14.05 | In Step
Galatians 2:11-3:14
‘But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?”’
Galatians 2:14
About ten years ago, I was hiking the northern section of the Pennine Way — a 268 mile route that travels the craggy backbone of central England. I’d stayed in a little hut1 on a glorious summers’ evening.
However, the next morning was thick fog. I mean, really thick. The cairns — piles of stones, strategically spaced to help hikers keep to the path — were invisible. With no clear path, I was reduced exclusively to compass navigation. This needed absolute precision, as we all know minor deviances walked out over a mile can lead you a long way off the route. And so, at 6am on this foggy morning, I made my slow and chilly way across the rocky peaks. Around an hour and a half later, with the sun began breaking through the fog I met the pathway down with beautiful precision. Nobody was there to witness this marvellous feat of compass navigation, and yet it remains a highlight of my hiking life.
Walking a precise direction is a good description of what Paul wants to name today.
‘Their conduct,’ Paul says, ‘was not in step with the truth of the gospel.’
In step with the truth.
Translated literally, they were not walking a straight course in the direction of the truth.
Here is the heartbeat of Galatians. That we would not only know the truth, but that knowing this truth would lead to a life that is endlessly aligned with it. That each day, our little decisions — on food and finance and people and time and prayer and colleagues and housework and social media and sleep — would all become aligned with the truth of the Gospel. That from this basic truth that you and I — who have united our lives with that of the crucified and risen Jesus — have had every sin, every place of shame, every failure and place of brokenness, nailed to a cross, with a vision of a new kind of life on the other side. This is the fresh direction of our every moment. The gospel of Jesus is not just a set of ideas that we add onto our existing thoughts; it is an organising direction for our every step that invades our everything. It is how we navigate the fog of our days, and find ourselves in the step by step journey to the eternal sunshine beyond.
For Peter, this was learning to reorganise his steps to a kind of community that abandoned all religious divisions in a community of radical honour and equality. For the Galatians, it was the realignment with the truth of the utter sufficiency of Jesus’ cross, rather than the temptation to hedge their bets and add in religious requirements like circumcision.
What might it be for you and I?
Paul’s words again may just be the revolution our conflicted souls need, in one of the most extraordinary declarations of the Scriptures:
‘I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.’
The fervour and efficacy of our faith will always be proportionate to our gospel alignment. And our gospel alignment is always lived out in this interplay of death and life, crucifixion and resurrection, abandonment of our egos and broken desires and selfish ambitions in favour of a life that is all and only and ever about Jesus and Jesus and Jesus again.
Unto death to all things of our wounded selves. And unto the fullness of life that is only and ever found and gained and walked in in Him.
This is our compass. This is our path through the fog.
This is what it is to be in step with the Gospel.
Reflect:
When all things go to the cross, newness comes.
What might I need to take to the cross today, that it may be crucified from my life?
Where might walking in step with the gospel change the shape of my life today?
Pray:
Father in heaven,
I come again today to the cross of Jesus,
That my life may align ever more greatly with the truth.
I bring you my broken desires;
I bring you my wayward thoughts;
I bring you all ways where I have trended toward cumbersome religion,
Rather than the full adequacy of grace,
That this broken life may be discarded,
And that my life may become re-animated;
And re-oriented;
And re-created;
In the shape of Jesus my Lord:
He is my compass,
And He is my path.
In His beautiful Name,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
2 Samuel 10-12 | Proverbs 14:19-27
A ‘bothy’ — a marvellous little addition to British hiking. Essentially it is a free-to-use hut, ensuring a dry nights sleep for passing hikers.