Taking a break from translating Acts for a bit. To be honest, I'm just kind of tired of Luke's Greek. I'm a lot more familiar and comfortable with Paul's way of speaking than with Luke's. So, I started on Galatians again this morning. This will probably be my sixth or seventh time translating through it.
What stuck out to me in chapter 1 this time is really how much Paul is trying to stress that he didn't learn the Gospel from a human being. No one handed it down to him, but he learned it straight from Christ. What is also of note is that he was baptized by Ananias before he understood anything about the Gospel. This can be deduced in that after his conversion experience, he says he went into Arabia for three years, and didn't look for counsel from flesh and blood about it, yet from the book of Acts, it looks like Paul was baptized almost immediately after receiving his sight back. Paul believed in Jesus Christ based on his experience with Him on the road. He knew He'd been crucified and rose from the dead, but didn't know any more "theology" than those facts. And according to Paul, no human being taught it to him, not even Ananias. So just his experience with Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus, and conversion because of it, was enough in Ananias' mind to baptize Paul. No soteriology. No trinitarian theology. No understanding of the person of Christ. All Paul knew was that He had dumped him off his donkey and was lit up like the sun when He told him to knock it off and that Paul was getting a new job. That He had been crucified was public knowledge, and that He had risen from the dead was obvious to him at that point.
And at that point Paul's foundational beliefs had been pulled out from underneath him. His teachers, the Pharisees whom he had trusted, were wrong, and worse either didn't know it or were deranged. He went into a crisis of faith trying to reconcile it, and spent three years in Arabia away from everyone, which was even then a harsh desert (Did he care if he lived or died at that point? Disillusionment on that scale can be devastating). To say that Paul had to deconstruct and reconstruct what he knew to be true was probably an understatement. And in those three years, Jesus Christ taught him the Gospel with which Paul would evangelize the entire Aegean. It took three years for Paul to integrate and accept it, letting go of the Pharisee's interpretation of the Torah.
Notice too that Paul is clear that the only Apostle he met after that was Kefa (Peter), and James the Presbyter, the Lord's brother. He was there a total of fifteen days before they sent him home to Tarsus in Kilikia, someplace he hadn't even been since he was a child.
Was Paul taught only by the Spirit of Christ in visions and revelations? Was Christ present in some bodily fashion with him for three years, teaching him in a similar fashion to how he taught the twelve for three years? Who knows? I'm inclined to think the former, but it just occurred to me that three years is exactly how long He taught the twelve for as well. What is interesting too is that Paul more or less quotes Jesus in his letters, and yet there were no Gospels written when he was in Arabia, and he didn't sit in on His lectures before the crucifixion. So the Spirit of Christ had to be doing some kind of serious rehash of everything He taught for three years. The twelve got in person classes. Paul got the online version with one on one tutoring, but the same material regardless.
How much does someone need to know before we baptize them? I think the answer lies with Paul. They need to be fully convinced of the reality of Jesus Christ, and that He was crucified and rose from the dead. The rest can obviously be explained later.
Finished translating Galatians 2 just now. Verses 1-10 continue Paul's explanation that he didn't receive the Gospel he taught from any other human being. Even when he went up to Jerusalem with Barnabas to settle the question of circumcision, the Apostles there didn't contribute anything to what he taught, and actually put his apostolate on an equivalent level to Peter's. Peter would go to the circumcised and Paul to the foreskins (literal from Grk.). What's interesting in these verses as well is that Paul describes those causing the circumcision debate as "false brothers smuggled in." I have previously described (and if you're interested check my blog post on the topic) that the church in Jerusalem wasn't immune from Judean politics, and that the divisions within the church didn't start happening until after Peter and John spoke to the entire Sanhedrin, including members, Pharisee and Sadducee alike, who hadn't been present for Jesus' trial and crucifixion like Gamaliel. After that, it seems like there were indications that the membership of the church began to be infiltrated by Pharisees seeking to turn the disciples of Jesus to their side or advantage against the Sadducees, seeing the as natural allies in their belief in angels and the resurrection. It is my opinion that this is what Paul is describing. He's not bashing fellow disciples. He's calling out Pharisees who snuck in trying to subvert the church to their aims.
