And eventually, they came to call themselves Christians, followers of Jesus, Christians, and Paul hated Christians maybe more than he hated Jesus.Īnd so, early in Paul’s life, his mission in life was actually to hunt down and kill Christians, which he did very faithfully until he actually met the risen Jesus. But then, of course, three days later, hundreds, literally hundreds of people took to the streets in Jerusalem, claiming that they had met the risen Jesus, that Jesus was back from the dead, and those hundreds became thousands. The Jews said, “You behave so that you can belong.” And Jesus said, “No, you belong so that you can behave.”Īnd that was part of the reason that Jesus ultimately was arrested, and he was executed publicly, thrown into a borrowed tomb. Jesus didn’t seem all that interested in people behaving first, he seemed to be okay with letting people belong in relationship, which he thought would lead to behaving. Second, Jesus flipped the script on the Jewish way of thinking about belonging to God. Number one, he claimed to be the Son of God. Paul hated Jesus because Jesus, a couple things. To belong to God, you had to behave Jewish, you had to be a Jewish person, and you had to behave according to the Jewish laws and cultural standards.Īnd that’s really what he believed, and partly because of that Paul hated a guy named Jesus. Paul was, of course…he was born, and raised, and educated in a very strict Jewish environment, which meant that Paul believed what really all the Jews in the first century believed, which was that to belong to God, you had to behave Jewish. Now, Galatians was written by a man named Paul. And what does it look like for Christianity to move out into the non-Jewish world? Is that tension between the old way and the new way, between Jerusalem and Rome, between the Jewish world and the Gentile, or the non-Jewish world. And that’s really what we find in the Book of Galatians. But as the Gospel began to go out into the non-Jewish world, it began to create a certain kind of tension. And so Christianity was originally a Jewish thing. Jesus was a Jewish man and all of his followers were Jewish people. Because Christianity first began as a Jewish faith. And so it’s sort of right there in the middle, where Christianity was beginning to really encounter the non-Jewish world. It’s maybe also important to understand that it’s about halfway between Jerusalem, which is the birthplace of Christianity and Rome, the center of the Roman Empire. It’s in what we would call the highlands of modern-day Turkey. It’s in the New Testament, which means that it’s after the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus.Īnd the Book of Galatians, was written to a group of people living in the ancient Roman province of Galatia. So it’s in the very last portion of the Bible, if you’re kind of flipping through, you might come across 1 and 2 Corinthians, it’s right after that. The Book of Galatians, if you wanna start making your way there is in the New Testament.
#Warroom to 888111 series#
Now, our guide for the series is gonna be the Book of Galatians.
#Warroom to 888111 how to#
It’s what we’re gonna talk about in this series is how to actually experience the freedom that Christ came to give us and calls us to live in. But we don’t always actually experience that.
#Warroom to 888111 free#
Ain’t that bizarre? Percentage wise, there are fewer people experiencing freedom in the land of the free than anywhere else.Īnd I actually think Christianity can be like that, we talk a lot about experiencing freedom in Christ. Which means that in the land of the free, there are a smaller number of free people than anywhere else in the world. We have the highest rate of incarceration of any country in the world. Like we love our freedom, right? We have freedom bumper stickers in our cars, we wear freedom t-shirts, we go to freedom festivals, we talk a lot about being free, we’re very proud of the fact that we’re free. Here’s an interesting fact about America. It kind of reminds me of America, actually. But I don’t know that we always experience freedom. But the reality is that we talk a lot about freedom. And I know that Jesus said this, he said, “If the Son, which is his favorite title for himself, if the Son sets you free, then you’re free indeed.” So he said, “If I set you free, then you’re free indeed.” So clearly, freedom is important to Jesus. We’re actually beginning a new series today on living free, which I’m pretty sure is something that as followers of Jesus, we’re supposed to experience. So good to have you with us this weekend. Craig:Craig: Well, hey, welcome to Mission Hills.
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