From Bumper Cars to Carnival Swings

Paul Taylor preaches a seven week series from September 7 through October 26 on the book of Galatians.

Being born again as a follower of Christ means becoming part of the new family that He has created. But learning to love people in a family can be really difficult. One thing that complicates matters is how different each person is. It's hard to love someone who is really different from you. That's what the young churches of Galatia were experiencing shortly after becoming Christians. In particular, it was challenging for the Jewish believers to get along with the Gentile believers. To make this easier, some people suggested that Gentiles had to be circumcised. That way, they would be just like the Jews and everybody could get along much better. But Paul wrote a letter to these churches trying to convince them not to fall for this. He was clear: the gospel message is about the formation of a new family whose members are different from each other in remarkable ways, and yet are still able to love each other deeply because of their relationship with God through Christ. We have a lot to learn today from Galatians about how to love each other as a family, even when people seem so different and hard to love.

This Week

Good Fences Make Bad Neighbors

Galatians 3:1-4:31

In this large section, Paul attempts to show how faith in Christ has superseded allegiance to the Law as the thing that defines the people of God. His point is that the Law is a fence: it protected people from God and from each other. It helped God's people know when they were failing God, but it didn't guide them into knowing how to love God or love each other. The Law is more concerned with displeasing God than pleasing Him. Through Christ, we have been freed from identifying ourselves in this way and can start to focus on loving God and loving each other. But we are much more comfortable with fences and always have a tendency to return to a fence mentality even though Christ has freed us from that.