The rest of the chapter from verse 11 to 21 is where Paul really starts in to his main theme of the letter which is that the disciple of Jesus Christ, properly functioning, is no longer subject to the Torah. and he is vehement about this.
He demonstrates his vehemence by referring to an incident when Peter (Kefa) came to Antioch, and Paul had to get right up in his face (literally what the Greek describes). Paul explains that before some guys came from James (the Presbyter in Jerusalem), Kefa would sit and eat with the other, non-Jewish Christians without issue. But when they did, he withdrew and separated himself to eat only with the Judeans according to Jewish custom. And this mentality spread until even Barnabas, whom Paul had evangelized the non-Jews with across Asia Minor and Cyprus, fell in line. Paul calls them hypocrites, and uses a word in the Greek that describes Kefa's actions as criminal. Paul stands up to him, and to his face directly in front of him, and in front of everyone he says, "If YOU starting out a Judean live like a non-Jew and not like a Jew, how are YOU compelling the non-Jews to Judaize?"
Paul then goes on to say, either as part of his tirade against Kefa (Peter) or just in the letter, "We Judeans by nature, and not malfunctioning people from the non-Jews, knowing that a human being isn't set right from the works of the Torah if not through the faith of Jesus Christ, we also entrusted Christ Jesus, so that we would be set right by the faith of Christ and not from the works of the Torah, because every soft-tissue of the body will not be made right from the works of the Torah. Yet if looking to be set right with Christ we have also ourselves been found malfunctioning people, then is Christ a servant of the malfunction? Absolutely not. Because if I again construct these things which I tore down [being the soft tissues of the body attemping to be set right by the works of the Torah], I myself am put together a violator. Because I died to the Torah through the Torah, so that I would live to God. I was crucified together with Christ; yet I am no longer alive, but Christ is alive within me; yet what I am now living within the soft tissues of my body, I am living with the trust which is of the Son of God who loved me and handed Himself over on my behalf. I am not setting aside the charity of God; because if being set right is through the Torah, then Christ died for no reason."
Paul is absolutely clear where he stands on this issue. Those who seek to be set right by the faith of Christ should not be looking to keep the Torah. He and every other baptized disciple (see Romans 6) was crucified together with Jesus Christ, and as he wrote in Romans about the old human being crucified together with Him, Paul himself is no longer alive, but Jesus Christ is alive within him. And what life he is now living within the meat and soft tissues of his body, he is living by means of the trust or faith which belongs to Jesus Christ who loved him and handed Himself over on his behalf. And Paul gets explicit about it when he says that, if it was possible to be set right by obeying the Torah, then Jesus Christ died for no reason. If the Torah could fix the malfunction within the soft tissues of our body, then there was no reason for Christ to have been crucified.
Paul's tirade against Torah keeping only gets more intense with chapter 3 where he starts off, "O IDIOT Galatians..." and it doesn't get any more friendly for Torah keeping or Torah keepers from there.
It's important to understand that nowhere here is Paul talking about what we would consider initial justification, and this is where a lot of confusion comes in to Paul's writings. Initial justification has nothing to do with what we can do or have done. This was dealt with by Christ. No, Paul is actually talking about what we would call the process of sanctification here, the actual practice of discipleship and in the rest of the letter, and this becomes incredibly blatant in chapter 5.
By succumbing to his fear of the guys sent from James, Peter (Kefa) began operating from his own natural responses and behaviors, that is, the soft tissues of his body, the flesh, was in control rather than the Spirit of Christ, and Paul wasn't having it. Not from anyone who knew Jesus and had been taught by Him, and especially not from Peter who himself had recognized in Jerusalem, which Paul was probably throwing back in his face, that even those who were born Jewish couldn't keep the requirements of the Torah and failed at it miserably. Paul was forcibly reminding Peter of his own words in Acts 15 where it was Peter himself who told the council to not put the burden of the Torah on the non-Jewish disciples.
