Episode 330: Bruce Longenecker - The Vision of Galatians
In this week’s episode of The Bible for Normal People, Pete and Jared talk with Bruce Longenecker about Galatians, Paul’s understanding of the Torah, and the kind of community he believed the gospel creates. They explore how Paul reframes identity around participation in Christ rather than ethnic or religious hierarchy, and why Galatians is less about individual salvation and more about transformed relationships in a fractured world. Together, they invite listeners to see Paul’s vision as a radical challenge to systems of power, exclusion, and self-interest.
Mentioned in This Episode
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Pete: You're listening to The Bible for Normal People, the only God-ordained podcast on the internet. I'm Pete Enns.
Jared: And I'm Jared Byas.
On today's episode, we're talking about the Book of Galatians and the vision Paul had that goes beyond what we're used to hearing about Galatians.
And our guest is Dr. Bruce Longenecker.
Pete: Yeah, Bruce is a professor at Baylor University and author of many books, including The Triumph of Abraham's God: The Transformation of Identity in Galatians, and that's sort of a clue what we're gonna talk about. Yep. So let's dive in.
Bruce: Paul is bringing a, a God, in a sense, to the streets of the Roman world, and people are saying, "Why should we believe in your God?
What has your God done? What will your God do for me?" And Paul says, "Let me tell you about a world that's out of order, and let me tell you how that God is setting this world right."
Pete: Bruce, welcome to the podcast. It's very, very good to have you.
Bruce: Thanks. It's great to be with y'all.
Pete: Yeah, we've been wanting to do this for a while. So let's, we're gonna talk about Galatians today, right? Right. Now, you, you, you've heard of that book, right?
Bruce: I, it's, uh, cropped up once or twice in my study of the Bible.
Pete: You might even have written a little bit. Yes. Okay, that's fine. So, so, uh, um, i- in, in as simple and succinct a way as we can do this, what is Galatians about?
Bruce: I think Galatians is a study in relationships, and what relationships say about who or what superhuman influence is informing those relationships, and the rest of it is commentary.
Pete: Hmm.
Bruce: So this is a- Paul is telling a story about God's creation that is out of control, and what God has done relationally to set relationships in right perspective.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Bruce: So Paul does as much with the problem, what has gone wrong in relationships in this world. He calls it the present evil age.
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Bruce: Uh, he spends as much time on the problem as he does on the solution, and often we don't spend much time with the problem, 'cause we just wanna get to the solution. But we don't see the depth of the solution unless we understand the depth of the problem to begin with. And Paul always focuses on relationship.
What are those relationships advertising about? What the power is behind those relational dynamics.
Pete: Yeah, and, and Paul's not particularly happy here either. He, he has a rather forceful way of speaking in this letter, as opposed to maybe some others.
Bruce: Yeah, this is raw Paul.
Pete: Yeah.
Bruce: There's, there's no, uh, holding back.
There's very little filter.
Pete: This is Paul regretting, 'cause he said, "I had no intention this to be in a Bible. I don't know, uh, I don't know how this happened," right? Yeah.
Bruce: In a sense, yeah. Maybe. I mean, after Galatians gets out there, he's gotta do some damage control, and sometimes we see that a little bit in, I would say a little bit in 1 Corinthians and a little bit in Romans as well, where he's saying, "Well, let me, let me reframe that in a little different way so that it's not just the raw moment as I presented it in relation to the Galatians," who needed to hear the rawness.
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Bruce: But sometimes the rawness can be heard in unfortunate ways as well.
Jared: Well, let's... I think it's a great place to start in terms of setting up the problem, because I think it helps people with context. Um, and, and make sure that we're rooted in the situation that Paul is dealing with. So can you say more about what relationships is he referring to, and what is, what's the problem?
Bruce: I think the problem is that the, uh, Christians in the Galatian cities, um, have experienced the Spirit, and these are largely, primarily, and perhaps even exclusively former pagans. The word pagan is a little bit complicated. But, uh, former polytheists who, who were involved in what Paul would say is idolatry and have given that up because of the message that Paul has brought to them.
