The Message Remix (349 page)

INTRODUCTION
GALATIANS

 

When men and women get their hands on religion, one of the first things they often do is
turn it into an instrument for controlling others, either putting or keeping them “in their place.” The history of such religious manipulation and coercion is long and tedious.
It is little wonder that people who have only known religion on such terms experience release or escape from it as freedom. The problem is that the freedom turns out to be short-lived.

Paul of Tarsus was doing his diligent best to add yet another chapter to this dreary history when he was converted by Jesus to something radically and entirely different—a free life in God. Through Jesus, Paul learned that God was not an impersonal force to be used to make people behave in certain prescribed ways, but a personal Savior who set us free to live a free life. God did not coerce us from without, but set us free from within.

It was a glorious experience, and Paul set off telling others, introducing and inviting everyone he met into this free life. In his early travels he founded a series of churches in the Roman province of Galatia. A few years later Paul learned that religious leaders of the old school had come into those churches, called his views and authority into question, and were reintroducing the old ways, herding all these freedom-loving Christians back into the corral of religious rules and regulations.

Paul was, of course, furious. He was furious with the old guard for coming in with their strong-arm religious tactics and intimidating the Christians into giving up their free life in Jesus. But he was also furious with the Christians for caving in to the intimidation.

His letter to the Galatian churches helps them, and us, recover the original freedom. It also gives direction in the nature of God’s gift of freedom—most necessary guidance, for freedom is a delicate and subtle gift, easily perverted and often squandered.

 

 

From:
Paul was raised to believe that the Law of Moses was the most precious gift God had ever given humankind. Infinitely superior to dead-end pagan ways. Paul knew Jesus couldn’t be the Messiah because the Law said a person who died as Jesus died was cursed. He passionately joined in punishing fellow Jews who claimed that a cursed man was the Messiah. But an encounter with Jesus himself forced Paul to rethink everything.

 

To:
Before meeting Paul, the Galatians practiced a mix of local and Greek customs in what is now central Turkey. Living in fear of fate, death, and the gods, they were thrilled to learn that Christ freed them from such fears to live new lives pleasing to the one God. When other teachers came and explained how to please the God of Jesus, the Galatians were dismayed to be told (incorrectly) that Jesus wanted them to have what they saw as a disfiguring surgical operation (circumcision), to stop sharing meals with their pagan neighbors, and to adopt other Jewish practices. Still, they went along with this Jesus-plus-the-Law-of-Moses system until Paul intervened.

 

Re:
Roughly A.D. 49. When Claudius became emperor in A.D. 41 after somebody murdered his predecessor, he wanted peace. But the Jews gave him headaches. Back in A.D. 19 they had been kicked out of Rome for rioting (there were many end-times movements and quarrels over which version of Judaism was the right one). But now they were back in large numbers. Claudius wished they could get over their intolerance toward everybody else’s gods and get along with each other too. He tried simply restricting their right to meet together, but in A.D. 49 there was a huge Jewish blowout over some guy named Chrestus (Christus?). Claudius banished them from Rome once more, but within a decade they managed to slip back in.