Have You Suffered For Nothing...?

“Have you suffered so many things for nothing?—if indeed it was for nothing. Does God then give you the Spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law or by your believing what you heard?” Galatians 3:4-5 NET

Paul draws a clear and profound contrast between believers who have heard the gospel but still adhere to the law of Moses, with all its rules, statutes, and ordinances, as opposed to those who stand completely in Christ’s freedom. This message, which Paul preached to the Galatian gathering, still reverberates. Still, there are those among them who are trying to subvert those in the church from freedom in Christ with a message of bondage and enslavement, which leads back to the law, contrary to Paul’s message.

The argument is still as potent today as it was in Paul’s day. Have not all of us heard of the gospel of Christ, which speaks of a liberating freedom from rules, laws, and ordinances to a dependence on the righteousness of Jesus alone? The difference is when we trust in the flesh, which is also trusting in our own effort to keep the law of God, we become self-righteous; when we surrender to Christ and realize that we cannot measure up to the strict standards of the law, we put our flesh and its desires to death. We can then put our confidence in Jesus, God in the flesh who fulfilled the law in all its requirements; our lives become hidden in Christ, who becomes our righteousness and our life in all of His fullness.

It's truly amazing how God's miracles unfold, not through the law and its commandments, but through the profound message of the cross and Jesus' resurrection. If God's wondrous work were to be accomplished through the law, then all that Jesus endured and died for would be in vain, and our salvation in Jesus would be a mere illusion. But that's not the case. It's through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus that we are granted the precious gift of eternal life. Our lives have been redeemed from sin and death, and we are now heirs to the eternal life that has been destined for the children of God since the dawn of creation.

Peter & Paul from a Catacomb etching

So why does Paul fight so hard to counter the arguments against reverting to the law and bondage? Because it was a divine purpose. Galatia, a city located in Anatolia, modern-day Turkey, was one of the disinherited nations indicated in Deuteronomy 32:8 that God gave over to the sons of God as their inheritance for their disobedience at the tower of Babel. Paul’s primary mission or ministry in Christ was to the Gentiles, not the Jews, to restore the disinherited nations back to God. This was not just a mission, but a divine calling, and it’s no wonder there was so much opposition to his ministry from Jews and local principalities and powers alike.

Paul is drawing attention to the significant suffering endured by the Galatian church; part of that suffering was the relentless attack from local Judaizers and the Greeks (or Gauls) in Galatia who had doubts about anything they could not see, like an idol or any other mythical Greek god. The Greeks of the time also had their competing gods like Zeus and his son Heracles (Hercules), usually in a bust or statue form, with a father and son motif. The conversion of the pagan paradigm to the Christian world of the Heavenly Father and His Son wouldn’t have been complicated for Paul, for he was an expert apologist, a master in defending and explaining the Christian faith.

Paul’s message was for the restoration and reclamation of the dispersed nations in Deuteronomy 32; God had called him to those nations to which he and his entourage traveled extensively. God’s message was for the world, not just Israel, and Paul was the first olive branch offered for that purpose. As the Church became more influential in the pagan world, many were turning to the message of Christ, and the Church was growing exponentially because the Spirit of God had empowered it. When the message of Jesus was spoken, signs and wonders followed in many cases, which further gave evidence that the Gospel message was genuine and potent and had the power to transform lives.

In my personal observations, Paul is using a negative (sufferings) to reinforce the positive restorative power of the Holy Spirit. This message was Paul’s plain message from the beginning. Paul probably had the most challenging time separating his thought processes from the law, namely because he was a Jew raised in the knowledge of the Torah. He ended up considering everything he had been taught ‘dung’, or garbage, not because it was terrible or didn’t serve a purpose, but because the law was incomplete without Christ. The amazing thing is that God unequivocally backed up Paul’s message, and the Gospel flourished in His time, which is why we have such a rich history of faith recorded in his letters to the churches he planted.

Stephen Barnett