The Law our former primary school teacher

In Galatians (3:25) Paul says that the law of Moses was a pedagogue, a schoolmaster / tutor / guardian for the people of God in their infancy to lead them to Christ, in whom they find maturity and come into their inheritance.

Thinking of the law as our one-time primary school teacher might help us to understand how we should relate to it today. For example, if you met your old teacher today you would not put yourself under his regime of try to re-enroll in his class, but there would still be much to learn from a wise teacher.

Adults do not expect their former teachers to tell them to sit up straight, be quiet, put their fingers on their lips and raise their hand if they have something to say. Neither does the teacher want to treat his former pupils in this way. The point of all that primary school stuff is that the lessons might be learned and internalized. The school aimed to produce the habits of self-discipline, respect, politeness, good order and so on which the specific rules of the classroom embodied for little people at that time.

Similarly, the OT Law does not legislate for every eventuality but gives case law to teach patterns and principles which need to be applied anew, not least in the changed circumstances of maturity in Christ under the (re)New(ed) Covenant.

(Thanks to my STMTC group and especially Phil for thinking through this stuff with me).

Homegroup Plans

We're currently working through Galatians in our homegroups. For the next quarter, the studies might go something like this:

12^th May - (5) Galatians 3:15-25

26^th May - (6) Galatians 3:26-4:20

9^th June - (7) Galatians 4:21-31

23^rd June - (8) Galatians 5:1-15

7^th July – (9) Galatians 5:16-26

21^st July – (10) Galatians 6:1-18 & Review

Narrow, nasty and negative

The same kind of charges could no doubt have been made (quite wrongly!) against the Apostle Paul. Galatians 1:6-9.

Hardest passage in Galatians

At the Proclamation Trust conference I'm off to tomorrow, I have to hold forth about Galatians 4:24-31.

I was kinda consoled by the fact that John Stott says of 4:21-31, “Many people regard this as the most difficult passage in the Epistle to the Galatians”. (BST, p121)

Here are a couple of other jottings on that section:

From Tom Wright Paul for Everyone:

Isaac / Ishmael

Promise / flesh

Free / slave

Sinai /

Jerusalem above / present Jerusalem

Bereft, but now fruitful / in slavery with her children

Galatian Christians / Jerusalem-based ‘agitators’

Trusting in God by the spirit / trusting in fleshly identity

Persecuted / persecutors

Will inherit / will be cast out

And because I know you always love a chiasm, this from Longenecker (Word Biblical Commentary, p213) on vv25-26:

A Hagar

B Mt Sinai

C Slavery

D the present city of Jerusalem

D’ the Jerusalem that is above

C' Freedom

B’ (Mt Zion)

A our mother

Sabbath

Further to my recent sermon on the Sabbath (see church website), which I also spoke on to the leaders at camp, I agree with Mr Newman, here:

Sabbath-keeping

By way of postscript, it has often been used as an argument against Christian sabbath-keeping (and indeed the Christian calendar as a whole) that Paul points to the observation of days and months and seasons and years as evidence of turning back to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world (3.9-10). I do not think that charge sticks. Paul is talking about observation of the Jewish calender, which is precisely what Christians are not doing. Christians keep the first day of the week as the Sabbath, and they order their year around the events of Christ’s life. Moreover, they are not doing so in order to be marked out as God’s people. The sabbath principle, of one day in seven consecrated for rest and blessing is, like marriage, embedded in the creation before the giving of the law (Genesis 2.3). Just as the coming of Christ has not abolished marriage, even though the relationship between Christ and the church is the ultimate reality of which marriage was created as a picture, so too the sabbath day is not abolished though Christ brings the rest of which the sabbath is a picture. As for the Christian calendar as a whole, Paul expressly gives permission for us to observe days in honour of the Lord (Romans 14.6).

Why The Reformation?

I'm very excited. God willing, on the Lord's Day morning Rev'd John Cheeseman will preach at Holy Trinity, Eastbourne on "Why The Reformation?" from Galatians 1:1-9.

I assume that's the Protestant Reformation of the 16th Century, but I don't know. Maybe John will speak about the "reformation" in Judaism with the coming of Christ or the need for another Reformation today, especially in our own church and nation, or all three.

But really I bet John has in mind the events which, more than anything else, where sparked by Rev'd Martin Luther posting his 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church at Wittenburg on 31st October 1517. The theses mainly protested against the Roman Catholic practices of penance and indulgences on the basis of Luther's growing understanding that the Word of God clearly states that believers are justified (declared in the right) before God in Christ by grace alone through faith alone and not be works (doing good things, or the mediation of priests though the Mass or penance).

An English translation of Luther's Theses can be found at:

http://www.ctsfw.edu/etext/luther/theses/theses_e.asc

By the way, why not arrange a Reformation Day Party as an alternative to Halloween this year? Maybe its something we should do as a church, for the adults and the kids?