On brotherly love and reaping the whirlwind

Many believers use an alternate code-language I call “Christianese.” It’s a special language that perhaps only folks from an American Christian subculture will understand. For example, we don’t leave a congregation because we don’t like the pastor; we leave because we “aren’t being fed.” We don’t decline to help in a certain ministry because we hate the idea of it. No, we decline because “God isn’t calling me to that, right now” or because “I don’t have peace about that.” A pastor doesn’t leave a congregation because he had an affair. Instead, he had a “moral failure.” We’re at a loss for words, so we promise to “pray for” someone—and sometimes we might even mean it! Christianese is but one sometimes funny idiosyncrasy in the American evangelical ecosystem.

Every culture has its loopholes; byways and back alleys that lead nowhere good but can be a cloak for bad behavior. Christianity is no different. We have a thirst for self-promotion. Before we’re Christians, we like to exalt in our achievements—we like to feed our pride, to feel superior. After we become Christians, we know that’s “bad” and so we cloak our pride in a veneer of piety.

The fruits of the Spirit aren’t a theoretical thing. They’re real, and never more so than in our everyday life with other people. So, Paul gets down to brass tacks here and explains how this fruit should work and show itself every day. But … that’s when we start to lose people. It’s easy to say something in church, to nod your head or intellectually agree. It’s something else to do it.

Paul said we must always march in step with the Spirit (Gal 5:25), because we live in union—in relationship—with the Spirit. Then he warns us against being conceited, which means to be proud for no reason.[1] We like to make performance an idol. We like to compare ourselves to others. We like to silently judge other people. This produces a tepid legalism[2] that only grows stronger if we don’t work to crush it. We can get like that without even noticing. The apostle knows this—it’s why he’s talking about it here.

The tell is simple—legalists never glory in the fruits of the Spirit. This is because those are virtues, which means they’re about character, attitude, demeanor, the heart. A legalist (or a legalist apprentice) will never boast about the fruits of the Spirit—she’ll always boast about something external, something measurable, something at which it’s easier and cheaper to point. Never forget that.

This article is part of a commentary series through the Book of Galatians. This article covers Galatians 6:1-10. You can find the rest of the series (so far) here: Galatians 3:1-6, and Galatians 3:7-14, and Galatians 3:15-22, and Galatians 3:23 – 4:7, and Galatians 4:12-20, and Galatians 4:21 – 5:12, and Galatians 5:13-26.

So, it’s no accident that when Paul wants to discuss the error of arrogance, pride, and vain-glory—to explain how to avoid 5:26—he turns to external things. If we could hear his voice, we would know his tone, and know how to read this passage better. Is this written in a forceful and confrontational tone, or is it more a warning from a worried friend? I see the tone as “affectionate disappointment”—the frustrated urgency that characterized the first four chapters can’t have faded too far into the background. I interpret the apostle’s tone here as, “I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you,” (Gal 4:11).

Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently.
Galatians 6:1

How do we know if someone is failing to “keep in step” with the Spirit? Easy—look for a moral failure. A believer is caught in the act. He stands ashamed. He didn’t plan it, but it happened, and now what to do? How should Christians react? It’s easy to cloak a cruel and harsh spirit with a religious gloss. So, Paul detonates that bridge by declaring that if someone is caught in a sin—something that isn’t premeditated, but perhaps overtakes the believer by surprise or by way of a sinful impulse[3]—then the folks who are truly spiritual should restore that person with a spirit of gentleness, of friendliness.

The NIV tries to help by rendering “you all who are spiritual” as “you who live by the Spirit.” This is right, but perhaps it helps too much. It’s an adjective. It describes the true Christian—she is spiritual, she has the fruits of the Spirit (Gal 5:22f). In other words, Paul says, show the fruits of the spirit in real life, towards real people, in a real situation.[4] Living in union and relationship with the Spirit isn’t an abstract thing, an idea that exists on paper as a nice utopia. It’s real. We can make it real. We must make it real. That starts with not being legalists towards one another when we sin.

The apostle does not say in what manner this is to be done; but it is usually to be done doubtless by affectionate admonition, by faithful instruction, and by prayer. Discipline or punishment should not be resorted to until the other methods are tried in vain.[5]

Paul continues:

But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted.
Galatians 6:1

The legalist doesn’t like to contemplate this scenario, because he already “knows”he’s better, faster, stronger, and smarter than everyone else. “Well,” Paul says, “you’d better check your ego, because you aren’t any of those things.”

Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.
Galatians 6:2

Paul keeps pressing the fruits of the Spirit because this is where the rubber meets the road. This is Christianity.[6] If you love your covenant brothers and sisters, then you won’t cast them aside when they’re overtaken in a transgression. If you have joy, your focus will be more on God’s love and grace and less on a cold disapproval of others. If you have peace, you can be patient with other people because your own status isn’t dependent on measuring yourself favorably against others. If you have kindness and goodness, then you have a tender-hearted, sweet, and gentle disposition that is eager to forgive.

If you’re faithful, then you’ll show loyalty towards your brothers and sisters by wanting to help them. If we have gentleness, then we’ll want to be kind friends towards others. In short, the opposite of a Pharisee. And, if we live in relationship with the Spirit, we’ll pray for self-control so we don’t do things we ought not do—which means we sympathize when our brothers and sisters fail in that goal, just as we do, too. “… one of the ways in which He bears these burdens of ours is through human friendship.”[7]

We each have burdens, sins, temptations, struggles. We can either be islands, or we can carry these for one another. Help each other. Pray for one another. Be understanding. Be kind and good. “Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness,” (1 Jn 2:9).[8]

What will we do? What does the law of Christ say?

It says to love your neighbor as you love yourself (Gal 5:14; cf. Lev 19:18, Mk 12:28f)—this is what James later called the “royal law” (Jas 2:8). Again, this doesn’t mean Jesus and Moses are at odds. It means this has been God’s heart all along, and the majestic intensity of the Spirit’s work in the lives of New Covenant believers makes this possible. Not a spirit of eager condemnation, but of loving correction (see Jn 7:53-8:11). The Old Covenant law was never an end in and of itself, nor was it ever intended as a vehicle to achieve righteousness in God’s eyes. Obedience was always predicated on love for God (Deut 6:4-5), and Paul is saying that now—as the story has progressed further along into the New Covenant—the Mosaic law is explicitly interpreted Christocentrically.[9]

If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves.
Galatians 6:3

The truth is that you’re nothing. I’m nothing. We are nothing. We’re only haters rescued by grace. That means we must not be so quick to condemn, to throw people away, to say “Aha!” If you are in a Christian community where there is a deficit of love, of patience, of understanding—no fruits of the Spirit applied to real people, in real life, in real situations—then you should flee.

Again it is apparent, as in Galatians 5:26, that our conduct to others is governed by our opinion of ourselves. As we provoke and envy other people when we have self-conceit, so when we think we are ‘something’ we decline to bear their burdens.[10]

Life in relationship with the Spirit—in step with Him (Gal 5:26)—isn’t a polite mission statement, a vision poster, or some bumper sticker. Love is the animating force that binds Father, Son, and Spirit together into one society of persons, one constellation, one compound being—God literally is love (1 Jn 4:8). Part of being restored to the image of God (cf. 2 Cor 3:18) is the renovation of love as that animating force that binds us to God, and to one another in the believing family. The fruits of the Holy Spirit are the crop, the harvest the Gospel reaps in your life from the fountainhead that is God’s love (Jn 3:16). A harvest isn’t theoretical—it’s either there or it’s not. These are virtues because they come from within and so cannot be consistently faked.

A legalist will not like any of this. She’ll equivocate. She’ll talk about holiness (1 Pet 1:15-16). She’ll talk about standards. She’ll get exasperated when one mentions love, patience, kindness, goodness—as if these are Pollyanna ideals for naïve folks who hail from Mayberry. Paul takes a sledgehammer to this lie; “You are nothing, so don’t think you’re something. You’re no better than him.”

Instead, they ought to do something completely different.[11]

Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else, for each one should carry their own load.
Galatians 6:4-5

There’s a movie starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford titled The Sting. Both men play con-artists running a swindle on a gangster played by Robert Shaw. One scene takes place on a train. Newman and Redford are preparing for the first act in this long-running con game. This particular hook involves poker. Newman’s character must successfully cheat during a game to set Shaw up.

Newman sits at a table, shuffling cards like a virtuoso. He does several cute little card tricks, and then he fumbles the deck and cards go flying everywhere. Redford stares at him, horrified. Can Newman get it together? Will he fumble the thing when it counts, too? Newman scowls, gathers the cards, and says to Redford, “Just worry about your end, kid.”

In other words, “You worry about your part. I’ll take care of mine!”

That’s what the apostle Paul is saying here. Worry about yourself. Weigh and judge your own actions. Do self-reflection, rather than judgmental condemnation. Then, you can have pride in your own holiness rather than tut-tutting about everyone else’s alleged lack of that virtue. This isn’t a license for self-righteousness, but a call to find grounding and foundation for peace in your own fruit of the Spirit, which is the harvest of God in your soul. After all, the day is coming when the Lord will assess the quality of what each believer has built upon the foundation that is the Gospel—we’ll be graded according to our own fruit (1 Cor 3:10-15).[12]

Don’t compare yourself with Pastor Jim or Deacon Smith or Sister Jones. God wants you to bring your own life before the open pages of his Holy Word. Are you more loving and patient than you were this time last year? How do you gauge your gentleness and self-control, your kindness and faithfulness? No one who honestly brings his or her life before God in this kind of way is going to have any interest in “comparing himself to somebody else.”[13]

A legalist finds peace by comparing himself first to a standard and then to others, graded on a curve. A Christian boasts and glories in what the Spirit is doing in his life. So, each believer must “carry their own load” in the sense that we worry about our end—we focus on the Spirit’s renovation project in our own lives, rather than comparing ourselves to others. The true believer need not fear hellfire—that isn’t even on the table here—but we should serve the Lord with an eye towards being acknowledged as good and faithful children when Jesus returns.

Nevertheless, the one who receives instruction in the word should share all good things with their instructor.
Galatians 6:6

This is a little aside from Paul that has no real connection to what’s come before, or what comes next.[14] The NIV tries to make a connection but the word it translates “nevertheless” can also mark a quick transition and be rendered “now” or something colloquial like “by the way …” This is a throwaway comment that’s almost spontaneous. It’s about how a teacher in the congregation deserves to be compensated. Perhaps all this talk about people worrying about their own selves, focusing on their own fruit of the Spirit, has spurred the idea to quickly remind people that their teachers in the congregations (who hopefully talk about this stuff) deserve some love![15]

Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.
Galatians 6:7

This comment reminds us of Hosea (Hos 10:12-13). Our actions are the seed we plant. The consequences of those actions are the crop, the fruit, the harvest. When we say one thing and do another, we’re hypocrites. When we say we love God, and don’t love one another, and don’t show the fruits of the Spirit towards brothers and sisters who are overtaken in a transgression, then we’re ridiculing God. We’re insulting Him. We’re mocking Him. “To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace,” (Heb 6:6). Alvah Hovey remarks, “Contemptuous treatment of him is sure to bring evil on those who are guilty of it.”[16]

It’s so easy to fool ourselves. Christians have been doing it since the beginning of time. The Israelites in Amos’ day were so cocksure that they longed for the day of the Lord—yet they were the evil ones (Amos 5:18)! Down south in Judah, her leaders, priests, and prophets were as corrupt as can be, yet they honestly blustered “Is not the LORD among us? No disaster will come upon us!” (Mic 3:11). In post-Civil War America, some Christians began pushing a “biblical” polygenesis—an allegedly scriptural perspective that taught that black people were a separate species from white people.[17] We do evil and are so blind that we see everyone else’s faults but our own. We think we’re holy when we’re actually quite evil. “Don’t be deceived!” Paul warns.

Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.
Galatians 6:8

Again, life in union with Christ doesn’t mean works-righteousness, of which legalism is a symptom. Nor does it mean lawlessness; a “we can do whatever we want!” ethos. It means marching in union—in relationship—with the Holy Spirit. Relationship produces observable fruit; either for God or for a very different master (1 Jn 3:7-10). What fruit are we bearing? What’s our “harvest”? More specifically, what seeds are we planting that generate this fruit? The answer tells us all we need to know about the crop to which we belong when Christ sends forth the harvesters at the end of the age to bring in the sheaves (Mt 13:30, 40-43).

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.
Galatians 6:9-10

The beloved apostle closes this section by implying an equation that suffuses the whole letter:

Alvah Hovey observed:

… the apostle simply reiterates the teaching of his Lord. His exhortation is but the statement, in another and practical form, of the Saviour’s ‘new commandment,’ which was, at the same time, as old as the spiritual nature of man … The extraordinary love of the early Christians to one another was a surprise to the heathen, and was, in many cases, the principal thing which recommended the new religion to their attention, and compelled them to see in it a beneficent power.[18]

We don’t know when the time of harvest will come, but we must do our bit while we wait. This means those virtues—that fruit of the Spirit—applied in real life to real people. To all people, of course, but especially to those in the household of faith. Christ’s family is a global community. What kind of crop will we have to show Jesus when He returns to gather in the harvest?

[1] LSJ, s.v. “κενόδοξος,” p. 938. The word only occurs once in the New Testament, and once in the apostolic fathers. The CEB has “arrogant” and the NIrV offers up “proud.”

[2] A “legalist” is someone who adheres to “legalism,” which is “attribution of great importance to law or formulated rule; strict adherence to the letter rather than the spirit of law.” In a Christian context, it means “adherence among Christians to the Mosaic law or to a similar system of laws, as opposed to the gospel expounded in the New Testament; the doctrine of justification by works; teaching resembling that doctrine,” (OED, s.v. “legalism,” senses 1 and 2, July 2023. https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/1042018082).

[3] See (1) Friberg, Analytical Lexicon, s.v. “προλαμβάνω,” p. 330, (2) Abbott-Smith, Lexicon, s.v., p. 381, and (3) Gerhard Delling, s.v., in TDNT. Albert Barnes captures the spirit of the matter: “hurried on by his passions or temptations to commit a fault,” (Barnes’ Notes, vol. 11 (reprint; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), p. 390). See also Schreiner, Galatians, p. 357. The idea is that there is no premeditation, no “high-handed” or defiant sin (Num 15:30f). This is essentially the distinction between the “unintentional” and “deliberate” sins from the Mosaic law (Lev 4:1-6:7; cp. Num 15:22-29 vs. Num 15:30f).

Alvah Hovey (Galatians, in American Commentary (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1890), p. 72) and A.T. Robertson (Word Pictures, Gal 6:1) believe the proper sense is that the individual has been “caught in the act” or “surprised” during the commission of sin.

