Paul gets right to the point by noting that the intruding religionists in Galatia are distorting the gospel of grace in Jesus Christ.
The initial two sentences of "grace greeting" were more than customary courtesies certainly more than schmaltz before the assault. They were laden, as indicated, with theological import that served as the foundation for Paul's argument throughout the epistle.
Whereas most of Paul's letters commence with some words of commendation, praise or thanksgiving (cf. Rom. 1:8; I Cor. 1:4; Phil. 1:3,4; Col. 1:3-5; I Thess. 1:2,3), Paul forgoes such in the opening words of this letter. He was "champing at the bit" to unleash his impassioned remonstrative rebuke of the Galatian's reversionism, which he was only able to hold in check until the third sentence. Paul's preference would have been to engage in a face-to-face confrontation with the Galatians and their seducers (4:20), but for whatever reason he had to settle for addressing the issues in this letter. He wastes no time in getting straight to the point.
The apostle loved these young Galatian Christians. He was so concerned about their being sucked into the dead-end religion of behavioral performance that he could not remain silent, but felt compelled to confront the intolerable situation. His grieving soul was full of emotional intensity that would criticize their credulity and denounce their defection, but it was the infiltrating false-teachers that most roused his seething consternation and indignant invectives. New Christians are so fragile, vulnerable and susceptible to the introduction of distortions and perversions. They so want to believe that religious teachers have their highest good and intent in mind, and will lead them on in their walk with God. They often lack the discernment to recognize that diabolically inspired religious peddlers (II Cor. 2:17) will inevitably misrepresent the gospel of God's grace in Jesus Christ for their own selfish benefit and ends. This is not to imply that the neophyte Galatian Christians were not to be held responsible for their backsliding, for Paul certainly holds them accountable. They should have been able to recognize that when the peripatetic outsiders began to criticize Paul and the gospel he shared, there was "a skunk in the woodpile." Apparently some of them did realize the perversion, and they were probably the ones who initiated or participated in the delegation who traveled to give a full report of the tragic situation to Paul.
1:6 Have you ever been blind-sided, or hit-up-alongside the head having never seen the approaching object that hit you? That must have been how the Christians in the Galatian congregations, and especially the religious purveyors of performance righteousness, must have felt when these forceful words of Paul were first read to them. It must have hit them like a brick!
Abruptly and explosively, like throwing a grenade into their midst or dropping a bombshell, Paul expresses his astonishment at the propensity of the Galatian Christians to abandon the gospel of Christ. "I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ." Shaking his head in incredulous disbelief, Paul must have been questioning: "How can they do this? How can they be so blind? Why are they so easily led like sheep to the slaughter? Why are they so easily led down the primrose path of religion, like pigs back to mud, or like prisoners back to the chain-gang?" He was perplexed (4:20), stupefied, and flabbergasted, as well as displeased, irritated and grieved. The unstable fickleness of the Galatians was astonishing and alarming. It had happened "so quickly," apparently indicating a short interval of time had transpired since Paul's ministry among them, and since their conversion (or perhaps, though not likely, referring to the rapidity of their transference of allegiance since the time when the false-teachers arrived).
The charge that Paul made against them is that of desertion or defection. This was a serious charge! The Greek word was used of those who betrayed their allegiance to a community, becoming deserters, defectors, or turncoats in treasonous abandonment. Those having any Jewish background, including the Judaizing infiltrators, may have remembered God's words to Moses about the Israelites, who "having quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them, made for themselves a molten calf and worshipped it," for which God's "anger burned against them" (Exod. 32:8; Deut. 9:16). In more recent history they may have recalled those who were turncoats and defectors during the Maccabean revolt (II Macc. 4:46; 7:24; 11:24). They would have been appalled to have their actions identified with such desertions.
Paul makes it clear that the actions of the Galatians was the result of personal choice. Though they may have been duped and deceived, seduced and snookered, they were not passive dupes and were to be held personally responsible for their choices. Only the tense of the verb that Paul used mitigated the situation, for he did not employ a past tense that indicated they were fixed in their defection or that their apostasy was complete, but he used a present tense that implied they were only in the process of deserting which meant they could still change their minds and stop their wrong course of action.
When Paul wrote of their "deserting Him who called you...", he was not alluding to their having forsaken their allegiance to him, Paul, who had preached to them. The obvious reference is to their falling away from and turning against God. The Christian gospel is a personal gospel of a personal God who sends His Son as a personal Savior to personally reconcile mankind to Himself. In a personal calling of His Spirit to the hearts of men (cf. 5:8), receptive individuals can enter into a personal faith-love relationship with Jesus Christ as He personally indwells our Spirit in the form of His Spirit (cf. Rom. 8:9,16). The problem was not that the Galatians were abandoning one theological ideology for another, exchanging an orthodox belief-system for one of heretical error and falsity (as these verses have often been misinterpreted and misapplied), rather, they were deserting their personal and ontological relationship with God who had "called" them, not just in the past objective "calling" of all men in the work of Jesus Christ (cf. Rom. 8:28-30), or in a solicitous summons to a decision about doctrine and church membership, but in the gracious beckoning of "calling" them into His own Being in spiritual oneness and unity.
This divine "calling" into His own Being is "by the grace of Christ." This does not mean that grace is the instrumental means of God's calling, nor the locative position into which God calls men, but that grace is the essential action of God's calling in Christ. All that God does, including His "calling," is by the expressive dynamic of His grace-activity in His Son, Jesus Christ, as He calls mankind into an ontological relationship with Himself. What amazes Paul is that the Galatians would turn their backs on such a dynamic Christic-grace-calling of an ontological relationship with the living Lord Jesus, to settle "for a different gospel."
(more)
You are free to download this article provided it remains intact without alteration. You are also free to transmit this article and quote this article provided that proper citation of authorship is included.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment