Galatians 3.1-9, 23-29
The Power of Belonging
In recent weeks, we have seen renewed debate in public life
about
identity and belonging,
particularly in light of the Supreme Court's ruling
that
defines 'sex' in legal terms as biological.
This ruling, and the discussions surrounding it,
have caused
pain for many in the transgender community,
as
questions of legitimacy, inclusion, and protection
are
once again placed under scrutiny.
For churches like ours, committed to the radical inclusion
of all,
these
moments are both challenging and clarifying.
They press us to return to the heart of the gospel,
to ask
again what it means to belong,
and on what
grounds that belonging is established.
Paul's letter to the Galatians is written
in the
context of just such a crisis of belonging.
The Gentile believers in Galatia had received the gospel,
experienced
the Spirit, and begun living lives of freedom in Christ.
But now, they were being told that this was not enough.
That to
truly belong, they must also adopt the Jewish law
—specifically,
circumcision.
In other words, they had to become like the insiders
if they
wanted to be fully included.
Paul responds with passionate urgency.
He begins chapter 3 with a jarring rebuke:
"You
foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?"
His tone may sound harsh, but it is born of deep concern.
Paul sees
what is at stake.
If the Galatians accept that their belonging depends on
adopting the law,
they have
misunderstood the gospel entirely.
The Spirit, Not the Law
Paul begins his argument with an appeal to their own
experience.
"Did
you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law
or by
believing what you heard?" he asks.
Of course, they received the Spirit through faith.
The Spirit
came to them not because they had fulfilled certain requirements,
but because
they trusted the good news.
Their experience of grace came first.
And this,
for Paul, is crucial.
Belonging begins with grace.
It is not
earned. It is not conditional.
This matters because the temptation to add conditions to
belonging is perennial.
It is not
just a first-century issue. It is a human one.
We want to know who is in and who is out.
We create
rules, boundaries, identity markers.
And often, we baptise these divisions with theological
language.
But Paul will have none of it.
The gospel
is not a system for measuring religious compliance.
It is the announcement of a new creation,
birthed by
the Spirit, sustained by grace.
To go back to the law
—to insist
on any external marker as the basis for inclusion—
is to deny
the sufficiency of Christ.
In the church today, we still struggle with this.
We may not
demand circumcision, but we create other expectations.
And it has to be noted in the light of the current debates
around transgender inclusion,
that we often
exhibit a decidedly pointed interest
in the
state of a person’s genitalia.
We ask whether people believe the right doctrines,
whether
they conform to certain moral standards,
whether
they fit particular categories.
We say "all are welcome,"
but then
make that welcome conditional on identity, agreement, or behaviour.
Paul reminds us, as he reminded the Galatians, that the
Spirit comes first.
The Spirit
is not a reward for performance, but a gift.
And if the Spirit is present in someone's life, that is
enough.
That is the
sign of God's welcome.
That is the
sign that they are included.
And who are we to add more?
The Faith of Abraham – God’s Universal Promise
Having challenged the Galatians to remember how they
received the Spirit,
Paul turns
to scripture.
And he goes right to the beginning of the story, to Abraham.
"Just
as Abraham 'believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,'
so, you
see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham."
This is a bold move.
Paul is speaking to Gentile believers,
people with
no ancestral claim on Israel's covenant.
And yet he says to them, you are Abraham's children.
Not because
you have taken on the markers of Jewish law,
but because
you have done what Abraham did—you have trusted in God.
Abraham becomes for Paul a figure of radical inclusion.
Long before
there was Torah,
long
before there was circumcision,
there was a
promise.
God called Abraham and Sarah,
not because
they had fulfilled a religious system,
but because they were willing to walk into an unknown future
in faith.
And so the promise came before the law.
The
relationship came before the rulebook.
This is what Paul wants the Galatians to see.
The
Gentiles are not second-class citizens in God's household.
They are not latecomers
who must
first become Jewish before they can belong.
They are already part of the promise,
because the
promise was always about more than one nation,
more than
one tradition.
As Paul says, "All the Gentiles shall be blessed in
you."
The
blessing of Abraham was always meant to overflow into the world.
The theologian Jin Young Choi draws attention
to how Paul
is reframing the identity of the people of God.
Belonging is no longer defined by genealogy or observance;
it is
defined by participation in the promise,
by trusting
the God who creates a new future where none seemed possible.
And that is a message we need to hear today.
Because too
often the church has acted as if
the promise
of God is its own private possession.
We have guarded it with statements of belief,
codes of
conduct, and criteria for leadership.
We have said, sometimes directly
and
sometimes with a quiet shake of the head,
"you
can belong, but only on our terms."
But the gospel is not ours to control.
It was
never ours to fence off or to ration out.
The promise to Abraham was not a promise to build a wall.
It was a
promise to bless all the families of the earth.
And in Christ, Paul says, that promise has now reached its
fulfilment.
The
blessing is for all.
At Bloomsbury, we have come to see this promise
as the
heart of our calling.
We aspire to be a church not for ourselves, but for others.
A place
where people from many nations, many backgrounds, many identities,
come
together not because we are the same,
but because
the Spirit has drawn us into one body.
A place where the promise of God
still calls
us forward into a new and more just future.
And if we take Abraham as our guide,
then faith
is not about certainty.
It is not about having the right answers.
It is about
saying yes to the God who calls, the God who blesses,
the God who
opens a future we could not have imagined.
