Friends: The Apostle Paul was both free in Christ and a slave for Christ. Lots of people are. See the column ... Blessings, Bob

--- --- ---

Spirituality Column #927

August 20, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Freedom, or Slavery

By Bob Walters

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free … do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” – Paul speaking of the New Covenant vs. the Law, Galatians 5:1

My Bible mentor George Bebawi called Galatians a “stick of dynamite.” Galatians he said is not there for friendly advice about forging a gentle new path ahead in Jesus.

It is there to blow up the Jewish way of thinking about the mindset of the Law.

And who better to do it than Paul?  Early in the book of Acts we see this highly educated but rigid and murderous Pharisee hunt, torture, and mercilessly kill Christians for their disobedience to the Law. Paul then came powerfully to Christ (Acts 9), and in his 13 letters of the New Testament not only explains to all how to be a Christian, but how Jews erred in not accepting Jesus, the new covenant, and Christian thought life.

Later in Acts 18:1-17 we see Paul, rejected by the Jews in Corinth, declare “I will go to the Gentiles” (non-Jews), and is then told by the Lord to “keep on speaking.” Paul, once a vicious Jew who killed Christians brings the message of Christ to non-Jews.

As the Bible is organized, after Acts is Paul’s letter to the Romans, two letters to the Corinthians, and then his run of shorter letters beginning with Galatians. This is where we see Paul note (v2:4), “Some of our false brothers infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ and to make us slaves.” Paul is referring to Jews who insisted Christians, among other things, be circumcised.

Then in Galatians 2:11-21 is Paul’s vociferous disagreement with Peter on many matters concerning the Law. Paul’s “freedom” in Christ was from the “slavery” of the Law. No human could fulfil the burden of the Law from which Jesus frees us by grace.

Paul pounds that message throughout Galatians.  Today’s Americans see the word “freedom” and think “land of the free and home of the brave.” We see the word “slavery” and think of only past plantations, modern social injustice, and CRT racism.

To avoid today’s cultural horrification at the mere word “slavery,” modern Bible translations have largely cleansed the Greek doulos (slave) into “servant.” But here the English is either “slavery” or “bondage” and a “yoke” that limits life. Some form of doulos is used 125 times in the New Testament to describe a person who is owned by another.

But “slavery” is not always a horrible yoke. In Matthew 11:30 Jesus says “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” It means in Christ we are properly yoked with our master. When Paul says he is “a slave of Christ” in Romans 1:1, he is declaring his love and purpose of being owned by Christ. We are usually slaves to that which we love.

Another of my great Christian mentors, Russ Blowers, knew George Bebawi well and gave George the highest compliment I ever heard Russ bestow on anybody. He called George “a free man in Christ,” and Russ was among the greatest of encouragers.

Few anywhere could match George’s scriptural expertise (in many languages), his understanding of the ancient church and multiple doctrines, his life experience of having grown up a Jew in a Muslim neighborhood in Cairo, Egypt, converting as a teen to Christianity, becoming a Coptic priest, attaining a divinity PhD at Cambridge, teaching and serving in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and USA … and the obvious surety and humility of his faith in and love for Jesus Christ.

George joyously made himself a slave of Jesus, and freely shared his joy with all.

G.K. Chesterton wrote that our greatest freedom is to be free to bind ourselves to that which we choose. Freedom only works well when we choose Jesus.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes freedom also requires love and responsibility. And in case you missed it last week, here is a link to my recent guest slot on Rich Jacobs’’ “Finding Genius” podcast (48 minutes): Exploring The Culture Of Christianity With Bob Walters (recorded 7-31-24).

Friends, Ever struggle explaining your faith in Christ to an unbelieving family member?  Consider the newly anointed Apostle of Christ Paul going home to his pious Jewish family in Tarsus. See the column below. Blessings and peace in the New Year.  Bob

--- --- ---

Spirituality Column #894

January 2, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Welcome to the Family

By Bob Walters

“… because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” – Romans 8:14

The Apostle Paul wrote 13 of the New Testament’s 27 books explaining the kingdom of God, the person of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the mission of the church, and human life in Christ.

