Has Anything Changed?
We have seen that the apostles had gone back under different laws and according to Paul; they were frustrating the grace of God. The controversy was very plainly between law and grace. Some said you did not have to follow law, some said you only had to follow grace and still others said you had to have a little bit of both. Paul made it very clear that the law was dead and they were now under grace. There is no way to misinterpret what he was saying to the apostles as far as what they were preaching and he even called these people by name.
It is not difficult to see that Paul’s preaching of grace was in controversy with what the other apostles were preaching. He was very plain that they were not embracing what he was preaching at that time. Whether they embraced it later on or not is not clear but what is clear is that they did not embrace it at that time.
The differences of opinion of course was on how a person has a relationship with God. The apostles were teaching that the Jews still had to be circumcised and they had to circumcise their children to have a relationship with God. The letter to the Galatians is Paul’s view of these things and he was making it clear there was no law involved in regards to having a relationship with God. Paul of course does the same in the Book of Romans and throughout all his writings. The disagreements they had amongst themselves are not something that has been made up by someone over the years. It is crystal clear they disagreed and had confrontations because of the differences in beliefs about law and grace and their relationship with God.
As I am writing this today, I cannot help but take this down to our day and age and sit back and think if anything has changed in this respect. Is law and grace still a controversial subject? Did it stop somewhere along the way over the past 2000 or so years? What is the big issue in our modern day? It is still law and grace. It is still an issue as to how we have relationship with God and access to God.
If you don’t think this is so, just try telling someone you have to do nothing to be right with God (grace) and they will soon tell you there are many things you have to do (law). Just try telling someone deeply (or not so deeply) immersed in their denominational teachings and you will see just how much this is still the exact same controversy today as it was back then. Nothing has changed in that respect. People today are still being told Sunday after Sunday they have to do and do and keep on doing to not only get any kind of relationship with God but to keep having a relationship. This is law pure and simple.
They may say they preach the pure unadulterated grace of God but in the same breath they will tell you what you must do to be redeemed and stay redeemed. A local preacher had a funeral service at his church for a person in his congregation a couple of weeks ago and he started off by saying this lady would have wanted him to preach a salvation message and that is what he was going to do. He started out by saying he was going to preach Jesus and Him only but it was not long before he said what this lady had done in her life in order for her to have made it to heaven. If that is not contradictory I don’t know what is.
There is no law under grace. If there is a law then it is no longer grace. If you add works of any kind to it, you have fallen from grace and back under works and law. The two don’t mix and it frustrates the grace of God. You don’t have to look far to see the same thing Paul came up against is still the prevailing message being preached today. Nothing has changed.
