Transcript: Episode 0061
This transcript:
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WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:27.820 Let's get go. 00:27.820 --> 00:39.700 Welcome to the Stone Choir podcast. 00:39.700 --> 00:45.220 I am Corey J. Moeller, and I'm still woe. 00:45.220 --> 00:50.220 On today's Stone Choir, we're going to be discussing Galatians 328. 00:50.220 --> 00:53.900 This is a passage that has come up many times in past episodes. 00:53.900 --> 00:59.820 It's an episode that we've discussed for a while doing separately as its own thing. 00:59.820 --> 01:03.140 It's a passage that comes up all the time in church life. 01:03.140 --> 01:09.260 You frequently hear pastors and others pointing to Galatians 328 as a very important passage 01:09.260 --> 01:11.300 for one thing or another. 01:11.300 --> 01:18.100 The problem is that virtually every time this verse comes up today, it is for evil purposes. 01:18.100 --> 01:23.340 So today we are going to be exegeting very closely the entirety of this verse. 01:23.340 --> 01:26.660 It's 26 words in most English translations. 01:26.660 --> 01:28.980 It's 23 words in Greek. 01:28.980 --> 01:30.180 They basically mean the same thing. 01:30.180 --> 01:33.580 We'll give you a transliteration in a minute of the Greek and the English. 01:33.580 --> 01:37.620 There's one error that's common in almost all the translations today that goes back 01:37.620 --> 01:43.700 to the King James that we will be discussing at some length, but it's not an error that 01:43.700 --> 01:50.460 used to matter because it didn't change what the verse meant until these new attacks occurred. 01:50.580 --> 01:55.620 We've talked a lot in past episodes about how the new modern global religion has new 01:55.620 --> 01:56.620 doctrines. 01:56.620 --> 02:04.580 It has new tenets of new faith, and one of them is the inversion of Galatians 328. 02:04.580 --> 02:09.900 So today we're going to be continuing half a dozen past episodes where we've brought 02:09.900 --> 02:13.300 this up in the episode on Amongst the Ashes. 02:13.300 --> 02:18.140 We talked about the fact that Black Lives Matter on their original website, part of 02:18.140 --> 02:23.980 their manifesto, basically went line by line through, or word by word, through Galatians 02:23.980 --> 02:29.180 328 and inverted it, which is pretty weird when you're talking about something that was 02:29.180 --> 02:34.580 ostensibly a group that was supposed to be anti-racist and just make sure the Black people 02:34.580 --> 02:35.860 didn't get beaten up by cops. 02:35.860 --> 02:40.740 That was sort of how it was sold, and that sounded pretty good to some people. 02:40.740 --> 02:42.700 So why would they attack Galatians 328? 02:42.700 --> 02:44.340 We talked about that in that episode. 02:44.340 --> 02:47.900 We're going to rehash a bit of that today because it's really important. 02:47.900 --> 02:53.660 In three of the human race episodes, one on foundational matters on scripture and soteriology 02:53.660 --> 03:01.020 and on racism, in different contexts we discussed how this passage is used to falsely bind 03:01.020 --> 03:04.940 consciences and things that are not found in scripture. 03:04.940 --> 03:09.340 On the episode on women's scripture and ontology, the same thing, saying that sexes don't exist 03:09.340 --> 03:13.100 because of Jesus, somehow that makes sense. 03:13.100 --> 03:16.980 If you paid attention two weeks ago to the Gnosticism episode, it will sound very much 03:17.060 --> 03:20.100 like the Gnostic heresy because that's exactly what's going on. 03:20.100 --> 03:25.540 I want to reiterate, as we said in that episode, when we call something Gnostic, this is not 03:25.540 --> 03:27.500 the generic internet. 03:27.500 --> 03:30.180 I don't like it, so I'm going to call it the G word. 03:30.180 --> 03:33.580 There are a lot of people online that have just latched onto that and say, well, it's 03:33.580 --> 03:34.580 Gnostic. 03:34.580 --> 03:35.580 We're not doing that. 03:35.580 --> 03:39.500 I'm conscious of the fact that it's become a meme, and it's unfortunate because there 03:39.500 --> 03:44.940 is actually a portion of the first and second century Gnostic heresy that's come roaring 03:44.940 --> 03:47.900 back today. 03:47.900 --> 03:53.740 When we deal with this passage today, it's in light of the things we said two weeks ago. 03:53.740 --> 03:58.540 Remember Gnosticism, one of its core tenets, was denial of the flesh, saying that the flesh 03:58.540 --> 04:01.220 is not real or it's wicked. 04:01.220 --> 04:02.580 It's not really us. 04:02.580 --> 04:03.580 We're spiritual. 04:03.580 --> 04:07.180 That is the higher realm, and all this fleshly stuff is evil. 04:07.180 --> 04:08.180 It's wrong. 04:08.180 --> 04:09.180 It's not us. 04:09.180 --> 04:10.180 It's incidental. 04:10.180 --> 04:11.680 It's accidental. 04:11.680 --> 04:12.680 That's a heresy. 04:12.680 --> 04:14.100 That is an anti-Christian heresy. 04:14.100 --> 04:19.980 It's an anti-creation heresy, which makes it an anti-creator heresy. 04:19.980 --> 04:24.820 In the episode we dealt with, the fact that these things are going on in the church today, 04:24.820 --> 04:30.020 and then in last week's episode, we established the same thing that Paul is establishing as 04:30.020 --> 04:34.140 he's writing this letter to the Galatians, which is that you people are falling away. 04:34.140 --> 04:36.940 I've taught you the truth, and now you're believing lies. 04:36.940 --> 04:39.020 Where did these lies come from? 04:39.020 --> 04:43.820 So we'll explain how the fact that Paul would have these concerns, that God would have these 04:43.820 --> 04:48.380 concerns in Galatia, should give us pause today. 04:48.380 --> 04:49.900 We're no better than them. 04:49.900 --> 04:51.980 Paul didn't plant our churches. 04:51.980 --> 04:55.540 Paul, through the Holy Spirit, has given us our doctrine. 04:55.540 --> 05:01.140 He's given us the words that we hold to, but he certainly was going to do a better job 05:01.140 --> 05:03.980 planting his church than any of our churches. 05:03.980 --> 05:05.540 I think that's fair to say. 05:05.540 --> 05:09.780 Now, insofar as a human is going and doing something, that's true because he was an apostle 05:09.780 --> 05:11.180 of Christ. 05:11.180 --> 05:16.020 Insofar as God's word is taught, there's always the possibility for any church to be 05:16.020 --> 05:20.780 completely faithful to God's word, insofar as it believes what Scripture says. 05:20.780 --> 05:21.780 But that's the problem. 05:21.780 --> 05:25.480 Do you believe what God has told you, or do you believe lies that you're bringing in 05:25.480 --> 05:27.140 from elsewhere? 05:27.140 --> 05:29.900 Same problem that they had in Galatia is a problem we have today. 05:29.900 --> 05:34.700 We talked about in last week's episode that this is the modern fight. 05:34.700 --> 05:38.940 It's a fight against not only ancient heresies, but against the unbelief that's inherently 05:38.940 --> 05:41.340 in all of our hearts. 05:41.340 --> 05:46.860 Last episode that we've previously referenced significantly, Galatians 3.28, was in Hebrew's 05:46.860 --> 05:51.140 Israelites and Jews, where we talked about the Talmudic prayer, and how one of their 05:51.140 --> 05:57.740 prayers is directly condemned by Galatians 3.28, that what the Jews pray to this day 05:57.740 --> 06:02.940 is an inversion of what God says here, and why that's significant. 06:02.940 --> 06:08.140 Just to give some historical context, Paul and Barnabas' first missionary journey in 06:08.140 --> 06:12.180 about AD 47 and 48 went into Galatia. 06:12.180 --> 06:14.700 If you don't know, Galatia is an Asia Minor. 06:14.700 --> 06:18.460 It's north of Jerusalem by quite a bit, north of Judea. 06:18.460 --> 06:25.060 It's in modern-day Turkey, kind of centered probably around the modern city of Ankara. 06:25.060 --> 06:30.180 The problem with us hearing that today is you think, oh, Paul went to the Turks, and 06:30.180 --> 06:31.540 you know what a Turk looks like. 06:31.540 --> 06:36.060 You know something about their language and a little bit about their culture, their Muslim 06:36.100 --> 06:41.020 now, that they're brown and swarthy, and that's what they are. 06:41.020 --> 06:46.580 Okay, what you don't know if you don't pay any attention to the historical context is 06:46.580 --> 06:49.140 that that's not what they were then. 06:49.140 --> 06:55.460 The people to whom Paul took his first missionary journey in Galatia were Celts. 06:55.460 --> 07:01.260 Celts, the same people that are really only extant today in Ireland, in a bits and few 07:01.260 --> 07:02.260 other places. 07:02.460 --> 07:06.780 Basically, when you think Irish, you think Celts, that's who lived here. 07:06.780 --> 07:10.460 Galatia in modern-day Turkey was Celtic. 07:10.460 --> 07:12.060 It was not Arab. 07:12.060 --> 07:14.460 It was not Shemite. 07:14.460 --> 07:21.100 It was Japhethite, and incidentally, the same is true of much, if not all of the Mediterranean. 07:21.100 --> 07:28.260 For example, King Tut, a couple thousand years before, his DNA was Irish, it's Celtic. 07:28.260 --> 07:31.900 He had red hair and blue eyes, and he wasn't the only one. 07:31.940 --> 07:37.500 The pharaohs, in many cases, they had Japhethitic DNA. 07:37.500 --> 07:43.340 They're also, I believe, Shemitic in ancestry, but there's inbreeding, this happens. 07:43.340 --> 07:47.660 The problem is that today when we think, oh, I know what an Egyptian looks like, I know 07:47.660 --> 07:52.740 what a Greek looks like, I know what a Turk looks like, it doesn't apply. 07:52.740 --> 07:57.140 2,000 years ago, many of those people looked different, and it's particularly true of where 07:57.140 --> 07:59.900 Paul was taking his missionary journeys. 07:59.900 --> 08:02.020 When he went to these people, they were Celts. 08:02.020 --> 08:05.140 They had light eyes, light skin, light hair. 08:05.140 --> 08:06.860 They were European. 08:06.860 --> 08:13.540 Now, this only matters because of the very first couplet in Galatians 328. 08:13.540 --> 08:16.420 I'm going to read the whole thing from the ESV. 08:16.420 --> 08:21.100 It's similar in most of the other translations, and I'm also going to give the transliteration 08:21.100 --> 08:24.060 from Greek so you can see that they're the same thing. 08:24.060 --> 08:29.140 In English, it says, there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, 08:29.140 --> 08:34.740 there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 08:34.740 --> 08:41.540 And in the transliteration from the 23 words in Greek, neither there is Jew nor Greek, 08:41.540 --> 08:48.740 neither there is slave nor free, neither there is male and female, for you one are in Christ 08:48.740 --> 08:49.740 Jesus. 08:49.740 --> 08:56.420 We'll get into some of the details there because there's one word that's mistranslated 08:56.700 --> 09:02.140 from the Greek in the majority of the modern English and other translations and other languages, 09:02.140 --> 09:04.900 going back to the King James, so it's not just a modern issue. 09:04.900 --> 09:09.180 There's just a sloppiness, and the sloppiness didn't use to matter. 09:09.180 --> 09:15.020 It didn't really significantly change the text, but the modern attacks do make that 09:15.020 --> 09:18.220 change matter, so we'll talk about that in a bit. 09:18.220 --> 09:22.140 I give that text now because the first thing it says is there's neither Jew nor Greek. 09:22.420 --> 09:27.020 Well, when Paul was speaking to the Galatians, there were almost no Jews there. 09:27.020 --> 09:30.140 They weren't Greek either, they were Celts. 09:30.140 --> 09:31.660 They were speaking Greek. 09:31.660 --> 09:34.300 They were part of the empire of the West. 09:34.300 --> 09:37.620 It was first the Greeks and then the Romans. 09:37.620 --> 09:43.260 Their empires were huge, so they were conquering and ruling these lands. 09:43.260 --> 09:49.740 When Paul says Jew nor Greek, he's drawing a distinction that matters, and today we're 09:49.740 --> 09:51.540 told it matters because of race. 09:51.540 --> 09:57.740 It meant something completely different at the time, because when you look at the dispute 09:57.740 --> 10:04.060 in Galatians, the actual problem that Paul was trying to solve by writing this to them 10:04.060 --> 10:06.340 was Judaizers. 10:06.340 --> 10:11.060 The Judaizing heresy had emerged in the church that he had just planted within just a couple 10:11.060 --> 10:12.420 of years. 10:12.420 --> 10:14.300 We talked about that three weeks ago. 10:14.300 --> 10:19.340 There were those who came along from the so-called circumcision party who said, you guys, okay, 10:19.340 --> 10:20.860 you're Christian, now that's great. 10:20.860 --> 10:23.740 You all have to be circumcised, you have to live as Jews. 10:23.740 --> 10:27.380 You have to follow the Mosaic law. 10:27.380 --> 10:31.660 Paul's writing to the Galatians because he's not only horrified, but he's pissed. 10:31.660 --> 10:33.380 He is angry. 10:33.380 --> 10:39.020 I think the fourth chapter, he actually says, in effect, I don't know who it is among you 10:39.020 --> 10:43.180 that is telling you to be circumcised, but he should emasculate himself. 10:43.180 --> 10:45.060 He should castrate himself. 10:45.060 --> 10:46.420 He should chop it all off. 10:46.540 --> 10:50.380 He's saying, this guy's telling you to take off your foreskin, you tell him to take off 10:50.380 --> 10:51.380 the whole thing. 10:51.380 --> 10:52.380 He was angry. 10:52.380 --> 10:58.100 God was angry that these Judaizers had shown up in a church that Paul had just planted, 10:58.100 --> 11:02.100 and these were Christians, and the first words in chapter three that we're going to 11:02.100 --> 11:08.500 read in its entirety in just a minute are, oh, foolish Galatians, who bewitched you? 11:08.500 --> 11:12.580 I highlight this before we read the whole thing because that is a warning to us, too, 11:12.580 --> 11:16.060 as the warning from last week on our apostasy. 11:16.060 --> 11:20.420 We have this nonsense view in our heads that we are somehow immunized from falling into 11:20.420 --> 11:25.620 error because we say we're Christian, we say we believe the Bible, we have a confessional 11:25.620 --> 11:31.420 document in whatever our church body is, and we definitely really hold to that. 11:31.420 --> 11:34.820 Given all those things, how could we possibly be bewitched? 11:34.820 --> 11:39.200 Well, Paul came to these people, and he told them everything, and as soon as he left, someone 11:39.200 --> 11:43.860 snuck in and gave them a different gospel, and they ate it up, they loved it, and they 11:43.860 --> 11:45.420 switched sides. 11:45.420 --> 11:48.820 They were abandoning the Christian faith right behind his back. 11:48.820 --> 11:53.180 When he follows up with the church in Galatia, it's not to congratulate them on their perseverance 11:53.180 --> 11:57.260 in the faith, it's to say, oh, foolish Galatians, who bewitched you? 11:57.260 --> 12:02.500 Who is it among you that has spread this Judaizing heresy that was tearing apart their faith? 12:02.500 --> 12:07.220 It was about the faith that all of this hinges. 12:07.220 --> 12:13.820 When we look at the context of Galatians and you look at everything that's being said, 12:13.820 --> 12:17.660 the particular things that are said today about this one verse become just completely 12:17.660 --> 12:18.660 nonsensical. 12:18.660 --> 12:23.220 They're simultaneously retarded and just absolutely demonic lies. 12:23.220 --> 12:27.780 There's no possibility for anyone who reads Galatians to come to the conclusions that 12:27.780 --> 12:32.820 pastors will try to get you to reach when they just give you the 26 words in English. 12:32.820 --> 12:37.380 Yesterday, just for the sake of curiosity, and so I can make the point today as we're 12:37.380 --> 12:42.220 recording, I read Galatians from start to finish in one sitting, it took me eight and 12:42.220 --> 12:43.220 a half minutes. 12:43.300 --> 12:46.820 I'm a fast average reader, not a speed reader by any stretch. 12:46.820 --> 12:50.340 I would imagine that most of the people listening could comfortably do it in 10 minutes or 12:50.340 --> 12:51.340 so. 12:51.340 --> 12:56.340 I highlight this to say that we're so lazy about saying, oh, I'm just going to read a 12:56.340 --> 12:59.780 verse or I'm going to read part of a verse, or maybe I'll read a chapter, but man, that's 12:59.780 --> 13:00.780 a commitment. 13:00.780 --> 13:06.140 Well, it's typical that the intros to Stone Choir run about 15 minutes before we even 13:06.140 --> 13:08.580 really get into the meat of the subject. 13:08.580 --> 13:13.060 If you have two hours to listen to a Stone Choir episode once a week, you have 10 minutes 13:13.060 --> 13:15.700 to read a book of the Bible. 13:15.700 --> 13:22.860 Just like last week, we said, go read 2 Kings 17-23, probably about the same amount of time 13:22.860 --> 13:23.860 if you did that. 13:23.860 --> 13:27.620 Galatians is going to probably take you about the same amount of time. 13:27.620 --> 13:30.580 Please, after this episode, go read Galatians. 13:30.580 --> 13:33.540 You'll take no more than 15 minutes of your life. 13:33.540 --> 13:36.180 It's God's word that he put there for your benefit. 13:36.180 --> 13:40.700 I say this specifically because when you do that and then you look at the arguments that 13:40.700 --> 13:44.460 are made about Galatians 3-28, they're just garbage. 13:44.460 --> 13:49.620 They're completely insane in addition to being false doctrine, in addition to being evil. 13:49.620 --> 13:50.740 They're just absurd. 13:50.740 --> 13:55.900 No natural reading of the text would arrive at the conclusions that are being shoehorned 13:55.900 --> 13:57.060 into it. 13:57.060 --> 14:03.660 It's only the proof texting of this verse that makes it possible for this deception to occur. 14:03.660 --> 14:09.220 By the end of this episode, what we're going to attempt to do is draw a moat around the 14:09.220 --> 14:11.660 entirety of Galatians 3-28. 14:11.660 --> 14:16.660 We're going to draw a bright line around everything that's permissible for anyone to say about 14:16.660 --> 14:18.060 this verse. 14:18.060 --> 14:23.940 We are going to extend as a challenge of defiance against any teacher who would say anything 14:23.940 --> 14:26.660 differently than we say here. 14:26.660 --> 14:30.780 We are saying to you that they are outside of the Christian faith in whatever they say 14:30.780 --> 14:32.900 that's contrary to what we say here today. 14:32.900 --> 14:37.300 There's a very limited scope of what can be said about this verse. 14:37.380 --> 14:41.220 Anyone who says anything different is going to make one or more of the errors that we're 14:41.220 --> 14:43.420 going to lay out today. 