Atlanta Westside Presbyterian Church
Your Stuff
Your Body
The Marks of Jesus
Divine Timing
Wise Love
Your Fight for Fruit
The Mother of All Freedom
A Shepherd's Tone
Do You Know Him?
por Walter Henegar
Christians should enjoy stuff more than anyone else in the world, because Jesus shows us the heart of the One who made it all. At the same time, we should distrust stuff more than anyone else, because Jesus showed us what our hearts are capable of doing with it. We enjoy stuff by receiving it as an undeserved gift from the God who made it and by sharing it with others who don’t deserve it, either. We distrust stuff by remembering that it will always fail us and deceive us and divide us in this world, but it will last forever in the next one, so we can work actively either to do without it or give it away now.
Your body is very good because God made it, Jesus has one, and the Holy Spirit lives there. It’s easy for us to live under a spiritualized worldview—like it’s only the spiritual things that are really good and important to God. But since he is the Good Creator, all of creation, all of this physical stuff, is infused with his goodness. Even though that goodness is damaged by sin, God still cares about his creation and is in the process of redeeming it for himself. When he himself took on a body as the God-Man, Jesus of Nazareth, it not only amps up the volume of his Genesis 1:31 declaration that creation is “very good”, it accelerated that process of redeeming the whole world. One day, at Jesus’ second coming, this whole universe will be resurrected, and God’s people will have their bodies glorified as they enjoy him in the new creation for all eternity.
What distinguishes the true Gospel from false gospels, and faithful messengers from false prophets, is the cross of Jesus. Just as Paul bears the “marks of Jesus” (v. 17) in the scars on his physical body, so Christians today ought to bear evidence of the death-and-resurrection pattern in our lives. Two ways to uncover the real patterns in our lives are to ask: Whose opinions matter most to us? and What do we want for other people? When we have been “crucified to the world” and vice-versa (v. 14), we are free to value Jesus’ opinion of us over all others, and to serve other people as works-in-progress and evidence of Jesus’ new creation.
Believers saved by grace through faith in Jesus have the power of the Holy Spirit to help us grow in actively bearing each others’ burdens. Because God has ordered the world so that we generally “reap what we sow,” he challenges us in at least three specific ways:1. You should make a habit of helping people carry their burdens, no matter who they are or what they believe, but the category of people whose burdens you should carry most are fellow Christians. 2. If you are not giving at least some of your time and some of your money to share the burdens of the church where you worship, you are sinning against God, and this will yield negative effects in your life.3. If you are helping to bear the burdens of your fellow Christians and also non-Christians, but you’re so tired that every day you dream of throwing up your hands and running away – you should not give up, because God will respond to your sacrifice with eternal blessings. These results are only possible because God is living and active in the world, ruling over the results of our lives according to his own wise and gracious timing.
Christians justified by faith in Jesus are no longer under the burden of law-keeping, but we are called to fulfill the “law of Christ” – that is, to love one another the way Jesus loves us. To do this, we must recognize the difference between a burden (v. 2) and a load (v. 4). A burden is too heavy to carry alone, whereas a load is a reasonable personal responsibility that must be carried alone. Loving wisely begins by soberly assessing our own weaknesses and vulnerability to temptation. This humble self-awareness teaches us to carry our own load, and to refuse to carry the load of others. The same humility trains us also to share our burdens with others, and to help bear their burdens, too. Love like this is only possible because Jesus has fulfilled the law for us, and has empowered us with his own Holy Spirit living within us.
The Christian life is a fight between the desires of what Paul calls the “flesh,” or the sinful nature, and the desires of the Spirit. The desires of the flesh automatically produce ugly “works,” like fungus, that dominate and divide us. The desires of the Spirit, on the other hand, draw out beautiful fruits of character that pull people together in relationship. If you are a Christian, the Spirit in you is “the real you,” and your flesh is a persistent but mortally wounded foe. Jesus has already nailed your sin to his cross; now he invites you to actively crucify your flesh, while actively working to keep in step with the Spirit.
Faith in Jesus rewrites our family tree, making spiritual freedom not only our inheritance but our birthright. Apparently the Judaizing Christians in Galatia were claiming to be the “real deal” because they descended from Abraham and Sarah. Actually, says Paul, those who try to earn God’s favor by keeping the law are not children of the free woman (Sarah), but of the slave woman (Hagar). As a result, even first-century Jerusalem had become a center of spiritual slavery! The Gospel, however, grafts everyone who believes into the true family of God. This means our spiritual family is way cooler than we think. It also helps explain why we don’t quite fit with the world around us: because both religious and irreligious people operate from a default posture of works that is hostile to the Gospel of grace.
In this selected passage, we get a glimpse into the heart of a shepherd. Paul is perplexed about the Galatians because he wants them to believe and walk in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He pleads with them to follow his example by reminding them of their mutual love and to know his jealousy for them. Even though his tone is firm, a shepherd’s tone reflects the Father’s jealous heart for us.
If you want freedom and rest, you will live in slavery; but if wanting God is the center of your life, you will find freedom and rest and more than you can imagine.
Trying to keep the law is like being a slave, but living by faith in Jesus is like inheriting a fortune. Jesus bought this inheritance for us by crawling under the yoke of the law and climbing onto the cross to redeem us. Forgiveness is just the beginning of the inheritance, which includes the Holy Spirit’s assurance that we belong to him, the privilege of participation in the “family business,”and above all, the intimate access of calling God Abba! Father! Knowing we are the beloved “sons” and daughters in the hands of a God this wise helps us trust him as we wait to receive our full inheritance: seeing him face to face in a perfectly healed world, and living together with him forever.