March 06, 2008 Galatians 2:16

03/06/2008

Galatians 2:16 (HCSB)

¹⁶yet we know that no one is justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ. And we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no human being will be justified.

Galatians 2:19 - 21 (HCSB)

¹⁹For through the law I have died to the law, that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; ²⁰and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. ²¹I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.

Sigmund Freud wrote of three parts of the human psyche; the id, ego, and super-ego. The id, is the driver of basic needs: food, shelter, and so forth. Ego is the part of our personality that recognizes those needs in others while super-ego extends into the realm of morality and civil duty. While I do not necessarily agree with all of Freud’s findings, I do agree that humans are born with levels of self- and social-consciousness, in addition to a spiritual level of consciousness. We all try to fulfill all these levels in different ways.

Paul wrote to the Galatians because even though he had been with them directly and preached to them, they were (as it were) eager to adopt any variant of the gospel that they came across. Paul was quite direct in pointing out that there is only one true gospel.

As Jews, many felt that the Law itself was their salvation—that is, the Law would justify them before God. But Paul points out that the Law is not what justifies, but rather Faith. Remember, the Jewish Law was very strict in many facets of the Jewish life. But we should not be so quick to point out their folly. Many church denominations today are thick with liturgy and ritual which may mislead one into believing that performing the acts of church is itself salvation.

Paul says something regarding the Law (and indeed about all liturgies) that would have been perplexing to a first century Jew: “To be crucified with Christ.”

To me, Paul is telling us that one must make a conscious decision regarding our Faith. That is, when we come to realize that the actions of church are merely reminders of what Faith can accomplish, we must make the deliberate decision to change our lives – or as Freud might put it, to extinguish the super-ego in favor of something new. Salvation does not come automatically, nor does it come undetected. We will all certainly experience a physical death, but to choose to “crucify” our moral and spiritual ideas is neither automatic, accidental, nor undetected. It is a conscious and deliberate decision of the individual that brings about a permanent change.

Are you merely going through the motions of church, or are you truly a new creation through Faith in Jesus?

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