And as a consequence, they have, they're experiencing the Spirit within their midst. So they are former idolaters who are aligned now with non-idolatrous identity, uh, in relation to the Spirit. But some have come to the Galatian communities and said, "Guess what? Um, Paul's Gospel gets you in.”
But if you really want to be, um, pleasing to the non-idolatrous forms of life, you need to be observing the Torah that was given to the non-idolatrous Jew- Jewish people, the people of Israel. Um, because it's the same God, right? You're, you've given up the idols, but you also need to go a step further.
And you didn't get this from Paul, um, but we're here to tell you what Paul didn't tell you. That is that “to really align your, uh, experience of the Spirit in non-idolatrous ways, you need to start observing the Torah." Um, so that's kind of their experience of things, uh, on the ground. Paul sees this as, um, introducing a kind of relational dynamic that is unhealthy and actually, uh, goes in the wrong direction.
Because all of a sudden, a certain kind of relational identity gets far more complicated than he would approve of. But that's going into Paul here rather than the situation. I can say more about situation if you'd like. Come back.
Jared: Yeah, well, uh, the, you know, that situation, um, they're referred to as agitators, right?
What, can you say more about what they are- what are they trying to stir up? Is it a situation where they're like, "Well, we're truly in, and so in order to truly be in, you have to behave more like us. You need to have this identity more like us." Or what, what can we responsibly say is the motivation of these agitators?
Bruce: Right. I think they point to the story of Abraham, because Abraham is the story of how the father of the people of Israel was a former polytheist, gave up all that idolatry to worship God. But the first thing he did was circumcise himself and any that came after him. And so you, Gentiles in Galatia, need to do the same thing.
Follow the same pattern. It's there in scripture. It, it's not complicated.
Pete: You know, they, they've got a good argument.
Bruce: It's a pretty good argument. Right, exactly. If you
Pete: wanna be- They're not just stupid. You know, they don't get the Jesus thing. They're saying, "We, we have a tradition here."
Bruce: Right. Yeah. We have a tradition, and if you wanna be a part of the people of this God, he's made it pretty clear what you need to be doing.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Bruce: It's a strong argument, and this is the problem. Sometimes we can paint these Galatians as kind of dummies, right? Just stupid people who didn't understand. If you don't have a Christian tradition that's very well-established, these are Christians, these are people who've been Christians for a few years at best or whatever.
Um, and you're, and they're shown, uh, Genesis, you know, the Abraham cycle in Genesis. It's pretty strong. It's a pretty strong argument that they need to be doing what these agitators are, are, are telling them to do.
Pete: And not only that, but I guess just in the, in the later second temple period, I'm not really up on this stuff as much as I'd like to be, but, you know, there was, you know, in essence, conversions.
You know, Gentiles were expected, if they wanted to be, if they wanted to be in, not, not God-fearers, but if they wanted to be in, well, they had to observe dietary laws. They had to observe Sabbath. They had to observe other kinds of things, and I mean, there's a long history for this. And, and I, I mean, talk about this.
For Paul to buck the system, wait a minute. I mean, and I can, I can hear every strong Christian who's also a biblical literalist.
Bruce: Right.
Pete: I think they'd be on the side of the, um, if I may call them Judaizers. That's not the best way to put it, but I, I think, because they're, they're adhering to the Bible.
Bruce: Right, and the key here, I think, is that Paul understood what he would call the Gospel, and read scripture in light of the Gospel, rather than reading scripture to inform the Gospel, and that's the difference, I think, between Paul's reading of scripture and, you know, if you're ta- talking about a literal interpretation of scripture, don't go to Galatians.
Pete: Right.
Bruce: Paul doesn't do literal. He, uh, he works playfully with the text be- and he thinks he can do that because he says, "Christ is alive in me." Right.
Pete: Well,
Bruce: And if Christ is alive in me, I can read scripture, and I should read scripture in light of what I know about Christ. Now that's a dangerous game.
Pete: It is. Yeah.
Bruce: But that's the game Paul plays in Galatians.
