A Friends (Quaker) Perspective on Romans and Galatians
Provided several years ago for Illuminate, an adult Sunday School curriculum published by Barclay
Press, a Friends publishing house
Lesson 11
Galatians 1:6-9; 2:11-16, 19-21
I resonate with Paul’s frustration here in Galatians. George
Fox taught from the beginning that God calls both men and women as ministers
and gifts them to do the work. The second preacher in the Quaker movement was
Elizabeth Hooten. Yet in the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s, Quakers in a number of
churches preached that women were not allowed by Paul to be preachers (or pastors
or elders). Just imagine what Paul thought when he heard that! NO, he shouted
from beyond the grave, NOT A NEW LAW! I
said you are set right BY TRUSTING IN JESUS, and you are now free to listen to
God and obey what God tells you to do. If God says preach, DO IT!
Just try and pry people loose from a rule that makes them
feel competent and comfortable. It’s nearly major surgery. Yet Paul has a
similar problem here. He has taught, as he always did, that we are saved
through confidence in the work of Jesus, his life, death, and resurrection, and
what that tells us about the character and will of God. This saves us into
freedom from rules and laws and freedom to hear and obey the lively and living
Spirit; and yet, the Galatians are yearning for something safer and more
obvious—circumcision. So much easier, really, a few minutes of excruciating
pain and then recognition by others that one is “in.”
I can see Paul tearing his hair out. Live by faith, he says;
you were included in Jesus’s death, and now your daily life is lived through
and by Jesus. The death of Jesus proves that the law was not doing the job of
setting people right. Don’t start trying to use the law for that purpose now.
And don’t be like Peter, says Paul, who talks out of both
sides of his mouth—acting like someone without the law one minute and then
trying to fit in with those who insist on the law the next. Act consistently
with the truth of the gospel. How often do we compromise the free air of the
good news because we are afraid of those who insist on following rules?
Lesson 12
Galatians 3:1-14
The measuring stick Paul introduces here is the presence of
God’s Spirit in the lives of the Galatians. Just as Abraham’s faith was what
set him right, so also the Galatians’ faith set them right so that God’s Spirit
now dwells in them. This Spirit is the guide for living.
Paul points out some things about trying to live by the law
that I wish we would listen to as we apply some part of the law today and
ignore the rest. Paul says that those who rely on the works of the law to be
right with God are cursed unless they do EVERYTHING written in the law. Paul
says that relying on the law is the opposite of living by faith. This is true
even with regard to advice Paul gave to churches in his time. Paul is not
instituting a new set of laws that set us right with God. He must still be
frustrated with us.
What does it mean to live by faith? We believe the good news about God that Jesus
came to tell us and illustrated by the way he lived; he identified with us as
human beings doomed to die and brings us along with him into the resurrection. Now,
identified with Christ, we have died to the law in order to be free to live to
God.
The last part of Galatians 3 celebrates the equality of all
in Jesus Christ. When we trust our oneness with Jesus Christ, we are all
children of God. We are wearing Jesus. We don’t have lines drawn between Jew
and Gentile, slave and free, male and female. We are one in Jesus and we are
one with Jesus.
Lesson 13
Galatians 5:1-6, 13-18, 22-25
I remember seeing a Gordon setter walking itself around the
track at a local middle school. The owner was ahead by ten feet or so, and the
dog followed, carrying its own leash in its mouth. A 1000-lb. horse wearing a
halter can be led by a tiny person. In both cases, the animal still wears the
“clothing” of intimidation or domination. But Jesus has let us off the leash,
out of the halter, and has set us up as freeborn human beings.
George Fox wrote of being renewed to the innocence of Eden
before the fall. This is a good picture of the eternal truth of what Jesus has
accomplished for us. Implicit in it is the truth that each day we make the
choice between listening to and obeying what God says and acting on our own
advice or as we are dominated by voices other than God.
Paul particularly warns against attempting to bring Judaic
practices into the life of freedom in Jesus. His own experience of living under
the law made clear to him that he wasn’t going to be able to please God that
way; only his face-to-face blinding encounter with the resurrected Jesus made
it possible for him to live at peace with God.
As always, freedom is not the same as a license to kill or
harm. As the Spirit fills more and more of the corners of our lives, our
actions can be characterized not by competitiveness, egotism, or envy, but
instead by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness,
gentleness, and self-control. This shows that Jesus is working in us to bring
about in our bodies what we hope for—our complete redemption.
One word about aging: it seems to me that aging requires us
to lean entirely on what Jesus has done for us. I know many older folks who are
more rather than less anxious, more rather than less querulous, more rather
than less self-absorbed. I encourage the elderly to remember that it is not our
own good behavior that earns us God’s love. It comes freely as we trust in what
Jesus reveals about God and accomplishes for us through his life, death, and
resurrection.
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