Hilton Head Island, SC – August 15, 2021
The Chapel Without Walls
Galatians 1:11-24; 2:11-21
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification were through the law, then Christ died to no purpose. – Galatians 2:21 (RSV)
In the history of Christianity, two men are most associated with the doctrine of justification by faith. They are the apostle Paul, and Martin Luther. Both of them reacted strongly against the notion that anyone could be saved from eternal damnation by following religious laws, although their aversion to salvation by adherence to biblical laws came from quite different directions.
Before Jesus appeared to Paul in a vision on the road to Damascus, Paul was a Pharisee, and an intentionally strict follower of all 600-plus laws that were contained in the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. As we learn in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, Paul was an active enemy of the nascent movement of the earliest form of Christianity. He was on his way to Damascus to stir up trouble for the small band of proto-Christians who lived there when a vision of the risen Christ literally knocked Paul off his horse and temporarily blinded him.
People who have emotionally wrenching conversion experiences sometimes go from one extreme to its opposite. St. Augustine of Hippo in North Africa was a libertine, undisciplined youth and young man who diligently never left a single grain of wild oats unsown. When he heard someone reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans on the other wide of his garden wall, the words struck him like a ton of bricks, and he became one of the most influential thinkers in the history of Christianity. Malcolm X was a proponent of Black Power as a young man, and then became a disciple of Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Black Muslims. Later he broke away from them, thinking they were too violent, and for that they publically assassinated him.
From the first two chapters of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, we are told that it was agreed fairly early on that Paul would be the apostle to the Gentiles and Peter the apostle to the Jews. This was because of a theological spat the two men had over circumcision. There were some Jewish Christians who insisted that Gentile men who became Christians had to be circumcised. Peter reluctantly approved this notion, while Paul adamantly opposed it. Needless to say, most Gentile males would not be thrilled with that idea, and thus they refused to become Christians, if that was a prerequisite. Therefore Peter continued on as the apostle to the Jews, and Paul agreed to become the apostle to the Gentiles. But from then on, almost no more Jews became Christians, and almost all those who did become Christians were Gentiles.
There still was a major issue to be resolved, though. Should all Christians, Jews and Gentiles alike, be required to follow the laws of the Torah? Apparently Peter tended to think so, but Paul vehemently denied that. Because most future Christians were Gentiles, no doubt that rescued Christianity from becoming a failure before it had even had a viable beginning. Those who were not raised with the Torah would never accept all its dictates as adults.
The laws of the Torah are intricate, occasionally contradictory, and almost impossible for anyone to try to carry out to the letter of the law. Among current religious Jews, the only ones who even try to observe all these laws are Orthodox Jews. Conservative Jews are less intentionally observant, and Reform Jews are the least observant. Secular Jews make no pretense of trying to uphold any but the most universally acknowledged of the Mosaic laws.
Nevertheless, in all three of the branches of Judaism, portions of the Torah are read in every Shabbat service, and comment is usually made on a portion of the portion in the rabbi’s sermon. Other parts of the Hebrew scriptures may or may not be read, but always something from the Torah is read.
In the Book of Acts and in the Letter to the Galatians, attitudes toward the Torah became the primary distinction between Judaism and Christianity in the first century. That still holds true in the twenty-first century of what Jews surprisingly call the Common Era and what most Christians still call A.D. (Anno Domini: the Year of Our Lord). For Jews the biblical law is uppermost as the central feature of the religion, and for Christians it is justification by faith. Technically though, the essence of Christianity is justification by grace through faith.
What does that phrase mean? Well, first let us look at the word “justification.” In its linguistic origin, justification is a legal term. If someone is accused of murder when a thief breaks into his home, he may be acquitted in court on the basis of “justified homicide.” The nine members of the US Supreme Court are called “justices.” A “justice of the peace” is a judicial official who handles relatively minor legal matters in some, but not all, states. A “just” law is one that is fair and is not illegally discriminatory against anyone or any group of people. To be “justified before the law” is to be found innocent of wrongdoing in the eyes of the law.
For Paul, the permanently pressing issue for everyone, Jews and Gentiles alike, is this: How can anyone be justified before God, the Creator of all people? After his Damascus-road-experience, Paul was convinced there was only one way. It was necessary to have faith in the saving grace of God through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. Thus, said Paul, and said Luther long afterward, we are justified only by faith in Jesus, and not by works of the law.
I want now to return to something I said earlier, namely, that the essence of Christianity is justification by grace through faith. We are not justified only by faith, but rather by grace through faith. And what do those words imply? They suggest that we receive faith through God’s grace, and God’s grace may be defined as our unmerited acceptance by God. God accepts us as sinners. As we learned last Sunday (I hope), we are all sinners due to original sin. We are incapable of not sinning, and therefore, throughout our lives, we sin to one degree or another and in one measure or another. We do not and cannot earn God’s love, we do not merit it, but He freely offers His love to us anyway. I believe He offers it equally to all of us. God is shamelessly un-choosy in His love for us; He loves all of us, from the best to the worst, equally. He obviously does not equally approve of everyone’s behavior, however. Surely the actions of some people find greater favor in God’s sight than the actions of other people, but nonetheless He loves everyone without favor to anyone. And that is illustrative of the wondrous and inexplicable grace of God.