The main feature of the Greek is that the verb is passive—the guy is surprised, or detected, or discovered, or overtaken by something. Ἀδελφοί ἐὰν καὶ προλημφθῇ ἄνθρωπος ἔν τινι παραπτώματι = “Now, brothers and sisters, if someone has been overtaken in reference to a transgression …” This doesn’t help us discern which option is best, but it really doesn’t touch my main point—this is not a “defiant” or “high-handed” (KJV) sin in the sense of Num 15:30. It’s not premeditated, defiant, or contemptuous of God. It’s the sin of a believer who just screws up—plain and simple.

[4] “A proud or contentious spirit would utterly disqualify one for the service contemplated by the apostle in this exhortation,” (Hovey, Galatians, p. 72).

[5] Barnes, Notes, p. 391.

[6] In his commentary, Timothy George helpfully draws out “four important truths about practical Christian living” from Paul’s command in Galatians 6:2 (Galatians, p. 413), but I believe the apostle’s focus is on our attitudes and actions towards other people. So, I won’t dwell on personal implications here because Paul’s focus is on practical outworking towards others.

[7] John R. W. Stott, The Message of Galatians, in The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1986), p. 157.

[8] Hovey observes, “Though the Fourth Gospel was not yet written, it is evident that Paul knew the substance of the Lord’s sweet and wonderful command to his disciples,” (Galatians, p. 73). Timothy George writes, “the work of restoration should be done with sensitivity and consideration and with no hint of self-righteous superiority,” (Galatians, p. 411).

[9] “The law, according to Paul, must be interpreted christocentrically, so that it comes to its intended completion and goal in Christ. The ‘law of Christ’ is equivalent to the law of love (5:13–14), so that when believers carry the burdens of others, they behave as Christ did and fulfill his law. In this sense Christ’s life and death also become the paradigm, exemplification, and explanation of love,” (Schreiner, Galatians, pp. 360-361). See also J. Louis Martyn, Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, vol. 33A, Anchor Yale Bible (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2008), p. 548.

[10] Stott, Galatians, p. 159.

[11] The NIV drops the adversative conjunction at the beginning of Gal 6:4, which should be rendered as something like “instead” or “but.” The phrase can be translated something like, “Instead, each one must examine their own work …” (τὸ δὲ ἔργον ἑαυτοῦ δοκιμαζέτω ἕκαστος). See the ESV, NASB, KJV, RSV.

[12] Schreiner notes that the verb here (“then they can take pride in themselves …”) is future, and so interprets vv. 4-5 as referring to the judgment of believers (Galatians, pp. 361-362). He is correct, but I want to emphasize the present-day implications too.

[13] George, Galatians, pp. 417-418. Also Stott: “In other words, instead of scrutinizing our neighbour and comparing ourselves with him, we are to test our ‘own work’ for we will have to bear ‘our own load’. That is, we are responsible to God for our work and must give an account of it to Him one day,” (Galatians, p. 159).

[14] Ridderbos, Galatians, pp. 216-217.

[15] Martyn speculates that Paul must have left competent teachers in the Christian communities in Galatia, and that the congregations are intent on dismissing these folks due to sinister influence from the enemies of the Gospel Paul criticizes throughout the letter, and so Paul reminds them of their duties to these teachers (Galatians, p. 552). Who knows! Martyn’s proposal makes good sense, but we just have no idea.

[16] Hovey, Galatians, p. 74.

[17] Mark A. Noll, America’s Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization 1794-1911 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022), pp. 482-485.

[18] Hovey, Galatians, p. 75.

On freedom and Paul’s “third way”

Freedom rings out again. It’s a big thing with Paul. The problem in the Old Covenant was externalism. After the return from exile, God’s people gradually overcorrected into legalism by the time of Jesus and the Apostles—an ossified, frigid works righteousness. This target is Paul’s rhetorical foe through the letter. Almost always, when Paul refers to slavery, the law, or freedom, he’s referring to the perverted form of “the faith” that had developed by his day—a system so crusted over with the barnacles of tradition that it wasn’t the Old Covenant religion anymore. “You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions,” (Mk 7:8).

This article is part of a commentary series through the Book of Galatians. This article covers Galatians 5:13 – 26. You can find the rest of the series (so far) here: Galatians 3:1-6, and Galatians 3:7-14, and Galatians 3:15-22, and Galatians 3:23 – 4:7, and Galatians 4:12-20, and Galatians 4:21 – 5:12.

It’s this backdrop that helps us understand what the apostle says now:

You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.
Galatians 5:13

So, when Paul reminds the Christians in Galatia that “you were called to be free,” he means something like “free from the legalism and false religion the Jewish establishment is peddling.” Not free from relationship with God. Not free from partaking in the faith that Abraham had—but free from the false system that had developed atop the Old Covenant and crusted over it. But, if they’re free from that—and from the Old Covenant framework entirely—then what was their matrix of authority? What was the new law? How did God regulate His people?

Christian have always struggled with how authority ought to work. Some say “the church” decides—this is the outsourcing option. Others say the bible alone is the answer—this is individualism and (if church history is any indication) a potential road to apostasy.[1] Others say we ought to primarily rely on the Holy Spirit—but this is the potential road to subjective mysticism. The true pattern of authority is the Holy Spirit speaking in and through the scriptures.[2] The scriptures are but one link in an integrated revelatory chain which goes like this:

Father and Son → Spirit → Scriptures → Christian community

There have always been some in the Christian community who abuse God’s love and grace. Perhaps they wouldn’t put it quite so crudely, but there it is nonetheless. It’s folks like this who may be creeping around the churches in Galatia, whispering that, because the Old Covenant is abolished, we’re now free to do whatever we want. “Not so!” Paul declares. Don’t use your freedom from legalism as an excuse, a pretext, as an absurd justification.[3] The NIrV renders this as, “don’t use your freedom as an excuse to live in sin,” and the NEB reads, “do not turn your freedom into licence for your lower nature.”

For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.
Galatians 5:14-15

The key, Paul says, is to read and interpret the law through a prism of love—through relationship.[4] This isn’t a new thing—it was there in the Old Covenant all along—but it’s become a new thing in light of Jesus’ authoritative interpretation and application of that first covenant. After all, didn’t Leviticus (of all places!) say that we must love our neighbor (Lev 19:18)? Isn’t that what Jesus said was the sum of the Old Covenant law (Mk 12:28-34)? Isn’t that what even a scribe figured out from his own study of the Torah(Mk 12:32-34)? That’s why Paul said elsewhere that love was the fulfillment of the law (Rom 13:10).

So, what to do with this sudden freedom from crushing legalism, freedom from the weight of all the external expectations of “right behavior,” freedom from the cold scrutiny of religious leaders anxious to condemn you? The solution isn’t to run wild and party. It isn’t to rip up the Torah and burn it in celebration. It’s to retain the Torah (Paul and Jesus both quoted Leviticus, after all!), but interpret it the real way—through a paradigm of covenant love for God and for one another. Without love, all the New Covenant community will do is destroy itself with infighting and selfish dealing (cp. Micah 2:1-5; 3:1-8). Paul illustrates this with an analogy of animals biting and eating one another. Real Christianity expresses itself in loving service to each other (cp. Acts 2:42-47).

When Paul says “serve one another in love,” he means the manner, the way, the inner disposition which prompts the service.[5] We don’t need a book or a podcast to teach us how to love one another—all we need to do is ask ourselves how we would wish to be treated. Your own heart is your teacher![6] Emil Brunner wrote persuasively about how brotherly love is the necessary witness of the church’s life in union with Christ.

The Spirit who is active in the Ekklesia expresses Himself in active love of the brethren and in the creation of brotherhood, of true fellowship. Thus the Ekklesia has to bear a double witness to Christ, through the Word that tells of what He has bestowed upon it, and through the witness of its life, through its being, which points to Him as its vital source.[7]

But, how to “be free,” be holy, and yet still live without legalism? The answer is a conjunction of Word + Spirit. Remember, the same Apostle Paul elsewhere said that the scripture had two jobs; (1) to bring people to faith in Christ, and (2) to teach us how we ought to live as children of the King (2 Tim 3:14-17). This is the tail end of that organic “revelatory chain” we mentioned earlier. Jesus promised He would continue to make His Father known to Christians “in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them,” (Jn 17:26). This suggests an ever-present communication between Jesus and His people—but how? Through the Spirit (Jn 14:26-27; 16:12-15). How does the Spirit speak to us? Primarily through God’s message, His story recorded in scripture—it’s the Spirit’s sword, after all (Eph 6:17)!

So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
Galatians 5:16

Paul says we must live a certain way—that’s what the “walk” metaphor means. How, then, shall we live? In union with the Holy Spirit, in relationship with Him.[8] Instead of incessant reference to laws and traditions (e.g. “can I do this on the Sabbath?”), a New Covenant believer lives in personal relationship with the Spirit of God. This is warmth, not frigid rules. Again—and this cannot be stressed enough—love for God was always the basis of a proper Old Covenant relationship (cp. Deut 10:12-22). But, after the return from exile a creeping legalism set in amongst the community that gradually ossified this love ethic into a works-righteousness that rescued nobody.

Now, in the New and better covenant, Jesus ups the ante (as it were) on love as the hinge for Christian life, doctrine, and practice—it’s love which fulfills the whole purpose of the Old Covenant law.[9] Jesus’ relentless focus on this love ethic is why the apostle John is so fixated on love (see 1 Jn 3). It’s also why Paul emphasizes freedom from a works-righteousness ethic in favor of a live lived in loving relationship with God via the Holy Spirit—remember that revelatory chain we mentioned earlier by which Jesus promised to never leave us alone (Jn 17:26; cf. Jn 14:26-27; 16:12-15)?

Father and Son → Spirit → Scriptures → Christian community

Live in union with the Spirit! This is a bit loose for people who prefer lists, categories, and a catalog of rules. But, if taken too far that’s the road to a new legalism, and they just broke free from all that. So, we keep the Torah but read it in dialogue with God’s message from the scriptures, by the power of the Spirit.

This isn’t a rote promise that “if you do this, you’ll never sin!” It’s a general truism, like many sayings in Proverbs. Paul is just saying that, to the extent you live in real union and relationship with the Spirit (in conjunction with the scriptures), then you will not be controlled by your own lusts. His wording in Greek is as emphatic as possible; it could be rendered something like “… you will never ever carry out the lusts of the flesh.”

For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
Galatians 5:17-18

God is changing us from who we are into who He wants us to be. “And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory,” (2 Cor 3:18). This means there is an ongoing, internal struggle as this renovation happens. Our “old person” doesn’t want to fade to black, and our “new person” must struggle to assert itself in our hearts and minds (cp. Eph 4:22-24). We win this battle to the extent we’re led by the Spirit—and to that extent, we’re free from legalism, self-righteousness, and the crushing weight of meeting impossible standards. To the extent we allow the Holy Spirit to lead and energize us, we’re free from the “law” of works-righteousness.

Basically, Paul’s audience is situated in a culture that presents two different authorities for the Christian life:

The Judaizers are offering “Jesus + obey all the Mosaic Law.” This is externalism. It’s legalism. It’s a bad option.
Other folks are offering a “do whatever you want” vibe.

Both these options are unacceptable, and so Paul offers a third way[10]—a life lived according to God’s will as expressed in the scriptures, interpreted through a prism of love for God and neighbor, by the power of the Spirit. To be led by the Spirit (Gal 5:18) is to be guided, to be led towards some goal[11]—to be shepherded. In the Christian faith, that goal is Christ-likeness—to be renovated from who you were and guided and led into the image of God’s dear Son (2 Cor 3:18).

So, we have a choice to make. Paul now compares the fruit of two paths—the flesh v. the Spirit. The “flesh” means our bodies, but more specifically our lusts, our sinful desires. It means the appetites and passions that characterize who we used to be (and partly still are),[12] rather than the “mind of Christ” which is the prototype and pattern for our moral renovation in process.

The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Galatians 5:19-21

These contrasting lists are rightly famous. They’re not exhaustive (Paul ends the list with “and the like”), but they’re representative enough to get the point across. A tree is known by its fruit (Lk 6:43-45). God’s people have His “seed” planted within them, and God’s seed always generates recognizable fruit (1 Jn 3:9). Perhaps a Christian’s fruit isn’t all it should be, but the point is that it’s recognizable. You might have a pitiful apple tree in your backyard, and even if it only produces a few sorry apples each year, you still recognize them as apples. So it is with Christians … and with those who serve a very different master. “This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister,” (1 Jn 3:10).

There are four general categories in this list. This doesn’t mean everything “bad” in this life should be situated in these categories; it’s just how this particular list shakes out:

Sexual crimes. Sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery.
Spiritual adultery. Idolatry and witchcraft.
Love of self. Hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy.
Drunkenness. Drunkenness is just what it sounds like, and what the NIV translates as “orgies” means the general sort of “carrying on” that happens at alcohol-saturated parties.

Because this is rotten fruit, people who practice these things—whose lives show a pattern of rotten fruit—will not gain possession of the kingdom of God.[13] Their actions make it clear to which master they really belong. Because Paul says these rotten fruits “are obvious,” I’ll only remark on a few of them here:

Sexual immorality. As the incarnate Messiah (the divine person with a human nature), as a Jewish man whose mission involved perfectly obeying the Old Covenant law in our place, as our substitute (cf. 2 Cor 5:21), Jesus’ frame of reference to define sexual ethics was Leviticus 18. As the eternal Son within the one Being who is God, Jesus gave Leviticus to Moses.[14] This means the sexual boundaries depicted there are still in effect—all of them.

Impurity. This literally means “dirty.” It’s figurative here, meaning activity that morally pollutes you. How do we know what these activities are? Well, that’s why you have the scriptures! Again, Paul isn’t saying we burn the Old Covenant and start from scratch—he’s appealing to God’s moral laws as standards of behavior loving children should want to do. We love God because He first loved us (1 Jn 4:19), and this love produces fruit. The opposite of that is to live a polluted, morally filthy life.

The apostle now shares the other side of the coin—the fruit of a Spirit-referenced and led life:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Galatians 5:22-23

There are all virtues, or what some would call moral qualities.[15] They come from within. They aren’t measurable. They can’t be quantified or plotted on a chart. They’re inner character qualities which flow from a heart disposition. The word “fruit” can also be translated as crop or harvest. Paul’s talking about the product of your heart; the “crop” which the Gospel has yielded in your life.No believer’s life is perfect. But, would an impartial observer seethis fruit in your life—no matter how underdeveloped it might be? Do they flow from your heart, habits, and appetites?

