BIAY - All Made One in Christ
Galatians 1-3, Psalm 38
Welcome to the Bible in a Year for 2025. Intro to this series and resource links available here, plus here’s how I’m approaching this year.
Scriptures for Today:
Reflection:
Paul’s testimony of before and after (Gal 1:21-24) - Paul’s simple testimony is that he once opposed Christians, but after an encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus (Acts 9) began “preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” Everyone has some sort of before/after, though it need not be so dramatic as Paul’s. It could be despair to hope, crisis of meaning to conviction about faith, sin to forgiveness and new living, self-centered to God-centered, ignorance of the Gospel to knowledge of grace. In truth, it’s all of these that make up a robust faith, though some may stand out more than others in experience. I love the response of the Christians Paul met after his conversion: “And they praised God because of me.”
“I have been crucified with Christ” (Gal 2:19-21) - This passage is well worth memorizing or at least understanding the truth and repeatedly coming back to it. One beauty of Christianity is what we might call a radical participation. First, Jesus partakes in a radical participation with us—born of Mary, sharing life on earth, ultimately sharing in the experience of death that all of us must face. Second, we are allowed to participate in His death. This is what Paul kind of means when he says, “I have been crucified with Christ.” It is Jesus’ death, yet we are able to share in it by grace, which allows our sin, pride, and all the rest to face the death that Jesus suffered. Next, because that part of us has been put to death (through Jesus), there’s a third step—our radical participation in His life. Paul says, “…I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” We get to have Christ living in us!
“All one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:26-28) - Speaking of radical, the Gospel transcends human boundary lines to unite into the family of God people who would never be otherwise. How? Not by nice subjective feelings (although the Gospel converts our sentiments and affections along with the rest of us), but by the objective work of Christ to make the promise of grace and a place in God’s family available to all. It transcends race/ethnicity (no longer Jew nor Gentile), economics and power (slave nor free), and sex (no longer male nor female), eliminating any rank order of value assigned by the world to various classes of persons and equalizes everyone who is in Christ. If everyone is “clothed with Christ” just the same in baptism, how can we then insist that worldly differences still control us when participation in the life of Christ has done away with all of that? Nonsense.
Questions:
What before/after dynamics do you see in your own story of faith?
How can you receive Christ living in you practically on a daily basis?
What is most inspiring about unity in Christ? What is most challenging?
What else might the Holy Spirit be speaking with you about in the text today?
Prayer: Lord, thank you for participating in human life through the incarnation of Jesus and allowing us to participate in His divine life through the cross and resurrection. Help me walk by faith daily. Amen.
“But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13:23)
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These chapters are are so full of hope and the promise of salvation. We can live in His Kingdom now through His sacrifice. And in the Kingdom He has leveled the playing field. We have all been adopted as God's children through the same promise.