THE ONE TRUE GOSPEL
Meditations in the Epistle to the Galatians
Galatians 3:26-29
TOTAL EQUALITY IN THE GOSPEL

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THE APOSTLE Paul has been at pains to show that in the work of Christ for us, in his life and in his death, we have complete acceptance with God. He has emphasised that we have to contribute nothing to that acceptance, and that if we try to contribute by our works, we in fact renounce the Gospel, and put ourselves under the law of God, and place ourselves under its curse of having to keep the law perfectly from the cradle to the grave, with the resultant penalty of death if we transgress even in just one small point. In the section before us Paul is stressing that there is complete equality in this Gospel. It is the equality of the Gospel that concerns us in this meditation.

ALL SONS

This section commences in verse 26 with the words "you are ALL sons of God through faith in Jesus". There has always been inequality in our world, and this is seen across the gender divide, and across the race divide. Here in his reference to all receiving sonship, Paul deals with the gender divide. This inequality was very evident in the time of the New Testament. It is not quite so prominent today, but is still there. In New Testament times, it was the elder son who had all the privileges and who was heir of the estate. The other sons came next, but did not receive such great privileges. The daughters came last and were very under-privileged.

Paul uses the word son, and this is very important. He wants to show that in the Gospel, whether male or female, we all receive the privileges, blessings and place of the eldest son. In Christ we are all equal before God as far as salvation is concerned and our place in the family of God, and our inheriting of heaven. Thus we are equally justified before God, and accounted righteous before God and his law on the grounds of the perfect righteousness of Jesus imputed to us. We all receive the same new birth after the same death of our old self in Christ. We die together with Christ, so the condemned sinner that we were, suffered death in Christ, and a new life was created as we rose together with Christ. All of us whether male or female inherit this new creation, which has been created to be like God, in true righteousness and holiness. It is a principle of life and a new person that is perfectly holy and without any stain of sin, and which can't be touched by sin. It is in this holy life the Spirit of God dwells. All equally receive the same Spirit without any difference in grace and blessing. It is through this Spirit indwelling and the holy principle in our new self, that all are equally able to subdue the temptations still residing in our flesh. We will also all be totally free from sin, when in glory we receive a resurrection body, equally like Christ's resurrection body, and be free at last from this body of sin which is our earthly body. We are equally beloved of God, and enjoy the same gracious standing before God.

ALL ONE IN CHRIST JESUS

In verse 28 Paul enforces this equality in saying that there is no male or female division, no slave or free division, and no division between Jew and Gentile. He concludes that we are all one in Christ Jesus.

This phrase has become a slogan in Christian circles, and usually has the meaning of unity in the true Gospel, so that whatever our denomination, we are all united as brothers and sisters in Christ, and denominational differences are unimportant in the light of this unity. In fact, although this is true, it is not what Paul is trying to say and emphasise here. His concern is to show, that in the free salvation which we receive through what Jesus has worked for us, we all enjoy the same salvation blessings, and it does not matter whether we are male or female, whether we are a slave or free, etc. To be a slave in the ancient world was to be very much at the bottom of the pile, with very few privileges if any, and with little or no protection under the ways of society. As far as our salvation is concerned, master and slave are on an equal footing, and before God are completely equal.

It was for this reason that Paul could call upon Philemon, a Christian who owned slaves, to receive Onesimus back, even though as a slave he had put himself under a sentence of death for running away from Philemon his master. Paul called Philemon to acknowledge the Gospel equality and welcome him as a dear brother in Christ. This equality does not remove the differences God has created between the sexes, which compliment each other, but does mean that as far as God is concerned both are equal in his eyes, showing that any idea of thinking one is inferior is wrong.

BAPTISED AND CLOTHED THE SAME

Paul speaks of every believer in these words "for all who have been baptised into Christ have been clothed with Christ." Again in these words Paul is proving our equality of blessing in the Gospel. We are equally all baptised into Jesus Christ, and so we are all equally clothed with Christ.

In spite of what some may hold, we must not equate baptism here with water baptism. If we do, we fall into the error of saying that the rite of water baptism actually brings about our salvation, when all that Scripture claims for this sacrament is that it is a sign of heavenly washing, and the seal of the promises of God in the Gospel. The baptism which Paul is speaking about is a spiritual thing which God does in his sovereign grace. It describes what God does spiritually for us. It describes how God puts us into Christ, and joins us to him, like being immersed in Christ as one is immersed in water.

