Paul’s First Letter to the Galatians

          I Paul, am on a Mission from God!

          I’m an ambassador of Jesus the Messiah and God the Father, who raised him from the dead!

          It is from them that I offer to all you Christians in Central Turkey Grace and Peace!

          I’m blown away at how quickly all of you defected from that Grace and Peace by embracing an alternative gospel… to be clear, there is only one Gospel, any other is false—there is only one message of hope and blessing—good tidings come from God and the Messiah alone!

          There are those who have looked at the Good News I preach and make the claim that it is too easy, that what I preach is people pleasing… believe you me, I wouldn’t be slaving away like this for Jesus if I was people pleasing!

          There are others who claim the Gospel I preached to you is a secondhand gospel—well let me tell you my story.

          I was the most religious of people, so zealous that I turned to violence and persecuted the church… up until God revealed the Church’s head, Jesus, the Son of God, to me, and ordered me to tell non-Jews about Him! This put me in a tailspin and for three years I tried to put it all together, eventually going to Jerusalem and meeting with Jesus’ brother, James. After that I preached in the province of Syria and my home province of Cilicia in South East Turkey. No one said it was a secondhand Gospel then, instead they just marveled that what I once persecuted, I now proclaim.

          Then, after 14 years, I checked in with the Jerusalem Church to make sure the Gospel I was preaching was in fact Gospel. They confirmed it, agreeing that God had gifted me to preach to non-Jews in the same way God had gifted Peter to preach to Jews. They asked only one thing of me, to “Remember the Poor” which of course I already planned on doing.

          This dual mission, I and my people proclaiming “Jesus is Lord” to the Gentiles and Peter and his people proclaiming “Jesus is Lord” to the Jews, turned out to be more complicated than expected—that’s why I have to write this bitter letter to you.

          In Antioch, my home congregation, this tension came to a head. Peter visited and stayed with us and shared meals with us, Jews and Gentiles eating together, no division, for we all are one in Christ—but then other Jewish Christians from Jerusalem showed up, and Peter withdrew from table, and his decision to do so caused all the Jewish Christians to follow his example and eat separately. It was hypocrisy! Whatever you were before Jesus claimed you for his Kingdom doesn’t matter, our old identities are gone, we belong to Jesus the Messiah, Jesus our Lord! Jesus demolished all these dividing walls, if we now build them back up when it suits us, then we are dividing ourselves from him!

          And those who came preaching to you all in Central Turkey after me… they are doing the same thing Peter did… and you all are falling for it! They’ve bewitched you! I preached Christ Crucified to you until I couldn’t preach anymore! And it is like you didn’t hear… Well, let me tell it to you again—you trust Jesus because you heard his Good News—that’s it! Did you receive the Spirit because you changed identity from Gentile to Jew, or because you heard the faith? Don’t you get it, there is no two-step process; no one is a second-class Christian. If you belong to Jesus, you belong to Jesus, full stop! Jesus plus anything is less than Jesus alone!

          I know these people preaching to you today are making you doubt that you are God’s Children, making you ask if God would bless someone like you—I can hear them telling you that you are cursed unless you side with them, because they have Moses’ laws on their side. Unless you change your identity… yet you already identify with Christ—any change after that does violence to your Baptism!

          I used to think like them, insisting to everyone I met that the Law says, “Cursed is everyone hanging upon a tree,” as proof that Jesus could not be the Christ. But he IS the Blessed One—the Blessed One receiving the curse short circuits all curses, so now all may be blessed!

          Let’s use Abraham, all the way back in chapter 11 of Genesis, as an example so you get what I’m saying. God made Abraham a promise, he trusted God and was made right. In fact, God promised to bless the whole wide world through him. As I’ve told you until I was blue in the face, God has made a promise to you through Christ. Trust God. Those who trust like Abraham are Abraham’s kin, through whom the world is being blessed!

          Now, many things have transpired since Abraham, namely the giving of the Law of Moses (which, I might add, doesn’t happen until Exodus 24—way after Abraham). The Law kept God’s people safe for many centuries, but now is being used by your fellow Christians to stifle the blessing of all people and exclude some from their baptism into Jesus Christ.

          So, know this, as many of you as were baptized into the Messiah have clothed yourself with him. Therefore, there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female…

(I imagine you have some different divisions in your day—perhaps costal elite or fly over state, rich or poor, young and old, LGBT and straight, citizen or immigrant, black or white) for all of you are one in Jesus the Messiah.
          And if you belong to him, then you are Abraham’s children, recipients of the promise!