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PREACHING EQUALITY:
GALATIANS 3:28
Dr. Michael Hegeman
Preach the Gospel
and Equality Shall be Added Unto You
If only this was
true. If we look at Galatians 3:28 as central to “the truth of
the gospel” that Paul proclaimed to his Galatian congregations,
then we would expect to have witnessed equality in the church
for the last 2000 years. In our baptism into Christ, Paul
proclaimed, there is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free,
male nor female, for all are one in Christ Jesus. This is a
profound statement in the least. Such a proclamation sounds like
equality to our contemporary ears. Yet we know that racial,
social, and gender equality in the church has been far from a
realized fact. The church that was called into being in Christ
Jesus has itself failed to live out the truth of the gospel:
freedom—freedom from all that would separate us in the body of
Christ.
The Power of the
Gospel Read, Preached, and Heard: Gal. 3:28
When I was in
seminary, I took a course on Paul’s letters taught by the Rev.
Dr. Donald Juel, a Lutheran pastor and professor of New
Testament. There were only six students in the class: four
women, two men. Donald Juel told us a story of when, in a
similar class years before, the class members found themselves
confronted with the proclamation of Gal. 3:28. One female
student read and heard Paul’s words, “In Christ there is no
longer . . . male and female, for all are one.” This student’s
very life was turned upside down by these words. She knew she
was called to ministry, called to preach the word of God, yet
because of her tradition, as a life-long Roman Catholic, she had
never imagined that her calling could be fulfilled. The gospel,
though, leapt from the pages of Scripture, its truth grasping
hold of her and radically re-orienting her life. She left her
tradition and sought out a denomination that would honor her
call to preach and administer the sacraments. Professor Juel
admitted to us that, at the time, this woman’s response to Gal.
3:28 made him very nervous. What would her family think we’re
teaching here at seminary? He had thought. Dr. Juel learned
that the power of the gospel read, proclaimed, and heard, should
make us all tremble. The truth of the gospel is not under our
control nor does it play nice with our traditions, social
systems, or our beliefs about gender roles. The truth of the
gospel has the power to change our lives, and it should do just
that.
The Context of Gal
3:28 within Paul’s Letter
What sparked Paul to
make his radical claim that in Christ Jesus all are one?
Among the Galatians (who were descendants of central-European
Celts living in Asia Minor) Paul had preached the gospel of
“Christ crucified” (3:1) and the liberation God had
achieved for
the entire cosmos through Christ’s faithful death upon the
cross. Paul knew that this message had had an impact on the
Galatians, for, as he reminds them, he had seen evidence of the
Spirit’s work in the midst of their congregations (3:2-5).
Nevertheless, after Paul left the Galatians to continue his work
of preaching the gospel, something went wrong in the midst of
their congregations. Other teachers started preaching to the
Galatians, informing them that Paul had not told them the whole
story of God’s action on their behalf. For them to be fully part
of God’s act of deliverance from the oppression of sin, the Galatian believers were told they needed to come under the
sphere of the Law’s power: the power of the Law to keep the
Galatians hemmed in, protected from sin’s power. For the men in
the congregations, adhering to the Law meant undergoing
circumcision. For men and women alike, this new teaching meant
that Christ’s faith was not sufficient for their being made
right with God (dikaiosyne, “making right”). All alike
were compelled to submit to the Law; they were not fully free
unless their daily lives were regimented by the Law and its
multiple strictures. Many of the Galatians began to doubt their
relationship to God, through Christ, and to doubt their freedom
in Christ.
When Paul heard of
this new development, he was outraged. For him, there was no
other gospel than that of God’s liberation of humanity and the
entire cosmos from the grasp of “the present evil age” by way of
Christ’s faithful death (1:3-4). Anything else was a false
gospel, that is, no gospel at all (1: 6-7). In his adamant
response, Paul declares to his Galatian hearers that there were
no requirements put on them when they were claimed by the
gospel, made right with God through Christ’s faithful death on
their behalf, and received true inheritance: the Spirit, who
made that gospel message efficacious in their communities.
The Gospel of
Liberation has Very Tangible Implications
In his letter Paul
reminded the Galatians that the truth of the gospel had very
tangible implications for their life in community. When the
gospel invaded the lives of both Jews and Gentiles alike, in
Antioch, thereby declaring them one body in Christ, there was nothing that
prevented the two communities from worshipping together or
sitting down at a table together. What was once forbidden under
the oppression of the old cosmos was now possible in Christ: the
two, separated communities could now sit down together and share
in fellowship and common meals. But, when messengers from
the Jerusalem church came and told the Antiochenes that what
they were doing was wrong, the two groups began to separate out
again. Even church leaders whom Paul trusted, Simon Peter and
Barnabas, joined in what Paul diagnosed as hypocrisy in
relation to the gospel. Paul condemned such ill-treatment of the
community that God had called into existence in Jesus Christ.