Pete: Well, Bruce, uh, I mean, before we leave this, this topic, um, the, the passage that should rightly blow people away, I think, in Galatians, is the Sarah and Hagar. Um, um, allegory that, I mean, I know it means allegory in a different sense than the, the Greeks used it, but still, it's like there, there couldn't be a more wrong interpretation of those, that story from a, let's say, grammatical, historical point of view.
Jared: Yeah, could, could you riff on that a little? Explain that, well, maybe even introduce that whole passage, 'cause I think for some people they may not be familiar with it.
Bruce: Yeah. Well, this is the interesting place where Paul uses the Abraham story to turn it on the agitators in a sense. Because the way he reads that story, in a way that he has to call it allegory because it's certainly not literal, he reads that story in such a way that it can read back as, "So therefore, get rid of those agitators."
The Abraham story tells you, Galatians, "Get rid of them."
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Bruce: Just as they've been telling you to, in a sense, get rid of me. Actually, the story goes the other way when read allegorically. So it's an allegory of how, uh, Abraham has descendants of different kinds, one through the flesh and one through the spirit, and sort of the Isaiah line through the, the, the spirit in a sense, versus the, um, the Ishmael line through Hagar, and this is the fleshly line of descent.
And basically, he says, um, the fleshly line of descent has always persecuted the, the, the sort of spiritual line of descent, and it's always been like that. And, scripture should tell us when read allegorically, "Get rid of those of the fleshly line of descent." And who are they? They're the persecutors, and that's what you are experiencing from the agitators.
They are, in a sense, persecuting you Gentiles, so get rid of them. And he does something similar, uh, in chapter three where he takes the word, um, the seed of Abraham. Now it's a collective noun, which it's like saying there's a crowd coming down the road. Well, crowd is singular. It is coming down the road.
And if I said, "Yes, but because it's singular, there's only one person coming down the road." Right. Uh, that's what Paul is doing in Galatians 3 when he says, "Jesus Christ is the seed of Abraham exclusively, and you become the pluralized seed as you participate in Christ." It doesn't mean that if, in the original text either.
Pete: Yeah.
Bruce: But it, Paul can do that because he knows the gospel, and that kind of reading gets him to the gospel reading of this text.
Pete: But Bruce, what do you make of, this is a very common response I hear from people, that Paul couldn't possibly have been running roughshod over these texts because it would have convinced no one. Do, do you see, do you feel that?
Do, do you see what I'm saying? It's, it's, they, um-
Jared: Well, they assume, are you saying they assume, like, a grammatical, historical way is the right way?
Pete: Yes. It’s assumed.
Jared: So it can’t be using allegory 'cause people would be like, "What? That's not how you use the Bible.
Pete: 'Cause no one would under- so, of course, that's a modern point of view, but no one, no one would, would feel, um, uh, compelled to agree with Paul because he's just not reading the text right.
Jared: So maybe the question is would that have been convincing to people in the, in, in the context in which Paul is saying it, when he's allegorizing it, would that have been convincing?
Bruce: Well, I think this is probably why his autobiography is told first.
Pete: Hmm.
Bruce: Uh, this is why Galatians 1 and 2 sets up his reading of scripture in Galatians 3 and 4 because he's basically saying, "I'm not a people pleaser. Uh, I, I was knocked off my feet by the risen Lord who lives in me, who was revealed to me," but the Greek is ambiguous. It doesn't just mean revealed to, it means lives within me.
Pete: Hmm.
Bruce: And as he lives within me, and the whole of chapter two ends, "It's not I who live, but Christ lives in me.
Therefore, I can read scripture in this way," is I, I think what he's doing is legitimizing this way of reading the text, and he knows how, um, how playful his readings of the text are, and it's because of his autobiography that he is allowed to do this. He's saying "I'll take the Abraham cycle and read it in such a way that it aligns with what I know to be true of the gospel."
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Bruce: And actually, you know, that raises the question, did Galatians work, or did they just sort of abandon Paul and say, "This is garbage?” I think it actually worked. I think we can see that from a few little, uh, clues, uh, from later letters, that actually the Galatians did not abandon Paul. They stuck with him, uh, at least for, at least for a while.
