TRISTAN SHERWIN

Here’s my longer sermon notes from this morning’s Metro Christian Centre, Bury & Whitefield service (dated 10th July 2022), continuing our new series ONE ANOTHER. You can also catch up with this via MCC’s YouTube channel.

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READ: GALATIANS 6:1-18 (NLT)

HOW TO SPOT A FRENCHMEN

How do you spot a Frenchmen?

Yes, it is a random question. But a number of years ago, my sons’ primary school sent out a letter saying they were having a ‘French Day’. I do not remember why, I just remember they wanted to celebrate all things French and, as a part of that celebration, they asked us parents to send our kids to school dressed up as French people.

So, that’s what we did.

We know the stereotype. As English people, some of us carry this certain mental picture of French people wearing berets, striped t-shirts, carrying onions, riding bicycles. And when I say that we dressed our kids as little Frenchmen, you may assume that’s how we dressed them.

We didn’t. We sent our boys to school in their t-shirts, jeans and trainers (the stuff they wear when they are not in school uniform), because that’s what French people wear.

We were not trying to make a point to the school. We were not being critical of other parents, either. Yes, we did want our kids to understand something. But, to be honest, we didn’t have time to run around shops looking for berets!

Of course, we know that not all French people wear berets. And yet, this strange picture exists. It exists because, in the 1800’s and into the early 1900’s, every summer, the French onion farmers, nicknamed ‘Onion Johnnies’, would come across to the UK and travel up and down the country on their bicycles selling onions, wearing berets. They were a common sight, and ‘since the Onion Johnnies were the only contact many Brits had with a Frenchman, they naturally assumed that all Frenchmen wore berets.’ [i]

That’s why, when British people see a beret, or someone riding a bicycle selling onions, we think of the French.

Identity is something that can be communicated in various ways.

We know that what we wear can communicate something about who we are and where we are from.

But Behaviour also marks our identity; what we do, what we don’t do, how we respond, what rites or rituals we partake in or refrain from, etc.

IDENTIFYING MARKS

Why are we talking about identity? What does this have to do with Galatians, or bearing one another’s burdens (whilst also, paradoxically, carrying our own burdens)?

Everything.

Galatians is a letter written by Paul to the churches in a region that is now modern day Turkey. As with all his letters, Paul is passionately pleading and putting together an argument against some ideas that have drifted into the church: ideas that are corrupting the freedom of the gospel; ideas about how people identify themselves to be followers of Jesus.

I’m saying this because Paul talks a lot about the Law of Moses (the Torah) in this letter, and circumcision. Paul reminds his audience that salvation has come to us, not because we obeyed the Law, but because Christ has set us free, and that we’re to trust in Him. Paul, at several points, even reminds those he is writing to that they are free from the Law—that, in Jesus the Messiah, Torah observance is not required.

And because we read these things we automatically—understandably—think Paul is weighing in on the argument of ‘Faith vs Works’, or, in our modern culture, ‘Legalism vs Liberalism’.[ii]

Yes, Paul argues that we are not ‘saved’—we are not “in God’s people”—because of works: faith is what matters! However, this does not mean that Paul would say we can behave however we like. Behaviour features heavily in this small letter that also speaks of freedom.

Yes, this conversation about ‘law’ and ‘freedom from the law’ occurs in Galatians, but it features as part of a bigger theme: Identity.

When Paul talks about the non-requirement of the Law, it’s not that we can behave however we like, it’s about redefining the people of God.

Paul is not anti-Law. For Paul, like the writer of Hebrews that I touched on the other week [I’m not going to repeat what I said then, see ONE ANOTHER // STIR UP (Heb. 10:24)], the Torah had done its job. It was a guardian and a signpost that pointed to something God would do; something that had now been achieved in Jesus.

Paul is not anti-Jewish, either. Paul is Jewish, and has also come to see that Jesus is Israel’s Messiah—not just for the Jews, but of the world, and this raises an identity question.

What do the Messiah’s people look like?

Let’s step back for a moment.

The Law was given, via Moses, to a particular group of people (Israel) after their liberation from Egypt. God chose this nation to be the vehicle of his blessing, his promise to the world. One day, God would do something through this particular people of God that would be for the benefit of all people, everywhere.

