God’s grace is amazing and all-encompassing. But the joyful, full-bodied Christian life is not something we can drift into. It is something we press into. Every opportunity to do good, to be known, to love well is available to us. Whatever we sow we will reap. What are we sowing? What do we expect to reap?

The truth is, we are all either an Ishmael or an Isaac. We are either a child of slavery or a child of freedom. How we relate to God’s word determines which we are. If we, like Paul, hold to the gospel message as God himself first proclaimed it in the person of Jesus Christ, we are Isaac. But if we, like the false teachers, believe the gospel needs our works to gain full righteousness before God, we are Ishmael.

None of us have empty hearts. All of us are accepting something, or someone, all the time. So, what, or who, is being formed in you?

Every Christian must understand the times in which they are living. Christ came, fulfilled the law, and rose to grant new, abundant life. But the hope of the resurrection is still out in the future. We live in the in-between time—the already but not yet. We are post-law people in a pre-resurrection state.

When obedience comes first in our message, the gospel becomes a side dish rather than the entire meal.

The exchange between Peter and Paul in Galatians 2 shows us what happens when the gospel culture we’re creating goes against the gospel doctrine we proclaim.

Are you holding the pen and drawing lines or are you resting inside the bloodline Jesus has drawn?

Paul’s Judaism led him to persecute the church of God. What Paul was doing was an attack on the people he thought he was protecting: God’s elect. His desire for the purity of God’s word drove him to approve the killing of God’s people because he believed they were redefining the boundaries of Israel by following Jesus. He had no idea that Jesus had redefined the boundaries for them. It wasn’t their message. It was God’s. Paul just hadn’t heard it yet. When Paul did hear the gospel, he experienced a complete life change.

In the book of Galatians, Paul tells us what the gospel is and what it isn’t so that we stick close to it. Who would stray from the gospel, you may ask? You and I, that’s who. The storms are always forming on the horizon. Let’s beware lest we deny the message that saved us.