Love. Jesus is the paradigm for love, which is unearned and undeserved (see Hosea 1-3). This means we love others especially if they don’t deserve it. This is hard to do, obviously, but it’s clear that a “get off my lawn!” vibe is not a fruit of the Spirit—but quite the opposite.

How many Christians are curmudgeons? Are bitter? How many of us sing “They’ll Know We Are Christians” and then leave the church building and ignore everything we just sang? How many of us do anything at all to make love the defining virtue of our lives? Take any steps to make that a reality? How many of us have prayed, “God, make me love you more, so I’ll love people more?” How many conservative Christians in America are more passionate about Donald Trump, who personifies corruption and debauchery, than about Jesus of Nazareth—who personifies love, kindness, and grace?

In Christ there is no East or West, 
In Him no South or North, 
But one great Fellowship of Love 
Throughout the whole wide earth[16]

Would that our goal would be make this true in our hearts and lives!

Joy. This is a spirit of pure delight, or great pleasure and happiness.[17] It’s an inner glow that comes from experiencing the joy of union and relationship with the Father, through the Son, by the power of the Spirit. It’s what the angel Gabriel said Elizabeth would experience when she gave birth to their son John (Lk 1:14). It’s what the angels in heaven do when just one sinner repents (Lk 15:7). Jesus told the disciples that, when they saw Him alive after His impending death, “no one will take away your joy,” (Jn 16:22).

Are you a happy person? If you’re a Christian, and your outlook is more about misery and gloom than joy, then perhaps there’s a problem? Of course, life is difficult and we all go through seasons of drought. But, overall, do you have joy, happiness, and delight in your life because of your salvation? Pray for God to give you joy. Pray the Psalms. Ask God for a joyful disposition. Ask him to change your mindset—to see the world through new eyes. Ask Him to teach you to love life in the Spirit. Pray all that before you read the scriptures.

Oh the sheer joy of it! 
Living with Thee, 
God of the universe, 
Lord of a tree, 
Maker of mountains, 
Lover of me!

Oh the sheer joy of it!
Breathing thy air;
Morning is dawning,
Gone every care,
All the world’s singing,
“God’s everywhere.”[18]

Peace. This means an inner tranquility, a trouble-free spirit or conviction because “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand,” (Rom 5:1-2). It speaks of security, of safety, of a certainty that all will be well, because you have “peace that transcends all understanding,” (Phil 4:7). Jesus is our peace (Eph 2:14). The Apostle Paul apparently didn’t write these virtues in any particular order, but if he had then “peace” would have gone before “joy,” because the first produces the second.

O what a happy soul am I! 
Although I cannot see, 
I am resolved that in this world 
Contended I will be;

How many blessings I enjoy
That other people don’t!
To weep and sigh because I’m blind,
I cannot, and I won’t.[19]

Forbearance. This means we put up with things—“love covers over all wrongs,” (Prov 10:12; cp. 1 Pet 4:8). The Pharisees didn’t like forbearance because their idea of relationship with God was an unwitting legalism—an adoption dependent on performance. When what we do is the basis of relationship, there is little tolerance for failure. Real grace isn’t that way at all. A honest thirst for personal holiness is a non-negotiable fruit of real faith (1 Pet 1:15-16), but that doesn’t create relationships. Grace does. Love does. Unearned mercy does.

That has implications for our relationships—we have patience. How willing are we to give in? To not insist on our own way? To listen to other voices? To be patient? To be understanding? Think of how much God has put up with from you—has He lost patience yet? It could also mean a kind of patience as the world falls apart around us, and in that sense it’s basically the same as peace. We’ll only want to cultivate forbearance in our lives if we truly appreciate God’s patience with us—seen most clearly in Christ’s voluntary death for us, in our place, as our substitute. The “Cross + Resurrection + Ascension” trilogy is the prism for seeing and living real life.

Whenever there is silence around me
By day or by night—
I am startled by a cry.
It came down from the cross—
The first time I heard it.
I went out and searched—
And I found a man in the throes of crucifixion
And I said, “I will take you down,”
And I tried to take the nails out of his feet.
But he said, “Let them be
For I cannot be taken down
Until every man, every woman, and every child
Come together to take me down.”
And I said, “But I cannot hear you cry.
What can I do?”
And he said, “Go about the world—
Tell everyone that you meet—
There is a man on the cross.”[20]

Kindness. The word sometimes means a kind of “moral uprightness” (cp. Rom 3:12), but it can also mean an interpersonal kind of goodness that’s almost a synonym for love.[21] It’s difficult to draw a hard line between these virtues, because they shade over into one another. The idea here seems to be a softness of heart, a kindness, a loving disposition towards other people. It’s this same “kindness” that describes Jesus’ mission to rescue us (Rom 2:4; Tit 3:4).

If we walk in union with the Spirit—in living relationship with Him—then kindness should always threaten to overflow from our hearts and into real life. Some of us have problems with kindness. I’m not talking about being an introvert or being shy, and perhaps being misinterpreted as unkind. I’m asking whether, if we could open your heart, “kindness” would be stamped inside. Do you have a desire to be kind, to be loving, to be tender-hearted? Or, are you a quarrelsome person? Do you only show kindness to select people?

God changes us to be more like Christ over the course of time. Is kindness gradually working its way into the overflow of your heart and mind? If we have God’s “seed” within us, then His fruit will come. Pray and ask God to give you kindness, as you ponder how kind Christ has been to you.

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
1 Corinthians 13:1-3

Goodness. The idea here is quite close to kindness, but perhaps shading more to sweetness and gentleness. It’s not exactly the moral uprightness of an external act (“he always does good!”), but more of an inward disposition, a virtue, a character that’s suffused with goodness, sweetness, tenderness.[22] St. Paul said he was convinced the Christians in Rome were “full of goodness,” (Rom 15:14). That didn’t mean they “always did good” (though perhaps they did), but it seems to indicate something like “you’re all good people—sweet and gentle people!” Paul prayed that God would grant to the Christians in Thessalonica their “every desire for goodness” (2 Thess 1:11), which again suggests an inward virtue rather than the moral quality of an outward action.

Pretend you’re at a funeral and someone says, “he was a good man!” What does that mean? It doesn’t mean so much that he did good things, but instead it refers to character. Not character in the sense of “his good outweighed the bad”—erase all imagery of doing things from your mind at this point. The focus is character, attitude, demeanor, disposition—you’re saying the guy was kind, sweet, gentle, nice, tender-hearted.

We’re selfish people. We want to look out for ourselves. We weren’t made that way, but we’ve become that way because of the Fall (see Gen 3). Part of “being made in the image of God” is that we alone among God’s creatures have the capacity to know God, to receive and acknowledge His love, and to love Him back in return. There’s a “I-Thou” connection with God ready to be wired up—one that no cat or dog will ever have. God is relational. Father, Son, and Spirit are “one” in the sense that their mutual love is the reality that (as it were) binds them together into one society of persons, one constellation, one compound being. It’s the inward circularity of divine life that explains the mutual indwelling language that Jesus used (see Jn 14-16, passim).

When God restores this “image” through salvation, part of what that means is that He renovates our capacity for relationship as it was meant to be—on both the vertical (us to God) and horizontal (us to others) planes. We can now begin the work of patching up our relationships so they better reflect the nature of the triune God whose image we mirror. That means these virtues Paul keeps pressing—kindness, goodness, gentleness—are possible … if we have union with Christ.

Let me live in my house by the side of the road—
It’s here the race of men go by.
They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong
Wise, foolish—so am I; 
Then why should I sit in the scorner’s seat,
Or hurl the cynic’s ban?
Let me live in my house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.[23]

Faithfulness. Paul means loyalty, trustworthiness, and reliability. To whom? To God, and to covenant brothers and sisters. It’s not just a “when I give my word, I mean it!” kind of vibe, but the more wholistic idea of “she’s such a loyal friend—I can always trust her!”

Faith is often a synonym for “trust,” and that’s what it means to “believe in Jesus”—it means to trust His representations about who He is and what He’s done for us. We trust God. We’re loyal. We’ve pledged allegiance to Him. We’re the same way towards our brothers and sisters in the believing community. These virtues interpenetrate one another, build upon each other. We’re loved by God, so we have peace, and so we have joy, and kindness, and goodness, and patience, and faithfulness to God and to one another. And, of course, we can be faithful like this because God has first been faithful to us in Jesus.

Thou hast given so much to me, 
Give one thing more—a grateful heart:
Not thankful when it pleaseth me,
As if thy blessings had spare days,
But such a heart whose Pulse may be
Thy praise.[24]

Gentleness. This is “a spirit of gentle friendliness.”[25] It’s a mild-mannered kind of disposition. The apostle isn’t declaring everyone must try to be Mr. Rogers, but he is saying that a “gentle friendliness” ought to characterize our interactions with others.

Self-control. Paul means a mastery over one’s emotions and desires. We get better at this as the person we were gradually fades into the background to be replaced by the person we now are in union with Christ. The question to ask is, “am I getting better at suppressing the old me?” This isn’t a matter of sheer willpower, but a character renovation the Holy Spirit works from the inside out. Self-control is one of the virtues that the apostle Peter said “will make you useful and fruitful as you get to know our Lord Jesus Christ better,” (2 Pet 1:8, NIrV).

God changes us so we can honor Him with our life and work. Self-control is part of the harvest the Spirit reaps from within our hearts from that change. The question, of course, is whether we pray for change, for self-control, for greater holiness. Or, whether we remain on autopilot.

Thy way, not mine, O Lord,
However dark it be!
Lead me by thine own hand,
Choose out the path for me.

Smooth let it be or rough,
It will still be the best;
Winding or straight, it leads
Right onward to thy rest.

I dare not choose my lot;
I would not, if I might;
Choose thou for me, my God;
So I shall walk aright.[26]

This all seems like a tall order. What we must never forget is that Paul isn’t talking about a transaction, a “do this for God, and He’ll do this for you” arrangement. That would be legalism and works-righteousness. You must always read every single command from scripture in light of Christ and His Good News; as the fruit of trusting that message, owning it—as the natural harvest which comes from a personal encounter with Jesus of Nazareth, by the power of the Holy Spirit (2 Cor 4:3-6). These aren’t the fruit of hard work, but the fruit of the Spirit.

Paul continues:

Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.
Galatians 5:24-26

Hopefully you haven’t literally crucified yourself! Paul is employing the same metaphors he uses in the letter to the church in Rome (“for we know that our old self was crucified with Him,” Rom 6:6, passim)—if you’re in union with Christ, then your old person is dead and gone. Your flesh and bones remain, but your spirit, your soul, your heart, your mind have changed. Spiritual birth has occurred, a God-seed has been planted, and things will never be the same again.

We can walk away. God has given us the power to walk away—to be led by the Spirit instead of our flesh. Instead of remaining unwitting slaves to our own lusts and ultimately to Satan, we’ve been set free. Jesus defeated Satan (Heb 2:14-15) and killed death itself for all who trust Him and His message (1 Cor 15:54-57). In return, He’s given the Holy Spirit to His brothers and sisters so He and the Father can teach us, communicate with us, mold us into the Son’s image. We must make a conscious, everyday choice to live with incessant reference to the Spirit.

Paul uses a military metaphor here which the NIV rightly keeps[27]—we must “keep in step” with the Spirit, “march in step” (NIrV) with Him. The Spirit “calls the cadence” in that we live in union—in relationship—with Him[28] (“we live by the Spirit”), and so we can and must choose to march in tune to His call. We can do that because we’re now free from both a false legalism and from Satan.

The danger is that it’s possible to fool ourselves; to become conceited and arrogant while maintaining an unwittingly fraudulent front of piety. We can do “good things” and even produce some fruit—tellingly, in this context the “fruit” will rarely be a virtue or a moral quality like those Paul listed. In short, we can become Pharisees. It’s to that danger that Paul now turns.

[1] Some Christians—especially those from the free church tradition—may be confused at this point. One key emphasis from the Protestant Reformation was suprema scriptura—that scripture was the supreme or highest channel of authority for Christian faith and life—not the only channel, but the final one. This is most often called sola scriptura, but supreme scriptura is a better term (see esp. James Leo Garrett Jr., Systematic Theology: Biblical, Historical, and Evangelical, 4^th ed., vol. 1 (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2014), p. 206). This doesn’t mean “the bible alone,” but rather that the scriptures are the supreme channel; the yardstick by which everything must be measured.

[2] Bernard Ramm, The Pattern of Religious Authority (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958), p. 28.

[3] See LSJ, s.v. “ἀφορμή,” sense no. 2, p. 292.

[4] “In this entire summary, Paul’s purpose is both to let the law come into its own proper validity in the life of believers; and to graft its fulfillment upon a different principle from that of human self-vindication through works—namely, the salvation brought by Christ. For the love, in which the law has its fulfillment, is the fruit of faith (verse 6),” (Ridderbos, Galatians, in NICNT, p. 201).

[5] The preposition in ἀλλὰ διὰ τῆς ἀγάπης δουλεύετε ἀλλήλοις could refer to personal agency (“serve one another by love”) but this option is typically for active and personal agents, not attributes or virtues. It could be instrumental means (“serve one another by means of love” or “with love”). I believer manner is best—Paul is describing the way we ought to serve one another.

[6] Martin Luther, Galatians, in Crossway Classic Commentaries, ed. Alister McGrath and J.I. Packer (Wheaton: Crossway, 1998), p. 265.

[7] Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith, and the Consummation, trans. David Cairns and T.H.L. Parker (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), p. 134.

[8] I take the dative in πνεύματι περιπατεῖτε to be a dative of association. Most commentors opt for a dative of agency (“by the Sprit”), but in this circumstance the agent usually performs the action of the verb (in this case, the Holy Spirit, if the dative truly expresses agency), whereas in our text Paul is telling Christians to perform the action. Daniel Wallace dismisses dative of agency and suggests means (GGBB, pp. 165-166), but this is quite difficult to explain in exposition. Another option is manner, which answers the implicit “how” of the verb. But, on balance, I believe a dative of association is the best option. Regardless of the syntactical category one chooses, the root idea is that we cannot live without the influence, leading, and direction of the Spirit.

[9] “So it is love—love that responds to Christ’s love and that expresses a new existence in Christ (cf. 2:20)—that motivates the ethical life of a Christian, with the results of that love ethic fulfilling the real purport of the Mosaic law,” (Longenecker, Galatians, p. 243).

[10] Fung, Galatians, in NICNT, loc. 3057.

[11] LSJ s.v. “ἄγω,” sense no. II.2.

