Chuck Larsen

Paul wraps up his letter to the Galatians by attributing to those saved through faith alone three blessings from God. Beginning in Galatians 6:16, He writes, “as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be (is) upon them, and upon the Israel of God.” Then in verse 18 he adds, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen.” It’s all about peace and mercy and grace. Instead of wrestling all the days of our lives with trying to earn God’s acceptance. Jesus provides that for us. He makes “peace” with God on our behalf. We then get to enjoy a God connection without fear. Paul make this clear to the Romans also, for in Romans 5:1 he wrote, “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” I remember my Dad often saying that the most important thing to him was to have “peace of mind.” Jesus brings that to us through faith!

We have peace, I believe, not because we’re so deserving of God’s acceptance, but because of God’s mercy. That’s the second thing that Paul attributes to the Galatians and to us! God is merciful to us because He “so loved the world…” I love the way the old Puritan write, George Swinnock describes the impact of God’s love. He says, “Have you never beheld a condemned prisoner dissolved into tears upon the unexpected and unmerited receipt of a pardon, who all the time before was as hard as a flint? The hammer of the law may break the icy heart of a man with terrors and horror, and yet it may remain ice still, unchanged; but when the fire of love kindly thaws its ice, it is changed and dissolved into water—it is no longer ice, but of another nature.… Therefore meditate much on the love of God and Christ to your unworthy soul.”

Finally Paul commends Grace to us! Paul began his letter in Galatians 1:3 with grace. He ends his letter her with grace as well. I love with C. H. Spurgeon is famous for saying; “The longer I live, the more sure I am that salvation is all of grace… Me too! Paul is expressing his conviction regarding God’s grace to the Galatians. One commentary on the last chapter of Galatians and this specific verse wraps it up well. Speaking about the Galatians and about us, it says, “It is the grace that sustains them, equips them to be living witnesses, fills their hearts with peace that passes understanding and with joy unspeakable and full of glory, and brings them at last to their inheritance, incorruptible, undefiled, and never-fading. Is it not true that throughout the letter the emphasis is on the marvel of God’s grace as contrasted with human work?

The greatest gift of all is not about the pretty paper or the pretty ribbon. It’s really all about what’s on the inside. Jesus once confronted the religious leaders by condemning them for cleaning up the outside and ignoring what mattered most. They dressed in flashy clothes. They performed many religious rituals. The offered many sacrifices, but they didn’t address their own sinful hearts. Jesus called them white-washed tombs. The outsides were all painted neat and clean, yet corruption and death lived on the inside. Paul stressed this same idea in Galatians 6:15. He writes, “For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.”

Paul says some similar things in Romans 14 about eating and not eating, drinking and not drinking. Neither of them are really important in the overall scheme of themes. Each one should be free to follow his or her own conscience. But it’s very simply, as Jesus told Nicodemus in John Chapter 3, you must be born again. It is all about a “new creation” that God makes of us through faith in Jesus. The UBS handbook says, “…this verse may be translated as ‘but being a new creature is important,’ ‘but being a new kind of person is what matters,’ or ‘… does make a difference.’ In some instances a new creature may be rendered as ‘being created new by God,’ or ‘being made over again by God.’”

I was 11 years old when Caril Fugate was fourteen. She joined Charles Starkweather on a murder spree across the state of Nebraska leaving 10 people dead. She and Charles were apprehended and Starkweather was executed 17 months later. Caril however went to prison. According to Leroy Lawson, “When she became eligible for parole at thirty-two, Caril had spent more than half her life in prison. It was not lost time. There she gave her life to Christ, affiliating with the Nazarene Church. She worked in the church nursery on Sunday mornings, taught Vacation Bible School, and even preached some sermons to the congregation. She underwent training as a geriatric aid and became involved in the work-release program in a nursing home on Sundays. She calls herself a new creation. She couldn’t have done this herself, but in the depths of her disgrace in prison, she was recreated by Jesus. It’s all about the “new creation” Richison sums this up, “Religious rites do not impress God. Church membership or baptism does not impress God. The central factor that impresses God is the cross and the new standing that it affords the person who trusts the cross for salvation. The Law is powerless to bring about this new transformation. This is the fundamental error of legalism.”

The narrator of Herman Melville’s book, “Moby Dick” begins his story with the words, “call me Ishmael.” When this narrator tells us to call him Ishmael he’s telling us about himself. He is an outcast. He’s rejected by his father and a pariah to his people. He is the son of a slave and destined to remain such his entire life. Although protected by God, his half-brother would inherit all that his father leaves. He is rebellious and jealous and bitter and in many ways senses that he’s been passed over for all the good things in life. He’s a man set on vengeance like the Ahab of Moby Dick. He will stop at nothing to get even or to hurt the “chosen” and take for himself the best of everything. He’s the one who will do what it takes to get what he wants.

Ishmael, the child of Hagar, is used by Paul to contrast the situation of the believer in Christ with the non-believer. The non-believer is trapped, enslaved to making his way in life on his own. He must put his confidence in his own abilities rather than trust in the loving relationship with his father. He is an illegitimate child. This child is a slave, while the other child, the son of the free woman, Sarah, is an heir. Through faith in Christ, the Messiah, we are heirs to the promise. Children of promise do not live with their parents under an arrangement of law. Their connection is not based on what they “do” but on who they “are.” They live together on the basis of love. In Galatians 4:25-26, Paul writes, “Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.”

