“One in Christ" Galatians 3:1-9, 23-29

 “Who are you?” It’s a question we get asked a lot. And there are as many ways to answer as there are time we have been asked this question. We can say our name. Our occupation. Our relationship to other people in our family. We can say how old we are. Where we are from and where we live now. We can talk about our politics. We can talk about our hobbies. But all of those are only pieces of who we are and they pale in comparison to our true identity - our identity in Christ.

But all of those other identities - they are really hard to shake, friends. 

Sometimes its because we don’t want to shake them. Many of them are good pieces of who we are. But when they become more important to us than who we are in Christ - that can quickly become a problem.

But we are not alone in that struggle. The Galatians are right there with us! AND they heard about Jesus directly from Paul. But then other people started to tell them that Paul wasn’t right. Or at least not fully. And now the Galatians are starting to doubt who they are.

So Paul’s harsh words are trying to catch their attention. To remind them who they are. To remind them who they belong to. To remind them that their identity in Jesus isn’t something to be shed or set aside, but instead is the entirety of who they are.

In many ways its hard for us to understand exactly what is going on here, because the idea of Gentile or Jew is not something we talk about very much today. But back in Paul’s day in was the defining moral divider amongst people. Are you a person of the Abrahamic covenant or not? 

Or for the people in Galatia - Does a Gentile need to become a Jew or like a Jew in order to be Christian? This was the question of all questions for people in the early church. All other moral issues were secondary to them. Because if you couldn’t answer this question, then you may not know exactly who you are anymore.

And when you have these questions that bear so much weight, people were become testy and forming sides. On one side, you had folks who said of course anyone who is Gentile needs to become a Jew in order to become a Christian. Jesus was a Jew, so therefore his followers should be as well. 

Folks on this side of the argument recall how Abraham was blessed by God with this covenant - an eternal covenant - for all of his descendants. So if we move away from the law that was an expression of this covenant then we would be saying that God breaks promises. Which is not true. Therefore, people need to be Jewish in order to be part of the covenant - they cannot be Gentile and belong to God. 

On the other side, you had some folks who tried to reconcile this breaking promise debacle by saying okay, you don’t need to be fully Jewish, but you also can’t be fully Gentile. We are going to pick out what we believe to be the most important parts of the law and bind you to those as well. They are trying to play the part of the middle, and as a result no one was happy.

Then you had Paul. Paul who said if you hold folks to any part of the law of old you’ve missed the whole point about Jesus’s coming. Yes, there was a reason for the law, but Christ has formed a new covenant that is not dependent upon us or how well we can uphold the law in our humanness. It’s about Christ’s faithfulness. And when you start to make it about the law, even a little bit, it undermines the Gospel. 

Tied up in this moral question of the time was also theology - what does it say about God and what do we believe? Do we truly believe that Christ changed everything? Do we believe that the Gospel is Good News to all people? Do we believe that God can extended and expand promises? 

Paul is saying, yes the law once existed to remind people of the covenant and to reveal God to folks, but now we have seen the very Son of God - Emmanuel - God with us in the flesh in Jesus. And that was so radical that it changed the course of history and the covenant in a way that broke it open to all who would believe. 

So the question is wrong. It’s no longer a question about if you need to be Jewish to be Christian or if you are tied to theAbrahamic covenant. The question now is - are you clothed in Christ. 

Friends, no other part of our identity matter as much as being a follower of Jesus. And just like there were folks long ago who confused the people in Galatia around this fact, there are good, well-meaning people today who want you to tie your identity with them more than Christ. Because we are getting the question wrong. So I ask you the question today that Paul posed to the Galatians - have you been clothed in Christ and does your identity lie in him?

When we answer that question “yes”, then everything else changes as well. We aren’t left to be a lone-ranger of the faith, trying to figure it out on our own. No, we become part of the body of Christ, the Church, something that is bigger than ourselves. We become grafted into this movement of sharing the Good News of the Kingdom of God that has went far and wide thought the ages. We become new in our identity and new in our mission as the people of God.

Which leads to another, perhaps even harder question, do we live this way? Do we live as if we are one together in body of Christ? Do we live as if we are bound together? Or are we still trying to separate people into categories - making it “us” vs. “them”.

Because of Paul that just isn’t going to fly in the body of Christ. It means we don’t understand what it means to have our faith in Jesus be the central part of who we are. And it means that we don’t understand what it means to be a new creation in Christ.

So I ask you this morning, children of God, who are you? What is your primary identity? What flows out of your heart and life? If people around you knew who you were about what you talked about most, what would they say? 

And if your answer isn’t “a follower of Christ” then perhaps today is your day. Your opportunity to become new in and through Christ Jesus. Or your opportunity to lie down those other identities and be clothed in Christ alone. 

So I ask you one more time - who are you? Amen.