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The Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast
GAL269 - The One Thing You're Allowed to Boast About
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Galatians 6:12-14 Thanks to everyone who supports TMBH at You're the reason we can all do this together! Music by
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Hey, my friends, it's Matt. This is the 10 minute Bible hour podcast. And yesterday I started what's probably going to be a three day conversation of me sort of participating in Paul's rant at the end of Galatians. It's fun. It's cathartic in its own way. So today's gonna make a lot more sense. If you catch yesterday's episode, it's just the previous one, you can go and check that out or, I mean, it's the Internet. You can play it however you want. You'll probably figure out what's going on if you just keep going with this one too. All right, I'm have Jeff play some music and we're gonna pick up right where we left off. I want to read you a little bit more of this passage. This is Galatians 5:14. Let me back it up so you know what I'm talking about. He said, not even those who were circumcised obey the law, yet they want you to be circumcised that they may boast about your flesh. He keeps going, may I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. There's this theme that runs throughout the New Testament that if you are bragging about your spiritual awesomeness, you're an idiot. It's a terrible look. It's dumb and it's stupid. Every time the disciples tried it, Jesus slapped their hand. That makes it sound like Jesus is being trivial or something. It was more than like, he just told him not to do it. At one point toward the end, some of the disciples mom comes up to Jesus and she's like trying to work things to make it so that they could maybe sit at Jesus right and left hand. Like, maybe nobody's asked yet. I'll just try to ask. I'll get my sons in a good position. You know what? On one level, you got to tip your hat to Good mom, who's looking out for her kids all the time. She clearly didn't understand how this worked. But Jesus is like, what? No, that's not even mine to give. And he corrects that. Basically given the same teaching he's already given a whole bunch of times. If you want to be first, you got to be last. The kingdom is upside down. Remember all of the rules about the world system. Jesus takes that and he flips that stuff. The values of the kingdom are different than the values of the world. We use that terminology all the time and maybe it gets a little bit watered down. What do we mean by values? What you value. The stuff that has cachet, the stuff that has currency in the kingdom is different. And grubbing and smarming and jockeying for being first in Christian stuff, It doesn't fit with the kingdom. Has anything changed, by the way? Is that ever attractive to you? Christian jockeying for who's Christianing the best or Christian leading the best or the best? Pastor Ick. You've all seen it, you've all been around it. Maybe we've even done it a little bit here and there. It's the worst. It doesn't make sense. This isn't a competition. It's not tennis, it's not basketball. This isn't a chest thumpy thing. Look at me. I'm the number one. I am the best at Christian. You just look like a clown when you do that kind of thing. I look like a clown when I do that kind of thing. Doesn't fit, doesn't work, doesn't make sense. Every time somebody tries to do it in the New Testament, I mean, heck, the Old Testament too, they look stupid. There's a whole book of the Bible in the New Testament dedicated to somebody who looks stupid. Stupid for trying to make sure they're always number one in Christian things and they get all the credit in the best seat. Diotrephes in 3 John. Say his name. Remember Diotrephes. It's a tiny little book and he is the mnemonic hook for this podcast for all of three John. He's the guy who loves to be first and his behavior is so tacky and so counter kingdom values that basically he gets an entire book of the Bible just about how tacky he is. You think about the way Jesus calls out the pharisees in Matthew 23. Effectively, his accusation is you're false and you love yourselves and you try to proper. Wow, I turned right to it. I feel great about that. Everything they do is done for men to see. They make their phylacteries wide and they make the tassels on their garments long. They love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogue. They love to be greeted in the marketplaces and to have men call them Rabbi. All of Matthew 23 is a withering critique of these people who Jesus later goes on to call snakes and a brood of viper. So I think if Jesus says it and he calls it out, it's okay for you. The person who's on the side of Jesus to be like, yeah, that behavior is really, truly horrible. And I certainly wouldn't want to do that. Think of Matthew 6. This is way earlier on when we're just kind of getting to know Jesus. But when he's talking about prayer and how to do it right, what does he say? And when you pray, don't be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corner to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. Oh, well, what is the reward? Being seen by men. That's what they wanted out of how they chose to pray. That's what they got. Good for them. It'd probably be better if the thing that you got for praying was God hears you and hears you with the sympathetic ear. But that isn't why they prayed. They cheapened it into something stupid. And so Jesus absolutely calls that out at every turn in the Bible when somebody tries to prop themselves up and look cool at the expense of the church and others and the reputation of the gospel, just because they're still playing by world kingdom rules and they want to look awesome, they look like a clown. Maybe Ananias and Sapphira are one more example that's worth bringing up in the Book of Acts. They wanted the stolen valor thing. They wanted to show up and talk about how Christian and giving and generous they were. Yeah, we're just like all the rest of you who sold everything you had, and then we're going to pool our resources. We totally did that, too. We gave up everything. Well, they didn't. They lied. They held back a whole bunch. They wanted all the credit for giving up everything like everyone else did, but they lied. What happened? They just died right there. I don't know that it's totally explicit about how the dying happened, but dropped dead. That's what happened. And then, I mean, one at a time, their bodies got dragged off. It's pretty dark, it's pretty bleak. But it also