Free Enough to Serve

 Free Enough to Serve

Galatians 5:1, 13-26[1]

I recently spoke about one of the reasons some people give for not being involved in organized religion. It’s because they see the church as “full of hypocrites.” And I suggested in that sermon that one reason for that criticism is that they hear us saying one thing while they see us doing something very different. I think another reason why people avoid religion is because, truth be told, we can come across like very selfish and self-centered people. Especially when it comes to salvation. When we make salvation all about “me, my, and mine,” what other people may hear is that we really don’t care about anyone else.

I think that’s a sad state of affairs. The Gospel is about Jesus Christ making the ultimate sacrifice, giving his life away selflessly so that we could all live together in the freedom, peace, and joy of God’s love. And somehow, someway, too many of us who profess faith in him do so in a way that strikes the people around us as so utterly selfish and self-centered that it turns them away from the community of those who claim to follow Jesus. To some extent, I can understand that. Too many in the church have focused on their own salvation to such an extent that it can come across as if they have no concern for anyone else’s salvation. Surely those of us who follow Jesus must share his concern for the whole human family!

I think part of the problem is that we can get caught up in our own “stuff” so much that it’s hard for us to look past it and really care about those around us. It’s a natural thing. And it’s true for all of us. It’s part of being human. Our life experiences are what are most real to us. But we can get so bent out of shape about our malfunctioning cell phones (just for example) that we lose all sight of the fact that there are many people in the world who have to walk miles for clean water! Now, I don’t want to suggest that what preoccupies us is always as trivial as a malfunctioning cell phone. We have much bigger concerns that, very naturally, occupy our attention. But the “optics” of that mindset don’t make for a favorable portrait of the church and those of us who are devoted to it.

I think our lesson from the book of Galatians for today addresses this question. Paul emphasizes the freedom we have in Christ. A big part of that freedom is that through his faithful obedience to God even to the point of death on a cross, and by placing our faith in him as our savior and lord, we’re set free from all the guilt and fear and all the other “stuff” that might plague us. For Paul, the cross means that God has “justified” us. That’s the language of the Bible. It’s a theological word for the idea that God accepts us and loves us just as we are. Unconditionally and irrevocably. Paul was insistent that we don’t have to do anything to earn that love and acceptance. In fact, he made it clear that if the believers of his day thought they could do anything to earn it, it would cancel out the message of the gospel!

We can read a passage like this and think that freedom is simple: you don’t “do the works of the flesh” and you “do the works of the Spirit.” But in reality, true freedom is something that’s really quite complicated. For one thing, if you look at the vice lists in the New Testament and think that any one of those behaviors excludes us from God’s love and acceptance, then we’re all in that boat because we’ve all fallen short in some way. And if you look at the “fruit of the Spirit” and ask whether we consistently embody those characteristics in our daily living, the answer is “sometimes we do and sometimes we don’t.” It’s a tough list to live up to. Freedom is something that’s quite complicated.

Many in our society think freedom means “I can do whatever I want, whenever I want to.” But that’s not freedom. It’s just “license.” As in taking liberties that aren’t necessarily thoughtful, kind, or caring to others or to ourselves. License differs from freedom in that in that it means doing whatever we please without thinking about how it may affect anyone.[2] It’s a matter of indulging ourselves however and wherever we want. License means choosing to ignore that there are always consequences to our actions and choices. And such blatant self-indulgence never results in real freedom. We can do whatever we please whenever we want as much as we can get away with, and never feel truly loved, or accepted, or valued as a person. And when we lack that basic foundation in our lives, we are never truly free. Freedom is complicated.

I think that’s one reason why Paul insists that the gospel of salvation through Jesus is a free gift. It makes a difference in how we not only look at ourselves, but also how we treat others. Recognizing that the only “justification” that really means anything comes to us through Jesus and the unconditional acceptance God extends to us through him frees us from all that would bind us in this world. That also frees us from all the ways we might think we have to bolster ourselves by putting down others. Trusting the gift of God’s unconditional acceptance frees us to serve one another, all others, in love![3] The only way to truly find freedom is to give yourself away in love, and the only way to truly give yourself away in love is when you find freedom from all that can bind us in this world.[4]

If we truly find that freedom to love, we’re naturally going to extend that love to everyone. We’re naturally going to be concerned with the salvation of the whole human family, not just ourselves. We will be motivated to serve others in a way that truly brings “liberty and justice” to all, in a way that recognizes the dignity of every person, regardless of race, gender, ability, or class. Serving others in love starts with recognizing the dignity of every person. Now, I will be the first to admit that it’s incredibly difficult to live out this level of love and freedom all the time. We all have a variety of influences within us that get in the way of giving ourselves away to others in love. What St. Paul wanted the people of his day and ours to know is that what God has done for us in Jesus sets us free to explore what it means to share love in a community of people, like this one, who are committed to sharing God’s love with the whole world.

