Our first scripture reading this morning comes from Paul’s letter to the Galatians, beginning at chapter 4, at the 11th verse. Paul writes, ‘I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain. Brothers, I entreat you, become as I am, for I also have become as you are. You did me no wrong. You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first, and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus. What then has become of your blessedness? For I testify to you that if possible, you would have gouged out your eyes and given them to me. Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth? They make much of you, but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out that you may make much of them. It is always good to be made much of for a good purpose and not only when I am present with you. My little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you. I wish I could be present with you now and change my tone, for I am perplexed about you.’
From there, we turn to Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, his first letter, chapter 9, beginning with the 19th verse. Paul writes, ‘For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all that I might win more of them. To the Jews, I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law, I became as one under the law, although not being myself under the law, that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law, I became as one outside the law, not being outside the law of God, but under the law of Christ, that I might win those outside the law. To the weak, I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel that I may share with them in its blessings.’
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray. Heavenly Father, you give us your word. You have shown us how we are to live. You give us your spirit when we believe. We ask that you help us to see and understand how and why we might better become like you. Because of Paul’s becoming like all things for all people, we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
So, Paul’s letter to the Galatians now turns us to the question of motivation. Not his motivation for writing the letter, which was clearly in response to this increasing error in the church community’s faith, but a question of the motivation for ministry: his own and that of the Judaizers. When he declares, ‘I am afraid that I may have labored over you in vain,’ what does he fear to be in vain? His own pride at leaving established gospel-centric, Christ-faithful, disciple-making congregations all around the Roman province of Galatia, or a fear that his own personal efforts and the work of the Holy Spirit within the hearts and minds of these believers would not bear faithful fruit and instead wither into apostasy and divine condemnation?
Paul contrasts his initial visit and mission with the apparent selfish motivation of the Judaizer opponents. He accuses the Judaizers, saying of them, ‘They make much of you but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out that you may make much of them.’ It seems like kind of poor English, but fortunately, with other translations like the NIV, this phrase becomes a little bit more understandable for us, where it’s written, ‘Those people are zealous to win you over, but for no good. What they want is to alienate you from us so that you might have zeal for them.’
Paul here accuses his opponents of having evil motivations in their attention to the Gentile believers. They have zeal and a fervent desire to win the hearts and minds of these Galatians, yet not to Jesus Christ, but instead to become followers and converts to their leadership, teaching, and authority. Much as modern-day politicians will often try to win the vote of the electorate by making all sorts of false promises, so Paul, this former Pharisee, once so zealous himself for the supremacy of the Jewish religion, compares these Judaizers to the same people who were like him, who condemned Jesus to die, and whom Jesus himself condemned as being false teachers.
In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus says, ‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.’ Why did Jesus condemn those scribes and Pharisees? Because they were teaching a system of religion grounding righteousness into a person’s works of devotion. They were teaching a system that elevated the teachers’ social status and respectability based upon the quantity and quality of their devotees, teaching a system of religion that they themselves did not and would not follow—all this rather than faith in the Lord. They were majoring in the minors of religion, overemphasizing those things which ought to have been our response of faith instead of an objective of the faith or a source for their own justification.
These teachers, who ought to have known better, possessed great knowledge about the law but were severely lacking in wisdom regarding the meaning, intent, and application of the law—like those Christians who know a lot about Jesus but who do not actually know or trust Jesus in relationship. So what were these Judaizers offering the Galatian church that Paul was not? The same thing which those scribes and Pharisees offered the Jewish people: a system of works whereby a person could feel confident of their own righteousness and status before the Lord based entirely upon their own efforts, while also ignoring their own failings.
They were teaching that they could do something to earn God’s favor and blessing, forgetting about way back when God’s sovereign election of ancient Israel in the persons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—believing that they could deserve and gain God’s love by their zealous devotion to Him. They were forgetting that He loved them first when they were unlovable and did not know Him, choosing them because of His great love for them, instead of choosing them because of their devotion.
