Far Be It From Me to Boast

Pastor Ray opened the final sermon in the long run through Galatians by reading Galatians 6:9-18, a passage he described as covering the whole book one more time in a short space. He organized the text around four movements: stewardship, substantiation, summary, and sign-off, and he closed with Communion and the Lord's Prayer.

What was said

Pastor Ray came to the table already a little nostalgic. The church had been in Galatians since late March, and he said he could picture a mental slideshow of the whole book. That nostalgia was actually useful, because he argued these last few verses are themselves a kind of slideshow, a compressed recap of everything Paul has been building toward.

The first movement was stewardship, and Pastor Ray was careful to say it is a sneaky stewardship passage, not an obvious one. The hinge phrase for him was "as we have opportunity." That little qualifier turns the whole section into a question about what you do with what God has given you, and he was clear that the passage is not only about money. Time, understanding, compassion, an inordinate joy that you can bring to other people - all of it counts. He described the women at the Turning Point Pregnancy Resource Center as a live example of not growing weary in doing good, and he connected Paul's warning about sowing to the flesh directly to the motive of seeking approval or avoiding criticism from other people.

On substantiation, he kept it brief because Paul kept it brief. The large handwritten letters Paul calls attention to in verse 11 are his way of saying, "I really did write this, do not let anyone tell you otherwise." Pastor Ray tied it back to the very beginning of Galatians, where Paul established that his authority came directly from God, not from other men. The authentication at the end mirrors the claim at the start.

The summary section took up most of the sermon. Pastor Ray returned to the image he had used through the whole series: Paul running across a stage, with legalism in one ditch on one side and license in the other, and the life of the Spirit running along the center. He said the Judaizers wanted the Galatians circumcised not because they were keeping the law themselves, but so they could boast to Jerusalem about the numbers. That kind of boasting is exactly what Paul refuses. The cross, Pastor Ray said, pops every bit of human pride, and he quoted the line he had picked up somewhere: the splinters of the old rugged cross pop the balloon of human pride. He read John Calvin's comment on verse 14, that the world is the object and aim of the old man, the drive to avoid criticism and collect praise, and set it against Paul's words in Philippians about counting everything as loss for the sake of knowing Christ.

He then spent time on the phrase "a new creation," pointing toward 2 Corinthians 5:17, which is where the church is headed next. He put verse 6:15 alongside 5:6 and noted the nearly identical wording, arguing that Paul is equating two things: being a new creation, and faith working through love. Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision matters, but both of those things do.

The sign-off in verses 17 and 18 Pastor Ray read as Paul appealing to his own sufferings as a credential. When Paul says he bears on his body the marks of Jesus, he is not talking about circumcision. He is talking about beatings and persecution. And the implication for the Galatians, and for the congregation, is that standing for the truth of the cross will probably cost something. Pastor Ray noted that Paul begins and ends Galatians the same way, with a blessing of grace spoken to the spirit of those who trust Christ, and he called that an encouraging word to end on.