In our Bible reading for this week, we’re going to encounter Galatians 3:28.  It contains one of the most stirring calls to spiritual unity in the entire Bible.  Here, Paul tells us that because we have been clothed with Christ in baptism, there are no longer Jew and Greek, slave and free, and male and female in Him. 

We probably should understand this as a reaction to the ancient Pharisee prayer, recorded in the Talmud, in which the pray-er thanks God for not making him a Gentile, a slave, or a woman.  Paul is pointing out that the things on which the Pharisee based his self-worth are no longer meaningful under the new covenant.

However, in recent years, this passage has become a rallying cry for those who wish to erase the Biblical distinctions in role between men and women.  If indeed there is no male nor female in Jesus, the argument goes, then anything that a man can do in worship, a woman also can do.

This is what people take from Paul’s words here, but is that really the result that Paul intended?  For that matter, does this argument represent the fulfillment of the spirit of Christianity, or is something else going on here?  Let’s consider these issues as we look at the meaning of being one in Christ.

I will freely acknowledge that especially in our time, the no-more-gender-roles argument has considerable appeal.  However, I see two significant problems with it.  The first is that it takes a statement that Paul was making about value and makes it about role instead. 

Let me explain.  First of all, it’s obvious that in Galatians 3:28, Paul is speaking metaphorically .  It is not literally true that once you are baptized, you cease to have cultural background, legal status, and sex characteristics.  Instead, Paul is saying that once you are baptized, other Christians regard you differently in some way.

There are two possibilities here.  The first has to do with value.  As the Pharisee’s prayer shows, 2000 years ago, some people definitely were valued less than others.  To the Pharisee, the Greek slave woman was at the bottom of the heap!  What Paul could be saying, then, is that in Christ, there is no difference in worth between the Pharisee and the slave woman.

Alternatively, what Paul could be saying is that in Christ, the difference in role between these various groups is erased.  Even though the woman is still a woman, for instance, now she is free to act like a man, and no one should stop her from doing so.

The best way to decide between these two alternatives is to see which one better lines up with the rest of Paul’s writing.  Does Paul seem to think that in Christ, there are no longer different expectations in behavior for these groups, that they all should act the same?  Or, instead, do these different groups continue to behave differently, even though in Christ they have the same value?

To test these competing claims, let’s look at only one book:  1 Corinthians.  In 1 Corinthians, does Paul write as though he thinks there is no longer a difference in role and behavior between the various Galatians 3:28 groups?

The answer here is obvious.  In 1 Corinthians 7:20-22, Paul speaks specifically to slaves, telling them that their salvation has not changed their earthly condition.  Unless they can legally become free, they are to remain as slaves.  In 1 Corinthians 9:20, Paul reveals that when he was around observant Jews, he himself behaved like a Jew, respecting their cultural beliefs.  Finally, in 1 Corinthians 11:4-5, Paul distinguishes between the way that Corinthian men were to pray and Corinthian women were to pray. 

This is just one Pauline epistle, and it’s not even all the relevant examples in the epistle.  It’s clear that Paul believed that all the role differences between Jew and Greek, slave and free, and male and female were not erased.  Each of these groups still should behave in the way that was appropriate for them.  We must conclude that Galatians 3:28 is about value, not role.

Second, and more insidiously, when we decide that we are going to treat these categories the same, we are IMPORTING WORLDLY VALUES into the church.  By this, I don’t merely mean that we are following a worldly pattern.  Instead, we are adopting a worldly system of values.

This problem is most obvious when it comes to cultural distinction.  I’m reminded of a story a brother told me once that when Russia was opened to the gospel in the 1990s, some American Christians who went there to preach also attempted to teach the Russians Stamps-Baxter hymns to use in worship. 

They did this even though the Russian Orthodox Church has a hauntingly beautiful tradition of a-cappella singing in worship that is much older than our own.  If you’re not familiar with it, look up Russian Orthodox chant on YouTube sometime.  However, these American brethren thought that it wasn’t enough for the Russians to worship God in a lawful way that was culturally appropriate for them.  They had to worship God in a way that was culturally appropriate for Americans.

This kind of cultural bulldozing is exactly the opposite of what Paul is trying to encourage.  His point is emphatically not “There is no American nor Russian in Christ so Russians should worship like Americans!”  Instead, every culture, every race can find its own equally valuable voice in worship.  Those are distinctions that we should preserve.