There are a lot of folks here that argue vehemently for Torah keeping in one form or another, and appear to have no understanding that any rule or law keeping results in more malfunctioning behaviors such as Paul described of the "works of the flesh" in Galatians 5, and the mechanics of which he described in Romans 7. Galatians is Paul's wake up call to them that you can't be set right, you can't please God, you can't be a disciple of Jesus Christ if you're still trying to follow laws and rules, especially the Torah. This only happens if you put your own responses and behaviors to death, and it is Jesus Christ who lives, acts, and responds through you. If you are trying to mitigate your own internal malfunction by keeping the Torah then you are saying Christ's death was meaningless.
Just finished translating Galatians 3 this evening. Did the first half of it this morning, and finished it up after doing work in the barn this afternoon.
Galatians 3 continues Paul's tirade concerning Torah keeping. As I wrote previously, he begins by calling the Galatians idiots, and asks them who bewitched them with the evil eye, because that's the only way he can fathom how they turned from the faith of Jesus Christ to keeping the Torah.
He then goes on to say, "I just want to learn this from you, did you get the Spirit [of Christ] from keeping the Torah or from listening to [in the sense of obeying] the faith of Christ? Are you such idiots, starting off by the Spirit [of Christ] are you now being matured by the soft tissues of your body? Were you suffering so much just for the heck of it? If at least it was even for the heck of it. The One then furnishing to you the Spirit [of Christ] and energizing powers within you, was this from keeping the Torah or from listening to the faith [of Christ]?"
Paul is here appealing to their own experiences and what they themselves had seen and heard. They started off by denying themselves, dying to themselves, and relying on the Spirit of Christ to act and speak through them, and suddenly, they're relying on their own natural responses and behaviors coming from their own brains and psychology. Why did they suffer persecution by the Judeans if keeping the Torah was the path that would make them right? The powers which they themselves demonstrated through the Spirit of Christ had nothing to do with keeping the Torah, as well they knew. And so Paul is essentially hitting them over the head with a metaphorical two by four of the things they themselves had undeniably experienced.
The next part of his argument is that the promises made to Abraham weren't to any of his physical descendants except for one, Jesus Christ. Now, I did check in both the Hebrew and the Greek Septuagint. Paul is right, the word for seed or sperm is singular in both versions, that is, it doesn't refer to many, just a single "seed." So Paul's argument is that those who were supposed to inherit the promise weren't Abraham's biological descendants, that is, neither the blood descendants of Ishmael or the descendants of Isaac, much less Jacob. But rather only those joined to or made one with Jesus Christ would inherit the promises as He was the only real heir being spoken of. And the Torah which was written four hundred and thirty years later had neither authority nor power to nullify the contract God made with Abraham.
So why was the Torah given? According to Paul, the Torah was given in order to mitigate the violations or trespasses. That is, it was given to be something like one of the old British governesses who oversaw the raising and education of a gentleman's or nobleman's children before the advent of public schools. In other words, it was given to watch over us and keep us from hurting one another or ourselves. But there was no way it could actually fix or bypass the problem within our malfunctioning brain, or flesh, which is what was actually needed. Paul goes on to say explicitly that the Torah was our governess into Christ, so that we would be set right by the faith; but with its coming we are no longer subject to the governess. That is, there is no longer any need for the Torah for those who are of Christ, any more than there is a need for the governess once the child has reached adulthood.
He then closes the chapter with, "Because as many of you as were baptized into Christ, have clothed yourselves with Christ. There isn't Judean neither Greek, there isn't slave neither free person, there isn't male and female; because you are all a single person within Christ Jesus. And if you are of Christ, you are therefore the seed of Abraham, heirs in line with the promise."
Like in Romans 6, Paul is here stating explicitly that those who are baptized into Jesus Christ are joined to Him and have become a single person with Him. Because we are joined to Him, a single person with Him, then like Him we too are the seed to whom the promises were made, and not those who are biologically Abraham's descendants or those who keep the Torah.
