Join us and our teacher, Pastor Ryan Brown, as we journey down the path of understanding these complex themes in our enlightening Decoding Galatians series. Expect to grapple with intriguing questions, discover Paul's insightful arguments, and unravel the cultural and historical importance of the Galatians.
In this riveting episode, Pastor Ryan Brown takes us on an intellectual exploration of the purpose and function of the law in the Biblical context. Understanding the promise and law relationship in the Bible is critical. We examine how the promise to Abraham superseded the introduction of the law. We dissect the purpose and function of the law and the implications of God's justice, grace, and holiness. We also discuss how the law was a medicine until the arrival of the ultimate cure - Christ.
As we journey further into the Book of Galatians, we delve into the role of Paidagogos , or guardian slave, and the significance of hindering growth. We also discuss the manifestation of true freedom, which is a cornerstone of biblical teachings. This in-depth discussion unravels the complexities of law, promise, and freedom.
This episode promises a depth of understanding that will enrich your knowledge of the God's word. So, gear up and prepare to delve into a mind-opening exploration of faith, law, and the profound teachings of the Bible.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RealBibleStories
Notes: https://sermons.church/archives?church=PalmsBaptistBibleStudy&id=126
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Check us out on these Streaming Platforms: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1912582/share
Join us and our teacher, Pastor Ryan Brown, as we journey down the path of understanding these complex themes in our enlightening Decoding Galatians series. Expect to grapple with intriguing questions, discover Paul's insightful arguments, and unravel the cultural and historical importance of the Galatians.
In this riveting episode, Pastor Ryan Brown takes us on an intellectual exploration of the purpose and function of the law in the Biblical context. Understanding the promise and law relationship in the Bible is critical. We examine how the promise to Abraham superseded the introduction of the law. We dissect the purpose and function of the law and the implications of God's justice, grace, and holiness. We also discuss how the law was a medicine until the arrival of the ultimate cure - Christ.
As we journey further into the Book of Galatians, we delve into the role of Paidagogos , or guardian slave, and the significance of hindering growth. We also discuss the manifestation of true freedom, which is a cornerstone of biblical teachings. This in-depth discussion unravels the complexities of law, promise, and freedom.
This episode promises a depth of understanding that will enrich your knowledge of the God's word. So, gear up and prepare to delve into a mind-opening exploration of faith, law, and the profound teachings of the Bible.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RealBibleStories
Notes: https://sermons.church/archives?church=PalmsBaptistBibleStudy&id=126
Website: https://real-bible-stories.square.site
Check us out on these Streaming Platforms: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1912582/share
Hello and welcome to Real Bible Stories. Join us as we deep dive into the historic, religious, cultural, political and emotional context surrounding the real lives of real people in the Bible and the stories we've all grown to love. Hello and welcome back to Real Bible Stories. I'm your host, emron Ward, and we're joined by Moa Selina and our teacher, pastor Ryan Brown. Hello everyone, back to the standard montage.
Imran:This week we are continuing down the rabbit hole of our Decoding Galatians series. So over the last three episodes now, we've been doing a deep dive into the Book of Galatians which, if you didn't know, was just one long letter, one long doctoral dissertation that Paul wrote to a church in Galatia that was very young in its faith. And I'm like I don't know Paul, why do you think they would understand this extremely doctoral thesis written thing you wrote to them. But now, 2,000 years later, we're deep diving all the cultural context surrounding that book. So it's been an absolute journey and I promise you here please don't be offended when I say this, but you're probably going to need to go watch those other episodes or listen to those other episodes for all the stuff we're talking about here to make sense.
Imran:So if you haven't caught up on this particular series. I highly recommend that you go back, start with the first episode in the series I think it was called Decoding Galatians, like Intro to Galatians, something like that and then kind of push through and then come back to this episode. All right, and for those of you that listened to me, glad to see you Now you're ready to jump in and for those that you didn't, that didn't listen, hey, I'll see you at the end of it.
Imran:Yeah, we warned you on a sea at the end of the episode, but with that, what are we going to hit? So last episode it was the first part of chapter three, just 14 verses we went through, and so I imagine for this next one, yeah, we're going to end at the beginning of chapter four tonight, so we've been kind of going through.
Ryan:You know, in the last episode we started with Paul asking six questions, right, or particularly in regards to the things that divide us, things that divide the church. In this particular case it was circumcision and he asked you know that big question? Right, let me ask you this one thing Did you receive the spirit before or after you started doing works of the flesh? Right, and he starts to be kind of begin his argument and really defending himself as to why the Torah is no longer necessary, especially for the Gentiles.
Imran:Yeah, and when you say Torah, you mean the law, correct, the Old Testament law.
Ryan:Right the law. And what he's going to build upon tonight.
Imran:Well, torah specifically. Sorry, is the first five books right?
Ryan:It is, and it's commonly referred to as the law.
Ryan:I mean the books of Moses. Torah is referred to as the law. You know kind of a common term, you know specifically the term, you know Leviticus and you know. But but yeah, the law, the books of Moses, the things that were given to the Hebrews as they were leaving Egypt, and he starts kind of making his argument where, really, where you left off, like just go listen to last week's episode, but yeah, just to kind of maybe refresh.
Ryan:You know, the macro of it was this is that to go back to the law. The first kind of point he makes is to go back to the law means that you are putting your trust, your faith and your hope back in yourself and not putting your faith, hope and trust in Christ. Because to go pursue the law then means I need to pursue all the law and if I'm pursuing all the law, I'm under the law, and if I'm under the law because that's what I'm held over to, which means I'm all in for Torah, I'm not all in for Jesus and you can't be. You can't be both. Be both right.
Imran:Because it's effectively saying that if you need to do these works, if there's faith plus something else that you have to do, then you're fundamentally saying that Jesus wasn't enough, he wasn't sufficient, that God dying for me was not enough to save me and justify me. I needed to do X, y, z, one more thing. So, even if it's like even simple things like baptism, like the, the to be dunked in water is not necessary for salvation, it's an external representation of that internal process of choosing to be faithful to Jesus.
Ryan:And so what he's going to build upon all that is because we like to build these little schemas or these systems or you know these rules, right, and what he's going to kind of get into the argument tonight. He's going to make it, and let me just give the macro right. At the kind of maybe at the front forefront, because you're going to learn a lot about his argument.
Selena:You know what?
Ryan:was the point of the law, you know. So it may be very enlightening for people who have had questions about, well, what was the whole point of the law then, if we're not to follow it anymore and that was the same argument being made against Paul Like, all right, paul, if you're saying they don't need to follow the law or any element of the law, then why was it there and what's the point Right? So he's going to start kind of giving an answer to why the law existed in the first place, but really kind of the macro would I would say, his primary argument, maybe. Maybe we'll first just start with this. If I were to ask you by what metrics typically do people measure church growth? With what would you consider? Oh, that church is growing.
Imran:Growing, I mean statistically, it would be numbers, maybe finances, numbers, you know butts and seats maybe.
Ryan:Hey, we're opening up new satellite campuses.
Imran:Yeah, right. So I guess, like expansion, that it's expanding in some way.
Ryan:Right and I would agree with you right. That's generally the metric people have of oh, that church is growing, right yeah.
Imran:It's that way, because that's how we measure the success of business.
Ryan:It's the same statistics, or maybe we add a hey customer base expanding is your bottom line getting higher.
Ryan:We have to do an additional service right.
Imran:We're going from one service to two, or one from two to three, which is still just how we measure business success. Right.
Ryan:It's kind of a worldly metric in the sense right. And that's because to Paul and maybe not call it church growth, but to Paul a growing church isn't necessarily one who grows in numbers, it's people who are growing in the fruits of the spirit.
Imran:In spirit.
Ryan:So a way you could say it is Paul's less concerned about church growth in terms of numbers and more about maturing the church, church maturity. How do we mature the church and that's true church growth right If you are maturing in those fruits of the spirit you know kindness, love, peace, patience, tenderness, right.
Imran:Yeah.
Ryan:All the things that we'll hit later in Galatians. But if you're growing in the fruits of the spirit or you're maturing in the fruits of the spirit, that's a true growing church. Yeah Right, that's a healthy church. And what you'll find is in healthy churches, or mature churches, you're going to find unity. Division is always a telltale sign of immaturity in the church. That's interesting. The argument he's going to start making is that is really one of maturity. He's saying to go to the law after having received the spirit, which is to go to or to rely on or is go to the right.
Ryan:Well, yeah, because they are going to it, because they received the spirit.
Imran:I mean go to. In our context of today, may may just be like to understand or to know. It's like, like you're not saying we shouldn't retore and be aware of where we came from. You're saying to like rely on the law. Context of the.
Ryan:Galatian church who was being asked to come under, to come under law with circumcision right To go to it, like you are going to get circumcised because you believe you need to do this to be a part of the family of Abraham right To go to the law right After receiving the spirit, and we've talked about this in the previous episodes.
Ryan:But the frustration Paul has right. I think you had said in one of the episodes like right at the end you're like man. I could just see Paul there writing it and just being so angry I thought about this after.
Ryan:That comment stuck with me because typically, the way you would write these letters and Paul's letters, you would have a scribe. So Paul's speaking it and you have a scribe writing it down what's unique about Galatians. And you read this at the end um, he hand wrote this and one of the things that you're going to see it alluded to a couple of times about his eyesight.
Ryan:Paul had really bad eyesight. It was probably because of his Damascus road um conversion with the bright light and, if you remember, he was blinded for a time and then um, you know, uh, the spirit sends a believer and he's able to see again. But what it seems is that he had always had kind of this problem with his eyes. He refers to it a lot and in this letter in particular he refers to it a couple of times that the end.
Ryan:he says you see what the large letters I write with from my own hand he makes the point of someone he's writing really big so he can see, but he's like I am writing this myself. I don't. This is not a scribe. It's almost like I'm so frustrated with this situation that I'm writing this myself.
Imran:I don't want there to be any confusion, any misinterpretation of what I'm saying.
Ryan:This is my hand, I'm writing this to you and part of his frustration going into tonight. What we're going to talk about is that, by the metrics of what the it's not just simply that he's trying that these teachers who are coming in behind them trying to preach this gospel of circumcision, is trying to pull these young new believers, gentile believers, and not trying to disciple them in the things they need to cycling in, but trying to add this other stuff.
Imran:Right, it's not even a year. I guess I could say.
