A little over a week ago, I finished going through Galatians. At the end of that post, I mentioned I was going to write a reflective post on Galatians to finish off my little dive into Galatians, and then was planning to do a book analysis series on Beth Allison Barr’s book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood. Well, the weekend came, and I jumped right into Barr’s book, forgetting to do my reflective post on Galatians. One of my readers messaged me and basically said, “Hey, where’s that final post on Galatians?”
Point taken. Here it is. Enjoy.
Galatians is basically a “mini version” of Romans. Or more accurately, Romans is an expanded version of Galatians. Romans was written probably around AD 55-56, whereas Galatians was probably written around AD 49, shortly after Paul’s initial missionary journey. If you compare the two letters, you can see that Romans 1-8 is an expanded elaboration on the basic theological argument that Paul laid out in Galatians. If anything, it shows that Paul’s basic message was pretty consistent from the very beginning of his own ministry.
At the heart of Paul’s message was what should be the practical outworking of the Gospel of Jesus. Through the death and resurrection of Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, God was reconstituting the People of God. Throughout the Old Testament, the “people of God” were understood to be Israel. The Mosaic Covenant, therefore, defined who the people of Israel were—how they were to live and how their nation was supposed to constitute itself. Paul’s point in his preaching, though, was that the Israel as “the Old Testament People of God” was not the goal of God’s purposes. Simply put, Old Testament Israel, along with the Mosaic Covenant, was just a means to an end. The ultimate goal of God’s purposes was found in His covenant with Abraham. God was going to use Old Testament Israel to be the means through which He would eventually bless all nations and redeem His creation.
Christ, therefore, fulfilled everything God was doing through Old Testament Israel. Now that Christ had come, Old Testament Israel, along with the Mosaic Covenant, had served its purpose, and a “new day” (or properly, a “new age”) had begun. The door had been opened, and now God’s salvation was finally going out to the nations. Given that, much of what Paul says, particularly in Galatians and Romans, was to explain the continuity and discontinuity between the Mosaic Covenant, on one hand, and the goal of the Abrahamic Covenant (i.e. the New Covenant brought about through Christ), on the other hand.
Paul was constantly challenging his readers (and his churches) to realize that being part of the people of God wasn’t a matter of formal, religious rule-keeping; it was a matter of having a renewed heart, mind, and spirit. As we covered in this series on Galatians, someone obsessed with “rule-keeping”—some who thinks “following the rules makes me a good boy” is ultimately a child in their thinking. And children with that mindset are always pointing out how they are better than the other children who don’t “follow the rules” as good as they do. We all know this from our own experiences as children. We would put other children down, highlight the good things we did, make excuses for when we didn’t follow the rules, all in order (so we thought) to make our parents (or God!) to love us more—for them to see that we were better than the others. To the point: in order to win the approval of our parents (or God), we would engage in divisive behavior with the other children, perhaps our siblings, for example.
Paul’s point is that the people of God shouldn’t act like children. We should grow up in Christ so that we are fully mature “sons” of God, true heirs to the Kingdom. Now, it’s rather easy to explain that theologically. I just did it in about three paragraphs. We Christians can read an explanation like that, nod our heads, and say, “Yes, that’s nice,” and we can intellectually understand and appreciate Paul’s point. Unfortunately, if we are honest, we almost always then go out into the real world (whether our churches or society at large), and we quickly resort to divisive, childish behavior. And nowhere can this be more easily seen than in our current political discourse.
Now, obviously, not all Christians are going to 100% agree on all political and social issues. Some Christians lean conservative, some lean liberal, and that is fine. We’re going to see things differently because this world is a very messy place, and we are all working with incomplete information and are limited by our own biases and perspectives. Back when I was a Biblical Worldview teacher, I naïvely believed that Christians, even if they had different views on things, would be able to discuss and debate political and social issues in a mature, Christ-like way that could bring clarity and get us all closer to the truth.
I don’t think that is possible anymore, at least not on social media. For that matter, I don’t think that’s ever been possible when it comes to politics. I’ve come to realize that the politics of this world are, by their very nature, divisive “works of the flesh.” And if you engage in politics or political debate at any level, you’re going to get yourself dirty in that area—it’s just inevitable. A contributing factor, obviously, is the “societal fallout” of…here we go…the rise of Donald Trump onto the political stage. It is no exaggeration to say that there has been a monumental shift in our political and societal discourse since 2016. And though a lot of people want to blame Trump, I don’t. I think, for better or worse, the whole Trump phenomena has pulled back the curtain, not only on the truly dirty world of politicians and media, but also on our own deep-seated prejudices, biases, and idolatrous ideologies…and that includes Christians as well.
When people look at what Paul says in Galatians 5:13-26, they correctly see that Paul juxtaposes “the flesh” with “the Spirit,” but they often misunderstand what he’s saying. Most look at his list of “works of the flesh,” notice the first three on the list, and automatically think “the flesh” is just about “sexual sin.” They completely miss the fact that everything on the list (the sexual sins included) is all about divisiveness and causing hostility. Similarly, people will just assume that the “fruit of the Spirit” amounts to just “being spiritual,” in the sense of being nice and polite. Most fail to see that all the stuff on that list requires hard work, because it is all about reconciliation. “Peace,” for example, isn’t really about some sense of “inner peace and calm.” It’s about doing what it takes to end hostilities with others. Gentleness—showing gentleness towards others.
