Ryan Hale

After Paul had finished his first missionary journey, he and Barnabas returned back to Antioch where they came into contact with some Judaizers who said, essentially, that the Gentiles must become Jewish if they want to be saved. Their specific message was that they must follow the law, even more specifically that they need to be circumcised. The circumcision was part of the law that had been given to Moses and passed down to the rest of the Israelites.

Paul and Barnabas end up having some “discussion” with the Judaizers there in Antioch but ultimately head to Jerusalem to meet with the rest of the Apostles to confirm that they are preaching the same Gospel that the Apostles are teaching. They are concerned that this has been an official stance that has come out of the church there in Jerusalem, so they go to have a meeting to confirm that everyone is on the same page.

It turns out that all is well and there is no significant difference between Paul’s message and that of the rest of the Apostles, but given the state of the current culture that they found themselves, they give warnings to stay away from food sacrificed to idols, sexual immorality, meat from strangled animals, and blood. Each of those had their own reasons to be included but primarily focus around the worship of the Greek gods and the surrounding culture.

With that as a background, Paul is responding to the Corinthians who have asked him about the meat sacrificed to idols, presumably specifically why they can’t eat it. It seems that they think that they should be able to and Paul’s response is interesting. He writes in his response in an attempt to help them understand why this is a problem instead of simply saying because the Council said so! He doesn’t invoke a new type of law – which it is not, of course – but instead labors to help them understand the reason that they are trying to stay away from the meat sacrificed to idols. It is based on love for those around them, and the intent of staying away from having others stumble as a result and lose their faith.

Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak. For if someone with a weak conscience sees you, with all your knowledge, eating in an idol’s temple, won’t that person be emboldened to eat what is sacrificed to idols? So this weak brother or sister, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. When you sin against them in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause them to fall.

1 Corinthians 8:9-13

It is critical, from Paul’s perspective, to not lose people from Christ and to not prevent people from coming to Christ. So for this, he explains that he will not eat meat if it will causes others to fall, essentially saying, it isn’t worth it. If it will cause others to lose faith, he would rather not eat meat at all.

Paul is saying that the Corinthians should have the same perspective. Do they prefer to eat meat sacrificed to idols and fall from faith in Christ? Or do they prefer that others would retain their faith even if it means that they can’t eat that meat?

While we don’t have temples with meat sacrificed to idols, what is the principle that we can learn? What are things that we should consider to prevent people from falling from faith in Christ? What can we do to prioritize more people coming to faith? What should we lay down? Or pick up? Where is our priority on these things?

As we believe in Christ and take our steps forward in faith through baptism and placing our trust in Jesus, both for our salvation and for our headship as our King and Lord, God promises to give us the Holy Spirit to live within us. Previously, God’s presence was found in the temple in Jerusalem. As Solomon built the temple, we see that God’s presence filled the temple.

But as Jesus died, the temple curtain was ripped and everyone had access to God. No longer just those who were designated as priests for the people. Instead, we have all become priests. We have all been determined to be part of those who serve God. In all ways that one should serve God, we do as well.

As we receive the Holy Spirit, we see that we are, ourselves, a new type of temple. God’s Spirit takes up residence within us. We have God himself living inside of us!

It is for this reason that Paul admonishes the Corinthians against sexual sin. He points out that sexual sin is the sin that we can commit that is against our own body, which in reality is a sin against the temple of the Holy Spirit. The use of our body for sexual sin, whether to unite it with a prostitute as Paul points out, or otherwise, is a sin against our own bodies having been intentionally united with that which is intentionally impure.

Paul explains it clearly:

Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.

1 Corinthians 6:18-20

Paul says that we should not consider our bodies to be the bodies with which we can make whatever choice we want. Yes, in a certain sense that true, but as believers in Christ, we believe that his blood bought us. Our spirit, our body, all of it. We don’t separate one versus the other. We give all of it to Christ because he bought it all. He purchased us for his kingdom, so now we give him all that we have and all that we are and serve him with it all as temples of the Holy Spirit.