Rather than just going off on those still trying to keep the Torah, Paul ups the ante by saying, and doubling down on it in the next chapter, that the promises God made to Abraham don't even apply to his blood descendants, but to Jesus Christ alone, and anyone joined into a single person with Him, literally throwing in the trash any hope a Jewish person may cling to by just being Jewish and keeping the Torah. Paul is telling those people there's nothing there to hope in. You're either joined to Jesus Christ, or you're left out in the cold where the promises are concerned.
Just finished translating Galatians 4 through 5:1. I stopped at the first verse of five because it really belongs with the previous paragraph and train of thought.
Verses 1-7 are Paul continuing his train of thought from chapter three where he described the Torah as a governess over young children, watching over us until the faith of Christ came, and he ended the chapter with that those who belong to Christ, because they are joined to Christ and He is the rightful and only heir of the promise to Abraham, are also heirs being a single person with Him through their baptism into Him. He goes on with this train of thought describing an infant who happens to be the heir to an estate such as which is large enough to have real property, servants, slaves, and so forth. That heir, even though he legally owns everything is himself no better off than a slave in terms of authority because he has to listen to the governess, his legal guardians, and the household managers until he comes of age to have full and unrestricted access to his inheritance. And this is the situation with us being watched over by the Torah and the "basic components of the world," as he describes it. Yet when the day which had been fixed to inherit came, God sent His Son to buy up all those under the guardianship of the Torah in order for us to receive the adoption as sons.
Roman adoption was a little different than the modern American concept. A Roman father had to adopt or declare his son as an heir legally. Just because you were biologically related to your father didn't mean much under Roman law, and it was a common Roman practice to adopt those not directly related to you as your heirs. A case in point was the Senator Gallio, the Roman governor of Achaia in Acts when Paul was in Corinth. Gallio was actually the biological son of Seneca the Elder and brother of Seneca the Younger, but had been adopted as the heir of one of his friends whose name was Gallio, even while Seneca the elder was still alive.
Here as in Romans 8, Paul says that, "because you are sons, God sent out the Spirit of His Son into our hearts shrieking [lit.], Abba Father. So that you individually are no longer a slave but a son; and if a son, also and heir through God." It is very clear from here and in Romans 8 that the Spirit to which he is constantly referring, especially in contrast or opposition to "the flesh" (literally the soft tissues of our bodies) is the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, being joined to and made one with Him.
He then returns from explaining spiritual mechanics to addressing the Galatians more personally in 8-20 as he says, "But at that time on the one hand not knowing God you were enslaved to those by nature not being gods; yet currently recognizing God, yet more being recognized subject to God, how are you turning back again upon the weak and impoverished basic components to which you wish to again be enslaved once more?" Paul is again wanting to know "What are you thinking? What could possibly possess you to run back to the governess when being one with Jesus Christ you own the whole estate?" And here he gets specific wanting to know why they're trying to keep the holy days, months, and years prescribed by the Torah when they are joined to Jesus Christ. He then says dishearteningly, "I'm scared for you lest I had worn myself out for you just for the heck of it."
12-20 is another more personal appeal talking about their personal history together, how they first received him not turning away in disgust at the physical problem he was having at the time. He asks them, after all they had been through together, "Did I become your enemy speaking truthfully to you?" In twenty, he says he's going to change his voice again because "I'm at a loss with you."
21-5:1 Paul uses Hagar and Sarah as an allegory between the two contracts, the one God made with Abraham about the inheritance of his "seed" (sing.), and the one God made with Moses and Israel on Mount Sinai. The former is described aptly as the son of the free woman, and the latter in keeping with his description of being enslaved as a child under the Torah is described as the son of Sarah's handmaid or slave girl, Hagar. In line with Isaac, those of the faith of Christ, being joined to Christ, are the children of the promise, not those subject to the Torah who are in line with Ishmael, the product of the flesh and the son of the slave girl; legally a slave himself and not an heir. He then ends the train of thought in 5:1 saying, "Christ freed us for freedom; stand then and don't be held again in the yoke of slavery [to the flesh through the Torah]."