Ryan:it's not that he's frustration isn't simply that they're wrong in thinking that the Gentiles need to go under Torah, but his further frustration that we're going to see here is that he realizes, if this is their view, they don't even understand the point of Torah to begin with. So not only do they not understand the gospel and they're preaching a different gospel because they don't understand what Jesus has done they don't even understand the point of the law. So what he does is he kind of gets into this and he does that like a Gentile way. He uses examples of his day like analogies to explain his concept, which will help us out tonight. I can tell you that.
Ryan:But you could ask but why is he going into so much or committing so much space to explaining the point of the law? If he's already telling the Gentiles you don't need to go, do it right. And the reason is is because he's trying to explain to them. You guys were never under the law, but I'm explaining to you what the point of the law is because you're now being asked to come under it. So, because you're now being asked to come under it, you need to understand what the function of the law is so you're able to be equipped to tell them no we're not going under the law and this is why.
Ryan:So he's essentially discipling them and something very relevant to them.
Imran:They're not educated and they don't know. It's like when people join the miracles. I don't know what I signed up for and it's like dude, you didn't read the fine print. You signed up for this. So, it's the same kind of way.
Ryan:Yeah, and so I would say one of the things, though, about the idea of a growing church not terms of numbers, but growing in the spirit but you know becoming mature in the spirit mature in your faith.
Ryan:You know, there's many things that will keep people from maturing, and I think this is true personally. I also think it's true corporately, of church and in large regards it's just true of general life, right, but a couple of things, things that hinder genuine growth from maturing, I would say one would be like division is a sign of it, which is also a sign of immaturity, but one I wrote down as an unwillingness to change. You see this with individuals and, you know, corporate churches, where they're brought into a season of life or a season of ministry. That was really good for that time. It was really good for that season.
Imran:Yeah.
Ryan:But then there's no longer good for that, right, you have to mature out of that season, move and change out of that season, go into the next thing. But because it works so well at the time, they don't want to let it go.
Imran:Yeah.
Ryan:People don't like change to begin with. Right, naturally people don't like change. But the unwillingness to change hinders growth in the individual but also the corporate life of church. And I mean I would say just for me personally in my life, like times where change was required and it was uncomfortable, right, comfort is the enemy of growth. Yeah, absolutely, because once you become comfortable, you become less reliant you become stagnant.
Ryan:Yeah, you become like I'm good at the status quo I don't need to change or grow because I'm good where I'm at, and so what God will often do is put us in uncomfortable positions and puts us through these transitions and changes into different seasons or different places.
Imran:But resisting going into that transition is ultimately that part that holds you back Right.
Ryan:And you see, like, like corporately in churches. You see this where, like man, you know this was probably a thriving church in the nineties or early 2000s, but they've stayed there. Yeah, they haven't changed anything outside of that. It's the same music at the time. It's the same technology at the time. It's the same way of doing, you know, service at the time, the same way of reaching people. Yeah Right, you're like what generation are you trying to reach with this? You know you can't jail at home church.
Imran:I feel that my home church in Miami so I've talked about Glendale before and I love them they grew, they grew me in the Miami who I am today, but but they haven't really advanced and they're they're aren't youth in the church. The church is fundamentally the same people I grew up with and now they're in their old age and it's like, but there's not a young body to take over for them when, those when, when that group passes on, you know so how would you separate that from tradition?
Imran:How do you separate that from tradition? Yeah, like I would say, your church is more traditional, there's a but that that really comes down to maturity, because tradition, you could also argue, is um, is an enemy to progress as well. To stand on tradition as your justification for not being willing to change shows a form of immaturity as well, I would say an improper place. Traditions are good.
Ryan:There's a reason traditions exist, but when you elevate tradition to a higher place and it needs to be that's what could stagnate it Absolutely. Um, so I was going to bring up.
Imran:I was good to highlight that point, um, because I've been reading a lot of Jordan Peterson recently. Something he talks about with, like, true maturity or is someone who is able to separate those things, being able to separate what needs to stay the same and being able to recognize what needs to change in order for you to move forward. And he's talking about like, in your own personal life, um, but he said, like, true maturity is one that is able to look at a situation, um, and and figure out what needs to be destroyed, what needs to be reduced to chaos, so that something better can be built from that chaos, and that our ability to do that, um, is what actually moves us forward. If we never get to that uncomfortable state where we were willing to destroy this thing and reduce it to chaos to build something new, then we're never going to actually truly grow and change.
Ryan:So well, and I would say like so some certain transition pieces of my life and you don't know what other seasons provide until you're in that season and how you grows you right. So first you know becoming married, right. Once you get married you're like okay. For a lot of people that commitment is very scary because they're comfortable single.
Imran:Yeah.
Ryan:And. I don't even mean like single in the sense of like I don't know what to do, that you know you have to do for the rest of your life Right, the commitment and that makes you very uncomfortable, right, Like it can make some people to the point where they're like well, I'm comfortable being able to do my own thing, responsible for myself, but I have, you know, a, a girlfriend or a boyfriend, right that?
Ryan:you know, I have this partner who's able to still do things with me. But but if, man, I signed that contract. If I mess up and or they said they've had enough with me, I could lose half of everything.
Selena:I have you know what I mean.
Ryan:So all those, fears come in and you know, going into marriage, as joyful as it is and should be, you should you should be happy and joyful going into marriage right.
Selena:But it's still uncomfortable, like that's part of like.
Ryan:You move in together and you're like.
Selena:Hey.
Ryan:I don't load the dishwasher that way, or I don't put the toilet paper roll that way. Why are you putting it in the back? It needs to go on the front right.
Imran:And you have those little art right. So there's this whole. Like I remember you gave an example before it's like, it's like you used to put on makeup and now you got married and you just stopped.
Ryan:Yeah. And it also does it's just you know there's not as much urgency as there used to be. Like there used to be like before I got up in the morning. She's dolled up right and we had a friend like that.
Imran:We had a friend where she said that her husband had never seen her without makeup until after they were married. And then I asked him about it and he was like, yeah, I woke up one day and thought I had gone to bed with another woman, but that's actually. I would say this, though it was like who is that?
Ryan:It's actually a sign of becoming closer, because she's becoming more comfortable of being able to be her.
Imran:Yeah, she was like, this is me.
Ryan:Instagram filter version of her with makeup right but it was after marriage. It is always after, because that's when you get comfortable and you grow to get. But all right, so that's like one right. Like where many people don't want to go into marriage because it makes them uncomfortable. And I, how much I have grown just being married right, because now you have somebody in your life that you can't fake it to right. Anybody can go and show up to church on a Sunday morning and fake it for an hour and a half and go home and you're like all right, right and be the real.
Ryan:You and those people who you're married to are. They know the real you. You can't fool them, so if you want to know, like who should, who is your? What is the quickest and best way to get discipled?
Selena:Get married because your spouse will let you know, right?
Ryan:And the other piece of that, another big transition that I've grown in is children becoming a father in each one of them, right, like there's a completely different dynamic of being a father of one than being a father of two, than being a father of three, right, the dynamic always changes, so you're always becoming uncomfortable, right?
Imran:That's interesting. I really thought about that.
Ryan:Yeah, every time, every time, because it's a new dynamic in the family. Man, you see, the same thing with pets, right, like? I don't think they haven't said this on the podcast, I think I told you guys. So our dog was dying, had cancer. The vets like, yeah, like, and they were wanting to do like very expensive treatment to delay it right.
Ryan:Get pet insurance, and I'm I know, I know Amarans big on these pet insurance. But besides the point, I was like, no, it's, it's, it's when it's time, it's time, right. And we were at a place where there was one week. I was like, all right, I'm going to take her in this week. It's going to be like a Thursday, didn't take her in, I'm something, I think I'm busy at work or something. And so we get into the next week and then we start seeing that she's starting to stand up on her own.
Ryan:And what had happened in between this was that we're like, okay, our dog is about to die, we're going to be left with our other puppy, so let's get another puppy. It helps the kids with that transition. The puppy can start learning from the older dog before she died. Like we had this whole plan right, but the kids were still sad that our dog was dying. So as a family, we, you know, held hands and we all prayed for our dog. And would you believe it, god answers prayers. So now we're stuck with this new puppy and our dog our dog, like she's like today.
Ryan:She jumped on the fence and like, fully recovered, fully recovered. It's insane. So now I'm stuck with three dogs and the puppy we got is a great day, so she's not even six months old yet, but bigger than my oldest dog. So it's just like having this monstrous toddler in the house because she's tall enough to jump on everything. But oh man, I've about killed that dog about three times already. Dog drives me crazy. She's going to be fun. I know she's a puppy, it's just that is hilarious.
Imran:My point is is that even with God, answers prayers.
Ryan:We got this third dog now and it's like this has changed our dynamic so much. I'm uncomfortable, right? My point is is that comfort, when you become comfortable in life and situations, you stop growing. So God will move you to make you uncomfortable to grow. You and some people are unwilling to do that, right. So when you're unwilling to end, what you see here but we're going into Galatians is that you have this whole community of Jewish believers who for so long were in a season of life, of being under the law, and now something new, something incredible Christ has come. He's ushered in the new age. He's changed everything.
Ryan:It's revolutionary, and they did not want to move and change from the season they were in and to the new season, even though it made them uncomfortable the idea of breaking bread with Gentiles, because for so long they were separated. You don't touch them, they're dirty. Now you're saying we could go eat break bread with them. That makes them uncomfortable, yeah, right. So you really have this group of people. Were just like many people today and for us, you know personally, if you're honest, you know they're just struggling with what we all do. So they had a hard time when God was doing something new and incredible. But that required them to move from one season into another season and even though it was uncomfortable, it was in that season that they were going to be able to grow and they were refusing to Right no-transcript.
Ryan:Paul kind of comes after them and really in a roundabout way, he really just calls them immature. He says yes, you've been under the law your entire life, you are very well educated in all things Torah, all things Jewish. But these new Gentile believers who know nothing, but they're fully reliant on the sufficiency of Christ, they have the spirit, they're doing great works among them and because they don't believe themselves to be reliant on Torah, you're coming around telling them they need to be. But that's coming from you, not coming from the spirit. They're more mature than you are. So now you have immature believers trying to get more mature believers to come down to their immaturity.
Ryan:The discipleship is supposed to be. The mature believer raises the immature believer up to them. What you have right now is an immature believer who thinks they're more mature, trying to bring the more mature believers down to essentially they keep trying to bring them up to their maturity, but really they're trying to drag them down to their immaturity.
