Freedom from the law
Day 618, Tuesday, April 21
Galatians Chapters 1 – 2
The letter to the church at Galatia centers on the relationship between the law and grace and the relationships between law and freedom. To Paul, the law doesn’t give us a path to obedience through which we can find salvation; the law is part of the prison that keeps us in bondage.
In chapters 1 and 2 Paul declares his independence from the original apostles in Jerusalem. “As for those who were held in high esteem—whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not show favoritism—they added nothing to my message. On the contrary, they recognized that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been to the circumcised.”
Paul’s account of his contacts with the church at Jerusalem differs from the accounts in Acts. Where Acts emphasized the continuity between the original apostles and Paul, Galatians puts the focus on Paul having received his call directly from God. He also minimizes the influence the original apostles had over his preaching, “All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along.”
Paul speaks of a disagreement with Peter (Cephas) over what Paul considers to be Peter’s return to the law. “When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined them in this hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.”
Paul cautions against reconstructing the kind of law we have been freed from. “If I rebuild what I destroyed, then I really would be a lawbreaker. For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God.”

Tuesday meditation

Psalms 114:1-8
When Israel came out of Egypt, Jacob from a people of foreign tongue, Judah became God’s sanctuary, Israel his dominion.
The sea looked and fled, the Jordan turned back; the mountains leaped like rams, the hills like lambs.
Why was it, sea, that you fled? Why, Jordan, did you turn back? Why, mountains, did you leap like rams, you hills, like lambs?
Tremble, earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob, who turned the rock into a pool, the hard rock into springs of water.

Prayer focus
May we live in your freedom, Lord, and not return to the bondage you have saved us from.

-Rev. Mark Fleming