The same holds true for men and women.  Lurking underneath the argument that women should assume male roles in worship is the conviction that male roles are somehow better, that the woman who serves God privately is less important than the man who serves God conspicuously.  Thus, the only way for her to become valuable and important is for her to start doing public things.  If that’s not true, if the woman is doing equally valuable and important things in the kingdom right now, then why the big push for change?

The problem is, though, that if we don’t place equal value and importance on the traditional service of women, we are no better than the American preachers who didn’t place equal value on the traditional worship of Russians.  It’s nothing but worldliness.  As Jesus points out in Luke 22:25-27, greatness in the kingdom does not come from authority and prominence.  It comes from humility in service. 

Because of our different gifts and different positions, not all of us can serve the same way.  However, every one of us can imitate, and indeed must imitate, the servant’s heart of Jesus.  Here at Jackson Heights, that servant’s heart is evident in so many of our women.  In no way are the female members here inferior in their gifts, their skills, or their education to the men here, and they wholeheartedly use all of those things to build up the church.

The sisters here are active in teaching other women, girls, and children.  They organize and prep for classes, in addition to carrying out a host of other vital administrative functions.  They prepare the Lord’s Supper.  They clean the church building.  They visit the sick and the shut-ins.  They call, text, and send cards to brethren they’re concerned about.  They invite outsiders to our assemblies.  They fix meals for brethren who are dealing with the loss of a loved one or otherwise going through a rough patch.  All that’s just off the top of my head; there’s probably a bunch of stuff that I’m forgetting!

In order for this congregation to fall apart, all those women wouldn’t have to leave.  They would just have to stop doing what they’re doing.  As Paul says in his discussion of the body of the local church in 1 Corinthians 12, all of us have been given a necessary role in the body by God, and the health of the whole depends on each part doing its part. The women of this congregation don’t have to take on male roles to become valuable, important, and God-pleasing.  They are valuable, important, and God-pleasing already.

When visitors from denominational backgrounds come to our assemblies, they are often puzzled by our tradition of a-cappella singing.  “Why don’t they use instruments?” they wonder.  If we explain that the Scriptures do not authorize the use of instruments in worship, they may be Biblically savvy enough to point to passages, usually from the Psalms, that contain commands to worship God with instrumental music.  Psalm 150:3-5 is the most prominent such passage, but there are others.

However, there’s a significant problem with assuming that what God bound on the ancient Jews is still binding on us today.  They served Him under a different law than we do.  They were bound by covenant to obey the Law of Moses, but we follow the law of Christ.

There are a number of passages in Scripture that make this point, but perhaps the clearest of them all is Galatians 3:24-25.  In this text, Paul compares the Law to a guardian.  Other translations here will say “schoolmaster” or “tutor”.  Colloquially, the English word that best captures the sense of the Greek original (paidagōgos) may be “crossing guard”—somebody whose job it is to make sure that a student arrives safely at school.

However, just as the guardian’s authority terminated when the student reached his destination, Paul reveals that the authority of the Law has ceased now that faith in Christ has arrived.  He tells the Galatians, “We are no longer under a guardian.” 

In context, Paul is particularly concerned with the Mosaic rite of circumcision, but his words have a much broader reach than that.  Some denominational commentators will attempt to divide the Law into two parts:  the ceremonial Law, which was nailed to the cross, and the moral Law, which continues.  This distinction was originally proposed by the Catholic philosopher Thomas Aquinas about 1000 years ago. 

Aside from the difficulty of applying this scheme (Is tithing part of the ceremonial Law or the moral Law?), I’ve never been able to find any Scriptural justification for it.  Rather, we should take Paul at his word.  Nothing in the Law of Moses continues in effect.

This does not mean that the Old Testament is valueless.  It gives us precious insight into the prophecies concerning Jesus, the nature of God, and the application of moral precepts that are repeated in the ordinances that govern us.  However, for a law to fall into that category, it must have been repeated by Jesus or His apostles and prophets as a rule for Christians to follow.

Thus, when it comes to instruments of music in Psalm 150, we must acknowledge that even though the psalm contains a stirring call to worship, those verses have nothing to do with us.  The only instrument authorized by the New Testament, according to Ephesians 5:19, is the instrument that we all must play when we worship—the heart.

One of the ironic things about marriage troubles is that the couple that’s having the trouble almost always knows what the answer is.  If they’re Christians, both of them will have no trouble relating what the Bible teaches about good marriages, and they will be able to identify where their marriage falls short.  The problems come when they try to figure out how to apply God’s perfect solution to their imperfect situation.

