Today's Devotion

Note: I write a daily devotion cleverly called “Today’s Devotion” (I told you it was clever) at my Substack: Most Certainly Beane. They are based on the Treasury of Daily Prayer lectionary. Today’s reading is Gal 5:1-26, in which St. Paul wishes that the false teachers in the congregation would “emasculate themselves.”

Of course, this is not normally language we consider pastoral or biblical - but there are times for bluntness, sarcasm, and for raising eyebrows. Dealing with false teachers in the congregation is not a time to be nice or to worry about hurt feelings. This is a time that calls for the pastor to man up and confront the clear and present danger to souls. Of course, when pastors speak like St. Paul, they often get “tone-policed.”

At any rate, I’m reproducing today’s “Today’s Devotion” below for your consideration. I know I already posted today (the 17th is actually a day assigned to me), so this one is a little bonus, lagniappe as we say in South Louisiana. If you are unhappy with it, Dr. Eckardt will give you a full refund of your blog subscription). ;-)

Plus it’s my wife’s birthday today. Happy Birthday, Miz Grace!

~ Ed.

Today’s Devotion
Wednesday, July 17, 2017 - Gal 5:1-26

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

St. Paul’s frustration with the false teachers reaches a pinnacle here in his letter to the Galatian Christians.  The issue is whether Christians are enslaved by the Law, or whether they have been freed from it.  Of course, we Christians are not exempt from the moral Law, for even though Jesus has fulfilled it all for us and set us free, and we are indeed freed from the Law’s power to condemn us – we are not “free” to kill and steal and lie and covet.  But as our Lord revealed during His earthly ministry (Mark 7:19) and in His appearance to Peter (Acts 10:9-33), the ceremonial Law – including sacramental circumcision – has been fulfilled in Christ.  Baptism and faith (Mark 16:16) have replaced bodily circumcision as our initiation into the covenant as God’s Israel – whether we are sons of Jacob by birth, or by adoption.

These false teachers are sometimes identified as the “circumcision party” (Gal 2:12, Titus 1:10, Acts 11:2).  Their insistence upon this Old Testament ritual is always accompanied by a theology of earning one’s salvation by works instead of grace.  It enslaves Christians who have been set free.  It burdens and binds consciences contrary to, not only the command of God, but also in opposition to the blood of Christ, by attempting to remove “the offense of the cross.”  For the cross is a “stumbling block” to those who believe their salvation depends on ethnicity or ritual works (1 Cor 1:23).

This frustration results in Paul’s lament: “You were running well.  Who hindered you from obeying the truth?  This persuasion is not from Him who calls you.  A little leaven leavens the whole lump.”  We must not allow similar false teachings that obscure grace and open the door to the slavery of works-righteousness back into our churches.  For even a little spreads like cancer.

Paul responds to these false teachers with the desire that they would castrate themselves.  Of course, in our sanitized and overly feminized age, such language is shocking.  Were a pastor to say this today, there would be a barrage of pearl-clutching and scolding and tone-policing: “You call yourself a pastor?” etc.  But there it is, in Holy Scripture, by the pen of St. Paul, and delivered to us by the Holy Spirit.  Whether you find this remark funny or offensive, it is what the Holy Spirit wants to be read, and this is perhaps why the Holy Ministry is a vocationally masculine endeavor.  For men simply talk this way, and sometimes it is necessary to be so blunt.

For when it comes to the Gospel, there is no license to compromise or be nice to those whose desire is to cause people to be “severed from Christ” and from the salvation of His cross.  St. Paul knows that his calling is to confess and preach, as he wrote to the church at Rome, “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38-39).  “For you were called to freedom,” dear brothers and sisters!

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.