From Prison to Promise – Living in Freedom
Paul now uses a vivid image to describe life under the law.
"Now
before faith came, we were imprisoned
and guarded
under the law until faith would be revealed."
For Paul, the law was never meant to be the end of the
story.
It was a
kind of holding pattern,
a
protective measure, something provisional.
It kept people safe, disciplined, in check,
but it was
not the destination.
The language of imprisonment is stark, and it can be
unsettling.
Paul is not
saying that the law was evil or oppressive in itself.
He was, after all, raised in that tradition
and
remained deeply shaped by it.
But he is saying that to remain under the law, after Christ
has come,
is to live
as if the door to freedom has been opened
and yet to
choose to stay inside the cell.
This can be difficult for us to grasp,
especially
if we think of law primarily in moral terms,
as
something good that teaches right from wrong.
But Paul is thinking here in relational terms.
The law
functioned as a guardian, a disciplinarian,
something
to guide the people of God until maturity arrived.
And for Paul, that maturity, that fullness of time,
has now
come in Christ.
So to return to law as the basis for belonging
is to miss
the new reality that has dawned.
It is to act as though the promise has not yet arrived,
as though
Christ has not broken down the dividing wall.
What is at stake here is freedom,
not freedom
as self-expression or licence,
but freedom
as the gift of being fully included,
fully
known, fully loved.
The kind of freedom that allows us to stop striving to prove
ourselves,
and instead
to live in the confidence of grace.
This is, perhaps, one of the most difficult spiritual
lessons for any of us to learn,
that we are
loved, as we are, not as we might become.
That we do not have to earn our place at the table.
That the
Spirit of God has already been poured out upon us,
not
because we have jumped through the right religious hoops,
but because
we are human, and God delights in dwelling with humanity.
And yet, we so often return to the old patterns.
We compare
ourselves with others.
We measure
our worth.
We wonder whether we are doing enough,
believing
enough, changing enough.
We build prisons for ourselves,
and
sometimes we build them for others.
But Paul invites us to step into freedom.
To live not
as prisoners or slaves, but as children of the promise.
To know ourselves as already embraced by God,
already
clothed with Christ.
This is the spiritual gift of belonging.
Not
something to be achieved, but something to be received.
Not
something to guard, but something to share.
And when we receive it, it changes how we see others too.
No longer
as threats or rivals, but as fellow heirs of grace.
In Christ, You Are All One – A New Identity, a New
Community
And now we arrive at what is, perhaps,
the most
well-known and revolutionary part of this passage.
"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."
These are words that have echoed down the centuries,
shaking the
foundations of every human system
built on
hierarchy and division.
Paul is not imagining a world without difference,
but a
community where difference no longer determines value.
Where identity is not erased, but transformed.
To be baptised into Christ, Paul says,
is to put
on Christ like a garment.
To take off the old markers of status and separation,
and to be
clothed with a new identity
that binds
us to one another in love.
And the consequences are profound.
Ethnic
distinctions, class divisions, gender binaries,
these are
no longer the terms by which we define belonging.
This is not a call to colour-blindness or gender erasure.
It is not
an invitation to pretend we are all the same.
It is, instead, a radical reorientation of community life,
where the
labels that have so often been used to exclude or control
are
stripped of their power.
It is imagining and living into being a community
where
Christ becomes the common ground, the centre,
the
clothing in which we all stand.
And this brings us back to the question we began with.
In a society increasingly polarised around questions of
gender,
where court
rulings and political campaigns
debate
who counts as male or female,
who can
enter which spaces,
who
is protected and who is not,
Paul's words speak with striking urgency.
"There is no longer male and female," he writes.
Not as a
denial of embodied difference,
but as a
refusal to let those categories define who belongs.
In Christ, the binary is not abolished but transcended.
No one is excluded from grace
on the
basis of how their gender is named or perceived.
No one is made to feel that their deepest truth
must be
hidden in order to be welcomed.
This is the gospel.
Not just an abstract promise of salvation,
but a
concrete reshaping of how we live together.
A dismantling of the barriers that keep people at the
margins.
A
reimagining of community as a space of radical belonging,
where we
see one another not through the lens of fear or judgement,
but through
the eyes of Christ.
Here at Bloomsbury, this is more than a theological idea.
It is a way
of life we are committed to embodying.
A place where trans people, queer people, migrants,
those rich
and poor, housed and unhoused, educated and uneducated
—all are
not only welcome, but recognised
as
bearers of divine image and recipients of divine promise.
We are not here to gatekeep grace.
We are here
to proclaim that in Christ, the gate is open.
This means that when the world tries to reimpose divisions,
when public
discourse tempts us to rank and exclude,
when institutions define people's worth
by their
conformity to narrow norms, we must resist.
We must be the community where the walls have come down.
Where all
have been clothed with Christ.
Where the Spirit is already at work, stirring among us,
drawing us
into a new humanity.
And so we end where we began
—with the
question of belonging.
The gospel does not answer that question with conditions or
categories.
It answers
it with Christ.
In Christ, you belong.
In Christ,
we all belong.
Not because we are the same, but because Christ has gathered us in our difference.
We are not invited to erase our identities,
but to discover that none of them can separate us from the love of God,
nor exclude us from the community of grace.
If we can live that truth, if we can be that community,
then perhaps others, who have so often been told they do not belong,
might come to believe that they do.
Thanks be to God.
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