The church in Corinth had been experiencing another situation where a man had been sleeping with, presumably, his step-mother. Paul says that it was reported that he was sleeping with his father’s wife. He doesn’t say his own mother, so I’m assuming that means that his father had remarried and now this man was with this new woman, who would be his step-mother.

But what was even worse, Paul says that they are proud. The church is proud of who they are and what they are doing. They are continuing to accept this man in their church, despite of what he is unrepentantly doing, and are happy for it.

It is almost as if they are happy for the tolerance that they are exhibiting for this man. Proud of how open-minded they are. But in reality, they are headed straight for their own destruction.

Corinth was a provincial capital in the Greek empire. It is no longer Greek, per se, in the sense that the empire had now fallen and was overtaken by the Romans, but it was still considered to be Greek in its culture. And that culture was polytheistic, worshiping different Greek mythical gods that had been created by humans.

Unfortunately, because the Greek gods were created by humans, it was human decision also how they should be worshiped and one of the most significant ways that happened, besides animal sacrifice, was through sexual relationships with the temple prostitutes.

And having accepted that as normal, the men would also have mistresses and concubines in addition to their wives. And this was considered normal.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that this was a significant issue in the Corinthian church, or for that matter, in any church that was establishing itself in the midst of the Greek culture of that time. Those were the normal practices of the day, but man’s ways are not God’s ways, and God taught them and the church that there should be fidelity between the husband and his wife without other women being found in the midst of their relationship, either for worship or simple purposes of pleasure.

But the worst part in the whole situation is that the “open-mindedness” that the church was exhibiting was going to destroy it and Paul notes this by explaining that the yeast works its way through the entire batch of dough. Here is how he explains it:

Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

1 Corinthians 5:6-8

Paul is saying that they can’t keep doing what they are doing. The “old yeast”, as he says, is the sin of the world. We are sinful people, but where we see unrepentant sin within the church, we must call it out. And if that call does not respond with repentance, it must be removed. Otherwise, the sin will continue to grow and multiply to others and soon the church will collapse and simply meld into the rest of culture, becoming nothing more than a shell of an organization based on… nothing. Nothing that distinguishes it. Nothing that sets it apart. No identity. No purpose. And all because we were simply trying to keep an open mind.

The Corinthian church is divided based on the various leaders. Some are saying that they follow Paul. Some say they follow Cephas. Others Apollos. They are pointing their fingers at one another saying that they don’t do it like that, but they do it better because they are followers of this one or that one.

But Paul is pointing out that if they are lining up behind the teachers, behind those that are working to plant and found the churches, they are establishing themselves on top of the wrong foundation. The only foundation that they should work upon is Jesus Christ. Only upon him can they establish their faith. Not upon mere men. Not upon their teachings. Not upon simple servants.

Paul takes one more step forward as well, though. He goes further to say that the church is living in a certain sense of luxury. Paul says that they are rich. They are full. And they have begun to reign. Instead of continuing as they, the apostles are doing, and remaining as workers, the Corinthians are acting as if they are kings, passing judgment on others.

And in this, there is a heavy dichotomy because Paul is part of the apostolic band that is sent out, telling others about Jesus, and establishing the churches. The Corinthians have been beneficiaries of his work and yet they are living in luxury while Paul continues on without anything. The apostles are hungry and thirsty, yet the church is fat and full. The apostles are dishonored and the church is honoring itself. The apostles are beaten and homeless and yet the church has everything that it could possibly want.

Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! You have begun to reign—and that without us! How I wish that you really had begun to reign so that we also might reign with you! For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like those condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to human beings. We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored! To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly. We have become the scum of the earth, the garbage of the world—right up to this moment.

1 Corinthians 4:8-13

Something is wrong with this picture.

Somewhere the message has gotten lost. Or somehow the culture of the world is seeping into the church. The Corinthians should be imitating Paul and the other apostles, working for the sake of the Gospel in their own hometown, and yet they are living in luxury. This is not how it was drawn up. This is not how the people of God should be living while we are here on the earth. This runs contrary to what Jesus both taught and demonstrated to his disciples. This runs contrary to how Paul lived among them and the example that he gave to the new believers.

