Tag: Galatians

Scripture Focus: Galatians 5.6-9
6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. 

7 You were running a good race. Who cut in on you to keep you from obeying the truth? 8 That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. 9 “A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.”

Reflection: Bad Yeast and Good Yeast
By John Tillman

Paul repeats this line, “A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough” in 1 Corinthians. (1 Corinthians 5.6-7) In Corinthians, Paul was concerned that a case of sexual immorality would spread and damage the reputation of the church. Here, Paul was concerned that the Galatians were being misled to follow strict Jewish laws.

So which is it, Paul? Does “yeast” lead to breaking God’s law or to following God’s law? If one law from scripture is binding, Paul, why do you say people don’t have to follow them all?

In the majority of scripture, yeast is treated like a corrupting agent. Nearly every mention is about keeping yeast out of spaces, places, and food that is holy. This goes back to the establishment of Passover. Making bread without yeast in that meal symbolized the haste with which the Israelites were to leave Egypt. (Exodus 12.34-39) All the ceremonial bread used in worshiping the Lord in the Tabernacle was to be made without yeast because it was looking back to that moment.

Yeast was removed from Jewish communities during Passover because just a little could make an entire batch of bread unusable. Even today, on the night before Passover, Jewish families will search through the house for crumbs of leavened bread, hidden by parents for children to find. These will be thrown out or burned.

Paul, and Jesus, were concerned about the yeast of false teaching and sin. They wanted it exposed and thrown out. Jesus warned about this in Mark, Matthew, and Luke. (Mark 8:14-21; Matthew 16.5-12; Luke 12.1-2) In Luke, Jesus specified yeast as the sin of hypocrisy and stressed that hidden things would be exposed. However, Jesus also compared the Kingdom of God to yeast spreading through a large batch of dough. (Luke 13.18-21)

So, there is good yeast which is the gospel the Galatians risked losing. And there is bad yeast, including pride, self-righteousness, hypocrisy, sexual immorality, and other sins.

We need to seek out and throw out bad yeast. This yeast puffs us up with pride which could lead to self-righteous-rule-enforcing or self-righteous-rule-breaking. Sinful yeast makes us unclean and infects everything we touch.  

We need gospel yeast. This yeast works through our whole lives, changing the flavor of our faith and filling us with pockets of God’s Spirit. Serve the world with gospel yeast. This yeast is the yeast that counts: “faith expressing itself in love.” (Galatians 5.6)

Share the gospel. It is good yeast.


Divine Hours Prayer: The Call to Prayer
Let my mouth be full of your praise and your glory all the day long. — Psalm 71.8

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.


Today’s Readings
Numbers 16 (Listen 6:59)
Galatians 5 (Listen 3:22)

Read more about The Law that leads to Grace
Thank you, God, for grace through faith that cannot be downgraded and a Law designed to lead us to grace.

The Law that leads to Grace :: Guided Prayer

Read more about Of Grace and Thorns
Paul’s thorn in the flesh is one of the great unknowns of scripture.

Of Grace and Thorns

Scripture Focus: Galatians 2.21
I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!

From John: Over the past few years, grace seems to have been downgraded, not just in soteriology, but as a mode of life. Prideful smugness is preferred. Slights and insults are the valued verbal currency. Self-righteous superiority, bluster, boasting, and striving are qualities our culture chases in our leaders. Yet Christ calls to us with simple grace. Come. Be clean. Come. Be with me. Come. Be healed. Come. Be made righteous.

May we confront our graceless culture with grace.

Reflection: Downgrading Grace
By John Tillman

Grace, once gained, can be forgotten and replaced with a smug and damaging form of self-righteousness. We can forget too easily from what Christ saved us and at what cost. This is a dangerous form of amnesia and Paul will not allow the Galatians or even the prominent leaders of the church to fall into it.

Paul shows us a model for biblical confrontation in Galatians. He is direct. He is personal. He seeks restoration.

Galatians may not seem as stridently corrective as some of the passages from the letters to the Corinthians, but Galatians is the only letter of Paul to contain all correction and no praise. Paul gets straight to the point and does not hesitate. He confronts the Galatians head on telling them that he is amazed they are abandoning the gospel of grace through which they were saved. And he relates his story of boldly opposing Peter to call out this downgrade of grace and cheapening of the gospel.

Paul got personal with the Galatians and with Peter. When confronting them about favoritism, Paul quoted Peter’s testimony from Acts 10.34 saying “God shows no favoritism.” When he confronted Peter, he discussed personal practices and details with Peter, telling him exactly what Paul considered to be wrong about what Peter was doing.

Paul never lost sight, even in a corrective mode, of the unity and grace for all found in Christ. Paul’s often-quoted passage about being “crucified with Christ, and I no longer live but Christ lives in me,” demonstrates a shared life in Christ and is a part of his dramatic speech to Peter on his visit to Antioch.

Christ’s sacrifice is at the center of Paul’s argument against any other action being any part of salvation. The sufficiency of faith in Christ cannot be reduced. Paul would not allow the council at Jerusalem or Peter or the Galatians to downgrade grace through faith. When we downgrade grace through faith, we chip away at the cross of Christ, making it an additive to our life rather than the sole source of our life.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. — 2 Corinthians 4.6

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Numbers 12-13 (Listen 5:53)
Galatians 2 (Listen 3:44)

This Weekend’s Readings
Numbers 14 (Listen 6:15), Galatians 3 (Listen 4:39)
Numbers 15 (Listen 5:09), Galatians 4 (Listen 4:13)

Read more about On Surrender
What things inside stand as barriers between you and God’s complete possession of all that you are?

