There can be no doubt whatsoever that one of the most important and influential people in the history of the Church and the Christian faith is St Paul. At the time St Paul was a persecutor of the Church, and known as Saul, the Church was a small sect within Judaism, a small and really quite insignificant group of what we today would call Messianic Jews; Jews who believe that Jesus is the Messiah, but Jews none the less. But that began to change, and change very rapidly, when St Paul was called by the Lord to take the Gospel to the non-Jewish, Gentile world. By the end of Paul’s life and in no small part thanks to his own missionary work, the Church had spread from its Jewish origins and home through what’s now Turkey and Greece, across the Mediterranean world to Rome. We’re sure St Paul didn’t found all the Churches in these areas but there’s no doubt that it was his missionary work among the Gentiles that paved the way for the Gospel and the Church to spread from its Jewish origins, out into the wider world and eventually, to spread throughout the Roman Empire.
But, while there’s no doubt that St Paul is a very important and influential figure in the history of the Church and its faith, there’s equally little doubt that St Paul was not the easiest of people. We know about his time as a persecutor of the Church, a tireless persecutor of the Church in fact, and that he was equally tireless in his efforts to spread the Gospel after his conversion to the Christian faith. So St Paul was what we might call a very driven individual, and people like that can often be very difficult people. In some early Christian writings and apocryphal texts, St Paul is described as,
‘A man of small stature, of three cubits (that’s about 4’6” or 1.37m in our measurements), with a bald head and crooked legs, in a good state of body, with eyebrows meeting and a somewhat hooked nose with a red face’
But it seems that St Paul might have had a case of what we would call ‘little man syndrome’ because whilst we also have descriptions of him having the ‘face of an angel’ we also read that he had the ‘temper of a demon’ which may have been the thorn in his flesh that he spoke about. And if St Paul, the man, was difficult, then no less difficult is St Paul, the writer and theologian. There’s no denying the importance of St Paul’s letters, which make up a large chunk of the New Testament Scriptures, but they’re not always the easiest of things to understand and perhaps one of the most enigmatic of all Paul’s writings is the third chapter of his Letter to the Galatians.
This morning, we only read the last a few verses of Galatians 3 and that doesn’t really give us the complexity of the argument St Paul uses to make his case that we’re all God’s children through faith in Christ.
Understandably given his own background as a devout Jew, and now Apostle of Christ to the Gentiles, one of St Paul’s great concerns is how Jews and Gentiles can be brought together as God’s people in the Church. As a Jew, he had great respect for the law, but he also believed it was unnecessary for Gentiles to convert to Judaism and live according to the law, in order to be members of the Church and to be saved. And so in St Paul’s letters we have this tension between what we might call the old way and the new way, the old covenant and the new covenant, between the Mosaic law and faith in Christ. We find this particularly in Paul’s Letters to the Romans and to the Galatians and we find it in this third chapter of his Letter to the Galatians.
St Paul begins Galatians 3 by calling the Galatians, fools because it seems that some of them at least were reverting to what Paul calls ‘works of the law’, in other words, they were intent on keeping the Jewish law and no doubt encouraging others to do the same. St Paul reminds them that they didn’t receive the Holy Spirit by works of the law, but by receiving the Gospel with faith. And he points out to them that Abraham was made righteous by faith, and on account of Abraham’s faith, God had promised to bless all people, long before the law had ever been given to Moses.
Paul then comes up with a very cryptic term the ‘curse of the law’ and weaves a quite complicated argument around some passages of Old Testament Scripture to explain what he means. He writes,
‘For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.’
We’re not quite sure what Paul means by the ‘curse of the law’. We can get a few clues though if we read this passage in conjunction with his Letter to the Romans, which St Paul wrote about 10 years later and in which he writes,
‘For the law brings God’s wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.’
‘Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.’
The only way it can be impossible to break the law is for there to be no law. Sin is still sin though, even if there is no law, but if there’s no law sin can’t be punished according to the law. But the coming of the law brings an awareness of sin; people know that they’re sinning because they know they’re breaking the law. That makes the sin worse and invites God’s wrath and brings punishment according to the law.
Perhaps this is what St Paul means by the curse of the law, but we can’t be certain. What we can say is that, for St Paul, the law, whilst it is good because it’s from God, can’t bring righteousness or salvation because only faith can do that, and the law isn’t the same as faith. Righteousness and salvation can only come through Christ who, by his death on the Cross becomes a curse, or perhaps accursed, for us so that the promise made to Abraham, the promise that all people will be God’s people can finally be fulfilled. And this comes not through keeping the law, not by works of the law, in other words, not by anything we do or have done ourselves, but by Christ’s death on the Cross and his Resurrection which gives rise to faith in Christ.
So for St Paul, the law, whilst good, was nothing more than a temporary measure, a guardian he calls it. The law was given to keep the people of Israel on the straight and narrow until Christ came to bring salvation both to them, and to all people according to the promise God had made to Abraham. And the way Christ did this was by his death and Resurrection because these are the things that brought all people, including the Gentiles, to faith.
Whatever else we regard as important about our faith, we should always remember that these are the most important things about our faith. These are the foundational events of our faith. We’re called a Resurrection people because our faith is founded on our belief that Jesus was crucified, died and was buried, and on the third day rose again from the dead.
In the first chapter of his Letter to the Galatians, St Paul speaks of his astonishment that the Galatians are turning from the Gospel he preached to them. St Paul doesn’t say what he preached to them, but we can get a good idea of what he said from what he wrote a few years later in his First Letter to the Corinthians;
Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you… For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.
This is the Gospel St Paul received and this is the Gospel he preached. This is what St Paul took to the Gentile world and this is what enabled him and his companions to spread the Gospel and enable the growth of the Church. Of course, St Paul preached many other things as well, things about the Christian life, and these things have been very influential in the Church and through his letters, still are. But the basis of the Gospel St Paul preached, the basis of his success as a missionary and evangelist was his proclamation that Christ died for our sins, rose from the dead and was seen, not by a few people, but by many people after his Resurrection. And perhaps there’s a message in that for the Church today. A message that, instead of trying to get people into our churches by any means we can, for whatever reason we can, regardless of whether they’re coming to worship the Lord or not, we might do better to take a leaf out of St Paul’s book and proclaim Christ as our crucified and risen Lord and Saviour. To stop just trying to get people into church and start trying to bring people to faith by proclaiming our faith.
Amen.
The Propers for the 12th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Trinity 1) can be viewed here.
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 