Grace is a very hard thing for people to accept. Grace offends our pride. Grace makes us feel indebted or obligated to the one giving us grace. Grace reminds us that we are not all-powerful, that we need help from others, that none of us can stand only upon our two feet. Grace reminds us that we are not all-knowing, that neither are we prescient, knowing what is going to happen in the future. Grace reminds us that we cannot be everywhere at once, much less in two places at the same time. Grace puts our human limitations under a spotlight display. Grace is humbling but not humiliating, and most importantly, grace proves to us that we are not God; we are only human creatures because God does not need grace, and He alone is exalted.
But how does our sinful flesh react or respond to grace? How does Satan react to God’s great and free gift? By trying to transform the gracious gift into an earned wage. But we know well what the wages of sin are: death. So that is exactly what the Pharisees, the Judaizers, and all others like them have to offer to the people of God—death by the law. I often wonder why anybody would prefer that route to God, but it is really a simple question to answer. They offer us a solution to the problem of grace that’s felt by our sinful flesh: do something, anything, so that then grace ceases to be grace. This solution is always in some form of legalism.
Now, legalism is probably the most destructive and prevalent Christian heresy persisting in our modern day, and it’s always trying to encroach itself into every Christian community—being echoes of these false teachers where what we do matters more than why we do it. We’re doing the right thing becomes more important than why we do the right thing. These false teachers are holding out an olive branch to our fleshiness. They offer something to soothe our wounded pride, to remove our feeling of indebtedness and help us regain our feeling of independence by the works of religion, as opposed to faith alone.
If we could feel righteous and good because of things we do, then we do not need grace because we will have earned our way into heaven. If we try to keep our scales balanced, always trying to do more good than bad, constantly comparing ourselves against others, judging ourselves better than them, then why do we need grace or forgiveness if our good outweighs our bad? Because we have balanced our spiritual scales with a zero-sum balance: no debt but also no fortune. Then just as C’s get degrees, we’ll get into the party, squeaking in just before the door slams shut behind us.
If we believe that salvation is our due because of all the good works we have done, our acts of charity, our love for neighbor, our work of social justice and equality in this life, then we do not need grace because we will have forged our own keys to the gates of heaven. Then we can exalt ourselves over and above and against all others because we’ve saved ourselves—sola bootstrappa. Then we do not need to worry about our limitations or our failings because even if Jesus picks up our slack, we know that we’re the ones who truly did most of the work.
Then we will receive exactly what we deserve—praise be! Who would we have to thank for our self-righteousness and this self-assuredness? Our false teachers, who brought us this different gospel. So we must shower them with all praise and glory and honor and respect. We must exalt them higher than ourselves because they are the ones who taught us how to achieve our own salvation. All praise to our teachers and masters—right? Wrong.
This is no baseless accusation that Paul makes against his opponents. He was very worldly wise; he understood human nature, and he has confronted this same issue against these same opponents previously when they ensnared the apostle Peter. So when Paul writes, ‘They make much of you but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out that you may make much of them,’ he is saying that these false teachers are making such a big deal about the Galatian believers because they want to try and win them over into their religious camp. They want to separate them from Paul and the gospel of God’s grace in Christ alone, so that instead they might receive all the glory, respect, and honor from the Galatians—that which is due only to our Savior, Jesus Christ.
That is their selfish motive. The no-good purpose for their ministry becomes all about the glory of the teacher instead of the salvation of souls. They sought to create their own disciples, wanting to transform them into the image of their religious ideals. Now, Paul does not bring this charge against them from a sense of jealousy for himself but from jealousy for Jesus. Paul did not share the gospel for personal gain nor for self-aggrandizement, but he offered it to all who would listen, trusting in the Lord’s providence for all his needs.
Paul’s motives regarding the Galatian church were pure and good. He was looking out for their spiritual well-being, trying to redirect them from their errors and disciple them in following only Jesus Christ. So he continues, ‘It is always good to be made much of for a good purpose and not only when I am present with you.’ For he was zealous regarding them to the good purpose of their salvation by faith in Christ. He reminds them of the truth that they had accepted previously when he was with them, and he demonstrates his continued zeal for them despite his absence and distance.