Imran:That's almost like when middle schoolers try to guide other middle schoolers. It's like come, I'll tell you the ways of the women and the ways of how to get a date and how to get a girl to hold your hand, and all this stuff.
Selena:And it's like you're like 12,.
Imran:you don't know anything about anything, but it's like I'm sure that's how my dad must have felt, looking down at me and my friends being stupid and he's like these guys don't know anything about what's telling me. This works and I'm not gonna tell them.
Selena:So I do have a question, and it's a late night thought, but I'll try to put it into words.
Imran:This podcast is being recorded at 916 pm.
Selena:Yeah, we're supposed to start recording at six and then yeah, but I had.
Ryan:you guys cooked me an amazing meal. Yeah, so we're all fed, we have coffee, so what's your question?
Selena:Oh my goodness, you see, I lost it already.
Ryan:I'm sorry.
Selena:So when the Jews were under the law for I guess their faith had to be believing in the promise that a Messiah was coming Is that basically how they got saved, or how they were reassured that they were gonna be with God? Because, post Jesus, we would need to believe that God sent his one and only son to die for us because he loved us?
Ryan:Who was the?
Imran:Messiah, yeah. So how did you get in heaven under the law, type of thing?
Selena:Yeah, like, how, like, like, what was their metric?
Imran:Yeah, besides the law, this is a good feed-in because that's Besides the law like with the law.
Selena:This is what.
Ryan:Paul's gonna talk about. He's gonna talk about this relationship because to them, they were always concerned about who was part of Abraham's family, who was gonna receive that promised inheritance, awaiting the Messiah. But they thought the Messiah was to come do a different function. They thought the Messiah was gonna come raise an army, free them from the oppression of Rome, reestablish Israel as an independent state, and then they're able to get back on track to their mission, as given in Deuteronomy, to be rulers over all the nations right.
Imran:And then what just really did? I'm gonna lead you back to my mission of ruling the world.
Ryan:But really the Messiah Christ, the promised seed of Abraham, which Paul will talk about here in a second, came through as that messianic fulfillment to usher in the faithfulness, to satisfy the promise to Abraham in a completely different way. And that's a part of the thing that they're struggling with. They're trying to understand and that's why we were saying I think it was a couple episodes ago that it's not that To them, jesus is the fulfillment of a different Jewish narrative. Right, it's a different narrative. They think that he came to fulfill something completely different. Yeah, okay, and Paul's saying what you think he fulfilled is not what, it's much bigger than that. Like their view of what Jesus accomplished and what he did, which was much smaller than Paul's view of like no, you don't understand. This is much bigger, it's much more transformative. It is a revolutionary thing that has happened. Jesus was too small to them in certain regards.
Selena:Okay, so before Jesus was in the flesh, let's say I was a Jew before Christ. How was I assured that I was saved or maybe was doing the right?
Imran:thing. Is that why the law Was saved? Even the word that they would use, yeah, like.
Selena:I don't understand.
Ryan:You were brought in. It was about being part of Abraham's family, so as long as I'm part as long as I'm as a descendant of Abraham, I knew that I was.
Selena:I don't know.
Ryan:Yeah, so that's that. So you see this with Jesus a lot. Right, John the Baptist, when he's preaching, he says he can make children of Abraham from these rocks. Right, when Jesus goes into the home of Zacchaeus, he says for this is truly a child of Abraham. They were very concerned about who belonged to the people who were children of Abraham and they thought it was very ethnically based that I am born a Jew. You know of this, essentially of this ethnicity, and I belong to that family. And part of the thing that Paul was saying is like no, it's not ethnically based. It's.
Ryan:Messiah based. Who you are in relation to the Messiah determines who is part of the Abraham's family, not who you were born under.
Selena:Yeah, now.
Ryan:Right.
Selena:Okay.
Ryan:Does that make sense?
Selena:Yeah.
Ryan:We're going to go through it here in a second, because he's going to break a lot of this out.
Selena:So essentially Gentiles and like Hagar's descendants, we're not part of, oh, I guess kind of part of.
Ryan:So he talks about Sarah and Hagar in Galatians as part of his argument the child of the flesh and the child of promise. So let's break this down, cause this may actually add a lot of foundation to help answer that question. As they come up, write them down and we'll make sure we close those circles.
Imran:But really good job, selena.
Ryan:So we're gonna go ahead and you're gonna go ahead and read the target text. So we're gonna be Galatians 3, verse 15. And we're gonna go all the way through chapter four, verse seven.
Selena:To give a human example, brothers, even with a man-made covenant, no one annals it or adds to it once it has been ratified. Now, the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It did not say and to all springs, referring to many, but referring to one and to your offspring, who is Christ. This is what I mean. The law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God so as to make the promise void, for if the heritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise, but God gave it to Abraham by a promise. Why, then, the law? It was added because of transgressions until the offspring should come, to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels, by an intermediary, intermediary, intermediary.
Imran:Intermediary.
Ryan:Or mediator.
Selena:I'll put mediator as a hard word to pronounce Now. A mediator implies more than one, but God is one. Is the law, then, contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not, for if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law, but the scripture imprisoned everything under sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. Now, before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.
Selena:But now the faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith, for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
Selena:There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, he heirs according to promise. I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. In the same way, we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, god sent forth his son, born of women, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, god has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, saying crying Abba, father, so you are no longer a slave but a son. And if a son, then it air through God.
Imran:Man, I find the NIV kind of fun, fun, fun to read, yeah, a little bit cleaner, but also has a lot more drama, Like there's like apostrophes and stuff. So like in verse not apostrophe, sorry like exclamation points, like in verse 21, absolutely not.
Imran:Yeah. Is the law therefore opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not, for if a law has been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. And it's like I just and you know now you've said that he actually hand wrote this out, and it's like you see him there. It's like, oh my gosh, absolutely not Capitalized. All caps, circle, highlight, underline.
Ryan:Right. So, remember, he's still kind of fending off personal attacks against him, saying, well, you don't care about the law, you're being a bad Jew under Roman oppression, right? You're a people pleaser, blah, blah, blah, right Things that we talked about a couple episodes ago. So he's gonna give us a lot of different reasons that are kind of nested in here. So we'll try to draw those out, so we'll kind of take this in stride. So I'm gonna reread verse 15 and go to wherever I decide. I'm gonna stop. Brothers and sisters, let me take an example from everyday life. Just as no one can set aside an ad to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case. The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say and to his seeds, meaning many people, but and to your seed, meaning one person who is Christ. So, essentially right here Paul clarifies something that had always been at the forefront of-.
Imran:Oh, this is both. And to your seed. Okay, sorry, go ahead.
Ryan:Yeah, at the forefront of all the Jewish thinkers' thought of all right. So the promise came to Abraham that through his offspring, his seed, you know there'd be this family this massive multitude of families right and Paul says, hey, you guys have understood this wrong. It does not say seeds, as if there's multiple families, he says seed, singular family. There's no such thing as a Jewish family and a Gentile family under Christ, because the promise had always been to one singular seed, right.
Imran:So from Adam and Eve he you know Through the woman's seed, through your seed, through your seed, you're gonna crush the serpent's head, yep your seed right.
Ryan:So the seed that is always being referred to there, through Abraham's seed, through Isaac's seed, right. It's all singular. In other words, what he's saying Based off the promise to Eve. Is that the promise wasn't that multiple people and multiple families that this would happen? It's not that a multitude of tribes and families could rise up and defeat the serpent or defeat Rome, or defeat right, it was gonna be one person.
Ryan:So if he first anchors them on, it had always said it was only gonna be one, one person. That's to who the promise was made. And this is a very interesting thing because the Jews thought very corporately. So when you start thinking in terms of, like election, who are the elect of God, you know that is a very Jewish idea. We are the chosen people, we're the elect people of God.
Ryan:Right here what Paul is really clarifying is he's saying look, from the beginning the promise had always been about one person. There's been one from the beginning of time, from the very beginning, who had been chosen, the elect, to come accomplish all this. And he says that is what has been revealed in Christ Jesus, the supreme elect of God that had always been promised was proven faithful through Jesus. He was that promised seed, right. So because they thought very corporately, the idea of an individual election was kind of like oh, whoa wait, oh, it does only say one seed, it is singular. Right. And this also, by the way, when you started talking in theological terms of who are the elect, right, because one theological camp out there believes that every election God makes is like individual, like the idea that he chose Selena to be part of the elect and he chose Emre and to be part of the elect. He did not choose your neighbor.
Ryan:Sorry, neighbor but one of the whole points that's being made here is that election the elect is this one seed who is Jesus. Jesus is the elect of God. It's your association to him, just as it's my association to Christ as the heir. My association to him now makes me a co-heir as Christ as the elect. My association to him now makes me part of that elect does that make sense, but that's a whole different rabbit hole.
Ryan:I just wanted to point out there, though, that he first starts this right, that it would be singular Christ. It's not just that. So Christ would rule the world, Christ would be the light of the nations, Christ would receive the inheritance. Okay, so they're all thinking we all are going to receive this inheritance, like no, no, no, no. The promise was to the seed. Who is Christ? He's the heir, he's the one who gets to receive the inheritance, and that and promise inheritance comes through the faithfulness that was demonstrated in Christ. Does that make sense? Faithfulness to the law?
Imran:Right, because he was born, because now we're talking about the function of the law Under the law.
Ryan:right, yeah, we'll get to it. So verse 17,. So he also knew that that statement would maybe confuse some people, so I like how he does this. What I mean is this the law To clarify, right. The law introduced 430 years later after the promise that he had made to Abraham, right, god makes this promise to Adam and Eve. Then he makes the promise to Abraham that through your seed, all the nations would be blessed. Makes another promise to Isaac right, he says now, 430 years later, you get Moses, the law comes right. So the law introduced 430 years later does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with that promise. For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on the promise, but God and his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise.
Imran:Okay, so essentially I'll say right off the bat I did not know that there was over 400 years between Abraham and Moses. That is a that's already like Long time. So think about it.
Ryan:When, when. So you have Isaac and then Jacob and then you have Joseph who goes into Egypt. Joseph is what brought all the Hebrews to Egypt, because there was his famine. He was in the second in charge of the kingdom and it says that there was. They were in slavery for over 400 years there. So things were really good for the Hebrews when Joseph was in charge, right. And then there's a new kingdom.
