By David ReayTuesday 18 Oct 2022LifeWords DevotionalsDevotionsReading Time: 2 minutes
Oh, foolish Galatians! Who has cast an evil spell on you? For the meaning of Jesus Christ’s death was made as clear to you as if you had seen a picture of his death on the cross. 2 Let me ask you this one question: Did you receive the Holy Spirit by obeying the law of Moses? Of course not! You received the Spirit because you believed the message you heard about Christ. 3 How foolish can you be? After starting your Christian lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort? (NLT)
The people of Galatia were Paul’s problem children. It seems they quickly got sidetracked from the good news of getting right with God through grace by faith. They reverted to trying to get into God’s good books by observing Jewish rituals and by thinking that keeping God’s commands would earn them God’s favour. Paul reminds them that Jesus died because none of that worked. If trying a bit harder was all that was needed for salvation, then Jesus’ death would not have been necessary. As it was, he had to bear the load of our failures on himself and set us free from having to perfectly obey God ourselves.
But there is another aspect to this passage worth considering. Think how Paul must have felt about these people. He has worked hard to persuade them of the truth and what do they do? Turn their back on it and embrace a lie. He suggests it is the work of the evil one who is the author of all lies. Whoever is behind their backsliding, it must be disappointing to Paul to see people he loves go astray.
People do disappoint us. We think we have helped them get on track and then they go off the track. Those of us who want to get involved in pointing people in the right direction must be ready to see those people go in the wrong direction. It won’t happen all the time, and sometimes they will be put right again. But in the meantime, we have to realise people are fallible. Humans are all too human.
Blessings
David