The four Gospels tell the story of Jesus. Acts tells the story of the early church, Peter, and Paul; the various letters of Paul and others explain the Good News of Jesus and what humanity is supposed to do about it.  Suddenly, in Christ, we are heirs.

It’s not surprising Paul was so adept and well-practiced at illuminating this newly arrived “Light of the World” – Jesus – who “came for all mankind” (John 3:16) and fulfilled the promises God made to Israel (Matthew 5:17). Jesus came into this world not to start a new religion, but to cement the divine-human relationship God set in motion in the Garden of Eden through Adam and Eve, in the seed of Israel through Abraham, and with the Law of Moses on Sinai.  Jesus came to complete God’s family.

Unlikely as Paul may have seemed – as “Saul” Paul had been killing Christians in defense of the Jewish Torah – Paul was the right man for the job of explaining deeply how the One God entered humanity through Israel in the person of Jesus to renew and restore the fallen world riven by sin and living far from its creator, the One God.

Paul brought many assets to the mission, including brains, energy, persistence, and faith in the One God.  Paul was thoroughly versed in Israel’s scripture as a Pharisee, schooled in Greek culture, was a Roman citizen, and who, despite being a zealot against the first Christians, became the tireless champion of the early church …  and not only because the resurrected Jesus appeared – forcefully, dreadfully, familiarly, personally – to Paul on the road to Damascus.

My holiday reading this year – we’ve had a couple weeks out of school – has been British professor (N.T.) Tom Wright’s book, “Paul: A Biography,” 432 pages published in 2018. Wright is called “St. Paul’s greatest living interpreter” and I’ll not attempt a “review” of the book.  I will say that its depth and common sense assumptions add new dimensions to the readings of Paul.  It’s a big read, but I enjoyed it immensely.

Wright drives home the point, vigorously described by Paul, that Christianity is a completion, not a replacement, of God’s great glory and purpose. And for all the book’s fresh and fascinating information and detail, one aspect I’d never before considered stopped me cold: Paul had to explain his faith in Jesus to his own pious Jewish family.

Shortly after beginning his ministry in Damascus and Jerusalem, “speaking boldly,” “Grecian Jews tried to kill Saul” and “the brothers” sent Paul back home to Tarsus (Acts 9:28-30) for what is thought to be a period of nearly 10, silent years.

Wright sets a fascinating narrative for this period before Paul wrote his letters: the zeal-filled Pharisee Saul goes home to his Jewish family in his Jewish neighborhood of Tarsus – where he had likely learned the family tentmaking business – now bringing zeal for Christ into a family environment that remained zealously pro-Torah. 

One never need wonder how Paul became so good at expressing the inheritance in Christ of the human family under the One God, saved by Jesus.  Paul began with a decade of trying to explain it to his own family and neighbors. That’s serious conviction.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is aware of the many “controversies” regarding the actual authorship of the various “Pauline” letters and other books of the Bible as well, but accepts the truth of the biblical canon as God’s Word.  Satan prefers we doubt.

Friends,  One’s faith walk involves far more than meets the eye … at least, it should.  Have a great week!  Blessings, Bob

--- --- ---

Spirituality Column #886

November 7, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Unseen Beauty

By Bob Walters

“… we fix our eyes on not what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” – 2 Corinthians 4:18

Life in this earthly realm is soaked in measurements, comparisons, and definitions, i.e., the temporal, finite, and quantitative environment of the “seen.”

For many if not most folks, the “seen” suffices for the totality of all that exists.  This idea that an unseen divine realm – heaven, the Kingdom, whatever one may call it – is the actual home of unerring reality intrudes on “common sense” and threatens one’s comforting, if prideful, personal supremacy: “God can’t improve what I already have.”

That the eternal birthplace, generator, and residence of truth, beauty, purpose, and love is seen only with a believing heart and faithful discerning eye is too far outside the box of possibility.  “Prove it,” screams the world, “Your faith puts you in a box.”

