What Matters Is a New Creation.

Galatians 6.

I.

            Paul finally eases up a bit on the invective and becomes the patient yet passionate teacher the Galatians knew from when he was with them.  “Brothers and sisters,” he writes, “if a person is caught doing something wrong, you who are spiritual should restore someone like this with a spirit of gentleness.”  He insists that they be gentle with each other, far gentler than he has been with the missionaries who are trying to undermine his work.

            In this letter more than in any other we see Paul the “mother-bear” who fiercely defends her cubs from danger, and just as fiercely loves and cares for them.  And his role is made more difficult by the fact that he is about a thousand miles away from them.

            If we want to understand the emotional intensity and dramatic shifts in tone we read in this letter, perhaps we can relate it to something we experience in parenthood.  It is like Paul is a parent whose son or daughter has gone off to work in another city, and it has been reported to him that they are being seduced and potentially assaulted by bad influences.  Involvement in a cult, or with drugs, or with a destructive relationship.  It’s like hearing they are making or are in danger of making bad choices.  And it is an indication of his love for them that his emotions explode all over this letter. 

            Having seen his ire blow through his writing, boiling over in the remarkable verse 5:12, he takes a breath, recovers his patience, and takes a more positive tone.  In spite of what he has just been saying, he really wants them not to fall into self-righteous judgmentalism with each other, but to realize that they all need each other.  Peace is important.  Unity is important.  Oneness in Christ is the theme of this letter and one of the themes of his whole ministry. 

            When we are ordained in the Presbyterian Church we pledge to uphold the “peace, unity, and purity of the church”.  This is what Paul is about in Galatians.  He has spent a lot of time on purity; that is, he has been explaining why the teachings and practices of his opponents are damaging to them and inherently contrary to the good news of God’s love for the world in Jesus Christ.  But the peace and unity do come through as well, especially here at the end of his letter.

            Paul’s letters are written to communities.  We should never forget that people experienced his letters as read aloud to their congregation.  No one had their own copy they could read on their own at home.  He is not addressing individuals so much as the body of believers together, and individuals then within the context of the whole community. 

            Paul is reminding the church that all of us are in the same boat, as it were.  The congregation is a communion of equals, making their way together in a very difficult and challenging world.  Having nearly exhausted his heartfelt expressions of disappointment, worry, and anger at the way this church is being seduced and assaulted by other teachers, he is now concerned with the character and quality of their life together as congregations of Jesus-followers.

II. 

            A big part of this is being self-aware.  As Paul writes: “Watch out for yourselves so you won't be tempted too.  Carry each other's burdens and so you will fulfill the law of Christ.  If anyone thinks they are important when they aren't, they're fooling themselves.  Each person should test their own work and be happy with doing a good job and not compare themselves with others.  Each person will have to carry their own load.”

            Take care of your self first, Paul writes, in the sense of paying close attention to your own thoughts, words, and actions, and being always ready to question and criticize yourself, your motives, your actions.  So much of what we do is done unconsciously.  It is like we are asleep.  We roll through life completely unaware of the effects we are having on people and on our world, concerned only with whatever little task we have given ourselves, concerned only with what is ours.

            Our egos, which Paul calls “the flesh” or our “selfish impulses,” drive us into the self- and community-destructive behaviors we talked about last week.  In 5:18-19 he gives a list of them, ranging from idolatry and jealousy to drunkenness and sexual immorality.  Doing these things is to be led by your ego, your self-righteousness and self-aggrandizement and self-preservation at all costs.  This is the voice in our soul that insists that we need or deserve this or that benefit, and at the same time shuts our mind to any thought for the consequences, either on ourselves or others.

            This is why he says we are fulfilling the law of Christ when we willingly carry each other’s burdens.  Real self-awareness blossoms immediately into other-awareness.  When we put ourselves in another’s shoes and see things from their perspective.  When we become conscious of what our behavior may be doing to others.  When we are able to lift our vision above this narrow obsession with ourselves and our own, and see others as part of our world, as part of us, that we are connected to them as well, that they are not the enemy or our competitors, but sisters and brothers in Christ.  That’s why he says in verse 10, “Let us work for the good of all… especially those in the household of faith,” but not limited to them.  For Paul, all always means all.    

            This lifting of our perspective is the work of the Spirit in our souls, and it happens when we look at Christ on the cross and see ourselves, and not just ourselves, but everyone.  Those who follow Jesus, indeed, look at Christ on the cross and see God!  The Creator of the universe, emptying life into our mortal existence, joining with us, and opening the highway for us to join with God, and with everyone.