Nevertheless, though we are all recipients of God’s grace, we are not all aware of His unmerited love. Only faith can give us that awareness. According to Paul and Luther, we can become aware of it only when we accept God’s gift of faith. That is why, again technically, we are justified by grace by our affirmation of faith.
Are you getting this? Are you seeing why Paul was so steamed at the Galatians? The Galatian Christians were Jewish Christians. They were Jews who had come to accept Jesus as the Messiah. In the middle of the first century that was thought to be possible by some Jews, but by the end of that century, almost no Jews believed it. A separation had come between the Jews and Christians.
Somebody had come to the Galatian congregation of Jewish Christians in what is now Asian Turkey, Asia Minor, and had said that Paul was a false apostle. In addition, this unidentified person had insisted that only Jews could be Christians. This terminology and these ideas may be confusing to you, but they were not confusing to the Galatians. Either Paul was right and this un-named somebody was wrong, or he was right and Paul was wrong.
Therefore the first thing Paul tried to do was to establish himself as a genuine apostle. The word “apostle” means, in essence, “one who has seen, and has been sent by, Jesus.” Paul’s detractor claimed that Paul had never seen Jesus and therefore could not have been sent by him. So Paul firmly reminded the Galatians of his vision of Jesus near Damascus.
But the second thing Paul wanted to make clear is that no one, Jew or Gentile, is justified by meeting all the demands of the Torah. In the first place it can’t be done, said Paul, and even if it could be done, only grace through faith, and not good works, can justify anyone before God. To us this may seem like a good way of getting bogged down in theological quicksand, but to the Galatians, and to Paul, this was a huge matter that had to be resolved. Paul, who probably had the thickness of skin of a fruitfly as well as the hubris of an Andrew Cuomo, was incensed that the Galatians had fallen away so quickly from what he had taught them about grace and faith. “I do not nullify the grace of God, for if justification were through the law, then Christ died to no purpose” (Gal. 2:21).
Law is nearly everything to practicing Jews, and grace is nearly everything to practicing Christians. In truth, no one is as diligent in practicing religious tenets as we should be. Further, the fact is that Jews and Christians do not agree on the fundamental essence of their two religions. Jews see themselves as justified before God by doing the deeds required by the Old Testament laws, and Christians see themselves, or at least should see themselves, as justified before God by the grace He has given us by means of our faith, which we accept as a gift freely given to us by God.
Jews further see themselves as being related to God by birth. They believe they are part of God’s Chosen People, and therefore they are automatically connected to God. Christians see themselves connected to God by God’s grace alone, and through the faith in God that grace initiates. Furthermore, to most Jews, “salvation” has reference only to life in this world. Belief in an afterlife is common only among Orthodox and some Conservative Jews. Most Reform Jews and virtually all secular Jews reject the notion of an afterlife altogether. To Christians, “salvation” also refers to life in this world, but to many although not all Christians, it also refers to eternal life in heaven with God and Jesus Christ.
As if all these complex and confusing matters were not enough to give us severe intellectual headaches, Jesus himself would probably also be perplexed by some of them. For example, Jesus perceived himself to be a Jew, and only a Jew. If we were to have lived in the time of Jesus, and we were to ask him, “Jesus, are you a Christian?” he would say to us, “Oy; a Christian: what is a Christian? I am a Jude, a Jew!”
I believe Jesus intended to invite everyone into Judaism, not into Christianity. But the Judaism into which he hoped to welcome everyone, Jews and Gentiles alike, was like modern Reform or Conservative Judaism, not Orthodox or Hasidic Judaism. But that isn’t what transpired historically. In the first and second centuries of the Common Era, and because the Romans crushed the Jewish nation in their revolt against Rome from 68 to 72 CE, Judaism and Christianity parted ways, never to come close to coalescing ever again.
The issues raised in this sermon had not been thoroughly clarified for the New Testament Christians. That is illustrated in the conflicts which are observed in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, and in the letters of Paul, James, Peter, John, Jude, and the letter to the Hebrews. Those to whom the latter letter was addressed were, like the Galatians, Jewish Christians.
I do not expect anyone to be spiritually bowled over by anything that has been said in this sermon. It is, I trust, far more educational than it is inspirational. Nonetheless, it deals with questions which are central to a proper understanding of what Christians call the Old and the New Testaments. However, there are new understandings in the Old Testament, and old understandings in the New Testament. Historically, Jews and Christians are brothers and sisters, and shall remain so forever, whether we admit it or not. In the meantime, however, the two groups do not perceive the essence of these two religions in the same way, nor are we likely ever to do so.
C’est la vie; Asi es la vida; Das ist Leben; Such is life. But also: L’Chaim: To Life --- and Law --- and Grace --- and Faith. And to Justification as well.