Pete: Well, um, you know, there's so much to talk about in this book. But can we, um, maybe just talk about what might be sort of a common assumption among readers of Galatians, this law and grace dichotomy. How does, help us understand, how does that play out in this letter?
Bruce: Yeah. Um, I, I want to take the word, or the translation of the Greek word nomos, uh, which is usually translated law.
I want to reframe it as Torah-
Jared: Mm-hmm ...
Bruce: Because law is so, um- It, it comes with so much baggage. So s- there's so many presuppositions that come with it. Right. It's so easy to say, "Oh, law versus grace." Well, obviously it's grace. What, what's wrong with these ridiculous Galatians? If we say Torah, it's a completely different scenario because Torah means God's instructions for God's people.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Bruce: And now we're saying, uh, God's instructions for God's people, um, instead of... Or we're saying grace instead of God's instructions for God's people. Now wait a minute, this is a much harder, a much more complicated scenario. Maybe they weren't such fools, sort of thing we've already been talking about.
Maybe this is a really pressing issue, and actually church history proves that to be the case. Second, third century theologians are all over the map on what do we do with God's instructions for God's people in relation to grace. And it's tough. So first of all, first of all, I wanna shift it to Torah.
Um, and I would say that what, uh, Torah in relation to grace does, or if we say Torah versus grace, there's ways in which that's helpful and ways in which that's not helpful. The way that it's helpful is Paul wants to say that there is what I call a macro identity that all Christians share, and that macro identity is basically Jesus Christ.
And there are micro identities within the Christian communities, and they are all legitimate, let's say Egyptian identity, Armenian identity, um, you know, the identity of the Gaul people, Jewish identity, et cetera. These are all legitimate as micro identities, but when you move those micro identities, any of them, up to the, to being a necessary macro identity, that's where everything falls apart because you're saying Jesus Christ plus.
And as soon as you say plus, you lose even Jesus Christ. So, um, this is where the Torah versus grace is legitimate because Torah should be a micro identity, not a macro identity. And if you put it to a macro identity, then it's a versus situation, and that helps to, that's where Paul's letter says, "Uh-uh. It's a versus, and because it's a versus, it doesn't work.”
Pete: Uh, um, Bruce, just on that.
Bruce: Yeah.
Pete: It, but that, I mean, I don't want that to get lost, what you just said. Torah is a micro identity. That's a huge shift.
Bruce: That's a huge shift. Because-
Pete: I, I mean, I'm not sure if anybody said that before Paul. You know? This is, this is not a thing Jews would typically say.
Bruce: Right.
Pete: Right.
Bruce: I, I, I think that's right. And, and this is Paul's world where there are ethnic hierarchies set up in every part of the world. And no matter what group you're involved in, you have a way of saying, "Our ethnic identity is a little bit better than everyone else's ethnic identity."
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Bruce: And you've created a macro identity, uh, of, of preference, of self-preference.
And as soon as you do self-preference, you're into a, a cosmic world of dog-eat-dog social Darwinism, where we use power to manipulate others to enhance our own positions. And that's what Paul sees when he looks out at what he calls the present evil age. But as a micro identity, Jewish identity is, is legitimate, and this is where a lot of early Christian discourse goes wrong too, in saying basically, Paul's gospel wants to get rid of Torah observance.
It doesn't. Paul's not a mini Hitler. Paul's gospel requires a Jewish presence within Christ groups because, uh, Christ groups are supposed to be the place where, um, where the praise of God, the worldwide praise of God, is articulated. And you can't do that if you're cutting off one particular ethnic group.
They have to be in the game, and that means it's, it's a legitimate thing for Jewish Christians to be observing the Torah while they're praising Jesus Christ.
Pete: And there's a long history of that misstep, right? And, and it's, it's sort of, you know, and, and, and not, I mean, I'm not taking potshots, but, you know, in the evangelical world in general, like, well, yeah, they're just wrong, you know?
And, and who needs them? Uh, yeah, they gave us the Bible and all that sort of stuff, but, you know, it's, it wasn't, um, to get back to what you said earlier, th- that relational dimension between these two groups is not something that many of us have to think about on a regular basis.
