Brothers and sisters:
Today’s meditation is
Galatians 2. I’ve read this book before several times, and even (feebly) translated it into English from Greek. This time my eyes were really opened to a simple question:
Why did Paul go through such pains to tell about his former life?
He’s not gloating, it doesn’t seem. He states in chapter 1 that he used to live a life of Judaism but was called by God out of that. Then he spends the best part of a chapter retelling how he became a disciple of Jesus. He was called and saved, then trained a lot for many years then went around and hung out with the 12 Disciples a bit. Oh yeah, and he chewed Peter out for being a hypocrite. Yikes. I would not want to get on Paul’s bad side.
But what does this all lead to? Why is he doing this? I think he defends his life and credibility to drive home verses 15-21. Paul knows what it’s like to live a legalistic life. He used to be a “good person,” but doesn’t make such legalistic claims anymore. If anyone had to rights to say that, both before and after his conversion, he was a righteous man it was Paul. More than just about anybody in the Bible he could consider himself (and others could consider him) a good person based solely on holy living. I mean, Moses was a murderer, Abraham was often timid, even Elijah gave up hope on occasion. Peter lived half his life with his foot in his mouth, John wanted to use God’s power to fry bad people. You get the picture. The tarnish on Paul was essentially that he was so zealous for Judaism before his conversion that he hauled off Christian families to death. After his conversion he always looked back on these acts in horror, but at the time he was only being a good person as he understood it.Paul was the real deal when it comes to someone honesty seeking to be righteous before God.
But he throws that away at the end of Galatians 2. He used to consider himself a good person, but now he is a saved person. Though doing good things and being a good person is God pleasing, it does nothing to earn God’s gifts. Nothing. Paul himself says that he actually died to the law (or to trying to be a good person) so that he may live to God. Jesus rescued him from self-righteousness and gave him a crown of Jesus’ righteousness instead. And that’s something worth living for.
This is God’s gift to you in Christ as well. Live a new life, be transformed by Christ living in you.
Peace:
Pastor J
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