Ryan:That essentially came in Cause at that time they were they were symmetrically being ruled. After that is when a new Egyptian dynasty comes in. I think that's what they call the, the middle kingdom. The middle kingdom of Egypt, I think, comes in at that time and things change and now it kind of gets rough for the Hebrews to get enslaved, right? But yeah, then you have 400 years of that 430 years right, and then.
Ryan:Moses comes out. But notice what he says, though. He made the promise before the law was ever there, right? In other words, if the law came after the promise, then the law. However, you need to understand and read the function of the law. It has to act as a function underneath the promise the promise. It doesn't supersede the promise, right? The promise doesn't act as a function within the law. The law acts as a function within the promise. Okay, right. So the law is there as a mechanism to fulfill the promise that was previously established. The promise wasn't made to go through, right To work under the law.
Ryan:That's the point he's making. Yeah.
Imran:It was first made as a promise, so almost Nothing else except a promise. So the law is in some way there to help us identify or realize or know something about the promise, Like not to, yeah, I was. I mean, he's gonna get it as kind of the ultimate purpose of it there. But that's kind of how I understand it. Is that the law is there to kind of give you a picture of what we're working to facilitate?
Ryan:No, he's setting them up and saying any theology or interpretation of how you understand. Remember, he's kind of he's writing to the Galatian church, but also kind of writing to the Jewish right. He's like for you to understand what the law is you need to understand. Yeah, you need to understand that it operates under the function of the promise. It's not the other way around.
Imran:Okay.
Ryan:Right. The promise supersedes the law because it came first. He gave it to Abraham as a promise.
Imran:Okay, so you can't, through the law, get the promise. It's like the promise comes first. So the law is clarifying something about the promise. So the law can't supersede that promise, right?
Ryan:So in another way you can also, because some would say this well, yeah, but the law came 430 years later. But it was Abraham who established the practice of circumcision. Right, it was actually circumcision, which was Abraham's covenant, to say, because God has made a covenant to us. The mark that we have of this covenant is circumcision Right. So Paul is very keenly aware of this. Argument that could be made against this Is that, yeah, law came later, but circumcision came before the law too. Circumcision came 430 years before too, but that's interesting. Here's a question, though Did Abraham have everybody circumcised before or after the promise was made?
Imran:After it was after. So he didn't get the promise because of the circumcision. He did the circumcision to recognize the promise.
Ryan:The promise that was made To set aside. The circumcision was there to remind them of the promise God had made about the seed of Abraham, so question Dang.
Imran:It literally has something they used to recognize related and it's related to the seed, so that they remember the seed you got it.
Ryan:Oh my gosh.
Imran:It's like oh, Abraham, you jokester there you go right, he's psychopath, it would be through.
Ryan:It's like this is rubbing her eyes. But notice what he's doing, though. He says we're going to do this in order to remember the promise God gave. The promise God gave was the seed. God has fulfilled that promise in Christ, so why do I still need to go get circumcised to remind me of a promise that God has already fulfilled? You see what I'm saying? Yeah, or not maybe what I'm saying, but with Paul saying right, yeah, but I am saying it too, right.
Imran:So let's continue, though, but you hear what I'm revealing.
Ryan:But Paul is aware, though, of that same argument of well, yeah, but circumcision came before too, verse 19. Why, then, was the law given at all, then? And that's like a fair question. Ok, so God made the promise. You're saying that that promise was going to include Jew and Gentile and also what's kind of like.
Imran:Another differentiation was Abraham a Jew and I'm sure like Like where does the term Jew even come from?
Ryan:Well, the Jew term actually comes from those who belong to the tribe of Judah.
Imran:Oh, but there's 12 tribes.
Ryan:Right, but it was kind of like an overarching thing, right. What so? Abraham right was really, I guess, what you could call it. You know, a semi from you have to go all the way back to Noah right in the lineage coming from Noah, but he wasn't really a Jew. What defined a Jew and the Jewish people was the law.
Imran:So I think that's kind of an undergirding. Only the tribe of Judah had the law.
Ryan:No, no, no, no, it derived from them, Judah Jew.
Imran:But the word Jew refers to all 12 tribes.
Ryan:Yeah, I mean it's now used to refer to all 12 tribes. Right. But my point, though, is that Abraham didn't have that law. He had the promise. So it was Abraham a Jew, right? And of course Jews would say, oh, of course he was the first Jew, it's like but was he Because we're in this kind of pulse?
Imran:thing, because what makes you do is that, when Abraham was given the promise.
Ryan:There wasn't Jew nor Gentile. There was no difference.
Selena:The law wasn't there. They were the same, they were one, yeah, right.
Ryan:So when the promise being made to Abraham, who is now the father of not just the Jewish people but all the nations, he's saying that promise was given before the law, before there was Jewish people. Right, which was the identifier? Does that?
Imran:make sense, and this is off the premise that the law is what sets Jews apart and makes them Jewish.
Ryan:We're going to talk about that here.
Imran:obviously, the law is what makes Jews Jewish.
Ryan:That that was the distinct identifier and there's a reason. We'll get to it in a second. But then, of course, then why did God give the law? Then? Why put the Exodus and Moses? Was the law given? Very fair question, something that many would be asking. So he gives an explanation here. So why then was the law given at all? It was added because of transgressions until the seed to whom the promise referred to had come, ie Jesus. The law was given through angels. That term angels there is messengers which is what an angel is.
Ryan:So they would refer to prophets as angels. They would refer to anybody who gives a message as an angel. That's why you also see, like to the angels, um, to to the angels over the churches, like in a revelation. Right, you talking to the messengers, to the messengers of the churches? Right, that's just a small little side Bible, but it really has revelations on the whole night. But um. The law was given through angels or messengers and entrusted to a mediator, a mediator Moses however, implies more than one party, but God is one.
Ryan:Now, another word to what he's saying is that if there's a mediator, he's talking about Moses.
Ryan:If if, if there's a mediator that is going between one and another, right Between us and God, and there's a mediator in between that, and that implies that there is more than one um involved in all this basis, but God is one. So so God is united in what he wanted from the very beginning with Abraham. Um, so God is one. Basically, Moses in the law were, if I could say it this way, Moses in the law was never meant to unite people. In fact, it was meant to do the exact opposite.
Selena:Um cause.
Ryan:notice what it says. It says it was added because of the transgressions until the seed to whom the promise referred to had come. In other words, there needed to be a clean path for that seed to come through. Yeah, there had to be objective, measureable metrics to be able to be able to test him against this person is right, because if um another, if you did not give the law, there was nothing, there was no distinctive identity, um it's like evaluation criteria, right yeah.
Ryan:Right Cause they would have done all the Gentiles done, and they would have as they were doing in Egypt when they were called out in the Exodus. They were polytheistic, they were worshiping multiple gods. They would have gone through all those same transgressions as the Gentiles did. What made them distinctive Beyond anything else, and the identity that sourced Israel, was the law.
Imran:That's what made them unique.
Ryan:We serve one God, one God only. Yeah, we have the law, we eat this way. We circumcised, we do right. Yeah, that was what gave them the distinctive right. If they didn't have that law, they would have been, they would have just merged with.
Ryan:Going on and all the transgressions as the Gentiles and you wouldn't attract the family and when that seed finally came to say I'm here to be the faithfulness of God to you, to Abraham, they would have been like who's Abraham? Like, how do you test? How do you measure that right? Yeah, the law was the metric to test God's faithfulness against and because nobody could be faithful to the law Except for Christ. Now you have a metric to say, ah, that's the Messiah, that was the guy, that's him, that's the seed. Like that was how you were supposed to know.
Imran:It was supposed kind of so you have all the false prophets, you measure them against the law and you're like well, you had, yet you didn't follow the law. So, therefore, you can't be the promised seed and that's there you go. You can check it that way, but if you didn't have that, if you didn't have the law. You had no check. You would just believe everyone who claimed to be.
Ryan:Anybody could be the seed. Then you'd be like I guess we'll do whatever this guy says anybody could be the seed right, and so it's literally like evaluation criteria.
Imran:It's like it's like a check when you like make software and you like run a debugger, or you run a check to kind of verify it works correctly and if it doesn't meet the conditions of your, of your check, then it's like you know there's something corrupt with your code.
Ryan:How can you test God's faithfulness Without something being required to be faithful to Right? So that's like reason number one that Paul's about to give here. He gives multiple other reasons for this right, but number one is as Emoryon said you can deduce it as evaluation criteria. Right, but the other plan wouldn't make with that though. So, because of that, the function that the law also played in was not to actually unite Nations together under the promise. It was actually meant to divide them.
Ryan:Mm-hmm, the law is here to separate you From the rest of the world, to make that clean path for the seed to come right. So the function the law was actually to divide, not unite. So one of the things Paul is kind of like Unite, so one of the things Paul is kind of upset with is he was saying the seed had always been meant to unify the world. The law was meant to divide you out from the world until that time came. Yeah, but that time has come. Now it's time to unite, right?
Imran:yeah, christ unifies under the law is what divides right.
Ryan:So now Christ has come, the faithfulness of God, the pistas of God, has come, as Paul refers to it here and you know all throughout Galatians. The faithfulness I Christ has come. Now it's time to unite Gentiles Jews together. What you're now doing is taking the people, the Gentiles, who's God meant to unite from the very beginning. Now you're trying to use some mechanism that was meant to divide. You're trying to use something that was meant to divide to now bring unity.
Imran:Yeah, he says it makes no sense. You're actually gonna cause. You're gonna cause more division over time, right, because?
Ryan:that's the function of the law. The function of the law is to divide right. Why are you trying to use the mechanism of division to bring unity? So that's number one. Anything on that, because I'm all about it that that made sense.
Imran:Did that make sense, Lena yeah?
Ryan:so verse good job. Well, we got a lot more here. So, first 21. Oh. No is the law there for?
Selena:Opposed. Tomorrow, the time is like oh, midnight's gonna come.
Ryan:Yeah, verse 21 is a law, therefore opposed to the promises of God. Then right, because if God made the promise With the intention to unite and the law comes which the with the intention to divide, then that seems contrary to each other. Right that that whole unity piece? This meant to you is.
Ryan:If we're all meant to be united under one family, then why did God give the law that divided us away from it? Right? So is the law therefore opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not, for if the law had been given that could in part life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. But scripture has locked everything up under the control of sin, so that what was promised being given through faith and Jesus Christ, the pistas of Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe. So a couple points with this. First, what would he mean that the law brings? So in Romans he says that where there is no law, there is no sin. Okay, and this is, this is a justice thing. Right? I can't hold you accountable To something you don't know. Right? I can't say, selena, you're going to prison for the rest of your life because you wore baby blue snowflake socks like what are?