As a part of the Law (the Torah), these people identified who they were through their behaviour and customs: They practised male circumcision. They dressed in certain ways. They observed certain rules about the Sabbath, and celebrated certain festivals, and they abstained from eating certain food. They also would not (or should not) have taken part in any idolatry. Behaviour and identity were wedded: Their behaviour spoke of their identity, which spoke of a promise they carried.

This is isn’t to say that Israel’s behaviour didn’t alter or adapt over time, and in differing circumstances. It did. But, in the ancient world, you could spot a Jewish person.

Even by the time we get Paul’s culture, you could identify a Jewish person—you could spot the people who made these claims about this one God, who had acted in history and who would do so again.

But in Jesus, God launched what he had promised to do through these people: The Kingdom of God. And this Kingdom redefined God’s people. This Messiah people contained not only Jews, but Greeks and Romans. This Messiah people ate together and met together, and shared life together. They prayed together and displayed a oneness, despite their social distinctions.[iii] It wasn’t that the Gentiles belonged to the Jews, or vice versa. In the best examples, they belonged to one another!

So how do you define these Messiah people? How do you spot them? Where is the ‘beret’ or ‘badge’ that helps us do so?

Even the culture around the early Jesus community struggled with this question. For example, in a place called Antioch (in Syria), this strange community brought together Jews and Samaritans, Greeks and Romans, slaves and free, rich and poor, men and women in a way that was so confusing that the people had no idea of what to call them.

From the outside looking in, this group was obviously not Jewish, even though it contained Jews. You couldn’t call this group Jewish because the non-Jewish members were not circumcised and they were not observing things like the Sabbath. And yet, like the Jews, the Greek and Roman members of this group were no longer attending the regular pagan rituals and sacrifices; they professed faith in the same God as the Jews.

Their question was, ‘What do we call these weird people?’ So, as Acts 11:26 tells us, the people of Antioch called these communities, Christians. Acts says that it’s the first time they are given this name.

I really want to emphasise communities, not individuals. In their surrounding culture, as individuals, these men and women would still be identified as Jew, Greek, Roman, Slave, Free etc. But together they were something else.

What’s fascinating is that they were given this name by the surrounding culture’s non-Christians because all they knew about this strange mixture of people is that they came together because of a person called Jesus the Christ.

This is fascinating because the people of Antioch seemed to have grasped that the defining mark of this community is Jesus—solely Jesus. And yet, when Paul writes to the believers in Galatia (maybe at the same time as the group in Antioch is named), they have forgotten this truth. Or, should I say, they have been duped out of it (Gal. 1:6-7, 3:1, 6:12-13).

In the Galatian churches, because of certain teachers (and not necessarily Jewish teachers), some people have been tricked into thinking that to identify as part of the Messiah’s people, they have to follow, or add to their faith, other Torah observances, such as circumcision and Sabbath rules to prove they are really part of God’s people.

It’s got to such an extent, that the Galatians’ faith is no longer an expression of love, but an expression of fear (Gal. 5:6), and instead of living out of the favour of God, they are trying (unnecessarily) to find favour with God (Gal. 4:8-12), which in turn distorts following Jesus into meaningless superstitious practice.

[As an aside, it also misses that the Torah wasn’t given as a means of finding favour with God. As I said when we looked at ‘Stir Up One Another’ (see earlier blog), the Law was given by a God who had already drew near. So, they were misappropriating the Torah into superstitious practice, too]

As a result, they are biting and devouring one another (Gal. 5:15); they are becoming conceited, irritating one another and becoming jealous of one another (Gal. 5:26); and they are comparing themselves to one another (Gal. 6:4).

Because of this, their one-another life is not looking like Jesus. It was looking like a competitive cult.

In sum’, the Galatians had been loaded down with rubbish ideas of what Christians must do to identify as Christian.

And so, just as not all Frenchmen wear berets, Paul wants the Galatians to know that not all of God’s people are circumcised or participate in particular customs, observances and regulations. Not all of God’s people are Jewish, and they are not required to be Jewish, either.

Furthermore, Paul wants them to realise that asking non-Jewish Christians to observe Torah is like meeting someone who is French and forcing them to put on a beret to prove they are French (I’m paraphrasing, of course). It’s not only binding to them (and injuring), it’s also grossly unnecessary. Doing so places burdens on people and distracts them from what really matters, instead of helping them grow into this Kingdom life.