And so we make this, we make this letter into something else.
Bruce: Right. And that's why Paul's theological discourse is so complicated and so urgent, is because he sees a really difficult scenario, where it's not just people who have the same identity coming together and bearing one another's burdens.
"Hey, I can bear the burden of someone who looks exactly like me, and is my age and shares my interests." That's not hard at all. But start differentiating my identity in any number of ways, and it gets harder and harder because I get separated. And that, from that person or that people group or whatever, and that's where Paul's theology is saying, "That's precisely what we're, we need to be doing," because those kind of restored relationships, let's call it, transformed relationships testify to the sovereignty of God.
That's what Galatians is. It's a defense of God's sovereignty in a world that looks like it's out of joint in terms of relationships.
Jared: Can you, can you say more about the, this micro/macro identity? Because, um, when you say, you know, this macro identity in Christ, it, it transcends the micro identity, but it doesn't negate it.
But then, and that makes a lot of sense, but I, I wanna maybe understand or help our, our listeners understand, does that depend on, and I, I think it, it would be concerning if that depends on assuming Paul's able to parse out ethnic identity versus religious identity, and saying like, "Well, you can be Jewish ethically, but not religiously."
I think that would be anachronistic. So can you talk more about this macro/micro identity without falling into, we're parsing out kinda the kernel and the husk, ethnic versus religious, 'cause I do feel like that wouldn't have made sense for Paul.
Bruce: Right. Yeah, it's, it, that's right. In the ancient world, ethnic groups were kind of where people started in terms of who they are and what they do in relation to their gods.
Um, and there's a saying, uh, that in a sense, the gods are in the blood. That, that who you are, um, in terms of your blood ethnicity predetermines your deity. Um, and in a sense, that's true for the Judean people. I sometimes prefer the word Judean rather than Jews, because the Judean people spread throughout the Mediterranean Basin are recognizing that they belong to a, their origins lie in a geographical location called, in this time, at this time, called Judea.
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Bruce: Where their temp- where their God has God's temple, Jerusalem, and even though they're, even though they may be in Italy or whatever, they are always ethnic Judeans. And their devotional configuration, their religious identity, is inbuilt with their ethnic identity, and the two are very, very difficult to separate.
Jared: So with Paul, then, yeah, how does that, the, that get parsed out when it's like, well, the, the Christ identity transcends that, but you can still keep this micro identity. How does that fit in Paul's scheme?
Bruce: For a number of reasons, Paul believes that God has used the people of Israel in important ways.
Um, but, and, and maybe we can get into that a little later, in terms of parsing out the micro identity of the Judean people in relation to Christ devotion, there might be one or two ways in which things get a little sticky. But for the most part, Paul sees this as largely a cultural identity phenomenon now.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Bruce: Um, where things get a little sticky might be in terms of sacrifices in the Jerusalem temple. There were a number of sacrifices in the Jerusalem temple. Uh, a, a thanks- a thanksgiving offering shouldn't be a problem in a, in the, in the Jerusalem temple. But if it's a, something about, uh, atonement for sin or something, maybe Paul will want to address that.
He doesn't really ever go there in the extant letters that we have. But we might ask, is there any place where Judean identity gets redefined in the light of Christ? And this was probably the place where we should start in that regard. But for the most part, Paul thinks it, it's a cultural phenomenon of an ethnic group.
And just as he's not gonna say, "We're not gonna have any Egyptians here, we're not gonna have any Armenians here," he's not, it, it's completely a- opposed to his theology to say, "We're not gonna have any Jews here either." Um, and in fact, his, his, a lot of his discourse is based on Abraham, in say, Romans 4.
Abraham is the father of the, the people of Israel, let's say, and the Gentiles in different ways, and, and Paul doesn't want to diminish either of these two categories. Okay. They have to be, both be in play, uh, for Paul.
Pete: Well, um, we can't not talk about this next, which is, uh, justification by faith.
And feel free to throw in those two little Greek words people talk about, pistis Christou, and what did I just say? All right. And who cares, and what, what, what difference does that all
Bruce: Right.
Pete: So what is, what is justification by faith for Paul?