Selena:you talking about.
Ryan:Like that, you, just you. That was a big no-no. You're like well, what are you talking about? I had no idea this was even a thing.
Imran:I will respectfully disagree with that, at least with our justice system.
Ryan:And I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about God's justice, but you're, I'll say that you're.
Imran:No, I'm talking about with your example that, like I, can definitely Take you to court for something you didn't know about and hold you to account sure, and you're jail are broken.
Ryan:I'm talking about the justice of God.
Imran:I'm saying who is don't don't, don't think you're not knowing about a law is gonna keep you out of jail.
Ryan:I'm saying God is just and it says that if he will not give a law or hold you accountable to a law that does not exist, yeah, or that you don't know about, right, where there is no law, there is no sin. Therefore, the law was given so that sin may increase. This is what it says in Romans. But where sin increases, grace abounds, all the more right. So this is a point that Paul makes in Romans.
Imran:Paul makes in Romans that the law was given, so that parallel would increase, because if you know something's wrong, you still do it. Then that sin.
Ryan:Law was given so that sin may Increase, but where sin Abounds, grace abounds all the more. That's in parallel to kind of what he's saying here. Is that the law that had been given? Or, I'm sorry, not that part, but scripture has locked up everything under the control of sin, so that what was promised being given through faith in Jesus Christ Might be given to those who believe. So that piece right there, what? Why was the law given? So everything's locked up under scripture? Well, there's a couple things with this. Okay, first, imagine, let's imagine a couple alternatives. Okay, imagine we lived in a let's imagine we lived in a polytheistic world where there were actually multiple gods, right, so you had the God of sex and you got the God of pride and you got the God of you know all your vices.
Ryan:Yeah, so let's say, the Goddess Diana came down nice, died for our sexual sin, because she's the goddess of sex, right? So all our trespasses against Diana, and and and and sex, right, she had told for for us We'd be like great high five. Yay, we are freed from the condemnation of sexual sin. But now I'm still condemned under Pride. I'm still condemned under, you know, gluttony. I'm still condemned under jealousy.
Ryan:I'm still condemned, and right you can go down that whole list, which means you're still damned, you're still going to hell. Yeah, right. So what? He says that when he wraps everything up under scripture, all things were brought up under it. The idea was not just simply that through the law, that we'd be condemned, that all would be condemned, but that we would All recognize Christ faithfulness to free us from all shame, guilt and condemnation. All right, so it's not just one thing that he saves us from, it's all those things that we're saved from, and it's recognized through the lock, as all of scripture has locked that up.
Ryan:And the law was given so that sin could increase, so grace can abound all the more. So we're not just putting Jesus in this little pocket of he had told for this sin but not these other sins.
Imran:It's so that, all wrapped up under the law, it's to help you realize what you are saved.
Ryan:We all need Jesus yeah it's to help us realize we are all, we all stand condemned and we all need Christ, who is the only one who is faithful to it and can free us from it.
Imran:Well, I mean, I will, I will ask this why did God give a law in the first place, if, if, if, without the law, sin wouldn't have abounded and I wouldn't have needed a savior? What? Why you can put me in that predicament. Well, he said to separate.
Selena:God's people. Well, that's it.
Imran:That's because we need to have a measure to measure Christ against, to know that he was the one that's actually fulfilling the, the requirements of the law, to know that he's gonna be the one that fulfills the promise over here with the seed. But if, if the law wasn't given, then I wouldn't be condemned. I would. I wouldn't be condemned because I didn't know that that law was there. So now you, now you, save me. So, no, not save the wrong word but now I'm like not being condemned you.
Imran:But okay, so two things. One there's still.
Ryan:God's holiness and his character Over the top of this right. So, yes, you would still be in your sin. You just want to be aware of your sin and therefore wouldn't be held against you. That's very beneficial to you, but it's not very beneficial to a holy God, because you're he's still now dealing with filth. Yeah, they just don't know. They just don't know they're in filth right, so there's the. There's also the love of God.
Imran:Because you being in your filth is not good for you.
Ryan:Because you being in your filth is not good for you. It's destructive to you. The consequences of sin are awful. You see the world and the consequences of sin there has to be an answer, for, whether you know about it or not, it's still whether you think it's a sin or not.
Ryan:It's, you still have the consequences of it. So, out of his love, to save you from that, right. But the third thing is also and we did that, save the world from you, you know right, and from you from all of us, right, yeah. But the third thing, if you remember going back when we did the questions, right, well, the idea of what's the point of it all, the purpose it's from through and for who are all things. Jesus Christ, the promised seed, the elect of creation. From the very beginning of time, everything was from through and for him, right. So he could have left you there, not giving you the law. That would have been great for you, that would have been great for emaran, but that is would have zero.
Imran:It wouldn't have stopped my notification and it wouldn't have it wouldn't have saved those that I was enacting my sin against or this, or those that were enacting their sin against me. But then there's no glory, there'd be no worship, there'd be no worry, there's no glory.
Ryan:The world was not created for emaran. The world was created for christ and for his glory. So, yeah, that would. You would have been maybe better off in terms of eternity. You would never be condemned, even though you would still be a sinner. Yeah, but you would not be condemned judicious, judicially, but then christ would get no glory and it's not a vow at the whole point is for you.
Imran:It's about him. You see what I'm saying Um, so that's basically so.
Selena:That's basically what the gentiles Like, what your question? That's basically who the gentiles were, because they didn't they were those without the law. They didn't have that upon them.
Imran:They wouldn't have been condemned by it.
Ryan:So and that's why they veered off and they were crazy right and that's why part of that, the point of the law was to keep them. That's why I say, because of the to what?
Selena:let me back up.
Ryan:Why then this is verse 19? Why, then, was the law given at all? It was added because of transgressions, the amount of transgressions and sin in the world. If it wasn't given as you know these guards over the stairs.
Ryan:Yeah, to keep them. They're still gonna deviate, they're gonna bounce left and right, but they're gonna at least be able to stay clear enough right to where there's a path for the promise seed to come through right. They didn't have that. They would have been, they would have lost their minds and increased in the transgressions, but not have been aware, held accountable to it, nor would they be able to recognize the provision God provides for it.
Selena:Yeah, it was Christ. Maybe you might not be able to answer this, but just kind of Thinking in my head is like so were they not condemned? Who the tensiles because they weren't Sitting in that sense, because they didn't know the law.
Ryan:It's a really good question. Yeah, so Paul opens up Romans and he says the law of God has been written on the hearts of every man. So the moral authority, what would they have been? And we talked about that? Romans is a great is is a phenomenal. You know letter because we were talking about last episode about how, like sin is kind of relative. So if you think something's wrong and you do it you sin.
Ryan:It may actually not actually be wrong, but because you believe in your heart that it's wrong and you do it, you've sinned. Because you have now sinned against what you think right, out of faith, out of your faith of what is right and wrong, you have done wrong, yeah, right. So it's about the heart. It's not about necessarily the ontological essence of something right. So when you start, he says the law of God has been written on the hearts of every man. So they would they have had the full law and knowledge. No, but do they have a basic understanding and knowledge of the law of God Because it's written on the heart of every man?
Imran:Yes, and I think it's by that law Everybody is measured against that's the same thing that a CS Lewis talks about in mere Christianity is that if you look across all societies across all time, even if it's like they don't, they don't have the law. But when you look at their law systems and you look at their governments and the types of laws that they have, they still have like the basic moral standards.
Imran:Moral standards are the same across all societies across all time, multiple gods they could yeah Morality that that morality is written on the heart of man, that God's law is written on the heart of man, whether it's been objectively told to you or not. You have some basic understanding of what is right and what is wrong, what is fair, what is trust, what is truth, and we desire justice, we desire truth. We just like we ever think about all call.
Ryan:Why do you desire as an example. Why do?
Imran:you desire justice, why you desire honor.
Ryan:It's like because it's written, that's a high level, as you see it manifests in certain cultures, though, is that you? Know, most cultures a murder is wrong. Hmm, rape is wrong. If I there's a concept of marriage or belonging to people, right, like no, no, that that's she's mine.
Imran:Yeah, that's like why does that you?
Ryan:sleep with her is wrong, right, like. So you have these basic and they manifest obviously in many different flavors, yeah, and they deviate a lot because they don't have the precise truth, right, even if you look at like child sacrifice, right, some of the cultures that do child sacrifice strike. Well, we have a high value of children. That's not okay. Why are they sacrificing children? Well, what's the whole point of why they were sacrificing? Because they were so desperate that they wanted to offer a sacrifice of something of the highest value.
Ryan:To please the gods to get them out of whatever situation, right?
Imran:So we obviously disagree with sacrificing children because we've got, because we value them highly. But they value them so highly that they sacrifice that was the ultimate sacrifice, so the core moral authorities the same, but because they didn't have the law, it manifested incorrectly. But it's like the Jews have they. They got the actual. Here you go. We wrote down this is the moral authority, this is what's on your heart, this is how you're supposed to correctly Execute that.
Ryan:I guess you could say yeah, so to get kind of gets back on track here interesting. Paul's thought though. Great question, selena. Thank you.
Ryan:Yeah, cuz the the other thing, kind of to what started it with your question to the. The problem with Torah and law is not the law. It's not that the law is evil. It's not the law is bad. Paul is not making that argument. So if anybody were to say that, it you know the law was a bad thing or an evil thing, it's not. The law is actually the manifestation of God's character. That's how it was given.
Selena:Yeah, it was given by God. That's how.
Ryan:Christ was able to fulfill it fully, because all he really was doing just be himself Right was being in the fullness character of who God is right.
Imran:So, and that's how you oh my god, to do it right. But we always think that Jesus was like it was challenging for him to fulfill the law. But maybe it was just easy.
Ryan:It was challenging himself. No, this is. This is. The great Paradox of it is that because he was God, but he was also a man in the flesh, so he still dealt with the same time, temptations, right of Everybody. He had every temptation to not fulfill the law as everybody else did. Yeah, in his flesh, right so. So I guess what I'm saying is is that he was able to because it was manifested from the character of who God was, and he was God in the flesh. But it wasn't easy for him, right? Remember, he is so stressed the night before he gets crucified, you know, I mean that he bleeds, he, he weeps over Jerusalem. He weeps, I mean you know it was. He had emotional struggle. This was no cakewalk for him by any means, yeah, but that's fair. But the thing, though, is that the Torah you know the oversimplifying that.