14:43.420 --> 14:44.980 There are a lot of errors that are in the wind. 14:44.980 --> 14:50.500 We're going to talk about a few of them, but principally this is another tool giving episode. 14:50.500 --> 14:54.220 We're going to give you the tools to understand, here's what this means. 14:54.220 --> 14:59.660 Anytime you hear anyone for the rest of your like bring up Galatians 3-28, your ears should 14:59.660 --> 15:04.700 perk up and you should start listening for these errors because in virtually every case, 15:04.700 --> 15:06.340 you're going to find them. 15:06.380 --> 15:12.340 You need to be aware of that because those errors are going to cause serious problems 15:12.340 --> 15:16.460 spiritually for anyone who believes what they say. 15:16.460 --> 15:20.380 The reason I'm going to have an exhaustive list of all the possible errors is that there 15:20.380 --> 15:21.860 are new ones every day. 15:21.860 --> 15:27.260 There are new insane false teachings about this that we can't possibly give you a list 15:27.260 --> 15:28.260 of. 15:28.260 --> 15:29.260 There's always going to be more. 15:29.260 --> 15:33.220 What we can do is say this is literally all that is permissible for anyone to believe 15:33.220 --> 15:34.220 about this verse. 15:34.300 --> 15:37.780 I know it's a bold claim, but we're going to make the case for that today. 15:37.780 --> 15:39.660 This is a simple verse. 15:39.660 --> 15:42.140 As we're doing this episode, we're not proof texting. 15:42.140 --> 15:43.620 We're not trying to pluck this out of context. 15:43.620 --> 15:49.020 We're going to put it in its context so that you understand clearly what is and is not 15:49.020 --> 15:51.020 being said here. 15:51.020 --> 15:55.060 From now on, for the rest of your life, whenever Galatians 3-28 comes up, whenever you hear 15:55.060 --> 15:59.820 these words on anyone's lips, you're immediately going to know, are they saying what the Bible 15:59.820 --> 16:04.380 says about this, or have they completely ignored the context, have they flipped it upside 16:04.380 --> 16:09.300 down and turned it inside out to do something wicked with it. 16:09.300 --> 16:10.300 That's why we're here. 16:10.300 --> 16:16.020 That's why Stonequire exists, because this verse, if this verse were not being maligned 16:16.020 --> 16:19.660 and inverted, this podcast wouldn't exist. 16:19.660 --> 16:24.620 We have done so many episodes where we refer to this because it is the key way in which 16:24.620 --> 16:26.500 Satan is attacking the church today. 16:26.860 --> 16:29.380 This is, again, this is an attack coming from inside the church. 16:29.380 --> 16:34.780 BLM is inverting it in their own words, but in the church, we're seeing inversions that 16:34.780 --> 16:36.060 are far more harmful. 16:36.060 --> 16:41.540 As we go through these today, we want you to be equipped to understand, just like the 16:41.540 --> 16:47.860 heresy episodes on Judaizing and Gnosticism, there's an entire set of heresies surrounding 16:47.860 --> 16:56.260 Galatians 3-28 that, incidentally, all revolve around Judaizing and Gnosticism. 16:56.260 --> 17:01.380 As promised, we will start off by reading Galatians 3, so that you have at least the 17:01.380 --> 17:02.380 entire chapter. 17:02.380 --> 17:09.260 But again, to echo woe, you should go and read the entirety of the letter to the Galatians 17:09.260 --> 17:12.700 at some point this week. 17:12.700 --> 17:14.140 And so Galatians 3. 17:14.140 --> 17:18.100 O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? 17:18.100 --> 17:23.300 It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. 17:23.300 --> 17:25.340 Let me ask you only this. 17:25.340 --> 17:29.760 Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law, or by hearing with faith? 17:29.760 --> 17:35.920 Are you so foolish, having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? 17:35.920 --> 17:40.420 Did you suffer so many things in vain, if indeed it was in vain? 17:40.420 --> 17:45.020 Does he who supplies the Spirit to you, and works miracles among you do so by works of 17:45.020 --> 17:48.160 the law, or by hearing with faith? 17:48.160 --> 17:53.260 Just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. 17:53.260 --> 17:58.660 So then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham, and the scripture foreseeing 17:58.660 --> 18:04.380 that God would justify the nations by faith, preach the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, 18:04.380 --> 18:07.820 In you shall all the nations be blessed. 18:07.820 --> 18:14.380 So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. 18:14.380 --> 18:20.580 For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, Cursed be everyone, 18:20.580 --> 18:25.580 who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, and do them. 18:25.580 --> 18:30.740 Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteous shall 18:30.740 --> 18:32.340 live by faith. 18:32.340 --> 18:38.020 But the law is not of faith, rather, the one who does them shall live by them. 18:38.020 --> 18:43.740 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, 18:43.740 --> 18:46.620 Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree. 18:46.620 --> 18:51.740 So that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the nations, so that 18:51.740 --> 18:55.500 we might receive the promised spirit through faith. 18:55.500 --> 19:00.740 To give a human example, brothers, even with a man made covenant, no one annules it or 19:00.740 --> 19:03.780 adds to it once it has been ratified. 19:03.780 --> 19:07.180 Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. 19:07.180 --> 19:13.220 It does not say, and to offsprings, referring to many, but referring to one, and to your 19:13.220 --> 19:16.280 offspring, who is Christ. 19:16.280 --> 19:22.420 This is what I mean, the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant 19:22.420 --> 19:27.180 previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. 19:27.180 --> 19:32.460 For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise, but God gave it 19:32.460 --> 19:34.860 to Abraham by a promise. 19:34.860 --> 19:36.440 Why then the law? 19:36.440 --> 19:40.980 It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise 19:40.980 --> 19:46.060 had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. 19:46.060 --> 19:50.600 Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one. 19:50.600 --> 19:54.120 Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? 19:54.120 --> 19:58.880 Certainly not, for if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would 19:58.880 --> 20:04.520 indeed be by the law, but the scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise 20:04.520 --> 20:09.280 by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. 20:09.280 --> 20:14.120 Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming 20:14.140 --> 20:16.060 faith would be revealed. 20:16.060 --> 20:21.220 So then the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified 20:21.220 --> 20:22.620 by faith. 20:22.620 --> 20:27.500 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you 20:27.500 --> 20:30.540 are all sons of God through faith. 20:30.540 --> 20:34.900 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 20:34.900 --> 20:40.940 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, 20:40.940 --> 20:43.660 for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 20:43.660 --> 20:51.040 And if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise. 20:51.040 --> 20:56.200 I would just like to start off by pointing out a quick grammar point for those who may 20:56.200 --> 21:01.920 have been listening particularly closely to what was literal reading of the Greek at the 21:01.920 --> 21:04.680 beginning of this episode. 21:04.680 --> 21:09.120 Different languages handle negation in different ways. 21:09.120 --> 21:13.240 Many languages do it in a way that sounds unnatural to the English here, it's something 21:13.260 --> 21:15.540 that we don't really have. 21:15.540 --> 21:19.300 German for instance has something similar. 21:19.300 --> 21:25.380 And so for instance, if I were to say there is beer here, I'll butcher the word order 21:25.380 --> 21:28.860 in German just to make it the exact same so it's easier to understand for an English 21:28.860 --> 21:29.860 speaker. 21:29.860 --> 21:31.820 Es gibt beer here. 21:31.820 --> 21:35.260 Now the negation of that would be there is no beer here. 21:35.260 --> 21:41.300 In English we use no, so we sort of drop that article we use no as our negation. 21:41.360 --> 21:47.840 And then is es gibt kind beer here, which would be the equivalent of if we had a negative 21:47.840 --> 21:55.480 form of the article a or an, so not a Greek is closer to that latter bit. 21:55.480 --> 22:00.640 And so what you hear there in the literal reading is oak and then any that the verb 22:00.640 --> 22:06.040 for is that oak is a negative prefix. 22:06.040 --> 22:10.280 And what that does is it negates the following verb. 22:10.280 --> 22:17.900 And so in English when we translate it, that's why we have neither nor, that nor being uda. 22:17.900 --> 22:22.420 And so when you hear the literal translation of the Greek, that's why it sounds unwieldy 22:22.420 --> 22:24.740 to an English speaker. 22:24.740 --> 22:28.660 But the other thing that I wanted to pull out here and why it's important to understand 22:28.660 --> 22:35.500 or pay attention to the grammar with the particular nuance is that you see that there are three 22:35.500 --> 22:43.300 couplets, neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, not male and female. 22:43.300 --> 22:46.760 Now it is the same underlying word there for neither and not. 22:46.760 --> 22:50.800 It is translated differently within the scope of the term, so the translation is fine, but 22:50.800 --> 22:54.880 it is translated differently in order to make it sound like English. 22:54.880 --> 22:58.240 Some very literal translations don't do that and it sounds very strange to an English 22:58.240 --> 23:00.180 year. 23:00.180 --> 23:05.020 But the important part to notice there is that middle word because the middle word is 23:05.020 --> 23:08.260 in fact different, the connecting word between the terms. 23:08.260 --> 23:15.860 So it is Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, not male and female, because the Greek word there 23:15.860 --> 23:22.000 is chi, the word for and in the pairing of the two sexes. 23:22.000 --> 23:23.980 This is an important distinction. 23:23.980 --> 23:28.380 We'll get into it more later in the episode, but it's an important distinction between 23:28.380 --> 23:33.220 the first two couplets and the third. 23:33.220 --> 23:38.200 There's a difference there in what is underlying this in the nature of these things. 23:38.200 --> 23:43.560 So the first one is ontological, immutable and inherent. 23:43.560 --> 23:45.340 It is dealing with race. 23:45.340 --> 23:52.100 The second is ontological, indirectly so, whereas the first is directly so, but indirectly 23:52.100 --> 23:57.700 ontological because the nature and the status as slave or free flows from things that are 23:58.700 --> 24:04.180 in many cases, not always of course, and that's also important, but indirectly ontological 24:04.180 --> 24:11.820 mutable because this can be changed and inheritable, so not inherent, whereas we get back to the 24:11.820 --> 24:17.620 same sort of nature as the first couplet with the third because it is directly ontological. 24:17.620 --> 24:20.580 The difference between the sexes is an ontological difference. 24:20.580 --> 24:27.540 It is a difference in being, it's a difference in nature and it is indeed immutable and inherent. 24:27.540 --> 24:31.140 And yes, you could say it is heritable, but that is a different thing. 24:31.140 --> 24:36.140 You're talking about biology then, which is involved here, but it's not the entirety 24:36.140 --> 24:39.100 of what is in view. 24:39.100 --> 24:45.380 So that gives you some of the grammatical structure, some of the underlying workings of this, the 24:45.380 --> 24:51.060 underpinnings in order to build a foundation on which to place what we're going to review 24:51.060 --> 24:56.540 in this episode about the nature of this verse and why it is so important and why Satan is 24:56.540 --> 24:58.620 attacking it. 24:58.620 --> 25:04.040 There are many parallel or related verses for this I have about 14 or 15 of them at this 25:04.040 --> 25:08.780 point that I've collected for, I'll probably eventually write something longer on this 25:08.780 --> 25:14.040 particular verse, this subject, but this is the key one. 25:14.040 --> 25:20.020 And one of the ways you can tell this is the key verse is this is the one that's attacked. 25:20.020 --> 25:22.620 Satan is going to attack the thing he wants to destroy. 25:22.620 --> 25:26.580 Now he may get to it in a roundabout fashion at times and he's done that in this case. 25:26.580 --> 25:32.580 He's attacked each and every one of these couplets separately, building up to a direct 25:32.580 --> 25:37.980 attack on this verse because it undermines Christendom, it undermines creation, it undermines 25:37.980 --> 25:39.500 everything. 25:39.500 --> 25:45.060 But this is the important verse because this is the one that's being attacked. 25:45.060 --> 25:46.900 And so this is the one that we need to defend. 25:46.900 --> 25:51.260 We may touch on some of the other verses as well because they do add some nuance. 25:51.260 --> 25:53.580 They're interesting, at the very least. 25:53.580 --> 25:58.380 But by and large, we are going to focus on that's why it's the title of this episode 25:58.380 --> 26:04.540 and why it is the focus of this episode, Galatians 3 28, because it is the core of this entire 26:04.540 --> 26:06.060 matter. 26:06.060 --> 26:11.380 Within these three couplets lies what you need not only to defend the church and God's 26:11.380 --> 26:17.260 creation, but what Satan, if he can subvert them, needs in order to destroy both of those 26:17.260 --> 26:18.820 things. 26:18.820 --> 26:24.380 And that is why you see it so frequently in the mouth of false teachers and false pastors 26:24.380 --> 26:31.660 because they are serving their master by teaching falsely, by ice-egeting as opposed to exegeting. 26:31.660 --> 26:37.500 Ice-egeting is to falsely interpret by ice-egeting this particular passage. 26:37.500 --> 26:41.700 So as I mentioned at the outset, Paul is writing to Galatia. 26:41.700 --> 26:47.220 He's writing to Celts who live in a different cultural context. 26:47.220 --> 26:48.620 But they're Christians now. 26:48.620 --> 26:50.500 They've been given the gospel. 26:50.500 --> 26:55.740 The Judaizing heresy has emerged among them, and they're being told that they need to 26:55.740 --> 26:56.940 begin circumcising. 26:56.940 --> 27:00.380 That's the full context of all six chapters of Galatians. 27:00.380 --> 27:06.700 I want to read again the 29th verse, the last verse in the third chapter. 27:06.700 --> 27:13.420 And if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise. 27:14.140 --> 27:18.900 Now this helps to explain everything that's going on here. 27:18.900 --> 27:27.100 The concept of Abraham's offspring being the key to salvation was the fundamental belief 27:27.100 --> 27:28.820 of the Pharisees. 27:28.820 --> 27:31.420 It was not the faith imparted to them by God. 27:31.420 --> 27:36.660 It was the pharisaical heresy where they believed that salvation was racial. 27:36.660 --> 27:37.660 That was their belief. 27:37.660 --> 27:41.420 The belief of the Pharisees, of most of the Jews. 27:41.420 --> 27:44.540 In that day, the salvation was racial. 27:44.540 --> 27:48.980 That belief in all that stuff was incidental. 27:48.980 --> 27:54.340 But as long as they had Abraham as their father, and then they held to the mosaic code, they 27:54.340 --> 27:56.140 would be saved. 27:56.140 --> 28:01.260 And so much of the Inc's build in the New Testament is throwing them all under the bus, 28:01.260 --> 28:05.700 saying you lying, brutal vipers, everything you're doing here is false. 28:05.700 --> 28:10.340 And so the first couplet, there is neither Jew nor Greek. 28:10.340 --> 28:17.100 It is about races, but it's specifically in the context of the Abrahamic covenant. 28:17.100 --> 28:21.580 Because again, they believed that because they could call themselves sons of Abraham, 28:21.580 --> 28:24.420 they could say they had a claim on salvation. 28:24.420 --> 28:26.580 And so that was what the Judaizers are doing. 28:26.580 --> 28:30.260 It's what the circumcision party was doing, saying, okay, that's great, you're Christians 28:30.260 --> 28:35.340 now, you got to circumcise yourselves, you have to follow the mosaic covenant. 28:35.340 --> 28:40.060 Which was the opposite of what Paul had just taught them as Christians. 28:40.060 --> 28:43.220 We see this also in Matthew 3. 28:43.220 --> 28:47.140 This is right as Jesus is being baptized. 28:47.140 --> 28:52.300 Listen to what John the Baptist says, but when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees 28:52.300 --> 28:56.980 coming to his baptism, he said to them, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from 28:56.980 --> 29:02.780 the wrath to come, bear fruit in keeping with repentance, and do not presume to say to yourselves, 29:02.780 --> 29:07.740 we have Abraham as our father, for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise 29:07.740 --> 29:09.660 up children for Abraham. 29:09.660 --> 29:12.300 Even now the axe is laid at the root of the trees. 29:12.300 --> 29:17.860 Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 29:17.860 --> 29:22.620 This is entirely keeping with the overall theme of Galatians. 29:22.620 --> 29:25.020 Who is a son of Abraham? 29:25.020 --> 29:30.140 Well, again, it was verse 29 say, if you're a Christ, then your Abraham's offspring 29:30.140 --> 29:32.900 heirs according to the promise. 29:32.900 --> 29:36.340 And the airship is something we're going to get to in the third couplet because why is 29:36.340 --> 29:38.300 he talking about sex? 29:38.300 --> 29:41.900 Why did Paul bring up sex in this context? 29:41.900 --> 29:47.180 When you read Galatians, it's one of the most exhaustive treatments of this subject, but 29:47.180 --> 29:49.940 we also find it in Romans 8. 29:49.940 --> 29:56.500 What scripture makes very clear is that every Christian is a son of God. 29:56.500 --> 29:58.700 That is the term that God uses. 29:58.700 --> 30:03.660 Every woman who's listening, every girl who's listening, you are sons of God according to 30:03.660 --> 30:05.420 the promise. 30:05.420 --> 30:10.140 When Paul says, when God says there is no male and female, that's what he's talking 30:10.140 --> 30:11.140 about. 30:11.140 --> 30:15.380 He's saying that salvation is available to all human beings. 