Our Incredible Salvation - 5

I love this episode!  A feature of it is a study of Galatians 3:28, which says we are all one in Christ and that there is neither Jew nor Gentile, rich nor poor, male nor female.  It's a fascinating study of what the death of Christ on the cross has done to elevate the status of women to equality with men.  Enjoy!

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Well, hello, and welcome back to Jeff's Bible Trek. We are in the midst of a study on our incredible salvation. Passages that explain what happened when we gave our lives to Christ. This is episode five in our study. In our last episode, we wrapped up key passages in the book of Romans. As you know, the next book in the New Testament is 1 Corinthians. Now you'd think there'd be a lot in this book to use in this study, but actually, I just want to focus on one verse, and that is chapter 1 and verse 2. And so here is verse 2b, and I quote, For you have been made pure, set apart in the anointed one, Jesus. And God has invited you to be his devoted and holy people, and not only you, but everyone, everywhere who calls on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ as their Lord and ours also. So Paul says we have been made pure. The dictionary definition of the word pure is this free from anything of a different, inferior, or contaminating kind, free from extraneous matter, such as pure gold or pure water. It also means clear and free from blemishes. Now I've lived as a Christian long enough to know that in any group of people, such as my listeners, there will be a percentage who don't see themselves at all as pure. But Paul is giving us not a human perspective, but God's perspective. While we tend to focus on our sins, faults, and failures, God chooses to focus on the fact that we are pure, unblemished, and faultless. If that doesn't put a smile on your face, I don't know what will. The more we look at how He sees us, the more we'll move toward that as a reality in our lives, because you move toward that upon which you focus. That is a reality in many realms, but particularly the spiritual realm and the realm of self-acceptance. Paul also says we are set apart. The King James Version says sanctified. The word means set apart from common use and set apart to sacred use. Note that it involves being set apart from something and to something else. According to Vine's expository dictionary of New Testament words, it means the separation of the believer from evil things and ways. And we have been set apart to God and his family and kingdom. As I reflected on this, what I saw in my mind's eye was a pharmacist using a steel object to set apart chosen pills from the main group of pills into a new group of pills that will be used to fill a prescription to the benefit of another person. That is like what God has done with us in our incredible salvation. And finally, Paul says we have received an invitation to be his devoted and holy people. People love getting invitations to go to weddings, but they're usually someone else's weddings, not ours. We have received an invitation to the wedding of the Lamb of God because we are a part of the bride of Christ. And in the meantime, we're getting beauty treatments as Queen Esther did before being joined to the king. All part of our incredible salvation. Well, that's all I have in the book of 1 Corinthians. I don't have anything on this topic from 2 Corinthians. So we're going to move into the book of Galatians, a book which contains a lot on our incredible salvation. So let's dive into chapter one and verse 4B. I quote, He has rescued us from this evil world system and set us free, just as our Father God desired. That word for world in this verse is better translated age. It's a period of time, not the planet Earth. The King James has it as this present evil world. So that describes the current evil age, with all of its systems, the cares of this age, the sons of this age, the rulers of this age, the wisdom of this age, the fashion of this age, the character of this age, the religion of this age, and even its God, little G, the God of this age, mentioned in Second Corinthians 4 4, or Satan. Paul's point is that Jesus has rescued us from all of that. The word rescued literally means to deliver or pluck out. It's like we were swimming, drowning even in this evil age. And he reached down, grabbed us, and plucked us out of the water and set us free. And now our citizenship is in heaven. So he has one rescued us from this evil world system, and two, he has set us free. It's interesting that later in the chapter, Paul shows us how this process occurred in his life. Verse 13, and I quote, by now you have heard stories of how severely I harassed and persecuted Christians, and how, listen to this, systematically I endeavored to destroy God's church all because of my radical devotion to the Jewish religion. Unquote. He was caught up in the evil world system, and he was contributing to it by systematically persecuting the church. It's like Paul was a system within a system. He then describes his rescue and his freedom in verse 15, and I quote, but then God called me by his grace and chose me from my birth to be his. And now the essence of this new life is