Justified By Faith

When we began our journey through Galatians, I shared that it is fairly short. It is just 6 chapters, 150 verses. We spent 2 weeks on chapter 1. The first on Paul’s introduction to the letter, why he was writing. The churches in Galatia have been unsettled about whether or not they have done enough to be right with God. Paul was the first to share the gospel with them. Before they began to follow the way of Jesus, they were Gentile, not Jewish. Paul did not teach them that they had to be Jewish before they could follow the Messiah. And either someone came and told them that they did have to convert to Judaism or they began to worry that they needed to, and now Paul is writing to say that there is no other requirement than to follow Jesus. The gospel is, he writes
1. We live in an evil age. The Law has not done what it was intended to do. It has not brought humanity into right relationship with God. It has not curbed sinfulness.
2. God is for us. God wants relationship with us. God wants us to choose God over sin.
3. When creation runs the way God intends, God will be praised.
4. Jesus chose to give himself to set right what our sin broke. Jesus rescued creation and offers to restore us to right relationships with God and one another.

Then last week we turned to Paul’s defense of himself. Who is Paul that the Galatians should trust his teaching? He is called by God and received the gospel he is teaching directly from Jesus. In fact, he says, the only one of the disciples he has met is Peter….3 years into his ministry, he spent about 2 weeks with Peter in Jerusalem. Then, in the first half of chapter 2, Paul shares that after preaching 14 years he went to Jerusalem again, along with Barnabus and Titus. He met with the church leaders there and shared with them the gospel that he was preaching to the Gentiles because he wanted to get their concurrence that what he was teaching was right. In fact, Titus was a Gentile Christ follower and hadn’t been circumcised, and they agreed that he didn’t need to convert to Judaism. James, Peter, and John gave them the right hand of fellowship and agreed that they would preach to the circumcised while Paul and Barnabus peached to the uncircumcised. All they asked was that Paul remember the poor, which, he writes, he had always been eager to do.

But then, there was a conflict between Peter and Paul. So, now we turn to Galatians 2:11-3:14.

Peter gave in. He was in Antioch, a city that was a center for early Jesus followers. In fact, it was in Antioch that the followers of Jesus were first called Christian. Peter was in Antioch, about 300 miles north of Jerusalem…it would take you about a week to sail there along the Mediterranean seacoast with good winds….and he was participating in the community of believers there. Peter, a Jewish Christian, was eating with Gentile Christians; and he was having no issues with purification rituals or kosher laws or his company.

Anthropologists tell us that “Since long before the dawn of humanity, eating has been a social act… Early humans were more successful when they banded together to hunt; they enjoyed greater security when they cooked and ate their food together.” Eating forms our identity and shapes our community…who is in, who is out.

It’s time to go back to school this week. Can you remember one of the most anxiety-producing things about the first week of school once you didn’t sit with your class in the cafeteria? Where would you sit? Where would your group be? Who would let you be part of their group?
Jews did not eat with Gentiles. Gentiles were unclean. They didn’t wash their hands the way the law proscribed. They didn’t fix their food the way the law proscribed. They ate foods the law forbade. And when James sent some folks from Jerusalem, some of the more rigid, law-abiding Christians, Peter drew back. Just like he did when he stepped out of the boat and walked toward Jesus on the water, he took his eyes off Jesus and started to sink. He stopped eating with the Gentile Christians, and so did Barnabus and the rest of the Jewish Christians. And Paul called them out.

Who is welcome at the table? Who gives the invitation? Who are the true people of God?

New Testament scholar Charles Cousar points out that “What Peter fails to recognize at Antioch is that Jews can be justified only together with Gentiles. Acceptance of God’s ‘not guilt’ verdict means acceptance of people with a different history, a different story to tell….”

I love the analogy that NT Wright offers: The Jewish faith had become like a traffic jam.

The highway was built through Abraham. Abraham believed God, so God judged him righteous. It was his faith that opened the way to God. God said all nations are going to travel this highway. But, then something happened and the traffic just stopped. It was the law, 613 commandments plus the rituals and rites and customs…no one could keep them all. No one could keep even the ones in Torah – the ones in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The law was meant to be a roadmap, a sign that said, the max speed for this curve is 45 mph…but the sign was ignored and the truck turned over, and now nothing was getting through. Then God sent a crane, Jesus, to clear the roadway. He lifted the symbol of oppression in the 1st Century, the cross, literally onto himself and bore the weight of Israel’s curse himself. Now, the roadway of faith is open, as God always intended, to all people of all nations.

The map now has been completely redrawn. The on-ramp is a gift received by faith, just believe God. You are justified, made right with God, by just believing the gospel: things aren’t right/I’ve sinned, God loves me and wants to set things right, Jesus chose to give himself so that things could be set right, and now that I’m merging from the on-ramp onto the highway, Christ lives in me…I am being made more holy, sanctification is happening in my life, I am travelling toward being more and more like Jesus, I am growing in my faith, in my morals, in my spirit…and God is the One to be praised.

This is the good news of the gospel. It is the message with which we have been entrusted. And it doesn’t take much to slow traffic down, or even cause a traffic jam. It is so easy to start thinking we have to earn the right to travel on this highway. It is so easy to leave debris in the road of judgment and to cave to pressure not to welcome everybody on this highway. Look back over history: Peter caved to pressure from the law abiders from Jerusalem to conform to cultural norms and not eat with Gentile Christians, Paul later in life will cave to pressure from the holders of hierarchical power to conform to societal norms and return women and slaves to their “proper” place, the church will cave to pressures to conform to the ways of the establishment and support the wealthy by exploiting the poor and Martin Luther will rebel…this passage is one that he and the other reformers held up as they criticized the abuses of the church…in fact, in his commentary on Galatians, Luther wrote 80 pages on Paul’s confrontation with Peter.

As we come to this table today, we come because we have received the gift of faith. We are justified, not by anything we have done, but simply by accepting what Jesus has done for us and we open ourselves to be filled with Jesus’s loving faithfulness, making sure we aren’t creating hazards in the roadway for other travelers and welcoming all to feast with us.

That’s a really nice way to end…but I think there’s too much at stake here to leave it with an analogy.

You are welcomed to this table because God loves you, and there is nothing you can do about it. Now, think of the last person you would want to eat with. You have the responsibility to share with that person that they are welcomed to this table because God loves them, and there is nothing you can do about it. We come by faith. We are changed by Jesus living in us. Amen.