30:15.380 --> 30:18.380 Sex has nothing to do with your salvation. 30:18.380 --> 30:21.020 And by what means does salvation come? 30:21.020 --> 30:24.220 It comes as heirs of God. 30:25.220 --> 30:33.740 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God, for you did not receive the 30:33.740 --> 30:38.140 Spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you've received the Spirit of adoption 30:38.140 --> 30:41.620 as sons by whom we cry, Abba, Father. 30:41.620 --> 30:46.360 The Spirit himself bears witness with our Spirit that we are children of God, and if 30:46.360 --> 30:51.660 children then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with 30:51.660 --> 30:55.700 him in order that we may also be glorified with him. 30:55.700 --> 31:01.340 So repeatedly uses gendered language, and it's not that it's excluding women. 31:01.340 --> 31:04.100 It's not that it's saying, oh, only men are saved. 31:04.100 --> 31:10.780 It's saying that in Christ, when you're saved, you become a son of God so that you may inherit 31:10.780 --> 31:11.780 eternal life. 31:11.780 --> 31:18.660 We are all sons of God and effectively brothers of Christ for the purpose of salvation. 31:18.660 --> 31:23.980 And that's the crux of the entire battle around misapplying Galatians, particularly 31:23.980 --> 31:31.040 verse 328, because every argument that says, well, this is a proof text against race. 31:31.040 --> 31:34.280 This is a proof text against slavery or classes. 31:34.280 --> 31:40.800 This is a proof text against any distinctions among or between the two sexes. 31:40.800 --> 31:46.220 The only way to reach that conclusion is to rob this passage of its sotereological import. 31:46.260 --> 31:49.020 To say this passage isn't about salvation. 31:49.020 --> 31:56.380 When the very passage itself says, for you are all one in Christ Jesus, there's something 31:56.380 --> 31:58.060 we focused on in the past. 31:58.060 --> 31:59.340 We're going to repeat here. 31:59.340 --> 32:03.940 The in Christ Jesus part is what the whole thing hinges upon. 32:03.940 --> 32:07.780 And four is synonymous with because. 32:07.780 --> 32:08.780 Four and because are the same. 32:08.780 --> 32:14.240 They could just as easily say, because you are all one in Christ Jesus. 32:14.240 --> 32:20.680 So in Christ Jesus matters because who's in Christ Jesus is everyone on the planet 32:20.680 --> 32:21.680 in Christ Jesus? 32:21.680 --> 32:25.240 No, almost everyone is outside of Christ Jesus. 32:25.240 --> 32:29.360 Only those who have faith are inside Christ Jesus. 32:29.360 --> 32:31.600 This is talking about saving faith. 32:31.600 --> 32:36.740 Only those who have faith does Galatians 328 apply at all. 32:36.740 --> 32:42.720 So as we said in the racism episode, the notion that somehow the phrase, there is neither 32:42.720 --> 32:48.080 Jew nor Greek, somehow means that races are not real. 32:48.080 --> 32:53.640 Even if that were true, when taken in the context of its sotereological import, it would only 32:53.640 --> 32:54.960 apply to Christians. 32:54.960 --> 32:58.280 It would mean that there are races until you become Christian. 32:58.280 --> 33:02.280 And then once you become Christian, the race dissolves and you cease to be Christian, you're 33:02.280 --> 33:03.960 just a spirit body. 33:03.960 --> 33:06.520 Well, that's Gnosticism. 33:06.520 --> 33:08.740 That is full-born Gnosticism. 33:08.740 --> 33:13.740 We do not change who we are or how God created us. 33:13.740 --> 33:20.580 Because the only way to read Galatians 328 in opposition to races existing is simultaneously 33:20.580 --> 33:22.780 to say that sexes don't exist. 33:22.780 --> 33:26.360 That's the other prong of this battle that we see everywhere today. 33:26.360 --> 33:31.660 It's very common for radical feminists, for some of the most evil people who pretend to 33:31.660 --> 33:34.100 be in the church, but they're wolves. 33:34.100 --> 33:39.220 They will use this as a feminist rallying cry, saying, we're all priests of God. 33:39.220 --> 33:43.980 There's no more distinction of male and female, therefore, there's no such thing as an office 33:43.980 --> 33:49.380 that's specific to a man, because there's no male and female in Christ. 33:49.380 --> 33:54.900 There are really two camps who abuse this passage, those who ignore the in Christ and 33:54.900 --> 33:56.420 those who embrace it. 33:56.420 --> 34:02.900 And so those who ignore it will just focus on there's no races, there are no classes, 34:02.900 --> 34:05.740 there's no sex. 34:05.740 --> 34:12.220 Those who acknowledge that in Christ is present will not do it properly. 34:12.220 --> 34:16.020 They won't do it to glorify God and say, this is about the gospel. 34:16.020 --> 34:20.020 Instead they'll do it to dissolve the church from within, say, okay, well inside the church 34:20.020 --> 34:23.820 there's no male and female, therefore, anyone can be a pastor, anyone can do this, that 34:23.820 --> 34:28.580 or the other thing, because there's no difference whatsoever. 34:28.580 --> 34:32.860 All the other parts in scripture that make clear that that's not true are deliberately 34:32.860 --> 34:36.980 ignored and this is used as a solvent to try to wipe them off the board. 34:36.980 --> 34:39.140 But that's not how God works. 34:39.140 --> 34:42.420 God's word is never set against itself. 34:42.420 --> 34:46.380 A house divided against itself will fall because it's evil. 34:46.380 --> 34:47.540 That's describing hell. 34:47.540 --> 34:49.380 It's describing the devil. 34:49.380 --> 34:51.620 It cannot describe God's things. 34:51.620 --> 34:54.340 All of God's things are a coherent whole. 34:54.460 --> 34:58.980 When we see passages that say things like there is no male and female and then we see 34:58.980 --> 35:03.940 literally everything else in scripture saying the opposite, it's not a conundrum if you 35:03.940 --> 35:09.260 understand the context, which is why as we're beginning, the context of all of Galatians 35:09.260 --> 35:10.460 is salvific. 35:10.460 --> 35:16.900 Again, Paul is addressing the Galatians long way from Judea, a long way from Jerusalem, 35:16.900 --> 35:18.980 long way from most of the Jews. 35:18.980 --> 35:22.580 I don't know how many Jews were there, not many, but there were certainly enough to ban 35:22.580 --> 35:24.820 them to destroy their faith. 35:24.820 --> 35:28.620 We have to tell them, why are you talking about circumcision? 35:28.620 --> 35:32.620 Why do you think that circumcising yourself and living under the law is going to make 35:32.620 --> 35:34.500 you a son of Abraham? 35:34.500 --> 35:37.420 How are you sons of Abraham? 35:37.420 --> 35:43.620 The racial component was a complete denial of the gospel, which is what all of this revolves 35:43.620 --> 35:44.620 around. 35:44.620 --> 35:49.980 See, when men like Cory and myself are called racist and evil and all these things, we're 35:49.980 --> 35:54.020 told that we hate the gospel and we hate other people. 35:54.020 --> 36:00.820 What's actually happening is that the destruction of these passages in service of anti-racism 36:00.820 --> 36:08.300 and anti-feminism and anti-misogyny and anti-slavery, all of those things, when those are drawn 36:08.300 --> 36:13.340 and pointed at the church, the function that they have is to destroy the gospel because 36:13.340 --> 36:17.460 this is a gospel passage, this is a gospel context. 36:17.460 --> 36:19.540 All Galatians is about salvation. 36:19.540 --> 36:23.220 Now it's a rebuke and again, that's crucial. 36:23.220 --> 36:27.180 A church that Paul planted four or five years later, they've gone off the rails. 36:27.180 --> 36:30.020 Oh, foolish Galatians, who bewitched you? 36:30.020 --> 36:34.380 He's looking at them in just disbelief and anger and he actually says, I wish that I 36:34.380 --> 36:39.020 were their face to face so I could use a different tone, but he had to make sure that they understood 36:39.020 --> 36:44.340 how important it was that the Judaizing heresies that they were embracing were endangering 36:44.340 --> 36:45.980 their salvation. 36:45.980 --> 36:51.220 Not a small matter, not a minor detail, not flipping a nor to an end. 36:51.220 --> 36:55.580 They were actually denying the faith by saying that they had to live as Jews because somebody 36:55.580 --> 36:58.060 came along and told them that. 36:58.060 --> 37:02.500 They're always going to be false teachers in the church, always. 37:02.500 --> 37:06.900 Every single one of our churches has false teachers inside it and has a line of them 37:06.900 --> 37:08.180 trying to get in. 37:08.180 --> 37:09.180 Why? 37:09.180 --> 37:12.260 Because that's where the Christians are, it's where the sheep are. 37:12.260 --> 37:15.620 Satan doesn't need to worry about the animals that are outside the sheepfold. 37:15.660 --> 37:16.820 He's already got them. 37:16.820 --> 37:18.140 He's devoured them. 37:18.140 --> 37:21.500 It's inside the sheepfold that the sheep exist. 37:21.500 --> 37:27.460 So when these attacks come and they're done in the name of all the good modern religion 37:27.460 --> 37:33.180 things, just keep in mind what they're fundamentally doing when they attack this passage by inverting 37:33.180 --> 37:36.380 it, is they're denying how we're saved. 37:36.380 --> 37:41.140 They're denying how we are saved and part of that is denying how we are created. 37:41.140 --> 37:43.100 Again, this is all Gnostic. 37:43.100 --> 37:49.420 The only way to deny there is Jew or Greek in reality is to become Gnostic to say the 37:49.420 --> 37:50.420 flesh is nothing. 37:50.420 --> 37:51.420 This is evil. 37:51.420 --> 37:52.420 This will all fall away. 37:52.420 --> 37:58.500 In the racist mepsode we treated the fact that when you look at passages like Acts 17-26 37:58.500 --> 38:03.700 and Revelation 7-9 where it talks about the different nations with their boundaries and 38:03.700 --> 38:08.780 it shows the distinct races in heaven before the throne of God, these are natural. 38:08.780 --> 38:09.780 These are created. 38:09.780 --> 38:10.780 They're things that God made. 38:10.780 --> 38:12.580 They're how God made us. 38:12.580 --> 38:14.460 God made me English and German. 38:14.460 --> 38:18.300 I am broadly Northwestern European and nothing else. 38:18.300 --> 38:19.300 Do I like that? 38:19.300 --> 38:20.300 Sure. 38:20.300 --> 38:21.300 Cool. 38:21.300 --> 38:22.300 I'm good at it. 38:22.300 --> 38:25.260 Do I think that if someone is Japanese or Ugandan or whatever that they're worse than 38:25.260 --> 38:26.700 me or less than me? 38:26.700 --> 38:27.700 No. 38:27.700 --> 38:28.700 God died for them. 38:28.700 --> 38:30.860 Do He's given them gifts that I may lack? 38:30.860 --> 38:34.940 But I am proud of what I am and I'm happy with what I am because it's God's gift to 38:34.940 --> 38:35.940 me. 38:35.940 --> 38:39.460 Talking in the past about the fact that I'm average in height, do I like to be taller? 38:39.460 --> 38:40.460 Sure. 38:40.460 --> 38:42.020 Am I going to complain about it because they're upsides? 38:42.020 --> 38:43.220 I like being me. 38:43.220 --> 38:44.420 I know how to be me. 38:44.420 --> 38:47.580 I wouldn't know how to be anyone else and I don't have to worry about because I have 38:47.580 --> 38:51.860 been given one life by God and it's a particular life. 38:51.860 --> 38:55.060 I have a genealogy that goes back to Noah and back to Adam. 38:55.060 --> 38:59.260 I can go more than some people but I don't know all the details and I don't care. 38:59.260 --> 39:04.140 How God made me is the same way that He made each of you. 39:04.140 --> 39:10.540 We all have a uniqueness in how we have been winnowed down through time into the particular 39:10.980 --> 39:12.580 humans that we are. 39:12.580 --> 39:15.900 That is to God's glory that there's so much diversity and variety. 39:15.900 --> 39:16.900 It's amazing. 39:16.900 --> 39:17.900 It's incredible. 39:17.900 --> 39:20.860 Different people have different gifts. 39:20.860 --> 39:26.900 The attack on anti-racism, the attack on the existence of race is a denial of the creator 39:26.900 --> 39:28.660 to say, that's garbage. 39:28.660 --> 39:30.780 There's neither Jew nor Greek. 39:30.780 --> 39:35.100 If you understand what Paul was talking about and to whom he was speaking, the reason he 39:35.100 --> 39:40.820 said Jew was that he was dealing with a Judaizing heresy among people who weren't Jews. 39:40.820 --> 39:42.740 He's like, what does it matter? 39:42.740 --> 39:44.860 You're Celts. 39:44.860 --> 39:49.180 This verse could just as easily say, there is neither Jew nor Irish. 39:49.180 --> 39:52.620 It would make just as much sense, it would be just as true. 39:52.620 --> 39:55.580 More directly applicable to those people in that day. 39:55.580 --> 39:58.900 The Irish by that name didn't exist, they were Celts. 39:58.900 --> 40:00.580 There's neither Jew nor Celts. 40:00.580 --> 40:02.420 That is exactly what it is saying here. 40:02.420 --> 40:04.580 It was particular to that place. 40:04.580 --> 40:09.500 In the Jew part, it was only highlighting the Abrahamic promise and covenant because 40:09.500 --> 40:11.500 they were denying it. 40:11.500 --> 40:16.340 They were denying the true nature of what it means to be a child of Abraham. 40:16.340 --> 40:21.060 John the Baptist explained it, do not presume to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our 40:21.060 --> 40:25.900 Father for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. 40:25.900 --> 40:27.540 This passage says the same thing. 40:27.540 --> 40:31.820 We are made children of Abraham because we have the faith of Abraham. 40:31.820 --> 40:34.100 That is our gift from God. 40:34.100 --> 40:37.540 We become sons of Abraham by becoming sons of God. 40:37.540 --> 40:41.300 It's synonymous and therefore it's not racial. 40:41.300 --> 40:46.500 The first couplet dealing with race is specifically denying that race saves. 40:46.500 --> 40:47.500 We don't think that. 40:47.500 --> 40:48.700 We think the opposite. 40:48.700 --> 40:51.420 There are heresies like Christian identity that believe that. 40:51.420 --> 40:55.940 They think that non-whites, non-Europeans are not human and cannot be saved. 40:55.940 --> 40:57.380 That is blasphemous. 40:57.380 --> 40:59.180 Those people are all going to hell. 40:59.180 --> 41:03.980 That is a wicked and perverted attack on the Christian faith. 41:03.980 --> 41:08.660 We think nothing of the sort because scripture says nothing of the sort. 41:08.660 --> 41:10.760 But it doesn't mean that race doesn't exist. 41:10.760 --> 41:15.260 It boggles my mind that people can't hold two separate simple things in their head. 41:15.260 --> 41:20.900 It can simultaneously be true that your race doesn't save you and that your race still 41:20.900 --> 41:22.060 exists. 41:22.060 --> 41:23.660 How is this hard? 41:23.660 --> 41:24.700 It shouldn't be hard. 41:24.700 --> 41:25.700 It's not. 41:25.700 --> 41:26.700 It's not. 41:26.700 --> 41:27.700 It's a simple thing. 41:27.700 --> 41:29.420 A five-year-old can understand it. 41:29.420 --> 41:33.140 It's only when people get older and their heads are full of lies that suddenly these things 41:33.140 --> 41:35.500 get complicated. 41:35.500 --> 41:40.700 Much of this battle is about explaining simple things simply so that people can get back 41:40.700 --> 41:42.900 to having a simple faith in God. 41:42.900 --> 41:45.540 It's not complicated. 41:45.540 --> 41:48.740 It's the lies that make these things confusing. 41:48.740 --> 41:54.620 So please, as you go through your days, just keep in mind, anyone who's talking about 41:54.620 --> 42:00.980 Galatians 3.28, if they ever talk about it in a way that isn't connected to salvation, 42:00.980 --> 42:03.580 they're a demon, full stop. 42:03.580 --> 42:08.580 They are speaking the teachings of demons because this is a verse about how we are saved. 42:08.580 --> 42:15.420 It's a verse about our sonship with God, how we become heirs of salvation. 42:15.420 --> 42:18.460 That's salvation talk exclusively. 42:18.460 --> 42:21.900 And then once we're saved, we're still a man or a woman. 42:21.900 --> 42:23.580 If you're a woman, you should be happy to be a woman. 42:23.580 --> 42:24.660 I'm happy to be a man. 42:24.660 --> 42:25.660 I know how to do it. 42:25.660 --> 42:29.780 I could never possibly be a woman because God didn't equip me for that. 42:29.780 --> 42:33.860 And the fact that someone can have some delusion in their head to think that, oh, I'm actually 42:33.860 --> 42:36.900 the other thing, that's a Gnostic heresy. 42:36.900 --> 42:38.900 They're departing from the faith that they ever had it. 42:38.900 --> 42:41.300 They can't have it anymore at that point. 42:41.300 --> 42:46.340 But they're denying their Creator actively by saying, I'm not what you made me. 42:46.340 --> 42:47.980 I'm this other thing. 42:47.980 --> 42:50.660 No, you're one particular thing. 42:50.660 --> 42:52.660 And thank God for it. 42:52.660 --> 42:56.540 When someone comes along and says, no, none of those things exist, just know that not 42:56.540 --> 43:01.020 only are they attacking creation, but they're attacking your salvation. 43:01.020 --> 43:06.380 Because the point of attacking this passage is to destroy the gospel. 43:06.380 --> 43:10.460 Galatians is about the gospel, and it's about the Judaizing Gnostic heretics who are attacking 43:10.460 --> 43:13.220 it then, and who are attacking it today. 43:13.220 --> 43:18.780 And when they succeed, as they were succeeding in Galatia, faith is destroyed, and souls 43:18.780 --> 43:22.620 are condemned to hell for eternity. 43:22.620 --> 43:28.860 On the note of this verse being simple, and really the entire book of Galatians is simple, 43:28.860 --> 43:34.820 I would like to divide this in two through an interpretive lens, as it were. 43:34.820 --> 43:41.580 On the one hand, the immediate verse, Galatians 3.28, is very simple. 43:41.580 --> 43:46.980 On the other hand, like much of Scripture, it is also inexhaustible. 43:46.980 --> 43:53.220 God managed to pack a lot of information into not very many words. 43:53.220 --> 43:59.180 Woe mentioned that the word for there in English can also mean because. 43:59.180 --> 44:04.620 I want to emphasize that by pointing out that the conjunction there in the Greek gar 44:04.620 --> 44:08.540 is explicitly causal. 44:08.540 --> 44:12.780 The reason that the beginning, the first part, the first half as it were, not in terms of 44:12.780 --> 44:17.980 size, but in terms of meaning or weight, as it were, is the division between the two halves 44:17.980 --> 44:19.420 of this verse. 44:19.420 --> 44:25.580 The first half must be understood in light of the second. 44:25.580 --> 44:33.860 These things are so because, or you could say, if, and only if, you are in Christ Jesus. 