Unity In and For the Gospel

Series: Galatians: Freedom Through Christ

Galatians: Freedom through Christ

“Unity In and For the Gospel”

 Text: Galatians 2:1-14

  • Focus: Human practices must not impede the Gospel of Jesus.

  

Reality of Groups

 Groups are a tricky thing to navigate … especially the larger they become (…and especially when coffee is available)

  • We all have a need to be in groups, be that family, sports, work, school, vacations, parenting, business … we live within a communal dynamic in almost everything we do.
  • And when we find meaningful community, for example, in a church like JRCC, we want others to experience what we are experiencing … and consequently that community gets larger. 
  • But as others join the group, and live life together, we often discover that what we really want is for others to join us, to come and belong, the same way we belong.
  • We find that it’s not enough to belong based on same intentions and beliefs; we actually want to belong with others based on same practices and outcomes.
  • We want more people “like us” to join our group.

 

Now, I am not a sociologist, but I do know that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

  • Commonality and homogeneity can lead to good goals, the effective amassing of resources, and positive outcomes.
  • But I also know from personal experience that homogeneity does not always produce godly results, even in the church.

 

Homogeneity & Hurt

 As an ordained minister, I have pastored in two Anabaptist church traditions/denominations: the Mennonite Church Conf. (used to be called the General Conference of Mennonites) and the Conf. of Mennonite Brethren Churches, of which, Jericho Ridge is a member.

  • In addition to credentials, I also have a cultural heritage as a Mennonite.
  • If you read Mennonite history, I can point to actual accounts in S. America & Prussia that record my parents and grandparents as present and part of the community. 
  • In other words, my genealogy gives me a place in Mennonite history and some “street cred” within the Mennonite people.
  • It means I belong as a Mennonite, at least culturally…

 So you might think that with my Mennonite genealogy, training, and credentialing, this would allow me to be a pastor in both of the two Mennonite denominations I mentioned earlier … but that wasn’t always the case.

  • Although these two particular conferences originally began as one, in 1860 they split into two, over issues of practice (i.e. how do we do certain things within the church, how do we live out faith in Jesus?).
  • In fact, today, we have well over 20 different Mennonite Conferences worldwide, all of whom profess the same basics of the Gospel message and same core Anabaptist principles…
  • What separates them are practices: how they chose to live out beliefs within their culture and church context/community.

 For example, in the 80’s, as a teenager, I chose to be baptized upon the confession of my faith in Jesus as my Savior and Lord.

  • Within the Mennonite Church, that I was a part of, that meant a tradition of baptism by pouring.
  • The church I attended in Vancouver didn’t have a baptismal tank… instead, upon the confession of our faith, we knelt and the pastor poured water over our heads from a basin and baptized us in the name of the Father, the Son and the HS. 
  • Now at the same time, in the Conference of Mennonite Brethren churches, the practice was baptism upon the confession of your faith (same theology), by immersion (different practice, as you enter a body of water and are fully dunked under).

 In the years since the 1860 divide of the two church groups, both Mennonite Conferences had developed strong views that their practice of baptism was biblically sound and preferred, to the point where practice entrenched itself as “law” within the two church cultures.

  • My oldest brother was turned away by the Mennonite Church because he wanted to be baptized by immersion, which wasn’t part of the church tradition.
  • In essence, he was told that if you don’t do baptism the way we do it, you don’t really belong … and his faith was actually brought into question.
  • As a teenager, he heard, “you don’t belong” … and he walked away, not only from the Mennonite Church Conf., but from the Church and the Gospel all together.

 I, on the other hand, had a very profound experience of baptism and acceptance into the Mennonite Church community … to the point where it eventually lead me into the pastorate in 1990.

  • I began my first pastoral role in the very same church that baptized me and welcomed me as a member.
  • I then had the privilege of baptizing many people by pouring, in that community and church tradition. 
  • And while I was baptizing new believers by pouring, down the street, some of my pastor friends in local Mennonite Brethren Churches, were baptizing people by immersion (like we do at JRCC).
  • Now, as Mennonite Church Conf. and MB Church Conf. pastors, we worked alongside each other in Vancouver sharing the Gospel message in the same neighbourhoods, schools, etc…
  • We were part of the same Anabaptist tradition, some went to the same Bible College for their training … we were co-labourers in the same neighbourhoods for the same Jesus with the same Gospel message! 
  • But, as an Ordained Mennonite pastor who was baptized by pouring, I was not allowed to pastor in a Mennonite Brethren Church.
  • In fact, not long before that, I would not even have been allowed to be a member of a MB church, let alone a pastor. 
  • Why?
  • Our two closely related church groups had established human “laws” of belonging and consequently separation.