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[1] © 2025 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 6/29/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] John Paul II, in “The Gospel of Life,” 19.3, said that we have “a notion of freedom which exalts the isolated individual in an absolute way, and gives no place to solidarity, to openness to others and service of them.” See J. Michael Miller, C. S. B., The Encyclicals of John Paul II, 808.

[3] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 188. He says that the church is the “fellowship of the justified, who no longer have to justify themselves” He goes on to insist that this freedom sets us free to serve others in love. As I have suggested before, I believe this is idea of freedom to love is a central theme in Moltmann’s understanding of the Christian life. It runs throughout his discussion of the church’s identity and calling; he begins the idea that Jesus establishes the freedom of God’s kingdom by sacrificing himself for others (117), by breaking the powers of oppression through the resurrection (98-99), and by assuring us that we are accepted by God, and therefore enabling us to accept others (188-89); therefore Moltmann understands the freedom of God’s kingdom as that which enables us to serve one another in the effort to bring freedom to others (84, 195, 278, 283-84, 292); he construes this life under the concept of “friendship” which Jesus models and we are called to emulate those who are “open for others” and who “love in freedom” (121, 316).

[4] St. Augustine said it this way: “love, and do what you will”; cf. Augustine, Homily 7 on the First Epistle of John; http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/170207.htm.; See John Caputo, On Religion, 3-7, 24-28, 109-116, 134-36, 139; cf. similarly, John Calvin and W. Pringle, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul to the Galatians and Ephesians, 160 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc): “He who loves will render to every man his right, will do injury or harm to no man, will do good, as far as lies in his power, to all.”  See further, Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4.2:732-33.

What Can I Do?

What Can I Do?

Gal 6:1-10[1]

It’s been forty years since the images from the Apollo missions to the moon forever changed our understanding of our place in the universe. The now-famous image of the earth “rising” over the moon, while remarkably beautiful, represents a world that looks shockingly small. And that’s just the viewpoint from the moon, the closest object in the scarcely comprehensible vastness of space. You may have seen another set of images—of size comparisons between the earth and the other planets in the solar system. In comparison with an image of Jupiter the size of a volleyball, the earth looks like a marble. In comparison with a similar image of the sun, Jupiter looks like a marble, and the earth looks like a single dot. And the perspective changes dramatically when you compare some of the closest stars in the galaxy—against which the sun looks like an English pea. Even Jupiter is invisible from that perspective, and the earth is smaller than invisible!

This relatively new perspective of our place in the universe has had a variety of effects—some positive, some not-so-positive. Among the latter, I would suggest that our sense of “smallness” in comparison with even our closest neighbors in space has generated a “whatever” outlook on life. I don’t mean to be discriminating here, but when you look at the work ethic of people who were born before and after the momentous moon landing, I think the difference is not entirely coincidental with our significantly altered sense of our significance. It seems that there may be a great many people of all ages who, as a result of these dramatic images, have adopted the view that “I really can’t make a significant difference.”

One of the ironic effects of the images comparing the size of our planet to other celestial bodies is that it has brought the world closer together. Internet and world-wide cable TV have had a similar effect. But surprisingly, I think all of this has also made us much more aware of what a staggering number of people 6.8 billion is! Faced with such vastness, some will “think globally and act locally,” but it seems that there are many in our world who have decided that they can’t really make a difference, so they have stopped trying and retreated into their own world.

But we really don’t have to take this point of view as our starting point to find it difficult to avoid “growing weary in doing what is right” (Gal. 6:9). The people Paul addressed still believed in large part that the earth was the center not only of the solar system, but of the entire creation! And yet he found it necessary to encourage them to recognize that the work they do for the Kingdom of God is work that has lasting significance. The way Paul did that was to remind them that God’s work is like a harvest that will one day be finished. The people of Paul’s day knew a lot about harvesting. There is a right time for it—if you try to harvest before that, the fruit isn’t ripe, and if you wait too late it will spoil. And there is a sense of inevitability to the idea of a harvest. The rhythm of planting and harvesting creates the expectation that harvest follows planting like day follows night.