44:33.860 --> 44:36.980 Because it says that you are all one in Christ Jesus. 44:36.980 --> 44:38.540 That is the requirement here. 44:38.540 --> 44:42.940 And so this most certainly does not apply in any way, shape, or form to those who are 44:42.940 --> 44:46.700 outside the church, those who are not in Christ. 44:46.700 --> 44:52.980 However, it is vitally important to understand, and quite frankly it's insane that people 44:52.980 --> 44:54.500 manage to miss this. 44:54.500 --> 45:02.300 Many do it maliciously to subvert things, but some in an innocent fashion miss this fact. 45:02.300 --> 45:08.700 If the three groups, the three couplets, are not real, if they are not actual things, if 45:08.700 --> 45:14.580 they do not have an existence in reality, then the verse is incoherent. 45:14.580 --> 45:16.100 It has no meaning. 45:16.100 --> 45:17.960 It has no import. 45:17.960 --> 45:22.380 It would be utterly pointless for it to be in Scripture, and God does not include things 45:22.380 --> 45:25.140 in Scripture that are pointless. 45:25.140 --> 45:29.880 The reason that it is important, the reason that it matters, the reason that it means 45:29.880 --> 45:35.720 something to say that we are all one in Christ, despite these things, is because these things 45:35.720 --> 45:37.460 are real. 45:37.460 --> 45:41.120 There is a real division between the Jew and the Greek. 45:41.120 --> 45:45.600 There are differences between and among the races of man. 45:45.600 --> 45:51.440 That couplet, that distinction has to be real for it to matter that we are one in Christ, 45:51.440 --> 45:56.520 that we are all one in terms of how we are saved if indeed we are. 45:56.520 --> 46:03.760 And as Woe pointed out, in this context, which in this case I mean the broad context, which 46:03.760 --> 46:10.720 would be the Greek world, the Roman world, and the Jewish world, in that world inheritance 46:10.720 --> 46:12.460 passes to the son. 46:12.460 --> 46:14.680 This is the case in most ancient civilizations. 46:14.680 --> 46:18.240 It's the case in most civilizations until fairly recently. 46:18.240 --> 46:19.560 Women did not inherit. 46:19.560 --> 46:20.720 Daughters did not inherit. 46:20.720 --> 46:24.680 The reason the daughters did not inherit is because a daughter became part of the family 46:24.680 --> 46:25.960 into which she married. 46:25.960 --> 46:32.480 She ceased to be part, legally speaking, of her original family, of her birth family. 46:32.480 --> 46:36.400 And so she didn't inherit from the father because the inheritance went to the sons who 46:36.400 --> 46:39.640 remained part of the family, period. 46:39.640 --> 46:43.120 They carried on the family name, they carried the family forward. 46:43.120 --> 46:46.400 She became part of another family. 46:46.400 --> 46:53.600 And so the word there that we see in verse 29, the word for heirs, Greek, unlike most 46:53.600 --> 46:59.040 cases in English, distinguishes between the masculine form of a noun and the feminine 46:59.040 --> 47:04.180 form and not just in terms of grammatical gender, in this case, in terms of masculine 47:04.180 --> 47:10.520 referring to men who are that noun versus women who are that noun. 47:10.520 --> 47:14.000 It's masculine in the Greek. 47:14.000 --> 47:19.360 I want to be careful here not to imply that you need to know Greek in order to understand 47:19.360 --> 47:21.040 Scripture. 47:21.040 --> 47:22.360 That's not the case. 47:22.360 --> 47:24.880 Anyone who tells you that is lying to you. 47:24.880 --> 47:26.240 Is the Greek language important? 47:26.240 --> 47:29.600 Yes, it is the language that God used to give us Scripture. 47:29.600 --> 47:32.760 And by that I mean both the Old and the New Testament. 47:32.760 --> 47:37.400 And so Greek is important, but you do not need to know Greek in order to read Scripture 47:37.400 --> 47:38.800 and understand it. 47:38.800 --> 47:44.700 There are some things that are accessible only in the Greek like this. 47:44.700 --> 47:49.480 You don't see that that word is masculine if you're looking at only the English. 47:49.480 --> 47:53.680 Now from the balance of Scripture, you would still understand that even if you had only 47:53.680 --> 47:58.800 the English because it says we are sons of God, we become heirs in Christ. 47:58.800 --> 48:03.720 It speaks of that in terms that are understandable simply in English without access to the underlying 48:03.720 --> 48:04.720 Greek. 48:04.720 --> 48:11.140 And, of course, as Woe has pointed out many times previously, there are many software 48:11.140 --> 48:15.320 programs out there including free websites where you can see this information and have 48:15.320 --> 48:19.040 ready access to it even without being able to read Greek. 48:19.040 --> 48:23.480 Because you can probably still read, for instance, if I just hover over heirs, I have 48:23.480 --> 48:24.480 it up in Logos. 48:24.480 --> 48:26.560 If I hover over heirs, it tells me that it is a noun. 48:26.560 --> 48:27.560 It is nominative. 48:27.560 --> 48:28.560 It is plural. 48:28.560 --> 48:29.560 It is masculine. 48:29.560 --> 48:30.560 There. 48:30.560 --> 48:33.380 We can all understand those terms in English. 48:33.380 --> 48:36.600 So I do not want you to think that you need to have Greek. 48:36.600 --> 48:37.880 The Greek is useful. 48:37.880 --> 48:40.140 It is not absolutely necessary to understand Scripture. 48:40.140 --> 48:48.420 But in this case, like I said, useful because I can pull out that heirs is explicitly masculine 48:48.420 --> 48:51.260 in the underlying Greek. 48:51.260 --> 48:54.780 Because we are heirs in Christ. 48:54.780 --> 48:55.980 We inherit. 48:55.980 --> 48:56.980 That is why it says son. 48:56.980 --> 49:00.580 It does not say it because only men can inherit. 49:00.580 --> 49:04.460 It is saying it because in that context only men inherited. 49:04.460 --> 49:08.380 And so in order to inherit, you had to be a son. 49:08.380 --> 49:14.900 And so even those who are female, women are also sons according to the promise. 49:14.900 --> 49:18.020 Because they inherit along with men. 49:18.020 --> 49:20.800 That is why you have the masculine there. 49:20.800 --> 49:25.200 And also one of the reasons we have not male and female. 49:25.200 --> 49:30.460 That distinction with regard to salvation is largely irrelevant. 49:30.460 --> 49:35.620 We've gone over previously some of the ways in which it is relevant tangentially speaking. 49:35.620 --> 49:38.980 And so, for instance, the issue of headship becomes relevant. 49:38.980 --> 49:44.220 Because certainly if you are a woman married to a man who is faithless, you are much less 49:44.220 --> 49:48.100 likely to remain faithful than if you were married to a man who is faithful. 49:48.100 --> 49:49.580 And so headship matters. 49:49.580 --> 49:52.020 Of course, that does flow in the opposite direction as well. 49:52.020 --> 49:59.060 Because wives are also supposed to help their husbands stay in the faith. 49:59.060 --> 50:07.140 But I want to pull out that earlier distinction with regard to the second couplet that I mentioned. 50:07.140 --> 50:15.140 The second couplet is mutable, which distinguishes it from the first and the third. 50:15.140 --> 50:21.220 And the reason that is relevant is partly because of historical context. 50:21.220 --> 50:26.740 And partly because it gives a greater scope to the totality of this verse. 50:26.820 --> 50:33.620 Because if all three categories were immutable, if they were all purely and directly ontological, 50:33.620 --> 50:40.580 then all would be saying is that an ontological, immutable category does not affect your salvation 50:40.580 --> 50:43.300 in a causal way at least. 50:43.300 --> 50:50.060 But because this one is mutable, the scope of the verse is that none of these things. 50:50.060 --> 50:54.180 And you could put in any number of different things in these various parts. 50:54.180 --> 50:59.860 As Woe said, you could swap out Jew and Greek for Jew and Roman, or you could swap it out 50:59.860 --> 51:05.620 for Greek and Scandinavian if you were so inclined, because it's saying that race does 51:05.620 --> 51:07.980 not save you. 51:07.980 --> 51:11.620 In this context, it's saying Jew because the Judaizers were the issue. 51:11.620 --> 51:15.700 But today we have those who will try to say, as Woe mentioned, that your race is what saves 51:15.700 --> 51:16.700 you. 51:16.700 --> 51:18.060 And so you can add any two races there. 51:18.060 --> 51:19.460 Feel free. 51:19.460 --> 51:22.980 It retains the meaning of the verse. 51:22.980 --> 51:24.860 You're slave nor free. 51:24.860 --> 51:29.580 You could swap in working class and upper class. 51:29.580 --> 51:35.220 Because this one is a condemnation of those who would say that is your social standing 51:35.220 --> 51:37.460 or your success in life. 51:37.460 --> 51:43.220 And so there goes the prosperity gospel, among other things. 51:43.220 --> 51:47.260 Those who would say all of these other things that are ultimately irrelevant are what actually 51:47.260 --> 51:48.260 save you. 51:48.260 --> 51:49.260 They're necessary for salvation. 51:49.260 --> 51:51.020 They contribute to your salvation. 51:51.020 --> 51:58.620 A lot of them harken back to and are basically in their essence works righteousness. 51:58.620 --> 52:00.780 This condemns all of that. 52:00.780 --> 52:05.620 And in the ancient context, part of why that is relevant, perhaps more so for the Romans 52:05.620 --> 52:07.780 than for the Greeks. 52:07.780 --> 52:15.180 But many of the ancient cultures viewed success in this life as an indication of favor from 52:15.180 --> 52:16.860 the gods. 52:16.860 --> 52:19.180 And the Jews did this as well. 52:19.180 --> 52:25.780 That is why at certain points in the New Testament, Christ rebukes the disciples when they advance 52:25.780 --> 52:31.020 this idea that, well, this person must be successful because he's a good person or this 52:31.020 --> 52:38.140 person must have been cursed because his parents were bad persons, anything like that. 52:38.140 --> 52:44.100 The Roman case would largely be because some of the public religious rights that were conducted 52:44.100 --> 52:48.660 in Rome were expensive if you wanted to participate. 52:48.660 --> 52:53.020 And so if you were wealthy, you could participate in the religious rights. 52:53.020 --> 52:55.780 And therefore, you were more favored by the gods. 52:55.780 --> 52:58.780 It was a very transactional religion. 52:58.780 --> 53:03.060 You had some of this in the Greek case, but it would partly depend on which gods you were 53:03.060 --> 53:06.700 worshiping in which region. 53:06.700 --> 53:09.980 But this is a condemnation of all of that. 53:09.980 --> 53:16.380 You are not saved by your works just because you have wealth does not mean that you're 53:16.380 --> 53:17.380 saved. 53:17.420 --> 53:24.140 Now, wealth is a gift from God and you are to use it in an appropriate fashion. 53:24.140 --> 53:29.220 He gave you the wealth in order to use it to further good in the world and no, not in 53:29.220 --> 53:34.100 the New World Order sort of sense, but by helping your neighbor and by helping your church, 53:34.100 --> 53:40.220 helping fellow Christians, all of those things, you are given your skills or your abilities 53:40.220 --> 53:46.980 or your assets in order to further things that are important to the church. 53:46.980 --> 53:51.940 They're important to a Christian life that benefit your Christian neighbors. 53:51.940 --> 53:55.260 And so this is a condemnation of those who would say that, no, my wealth means that 53:55.260 --> 53:57.340 God loves me and I'm saved. 53:57.340 --> 53:58.340 That's not what it means. 53:58.340 --> 54:02.740 We know what God says in the pages of Scripture about wealth and how it can be a hindrance 54:02.740 --> 54:05.980 to entering the kingdom of God. 54:05.980 --> 54:10.860 And then when it comes to the third couplet, that condemnation of those who would draw 54:10.860 --> 54:16.940 a distinction between man and woman with regard to salvation, that is a condemnation of a 54:16.940 --> 54:19.800 number of things. 54:19.800 --> 54:25.300 One is that there were some cults in the ancient world that basically said women cannot be 54:25.300 --> 54:26.300 saved. 54:26.300 --> 54:31.600 Women, some of them went so far as say women do not have souls, but there were also including 54:31.600 --> 54:37.660 in the Greek world some who said that women in the next life would become men. 54:37.660 --> 54:43.300 And so it's a condemnation of all of those denials of the good created nature of sex, 54:43.300 --> 54:49.180 that being part of God's creation that is preserved in paradise. 54:49.180 --> 54:52.680 If you are male in this life, you are male eternity. 54:52.680 --> 54:56.640 If you are female in this life, you are female in eternity. 54:56.640 --> 54:58.100 God made you the way you are. 54:58.100 --> 55:02.900 He wants you to be the sex that you are, and you will be that forever, because that is 55:02.900 --> 55:04.740 how he made you. 55:04.740 --> 55:11.060 And the good things that God creates are not destroyed. 55:11.060 --> 55:16.700 So this is an affirmation of the goodness of God's creation, of his created order, 55:16.700 --> 55:21.020 and a condemnation of those who would say that, no, you actually have to be male in 55:21.020 --> 55:24.940 order to be saved, or you have to be male in order to have a soul, or any of the various 55:24.940 --> 55:26.780 things like that. 55:26.780 --> 55:32.660 But again, as I started out saying, it is necessarily the case that all three of these 55:32.660 --> 55:38.260 are real in order for the verse to have any actual meaning. 55:38.260 --> 55:42.660 Because if you say that these are not real, then what does it mean for them to not matter 55:42.660 --> 55:44.320 if you're one in Christ? 55:44.320 --> 55:50.620 What does it mean for something that isn't real, not to matter to salvation? 55:50.620 --> 55:52.320 That's a meaningless statement. 55:52.320 --> 55:53.320 So they have to be real. 55:53.320 --> 55:58.860 So those who deny the reality of race, or the reality of hierarchy, or the reality of 55:58.860 --> 56:07.300 sex are denying, one, God's created order, and so they're tacitly denying God, but two, 56:07.300 --> 56:10.380 they are asserting that this verse has no meaning. 56:10.380 --> 56:14.860 And so in a very real way, they actually subvert their own argument, not that it matters, 56:14.860 --> 56:19.260 because the appeal to hypocrisy never really matters in these discussions. 56:19.260 --> 56:22.860 But they are subverting their own argument, because they say, well, we're all one in 56:22.860 --> 56:24.340 Christ, and so these things aren't real. 56:24.340 --> 56:30.580 Well, if they aren't real, then it doesn't matter that we're all one in Christ. 56:30.580 --> 56:36.660 But you have to pay attention to the false teachers and the false pastors who would 56:36.660 --> 56:41.780 use this in order to subvert the created order, because ultimately, again, they are basically 56:41.780 --> 56:43.700 Gnostic. 56:43.700 --> 56:48.140 The rejection of any part of this is Gnosticism. 56:48.140 --> 56:51.940 You have the rejection of race, which is the rejection of the flesh. 56:51.940 --> 56:58.080 You have the rejection of hierarchy, the created order of things in the world, which is a rejection 56:58.080 --> 56:59.460 of the material world. 56:59.460 --> 57:03.740 That's one of the most hard-line forms of Gnosticism. 57:03.740 --> 57:08.660 And then the rejection of male and female is, again, a form of Gnosticism that was particularly 57:08.660 --> 57:11.860 an issue in some parts of the ancient world. 57:11.860 --> 57:17.100 I think it's important with this second couplet not to completely divorce the slave nor free 57:17.100 --> 57:20.460 from slavery, cross-slavery. 57:20.460 --> 57:26.860 We did an entire episode entirely on the subject of slavery as being morally illicit. 57:26.860 --> 57:28.540 Scripture permits slavery. 57:28.540 --> 57:29.540 This is a fact. 57:29.980 --> 57:35.020 In fact, there are many cases in Scripture where God blesses some men by giving them 57:35.020 --> 57:36.820 more slaves. 57:36.820 --> 57:40.780 That would not be the case if slavery were, per se, sin. 57:40.780 --> 57:48.660 So when the status of being a slave is brought up in Scripture in these passages, it's important 57:48.660 --> 57:54.260 to understand how God treated, I think, another good passage that illustrates that is Ephesians 57:54.260 --> 57:55.780 6. 57:55.780 --> 57:57.220 Paul again writes, 57:57.220 --> 58:01.860 Slaves obey your human masters with fear and trembling in the sincerity of your heart 58:01.860 --> 58:03.700 as you would Christ. 58:03.700 --> 58:08.820 Do not work only while being watched as people-pleasers, but as slaves of Christ. 58:08.820 --> 58:10.980 Do God's will from your heart. 58:10.980 --> 58:15.200 Serve with a good attitude as to the Lord and not to people, knowing that whatever good 58:15.200 --> 58:20.180 each one does, slave or free, he will receive this back from the Lord. 58:20.180 --> 58:23.980 And masters treat your slaves the same way, without threatening them. 58:23.980 --> 58:28.500 Because you know that both their master and yours is in heaven and there is no favoritism 58:28.500 --> 58:29.500 with them. 58:29.500 --> 58:35.100 And the word favoritism there is usually translated as partiality. 58:35.100 --> 58:37.420 We've talked about partiality in the past. 58:37.420 --> 58:42.420 It's particularly in the context related to this, where social status was treated by 58:42.420 --> 58:48.900 some as a matter that would distinguish whether or not someone received more favors in the 58:48.900 --> 58:50.100 church. 58:50.100 --> 58:53.580 This is what happened in the Epistle of James. 58:53.580 --> 58:57.760 When he condemns the showing of partiality, it's that the rich were given a higher place 58:57.760 --> 58:58.760 in the church. 58:58.760 --> 59:03.580 They were given the best seat and the poor guy was stuck in the back. 59:03.580 --> 59:05.260 And James condemned that. 59:05.260 --> 59:07.540 He said, like, the rich are the ones who drag you in the court. 59:07.540 --> 59:09.700 What are you doing preferring them? 59:09.700 --> 59:12.540 And God certainly doesn't show partiality. 59:12.540 --> 59:18.900 God doesn't care about who has more money or more looks or IQ or any of the rest. 59:18.900 --> 59:20.340 Because you know what? 59:20.340 --> 59:23.180 Whatever good we have, God gave us. 59:23.180 --> 59:29.940 I think that's one of the things that Corey and I will point to Job for, because when 59:29.940 --> 59:35.820 Job came to God complaining, God's response was, basically, who do you think you are? 59:35.820 --> 59:39.740 Where were you when I created the foundations of the world? 