Nowhere is this more true than with communication in marriage.  All of us know that any good relationship, whether marriage or not, is founded on good communication.  If two people aren’t communicating well, their relationship is going to suffer.  In just about any bad marriage, the spouses will candidly acknowledge, “Yep; we don’t communicate very well!”

However, admiring the problem doesn’t do any of us much good.  We have to look for godly solutions.  We have to figure out how to clear away years or even decades of failed attempts at relationship-building to lay a foundation for a stronger relationship tomorrow.  This morning, then, let’s examine three Biblical principles that we can use to be a light in our marriages through better communication.

First, we must learn to BE DEVOTED to our spouses.  Consider the picture of marriage that appears in Ecclesiastes 9:9.  One of the things that strikes me about this passage is how all-encompassing it is.  It tells us that we’re supposed to enjoy being with our spouses all the days of our lives.  There is simply no way to have a good marriage without spending lots of time with our spouses.

However, not all time spent together is created equal, and at least in my marriage, a lot of the problems here start with me.  I don’t know about the other men here, but I have a single-track mind.  I live my life in sequence.  I start one thing, do it, and move on to the next thing. 

This means, then, that if I am sitting on the couch in the evening, and I’m reading a book or looking at something on my laptop, that might look like a great opportunity to have meaningful conversation with my wife who’s sitting six feet away, but it’s not.  My mind is on a single track, and she ain’t it.  If she tries to talk to me, I will listen for about three seconds, then go back to the thing that I’m focusing on.  It’s a disaster!

Instead, we have to know when meaningful conversations with our spouses happen.  In my marriage, our best conversations when I’m doing something that involves my body but not my mind.  We go for walks together and have great conversations.  We run errands together, and it’s the same thing.  Even if I’m just loading the dishwasher, I’ll engage for 10 minutes. 

Because this kind of communication requires more thought and effort from men, it should be the husband who takes the initiative in having meaningful conversation.  I thought Clay’s sermon on intimacy last week was great, and I’m going to co-opt some of his language to explain why this is so.  There are exceptions, but I think it’s generally true that women need more preparation for physical intimacy, but men need more preparation for emotional intimacy.  We’ve all heard about how men are like microwaves and women are like crock pots, but I think when it comes to engaging conversation, it’s the husband who is like the crock pot.  He’s the one who is not going to be able to engage the other spouse in the way they want at the drop of a hat.

In practice, it’s usually the drop-of-the-hat spouse who seeks to have their needs fulfilled, but if you think about it, that’s backwards.  Instead, it ought to be the spouse who needs prep time who makes the effort to prepare and then reaches out.  The loving wife will get herself ready for physical intimacy with her husband, and the loving husband will set aside time for emotional intimacy with his wife.  Men, whatever that time needs to look like in your marriage, I leave to you, but you need to figure it out and make it happen.

Second, we should BE COMPASSIONATE.  Peter says as much in 1 Peter 3:8.  Even though this verse doesn’t mention marriage, it comes right after a lengthy discussion of marriage, and even if it didn’t, all the Bible’s rules for relationships generally have application to marriage.  The point here is simple.  Be kind and sympathetic to others.

This is all the more important in our marriages because of the tremendous ability all of us have to wound our spouses.  I guarantee that if you look deeply into any troubled marriage, what you will find is two hurting people who are terrified of being hurt again, and so they build up all this emotional armor and lash out at each other in an attempt to protect themselves.  Take some mighty macho he-man who whips two alligators every day before breakfast.  He’ll never admit it, but he is scared to death of his 100-pound wife’s razor-edged tongue.  Every one of us who is married, is married to a fearful, fragile, insecure human being whom we can devastate with a word. 

Go gently, brothers and sisters.  Go gently.

This starts with listening.  A lot of the time, when people complain about lack of communication in their marriages, they mean that their spouses don’t want to talk about what they want to talk about.  Brethren, compassionate communication doesn’t start with talking about what we want to talk about.  It starts with listening to our spouses talk about what they want to talk about.  Demanding that they talk doesn’t work.  Giving them our attention when they do want to talk does.

This also means that we will respond to them in a them-centered way, not an us-centered way.  Sarcasm, for instance, is self-centered.  When we’re looking to be sarcastic, we’re not really listening to our spouses.  We’re listening for an opportunity to exalt ourselves at their expense.  The problem is, though, that when we hurt our spouses every time they open up, we’re teaching them that we can’t be trusted and that they never should open up.  By contrast, the more we reward openness with compassion, the more open they will be.