Imran:No, it's okay.
Ryan:The law, though, is not that it was a bad thing. The problem is this is kind of a point that Paul's making the problem is not Torah or the law, it's the material that the law is working with, which is sinful human beings Right. So he, in other words, he was saying it's not that the law is wrong, you're wrong. Mm-hmm and because you're wrong and I'm wrong and you're wrong because we are wrong. The law operating over the top of us is what makes it insufficient to justify us.
Ryan:And that's why he says For if the law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. If there was a law out there that we could do. Well, let's take away the 613 laws of the Torah and let's reduce it down to the very beginning with Adam and Eve. There it's what you'd call the the one rule law. What was the one thing? They weren't.
Selena:Only for three.
Imran:I give you everything, I just don't eat the tree. Do not eat of this fruit, the fruit of this tree and you can justify yourself one roll, as long as you don't do that.
Ryan:One rule, right, and you would think like me. I would think that if I had one rule and that would justify me for eternity, that I would never have to break into.
Imran:I just as long as you never break the one rule, I could do that.
Ryan:right, I'm gonna do that it's how it started and they couldn't right. And I was even thinking, like you're talking about You're trying to quit coffee, right? Yeah. One thing right. Yeah, that is a rule you put on yourself, mm-hmm. How, how faithful have you been to that? Don't do it to her.
Selena:So I'm not trying to pick on you. Selena, I'm saying she's like this is good for me to do this is a good example, though.
Ryan:New Year's resolutions. How many people make rules for themselves? Right, I'm gonna get to the gym I'm gonna go out with four times a day. Or I'm gonna right, there's all these things or not, four times a day, four times a week, but maybe if you're amaran, you look like you go to the gym four times a day.
Imran:Oh, I thank you.
Ryan:My point, though, is that even rules we give ourselves the laws that we give ourselves we can't even be faithful to our own laws. Yeah, we can't be faithful to our the rules we give ourselves, oh yeah, the law that God gives us right. So this is Paul's point.
Imran:That's, I'm trying to think if there's a rule that I could follow for the rest of my life and I, literally I'm like Dog you couldn't do it.
Ryan:That's, that's how breathing that's how we are gonna try to stop right. That's how broken we are. And Paul's point is this is like if there was a law that could do it, there would be one, but there's not. That's why it was through the faith in Christ. So in other words and I think this should be a very liberating point, I know that's why I didn't want to gloss over this the law was never meant to justify you and you were never intended or meant to justify yourself. So if you ever thought that I have to figure out a way to get myself justified before God from the foundations of the earth God chose, he made his election, the elective creation. Jesus Christ would be the seed through that promise to get fulfilled. That would justify you. It was never on your shoulders to justify yourself. So if you feel like you're putting it on your shoulders now, drop it, because it's not on you has never been on you from the foundation of the world. It's always been.
Imran:It's like. It's like the one situation where you can say it's like I'm not good enough and thanks, thank goodness. You know, it's like I'm not good enough and I don't have to be good enough. Thank goodness, thank God, that I don't have to be good enough. Yeah, because if I have to be, if I had to be good enough and I knew I could ever be good enough oh my, it's like that. What's the point? And it's not on you to figure that out right and thank God is not have to be good enough.
Ryan:God is not Reactive or surprised by you, right. You get surprised by yourself when you sin, right, especially as a believer because, that's not your intention, of your heart, right?
Ryan:You don't intend to go into sin and you do it. You're like I can't believe. I just did that. You surprise yourself and you become reactive to your own sin. But you're not surprising God. And God's not reactive to your own sin. He very much knew from the very beginning of creation what your sin was gonna be. He says I already got a plan. He was proactive, preemptive with your salvation. That's why Paul says earlier, when we went For the last week's episode, when he says when he announced the gospel in advance, he knew from the very beginning. This was the plan all along. Yeah, right, I think he's not surprised. He's not surprised by your sin. You're surprised by your sin. He's not surprised by your sin, right? So fall back into the promise and the plan that he had from the very beginning for your sin. Don't try to distort it or distort his plan to be something different, to justify yourself, because you've already been justified in Christ.
Selena:Yeah, just kind of random thought, but I was thinking, huh, god can't be surprised, because to be surprised is to not know that something was coming. So, like all of our emotions, like sadness and happiness, excitement, amaze, like amazement, we have those emotions because of God, but we were surprised.
Ryan:It's like Because that's how we're experiencing. That's a unique human experience, because we experience, surprises, a unique human experience for us as linear. He's eternal, he's above that. You know what I mean. It's a very mind-boggling concept when you start thinking about the fact that God is experiencing all the worship across all of eternity all at once, all the time. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Imran:You know, anyways, for.
Ryan:D. God, let's continue, we're never gonna. Yeah, we really will be here until midnight, all right, so so verse 23. So before the coming of this faith, right, the faithfulness, the pistice that is Christ, right, so just Paul's often referring to the faithfulness of God that was promised to right the faithfulness.
Ryan:Yeah, this promise that came through Christ. So when you see before the coming of this faith, or you could also just, if it helps you understand it better, before the coming of Jesus, okay, well, verse we in verse 23. So before the coming of this faith or before the coming of Christ, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed again, the pistice of Christ. Locked up until Jesus Christ that was to come would be revealed. Okay, so I'm just very, I'm just gonna read it over. Which is replacing faith with Jesus, because that's what he's referring to before the coming of Jesus.
Ryan:We were held in custody under the law, locked up until Jesus that was to come would be revealed. Okay, so you understand his point. The law was there To lock us up until Christ came. Yeah, so the law was our guardian Until Christ came. That we might be justified by faith now that, now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, so very need it anymore.
Ryan:Very cool thing here that term guardian it's actually a very formal title, the. The term is a Peta Gogos and it is a formal title of a slave that would, in particularly Roman times, like a really rich family. Okay, if you had a rich family, you would have this Peta Gogos slave that you would. Essentially it's like a nanny. You would have put them in charge of taking care of the error of the home. Right, so I'm rich, I have all my wealth, I have my son. You take this slave and you would say you need to make sure that my error is Doing everything he needs to be doing to get prepared to receive my inheritance, because I'm gonna die someday. He's gonna get my inheritance. That means he needs to go to school. He's be doing his homework, he's be watching behind his ears, brushing his teeth.
Imran:He needs to be doing all these things. Family business runs. You need to know the function of all the old, all the plan on how to get him matured enough To receive and take over the inheritance, right?
Ryan:So you'd give this slave who would keep the error on Track, right? That's the term that Paul uses right here for that term guardian. It's that formal title of Peta Gogos, of this formal title of a slave who would watch over the children. Okay, so it's just keep them from doing stupid things, right?
Imran:and in other words, and you got to keep them alive, you got to make sure they don't die before they can collect right and keep them from doing dangerous things, right?
Ryan:So it's like, hey, he's essentially saying this is that Israel, under the time of the law, were like children who have the promise of an inheritance but are not mature enough to receive it yet. So you're given the Peta Gogos. You know the scar in this, this slave nanny, essentially, which is what the law was and what that was meant to do was no, no, no, no. Israel, don't be going and playing with that idle toy over there. Leave those persons alone.
Imran:Yeah, yeah, we leave that, leave that. Roman got a lot of supposed to be doing that.
Ryan:Come back over here. No, no, no, no, don't be, don't be going so messing with the Greeks in that that's gonna make you right. So that's what this slave's job was, and it's usually the most respected slave. It's the most trusted slave because you're trusting them with your air right. So it. The analogy he's using is that it acted as a guardian.
Imran:It was there to, as you are waiting for your inheritance, to make sure you're doing everything you need to Until the moment, as set by the father, for you to receive that inheritance, and yeah, sometimes they would give be given their inheritance before the father dies, that's such a Great thing too, because I can't think of a way that the Jews would have survived Without the law as the Jew, as being Jewish people, without getting, just like, merged into these other cultures and kind of, because they were Getting taken over all the time, right, so like.
Imran:But they could come together and know that they were of the family because they had the law to set them apart and so they knew say, hey, you follow the like, the like is a high holidays, you follow, you eat. This way it's like, oh, we're of the same family, you know we're of the same culture. This is holding us together. If they didn't have that, they would just have kind of dissolved into these other cultures that were taking them over over time when they weren't fulfilling. Right, I was like to the previous point.
Ryan:Right, it was to kind of clear that path right yeah that see to come.
Ryan:But here he even further, makes another point, though, and he says but it was also to guard you and protect you. Yeah, right, so it's. The law was like a slave who kept watch over you until Christ came and Justifies you through his faithfulness. But now that Christ has come, there's no need to have the guardian anymore. You have become matured in that inheritance, as Proven by the reception of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is essentially like the down payment of your inheritance. He's saying you've matured now in the full revelation of Christ, who we were waiting for. So you don't need the guardian anymore. You have Jesus. You don't need that guardian anymore.
Ryan:So for these Jewish teachers to come in behind and say no, no, no, no, we still need that guardian. It's essentially like saying a look, mom and dad, I don't, I don't need my pull-up on anymore. I go to the bathroom like a big boy, and they are right. And then somebody else like no, no, no, put that diaper back on. But it's more like you're a grown adult Still wearing a diaper. Yeah right, like if I could give like an out of my eye.
Imran:I need this to guard, to guard me. And it's like, do you? You don't know how to go to the bathroom on your own? It's like, hey, why do you need that we're out of diapers.
Ryan:No, you put that diaper back on right. You just, you were just brought in like you need that dive. So I have this 94 Jeep yj right, it's like nice and had it for For a few years, and my son loves it, christian and he's always asked for it and I'm like you know I kind of had this deal with them. I said when you get your driver's license and you graduate high school, I'll give you the Jeep.
Ryan:if I still have it, I'll give you that Jeep nice, but he's like, he's like 10 12, 12, but, he's been asking about this since he was like 8, but he loves this Jeep, right? So in a sense it's like that is part of your inheritance, son. Now, because I've given him, you know, in terms of inheritance this Jeep, does that mean I then just go get my keys and I hand them the keys and said go Add it, son. No, no, he's not mature enough.
Selena:It's a manual.
Ryan:He has no idea how to drive, you know, he doesn't even have his driver's permit right.