I think we would have to agree that there is something built into the very nature of a life of sacrificial love, a life of bearing one another’s burdens, a life of loving your neighbor as yourself that is “wearying.”[2] You give and give and give some more, and never really know if any of what you'regiving is doing any good at all! But Paul recommends that we take a longer look when we find ourselves getting discouraged. We need to look at things from a broader perspective when we feel that our work is insignificant. [3] In a very real sense, our “bigger” perspective of the vastness of the universe and our place in it needs the “broader” perspective of the Kingdom of God that continues to grow and produce fruit until the final harvest day. The harvest that our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ saw as ripe already is one that will be completed in God’s good time

I wonder whether part of our problem may be that we get distracted by results, or the lack thereof. Churches in our day have become obsessed with their own efforts at creating an image that will produce success, which is one way of reading what Paul means by “sowing to the flesh.” Those of us who cannot rely on such things must continue to “sow to the Spirit” in faith and hope[4]—which is the only way to maintain a life of self-giving love over the long term. We need the confidence that “your work in the Lord is never wasted” (1 Cor. 15:58, New Century Version).

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[1] © 2010 Alan Brehm. A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 7/4/10 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX and at A Community of the Servant-Savior Presbyterian Church, Houston, TX.

[2] Cf. Luther’s comment in his commentary on Galatians: “It is easy enough to do good once or twice, but to keep on doing good without getting disgusted with the ingratitude of those whom we have benefited, that is not so easy”! http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/gal/web/gal6-01.html On the weariness that goes with a life of loving service, see also John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul to the Galatians and Ephesians, 179-80. Compare Calvin’s more positive approach that we need the patience and other qualities articulated in 1 Cor. 13 in order to do this; Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 3.7.6.

[3] Henri Nouwen, in The Wounded Healer, says it this way: “the deepest motivation for leading our brothers and sisters to the future is hope. For hope makes it possible to look beyond the fulfillment of urgent wishes and pressing desires and offers a vision beyond human suffering and even death.”

[4] Cf. Richard B. Hays, “The Letter to the Galatians,” in New Interpreter’s Bible XI:339 says “Only work that is the fruit of the Spirit will be of value at the time of the eschatological harvest.”

Love Means ...

Love Means …

Gal 5:1, 13-25[1]

I think some of the goofiest myths that define our culture surround the notion of love. For example, there are many people out there who live their whole lives looking for “the one.” You know, the single solitary individual out of the roughly 2000 cities the size of Houston that could contain the population of the world! Another is “happily ever after.” It is the fairy-tale ideal that when you find “the one” you will spend your lifetime in honeymoon bliss. One of the silliest love-related myths must have come from the tagline to the 1970 film Love Story: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” What in the world does that mean? If you’re human, you will always be in a position of needing to say you’re sorry. If anything, love means you always say you’re sorry, and you keep coming back and saying you’re sorry no matter what!

These myths about love keep many people spending their lives looking for their own personal holy grail of love. It seems to me that once again we’re missing the whole point. St. Paul, reflecting on the life of our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, says that the whole essence of life is “faith working through love” (Gal. 5:6). I think a big part of what Paul was trying to say is that the true path to fulfillment in this life is through giving yourself away to others.

I’m afraid we have some problems with this as well. In our culture, we are told that you have to beware giving too much of yourself away. While I would say that kind of thinking is mostly motivated by the self-interest that permeates our world, there is a genuine challenge here. How do you lose your life for the sake of the kingdom of God and for the sake of others without losing your whole sense of self? I think at least part of the answer is that we can only give ourselves away in love when we are connected with a community that becomes a tangible embodiment of God’s unconditional love for us.[2] In a very real sense, we have to be free in this way in order to love others by giving ourselves away.

