God's Glory or Ours: Galatians 4:17-20

It is God who deserves the glory because He is the one who provides the way to salvation.  God is the one who is righteous.  He is the one who can change us and help us become something greater than we are.  He knows us better than we know ourselves.  Our focus should be on Him.

Originally, Paul went to Galatia to tell people about the grace of God that comes through the faithfulness of Jesus on the cross.  After Paul left Galatia, some Jewish followers of Christ came and began to teach that to be saved the Galatians needed to be follow aspects of the law they were neglecting.

These false teachers have horrible motivations.  On the surface, these false teachers are telling the Galatians they need to be doing more if they want to be saved so that the Galatians will turn to them in appreciation.  The false teachers are shutting out the Galatians so the when the Galatians change they will be grateful to the false teachers for making sure they were included.  The false teachers seek grandeur by passing along so-called hidden knowledge to which Paul didn’t give them access.

This is an incredibly human action.  There are people in the world who help others out of genuine altruism.  They show kindness because they genuinely care.  There are also people in the world who help others because they want to create dependency.  They like being important.  They want the feeling that comes when other people need them.  They are more interested in feeling important than caring for others.  We might call this creating co-dependent relationships.

This is manipulative human behavior.  Rather than helping people so God’s love is on display, these creators of co-dependency have themselves as their focus.  It is about their importance.  It is about their love.  It is about drawing attention to them.  People who show love while creating co-dependent relationships are like wolves-in-sheep’s clothing.  They trade the selfless faithfulness of Jesus for their own selfish desire to feel important.

How did Paul recognize this behavior?  It’s quite simple.  These people came to Galatia and said that Jesus isn’t enough.  They taught the Galatians that they had to be the right gender, the right socio-economic status, or proper lineage.  They taught abstention from certain foods to be necessary.  They taught circumcision was important for salvation.  By passing along this secret knowledge, the Galatians learned dependency on having this special understanding only the false teachers could bring.  They taught that Jesus isn’t enough.

It is bewildering to see this in practice.  God’s truth should be given to all who desire to hear it.  God’s salvation is freely offered to all who will receive it.  We don’t trade access to God for our own glory.  It is God who deserves the glory because He is the one who provides the way to salvation.