Galatians 2:16

The last post ended with the promise to take-up the notions of “works of the law” and of “faith somehow related to Jesus” as competing options by which to be justified.  Justification has often been understood as the rough equivalent of “to be declared sinless or pure.”  To understand Galatians, it is unfortunately necessary to “unlearn” what we have been taught in order to hear Paul authentically.  The reader is urged to see “justification” and “righteousness” (the words are close-kin to one another) as expressions of a covenant relationship.  And I have earlier posted on this blog a series of lessons that explain covenant relating.

God is righteous, by which we mean that God is wholesome and reliable in the way He relates to His covenant partners.  It is a solemn responsibility and an uncommon privilege to be selected as someone’s covenant partner—especially God’s!  One does not grant this kind of personal access to everyone met on the street.  It is reserved for people who accord the relationship with the highest honor.  So when God, the righteous God, admits covenant partners, He “justifies” them.  He declares them to be acceptable to join Him in covenant.

I’m thinking now of the Parable of the Wedding Banquet.  A king sends out invitations, basically to anyone who will accept and respond.  When the first round of invitations doesn’t yield enough responses, the king sends out his servants again.  They are to carry the call of invitation not only to the thoroughfares and main roads, but down the alleys and side roads, with the goal of bringing-in anyone and everyone.  At the event, a fellow is spotted not wearing clothing appropriate to the occasion.  He is unceremoniously cast out.  The message is that the New Covenant relationship carries a wide invitation, but a narrow acceptance limited only to those appropriately attentive to the solemnity of relational responsibility.  Many are called, but few are chosen.

As Paul writes Galatians, the only people “justified” to be acknowledged as the people of God are Jews.  The rare exceptions in which Gentiles find acceptance is when they abandon their natural cultural and religious inclinations and bend in a Jewish direction.  They become “proselytes” who embrace Judaism and the God of Israel.  This understanding ensured that the Jewish “social map” was organized around the Torah, the covenant-law of Israel.  And for some time, for long centuries in fact, that social map was valid.  Jews were right to be exclusive, and to blur the lines of fellowship and justification would necessarily dishonor God.  The lesson here is not that exclusivity in the covenant was wrong, that people should be more accepting, or—in modern American perspective—should be more “multi-cultural.”

The careful marking of “one of us” from “one of them” was essential and appropriate, until Jesus died on the Cross and was resurrected to newness of life.  That Person, that Event, changed everything.  It necessitated a re-drawing of the longstanding social map.  On the Cross, Jesus demonstrated most thoroughly and most dramatically and most meaningfully the “faith” or “faithfulness” that He embraced all through His life.  The word “faith” (or “belief”) carries several meanings.  We who are children of the “scientific age” tend to use it as in the question, “Do you believe in Bigfoot?  Or, in UFO’s?  Or, the Loch Ness monster?”  In this sense, belief in Jesus means that one accepts as historically true His existence, perhaps even His miraculous activities and rising from the dead.  But “faith” can mean more and different things:

--trust.  When a friend makes a promise and you trust the friend to keep it, you are showing faith.

--faithfulness.  When one partner responds to another in a way that honors him/her and that honors the relationship itself, they are being faithful to one another.  They are “keeping faith” or “being true” to one another.  Btw, when Jesus declared, “The truth will set you free” (John 8:32), doesn’t it seem more likely that His meaning was not, “You will be set free when you realize these things are actually true.”  Instead, Jesus offered “freedom” to those who embrace the “truth” that one partner keeps for another partner.  The joys of faithful relationships unleash a freedom from a tortured inner spirit and psychology.

It is said that every potential meaning of the word “faith” is exhausted to the fullest by a martyr.  One who would accept death before dishonoring God and the relationship shared with Him demonstrates “faith(fulness).”  When Jesus took the Cross and martyrdom, He exhausted faith of its many meanings and ran each meaning to its fullest expression. 

In Ben-Hur, Charleton Heston is fastened by each hand to two teams of horses that pull in opposite directions.  Jesus faced similar stress when He held faithfully to God with one hand, and held faithfully to people with the other.  The demands and resulting stress were such that He would be forced to let go of one or the other, or find Himself destroyed and pulled apart.  Jesus might have been expected to continue a faithful grip on the Father God who had always been faithful to Him, while releasing His grip on sinful, faithless people.  Jesus would have been spared, and that would have been fair and just.  But, expressive of pure grace and breathtaking mercy, Jesus also refused to let go of us.  Those two obligations, met full-strength, forced Jesus through a trial in which not only His face, but His honor, was spat upon.  Refusing to let go then forced Jesus through whips and scourges, until His back was laid bare.  He might have quit, might have let go His grip, at any point.  But He held even when the resulting responsibility pulled His spirit from His body, killed Him, on the Cross.  That is “faith”, bearing meaning and carrying definitions that leave nothing short.

Let us return to Paul in Gal. 2:16.  “…yet knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we believed on Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law: because by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.”  The first option here (which Paul denies flatly), by which one might find justification, is “by the works of the Law.”

Even though this possibility meets an unequivocal denial from Paul, we have to be sympathetic to the concerns of those who demand it.  Jewish people faced a struggle to maintain their traditional identity, religion, and faith that forced many of them to die as martyrs.  When Alexander the Great conquered the Mediterranean region under the domination of Greece, the various sub-cultures now dominated were forced to accept Greek culture and religion.  This was called Hellenization, and it was compulsory.  Of course, the Jewish people resisted and clung stubbornly to God and His Law.  And, they suffered terribly for keeping their allegiance and faithfulness.