Those whom the gospel has claimed and joined together, let no
men put asunder!
The Founding of the African Methodist Episcopal Church
In the late 1780’s,
at St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia,
white and black members of the congregation did not sit
together. White leadership of the church had grown uncomfortable
with the rise in the number of black worshippers, both slave and
free. The white leaders of the church forced the black members
to sit in the gallery (even toward the back of the gallery)
during the main worship service. This meant that black
congregants could only come down to the altar railing to pray or
to receive communion after the whites had finished their
worship and left the sanctuary. Richard Allen, a former slave
who had bought his own freedom and had been licensed to preach
to the growing number of black congregants, felt deeply the
hypocrisy of this forced separation. Allen himself was converted
to faith in Christ through the proclamation of the very gospel
which he saw now in jeopardy. Faced with this denial of access
to the full body of Christ, Allen, along with other black
leaders of the congregation, led a mass exodus of the black
members of the congregation to found a congregation of their
own. Denied table fellowship, they knew that the truth of the
gospel was threatened. Denied the equality that is the result of
the proclamation of the gospel, Allen and his followers founded
the congregation that would eventually become the African
Methodist Episcopal Church.
Our Equality is
Shaped by Co-Crucifixion With Christ
Paul admonished the
Antioch church members as he proclaimed to them, “We were all
under the oppression of sin, Jews and Gentiles alike. In Christ
we have been delivered out of the hand of that oppression. We
were all enslaved under the old cosmos, and what God has done in
Christ is to emancipate us from that slavery. God has bought us
off the slave market, redeemed us, and set us right. We are all
alike in this.” Paul speaks of himself as the exemplar of what
God has done, “I have been co-crucified with Christ. It is no
longer I who live, but Christ now lives in me” (2:19-20). What
Paul says of himself is true for all the Antiochenes and the
Galatians, “Each has been crucified with Christ. Each has
suffered the humiliating death of the old cosmos in his or her
own body. Sin and the flesh have both suffered this death. The
new life we all live together is one marked by this crucifixion
through which God has affected for us a new freedom, a new
unity, a new equality, as it were.” Paul tells the Galatians
specifically that they had already known this new life to be
true for them, because they had all seen evidence that the
Spirit had made claim on their lives. They had seen works of
power (dunamis; 3:5) in their midst, they had been
baptized, and in their baptism they had clothed themselves with
Christ (3:27). Through this baptism they had received the Spirit
poured into their hearts and that Spirit had cried out through
them, “Abba,” to their heavenly Parent, who was making them one
family (4:6-7).
A Paradoxical
Equality
How are Jews and
Gentiles equal in Christ? Each has suffered co-crucifixion with
Christ. Both Jewish believers and Gentiles believers have been
clothed in the same Christ. All have been made one in this
Christ, adopted into one family. All are heirs of the same
Spirit, the same promise, the same inheritance. Their equality
is paradoxical: they have all suffered the same death of the old
cosmos with its separating distinctions. Each is the first-born
child who receives an equal portion of the inheritance God has
to offer. Each has been emancipated, set free to be . . . a
slave.
A slave? Yes, here
is the greatest paradox: in God’s setting all things right, the
old dualisms are obliterated. No longer are there Jew or Greek,
slave or free, male and female. All are one in Christ,
emancipated to be slaves to one another! If we have read
biblical translations that have used the word “servants” for the
Greek douloi we miss that radical paradox of the life in
Christ that Paul proclaims. Paul, in effect, says, “We were all
once enslaved. All of us. God, through Jesus Christ, has set us
free. Now you are free to be slaves to one
another.” With our former racial status and our former social
standing obliterated, our new equality is transformed by the
radically offensive status of being a slave. Such a
categorization is not to be romanticized or overly
spiritualized, lest we forget the horrors that human beings have
perpetrated against each other throughout history in various
forms of slavery. Physical, economic, and sexual slavery are
brutal realities that testify to the oppressive capacity human
beings exert over one another. Nevertheless, despite the
offensiveness of being called to be slaves, Paul proclaims this
to be our new status in the family which God has enacted in
Jesus: slaves of one another.
How Can an Equality Marked by Co-Crucifixion and Slavery be
Good News?
Paul, the preacher,
proclaimed to the church members in Philippi, “Jesus Christ did
not consider equality with God as something to be
grasped, but emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave. .
.humbling himself, obedient even to death on a cross” (Phil
2:6-8). Paul continues in this proclamation, “Let this
same mind be in you…be in full accord and of one mind” (2:2).
This was the Good News Paul proclaimed. What was good for
the Philippians and the Galatians is good for us as well.
First of all, this news is good because it is about God.