Bruce: Well, if we take justification, Paul ultimately roots justification or righteousness, the same, uh, Greek term can go either way in terms of your translational preference.
Paul ultimately roots this in, um, the, the phrase of Galatians 5:5, the hope of righteousness. And in other words, this is where sort of traditional Christian theology has a legitimate foothold within the reading of Galatians. I think Paul is thinking of people standing before the judgment seat of God and being accountable for, in their life, for how they've lived.
And in Christ, Paul says, "We have the hope of righteousness," in that future-oriented, um, uh, eschatological, uh, phenomenon of judgment before a righteous God. But he also uses the term righteousness or justification in relation to, uh, relationships between people. And in this case, it's really the Jewish people and the Gentiles within Christ groups, and how are we to be living together, uh, in Christ groups when we are so different in our practices or can be, in theory, so different in our practices.
So he has a sort of a, a, a present day aspect to his understanding of righteousness in relation to the future orientedness of, of, of righteousness. So that's a quick sort of intro to, to justification in Galatians, but justification by faith, I prefer the little translation justification by trust. The little word pistis, um, which is usually translated faith, a lot of work has been done recently to suggest that, you know, faith is okay as a translation, but in Paul's day, it would've been heard a little bit more in relation to trust.
And although the two overlap, they also are doing different, different things, um, in terms of, uh, semantics or whatever the, the content of their meaning. Um, so faith can be about, it can be understood cognitively. Um, justification by faith, what you believe, and here's what we need to believe, A, B, C, D, and as long as you believe that, you're fine.
Trust is more relational. And that's not to say there's nothing content-based in trust. There's gotta be some trust, uh, content based in trust because you're putting your trust in someone who is trustworthy, and that involves content. But trust opens up a relational context a little bit more easily perhaps than faith.
So I, I talk about, uh, trust in this regard. If I try to bring together the, this notion of trust in relation to justification, I think key for this is Paul's claim that we have trusted in Christ Jesus, and Paul understands that almost, um, part, part, in terms of our participation in Jesus Christ. So he goes on to explain what he means by our faith in Christ in relation to the metaphor of dying with Christ.
We die with Christ in order that Christ can come alive in us, and it's when Christ comes alive in us that we have confidence that we will stand before the judgment seat- Mm ... of God in the future and be declared righteous, not because of any micro identity we have, but because of the macro identity of Jesus Christ.
It's like what God the Father wants to see is Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ. Uh, and so to have trust in Jesus Christ for Paul involves dying with Christ so that Christ can come alive in us, and then that's what God the Father sees when we stand before him in judgment. So when you put pistis and Christou together, pistis, faith or trust, Christou, Christ, the translation of this in Galatians that occurs in a couple verses is usually faith in Christ, or let's say trust in Christ.
And that's legitimate because Paul uses the, a verbal form of that precisely in Galatians 2:16. But there are a number of scholars who wonder whether there are different, there's a different relationship between these two words in Galatians and also in Romans and a few other passages, too. And that's not so much our faith in Jesus Christ, but the faith or the trust of Jesus Christ.
Um, faith of Jesus Christ to say something like his obedience to God the Father, or his obedience to his mission, uh, that ends in the cross. Um, so this is the reading I hold, that this is actually referencing the trust that Jesus Christ exhibited, and it's the trust that Jesus Christ exhibited in God the Father, who Jesus Christ knew was faithful to his promise to resurrect Jesus.
Jesus goes to the cross knowing, trusting, that God will be on the other side and will resurrect him. Jesus, uh, in Paul, Jesus does not resurrect himself. He doesn't, he's not waiting around in the tomb between Good Friday and Easter, uh, and, and Easter Sunday. There's almost a non-existence of Jesus in those, in those, in that period of time.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Bruce: And what fills the gap is the trustworthiness of God the Father, who has, in a sense, been holding the identity of Jesus Christ in his hand or in his memory, however we anthropomorphize God at this point, and brings Jesus Christ the Son to life after that.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Bruce: And the reason I like this is because it corresponds with, uh, the faith of Abraham in Galatians 3:6-9.