Ultimately, the “works of the flesh” are self-centered and power-hungry attributes, while the “fruit of the Spirit” are community-minded, reconciliatory attributes. As Christians, we are to strive for the latter, not just within our churches, but within our society as a whole. Unfortunately, though, especially these days, we don’t do a good job with that. Instead, we end up parroting the divisive “works of the flesh” that is so prominent in our current political and social issues.
Now obviously, when it comes to politics in America, with our two-party system, part of the political process involves one party trying to distinguish itself from the other party, offering different policies, solutions, and programs than the other side, and then making arguments as to why their suggested policies are better and will be more beneficial to society than the other party’s suggested policies. At least, that is what would ideally happen. If that happened, I wouldn’t say that would necessarily be a “work of the flesh.” It’s human beings trying to hammer out the best way for our country to be run.
But let’s face it, that doesn’t happen much anymore—I wonder if it really ever happened all that much. I don’t think it did. We just didn’t notice because, up until Trump, there still was this thin veneer of politeness in our political discourse. The candidates themselves would “play nice,” mouth pleasantries of respect to the other side, kiss babies and such; but then behind the scenes, the hatchet men and operatives did the dirty, divisive stuff. Trump pulled back the curtain, and now it seems that every candidate, and by extension, everyone, just hurls the divisive rhetoric around like it is candy on Halloween.
And I can’t stress this enough—that happens all the time in both parties. And whereas the “Moral Majority” of 80s Evangelicalism was guilty of being blindly partisan and divisive for the GOP side, based on a handful of social issues fed to them by the GOP, and thus making conservative politics their pharisaical religion, there is now that very same dynamic happening with more “liberal” Christians being blindly partisan and divisive for the Democrats.
Again, it’s not a matter of having honest political views and then voting for the party or candidate you think aligns closest to your views. That’s fine. The problem is that, just as the Jews of Paul’s day used the Torah to both self-righteously pump themselves up and attack and demean anyone else who weren’t “as good” as them (according to the rules of the Torah), too many Christians on both the political Left and political Right, have made a particular party platform their own “political Torah”—and they self-righteously pump themselves up and attack and demean those on the other political side as being, well, sinful…because they don’t hold certain political views. And they are so intent on attacking the sins of “the other side,” that they absolutely refuse to acknowledge the sins of their side.
I won’t give any specific examples, but I wish Christians (and everyone for that matter) would see and acknowledge that the politics of this world—and specifically the politics we have in America—is always going to be divisive and tainted. As citizens, we should have a say in the political system, but we shouldn’t let it corrupt us. We should see ourselves ultimately as outsiders—as strangers and aliens. And if we find ourselves blindly parroting the divisive rhetoric and misleading talking points of one candidate or party, we’ve lost our way. It’s fine to point out the shortcomings of an opposing candidate. But if you refuse to acknowledge the shortcomings of your own candidate, chances are you are engaging in the “works of the flesh.” It’s pretty much the same thing Paul condemns his fellow Jews of doing in Romans 2:1: If you condemn the other person, you’re condemning yourself…because you’re doing the same thing.
The truth is that as long as we live in this world, no matter how much we strive to “live according to the Spirit,” we’re always going to be tripping ourselves up with the occasional “work of the flesh.” We’re all guilty of that to a certain extent. When that happens, we need to be able to forgive ourselves, get up, and repent when that happens. But if we are constantly enraged as the speck on the other’s eye, if we confidently extol our own moral superiority because we back this candidate, and if we routinely condemn anyone as being, not just wrong, but immoral for voting for that candidate, then Galatians 5:13-21 really should scare the crap out of us—because Paul says people who do those things, those works of the flesh, will not inherit the Kingdom of God.
And I don’t know about you, but I do not want to find myself in outer darkness, next to Trump, or Biden, or Harris, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. I’ve had enough of the campaign season as it is.
My thots on politics: I vote anti-pessimal (against the worst as I see it) and I recommend this approach, given the current political realities. I do not worry about supposedly voting FOR someone that I do not agree with on some things, I am using my miniscule power of voting to try to avoid the worst result. I think all the candidates are horrible; but in a beauty contest, there needs to be a winner, so I select the least horrible, because of the way the system is set up with only the 2 main candidates/parties having a chance of winning.
My thots on Galatians (and Romans): I try to read both letters realizing that Paul was a Torah-observant Jew (AKA Paul within Judaism model) which rules out some possible interpretations.
Paul’s big point is that when it comes to Torah observance, Jews can do it–it’s part of their heritage. It played a huge role in God’s plan. But since the Holy Spirit had now been poured on out the Gentiles, Torah observance was not a requirement for Gentiles. They didn’t have to become Jews in order to inherit the blessings God promised to Abraham.
As for politics, at this point, I think the government has gotten too big with too much bureaucracy and power. In that sense, it is looking more and more like “the beast.” Therefore, I’ll vote for the candidate who is most likely to fight against that beast and is most likely to cut the size of government.