Paul asserts that we have already achieved true Freedom thanks to Christ. However, we regularly yield this gifted Freedom to pursue base desires and in doing so unnecessarily complicate our lives and permanently decrease our future capacity for Freedom. Paul challenges us to understand that true Freedom is not the absence of rules, order or consequence, but a free and clear mind, which springs from an unencumbered life...
We continue our tour of Galatians with Chapter 4. Paul spends the majority of the chapter using slavery as an allegory to help the Galatians, and us, understand what our relationship with God is like. We aren't mere peons toiling and mindlessly carrying out the orders of some unseen master, but adopted heirs privileged to experience a relationship and blessed with an inheritance...
Continuing our exploration of Paul's Letters, we find Paul correcting the Galatian Church for straying from the message by incorrectly focusing on the rules vice the relationship. Paul drives them towards the realization that: As 'good' as we may be, we will always come up short of perfect, which isn't hopeless only because Christ closes that gap for us...
This week we continue our study of Paul's Letters to the Churches with Galatians 2. In this chapter I think Paul is driving two central points:
To those points, Paul lays out some excellent examples...
We began Galatians this week, which continues our study of Paul's letters to the churches. The Galatians originally received the message from Paul and become devout followers, however in his absence they allowed their focus to wane and eventually reverted back to their old ways and allowed the message to be contorted...
This week we continued our study of Paul's Letters with 2nd Corinthians Chapter 11. The big takeaway here was that God in his genius provides us with a simple solution to the complex messes we create: repent and be forgiven. And I think we struggle with this because we somehow want it to be more difficult; we struggle to accept simple and postulate that the more complex the solution, the more refined, the better...