 

Now, we didn’t call them that … they were discerned practices around things such as the appropriate mode of baptism, or who could take communion and when … things that subsequently determined who was “in” and who was “out” when it came to membership and leadership.

  • As a larger church community, preaching the same Gospel message … we were divided/separated by a practice.
  • Ironically, if my brother had come to faith and simply walked into a Mennonite Brethren church, literally blocks away from the Mennonite Church he walked into, he would have been welcomed because of his desire to be baptized by immersion… 
  • And, if it was 1990 today, I could not be one of your pastors at Jericho Ridge “Mennonite Brethren” Church.

 Now, please don’t hear what I am not saying.

  • My point is not to disparage or endorse either of these Mennonite Conferences and traditions.
  • I am simply pointing out that both church traditions had drawn human lines in the sand, in this case around baptism, that harmfully said “this is who belongs and this is who does not belong within the body of Christ.”

 Thankfully, since then, both the Mennonite Church Conf. and the Conf. of MB Churches have made changes in how they practice baptism as a symbol of a person’s faith in Jesus.

  • The faith communities gathered, studied, discussed, debated, disagreed, studied, prayed, discerned the counsel of the Holy Spirit, and determined that new practices were needed.
  • It was hard work, it was messy, it was uncertain and uncomfortable at times, but in the end, the priesthood of all believers under the counsel of the Holy Spirit revealed error, caused repentance and new practices emerged… 
  • As witnessed by the fact, that I am an ordained minister in the Mennonite Brethren denomination, equally as I was in the Mennonite Church … and am today called by you to serve as one of your pastors … even though I was never immersed.
  • And, if someone professes faith in Jesus today and asks to be baptized by immersion in a Mennonite Church, he/she would be welcomed to do so.

  

Who’s In and Who’s Out?

 So, why tell a story of divisive practices in our church tradition?

  • Quite simply, because it happened just 35 years ago!
  • Imagine, devout followers of Jesus in our generation, falling into the very same temptation to put law over grace, just as we read about in the letter to the Galatian church… a letter written 2000 years ago. 
  • Is it possible that we also allow practices to divide the most precious group on earth, the church/body of Christ? 

Read with me our text this morning from Galatians 2:1-14…

  • Paul is in the midst of giving us his pastoral/ministry bio.
  • Paul has reminded us that his cultural lineage and credentials as a Jew are fully legit … Paul belonged. 
  • But that’s not the basis on which Paul writes to the church…
  • Paul has one focus: to bring Jesus and the Gospel message of salvation by grace for all, into sole unifying focus for the Church.

While the Apostle Peter is preaching the Gospel message to the Jewish people, the Apostle Paul has been out preaching the Gospel to non-Jews, like those in the region of Galatia/modern Turkey…

Then fourteen years later, I/Paul went back to Jerusalem again, this time with Barnabas; and Titus came along, too. I went there because God revealed to me that I should go. While I was there, I met privately with those considered to be leaders of the church and shared with them the message I had been preaching to the Gentiles. I wanted to make sure that we were in agreement, for fear that all my efforts had been wasted and I was running the race for nothing. And they supported me and did not even demand that my companion Titus be circumcised, though he was a Gentile.

  • In the 80s, mode of baptism was our issue of belonging … in the 1st century, the practice of circumcision was the issue.

Even that question came up only because of some so-called believers there—false ones, really—who were secretly brought in. They sneaked in to spy on us and take away the freedom we have in Christ Jesus. They wanted to enslave us and force us to follow their Jewish regulationsBut we refused to give in to them for a single moment. We wanted to preserve the truth of the gospel message for you.