Paul sees the earthly Jerusalem as the center of the religion of bondage. God was shut up in a Temple from the people and accessed only through strict religious rituals and sacrifices and mediators called priests. Paul’s argument is that those who hold to such religion, as Maxie Dunnam writes, “…whether they in fact trace their ancestry to Ishmael or not, are sons of Hagar. That line continues prolifically until today, for it includes all those who seek salvation apart from the freely given grace of God through Jesus Christ.” Dunnam goes on to say that on the other hand “Those who acknowledge Christ as Lord, who by faith receive His grace, claim the Jerusalem above. Like Isaac, the believing recipients of grace are the children of promise, whether any trace of Isaac’s blood flows through them are not. It is grace, all grace!”

When Jesus and the Apostles refer to the “law” they are often referring specifically to the first five books of the Old Testament. There is normally a threefold division of the Old Testament in Jewish thinking; the Law, the Writings, and the Prophets. The Law is the Pentateuch consisting of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The Writings refer to Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes. The Prophets refer to everything else. Paul asks the Galatians in Chapter 4:21, “Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law?” The Law consists of more than the issues handed down to Moses on Sinai. It also encompasses the historical information as well. So Paul goes back to early passages in Genesis and connects his argument with the story of Abraham and Sarah. He writes in Galatians 4:22-24, “For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar.”

We have already talked about Abraham as the Father of the faithful, now Paul addresses another aspect of Abraham’s life. He not only had Isaac, but he had another son named Ishmael. Ishmael was born because Sarah and Abraham took matters into their own hands. It could have been as many as 18 years since God had originally given Abraham the promise of a son that he and Sarah decided to help God out. Our self-effort associated with the “flesh” in our passage results in children of Hagar or children of the flesh. I think I’ve given birth to several Ishmael’s in my life.

Jon Courson in his commentary on Galatians observed, “You see, to this day, blood is shed daily in the ongoing struggle between the children of Ishmael and the children of Israel. So, too, in my own life, whenever Ishmael is born as a result of my own fleshly efforts, strife, anxiety, and tension are also birthed in my life.” Although considered the father of the “faith” filled, Abraham had a problem with impatience and God recorded that for our instruction. When I got impatient waiting for God’s promises to come true, I tend to want to take matters into my own hands and help God out. It always results in an “Ishmael.” It always results in trouble! God always fulfills His promises, in His time because He’s always faithful. Yet, I have a lot of Ishmael’s clinging to my legs and have to deal with them. Like with Abraham, Ishmael became a problem for the child of promise.

In Galatians 4:19-20, Paul sings a “song sung blue” which he sings “with a cry in his voice.” The emotions get the best of him. He writes, “…my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you! I wish I could be present with you now and change my tone, for I am perplexed about you.” The Wycliffe commentary says, “Paul’s pain and concern were like those of a mother in travail. Yet what he agonizingly sought for was not the new birth of his friends (they were his children already in the Lord), but the full forming of the new life in them (Ephesians 4:13; cf. Philippians 3:10). Another visit, he felt, would be highly desirable. It would accomplish more than the pen. Then he could speak softly to them, as a mother to an erring but still beloved child, and thus change his voice, which now necessarily seemed harsh.”

Paul was a religious fanatic. His Zeal, as he called it, drove him to try to destroy the church of God. He participated in murder; he arrested and enslaved both men and women, and participated in some of the worst crimes against humanity imaginable. He did all this in the name of religious zeal! This was the same religious zeal of the Judaizers, Paul was still zealous. But now with Christ he has a true zeal for the welfare of the Galatians. He has the right kind of zeal that moved him to want the best for others. God expressed that kind of zeal for each of us as well. John 3:16 tells us all about it; “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him would not perish but have everlasting life.” We see Paul teaching us about the right kind of zeal again in Romans 5:8; “But God demonstrates His own (zeal?) love for us in this; while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”

The Corinthian Church had many zealous people. In the first few chapters Paul identifies them as being “zealous for gifts.” Then before he expounds on the superior value of “love” he says, in 1 Corinthians 12:31, right before the famous chapter on love, “But be zealous for the better gifts. And I shew unto you yet a more excellent way.” After going through the definition and identification of true biblical love (agape), he then tells the Corinthians, plagued by dispute and disorganization and strife and struggle, “to pursue love” (1 Corinthians 14:1). We can be zealous for our own ideas. We can be zealous for being right. We can be zealous for a particular interpretation. We can be zealous for our interpretation of reality. We can be zealous for our particular Spiritual gift, as well as our abilities and talents. We can be zealous for all the right things even. But there’s something far greater than being right! It’s love! Nothing will ever trump love. Be zealous for love! In his sermon on zeal, John Wesley wrote, “But of all holy tempers, and above all others, see that you be most zealous for love. Count all things loss in comparison of this,—the love of God and all mankind. It is most sure, that if you give all your goods to feed the poor, yea, and your body to be burned, and have not humble, gentle, patient love, it profiteth you nothing. O let this be deep engraved upon your heart: All is nothing without love!”