Loving God of mercy and peace, shower Your gifts on this dear reader in all they may be facing right now; in Christ Jesus' name I pray, amen.
Our text for today is from Galatians 3:1-9: 1 You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited as crucified! 2 The only thing I want to learn from you is this: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard? 3 Are you so foolish? Having started with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? 4 Did you experience so much for nothing?—if it really was for nothing. 5 Well then, does God supply you with the Spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard? 6 Just as Abraham "believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness," 7 so, you see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham. 8 And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, "All the Gentiles shall be blessed in you." 9 For this reason, those who believe are blessed with Abraham who believed.
You and I are creatures of free will. We can choose whatever it is we want to do or believe. We can choose to believe and love God or we can choose to say that we have no time or even belief in God and walk away from God's fellowship. We can choose to believe what we were taught as children by those parents who loved us and wanted the best for us or we can choose to believe and follow the "teachings" of others that mock what our parents taught us. As siblings we sometimes see that in our brothers or sisters and as parents we sometimes see that in our children. If you've seen something like that you can begin to understand the Apostle Paul's opening lines of this chapter. The folks who were once believers in Jesus Christ by faith have now, somehow, been convinced that they need to be more works oriented rather that faith oriented. They've started to look away from the cross and what it represents: God's ultimate love gift to us so that we might be restored to a full relationship with Him because of the sacrifice of His only Son, and to look towards themselves in what they can do on their own; a struggling to "work out" their salvation by following the Jewish law. The influence of the Jews has not easily faded in this community and it is now coming to the forefront and this is troubling Paul. The reality was that this was killing their faith. They had seen miracles being worked among them and still they think that by relying more on themselves they can achieve more.
Paul appeals then to their historical faith by referring back to Abraham. Abraham was the father of the faith simply because he believed and trusted God. It was God who called him to leave his family and country and to follow him to a new land. That act of going after God gained him the name of father of the faith. And Paul, from having studied their faith as Jews now with the perspective of being a Christian can say that Abraham, even in those days, was told by God that his faith would bless even Gentiles (non-Jews), and that this faith the Gentiles would receive would be by faith not works.
You and I are blessed by our faith and this faith has come freely (at a great cost to Christ Jesus) to us. It came by our simply believing. After we received faith we set out to tell others and to do the things that would bless God and God's people. This was the result of faith not of our having to so that we might become saved. We're already saved. We're in a right relationship with Christ when we ask to be. Our temptation is to try and do works that show or say, "Hey, I'm a good person and this what I'm doing is so that God will notice me and see that I am worthy of being saved." Paul would tell us. God has noticed you and that's why we celebrate Christmas. And Easter. And it is precisely because of Jesus that we are saved.
PRAYER: Loving God, again I thank You for Jesus. May my faith increase in belief by my asking not by my trying to do something worthy. May the lessons Paul tried to share with the Galatians be my lesson in knowing more just how much You love me. I ask this in Jesus' name, amen.
Have a great and blessed day in the Lord.
Eradio Valverde