So, what about us? Are we following Jesus’s example? Are we following Paul’s example? A friend of mine used to ask us: Are we more like a cruise ship, or more like a battleship? This is similar to the question that Paul is asking the Corinthians. Are they contending for the Gospel? Or are they happy moving through their lives without a care in the world? This is a significant question, especially for the church in the west and the type of faith that we are exporting to the rest of the world. What does our leadership look like? And how are we as disciples leading others?

Paul is continuing to write to the Corinthian church, but he is reproving and correcting them for the divisions within the church. He explains that, previously, he could only give them “milk” in his teaching and not the “meat” of the Word because they were worldly. They were like newborn children because of their worldliness. They believed, but the world and the way that it worked continued to find its way into the church and into the way of thinking of the people within it.

In the case of the Corinthians, this was particularly evident. As a city, they were particularly prosperous and wealthy. They used their prosperity as license to live lavishly, in drunken stupors, giving themselves away sexually to any and all. This was the way that the people of Corinth frequently lived, and we see hints of this show up throughout this book, but not even this is the point that Paul starts with as he writes to the Corinthians.

Instead, Paul points out their divisions based on their teachers. The Corinthians have divided amongst themselves saying that some follow Paul, others follow Apollos, but Paul explains, of course, that they are both simply builders. They are servants. But there is one foundation, and that foundation is Jesus Christ.

So then, no more boasting about human leaders! All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future —all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.

1 Corinthians 3:21-23

Paul wants the Corinthians to build their lives upon Christ. He is the one who will be lifted up. He is the one who will be glorified. Him and him alone. Not the teachers. Not the builders. Only Christ. He is the one true foundation upon which we must build our lives, and if we try to do otherwise, building upon anything else, our lives – as a result of division, sin, disappointment, or otherwise – will crumble and fall. Nothing will be left. Paul knows this and wants to remove this possibility out from underneath the Corinthians. He wants them to build their lives, place their faith, and put all of their hopes in one person, in Jesus Christ. Jesus is of God and there is no other foundation upon which we must build.

Paul continues to tell the Corinthians that his goal, while he was there in Corinth, was to stay away from preaching and arguments that would be considered wise to the world, and instead speak with the wisdom of God. It would only be considered wisdom to those whom the Spirit had revealed the truth.

But to do this, Paul says that while he was with them, he simply sought to know Christ and him crucified. And this is the source of everything that Paul was doing. Because he sought to know Christ, he would have the wisdom that he would need to be able to speak to the Corinthians of the wonders of God.

Jesus told his disciples this very thing when he was with them. In John 15, he said that he is the vine and they are the branches. They must stay connected with him or else they would be cut off, fall to the ground, wither, and die. Only by staying connected to Christ can we produce fruit.

Now we see Paul saying something similar, that he sought only to know Christ, and because he did, he was able to speak with wisdom from Christ. Jesus is the source of Paul’s wisdom. Nothing more.

But how would Paul do that? The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John hadn’t yet been written. No, but the books that we now call the Old Testament had already been written and were available to Paul. In fact, we routinely see that Paul reasoned from the scriptures with the Jews, explaining that Jesus had to be the Messiah given the arc of the historical story told by the scriptures, given the prophecies that Jesus fulfilled, and given all that Jesus had done. Paul sought to know Jesus through what was told about him and through what was known of what he had done.

But Paul also knew Christ because of what God gave him as he believed in Christ. Paul received the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, and it is from the Spirit as his source, speaking within him, that he was now able to reason from the scriptures and reflect upon the wisdom of God.

Paul says that it is impossible for one person to know what another person is thinking. Only the person’s spirit inside of them can possibly know what that other person is thinking.