With nearly every word in this letter, Paul is begging and pleading with the Galatians, fighting tooth and nail for them to not engage with or return to Torah keeping, because that is of the flesh, our own natural responses and behaviors, not the Spirit of Christ. He is explicit and adamant about the idiocy of it, continuing his fight against it by declaring in the next verse in chapter 5, "If you should be circumcised, Christ will benefit you nothing." And the warning really couldn't be clearer or more harsh. What he's telling them is that if they choose to be initiated into Judaism or return to Judaism and attempt to be set right through keeping the Torah, then they have blasphemed the Holy Spirit, essentially trashing everything they experienced with the Spirit of Christ and saying it's worthless as the author of Hebrews warns the Jewish Christians about not doing. This is why Paul is so desperate to put a stop to this immediately and turn them back to submission to and reliance on the Spirit of Christ within them.
This is why I personally write so harshly against Torah keeping now. By returning to the Torah, or any law keeping, you're saying Christ's death, burial, and resurrection means nothing to you and you can be set right by your own efforts. This is what damns a person.
I finished translating Galatians 5 last night, but waited until now to write this. The truth is I was shaking a little after writing the commentary for Galatians 4-5:1, though it was really through 5:2, for a while. Paul's message here is forceful and to the point as he begs and pleads for the Galatians to turn around and not to go any farther down the road they're going.
Paul starts Galatians 5 with a serious warning that he again doubles down on, "Look, I Paul am saying to you that if you should be circumcised, Christ will benefit you nothing. Yet again I testify to every circumcised human being that he is a debtor to do the whole Torah. You were nullified from Christ, such ones of you being set right with the Torah! You deprived yourselves of the charity [of God]!" The word I have here translated as "nullified" is "katargeo" in the Greek. Several possible translations for this word are "nullified, rendered inert, left unemployed, ruined, destroyed." A good image to illustrate this word is say one of the factories in Europe which had been bombed during World War II. Some of the walls or pieces of it may still be standing, but it's been rendered completely useless for its original purpose. The word I have translated as "deprived yourselves of" is "ekpipto." Strictly speaking, it means to "fall out of" a thing, or "fall off" a thing, such as "falling out of" a chariot, which would be a good picture illustration for what Paul's saying. But it can also mean "to be deprived of," to be "thrown ashore, shipwrecked," or also of actors, "to be booed off of a stage."
The author of the letter to the Hebrews, writing under similar circumstances to Jewish Christians contemplating abandoning Christ to return to Judaism because of persecution against Christians, writes, "Because it's impossible those once having been enlightened, having also tasted of the gift of the high heaven and having become sharers of the Holy Spirit, and having tasted of the good spoken word of God and powers of the impending aeon, and having fallen aside to make those people new again into a change of mind, recrucifying the Son of God and making an example of Him. Because ground which drinks the rain frequently coming upon it and giving birth to a suitable plant for those by whom it is also cultivated, receives a share of praise from God; yet having brought out thorns and thistles, failure and curse are near, the end of that ground results in burning." And also, "Because with us erring deliberately after the receiving the observable knowledge of the truth, there is no longer a sacrifice left concerning those errors, but some terrifying expectation of judgment and jealous impending fire to eat those opposed. Someone having set aside the Torah of Moses dies without compassion upon two or three witnesses; by how much more worse punishments do you think will the person who has trampled the Son of God, and the blood of the contract with which he was consecrated, having been treated like dirt [lit. common, profane], and outraged the Spirit of charity, be worthy of? Because we know the One who said, 'Vengeance is for Me, I will pay back.' and again, 'The Lord judges His people.' Falling into the hands of the Living God is terrifying."
This is why Paul is begging, pleading, and fighting tooth and nail against the Galatians abandoning the Spirit of Christ in order to be set right by keeping the Torah. Because doing this treats Jesus Christ and His death on the cross like dirt, like there was no point to it. It blasphemes the testimony which the Holy Spirit gave them about Christ through the powers He displayed through them, something which they experienced and couldn't deny the experience of. They tasted the gift of heaven, they tasted the Spirit of Christ, and they were trashing it by Torah keeping.
Paul goes on to say that it doesn't matter if you're circumcised or not. Neither cutting the foreskin off nor leaving it on is physically capable of changing anything about our natural responses or behaviors. It's pointless and without any power to actually do anything. The only thing which has any power to do anything about this is the faith of Jesus Christ being energized and activated through love.