I would have to say that we’re going from the frying pan into the fire here. We as a culture are also confused about freedom.[3] We think freedom means “I can do whatever I want, whenever I want to.” We confuse freedom with “license.” License means you don’t care about anybody else, so you have no qualms about doing whatever you want, regardless of how it affects others.[4] It’s a matter of indulging yourself however and wherever you please. But what that misses is that there are always consequences to our actions and choices. Pure self-indulgence never results in real freedom.[5]

This was a problem for the churches in Paul’s day. They had determined that the life and death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ meant that God had done all that was necessary for their salvation. That meant that no one had to try to earn their salvation by any kind of works—whether Eastern astrology or Greek virtue or Jewish obedience to Torah. But as in most cases where people get a taste of freedom for the first time, they had a hard time figuring out what it meant to be truly free.

You might think that we’re just going round in circles here. The true meaning of love is found in the freedom to give yourself away. True freedom is what you get when you live your life in loving service to others. But I would say that it’s not so much a vicious circle as it is a paradox. The only way to truly find freedom is to give yourself away in love, and the only way to truly give yourself away in love is when you are free.[6] St. Augustine said it this way: “love, and do what you will.”[7] I think he was saying that if you truly love God and truly love others, then you are free to do whatever you want, because what you want will be—in so far as it is humanly possible—an expression of love toward God and others. And as St. Paul said it, there is no law against that (Gal. 5:23)![8]

Now, I will be the first to admit that it’s incredibly difficult to live at this level of love and freedom all the time. We all have a variety of influences within us that keep us from the freedom to give ourselves away to others in love. It seems to me that part of the challenge faced by Jesus’ would-be disciples in our Gospel lesson today (Lk. 9:57-62) is that they really weren’t free enough to give themselves away in love. I think that most of us spend a lifetime learning what it means to live like this, and then only a very few ever really attain it. What St. Paul wanted the people of his day and ours to know is that what God has done for us all in Christ Jesus enables us to explore what it means to have the freedom to love others in a community of people who are also free to live and to love.[9]

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[1] © 2010 Alan Brehm. A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 6/20/10 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX and at A Community of the Servant-Savior Presbyterian Church, Houston, TX.

[2] Jacques Ellul, “Christian Responsibility for Nature and Freedom,” Cross Currents 35 (Spring 1985): 50 , where he says that Christians are free, but that “this freedom is inconceivable without a conversion to God and a life within the love of God and neighbor. People become individuals, yes, but this change is viable only if together with others they form a new community.” Cf. also Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 83-85; and Richard B. Hays, “The Letter to the Galatians,” New Interpreter’s Bible XI:310: “freedom in Christ manifests itself through the formation of concrete communities where the old barriers of nation, race, class, and gender are overcome in communion at the one table (cf. 3:26-29; 5:13-15).”

[3] See Karen Engle Layman, “Galatians 5:1-15,” Interpretation 54 ( Jl 2000): 297-299; she quotes Hans Küng, “The illusion of freedom is to do what I want. The reality of freedom is to want what Almighty God does” (from Freedom Today, 41).

[4] John Paul II, in “The Gospel of Life,” 19.3, said that we have “a notion of freedom which exalts the isolated individual in an absolute way, and gives no place to solidarity, to openness to others and service of them.” See J. Michael Miller, C. S. B., The Encyclicals of John Paul II, 808.

[5] Cf. Charles B. Cousar, Galatians, 107-110, where he discusses various alternative versions of “freedom.”

[6] See especially Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit; this is a theme that runs throughout his discussion of the church’s identity and calling; he begins the idea that Jesus establishes the freedom of God’s kingdom by sacrificing himself for others (117), by breaking the powers of oppression through the resurrection (98-99), and by assuring us that we are accepted by God, and therefore enabling us to accept others (188-89); therefore Moltmann understands the freedom of God’s kingdom as that which enables us to serve one another in the effort to bring freedom to others (84, 195, 278, 283-84, 292); he construes this life under the concept of “friendship” which Jesus models and we are called to emulate those who are “open for others” and who “love in freedom” (121, 316). I would suggest that this idea of freedom to love is a central theme in Moltmann’s understanding of the Christian life.

[7] Augustine, Homily 7 on the First Epistle of John; http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/170207.htm.; See John Caputo, On Religion, 3-7, 24-28, 109-116, 134-36, 139; cf. similarly, John Calvin and W. Pringle, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul to the Galatians and Ephesians, 160 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc): “He who loves will render to every man his right, will do injury or harm to no man, will do good, as far as lies in his power, to all.” See further, Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.2:732-33.

[8] See R. N. Longenecker, Galatians, 247, who puts it more positively: “where the new life in Christ by the Spirit is present, no law is required to command it.”

