Crucified with Christ.

Galatians 2:1-21.

I.

            Paul continues to tell his faith story.  He says that, after working as a preacher in the Way of Jesus Christ in Antioch for 14 years, he had another revelation from God.  He was to go up to Jerusalem to confer with James, Peter, and John, the acknowledged “pillars” of the church.  He took Barnabas and Titus with him.  Titus was a Gentile convert who was not circumcised, and Paul brings him on purpose to make a point.

            Paul says he felt this meeting was necessary to make sure he and his friends in Antioch were “not running, or had not run, in vain”.  By this he means that he wanted to confer with other leaders in the Jesus movement about the practice of the church in Antioch of receiving Gentiles into their communion without requiring literal obedience to Jewish Law, which included the requirement of circumcision.  He wants to make sure that what they were doing was in line with what these apostles had also been teaching.

            The question had apparently been raised by people whom Paul refers to as “false believers,” who had been secretly watching the Christ-followers in Antioch, waiting for them to do something wrong.  They were spying on the freedom enjoyed by the Antioch church, with an intent to do nothing less than “enslave” them, Paul charges. 

            It turns out that the pillars had no problem with Titus.  And they agreed with Paul’s interpretation of things, and reaffirmed his call as apostle to the Gentiles.  So, everything seems cool until Peter comes to Antioch for a visit. 

            At first, Peter eats with the Gentiles, presumably meaning that he ate Gentile food.  But then some other more conservative believers showed up, and they put some pressure on Peter, causing him and the other Jews in the church to withdraw from eating with the Gentiles.  The compromise seems to be that Jews and Gentiles can eat together, but only if what they eat is suitable to the Jews, that is, kosher.

            The problem here, I think, is that there are at least three different understandings of mission.  Paul appears to think in terms of one mission with two directions, one to Jews and the other to Gentiles.  James and Peter appear to think of this as two separate but related missions.   And the extremists among the Jewish followers of Christ see it as one mission to Jews, and an auxiliary mission to Gentiles in which they have to become Jews.

            The compromise appears to be satisfactory even to Paul’s ally and friend, Barnabas.  But Paul objects strenuously.  And he goes so far as to break with the church in Antioch over it.  This enables his opponents to paint him as an unreasonable fanatic, more committed to his own idiosyncratic version of the gospel than to finding unity with the founders of the Way, the Jerusalem apostles, who knew Jesus.

II.

            This may seem like an arcane, technical theological argument, much ado about very little, and only important to specialists.  But for Paul it has to do with the heart of the good news of Jesus Christ.  So when he reports his admonition of Peter, he plows ahead immediately into his argument to the Galatians, so that we can’t even tell for sure where the quotation ends.

            He is still recounting what he said to Peter, and also now more pointedly he is speaking to his opponents in Galatia, when he says, “We ourselves are Jews by birth and not ‘Gentile sinners’.”  And he says that, I think, with some irony.  The entire church in Galatia was Gentiles, and he subtly reminds them of what self-righteous Jews think of them. 

            Then he goes on to make the point he makes elsewhere that Jews who think they are made righteous because they keep to the letter of the law are really sinners too.  “We,” that is, Jews who now follow Jesus, “know that a person is made righteous not by the works of the Law but through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ.”  This is something on which all followers of Jesus’ Way agree, even the ones who still want to require adherence to the Jewish laws. 

            They would have to agree on this for at least two reasons: Jesus was crucified, which means that according to the Law he is cursed.  So a person cannot consistently follow both the Law and Jesus.  In addition to this, Psalm 143, which Paul alludes to here, specifically says that no one living is righteous before God, which means that simply keeping the letter of the Law hasn’t made anyone, not even Jews, righteous.  Everyone in the Jesus movement agrees on this, even Paul’s opponents.

            But at the same time, they are apparently uncomfortable relying on Christ alone.  They think that Paul’s approach is too lax and unstructured.  It is an invitation to sin, they say.  They are rightly worried about what 19 centuries later Dietrich Bonhoeffer would call “cheap grace,” the idea that God’s love and grace and forgiveness are given to us unconditionally, no matter what, no strings attached.  They fear that not only does this give us no incentive to live any better, but it even provides an incentive to do evil.

            Think about it.  If following Jesus is all about receiving God’s grace and forgiveness, without any requirement to actually do anything, why would people bother to change their lives?

III.

            But Paul rejects the charge that he is allowing Christ to become an excuse to sin.  That charge against him is just an indication that his opponents simply do not get it.

            Paul says that it would be ridiculous for him to build up a new Law based on Christ, where he just tore down the old Law based on Moses.  What Paul opposes is the whole mindset that keeping an externally imposed law is the only way to righteousness.

