No. 30. >> I've read that some scholars believe that the climax to Paul's letter and his argument against his opponent occurs at the very end of Chapter 3 and the beginning of Chapter 4. Why does Paul refer to baptism at this point? And why is there no mention of law or justification? What point is he trying to make here? >>DR. ARTHUR A. JUST, JR.: Thank you, Nick. This is a point that I think all scholars recognize. Whether they call it the climax or not. But all scholars recognize this as a real turning point in the epistle. Now, some will include Verses 26 through 29 with Verses 23, 24, and 25. But I think there is a break here. But there's also a very intimate connection between this section and the previous section. Now, if you look at the text with me, I want you to observe something here that I think is very interesting. Because if you go back to Verse 16, Chapter 3 Verse 16 where Paul in citing Genesis 17 says: And to your seed which is Christ, there's a natural move right from there, from Verse 16 to Verse 26. For all of you are sons through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized -- you could go boom, right there. You can move directly -- you could really move directly even to 27. For as many of as you were baptized in Christ, you put on Christ. So what happens between Verse 16 and Verse 26 is a bit of an interlude. And I think that what he does now in 26 is he goes back and picks up the inheritance of Abraham. What it means to be a child of Abraham, a son of Abraham. And I agree with those scholars. That we are in the heart of Galatians. That this is about descent from Abraham as it is now to be seen as incorporation into Christ. And this is descent in a radically new way. That you are now going to be called sons of God. You're going to be heirs. And what you see Paul doing here -- and I think this is fair. I mean, this may sound a little strange to you. But he's not only exegeting Scripture, which he's been doing all along. But now he's going to be exegeting namely interpreting what I think is a baptismal text. A liturgical tradition. And I think you're going to see that he's combining Scripture and tradition here, which is something that the early church did in its liturgical rites, particularly in baptism. Now, I would break down this whole section Verses 26 to 29 as one section. And then 1 to 7 as another section. And there I would break it down into 1 and 2 and then 3 through 7. But this is all to be understood as a piece, too. I think this is one separate passage. Now, I want to point some things out before we go on. In Verse 26, Paul talks about them as being sons of God. In Verse 29, he talks about them as being heirs. He begins with them as son. He ends with them as heirs. Now, that's a very important point. So the new identity, the new person in Christ is son and heir. Then he picks up with the language of heir in Verse 1. He talks there about how humanly speaking again what an heir is, even though he is an heir of the estate, he is also going to be a slave. And then in Verse 3, it's really a climatic moment in this epistle where he moves through what it means to be a son, adoption, he uses the language of adoption. And he says in Verse 6: Therefore, because you are sons. And then he ends: That you are heirs of God. So the sonship heir all the way through here. And that's why I think this is a discrete section. Now, let's look very briefly at the first four verses here, Verses 26 through 29. A very famous passage in Paul's letters. One that you probably know very well. And I want you to observe a few things. And you've already anticipated some of these things, Nick. First of all, I want you to see that Christ is used five times. It's used in Verse 26, twice in 27. It's used in 28 and 29. Five times. Jesus is used twice. At the very beginning and look -- in the end it's ***incristo yasu but in Christ Jesus. And that same expression is used at the end of 28. In Christ Jesus. There's Jesus connected with Christ. Faith is used in Verse 26. But then is not used again in this entire section down to Verse 7. Faith is only used in the first verse and then not used again. And as you observed, there's no mention here of circumcision. There's no mention of justification. There's no mention of the law. What is at the center here is baptism. And then in Verses 3 through 7 really both the incarnation and atonement and then our baptism into Christ, which is used -- Paul uses different language in Verse 6 to describe what that baptism looks like. Now, I think what you might say the theme of the first four verses of this section is incorporation into Christ. What does it mean to be in Christ Jesus? Now, that is a formula for Paul throughout all his letters. What does it mean to be in Christ Jesus? And that's how he begins. For all of you are sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. Now, this is talking about our faith in Christ Jesus. And he calls us sons. The masculine here is very important we're going to see because Jesus is the Son and we are his sons. And then what he does after bringing forward kind of the basic statement, sons by faith in Christ Jesus, he explains what that means and how that happens. It happens in baptism. Verse 27. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ, you see that language into Christ? Faith in Christ Jesus. Baptized into Christ. There's really a sense of Communion here with Christ. That mystical union between us and Christ. Christ in us, we in Christ. He says for as many of you as were baptized into Christ Jesus you have clothed yourself with Christ. One of the ways to speak of this as if you have put on Christ as if he were your coat, your cloth. Now, there are a lot of reverberations here. And what I mean by that is we certainly can remember the parable from Matthew, the wedding parable where they are wearing the right garment to enter into the wedding feast, the garment of Christ, the baptismal robe. One of the reasons that we think that Paul is exegeting that is interpreting a baptismal formula here because in the early Christian churches whether you realized this or not most baptisms if possible were done by immersion. And they were done in the nude. So when you came up out of the font, you were immediately -- you had a white robe put on you after you were anointed with oil. And that robe was a symbol of your righteousness in Christ. And that's essentially what that means, to be clothed in Christ is simply to say that one is now a Christ in the world. That one now represents Christ not in kind of a detached way. But because Christ is in us and we are in him. And that that union with Christ means that when people see us, what they see is Christ. That's what baptism means for Paul. Now, remember, this is one of his very earliest, if not his earliest statement on baptism. And it is profound in every way. Now he describes what that looks like. And you're going to see a pair of opposites here. And Paul is declaring that these opposites that exist in the world now because of sin, they are no longer going to be there. And I think it's important to recognize that there's -- the translations don't always capture this. That there are some distinctions to be made in these opposites. Now, let's translate it. For there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free -- and here look at the translation -- there is neither male and female. Not nor. Male and female. For we are all one. That's masculine, Christ. Excuse me; for you are all one, masculine, reference to Christ in Christ Jesus. Now, Paul declares that in baptism, in the new creation, in Christ, that there is unity. The key to this passage is unity. Now, many of you know and if you don't you will come to find out if you listen to any of the conversation about this, many people who support women's ordination use this passage in support of it. This passage has nothing to do with ordination. It has nothing to do with women's ordination. It's about baptism. And they use it in women's ordination to talk about equality. But this isn't about equality. This is about unity in Christ. That when we are in Christ, our identity is not slave or free, Greek, you know or Jew, male and female. Our identity is Christ. And that's why that masculine pronoun is so important. Our oneness is in a person. A masculine person, Jesus. Now, I think -- and in the Greek it's clearer than in the English -- the fact that it says male and female, not male nor female -- male and female indicates that the image of God in the first creation was to create us as male and female. The image of God is both male and female. And those continue in heaven. Even though our identity will not be as male or as female. But as one in Christ. We will continue to be male and female. Although, I think the reason why it's neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, that will not be at all in heaven. I mean, you won't be identified in any way that way. You will be identified in Christ. But those things are wiped out because those are a result of the fall. Male and female are not. Those existed before the fall. Now, I may be getting beyond myself here. But I think it's important for you to recognize that there are passages that were written in the New Testament like this one that are used later on by the church, particularly in a different cultural context to give a meaning that was never intended there by the apostle himself. And so to go back to what is the apostle doing here? He's simply describing that because of baptism, putting on Christ, we are now one in Christ. All of us. No matter what our identity is in this world. Mother, Father, sister, brother, slave, free, Jew, Greek, male and female, none of those things matter. What matters is our unity in Christ. And that's why we have to be careful about being too particular in the church in narrowing the church down in such a way that it identifies itself with a particular group. I think it's helpful to recognize that the church is the body of Christ. And what defines us more than anything else is not our race. Not our sex, our gender. Not our economic status or social place. What defines us is our baptism. Our unity in Christ. Now, Paul concludes in Verse 29 by summarizing this. And in a sense stating it in a little different way but the same thing. He says: And if you are of Christ -- if you belong to Christ, if you are part of his possession -- then you are seeds of Abraham. Now, go back to Verse 16. And to your seed who is Christ. And here he's saying if you are of Christ, if Christ has become your clothing, if you are connected to Christ in baptism, then you are seeds. There's plural, of Abraham. Heirs according to the promise. Now, there's the conclusion to his Abrahamic argument right there. That really if you look at a chart of how it is that we see our identity, our identity isn't say through Moses to Abraham. You know, with Christ as an intercession. It's from Abraham to Christ. And to be Abraham is to be Christ. And Moses is totally out of the picture. That's why law is not referred to here. So what he's saying to us very clearly is this: We are the true children of Abraham. We are the seed of Abraham. We are heirs of promise. Why? Because we've been joined to Christ, the seed. And he is our -- he is our union with God. And if we are united with Christ, then we are united with Abraham. And we are the true children of Israel. The very thing that Paul will say to the Galatians at the end of Chapter 6.