59:39.740 --> 59:45.260 He didn't take him seriously as a challenger, because whatever good, whatever blessings Job 59:45.260 --> 59:51.140 had before Satan came and took them away, God gave them to Job. 59:51.140 --> 59:55.380 Whatever you have, whatever I have, whatever good anyone has comes from God. 59:55.380 --> 01:00:00.020 So the notion, therefore, that, oh, I have this good thing, I'm going to use this to 01:00:00.020 --> 01:00:05.060 prove that what I get more salvation, I'm going to take the gifts that God has given 01:00:05.060 --> 01:00:08.820 me and then come to God and say, look how good I am. 01:00:08.820 --> 01:00:10.460 You need to give me more. 01:00:10.460 --> 01:00:11.460 That's insane. 01:00:11.460 --> 01:00:12.460 It's just deranged. 01:00:12.460 --> 01:00:18.380 And it's the sort of smackdown that Job received from God, because to whatever degree he was 01:00:18.380 --> 01:00:21.220 up and he went out of the line, God put him back in his place. 01:00:21.220 --> 01:00:24.580 He's like, who do you think you are? 01:00:24.580 --> 01:00:27.060 You have no business challenging me. 01:00:27.060 --> 01:00:29.020 That's God's attitude. 01:00:29.020 --> 01:00:30.980 Whatever we have came from him. 01:00:30.980 --> 01:00:36.540 So whether someone's a slave or they're free, if they're rich or they're poor, those distinctions, 01:00:36.540 --> 01:00:41.940 not only don't they matter for salvation, but relative to God, in those terms, we're 01:00:41.940 --> 01:00:43.820 all exactly the same. 01:00:43.820 --> 01:00:49.420 The riches that we have on earth compared to the riches of God, they're not the same 01:00:49.420 --> 01:00:50.420 category. 01:00:50.420 --> 01:00:52.860 It's not the same type of thing. 01:00:52.860 --> 01:00:57.780 And this is part of the nuance in the verse that is just completely wiped away if you 01:00:57.780 --> 01:00:59.700 start saying these things are real. 01:00:59.700 --> 01:01:02.340 Obviously, it's real if someone has more, someone has less. 01:01:02.340 --> 01:01:07.060 If someone's a slave, if they're literally owned by another person, they have a lower 01:01:07.060 --> 01:01:08.060 station in life. 01:01:08.060 --> 01:01:10.820 There are things that they can't do that others can't. 01:01:10.820 --> 01:01:12.780 They don't have freedom. 01:01:12.780 --> 01:01:17.180 But when God addresses those with freedom, he chastises them. 01:01:17.180 --> 01:01:18.180 He warns them. 01:01:18.180 --> 01:01:22.740 He admonishes them, don't treat your freedom as license because it's not. 01:01:22.740 --> 01:01:28.020 Whatever blessings we have, whatever freedom we have, it's still enjoined by God's will. 01:01:28.020 --> 01:01:30.140 You can't go outside of that. 01:01:30.140 --> 01:01:33.980 And so in many cases, those who have more options just make their sin worse. 01:01:33.980 --> 01:01:36.020 They make their sin more elaborate. 01:01:36.020 --> 01:01:40.180 They're going to get creatively evil in ways that the guy who has very limited means and 01:01:40.180 --> 01:01:44.180 very limited scope in his personal life as a slave, he's not going to be able to do the 01:01:44.180 --> 01:01:47.420 things that somebody like Andrew Tate will do. 01:01:47.420 --> 01:01:52.620 Totally different class in the one who's a slave is going to be far better off. 01:01:52.620 --> 01:01:56.360 Even if he's wicked, he's going to be better off because his sins are going to be simpler. 01:01:56.360 --> 01:02:02.260 The man who has no limitations makes how far worse for him without God. 01:02:02.260 --> 01:02:08.060 And so again, the soteriological context, the fact that this verse is about our salvation 01:02:08.180 --> 01:02:11.740 is what makes it interesting, makes it valuable and a blessing. 01:02:11.740 --> 01:02:15.100 It's a reason that the epistle of Galatians is beautiful. 01:02:15.100 --> 01:02:21.060 It's one of the epistles that opened Luther's eyes to the gospel because he saw arguments 01:02:21.060 --> 01:02:24.780 and things that were here that made clear that things he'd been taught in the Roman 01:02:24.780 --> 01:02:27.540 Catholic Church were simply not true. 01:02:27.540 --> 01:02:31.980 For us to fixate on this verse today is not to get tunnel vision. 01:02:31.980 --> 01:02:32.980 It's to highlight. 01:02:32.980 --> 01:02:37.820 It's to shine a light on the fact that these are God's treasures. 01:02:37.820 --> 01:02:42.580 All these little nooks and crannies of scripture, and when suddenly some verse suddenly starts 01:02:42.580 --> 01:02:48.860 getting an outsized attention, or words to, you know, on Twitter I've pointed out that 01:02:48.860 --> 01:02:53.220 Imago Dei is something that's used all the time now. 01:02:53.220 --> 01:02:58.420 But when you do a Google Ngram search for it, it took off in the last like 10 or 15 years. 01:02:58.420 --> 01:02:59.820 But it sounds really Jesusy, right? 01:02:59.820 --> 01:03:02.340 It sounds like a super Christian thing to say. 01:03:02.660 --> 01:03:08.820 To say Imago Dei in Latin, that new trend, it's a completely new thing. 01:03:08.820 --> 01:03:13.700 Now, there's always been discussion of the image of God, but it was in different contexts 01:03:13.700 --> 01:03:15.700 than today. 01:03:15.700 --> 01:03:22.420 Whenever anyone says Imago Dei today, they're using it as license for bad things, for bad 01:03:22.420 --> 01:03:26.140 theology, but they're hiding behind that Jesus dust. 01:03:26.140 --> 01:03:31.580 They can put that mask on, and then they can present false doctrine and say, look, I'm 01:03:31.700 --> 01:03:32.700 going to see. 01:03:32.700 --> 01:03:33.700 And so we got to do this. 01:03:33.700 --> 01:03:38.820 And when they say Imago Dei, they're saying you can't execute murders because so many 01:03:38.820 --> 01:03:39.820 of them are black. 01:03:39.820 --> 01:03:40.820 That makes it racist. 01:03:40.820 --> 01:03:45.540 Well, we think the concern is that why are so many blacks murdering? 01:03:45.540 --> 01:03:47.180 That's what concerns me. 01:03:47.180 --> 01:03:48.580 Why are there murders? 01:03:48.580 --> 01:03:51.420 And then why did they predominantly come from certain groups? 01:03:51.420 --> 01:03:52.420 That's relevant. 01:03:52.420 --> 01:03:55.420 We did a whole episode on that. 01:03:55.420 --> 01:03:58.620 Galatians 3.28 doesn't condemn that because it doesn't say there's no such thing as a 01:03:58.620 --> 01:04:00.020 black guy. 01:04:00.020 --> 01:04:05.340 It says there's no such thing as a black guy being given preferential or disadvantaged 01:04:05.340 --> 01:04:07.340 salvation. 01:04:07.340 --> 01:04:10.620 Same Jesus, same salvation, same cross. 01:04:10.620 --> 01:04:14.540 The differences are how we respond to the message of the gospel. 01:04:14.540 --> 01:04:15.540 That's a personal question. 01:04:15.540 --> 01:04:17.260 It's not a racial one. 01:04:17.260 --> 01:04:22.260 It's not one derived from our sex or from our status or anything else. 01:04:22.260 --> 01:04:26.780 For those of you who are listening and are Lutheran, I want to point out that you are 01:04:26.780 --> 01:04:32.180 technically confessionally bound to deny that those who are not in Christ have the 01:04:32.180 --> 01:04:33.900 image of God. 01:04:33.900 --> 01:04:39.700 Our confession states that the Amago Dei is lost in original sin, and it is not restored 01:04:39.700 --> 01:04:44.860 except in baptism, except when you are given faith, when you are placed in Christ. 01:04:44.860 --> 01:04:48.920 I am less familiar with the confessions of the various Reformed traditions, so I do not 01:04:48.920 --> 01:04:51.460 know if you have something similar in yours. 01:04:51.460 --> 01:04:52.460 Perhaps some of you do. 01:04:52.460 --> 01:04:57.100 I know that the book of Concord denies the Amago Dei to the pagan. 01:04:57.100 --> 01:05:00.420 In this case, I just mean unbeliever. 01:05:00.420 --> 01:05:04.900 One thing that I hope that comes through in this episode, and I believe that it will given 01:05:04.900 --> 01:05:08.940 that we're going to spend about two hours on essentially one verse, although with other 01:05:08.940 --> 01:05:15.520 verses pulled in, is just the depth of the wealth that is present in Scripture. 01:05:15.520 --> 01:05:21.260 If we can spend this much time and discuss this many different aspects of a single verse, 01:05:21.260 --> 01:05:25.540 it should be very clear that you can read Scripture for a lifetime and never exhaust 01:05:25.540 --> 01:05:26.540 it. 01:05:26.540 --> 01:05:31.860 You could read a single book in Scripture for a lifetime and never exhaust it, which again 01:05:31.860 --> 01:05:33.220 is very clear proof. 01:05:33.220 --> 01:05:34.220 This is the word of God. 01:05:34.220 --> 01:05:36.340 You couldn't do that with any other book. 01:05:36.340 --> 01:05:41.580 If you read whatever your favorite book is, pick your favorite science fiction book, great 01:05:41.580 --> 01:05:46.980 piece of historic literature, whatever it is, you could exhaust it in 20 years, regardless 01:05:46.980 --> 01:05:48.420 of what it is. 01:05:48.420 --> 01:05:50.260 You cannot do that with Scripture. 01:05:50.260 --> 01:05:56.260 You will always be able to find more and a deeper meaning, a deeper understanding when 01:05:56.260 --> 01:06:00.260 you return to Scripture no matter how many times you've read it. 01:06:00.260 --> 01:06:07.380 On that note, I want to pull out something from Galatians 3.28 that will make some of 01:06:07.380 --> 01:06:11.060 you very happy and perhaps annoy some of you a little bit, but in this case, I wish to 01:06:11.060 --> 01:06:15.860 make very clear to you that this is actually important in this case. 01:06:15.860 --> 01:06:22.380 In many cases, you will find those who interpret Scripture who will attempt to find chiasms, 01:06:22.380 --> 01:06:28.780 chiasmus everywhere because it is one of the forms of writing. 01:06:28.780 --> 01:06:33.860 It is one of the little tools in the Shemitic toolbox that's just popular in that part 01:06:33.860 --> 01:06:34.860 of the world. 01:06:34.860 --> 01:06:38.660 And so you will find it in the pages of Scripture. 01:06:38.660 --> 01:06:45.180 And notably, it does appear both in the Jewish context and in the Greek world. 01:06:45.180 --> 01:06:49.980 And so it makes perfect sense that you would find it also in the Greek of the New Testament. 01:06:49.980 --> 01:06:57.820 In the case of the Germanic world, so also the Celts, incidentally, you're going to find 01:06:57.820 --> 01:07:01.660 less chiasmus and more parallelism. 01:07:01.660 --> 01:07:08.220 Now to be clear, to make sure that you understand what is I'm saying, if you have a structure 01:07:08.220 --> 01:07:16.380 of a particular chunk of text that you have a thought and then another thought, let's 01:07:16.380 --> 01:07:20.060 just go with two thoughts formulated two different ways. 01:07:20.060 --> 01:07:25.060 So you have A, A prime, B, B prime, two different thoughts formulated different ways. 01:07:25.060 --> 01:07:30.700 To the Shemitic mind, you are going to write that in a chiasmic structure, which is to 01:07:30.700 --> 01:07:37.460 say that you are going to have A, B, B prime, A prime. 01:07:37.460 --> 01:07:43.220 You're going to have it inverted as it were, whereas to the Germanic mind, this includes 01:07:43.220 --> 01:07:48.260 those of us who speak English, you are more accustomed to seeing parallelism. 01:07:48.260 --> 01:07:52.500 So A, A prime, B, B prime. 01:07:52.500 --> 01:07:55.740 That's the sort of comparison that we expect. 01:07:55.740 --> 01:08:03.500 However, in this case, neither one of those appears here in Galatians 328, because that 01:08:03.500 --> 01:08:08.820 second couplet basically subverts all expectations. 01:08:08.820 --> 01:08:13.620 So if you had, say, a Pharisee reading this, he would see there's neither Jew nor Greek. 01:08:13.620 --> 01:08:18.580 Well, that's going to annoy him, but if he gets over that and keeps reading, neither 01:08:18.580 --> 01:08:20.100 slave nor free. 01:08:20.100 --> 01:08:22.580 Okay, that's fine. 01:08:22.580 --> 01:08:28.460 Those two, the first and the second alone, that would be chiasmic to a Pharisee reading 01:08:28.460 --> 01:08:29.900 this. 01:08:29.900 --> 01:08:34.980 Because how he would read this is he would read it, the Jew is free, the Greek is a slave. 01:08:34.980 --> 01:08:35.980 Great. 01:08:35.980 --> 01:08:36.980 I agree with that. 01:08:36.980 --> 01:08:38.100 That's, I like that. 01:08:38.100 --> 01:08:43.460 But then he would get the third part and the problem is inherently having three parts 01:08:43.460 --> 01:08:48.700 you can't form a chiasmic structure in this way, because it would be A, B, C, C, B, A 01:08:48.700 --> 01:08:50.660 is how you would do that. 01:08:50.660 --> 01:08:56.900 But he gets to it and goes, okay, the Jew is free, but now we have the third one. 01:08:56.900 --> 01:08:59.940 We can't form a chiasm here, and it's inverted. 01:08:59.940 --> 01:09:05.260 You can't do parallel either, because you'd be expecting, you know, the Jew is free and 01:09:05.260 --> 01:09:06.260 male. 01:09:06.260 --> 01:09:11.460 And I'll get into that more in a second here, and the Greek is a slave and female. 01:09:11.460 --> 01:09:12.580 It's not a chiasm. 01:09:12.580 --> 01:09:13.580 It's not parallel. 01:09:13.580 --> 01:09:17.860 So it subverts the expectations for both groups. 01:09:17.860 --> 01:09:22.380 And another place that scripture does this is a related passage to Galatians 3.28. 01:09:22.380 --> 01:09:26.740 This is one of the passages that I want to bring in from outside Galatians, as it were. 01:09:26.740 --> 01:09:27.740 Colossians 3.11. 01:09:27.740 --> 01:09:35.020 Here, there is not Greek and Jew circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, skithian, slave 01:09:35.020 --> 01:09:39.180 free, but Christ is all and in all. 01:09:39.180 --> 01:09:43.940 And so you can obviously see very similar to Galatians 3.28. 01:09:43.940 --> 01:09:52.060 But here you actually have two chiasms, because you have Greek and Jew circumcised and uncircumcised. 01:09:52.060 --> 01:09:57.820 And so the Jewish reader is going to say, okay, so the circumcised Jew and the uncircumcised 01:09:57.820 --> 01:09:58.820 Greek. 01:09:58.820 --> 01:09:59.820 Great. 01:09:59.820 --> 01:10:06.860 Then you'll get to the second chiasm, barbarian, skithian, slave free. 01:10:06.860 --> 01:10:12.300 For those who do not know, the skithians at this time in this cultural context were considered 01:10:12.300 --> 01:10:18.840 the absolute worst of the barbarians, the most feral, uncivilized people on earth. 01:10:18.840 --> 01:10:23.080 And so it's saying barbarian and the worst of the barbarians. 01:10:23.080 --> 01:10:27.100 Here's where you have the problem for the Jewish reader, because the Jewish reader will 01:10:27.100 --> 01:10:33.840 look at it and go, wait a minute, this chiasm taken together with the first is comparing 01:10:33.840 --> 01:10:38.680 Jews to the worst possible barbarians. 01:10:38.680 --> 01:10:44.540 And not only that, but it's saying that the Jews are slaves. 01:10:44.540 --> 01:10:49.920 And so there's a critique there that you see in Paul when he's writing this. 01:10:49.920 --> 01:10:55.280 It's implicit, it's not explicit, but it is there if you understand the literary forms 01:10:55.280 --> 01:10:58.820 that are common to these peoples. 01:10:58.820 --> 01:11:06.620 But to return to Galatians 3.28, one of the things that you will miss in Galatians 3.28 01:11:06.620 --> 01:11:11.580 if you do not have the background context, the historical context, is that this is an 01:11:11.580 --> 01:11:15.740 explicit polemic. 01:11:15.740 --> 01:11:19.540 If you want to say it's an implicit polemic, then it is right on the line, it is as strong 01:11:19.540 --> 01:11:24.120 of an implicit polemic as you can make without it being explicit, because it doesn't explicitly 01:11:24.120 --> 01:11:26.720 mention the Talmud. 01:11:26.720 --> 01:11:33.360 This is the inversion of a prayer that Jewish men traditionally pray as part of their morning 01:11:33.360 --> 01:11:35.100 prayers. 01:11:35.100 --> 01:11:40.440 And so that inversion in the second couplet is an important part of this condemnation, 01:11:40.460 --> 01:11:45.440 of this polemic against the Jewish prayer, but now I'll read you the translated text 01:11:45.440 --> 01:11:49.080 of the Jewish prayer. 01:11:49.080 --> 01:11:54.720 There are three blessings that Jewish males traditionally pray as part of their morning 01:11:54.720 --> 01:12:00.280 blessings as part of this specific prayer within those blessings. 01:12:00.280 --> 01:12:06.600 The first is, blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has not made me 01:12:06.600 --> 01:12:11.400 a goy, which is to say a non-Jew, a Gentile. 01:12:11.400 --> 01:12:17.560 The second, blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has not made me 01:12:17.560 --> 01:12:19.280 a slave. 01:12:19.280 --> 01:12:25.200 And the third, blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has not made 01:12:25.200 --> 01:12:28.640 me a woman. 01:12:28.640 --> 01:12:33.040 This is the Burkot Hashakar, if you want to look up the prayer and manage to spell all 01:12:33.040 --> 01:12:36.720 the phlegm that I just got on my mic. 01:12:36.720 --> 01:12:41.640 But these three blessings that are traditionally prayed by Jewish males as part of their morning 01:12:41.640 --> 01:12:47.600 prayers are a rejection of God's created order. 01:12:47.600 --> 01:12:53.600 They're a rejection of God's created order because they're not praying, thank you, God, 01:12:53.600 --> 01:12:55.280 for making me what I am. 01:12:55.280 --> 01:12:56.960 That's fine. 01:12:56.960 --> 01:13:00.480 Go ahead and pray to God, thank you for making me male. 01:13:00.480 --> 01:13:02.280 Thank you for making me German. 01:13:02.280 --> 01:13:06.480 Thank you for making me whatever the thing is about which you are thankful. 01:13:06.480 --> 01:13:07.480 That's fine. 01:13:07.480 --> 01:13:11.080 You should be thankful for what God has made you, what God has given you. 01:13:11.080 --> 01:13:15.640 Because don't forget that your attributes are also gifts from God. 01:13:15.640 --> 01:13:18.160 Everything you have is a gift from God. 01:13:18.160 --> 01:13:22.480 The problem with how this is prayed, partly it's the intent behind it, but you can see 01:13:22.480 --> 01:13:24.440 the intent in the wording. 01:13:24.440 --> 01:13:28.920 Because it's not thank you for making me, it's thank you for not making me. 01:13:28.920 --> 01:13:34.420 These groups, a member of this group that is lesser than I am. 01:13:34.420 --> 01:13:39.440 This is the prayer of the Pharisee versus the publican, or the tax collector, whatever 01:13:39.440 --> 01:13:40.960 you want to call the gentleman. 