Jerry Gill's Enduring Questions

FAVORITE BIBLE PASSAGES: GALATIANS 3:28

            One of the most amazing and radical things about the birth of the Christian Church in the New Testament is the fact that it was inclusive of those the Hebrew hierarchy had initially excluded from their fellowship. In his letter to the Church at Galatia Paul explicitly says that “In Christ there is no such thing as Jew and Greek, slave and freeman, male and female; for you are all one person in Christ Jesus.” (3:28) Such is the radical nature of the Christian Gospel. It was this extreme notion of the inclusiveness of the teachings of Jesus that gave birth to Christian Community over two thousand years ago.

            Indeed, Paul’s letter to the believers in the region of Galatia was a manifesto that set in motion the radical inclusiveness of the Christian faith, and indeed, of much of what we call the “modern world.” It is hard for us to grasp the extremely radical character of this very simple statement. These formerly hard and fast distinctions, which led, and still do in some contexts, to extreme mistreatment of half of those mentioned in this amazing verse of Paul’s letter. In the rest of Paul’s letter, he spells out some of the implications of this message at the heart of the Gospel of Christ. In telling the story of his own journey to discover the core of the message of Jesus Paul enumerates some of his own prejudices and those of other leaders of the early Christian Community that hindered a full growth of the Gospel.

            Specifically, he calls out the Jewish hatred of Gentiles and the subjugation of women as contrary to the teachings of Jesus. He also speaks out against the evil tradition of slavery. In short, in Paul’s view, there should be no divisions amongst believers at all. All are brothers and sisters in Christ, all of equal worth and import. I must say that when we think about the extreme radical nature of these statements of Paul, the man who made prisoners of Christians and passively witnessed the stoning of Stephen, the amazing character of the Gospel of Jesus becomes abundantly clear. As he himself put it: “You, my friends were called to be free men, only do not turn your freedom into license… but be servants to one another in love… The harvest of the Spirit is love, joy, peace; patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, and self-control.” (Galatians 5:13,14,22,23)

            In this letter in chapter 2 verses 11 and 12, Paul even brags a bit about having to call out his brother in Christ and fellow Apostle, Peter, when he showed deference to his Jewish Christians over the Gentile believers. Peter would not eat with the Gentiles. “If you, a Jew born and bred, live like a Gentile, and not like a Jew, how can you insist that Gentiles must live like Jews?” In short, Paul became as avid believer in human equality as he had been a radical Jewish, pharisaical bigot prior to his own conversion to the person of Christ. In my mind, Paul’s complete turn-around with regard to his attitude toward Gentiles is one of the amazing phenomena of the New Testament. He made it clear that inclusivism is a cornerstone of the faith.