'Normal' service has been resumed...

It's been tricky getting anything onto the internet for the past couple of weeks because our connection has been dodgy - I think the box got struck by lightning. But now, thanks to the heroic efforts of my colleague Rudi, it's mended. So here are two things I've added to my website:

1 Thessalonians Overview
Galatians 5v13-26

The first is an overview of 1 Thessalonians (hence the title). I love this book, and it made a big impact on me when I studied it as a student, and then as a Relay worker. It was great to revisit it, and to teach it at our Bible study meeting. One particular highlight was the use of a 'wordle' (which Ed mentioned on his blog the other day). Basically you stick a load of text (1 Thessalonians in this case) into the website, and it spits out a pretty word picture, with the size of the words corresponds to the number of times they occur. OK, I know there are issues about translations and stuff, but I thought it would be a fun way for the group to work out what 1 Thessalonians might be about - and it worked quite well. Definitely worth doing again I think.

The second is a talk from our morning service yesterday on the 'fruit of the Spirit.' In one way, it looks like I take a really long run up to talking about the fruit of the Spirit, but it's impossible to understand the fruit of the Spirit without putting it in the context of the whole letter to the Galatians. It's all about freedom. Although they were free, they were starting to add rules, which Paul hates. But the alternative, to just do what you like, is no good either. Instead, Paul wants them to see a third way - life by the Spirit. Not following rules, but following a person.

Freed for Freedom

I've just spent most of the day writing an overview of Galatians. It was still pretty rough when I delivered it this evening, although it wasn't bad considering I started from scratch this morning (with a few pointers from Peter). But I'm basically loving Galatians now! I need to spend more time digging into it, but it's been a great reminder of just how brilliant the gospel is, and how stupid it is to trust anything else. Plus it's a real challenge to keep watch for legalism creeping in. It's so easy to start trusting in things which aren't the cross; it might not be as obvious as obeying the Old Testament law, but we can easily invent a million other kinds of law to put in it's place...

One particularly striking bit is the barney Paul has with Peter. Peter is behaving badly by separating himself from the Gentiles (non-Jews) when his Jewish mates come to visit. Paul goes ballistic, although it leads to some quality insights about being justified (or 'made right with God') by faith. But I think what makes it worse is his hypocrisy (2v13). Peter doesn't believe that he needs to separate from Gentiles for theological reasons - most of the time he eats with them. But when people are looking, he changes his behaviour to please them.

I started to wonder - do I do that? Do I act in ways which don't fit with the gospel, just to keep other people happy? And do I condone other people doing it, when I should be challenging it like Paul did?

Paul challenged it because it was really, really important. By moving to a different table, Peter was doing more than just disrespecting the Gentiles. He was effectively saying that the rules were more important than the gospel, and that the cross isn't enough. No wonder Paul went crazy. Maybe I should go crazy more often?!

You can look at the overview here if you want to.