[12] “[T]he flesh, as the seat of the affections and lusts, fleshly nature …” (LSJ, s.v. “σάρξ,” no. II, p. 1585).

[13] The phrase is ἃ προλέγω ὑμῖν καθὼς προεῖπον ὅτι οἱ τὰ τοιαῦτα πράσσοντες βασιλείαν θεοῦ οὐ κληρονομήσουσιν. It can be rendered, “I am warning you beforehand, just as said previously, that the ones who are practicing such things will not gain God’s kingdom.” The key word is πράσσοντες, which in this context means “to practice,” (LSJ, s.v. “πράσσω,” no. IV, p. 1460).

[14] Leviticus 18 begins with “The LORD said to Moses …” (Lev 18:1). We know this is the triune God speaking, because the divine name of Yahweh is always signified by a capital “LORD” in our English bibles.

[15] Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “virtue,” noun, sense I.1.a, July 2023. https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/2971758024.

[16] John Oxenham, “No East or West,” in The Treasury of Religious Verse, ed. Donald T. Kauffman (Westwood: Revell, 1962), p. 322.

[17] See (1) LSJ, s.v. “χᾰρά,” p. 1976, and (2) Abbott-Smith, s.v., p. 479.

[18] Ralph Cushman, “Sheer Joy,” in Treasury of Religious Verse, p. 209.

[19] Fanny Crosby (at age 8), “Blind But Happy,” in Treasury of Religious Verse, p. 211.

[20] Elizabeth Cheney, “There is a Man on the Cross,” in Treasury of Religious Verse, p. 143.

[21] See (1) Ceslas Spicq and James D. Ernest, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994), s.v. “χρηστεύομαι, χρηστός, χρηστότης,” p. 511f, and (2) Abbott-Smith, Lexicon, s.v., p. 484.

[22] Spicq, Lexicon, s.v. “ἀγαθοποιέω, ἀγαθωσύνη,” p. 1.

[23] Excerpt from Sam Walter Foss, “The House by the Side of the Road,” in Treasury of Religious Verse, p. 244.

[24] George Herbert, “A Heart to Praise Thee,” in Treasury of Religious Verse, p. 256.

[25] Friberg, s.v. “πραΰτης,” Analytical Lexicon, p. 326.

[26] Horatius Bonar, “Thy Way, Not Mine,” in Treasury of Religious Verse, p. 219.

[27] See (1) LSJ, s.v. “στοιχέω,” p. 1647, (2) Abbott-Smith, s.v., p. 418.

[28] Once again, I believe this is a dative of association (contra. NIV and most EVV). The military metaphor further supports this usage over against agency or means. We are, as it were, marching in step with the Spirit which means we have to “stay with Him.”

Book review: “Biblical Porn” by Jessica Johnson

*Biblical Porn: Affect, Labor, and Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Evangelical Empire* by Jessica Johnson (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018), 218pp.

This is a very curious book. It chronicles bits of the Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church saga with particular attention to the church’s propagation of a deviant strain of Christian sexuality (i.e. “biblical porn”); particularly how it leveraged its expectations in this area to produce volunteerism, commitment, and loyalty to its peculiar evangelical empire. The ground Johnson covers here overlaps in some areas with ChristianityToday’s wildly popular “Rise and Fall of Mars Hill” podcast (Johnson published first!). But, its burden isn’t to provide a straight history. Johnson explains (Biblical Porn, p. 7):

The peculiar aspect of this book is that it seems to see-saw between an engaging history and sudden esoteric discussions of sociological theory. It reads like two very different pieces melded somewhat awkwardly into one. The discussions of sociological affect seem pasted in with (in some instances) little to no transition. The jarring bit is that Johnson doesn’t really try to translate affect theory for non-specialists. Her academic peers in the same field surely appreciate her remarks along that line, but interested laypeople like me are a bit lost when she veers hard right into academic speak.

In summary, this is a very interesting and informative book that can’t decide whether it wants to be a academic treatise or a popular book for non-specialists. In contrast, it seems to me that Kristin Kobes DuMez faced a similar dilemma with Jesus and John Wayne and chose the popular route, and succeeded quite well. This doesn’t mean Johnson’s book is bad–far from it. I enjoyed it and was horrified at some of what I read. I just wish she’d had interested laypeople like me in mind when she wrote it.

What to think of Driscoll? The sexual ethics that he pushed (and is still pushing?) are perverse and disgusting. Johnson focuses less on the Mars Hill phenomenon than on how “biblical porn” acted as a tool for leveraging volunteerism in service of an allegedly good cause. In that respect, it’s a horrifying look at what a militant, hyper-sexualized “bro culture” approach to sexual ethics within Christian community can do.

It’s easy to forget how scandalous and polarizing Driscoll’s teaching about sexuality were–Mars Hill Church closed nine years ago and some readers may have little to no idea who Driscoll is. The intriguing thing about Driscoll is that he swam in complementarian waters and his teaching was notable less for its deviancy from that perspective (see, for example, Tim Challies very polite negative review of Real Marriage), but more for the macho and unfiltered crudity of his framing.

Driscoll made crude sexual jokes during sermons.
He repeatedly spoke about how wives needed to make themselves sexually available for their husbands.
He spoke about how a church planter pastor’s wife most important job was to sleep with her husband.
He encouraged wives to perform oral sex on their husbands.
And much, much more.

I appreciated much (not all) of Rachel Held Evans’ review of Driscoll’s Real Marriage book from back in the day. If you’re interested in a substantive, accessible look at Driscoll, then listen to ChristianityToday’s very helpful “Rise and Fall of Mars Hill” podcast series. As a companion piece to understand the terrible errors of the Christian purity culture to which some of this drek is tied, I highly recommend the book by Sheila Gregoire and her daughter titled The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You’ve Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended.

Killing Death

This Easter, I preached about Jesus destroying death (1 Cor 15:12-26). This has always been a difficult topic for me–how do you describe something like death being “destroyed”? The concept is abstract and hard to grasp. But, I gave it my best shot.

I hit upon a different way to describe the substitutionary nature of Jesus’ condemnation and execution–which I labeled (respectively) as indictment and punishment. I tried to show how Jesus’ resurrection secures His people’s hope of victory over death. I was able to do the sermon in less than 30 minutes, which is my goal nowadays.

Here is the video and audio from the sermon:

On Two Ladies and Their Two Jerusalems

Henry Knox personifies the perennial American virtues of dependability and ingenuity.[1] He was George Washington’s chief artillery commander during much of the Revolutionary War. Knox was nobody’s version of a dashing soldier. A 1784 portrait shows a chubby, round-faced man with at least two chins. His shoulders slope downward as if he’s slouching for the portrait—one can just imagine the belly that must be there, despite being over six feet tall.

Knox had no formal military training. He was a bookseller who liked to read, and devoured tomes on military history and eventually artillery. Washington promoted him to the post over the head of an older, much more experienced professional soldier. He must have seen something in the guy.

One of Knox’s greatest feats was to seize 55 artillery pieces from captured Fort Ticonderoga, at the southern end of Lake Champlain, and transport them to Cambridge, MA to participate in the siege of Boston. This is a distance of approximately 220 miles on modern roads, and Knox’s achievement was “one of the most impressive examples of perseverance and ingenuity in the war.”[2]

Artillery pieces in that day were extraordinarily heavy—Knox’s 55 guns weighted over 60 tons. He and his team successfully hauled this captured artillery across waterways, over hills and down into valleys and lost not a one.

Knox later served in Washington’s first administration as Secretary of War. This is an extraordinary, self-made man—a guy who taught himself his own profession and helped win the Revolutionary War. He was a guy who “made it happen,” and his successful capture and transport of 60 tons of artillery pieces to the outskirts of Boston one cold winter is exhibit no. 1.

In that brief description, I took a historical figure and made him represent something bigger, something beyond himself. Does Henry Knox really embody dependability and ingenuity to the nth degree? Perhaps nobody really can, but that one incident surely illustrates the point.

This article is part of a commentary series through the Book of Galatians. This article covers Galatians 4:21 – 5:12. You can find the rest of the series here: Galatians 3:1-6, and Galatians 3:7-14, and Galatians 3:15-22, and Galatians 3:23 – 4:7, and Galatians 4:12-20, and Galatians 5:13 – 26.

Paul does something similar, in Galatians 4:21 – 5:12. He grabs a historical incident and says, “this is a great illustration for something deeper—something important.” He hopes this will make an impression on the Christians in Galatia, because it’s important they get this. He explains …

Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says?
Galatians 4:21

Now, in a tone of exasperation—like that of a frustrated person to a particularly dense friend—Paul asks if they’re really aware of what it means to put oneself under a system of works righteousness. This echoes what he’s mentioned earlier, in Galatians 3:7-14. “You really want to go that way?” he asks. “I’m not sure you understand what you’re doing!”

Anytime you add something to Jesus’ “repent and believe” (Mk 1:15), you destroy the Gospel. False teachers are claiming the equation is “Jesus + obey the Mosaic law = salvation.” This is why some of these “foolish Galatians” (Gal 3:1) want to “be under the law.” They’ve been fooled to believe in that false equation.

“Do you not listen to the law?” Paul asks.[3] He explains what he means …

For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. His son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a divine promise.
Galatians 4:22-23

“This is what I mean,” Paul says,[4] and then lays it out. He grabs an incident from the book of Genesis (ch. 16) to make his point. He uses allegory, which basically means one thing is really a symbol for some hidden other thing.[5] This means the point he’s about to make doesn’t come right from Genesis, but he uses the incident from Genesis 16 as an illustration for something else. It’s a capstone to the same long argument he’s been making since Galatians 3.

For as painting is an ornament to set forth and garnish an house already builded, so is an allegory the light of a matter which is already otherwise proved and confirmed.[6]

You’ll have to read Genesis 16 to understand what Paul’s about to say—why don’t you do it right now?

There are two children from Abraham: Ishmael and Isaac. One was born to a slave woman, Hagar—whose mistress was Abraham’s wife Sarah. The other was Sarah’s child, whom they named Isaac.

Ishmael was born because Abraham and Sarah tried to fix things their own way. God had promised them more offspring than could ever be counted—that Abraham would be the genesis of all God’s people. Well, the years passed, and no child came. We gotta do something, they figured. Gotta take matters into our own hands. So, Sarah declared, “The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her,” (Gen 16:2). Abraham was only too happy to oblige and slept with Hagar. Thus Ishmael was conceived.

Isaac, on the other hand, was born according to God’s promise. Sarah conceived a child in her old age, and they had a new baby boy of their own.

This contrast—going your own way vs. going God’s way—is what Paul highlights throughout the example. Hagar represents “going your own way,” when Abraham and Sarah decided to solve the problem “according to the flesh.” Sarah represents “going God’s way,” and so she is a “free woman.”

This “according to the flesh” (Ishmael) vs. “as a result of a divine promise” (Isaac) suggests two very different paths:[7]

Children of the flesh → Ishmael → focus on human effort → unbeliever

Children of the divine promise → Isaac → focus on God’s grace → believer

Paul continues …

These things are being taken figuratively: The women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves: This is Hagar. Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother.
Galatians 4:24-26

These two women and the two very different paths they represent stand for two covenants. These are the Old and New Covenants,[8] symbolized by two cities, and two women, and two very different “children.”

Old Covenant from the Old Jerusalem → Hagar → slave children

New Covenant from the New Jerusalem → Sarah → free children

Paul’s language is a bit shocking—he compares the Old Covenant to slavery! Did Jesus think that way? Did the man who wrote Psalm 119 think that way (“Your statutes are my delight; they are my counselors,” (Ps 119:24))?

They didn’t.

So, in what way are the “children” from the present Jerusalem “in slavery”? Paul must again be referring to the wrong interpretation of the Old Covenant that he’s been arguing against all along. That’s the best explanation.[9] The Mosaic law isn’t oppressive or evil (“Direct me in the path of your commands, for there I find delight,” (Ps 119:35)). It is not a tool for slavery—“I will walk about in freedom, for I have sought out your precepts,” (Ps 119:45)). Nor is it a vehicle for salvation—it has nothing to do with that.

This suggests it can only be compared to slavery if it’s twisted into something it’s not meant to be. The Mosaic law can become a form of “slavery” if you twist it into a means of salvation. “For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die!” (Gal 2:21, NLT).

You have a choice of two “mothers,” each corresponding to a particular path:

Go your own way → Hagar as “mother” → slavery

Go God’s way → Sarah as “mother” → freedom

Paul now quotes a passage from Isaiah to strengthen his point:

For it is written: “Be glad, barren woman, you who never bore a child; shout for joy and cry aloud, you who were never in labor; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband.”
Galatians 4:27 (quoting from Isa 54:1-3)

In Isaiah’s book, this follows right on the heels of the great prophecy about the Lord’s suffering servant (Isa 52:13 – 53:12). In that passage, God promised that His servant would justify many people, and would see His “offspring,” who are the true believers whom He’ll rescue. After that assurance, Isaiah then says the bit which Paul quotes here in our text—the “barren woman” who has been longing to bear “children” will have her wish, but not in the normal fashion. She won’t bear the children or ever suffer labor pains, nonetheless this “desolate woman” will have multitudes of them.

This is poetry, metaphor—it hints about something deeper. God often refers to his community as a woman (Isa 61:10; Isa 62:4-5; Jer 3:14; Eph 5:25-27)—sometimes an unfaithful woman (see Ezek 16, Hos 1-3). So, this woman to whom God speaks is likely Israel—His covenant family. She is “barren” because the glittering promise from Mt. Sinai (“… you will be my treasured possession … a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” (Ex 19:5-6)) seems to be nothing but a pipe dream when compared to the crucible of reality—a fantasy.

Children are a sign of God’s blessing—but where are her “children”? Well, God promises that she’ll have them. God’s community will one day be complete, made whole, elevated to that splendor she never really achieved. Isaiah looks forward to the new covenant, when Jesus will make all those promises to Abraham come true.

Why does Paul quote this passage? He connects the “good mother” with Sarah, who waited upon God even through apparent barrenness. Sarah will have more children than the “other woman,” Hagar.[10] The Galatian Christians are children of the free woman, symbolized by the new Jerusalem (“she is our mother,” Gal 4:26)—they’re Israel’s “children.” Anyone who shares Abraham’s faith is a child of Abraham, and an heir in God’s family (Rom 4:16-17; Gal 3:26-29). Every new believer is a precious “child” given to that barren woman, Israel, who once thought she’d blown it and would never have offspring.