That, uh, we're told God promised Abraham that he would be, uh, uh, uh, that he would be the father of many nations, many Gentiles, and Abraham trusted that God is faithful. And just as Abraham trusted that God was faithful, and so it's proving that God is faithful in Christ, so too Jesus trusts that God is faithful.
And guess what? God resurrected Jesus, uh, or the Son, and proving God's faithfulness.
Pete: Well, I, I don't want to make this more black and white than it needs to be, 'cause it's Paul, and it's, it's complicated, right? But, um, there seem to be two options. Um, we're justified by our faith in Jesus, which is a more, let's say, standard, typical way that most people hear it. Like, we're, we're justified by faith by our act of believing, I guess, or, or having faith or something like that.
Um, this other way sort of flips that around a little bit. We're, we're saved not by our faith in Christ, but as I've heard, uh, others say, by the faithfulness of Christ, who has been faithful even, um, to death on the cross, who, uh, was the obedient Adam, uh, as opposed to the disobedient Adam, right?
I mean, I have to tell you what, why I get excited about that is because it just puts the focus on what God is doing in Christ and not here, here's this formula, and now we're going to be either evangelists giving you all these arguments for why, "Oh, good, now you intellectually believe, and now everything's okay."
That's why I think the word trust is so important in that as well. You know, but trust and faithfulness, they're, they're not, there's a lot of semantic range stuff going on with that word, I think, right?
Bruce: Right. Right.
Pete: Yeah.
Bruce: I think that, I think that's exactly right. And what the concept of the faithfulness of Christ or the, the trust of Christ, and as you say, both are probably packaged up in there, what that does is it foregrounds a story about what God has done to set the world right, rather than making it a doctrinal statement about, "Here's what you need to do in order to get your, in order for your soul to get to heaven." Mm. And it's not to say that that is not, a, a misreading of Galatians. It's just not necessarily the foreground of what Paul is doing in Galatians.
Where Paul is saying, "This world is out of order," and we can see that in relationships of chaos and trauma all over the place. And what do we do about that? We believe in Jesus Christ. Well, uh, yes, but we believe in Jesus Christ because God has sent the Son into this world of trauma and disorder and, um, is setting it right as we participate in Christ, and the Spirit of Christ comes alive in us in new ways of relationships. New ways of forming relationships, and those new relationships testify to the sovereignty of God.
Pete: Yeah, it makes it... I like the way you put that. It makes it God's story, what, what God is doing and has done. And, you know, there still is that some mechanism, I guess, of how individuals get in to that. Right And, and, and, um, but I, I, I think, and maybe you agree, I, I think Paul is much more about telling that story and the implications it has for humanity and maybe not so much escaping hell when you die.
Bruce: Right. Right, because in Paul's world, there's a smorgasbord of gods.
Pete: Yeah.
Bruce: Not in our world, do you believe in God or not, um, or are you agnostic? Uh, and is it the Jewish God or the Muslim God or the Christian God? No. It was which gods do you, are you devoted to and why? And so Paul is bringing a, a God in a sense to the streets of the Roman world, and people are saying, "Why should we believe in your god?
What has your god done? What will your god do for me?" And Paul says, "Let me tell you about a world that's out of order.
And let me tell you how that god is setting this world right." And they're going, I, I think they're going, you know, some of them are going, "That's kind of interesting.
Maybe I'll have a little bit of that god, and maybe, you know, I'll start, you know, uh, adopting more and more."
Pete: And, and maybe the answer to that question then is not, "Guys, you really, really have to get Torah down." It's something that says, "Yeah, it, this is included, but it's a much bigger vision than that."
Bruce: Right. Right.
Pete: Well, that's a fun reading of Galatians. That's a way to get into it, I think.
Jared: Well, and maybe we can push, maybe we can push even harder on that because you started by talking about that, that Galatians is about relationships and, and social identity. And so if we pivot away from this book is about how to get saved and not go to hell when you die, and that justification by faith isn't just, uh, a, a belief or a mental ascent of checking off a couple of boxes..