01:13:40.960 --> 01:13:45.120 This is the prayer of the man who stands up in the synagogue or who stands up in the temple 01:13:45.120 --> 01:13:50.320 and says, I am so much better than everyone else, thank you God for making me so holy 01:13:50.320 --> 01:13:53.280 and great. 01:13:53.280 --> 01:13:58.240 Thank you for not making me like the rest of these sinful wretched people who are surrounding 01:13:58.240 --> 01:14:02.640 me and making the building smell bad. 01:14:02.640 --> 01:14:06.200 This is not a prayer of humbling oneself before God. 01:14:06.200 --> 01:14:08.200 This is a prideful prayer. 01:14:08.200 --> 01:14:12.880 It's not even really a prayer, it's an insult to God's face. 01:14:12.880 --> 01:14:18.800 And so this verse in Galatians is a polemic against this prayer. 01:14:18.800 --> 01:14:24.460 It is a polemic against the Jewish religion, against Judaism, which is not Christianity, 01:14:24.460 --> 01:14:32.660 which is related to Christianity only insofar as it is a perversion of Christianity. 01:14:32.660 --> 01:14:39.500 This verse in Galatians specifically condemns it and does so in part by using the exact 01:14:39.500 --> 01:14:41.820 same three couplets. 01:14:41.820 --> 01:14:42.820 Because that's what we see. 01:14:42.820 --> 01:14:46.620 Thank you for not making me a goi and it says doesn't matter, Jew or Greek. 01:14:46.620 --> 01:14:47.900 Thank you for not making me a slave. 01:14:47.900 --> 01:14:50.220 It doesn't matter, slave or free. 01:14:50.220 --> 01:14:51.580 Thank you for not making me a woman. 01:14:51.580 --> 01:14:56.820 It doesn't matter male or female, but it also inverts that second one. 01:14:56.820 --> 01:15:01.460 And so you have Jew slave male instead of what these Jewish males who pray this prayer 01:15:01.460 --> 01:15:06.660 in the morning would expect, which is Jew free male. 01:15:06.660 --> 01:15:12.860 And so it's just one of those layers to bear in mind when you read Galatians. 01:15:12.860 --> 01:15:18.900 And just to think about the depth of what is put into Scripture for us and sure if you 01:15:18.900 --> 01:15:23.980 don't understand the historical context of this, you will still understand the meaning 01:15:23.980 --> 01:15:27.700 of the verse because the meaning is there right on the face of the thing. 01:15:27.700 --> 01:15:33.380 It says you were all one in Christ Jesus, so these things so teleologically do not matter. 01:15:33.380 --> 01:15:37.940 That's blunt from the face of the text in Galatians 3. 01:15:37.940 --> 01:15:43.620 But you get this additional depth of meaning here of the condemnation of the polemic against 01:15:43.700 --> 01:15:44.700 false religions. 01:15:44.700 --> 01:15:51.380 And it just shows you how much there is in Scripture to be discovered for those who spend 01:15:51.380 --> 01:15:54.740 the time to meditate on God's Word to study God's Word. 01:15:54.740 --> 01:16:00.740 He has given us an immense wealth in His Word, and we should be very thankful for it. 01:16:00.740 --> 01:16:06.060 And another one of those details that stuck out to me a couple of years ago was the fact 01:16:06.060 --> 01:16:12.580 that these three couplets are not and, and, and, nor, nor, nor. 01:16:12.580 --> 01:16:14.820 It's nor, nor, and. 01:16:14.820 --> 01:16:20.780 I saw some discussion online, and for some reason I noticed that the ESV translates this 01:16:20.780 --> 01:16:23.420 correctly even though a number of others don't. 01:16:23.420 --> 01:16:27.100 And somebody else had quoted a different one, and they said nor, nor, nor, and I thought, 01:16:27.100 --> 01:16:32.180 I think my Bible says differently, but of course I didn't do what we condemn here and 01:16:32.180 --> 01:16:34.300 say, well, my Bible says this, so you're wrong. 01:16:34.380 --> 01:16:38.780 I said, well, I'm going to look at the Greek and see, like, clearly somebody dropped a compound 01:16:38.780 --> 01:16:40.620 word somewhere, who was it? 01:16:40.620 --> 01:16:46.140 And it turned out that King James and a number of others use a nor. 01:16:46.140 --> 01:16:52.940 They make all three of these couplets parallel, and that's not what the original language did. 01:16:52.940 --> 01:16:59.660 As I said earlier, it doesn't really change the purpose of, like, the text works either way 01:17:00.300 --> 01:17:01.980 in its own context. 01:17:02.060 --> 01:17:08.460 So when you're treating Galatians properly and you're treating it as a soteriological passage, 01:17:09.020 --> 01:17:15.660 it's totally fine if a nor is there instead of an and for male nor female instead of male 01:17:15.660 --> 01:17:17.340 and female, which is correct. 01:17:18.540 --> 01:17:20.140 It doesn't really change it. 01:17:20.140 --> 01:17:21.580 I want to say that explicitly. 01:17:21.580 --> 01:17:24.620 I'm not saying, oh, no, those, those Bibles are all terrible. 01:17:24.620 --> 01:17:25.660 They're, they're wrong. 01:17:25.660 --> 01:17:27.740 They have this terrible corruption. 01:17:28.300 --> 01:17:29.420 It's a mistake. 01:17:29.420 --> 01:17:30.620 It's clearly a mistake. 01:17:30.620 --> 01:17:31.580 It's not ambiguous. 01:17:31.580 --> 01:17:35.820 They are wrong, but it doesn't damage your understanding of this passage. 01:17:35.820 --> 01:17:40.780 If you're just treating the passage the way it should be treated, which is this is about salvation. 01:17:40.780 --> 01:17:41.900 Doesn't matter if you're Jew or Greek. 01:17:41.900 --> 01:17:43.260 Doesn't matter if you're slave or free. 01:17:43.260 --> 01:17:45.340 It doesn't matter if you're male or a female. 01:17:46.380 --> 01:17:52.300 But as Cory was just saying, there's a, there's a depth in a richness to the way God presents 01:17:52.300 --> 01:17:58.380 these things, that when this came under attack, that's when I started looking. 01:17:58.460 --> 01:18:02.380 And I think that Cory and I first discussed this because we were talking about Galatians 01:18:02.380 --> 01:18:05.660 as we realized just how important this was. 01:18:05.660 --> 01:18:12.460 Like not that the difference of that one word is groundbreaking or earth shaking, but it's notable. 01:18:12.460 --> 01:18:13.740 God said one thing. 01:18:13.740 --> 01:18:15.900 Let's leave it the way he said it. 01:18:16.460 --> 01:18:21.660 And then when you start looking at the attacks and keep in mind, what are the attacks today? 01:18:21.660 --> 01:18:25.820 When you get outside what a Galatians 3 28 says, what God says, 01:18:26.300 --> 01:18:30.380 and you start looking at what evil men are doing with it, what do they say? 01:18:30.380 --> 01:18:31.900 They say there are no races. 01:18:31.900 --> 01:18:33.500 They say that there are no sexes. 01:18:33.500 --> 01:18:36.060 There's no distinction between male and female. 01:18:36.060 --> 01:18:37.740 We're absolutely the same. 01:18:37.740 --> 01:18:38.700 We're interchangeable. 01:18:39.260 --> 01:18:40.620 We're just, we're fungible. 01:18:40.620 --> 01:18:42.060 We're human beings. 01:18:43.260 --> 01:18:44.780 That's clearly false. 01:18:44.780 --> 01:18:50.700 And then in that context, when someone is trying to attack the created nature of reality, 01:18:51.660 --> 01:18:55.660 this distinction becomes important where it never mattered for, 01:18:55.660 --> 01:19:00.380 for, you know, ever any hundreds of years people have been mistranslating that one word. 01:19:00.380 --> 01:19:02.140 It didn't make any difference. 01:19:02.140 --> 01:19:05.980 But in the 21st century, it does because as Cory said earlier, 01:19:05.980 --> 01:19:12.780 there is an ontological distinction between a Jew and a Greek or a Jew in a Kelt. 01:19:13.420 --> 01:19:17.020 Just as there's an ontological distinction between a man and a woman, 01:19:17.020 --> 01:19:18.860 that is according to their nature. 01:19:19.820 --> 01:19:21.580 It's not an accident. 01:19:21.580 --> 01:19:23.020 It is how God made you. 01:19:24.220 --> 01:19:26.300 So those are similar in that way. 01:19:26.300 --> 01:19:30.620 You are made whatever race you are, whatever mix of races you are, 01:19:30.620 --> 01:19:32.540 you're made one sex. 01:19:32.540 --> 01:19:34.620 You're either male or female. 01:19:36.860 --> 01:19:41.420 Yet the distinction between male and female is sufficiently different 01:19:41.980 --> 01:19:47.740 from even the ontological distinction between a Greek and a Jew or a Jew in a Kelt. 01:19:48.700 --> 01:19:51.100 That God treated it slightly differently. 01:19:51.100 --> 01:19:54.940 And this is when I started to hone in on it and Cory and I had really interesting discussions 01:19:54.940 --> 01:19:58.300 around, yeah, this is, here's what's actually going on here because 01:20:00.620 --> 01:20:02.940 the Jew in the Greek and the context of the verse, 01:20:03.580 --> 01:20:05.820 God's saying it doesn't matter for your salvation. 01:20:05.820 --> 01:20:06.700 Absolutely true. 01:20:08.460 --> 01:20:12.700 The anti-racist says, well, that means that there are no races, which is absolutely false. 01:20:13.340 --> 01:20:17.180 Yet at the same time, it's true that a well-behaved Jew, 01:20:17.580 --> 01:20:21.020 completely separated from whatever problems that group has. 01:20:21.020 --> 01:20:25.100 If they're well-behaved and they believe God and just did the right things, 01:20:26.060 --> 01:20:30.860 whatever differences they had from Greeks who were similarly faithful to God, 01:20:31.740 --> 01:20:32.860 it wouldn't be that much. 01:20:32.860 --> 01:20:34.860 It would be the things that we call ethnicity. 01:20:34.860 --> 01:20:38.940 They would have maybe different food, different music, different language, 01:20:38.940 --> 01:20:41.900 but they would all basically behave in similar ways. 01:20:42.540 --> 01:20:44.940 Some would be better at some things and worse at others. 01:20:44.940 --> 01:20:51.020 Jews seemingly, at least today, tend to have more gifts and creative endeavors sometimes. 01:20:51.580 --> 01:20:55.740 I don't know if there have been a lot of impactful Greek people lately, 01:20:55.740 --> 01:20:59.500 but again, going back to what we said earlier, the Greeks today 01:20:59.500 --> 01:21:00.780 aren't the same as the Greeks then. 01:21:00.780 --> 01:21:01.580 It doesn't matter. 01:21:01.580 --> 01:21:05.580 If the two different races, whatever two races you want to distinguish from each other, 01:21:05.580 --> 01:21:06.940 they're somewhat similar. 01:21:07.660 --> 01:21:10.060 If they're behaving and they're doing what God wants, 01:21:11.180 --> 01:21:13.420 they're going to have enough similarities that they could get along. 01:21:13.420 --> 01:21:14.140 It would be okay. 01:21:14.780 --> 01:21:17.020 I would never say that they were interchangeable, 01:21:17.580 --> 01:21:21.180 but I think that one of the distinctions we have today that illustrates this is 01:21:21.820 --> 01:21:24.220 Western cultures in Japanese culture. 01:21:24.940 --> 01:21:29.260 When we first came in contact with them before we screwed them up by Westernizing them, 01:21:30.700 --> 01:21:32.940 there were some things that were very weird and very different, 01:21:32.940 --> 01:21:35.260 and they're still weird and different because they're Japanese. 01:21:35.260 --> 01:21:36.620 They're alien to me. 01:21:37.180 --> 01:21:38.060 I don't think that's bad. 01:21:38.060 --> 01:21:39.820 It's just that they're very different. 01:21:40.780 --> 01:21:43.100 There are certain things about the Japanese in particular, 01:21:43.100 --> 01:21:47.100 even among all Asians, that I think many Westerners, when they look at it, 01:21:47.100 --> 01:21:49.820 they find certain things that they do very laudable. 01:21:50.700 --> 01:21:57.420 When Japan got into Scotch in the early 80s, they bought up a bunch of Scotch distilleries, 01:21:58.060 --> 01:21:59.740 but they didn't change what they were doing. 01:21:59.740 --> 01:22:05.020 They just made them even better because they fell in love with whiskey, with spirits. 01:22:05.020 --> 01:22:11.580 They already had sake, but what they found when they had this love affair with whiskey 01:22:12.140 --> 01:22:17.740 was it's really, in a way, a very Japanese thing to distill something in nature to its essence 01:22:18.380 --> 01:22:23.100 and then to wait patiently for it to transform into something sublime 01:22:23.100 --> 01:22:24.780 with all these very subtle distinctions. 01:22:25.260 --> 01:22:27.900 It's a very Japanese thing culturally. 01:22:27.900 --> 01:22:30.220 They just took to it like, yeah, this is Scotch stuff. 01:22:30.220 --> 01:22:30.860 We love it. 01:22:30.860 --> 01:22:31.580 We love Scotch. 01:22:32.700 --> 01:22:36.060 They made it their own in a very, very subtle way. 01:22:37.020 --> 01:22:43.740 There is an overlap, even from vastly disparate races and cultures, yet there was an overlap 01:22:43.740 --> 01:22:49.340 and appreciation of that particular thing that was complete harmony between two people 01:22:49.340 --> 01:22:51.340 that had been scattered for thousands of years. 01:22:52.220 --> 01:22:59.500 That's an example where, although the Scots and the Japanese are not remotely the same 01:22:59.500 --> 01:23:03.900 or remotely interchangeable, nevertheless, there's a certain overlap in 01:23:06.380 --> 01:23:07.180 the type. 01:23:07.180 --> 01:23:11.820 The best of the Scots had something that was also the best of the Japanese. 01:23:11.820 --> 01:23:14.300 Even if they came at it from some different angles, 01:23:14.300 --> 01:23:18.220 they were still doing something beautiful that was mutually intelligible. 01:23:19.260 --> 01:23:24.780 Now, I highlight this in terms of races because when God distinguishes, there is no 01:23:24.780 --> 01:23:32.060 neither Jew nor Greek and then says there is not male and female, that's a distinction in kind. 01:23:32.620 --> 01:23:36.220 Because what I just said about the Scots and the Japanese, 01:23:36.220 --> 01:23:38.380 you cannot say about men and women, period. 01:23:38.940 --> 01:23:48.380 There's no version of womanhood that can have that sort of harmonious interaction with manhood. 01:23:48.380 --> 01:23:53.740 There's appreciation, but it's an appreciation as alien in some sense. 01:23:54.540 --> 01:24:00.140 The ways that man and woman complete each other are because we're both missing something. 01:24:00.700 --> 01:24:06.060 Adam was perfect in the garden and he was not complete and kill until God created Eve. 01:24:06.620 --> 01:24:08.780 Even in his perfection, he was incomplete. 01:24:08.780 --> 01:24:10.700 There wasn't enough without her. 01:24:12.940 --> 01:24:16.780 And then when God created Eve, he said at last, this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. 01:24:16.780 --> 01:24:18.060 He was like, yeah, this is it. 01:24:18.620 --> 01:24:25.500 And from that day until today, when a man finds a woman and loves her the same way that Adam loved 01:24:25.500 --> 01:24:27.340 Eve, it's the same feeling. 01:24:27.340 --> 01:24:29.820 You're like, I was missing something and now I have it. 01:24:30.540 --> 01:24:33.900 But it's not the way the Japanese discovered scotch. 01:24:34.620 --> 01:24:37.820 It wasn't, okay, I'm going to take this and make my bone and I can go off in my corner. 01:24:37.820 --> 01:24:41.340 No, they have to exist together for it to work. 01:24:41.340 --> 01:24:46.460 Men and women have to exist together as a one flesh union for any of it to work. 01:24:47.020 --> 01:24:49.740 When they're separated, they're their own separate things. 01:24:50.620 --> 01:24:55.740 So the distinction with this one changing a nor to an and when God did that, 01:24:55.740 --> 01:25:01.100 and he said there's no male and female, he was respecting that not only are they distinct, 01:25:01.660 --> 01:25:05.260 but that they are maintained in their distinction at all times. 01:25:05.820 --> 01:25:09.500 We talked about this in the Gnosisism episode, when you are resurrected from the dead 01:25:10.060 --> 01:25:15.340 as a Christian, even though you are soteriologically a son of God, even if you're a woman listening, 01:25:16.140 --> 01:25:17.340 you're going to be raised a woman. 01:25:17.340 --> 01:25:18.620 It doesn't change who you are. 01:25:18.620 --> 01:25:19.740 It doesn't change your nature. 01:25:20.300 --> 01:25:24.780 It's solely for the purpose of inheritance of salvation that you're a son of God. 01:25:24.780 --> 01:25:27.980 That's a blessing from God because it's how he says he does it. 01:25:27.980 --> 01:25:28.860 We don't have to understand. 01:25:28.860 --> 01:25:32.700 We have to second guess like, okay, you said it, I believe it, praise the Lord. 01:25:32.700 --> 01:25:33.900 That's the end of the discussion. 01:25:34.540 --> 01:25:36.380 Nothing else about you as a woman has changed. 01:25:36.380 --> 01:25:39.660 You're still a woman and when you're resurrected from the dead, 01:25:39.660 --> 01:25:42.060 your female body is going to be perfected. 01:25:42.060 --> 01:25:44.860 Whatever is wrong with it now is going to get fixed. 01:25:44.860 --> 01:25:49.420 You're going to be perfect and you're going to be a woman for eternity because that's what you are. 01:25:49.980 --> 01:25:53.580 You're not going to be some spirit body that's some asexual 01:25:54.700 --> 01:25:55.260 in between. 01:25:55.260 --> 01:25:56.300 You're not going to be an angel. 01:25:57.100 --> 01:25:59.020 Cori and I are going to be raised as men. 01:25:59.020 --> 01:26:01.500 It's what we are because it's how God made us. 01:26:02.380 --> 01:26:07.100 And so there's one small word here of nor versus and. 01:26:07.100 --> 01:26:12.540 It didn't matter in the context, but it does matter today because it's yet another of the 01:26:12.540 --> 01:26:17.260 thousand different examples in scripture where God makes clear that men and women are different 01:26:17.340 --> 01:26:19.500 in a unique and special way. 01:26:19.500 --> 01:26:20.300 That's a blessing. 01:26:20.940 --> 01:26:25.660 And just as with the other couplets in this, it's not to denigrate one. 01:26:26.700 --> 01:26:30.860 The distinction that there's no distinction between Jew and Greek, slave or free male 01:26:30.860 --> 01:26:34.300 and female, is not to say one over the other. 01:26:34.300 --> 01:26:38.380 It's say that before God, we're all the same in terms of salvation, 01:26:38.380 --> 01:26:41.500 but we don't lose who He created. 01:26:42.060 --> 01:26:42.940 He created you. 01:26:42.940 --> 01:26:43.980 He created me. 01:26:43.980 --> 01:26:44.780 We're different. 01:26:44.780 --> 01:26:46.060 That's a good thing. 01:26:46.060 --> 01:26:47.340 I wouldn't want anybody else to be like, 01:26:47.340 --> 01:26:48.140 you know, what's the point? 01:26:48.140 --> 01:26:50.220 There's one of me is more than enough. 01:26:50.780 --> 01:26:53.420 The variety that God has created is awesome. 01:26:53.420 --> 01:26:55.020 It's something that we should celebrate. 01:26:55.580 --> 01:26:57.740 Like we should celebrate diversity. 