Now, presuming Paul penned this letter from Syrian Antioch before the Jerusalem council, he was certainly not in any position to receive any kind of significant material benefit from them, whereas his opponents must have traveled to Galatia and then set up shop. Like some new-age guru with their self-help instructions, they were looking to receive the church’s adoration and thus convert their own disciples.
Building the case for Paul’s righteous motives regarding the Galatians, he reminds them of his initial visit: ‘You did me no wrong. You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first, and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus.’
Paul began his ministry among the Galatians seemingly by accident, against his planned intention, and he appeared to them a man possessed of weakness: a bodily ailment, an infirmity of the flesh or illness. The Greek word used refers to a sickness or weakness of the flesh. Yet Scripture is not clear on just what this weakness was. Some suggest it was his eyesight, which is believed to be poor or failing based upon the testimony of his letters. This could be a reasonable assumption here with a literal understanding of his remark, ‘If possible, you would have gouged out your eyes and given them to me,’ but that might have also been a figure of speech, similar to giving the shirt off your back.
Other people suggest that it was a weakness from suffering from malaria or epilepsy, but that’s only speculation. Herman Ritterbach suggests that the infirmity that’s referenced here was the result of his treatment at the hands of the Jews in the region; his being stoned up in Lystra. But regardless, the ultimate worldly cause of Paul’s ailment is irrelevant because it’s the effect that mattered most. Some divine providence kept Paul in Galatia, and being one to never waste an opportunity to preach, he preached Christ where he was, and so these Gentiles heard the good news and began to follow Christ.
However, not only did this mysterious ailment keep Paul there, but by ordinary expectation, whatever it was, it could have or would have been a problem for his audience. Paul was notorious for being a messenger for God; that’s why the Lystrians had called him Hermes. But whatever was wrong with him did not jive with the commonly held universal pagan religious view that the righteous are always rewarded and blessed while the wicked are always punished and afflicted. Ordinarily, an afflicted person was considered to be cursed by the gods—certainly not a person who would be a divine messenger.
And so, Paul says that, “My condition was a trial to you,” meaning that the Galatians suffered some sort of temptation or trial because of his weakness, which otherwise would have normally caused them to scorn or despise him. But nevertheless, they received him as an angel, as if he were Jesus himself. The afflicted Paul preached the gospel of grace in Christ while they listened, received, and believed. They did him no wrong; they were blessed to be a blessing to him while he was there. They would give their figurative shirt off their backs because of their newfound joy and peace in response to the regeneration by the Spirit and their faith in Christ.
Again, Paul did not preach to them for his own selfish gain or by human intention, but only by divine providence. Then once enough time had passed, he and Barnabas left them and returned to Syrian Antioch. But even gone from their presence, he still felt concern and love for them as his children in the faith, as brothers and sisters in Christ. At no time does Scripture or his opponents suggest that Paul exploited them, took advantage of them, or sought glory from them.
Yet after a good and faithful start, they now might consider him their enemy for speaking the truth of grace out of love for them. Do they now wrong him? Do they now scorn or despise him? Do they now reject him, his gospel, and Jesus Christ? It’s no wonder that Paul grieves over them, saying, ‘I’m afraid I may have labored over you in vain,’ or that on behalf of these spiritual children, he is again in the anguish of childbirth.
So he encourages them: ‘I encourage you to become as I am, for I have also become as you are,’ because his greatest desire was to see Christ formed in us. But how do we do that? Through active discipleship by following and emulating Paul’s example, both in ministry and in life. Because he was always seeking to emulate and become more like Christ.
We remember that during his earthly ministry, Jesus was accused and condemned for some of his more liberal social habits. We read in Matthew’s gospel, ‘As Jesus passed from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he rose and followed him. And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?’ But when he heard it, he said, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.’’
Jesus went to those people who were living outside of the Jewish law and religion, even though it was still a judge over them, not to affirm them as they were, but to call them to a better faith and a better life. So too did Paul go to the Gentiles, living with them and living like them in all their secular ways—demonstrating for them that righteousness comes not as a matter of religion but only through faith in Christ.