            Paul says that his opponents are failing to perceive the magnitude of what God has done in Jesus Christ.  “Through the Law I died to the Law,” he says, meaning that his direct experience of Jesus Christ blew apart his ego, and his reliance on the Law, and woke him up to the Law’s futility in making anyone righteous.  The main effect of the Law was to make people separate from each other and allow some to believe they were better than everyone else, when really they weren’t.

            Not only had the Law become a dividing force separating Jew from Gentile, but it was used by both the religious establishment and the Empire, to keep people subservient, submissive, and suspicious of each other. 

            When Paul says he “died to the Law” it means that everything he once was sure of, everything he once thought was good, true, right, holy, beautiful, and eternal, everything upon which he based his whole life, came crashing down when Jesus Christ manifested himself in him.  The person he once was, died at that moment.  His ego, his personality, his identity, his self-worth was exploded. 

            Now he lives, not for something that merely points to God, but for God.  It is as if he says, “As far as the Law is concerned, I died, because the Law condemned and cursed me as it did Jesus Christ; but as far as God is concerned, I came alive, I woke up.”

            He goes so far as to say, “I have been crucified with Christ.”  This is an astounding statement.  We can’t take it literally, of course; his body hasn’t been nailed to a tree and left to rot.  It means that with Christ he has been cursed by the Law; with Christ he has been deemed blasphemous by his own religious establishment; with Christ he has been deemed seditious by the political establishment, the Empire.  He has been made an outlaw in every sense, which places him firmly with the Lord Jesus Christ.

IV.

            It is no longer his “I”, his ego, that lives.  Rather now it is Christ who appeared in him who now lives in him.  “The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God.”  His body, even the “flesh,” the mortal, physical, temporal dimension of his being, is guided and directed by his profound trust in the Son of God.

            “Son of God” was a loaded phrase in those days because it was one of the titles the Emperor gave to himself, but which Christians knew really belonged to this poor, good, holy man named Jesus whom the Emperor had crucified.  For Paul, as he goes on to say, “Son of God” is not a title indicating secular, coercive, military, or terroristic power, as it was for the Emperor.  No; for him it means the One who loved him and gave himself for him. 

            This is the 180 that Paul makes when he meets the living Lord Jesus in his heart.  He moves from a trust in law and coercion and force and personal striving, to a trust in the love he sees in the cross, where Jesus bears the full weight and consequences of law, and coercion, and force, and striving, and endures the murderous hostility of Roman terror.  He moves from trusting in the uniqueness and specialness of his beloved Judaism, to a realization that his nation is just another conquered, defeated, exploited, tortured people, no different from every other nation crushed by Rome.  He realizes there is no difference between Jew and Gentile in that sense. 

            Paul suddenly becomes aware of the fact that Jesus had been put to death by experts in the Law like him.  Instead of being a means of resistance to evil and empire, the leaders of his people had made a deal with Rome so that now even keeping the Jewish Law, originally a courageous expression of freedom, had degenerated into a way of showing deference, subservience, subjugation, and allegiance to the Emperor.  It put his own people, the nation formed by God in resistance to the power of centralized violence, in alliance with the worst tyrants the world had ever seen.  Instead of resisting the devil they made a deal with him to save their own skins.  Now circumcision was less an obedience to God than it was a small sacrifice of their own flesh to the Emperor.  It was now the price they paid in their own flesh and blood to get out of having to worship their oppressor.  But just paying that price was itself a form of worship.

            Once he meets the risen Jesus, his eyes are opened.  And he sees the truth and is able to turn away from this cynical abuse and coopting of his own traditions and theology, and turn instead to the fathomless love of God.  God used this degraded and depraved situation in which Israel had basically negotiated itself out of existence as a people loyal to God alone, and sent Jesus Christ, the real Son of God, the real Savior, the real Lord to bear the brunt of murderous violence pumped up from forces of evil of which the Emperor was only a puppet.  And he shows it to be empty, ineffective, and powerless.  Indeed, it just becomes the way God triumphs and reveals to the world its true nature in resurrection.

V.

            True freedom is never purchased from some earthly principalities and powers by our good behavior, loyalty, or enthusiastic participation in their systems of inequality, violence, and exploitation.  It is never something we earn or deserve according to the demands or expectations of human leaders.  It is never something we are paid for our keeping of rules and regulations.

            True freedom is a gift of the living God who is revealed to us in Jesus Christ.  The glorious fact that he lives in us and in all things means that he, in his humility, poverty, generosity, gentleness, kindness, peace, and love, is the real and true power in our lives and in the whole universe.  It is his faithfulness in withstanding and absorbing the worst that our little systems can throw, and still emerging to call us home, that changes everything… or rather reveals everything to be very different from what we thought.

            It is when the powers of the world see us as dead, worthless, and defeated, that God sees us as we truly are: alive and blessed and good.  It is when we identify with Jesus Christ in his rejection and death, that his life is disclosed and unveiled within us.  It is when our egos are disarmed and put in their place, that Christ himself emerges with and within and among us.

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