Day 3

Lisa Scheffler, author

A new student walks into the cafeteria, lunch tray in hand. His or her eyes dart back and forth across the room searching for a seat. Every table represents a rung of the high school hierarchy. Jocks in one corner, science nerds in another. The theatre kids sit near the stage (naturally) and there’s always a “reject” table. Where to sit? It’s a monumental decision for our new student because the stakes are high. Where you sit will determine your clique, and that determines who you are. Or at least, that’s the way this scene is depicted in most television shows and movies.

Even if they are relying on stereotypes, these shows are tapping into something as old as society itself — the fear of guilt by association. Will people judge us based on who we are seen hanging around?

For generations the Jewish people had been afraid of guilt by Gentile association. Now, after Jesus’ death and resurrection, true fellowship between Jews and Gentiles was not just possible, but expected. Many Jewish Christians were struggling with this change.

Notice how Paul challenges the Galatians by reminding them of something they should already know.

Read

Galatians 2:15-18

¹⁵ “We who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles ¹⁶ know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.

¹⁷ “But if, in seeking to be justified in Christ, we Jews find ourselves also among the sinners, doesn’t that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not! ¹⁸ If I rebuild what I destroyed, then I really would be a lawbreaker.

According to these verses how is everybody justified (made right) with God? Is there any difference between Jew and Gentile?

Reflect

The Jewish people were always reliant on God’s covenant faithfulness and mercy to justify them, or give them right standing, before God. Yes, they had been given the Mosaic law, but they also been given the sacrificial system, because they wouldn’t be able to keep the law. Then, of course, the Son of God came to be the ultimate sacrifice for all humanity, because no one could keep God’s law. The law had its place and time. It was meant to teach Israel who God is and who his people should be. As Paul will later describe, it acted as a guardian, but it was never designed to save anyone.

The Jews in Paul’s day had come to see the law in an unhealthy way. To them the gift of the law was evidence of their privileged status before God. Circumcision, food laws, and holy days became boundary and identity markers, setting them apart from the “sinners” who surrounded them. But these “works of the law” never justified them before God. Only faith made someone right with God. And the object of that faith had been revealed — Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior, and Lord.

Jewish Christians were worried that without the law, how would pagan Gentiles learn the ways of God? Wouldn’t their influence on Jewish Christians be corrupting? Wouldn’t the Jewish Christians suffer from guilt by association?

Paul insists that they are missing the point. For Paul, the flip side of law wasn’t lawlessness, it was faith. Paul will spend a great deal of time on the Spirit later in the letter, but spoiler alert, he trusted in the transforming power of the Spirit to root out sin in all those who are in Christ.

Paul reminded the Jewish Christians that now their identity must be found in Jesus Christ, not their ethnic identity, and not their adherence to the Mosaic law. Their thoughts and behavior will ultimately conform to Christ as well, but not by the power of the law, but by the power of the Spirit. It is our faith in Christ that makes us right with God and our continued faith that helps us see the rightness and beauty in living according to the ways of Jesus, not in the ways of sin.

Paul’s mission was to proclaim the gospel to the Gentiles and to tear down the barriers between Jew and Gentile. In Christ, ethnic Jews had no greater standing before God than other ethnicities. To add anything to faith in Christ would mean rebuilding what Paul had already destroyed.

God had done something wonderful — he’d created a new covenant family where anyone who trusts in Christ has a place at the table. No ethnicity or nationality is favored by God over another. We can’t earn that seat with our ethnic heritage or family tree, and there is no work we can do to make us worthy. There is nothing we can add to what Jesus has already done, because he has done it all. That is a reason to praise him.

Respond

Why do you think it’s important that we recognize that only faith can justify us? That every ethnicity has equal standing before God and he shows no favoritism? How should that affect our thoughts and actions?

Reflect on your place at God’s table. What does it mean to you that you have been welcomed into God’s family just as you are. Spend some time praising God!