Within Galatians Paul lists works of the flesh – works coming from our emptiness and not from the Spirit’s fullness. Seven of these are context specific social sins– hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions and factions .(5:20-21) Paul is writing to a specific Church with a big conflict going on about law and grace. Circumcision was the explosive symbolic center of the debate.
Someone has speculated there might have been graffitis up in the Galatian church, on the walls of the house church in which they met. One might have read, “The only good Gentile is a circumcised Gentile.” Another one reads, “All Jews are a cut above.” Obviously written by a Jewish disciple. A Christian wrote “Grace isn’t cheap but it is free.” A Jewish disciple fires back, “Nothing is free.” One Jewish brother writes, “Long live the Law.” To which another sister writes, “Long live life” and so it goes endlessly. Slowly the heat increases and the light dims within the church.
Now the hostile graffiti may or may not have been on the walls, but it was certainly in some of their heads. When we combine legitimate theological disagreement with lots of godlessness then we have a church war. Such crusades are always fought by the “true” church factions against “true” church factions-self righteous arrogance running wild. The law-grace argument per se was not killing the church. It’s the “cutthroat competition; “ “the all-consuming but never satisfied wants,” “brutal tempers,” “an impotence to love or be loved,” ”heated small mindedness,” and “petty insistence on uniformity” that was killing the church (paraphrases of 5:20-21).
Though truth seeking as to law-grace issues remained crucial in Galatia, it could not happen when bullets were flying, grenades were detonating and little uniform factions were “studying” together in isolation. So first they had to call a truce, take down the graffiti and pray for the winds of the Spirit–unity, love, peace, forbearance, kindness, faithfulness and gentleness. These are context specific relational fruits of the Spirit. The Spirit destroys factions and transforms quarrels into good public arguments which produce understanding and respect for each other.
Today the challenge is “Can we become good enough to disagree and still claim the unity the Spirit gives?” Humility helps us admit we do not see through 20-20 lenses, but we see as “peering through a mist.” Humility doubts our interpretive certainties and leads us into relational confidence in Christ. In Christ we miraculously begin to love and value people we do not like and with whom we disagree. Where the Spirit is lifting up Jesus as Lord in our neighborhood churches we simply never allow anything or anyone “to wreck the work of God among us.” (Romans 14:19-21)