And the leaders of the church had nothing to add to what I was preaching. (By the way, their reputation as great leaders made no difference to me, for God has no favorites.) Instead, they saw that God had given me the responsibility of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, just as he had given Peter the responsibility of preaching to the Jews. For the same God who worked through Peter as the apostle to the Jews also worked through me as the apostle to the Gentiles.

In fact, James, Peter, and John, who were known as pillars of the church, recognized the gift God had given me, and they accepted Barnabas and me as their co-workers. They encouraged us to keep preaching to the Gentiles, while they continued their work with the Jews. 10 Their only suggestion was that we keep on helping the poor, which I have always been eager to do.

11 But when Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him to his face, for what he did was very wrong. 12 When he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile believers, who were not circumcised. But afterward, when some friends of James came, Peter wouldn’t eat with the Gentiles anymore. He was afraid of criticism from these people who insisted on the necessity of circumcision. 13 As a result, other Jewish believers followed Peter’s hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.

  • So Peter makes a self-centered choice based in fear, and it starts to permeate the practice and message of the Church.

14 When I saw that they were not following the truth of the gospel message, I said to Peter in front of all the others, “Since you, a Jew by birth, have discarded the Jewish laws and are living like a Gentile, why are you now trying to make these Gentiles follow the Jewish traditions? 

Sound familiar? Why are you trying to make these believers follow the tradition of baptism by pouring verses immersion?

  • Why are you trying to make these believers follow a Jewish practice as a condition to belonging in the body of Christ?
  • “Peter, when tradition/practice becomes a law, it opposes the Gospel message of Jesus that sets us free from the Law.”

So what we have in the 1st Century is a case of “tradition” verses “theology” … “law” verses “Gospel”.

  • Tradition is the repetition of human practices based on a belief.
  • Theology is the knowing of God based on His revelation and practices.
  • And when we track those two things in the Biblical narrative, we find that tradition & law are closely connected, and theology & grace are closely connected.
  • In other words, what we are reading about in the book of Galatians is the ever-present tension between “law based practices” and “grace based theology”.
  • And let’s be honest, as humans, law is much easier for us than grace, even in the body of Christ. 

So Paul has a face-to-face with Peter and says, because of God’s gracious revelation of Himself in Jesus, we no longer believe that salvation is attainable by the Old Testament Laws of Moses.

  • Because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, we believe that salvation is found in Jesus Christ and in Him alone.
  • So in this case, you Peter, are no longer bound to keep the Jewish laws for the sake of your salvation … in fact, in Jesus, you are just like a Gentile.
  • You have freedom from the Jewish law because of Jesus.
  • Everyone who comes to Jesus for salvation is free from the OT Law and welcomed by grace into the NT family of God/the Church.
  • This New Covenant takes the place of the Old Covenant, because of Jesus.
  • Jesus fulfills the Law and frees us from having to become like a Jew, trying to keep all 600+ laws of Moses.
  • That’s why Paul says in Galatians 3:28,

28 There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. 

  • You cannot enter the body of Christ by keeping a Jewish, or Mennonite, or any human tradition/practice/law.
  • You cannot belong based on your name, your credentials, your training, your career, your lifestyle…
  • So why, Peter, are you imposing those laws (that you have been freed from) on others?

 Today, this argument makes complete sense.

  • The practice of circumcision is done primarily for medical reasons or familial traditions.
  • We no longer view circumcision as a sign of salvation or being in right relationship with God.

  

Who’s In at JRCC?

 Well, if we would never ask someone to be circumcised in order to belong to JRCC, does that make this passage and the book of Galatians obsolete? Lesson learned?

  • Friends, the book of Galatians reveals a systemic human tendency toward law and away from grace.
  • The book of Galatians is preserved because every generation of Jesus’ Church wrestles with issues of law verses grace … practice in tension with theology. 
  • Do not think for one moment, that we at JRCC cannot be tempted to take a set of human practices, turn them into hard and fast rules, and layer them over and above the Gospel for the sake of living more comfortably together. 
  • And even more insidious than doing so for comfort, is when we take a set of rules and impose them on others over and above the Gospel, for the sake of our power and control. 
  • Paul is reminding us that it’s well within our sinful nature to do what is easier and self-centered … rather than engaging in difficult/messy communal work of interpreting Scripture, discerning Biblical truth as a diverse community of believers and hearing what the Holy Spirit says to us regarding how we should live that truth out in community. 
  • Church, human practice never dictates God’s truth.
  • When it does, it will always divide the body of Christ. 