Now you, brothers and sisters, like Isaac, are children of promise. At that time the son born according to the flesh persecuted the son born by the power of the Spirit. It is the same now.
Galatians 4:28-29

Christians who trust Jesus, through the simple Good News He preached, belong to Sarah and are “children of promise.” What happened between Isaac and Ishmael? Ishmael harassed his younger stepbrother (Gen 21:9). “It is the same now,” in that the other “children” (those who belong to the slave woman—the Old Jerusalem) harass the true children who are free.

Children of promise → free → true believers

Children of the flesh → slaves → false believers

These “slave children” are the false teachers and all who believe in the equation “Jesus + something else = salvation.” Some bible teachers believe they are the Jews and the Old Covenant, but this is wrong—the Old Covenant (properly interpreted) isn’t evil and doesn’t produce slavery. Instead, Paul has been arguing against the “works righteousness” crowd and he continues that here.

But what does Scripture say? “Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son.”
Galatians 4:30

When Ishmael harassed Isaac, Sarah told her husband to send Hagar away. “She has no part in any of this!” What’s the connection to the situation in Galatia? Well, just as Sarah (the “mother” of freedom in this analogy) sent away Hagar (the “mother” of slavery), so too should the Christians in Galatia “get rid of” these false teachers and everyone else who believes in that fraudulent salvation equation. They have no share in Abraham’s inheritance. They aren’t children of the free woman—they belong to someone else entirely. Send them packing, and don’t fall for their tricks!

Therefore, brothers and sisters, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman.
Galatians 4:31

And there it is.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
Galatians 5:1

By accepting Christ, the Galatian Christians escaped from slavery. They were in bondage to the “elemental spiritual forces” of works righteousness (Gal 4:3, 8-10), but that’s all in the past. Paul spoke of Sarah and “freedom.” Well, it was for freedom that Christ has set us free. So, don’t go back to prison!

Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law.
Galatians 5:2-3

If they decide to go down the “Jesus + Mosaic law = salvation” road, then they’re spitting in Christ’s face. We can’t be perfect, and so that’s why Christ came. But if, knowing that, you still want to try to obey the Mosaic law as if it were a way of salvation then Christ is worthless to you. If you want to go that way, then you’d better be willing to be perfect and obey the entire law.

Good luck with that.

Again, Paul is arguing against the common misunderstanding of the Mosaic law that the false teachers are peddling—the same confusion that Jesus dealt with. The Mosaic law was never intended as a vehicle for salvation—it was simply a code for holy living while God’s people waited for the Messiah. Centuries of tradition had crusted over top of the Old Covenant and turned it into a burdensome thing—a yoke of bondage.

You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.
Galatians 5:4

The word which the NIV renders as “have been alienated from Christ” means to be “parted from” or to “abolish.”[11] This is a moment of cosmic significance. If you choose that false equation of “Jesus + something else = salvation,” then you’ve chosen a false message. That means you’ve been parted from Christ, separated from Him. The union that once was is severed, abolished.

The people don’t do the severing—God does it. The text (and the Greek words behind it) don’t read “you’ve alienated yourselves from Christ.” It reads “you’ve been alienated/parted from Christ.” Why has this happened? Why has God cut them loose from Christ? Because they “have fallen from grace.”[12]

Some Christians today might interrupt and ask, “is Paul saying they’ve lost their salvation?” The answer is that Paul’s not addressing that question here, and we shouldn’t pretend he did—even in the interests of theological tidiness.[13] He’s issuing a frustrated warning. In real life we know we must balance one statement with another. Say your husband tells your child, “I’ve had it with you and your phone. All you do is stare at it. You don’t do anything else all day!” Should you then wonder, “Does my husband hate telephones? Will he sell his phone? Will I have to buy him a retro pager, instead?” The truth is that your husband isn’t really talking about telephones at all. He just thinks your son spends too much time staring at it. He’s worried about him and spoke harshly to get his point across.

Paul is doing something similar—he isn’t addressing salvation, he’s just issuing a harsh warning. If you choose that wrong route, you’ve fallen from grace and God will sever you from relationship with Jesus—because that’s the choice you made. This is very dangerous. Stop it now and come to your senses! He says all this to make them reflect, to think about what they’re doing (see v. 10).

For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
Galatians 5:5-6

This passage should probably begin with “but” (see the New Living Translation here) because it’s expressing a contrast—you can either choose works righteousness and thus fall from grace, or you can eagerly await final righteousness through the Spirit. Y’all can do that, but we will do this (etc.).

Jesus is all that matters. Not circumcision. Not tithing. Not your job. Not your automobiles. Not your family pedigree. Not your education. Not how smart you are. In union with Christ, all of that is now useless (see Ecc 1-2)—all that really matters is faith proven by love (see 1 Cor 13). “If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing,” (1 Cor 13:2, NLT).

You were running a good race. Who cut in on you to keep you from obeying the truth? That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you.
Galatians 5:7-8

What happened to you all? You used to understand. You used to get it. You used to know the truth. Where did you go wrong? This teaching didn’t come from Jesus—it came from someone else.

“A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.” I am confident in the Lord that you will take no other view.
Galatians 5:9-10

Paul quotes a line from one of his letters to the church in Corinth (1 Cor 5:6). Just a little yeast will make the entire loaf of bread rise. In the same way, just a little bit of falsehood will ruin the entire Christian message. But, he says, I’m confident that you’ll correct your course, come to your senses, and tell those troublemakers to, “Hit the road, Jack—and don’t you come back no more, no more, no more, no more …”[14]

The one who is throwing you into confusion, whoever that may be, will have to pay the penalty.
Galatians 5:10

Paul reminds us that troublemakers will pay, in the end. “The LORD examines the righteous, but the wicked, those who love violence, he hates with a passion,” (Ps 11:5).

Brothers and sisters, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished.
Galatians 5:11

Verse 11 is difficult. The best explanation seems to be that these false teachers are spreading lies about Paul, suggesting he really preaches “Jesus + Mosaic law = salvation” elsewhere, but has abridged his message to them for sinister reasons.[15] This doesn’t make any sense, Paul says, because he’s hated and persecuted everywhere by these same people! If he preached the false message, the Judaizers would have much less of a problem. Christianity’s great offense is that it requires people to admit, “I’ve been wrong about everything, and nothing I do myself can ever fix my relationship with God!”

There’s a reason why Jesus’ death makes people so angry—because it means we’re criminals and that Jesus was executed in our place. Our salvation hinges on us admitting this to God and choosing to love Him rather than ourselves. It asks us to admit that we’re no good, but that Jesus was voluntarily indicted and executed in our place, for our crimes, as our substitute. That’s what the Christian story says as soon as someone looks at the cross and asks, “why did that have to happen?” It makes us humble ourselves and exalt Him. That offends us, and so the cross makes people angry. We don’t naturally want this, and that’s why in order for anyone to respond to the truth, God must first remove that dark veil so the Gospel light can shine in (2 Cor 4).

As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves.
Galatians 5:12

These people are so obsessed with circumcision, why don’t they just cut their penises off? “What could be more fitting?” Paul chortles. Prove the depth of your commitment to God—off with the penis! Nobody can suggest Paul lacked a sense of humor.

In the next part of the letter to the Christians in Galatia, he explains how to properly use this “freedom” from legalism.

[1] The account which follows is largely from John Ferling, Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence (New York, OUP, 2007), pp. 101-104.

[2] Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789, revised ed., in Oxford History of the United States (New York: OUP, 2005; Kindle ed.), p. 314.

[3] This is literally what he asks in Greek; the NIV tries to smooth it out.

[4] The conjunction is explanatory, and need not be a formal “for,” like the NIV renders it.

[5] “The use of symbols in a story, picture, etc., to convey a hidden or ulterior meaning, typically a moral or political one; symbolic representation,” (Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “allegory,” noun, no. 1. OED Online. March 2023. https://bit.ly/402jNkx (accessed April 14, 2023)).

[6] Luther, Galatians, p. 416.

[7] Hendriksen, Galatians and Ephesians, pp. 180-181. In a similar vein, Martin Luther wrote, “Therefore the children of the flesh (saith he) are not the children of God, but the children of the promise, &c. And by this argument he mightily stoppeth the mouths of the proud Jews, which gloried that they were the seed and children of Abraham: as also Christ doth in the third of Matthew, and in the eighth of John,” (Commentary on Galatians (Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997), p. 415).

[8] It could well be the Old Covenant and the Abrahamic Covenant, but the latter is the well-spring from which the New Covenant springs. I prefer Old and New Covenants, but I don’t see how it really matters, one way or the other. It’s not worth arguing about.

[9] Ronald Fung explains that Hagar and the present Jerusalem “stands by metonymy for Judaism, with its trust in physical descent from Abraham and reliance on legal observance as the way of salvation,” (Galatians, in NICNT, KL 2571-2572).

John Calvin notes, “What, then, is the gendering to bondage, which forms the subject of the present dispute? It denotes those who make a wicked abuse of the law, by finding in it nothing but what tends to slavery. Not so the pious fathers, who lived under the Old Testament; for their slavish birth by the law did not hinder them from having Jerusalem for their mother in spirit,” (Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul to the Galatians and Ephesians (Bellingham: Logos, 2010), p. 138).

[10] Paul’s analogy breaks down when you try to connect too many dots (Hagar was not married), but his point stands. It’s an imperfect allegory to make a point, and we should take the point and not quibble over tidiness.

[11] See (1) LSJ, s.v. “καταργέω,” no. II, p. 908, (2) Louw-Nida, Lexicon,s.v. 13.100, and (3) Abbott-Smith, Manual Greek Lexicon, s.v. “καταργέω,” p. 238.

[12] This particular phrase is epexegetical, meaning it explains a statement just made. “You have been severed from Christ, you all who want to be justified by the law—you have fallen from grace!” (κατηργήθητε ἀπὸ Χριστοῦ, οἵτινες ἐν νόμῳ δικαιοῦσθε τῆς χάριτος ἐξεπέσατε).

[13] “We should not try to diminish the force of these words, in the interest, perhaps, of this or that theological presupposition,” (Hendriksen, Galatians and Ephesians, p. 196).

[14] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSiHqxgE2d0.

[15] See Richard Longenecker, Galatians, in WBC (Nashville: Word, 1990), pp. 232-233.

The King Whom Nobody Wanted

This past weekend, Christians celebrated Palm Sunday. I preached the text from the Gospel of Luke and focused on why Jesus was so sad as He approached the city, despite all the joy and celebration going on around Him. I’ve put both the video and audio versions of the sermon below:

On Humphrey Bogart, Devil’s Island, and Prison

In 1956 Humphrey Bogart starred in one of his quirkier movies, a comedy titled We’re No Angels. The year is 1895, it’s Christmas morning, and Bogart and two others are convicts on Devil’s Island, the notorious French penal colony. They escape that awful place and make their way to a coastal city in French Guiana and plot their next move.

Through a series of bizarre circumstances, Bogart and company find themselves tied up in the affairs of a storekeeper and his family. High jinks and hilarity ensue, complete with Christmas dinner, a pretty girl, a sinister relative, and a pet snake named Adolph. At the end of the movie their boat awaits, they have civilian clothes, they have luggage, and look like respectable gentlemen (except for Adolph). Everything is working, and freedom awaits. All they have to do is get on the boat.

And yet, in the gathering dusk, the three convicts make a crazy decision—they decide to go back to prison! Bogart ponders the suggestion for a beat, gestures with his hat, and nods his head. “Well, if it doesn’t work out, we’ll do it all over again next year,” he says.

This isn’t meant to be taken seriously. It’s a comedy. But, we are meant to get the absurdity of the decision—who in his right mind would go back to prison? Crazy, right?

This article is part of a commentary series through the Book of Galatians. This article covers Galatians 4:8-20. You can find the rest of the series here: Galatians 3:1-6, and Galatians 3:7-14, and Galatians 3:15-22, and Galatians 3:23 – 4:7, and Galatians 4:21-5:12, and Galatians 5:13 – 26.

And yet, this is exactly what the Christians in Galatia are doing. Jesus has set them free but they’re choosing to go back to prison, to slavery, to bondage. The danger is that they don’t realize it. Paul explains …

Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. But now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable forces?
Galatians 4:8-9

Paul likes to compare salvation to liberation—which is what “redemption” basically means. Jesus “saves” us, yes, but that word seems to have lost a bit of its sparkle because it’s so familiar. Terms like “rescue” or “liberate” or “set free” help explain. The “ransom” language (see Mk 10:45; 1 Tim 2:6) gets across something similar—we were slaves to Satan, but now Jesus has set us free!

The Christians in Galatia, Paul says, used to be slaves to things that weren’t God. But now, all that has changed. Now they know God, or—Paul hastens to clarify, perhaps with a flash of irritation—they’re known by God, how on earth could they then turn back to what they’ve left behind? This clarification (“known by God” instead of “you know God”) stresses God’s divine gift. We do choose God, but underneath all that we only choose Him because the Spirit has first lifted the dark veil from our eyes so the Gospel can shine in (2 Cor 4:3-6).

This makes their potential betrayal all the more inexcusable. God has done this, so you repay Him by doing that? You’ve walking back into slavery! Crazy!

With all the talk of the Old Covenant and the Mosaic law, we can make the mistake of thinking Paul’s audience is a bunch of Jewish people. This ain’t true. He’s going on and on about Jewish stuff because false teachers are stalking the land, teaching Christians they must become Jewish (that is, the false teacher’s fraudulent idea of what “Jewish” means)in order to be real believers. They’re wrong—that’s why Paul is writing this letter.

But, Paul’s audience is a mixed group of Christians in modern-day Turkey. This isn’t exactly Jerusalem! He focuses on Jewish law and the Old Covenant because that’s the false teaching that’s gotten them all so confused. What’s so wild is what Paul does next. He equates the false teacher’s perverted version of the Mosaic law with pagan cults. One is just as bad as the other! This is why Paul said, way back at the beginning of the letter, that there is one single Gospel—any deviation is fatal (Gal 1:6-9). It doesn’t matter if the deviation is towards the legalism so common in Jesus’ day and Paul’s day, or towards a kind of “we can do whatever we want, ‘cuz grace rules!” vibe (see Rom 6:1-2). A deviation is a deviation, and it’s always fatal.

Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? You are observing special days and months and seasons and years! I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you.
Galatians 4:10-11

If you stop following Abraham’s example (to believe and trust God, and be counted as righteous in response), then you’re choosing slavery. The Galatian Christians are observing Jewish holidays, special occasions, and the like. It’s not that they simply prefer to observe Old Covenant rituals as aids to faith—Messianic Christians today do something similar. The problem is that they’re following the perverted ideas of the false teachers—they think they need to observe these special days (etc.) in order to gain salvation.

This is why Paul throws up his hands and suggests he’s wasted his time on them. They’re so confused that they seem hopeless—did they ever understand who Jesus is and what salvation is about? Maybe not!

