Above All Else, Preserve The Gospel
Written by Erin Richer
We wrap up our first Dive Studies tomorrow and I’ll be completely honest, it was far more wonderful than I could have ever hoped or imagined.
To learn beside so many incredible people, to be challenged to see the words in a different way, to see lightbulbs go off and eyes light up as the Holy Spirit blew His breath and ignited new flames holds meaning and joy which words will forever fail to convey. I sit at my kitchen table replaying some of my favorite memories and one stands out because it occurred on the very first day as we opened our Bibles and began chapter one.
Not long into our first meeting, shortly after reading through chapter one aloud, one of our members, Michelle, said, “Just taking a step back and looking at the big picture of this chapter, I can easily see why you chose this book to start studying as Dive Collective.” And she was right. We chose Galatians with great purpose. God showed her from the beginning of the book that the most important message, the undergirding of every reading we will ever do and the lens through which we will read the entire text is the grace of the Gospel.
Soon we will be jumping into the Old Testament story of Ruth, but before we touch on anything in the Old Testament we want to drill down on the message that Paul spends an entire epistle pleading with the Galatians to get straight. His tone with them makes it clear that this is a matter of eternal life and death. Paul’s repetitive and desperate plea to these Gentile believers is this: preserve the Gospel. Be mindful to protect the message of the Gospel. Don’t let anyone change the simplicity of the message that was preached to you: Jesus is the fulfillment of the promise that was given to Abraham. All of the law was fulfilled in Him. Salvation is through faith in the Gospel and not through works or rules.
We are a people drawn to rules, to checklists and accomplishments. In the book of Galatians we receive with great enthusiasm the message of freedom that all of the work and rituals and traditions that get added to our faith accomplish exactly zero. If done in an effort to achieve righteousness, they actually enslave us to a life of futile labor. All the while, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is freedom for our souls. It is freedom to take the energy we are naturally inclined to use to try to earn our way to heaven and instead spend it all lavishly loving others as we love ourselves.
With this good news in mind, let’s flip the pages back a few and dive into Ruth next week.