But in our case, we have received the Holy Spirit. He has made us to be a new creature, a new creation. And that new creation carries within it the actual Spirit of God. Now, because we carry the Spirit of God, we have within us access to God’s thoughts. We have within us the ability of know the internal depths of God, and because we can know God this intimately, we can understand him and his wisdom for us.

The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for,

“Who has known the mind of the Lord
so as to instruct him?”

But we have the mind of Christ.

1 Corinthians 2:10-16

I want to make note here that Paul says that we have the mind of Christ. He is writing to the Corinthians saying that they too have the mind of Christ. They have also received the Holy Spirit. They can understand the deep things of God. They can perceive and understand the wisdom of God. This is available to them as well.

And so also us. If we have believed in Christ and have received the Holy Spirit, we also can understand the depths of the wisdom of God. We must continue to dig. We must continue to explore. We must continue to ask, seek, and knock, but as we do, we can know Christ and him crucified more and more. We can know the wisdom of God and continue to help others do the same.

Paul now writes a letter from Ephesus back to the Corinthians, after having spent about a year and a half in Corinth establishing a church there in that city. Corinth was an extremely worldly city, known for its excesses in sexuality and drunknness, but also in business, wealth, and even religiosity based on the Greek gods. Between the two letters to the church in Corinth that we have, and a third that was lost, the Corinthians give us the greatest insight into how Paul had to work with its church and deal with some of the issues of that time within its community.

One of those issues is how the Corinthians saw their standing within the society based on their understanding of the Gospel. There were divisions amongst them with regard to who they followed, and there was pride about their knowledge of the Gospel.

Paul, however, says that this knowledge is probably nothing to be proud about, at least in front of the people of the world. If their intent is to be considered to be special by the world, they have it all wrong. They will simply be considered to be fools:

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written:

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”

Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

1 Corinthians 1:18-25

Paul is saying that the world is looking for different things that what they are preaching. Human wisdom is completely different from God’s wisdom and those differences come out within the cultures within which that wisdom is grown.

For example, the Jews demand signs, Paul says. Why? Why would the Jews demand signs? The Jews have grown up telling the stories of the Old Testament, the stories of Moses leading the people out of Egypt through the Red Sea, the water coming from the rock, the manna falling from heaven. These were signs that the Jews of Paul’s time recognized as God’s work, even if there were points at which the people who experienced the signs didn’t actually recognize God’s hand in the demonstration of the original sign.

On the other hand, Paul says that the Greeks look for wisdom. The Greeks believed that they could understand the world through reason. Through their own human intellect, through what they could observe, they tried to answer some of life’s great questions, including human origin, human purpose, etc. Of course, we humans are very limited in our ability to observe, and thus limited in our ability to reason based on limited understanding, so we fail to come to the right conclusions.

In any case, regardless of the human system within which the Gospel is preached, Paul says that those who are listening with human ears and reasoning with human minds are doomed to call the Gospel simple foolishness. How can it be good news that a Messiah, the one that God has sent, is crucified and killed? What good can that possibly produce?

And yet, Paul says that is exactly the message that he is preaching. Why? Because this is the wisdom of God. God isn’t simply looking at our short span of time that we call life as humans on earth. He isn’t even looking at the timeframe of what we would call “history”, a few hundred years. He is looking at eternity. Eternity past, eternity present, and eternity future. Or simply, just eternity. God knows that the human soul will continue to live on forever, but in the context of God’s glory. Not simply in the context of our world. Not in the context of this life. In the context of eternity.

In that context, if we can even begin to imagine it, the foolishness that Paul is preaching begins to demonstrate the wisdom with which God is acting and moving. Everything else fades. All of the kingdoms of this world. All of the politics of the world. Everything else becomes nothing at all. Why? Because when we understand our lives in the greater context of eternity, we understand that we either give glory to God, the One who created and made all of eternity, or we run against Him, the one who made it all.

Christ is crucified as a payment for the sins that we have committed, allowing us to enter into the Kingdom of God. Now, as we understand this, we see the reason for this message. We see why God’s wisdom is different than human wisdom. God is allowing us to enter into his presence, to give him glory. Not glory for ourselves, but glory for God, and him only. Without this perspective, this message seems like foolishness, but for those who are being saved, it is the power of God.

