Did you guys ever take like a logic class or maybe a speech or debate class or something where they taught you about logical fallacies and the law of binary opposition, that being the stuff about how things are either a one or a zero at their most basic level, all logic and thought, sort of rooted in some elemental level of either a thing is this or this. Switches is the same way software, computers are built. And in that class where you were learning about that stuff, I wonder if maybe you heard the same example of a self-conflicting statement, a self-defeating statement that I always heard growing up. The one that I always heard was this it is impossible for there to be such a thing as a married bachelor. Those two words don't go together. It doesn't work. Because if you are married, you have switched the binary oppositional switch that is either a one or a zero, an on or an off. You have switched it from off, not married, to on. There isn't a part married. You're not married until you say the vows. I guess some people do paperwork with the government to register their marriage for tax purposes or whatever, but marriage is something that's instituted by God, and once the actual vows before God and the people who got you there are taken, you have flipped the switch from not married to married. There isn't a halfway. It's not a dimmer, it's a one or a zero. You know, to extrapolate that out, I was reading through Galatians and thinking about the stuff we're talking about on the front end here. I have to thinking about uh imagining a club, like a bachelor's club, a bunch of guys who are all saying, we're committed to bachelorhood forever. We will never change our minds. We've all agreed to it, and we're gonna go through life as bachelor bros. We're gonna travel the world and we're gonna do things together and we're gonna celebrate the virtues of bachelorhood. And part of our vows to enter into this League of Bachelor Brotherhood is that we shall never be married. Okay, I wouldn't do that if you have the option to get married. It's probably a good idea. I mean, I wouldn't marry the wrong person either out of desperation, but I think marriage is a really good thing. I highly recommend it if you can find the right person. But let's say there were people who made such an arrangement. The League of Brotherhood of the Holy Solemn Order of Bachelor, sworn bachelorhood. That's a good name. I don't know what the acronym is, but let's say such a thing existed, right? Well, then let's say one of the guys, we'll call him Scotty, decides, well, I still want to be in the League of Bachelors, but also I'm gonna get married. And so then he goes and he gets married, and then he goes back to the next League of Bachelor Brothers meetings, and he's like, I'm still in, guys. I'm still a bachelor. I've changed, you know, my position on being married versus being a bachelor to married, but I'm still a bachelor. Everybody would be like, that's not how logic works. You can't just change your position on that. That would be an example of the one thing that definitionally is required of you in order to be in this club. It doesn't work. You can't be married and be part of the bachelor club. It's mutually exclusive. It kind of just ruins it. And that's the way the apostle Paul is treating the Galatians. It really seems like what the Galatians had communicated to the Apostle Paul, what you know, whatever had come back to the Apostle Paul, it seems like he was getting the impression that the Galatian church was like, okay, Paul, everybody, back in the day, we were the kind of Christians who believed that we were saved by the grace of Christ. And we held the position that through the work of Christ on the cross and his fulfillment of the Old Testament law, and through his resurrection and by his forgiveness and his unmerited favor, that we are forgiven of our sins and made right with God and can anticipate eternal life with God someday. That's what we used to believe. That was our old position. But, you know, we ran into some people who had some new ideas and perspectives we really hadn't considered. They opened our eyes to some new ideas. And now we hold a different position on that. Our new position is that we're the kind of Christians who are saved by our own effort and work through strict adherence to the ancient Jewish law. And Jesus fits in there somehow, maybe sort of, I guess that's awesome. But we're the kind of Christians who kind of go out and take the bull by the horns and earn it for ourselves by really, really obeying the law. So you see, Paul, there's really nothing to be super mad about. We just used to hold one Christian position and now we hold a different one. But in the book of Galatians, Paul is going to completely reject that as even being an option. He seems, no, seems, well, that's really funny. He is overtly, clearly and expressly saying throughout the course of this letter, you can't do that any more than you can be a married bachelor. It doesn't work. It is a logical contradiction. To be a follower of Christ, to be a Christian, to be in Christ, is to depend on Christ for his forgiveness of sins, his imputing of his own righteousness, a righteousness apart from the law, a righteousness, a right standing before God that can only be obtained by the gracious work of Christ through his forgiveness by his work on the cross and in the resurrection. So they seem to be playing a game where they're saying we've listened to some new teaching and we've evolved to a new Christian position. Paul is saying you can't evolve to that position. You're definitionally no longer a Christian if you hold that position. That's the basic contention of the two sides in this letter. Now, really, there are kind of three sides. There's Paul, who represents Orthodox historical Christianity, who represents all of the Christians, who represents God and Jesus. And then there's his enemies, the Judaizers, who've come and agitated and caused problems in this church. And then there's the squishy middle, who are these fledgling Christians in Galatia who seemed like they were doing pretty well, but now they've embraced weird stuff. Listen to exactly how Paul addresses this as we continue forward in this to what do I owe the pleasure portion. Okay, yesterday we read, I'm astonished that you're so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel, which is really no gospel at all. You can't be a married bachelor. Evidently, some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ, perverting it so heavily that it becomes unrecognizable, and you're effectively practicing a different religion. That little paraphrase it all aside was mine. Verse 8. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned. He's saying, be more loyal to the message you received and accepted than you are even to the people who relayed that message to you in the first place. Hold tight to that true thing. It is at the core of what it is to be in Christ, what it is to be a Christian. If you abandon that true thing, then whatever you are or wherever you're going, it isn't Christian. It isn't in Christ. As we've already said, so now I say again, if anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned. And did you catch it? There's a little history lesson there, even in that. He's saying that anybody who preaches a gospel different than the one that we preached to you, let them be eternally condemned. But then he goes on to say that it's not just that we preached it, you accepted it. If anybody preaches to you a gospel other than the one you accepted, let him be eternally condemned. I realize those are very harsh words, and they're not mine. I'm reading what's in the text. I know that a ton of you who listen to this have been around church, and at times church has been weird. I know that there are many of you who right now, you don't go to church, you used to. It's hard, it's weird. It's the leftovers of the really rough decade of church and deconstruction and new progressive fundamentalist leftism as a new religious option. Things were weird in the 20 teens. And for a whole bunch of us, there was a lot that we had to reckon with during that time. I do think that as time passes and the world unfolds, there's a whole lot of us who went through some of that difficult stuff of faith somewhere roughly in the 20 teens, who are kind of starting to get our feet back under us and see it a lot differently at this point. But I know that you start using words like heresy or eternal condemnation, and that can be the kind of thing that flashes you right back to the worst conversation you ever had at church, or the idea or teaching that just did not make sense and seemed bizarrely, unnaturally combative. And the truth of the matter is, I don't know. I wasn't there if that happened to you, when that happened to you. It's possible that a younger version of ourselves took great offense at something that an older, more mature version of ourselves might have recognized was actually right. It's possible that the people who said that were just being jackwagons and they were wrong and they were mouthy and they were loud and they were overly confident and it made you feel crappy, and you were right to feel crappy about it. I don't know. For me, frankly, a lot of those bumps and bruises from way back in the day, so much time has passed, I don't even remember for sure if I was right to be angry about the things that I thought were hurtful at church, or if maybe they were right and I just didn't get it. I I don't know. For me, it's becoming kind of neither here nor there and not really informing my faith much anymore. To go back and try to adjudicate it at this point is feels like fighting with ghosts, punching at the wind. For me at least, charging forward into the Bible with you and doing it for ourselves has been one of the real antidotes for that. It's been very important for me over the last five years, really 10 years, since I started doing this on the internet, for kind of gaming some of that stuff out and just seeing the Bible and the church and the whole thing for what it is. But I just didn't want to get to the end of this conversation about Paul saying you can't think that and be a Christian and not acknowledge the elephant in the room, or at least the elephant that was in the room in the 20 teens when all of us were going through so much, that that sounds like a very deterministic statement. It sounds a little judgy on the part of Paul to say you cannot shift positions on this. On this particular issue, if you shift positions, you've shifted positions away from Christ. To reject Christ as the centerpiece of your faith and to embrace your own proper behavior as the saving centerpiece of your faith is to embrace a different religion. I know that that might sound just a little too sure and a little bit off-putting, but I think we should hear Paul out, because I think he makes a really good case, and I think there's a reason this letter has stood the test of time. Yeah, it's a bold thesis charged with a ton of emotion. But can he back it up? Well, I've read this book a lot of times and I find it compelling. So there's no point in pretending like I don't think he can back it up. Yes, I think he can back it up, and I think he does. Ultimately, as you're working through it, you'll have to decide if a statement that bold with language like eternal condemnation is merited here or not. But as for me, as the letter unfolds, I think he makes the case well enough to say if you abandon this position in the way the Galatian church had been led into abandoning this given position, it is no longer Christianity, in the same way that being a married man makes you not a bachelor. Paul views it as a matter of logical consistency, and I think he makes a pretty good case. All right, I'm Matt. This is a 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.
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