Buyer’s Remorse
Back in 1985, as I was mullet-ing my way through high school, hip hop stars RUN DMC released their King of Rock album, which included the song, “It’s Not Funny.” It opens upl ike this:
It’s not funny when you buy a TV off the street
You take it home, plug it in, BAM, you got beat
It’s not funny when you buy a house with all you got
And the day you go to see it it’s a vacant lot
It’s not funny! It’s not funny!
Maybe you’ve never been burned by a guy selling electronics out of his trunk, or an unscrupulous real estate agent selling you an empty lot to live in, but we have all had the experience of thinking that we had paid for one thing but received something else. For me, it was buying an autographed picture of legendary Bears linebacker Dick Butkus (yes, that’s his real name) and failing to see the fine print about it being a “copy” of his autograph on the photo. Live and learn. Buyer’s remorse is a real thing and it stinks.
That must have been how the first Christians in Galatia felt. The Apostle Paul showed up and told them about someone named Jesus who could change their lives if they would simply put their faith in him and His resurrection, no strings attached. However, soon after Paul left town, other Christians who were Jewish and still figuring out this new “Christianity” thing, showed up and told them the totally opposite. If they really wanted to be in a right relationship with God, they needed to follow Jewish practices. Those practices included observing the Sabbath rules, eating a kosher diet, and, for the guys, getting circumcised (that had to be a tough sell). This all caused the Galatian Christians to doubt the simple message Paul had given them, and they started down a different path of trying to work hard enough and be good enough to please God.
This is the whole reason Paul wrote a letter to the Galatians, which is now known as the book of Galatians in our Bibles. Paul wrote this letter to remind them of how they had received Jesus by simple faith but now they were trading that relationship for a rule book that no one could live up to. They wanted to live the Jesus + something life, and Paul told them that Jesus + nothing = everything.
A Little Background on Galatians and Paul
Many of the books that we have in the New Testament are letters. They were written by people like Paul, St. Peter, St. James, and others to churches or groups of Christians to tell them how to follow Jesus, to teach them solid doctrine, to encourage them, and to deal with problems or issues churches may be having. Galatians is one of those letters.
So, what is a Galatian?
Galatia was a territory or province in what is now modern-day Turkey. So the Galatians were not people in one particular city or town, they were people who lived in the territory of Galatia. They were mostly Gentiles (non-Jewish), although there most likely were some Jews among them.
On one of his missionary journeys, Paul traveled through Galatia and after hearing his message, there were groups of Christians in the towns and villages of Galatia. That was the audience Paul was writing to.
Speaking of Paul, who was he? Paul was a classically trained Jewish Pharisee (religious leader). He went by the name Saul (the Hebrew version of his name) and did not agree with Christianity. Okay - he didn’t just “not agree with Christianity,” he violently opposed it. He was responsible for Christians arrested, imprisoned, beaten, tortured, and in some cases, put to death. Then one day, as he was on the road to Damascus, Syria to persecute more Christians, Jesus revealed himself to Saul in a powerful way and Saul went from trying to destroy the church to becoming on of its most powerful voice in the Gentile (non-Jewish) world. Note: You can read his story in the book of Acts, chapters eight and nine.
So, back to Galatians: Paul went through Galatia, and people there received his message with joy. But after he was gone, other teachers showed up and started to load them down with rules and religion by telling them that in addition to trusting Jesus, they had to live like Jews. That’s what caused the problem and why Paul wrote the letter.
Choosing a Path
Paul was shocked that the Galatians would trade in their freedom in Christ for a religious system that they would never be able to live up to. Look at what Paul writes:
Yet we know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law. And we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be made right with God because of our faith in Christ, not because we have obeyed the law. For no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law.” – Galatians 2:16
Paul wrote the letter to tell the Galatians that there were two paths they could pursue: they could choose the path of freedom by trusting Jesus to make them right with God (justify them), or they could choose the path of religion — trusting themselves to live up to a code (the Jewish law), hoping that they could do enough of the right things to be justified to God. Paul’s input was that as a super religious Jewish person, he had tried the religious, self-justification path for most of his life, but could never be good enough. He always fell short. But, now he was trusting in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection to make him right with God, and he felt, for the first time in his life, free.
That was Then, This is Now
You might be thinking, “Yeah, but no one is trying to talk me into following the Jewish religious law or telling me I have to eat kosher.” While the particulars might be different, the principles of legalism still exist today. There are still people telling us that we need Jesus + something else. It might be Jesus + water baptism, Jesus + a certain version of the Bible or a certain denomination of church, or Jesus + anything else. For some people, if you don’t vote a certain way or follow a certain political party, you are on the fence with God. Usually, whatever they are into or already doing is the “secret sauce.”
That’s why we are looking into the book of Galatians at Journey Church this fall. It is easy for people who are not followers of Jesus or people who pursue God through another religion to feel that they need to rack up enough good deeds in their lives to outweigh the bad, but they’re never sure the scales are tipped in their favor.
One thing that all religions have in common is the need for you to do something or a lot of things to build that bridge to God. It’s up to you to do the work if you want to feel close to God. Even people who are Christians, those who have put their faith in Christ to make them right with God, feel the pull of earning it, of trying to do things to try and make God happy with them.
Here’s the really good news – the Bible says that God already loves us and likes us and wants us to know Him. That’s the unique message of Christianity. While other religions say you have to pursue God and build a bridge of good works to get to Him, Christianity alone says that God pursues us, and built that bridge through Jesus and His death and resurrection.
So I invite you to hang out with us on Sundays in October and November as we explore Paul’s letter to the Galatians and use it to experience the joy of a relationship with God instead of the dread of religion.