no longer mine, for the anointed one lives his life through me. We live in union as one. My new life is empowered by the faith of the Son of God, who loves me so much that he gave himself for me, dispensing his life into mine. There's a lot to talk about in this verse, so let's get to it. Paul mentions our old identity. Now, I I did some study on this, and I also thought long and hard about my own identity, both old and new. You see, I met Jesus when I was 22 years old. So I'm in a position to evaluate both identities before I met Christ and then after. To begin with, each of us were born with a particular temperament. And it's hardly ever a single temperament, but often a blend of two or more temperaments. You can see this in siblings and how different they are from each other. But I don't want to get into the weeds on the temperament subject, as I want to cover some other things. There are different components of our identity. There's our personal identity, which is the way a person defines themselves, including their values, beliefs, and passions. There's our cultural identity. This is the connection a person has to their heritage, traditions, and shared practices. And there's our narrative identity, which are the stories a person tells about themselves, which shape their understanding of who they are. There are different factors that shape identity, including physical appearance, education, our profession, life experiences, genetics, health conditions, family, religion, interests, athletics, even our neighborhood. Now, this episode could get really long if I began to dig more deeply into all these aspects of identity. It might even warrant a whole season in itself, we'll see. So, but for brevity, I'm simply going to refer to our old identity before Christ and our new identity in Christ. When I look at myself, I can tell you that I had a plan for my life. I knew and had visualized what I wanted out of life. It was just a series of events that taken together all led to making the decision to give my life to Christ on April 13th, 1976. And on April 14th, the next day, I could tell that things were different. What was different, Paul says, is that my old identity had been nailed to the cross of Christ and a new identity had been imparted. When we receive Christ, our personal identity, the way a person defines themselves, including their values, beliefs, and passions, is infused with Christ. And our new life is empowered by faith. I ran into something interesting when I got to this part of the verse. You might have noticed when I read Galatians 2.20 in the Passion Translation that it said, My new life is empowered by the faith of the Son of God. Not faith in the Son of God, but the faith of the Son of God. Even the King James Version reads this way. And you might not be aware of this, but the King James Version is pretty high on the scale of word-for-word accuracy. All the other translations I looked at, the ESV, NASB, NIV, NLT, and even the Message Bible, said by faith in the Son of God. So let's go with that. I distinctively remember being empowered by faith in the very moment I received Christ. I spent hours that night struggling with making the decision, but there came a moment of faith when I took the plunge. And ever since, of course, they have been a few times that my faith has wavered from time to time, but there always seems to come a moment when the Spirit of God empowers me to believe God wholeheartedly. And finally, in verse 20, Paul says that all of this is due to the fact that Jesus loves us so much that he gave himself for us and dispensed his life into ours. Now, if someone is near you right now, just give them a shout and tell them, the Spirit of God lives inside of me. Now, now we move into the third chapter of Galatians, where there are a couple of interesting revelations about our incredible salvation. The first is in verses 26 through 28, and I quote, You have all become true children of God by faith in Jesus Christ. Faith immersed you into Christ, and now you are covered and clothed with his life, and we no longer see each other in our former state, Jew or non Jew, rich or poor, male or female, because we're all one through our union with Jesus Christ. I like the point Paul makes that we are covered and clothed with his life. In the Garden of Eden, God covered and clothed Adam and Eve out of his compassion. And in the spiritual sense today, God has covered and clothed us with the life of Jesus. It's a very cool thought, a very cool reality. Next, Paul said that in Christ we all have equal standing. And he specifically mentions three groups of people. The first is Jews and non-Jews. So nationality doesn't matter because in Christ we all have equal status in the eyes of God. Next group is rich and poor. So economic status doesn't matter because in Christ we all have equal status in the eyes of God. Which is interesting because rich people have more money, which brings more options in life. But you know what they say, you can't take it with you. If we're in Christ, we all have equal status because we all have the same father. And you know, when it comes to things like money, the first will be last and the last will be first. Selah. The third group that he