The Experience

Reading: Galatians 3:1-22

Yesterday’s reading was focused on Abram’s physical children (or lack thereof), and today’s reading takes that concept a step further by talking about his spiritual children—or at least that’s the theory.

The problem is that, as humans, we pretty much always manage to confuse ourselves and pick the wrong things to focus on. This was as much a problem for the Galatian Christians (some of Abram’s spiritual children) as it is for us now.

The first chunk of today’s reading shows us Paul, pretty frustrated with the Galatians (one of my Bibles starts out the passage with, “You crazy Galatians!” and another takes it even further: “You stupid Galatians!”).

What had him so frustrated? Apparently some of the Galatians were undergoing circumcision as a way of trying to “complete” what God started. Rather than keeping Jesus as the central focus, they had fallen into the (familiar) trap of worrying about rules and regulations.

It’s not hard to understand, at least not for me. I like rules and regulations (at least most of the time) because they’re like checklists; I know exactly what to do, and I know when I’m done.

As much as the checklist-style religion thing appeals to me, though, that’s not how God works at all. As far as I can tell, he’s not really interested in making my life easy so much as making me holy.

By placing my faith in the checklist, I’m essentially suggesting that I can make me holy.

Not only does it not work, but it’s actually kind of insulting to God when you think about it—He goes to the incredible (and frankly, inexplicable) effort of sending His son to die for me, and I basically say, “No worries, I can handle it!” That’s the height of arrogance on my part!

When we try to use the rules to help us feel like we’re on top of things, not only are we deluding ourselves (because the odds of us actually being on top of all the rules are almost nil), but we’re ignoring their purpose as a catalyst to bring us close to God.

According to Paul, if we’re looking to the rules first, we’re going about it all backwards. The Message puts it this way: “Let me put this question to you: How did your new life begin? Was it by working your heads off to please God? Or was it by responding to God’s Message to you?”

It’s not hard to guess the answer he’s looking for. The only hard part is dragging our eyes away from the rules and keeping them focused continually on Jesus.