01:26:57.740 --> 01:26:58.540 That shouldn't be. 01:26:59.820 --> 01:27:05.180 It kills me that something that's actually a beautiful part of God's creation has turned 01:27:05.180 --> 01:27:11.260 into the solvent that's destroying faith and is destroying creation simultaneously. 01:27:11.260 --> 01:27:15.980 Because if not for that, we could actually appreciate foreign food. 01:27:16.140 --> 01:27:20.940 That's one of the reasons the Europeans explored and conquered the planet, 01:27:20.940 --> 01:27:22.620 was looking for spices. 01:27:22.620 --> 01:27:25.980 You know, the jokes online today is that white people don't spice their food. 01:27:25.980 --> 01:27:30.540 Well, we literally conquered entire continents looking for spices for food. 01:27:30.540 --> 01:27:31.660 So get real. 01:27:31.660 --> 01:27:32.460 We have good food. 01:27:32.460 --> 01:27:34.700 We know how to make it and we know how to find recipes. 01:27:34.700 --> 01:27:37.740 But if someone else does something great, awesome. 01:27:38.780 --> 01:27:41.580 When someone does something different, like the scotch, 01:27:41.580 --> 01:27:45.500 the Scottish making scotch and the Japanese discovering it, that's great. 01:27:45.500 --> 01:27:49.660 And Japanese whiskies now, as they've been developing over the last many decades, 01:27:49.660 --> 01:27:53.900 but especially in the last 30 years, 40 years, they're sublime. 01:27:53.900 --> 01:27:57.180 And they're distinct in a way that's very subtly Japanese, 01:27:57.180 --> 01:27:59.660 that's different than scotch or American whiskey. 01:27:59.660 --> 01:28:00.780 And that's beautiful. 01:28:00.780 --> 01:28:05.100 There's one more amazing whiskey in the world because the Japanese made it their own. 01:28:05.100 --> 01:28:07.100 That's the kind of diversity I celebrate. 01:28:07.100 --> 01:28:10.700 I don't want the Japanese to be wiped out of existence 01:28:10.700 --> 01:28:14.300 by being replaced by other races because what they're good at would be gone. 01:28:15.500 --> 01:28:17.020 I don't want women to cease to exist. 01:28:17.020 --> 01:28:20.060 I want everything that God wants to create to be sustained. 01:28:20.060 --> 01:28:26.700 And for us not to mess it up in discussing Galatians 328 for a couple of hours 01:28:26.700 --> 01:28:30.380 is precisely because the world, including within the church, 01:28:31.500 --> 01:28:33.900 is not immunized against making these errors. 01:28:33.900 --> 01:28:35.900 Obviously, the world is going to be evil. 01:28:35.900 --> 01:28:39.980 But when we find the evil coming inside the church and attacking God's creation, 01:28:39.980 --> 01:28:41.660 that's when it's our problem. 01:28:41.660 --> 01:28:45.020 When we see our own pastors and our own teachers spreading 01:28:45.740 --> 01:28:51.580 Judaizing heresy and Gnostic heresies and this other filth, the up-ends creation, 01:28:51.580 --> 01:28:54.940 by denigrating each other, we have to go after it. 01:28:54.940 --> 01:28:57.820 We have to defend it because there's no one else to do it. 01:28:57.820 --> 01:29:00.300 Paul's not going to write any more epistles to us. 01:29:00.300 --> 01:29:02.780 Can you imagine what the epistle to the Americas would be like? 01:29:03.900 --> 01:29:08.940 Oh, foolish Americans who bewitched you would be the least of the problems in there. 01:29:08.940 --> 01:29:10.460 Paul would be spitting fire. 01:29:10.460 --> 01:29:11.260 It would be banned. 01:29:11.260 --> 01:29:12.780 You want to talk about banned books? 01:29:12.780 --> 01:29:14.540 If Paul wrote an epistle to America, 01:29:15.340 --> 01:29:19.020 he would never be allowed to see anyone on the Internet because he would tell the truth. 01:29:19.020 --> 01:29:21.820 He would tell us what God thinks of the things we're doing. 01:29:22.380 --> 01:29:26.380 And the Galatians are in far better shape than the churches of our day. 01:29:27.180 --> 01:29:33.660 So that's why I said earlier, the passage of John speaking to the Pharisees, 01:29:34.460 --> 01:29:37.980 their attitude where they presume to say to themselves, 01:29:37.980 --> 01:29:42.300 we have Abraham as our father, that's the attitude of every church body today. 01:29:42.300 --> 01:29:45.020 And I'm particularly talking about the conservative ones, 01:29:45.020 --> 01:29:48.140 the ones that have historic confessions, 01:29:48.140 --> 01:29:53.260 the ones that have tradition that have preserved the things that were inherited from of old. 01:29:53.260 --> 01:29:56.060 And they say, I believe the Bible, I'm this and I'm that. 01:29:56.060 --> 01:30:00.060 When these things happen, when Galatians 3.28 comes under attack, 01:30:00.060 --> 01:30:01.020 where are they? 01:30:01.020 --> 01:30:02.780 Are they joining in the fight? 01:30:02.780 --> 01:30:04.620 Are they splitting the difference? 01:30:04.620 --> 01:30:07.100 Are they saying, well, I'm going to hold the line on traniism, 01:30:07.100 --> 01:30:09.100 but yeah, we got to stop racism. 01:30:09.100 --> 01:30:11.180 You can probably guess some of you who I'm talking about with that. 01:30:11.740 --> 01:30:13.340 That's very common. 01:30:13.340 --> 01:30:18.460 The boomer stalwarts of the old generation and of the new religion, 01:30:18.460 --> 01:30:22.380 they will happily burn down half of this verse to try to defend the rest. 01:30:23.020 --> 01:30:26.700 And everyone wants to give them credit for sitting on their laurels when 01:30:26.700 --> 01:30:29.180 all they're going to be remembered for is the evil they're doing today. 01:30:29.900 --> 01:30:32.460 When we have guys who did good things in the past 01:30:32.460 --> 01:30:36.780 and may openly embrace doxers against men in their own churches 01:30:36.780 --> 01:30:38.700 and for once I'm not talking about myself here, 01:30:40.140 --> 01:30:41.180 this is bad news. 01:30:41.980 --> 01:30:46.060 When it takes podcasters to say, hey, maybe Galatians 3.28 matters, 01:30:46.060 --> 01:30:47.340 the church is in real trouble. 01:30:48.300 --> 01:30:50.460 I was telling Cory, we were doing prep, 01:30:50.460 --> 01:30:55.660 I pray every day that we will eventually succeed in making this podcast obsolete. 01:30:55.660 --> 01:30:57.020 I don't have to talk about this stuff. 01:30:57.020 --> 01:31:00.860 I want it to be so common and for us to equip so many men 01:31:00.860 --> 01:31:04.060 that anytime I get up and see some new horror, 01:31:04.060 --> 01:31:06.780 I see 500 guys piling in and saying what I would say. 01:31:07.340 --> 01:31:09.900 Because the things that we have to say about these matters, 01:31:10.540 --> 01:31:11.900 they're not particularly clever. 01:31:11.900 --> 01:31:13.500 We're just paying attention. 01:31:13.500 --> 01:31:15.740 It's literally just paying attention. 01:31:15.740 --> 01:31:21.820 I've been very frustrated recently with the illiteracy of even intelligent men 01:31:22.620 --> 01:31:27.580 where things like our distinction of because and for being causal 01:31:27.580 --> 01:31:31.900 and that actually mattering for the sake of Galatians 3.28. 01:31:31.900 --> 01:31:35.180 If you don't understand the causality inside this verse, 01:31:35.180 --> 01:31:37.820 you're illiterate and you're a fool and you don't understand anything. 01:31:38.460 --> 01:31:39.820 And I don't say that to be mean. 01:31:39.820 --> 01:31:44.140 I say that as a warning that if you're just gliding through the text 01:31:44.140 --> 01:31:46.300 and you're not actually understanding what's said, 01:31:47.340 --> 01:31:49.500 best case, you just don't draw any conclusions. 01:31:50.140 --> 01:31:53.180 But you're also not equipped when a false teacher comes along 01:31:53.740 --> 01:31:58.380 and tries to separate the three couplets from the causality. 01:31:58.380 --> 01:32:02.860 Because the in Christ causality in this passage is the whole thing. 01:32:03.420 --> 01:32:05.260 It only applies in Christ. 01:32:05.260 --> 01:32:07.740 It doesn't apply outside of Christ. 01:32:07.740 --> 01:32:09.740 It shouldn't take us pointing that out. 01:32:09.740 --> 01:32:12.620 Everyone should be saying the same thing because it's not a hard problem. 01:32:13.340 --> 01:32:15.900 But apparently it's hard for people to pay attention. 01:32:15.900 --> 01:32:18.940 So one of the things we beg people, just pay attention, 01:32:18.940 --> 01:32:21.580 is Corey said earlier, it's not about reading Greek. 01:32:21.580 --> 01:32:22.300 I don't know Greek. 01:32:22.300 --> 01:32:23.180 I'm never going to learn Greek. 01:32:23.180 --> 01:32:23.740 I don't want to. 01:32:24.300 --> 01:32:26.940 The more Corey learns, the less I need to care. 01:32:26.940 --> 01:32:30.380 Because I have one more guy I can ask questions about these things. 01:32:30.380 --> 01:32:30.940 That's fine. 01:32:30.940 --> 01:32:31.820 I've solved the problem. 01:32:31.820 --> 01:32:32.940 I can ask someone who knows. 01:32:34.300 --> 01:32:36.140 It doesn't need to be complicated. 01:32:36.140 --> 01:32:39.340 Just believe what's actually there, but believe all of it. 01:32:39.340 --> 01:32:42.940 When God said not a jot nor a tittle will fall away. 01:32:43.980 --> 01:32:47.020 That was about the stuff, about the little details, 01:32:47.020 --> 01:32:50.700 the smallest letter, the smallest mark, the tiny details. 01:32:50.700 --> 01:32:54.700 If those are important enough for God, maybe we should pay attention. 01:32:55.340 --> 01:32:57.180 And it doesn't mean obsessing. 01:32:57.180 --> 01:33:00.460 We're giving this verse more attention than we give most verses, 01:33:00.460 --> 01:33:06.060 precisely because Satan has a spotlight pointed at Galatians 3 28. 01:33:06.620 --> 01:33:10.300 Because with things like BLM, he's driving a truck right through it. 01:33:11.180 --> 01:33:14.140 He's showing us what matters. 01:33:14.140 --> 01:33:16.380 You could be completely a deaf mute, 01:33:16.380 --> 01:33:19.340 and you could still feel the vibrations from this attack. 01:33:19.340 --> 01:33:22.300 That's how clear it is that these types of things 01:33:23.260 --> 01:33:24.940 are what matters to hell. 01:33:24.940 --> 01:33:27.500 And if they matter to hell, they have to matter to heaven. 01:33:27.500 --> 01:33:29.340 Even pagans understand this. 01:33:29.340 --> 01:33:31.740 There are a lot of men who are seeking out God, 01:33:31.740 --> 01:33:34.220 because when they see evil in the world, 01:33:34.220 --> 01:33:36.300 they understand that there has to be an opposite of that. 01:33:36.860 --> 01:33:41.340 And when Christianity historically has been the place where it was claimed we had that, 01:33:41.340 --> 01:33:43.180 they come looking at Christian churches. 01:33:43.180 --> 01:33:44.940 And unfortunately in most of them, 01:33:44.940 --> 01:33:47.500 they find people attacking Galatians 3 28, 01:33:47.500 --> 01:33:49.340 just like the global religion, 01:33:49.420 --> 01:33:52.460 saying there are no races, there are no sexes, 01:33:52.460 --> 01:33:54.460 slavery is bad, classism is bad, 01:33:54.460 --> 01:33:55.420 there are no distinctions. 01:33:55.420 --> 01:33:56.300 We're all equal, man. 01:33:58.220 --> 01:34:00.300 Anyone who doesn't know God yet, 01:34:00.300 --> 01:34:02.060 but knows that those things are lies, 01:34:02.060 --> 01:34:04.140 is going to keep looking for God elsewhere. 01:34:04.140 --> 01:34:06.140 Because the very people who told me, 01:34:06.140 --> 01:34:07.980 I know about Jesus, let me tell you about them. 01:34:07.980 --> 01:34:09.660 When the first thing that they say is a lie, 01:34:10.700 --> 01:34:13.420 the intelligent man who doesn't know God is just going to keep walking, 01:34:13.420 --> 01:34:14.540 like, no, that's more the same. 01:34:15.180 --> 01:34:17.420 I don't know about their Jesus, 01:34:17.420 --> 01:34:19.340 but I know this is a crock of crap. 01:34:19.340 --> 01:34:20.300 I want none of that. 01:34:21.420 --> 01:34:23.260 That's why this stuff is consequential. 01:34:23.260 --> 01:34:24.460 It's not just fiddly, 01:34:24.460 --> 01:34:27.260 and it's just not just about nores and ands, 01:34:27.260 --> 01:34:28.700 and obsessing with one verse. 01:34:29.340 --> 01:34:34.060 It's when you betray the gospel by subverting creation and its creator, 01:34:34.620 --> 01:34:37.340 you make it impossible for the gospel to be spread 01:34:37.340 --> 01:34:39.660 to those who God is trying to reach in these days. 01:34:41.180 --> 01:34:43.660 Woe saying jot or tittle reminds me of 01:34:44.380 --> 01:34:46.940 one of the ways that I have taken to saying that. 01:34:46.940 --> 01:34:48.460 And for those who don't know, 01:34:48.460 --> 01:34:51.660 it basically just means the smallest parts of writing. 01:34:52.300 --> 01:34:54.940 The tittle, an example of that being the dot on an I. 01:34:56.220 --> 01:34:59.820 One of the ways that I've liked to say that is either iota or yod. 01:35:01.020 --> 01:35:04.860 And the reason that I like that is because it highlights the two languages 01:35:05.500 --> 01:35:08.460 that God used in order to transmit his word. 01:35:08.460 --> 01:35:11.660 Because the yoda is the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet, 01:35:12.220 --> 01:35:15.340 and the yod is the tenth letter and the smallest letter 01:35:15.980 --> 01:35:17.340 in the Hebrew alphabet. 01:35:18.300 --> 01:35:21.180 And so we have a promise from God, 01:35:21.180 --> 01:35:24.060 this the promise that neither jot nor tittle will pass away, 01:35:24.060 --> 01:35:27.020 of course, is a promise from God about scripture 01:35:27.020 --> 01:35:29.580 being transmitted to us without losing anything. 01:35:31.660 --> 01:35:34.940 And so today we can say that not an yoda will be lost. 01:35:36.220 --> 01:35:38.460 And we already see historically, 01:35:38.460 --> 01:35:41.340 he fulfilled the promise, if we say yoda or yod, 01:35:41.340 --> 01:35:43.020 of a yod not being lost. 01:35:43.020 --> 01:35:46.060 Because when scripture was translated, 01:35:46.860 --> 01:35:49.900 when it was transmitted from the Hebrew into the Greek, 01:35:49.900 --> 01:35:50.940 nothing was lost. 01:35:51.660 --> 01:35:56.700 We have God's perfect word without anything being lost 01:35:56.700 --> 01:36:01.420 as he promised in the Septuagint with regard to the Old Testament. 01:36:01.420 --> 01:36:04.540 And that's why I will continue to say yoda or yod, 01:36:04.540 --> 01:36:06.380 despite the fact that very obviously, 01:36:07.980 --> 01:36:10.380 we are going to emphasize the use of the Greek 01:36:10.380 --> 01:36:12.060 instead of the Hebrew in the Old Testament. 01:36:12.060 --> 01:36:14.300 We'll get into that more in the future. 01:36:16.060 --> 01:36:19.660 But I want to emphasize something that Woe said about 01:36:19.660 --> 01:36:23.500 that third couplet in Galatians 328. 01:36:25.580 --> 01:36:26.780 If you start with the first, 01:36:28.860 --> 01:36:32.780 let's pick two examples, the French and the Japanese. 01:36:33.740 --> 01:36:36.540 If there were no Japanese, would the French still be French? 01:36:37.420 --> 01:36:38.300 The answer is yes. 01:36:38.860 --> 01:36:40.140 And the inverse is also true. 01:36:40.140 --> 01:36:43.340 If there were no French, the Japanese would still very well be Japanese. 01:36:44.780 --> 01:36:47.340 If there were no slaves, would there still be freemen? 01:36:48.140 --> 01:36:48.460 Yes. 01:36:49.820 --> 01:36:51.980 If there were no freemen, would there still be slaves? 01:36:52.700 --> 01:36:53.340 Yes, again. 01:36:54.140 --> 01:36:56.460 I could go into greater depth on why that one is true, 01:36:56.460 --> 01:36:57.980 but we'll save that for another time. 01:36:59.740 --> 01:37:01.740 But this does not apply to male and female. 01:37:02.620 --> 01:37:07.500 You cannot have man without woman, and you can't have woman without man. 01:37:08.460 --> 01:37:14.860 Because as Woe mentioned, even though Adam in the garden was perfect, 01:37:14.860 --> 01:37:19.420 he walked with God, God said it is not good for man to be alone, 01:37:19.420 --> 01:37:21.340 because Adam was not complete. 01:37:22.620 --> 01:37:24.300 Man without woman is not complete. 01:37:24.300 --> 01:37:26.060 Woman without man is not complete. 01:37:26.780 --> 01:37:29.820 And so that is why there is male and female. 01:37:32.300 --> 01:37:36.060 And that highlights another thing that I want to say about this verse, 01:37:36.060 --> 01:37:39.580 this verse, this is one of those times in Scripture 01:37:40.220 --> 01:37:42.780 where you can actually say the exact opposite of the verse 01:37:44.380 --> 01:37:47.660 in terms of the literal wording, and it's still be true. 01:37:49.100 --> 01:37:51.900 Now that is only the case if you ignore that final clause, 01:37:52.620 --> 01:37:55.420 because if you pay attention to the final clause, then you can't do this. 01:37:56.140 --> 01:37:59.900 But without that final clause, you can say and have it be entirely true and 01:37:59.900 --> 01:38:03.820 consonant with Scripture, there is Jew and there is Greek. 01:38:04.380 --> 01:38:05.980 There is slave and there is free. 01:38:06.540 --> 01:38:08.140 There is male and female. 01:38:08.860 --> 01:38:12.380 Because that is what the verse again, as I said earlier, is saying. 01:38:12.380 --> 01:38:15.420 It's saying these are real categories, these are real things. 01:38:15.420 --> 01:38:21.420 These are part of the created reality as God intended it, as God made it. 01:38:22.380 --> 01:38:27.660 And so that is why it matters that if you are in Christ, again, causal, 01:38:28.300 --> 01:38:31.260 if you are in Christ, then you are all one, 01:38:31.260 --> 01:38:34.460 and these things do not matter soteriologically. 01:38:36.460 --> 01:38:39.980 But I just wanted to emphasize that difference of that third couplet, 01:38:40.620 --> 01:38:46.700 and the reason for the difference is because both male and female are necessary for the 01:38:46.700 --> 01:38:48.540 totality that is humanity. 01:38:49.180 --> 01:38:53.260 You cannot have one without the other, whereas with the other two couplets, 01:38:53.260 --> 01:38:57.500 you can very well have one and not the other at any given time in any given place. 01:38:58.220 --> 01:39:05.820 Now that we've drawn a clear line around the proper context of this verse, 01:39:06.860 --> 01:39:10.140 I hope that everyone who's listening who agrees with our arguments, 01:39:10.140 --> 01:39:12.060 I'm not sure how someone could disagree. 01:39:12.060 --> 01:39:16.300 But if you agree with them, if they're sound to you, know this. 01:39:17.340 --> 01:39:21.580 There is no possible claim that can be made about this verse that we have not addressed here. 01:39:22.140 --> 01:39:26.380 Anything else must necessarily defy some portion of this. 01:39:27.020 --> 01:39:29.660 Either denying that this is about salvation, 01:39:29.660 --> 01:39:35.020 or denying that it's about the ontological nature of created reality. 01:39:35.020 --> 01:39:38.620 God's creation is material. 01:39:38.620 --> 01:39:40.780 It has particulars. 