It was important to identify “one of us” from “one of them” in such situation.  To identify themselves as faithful Jews to one another, they used “works of the Law.”  These were acts of compliance to Torah, the Old Covenant Law and each worked as a “badge” of identification.  The “works of the Law” consisted essentially of three Law-keeping obediences:

--circumcision.

--kosher-food diet.

--keeping Sabbath.

Think of the way Amish modes of dress and comportment serve to identify themselves with other Amish, and also distinguish them from others (“the English”).  The standard clothing styles are like uniforms, identifying their “soldiers” from enemies in the cultural and religious clash.  The “works of the Law” likewise enabled one to distinguish insiders from outsiders, the faithful from the corrupt.  And, as we have already said, these identifiers were meaningful and valid, until Jesus died in faith.

So, if not “works of the Law”, how might one be justified to be included among God’s people (and so find a seat at table)?  The phrase “by faith in (Jesus) Christ” can be translated from the Greek, and English Bibles traditionally and almost universally get it wrong.  The phrase can also be translated, “by the faith(fulness) of Jesus.”  In other words, justification comes not because we believe in Jesus, but because Jesus himself was faithful.  It is His faith, not ours, that brings justification.

Put another way, justification comes through the action of God rather than through the action of people.  God was acting “in Jesus”, even through His crucifixion, to bring a new way by which people might find acceptance.  This translation is finally being brought up in new Bible translations, like the CEV (Common English Version).  Accepting it means that we accept the startling conclusion that Paul, nowhere in Galatians, presents Jesus as the object of human faith.

Of course, our faith is still essential once we accept the “faith of Jesus.”  What is required is that when we consider “saving faith” or “the faith that saves”, we should allow ourselves (or force ourselves, contrary to what we probably have always been taught) to think first of the faith of Jesus!  In other words, to think first of the Cross.  It is here, and in Him, that we find the faith that is of such exhaustive quality that it saves us.  And then, after this consideration of Jesus, we might consider our own faith that is responsive to His.

It is curious that the phrase “faith(fulness) of Christ” occurs in Paul’s writings only seven times, and it usually is coupled with a clear reference to human faith.  His faith and ours are conjoined (which is what we should expect in a conversation regarding covenant relating).  The seven places are Romans 3:21, 26; Gal. 2:16 (twice), 20; 3:22, and Phil. 3:9.  In the following quotations of these Scriptures, the bold text will show human faith, and the other references will be re-translated to the faith(fulness) of Jesus:

--“But now apart from the law a righteousness of God hath been manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of God through [the faith(fulness) of Jesus Christ] unto all them that believe; for there is no distinction” (Romans 3:21-22, ASV).

--“yet knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through [the faith(fulness) of Jesus Christ], even we believed on Christ Jesus, that we might be justified [by the faith(fulness) of Christ], and not by the works of the law: because by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified” (Gal 2:16, ASV).

--“and be found in him, not having a righteousness of mine own, even that which is of the law, but that which is through [the faith(fulness) of Christ], the righteousness which is from God by faith” (Phil 3:9, ASV).

In each of these three references, Paul is speaking about the basis for our justification/righteousness.  And in each case, he conjoins the “faith of Jesus” with the faith of a Christian.  We will say more about this joining or “marriage” between His faith and ours later, but for now it is enough to see that for Paul there must be a re-drawing of the social map.  The necessity is obvious for anyone who understands the Cross.

The new social map will allow Gentiles to be accepted as “insiders.”  The old map did not.  And usually, that old map was drawn in the minds of Jewish people.  It became visible through who was, and who was not, allowed a seat at table.  And it also became visible in the Jerusalem Temple, where courts separated by boundary walls replicated the social map of Judaism.  The Gentiles (with surprising allowance of diversity) were allowed to enter the Temple grounds, but were restricted to their own area and were forbidden to enter the court reserved for Jewish men (Jewish women had their own court).  On the wall was a posting that declared just how serious the social map was regarded:  “No foreigner is to enter within the forecourt and the barrier around the sanctuary.  Whoever is caught will have himself to blame for his subsequent death.”  Jews are insiders; Gentiles are outsiders, and the barrier between them is solid.

But the map was being redrawn.  Some insiders would now be regarded as outsiders, and some outsiders now found acceptance.  When the Cross is made the new organizing center (instead of the Torah), Gentiles find a place inside.  They are justified or declared righteous.  Paul described this erasing/redrawing by making explicit reference to the Temple barrier:

“Wherefore remember, that once ye, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called Circumcision, in the flesh, made by hands; that ye were at that time separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world.  But now in Christ Jesus ye that once were far off are made nigh in the blood of Christ.  For he is our peace, who made both one, and brake down the middle wall of partition, having abolished in the flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; that he might create in himself of the two one new man, so making peace; and might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby:  and he came and preached peace to you that were far off, and peace to them that were nigh:  for through him we both have our access in one Spirit unto the Father.  So then ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God, being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief corner stone; in whom each several building, fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God in the Spirit. (Eph 2:11-22, ASV)

You can bet that when Paul sees Jesus as the “chief corner stone” of this new fellowship, that bring both Jews and Gentiles inside the people of God, he see Jesus in such exalted and vital position by virtue of His “faith.”  This is the new, and now the only, means by which a person may be justified.