It’s About Us
This letter was written to the church in Galatia by Paul. The Gentile-Christian church he founded received a backlash of criticism from the Jewish-Christians. The Jewish-Christians told them that Paul was not a real Apostle of Christ which made them illegitimate believers in Christ. According to them, to be real followers of Christ they had to be circumcised and follow the laws of Moses as well. The more pressure the Gentile-Christian received they found themselves in an intra-conflict. The intra-conflict caused many of them to go back to their old pagan religious practice.
As the conflict continued Paul received word, but was not able to defend himself or the church in person so he wrote a letter outlining their responsibility as a church of believers. The conflict was with those who were believers in Christ but had a different view of Faith in Christ. This intra-conflict reminds me of the response letter Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote to the eight clergymen from the Birmingham Jail in April 1963. Although, they believed in Christ they said, “The demonstrations were unwise, untimely that hatred and violence had no sanctions in their religious and political traditions.” A quote from Dr. King’s response said, “I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worship service to comply with the desegregation because it is the law, but I long to hear a white minister to declare: Follow this decree because integration is morally right and the Negro is our brother.”
As Dr. King and Paul was trying to say in their letter was it’s about us. We are brothers and sisters in Christ connected through our faith. We are to carry each others burden and help those who have strayed away from the faith to be reconnected with God. When we approach a brother or sister who strayed away from God we must make sure we do not fall into temptation. The members of this church were trying to live in Christ and in their pagan practices. Paul had to remind them it was their faith that brought them this far. He kept reminding them it was about them as a whole. Today many of us continue to struggle between what we ought to do and what we really do. Let us stop saying God knows our heart just as long we are sincere. Let us say God help us to be sincere as we work on transformation our hearts to be a better servant and minister of the Gospel.
Prayer: God we seek to unite ourselves as one. Help us to dismantle the intra-conflict as Christians so we can do the work ministry outside the walls of the church. Amen.