“I am free,” boasts the non-believer, unaware that it is the measured, temporal, earth-only life he inhabits that is the confining box.  There is plenty of structure in the divine; not only more than meets the eye, but beauty the eye is unequipped to handle.

What kind of structure? “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.” (1 Cor 1:18)

When you know, you know.  God, creating us in His own image, gave us a mind to think and create and love … and to seek Him and find Him by trusting His grace and living in His truth.  Most of that was muddled until the arrival and resurrection of Jesus Christ, proving the prophecy of an age when man would meet God, face to face.

The trouble humanity has these days is the self-inflicted culmination of several hundred years of philosophy separating man into pieces – his body, his will, his soul – that negates our willingness to accept the fullness of God’s grace.  We can see our “natural” state and for better or worse – or for death – we deny the unseen eternal quality of marrying our life to God’s through Jesus’s bride, the church. It’s very real.

I can see that divine life just fine, I think, as can many people I know. I can read the Bible, I know the love of Christian fellowship, I know the peace of Spiritual grace, and when I look around with my physical eyes, there is nothing I see that I think “just happened” without purpose or God’s will, and sadly, too often, by Satan’s evil design.

I once read a Bible commentary that made a compelling point that “eternity” is not a measure of anything, but that eternity is the quality of God’s life, not a quantity.  I liked that, and was all the definition I needed.  We can only glimpse God’s life on this side of reality in faith, and without faith, the message of the cross is foolish indeed.

“The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” (2 Cor 4:4).

This mind God gave us … it isn’t just to learn obedience, but to learn to think freely and in truth.  It is how we find God, who by the way I am convinced is also always searching for us.  But while secular humanity is “all about thinking,” missing scripture means you are missing truth … and in the process, missing Jesus.  There is no way back.

The ancient Jews had it a little easier, with a well-defined Law just for them and God’s faithful promise to save all mankind through their chosen nation Israel.  A life of faith in Jesus is not so well defined, despite the clarity of scripture and the abundance of historical evidence of His life, death, and truth.  Modern man stumbles and complicates.

Life in Christ is a beautiful thing; but the brightness is in our hearts, not our eyes.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) prays Ephesians 1:18: “Open the eyes of my heart.”

Spirituality Column #749

March 23, 2021

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

The Light Beyond

By Bob Walters

“So from that day on they planned together to kill him.” John 11:53

It didn’t take long for the Jewish leaders to get their wish.

As the Jerusalem Passover celebration loomed a couple of weeks ahead and as Mary, Martha, and other mourners looked on in nearby Bethany, Jesus summoned four-day-dead Lazarus out of his grave. Word of the miraculous reversal of death spread quickly throughout Jerusalem and the inner chambers of the cursing Jewish leaders.

It was in this miracle of Jesus raising Lazarus that the die was cast, the Rubicon was crossed, and the concluding events of the Messiah’s mission to save the world by revealing the true light of God’s love, compassion, and righteousness were put into motion.  The furious and threatened Pharisees, Sadducees, and all the Sanhedrin – the entirety of the Jewish ruling council – cemented its intention to have Jesus killed.

Ironically, the high priest Caiaphas sealed the decision by stating a prophetic truth even he did not understand at the time (John 11:50), “…it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.”  He knew not what he said.

The Jewish leaders had two problems (John 11:48): Jesus overshadowing their religious authority with the Jews, and Jesus eclipsing their civic position with the Romans.  If Jesus was this supposed “new king,” their leadership and status would end.

In the big picture, they had no idea how absolutely correct, but wrong, they were.

Their opportunity to kill Jesus materialized when He came near: His “Palm Sunday” entrance into Jerusalem for the Passover and Festival beginning later that week.  The scheme they hatched was to arrest Jesus for the Jewish heresy of claiming to be God and have the Romans execute him for claiming to be a king. 

Even at the Cross, it was still “so far, so good.”  Then Easter happened.

Caiaphas thought having this one man die would save the Jewish nation.  Wrong; having “this one man” die, God’s plan all along, would save all nations.  It was they, because of their unbelief in the Messiah who lived, who would be condemned.