SPIRIT IDENTIFIED

As Paul says (in Gal.6:15) it doesn’t matter if we are circumcised or not—what matters is that we are becoming new people, a new creation! Or, as Paul says it in Gal. 5:6, ‘When we place our faith in Christ Jesus, it makes no difference to God whether we are circumcised or not circumcised. What is important is faith expressing itself in love.’

What matters to Paul, in this letter and other letters (Gal. 3, Eph. 1:13), is that we have been identified by God’s Spirit. What matters is not ceremonial observance, but that we embrace the identity God has pulled us into and allow God’s Spirit to lead us into loving our neighbour as our self; allowing the Spirit to grow love, joy, peace, self-control, goodness (Gal. 5:22-23); allowing the Spirit to move us away from hostility, factions, quarrelling, selfishness and self-seeking inclinations (Gal. 5:16-21).

Again, behaviour definitely matters to Paul. But unlike our works, this is the developing fruit of the Spirit’s activity within us as we trust in Jesus.

The identity of the Messiah’s people is not displayed by placing ceremonial burdens on ourselves or others; it’s displayed in our bearing one another. Co-suffering with, serving, supporting, helping, and caring for one another. This is what the Law of Christ is—this is what we are to ‘fulfil’ (Gal. 6:2), and it is what the Law has always pointed us towards.

‘For the whole law,’ Paul writes, ‘can be summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbour as yourself.”’(Gal. 5:13, NLT)

This does not mean that Paul expects that we are morally perfect all the time and immune from making mistakes or messing up big time! Nor is Paul saying that we don’t need the help and support of other people, just because we have God’s Spirit. Community is at the very centre of all this. All Paul wants is for us to come to a place where we can say, with him, ‘God forbid that I should boast of anything else except the cross of Jesus Christ’ (Gal. 6:14)

MODERN MARKERS

The thing is, this problem persists. We are still obsessed with identifying ourselves in a ‘ritual’ way more than a Jesus-shaped loving-one-another way. To be fair, the latter is more difficult.

Admittedly, we may not be pushing circumcision—we would be naturally wary of that. However, there have been countless things pushed and marketed as hallmarks of a genuine Christian faith.

For example, a long, long time ago, someone said to me that all Christians should get up a 4am and pray for several hours before starting their working day. Now, if God calls you personally to get up at 4am to pray for several hours, fine. To quote Paul, in Gal. 6:5, your responsible for your own conduct; that is your responsibility to carry. But, don’t push that as a burden onto someone else. Just because someone doesn’t wake up at 4am to pray, doesn’t mean that they don’t love Jesus!

How we pray has also been used as a marker. Some people use written prayers, some people are spontaneous, some people use a rosary, some people kneel, some people stand, some people lie down. Some pronounce Jesus as ‘Gee-zus’, others as ‘Hay-soos’, others as ‘Yeshua’. It’s all ok! Sadly, sometimes, we have taken how people do or don’t pray as markers of whether they are genuine in faith. What matters is not that you say ‘Hay-soos’ whilst kneeling and reciting a prayer, or whether your standing and spontaneous in Latin—what matters is new creation!

Not all Christians wear a cross! Again, if you feel God has calls you to do so, fine. But, don’t assume that a Christian who doesn’t wear a cross (or a Jesus sticker on their car) is less Christian than you or that they are ashamed of Jesus.

Not all Christians follow the Daniel Plan or The Freedom in Christ course—and they are not required to do so.

Not all Christians are Joyce Meyer fans. It’s OK if we’re not in to your favourite ‘Christian celebrity’. Actually, the ‘celebrities’ aren’t important. We love Jesus—that’s the main thing.

Not all Christians listen to Christian music!

Some Christians haven’t watched a show called The Chosen (even though we’ve heard good things about it).

Some Christians work on Sundays.

Like the Christians in Galatia, we can wrongly see ourselves as a superior ‘type’ of Christian. Whether it’s ego, or pride, or superstition—or actually immaturity (that we wrongly diagnose as maturity)—we have this way of creating Christian status symbols; and sometimes from good things that we bend out of shape, like prayer, fasting, giving and gifts of the Spirit.

We may not verbally express our superiority, but we can be critical of those who don’t meet our additional standards, thinking they are less mature than us. And in a church context, we will be divisive; pulling apart the unity of the body and pulling personally away from other Christians we feel are not ‘Christian enough’ for us.