drives home the point that I'm making here, which is the New Testament really doesn't like the thing where we try to prop ourselves up as being awesome and the best at Christianity. And it really, really doesn't like it when it's all predicated on lying. And it really, really, really doesn't like it when it's predicated on lying and lying in ways that undermine the message of Jesus and undermine the church and hurt other people. So my point is, even though Paul has been very present as a character in this letter, obviously he feels these things. He's in the mix here. He is a character in the controversy he is speaking into, even though he's very passionate here, even though he's grabbed and he's writing with very large letters. And to the first time viewer of Galatians, he might look a little overly impassioned, a little, a little bit partial here. He might be demonstrating some bias and a little bit too much gumption, even though it might look like that at first pass. When we compare what he's saying and what he's calling these guys out for to the rest of the New Testament, he is perfectly in keeping with what the expectations are. He's perfectly in keeping with the teachings of Jesus. Though sometimes such passion is a little bit scary to us in the age of HR and caution. Paul is in the right here based on what the rest of the Bible says. Here's one more thing he's in the right about. I feel like I'm in the middle of a very long aside here, but that's all right. He's in the right about the one thing that you can boast about the cross of Jesus. Jesus did the work celebrating that. Boasting about it even. I don't know if it fully culturally translates to how we think about boasting. Maybe a boast here is maybe a little different than you and I might parse the word brag, but the principle translates from the Greek to the English just fine. Paul more than once says, if I'm going to talk myself up for anything, if I'm going to brag about anything, it is going to be what Christ has done in my life. I mean, there's a. I don't know who it's credited to. I've heard it credited to a lot of people. But like the, the only thing that you and I contributed to our salvation was the sin that made it necessary. I mean, it's basically Bible, I guess. But that's a great quote. It's a great pithy turn of a phrase. And it's true. So what do boast in? My own weakness that somehow brought glory to God and that he was able to somehow redeem this. That he was able to redeem the weird twisted up, screwed up things about me that you know and that you don't know. That he could take dead dry bones and breathe life back into them. And not just neutral life that is going to die again, but life that lasts life that goes from just getting by to somehow exalting and proclaiming the praises of God, yeah, that's boastworthy. That's worth celebrating and pointing to. And even though we didn't do anything, Galatians clearly teaches that that's not how salvation happens. You didn't breathe life into your own bones and then go flag down God and be like, hey, I just breathed enough life into my bones that you could maybe breathe the rest in there. God gets credit however he did it, whatever the mechanics are of it, however he knew first and then we chose or whatever. According to the Bible, according to Galatians, God gets all the credit. He owns life, he owns salvation. And so Paul's being really consistent with this theology right here to say, yeah, if I'm going to brag about anything, it's Christ, it's the cross, it's what he did. And he rounds out the thought saying, been through that. The world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. So he's coming back around to that point of the stolen valor of the bad guys, the Judaizers in Galatians, and the authentic valor of Paul. What is he boasting in? What is he celebrating? Well, these marks on my back, why are they there? They're the marks of someone who is serving the cross, serving Jesus, faithfully proclaiming the gospel, walking by the Spirit under difficult circumstances. So, yeah, I'll point a thumb at that stuff. So it all very much ties together. And you can really see this. Look what large letters I write coming through right here. As Paul is articulating all of this stuff, as he's fleshing out these ideas, and very much connecting the authenticity of his ministry to the authenticity of the Gospel, to the affirmation that he received in his ministry from all the people who walked with Jesus before Jesus was crucified and resurrected. And he's also tying in the fraudulence of the Pharisees and these people who are maybe stepchildren spiritually of the Pharisees at best, and maybe legitimate Pharisees in disguise at worst, pulling together all of that resume stuff that we read about earlier, he's pulling together all of the theology stuff that we read in the middle. He's pulling together all of the Life by the Spirit, constructive proposal stuff that we read at the end to make this big, gigantic, important closing point. But I'm not quite done processing out mentally the part where Paul is ranting about what is wrong with these people and their stolen valor routine. Paul's critique of these guys is complex. It's not just one thing. It's multifaceted he's hitting them on their motivations. He's hitting them on their weak psychology, on their weak constitution, on their cowardice, on their dishonesty, on their willful disregard for what the God, the Lord they claim to follow actually taught. They're trying to assuage their insecurity. They're trying to save face in front of their buddies who don't agree with them. They're trying to avoid any physical discomfort or pain on their own body for carrying out a message that many are reacting to with violence, but they're willing to inflict your bodies to pain to avoid that. Now, what do you all make of this? Are these people to be listened to or not? At its heart, Paul's charge is legitimately stolen valor. They're trying to claim Christian credibility and authority and leadership to speak to you as a church. But they've avoided all of the service and avoided everything that would be hard and avoided every bit of pain by changing the message in a very consequential way, such that they can have all of the credit and all of the praise and all of the nice seats at the meals and whatnot at church, but without actually teaching the truth and without actually enduring what came with teaching the truth at this point in things. Large letters indeed. Go get them, Paul. Alright, that's plenty for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10 minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.