Vicaring - A sermon resource for all those involved in Christian ministry

Preached           Trinity 1            13^th June 2004

Galatians 2.15-21      :        Luke 7.36-8.3

This short passage has rocked human history three times.

The first was in its original setting it meant that Christianity ceased to be just a sect within Judaism and became a religion for the whole world.

The second was when Martin Luther took it and made it the major weapon of the Reformation.

The third -We’ll come to that.

In its original setting: The row (In the Church at Antioch and spreading into Galatia) was this; is Christ an add-on too Judaism, or is he something complete in Himself, a radical new departure. Paul most definitely held the latter view. There were not surprisingly Jewish Christians (Remember the first Christians including Peter & Paul were all Jews) who took a more conservative view.

Paul has just been let down in a row with such a group by Peter, whose support he had every reason to expect. This is how he explains his position.

We need to follow his argument very slowly and carefully because it is very dense prose. (2.15-16)

Paul says first of all, even we who are by birth Jews, have needed to put our trust in Jesus Christ. No argument Peter and even Paul’s opponents would accept Judaism had somehow gone awry and needed the correcting grace which came from Jesus Christ.

Paul challenges them to accept that it is in this grace that their confidence really lies. It does not rest in their Jewish genes. It does not rest even in the strict Pharisaic which Paul had lived by before his conversion. It needs Jesus. That is why we became Christians.

To hammer the point home he says again. We as much as the gentile Christians have believed in Jesus Christ for our justification. In so trusting in him we show that we have given up on the law, the Torah.

We do well to give up on the law says Paul because it cannot Justify. He does this by adding his own gloss to a verse from the Psalms “No one living is righteous before you.”(Ps 143.2) We all start off on the same footing with God – in need of grace. And we cannot get this through the law.

But to live without the law is to live like a Gentile So Paul and Peter had been doing. The understandable orthodox Jewish reply is that in that case Christ has encouraged them to sin. This is only so says Paul if you allow that the law still has any ability to pronounce on what is and is not sinful. If you allow that, then not merely is he guilty of transgressing some of its regulations, rather he has committed the most unforgivable sin of all – apostasy.

But Paul will not for a moment allow the law that place. The life of the Pharisee Saul of Tarsus so dominated by the Law has come to an end. In its place comes a life fixed on God in Christ.  The law cannot bring life (3.21). By his identification with Christ the old life has been ended. This power of Christ, to terminate what is not of God (5.24) is the negative half of the new life which Paul claims Christ has brought. But the positive side is that in the place of what has ended comes a new vital force; Christ living in him. (For completeness and exactness we should add: by the Holy Spirit) The continuing biological existence of Paul is focussed on; empowered and directed by Christ. You cannot under any terms describe such a person as a sinner.

This gift of righteousness is God’s gift to the believer in Christ. To seek it in any other way is to despise this divine graciousness. It is moreover futile. The law cannot do what Christ has done. To claim that it can, to rely upon it, makes an absurdity of the work of Christ.

It follows therefore that Jews and Gentiles are all on one footing before God. It follows therefore that the scope of Christianity is truly universal.That argument determined the future of European civilisation and ultimately of the World.

The Reformation: But it only did so when the Text took on its full power once again. It would take  another sermon or in fact a lecture to describe the state of Medieval Catholicism and how, at a stroke, in the hands of Martin Luther, it cut away the validity of the whole system.

But in essence what Luther did very convincingly was to equate the whole thing, Masses for the dead, pilgrimages, penances and above all the sale of indulgences by the Pope with the works of the law that Paul so roundly denounces. You do not need all that religious parephenalia. All you need is simple faith in Christ as your Saviour.

It is that simple unadorned faith which rocked Europe and with it the future of the world.

The third Time: It rocks the world a third time when it strikes into your heart. And it has the power to do so again and again.

It really does shift your view. Because you have to realise first that you need help. All that we treasure al that we have achieved do not set us right with God. That is humbling.

But the realisation that what you could not earn has already been given, is yours freely and completely and without strings that makes the heart sing. That makes a new life lived as Paul says, “Not by me but by Christ living in me.”

That is why Christ is not simply the add-on to anything else he is something new, perpetually new, “The same yesterday today and forever.”

• Proper 6 C

Sermon: St Paul’s : 21st June 1998  :Trinity 2  :Galatians 2

Galatians Map

Probably to the south whence just returned with Barnabas from his first Missionary Journey.

In Acts Before Ch 15 the Jerusalem conference precipitated by Galatians

It is therefore about a dispute among Christians, not the first (Acts 5 & 6) nor the last. Christianity is an open ended religion not a prescribed set of laws. We move forward under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. But his message is  subject to interference; our presuppositions, wishes, and private agendas.

The row is about going forward. Paul is out ahead, so far that he is almost out of sight. But it is a row between Christians. We are guilty of an anachronism if we set Christianity and Judaism at opposite poles. Christianity is emerging from Judaism. Paul, Peter Barnabas are Jews. So is a good chunk of the Church at Antioch, so are Paul’s opponents. But they are all – yes even the opponents Christians. That is they believe that Jesus is the Messiah. They all believe that the promises of the O.T. are fulfilled in Jesus.