Peter acknowledged the same truth when he went to the Roman centurion Cornelius in Caesarea. But even he slipped back into the trap of religious legalism when some emissaries from James, the brother of Jesus, came to him, which prompted Paul’s earlier rebuke of that preeminent apostle—the very same rebuke he now offers to the Galatians who were seeking to follow the religion of these false teachers.
Paul did not stop being Jewish or Christian in becoming like the Galatians. Scripture is clear that he would still practice and participate in worthwhile elements of the temple cult, whether from his own devotion or for the spiritual peace of newer believers, but never as a means of salvation or divine justification. And many of the themes and much of the theology expressed in this early letter of Paul’s are expanded and expounded upon in his later writings.
Our understanding of this mutual becoming—like Paul, who is becoming like Christ—is helped greatly by what he writes to the Corinthian church: “I have become all things to all people that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel that I may share with them in its blessings.”
After going through a list of social examples, he declares that he had become all things to all people, meaning that he became like them so that they could relate better together, and then he could lead them to Christ. When you want to get to know somebody better, do you not try to learn more about them and the things that they like and dislike? You try to build common ground to generate a shared frame of reference.
Are we not more likely to listen and pay credence to other people who show themselves to be like us? If you’re a Red Sox fan, are you more likely to listen to some baseball announcer or fan who’s wearing a Yankees jersey or a Boston ball cap? If you attended Ohio State upon your first visit, are you more likely to have more confidence in a doctor with a diploma from Ohio State or one from Michigan? Yet Paul was not just changing his jersey or hat to match whoever he was with; like Jesus, he would join with the Gentiles in all aspects of their lives, being authentic with them, proving that he was neither superior nor judgmental.
So that when he would start redirecting them towards something, towards someone better, they might trust him and change. Paul did not look down upon the person rolling in the mud and filth, saying, ‘Stop it! Get out of there! Clean yourself off! Don’t you know any better?” Instead, he jumped into the mud pit with them, getting himself dirty in the process, and then he showed them how to get out of the mud, and then he held the towel to help clean them off.
He would minister in this way so that by his active witness, more people might come to know Jesus and be saved. He would do all this; he would go to all these lengths because he wanted to share all of the blessings of Christ with them. He wanted to share the eternal inheritance of Jesus, Abraham’s distant offspring and heir, with them and with us.
This is why Paul grieves over the Galatians. This is why Paul is again in the anguish of childbirth for the sake of the gospel until Christ is formed in us. Paul later says this so succinctly when he tells the Corinthians, ‘Be imitators of me as I am of Christ.’ So, imitate the faith and faithfulness of Paul, who imitated the faith and faithfulness of Jesus. This is the way of Christian discipleship and has been from the very beginning.
We follow and imitate our mothers and fathers in the faith, becoming like them just as they had become like Christ. This must be our watchword and guide, ensuring that we are following Christ-followers and not false teachers. And to do this, we must continue our own study of Scripture to recognize what is of Christ and what is not.
We must continue to pray to and with our heavenly Father, keeping those lines of communication open. We must remain in the company of faithful brothers and sisters in Christ, encouraging one another in the faith, holding each other accountable, praying for one another, building each other up so that when Christ returns, we are prepared and ready—then strong and confident in our faith.
We need to engage with and be in fellowship with people who do not know Jesus. Studies have shown—I don’t have the specific details at hand, but if you consider your lives, you’ll see this to be true—that studies have shown most Christians, after they come to true faith, within about six months, do not know anybody. They don’t have any friends who are not professing Christians.
Jesus went and ate with sinners and tax collectors. So too, we need to go, get in the mud, get into the trenches like Paul. Because it’s only by engaging with non-believers that we can ever share the gospel, ever spread the hope and life found in Jesus Christ alone.
And this is just another aspect of our being Christ-like—imitating Paul as he imitated Jesus. Every Christian is not called to be a missionary like the Apostle Paul, but we are all each called to be like him as he was like Jesus. So be like Paul to be like Jesus.
Do not conform to the ways and expectations of this world. Do not be like the many false teachers who preach Christ plus law. Instead, stand firm in your faith in Christ alone and see Christ formed within you. Amen.