Galations overview

Martin Luther called Galations his “beloved Katie”. He loved it like his wife. Considering they both breached vows to Christ of celibacy to be together, it was a pretty profound connection to make. Also cute.

I started reading it cautiously because in my Christian tradition Galations has been taught as a kind of purity text. Its emphasis on the centrality and sufficiency of the gospel means it’s been taught to me as a heresy hunt. We have to find and eliminate anything that adds to the pure gospel; any “gospel-plus”.

While that’s kind of right, the joy with which Galations unfolds makes that way of approaching it seem weirdly negative and upside down. A bit like saying the way to have a truly great party is to discover and eliminate anything that is not fun.

Paul’s vibe is that it’s about letting go, shedding legalism, as much as rooting it out. I describe it as “not a heresy trial, more of a whoop of freedom” Which clearly is where Luther was coming from.

I love your Paul put it: “the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love”.

There are however some brutal slaps here. He slaps away any of our identity that comes from enslavement. He provocatively calls the Jews essentially Muslims (children of Hagar), which they would hate, to shock them into freedom from their legalism. I talk about victimhood and self reliance as identities I would like to shed.

I really loved that the church’s, and our, secret weapon is kindness. All of these letters boil down to doing, day by day, more than thinking. So pragmatic. So inherently about community.

The vision is of us simply feeding ourselves and those around us on kindness, like planted trees with good nutrients we organically start to produce fruit …of the spirit. Love joy peace and all that. We create groves of safety and nurture.

This is what we weaponise. Not heresy hunts; faithful kindness. It’s fun, it’s creative, it’s joyous, it’s relational. Kindness will charm and shock the world into shedding those identities of slavery. “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love” What a gospel! What an earth shattering little letter!

1 The centrality of the gospel, so familiar to my Christian culture. I wonder if the warnings about adding anything to the gospel (“gospel plus”) go too far in excluding too much spirituality. Respecting Paul’s self deprecating narrative of his own conviction about this, I decide to mirror his openness by being open and humble as I read.

2 Kill the law! Trying to be good to earn God’s favour undoes the work of Christ. He may as well have died for nothing.

3 the promise, the prison and the gift. The covenant to Abraham was a promise of grace. The law is a prison, chaining us up with the awareness of God’s expectations. Grace in Jesus is the gift that sets us free.

4 Of slavery and freedom. I think about how identities self-reliance and victimhood are both slaveries. I marvel at Paul’s boldness in declaring his Jewish opponents “children of Hagar”, of slaves. So offensive! It’s a slap, he’s slapping us out of any part of our identity that is slavery.

5 Glorious freedom. I visualise the trick of obedience without legalism as a high wire act that seems impossible at first but it’s soaringly free if you get it. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. Answering the question about gospel plus that I started with, it’s not so much purging as shedding. Not so much a heresy trial as a whoop of freedom.

6 So dense, Paul keeps the complex ideas coming until the last word. It’s mainly about kindness, creating safe places where magic happens: the fruit of the spirit, churches. And at the end about the marks of slavery. Slaves were branded, Paul was circumcised. We all have scars. Jesus’ scars are the kindness of God.