Check Your Narrative

When I was a college student working toward my degree in history, I did some reading that reinforced the important role of narrative in history. In fact, at the college level and beyond, the study of history is all about narrative. It is not about memorizing and knowing names and dates and places. History is about the connection of past events and people from one to the next. When we connect together a string of events and people in a way that ties it all together in one story, that is called a narrative. And it is the job of the historian to look over all the evidence and relics of the past and reconstruct from those things the story—the narrative—of past times.

It strikes me that we all do this. We may not all be professional historians. But we do all live in a world in which we strive to find connections between events taking place around us. We all live in a world in which we seek to find meaning in these events by placing them into something of a narrative. It is our way of making sense of the world. It is our way of explaining why things happen the way they do, why people do the things they do.

Let me share a rather extreme example to demonstrate the way we do this. Also during my college years, I worked part time for a painter. It was a small crew; he did not have many employees. Every payday, he would pull out his wallet and pay each of us by cash. He did not have any accounts set up at the local Benjamin Moore paint store; he bought all his supply with cash. I am not sure if he had any bank accounts at all. I sort of suspected that he had a locked safe in his house filled with cash.

I came to find out that quite a few years earlier, his painting business was rather large. In fact, he had many more employees, and he would spend a fair amount of his time just going around and bidding jobs and lining up the work. At that time, he also employed a bookkeeper accountant who handled all the accounts and kept all the finances of the business. One day the accountant left town and completely disappeared, wiping out all the accounts and taking everything.

The result was that this painter for whom I worked constructed a narrative. In his narrative of events accountants, bankers, and bookkeepers could never be trusted. It no longer mattered to him that the overwhelming vast majority of accountants and bankers are good honest people. In his experience, in his story, in his narrative they cannot be trusted. Even though all the facts and statistics and evidence told a different story, his own experience locked him into a narrative that they are all cheating crooks. That was the narrative he had put together by which he saw the larger financial world, and no one was going to convince him otherwise.

Narratives, then, form and shape the way in which we see the world around us. And even more than that, narratives form and shape pieces of our everyday activity in the world. The narratives that we construct by the way we put together events in our lives have power to control the way we see other people. These narratives have power to influence how we see the world and how we live in this world.

In the circles of our church’s reformed tradition we have another word for that. We don’t always call it a narrative. Sometimes we refer to that as a worldview. What we have always thought about and talked about as our Reformed biblical worldview is just another way of saying we live by a narrative. When we look at our Reformed biblical worldview what we are actually doing is making a connection between events and people and places in a way that is informed by scripture and controls the way we see other people; it influences how we see the world and how we live in the world.

The point is this: we all embrace narratives whether we mean to or not. How we see other people and how we live in the world are all controlled by whatever narrative dominates your worldview. So, maybe it’s a good idea every once in a while for us as people who profess to be Christian to pause and check our narratives. Maybe it’s good that we stop and realign our narratives to make sure our lives are influenced by a worldview which is rooted in the truth of scripture.

And this is where the book of Galatians comes in. Paul writes his letter to the churches in the region of Galatia because they needed to check their narrative. They needed to realign their worldview back in line with Christ. We are going to spend some time over the coming weeks going through this book of the Bible and picking up the way this 2000-year-old letter still speaks to us in the church today.

For today let’s start out with the first ten verses of chapter one.

Galatians 1:1–10 NIV

1 Paul, an apostle—sent not from men nor by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead—2 and all the brothers and sisters with me, To the churches in Galatia: 3 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5 to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. 6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—7 which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! 9 As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse! 10 Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.

The Gospel as Narrative Worldview

Paul has a way of tipping his hand and showing his cards in the way he introduces himself in his letters. We get a clue to the theme of Galatians just by the return address Paul stamps on the envelope. Paul, an apostle. Three words into chapter one verse one and we see something already. Apparently, there are those in the church who are refuting the authority of Paul as an apostle. He goes even further; an apostle not sent from men but sent by Jesus and the Father. And then just to throw a little more weight behind his claim of apostolic authority, verse two includes the backing of all the brothers and sisters with me. Paul doesn’t name names, but the assumption is that the other apostles of the early church receive and accept Paul as a fellow apostle among them.

Paul’s introduction - an apostle, sent from God

Verses three to five show a standard greeting in letters of the first century Roman world. Although it is common for Paul to extend this greeting as not only a blessing of well-wishes from the sender, but also a greeting that comes with the blessing of God himself.

