Pastors often exaggerate just a teensy bit.

We stretch the truth with hyperbole, you know, just to make sure everyone is paying attention and stays engaged. I usually try to avoid that, but today I’ll start with something that falls into that trap.

It’s an exaggeration. But not much. You ready?

If the book of Galatians wasn’t in the bible, I might not be a Christian today.

Ok, ok, that’s probably not true. But this scathing letter that Paul writes, this powerful shout for freedom, this insistent protest against religion and for relationship…this is what I live for! This is the heart of Christianity.

I want to encourage each of us to bury ourselves in this book for the next 5 weeks.

The themes in the book of Galatians address the same heart issue that came up a few weeks ago when we looked at Luke chapter 7. Remember Jesus at the dinner party with Simon? Remember the woman who had lived her life in sin, the woman labeled and rejected, the woman who beautifully poured out her love as she anointed the feet of Jesus?

The root issue Jesus revealed to Simon is the same root issue here in Galatians: how do you deal with sin and evil in the world? Is the solution to have your rules and your will power, is it to separate in your mind and your attitudes the acceptable behaviors and people over here, from the unacceptable behaviors and people over there?

Jesus said no! The solution isn’t boundaries and rules and separation. That’s religion. The solution is a relationship. A relationship, like the intimacy between the woman and Jesus, a relationship that doesn’t wash over or overlook evil and sin and bad things. A relationship rooted in the heart of God, who forgives and heals sin, and transforms lives!

And Paul’s letter to the Galatians nails the same thing.

Yes, there is an evil world that we need to be rescued from; and the world is evil because we make wrong choices. We sin; we break our relationship with God, with each other, and it has ruined the world.

But it is critically important how we deal with that sin. It can’t be dealt with by our strength and our rules and our effort. It’s only dealt with by living in a love relationship with Jesus, whose love and forgiveness pour over us because of what he has done.

Galatians is aimed at us, and it’s aimed at us now. It’s not just for people who haven’t chosen to follow Jesus, accepting him for the first time. It’s not just for us long ago, when we first accepted him.

The reality of being human is there is a constant pressure to move, move from being the woman at Jesus’ feet to sitting in Simon’s place at the table. There is this pull away from a living, vibrant, free, forgiven relationship with Jesus toward a stilted, rule based, abstract religion…a religion complete with its own language and customs and habits that marks some as in an some as out.

That move, that slide, that slippery slope from love to duty, from relationship to religion, is what causes Paul to write to the Galatians in anger.

Turn with me to page 1062 in the pew bibles, to Galatians chapter 1. We’ll set the stage for the book, for our understanding of it.

This is not some polite check-in letter. Paul’s heard things that really disturb him about these churches that he began, and it got him so worked up, he grabbed a scribe, and started dictating. Probably very fast, with a raised voice. J

If you just read the letter, you’d see the anger. But if you compare it to his other letters, you’d see it even more clearly. Paul always follows the letter-writing conventions of his day. He starts by naming himself, relating himself always to Jesus. Then he names who he is writing to, the churches in Galatia, much of which is in modern day Turkey.

He speaks grace and peace to them in verses 3 to 5, all part of the normal pattern. But in other letters, he goes on to thank the people he’s writing to for something.

But not here. Nope, in this letter, Paul launches right into the heart of the problem. [READ vs. 6-7]

Look at the loaded words: astonished, deserting, different gospel, confusion, perversion.

What in the world is going on? The Galatians may have thought the same thing. “What is the big deal?” may have been their thought.

Paul came to them originally, and he taught them about Jesus…the Jesus who, as it says in verse 4, “gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age.”

“Gospel” literally means “good news”, and this is the great good news. JESUS gave himself for our sins. Jesus’ death and resurrection rescues us, frees us, from this messed up, evil world, full of brokenness and pain.

When Paul brought them this good news, they believed it. And it didn’t just become a history lesson. As we’ll see in chapter 3 next week, this good news became alive in them. God’s Spirit was poured out on them, they saw actual miracles as this good news burst to life like fruit from a tree.

So they started right.

They got it. They believed that Jesus made a life-changing difference to their lives, and they were rescued from the evil of this world. They saw miracles! They received the Spirit, they were welcomed into God’s family, they were ushered out of slavery to sin and their own selfish behavior, and into freedom!

And then it all started crashing down. At least, it did from Paul’s perspective. The Galatians probably thought of it as an upgrade.

The big wigs of the early church, the Jerusalem Christians, the ones who knew the real apostles like Peter and James… these real-deal Jerusalem Christians came to help the Galatians really understand the “deep things” of faith.

For the first time, the non-Jewish, Gentile Christians of Galatia learned about the Jewish law. They learned about feasts and seasons and hand washing and circumcision. They learned all the deep mysteries that could turn them into Simon at the table.