Verses 7-12 Paul returns to his personal address to them, and gets really, really blunt about what he thinks of those causing these problems among them, expressing the wish, explicitly, that whoever they might be, those pushing the Galatians to be circumcised and follow the Torah wouldn't stop at removing the foreskin from themselves, but would go all the way and be castrated completely! How much more proof does anyone need to understand how Paul feels about this topic of Torah keeping? How much more blunt does he have to get?
From verses 13 to the end of the chapter we come upon the base understanding of the roots of Christian practice and behavior which Paul had spoken of in Romans 6-8. Those who are of Christ are freed from the Torah, they're no longer under the governess. Being an adult means accepting the role of an adult with all of the responsibilities that go with it, as well as the privileges. And our first responsibility is to, through love, enslave ourselves to one another. Keeping the Torah, or following any moral code, isn't necessary because every single rule in the Torah is brought to fulfillment with the single, simple message, "love your neighbor [lit. the person next to you] like yourself." Do this and the Torah, or any moral code, isn't necessary at all. But by turning on one another, nipping and eating at one another we will expend and destroy each other.
Immediately following his warning about nipping and eating at one another, he writes, "Yet I say, walk by the Spirit [of Christ] and you won't bring the desire of the "flesh" [the soft tissues of the body, brains, meat, organs] to completion. Because the flesh desires against the Spirit [of Christ], yet the Spirit of Christ against the the flesh, because these things lie opposite one another, so that you would do these things, not what things you would wish. Yet if you're led by the Spirit [of Christ], you aren't subject to the Torah."
The Spirit Paul is speaking of here refers to the Spirit of Christ. This is obvious from not only his referring to "God sending the Spirit of His Son into our hearts" both in this letter and in Romans, but also referring directly to those having or not having the Spirit of Christ in Romans 8. As Paul stated earlier in this letter, and in the letter to the Romans, as many as were baptized into Christ were clothed with Christ.
What Paul is saying here is that, rather than attempting to restrain the flesh with Torah keeping, which ends up failing miserably regardless and does nothing to address the underlying malfunction within the flesh, if we disengage from our own natural responses and behaviors produced by our malfunctioning flesh, and instead depend solely on the Spirit of Christ to respond and behave through us, then those responses and behaviors produced by the flesh, while they may still come to mind, they won't be expressed in actions or words. As long as we are engaged with the Spirit of Christ and disengaged from our own responses, then there's no way for the malfunctioning flesh to express itself. It gets completely bypassed as a point of origin for our behaviors. And if the Spirit of Christ is the point of origin for a person's behaviors, then they're a functioning adult and have no need to be subject to the governess, that is, the Torah.
What follows after this are two lists Paul gives in order to determine whether or not a person's behaviors are originating from their own flesh, or from the Spirit of Christ. I'm not going to go into them individually, they're pretty self explanatory. But I will say this, each "work of the flesh" can ultimately be attributed to either a fear, aggression, feeding drive, or sexual drive response. This is why I tend to think that when Paul says "flesh," he literally means the meat of our brains where our natural behaviors originate. All of these responses are governed by the hypothalamus specifically, and the limbic system in general, as survival responses. In every other animal, these survival responses work to physically protect and propagate the animal in question. But in human beings, these responses have gone haywire, treating EVERYTHING as either a survival need or a survival threat whether it's physical or psychological, or even imaginary. That malfunction then presents as the works of the flesh which Paul describes here and in other lists in his other letters, which he gives frequently.
The fruit of the Spirit of Christ is Jesus Christ acting and speaking through the person walking by the Spirit of Christ. The word fruit is singular in the Greek. It's not "fruits" but "fruit." It's a single kind of fruit presented by love, joy, peace, and so on. And he goes on to say that there is no law, no rule within the Torah, against anything which is produced by the Spirit of Christ.