            So that now we no longer see things or people from “the human point-of-view” but from God’s point-of-view.  Which means that an assault on anyone is an assault on us.  We feel each other’s pain and sorrow, and it becomes as impossible for us to ignore a famine in Africa or a genocide in Asia, or the bombing of civilians in Gaza, or the shooting of an unarmed teenager in Missouri, or the massacre of a dozen children in Connecticut, as it would be if those things were happening to our own family.  Because they are.  In Jesus Christ we are all one family.

III.

            “There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”  That’s been the issue for Paul throughout.  His opponents wanted to maintain the distinction, literally cut into men’s bodies, between Jews and Gentiles.  It had the added “benefit” of making them legally official and exempt from persecution.  Paul sees that this means that his opponents were buying into and caving in to the divisive and oppressive regime of the Emperor.  They were preaching an officially approved, inoffensive, undangerous version of Christianity, the kind of mealy-mouthed faith that the book of Revelation tells us that God spits out in disgust.

            Paul’s opponents only want to look good by human standards, he says.  They are currying favor with the imperial authorities.  They think that getting Galatians to cut themselves will make them look good.

            Paul says we are to “plant for the benefit of the Spirit.”  This means “working for the good of all,” and not just one ethnic/religious group.  “But as for me,” he writes, “God forbid that I should boast about anything except for the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The world has been crucified to me through him, and I have been crucified to the world.  Being circumcised or not being circumcised doesn't mean anything.  What matters is a new creation.”

            The means of terror and oppression by the Romans have been turned by Christ Jesus into the way of true liberation and freedom.  To boast about the cross means basically to thumb your nose at the Romans and say, “See, the One you killed is even more alive now than when you crucified him.  He is alive in me, and he is alive in these people, this new community that is willing to die with him rather than cave in to imperial terrorism.  Through Jesus Christ we have been carried to the other side of your murderous regime.  Through baptism we have died with him already; you can’t kill us: we’re already dead to you.  And we’re already alive in the Spirit, as witnessed by our acceptance of and unity with all peoples in Jesus Christ.”

            Paul even says, in effect: “You know, if its marks on the body that you value look at me: I have the scars from numerous beatings to show that I have put my body where my words are.”

            In the end, Paul writes, in spite of this argument he has been engaged in about it, “Being circumcised or not being circumcised doesn't mean anything.  What matters is a new creation.”

IV.

            “What matters is a new creation.”  In 2 Corinthians, Paul says, “If anyone is in Christ, that person is part of the new creation.  The old things have gone away, and look, new things have arrived.”

            One of the themes of Scripture is how God’s promised future is continually breaking into the present.  It is continually “presenting” itself, being found in the here and now.  “New things have arrived.”  “Behold, I am doing a new thing.”  “The Kingdom of God is near.”  “The Kingdom of God is within (or among) you.”  “Today is the day of salvation.”  And so forth. 

            What we are about in this gathering of Jesus-followers, is living today in the future.  We live today by the values, practices, truth, insight, wisdom, and grace that Scripture tells us is coming into the world.  It is our future, the world’s future, and it is always arriving. 

            That is the theme of the season of Advent, by the way, which begins next Sunday.  God is coming into the world.  God is coming into history.  God is becoming a human being and dwelling among us.  It’s not about shopping, or family, or evergreen trees, or giving, or any of the other things, good and bad, that we have made it about.  It’s about the end of the world, in the sense of the world’s goal and purpose and inner direction.

            What arrives into the world in Jesus Christ is our future, our destiny.  And we see that this destiny is one of blessing, wholeness, joy, peace, and life beyond the power of death.

            “What matters is a new creation.”  What matters is that we live into the newness of God’s life at work in the world and in our hearts.  Not only do we lift our gaze and include all people as one with us in Christ; but all creation and all time is united in Christ as well. 

            And we are called as witnesses to this new creation.  The new creation, which is really the true creation beneath the creation we have twisted and corrupted by our sinful, ego-centric activity, is what emerges among us in the gathering of disciples.  It emerges as we activate the gifts of the Spirit we heard about last week: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control.”  It emerges when we trust Jesus Christ.  On the cross he bore our ego-centricity, our selfishness, our fear, anger, and shame, our violence; he endured the full force of the mess we have made of the world, embodied in his killers, the Romans; he endured even the betrayal and abandonment of his own friends; he even endured the condemnation of the Torah, God’s law. 

            And he showed finally what Paul affirms in the greatest chapter of all his letters, Romans 8, where he says that “nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord: not death or life, not angels or rulers, not present things or future things, not powers or height or depth, or any other thing that is created.”  Nothing can separate us from God’s love, revealed in Christ’s pouring out of his blood, God’s very life, onto the earth, sanctifying and blessing, restoring and renewing, blessing, healing, and saving us and the whole creation.

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