The Jerusalem Christians helped the Galatians go deeper, and as they did it, they whispered about Paul. “He doesn’t really get it. He’s not giving you enough. He’s just giving you the bare bones…let us fill you in on the advanced stuff.”

I think Paul’s letter probably came as a shock.

“What’s the big deal? We’re just becoming better disciples. We’re going deeper. We’re learning, going farther than what you taught us.”

But Paul says they’re not going deeper, they’re going wrong. They’re not continuing on the same road, they are following a different gospel, a different religion altogether.

I’ll say it again: this is for us. It’s not for other people who haven’t yet followed Jesus. It’s for now; it’s not just something we took care of back at the beginning of our journey.

The journey of the Judaizers, the journey of trying to add rules and regulations and rituals…it’s a journey that constantly tries to derail us.

We begin with the freedom of grace and faith and belief. We begin with a simple prayer for Jesus to forgive us and to lead our lives, and then all the entanglements come, all the little “cues” that we have to get right in order to stay in the Jesus club.

Our own history as Friends is full of these temptations and battles. Quakers burst on the scene with a simple gospel, “Jesus Christ can speak to your condition.” It was received with the power of the Spirit, and people gave prophetic words and were given boldness to speak truth to powerful people around the world.

At the time Friends began, the English language was different: “you” was plural, the way I would address “y’all”. “Thee” was singular, the way I would address just one of you. Regular people got the singular “thee”, but the normal practice was to call nobles the plural “you,” even when it was just one of them. That’s where we get the phrase, “the royal we”.

Early Friends decided to “thee” everyone. It was a radical, freeing, Spirit-empowered word of inclusion for everyone.

But a hundred years later, when English changed but Friends kept using “thee”, that beautiful expression got made into a law, a marker, a rule that identified us as Friends. In fact, the very thing that originally made everyone equal became a marker of dead religion, a separating mark between the true Quakers and the rest of the world.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I saw that same slide in my own life.

In high school, I found beautiful freedom in the true good news of the gospel, that I was loved and accepted and welcomed into God’s family because of what Jesus did, no matter what I had done. New life and freedom and the Spirit’s power blossomed.

But then I was looking down my nose at other people’s music. I was piously praying for Hayley and Susan and Brenda to “go to the altar” and “get right with God”, because it was obvious from how they dressed and the way they didn’t get the marker points right, that they weren’t “in” the club. Dead religion again.

When those three quit going to church, and I heard through a friend that it was because we had judged them and rejected them, it cut into me. I was the Galatians, and those three girls were like Paul’s letter to me, making me wake up and face what was really happening.

Rules and lifestyle issues and whatever other “keys to the Jesus club” we create: those aren’t what it means to go deeper into the same gospel.

It is no gospel at all!

I’ve met very few people outside the church–I may not have met any!-–who are trying to prove themselves to some unknown God by doing good deeds.

I have met a whole lot of Christians, people like ME, who constantly slip into justifying ourselves by keeping our good little lists of thing to do and not do. Simon was one of the good ones, the insiders. The Galatians had already chosen to follow Jesus, and had known the power of freedom and life in the Spirit. But that slow tug of religion and rules pulled them away from a living relationship with God.

For the Galatians, it was circumcision and what food to eat and what festivals to celebrate.

For the Quakers in the 1800’s, it was getting your plain speech right to show you were in the club.

For Christians in the middle of the 20^th century, it was no dancing and no movies and no card playing.

All of these things were well-intentioned marker points to demonstrate someone who was taking faith seriously.

But Paul would shout at the top of his lungs, that when following Jesus becomes defined by stuff we do instead of what Christ has done, it is a perverted and different gospel.

What’s on your list today? And I’m not talking about Fred Meyer.

What’s on your list of what it means to go deeper with God, to truly mark yourself as a committed follower of Jesus?

What is it that truly frees us from sin, evil, and wrong choices?

When our list is full of rules and external cues and will power, we have no gospel of good news. When we limit how God’s power comes, limit God to our approved religious activities, we have no good news. When we try to corral and tame the Holy Spirit into a list of proper behaviors, we ought to be under God’s curse! (Gal. 1:8-9)

Freedom and life and the Spirit’s power came to us first as a free gift. And the same is true all through our relationship with God.

The battle against works and against legalism is one that we fight our whole lives long.

It creeps up so subtly, and we find ourselves looking down our noses at others far too easily. Many of us know Paul’s argument [READ 2:15-16]

Now let’s live it! Live in the freedom and power of relationship with the Creator of love, with our Savior, with the one who died and lives again to save us from ourselves and from religion.

This is what we have opened before us right now. The God of the universe, infinitely loving with power to forgive, is right here. Not rules. Not religion. Christ has come to teach his people himself.