Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the Ten Minute Bible Hour podcast. And I've been thinking lately about the different tribes that I'm a part of. You know, because I'm not one thing. You're not one thing. You're a part of a bunch of different little circles, a lot of them by choice, maybe some of them by birth. And the thing that made me think about this was that we're coming to the end of the Major League Baseball season in my country, the highest level of baseball in the world. And I root for the worst team in that league. It might turn out that I root for the worst team in the history of that league because my beloved Colorado Rockies are horrible at baseball this year. Really, they are threatening to win the fewest games ever, to have the worst record over the course of a season in the history of ever. And I haven't been able to look away. I mean, this car crash has just been fascinating to study. How does it go this wrong? But in the course of that, there's also been this weird collegiality among Rockies fans. I know we always have something to talk about. We always have something to laugh about. It's kind of shared misery, but also shared awe at how poorly it's gone. The point is, you can even have a little tribe or a little identity that's born out of things that aren't the most pleasant. But also, there's a ton of things in my life where I feel collegiality with other people because the things that are very pleasant. And I suppose I am, we are this weird combination of about a hundred or two hundred, who knows how many, different little tribes and affiliations that make us us, all the things we care about, all the circles we run in, whatever you want to call it. In the book of Galatians, Paul is painting this picture of the biggest identity marker that any individual could ever experience. The biggest tribe, the most important tribe that makes you you, that defines who you are, and it is the tribe of the family of faith. He's writing to Christians in Galatia, and he's making it really clear that you being sons and daughters, agents and heirs of the king and the household of the kingdom of God, that is the biggest thing that makes you you. And it even transcends a bunch of cultural and religious preferences. It even transcends the color of your skin, your language, where you're from, your social status, your wealth, your special interests, your tragedies and traumas from before, yeah, however, you got here. It is the biggest thing that makes you you. And you would think something that important would have very stringent requirements for entry. I mean, let's just view this very crassly from a capitalistic value proposition point of view. You're talking about something that answers one of the biggest questions that everybody has in life, which is what is the point of me? Or let me phrase it another way. Who am I? Or let me phrase it another way. Where do I fit? Or let me phrase it another way. Why am I here? Or let me phrase it another way. Why would I have any hope for the future or for my life or for what happens after I die? This picture that Paul is painting about our identity as Christians, our identity in Christ, it speaks to all of that. It's pretty much the most valuable thing that you could possibly imagine in terms of the question of identity. And so you would imagine that something that valuable would be really hard to get. And you would have to do a lot of things to get it, because valuable things in life are very expensive, or else everyone would have them. But what we see in the book of Galatians, and what Paul is re-summarizing here at the end of the book of Galatians, is that actually it's the bad guys who teach things antithetical to Christ and Christianity who are saying that it's very, very expensive to buy your way in to this great product, this identity that we have in Christ. They're the ones saying only the elite can get it. In fact, you can't get it with the current amount of skin that a lot of you adult men have on your genitals. We're gonna have to cut some of that off. That is how steep the price is. You're gonna have to demonstrate some commitment. Blood is gonna have to be shed here for this to work. There's gonna have to be a bit of a humiliation ritual, and people are gonna know it happened. This isn't cheap. This is valuable stuff. I don't remember the name of the it's Blagojevich, right? The guy from Illinois in my country. I think that's who it was. I think he was trying to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat or something when he became president. If I'm getting the wrong guy, I'm I'm totally besmirching someone, but I think it was Rod Blagojevich, where he was caught on a hot mic saying something like, I'm not just gonna fill the Senate seat for free. This is valuable. I'm gonna get something out of it. Okay, whether he did that or not, the point is we can all imagine that kind of political corruption. And frankly, we can all understand the sort of political calculus that that politician was making in that scenario. This is a valuable thing. We don't give it away. There's a very high threshold. A lot is gonna be required to own this. Those are world system values. And the bad guys in the book of Galatians are thinking just like that. World system values say that really valuable things cost you a lot to get. But then Paul shows up with kingdom values, and they tend to be the opposite of world values. And Paul comes in with this sense of, nah, without money, come and buy. This has been paid for by God. This has been paid for by Christ in his death and his resurrection. Frankly, you can't raise enough capital to buy what needs to be bought here yourself anyway. You can't buy righteousness before God, you can't muster it. Instead, the only way into this tribe, this new family of faith, this circle of identity, is to receive it freely by the work of Christ. Wow. Well, there's another world values, world system philosophy or truism that that flies in the face of. And that