Where’s the Joy?

Series on Galatians

II The Apostolic Assertions

F The Plea

Text 4:12-20

Introduction

The entire letter up to this point has been a significant rebuke to the folly of the Christians in Galatia in listening to the Judaizers. In Paul’s day, letters that were written to rebuke someone for misbehavior often ended with a request for a renewal of friendship and a change of behavior. In this letter Paul has repeatedly rebuked the Galatian believers for disloyalty to the gospel staring at 1:6 where he notes that Under the influence of false teachers, they were turning from the true gospel and following another gospel which required circumcision and observance of the law for inclusion in the people of God. Then Paul reinforced his rebuke for disloyalty to the true gospel by telling the story of his own loyalty to the truth of the gospel in 1:11–2:21. Next, Paul rebuked the Galatian Christians for foolishness about the gospel in 3:1–5, noting that they were believing the lie that works of the law were required to enjoy the blessing of God. Finally, Paul undergirded his rebuke for foolishness by an exposition of the promise to Abraham fulfilled in Christ 3:6–4:11, showing that since Gentile Christians were children of Abraham and included in God’s promise to Abraham, they could not be excluded from the blessing of God on the basis of the law. Thus the scene is set for the appeal which Paul makes here. We should note that we can seldom if ever plead with people to be saved if they do not know they are lost. We cannot bring healing mercies to people who do not believe they are sick. The Appeal consists of three things to be considered: the consternation of the Apostle, the contrivance of the Judaizers, and the changeableness of the believers.

I Consternation

In verses 12-14 Paul is recounting his earlier experience with the Galatian believers which had been very positive. I plead with you, brothers, become like me, for I became like you. You have done me no wrong. As you know, it was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you. Even though my illness was a trial to you, you did not treat me with contempt or scorn. Instead, you welcomed me as if I were an angel of God, as if I were Christ Jesus himself. First all the Apostle notes that he was ill. While the Corinthians said “his bodily presence is weak (or sickly),” the Galatians were gracious enough to overlook what was apparently obnoxious and offensive in Paul. His condition could rightly have been a “trial” to them, whatever the exact nature of the ailment. Most commentators settle on opthalmia which can be a repulsive eye disease., but we cannot be sure. Whatever the problem, in those days the first reaction would have been to avoid him as disgusting and under God’s judgment, or shun him as demon-possessed. When Jesus heals the man born blind in John chapter 9, we read, His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life. But the Galatians opened their hearts, and they did not treat him with contempt or with scorn. This shows they greatly appreciated the message Paul brought which was a message of grace, of freedom and light. They treated him as a heaven sent messenger and were filled with joy as Paul notes in verses 15 and 16, What has happened to all your joy? I can testify that, if you could have done so, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me. Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth? Where was the joy? In Luke 15 we read the parable of the lost coin in which the woman finds her lost coin and calls her neighbors to rejoice with her and in verse 10 Jesus says, In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents. Jesus is the joy of heaven and the Galatian believers had met him and rejoiced. How could they now choose the dismal dreary forbidding future of slavery to the law?

II Contrivance

In verses 17 and 18 Paul characterizes the false teachers and reveals their motives, Those people are zealous to win you over, but for no good. What they want is to alienate you from us, so that you may be zealous for them. It is fine to be zealous, provided the purpose is good, and to be so always and not just when I am with you. As they were once zealous for Paul, now they are zealous for the false teachers. It us not the zeal that is bad, but the cause for which they are zealous and the people for whom they are zealous are bad. These false teachers are not motivated by seeking God’s glory but by seeking their own. What Paul is asserting is the opposite of the post-modernist thinking of our time. Today it is more important to be zealous than to be right. As I write this there are people demonstrating in the streets of many cities across the United States. No one can figure our exactly what they are for or against, but it does not seem to be making any difference in the news coverage. The major news outlets incessantly report on this directionless movement. It is not surprising when you consider that people are so foolish that they will look at another person and say that he or she is very religious and think that is a good thing. Paul was not interested in the Galatians simply being zealous. He wanted to see them be zealous for the right thing. Today the important thing seems to be that you believe. It doesn’t matter what you believe. All religious roads lead to God, they say. This is nonsensical drivel, foolish inanity, irrational mumbo jumbo, ludicrous poppycock, and thoughtless rubbish. I remember Paul preaching at Athens on Mars Hill according to Acts 17:22–31, Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you. “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man’s design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.” As our text for today reveals it is not “faith” that is important but the object of that faith. If it doesn’t matter what you believe or what you are zealous for, then why believe at all when there is no reality, no truth, no objective standard? Paul saw them turning from the truth to believe a lie and that was a disaster. This is also why so many people are led down the wrong path following clever charismatic, charming, compelling, captivating religious leaders who are teaching lies.

III Changeableness

Paul concludes with a reflection on the changeableness of the Galatian believers in verses 19 and 20, My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you, how I wish I could be with you now and change my tone, because I am perplexed about you! Obviously Paul’s consternation is continuing here as he confronts his perplexity over the way in which the Galatians have so easily moved from freedom to bondage. He is so perplexed that he literally questions their salvation. He says he is in the pains of childbirth again. As any mother can tell you, childbirth is not something you want to do twice for the same baby. C.H. Spurgeon was exceedingly perplexed and frustrated over the blindness of sinful men and he invented a modern parable about it. He writes, “I stepped into a dark prison, and to my surprise, instead of hearing notes of mourning and lament, I heard loud and repeated boisterous and obstreperous laughter. I looked into the faces of some of the criminals, and saw sparkling gaiety like that of wedding-guests. Walking to and fro, I noticed captives who boasted that they were free, and when I spoke to them of their prison-house, and urged them to escape, they resented my advice, saying, “We were born free, and were never in bondage unto any man.” They bade me prove my words; and when I pointed to the irons on their wrists, they laughed at me, and said that these were ornaments which gave forth music as they moved; it was only my dull and somber mind, they said, which made me talk of clanking fetters and jingling chains. As I walked this prison through and through that the most fettered thought themselves the most free, and those who were in the darkest part of the dungeon thought they had most light, and those whom I considered to be the most wretched, and the most to be pitied, were the very ones who laughed the most, and raved most madly and boisterously in their mirth.” This is the same sort of frustration Paul felt. How could these Galatian believers be so blind that they were surrendering their freedom in Christ and walking into the prison of self-righteousness. This brings the Apostle to such desperation that he suggests that they need to be born again all over again. Let us never indulge in this kind of folly. Once freed, let us remain free in the grace of Christ.