People ask why the Church has so many denominations, splits, factions… Galatians 2:1-14 … when we refuse to have the difficult conversations that Paul and the other Apostles had.

  • Now, don’t read what Paul is not writing.
  • Paul is not coming out against Jesus and the Gospel message … his theology remains true and unwavering.
  • Paul is speaking against human practices that become barriers between Jesus and people. 
  • The OT Law was never meant as a barrier preventing people from accessing God.
  • It was intended to point to the need for a Saviour, who came in the person of Jesus, fully human and fully God, tempted in all ways but never sinning, dying on the cross to fulfill what the Law required for sinful humans to be in relationship with a holy God …

… Jesus fulfilled those requirements when he died on the cross … and then, rising from the dead, Jesus established a new way to be in relationship with God.

  • Through him, and him alone … by Grace! Romans 10:9

And that message is the very message about faith that we preach: If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved. 11 As the Scriptures tell us, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be disgraced.” 12 Jew and Gentile are the same in this respect. They have the same Lord, who gives generously to all who call on him. 13 For “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” 

The text does not say, “Everyone who is baptized by immersion and calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

  • It does not say, “Everyone who is circumcised and calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
  • In fact, anyone who practices or teaches that you have to do anything in addition to calling on the name of the Lord to be saved, is speaking heresy! 
  • You are saved when you believe in your heart that Jesus died on the cross to forgive our sin and rose from the dead to proclaim a new way of being in relationship with God. 
  • You are saved because of the Gospel of grace, which compels you to openly declare what Jesus has done for you. 
  • Anything that anyone wants to add to that is heresy!

 

Every generation will be tempted to adopt practices that distort the Gospel of Jesus and in so doing mutilate the unity of His body, which is based on salvation by grace alone.

  • We are not immune to the temptations of wanting to be the church/JRCC with others who smell, look and act like we do.
  • We are not immune to thinking that our expression of the Church would be “better” if we just had more people like us.
  • Really? Is that too much to ask? …that God would bring more people “just” like me so that my church/Jericho Ridge can grow.
  • The church was growing in Paul’s generation and some of the leaders succumbed to the temptation of wanting it to grow a certain way … wanting it to grow their way because it was far more comfortable that way.

 

So the Apostle Paul put his reputation and his life on the line for the unity of the Church according to the Gospel message.

  • And he didn’t just do it in Galatia; he did it everywhere he went.
  • Listen to what he says to the church in Ephesus… Ephesians 2 & 4,

2:13 But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups (Gentiles & Jews) into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, 15 by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments…  19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, 20 having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone21 in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, 22 in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.

4:1 Therefore I beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God. Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, in all, and living through all. And he has given each one of us grace through the generosity of Christ.

As the worship team comes up and begins to play, and our prayer team heads to the back…

Let me close by saying that God is still building His Church… God is growing Jericho Ridge… I believe that!

  • But I cannot even begin to predict who God is in the process of adding…
  • I don’t know their last names or what they look like…
  • I don’t know if they were baptized by immersion or pouring…
  • I don’t know if they are circumcised or eat kosher foods…
  • I don’t know if they do yoga or practice Lectio Divina…
  • I don’t know their financial priorities…
  • I have no idea what brokenness they will bring with them!!!

But this I do know with absolute certainty!

Every person God is adding to His church, is a sinner who thinks and lives imperfectly as they are being saved by the grace of Jesus Christ who is at work perfecting them.

  • Friends, that’s who God added to His church when he added me … and you.
  • And that Gospel/Good new is what unites us as Jericho Ridge … an unwavering belief in Jesus as our gracious Saviour and Lord of His church.
Because human tendency is towards law and away from grace, we establish rules in our groups and churches that end up determining "who's in?" and "who's out?". God is building His Church based on grace and anyone who calls on the name of Jesus to be saved, is welcomed into God's family solely by grace.

Speaker: Wally Nickel

September 22, 2019
Galatians 2:1-14

Wally Nickel

Transitional Pastor

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