On Surrender

Read more about Supporting Our Work
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Supporting our Work

Scripture Focus: Galatians 1.9-10, 23-24
9 As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse! 
10 Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ. 

23 They only heard the report: “The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” 24 And they praised God because of me. 

Reflection: Defender of Grace
By John Tillman

Paul was an elite member of one of the most powerful factions of Judaism—a “pharisee of Pharisees.” He had studied under Gamaliel, one of the greatest scholars of his day. He was commissioned by the religious authorities to act on their behalf to defend the law.

It is from this charge that he turns to become the defender of grace. Paul converted from being a disciple of law to an apostle of grace. His conversion stands as one of the repeated touchstones of his teaching, his testimony, and his reasoning.

As much as Paul knew and loved the law, he knew that life did not come from the law—death did. Chares Spurgeon, in a sermon on Galatians, said, “…but while the law is glorious, it is never more misapplied than when it is used as a means of salvation.” Spurgeon continues:

“It was written on stone; as if to teach us that it was a hard, cold, stony law—one which would have no mercy upon us, but which, if we break it, would fall upon us, and dash us into a thousand pieces. O ye who trust in the law for your salvation! Ye have erred from the faith; ye do not understand God’s designs; ye are ignorant of every one of God’s truths.” 

Spurgeon concludes that the law was a tool of God to teach us to receive the better offering of God’s grace:

“It was intended by its thunders to crush every hope of self-righteousness, by its lightning to scathe and demolish every tower of our own works, that we might be brought humbly and simply to accept a finished salvation through the one mighty Mediator who has “finished the law, and made it honorable, and brought in an everlasting righteousness,” whereby we stand, complete before our Maker at last, if we be in Christ.”

We make a mistake when we think of “The Bible” as “the Law” that we must keep. The Law is in the Bible but the Bible is not the Law. The Bible contains the law as a seed. What grows from that seed, through the husbandry of Christ’s sacrifice, is the flower of grace. The Bible is the story of Christ’s flowering, fragrant, and beautiful work of grace.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Greeting
My mouth shall recount your mighty acts and saving deeds all day long; though I cannot know the number of them. — Psalm 71.15

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Numbers 11 (Listen 5:22)
Galatians 1 (Listen 3:05)

Read more about Grumbling and Doubt
No matter how deep the hole we are grumbling at the bottom of, God’s arm is not too short to reach us and lift us out.

Grumbling and Doubt

Read more about Paul’s Stance on Gentleness
May we tear down arguments and strongholds, but never people for whom Christ died.

Paul’s Stance on Gentleness

Scripture Focus: Galatians 6.8
Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.

From John: This post from 2018 is worth repeating even when we already feel like we are fasting from everything. Even in our new crisis, when as Andy Crouch quipped on Twitter, we are all giving up a lot more for Lent than we intended, we can turn unchosen isolation and unchosen cancellations into willing sacrifices. As my own pastor, J.R. Vassar has been encouraging our church, may we use well the “margin” cancellations and losses of social obligations bring to us. May we fill our unexpected margin not merely with more streaming entertainment, but with a more serious approach and commitment to prayer.

Reflection: Fasting is for All
By John Tillman

We sometimes treat fasting like a spiritual version of Mixed Martial Arts—only the strongest should attempt it. But fasting can and should be experienced in some way by believers of all maturity levels.

How do we expect young believers (or new believers) to mature at all if we deter them from learning and practicing one of the major disciplines of our faith?

No matter our age or maturity level, we may begin in fasting as we would begin any new practice. With small, achievable steps.

“As with all the Disciplines, a progression should be observed; it is wise to learn to walk well before we try to run.” — Richard Foster

Fasting may be the most important spiritual discipline for the church to focus on in the next decade. In an instant gratification culture, where we often find ourselves angry when a web page doesn’t load instantly or when a streaming video lags for even a few seconds, we need both a reality check and a spirituality check.

We desperately need to pursue spiritual focus amidst notifications and distractions. We desperately need to cultivate longings for God that won’t surface until we strip away the spirit-numbing stimulants of modern life.

“Fasting helps us keep our balance in life. How easily we begin to allow nonessentials to take precedence in our lives. How quickly we crave things we do not need until we are enslaved by them.” — Richard Foster

Fasting from food is only the beginning of what, for many of us, may be a spiritual quest for stillness, mindfulness, and disconnection from the noise and haste of digital faux-life so that we can connect to true life in Christ.

May we explore fasting beyond fasting from food. May we explore the call of God to withdraw and abstain for a time from anything in our lives that creates false dependency, false assurances of competency, and false feelings of necessity.

Divine Hours Prayer: A Reading
Then, speaking to all, he said, “If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me.” — Luke 9.23

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Proverbs 7 (Listen -2:21) 
Galatians 6 (Listen -2:18)

This Weekend’s Readings
Proverbs 8 (Listen -3:26), Ephesians 1 (Listen -3:10)
Proverbs 9 (Listen -1:50), Ephesians 2 (Listen -3:04)

Read more from Spending our Way to Asceticism
May our pangs of emptiness lead us to make more room in our hearts and lives for the Holy Spirit and for the community of his Holy Church.

Spending our Way to Asceticism

Read more about Calloused Hands and Softened Hearts
There is suffering coming to our lives.
There is death coming to our lives.
There is destruction on its way.
We may still be encouraged.

Calloused Hands and Softened Hearts