The meaning is that we are joined to Christ so that when he died for our sins, we actually died in him. Our sins were punished by death in Jesus, and the sinful old self that we were, ceased to exist dying with Jesus on the cross. Jesus did all the suffering, and we died in him to receive all the blessings. The gift of faith in Jesus as Saviour is the uniting bond. God shows us our need of the Saviour and opens our heart and mind to see Jesus as the only Saviour, so that we believe in him with whole-hearted trust.

Being thus baptised into Christ, we are clothed with Christ. This means that all that Christ is in the perfection of his righteousness, and in the wonder of his fellowship with God, becomes ours. We are seen by God as God sees his only begotten Son, because being clothed in Christ, all our sins and demerit are blotted out forever. We also enjoy a similar relationship with God, of sons, which Jesus enjoys, with all its love and intimacy.

In the context of our theme, Paul is at pains to emphasise that all are equally blessed, and all enjoy the same precious and rich blessing and relationship. There is no difference between the sexes or between races. All are one in the eyes of God.

EQUALLY ABRAHAM'S SEED

In the phrase in verse 29 - "If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed" - Paul presses home the completeness of our equality before God as believers, by dealing with the very severe difference which was held concerning Jews and Gentiles. He has already said that Jews and Gentiles are one before God, and accepted in Christ equally, but he does not leave it there, because all down the history of the Old Testament, the Jews had been God's chosen people, and the inheritors of the promises of God. This understanding made the Jews feel they were preferred before God to Gentiles, and it really was the substance of the reason for the error that had crept into the Galatian church.

The Jewish Christian felt this heritage they had from the past, and it made them very reluctant to give up their Jewish religious heritage. After all this marked them out as specially in God's favour. They had embraced their Messiah and the work he had done of the cross for them, but they felt that to attain the excellence of favour with God, the Jewish religious order must not be abandoned. This was seen in their pressing the necessity of circumcision, for this was the sign for them of the covenant of God's promised favour to them.

So embedded in the consciousness of Christian Jews was the special place of the Jews before God, that God had to specially show that the Gentiles were equally blest. So when Cornelius was converted, Peter was given a special vision to show him that what was previously thought unclean, God was now declaring clean, i.e. Gentiles. Then to rub the lesson in, when Peter ministered in the name of Christ to Cornelius and he believed, God showed his equal acceptance of Cornelius and his family, by the same demonstration of the Spirit's gift and indwelling as he gave the Apostles in the Upper Room. Then in the case of the Samaritan believers, they had never heard of the Holy Spirit although they had believed. God had withheld this blessing of salvation until representatives of the Apostles were present, so that as God poured out the Spirit on the Samaritans, in the same way as he had at Pentecost, the Apostles may believe that the Gentiles were equally accepted of God.

The words of Paul in our text are very telling. Abraham was the father of the chosen people. The promise of Christ and salvation was made to him and to his seed. Paul tells us that the seed of Abraham was never meant to be a particular nation, but the spiritual seed, being all who believed the promise God gave Abraham. It is being in Christ by faith, resting our souls on his doing and dying for us, that causes us to become and be the seed of Abraham. The seed of Abraham meant all people from any nationality who received the promise in Christ.

There could not be a more telling expression, that it is not the Jewish nation that is the chosen people of God, but all the believing people who rested in Christ alone, whatever nation they came from.

HEIRS TOGETHER

The last thing that Paul emphasises in seeking to convince of the equality of all in the Gospel is that we all inherit the same blessings. He makes this point right at the start when he says "You are all sons of God";and he closes with the point when he says in verse 29 "and heirs according to the promise". This promise was first made to Abraham, and it has been the full promise in Christ throughout the Bible.

There are to be no gradation of blessing before God, or finally in heaven. All who believe in Jesus, regardless of gender, class or race receive the full blessing that God conceived in salvation. The blessing is that we should all equally be members of his family, and inherit all his divine wealth in heaven. We are all equally regarded and all equally loved as members of God's family.

This world is rife with distinction of acceptance and privilege. Some have everything, and some have nothing at all, and there are so many different gradations in between. All this inequality is a blemish of life, and comes from the seed of evil Satan has sown into this world. To perpetuate inequality in God's kingdom, would be to tarnish it with the same imperfection, disorder and discord which Satan has blighted this world. To suggest that there is first and second class Christians, or that some are more preferred than others in God's kingdom, is only to be thought of to be rejected. Heaven would not be perfect if this were so.

It is for this reason that any form of religion which brings inequality, and places some higher and more accepted than others, must have been through the seduction and influence of the devil. The very idea of inequality is alien to heaven. This truth about equality for all in the kingdom of God must therefore be a yard-stick by which we evaluate truth and error in the kingdom, and where it is found, it is a mark of the true Gospel being in place.