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Chapter Eleven

MAJOR MESSAGE FROM GALATIANS

Galatians 1

II Corinthians 4:6 makes it clear that the creation is far less starkly majestic than that other eternal Light, that is behind it, the Fashioner who fashioned the universe and both created and took the form of man. This He did,  not to live his life in it, but to redeem the utterly humiliated race through faith, humbling Himself to the doubly low level both of taking the form of a creature, and dying to redeem the remnant, both of every believing sinner, and of the race.

At His word spoken the universe came to be, and to man in this universe came for those rescued, the law of the Spirit of life (Romans 8:2) in Christ Jesus, the holy and empowered way for a new creation  (II Cor. 5:17ff.). This law of life is more fixed than the stars. It is how life moves when Christ rules it, first re-creating it in the sinner, then being Lord for it. Thus man in Christ is a double creation, first in the image of God and then in the rescue with pardon that brings peace. The creation attests His majesty and power; the Gospel His mercy and peace.

THIS Gospel, Paul indicates in Galatians 1, is intractable truth, in nothing taught by man or inculcated from culture, but supernatural in source and hence immutable as it is beautiful, as intransigent as it is intractable, as ineradicable as God is, and as open in its loving offer to the race, as was His heart to it in the first place (Col. 1:19ff.). This is a counsel of the Lord, the King's Counsel. Neither toy nor with your own power or probing, seek to deploy the Gospel. Transmit it chastely, in purity,  for man shall live by every word which proceeds out of the mouth of God, and to contort His mouth to gain further export is only an indirect parallel to the crucifixion in the first place. This does not hurt the body of Christ now resurrected; but it has if it were possible, a greater grief. It distorts the purpose of His mission.

In Galatians 1 then, we learn that the Gospel is of supernatural origin, authority and is indefeasible. Paul is not an agent to bargain between God and man, and if He were He would be a fraud. Not the servant of man to God but of God to man, is he, and his integrity rests in this point. NO representation to God will  alter the Gospel.

 

Galatians 3

The way things work in the Spirit of life (Romans 8:2), as from the first in the creation, is NOT by what man does - man, who had to wait so much as to exist, through the creative word from the Lord. Instead, it is by what God has done, so making available to man the NEW creation, with the power of God to bring it in each soul, to birth, and for each reborn soul, as a life-support and inspiring incentive from the inventive heart of the Lord. DID YOUR WORKS create the miracles of your conversion and the divine actions ? asks Paul. Born in supernatural power, do you continue in human contrivance ? "Having begun in the Spirit are you now being made  perfect by the flesh ?" No, a product of divine pardon and power, as such you proceed in, with and through that very same dynamic. Your restoration is by and for God, not to a pageant of arrogant, human dynamic. Keeping the moral law is a by-product of eternal life, not an addition to its ground.

Galatians 5

The message moves to continuing life in liberty (cf. II Cor. 5:17). "Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free." Avoid legal entanglements as a source, basis or spring of your salvation.  Elements of law save no one, for all have sinned, and the debt remains. It is a matter of good and bad fruit now: of conformity to the way of life as God has given it to man, in the post-symbolic era. Bad trees have bad fruit, and these have bad root, being ungrounded in God. The fruit of the "flesh", the independently considered life of man, based in his own efforts as criterion and desire, and such things: these will not inherit the kingdom which they oppose in heart, in mind and in spirit. But the fruit of the Spirit is in things spiritual.

The relevant trees do not need to produce a new root system, but as far as flesh is concerned, the mental or the spirited or the physical, so far from the flourish of libido and aggrandisement, to follow the pattern of sound words in the power and grace of the Spirit of God. There is a deep abiding, as one acts in a loving faithfulness.  What matters in Christian life is "faith working through love"  (Galatians 5:6).

The law of the Spirit of life is not for salvation, but IN IT, and its depth is astonishing, coming from the very heart of God to the converted soul, and the uplifted face of seeking man, re-found in and through the Gospel. In this, you MORTIFY the flesh, and so not GLORIFY IT! (Romans 8:6-20). "To be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." In other words, do not try to make the road; just walk on it. "Walk in the Spirit!," Gal. 5:16.

 There is the King's Counsel, who is and shall be called, Counsellor, for His name itself, it is Wonderful, that of the Mighty God.