Today's Quick Word
Today’s Quick Word
Galatians 2:4-5, 10 This matter arose because some false believers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves. We […]
Galatians 2:4-5, 10 This matter arose because some false believers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves. We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. … … All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along.
The burden of the Apostle Paul’s argument in Galatians (especially in Chapter 2) is that the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Gospel of God’s grace, is about believing in, trusting in, relying on the finished work of Christ alone for Salvation, and that if we add anything to that, it terms of what we do to be put right with God, then we have missed the whole point of the Gospel! As he says at the end of this chapter: “If righteousness [being in a right relationship with God] could be gained through the law [our good works], Christ died for nothing!”, and that would be unthinkable.
We cannot be saved by faith and works. But the danger we run into by getting this clear is to fall into the trap of thinking that being saved by grace alone means that we don’t have to do anything – we are free to live as we like. In fact, I have spoken with people who are very critical of those who strive to live a holy life of obedience to Christ, accusing them of seeking to be trusting in works righteousness, contrary to Paul’s argument in Galatians!
As the Apostle James urges us in his letter, we are not saved by faith and works, but we are saved by a faith that works. Similarly, Paul is quick to mention in the context of Galatians 2, his own ongoing eagerness to help the poor – an expression of good works. Let us not fall into the trap of ‘cheap grace’ – but rather, let us “trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey.” (John Sammis). Like James, and Martin Luther and John Calvin, and the other Protestant Reformers, Paul was always eager to help the poor, because he was going to heaven, not so that he would go to heaven!
– Bruce Christian
