Thoughts on Galatians from a Task-oriented person

In my quest to read more, I have taken Tim Challies’s challenge to use his guide on books to read. One of the books listed was a commentary. A new commentary series that is being written is the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series. I have read a couple of them and found them very easy to read and very devotional. I just finished Galatians by David Platt and Tony Merida and was challenged by it.

I am a task-oriented person and I think because of that, I found Galatians hard to wrestle with. I know what it is saying but how does that apply to my life? Paul starts off talking about how once the Galatians accepted the teachings of Paul and he left, they quickly abandoned what he taught and followed these Judaisers. They were saying that you need Christ + other works. Christ plus you need to live this way to be saved. I dismissed this because I knew that we were saved through faith in Christ alone. Then I would look at the lists in Gal 5 and use them more as a checklist: yup doing good there, yup, there too, oops, need to work on that. Even when I would look at the spiritual disciplines or when asked about what I should do to grow, I would see them as tasks to do. I have a couple of books on the disciplines and I would go through them and think, yup, there. Yup, there, Need to do that one… Even my quiet time has gotten to be more of a task to accomplish and remember to do rather than the focus of my day.

Gal 5:1, 16-18, 22-23

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.  But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,  gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

Walk by, Desires of, Led by, and Fruits of the Spirit … this is the goal: living in God’s presence. Too often, we break things down into tasks, and then forget the goal because of all the tasks. Can’t see the forest for the trees. “And the Christian life is not so much about you and I living for Christ as it is trusting Christ to live for us and through us and in us.” (Galatians p 50) It is not a checklist to prove our spirituality. Pray: Muslims pray many times a day. Go to Worship: Hindu’s worship and they worship all day long. Study the Bible: JW’s do too and can quote the Bible better than most Christians. Missions Trip: So do Mormons many of which give up years of their lives to do so.

“If your Christianity consists of slavery to religion in order to make yourself right before God, then it’s just as if you’re giving yourself to the pagan religions of the world. But Christianity is radically different from those worldly religions. Rather than slaves of religion, we are sons in a relationship with God." (Galatians p 88)

Gal 4:9 “But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?”

 In my relationships with Wanda and the boys, I may write down tasks to do with or for them. But, my relationship is on my mind when I do those things. The why is more important than the what. The book of Galatians has reminded me that the same thing is true with my relationship with God.