We’re very used to being told who’s hot and who’s not.  We’re very used to being told what ‘the rules’ are.  Well Galatia was a multicultural land with people from different backgrounds, the rules of who was in and who was out were defined by a small group of people and the rules they set. 

Paul had visited the region and challenged these divisions. He had a hand in establishing the Christian church there, so he was writing to people he knows in places he has already been at least once.  Paul preached to them all a gospel of justification by faith in Christ Jesus, he preached to them about God’s inclusivity about how all the divisions between them were nothing to God

Paul preached the truth of Christian salvation a foundation we still believe in today: we are justified, made right, forgiven, by our faith in Christ Jesus, once we accept this into our hearts we are called to change the way we live our lives, we try to hold Jesus up as our example, inspiring us to lead lives which are ethical, moral, and sacrificial.  All we need is faith to enter into this new life of the Christian.

Galatians is a letter written by Paul some time after his visit to the churches in the Roman province of Galatia.  However at the time Paul is writing his letters, there is a problem. The divisions between the different groups - Jews and converts to Christianity were starting to reassert themselves. Church leaders in Galatia were teaching that in order to be a true follower of Christ they had to become Jewish first, that the men had to be circumcised and initiated at the synagogue and then observe chapter and verse the Law of the Old Testament - those things pertaining to Feast Days and Diet and Ritual Cleanliness and so on and so forth.

In short they were being taught that the grace and love of Jesus Christ was not enough; that to be  a follower of Christ, to be fully acceptable to God, they had to do something special, that they had to earn their way, that they had to follow rules and regulations to prove themselves worthy of God.

Imagine how Paul must have felt for a moment to hear this news, these were people who had heard the liberating and inclusive gospel of good news, who’s lives he would have seen change as they were able to step away from labels and divisions of the past – and here they were being told that to be Christian they had to embrace some of those old divisions back again. It’s not a small jump to presume that those preaching this message would have a vested interest in re-establishing the old pecking order, that in some way this message was self-serving.

The old law was very good at setting up divisions between people. Who's in & who's out.  Natural, genetic Jews were in first place. Converts to Judaism were next in second.  Gentiles, that's everyone else, were last.  Paul disagrees in the strongest terms.  The law never saved anyone, he says.  Only faith in Christ can do that.  Why be slaves to a bunch of rules and traditions, when you can be free through the life of the Spirit which comes through faith in Jesus Christ?   Now the old distinctions don't matter anymore, instead, the Christians can focus together on their new relationship with God.  They don't have to expend energy on who's who and who's in and who's out.  They can work on living a Christ-like life, instead.

In its most practical sense, we could think, well this doesn’t affect us, since, we’re not likely to suddenly think we need to start observing ritual laws, but there is a very clear and important message for us here to, because we all get messages telling us what we should be believing and how we should behave – our society has an almost unspoken, hidden law.  

A Law that says, you are most important and your needs must come first.  A Law which says spend, spend, spend.  A Law which places personal freedom and "rights" above all else.  A law that says we can dispense with the liberating Gospel of Jesus and replace it with a faith system based on science.  Think about our society as reflected in the media and around us.  Peer pressure to conform.  Marketing ploys to get your money.  Traditions and "proper ways" to act.  People who don't follow those unwritten "laws" are quickly, either pushed into line or forgotten.  You have to dress the part, or you aren't taken seriously. Being a Christian and sticking to it is counter culture.

There are two ways we can respond to these messages that are both dangerous for our spiritual development.

The first is that we can go backwards – as happened here, we focus on detail that denies us the energy to truly live out the calling of Christ. I wonder how Paul would have felt seeing the Anglican church tearing itself apart over women bishops and gay clergy at a time when the world still cannot feed itself, when knife crime is on the increase and the threat of global warming looms large on the horizon – would he be writing a similar letter?

The second is that we can mistake the freedom Jesus gives us as a freedom to believe anything we like, to pick and choose which bits of the Bible we like, to think that some of the tougher challenges must be someone else’s problem – or we can try and cobble together a faith system that suits us like we’re selecting which pizza toppings we want, taking bits of other faith systems, mixing in some superstition and hoping it all sits together right.

It’s easy to mistake inclusion for meaning ‘anything goes’, the more liberal end of the Christian scale often provides a home to messages that focus on ‘vague spirituality’ and ‘being nice’ rather than the life enhancing, liberating gospel of Christ. He gives us freedom through our belief in him – I suspect that Paul would find echoes of the Galatians church in those messages as well.

Paul appeals to his readers to stay focused on Christ in their faith, and his message reaches into our lives today.  We have to try to let Jesus’ example be the leading light in our lives, and try to avoid those things which would pull us backwards, those forces in the world which encourage us to be sceptic, self interested and narrow minded.  We also have to keep our focus on his gospel message as being the true inspiration for our spirituality. Like the church in Galatia – we are a liberated people. Many may have told us that we are not included, but that misguided message is exposed as being motivated by self interest and prejudice that speaks against Jesus’ desire for the church

We are a liberated people – with all the blessings that he has bestowed on us, and as we celebrate that freedom to worship him as the people we truly are, we too have to take our spirituality and faith journey in the right direction, not backwards, not distracted sideways – but forward into deeper understanding and maturity of the one true God.