Moshe told him “For you Western Christians, sin is something that’s in you that you’ve got to get rid of it. For us, a sin is something that I do, so how do I get rid of sin? I just stop doing it.”
It’s a profound thought to me. For a Western mind it sounds oversimplified. We think of sin as something we fall into over and over. But for one who is working on living life in harmony with God, it IS that simple. When we are truly living in harmony with God in the way the Bible teaches, our actions follow.
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(1) Dikaioo (Strong’s 1344), cont. Some people say that Paul’s view of grace alone and James' view of requiring works contradict each other. The difference between Paul’s view of being saved by grace alone and James’ view of requiring works is that “Paul has in mind Abraham’s attitude toward God, his acceptance of God’s word.” It’s not about “Abraham’s character or actions, but upon the contrast between faith and the lack of it, namely, unbelief.” James looks at “the contrast between faith that is real and faith that is false, a faith barren and dead, which is not faith at all.” In other words, “The works of which Paul speaks could be quite independent of faith: those referred to by James can be wrought only where faith is real, and they will attest its reality… Paul is occupied with a right relationship with God, James, with right conduct.”
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