Not buying it
This week is on Galatians 4:21-31:
Paul writes these verses to break up the misconception that our salvation is due to our striving at religion. There were ministers coming by the church in Galatia, attempting to steal people away from the freedom they had in God, by trying to convert them to Judaism. They taught that grace was a reward for good works, not that it was a free gift to those who repent and turn away from their wrongdoing.
Paul compares Hagar and Sarah. Hagar was the illegitimate mistress of Abraham, who he used in order to try to produce descendants by his own strength. Sarah was Abraham's legitimate wife, in whom was God's promise of countless descendants. An outsider would look at Hagar and Ishmael and say that God's promise was fulfilled there, that there was "fruit." But really it was just the result of striving and faithlessness. That is religion in the dead sense. It competes with true religion, which is the offspring of love.
You hear it a lot in church by how people describe their spiritual lives. "I got healed because I prayed for two hours a day, six days a week, for two months." "That person won't get healed because they never come to church." "I got a job because I fasted for three weeks while I prayed." "Our church has missionaries on five continents plus street evangelism twice a week, therefore God's blessing is on us, not that church down the street." Everything for them has to do with cause and effect, not the cause and effect of sin and punishment, but of work and blessing. Want a healing? Buy it with fasting. Want a job? Buy it with charity work and prayer. Got caught cheating on your wife? Pay off the debt by preaching up a storm and spending two hours in worship every morning. You do the work, God writes the paycheck.
Eventually, they begin to link their salvation with their works. "I am going to heaven because I saved three people and helped start a church, plus I'm not an alcoholic and I've never had sex outside marriage. My neighbor smokes cigarettes and uses Microsoft Windows, so he's obviously going to hell." It doesn't work like that, but science does, so we try to squeeze grace into the worldview we're raised with. It doesn't fit. The only wages we earn are the wages of sin, which is death. That check paying the bills is charity, not salary.
A friend of mine does contract work for poorer clients. Sometimes he does a favor and they try to pay him, but they can't afford to pay his already cheap rates and end up giving him money amounting to less than minimum wage. He used to accept it from them anyway, so they'd feel better, but he came to realize that it was better to just insist on it being free work. The problem he kept running into was that the client would feel as though they'd paid for his work, and would complain and nitpick and demand the same as if they were a paying customer. When we see our salvation as the result of our goodness and work, we are like that customer. "I paid you to save me, and now my best friend has cancer. You need to fix it, because I'm not happy with the work I paid for otherwise."
That's not to say that we don't have to repent of sin, or that our bad deeds don't still cost us something. Paul talks elsewhere about the differences between good behavior and bad behavior, between stuff God likes and stuff God hates. The difference is that those things don't buy our salvation for us. They don't buy God's blessing. God gives those things freely to those who ask, because we're that poor customer, the one who needs desperate help, but who has no means to pay for it. We should do good things. We should do them as much as we can. But we shouldn't ever pretend that we've paid for our salvation, or that we've bought God's favor by doing those things.
Islam is a great depiction of the slave woman's offspring. Literally it claims descent from the line of Ishmael, the slave woman's son. It's a religion of striving, of prayer five times a day, mandatory religious service attendance, compulsory charity, compulsory pilgrimages, etc. You could look at that and say that these are great men of God, but it produces death. Like Christians, these guys open schools and hospitals, pay alms to the poor, preach and proselytize. Unlike Christians, they don't believe in Jesus and ask for his salvation. When the time comes for the final judgment, they'll ask for their inheritance, and be told they were employees, and crappy employees at that. Employees aren't in the will any more than people are in the Book of Life for being good.
Striving also produces hard-hearted arrogant people. When you believe you've earned your place, you tend to fight to protect it. You don't admit your failures because it would bring your salvation into question and you worked so hard to earn it. I wonder how many cases of deep moral failures in the church could have been avoided if people didn't get caught up in this religious spirit and weren't enslaved to the imaginary tally. "A little adultery won't matter, because I've published two books and have a podcast series on Jesus. That's got to be worth something in God's eyes." "I could step down and get counseling for my addiction, but I'm the best evangelist anyone has seen in years, and God can't do this without me." It's slavery and it rejects the gospel.
In reality, the religious have things backwards. It's not works that produces salvation. It's an understanding of salvation that produces good works. We've been adopted into God's household. As kids we don't always understand that there are rules of the house, but we love getting free food, clothing, and housing, even if we complain about it perhaps more than we should. We don't somehow earn our keep by not fighting with our brothers, not talking back, by picking up our room and doing our homework. We earn our keep by being beloved sons. But does that invalidate the rules of the house? Are our parents going to be as happy if we leave a mess everywhere and punch our brothers in the face and steal their things? When we love our parents, and we recognize how they gave us things we couldn't get on our own, we do as they ask and we try to live in harmony with our brothers in that house with many rooms.
Choose the path of the legitimate bride. Be a mature child with an inheritance, not a crappy employee. You didn't earn the right not to suffer eternally for your sins. You didn't earn God's favor by doing all the right things or by pioneering some revolutionary new philosophy of ministry. The only wages you've earned are debt Jesus has offered to pay, if you'll quit pretending you're fine and don't need his help.
Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? 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.