Finally, we should BE OPEN.  Look at Paul’s appeal in 2 Corinthians 6:11-13.  Again, this isn’t a marriage-specific passage, but it reveals a truth about all relationships that is particularly significant in marriage.  If we want to have good communication in our marriages, it’s not enough for us to listen compassionately to our spouses when they make themselves vulnerable.  We have to be willing to be vulnerable too.

Just to be clear, though, “being vulnerable” is not code for “telling my spouse exactly what I think of their awful behavior”.  That’s not vulnerability.  It’s self-righteousness. 

True vulnerability is hard, and it’s especially hard in difficult marriages.  Being vulnerable is an act of trust, and how can you trust somebody who’s burned you so many times before?  I think the answer is that if you want your marriage to get better, you have to pray a lot, gather your courage, and do it.  Maybe you preface it with an appeal for compassion, but there is no way to open yourself up without. . . opening yourself up. 

Additionally, I think that being open is especially hard for men.  If there is any person on the planet a man wants to impress, it is his wife.  We want our wives to see us as tough, competent, in control, and immovable, and the parts of our inward life that don’t fit with those things, we often edit out.  I get that.  In fact, I am that!  However, at the risk of hypocrisy, I will say that I think it’s important for us to try. 

As much as the devil delights in anything, he delights in deception.  We have it on excellent authority that he is both a liar and the father of them.  Indeed, the fruits of his deceitfulness are evident everywhere around us; indeed, even in our own lives.  Sin is never good for us, yet he presents it as always good for us.  He holds forth good as evil and evil as good.  Perhaps most cruelly, he loves to convince unsaved people that they, in fact, have been saved.

In particular, he seeks to persuade people that baptism is unnecessary for salvation, despite abundant Scriptural evidence to the contrary.  Here, his preferred strategy is pitting the word against itself.  He points to the many passages that say that we are saved by faith, not works, claims that baptism is a work, and demands that we reject the baptism passages in favor of the faith passages.

This argument should make us suspicious, especially when we realize that Paul, one of the great New Testament defenders of the importance of baptism, also insisted that we are saved by faith apart from works.  This leaves us with two alternatives.  Either Paul is divided against himself, or there is something wrong with the proposition that baptism is a work!

It is, of course, the latter that is true, and nowhere is this more obvious than in his discussion of the spiritual problems in the Antiochene church in Galatians 2.  Some men who belonged to “the party of the circumcision” came to Antioch and pressured the Jewish Christians there into shunning their Gentile brethren.  The goal of this division was to compel the Gentiles to live like Jews by adopting the regulations of the Law of Moses.

In Galatians 2:16, Paul points out the crucial problem with this behavior.  Jewish Christians had become Christians in the first place because they knew they could not justify themselves by observing the works of the Law.  Rather than being justified by those Mosaic works, they sought justification through faith in Christ.  If those dead works didn’t help the Jews, then why in the world would the Jews want to bind them on the Gentiles?

Every time in Scripture that Paul contrasts faith versus works, this is what he is talking about: justification by faith in Jesus versus justification through works by perfectly keeping the Law of Moses.  Every time!  He’s not talking about Johann Tetzel and the sale of indulgences by the Catholic Church; still less is he talking about baptism.  Whenever we stop using “works” in the Pauline sense and define it in a non-Biblical way instead, we’re opening a door for the devil. 

In real life, there is no contradiction between baptism and salvation by grace through faith.  Baptism doesn’t earn salvation.  It’s an expression of faith in Jesus and the Bible’s promise that He will save us when we are baptized.  When we do what He has asked, He will keep His pledge every time.  When we don’t because we have been deceived into believing that we don’t have to, the devil rejoices.

When captives came to Zion,
Delivered by the Lord,
Then we became like dreamers
To see our own restored.
Our laughter filled our voices;
Our joy imbued each shout;
We hailed the lost returning,
For God had brought them out.

The nations watched with wonder;
They hastened to proclaim
The God who brought salvation,
The greatness of His name.
Now every heart rejoices
And every spirit sings,
For we repeat with gladness,
“The Lord has done great things!”

O Lord, restore our captives
As rain restores the streams,
That those who sow with mourning
May reap their joyful dreams.
They scatter seed in sorrow
And walk their fields in pain,
But they will come rejoicing
And bringing sheaves of grain.

Suggested tune:  WEBB
(“Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus”)