Ryan:Not old enough, right? So I don't. I'm not gonna just go give him the keys to in his inheritance. Instead, there's a process, and part of that process is that at some point he's gonna get a driver's permit and I have to go teach him how to drive I he's not allowed to drive anywhere unless I'm in the car with him, right? So that's part of the process and that's good. But at some point he's gonna get his own driver's license. He's going to become an adult and I will hand him the keys. Here's your inheritance.
Ryan:Here's the Jeep. Take it out right.
Imran:Yeah.
Ryan:Now what if him, as a grown man, I get a call from my future daughter-in-law? She's like, hey, I need you to. Congratulations, christian.
Imran:I need.
Ryan:I need you to come right in the Jeep with us. Why, well, christian says that we can't drive anywhere in this Jeep unless you're in the Jeep with us. Like well, you don't need me in the Jeep anymore. Like, you have your own driver's license. I gave you that inheritance. Nobody says he can't drive anywhere unless you're. That's essentially what these Jewish teachers are doing. Is they're saying you have the guardian, you had the nanny, you've matured into a place where you've received To receive the inheritance, you don't need the guardian anymore. But now you're still ask, asking them no, I still want my guardian, I want my Linus blanket, I want. I.
Ryan:Still need to suck my thumb to make me feel comfortable doing my thing right. That's essentially Kind of the problem. He makes a further point here. So verse 26 so in Christ Jesus, you are all children of God through faith, for all of you were baptized into Christ, have clothed yourselves with Christ. So there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. There's not multiple families. It had always meant to become, through the one seed, one family and you were all baptized, jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free. You were all baptized under Christ, that one seed. You are all one family.
Ryan:Right to his larger argument Gentiles belong into the family Verse 29 if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, because Christ is the promised seed, right. So if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and errors According to that promise. What I am saying is that as long as an heir is under age, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the entire estate, right? So he uses this reference again about the air and having when he says he's no different than a slave.
Imran:Yeah why?
Ryan:because as the heir who is gonna receive the inheritance of Of you know his rich father, right, he's gonna receive that inheritance. The slave will not. The slave will not receive that inheritance. But for the time that he is underage and he's been that slave has been put in charge over that underage air. That slave has authority over the air. Yep, he's subordinate to that slave Right and he says so.
Ryan:You are, you have the inheritance, but you can't live freeing that inheritance. You are no better than a slave in terms of rights and freedom, because a slave is actually the one in charge of you. It's only once you mature and get out of that and you no longer need the guardian and need that slave, now you're going to be able to go live in the freedom of your inheritance. So Paul's problem with this is is he's not saying is that okay? If you are a Jew who thinks we still need to be under Torah, that doesn't mean that you're not receiving the inheritance. All that means is that you're still wanting to live under the guardian. You still want to live life with the diaper on.
Imran:And that means it's like trying to live free in the inheritance while you have a ball and chain.
Ryan:That's your point. Is that you're not? Dragging around this ball and chain you are no better than a slave if you're still requiring the slave guardian. Therefore, you're going to receive the inheritance, but you're not going to be able to live in the full freedom and receive the full benefits of that inheritance.
Imran:I feel like as long as you're under the guardian.
Imran:I feel like there's people that actually are afraid to go into the faith because of that. They feel like to be a part of Christ's family is more like that ball and chain of the law is holding. It's like, oh, I just holding them back instead of like, hey, you have the freedom to be in the spirit. And now looking towards and we get into those episodes of the fruits of the spirit and it's like now you can live your life pointing towards the fruits of the spirit instead of being, oh well, I'm, now that I'm a part of the kingdom, I have to go study up on Torah and learn all this stuff about the law and now I have to change my whole lifestyle, change how I approach everything, and it's like that is that slavery?
Ryan:Exactly A young Gentile church who already needs a lot of discipleship because they don't know a lot, right they're. They're in a sense immature. They have the spirit, they've seen the works and the powers of the spirit Right, but they still have a lot to learn. And now you got people coming in trying to make them not more mature make them Jewish.
Ryan:They're trying to make them less mature, right? That's like. That's like his big beef, right? But it continues. This is now verse two of chapter four. It says the error is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. So also excuse me, I just sneezed the error is subject to guardians and trustees until this time set by his father so also when we were underage, we were in slavery until the elemental spiritual forces of the world.
Ryan:So essentially he's saying that Israel, the Jewish people, under the law, were like that underage error Right.
Ryan:So we needed the guardian, we needed the trustees we needed the law, but now that Christ has come, we don't need them anymore because we have Jesus, who is greater than that Right. It was the full promise, or is the fulfillment of the promise made to air? I want to make a little side note here. I thought it was very interesting because when it says we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces, okay, interesting statement. So the term there for elemental is the Greek word stoikia, and stoikia you find this in a couple other texts, but I can. Philo, I think it's a. I have it right. On contemplation three, he emphasizes stoikia. What is philo? Contemplation three so philo was a, a philosopher, a Roman philosopher. Okay, of that, eight of the eight, of the eight of the eight of the eight of the eight of the eight of that eight of that day, yes, and you also got um.
Ryan:There was a very famous um Greek, ancient Greek doctor named Galen Um. He was big in medicine, wrote like a lot of the ancient um medicinal textbooks and stuff. Um here here refers to stoikia a lot too. So what is stoikia Um? Stoikia is the elevation of natural things and its associations to divine gods. So simply like if you had a a little God trinket, like an idol made of wood or stone or whatever.
Ryan:it's not just simply that that's wood or stone, but that God's actually possessed it, and that feeds into this medicinal idea from Galen. The idea is essentially being, um like that stoikia is the balance of earth, water, fire, air. Um, so when somebody's sick, if you have a disease or you're sick. The idea is that your stoikia is off your balances, your balance. Of fire, water errands um, um. Earth within your body is out of balance, right. So when he, when Paul, says we were in slavery, I don't know, the elemental, spiritual or the.
Imran:It's an oversimplication but it makes sense.
Ryan:That I can't go through the whole philosophical concept of stoikia right now.
Imran:No, no, no. I was saying that's like okay. If a doctor wrote that you know, 2000, a little over 2000 years ago, I think, monodox would say that if you're sick it's because something of your internal processes is off. Whatever it is, is your pH, it's your uh. Too much white blood cells, too little white blood cells whatever it is, there's something in your body. That is not in homeostasis.
Imran:Right, the elemental forces of balance in your body is off in your body right, and that's why you're high blood pressure or whatever, and that's how they do and pursue and try to build better medicine right. Is how we find this. How do we get you back to?
Ryan:balance, so um, so that's fun. What's interesting about it, though, is that so when he says we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces of the world but Paul is kind of implicitly providing here is like a medical diagnosis. He's essentially saying that human beings in general are morally sick.
Imran:We are morally diseased people, which is why we don't want what's best for us the law cannot justify us because we are morally diseased, sick people.
Ryan:Right, right, the rival teachers were essentially telling the church in Galatia that, um, you know, they need this babysitter, they need Torah, they need the law to bring them into good health, to bring in good stochaea, right, spiritual stochaea, um, to bring them into good balance. But what Paul's kind of point is, and what in that statement, is that the law was really only the law was not the cure for the sickness. It was the medicine that was kind of keeping the effects of the sickness at bay. Right, it was that guardian right.
Ryan:It's essentially saying that you got cancer. So here's a bunch of aspirin, here's some chemotherapy, um, to kind of keep the cancer from spreading, to keep it from getting too far out of control. Yeah, but his point is this you don't need the law that acts as that medicine anymore, because the cure to that cancer, that spiritual cancer, has come and it's through Christ. Yeah, so if he's cured your cancer, you don't need the law or the medicine for the cancer. Does that make sense?
Imran:Um. Hence I would say you're um, he's curing.
Ryan:He is cancer.
Ryan:But you know what I'm saying though, like his point is, is that the function of the law, acted as the medicine and not the cure until the cure came, and now the cure is in you.
Imran:The cure is spreading within you. You don't need the law anymore. You need to focus on the aspirin to kind of keep you.
Ryan:Keep it from spreading. You now got the cure living within you that is going to start destroying all the cancer all the cancer within your spiritual body.
Imran:Right, yeah. And if those aren't following the analogy, the cancer is sin, sin is a cancer, right, yes, spiritual cancer.
Ryan:And so that's why I, like Paul, uses, like all these different analogies and explain this right. So the last piece here. But when the set time had fully come, right, so the law was there. It was acting as that babysitter. It was acting as that right, that guardian. It was acting as that medicine from the spiritual sinful cancer within us. It was also acted as that dividing identity to keep, you know, a path clean for that seed to come. But now for that set time that that faithfulness would be revealed.
Ryan:But when the set time had fully come, when Jesus came, when God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law that we might receive adoption to sonship, because you are his sons, god sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, the cure, the spirit who calls out Abba, father. So you are no longer a slave but God's child. And since you are his child, god has also then made you an heir Right. So he brings it back to his central argument Gentiles belong to the family of Abraham and it's not multiple families. There's only one family because the promise was to one seed, not multiple seeds. Therefore, if the seed, promise seed is Christ and Gentiles belong to Christ and Jews belong to Christ. We are under the same seed, the same family. We're all adopted sons and co heirs with him. Make sense? Yeah, absolutely so. I would like to Did that make sense, elena, sorry, okay, good.
Ryan:So I just want to kind of close out with just five kind of observations with it, because modern for us, like in the church, not a whole lot are pushing hey, you need to follow Torah, you need to follow the law, right, but we do have our babysitters, are? There, are things that we still look to be our guardians, to be our babysitters and fit. Yeah, one of the things I could say about this is that because the Spirit has come within us which is greater than the law, right, why do we want to chase rule based systems, particularly in faith? Right, and I'm not talking organized religion. When I talk about like, like, systematic things, I'm not talking or like you want your government organized, right.
Ryan:When you are having an HR problem, when you want to figure out something about health benefits or something, you want your HR and your company to be organized. You want your church organized. You want organized religion, right. What we're talking about, though, are things where it's like okay, here's a list of rules that I must follow, and when the things that are in between that may be a little gray, I have my guardian to kind of help bring me along, right, and the thing about that that's really lazy. That is, that is lazy faith, and I just wrote a couple things.
Imran:What do I do? I just check these boxes and I'm good, and it's like no, no, no, that's not how it works at all.
Ryan:Yeah Well, I guess I, for what would you guys think are some modern babysitters.
Imran:Modern babysitters that we place on ourselves. Now I kind of over simplified maybe this is oversimplification. I would say tithing, that people will put tithing as like, well, I have to do this in order to be saved, or churches will put out this like you need to do this so you may not be saved.
