January 21, 2025: Tuesday Bible Study on Paul’s letter to the Galatians 2:15-21
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
It is so good to be back with you online for our Weekly Bible Studies. In my time away from this study, I have been celebrating with you the Christmas birth Narrative, Epiphany, and I have traveled to Michigan for the celebration of life for my older brother Rick. He passed into God's eternal care after suffering with kidney disease and diabetic issues that became life surviving issues after his exposure to agent orange in Vietnam in the late 1960s. In spite of his really good health and exercise regimen, he was unable to survive its effects on his life. I am back now and really looking forward to our celebration this Saturday of the 75th anniversary of American Ev. Lutheran Church (of Pima County). We have sold tickets for the lunch and door prize drawings, and you can come, but it is not possible to share the meal from Noon to 1PM at this time. Our caterer has already been given the total reservations for the meal. But there will be a special musician with us until 2PM, a clown/face painter/balloon artist and the drawings for door prizes. You may certainly join us for these parts of the afternoon. On Sunday, our Bell Choir will open our service with a special festival music arrangement. For members, please remember that we have our annual congregational meeting starting at 8:30AM on February 2. Bring food to share by 8AM. On that day we will not have a noon carry-in dinner due to the carry-in brunch before the annual meeting.
Today we move forward in our study of Galatians. We are in chapter 2, verses 15-21.
In this passage it becomes obvious that there are definitely issues between the Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians with regards to which community holds a position of primacy in the early church. This is definitely a very difficult issue, which requires a view of the nature of each community's relationship with Christ, and what that means in terms of who gets to come first. Let's be honest, there has always been this kind of one-up-man-ship with regard to who bears the right to lead and guide the Body of Christ, the Church. We are still faced with it today. It became obvious at my brother’s Catholic funeral, as were told that unless we were members of the Catholic Church, we would not be offered the Sacrament. Today, the Roman Church, even after decades of dialogs with Lutherans, still claims its primacy above all other churches. I am telling you now that Paul undoes all of that kind of thinking in this passage from Galatians. Right at the beginning of this passage Paul addresses this. We can all acknowledge the historic problems in the Catholic hierarchy, from claiming the right to judge others, to the division of the Papacy, with a pope in France, and another in Italy at the same time, as well as, the manipulation of Christ's children to make money to create the great art of the Vatican and the cathedrals in the middle centuries of the Common Era. Martin Luther utilized Paul's writings and thinking as the foundations of his suggested reforms of the Catholic Church, and as we know, his life became the target of imprisonment and death if those Catholic authorities had been able to find him as he was being protected by the German princes. Paul says that though the Jewish Christians might feel their right to superiority in the Church, it was not their right. Instead, the only person who was truly in a position of righteousness before God was Christ by the Father's Grace. He was the only one to be in that position of fulfilling the Law of God, and He did so on behalf of all of God's children. No one has the right to claim individual primacy except Christ, and through Him, we who believe in Him as our Lord and Savior, receive the benefit of His perfection and subsequent justification. We all come before God Justified by Grace through Faith. It is the Christ who lives in, with, and around us, who brings us into the fullness of God's Grace, Forgiveness, Life, and Salvation.
One of the issues here is that we all need to be willing to admit that we become new, only through our Savior. It is the Christ in us who justifies us before God. There is a story about Margaret Thatcher, a historied prime minister of England from years ago. She once visited a care home for the aged in her country, and in one room she held the hand of a much older woman, and said to her, "Do you know Who I am?" The woman's reply was, "No, I don't know who you are, but if you ask the nurse, she will be able to tell you". In our secular lives we have an identity that the world generally knows us by, but when we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior, He becomes the "NEW" that is in us and causes us to transform by the power of His Spirit. That transition is a lifelong process, where all who accept Christ from the time of their Baptism, their Confirmation, from the Word of God, and having their faith encouraged and strengthened by their brothers and sisters in Christ in the Church, come to live new lives. My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, this is you and me! God's true Israel exists only in one person. That person is Jesus Christ. It is through Him that we too become the true Israel of God, and in that, are also full participants in the elect of God, justified by Christ's sacrifice when He paid the price for our sins on the Cross. This takes us one more step, there is to be no privilege in sharing the meal at the altar. It is to be an open and welcoming meal where all who accept Christ as their Lord and Savior are called to receive His Body and Blood in the bread and wine of Holy Communion. We must always realize that our equality is in Christ and by Christ!
God bless you today and always, and Happy Anniversary American!
With Christ Love, Pastor Kim
Comments