It Matters A Great Deal

January 23, 2018

It Matters A Great Deal

You were running the race so well. Who has held you back from following the truth?

Galatians 5:7

Read: Galatians 5: 7-12

The Apostle Paul is a master of mixed metaphors, as he so well demonstrated in this passage. He moved seamlessly from running a race, to cooking, to a courtroom setting, to a personal reference and closes with a reference to castration. Whew! The depth of Paul’s passion for Christ and for the church of Jesus Christ is clearly evident. There are times in Paul’s writings when he seems to exhaust a thesaurus as he proclaims the marvelous grace of God. There are times, like this passage, when it seems like his passion overwhelms his ability to clearly communicate. In today’s passage, Paul is clearly very angry.

I think it was in the writings of Fred Craddock that I read, in a country where everyone is a Christian, no one is a Christian. The truth observed in that statement is that it is possible to water down the Christian faith to a point where nothing really matters, and anything goes. Paul was so angry, so passionate because he believed it matters a great deal what we believe about Jesus. Paul told the Romans that just because God’s grace is so marvelous, we do not have a license to sin with impunity. (See Romans 6) Here, he is telling the Galatians that the grace of God launched a New Covenant relationship with humankind, and that it is grossly offensive to the price God paid to set us free to require people to take a step backwards into the Old Covenant, before moving forward with God in the New Covenant.

My Takeaway: The Christian experience of most Americans is pretty tame. We go along to get along. As you are reading about Paul’s passion to keep his friends in the Galatian churches on the right path with God, is there anything in your journey with Christ that invokes such passion? Should there be?

Sē’lah

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com.

Copyright © 2018 by Alex M. Knight

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

·        Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms has been published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

·        The second edition of  First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.

·        Meditations on The Story of My Life as told by Jesus Christ has been released as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007, 2013, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.