2nd Sunday after Pentecost, Morning Worship, June 22, 2025
Sermon: What’s the Difference?
Accompanying Scripture: Galatians 3: 23-29

What’s the Difference?

I’ve been wrestling with Paul this week. His letter to the Galatians sounds as if the Jewish Law is all bad. His writing strikes me as being a strict black and white scenario. Law is bad, Jesus is good.

I had a rabbi for a few years who taught me about the law. Though I choose not to follow most of it, I love what it means. Strictly speaking, the law says, “Don’t treat others in a way you wouldn’t want to be treated.” How we treat our neighbor is important to God. God’s chosen people went to great lengths to define what that meant. And the rabbis are still discussing this thousands of years later.

When Jesus walked on this earth, he was clear about his purpose for being here: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” (Mt 5:17)

And Jesus did just that. He challenged us with the Beatitudes; he set the bar high on behavior. His parables challenge us to be better people. That was his function: to fulfill the law.

Is Paul writing in an us vs. them? Like Republicans vs Democrats? The Thunder vs. the Pacers?

No. I think what Paul disagreed with was a legalistic view of the law. Some of the congregation felt that to be a Christian, you needed to be a Jew first. Especially important for them was circumcision. Paul and the rest of the Apostles disagreed. They believed that God was doing a new thing that was fulfilled with Jesus’ resurrection.

The fulfillment of the law was promised by the prophet Jeremiah: “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” (Jeremiah 31:33)

So, for us Christians, we need Jesus’ teachings and knowledge of our history as people of God. Paul challenged the legalism of the day just as much as Jesus did.

Which brings me relief. I’m relieved that Jesus fulfilled this new thing that God had begun. I’m relieved and overjoyed that the law is written on my heart. And yours.

That gives new meaning to the focus scripture in this verse: 28 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.”

We sit in this place, worshiping God. And we don’t do it alone. We do it with each other as we call ourselves to worship, confess our corporate (not our personal sin.) We hear the Word read and proclaimed, and we respond with great joy. The point is that we do it together. In the community.

And for a little while, while we worship our risen Lord, we are one in Christ. Our ethnicity takes a back seat, our vocations are gifts we offer back to God, and our gender doesn’t matter. We are free in Christ with the law on our hearts. That freedom comes with the responsibility to learn and live out Jesus’ teachings the best way we can.

And that’s the good news: that we are one in Christ. Whatever labels we’ve been given don’t matter because we are enough in Christ. We resist because of those labels that others give us and by the critics’ comments. Sometimes we believe them more than we believe Jesus.

But it’s Jesus who makes a big difference in his life, death, and resurrection. We can believe him. He came to fulfill the law. We don’t need legalism. We can rely on Jesus to guide us.

Say yes to following Jesus and his teachings. By doing so, you are saying yes to freedom in God.

What’s the difference?

Jesus is the difference.

Amen.