I plead with you, brothers and sisters, become like me, for I became like you. You did me no wrong. As you know, it was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you, and even though my illness was a trial to you, you did not treat me with contempt or scorn. Instead, you welcomed me as if I were an angel of God, as if I were Christ Jesus himself.
Galatians 4:12-14

After the shock of this suggestion (“did I waste my time on y’all?”)—Paul had time to ponder it before he wrote it, so he likely did it on purpose—Paul switches to a softer tone. He seems to say, “Look guys—put yourself in my place and see where I’m coming from!” He loves them. They never did anything to hurt him. Paul has their best interests at heart. The false teachers are trying to throw them into confusion (Gal 1:7), but don’t they remember Paul’s heart towards them? They used to trust him—what happened?

Where, then, is your blessing of me now? I can testify that, if you could have done so, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me. Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?
Galatians 4:15-16

Have they changed their minds about Paul—become suspicious, distrustful, cynical—because they don’t like what he’s telling them? “You trust these bozos over me?” Paul asks. “Really?”

Those people are zealous to win you over, but for no good. What they want is to alienate you from us, so that you may have zeal for them.
Galatians 4:17

The false teachers don’t have good motives. They want followers. They want clicks. They want celebrity. They want fame. Paul stands in the way, so he must go. Don’t listen to them!

It is fine to be zealous, provided the purpose is good, and to be so always, not just when I am with you.
Galatians 4:18

The Christians in Galatia are zealous. They want to do right. They want to be right. But, their zeal is leading them off a cliff. They’ve transferred their zeal from the truth to a lie, and disaster awaits.

My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you, how I wish I could be with you now and change my tone, because I am perplexed about you!
Galatians 4:19-20

Paul sounds anguished. At wits end. Frustrated in a compassionate sort of way. He’s like a mother in childbirth, waiting for a baby to enter the world. Will these “believers” in Galatia turn out to be real Christians, after all? Paul wishes he were there so he could understand. He’s perplexed, confused. He wishes he could speak in kinder tones—if only he could chat with them in person! What Paul wouldn’t have given for Zoom!

In the movie We’re No Angels, the escaped convicts decide to go back to prison because the outside world is so dark. “You always know where you are in prison,” one of them says, wistfully. Things are simpler. Easier. The real world is so devious, so complicated, so twisted. It’s better in prison. So, they go back. The movie fades to black as halos appear over each of their heads—even Adolph’s. It’s a clever riff on the title. Perhaps they really are angels, after all …

In contrast, the situation in Galatia isn’t a joke. Things aren’t easier back in the prison of works righteousness. They’re worse. It’s a treadmill from hell that leads nowhere. We shake our heads as Bogart and company decide to go back to prison, even as we realize it’s a silly comedy. How much more unbelievable is it if we forsake Abraham’s example of simple faith and trust in God’s promise for a false gospel?

In the depths of his confusion, Paul tries out an analogy—maybe that will express his point better. Maybe then they’ll understand. We’ll see about this analogy in the next article.

On “Real Children” and British Spies

I recently watched a detective show. One character sat in a restaurant next to a British spy, a senior MI-6 official, who happened to be a traitor. A gun half concealed in his pocket, he asked the Brit why he’d done it. The spy calmly ate his food and smirked at the weapon as only British spies can do.

He explained that MI-6 was populated by posh types—the sort who went to the right schools, the best universities, who had the right connections. “I came up hard,” the spy rasped, resentment smoldering in his eyes. “They let me in the club, you see, but never fully …”

Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out so well for the Brit. He was murdered by the NSA, as a result of a deal brokered by the other guy, who was framed for murder by the British guy, who was secretly working for the Iranians … It’s complicated! But, we can understand the British spy’s resentment. Americans often don’t like social class as a status marker. We like to believe anyone can earn a place at the table if he works hard. These two paths, class vs. merit, seem contradictory.

And yet, in a strange way, the dominant religious context in Israel in Jesus’ day held that both social class and hard work were paths to righteousness. If you were a Jew, then you were born with immense privilege. The popular sentiment was to really hate the Gentiles as the other, the inferior. The poor MI-6 spy wouldn’t have approved. And yet, the New Testament also shows us that former Pharisees kept pushing a “obey the Mosaic Law + Jesus” formula as the path for Gentile salvation (Acts 15:1-2; Gal 2:11-21). Secular Americans might appreciate this—if you work hard, you get your reward!

In this section, Paul tells us this is all a lie. Who is a child of God? The one who is born into the right class? Or, maybe the one who works hardest? Neither. I’ll let him explain …

This is part of a commentary series through the Book of Galatians. This article covers Galatians 3:23 – 4:7. You can find the rest of the series here: Galatians 3:1-6, and Galatians 3:7-14, and Galatians 3:15-22, and Galatians 4:8-20, and Galatians 4:21 – 5:12, and Galatians 5:13 – 26.

Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed.
Galatians 3:23

The NIVs translation might give the impression that, before Jesus came, believers were imprisoned by the Mosaic Law. It sounds negative, harsh—a terrible burden to be endured. But, we can also translate both phrases here (“held in custody” and “locked up”) in a positive sense (see the NLT translation here). If so, we have a statement that reads something like “… we were guarded by the law—hemmed in until the faith that was to come …”

Because Paul doesn’t see the Mosaic Law as an evil thing (when properly understood), he’s probably writing in a positive sense. The Mosaic Law was a guardrail that hemmed us in until the Messiah arrived with the New and better Covenant in hand. It was a positive thing, a protective shield.

Its ceremonial laws told us how to maintain relationship with God, teaching us about Jesus’ coming sacrifice by way of repeated, living object lessons.
Its moral laws codified principles of right and wrong.
Its civil laws helped maintain social order in the messiness of real life.

In Galatians 3:22 (“Scripture has locked up everything under the control of sin”) we saw Paul refer to Scripture in general as teaching no hope for “righteousness by works.” But here, he’s talking about something different.[1] He’s saying that, because we can’t be good enough to earn salvation ourselves (cp. Gal 2:21), God gave us a guardian, a watcher, a custodian to protect us while we waited for the Messiah. That custodian was the Mosaic Law.

So, the law didn’t lock us away for a millennium while we pined away for Jesus to set us free—the Psalmist certainly didn’t feel that way (“the precepts of the LORD are right, giving joy to the heart,” Ps 19:8)!

What did the law do, then?

Well, just like parents do with their own children, our Heavenly Father set boundaries and standards to govern our lives until the time came for our childhood to end. It ended when Jesus revealed Himself and His mission—“until the faith that was to come would be revealed,” (Gal 3:23). Now, “faith in God” means faith in Jesus Christ and everything He came to accomplish.

It wasn’t a new thing in the sense of being a “bolt from the blue.” No—it was simply the fulfillment of all the old promises. This is why Jesus didn’t start at the beginning (“Hi. My name is Jesus. There is only one God, and lemme tell you about Him …”). He didn’t have to explain as if He were a Martian who crash landed in a flying saucer. Instead, He assumed His audience would understand Him when He said, “The kingdom of heaven has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mk 1:15).

So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.
Galatians 3:24-25

The faith about Jesus has now been revealed. The law used to be our guardian, but its time has now passed. The word for “guardian” here was often used to describe a servant who led a boy to and from school—a watcher and guide. That was the Mosaic Law’s purpose—not a vehicle for salvation, but a set of guardrails to keep our brothers and sisters from the Old Covenant headed the right way “until Christ came.” It “kept us under discipline, lest we should slip from his hands.”[2] This guardian’s purpose[3] was to make us long for a better way to deal with our sinfulness, a permanent solution. And, “now that this faith has come,” the law can be put away.

We’d be wrong to think “this faith” means salvation as we know it didn’t exist before, or that “justification by faith” was a new concept. This is just Paul’s shorthand way of saying “explicit faith in Jesus as the agent of salvation,” (cp. Simeon’s words in Luke 2:30). Abraham was justified by faith, too (Genesis 15:6)! But, God has filled in the details about“this faith” more and more as the bible’s storyline has gone along.

Now that Paul has clarified what the Mosaic Law’s purpose was (to be a guide, a watcher, a guardian for us), he explains the implications of the New Covenant.

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
Galatians 3:26-27

If you are in union with Christ Jesus—bonded to Him, joined together by faith—then you are a child of God. Not just you, but you and everyone else who has done the same. As we saw earlier, Paul loves this metaphorical picture of “union,” and he deploys it in many ways. Now, he asks us to picture a baptism, an immersion under water, a submersion which joins us to Christ. It’s as if, by faith, we’re fused to Christ by way of this baptism which plunges us beneath the waves and joins us to Him. Now, as we emerge from these metaphorical waters, we’re clothed with Christ Himself. He is us and we are Him. We’ve been made new. Paul will elaborate at length about this same picture in Romans 6.

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:28

In Christ’s new covenant family, this world’s ethnic, socio-cultural, and gender barriers are breached and torn down. This doesn’t mean those distinctions cease to exist in real life. It just means the corrupted value markers these distinctions represent in our fallen world have no cachet in God’s kingdom family.

If you’re a Jew who believes Jewish people are inherently superior, then you’re wrong. This was a common prejudicial assumption by some in Jesus’ day—but no more![4] Babylon’s culture is upended in Christ’s kingdom family.
If you’re a slave who believes you’re somehow less than a free brother or sister, Paul wants you to know that’s all wrong. Those class markers are obliterated—God doesn’t care about them at all.
If you’re a woman who is told patriarchal[5] norms are the way things are supposed to be, then Paul says this is all wrong. Those cultural prejudices are gone—men and women are equal in God’s family.[6]

The Judaizers would have the Galatians become their (wrong) kind of Old Covenant Christian as a pre-condition for entering the family—a “Jews vs. everyone else” kind of attitude. Paul says, “No!” For good measure, he tosses the socio-cultural and gender categories into the mix and says they’re also fake preconditions. The only thing which makes you a child of God is faith in Jesus—“the work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent,” (John 6:29). And, once a child of God, the racial, economic, and gender distinctions which this world abuses so much are relativized into proper proportion.

We are all one in Christ Jesus. Our collective diversity isn’t abolished but relativized and integrated into the one mosaic that is Christ’s family. “In other words, it is a oneness, because such differences cease to be a barrier and cause of pride or regret or embarrassment, and become rather a means to display the diverse richness of God’s creation and grace, both in the acceptance of the ‘all’ and in the gifting of each.”[7]

In short, Paul shows us a radically re-shaped social world. “The unavoidable inference from an assertion like this is, that Christianity did alter the condition of women and slaves.”[8]

If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
Galatians 3:29

Who is a true child of Abraham? The one who belongs to Christ—the penultimate son of Abraham (Mt 1:1). Anyone who says Jewish people are the “real” children of Abraham are wrong. This has never been a genetic identity marker, but an ideological one—the true believer is the real son or daughter of Abraham and an heir according to the promise.

What promise is this? It’s the covenant with Abraham summed up as a single “promise bundle.” Once again, here they are:

Paul is saying that anyone who belongs to Christ is a child of Abraham and therefore an heir to all these promises. “So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith,” (Gal 3:26). There is no Jew v. Gentile distinction, now or forever. Elsewhere, Paul said a mystery that has since been revealed is that “Gentiles are heirs with Israel, members of one body, and sharers together in the promise of Christ Jesus,” (Eph 3:6). Jesus has made these two groups into one, creating “one new humanity out of the two,” (Eph 3:14, 19). Gentiles are “no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household,” (Eph 3:19).

Why is Paul saying this? Because he wants his audience to know how wrong the Judaizers are. They don’t understand what the Mosaic Law is about. It was a guardian, a guide, a guardrail to keep God’s people true until the Messiah arrived.

What I am saying is that as long as an heir is underage, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. The heir is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father.
Galatians 4:1-2

Jesus has now come and gone, and so the training wheels can be put away. The time set by our heavenly Father has arrived—that’s what Jesus said (“the time has come!” Mk 1:15)! Any believer is a child of Abraham, an heir according to the promise, and it’s all by trust in Jesus—not by a legalist “checklist” view of the Mosaic Law.

So also, when we were underage, we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces of the world.
Galatians 4:3

The analogy is easy—an underage heir might be an heir, but he doesn’t have any of the rights until he actually inherits the estate. But, when he does inherit, the guardians go away. So far, so good.

Paul says it’s similar with us before Christ saved us. But, what he says here is hard to understand. It’s difficult enough that I’ll spill a few ounces of ink spelling it out. What does the phrase behind the NIVs translation “elemental spiritual forces of the world” mean? The word means “the basic components of something.”[9] This could refer to anything—the physical world, physics, Star Wars, a decent espresso. It could also refer to the transcendent powers that control this world. So, for example:

Paul warns the church at Colosse to not be fooled by hollow and deceptive philosophy, “which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces,” (Col 2:8). This seems to mean the components which make up the false teaching from which they ought to run away. Or, it could refer to the demonic forces which rule this present evil age.
The person who wrote to the letter to the Hebrews said that by now they ought to be able to teach others about the faith, but instead “you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again,” (Heb 5:12). Here, the word means the ABCs of the Gospel—the rudimentary first principles they should have mastered long ago.
Peter said that one day, when the day of the Lord arrives, “the heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire …” (2 Pet 3:10). This means the components of the natural world will melt away to make way for the new creation.

But, what does Paul mean here? Because Paul hasn’t spoken about evil spiritual forces at all in this section, it probably means the “basic components” of some kind of teaching or doctrine. He’s been talking about the Mosaic Law[10]—warning against a false understanding of it. His audience is the Christians in the various churches in Galatia—some are Jewish and others are Gentile. He seems to be talking to both ethnic groups as one body (see Gal 4:8). So, it’s probably best to see the NIVs “elemental spiritual forces of the world” as referring to the false teaching, axioms, and principles we believed in before we come to Christ.

As we see it, the passage has reference to definite principles or axioms, according to which men lived before Christ, without finding redemption in them … And since the apostle speaks of being held in bondage under these rudiments, we shall probably have to think of the prescriptions and ordinances to which religious man outside of Christ surrendered himself, and by means of which he tried to achieve redemption.[11]

For the Jewish people, that false teaching was that wrong view of the Mosaic Law—the idea that God gave it as a vehicle for salvation. For Gentiles, it was whatever “spirit of the age” we followed. There are many teachings like this floating about today. Be true to yourself! Live your truth! Don’t let anybody tell you who you really are, inside! You do you! The times change, but the song remains the same.