mentions is male and female. Gender doesn't matter because we all have equal status in Christ in the eyes of God. Now, to me, this is the most interesting of all three of these comparisons. In the Old Testament, women seem to not have equal status with men, not by a long shot. And that was because of the curse, as a result of the fall in the Garden of Eden. See Genesis 3. In our country, women didn't seem to have the same status for a long time. They couldn't even vote until 1920. And even to this day, many men view women as second-class citizens and not as important as they are. But look what Jesus modeled during his life on earth. He elevated the status of women. By virtue of the fact that he canceled the curse upon humanity on the cross, men and women in Christ hold equal status in the eyes of God. You say, well, what about submission in Ephesians 5? Well, the uh Passion Translation provides some clarity on this. This next part may a bit controversial, but hang with me for the next few minutes. Let's review Ephesians 5, 21 to 26. And I quote the whole passage. And out of your reverence for Christ, be supportive of each other in love. For wives, this means being devoted to your husbands like you are tenderly devoted to our Lord. For the husband provides leadership for the wife, just as Christ provides leadership for his church, as the Savior and reviver of the body. In the same way, the church is devoted to Christ. Let the wives be devoted to their husbands in everything. And to the husbands, you are to demonstrate love for your wives with the same tender devotion that Christ demonstrated to us, his bride. For he died for us, sacrificing himself to make us holy and pure, cleansing us through the showering of the pure water of the Word of God. Let's start at verse 21. It says, Be supportive of each other in love. And I see this as putting each other ahead of yours yourselves. The remaining verses in this passage explain how husbands and wives are to be supportive of each other. Verse 22. This is the verse which many translations say the wife must be submissive to her husband. There's a footnote in the passion that says the word submit is not even found in the verse. That's interesting. Verse 23. The verse says the husband provides a leadership for the wife. Now many people will take that to mean that the husband is the boss of the relationship or in the relationship. But it means to provide leadership in modeling a self-sacrificing love, which we'll see in verse 25 in a moment. But first, verse 24. This verse continues with the wife on how she is to be supportive of her husband. It says, in the same way the church is devoted to Christ, the wife is to be devoted to her husband in everything. Now, at this point, we should probably define the word devoted. The dictionary defines it as zealous or ardent in attachment, loyalty or affection. Let me read that again. The dictionary defines devoted as zealous or ardent in attachment, loyalty, or affection. And both the wife and the husband are to do this. And now verse 25. This verse says that the husbands are to demonstrate love for their wives with the same devotion that Christ demonstrated to us. And how did he do that? He died on the cross for us, sacrificing himself. That's how a husband is to love his wife. And this is the leadership he provides to her because it won't be long before she is doing the same thing for him. He has shown her how to love like that. You know, my wife and I seem to be locked in a competition with each other to see who can serve the other more. It's kind of funny and fun, actually. But it's really a demonstration of our love and devotion for one another. An interesting twist on this is when the roles of the husband and wife are reversed in terms of which has a more dominant temperament than the other. But the same rules exist in terms of being devoted to one another in a self-sacrificing love. Now we originally went down this road in Ephesians because of our verse in Galatians 3.28, and the fact that now in Christ there is neither male nor female. We have equal standing now, all part of our incredible salvation. The other piece in Galatians 3 that stems from our incredible salvation is that all the promised blessings to Abraham flow through the cross and into our lives. Paul says it three times in this chapter. In verse 14, and I quote, Jesus Christ dissolved the curse from our lives, so that in him all the blessings of Abraham can be poured out upon Gentiles or non-Jews. Unquote. In verse 18, and I quote, we receive all the promises because of the promised one, that meaning Jesus Christ. And in verse 29, the last verse of Galatians 3, and I quote, and if you belong to Christ, then you are now Abraham's child and a true heir of all his blessings because of the promise God made to Abraham. Unquote. Now, while I'm super tempted to dive into this topic, I've already done a whole season called Kingdom Promises, in which I delve into some of the most notable promises and blessings made to Abraham and therefore us. So I invite you to head over to season one and get the 4-1-1 on that. So with that, we're going to stop here and cover the rest of Galatians next time. Until then, may God bless you powerfully.