Ryan:That fall more I think kind of the group of like with the role of circumcision is playing kind of in this whole narrative. Yeah, I guess I would say well, let me throw one out there. I think pastors, I think people look at pastors a lot of the times as they're functionally what the law was to the Jewish believers. They play pastors, and this is what I mean, because I get this, even I get this a lot. You know, there's some ambiguous situation, really, a situation where you know, hey, you know me and my girlfriend.
Ryan:We're not sleeping together but we're doing these things. And here's the thing I was reading. And they do this whole like long logical not really circle. It's like a zigzag getting to, like trying to mix, you know, and they want you to affirm or verify this is okay, right, right. And it's just like. I mean, there's one one guy he was sharing all this with me, he was going around his little logical rabbit hole is spaghetti noodle of logic.
Ryan:And I said, hey, have you prayed about this? Like, why are you asking me? You got the spirit man. Like, why are you? Are you coming to me after prayer? And you need or have you not even brought this in prayer? Yeah, why are you bringing this to me? As like because you want me to affirm something in your life? I'm not the one who leads you. The spirit does. What does the spirit say? And it is like you know like I haven't really prayed about it.
Ryan:I haven't really brought it to right. So we could start tending to make the guest spiritual leaders in the church be our babysitters in a sense. And let me just be very clear, I would say the church itself.
Imran:it's like if I didn't there's. There's a sense that people don't open up their Bible during the week and do their own study in the first place, so like if they didn't hear it in church then they don't know, and then whatever they hear in church they assume is perfectly everything's correct and gospel. There's no independence, it's like. It's like we talk we've talked in the past about the concept of amen. You know, I agree, it's like you can only be that person in the congregation that can say amen while the while the pastor's preaching.
Ryan:If you have, done your own study. I agree with that.
Imran:Exactly. It's like you're, because to say amen is to affirm what is being said, to say I agree. It's like how can you come to a point of agreement if you don't even know what the text says? Amen, amen.
Ryan:So, and well, you see this too. People like well, you know, I need a, you know this church where I can, you know where I get spiritually fed in the sermon. Or can I just say it is not the pastor's job to spiritually feed you, the, the, the pastor's job is a shepherd and a shepherd.
Imran:The whole function of the church is to to teach.
Ryan:But my point though, is that a shepherd leads sheep to where it's safe. The shepherd protects the sheep, fights off dangers for the sheep, chooses the best path for the sheep, leads the sheep to the places where there is food to be fed, but it is the sheep's responsibility to feed themselves. Yeah. Right, so I need to get spiritually fed. So what you mean is that you want a pastor or a Bible study teacher or somebody to do all the hard work, to do all the study to do the labor and then spoon feed you.
Ryan:You need that babysitter, you, you, you want to put your spiritual diaper on and you want to be spoon fed because you are not mature enough to actually go in and read the Bible yourself and put in that work yourself, right, like to me that's a very real thing, right, and I would just say this If you're living with a babysitter, right, if you feel like that, there's something like, oh, this, this thing is, or this person or this function is my babysitter, and these are going to be I don't want to say harsh, but you know, I think, I think they're just hard truths, right, but one I would say this you're immature in your love for Christ, and this is what I mean. You depend on rules to dictate your behavior, not love. So people want a list of rules of what I can and cannot do, and I, just as long as I can, just follow those rules. You know, I could say that like that's not love.
Ryan:Right Now, you could say that submission, you can even say it's obedience, but you can't say that's love. You know what I'm saying? Love for Christ should govern your behavior and that changes things. Right, like that changes a lot of things, because there's a lot of rules that I don't agree with that I submit to. But, for example, there are plenty of laws in the state of California that I disagree with, right, I submit to them, I'm obedient to them. But I'm not doing that because I love those laws or I love the people who wrote them.
Selena:I do.
Ryan:I mean in general sense, right. I'm not, you know, so there are things that I do in marriage Right with my wife that I don't disagree, that I may disagree with, but I submit to it. But that's how to love her, her Right. I don't need my wife to give me a list of do's and don'ts to make her happy. What I want is a relationship with my wife and out of love for my wife.
Ryan:You see what I'm saying, mm-hmm. It's love that governs that relationship, not rules. Right love With that relationship, not rules. The second thing I would say this If you're living with a babysitter, you're also hindering your growth in Christ. I Can't mature in a relationship. I can't mature especially like a marriage Right. Christ puts this in terms of a marriage relationship. Imagine, on your wedding night, right on your wedding night, selena, you guys go back to you know the hotel room, whatever right it's, it's, it's the night, right, the thing that Emmerand's been waiting for for a long time, and then he takes his pants off.
Ryan:I know this is a very hyper-sexualized analogy, but all right, I'm just saying he takes his pants off and there he is wearing a diaper. Wow, maybe ruin the mood a bit.
Selena:Right, are you going?
Ryan:to when it comes to a disagreement where everyone's like no. This is the decision we need to make for our family, for our life, for a big decision right Like Leave the Marine Corps where we go live next.
Imran:Topeka.
Ryan:Wherever that is right. Would you take him more or less serious if he was wearing a diaper the whole time?
Selena:Let's serious, right your relationship.
Ryan:I'd take me less serious is the hard to grow in that marriage. If he was wearing a diaper in every fight you had and every intimate act you had, you know I'm saying um. Third, you're keeping yourself enslaved from the freedom in Christ.
Imran:The funny analogy. By the way, that was good.
Ryan:You are not living in the full blessing and freedom that Christ offers you if you're still trying to live in a rule-based religion. Right, it is walking in the spirit, it is in relationship with the spirit, it's in love for Christ for what he has done and demonstrated for you right.
Imran:So the it's like the output is faithfulness. The output's not slavery, so it's like you doing. You working towards the fruits of the spirit that we're going to talk about in the in later episodes. Is the output of your faithfulness out of love and dedication to Christ, instead of it being just you focused on trying to fulfill the law, or whatever rules or whatever Like just think about like a relationship ever had a relationship where You're trying to have this, build this new relationship with somebody, but their old, bad relationship just bleeds into it.
Ryan:It's like all they ever talk about and they just project that person's behavior on your behavior, or you know I'm saying it's a toxic relationship.
Ryan:It becomes toxic From a previous toxic relate because you're still living there, right, many people Still live and are enslaved to past trauma. They're, they're, they're enslaved to past situations or past relationships and Christ has called them out of that and they're saying, okay, I belong to you, but I still kind of want to live there, I want to live in my slavery, I want to stay in my jail cell and You're not experiencing the full blessing and and and Freedom and life that Christ offers when you live there Doesn't mean that you're not gonna receive the inheritance. It doesn't mean that you're not going, that you're not, you know, saved. It just means you're not experiencing the full freedom in life that God has for you. And I would say that that's like the difference between surviving and thriving in life. I don't mean thriving in terms of financially, like, oh you know, I in the world, I get to be a millionaire now like I'm talking about Finding joy and contentness and peace and comfort.
Ryan:All those things that I'm trying to do, all those things that Christ offers you won't experience because you're still living there, you know I mean which are also all fruits of the Spirit. You see, I'm saying Maturity, right, maturity the last day. I would say this you are kept from and fully engaging with your inheritance. The Holy Spirit is kind of like the down payment for the full inheritance, right, that's. That's kind of like God saying you this is how you know you are a child of God. Here is a down payment of your inheritance that you're gonna share with Christ. It's the Spirit. Now, if I just have to memorize a bunch of rules and I just follow these rules and I follow this habit, right, that is much easier to do than engaging with the Spirit every day. Right, engaging like, okay, what is my job today?
Ryan:What is your plan for me today? That takes a lot more time, takes a lot more engagement. It could be more exhausting, but it's also more fulfilling and, again, more Experience, more blessing and living To the full measure of life that God has. Right. If I could just say this as good as your pastor may be, as good as you may think this podcast is or a Bible study you attend, nothing is better than the Spirit that's within you. Hmm right.
Ryan:So engage with the Spirit and engage with that down payment of that inheritance that has been given to you. To walk in that fullness and that freedom right, step out of the enslavement. Ditch the babysitter, make this your own. You're mature, you have Jesus, you don't need the babysitter, you have the Spirit. Walk by the Spirit.
Imran:I also want to throw out that um, don't wait for the whispers to become shouts. There's something, selena, that we're talking about. Last night, that um Christ has has called you to be a part of his kingdom, and he has a function for you to play within his kingdom, and the Spirit is within you and so is speaking to you and so is trying to guide you. And it may start with a whisper, but you know what you're doing is Wrong, because the Spirit is telling you what you're doing is wrong. Do not Wait for the whispers to become shouts, because when they become shouts, it it is a big deal right or what you're not doing.
Ryan:Hey, I want you to go talk to that person. I want you to go do this.
Imran:Yeah, through your inaction is all can also be wrong, and those whispers can still become shouts.
Imran:Look at a Look at Jonah Through his inaction, through him not wanting to go the direction that God wanted to go on at him to go, those whispers became shouts in a very real way in his life. And so for me, with within my marriage, and I, selena, walked out the door and those whispers became a shout very quickly and and I'm so thankful that she came back and we were able to spend the last two, two and a half years working on rebuilding this marriage into a Christ-centered marriage, a Christ-centered marriage because it wasn't that in the first place, because I wasn't listening. I wasn't listening. There was a point where God went from being the God of my father to being my God. You know, just like we talked about with Jacob Abraham, isaac and then Jacob, where he's describing Aver, he's describing God as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and then there's a point where he says my God and that was that was my point where he God went from being the God of my father to my God.
Imran:So If you're chosen to the kingdom, he's gonna get you. He's gonna get you. He's already chosen you. All right with that. Thank you for joining us for this week of real Bible stories and I hope that you enjoyed it. These are deep, deep studies and but same time, every time I finish an episode I'm just excited for the next one. So I know it's good. So I hope you're feeling the same thing that I'm feeling and we will see you next week on real Bible stories.
Selena:Thank you for tuning in to real Bible stories. If you enjoyed this podcast, be sure to leave a review, share and subscribe to be notified each week when we upload new episodes. Real Bible stories is produced in partnership with Palm Church in 29 Palms, california. If you would like more information or want to check out archive sermons and Bible studies, please check out the church website at palms Baptist church comm or check them out on Facebook, instagram or YouTube. Real Bible stories can be found wherever Podcasts are found. Thank you again and we will see you next week.