Verse six turns a very sudden and abrupt corner. I am astonished, Paul says. The Greek word here translated as astonished is intended to be much more forceful. It’s not that Paul is puzzled or surprised by how quickly the Galatian Christians turned off track. He is passionately disturbed by their behavior. A modern equivalent of today’s language that captures the mood of Paul’s opening in this letter might go like this: dear Galatians, wtf??? He isn’t pulling any punches or softening his tone. Paul is not being passive aggressive; he is just plain being aggressive.

the people in Galatia have turned away from the true gospel of grace in Jesus and instead taken up some false gospel pushed at them by outsiders who have been trashing Paul’s reputation and status

Here is where Paul lays down the center of his argument. The people in Galatia have turned away from the true gospel of grace in Jesus and instead taken up some false gospel pushed at them by outsiders who have been trashing Paul’s reputation and status. It’s not that some people have augmented Paul’s teaching with some kind of alternate perspective. It’s not that Paul is pushing back on a slightly different point of view. He is saying that the version of gospel that came from others after him is completely incompatible with the gospel of grace which Paul himself first presented.

You can tell in these verses just how emphatic Paul is about this. He repeats himself on this point. He says anyone who presents a gospel that is different than the one first received from Jesus is cursed. The Greek word for cursed is anathema. It does not just mean mistaken or in need of correction. It is the word that is similar to the Hebrew understanding of being cut off from the covenant.

for Paul, the gospel of Jesus is a narrative

Let’s make some connections. Paul’s understanding of the gospel of Jesus is so much more than information. It is so much more than a message. It is so much more than something to be learned and something to know. For Paul, the gospel of Jesus is a narrative. The events of Jesus’ life make a connection in which God’s grace is pulled together within a narrative that continues to connect with the events of our world yet today. Gospel, narrative, worldview; I use all those terms interchangeably here.

Check Your Narrative

Bring this back to where we started. Narratives take shape in every single one of our lives. The narratives you choose to accept ultimately form and shape the way you see other people and the way you see the world around you. Galatians 1 is an emphatic reminder that the gospel is for us a narrative—the only narrative—which truly, accurately gives us the correct perspective to see others and see the world.

Paul is pushing against a narrative which insists righteous purity before God has a direct connection with a person’s own moral behavior

Paul says to the churches in Galatia and to us in the church yet today, check your narrative. I am going to push a little information beyond these verses to help us fill in the blanks. The people in Galatia were being led astray by a teaching which said they needed to conform to all the Old Testament laws of Moses in addition to faith in Jesus. It was a narrative that said the way you prove your merit and worthiness of God’s covenant is by following the rules. It’s a narrative that insists righteous purity before God has a direct connection with a person’s own moral behavior.

if you have to prove yourself worthy to God, then that must be the pattern you follow to prove yourself worthy to others too

In other words, if you want to participate in the covenant promise of God, it comes by proving you can live the right way by following the right standards. And when that story becomes the narrative, the worldview, the so-called gospel, then those same standards start to control and dominate how people receive and treat one another as well. If you have to prove yourself worthy to God, then that must be the pattern you follow to prove yourself worthy to others too.

The Direction of Your Narrative Worldview

This is why Paul concludes his opening argument with the question about whom it is we ought to be striving to please. Am I trying to please God or am I trying to please other people? Am I living a narrative which feels compelled to prove myself to others, and others are compelled to constantly prove themselves worthy of me? Or am I living a narrative which rests in submission to Christ because, by God’s grace, I have already been counted righteous before God through Jesus alone?

Paul asks - are we striving to please people, or are we striving to live in submission to Christ?

Check your narrative, Paul says. Are you living in a way that leans to the grace of God, or are you living in a way that leans to the standards of people? Paul goes out of his way in the opening of this letter to insist that the gospel worldview narrative he shares is a gospel he received from God. We will see more about that next week as this series continues through the rest of chapter one.

the gospel of God’s grace always points to Jesus first

What we see today, then, is a reminder that we still have this gospel worldview narrative revealed by God himself and given to us. It is in God’s Word that we are reminded over and over again that we are forever counted as one of his very own because of Jesus. It is the narrative of God’s grace extended over and over again to his people in the Bible which is also the foundation for the narrative we share of God’s grace extended over and over again to people in the world yet today.

God’s redemption of the world through Christ set into motion a narrative worldview in which we still walk today

It is this narrative of God’s grace which then also takes hold and informs the way we understand who we are as beloved children of God. The story of God’s redemption of a broken world began so long ago. God’s redemption became perfect in Christ. And God’s redemption set into motion a pattern of events, a connection of stories, a narrative worldview in which we still walk today. May we be people who once again turn and embrace the timeless and eternal story of the gospel as the narrative which defines who we are how we see God’s redeeming grace continue to unfold in our world.