[9] Cf. Frances Taylor Gench, “Galatians 5.1, 13-25,” Interpretation 46 ( Jl 1992):290-295; see also Cousar, Galatians, 110: “The person who trusts the faithfulness of God is then in a position to take risks about everything else in life.”

All Children of God

All Children of God

Gal 3:26-29[1]

Growing up in small-town Texas means being a football fan. I’m not talking about the small cities that we’re familiar with—I’m talking small town Texas, where they still only have a four-way stop at the main crossroad. In those towns, your whole life is punctuated by Friday night football games. And there really is no question whether or not you’re going to cheer for the home team. Everybody cheers for the home team. There’s no possibility that someone might like the line-up or the coaching staff of a rival team and cheers for them instead. Everybody cheers for the home team.

Unfortunately, there are football fans and there are football fans. Most people in a small town are loyal supporters—they show up at every home game, and even go to some of the away games. But occasionally, you ran into the people who took it too far. You know, the ones who thought cheering for the home team means that you hate the other team—all the other teams, and their fans as well. They were the ones who would start fights and throw rocks at the other team’s bus and slash the fans’ tires.

Of course, that kind of “us against them” thinking has pervaded human culture. It would seem that regardless of time or place, regardless of status or faith, the human family has a deeply ingrained need to differentiate themselves from others they can look down on.[2] Whether it surfaces in wars between nations, ethnic and racial hatred, or social discrimination, it seems we are obsessed with defining our own worth in competition with others.

I’ve never really understood the blatant, mean-spirited racism that infects some people on this planet. I don’t understand how anyone can look at another person and think of them as some kind of sub-human animal. And yet I have to admit that I share the human tendency to think that I am superior to others who are different. I’m not particularly proud of that fact, I just acknowledge it. And strive to overcome it. But what disturbs me deeply is when people take those notions and turn them into a badge of loyalty or a mark of patriotism —or even into a medal of faith! For many people, it seems that Christian faith just becomes another way of justifying our cherished prejudices.[3]

But once again I must insist that is not the way in which the Bible presents the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or the God and father of our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ. The God of the Scriptures is the God who is concerned about “all the families of the earth” (Gen. 12:3).[4] With that in mind, and given Jesus’ acceptance of all people, we might want to believe that the church would be a “hate-free” or “discrimination-free” zone. Unfortunately it is not. Apparently, it wasn’t even in the days of St. Paul.

Part of the situation Paul was addressing was a church in which Jewish Christians joined together with gentile converts. In order to understand the problems that caused, we have to understand that one of the fundamental aspects of Jewish identity was the belief that they were chosen by God. It would seem that many of the Jewish people in that day and time thought that their election meant privilege rather than call. So they believed that God’s special relationship with them meant that they must be special, and therefore better than the “gentile dogs” (that is, all non-Jewish people). Of course, if the gentile “sinners” wanted to, they could convert and become Jewish, and they would be part of the privileged people. Otherwise they remained outsiders and should stay outside.

Well, when the Christian gospel started bearing fruit among all the people groups outside Judaism in the First-Century world, the Jewish Christians had some challenges with it. In fact, some of them insisted that people must first convert to Judaism before they became Christians! But Paul saw that for what it was—not only an affront to the Gospel but also an affront to the God of Abraham, who called Abraham and Sarah and all their descendants for the benefit of “all the families of the earth.”

Following that logic, Paul extended the language of election to include gentiles who converted to Christian faith. This was a major leap for any Jewish person in that day. It reversed the whole language of election. It meant that those who were privileged were now just like everybody else. It meant that those who had been outsiders were now insiders, and in some cases that those who had been insiders were now outsiders. It turned the world upside down![5]

I think in our day and time, we should follow Paul’s lead and extend his thinking to include the whole human race as God’s chosen people. If we’re honest with ourselves and each other, we would have to admit that we have taken Paul’s scandalous overturning of the system of privilege and discrimination and turned it into a whole new means of looking down on others. We have turned our Christian faith into an exclusive mark of superiority over all “non-believers.” But it would seem to me that the God who created all things and all people, the God who called Abraham and Sarah and their descendants for the benefit of all people, and the God who in Jesus Christ came into this world to redeem all people, is the God who has chosen to love the whole human family. Truly, in and because of Christ Jesus, we are all beloved “children of God”; we are all chosen to be “one in Christ Jesus.”[6]

When it comes to this enterprise called faith, just as much as in life and work and all other areas of human endeavor, we are all in this together—and that includes Muslim imams and Catholic nuns and Jewish rabbis and Buddhist priests and Hindu monks—along with people of every other stripe and variety. We can no longer look at others as “other;” we can no longer look down on “outsiders.” Rather when we look at another human being—any and every human being, we must see that person as one whom God has chosen to love every bit as much as you or me.[7] The Good news of the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ is that God has chosen us all without exception!

