God’s Word for You

Galatians 4:17-20 law and gospel

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Thursday, July 25, 2024

17 Those people are eager about you, but for no good. Instead, they want to cut you off from us, so that you can be eager for them. 18 It is fine to be eager if it’s always in a good way, and not just when I am with you. 19 My dear children, I’m suffering birth-pains all over again for you, until Christ is formed in you. 20 I wish I were with you now! I would change my tone, because I am so perplexed about you!

To be eager for somebody, zealous for them, agonizing over them like Jesus did for the crowds (Mark 8:2), is to want the very highest good for them. It’s to want their salvation. A pulpit prayer that I often say these days is this: “Holy Father, bless these good people. Do not look at their sins or mine; do not throw us away from you. Look into their hearts, and see their faith. Count their faith as righteousness, Father, for Jesus’ sake. Bless them, and let my words today remind these saints of what they already know.”

The hissing, slithering, whispering Judaizers were eager to do just the opposite to the Galaltians. They wanted those people to listen to them and not to Christ, not to the Holy Spirit, not to Paul who was preaching to them. They were putting their own perverted and distorted reason above God’s very own plan for saving mankind.

Why? What possible reason could false teachers have for preaching their false doctrine? This is part of the devil’s clawing and scratching as he continues his plummet deeper into hell with each passing day. The false teacher, the demon, the atheist, all think the same thing: If lots of people believe as I do, then that might prove that I’m right. They think: I’ve made a little name for myself, and that will soften things at the bottom when I fall out of the tree. It’s the same argument that the flat-earth community has. “But the mirth of the wicked is brief; the joy of the godless lasts but a moment. Though his pride reaches to the heavens and his head touches the clouds, he will perish forever” (Job 20:5-6).

Paul isn’t agonizing over the false teachers. He is troubled and worried that his dear Galatian friends are falling for all of that garbage. These were the people of Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe. These were faces and voices and smiles he could see as he wrote to them. There were the “great number of Jews and Gentiles” in Iconium who heard Paul’s message of grace and who saw the miracles he did there (Acts 13:1-3). There was the crippled man Paul healed in Lystra, and others who at first thought Barnabas was Zeus and Paul was Hermes (Acts 14:8-12). Timothy’s mother and grandmother were members of that church, too (Acts 16:1). And there were friends at Derbe as well. One of them, a man named Gaius, would travel with Paul later on when he went to Greece (Acts 20:4). “A heavenly synod there devised, of many faces, hearts and eyes.”

In those days Paul had to wrestle against the blind rage of the Jews who stirred the people up so much that they took him outside the city of Iconium and stoned him, leaving him for dead (Acts 14:19). It didn’t get much easier anywhere else. But now, writing from far away, he felt like he was going through it all over again. They had taken two steps forward in their faith away from their pagan roots but they had taken three steps backwards. They were standing hip-deep in the mud of a kind of Judaism that didn’t want Christ, or who wanted Christ to calm down and take his seat with the prophets. Their idea of Christ was not as the One who was the Son of God, who fulfilled the law, but as one who taught well, surprised everyone with miracles, perhaps, and could now be set back on the ancient prophetic shelf with Elijah and Elisha.

What Paul wants most of all is to be with them. A letter is good; a letter is better than nothing. But to speak with them face-to-face would be best. Luther gets right to the point: “If my letter is a little harsh, I am afraid that I may offend more of you with it than I correct; if it is a little gentle, it may accomplish nothing among the hard and unfeeling ones, because dead letters and syllables give only what they have. On the other hand, a living voice is a queen in comparison with a letter; for it can add and subtract, and it can adjust itself to all the forms and qualities of attitude, time, place, and person” (LW 26:432).

The minister always wants to apply God’s law and gospel correctly. But to do this, he must make, as Walther says, the prophet distinction between them. This means knowing whether a heart is hard and fast, or grieving and repentant. To preach the gospel to a man who doesn’t think he has sinned is useless to that man’s soul, and can even confirm him in his sinfulness. To preach the law even more sternly to a man who is already grieving over his sin is to crush his spirit until he is pulverized, and may never think he can be forgiven for whatever error he committed. For while we preach Christ crucified for the forgiveness of our sins (justification by faith in Christ alone), we also know that in the Scriptures, law and gospel have to be divided. They have to be separated like a wild bull needs to be kept penned apart from a mother cow with her calves. And just as your pharmacist keeps medicine and poison on the same shelf, he knows which one to use, and when, and how much. One kills an infection; the other heals a wound. And so it is with the two great teachings of the Bible: the law kills the infection of sin. The gospel heals the wound that sin leaves behind in the repentant believer.

Compare your life with the law of God. How have you sinned? This is what brings you to the fear that leads to repentance. What about the message of Christ crucified for us? This is the gospel that binds the bleeding wound left by the sharp edge of the law. Trust in Jesus! His sacrifice and resurrection means your forgiveness, and your resurrection to everlasting life.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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