Paul is continuing to try to convince the Galatians that they have been set free from the law. They no longer need to continue to obey each of the tenents of the law that God gave to Moses to lay out to the Israelites. They no longer needed to do this because God has given them freedom through Jesus Christ because they now have the Spirit of God living within them.

Paul starts chapter 5 saying this:

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

Galatians 5:1

I love the sentiment of that first sentence. I think it speaks to something deep within me. Freedom. Yeah, that sounds good. I don’t always feel free, so the offer of freedom sounds amazing. It is for freedom that Christ has set me free.

But exactly what are we talking about there? What do we mean when we say the word freedom?

Oxford says this:

the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants.
“we do have some freedom of choice”

Or

the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved.
“the shark thrashed its way to freedom”

Let me test those quickly: It is for “the right to act, speak, or think” as I want that Christ has set me free.

Hmm… no, that doesn’t really fit what we would think of in a Biblical sense. I need to put on the mind of Christ, not my own mind.

Another test: It is to not be “imprisoned or enslaved” that Christ has set me free. Yeah, that’s getting closer. The scriptures most certainly talk about not being a slave to sin or being imprisoned by sin. So, Christ has set me free so that I will no longer be enslaved.

So, we’re close, but I’m not sure that we’ve completely captured it yet.

But I noticed, as I looked down further in the chapter, a connection between how Paul started the chapter saying that Christ gave us freedom, and potentially a definition of what he means by that. Paul draws a comparison between the acts of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. He says that the acts of the flesh are obvious, and of course, that is true: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.

And if we think about it, those things are obvious to us, not only because we not only inherently know that each of those things are not good, but we also have laws from God against each of them, not to mention laws from man against several of them as well.

But then Paul goes on to speak about the fruit of the Spirit, meaning that if we live according to the Holy Spirit that God has placed in us when we live for Jesus, we inherently do these things: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. And Paul, of course, points out that against such things there is no law.

Typically when I write, I don’t like to use examples of other people to show a bad example, but I had something happen yesterday that is relatively benign, yet a good examplar of what I think we’re talking about here.

I had to take my son to another city for a practice for his sport, so we drove on a 4-lane highway down to the other city. It was about an hour away and we were already running late, so admittedly, I was already going a little faster than I should have been. I was in the left lane and passing someone when I look in the rearview mirror and see a car come screaming up behind me. I couldn’t tell you how fast he was going, but he was swerving through traffic.

He came up very quickly behind me, flashing his lights, riding on my back bumper, etc. I continued to pass the car that was in the right lane and then moved over to the right. However, in some sort of strange demonstration to seemingly show me his dominance of the road, he swerved over behind me, drove up on the right shoulder, and then swerved over right next to our car, as if he was going to broadside us on the right side, swerving back over at the last second to avoid hitting me. My wife was screaming. I was “exclaiming”, let’s say, and it was chaos for about 2 seconds. All of this at about 130km or 80mi per hour. In the end, he just kept going, flying down the road ahead of us.

Whew… So, that made me think this morning. There are laws, of course, against what he was doing. No one should ever drive in that way. It was super-dangerous, to say the least.

But then I also thought, those laws didn’t necessarily stop him from driving in that way. He didn’t seem to mind breaking the laws.

Yet, if he had driven, and if we all drove according to the fruit of the Holy Spirit, there wouldn’t need to be any laws. If we drove with love, joy, peace, etc… no laws required. Yet we don’t. Our egos, our pride, our own desires all get in the way.

This is that from which Christ has set us free. We have freedom from the law and from the punishment that would come from breaking the law because we have the Holy Spirit. Let us live according to the Spirit as a free people, those that have been set free to live according to the leading of the Spirit.

I was reminded this morning that Jesus not only came in the flesh, being God yet living like one of us. He also entered into the same type of systems of the world that we live within.

