What
in the world would make an apostle like Paul so angry he was spitting bullets,
pulling no punches, and a few other clichés that you can verbalize when someone
is red-hot and hopping mad?
I mean, this is an
Apostle, right? A designated and
authority-laden spokesmen of Jesus who saw Him post-resurrection. Surely, he wouldn’t be the kind of guy to get
angry, right?
Wrong.
He was angry. And sad.
And frustrated. All at the same
time.
For what reason?
He was defending the
Gospel. The Galatians were tempted to
add stuff to the Gospel and Paul would have none of it. We have a tendency to add things to the
Gospel also (cultural preferences that we baptize), so don’t go looking down
our collective nose at those Galatian brothers and sisters. Can you maybe think of something that we add
to it?
Paul was angry because
turning away from the Gospel – that Jesus died to deliver us according to the
determination of God (1.3-5) – is the way of spiritual death, not spiritual life
or enlightenment. He wanted those who
preached that distorted, impure Gospel to go to hell, literally. And he doesn’t just say that once but twice
(1.8-9). Twice!
He was that angry because
the stakes were that high. So he’s not overreacting. He was frustrated because the Galatians knew
better were entertaining other thoughts or ideas. And he was sad because it meant they weren’t
walking as faithfully as he prayed for them to do.
But mostly, he was
mad. In exploring, entertaining, and
entering into these “new ideas,” they were walking away from the One who had
died for them to deliver them, Jesus the Savior.
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