There is never a moment in your life that you have outgrown the need for Jesus. There is no point that you need less of Him, His blood or His presence. You, we, all of us NEED Jesus at all times for the rest of this time and eternity to come.
"You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion is not from him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view, and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is. But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been removed. I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves!
Have there ever been seasons in your life where things were going super great and all of a sudden aren't? Can you remember a time that you felt like your relationship with God and pursuit of Him was exiting and amazing only to realize you've fallen back into old habits and lifestyles? Have you ever had deep-rooted beliefs or convictions that you changed because of something you heard or were taught? I can say yes to all of these. Some of my experiences saying "yes" brought me closer to Jesus, some of them I can tell you are the exact places I started to veer off the path God had for my life. The race is not an easy one.
The idea that our lives are each a race is a metaphor used a handful of times in the bible. There are so many cool roads we could go down exploring this choice of word-picture, but for today I want to hang out on something Paul says that doesn't actually relate- yet, he chose to say:
"You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth?"
Have you ever stopped to think why not running well, whether that's lacking in endurance or perseverance or training, that the reason was due to a hinderance in obeying the truth?
I wondered.
In real life, if you are a runner and you stop running for any reason, that lack of pattern gives space to lose endurance. I am a runner and have experienced that phenomenon after having my children. The months that I have "sat out" from running because of taking care of infants later required me to take time to build towards the capacity I had before giving birth. Why? Because running requires consistency to maintain and increase capacity.
The race that we call life, I'd like to suggest, requires some of the same things. If truth is important to our endurance and obeying is also important, then knowing what truth is so that we are able to recognize and follow the Lord is of untmost importance to maintain what is needed to run our race. Afterall, we have an enemy that would love to persuade any of us into his counterfeit truth and off the path rather than us remaining in the presence of TRUTH, himself. How do we remain in the race? Perhaps, not taking your eyes off of the leader...
GET THIS:
Obeying the truth is not following rules, Obeying THE TRUTH is following Jesus.
Running the race gets done as long as we are obeying and following Jesus. He is our perfect leader. As we have been studying Galatians, Paul has made it clear that our relationship with God through Jesus produces this obedience--not from a religious source, but a RELATIONAL one. There is no transactional nature. His grace is sufficient and, therefore, I follow Him. Again, yes, this is a process. The process does not come without bumps, however. In this passage, I believe we can learn from Paul how to recognize when we've compromised the Gospel in our lives and how to keep from doing it.
Who hindered you from following Jesus? Who luered you back into bondage? That's Paul's question.
Who has hindered us from following Jesus at any point in our lives? Let me be clear, I know that our battle is not with one another. It is against the enemy and all entities on his side. Yet, the opportunities to compromise or adopt ideas, beliefs, religions, etc are generally given through people. If you don't know Jesus, if you're not pursing relationship with Him- daily- it is easy to become persuaded away from truth persuaded away from Him.
What IS truth?
As I have stated previous, truth is not a concept- Truth IS a person. When you recognize that Jesus said "I am the way, the truth and the life". There is no shift or change in truth when truth is fully embodied by Jesus. Truth is not conceptual or rational- Jesus IS truth.
What happens when we start to define truth and follow it outside of who Jesus is?
Our world has done this in one of the most destructive ways by suggesting that Love is something it is not. There is an attempt to redefine love and persuade people to agree that if God is love than love is God. That, to love knows no bounds and covers everything without changing anything. Yes, God IS love, but it is not a transposable truth. Love is NOT God. That is idolatrous. That notion now becomes the shiny object that leads you from running ahead to going off the path and entertaining things that are now not Jesus, but worldly persuasions and perversions of the ONE Truth. It's also fascinating that when we talk about this, anything not rooted in Jesus begins to bristle against the notion that it isn't true.
What do I mean?
It makes people SO uncomfortable to talk about these kinds of things because it suggests there is actually only one way and everything else is wrong- that there's actually a lot of people that have it wrong rather than a lot of people having their own "right way". You may have it wrong. That's uncomfortable, right? Maybe. Maybe the problem isn't that anyone is potentially wrong, but that we've created a society that refuses to change. A society that refuses to recognize where it is wrong. You know, it's actually a part of the design that creation recognizes where God is needed. This world belongs to a good God and actually groans to be restored to Him.The crazy thing is that Jesus welcomes that awareness to change not with shame or guilt, but with freedom. I'd also suggest that where you see the obstinate mentalities opposed to recgonizing error in society are the exact places that are warring against the thought "IF you are wrong about this, than you are hosed."- inset any number of adjectives: dead, screwed, going no where, an idiot, etc. ALLLL of these suggestions in the face of recognizing the opportunity to change ARE the enemy.
It's all real. Whether you believe it or not- your convictions don't change reality. There's one person in existence that is banking on you refusing to change from anything that isn't rooted IN TRUTH.
Yet, someone's voice is louder...
this persuasion is not from the one who calls you
Not "called", calls.
