I felt prompted this morning to read Galatians chapter 2 again. Before I get into the specifics of the verses that stood out to me, I want to preface it with these thoughts:
I spent a good portion of my young adult life discussing the gospel, learning of other faiths perspectives on the gospel, and studying out sections of scripture that they used in justifying the differences in our respective doctrines.
One of the most glaring differences in the doctrines has been that of “saved by grace, not of works”.
In my younger years I simply brushed these differences off by emphatically denouncing the idea. It seemed, at least from my personal perspective, that what I had learned in seminary was to do so. “Faith without works is dead!” was my common tit-for-tat response, inadvertently pitting the bible against itself, and attributing nearly all differences to translational error.
As I grew older, as I studied the Bible more, as I dug into the original Hebrew and Greek words I discovered that errors in translation were far less frequent than I thought. At least, as far as the words themselves were concerned.
Translation is an interesting word. At face value, when talking about words that were once written in another language, the meaning seems perfectly clear.
The translation of the Bible from Greek or Hebrew into English is only a portion of the meaning however. When text that was written long ago is translated, linguists can only do some of the work of translation, but a significant portion of the translation is still left to the reader.
Taking note of the first bullet point we see that translation also includes “rendering of the meaning” of the words. Taken individually, most words can be translated without much effort to an analog in the destination language, but the translation of meaning within groups of words (or the interpretation) is a more complex endeavor. Among other things, to quote Paul again,
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
With this in mind, I often focus on those verses that I used to dismiss as errors to try to do some more “translation” for myself. If the individual words haven’t been incorrectly translated then maybe it’s the common interpretation that needs revision.
These are the verses that stood out to me this morning:
17 But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is therefore Christ the minister of sin? God forbid.
If in the course of the death of our Natural Man, and our re-birth as disciples of Christ, who have taken upon ourselves his name, fall into sin, does that make Christ the sinner and not us? NO!
18 For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor.
If I fall back into sins, it is ME who is the transgressor
19 For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.
?? I no longer live the law of Moses because I live in the higher law of God. ??
20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
I accept that Christ took upon him my sins, and his sacrifice on the Cross took the place of the sacrifices I would have to perform under the law of Moses, In exchange, I took upon myself his name to “act as he would act”, but if I act against that covenant, that’s MY natural man that I am still seeking to put off, and it’s for that weakness that Christ gave himself for me.
21 I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.
My sins are mine and do not devalue the grace of God. If I had to be perfect to accept the grace of God then Christ would have died for no one.