In particular, I noticed in Galatians this morning where Paul says that Jesus was born under the law:

But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.

Galatians 4:4-5

Jesus came into the same situation where we live, into the physical world and in all of its systems to be able to purchase us back from it. In this particular case, I want to make note of the part that says that he was born under the law, to redeem those under the law.

No one had been able to fulfill the law in its fullness and completeness. Each detail of the law demands obedience, or it is broken. Each part is perfect and demands perfect execution. It is God’s law and he expects that it is completely followed.

Yet no one had ever done it. And after Jesus, no one has done it since.

But Jesus did it. He fulfilled the law. He did everything that the law required. He fulfilled it all. Completely. And because he did so, he was undeserving of punishment, but instead completely pure and worthy as a sacrifice before God.

Paul goes on to make a comparison to Ishmael and Isaac. He says that he can either be Ishmael, like the son of Abraham born to a slave woman. The slave woman, Hagar, is a worker in Abraham’s family. We can be a servant, just as we would be as servants to the law if we are born only to the law and this was our redemption, our way to please our master.

Or we can be Isaac, like the son of Abraham who was born to Abraham’s wife, Sarah. Sarah was connected to Abraham because Abraham loved her, and their child Isaac didn’t have to work to be loved because he was a child of their marriage. Isaac was a child of the promise, the promise that Abraham made to Sarah, but more importantly, a child of the promise – the covenant – that God made to Abraham.

Paul is asking the Galatians the same question that he might ask us today. Which are you? Like Ishmael? Or like Isaac? Through the law, and your attempts to make God happy by trying to work for him and fulfilling all of His commands, we could be like Ishmael. Or because the law has already been fulfilled through Christ, we can be a child of the promise. Which one are you?

Paul is pretty frustrated, and he is taking it out, in a certain sense, on the Galatians. They had heard the Gospel of Jesus crucified for each of us directly from Paul’s lips, and now they were turning their backs on the Gospel and deciding instead to follow the works for the law for their justification before God.

And Paul puts a question to them: Did you receive the Holy Spirit because you believed? Or did you receive the Holy Spirit because you followed the Law and did good religious works? Which was it?

Here is how he records the question in his letter:

I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?

Galatians 3:2-3

Let’s walk this back one step at a time.

Paul went to what would become the Galatian churches – Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe – and announced the Gospel of Christ to them. He spoke of Jesus Christ as the Messiah who was to come. He spoke of Jesus crucified for the forgiveness of sins, and he spoke of Jesus being resurrected of the dead. If you want to get a sense of Paul’s message, take a look at the recounting of his preaching in the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch.

From here, the people believed, were baptized and received the Holy Spirit, or they did not. There wasn’t any additional teaching on how they needed to clean up their lives before they received the Spirit. There wasn’t additional teaching on how they needed to obey each of the teachings of the Old or the New Testament before they received the Spirit. There wasn’t even a waiting period prior to believing nor to the Holy Spirit coming upon them. Instead, Paul says, when they believed and had faith in Christ, they received the Holy Spirit.

But how often do we practice the opposite? In various religions, people will say that they need to be good people. They need to be righteous. They need to practice good religious deeds. As long as they continue in this way, at least according to what we see in the Bible, these people will never receive the Holy Spirit because they do not believe in Christ as the One who will save them.

But even in Evanglical churches, do we not frequently do similarly? Don’t we often teach, or at least practice, that someone needs to clean up their lives to be able to come to faith in Christ? Yes, this happens, and frequently.

Of course we must call people to repentance. Of course we must call them to leave their sin. But the thing to understand here is that it is not up to man’s understanding, or man’s wisdom to decide if someone is ready. As they believe in Christ in faith, they can receive the same Holy Spirit that we have. We are not gatekeepers. We are seed sowers. God does all of the rest.

Let us call people to repentance and faith in Christ, and let’s open the doors to the Holy Spirit to come in and make all of the change that He desires because just one thing is required, faith in Jesus.