God never stops directing us. Even when the enemy attempts to persuade us, the voice of Truth remains constant and consistent. It is up to us to recognize Him and to remain aware of His voice. Paul was directed back to Galatia to call these people to ditch the attempt of the enemy to derail them and come back to Jesus (that's the definition of repentance, ya'll). We have the privilege of opening up our Bible's, meeting with God, pursuing the Lord and redirecting our attention back to Him when we're aware of leaving the path....that is God's desire- to always bring us back to Him, sometimes it's an 'inch', sometimes it's a 'mile' worth of correcting the race- but He's always in it to restore, redeem and increase. One of our biggest hurdles is choosing to recognize when we've gone astray instead of taking offense ESPECIALLY if God uses someone in our life to tell us so.
How many of us truly listen to another when it is a warning or appeal to our lives being inconsistent with the Gospel? How many of us are even surrounded by people that know and love the Lord to a degree that they are able to recognize and speak into our lives in this way?
Let me be clear, and I am receiving this for myself, any place- big or small- that we are persuaded away from the Truth, I pray that we have the humility and courage to respond with repentance when presented with the evidence of our compromise.
a little leaven leavens the whole lump
There are plenty of trivial things in life we make agreement with that become stepping stones to greater deception- it truly matters what you put your faith into. Do not be misled by thinking that any "small" deviation from the Gospel will not pollute the entire Truth. God says of Himself "I am the Lord and I do not change", Malachi 3:6. What we don't understand or don't like, even if we build theologies and churches and passion around it- DOES NOT change God. What it does do is lead us further and further away from Him.
Again, there is someone who would love nothing more than to separate you from God. If there's only one way to be connected to Him- wouldn't it make sense that the enemy would attempt to persuade you from that connection point?
The last part of this passage is a cry from a "father's heart". I'm a mom to two young adults. I understand the tension and frustration of teaching your children something only to watch them stumble and fall away from in their own process of learning. Even more infuriating- watching this happen from the influence of someone else. Paul's heart cry becomes a petition to the faithfulness of God. He recognizes that God's will is that none of those He calls to Himself are lost and that any attempt of the enemy is futile in the face of faith.
I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view, and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is. But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been removed. I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves!
You see, confidence is IN Jesus. That is the place of unwavering and stable belief. We can learn a lot from Paul in this letter in our own leadership. Even in our best attempts to disciple and teach people about Jesus, ultimately, each individual will have the freedom to make their own choices and decisions in their pursuit of Him. It is completely unrealistic to suppose that any person's relational journey with God won't be tested or attacked, we're all warned of this! However, when our place is "leader" or "teacher" in another's life, what is important is our integrity, demonstration and willingness to redirect when they go off the rails. Not to judge, but to call a spade a spade. The obvious deflection from the freedom of the Gospel here is made clear in Paul's own persecution. He reminds them that the scandalous grace of the cross is EXACTLY what these people are undermining. Basically, if you don't see the error in circumcision look at the fact that they are pushing circumcision as a means of salvation when that's exactly what the cross got rid of and exactly why they're mad at me!
Often times things that are suggested to us may not appear to be inherently bad. Circumcision had been an observed tradition for the Jewish people for centuries. It is easy to persuade anyone into something that is common and widely practiced- making things normal (think back to the blog about circumcision) makes it way easier for human beings to accept (nowadays, you may hear the word "biological" as if normal becomes something that is built into you). Any small (or large) suggested edit to God, His will or His ways or His Gospel will lead you the wrong direction and keep you from getting to know Him in the fulness that He has made available. I'm not wrong about this. You can't make something true just by declaring it is truth. Truth is a person who does not change. YOU, however, were made to CHANGE by becoming more and more like HIM. The pieces and places in our lives and bodies and minds that are not aligned with God's design don't make us bad people, they reveal our need for Jesus SO THAT we can be in God's presence...I want that, don't you? I not only get to be seen perfectly by God in Jesus, I get the opportunity to actually become that as well!
sigh.
And yet, we look at the world around us. The issues at hand reveal the very real attempt to persuade anyone away from Jesus and who He says He is. His glory and holiness made common and legendary instead of something to be revered and feared. The ease to which leaders and churches declare new stances and theological beliefs is, quite frankly, terrifying to me.
I second Paul's response to the people so easily swaying back into captivity, maybe not in the same crude manner, but I get it.
In case you didn't know, Paul suggested that the one leading these folks astray should just go ahead and chop their own youknowwhat off. Yep, that's in the Bible.
Man, we need Jesus.
We NEED Him. We need to love scripture and believe He's present and real and in desire of relationship. We need Him to teach us truth and teach us how to teach truth. We need Him to stay grounded and undistracted. We need Him for patience and kindness and endurance. We need His faith. We need His love.
Thankfully, His plan was always that we would have access to it with Him.
Let us fix our eyes on Jesus- not our version of Him, but Who HE says He is.
And, yes, that means we need to be pursuing Him- IN the scriptures, IN relationship, IN community....WE NEED JESUS and we NEED to actually act on this.
Keep running....
Amen.
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