Luke 7
Faith of the Roman captain, that merely the words of Jesus would heal his servant, that the illness would simply follow Jesus' orders and be gone. Jesus commends his trust, and the servant is healed.
Compassionate Jesus: When Jesus saw her, his heart broke. He resuscitates her son. Quietly worshipful, then noisily grateful. "God is back, looking to the needs of his people!"
John the Baptist, in prison, doesn't "get" Jesus. John must have been looking for the conquering Messiah. What happens? "The blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the wretched of the earth have God's salvation hospitality extended to them." Is this what you were expecting?
What did you expect when you saw John? A messenger from God.
"No one in history surpasses John the Baptizer, but in the kingdom he prepared you for, the lowliest person is ahead of him. The ordinary and disreputable people who heard John, by being baptized by him into the kingdom, are the clearest evidence; the Pharisees and religious officials would have nothing to do with such a baptism, wouldn't think of giving up their place in line to their inferiors." (Foreshadows Jesus' later question to John and James who are jockeying for position in the kingdom of God--can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized in the baptism I am baptized?).
Anointing Jesus' feet at a Pharisee's house. Surprising she could get in the door. "She was forgiven many, many sins, and so is so very, very grateful. If the forgiveness is minimal, the gratitude is minimal." How much of faith, then, is perception of sin? Need for God? "I forgive your sins; your faith has saved you; go in peace."
Galatians 1-3
From Peterson's introduction to Galatians: "When men and women get their hands on religion, one of the first things they often do is turn it into an instrument for controlling others, either putting or keeping them 'in their place.'" It's a long history, and no doubt reason many shun religion. Paul learned that God was not an impersonal force to be used to make people behave in certain prescribed ways, but a personal Savior who set us free to live a free life. God did not coerce us from without, but set us free from within. Paul's letter to Galatians is set several years after he was there starting churches. Some old school folks came in and bound people up with rules and law. Paul writes to help the Galatians recover the original freedom they had received in Christ.
Authority to speak comes from Jesus. In the story of freedom, God is always the subject; humans are always the object. If we're to live free, it's because of God's action, not our will or disposition or politics or intelligence. Something is done to us before we act; we are acted upon by God. Life isn't naturally produced for us; it's supernaturally provided for us.
Leaders among you are turning the message of Christ on its head. The message I gave was good and true and from God. Paul's history, and the change in his understanding. He did not stay the same...in fact, he'd been where these recent preachers/visitors had been, until he met Christ, who set him free. Paul's hiatus in Arabia for solitary retreat to explore the meaning of God's love for him. We should all have an Arabia time and place. Then he began his ministry. "That man who once persecuted us is now preaching the very message he used to try to destroy!"
Spies wanted to reduce our freedom to servitude. Assigned to ministry to the non-Jews, while James, Peter and John continued to reach to the Jews. And remember the poor. Preach the good news and remember the poor. But we can do such spiritual gymnastics to decide who exactly is poor.
Peter's fear of conservative Jewish group. Had tasted freedom, but when they came round, Peter tightened back up to the hard law. He re-shifted the tide toward legalism. Paul called Peter's shape-shifting out.
"We Jews know that we have no advantage of birth over 'non-Jewish sinners.' We know very well that we are not set right with God by rulekeeping but only through personal faith in Jesus Christ. How do we know? We tried it-and we had the best system of rules the world has ever seen! Convinced that no human being can please God by self-improvement, we believed in Jesus as Messiah so that we might be set right before God by trusting in the Messiah, not by trying to be good."
"I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God but it didn't work. So I quit being a law man to be God's man. My ego is no longer central; no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I'm no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me."
"If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily."
Rule-keeping is because someone else is looking, God or someone else. It's living by performance and show. And it imprisons us. The gospel begins with acceptance, then, with the rush of freedom into the soul that acceptance brings, the spiritual, moral, responsible life begins.
Trust in Christ, not in the law. How did your new life begin? Was it by working your head off to please God? Or was it by responding to God's Message to you?
"Does the God who lavishly provides you with his own presence, his own Holy Spirit, working these things in your lives you could never do for yourselves, do he do these things because of your strenuous moral striving or because you trust God to do them in you?" (3:5-6)
Persons who put their trust in Christ are children of faith. Those who live by faith are blessed along with Abraham who trusted God and was promised to be a father through whom all nations would be blessed.
"Utterly cursed is every person who fails to carry out every detail written in the book of the law." Impossibility of carrying out such a moral program. We live in right relationship with God by embracing what God arranges for us.
Habakkuk: "The person who believes God, is set right by God-and that's the real life." Rule keeping doesn't mean living by faith, but increases rule keeping.
We are all able to receive God's life, God's Spirit, in and with us by believing--just the way Abraham received it.
"The purpose of the law was to keep a sinful people in the way of salvation until Christ, the descendant, came, inheriting the promises and distributing them to us. Through the line of Abraham and Moses.
"Until the time when we were mature enough to respond freely in faith to the living God, we were carefully surrounded and protected by the Mosaic law." The law was our tutor, until Christ came. The law delivered us to the place of faith, to Christ. And having delivered us, its job is done.
"By faith in Christ you are in direct relationship with God. Your baptism in Christ wasn't just washing you up for a fresh start. It involved dressing you in Christ's life, the fulfillment of God's original promise. "
"In Christ's family there can be no division into Jew and non-Jew, slave and free, male and female. Among us you are all equal. That is, we are all in a common relationship with Jesus Christ." Galatians 3:28
Why don't we hear much about this freedom side of Paul? It seems what's most "played" about Paul is rule and account keeping. Naturally he had solid knowledge of the law; he was a Pharisee, and a leader of them at that. But he saw a new way. It seems we so often make Paul the arbiter for us, rather than the one to whom he points, Jesus. I do think in many ways, Paul has gotten a bad rap. He was battling uphill against culture, which is the place the gospel so often finds itself. Preach the good news and help the poor. The two big instructions. And don't bind people up; break them free!
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