Spiritual class systems still invade the equality we are supposed to all share at the foot of the cross and the status we all have ‘in Christ’.

One of the ways in which these hideous attitudes are exposed, is when people fall, and stumble, or blow it completely. So, it’s no surprise Paul uses this example at the start of chapter 6.

When this happens, those who boast in their spiritual status symbols more than the cross of Christ, tend to gloat, or pin up those who have failed as examples of why their standards are better. They tend to demonise.

You won’t find compassion, they’ll be critical! They may even proclaim that they are prophetic. Don’t be deceived. Real prophets, like Jeremiah, weep and suffer with those who stumble, they share in the loads people are under—they’re certainly not smug. Like those real prophets, like Jesus himself, as Paul tells us, in Gal. 6:1, if we are really the ‘spiritual ones’, then our behaviour towards those who stumble and fall should be marked by gentleness and humility.

CUSTARD HEARTS

Gentleness and Humility are key to this one-another life. We can’t bear one another without them. We can’t even bear with one another without them.

Gentleness is important because human hearts are like custard. I don’t mean that they’re yellow, gloopy and taste of vanilla. Custard is an interesting substance because (as a non-Newtonian fluid) the harder you hit custard, the harder it gets. When you gently place your spoon into a bowl of custard, the custard yields and the spoon gets in. However, if you were hit custard hard with a mallet, it wouldn’t break the surface.[iv]

Human hearts are like custard: The harder you are with us, the more hardened are hearts become, the less likely we are to let you in.

Humility is paramount, because we can’t deal gently without it.[v] If you think you are better than others, more “godly” than others, and higher up on the imaginary ladder you wrongly believe exists between you and God, then that ego poisons how we treat one another.

There is no ladder. There are no rungs between you and your Christian brothers and sisters. When we talk about the Christian faith, we are not talking about how we got close to God. Boasting in the cross is about how God stooped down and came close to us.

And as Paul tells us in Gal. 6:3, if you think you’re too important, you are too “holy” in your own estimation to stoop down to others, then you are delusional. Furthermore, you’ve missed the truth of the gospel (and scripture as a whole): that holiness is not something we bring to God, it is something God brings to us.

Again, that’s not say ‘holiness’ and behaviour are unimportant. They’re fruit.

So, how do you spot a Christian?

Well, we are not perfect. We are not claiming to be ‘spiritual masters’ of any kind. Some of us may have disciplines and spiritual practices, some of us don’t. But we’re not identified by the presence or absence of those things. We’re learning to trust in the love Jesus, and we’re learning to love one another like Jesus.

You could say, as the Dutch priest, Henri Nouwen once said, ‘The discipline of the Christian disciple is not to master anything, but rather to be mastered by the Spirit’[vi]

Or, as Paul himself said it:

“I myself no longer live, but Christ lives in me. So I live my life in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me”

The Apostle Paul, Galatians 2:20 (NLT)

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[i] If you don’t believe me, here’s an article in the French press explaining it much better than I: https://www.thelocal.fr/20191126/so-why-do-we-think-the-french-all-wear-berets/

[ii] I don’t really want to spend time in a sermon talking about the problems with Legalism and Liberalism. Actually, I don’t even agree with the terms! They are both the same thing—they just have different standards; and when you fail to meet those standards—those behavioural and intellectual markers of identity—both sides throw ‘the book’ at you, excommunicate you, and demonize you.

[iii] Cf. Gal. 3:26–28

[iv] If you don’t believe me, test it! Alternatively, here’s a video of someone walking across a swimming pool filled with custard to prove the point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mxd_LJr0BWg

[v] For a great definition of humility, here’s some sobering words from the seventeenth century French mathematician, theologian and scientist, Blaise Pascal: ‘Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.’(Pensées). In other words: However great we are, we are small in the scheme things. I also like how author and counsellor, Ed Welch puts it, ‘Humility means that you acknowledge you don’t know everything, and you might be especially confused when it comes to God.’ (Shame Interrupted: When God Lifts the Pain of Worthlessness & Rejection, New Growth Press, Greensboro, 2012, p. 91)

[vi] Henri Nouwen, The Selfless Way of Christ: Downward Mobility and the Spiritual Life (p.70)