is that the lower the threshold to entry, the more it cheapens the thing, you know, because the riffraff get in. I understand why there are gated communities where people are willing to invest tons of money to make something beautiful, but they want to keep it beautiful. Okay, I get it. Those are world system values, cool, fine, whatever. But the kingdom of God thing flies in the face of that because everybody is invited. It's not just for the ethnically Jewish, it's not just for free people, it's not just for property owners, it's not just for men. No, this is otherworldly and otherworldly to the point of frankly, discomfort. Because it's like, yeah, you know, going to the DMV, it's the great equalizer. Everybody has to go in there to get their license. Like, hi, everybody from all classes of society. Well, this is the one thing that kind of brings us all to our knees and puts us all in the same bucket. Well, not as much as the kingdom of God, because everyone who shows up there, no matter how rich they are, no matter how fancy they are, no matter what their clothes look like, no matter how socially acceptable their behavior, no matter how much they are lauded and celebrated and famous, no matter how sophisticated they are socially, they're all beggars. We were all dead. We were all slaves, and then God gave us life and God gave us freedom by his own work and at his own expense, great expense. It levels everything, it changes everything. When you understand how everybody got in, and that is as a beggar at the expense of the king, it makes it possible to envision a pathway to the kind of stuff that Paul's talking about, that the Bible's talking about, about how we treat each other, about how we do things, about things being different, about things being transcendent, bigger than this world, bigger than this moment, bigger than this life. And I will admit to you, my friends, that one of the things I've learned from our time in Galatians that is going to stick with me forever, is that I'm way more clear on how important the means by which people enter the family of faith is to what the family of faith looks like. And I guess that takes us back to that principle of walking by the Spirit. How we initially come to faith or enter into the new family of faith, which is by Christ alone, not by our works, unearned, that shapes what the family of faith and what the kingdom of God looks like. It changes everything. But in addition to that, what it looks like to dwell in that household, to be in that family, which Paul describes in the book of Galatians as life by the Spirit or walking by the Spirit, well, that's also the gift of God. So what gets us in in the first place isn't us. And then what helps us get it right to whatever degree we do when we're in also isn't us. This changes everything. None of our other tribal identity markers work that way. Toward the end of Galatians here, as Paul is summing up everything that he said in the book, we did a detailed breakdown yesterday of how Paul's concluding remarks closely mirror or repeat his outline through the book. He harkens back to these things we've spent today talking about, saying, May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. Well, there you have it. He's got nothing to brag about what he did. He entered into this most valuable identity marker, this new family of faith by Christ. That's all he has to brag about, nothing about himself. He goes on neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything. What counts is a new creation. So he's re-emphasizing the point that he makes in Galatians 3, 26 and forward earlier in the letter where he says, You are all sons of God and daughters of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. He's got nothing to brag about. God did the heavy lift, God did all the lift, God did all the work. And that's how every member of this tribe, this new family of faith, got there. There's no exception. Not John the Baptist, not Paul himself, not Mary, the mother of Jesus. She was saved by the work of Christ as well, even though she was awesome. Every single member of this new family of faith got there the exact same way as a beggar, as somebody who was dead in sin and then was made alive by the work of God in Christ. That means this new family of faith is going to be, well, awesome. It's going to be different than any other institution in the world. And it's an institution that transcends this world into the next. If this is to be believed, and full disclosure, I happen to believe it. So Paul's given us several points to remember to make sure that we understand what he's saying, to make sure that he leaves us with the right stuff on the way out the door. He wants us to remember one, that he wrote it, two, that it's authoritative, and this is from the church and Christianity and Jesus. Third, he wants us to know that the Judaizers, the agitators, the bad guys here are wrong and bad, full stop. Four, he wants us to know that the law was our teacher, but it's not anymore, and there's no hope for life in the law. There never was. It's always been through Christ. Five, he wants us to remember that in Galatians he deeply explored the idea that life is by Christ alone and not by the law. I forgot what number we're on, but I'm just gonna say six. Because of all that earlier theology, he's pointing out that there is a new family of faith. This is the most important identity anywhere. We have nothing to brag about because it's entirely the work of God. And then we live within this identity as sons and daughters, heirs, agents of the king, also as the gift of God, as we walk by the Spirit, which is by the power of the Spirit and not by the power of us. That was quite a bit today, but with just one more final thought to go, that effectively is rounding out Paul's outline for the book of Galatians. I can feel this book getting really close to being in our hip pocket. Okay, that's plenty for the moment. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon, okay.