The context for St. Paul’s Proclamation of Freedom

This is an article I wrote recently for the Cathedral of St. Stephen Art Group.  They asked for a short article so here it is.

 

The context for St. Paul’s Proclamation of Freedom

As many of you as were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.  There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. (Gal. 3:27-28)

The context for this well know text from St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians is one of conflict between differing beliefs of how converts should live out their faith.

The context of this letter is important as historically it has given rise to hatred of and discrimination against the Jewish people forgetting that Jesus and Paul were Jews.  Paul never tries to convince Jewish believers to abandon the Torah.  

The community of believers in Galatia were Gentiles who had been evangelised by Paul.  However, now some rival apostles had come demanding that the Gentile converts observe the Jewish law, the Torah.  Paul vehemently refutes this – it is faith in Jesus Christ that justifies the believer, not observance of the Jewish law. 

The argument gets personal because his opponents believe Paul has been diluting the faith, so Paul lays his credentials as an apostle for all to read.

In this letter to his converts he gives a very negative assessment of the Torah (3:19-20).  He is anxious that the Gentile believers not adopt the Jewish observances.  This letter is a passionate argument against those who would not only demand unnecessary observance from Gentile converts, but deny the freedom brought by Christ – and Paul is not having it.  In later letters he wrote he explores some of these issues in a more mature and reflected way.

The key thesis of this letter is that person is justified not by works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ (2:16).  In Christ there is freedom – ‘for freedom Christ has set us free’ (5:1).

In baptism, the convert has ‘put on Christ’ (3:27), has become a new reality therefore she or he enters into the freedom of Christ in which differences of status, race, sex or privilege have no significance.  For Paul, Gentiles observing the Torah would perpetuate this state of society.

These divisions were commonplace in society of the time.  It is reported that Socrates said he had three blessings, ‘that I was born a human being and not a beast, a man and not a woman, a Greek and not a barbarian’.  According to Rabbi Judah, a man is obliged to say daily ‘Blessed is God who has not made me a Gentile, who has not made me a boor (slave), who has not made me a woman’.

To ‘put on Christ’ means to have Christ’s outlook and mission. This is a total re-orientation to God of Jesus and is now the believer’s primary meaning and context.  This is the freedom Christ has given them: the freedom of active love (5:2).  So, to perpetuate these divisions of privilege and power is to abandon the great gift of Christ – the Spirit that gives freedom to act as Christ acts.  To perpetuate these divisions is to collude with death.

However, it is interesting that while Paul can proclaim freedom from these social divisions and all it implied, he did not see that this would change people’s roles.  Slaves remained slaves (letter to Philemon), women were to be subject to their husbands (1 Cor 11:3).  The urgent issue for the early church to deal with was the relationship between the Jewish and Gentile believers – should the Gentile converts observe the Torah.  In his letters Paul returns to this both theologically and practically.

The change that the freedom of the believer brings about is the freedom of love.  He spells this out in chapters 5 and 6 of the letter.  It is to ‘bear one another’s burdens’ (6:2), it is to ‘not grow weary of doing what is right’ (6:9), to work for the good of all (6:10).

There is always a relationship between theology, history and practice.  It took the early church many decades to sort out the Jew/Gentile relationship (and is still being understood).  It took Christianity and western society about 1800 years to understand that this text meant that slavery as a way of life was incompatible with human dignity. It took until the 20^th century for women to have equality in law in some societies. 

Incarnating this call of equality, human dignity and freedom which is Jesus’ gift of mission to us will always have an urgency and will always be contentious.  I am reminded of Dom Helder Camara, Bishop of Recife, Brazil and extraordinary advocate for the poor: "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist”.  

Wherever there are divisions that disempower people there the freedom of Christ which is love must transform.  While humans live and breathe, this will always be a work in progress.