Galatia

That would be James.

And then the earliest books of Paul, which are Galatians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and also Romans.

But we're going to do Romans next week.

Romans is so foundational to Christian theology, I thought that it deserved its own lecture.

Or Hebrews is that way.

1 and 2 Peter are that way.

Or it's going to be a letter to an individual church So obviously, Philippians, Romans, Ephesians, Galatians, they're all individual churches.

Or in the case of Ephesians and Galatians, maybe a few individual churches.

Yeah, I think we can look at Paul.

I think we can look at his letters to the churches and see that people are people.

And for example, you have the Galatian church.

Paul wrote the Galatians, and they got tripped up.

He said, you were running well.

Who tripped you up in your race? They got tripped up by legalism.

Everlasting joy shall be upon their heads, and they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Galatians chapter 1.

Greetings.

Paul, an apostle, not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ, and God the Father who raised him from the dead, and all the brothers who are with me, to the churches of Galatia.

He recognizes something.

Even after all these years, me going to Rome, Thessalonica, Galatia, Ephesus, doesn't matter.

My flesh is garbage.

Who will deliver me? Thank you, Jesus.

When he had landed at Caesarea, he went up to Jerusalem and greeted the church, and then went down to Antioch.

After spending some time there, he departed and went from place to place through the region of Galatia and Phrygia, strengthening all the disciples, Now there came to Ephesus a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria.

He was an eloquent man, well-versed in the Scriptures.

He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and he spoke with burning enthusiasm and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John.

He addresses the Galatians as brothers or brothers and sisters.

He wants to remind both the men and the women in the church of Galatia of how their identity in Christ has changed how they relate to one another.

They're not the moral police.

They're not just looking for opportunities to point out where they're Fellow believers in the church are falling short.

What does that mean? Who is a spiritual person? Are we talking about someone who meditates day and night? Someone who is going to church every day? What is a spiritual person? Well, very simply, a spiritual person is someone who is filled with the Spirit.

Okay, I mean, that's the context here.

If you go back to Galatians chapter five, where we have the famous verses on the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Right before that in verses 16 and following, we have all these different phrases.

which

means we know that Christ loves us because he died for us on the cross, but then just like the church in Galatia, we slip into thinking, okay, now I'm going to grow and I'm going to be sanctified by my own grit, my own strength, my own willpower.

And we kind of white-knuckle Christianity into And I think we missed the point that the gospel is not the ABCs of the Christian life.

The gospel is the A to Z. It's all the way through.

Where are the churches to which the epistles were written? Look over the roster of the churches of the epistles and then travel to these centers, known some of them only to archaeology.

Where is the church of Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, Colossae, Thessalonica? I have sat on the broken stone of a fane in old Galatia and looked out over the ruin of that desolate scene.

How infinitely sad to contemplate the ruins of a great civilization.

How much sadder to contemplate the ruins of a great faith.