Paul proclaims what God was up to in Jesus Christ. The message
is about God and God’s initiative. God desired to set right what
has gone wrong in the cosmos and God has achieved this in Jesus
Christ. Second, this news is good because it affects all
of us. No one is left untouched by what God has done and
is doing. Third, lest we forget, this is all about God.
We are mutually affected by what God has done. No one has higher
status in God’s economy (oikonome). All have the same
status as siblings, adopted children of one parent. Each is the
inheritor of the fullness of what God has bestowed in Jesus
Christ. Each has received an equal portion of God’s Spirit, each
being clothed in the same garment: Christ himself. And the
garment Christ himself wears is that of the humblest; a servant,
a slave. In human flesh Christ was servant of Jew and Gentile,
slave and free, male and female. As we take on the mantle of
Christ, we are called into the radically offensive, yet godly,
role of the co-crucified—slaves to one another. At the root (radix)
of our relationship to one another before God is an equality
marked by deep mutuality: a radical paradox of freedom in being
yoked to one another in . . . love.
The Love of God is the Standard of the New Creation
If being called to
be slaves to one another sounds offensive, and it should,
then hear what Paul proclaims to be the reality of the New
Creation, “Your new-found equality, where the old categories of
race, social status, and gender no longer apply, is now grounded
in a freedom wherein God sets the terms of that freedom. The new
standard (kanon; 6:16) for life in the New Creation that
God has enacted is love.” This is good news for us. By
sending forth the Spirit into the hearts of believers, God
empowers this new family where birth order is no longer
relevant, where each is equally-inheriting, and all are mutual
slaves to one another in love. Without God’s help we
could not live up to this standard. In the old cosmos, our
relationship to God and one another was marked by alienation,
separation, disobedience, and oppression. In the New Creation,
the community (koinonia) is now constituted by
Spirit-inspired love.
When Love is Not Equal the Truth of the Gospel is Threatened
Paul reminded the
Galatians how he had admonished the Antiochene church members
for their lack of mutuality (2:11-14). When some members
withdrew from mutual table fellowship, retreating, as it were,
to the old cosmos, Paul said that the truth of the gospel was
threatened. Paul exhorted his Galatian hearers to recognize when
the truth of the gospel is threatened in their midst. They would
see the evidence of the “works of the Flesh”: enmity, strife,
divisions, quarrels, factions, riotous living, that is, anything
that severs the ties of the community God has made” (5:16-21).
However, when the truth of the gospel is alive and well in their
communities, they would know this by the evidence of the “fruits
of the Spirit”: love, peace, joy, patience, kindness,
generosity, faithfulness, and self-control (5:22-23). That is,
the old divisions would be obliterated. Paradoxically, in God’s
New Creation, everyone in the community would be like a
first-born child, all-inheriting, and, at the same time, a
humble slave to all. Paul’s message is the same to us today:
God’s love is the power that enables us faithfully to
live out the truth of the gospel, loving our neighbors as
ourselves (5:6, 14).
Preaching Equality
Paul preached the
good news of Christ crucified. In this message of God’s act of
deliverance, God’s love is known: Christ gave himself up to free
all humanity from the grasp of oppression and to set right all
that has gone wrong. Those claimed by this gospel message are
placed within God’s new order: all are one in the New Creation.
All have been crucified with Christ, suffering death to the old
cosmos. All who have been claimed by the Spirit in baptism, have
clothed themselves with mutuality in Christ. All are equal
offspring, co-inheritors of God’s promised Spirit, empowered to
love one another. Wherever Paul saw that the truth of this
community-forming gospel message was threatened, he preached the
good news, again. Paul re-preached the gospel to the
church in Antioch when he saw their table fellowship threatened.
Paul re-preached the gospel when he saw that the equality
God had won for Jew and Gentile alike was threatened in the
Galatian churches. Paul re-preached the gospel so that
the Spirit of God might be active in the community, conforming
all to one standard: love.
Whenever we are
faced with situations in the church and the world, where the
mutuality, equality, and unity won by God in Jesus Christ is
threatened, we are called to proclaim the gospel. We are to
preach the gospel, not so that some will be humble and some will
lord it over others. We are to heed this call: Preach the gospel
and equality shall be added unto you. Preach the gospel and
love, peace, and joy shall be added unto you. Preach the gospel
and women and men of all races, ethnicities, and social standing
will know themselves equal before God: sisters and brothers of
one another, each equally claimed, each equally and lovingly
equipped to serve in the New Creation. “And for those who will
follow this standard . . . grace, peace and mercy be upon them.
Amen” (Gal 6:16, 18).
For Further Study:
For further study on Galatians and the theological perspectives
advocated in this article, see J. Louis Martyn, Galatians: A
New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, The Anchor
Bible (Doubleday: New York, 1997); see also Beverly Gaventa, “Is
Galatians Just a ‘Guy Thing’?: A Theological Reflection”
Interpretation54/3 (2000): 267-278.
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