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[1] © 2010 Alan Brehm. A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 6/20/10 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX and at A Community of the Servant-Savior Presbyterian Church, Houston, TX.

[2] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 188-89, where he talks about the principle of “like cleaves to like” as an expression of the need for self-justification and self-corroboration.

[3] Cf. Moltmann, Church in the Power, 182-83, where he talks about this facet of racism in human society.

[4] See especially Romans 3:29-30; 10:12; cf. Charles B. Cousar, Galatians, 84 and Richard B. Hays, “The Letter to the Galatians,” The New Interpreter’s Bible XI:278. See further Elsie McKee, “Calvin and Praying for ‘All People Who Dwell on Earth’,” Interpretation (Apr 2009): 130-140, referring to a reference in Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 3.20.38.

[5] Cf. Cousar, Galatians, 81: “The new unity discovered in fellowship with [Christ] replaces the old lines of demarcation which included some and excluded others.” Cf. also Hays, “Galatians,” 278-79. See further Moltmann, Church in the Power, 106: “In the church of Christ the religious, economic and sexual privileges that obtain in the world around lose their force.” Cf. ibid., 292-93, where he speaks of the Christian community as “the sign, the instrument, and the breaking-in of the new order of all things” and therefore not as “the exclusive community of the saved,” but “the initial and inclusive” expression of “the world freed by the risen Christ.” Cf. Similarly, Hays, “Galatians,” 272: Paul sees the church as “an alternative community that prefigures the new creation in the midst of a world that continues to resist God’s justice.”

[6] Cf. Cousar, Galatians, 85: Christ’s coming as an “eschatological event” was “world-changing; it inaugurated the last times. Though not every individual has been aware of that event and its implications, the event is nevertheless true and impinges on the lives of all.” Cf. especially Karl Barth, in Church Dogmatics, 2.2, 115-17. See also ibid., 59-60, 101, 103-105.

[7] Cf. Moltmann, Church in the Power, 188: “The Christian fellowship in which the one accepts the other, just as he is himself accepted by Christ for the praise of God (Rom. 15.7), is the social form of justification by faith.” Cf. further ibid., 189: “For Christianity the basic principle of liberated humanity can only be the principle of the recognition of the other in his otherness, the recognition of the person who is different as a person.” See further Samuel K. Roberts, “Becoming the Neighbor: Virtue Theory and the Problem of Neighbor Identity,” Interpretation 62(2008):146. eLibrary. Web, 17 June 2010; E. Louise Williams, “The Broken Walls of Galatians 3:28,” in Word & World 20 (Summer 2000):227-31.

Helping Ourselves?

Helping Ourselves?

Gal 2:15-21; Lk 7:26-50[1]

Through the ages, people have been enslaved by a variety of means. Though simple brute force and fear have been widely used, I would suggest that ideas have been the most effective means of enslaving people. Sadly, faith has been one of the most powerful ideas to enslave people. In Paul’s day and time, many people believed that their lives were under the control of the planets or simply an impersonal and uncaring ultimate principle in this world. Though they were basically enslaved to this belief, they devised elaborate means to get around their “destiny.”

The good news of the gospel is that Christ has set us free from everything that would enslave us. For example, one of the key points Paul calls attention to regarding Jesus was that he had demonstrated those “powers” that enslaved so many people to be powerless (cf. Galatians 4:8-10; Colossians 2:15). Basically, the point of much of what Paul was trying to do in his ministry was to help people find freedom from everything that could make them feel trapped.

Although we have progressed in many ways beyond the average person living in Paul’s day, we still have ideas that can bind us. We don’t believe the planets rule our lives, but there are other “myths” that determine how we live. For example, the belief that loyalty to my own kind supersedes all other concerns. Or the idea that you have to step on others to climb the ladder of success. Or the notion that you only live once, so you have to make the most of it.