And they are agree that those promises are mean that the Gentiles will come into the people of God (Isa 49.6 55.5 56.3 etc.) they will become children of Abraham. For the promise to Abraham is “In you shall all the nations of the world be blessed Gen 18.18

There is no argument that Gentiles can become Christians be baptised into the name of Jesus. Paul’s opponents have no problem with that The Church has accepted that at the point at which Peter baptised Cornelius. Jesus is the way for Jew and Gentile alike.

But a way to what? Paul’s opponents  would say, into Judaism. A new reformed, Jesus Led, Judaism, the final righteous remnant of the people of God, prepared for His great and final victory. Their great and natural fear was that with the inflow of Gentile coverts this would be lost. Christianity would loose its rots and become something different for its origins. Worse still it would slide into the moral morass of the declining Roman Empire.

But Paul would say., “It is something different. It is not Judaism it is greater than that, for it embraces all nations. But it is not Gentile because that would make it pagan It is something new. And the sign of that new thing is that Jews and Gentiles sat together in particular ate the Lords supper together – Just as Jesus ate and drank with all and sundry. On this Peter most dramatically reneges.

But to do so is to abandon the vital core of Christianity.  – what that core is Paul will go on to explain but in  essence it is -New Life in Jesus.

Whatever might be said about the law – its divine origin its moral rectitude its superiority over debased paganism – it is exactly not this it is in fact the old life. For the law is a system in itself and it does not need Christ. Law and Jesus actually means LAW & Jesus. It reduces him from the engine to the bonnet badge. If the Law has the power to save it does not need Jesus

But Jesus is the power of this new Thing. What is it?

Being born again Paul actually says “I have died and I live again”

How do I live in Jesus? In a new state

This state has the title righteousness. That means simply being able to stand unashamedly before God.

But precisely because it is new it is the death of the old.

The Jew leaves behind the law, the Gentile leaves behind lawlessness. Paul really expects that. This cannot be a change which makes no difference.

For in this state we are free to let Jesus live through us “I no longer live but Christ lives in me” He lives in me by his Spirit – More next week.
But now the question, ‘Do you know what Paul is talking about?’

• Proper 6 C

First Preached     10^th June 2007             Trinity  1 ( C )

1Kings 17.17-end :        Galatians 1.11-end       :        Luke 7.11-17 

  
This sermon had the benefit of a power point projection. Most of the illustrations are decorative rather than essential, but I do think a map helps to earth events which otherwise seem up in the air.

Who, what why and when &where?

Where: from Antioch to Galtiania     [Trans 1 map]

When: 49 AD (???)[i]

Why:  Because others were debasing the Gospel and slandering Paul. They were saying that he is not really an Apostle. He has no authority to say some of the things he does.

What: Paul defends himself and the Gospel, because they are intimately intertwined.

Because the point is that Paul’s Gospel and his mission to preach to the Gentiles come from his conversion on the Damascus Road.                     [Trans 2 Conversion of Paul]

 He is not a secondary Apostle, taught by the Jerusalem Church. He has a first-hand story to tell.

But his conversion is more central to his Gospel than even that. He talks of ,”God who set me  apart from birth” God has the preeminence, the initiative and the focus. God sets his love on us, much more than we do on him.

The Gospel is not just a story of events long ago and far away. It includes that ongoing power of God to call men (and women to himself)

There follows a selection of stories about Christian conversion down the ages. This list is my choice; you may wish to vary it according to your favourite saints and heroes of the faith.

Augustine – 20 years thinking                         [Trans 3 Augustine]

St. Francis – sudden revulsion at his own selfishness [Trans 4 Francis]

Wesley  – from mere piety to living faith                    [Trans 5 Wesley]

Wilberforce – into social action                                   [Trans 6 Wilberforce]

Hudson Taylor – to China, identification with the people. The consequences still infolding.           

[Trans 7 Hudson Taylor]

Billy Mitchell – Norther Ireland; from violence to reconciliation. No Damascus conversion a slow outworking                                                     .           [Trans 8 Billy Mitchell]

Now you are going to say, “But I have no such dramatic story” But that is like saying, “Because I am not Paula Radcliff I cannot run for a bus.” You know that God loves you. The story of how you came to realise that fact is your story and your assurance. God will not let you go.

I included a personal testimony, not to my conversion, which is 40 myears old but to a recent – realisation that after a very black and desolating period in my life, I am still a child of God. Our assurance is not that we are strong, but that we are held by the Love of God.                                                                                                                                 [Trans 8 : Blessed Assurance]

Trials are not signs of spiritual failure, they can be necessary to your faith, your growth and your spiritual & psychological well being. Your spiritual story may not equal St. Paul’s but it is still part of God’s ongoing work

It is also a powerful evangelistic tool. -Your Testimony is closer to the life of those that you know than is St. Paul’s.

In one of my churches we ran a course to help people realise that; just to get  them to record the significant moments in their life when they knew God was with them.  

The gospel is that God has called us in love in Jesus, and made that love flame in our hearts through his Holy Spirit..

We have a story to tell. Christianity is a Story. The Gospel is the story of Jesus. But His story is not finished yet. The story is still being told:- through you!

• Proper 5 C