Still Crazy After All These Years

As I write this blog I am reminded of how slow we are to learn God's way and how quickly we forget His word in how we live out our Christian lives.  In Galatians Paul has a confrontation with Peter over this issue.  Peter is all chummy with the Gentile Christians until some of his Jewish buddies arrive on the scene.  Then Peter acts like the words of the old 'skinny legs song' ("Say man, don't walk ahead of that woman like she don't belong to you ... just 'cause hers got them little skinny legs you know that ain't no way to do").  Joe Tex might not have been a New testament writer, but he had seen that "I don't know you" behavior.  So ... what did Paul tell Peter?

Paul got up into Peters face and began to remind him that the point of the Christian faith isn't to get the Gentiles to become good Jews (seems we still have people trying to get folks to follow Jewish laws and traditions today).  Paul told Peter the people had been freed from the law ... released from the bondage of the law ... freed from trying to keep the law to become righteous.  Paul says our righteousness comes from dying to self and being raised with Christ as new creations ... free from our past ... able to live out our faith and our love for God and others.  He says it is not him who lives but Christ who lives in him.  So why go back to failed law and failed/replaced traditions?  The reason is that we are still crazy after all these years.

We are still caught up in our good works = righteousness.  That never worked and it doesn't work now.  We are also living in an age when legalism is viewed by some as being faithful to Christ.  A person told me a guy he knew was a 'real' Christian.  I asked him how he knew.  He began to tell me the legalistic positions taken by the other person and I realized he wasn't describing a Biblical Christian ... he was describing a Pharisee.

As I have blogged many times before, our desire and aspiration is not to become like the Pharisees ... it is to become more like Jesus.  Let's drop the craziness and become Christ-followers!  Pastor Randy