So, Paul basically says (referring here to Jewish Christians like himself who have since seen the light), “so also, when we were underage, we were in slavery to this wrongheaded ‘follow the Law to earn salvation’ idea …”

For, even though the law itself was of divine origin, the use that men made of it was wrong. Those who lived under the law in this unwarranted way lived in the same condition of bondage as that under which the Gentiles, for all their exertion, also pined.[12]

But now, Christ has come and set the record straight. He’s the light which brings revelation to the Gentiles, and glory to Israel (Lk 2:30-31)—sweeping aside all false teaching and wrong ideas and drawing a line in the sand. He’s made these two groups into one, “for through him we both [i.e. both groups] have access to the Father by one Spirit,” (Eph 2:18).

But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.
Galatians 4:4-5

The time came. Jesus arrived on Christmas morning. He was born under the authority of the Mosaic Law to rescue us from the law’s curse. The word “redeem” here means liberation from captivity in a slave market context. The idea is something like “rescued us from slavery for a really steep price.” Earlier, Paul said Christ had “redeemed us from the curse of the law,” (Gal 3:13). He means the same thing here. Christ came to set us free—all of us, Jew and Gentile—from the penalty of capital punishment that the Mosaic Law imposed because of our sinfulness. Jesus did this so we’d be adopted as sons and daughters in God’s family. Again, adoption has nothing to do with who your parents are. It has to do with faith in Jesus.

Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.
Galatians 4:6-7

If you’re indwelt by the Holy Spirit, you’re a son or daughter of the King. You’re not a “slave” or underage heir waiting for title to the estate (see the analogy at Gal 4:1-2). Now you’re God’s child. The adoption metaphor is beautiful—an adopted child isn’t born into a family; she’s simply brought into it because the parents decide to show love. This is what God has done with we who are His children—we’re each adopted from Satan’s orphanage. And, because you’re His child, you’re also an heir—no matter who you are or where you’re from.

The Judaizers are peddling such a different message! They say, “do this, do that, follow these traditions, and you’ll be saved!” That’s why Paul called it “a different gospel,” (Gal 1:6). Our MI-6 spy might be confused, but he’s dead so I suppose it doesn’t matter. It’s not by merit or class that you enter God’s family. It’s simply by faith.

[1] Galatians 3:22 refers to the Scripture as being condemnatory, but in Galatians 3:23 Paul depicts the Mosaic Law as supervisory (Richard Longenecker, Galatians, in Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 41 (Waco: Word, 1990), p. 145). This observation is more inspired by Longenecker than a direct attribution—he saw Galatians 3:22 as referring to the Mosaic Law (Galatians, p. 144), whereas I disagree and believe it is Scripture in general.

[2] Bengel, Gnomen, p. 4:30.

[3] The Greek is a purpose clause (ἵνα ἐκ πίστεως δικαιωθῶμεν), explaining why the guardian was what it was.

[4] If you’re interested in more about this attitude and how it shaped the actions of the religious leaders in Jesus’ day and the time period from the Book of Acts, see Alfred Edersheim, Sketches of Jewish Social Life in the Days of Christ (New York: Hodder & Stoughton, 1876), ch. 2 (https://bit.ly/3Y4hmxH). There are more up to date and scholarly books available, but this one is available for free to anyone with an internet connection, is short, and is accurate.

[5] I mean “patriarchy” in this sense: “The predominance of men in positions of power and influence in society, with cultural values and norms favouring men,” (Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “patriarchy,” noun, no. 3).

[6] Paul’s statement has obvious social implications for how Christian men and women ought to relate to one another in marriage, in the New Covenant family, and in a Babylon society. However, Paul does not elaborate on that here, so neither will I.

[7] James D. G. Dunn, The Epistle to the Galatians, in Black’s New Testament Commentary (London: Continuum, 1993), p. 208.

[8] Henry Alford, The New Testament for English Readers: A Critical and Explanatory Commentary, New Edition., vol. 2 (London; Oxford; Cambridge: Rivingtons; Deighton, Bell and Co., 1872), p. 343.

[9] See (1) Walter Bauer, Frederick Danker (et al), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3^rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2000), s.v. “στοιχεῖον,” p. 946, (2) Henry George Liddell (et al.), A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), p. 1647; (3) Timothy Friberg, Barbara Friberg, and Neva F. Miller, Analytical Lexicon of the Greek New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000), p. 357.

[10] “… certainly what Paul has primarily in view here is the law, and that as an instrument of spiritual bondage,” (Ronald Y. K. Fung, The Epistle to the Galatian, in NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988; Kindle ed.), KL 2263).

[11] Herman Ridderbos, The Epistle of Paul to the Churches of Galatia, in NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1953), pp. 153-154. See also (1) Henriksen, Galatians and Ephesians, p. 157, and (2) Hovey, Galatians, p. 52.

[12] Ridderbos, Galatians, p. 154.

The Bible–Puzzle or Telescope?

We need to read our bibles. God wants us to read our bibles—it is the story of Him revealing hidden things to us we would otherwise never know! Fair enough. But I first want to ask an important question—what is the best way to think of the Scriptures?

Different Christians answer in different ways; most often as the result of the different emphases of their theological traditions mediated from seminaries to pastors. How you answer the question above will determine what you think happens when you read your bibles. Only one of these answers is the best answer—which one is it?

We will first take a look at a passage from Psalm 119, then look at two possible frameworks for reading Scripture (a puzzle or a telescope?), then wrap up with what I feel is the best approach.

Words Which Give Light

Psalm 119 is a beautiful love song to God’s revelation. Today, on this side of the Cross, we often assume the psalmist is simply talking about the Bible (e.g. “I have hidden your word in my heart,” Psalm 119:11). But he was probably talking about revelation in a general sense.

“Revelation” is when God personally unveils Himself to His people to communicate things we would otherwise never know.^[1] God revealed Himself in many ways—through visions, prophecies, individual guidance, dreams, divine appearances, angels, direct speech, most definitively in Jesus Christ (God’s “Word” (Jn 1:1, et al), His revelation, message, and literal speech embodied in the incarnation) … but also in written records. Strictly speaking, the bible is more an inspired and truthful record of God’s revelations than “the” revelation all by itself.[2] My point is that, while my comments here will focus on the Scriptures, all references in Psalm 119 to “the word” are probably about more than “the bible.”

Think about what the psalmist says in Psalm 119:129-136. He says God’s statutes are wonderful, and this loveliness drives him to loving obedience (Ps 119:129). This is not the rote obedience of a legalist, but the joyful response of a good child. He declares “the unfolding of your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple,” (Ps 119:130). As God communicates to us (however He does it—“words” here means “speech”), His light shines into us, bringing understanding even to the most ordinary among us. God’s speech, His message, unspools and casts light into our hearts, minds, and souls—into our very being.

So, the psalmist wants more and more—“longing for your commands,” (Ps 119:131). He wants more light, more understanding, more relationship. He wants to be a better child. He knows relationship with God is not about rote doctrine. “[R]evelation is primarily a spiritual transaction rather than mere illumination of the intellect … [i]t is easy to see how far removed this is from the bare communication of truth to the mind.”^[3] It is “those who love your name” (Ps 119:132) who receive mercy, not “those who follow the checklist.”

So, when the psalmist asks God to “direct my footsteps according to your word” (Ps 119:133), he is asking for more than “help me not do that bad thing again.” There is that, but the reason why he asks “let no sin rule over me” is because he loves God and wants to be an obedient child (cp. Deut 6:4; Mk 12:28-32; Mt 9:13 (cf. Hos 6:6)). He even asks to be rescued from those who hinder him from obeying God’s precepts (Ps 119:134).

When he asks “make your face shine on your servant” (Ps 119:135), he is playing on God’s personal revelation as a luminescent cloud. Just as Moses came down from the mountain with his face all aglow from actual contact with Yahweh, so the psalmist figuratively asks for God to turn to him with blessing, with favor, with divine help—“teach me your decrees.” His love for God flows so deep that “streams of tears flow from my eyes, for your law is not obeyed,” (Ps 119:136). This is not the fuming rage of a legalist (cf. Jn 9:19-34), but the sorrow of a child brokenhearted about externalism in the congregation.

As we consider the psalmist’s attitude about God’s revelation, His “word” (in any format), let us return to the question I asked at the beginning—what is the best way to think about the Scriptures?

a puzzle piece we look at to categorize knowledge, or
a telescope we look through to see, know, experience, and love God?

Which model does our passage best suggest? To answer this question, we will consider each model in turn.

Bible as a Puzzle

When you believe the bible is one big puzzle to be sorted into categories, with various passages filed under this heading or that (“the proper task of theology is to exposit and elucidate the content of Scripture in an orderly way”),^[4] then you may tend to read in a cold, analytical, and sterile fashion. It does not mean you will have this attitude—it just means you may lean in that direction, to greater or lesser extent.

Faith can unwittingly become about intellectual knowledge. Do you believe Jesus is the Son of God? Do you believe in the virgin birth? Do you believe Jesus died on the Cross? Do you believe in the resurrection? And so it goes—intellect can unconsciously supplant trust, love, and commitment.
And so, bible study can unconsciously degenerate into an autopsy—cold, dispassionate, clinical.
We end up reading the bible for doctrine, for knowledge—not for love (notwithstanding the honest caveats).

This is often more an attitude or ethos than a conscious decision. Let me share one example from one very influential evangelical theologian from yesteryear. He is discussing the definition of “revelation.”

I have learned a lot from Carl Henry. I like Carl Henry. But, where is the love? Henry saw the Scriptures as a puzzle to be sorted, filed, indexed. A theologian was like a lawyer preparing a brief—“logical consistency is a negative test of truth and coherence a subordinate test.”^[5] He looked at Scripture to find truth. This mindset may produce something like the following, which is largely a precis of some of Henry’s system:

God reveals Himself through the bible—all knowledge (even revelation about Christ^[6]) flows from the Scriptures. It is the “basic epistemological axiom.”^[7]
God does not reveal Himself as personal presence. That would open the door to a subjective mysticism. Instead, He reveals Himself via propositions—“a rational declaration capable of being either believed, doubted, or denied.” Revelation must be cognitive, which means it must be propositional, which means the Scriptures are the ballgame,[8] and the implication is the bible is a storehouse of data.
Therefore, the Spirit’s job in this context is to help us interpret this data that is the bible. He has no meaningful role apart from this.^[9] Henry saw danger when the Spirit was “severed from the Word,” and by “Word” Henry meant the Scriptures, not Jesus.[10] Representing this perspective downstream from Henry, John MacArthur did not misspeak when he wrote that the bible “is the only book that can totally transform someone from the inside out.”[11] It is telling that MacArthur did not credit Jesus with granting life, but rather the bible (energized with “Spirit-generated power”).[12]
So, the most important thing we can do is study the bible. “Only the Bible can effect that kind of change in people’s lives, because only the Bible is empowered by the Spirit of God.”[13] The inevitable corollary is a strong defense of Scripture’s integrity, which explains the emphasis from these quarters on Scripture’s inerrancy.
And so, our focus may subtly shift from relationship with the Messiah to whom the bible points, to “the bible” itself—to doctrine, knowledge, cold logic. Henry did not think rationalism was an error, so long as it was based on valid premises.[14]
The bible becomes, de facto, the only channel for relationship with God. This is why many Christians who trend towards “knowledge” as their relationship paradigm for God are very uncomfortable with the “Jesus reveals Himself to Muslims via dreams” issue—because the bible is not in the driver’s seat. In a similar way, these Christians often speak about the Spirit to say what He does not do—it is frequently negative. I suspect these Christians are wary of something non-rational, something supernatural, something they cannot understand with the intellect.[15]

Here is an example. Sometime in years past, I was with a group of pastors, and we were discussing the “problem of evil.” One pastor brought up an example of someone who “walked away from the faith” after suffering sexual abuse as a teen. The woman told her pastor that, if her abuser ever became a Christian, “I could never share heaven with him!”

A man in the group stabbed the air with a forefinger. “Her attitude is that ‘I’m more righteous than God, and so I’m more qualified to make a decision about that person’s fate!’”

There was a moment of silence. I suggested, “Maybe she’s just really hurting? Maybe that’s all that was behind that comment.”

You see, to him, there is not a person here with feelings—there is only icy logic, a remorseless conclusion based on theology. He did not see people who hurt—he saw problems to be categorized into doctrinal cubbyholes, to be sorted, filed, tagged. In practical terms, he unwittingly acted as if the Bible were a cadaver, and the question at hand was an excuse to grab a scalpel, slice it open, and pick at it. This man read the bible for knowledge. It was cold. Clinical. There was no love.

Of course, not everyone is like that pastor. But, some pastors (and some ordinary Christians) are not too far downstream from this. There is a better way!

Bible as a Telescope

At the back of all this is this question—what is a relationship with God about? There is a continuum, with “love” and “knowledge” at opposite poles. A ditch lies at either end—God is either Jello or an iceman. Both poles are important (it is kind of important to know about God, after all!), but you will likely tend towards one over the other—Carl Henry certainly did.

So, let me declare this—love must be the foundation for your relationship with God. Moses said it. Jesus affirmed it. I think that is pretty definitive! On this continuum, trend towards love.

If you think faith is about love and trust in Jesus, you will look through the bible to connect to God. But, if you think faith is about information about Jesus, then you may look at the bible as an end in and of itself. This last approach misses the point.^[16]

Let me give you a few examples:

You love espresso. You have an expensive espresso machine. Which is more important—the machine or the espresso it produces? The espresso, of course! Suppose someone objects, “Well, without the machine, we wouldn’t have espresso!” This is missing the point—the goal is to drink espresso! The machine is only valuable insofar as it makes the coffee.
You have a telescope. It is a great telescope—the best! You set it up in your backyard, ready to go. Someone keeps gushing about the telescope; its the features and its general awesomeness. “Isn’t it great?” he asks. It might be a wonderful telescope, but the goal is to look through the scope to see the heavens! The telescope is not the point—it is simply a means to a greater end. It is a tool. To obsess over the telescope is to miss the point.

What I am suggesting is that the bible is a telescope. It lets us see, know, and experience God. It channels God, by the power of the Spirit. It does not exist for its own sake—its only job is to provide a scope to look through to see God and experience Him. We do not look at a telescope—we look through it to see the heavens. In the same way, you look through the Scriptures to see God—you do not look at it!

We saw from our text that as God’s revelation unfolds to us, it brings “light” to our eyes, giving understanding to the simple (Ps 119:130). The Scriptures (God’s truthful record of His revelation) are a telescope which bring God into focus, make Him present, confront us with Him for teaching, rebuking, correction, for training in righteousness (2 Tim 3:16)—“direct my footsteps according to your word” (Ps 119:133).

