Paul’s letter to the Galatians was written during a momentous era in the story of the Christian Church. Jesus had risen from the dead, and had ascended to his Father; the Holy Spirit had descended. The Church, under the leadership of the Apostles, appointed by Jesus, had been founded, and was preaching the Good News of Jesus Christ: He is risen, he is Lord, he has ascended, he will come again, repent and believe in the Good News. Such was the force and conviction of the Apostles’ preaching, under the power of the Holy Spirit, that converts could be numbered in thousands at a time.
Yet Christianity had still one great step to take. Up until now, it had been a small but growing branch of Judaism, consisting largely of Jews who had become convinced that Jesus is the Messiah; Jews who nevertheless kept the Old Covenant, the Jewish Law, and who believed that one had first to be a Jew in order to become a follower of Jesus Christ. This was the position of Peter and the Apostles in the beginning. Jesus’ great commission, “Go out to the whole world and proclaim the Good News…” barely begun to be preached to the Gentiles in any significant numbers.
It was at this point that God chose the most single-minded, narrow of Pharisees to become his Apostle to the Gentiles, the man who believed that the Jewish Law could make him perfect, to proclaim that, since salvation in Jesus Christ is sufficient, it has swallowed up the Jewish Law, which no longer applied.
It was inevitable that Paul’s teaching should come into conflict with Peter’s. In any other human situation, in the face of such a dispute, the new religion could have been torn apart. In this case, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the initial conflict transformed Christianity into what it has become today; a world-wide, universal faith embracing all the peoples, races and cultures of the earth. The outcome of the dispute was the very first Church council, the Council of Jerusalem. The Apostles, meeting together much as their successors did in Rome in the 1960’s, considered the issue of Gentile Christians which confronted the Church, and, in union with Peter as head, and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, came to a conclusion regarding the Gentiles. With a few conditions, Paul’s position was vindicated, and Christianity was opened to all of us in the Church today.
Paul’s conviction was grounded in the cross of Jesus Christ. Jesus’ death as a blasphemer, a cursed death to a Jew, was to Paul the Pharisee a terrible stumbling block. But to the convert Paul, it was the only possible way to salvation for us. Look at his strong language: “The only thing I can boast about is the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world.” Jesus’ cross colours everything, redeems everything, gives everything meaning. The cross, for Paul, is everything; without it we are nothing. The world crucified Jesus, and through the crucifixion was saved; Paul wants to conform himself to Jesus Christ in every respect, especially in his suffering and death.
The cross of Jesus Christ unites us, too. We are all sinners, standing before God in equal need of redemption. Paul recognised this as the most important fact in human history. It is salvation through the death and Resurrection of Jesus and not the Law, which brings us together as one, which gives meaning to our existence. Peter agreed, and so have all the Church’s councils ever since. Without Paul we might not even be Christian, for we are the Gentiles to whom he preached faith in Jesus Christ. It is our task to believe implicitly in the faith he taught us, to live it, and to hand it down faithfully to the next generation. May God bless and strengthen us in this task, and may he make each one of us faithful witnesses to his Word and work in the world.
Fr Phillip.