Uh, can you, can you tie those together and say in what ways then is Galatians about social identity and relationship? And when you say on the streets of Rome, Paul is bringing a god who is going to make an impact for you, what is the impact that Paul is describing?
Bruce: For me, the key is what Paul says in Galatians 3:22, where he introduces, uh, although he has already introduced it, uh, in 2:17, so where Paul reintroduces, um, what I would frame as and translate as the cosmic power of sin.
Now, uh, in, in, in more traditional interpretations. This is just sin, like our little sins, our transgressions. But there's good reason to think, we see this in a number of texts in Paul, that Paul is externalizing something that is, it's so foreign to our way of thinking, but it's, he's externalizing something that is running rampant through God's good created order and pulling God's good created order apart and introducing social chaos left, right, and center.
Um, and you see this, as I say, in a number of texts, and Galatians just shares in this kind of worldview that we just don't get, and for that reason, we collapse sin to being our things that happen in our hearts or little things that we do.
And those are transgressions, those are sins, and Paul takes those seriously, but those ultimately are operating within a world where we are enslaved to the cosmic power of sin in one way or another. And the difference is Paul never talked, in Galatians and largely in his, in the majority of his letters, he doesn't talk about repentance and forgiveness.
Pete: Right.
Bruce: Right? If this is just about our sins, then let's repent and God will, God will forgive us. That's not Paul's natural theological discourse. It's not to say he would disagree. He would agree, but for him, his, his primary contribution lies elsewhere. The primary thing is about liberation of people and people groups from the domination of a cosmic power of sin that introduces what I, uh, what some refer to as social Darwinism, the use of power. Any power that I and, and my group can acquire and accumulate, we'll use it against people who are different than us, and we'll try to accumulate whatever they have for ourselves.
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Bruce: Mm-hmm. And they're doing the same thing. And all we have is, well, what Paul says in Galatians 5:15, I think it is, "Be careful. You're gonna bite and devour each other if you live like the world." Right. That's bite and devour. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there. Paul understood that, and I think we understand that in our world.
So Paul's description of the problem is one that we can certainly relate to, I think.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Bruce: Um, so this is the present evil age that Paul says we all live in. It's a horrible world of toxic relationships where people use power to, to accumulate things for themselves, and Paul flips that in relation to the spirit of the Son of God and the Son who gave himself for others.
That spirit becomes alive in Christ groups where we now, Paul says things like, "Bear one another's burdens," right? Love our neighbors as we love ourselves. And those are people of difference within Christ groups. It's not just a bowling club where we all share an interest in bowling, and we all have the same socioeconomic profile.
We are different in any way, any and every way. And if caring for, for one another and bearing one another's burdens is happening in groups, that's got to be a testimony of the Spirit's presence in those groups, 'cause there's no other way of explaining it, Paul would say.
Pete: Yeah. Well, I th- I think we, we unfortunately need to wrap this up. However, I'm having a good time here. I, I, uh, but what I'm gonna take away from this, and what I hope many take away from this, is that Galatians is not what you think it is. It's a retelling of the cosmic story, and it's, in that sense, it's Revelation in that sense. Do you see what's really happening here, right?
And, and the role Jesus plays. And so our relationships, um, should not suffer because of this thing that God has done. It should be the opposite.
Bruce: Right. And what, and I'm not gonna take very long, but I think what Paul imagines is Christ groups in which we're not just, um, undergoing drudgery divine as we give of ourselves for other people, and we become doormats for others, and others can take advantage of us.
It becomes a community where everyone is doing that, and joy transpires as, as the community is full of Jesus Christ. And a Christ-full community is a community of joy, of possibility, where new relationships form and the stories are endless. Imagine the stories that will transpire in these kind of communities of Christ givenness, where we're giving Christ to each other.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Bruce: Uh, it's an exciting vision.
Pete: Yeah.
Jared: Yeah. I think it's a great place to end with that vision. It sort of... It's a nice benediction as we wrap up our time. Yeah. So thanks so much, Bruce, for, for jumping on- Yeah ... and, and educating us on Galatians.
Bruce: My pleasure. Thank you so much. It was fun.
Pete: Bruce. Thank you so much.
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