Gal 4:12-31
Where We Came From, Who We Are, and Where We Are Going
Paul gives us some of the strongest words of personal affection that we see anywhere in his writings. Luther said that these words “breathe Paul’s own tears” (Luther, Lectures on Galatians, 27:299).
Show them how to walk by grace
How we got here
We do not become children of God by the law, by the old covenant, but by the promise of God, by the new covenant. To put it another way, we are not saved by obedience to the law, but by faith in the promise of God.
Who we are
if you go to church, sing songs, and study the Word, thinking this is how you’re going to work to earn God’s favor, then you are no different from the over one billion Hindus in the world today who are bowing down to their gods. If your Christianity is a check-off box in order to make you feel good about yourself before God, in order to save your skin on the day of judgment, then your Christianity is no different from every other religion in the world, and ultimately it will condemn you. Paul is uncovering a scheme of the Devil in the first century that continues in the twenty-first century. It is subtly and dangerously deceiving. What if Satan’s strategy to condemn your soul involves not tempting you to do all the wrong things, but instead leading you to do all the right things with the wrong spirit?
Oh, the folly of these Galatians! We can certainly understand the language of the Prodigal Son, who came to his father and said ‘I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants’ or ‘slaves’. But how can anyone be so foolish as to say: ‘You have made me your son; but I would rather be a slave’? It is one thing to say ‘I do not deserve it’; it is quite another to say ‘I do not desire it; I prefer slavery to sonship’. Yet that was the folly of the Galatians, under the influence of their false teachers.
Where we are going
By the grace of God we must determine to remember what once we were and never to return to it; to remember what God has made us and to conform our lives to it
The way for us to avoid the Galatians’ folly is to heed Paul’s words. Let God’s Word keep telling us who and what we are if we are Christians.
Help them to trust in your word
All Christians should be able to say something like this, especially to unbelievers, namely that we are so satisfied with Jesus Christ, with His freedom, joy and salvation, that we want other people to become like us.
Help us to hear it
He has said some hard things to the Galatians, not because he hates them, but because he loves them.
Help us to live it
Give them a zeal for your will
Be conformed to the image of Christ
See others transformed for the glory of Christ
The difference between Paul and the false teachers should now be clear. The false teachers were seeking themselves to dominate the Galatians; Paul longed that Christ be formed in them. They had a selfish eye to their own prestige and position; Paul was prepared to sacrifice himself for them, to be in travail until Christ was formed in them.
Calvin wrote: ‘If ministers wish to do any good, let them labour to form Christ, not to form themselves, in their hearers.’
Paul says that he will not be satisfied until that happens. May God help us to be a people who are not satisfied until Christ is formed in us, until we take on the shape of Christ.