Foolish No More! by Ted Haggard

Author:Ted Haggard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-01-25T16:00:00+00:00

S PIRITUAL D YNAMITE

A t just what point in his ministry Paul wrote Galatians is debated by scholars, but I tend to agree with those who say it was the last letter he wrote. This makes sense because the letter overflows with a near desperation to communicate. Paul wrote with righteous—maybe even a little unrighteous—anger because not only was he defending the gospel, he was trying to prevent years of blood, sweat, and tears that he had invested in building believers from being wiped away. In his letter he argued that the core of the gospel must be protected, no matter the cost. And now, two thousand years after Paul became so incensed and blasted this pointed letter to his followers and friends, we are still studying Galatians to comprehend its revolutionary message.

Galatians does stand apart in specific ways from other Pauline letters, such as Ephesians and Philippians. Don’t get me wrong, they are wonderful epistles, but Galatians is uniquely charged with spiritual dynamite. It has been described as the “Magna Carta of Christian Liberty.” The message of grace and salvation by faith alone is so important that it literally changed how the early believers viewed God, and it opened the door for Christianity to become a global religion, not just a Jewish sect. The apostle Paul deeply understood the true liberty that comes only from the Lord Jesus.

Paul wrote his letter to the churches in Galatia, a region in what is now Turkey. (Antioch, which you’ll read about in the book of Acts, was an important city in this area.) Prior to Paul’s missionary endeavors among them, the Galatians had worshiped Greek gods, such as Zeus and Hermes. The Galatians were pagans who didn’t know the living God. Then along came the apostle who said to those living in this region, “Hello! You are worshiping dead idols. But for the asking, you can have a personal relationship with the real God. You can have Jesus as your Lord and Savior. You can have the power of the Holy Spirit. You can have changed lives. What are you waiting for? Believe, receive, and become new people.”

Many of the Galatians who heard this must have thought, Wow! Jesus’s blood can cleanse my conscience. I can be full of the Spirit of God Himself This is wonderful! These Gentile Galatian believers bought into Paul’s teaching and said, “Were going to believe it; we’re going to go for it!”

And as Paul had promised, the Galatian Christians were having a wonderful time celebrating their freedom, finding deliverance from evil in their lives, and receiving healing. They expected Gods power to work, and it did. They were experiencing the fruit of the Spirit in mighty ways.

When the leaders of the church in Jerusalem heard about all this, they were concerned and sent a fact-finding delegation to Galatia. Was something amiss up there? That’s when the trouble started. These visitors from Jerusalem were born-again Jews—quite different from their born-again, saved-from-paganism brothers and sisters in Galatia. So,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.