Whom to Please

Galatians 1:8-10

The issue going on behind the scenes here was that some were insisting that you had to be a Jew to be a Christian. Of course one can be, the problem comes in insisting on any sort of rites as being necessary. Our church doesn’t even hold baptism to be necessary for salvation, just what it represents. One should be baptized upon coming to faith, but that’s another post or more.

The parallel concern here is one of authority in the church. There is one authority – “Christ our only King and head”, as my church acknowledges. But would an observer really get that? Do those of us in the thick of things really get that? It means the Gospel of Christ, not just about Christ, has its own authority, its own power, its own direction. We strategize and analyze and market and target – which is fine and good and it may help us zero in on real situations and real human needs and how to communicate with those who desperately need the liberation of that Gospel’s power in their/our bondage to this dying order of things – but sometimes it seems as if God is required to act through the filter of our strategies.

Meanwhile, authority is a huge issue in the church. What to do and how and who has the say about it all is an ongoing, often perplexing, dynamic. We bring more human baggage to that process than we ever perceive, even though it’s easy enough to perceive a lot of it. Somehow, amazingly but not so amazingly when you consider what power is at work, God gets enough of a piece of our hearts and minds enough of the time that we go forward – as long as we keep reminding ourselves and one another that our goal is to please God. And one with particular responsibility for proclaiming the Gospel lives under the impending curse that will most certainly fall on him (verses 8-9) if he fails to be faithful to the task.

Prayer:
Lord, keep me true to the one authority I need be concerned with. Through the grace of Christ. Amen.