In our lesson from the letter to the Galatians for today, it seems to me that the “myth” that Paul was addressing is the idea that “God helps those who help themselves.” I think many people view the Christian faith from this perspective—as if it were some kind of barter system, where we exchange going to church and helping the less fortunate and giving our income so that God will in the end give us eternal life in paradise. It is the idea that we have to justify ourselves somehow—in this case what we do.[2]

But that really is not consistent with the way in which the Bible presents the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or the God and father of our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ. From beginning to end, God acts out of mercy and love and grace and compassion. Everything that God does on our behalf comes solely out of that steadfast love that endures forever; not as a reward for anything that even the most pious people do—not even Abraham!

Look at the story in our Gospel reading. Is Jesus’ encounter with the woman who washed his feet really an example of “God helps those who help themselves”? Of course Jesus does say to her, “your faith has saved you.” But would we really describe this as an instance where a woman “helped herself” to salvation? I think not! I think we would have to say that it was Jesus who saved her. But then that’s the way the Bible describes salvation from beginning to end—it’s wholly and completely something God does.

That’s what Paul is dealing with in our text from the letter to the Galatians for today. He’s actually addressing the idea that somehow your relationship with God is based on how well you live up to the stipulations of the Torah. Paul insists that the whole purpose of Jesus’ death on the cross was to set us free from that kind of thinking. He insists that the Gospel is about what God has done through Jesus, not what we do to “help ourselves.”[3]

This issue is actually the subject of a great deal of debate among biblical scholars and theologians. The question is whether we should translate passages like Gal. 2:16 to say that we are “justified by faith in Jesus” or “justified by the faithfulness of Jesus.”[4] It may seem like theological “trivial pursuit,” but there is actually more to it. The first version emphasizes that it is our faith that saves us. The alternate one, “justified by the faithfulness of Jesus,” emphasizes that it is what God has done through Jesus Christ that saves us. I think it is the latter, which is why I chose to read the lesson from the NET Bible.[5]

While we do not want to downplay the importance of responding in faith and obedience, we would not say that we are “helping ourselves” regarding salvation. In fact, Paul says that if our eternal destiny depends on anything we have to do, then “Christ died for nothing” (Gal. 2:21)! For Paul, for the biblical witness, and for the Reformed branch of the Christian faith, our eternal destiny is secured solely by what Jesus did, and nothing else. Our fate ultimately rests not on our faith, which can come and go like the tides ebb and flow, but on the faithfulness of our God and of our Savior Jesus the Christ![6]

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[1] © 2010 Alan Brehm. A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 6/13/10 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX and at A Community of the Servant-Savior Presbyterian Church, Houston, TX.

[2] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 186-87.

[3] Moltmann, Church in the Power, 187; cf. The Book of Order 2010-2011, G-3.300a., where we say that we are called to “tell the good news of salvation” that the “God who creates life, frees those in bondage, forgives sin, reconciles brokenness, [and] makes all things new, is still at work in the world,” placing the emphasis on salvation as something God does.

[4] For the former, see J. D. G. Dunn, Romans 1-8, 166-67; for the latter, Richard Longenecker, Galatians, 87-88. The issue revolves around the question whether Paul is speaking of the work of Christ as the “objective” basis for our salvation (i.e., “grace alone”), or the human response of faith as its “subjective” basis (i.e., “faith alone”). Cf. Hendrikus Berkhof, Christian Faith, 447-49. I like the way the language of the Heidelberg Catechism (question 61) balances “grace alone” and “faith alone”: “Q. 61. Why do you say that you are righteous by faith alone? A. Not because I please God by virtue of the worthiness of my faith, but because the satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ alone are my righteousness before God, and because I can accept it and make it mine in no other way than by faith alone.” Cf. also the Study Catechism (question 80): “Christ alone is my righteousness and my life; Christ is my only hope. Grace alone is the basis on which God has forgiven me in Christ. Faith alone is the means by which I receive Christ into my heart, and with him the forgiveness that makes me whole.”

[5] The KJV also adopts this translation for Gal 2:16!

[6] Cf. Karl Barth: Church Dogmatics 2.2.559, where he says that his faith in Christ “has its basis in the fact that He Himself, the Son of God, first believed for me.” Cf. also Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 116-120, 143-48, where he discusses the God who is revealed as the one who is faithful to the promise.