Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost. Octoechos Tone 4. The Holy Martyrs Zenobius and Zenobia His Sister (284-305); Passing into eternal life of Blessed Priest-martyr Olesky Zarytsky (1963), Pastor of Strutyn near Zolochiv, and Siberia, Martyr
Galatians 2:16-20; Luke 8:5-15
Read Galatians 2:16-20
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
Ever second-guess a major decision in your life? Some of the challenges you face may cause you to look back and find where you came from attractive again. Many of the early Christians went through that twice – many were Gentiles who became Jews who then became Christians. That’s a lot to go through. Add religious arguments to the social pressure to undo those decisions, and you have a disorienting experience.
In today’s reading, the Apostle Paul is urgently cutting through this confusion. He says:
You Gentile Christians want to go back to having the Jewish Law as the basis of your relationship with God. According to it, you were previously unjustified sinner Gentiles. Now, because you have faith in Christ as the basis for your relationship with God and don’t live according to the Jewish Law, you look like unjustified sinners to your Jewish friends all over again, so you’re thinking of combining the two things – having faith in Christ plus having to keep the Jewish Law.
We Apostles, who are Jews by birth, sometimes look like unjustified sinners to them too, but we aren’t and neither are you. If we go back to trying to be justified by the Jewish Law, we will actually end up being unjustified sinners because no one can be justified that way. That would be a negation of all the fulfilment of the Law that Christ did on our behalf. Through our identification with Christ by faith, His crucifixion counts for us and, as He is risen, we now proceed in living by faith in Him, not our keeping of the Jewish Law.
Don’t go back. Live your life freely, in love, by faith in the Son of God, who loved you and gave himself for you.