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. 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.”
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. 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.” Therefore, brothers and sisters, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman.
Paul writes these verses to break up the misconception that our salvation is due to our striving at religion. There were ministers coming by the church in Galatia, attempting to steal people away from the freedom they had in God, by trying to convert them to Judaism. They taught that grace was a reward for good works, not that it was a free gift to those who repent and turn away from their wrongdoing.
Paul compares Hagar and Sarah. Hagar was the illegitimate mistress of Abraham, who he used in order to try to produce descendants by his own strength. Sarah was Abraham's legitimate wife, in whom was God's promise of countless descendants. An outsider would look at Hagar and Ishmael and say that God's promise was fulfilled there, that there was "fruit." But really it was just the result of striving and faithlessness. That is religion in the dead sense. It competes with true religion, which is the offspring of love.
You hear it a lot in church by how people describe their spiritual lives. "I got healed because I prayed for two hours a day, six days a week, for two months." "That person won't get healed because they never come to church." "I got a job because I fasted for three weeks while I prayed." "Our church has missionaries on five continents plus street evangelism twice a week, therefore God's blessing is on us, not that church down the street." Everything for them has to do with cause and effect, not the cause and effect of sin and punishment, but of work and blessing. Want a healing? Buy it with fasting. Want a job? Buy it with charity work and prayer. Got caught cheating on your wife? Pay off the debt by preaching up a storm and spending two hours in worship every morning. You do the work, God writes the paycheck.
Eventually, they begin to link their salvation with their works. "I am going to heaven because I saved three people and helped start a church, plus I'm not an alcoholic and I've never had sex outside marriage. My neighbor smokes cigarettes and uses Microsoft Windows, so he's obviously going to hell." It doesn't work like that, but science does, so we try to squeeze grace into the worldview we're raised with. It doesn't fit. The only wages we earn are the wages of sin, which is death. That check paying the bills is charity, not salary.
A friend of mine does contract work for poorer clients. Sometimes he does a favor and they try to pay him, but they can't afford to pay his already cheap rates and end up giving him money amounting to less than minimum wage. He used to accept it from them anyway, so they'd feel better, but he came to realize that it was better to just insist on it being free work. The problem he kept running into was that the client would feel as though they'd paid for his work, and would complain and nitpick and demand the same as if they were a paying customer. When we see our salvation as the result of our goodness and work, we are like that customer. "I paid you to save me, and now my best friend has cancer. You need to fix it, because I'm not happy with the work I paid for otherwise."
That's not to say that we don't have to repent of sin, or that our bad deeds don't still cost us something. Paul talks elsewhere about the differences between good behavior and bad behavior, between stuff God likes and stuff God hates. The difference is that those things don't buy our salvation for us. They don't buy God's blessing. God gives those things freely to those who ask, because we're that poor customer, the one who needs desperate help, but who has no means to pay for it. We should do good things. We should do them as much as we can. But we shouldn't ever pretend that we've paid for our salvation, or that we've bought God's favor by doing those things.
Islam is a great depiction of the slave woman's offspring. Literally it claims descent from the line of Ishmael, the slave woman's son. It's a religion of striving, of prayer five times a day, mandatory religious service attendance, compulsory charity, compulsory pilgrimages, etc. You could look at that and say that these are great men of God, but it produces death. Like Christians, these guys open schools and hospitals, pay alms to the poor, preach and proselytize. Unlike Christians, they don't believe in Jesus and ask for his salvation. When the time comes for the final judgment, they'll ask for their inheritance, and be told they were employees, and crappy employees at that. Employees aren't in the will any more than people are in the Book of Life for being good.
Striving also produces hard-hearted arrogant people. When you believe you've earned your place, you tend to fight to protect it. You don't admit your failures because it would bring your salvation into question and you worked so hard to earn it. I wonder how many cases of deep moral failures in the church could have been avoided if people didn't get caught up in this religious spirit and weren't enslaved to the imaginary tally. "A little adultery won't matter, because I've published two books and have a podcast series on Jesus. That's got to be worth something in God's eyes." "I could step down and get counseling for my addiction, but I'm the best evangelist anyone has seen in years, and God can't do this without me." It's slavery and it rejects the gospel.
In reality, the religious have things backwards. It's not works that produces salvation. It's an understanding of salvation that produces good works. We've been adopted into God's household. As kids we don't always understand that there are rules of the house, but we love getting free food, clothing, and housing, even if we complain about it perhaps more than we should. We don't somehow earn our keep by not fighting with our brothers, not talking back, by picking up our room and doing our homework. We earn our keep by being beloved sons. But does that invalidate the rules of the house? Are our parents going to be as happy if we leave a mess everywhere and punch our brothers in the face and steal their things? When we love our parents, and we recognize how they gave us things we couldn't get on our own, we do as they ask and we try to live in harmony with our brothers in that house with many rooms.
Choose the path of the legitimate bride. Be a mature child with an inheritance, not a crappy employee. You didn't earn the right not to suffer eternally for your sins. You didn't earn God's favor by doing all the right things or by pioneering some revolutionary new philosophy of ministry. The only wages you've earned are debt Jesus has offered to pay, if you'll quit pretending you're fine and don't need his help.
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