Click for Galatians 1:10 Podcast
Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ. (Galatians 1:10)
The third word in this verse is really the first word in the Greek sentence. This word “now” draws attention to the authenticity of the Apostle Paul's conversion. You see, there were other Jews accusing Paul of throwing out the sacred Old Testament requirements that made anyone right with God. But the problem with their theology is that it had been long incorrect and not biblical.
These people from James in Jerusalem were teaching that one is saved by believing in Jesus plus certain good works. On the other hand, Paul was teaching that all men, including the Gentiles, are saved by simple faith in the LORD's Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing else can make one right in God's eyes but the perfection of Christ applied to the helpless believing sinner.
There is a mentality, common among many Christians, which suspects grace to be too easy. This mindset distrusts anything that appears to be too tolerant and not sufficiently difficult and demanding to gain God's acceptance. The underlying assumption is the more demanding and higher the price of piety, the more likely it is to be of God. Pride is at the root of the comment that suggests that one can preach too much grace. Contradictory to this attitude is the fact that biblical Christianity is founded upon the unmerited and undeserved grace of God for those who have no ability to please God.
The grace of the God of the Bible is distinct to the Christian faith. You may be surprised to know that Jesus never used the word itself. He just taught it and lived it. No other religion emphasizes grace the way the Bible does. Grace is such that it releases us not only from sin but from shame.
“Grace” is the most important concept in the Bible, and the world. Donald Gray Barnhouse once said, " "Love that goes upward is worship; love that goes outward is affection; love that stoops is grace." Grace is most needed and best understood in the midst of sin, suffering, and brokenness. We live in a world of earning, and deserving, and these result in judgment. Only grace makes us alive.
Paul wrote in Romans 5:8, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Understanding this foreign expression of love is what frees us to fling caution to the wind in serving Christ. When we have become the recipients of this radical and life-changing reality, we will be stirred by a heart that has been set free from self in order to serve the very One who laid down His life for us.
Grace is the opposite of karma, which is all about getting what you deserve. Grace is getting what you don’t deserve, and not getting what you do deserve. Christianity teaches that what we deserve is death with no hope of anything else.
In v.10 here, Paul turns the tables on his opponents. It was not that he had begun to be a man-pleaser since his conversion, but that he had ceased to be so. As a zealous Pharisee he was a man-pleaser. Had he not been converted, he would still be a man-pleaser. When the grace of God arrested his life, he radically corresponded to the radical One who now defined him by this radical concept known as grace.
Why not be defined by grace 24/7? The options are to be defined by that which is less substantive. The liberating grace of God frees the believer from having to worry about pleasing anyone, including God. It brings wholeness to our lives, so that we are no longer looking for something else to satisfy or fulfill us.
To invest in BYM, click here
