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And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. Heb 11:6 |
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| Archived Manna: | |
Dear
Friend,
If you do not already have a habit of gathering daily manna the first thing in the morning (we can look at the example given to us in Exodus 16 and find the pattern for make it a habit. Establish your life and your schedule to allow you the necessary time to do your daily collection first thing every morning to give you the strength to make it through the day. And remember that today’s manna will not be sufficient for tomorrow; tomorrow’s manna must be collected tomorrow morning. Thursday, March 12, 2026
Today's Passage : Today's Passage :Stand Fast in Freedom (Galatians #55) Bible Verse: Galatians 5:1-6 "Stand fast in the freedom that Christ won for us; do not let yourselves be shackled back into the yoke of slavery. I have said it before and I will say it again: if you become circumcised as a sign of reliance upon the Law, Christ becomes useless to you. You obligate yourself to follow the Law perfectly, and you will fail. You cannot be justified before God by the Law; if you try, you sever yourself from Christ and His grace. Our hope is in righteousness through faith and the Spirit, which we express by love. Circumcision and uncircumcision are meaningless to those who have the love of Christ." Message:
If you have had enough theological heavy-sledding in Galatians 4, welcome to everybody’s favorite chapter of Galatians. The late chapters of the Pauline epistles are usually the “fun” part; he might become poetical, or bombastic, or mushy, but what he says is always easy to understand.
The first sentence of the chapter could be a clarion call; one might imagine a banner over a Salvation Army storefront. The transliterated Greek word for “stand” is “stake”, and we might find meaning by imagining a person staking himself to the ground, as we would anchor our tent with tent pegs.
Paul made the word up, or at least this usage of it; it did not exist before the New Testament. John used it once, in the sense of “stand”, since it is a corrupted form of a Greek word meaning “stand”. But the way Paul uses it is in the sense of stand up, stand firm, stand fast. We picture a line of soldiers who refuse to retreat no matter how fierce the attack; a boxer who stays on his feet no matter how badly punched; a man named Jesus, who refuses to relent no matter how bloody they beat him or how cruelly they torture him.
Christ advocates for a man before the Throne
Stand fast in your freedom! Christ suffered and died so that we could have it! Paul has told us for more than a chapter how we are free, we who were slaves first to sin, and then to a body of law created to make us aware of our sin. He has expressed all kinds of puzzlement, made all sorts of arguments, and now he hits the “Send Message” button. It is the first message of Christianity: freedom in Christ. Too often we hear “Repent, sinners,” until it has practically become the parody of a Christian missionary. But as important as repentance is, in my mind it comes after “Christ will set you free.”
The “good news” of the Gospel is freedom, forgiveness, and life; and this truth is implicit in all that Paul teaches. The first four-and-a-half chapters of Galatians are about life, not rules. Paul practically rants and raves about how rules cannot save us; they can only enslave us. Moral exertion cannot save us.
And in fact, if we center our religious lives on moral exertion, Paul implies that we may lose our freedom. It is Christ who frees us from sin and gives us life, not our own fight against sin. We do avoid sin, out of love and obedience to God, but we must always be diligent that we do not become enslaved to the Law by seeing our efforts, rather than Christ, as the solution.
Meditation : Prayer : The blessing of the Lord rest and remain upon all his people, in every land, of every tongue; the Lord meet in mercy all that seek him; the Lord comfort all who suffer and mourn; the Lord hasten his coming, and give us, his people, the blessing of peace, this day and always. Amen. |
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