In another place, the psalmist says, “Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path,” (Ps 119:105). God’s revelation lights our path so we can find our way to Him, so Jesus—the true light (Jn 1:9)—can shine upon we who are in darkness and guide our feet into the way of peace (Lk 1:79). Elsewhere, Solomon says our spirit is “the lamp of the Lord, that sheds light on one’s inmost being,” (Prov 20:27). We are lamps waiting to be lit by Yahweh—“light and life to all He brings!” (cp. Jn 1:4). His revelation—ultimately Jesus as the light of the world—illuminates us from the inside out. The Scriptures are a witness to that revelation (Jn 5:46)—they connect us to Jesus.

Read the Scriptures with Love!

This is what I’m saying, in the end:

Read the bible to know God, not to know about God. This is not a call to toss doctrine to the winds—it is not a “we don’t need no theology in this here church!” attitude. It is a plea to keep warmth, love, and personal encounter with Christ via the Spirit at the forefront. Carl Henry was right to acknowledge that personal faith is a gift of the Spirit,[17] but I fear some who follow in his theological train unwittingly make the same acknowledgments in a pro forma manner.
Read the bible to love God, not to love facts about God. The demons know true doctrine and it does them no good (Jas 2:19)! “The purpose of theology [and bible reading!] is to clarify the propositions involved in faith, but we must never mistake belief in propositions for the faith.”[18]
Read the bible to grow closer to Him in relationship, not to pick at Scriptures with tweezers.

I have one more example to give. Many years ago, I spoke to an individual who did not believe spiritual illumination helped us understand the bible. Instead, she said the Spirit “allows me to receive the text as it is.” I asked her to explain. She said the Spirit never helped people agree on what a text means. She said she had people in her church who were more spiritual than she, but worse bible interpreters—thus a person’s spirituality was irrelevant. The matter would always be settled by grammar, syntax, rules of interpretation.

I interrupted and asked her flat out, “Are you saying you never pray and ask to understand the bible?” She grimaced, then stammered a bit. “I don’t want to say the word ‘understand’ …” She then rallied, and repeated that interpretation was always settled by grammar and interpretative rules, and that the Spirit simply “enables me to accept the text as it is.”

Basically, she followed Carl Henry. She looked at the Scriptures to discover truth from the ink on the page or the pixels on the screen—she did not look through them to see, know, experience, and love God. If we are not careful, our faith may grow cold and rational. Emil Brunner remarked that “[t]his confusion, this replacing of personal understanding of faith by the intellectual, is probably the most fatal occurrence within the entire history of the church.”[19]

We need to read our bibles, but in the right way!

I like my espresso machine, but only because through it I see my espresso—the machine is a means to an end.
We love our bibles, but only because it is a telescope we look through to see, know, and love God.
The bible in your hand is God’s divine means to an end, and that end is a relationship with Him.
It is not a puzzle we look at—it is a telescope we look through.

So, when you read your bibles, read them with an attitude of love—not the attitude of a mortician—so that through the Scriptures you can see, experience, and love God. Read for formation, not simply for information.[20]

[1] See Edgar Mullins, The Christian Religion in its Doctrinal Expression (Philadelphia: Roger Williams Press, 1917), p. 141.

[2] This need not be categorized as a neo-orthodox statement. Long before Barth or Brunner put pen to paper, Edgar Mullins repeatedly called the Scripture “the record of God’s revelation,” (Christian Religion, pp. 137, 140, 142), as did Alvah Hovey before him (Manual of Christian Theology (New York: Silver, Burdett and Company, 1900), pp. 42, 85.

[3] Mullins, Christian Religion, p. 141.

[4] Carl F.H. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, vol. 1 (Waco: Word, 1976), p. 238. See especially ch(s). 13-14.

[5] Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, p. 1:232.

[6] To Henry, the Scripture is the reservoir or conduit of divine truth (Thesis No. 11, God, Revelation, and Authority, vol. 4(Waco: Word, 1979), p.7). It is the end of the line. The Spirit’s role in this context is to illuminate the Scripture (see Thesis No. 12, God, Revelation, and Authority, p.4:129) by enlivening it so we understand what it says. He only helps us interpret but imparts no new information (God, Revelation, and Authority, pp. 4:273, 275)—this is illumination, according to Henry. The Christian looks at the Bible as an end in and of itself.

[7] Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, pp. 1:218f.

[8] See Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, pp. 3:455-459.

[9] To Henry, the Scriptures are the vehicle and the Spirit simply shines a light upon them. “God intends that Scripture should function in our lives as his Spirit-illumined Word. It is the Spirit who opens man’s being to a keen personal awareness of God’s revelation. The Spirit empowers us to receive and appropriate the Scriptures, and promotes in us a normative theological comprehension for a transformed life. The Spirit gives a vital current focus to historical revelation and makes it powerfully real,” (God, Revelation, and Authority, p. 4:273).

[10] Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, pp. 3:482f. “The Bible supplies no basis for the theory that the logos of God must be something other than an intelligible spoken or written word.”

[11] John MacArthur (ed.), The Inerrant Word: Biblical, Historical, Theological, and Pastoral Perspectives (Wheaton: Crossway, 2016), p. 19.

[12] This relentless focus on the Scriptures to the exclusion of anything else led Emil Brunner to intemperately accuse such adherents of idolatry. “The habit of regarding the written word, the Bible, as the ‘Word of God’ exclusively—as is the case in the traditional equation of the ‘word’ of the Bible with the ‘Word of God’—an error which is constantly on the verge of being repeated—is actually a breach of the Second Commandment: it is the deification of a creature, bibliolatry,” (Revelation and Reason: The Christian Doctrine of Faith and Knowledge, trans. Olive Wyon (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1946), p. 120).

[13] MacArthur, Inerrant Word, p. 20.

[14] “The Christian protest against rationalism in its eighteenth-century deistic emphasis on the sufficiency of human speculation unenlightened by divine revelation is legitimate enough. What is objectionable about rationalism is not reason, however, but human reasoning deployed into the service of premises that flow from arbitrary and mistaken postulations about reality and truth. Christian theology unreservedly champions reason as an instrument for organizing data and drawing inferences from it, and as a logical discriminating faculty competent to test religious claims,” (God, Revelation, and Authority, p. 1:226). Emphasis added.

[15] Carl Henry wrote, “There is but one system of truth, and that system involves the right axiom and its theorems and premises derived with complete logical consistency,” (God, Revelation, and Authority, p. 1:227).

[16] For the position I am advocating, see especially (1) Emil Brunner, Revelation and Reason, pp. 3-57, 118-136, and (2) William Hordern, A New Reformation Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1959), pp. 31-76. My telescope analogy is from Hordern (p. 70). For a helpful cautionary note hitting the brakes on Brunner (et al) while disagreeing with Henry’s more rationalistic perspective, see Millard Erickson, Christian Theology, 3^rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2013), pp. 157-163. See also James L. Garrett, Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), pp. 168-182 for a solid, helpful discussion on the bible and authority in Christianity.

[17] Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, p. 1:228.

[18] Hordern, New Reformation Theology, p. 72.

[19] Emil Brunner, Truth as Encounter: A New Edition, Much Enlarged, of ‘The Divine-Human Encounter’ (London: SCM Press, 1964), p. 165.

[20] Justo Gonzalez, Knowing Our Faith: A Guide for Believers, Seekers, and Christian Communities (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019), p. 27. “… our main purpose in reading the Bible must not be information, but rather formation. When we read, for instance, the story of Abraham, what is important is not that we learn by heart the entire route of his pilgrimage, but rather that somehow we come to share that faith which guided him throughout his journey.”

Translating John 1:1-18

Here is my translation of John 1:1-18, from the NA-28 Greek text. The notes in the text are footnotes, not the verse numbers–I did not include verse numbers:

In the beginning was the Messenger—God’s living embodiment of Himself,[1] and the Messenger was with God, and the Messenger was God.[2] This Messenger was there at the beginning[3] with God. Everything was created through Him, and apart from Him not one thing was created. Life was in Him,[4] and that life was the light for[5] men and women. The light is shining into the darkness, and the darkness has not overpowered it.[6]

A man arrived, sent from God. His name was John. He came to be a witness[7]—to testify about this light[8] so that everyone might believe through John.[9] This man was not that light, but came to testify about the light.

This light was[10] the true light[11] who shines upon all people, and it was coming into the world.[12] He was in the world, and this world was made by Him, and the world did not acknowledge Him. He came to His own, and they did not welcome Him. But, to as many as received Him, He gave them permission[13] to become God’s children. He only gave this permission to the ones who trust in His name[14]—not those who are born from normal descent, or from sexual passions, or from our own scheduled birth plans, but those born from God.

And so, the Messenger became a human being and lived among us. We saw His majesty—glory like that of the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John was bearing witness about the Messenger, crying out and saying, “This is the one I was talking about, when I said, ‘The one who arrives after me is mightier than me, because He existed before me.’”[15]

This is why[16] from the Messenger’s unlimited supply[17] we have each received one gracious blessing after another.[18] For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. Nobody has ever seen God at any time. The one and only God, whom the Father holds so dear[19]—He has made Him known!

Here is the Christmastide sermon I preached from this text. I didn’t use my own translation for the sermon, because I find that sometimes confuses people. So, I stuck with my normal preaching translation–the NIV (2011):

[1] This word carries a wide semantic range. Here, it refers to Jesus as the embodied personification of God’s message (Mounce, Expository Dictionary, pp. 1201, 448, 803). Mounce notes “[t]his flexibility has its root in the use of logos in Greco-Roman literary culture, where it could stand on its own for the spoken word, ‘a message,’ as well as what one does, ‘a deed,’” (p. 803). LSJ notes the term in this context means Christ personified as God’s agent in creation and world-government (Greek-English Lexicon, 1996, p. 1059; cf. BDAG, p. 601, ¶3). The “word” here is God’s divine message, personified in Jesus (Friberg, 3c). See especially Moises Silva’s conclusion on this matter (NIDNTTE, 3:169).

Because “logos” here is a noun, I decided to render it as Messenger. One could argue I should be explanatory, and write “in the beginning was ‘God’s self-revelation’ or ‘very personal message.’” I chose not to do that, because I believe “logos” throughout this section refers to Jesus as a proper noun. So, I opted for Messenger, and I’ll leave it at that.

[2] In a copulative sentence with two nominatives, the one with the article is typically the subject. See Richard Young’s discussion (Intermediate Grammar, pp. 64-66).

[3] I believe the preposition is specifying a point in time, which I rendered as “there at the beginning.”

[4] I take the preposition to be expressing metaphorical space. It’s tempting to go with association (“with Him was life”), but that isn’t what John appears to be saying (cp. John 5:26).

[5] This is an objective genitive.

[6] The phrase “the light is shining” is an imperfective aspect (present tense-form), while the “darkness has not overpowered it” is the perfective aspect (aorist). In the latter case, John seems to be viewing the darkness’ defeat as an undefined whole, viewing the situation in one grand sweep as if from a helicopter or via drone footage. The light is still shining, and the darkness has not overcome it.

[7] Woodenly, this reads “he came for a witness.” But, the word “witness” is a noun, which indicates that was why John came—to be a witness.

[8] This is a subjunctive purpose clause which functions in apposition to the description of John as a witness.

[9] The pronoun in ἵνα πάντες πιστεύσωσιν διʼ αὐτοῦ refers to John, not to Jesus. Both antecedents preceding and following this refer to John.

[10] This is an imperfect “being” verb, and you have to supply the subject—in this case, it is “the light.”

[11] Here, both nominatives have the article, so we operate by Rule 3d in Young (Intermediate Grammar, p. 65), and conclude the first nominative is the subject, and the second is the predicate nominative.

[12] The participle is an adverbial participle of attendant circumstance. It’s tempting to see means or reason, but I don’t think they fit.

[13] God gives them the power to become His children. But, to forestall the idea that salvation is something we do, a translation ought to try to convey that. I think “permission” does the trick, here. See BDAG (p. 352, ¶2) and especially LSJ (s.v. “ἐξουσία,” 1996 ver.) for the rendering of “permission to.”

[14] This phrase τοῖς πιστεύουσιν εἰς τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ is usually moved and folded into the middle of v.12. It’s an apposition, further explaining to whom Jesus gave permission to become God’s children. It doesn’t have to be moved to the middle of v.12; it can stand here on its own as an introduction to v.13. This makes better sense, or else v.13 just begins with no connective tissue. It’s the ones who believe in Jesus who get this permission, not those who are born from blood (etc.) It’s cleaner to leave this clause at the end of v.12. Because I’m leaving it here at the end (as it is in the Greek), I have to be a bit explanatory—which is why the sentence doesn’t simply begin with “to the ones who …”

[15] This sense has several different senses: “The one who arrives after me (in time—this is not about being a disciple of John) is mightier than me (i.e. before John in rank), because He existed before me (in time).”

[16] The conjunction here specifies reason—the grounds for knowing something is true. John was right to say that Jesus is mightier than he—this is why from the Messenger’s unlimited supply we have each received … etc.).

[17] The sense here is Christ’s fullness, completeness, the sum-total of His being (see BDAG, p. 829-830, ¶3b; LSJ, s.v. “πλήρωμα,” ¶6). Christ is a reservoir, dispensing grace upon grace. I chose to follow Julian Anderson’s translation (The New Testament in Everyday American English) and render this as “unlimited supply.” This might be a bit more concrete than John intended, but I feel the communicative clarity is worth it.

[18] The best sense seems to be multiple graces being piled up on top of one another, like rolling waves. The NIV 2011’s rendering of one single grace surpassing another single grace seems to refer to the Old v. New Covenants, but I don’t think this is correct. But, I won’t quibble with those who like it.

[19] The well-known expression here is “in the bosum of the Father.” This really means something like “in closest association with” or “really close to.” See the discussion in the UBS Handbook on the Gospel of John.

The Eccentric Fundamentalist

Musings on theology, apologetics, practical Christianity and God's grace in salvation through Jesus Christ

On brotherly love and reaping the whirlwind

On freedom and Paul’s “third way”

Book review: “Biblical Porn” by Jessica Johnson

Killing Death

On Two Ladies and Their Two Jerusalems

The King Whom Nobody Wanted

On Humphrey Bogart, Devil’s Island, and Prison

On “Real Children” and British Spies

The Bible–Puzzle or Telescope?

Words Which Give Light

Bible as a Puzzle

Bible as a Telescope

Read the Scriptures with Love!

Translating John 1:1-18

Musings on theology, apologetics, practical Christianity and God's grace in salvation through Jesus Christ

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Words Which Give Light

Bible as a Puzzle

Bible as a Telescope

Read the Scriptures with Love!

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