That was what God had promised all along: Israel was God’s chosen nation through which He would deliver a savior Messiah for the rest of the world.  The point was neither to save nor abolish Israel or the Law, but to complete (“fulfill” in Matthew 5:17) them both in the establishment of God’s kingdom over all the earth.

The Old Covenant of the Law would be fulfilled with the New Covenant of faith in Christ, where it matters less who you are than whose you are: less about behavior and bloodlines and all about love and belief that Jesus is the Lord and Saving Son of God.

When Jesus famously told Martha outside Lazarus’ grave, “I am the resurrection and life” (John 11:25) before Mary and the mourning witnesses arrived (John 11:33), Jesus wasn’t just comforting her about Lazarus not being dead.  Jesus was declaring true the widely held Jewish belief of an unknown light beyond this world.

And that true, eternal light for all humanity was, is, and always will be, Jesus.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) thinks Lazarus should have “his own Sunday” before Easter.  The miracle’s exact timing isn’t recorded in scripture but it appears to have been about a week before Palm Sunday.  It’s most definitely the trip-wire event that shattered the patience, nerve, and little remaining courage of the Pharisees.

Spirituality Column #468
November 3, 2015
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville-Geist

The Faith of a Child
By Bob Walters

No, this isn’t a column about a little kid with an amazing faith story.

We all love stories of a child’s innocence and wonder and truth, so hopeful, so blessedly untainted by life’s doubts, age’s cynicism, and energy’s erosion.  We warm to the notion of purity – whether of observation, reflection or narrative – that surprises and charms us.   When demonstrated in youthful straightforwardness, it’s a tonic of guilelessness and virtue.  Kids are great.

But no, this is about us.  Adults.  And the Bible.  And Jesus Christ.  And mainly Jesus’s repeated instruction to his disciples and others, in so many words, to possess or exhibit “the faith of a child” as a requirement to come into the Kingdom of God.

This teaching on children and “little ones” appears throughout the Gospels (e.g. Matthew 18, Mark 9, Luke 9, Luke 17, etc.) and New Testament.

Taken on its surface – in a 20^th century social context of human maturity, a light understanding of Christian theology and within typical church doctrinal rigors of guilt, sin, fear, disobedience and general human fallenness that get worse as we age, and then juxtaposed with the humility, simplicity, and naiveté of the “childlike” mind, the grace of Jesus and the truth of the Gospel – the “faith of a child” teaching is charming but confusing, and even contradictory.

For example, it’s bad to be a milk-drinking spiritual infant, “not acquainted with righteousness” (Hebrews 5:13), but desirable to crave pure spiritual milk to “grow up in our salvation” (1 Peter 2:2).  We need the “milk of … God’s word,” not “solid food” (Hebrews 5:12).  Are we supposed to grow up, or not?  Are we supposed to really educate our adult selves about Christian faith, or not? Which is it: milk or meat?

In our modern Western culture, the “faith of a child” teaching seems naïve.  But to pious first century Jews and Jewish leaders in Jerusalem, it would have seemed outrageous.  And here’s why: they would have known what Jesus was really saying.

At age 13, Jewish boys went through a ceremony to become a “Bar Mitzvah,” one who is, literally, “subject to the law.”  What Jesus was saying, in quasi-parable fashion in places like Luke 9:46-48, “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven,” a “child” in its contemporary social context would have meant “one not subject to the law.”

In Christ, the law is fulfilled.  “Childlike faith,” then, is pure faith focused on Jesus the Messiah Christ, meaning freedom from Jewish law.

It’s an amazing faith story, yes; but all about Jesus.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) thanks Dr. George Bebawi for his Wednesday Bible studies at East 91^st Street Christian Church.  He is a deep well of faith and teaching.
PS - This column begins the 10th year of "In Spirit" in Current in Carmel.  Column #1 appeared Nov. 7, 2006.  Thanks to Steve, Brian and everyone through the years at Current.