Galatians 3:23-29
Emmanuel Baptist Church
June 1, 2025
Rev. Kathy Donley
Image: copyright by David Hayward, license purchased at https://nakedpastor.com/
One time, I came across some old church documents. It was not here, not this church. But as I read through these letters from a church in a denomination not my own, I came to understand that what I was reading was an argument, an old fashioned church fight. The documents I accessed were written by one faction. I didn’t know what the other side said directly. I had to figure it out from the allusions and brief quotations in the document written by their opponents. The same thing is happening in ancient Galatia. We’re tracing a doozy of a church fight through the letters written by Paul who is strongly advocating for his position.
Paul had planted churches in the region called Galatia, which is in modern day Turkey. Paul was Jewish as were all of Jesus’ original disciples. The congregations in Galatia were composed of Gentiles who had formerly worshipped the Greek gods, but because of Paul’s witness, they had been baptized and now identified as Christians. Now when the church leaders at headquarters in Jerusalem heard about it, they sent some teachers up to Galatia to visit those little communities of new believers. They said something like, “Paul only gave you half of the message. He told you about Jesus and that’s wonderful. You’ve experienced this spiritual awakening, right? But actually, you need to become part of the true family, the family of Abraham, the ancient people of God. And for that, of course, you need to get circumcised.”[1]
To be circumcised is take on Jewish identity. Paul is so angry with his opponents that he tells the Galatians “I wish they would castrate themselves!” (5:12)
For decades, the church in America has argued about human sexuality. Can you be gay and Christian? Some say empathically Yes. Some say emphatically No. Some try for a middle ground and say “Maybe, but only if you’re celibate.” Similarly, there was a time in the early church when the raging argument was about whether Gentiles should be fully welcome or whether they would have to jump through hoops and then probably still be seen as second-class. It is an argument that just won’t die.
In the first century culture at large in, Jews and Gentiles were distinct and opposite groups. They worshipped different gods in different spaces. They did not go to the same restaurants or live in the same neighborhoods. No one expected anything other than that. They had different hobbies, different histories, different diets – too many differences for any kind of unity. The culture supported that – stick with your own kind. Watch the news that supports what you already think. Only read your favorite scriptures that buttress your theology. That’s the safest thing to do.
Paul doesn’t care about what is safe. And he is more concerned with what is happening inside the church than in the wider society. When he writes, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female: for all of you are one in Jesus Christ” he seems to be quoting an ancient baptismal formula. He takes those Galatians back to their baptisms, to the words that had been pronounced over each of them, words that abolished the distinctions the missionaries were trying to re-establish.[2]
Paul speaks about their baptism as being clothed with Christ. At that time, people took off their clothes and were baptized naked and then put on a new white garment signifying that they were clothed with Christ, wrapped up in him and incorporated into his body so that Christ became their primary identity marker.[3]
Baptism is our most essential ritual. The words we use at baptism are significant; they proclaim the heart of our faith. It is extremely telling that one of the earliest baptismal confessions focuses on three areas of social conflict – racial/ethnic identity, social class, and gender. In Christ, those hostilities are overcome.
“Paul sees the church as an alternative community that prefigures the new creation in the midst of a world that continues to resist God’s justice. Paul is not calling for a revolution in which slaves rise up and demand freedom; rather in this verse, he is declaring that God has created a new community, the church, in which the baptized already share equality.”[4]
We live in a different world now; in a democracy which gives us the opportunity and obligation to demand freedom and dignity for all, but this text reminds us that when that is unsuccessful in the wider culture, it is still a foundation of our life together in Christ.
There is sometimes a misperception that Christian unity obliterates social distinctions. Well-meaning Christians today may say “I don’t see color” in regards to racial differences. But that is not the point at all. Paul wants to bring Gentiles into the community with their Gentile identity robustly intact, not as Gentiles who can pass as Jewish, not as “don’t ask don’t tell Gentiles.”
African American theologian Brad Braxton writes, “When Paul says, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male and female," he is not asserting the obliteration of difference, but rather the obliteration of dominance.” Baptism does not erase human differences, but abolishes the dominance of one over the other. In Christ, Jews are not to be dominant over Gentiles; free persons are not to be dominant over slaves; men are not to be dominant over women.[5]
To most of us, this seems self-evident, patently obvious. It seems like a church fight that should have been settled long ago. Unfortunately, it is far from over.
If you google Galatians 3:28, as I did, you will find people vehemently arguing in favor of boundaries between male and female. One stranger on the internet asserted that Paul was discussing salvation, not church office qualifications. Another boldly proclaimed that “this does not abolish gender based roles established by God and redeemed by Christ.”
I would note that the format changes when Paul describes sexual or gender distinctions. He writes there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, but then changes to say no longer male and female. That construction echoes Genesis 1:27, which says that God created human beings, male and female in God’s own image. The baptismal formula is emphasizing the power of the new creation in Christ; it parallels the creation of human beings from the beginning. [6]
In Christ there is no Jew or Greek. Reformed theologian Philip Yancey writes, “In this day when tribalism sparks massacres in Africa, when nations redraw boundaries based on ethnic background, when racism in the United States mocks our nation’s great ideals, when minorities and splinter groups lobby for their rights, I know of no more powerful message of the gospel than this, the message that got Jesus killed. The walls separating us from each other, and from God, have been demolished.[7]
At a time when the culture around us seeks to re-establish the dominance of all the typical categories that entrench power, and to do so in the name of God, we must embody the gospel of Jesus with its full implications: social, economic, political and personal.
In Christ, there is neither native born nor undocumented immigrant. In Christ, there is neither white, brown or black. There is neither gay or straight, trans or cisgender. There is neither Israeli or Palestinian, Russian or Ukrainian. In Christ, there is neither billionaire, nor middle class, nor poor. For all are one in Christ. For freedom, Christ has set us free. Let us not submit again to any kind of human constructed dominance. Thanks be to God.
[1] https://www.ntwrightonline.org/who-are-pauls-opponents-that-inspired-galatians/
[2] Richard B. Hays, New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, Volume XI, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000), p, 272
[3] Elizabeth Johnson, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-12-3/commentary-on-galatians-323-29
[4] Richard B. Hays, p. 272
[5] Brad Ronnell Braxton, No Longer Slaves: Galatians and African American Experience, (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2002), p. 108.
[6] Richard B. Hays, p 273
[7] Philip Yancey, What's So Amazing About Grace? Revised and Updated: The Key to Transforming a Broken World, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2023) p. 155