Those of Christ Jesus have been crucified with Him, and as such have also crucified the malfunctioning soft tissues of the body, with its passions and its desires, referring back to Romans 6 and here in chapter 2 of this letter regarding being crucified together with Christ by being baptized into His death. For this reason, if we live by the Spirit of Christ, we will also march in step [lit.] with the Spirit of Christ. If we live by the Spirit of Christ, we don't become conceited, provoking one another, or envying one another.
I just finished translating Galatians 6, the last chapter of the letter. This will be my last post here for at least a couple of days for personal reasons, but I wanted to finish what I started.
Here, Paul switches back from explaining how things work at the end of chapter 5 to personally addressing and instructing the Galatians. In particular, he starts off addressing what steps should be taken if someone go off the deep end with some violation or overstepping. I think, in particular, he's thinking of those who started this mess in the Galatian church with the Torah to begin with. His instruction is that those who are walking in the Spirit of Christ, the spiritual ones not functioning from their flesh, fix or repair that person gently or softly. With this he says, "Carry one another's weight, and in this way you will pay in full the rule of Christ," that is, the rule He gave or laid down.
He then begins to talk more specifically about they are to individually do to prevent this kind of heresy from happening again, "Because if someone thinks to be something, being nothing, he is delusionally deceiving himself. Yet let each person put his own work to the test, and then the bragging will arrive for just himself and not for a different person; because each person will carry his own load." In short, if one of them starts feeling like they're something special, they need to check themselves, examine their own responses and behaviors, and in this way the bragging will be contained to just that person bragging to himself and it won't spread like the poison their current problem did. He goes on to say, continuing to explain, "God is not sneered at." Literally, what he saying is that God will not stand for someone turning their nose up at Him and blowing Him off. "Because whatever seed a human being spreads, this he will also harvest; because the guy spreading seed for his own flesh [previously described in chapter five, and what started this whole mess] will harvest corruption from the flesh, yet the guy spreading seed for the Spirit [of Christ] will harvest the life of the Eternal One from the Spirit [of Christ]." I think this is pretty self explanatory, to be honest. If you indulge your own malfunctioning flesh, and operate from that, then you will harvest the works of the flesh and the corruption which follows. If you submit to the Spirit of Christ, with Him in control, then you will harvest God's own Eternal Life through you, that is, Jesus Christ living and expressing through you. " He then admonishes them not to give up or lose enthusiasm for walking in the Spirit and accomplishing the highest good in the period of time that they have.
Finally, addressing those causing the problems one last time, he says, "As much as they wish to put on a good face with the flesh, those folks compelling you to be circumcised, it's just so that they might not be persecuted for the cross of Christ." And this is what really started this whole problem. They got scared. Their fear survival response kicked in and the Spirit of Christ went out the window, and everything went downhill from there, harvesting massive damage and corruption among the Galatian disciples. "Because neither the circumcised themselves keep the Torah but they wish you to be circumcised so that they would brag about the flesh of yours." In other words, for as much as they talk the Torah up, they don't actually keep it either, but they want notches on their Torah scrolls to brag about with the number of circumcisions they can obtain.
He then states, "Yet may it never happen to me to brag about anything except about the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the cosmos had been crucified to me, and I to the cosmos." In this case, I have rendered "kosmos" in its original form rather than world, because he's referring essentially to the entire system of the universe. As far as he's concerned, as he wrote earlier, he was crucified with Christ, and he's no longer alive, but it's Christ who is alive within Him. The rest of the universe is dead to him, and he to it.
He then says again, repeating himself, "Because neither circumcision means anything nor does a foreskin mean anything, but it's the new creation that means something." That is, it doesn't matter whether you cut on your man parts or not. It won't affect anything that matters. It's the new creation in Christ Jesus, the Spirit of Christ acting and speaking through you that matters. "And as many as march in line with this standard of measurement, peace will be upon them, and mercy and peace upon the Israel of God."
He closes with, "Let no one offer me any more beatings; because am carrying the scars of Jesus within my body." This was both hard and personal for Paul. With as much as he had physically and emotionally suffered, his body carrying the scars of that suffering for Christ, he displayed Jesus Christ wherever he went. He no longer lived, but Christ lived in him. He didn't need delusional folks in the churches to start beating on him too.
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