01:39:40.780 --> 01:39:42.060 They include race. 01:39:42.060 --> 01:39:43.500 They include sex. 01:39:43.500 --> 01:39:47.500 And indeed, they do include things like slavery and class. 01:39:47.500 --> 01:39:52.060 There are some men who are simply not fit for anything other than the lowest stations. 01:39:52.860 --> 01:39:56.140 And to say that, everyone's like, oh, that's so mean. 01:39:56.140 --> 01:39:57.580 Why would you want to do that to them? 01:39:58.380 --> 01:40:03.100 There's nothing that's harder on a man than not knowing his place in the world. 01:40:03.100 --> 01:40:04.780 I don't know what I should be doing. 01:40:04.780 --> 01:40:06.460 I don't know what I want to do. 01:40:06.460 --> 01:40:07.900 I don't belong. 01:40:07.900 --> 01:40:09.660 I don't have any sense of self. 01:40:10.380 --> 01:40:13.340 That's something that's common in all times and places, 01:40:13.340 --> 01:40:16.300 especially for younger men, just trying to figure things out. 01:40:16.300 --> 01:40:22.780 Now, it's worse today because we're no longer inheriting the occupations of our fathers. 01:40:22.780 --> 01:40:25.900 It used to be that if your dad is a tanner, you're a tanner. 01:40:25.900 --> 01:40:29.340 If your dad made stained glass windows, you make stained glass windows. 01:40:29.340 --> 01:40:30.300 That's just how it worked. 01:40:32.780 --> 01:40:37.660 When that went away, young men ceased to really understand, well, what do I do? 01:40:37.660 --> 01:40:39.340 Whenever I was like, oh, you can do anything you want. 01:40:39.340 --> 01:40:40.780 You can be anything in the world. 01:40:40.780 --> 01:40:42.220 Well, that's nonsense. 01:40:42.220 --> 01:40:45.420 The overwhelming majority of men can't be anything they want to be. 01:40:45.900 --> 01:40:47.500 They're going to be good at a few things. 01:40:47.500 --> 01:40:51.260 They'll be mediocre at a fair number, and they'll be bad at a whole bunch. 01:40:51.980 --> 01:40:55.020 And the best they can do is to try to find something 01:40:55.020 --> 01:40:57.820 that they'll either be mediocre or really good at, 01:40:58.380 --> 01:41:01.180 and hopefully they can feed a family with it. 01:41:04.300 --> 01:41:06.940 The fact that there are men who are not good for anything, 01:41:06.940 --> 01:41:09.260 except for the lowest stations in life, 01:41:10.220 --> 01:41:14.220 if it's how they're made, if it's what they are, 01:41:14.860 --> 01:41:17.900 then to deprive them of even that is worse than not. 01:41:18.940 --> 01:41:23.980 If a man is only good for flipping burgers or fries or digging ditches, 01:41:23.980 --> 01:41:26.220 whatever you want to say is the lowliest thing. 01:41:26.220 --> 01:41:28.220 I don't say any of those things would be insulting. 01:41:28.780 --> 01:41:31.660 My paternal family was ditch diggers for generations. 01:41:31.660 --> 01:41:34.780 That was the family business, digging ditches. 01:41:34.780 --> 01:41:35.660 It's hard work. 01:41:35.660 --> 01:41:36.700 I'm glad I didn't do it. 01:41:36.700 --> 01:41:38.140 I'd be bad at it. 01:41:38.140 --> 01:41:41.340 But the fact that when we look at these things, 01:41:42.300 --> 01:41:45.420 we don't have a sense anymore of what we should do, 01:41:45.420 --> 01:41:49.500 hurts everyone, and especially hurts the man who isn't equipped for much. 01:41:50.060 --> 01:41:50.940 To say, you know what? 01:41:51.660 --> 01:41:53.100 You're going to be a janitor. 01:41:53.100 --> 01:41:54.780 You have an ADIQ. 01:41:54.780 --> 01:41:56.140 You can't even live on your own, 01:41:56.140 --> 01:41:56.620 but you know what? 01:41:56.620 --> 01:41:58.140 You can be a good janitor. 01:41:58.140 --> 01:41:59.100 Here's the mop. 01:41:59.100 --> 01:41:59.900 Here's the bucket. 01:41:59.900 --> 01:42:01.180 Here are the floors. 01:42:01.180 --> 01:42:02.860 Go to these rooms in this order. 01:42:03.420 --> 01:42:04.940 Go from wall to wall. 01:42:04.940 --> 01:42:06.780 When it looks like this, you're done. 01:42:06.780 --> 01:42:08.380 Someone who's retarded can do that. 01:42:08.940 --> 01:42:11.340 They're actually capable of doing a job like that. 01:42:12.060 --> 01:42:14.140 When you say, oh, no, you can do way better than that. 01:42:14.140 --> 01:42:15.180 No, they can't. 01:42:15.180 --> 01:42:18.140 If that's the best they can do, if that's their station in life, 01:42:18.140 --> 01:42:19.180 don't rob them of it. 01:42:20.140 --> 01:42:25.180 And so just as women have been robbed in the last century, certainly, 01:42:25.180 --> 01:42:27.820 and the last few generations by feminism, 01:42:27.820 --> 01:42:29.340 they've been deprived of motherhood. 01:42:29.340 --> 01:42:32.700 They've been deprived of the very thing that God made them for. 01:42:32.700 --> 01:42:35.660 They've been told, no, you need to compete with men in the workplace. 01:42:35.660 --> 01:42:39.500 You need to go get the same jobs as them, have the same crummy hours, 01:42:40.300 --> 01:42:43.900 same miserable political fighting all day long. 01:42:43.900 --> 01:42:47.260 You have to go up against them and compete on their terms. 01:42:47.820 --> 01:42:51.260 And anytime it doesn't work as well for you and you're unhappy, 01:42:51.260 --> 01:42:52.380 well, that's men's fault too. 01:42:53.180 --> 01:42:55.660 It will never have anything to do with the fact that a woman is in a place 01:42:55.660 --> 01:42:59.100 she doesn't belong, doing something she doesn't want to do, 01:42:59.100 --> 01:43:02.860 and is giving up on the thing that she does actually want to do, 01:43:02.860 --> 01:43:03.900 even if she doesn't know it. 01:43:04.540 --> 01:43:05.900 And it's tragic today. 01:43:05.900 --> 01:43:11.340 You see a lot of videos on TikTok that shows up elsewhere on the internet 01:43:11.340 --> 01:43:14.220 where girls say, I just figured it out. 01:43:14.860 --> 01:43:16.300 I'm 30, 35. 01:43:16.300 --> 01:43:20.780 I realize I want babies and here I am with this house and this career 01:43:20.780 --> 01:43:23.740 and I've done all this stuff and I'm not happy with any of it. 01:43:23.740 --> 01:43:24.620 I just want kids. 01:43:25.420 --> 01:43:27.740 She should have been told that when she was 15. 01:43:28.380 --> 01:43:33.100 She shouldn't have gotten all those years into her life before no one told her 01:43:33.100 --> 01:43:35.260 and she had to figure out on her own what she really wanted. 01:43:36.620 --> 01:43:41.020 So when Satan attacks a passage like Galatians 328, 01:43:41.020 --> 01:43:45.180 so there's no male and female, the or in the end doesn't matter anymore. 01:43:45.180 --> 01:43:48.540 Because when he's going after it, he's saying that we're interchangeable. 01:43:49.180 --> 01:43:53.100 He's saying that you go girl and girl bosses and all that stuff 01:43:53.100 --> 01:43:54.380 is going to work out for him. 01:43:54.380 --> 01:43:55.100 It just doesn't. 01:43:55.660 --> 01:43:57.020 It absolutely doesn't. 01:43:58.780 --> 01:44:02.780 And anyone who's deceived into believing that it does ends up worse off for it, 01:44:03.900 --> 01:44:07.100 and then you have guys on the internet pointing and making fun of them for it. 01:44:07.100 --> 01:44:10.620 And to some extent, it is necessary to have negative examples. 01:44:10.620 --> 01:44:12.220 Say, look, don't turn out like this person. 01:44:12.940 --> 01:44:17.500 But unfortunately, there's a lot of Schadenfreude and cruelty involved, 01:44:17.500 --> 01:44:18.380 which there shouldn't be. 01:44:19.420 --> 01:44:22.140 If someone screws up, let them be a lesson to others. 01:44:22.140 --> 01:44:27.100 And let that lesson come down to the younger generations who can avoid making all the mistakes. 01:44:27.260 --> 01:44:33.100 When Satan comes after this verse, when he comes after these distinctions, 01:44:33.660 --> 01:44:36.780 when he says that Africans are interchangeable with Europeans, 01:44:37.420 --> 01:44:40.620 when people with an average IQ of 85 are interchangeable 01:44:40.620 --> 01:44:43.980 with people with an average IQ of 100, he's lying to him. 01:44:43.980 --> 01:44:45.500 Everyone's being lied to. 01:44:45.500 --> 01:44:46.620 We're not interchangeable. 01:44:46.620 --> 01:44:48.220 We can't do the same stuff. 01:44:49.100 --> 01:44:52.860 And when that lie is told, it's everyone up for failure. 01:44:52.860 --> 01:44:57.020 Because suddenly you have Boeing miss drilling holes because of their diversity efforts. 01:44:57.900 --> 01:45:02.220 And you have white guys who'd have a good paying job on a factory line. 01:45:02.220 --> 01:45:07.180 They can't feed their families because some diversity hire got the job instead. 01:45:07.180 --> 01:45:10.460 And planes fall in the sky and everyone complains about it. 01:45:10.460 --> 01:45:11.740 And like, it's inevitable. 01:45:11.740 --> 01:45:13.900 You had someone doing something they're not equipped to do. 01:45:14.460 --> 01:45:15.660 What do you think is going to happen? 01:45:16.780 --> 01:45:18.220 I couldn't be a mother. 01:45:18.220 --> 01:45:19.660 I couldn't run a nursery. 01:45:19.660 --> 01:45:20.700 I'd lose my mind. 01:45:20.700 --> 01:45:21.820 It's just preposterous. 01:45:21.820 --> 01:45:25.020 The notion that I could do the things with small children, 01:45:25.020 --> 01:45:30.060 the women, all girls are virtually all equipped for just naturally. 01:45:30.060 --> 01:45:31.100 It's alien to me. 01:45:32.380 --> 01:45:35.340 At scale, if I had one kid or two kids, I could handle it. 01:45:35.340 --> 01:45:38.940 But the things that we're good at are distinct. 01:45:38.940 --> 01:45:39.740 And that's okay. 01:45:39.740 --> 01:45:40.780 It's a blessing. 01:45:40.780 --> 01:45:43.900 That's part of the actual godly diversity that we've been given. 01:45:44.620 --> 01:45:48.700 Every attack that happens in the world against that makes the world worse. 01:45:48.700 --> 01:45:50.220 That makes daily life worse. 01:45:50.780 --> 01:45:53.020 Forget even the false doctrine. 01:45:53.020 --> 01:45:57.340 Forget destroying salvation by denying the Creator. 01:45:57.340 --> 01:45:58.620 It just makes everything worse. 01:45:59.180 --> 01:46:00.540 That's also part of this argument. 01:46:00.540 --> 01:46:02.380 It's not the main argument here, but you know what? 01:46:03.020 --> 01:46:08.620 When all these attacks on Galatians 3.28 are provably and measurably making 01:46:08.620 --> 01:46:14.220 the world we live in a worse place, that's an indication that maybe we're up against God. 01:46:14.220 --> 01:46:17.580 Or maybe we're doing something that God says not to do. 01:46:17.580 --> 01:46:20.060 And we're believing the opposite of what he says. 01:46:20.060 --> 01:46:24.220 Because whenever you find people obeying God and doing what he says to do, 01:46:24.220 --> 01:46:25.500 you find God's blessings. 01:46:26.140 --> 01:46:29.500 Not in the way we were talking about earlier, where we're trying to measure whoever has the 01:46:29.500 --> 01:46:32.380 most money must be the most blessed by God. 01:46:32.380 --> 01:46:33.180 That's not the point. 01:46:33.980 --> 01:46:38.380 Sometimes having wealth, having a lot of stuff as a test, 01:46:38.380 --> 01:46:40.460 and it's a test that a lot of people fail. 01:46:40.460 --> 01:46:42.700 It could be a blessing if they were faithful, 01:46:42.700 --> 01:46:46.860 but when they have a lot, the way that they use it and how it preoccupies them, 01:46:47.420 --> 01:46:49.340 takes them further away from God. 01:46:49.340 --> 01:46:52.220 Whereas if they had less or had nothing, they would be better off. 01:46:53.020 --> 01:46:57.820 I want people to remember that this verse, whenever you hear someone talking about it, 01:46:57.820 --> 01:47:00.940 if they talk about it in ways that aren't about salvation, 01:47:00.940 --> 01:47:04.780 if they talk about it in ways that attack, how God created everything, 01:47:05.340 --> 01:47:06.140 they're from hell. 01:47:06.860 --> 01:47:07.420 Full stop. 01:47:07.980 --> 01:47:12.620 I don't care who they are, what their reputation is, how much you like them, 01:47:12.620 --> 01:47:14.540 how much else they've gotten right in the past. 01:47:15.340 --> 01:47:16.860 The Galatians got stuff right. 01:47:17.420 --> 01:47:19.580 Paul planted the church in Galatia. 01:47:19.580 --> 01:47:21.020 They had sound doctrine. 01:47:21.020 --> 01:47:24.380 They could have only possibly had sound doctrine because their teacher 01:47:24.380 --> 01:47:26.060 was an apostle of Jesus Christ. 01:47:26.860 --> 01:47:30.460 It was when someone else snuck in and bewitched them, 01:47:30.460 --> 01:47:32.620 and fed them teachings of demons, 01:47:32.620 --> 01:47:34.860 and they believed them too because they couldn't tell the difference. 01:47:35.900 --> 01:47:37.900 We are no better than the Galatians. 01:47:37.900 --> 01:47:39.100 We're no better. 01:47:39.100 --> 01:47:43.580 We're worse in every demonstrable way, because we are arrogant. 01:47:43.580 --> 01:47:45.020 We are the Pharisees. 01:47:45.020 --> 01:47:48.300 We're the ones who say that we have this confession. 01:47:48.300 --> 01:47:49.900 We have this logo. 01:47:49.900 --> 01:47:50.860 We're Christians. 01:47:50.860 --> 01:47:51.980 We're immune from that. 01:47:51.980 --> 01:47:52.620 No, we're not. 01:47:53.420 --> 01:47:59.340 The four-part series culminating in apostasy laid bare that we are not immune. 01:48:00.060 --> 01:48:03.500 Not only are you not immune, but it's happening before our eyes. 01:48:03.500 --> 01:48:05.900 And this verse is one of the chief ways it's happening. 01:48:06.700 --> 01:48:08.300 Don't let it happen among you. 01:48:08.300 --> 01:48:10.860 When you hear somebody bring it up, test what they're saying. 01:48:10.860 --> 01:48:15.580 And if they're not talking about how this verse in Galatians is a celebration 01:48:15.580 --> 01:48:19.100 of how God saves us from sin, death, and the devil, 01:48:19.900 --> 01:48:23.580 if they want to try to make it about reordering this life, 01:48:23.580 --> 01:48:26.380 saying that the Christian life no longer has sexes, 01:48:26.380 --> 01:48:28.780 that you don't need to be husband and wife anymore, 01:48:28.780 --> 01:48:30.940 you don't need to have distinctions, 01:48:30.940 --> 01:48:33.820 we can all just mix together and be one, they're from hell. 01:48:34.380 --> 01:48:39.100 Because everything, every single thing that will come downstream from those teachings 01:48:39.580 --> 01:48:42.380 is evil and does harm, period. 01:48:44.460 --> 01:48:48.460 When Satan came to Christ in the desert in order to tempt him, 01:48:49.820 --> 01:48:51.500 he did it by quoting scripture. 01:48:52.940 --> 01:48:54.620 And he didn't even misquote scripture. 01:48:55.340 --> 01:48:59.740 Really, he quoted scripture in a way that was misleading. 01:49:00.700 --> 01:49:05.740 It is possible to use basically any good toward a wicked end. 01:49:06.700 --> 01:49:10.860 It is possible to abuse things that are good in themselves 01:49:10.860 --> 01:49:13.340 in order to use them to achieve evil. 01:49:14.060 --> 01:49:15.580 That's what Satan does with the law. 01:49:16.460 --> 01:49:18.140 God's law is perfect and good. 01:49:19.020 --> 01:49:21.580 It is used to kill us because we are sinners. 01:49:22.300 --> 01:49:26.700 And incidentally again to remind you of what we've gone over before, 01:49:26.700 --> 01:49:28.220 we sin because we are sinners. 01:49:28.220 --> 01:49:30.380 It is not that we are sinners because we sin. 01:49:31.020 --> 01:49:34.780 The causation matters there because original sin matters. 01:49:34.860 --> 01:49:36.380 But we've covered that previously. 01:49:38.460 --> 01:49:40.460 So for this verse here in Galatians, 01:49:41.180 --> 01:49:44.300 Christians need to pull out two sets of truths. 01:49:45.340 --> 01:49:48.380 The one is what it says on its face. 01:49:49.420 --> 01:49:52.460 But you must be careful to recognize as Woe just said 01:49:52.460 --> 01:49:55.980 that it is in the sotereological context only. 01:49:56.860 --> 01:49:59.100 And so there is neither Jew nor Greek, 01:49:59.100 --> 01:50:02.700 which is to say race does not matter to salvation. 01:50:02.700 --> 01:50:04.380 There is neither slave nor free. 01:50:04.860 --> 01:50:08.780 Which is to say your position socially or hierarchically 01:50:08.780 --> 01:50:10.700 does not matter to salvation. 01:50:11.260 --> 01:50:12.940 And there is not male and female. 01:50:12.940 --> 01:50:16.940 Which is to say your sex does not matter to salvation. 01:50:18.620 --> 01:50:21.420 That is the first set of truths that you must pull out of this. 01:50:22.220 --> 01:50:25.820 And you must be careful to remember that four is causal. 01:50:27.260 --> 01:50:30.780 If and only if you are in Christ Jesus, 01:50:30.780 --> 01:50:32.300 then these things do not matter. 01:50:33.180 --> 01:50:35.340 Because that is the core of the Christian faith. 01:50:35.900 --> 01:50:40.220 The core of the Christian faith is that you are saved by faith alone. 01:50:40.780 --> 01:50:42.380 You are not saved by your works. 01:50:43.740 --> 01:50:46.140 I know that some who are listening are going to be up in arms, 01:50:46.140 --> 01:50:48.700 but that is the core of the Christian faith. 01:50:48.700 --> 01:50:50.140 There is no avoiding that. 01:50:50.140 --> 01:50:51.660 Well, what about James? 01:50:51.660 --> 01:50:53.660 That is about the and then what? 01:50:54.940 --> 01:50:56.780 Which is part of what this podcast is. 01:50:56.780 --> 01:50:57.740 It's the and then what? 01:50:57.740 --> 01:51:01.020 How do I live a Christian life now that I'm a Christian? 01:51:01.820 --> 01:51:05.500 Good works will necessarily flow from a living faith, 01:51:06.220 --> 01:51:08.620 but you are not saved by those works. 01:51:08.620 --> 01:51:10.300 Those works do not contribute. 01:51:11.020 --> 01:51:14.060 What does Scripture say of those who would be justified by the law? 01:51:14.780 --> 01:51:17.820 You are damned if you would be justified by the law 01:51:17.820 --> 01:51:19.420 because you are severed from Christ. 01:51:21.260 --> 01:51:25.420 And so this verse is purely in its literal wording 01:51:26.140 --> 01:51:27.740 about soteriology. 01:51:27.740 --> 01:51:29.180 It is about salvation. 01:51:29.900 --> 01:51:33.500 And so those first truths, that first set of truths that you must pull out 01:51:34.380 --> 01:51:36.060 are about salvation. 01:51:36.860 --> 01:51:41.420 The second set are the exact inverse of the literal wording. 01:51:42.380 --> 01:51:45.980 Because again, as I mentioned multiple times in this episode, 01:51:46.780 --> 01:51:53.340 this verse is coherent if and only if these couplets are real things. 01:51:54.300 --> 01:51:58.220 And so as a Christian, you must pull out race is real 01:51:58.220 --> 01:52:00.780 because there is Jew and there is Greek. 01:52:00.780 --> 01:52:01.980 Those are real things. 01:52:02.780 --> 01:52:06.140 That they are real is why it matters that they do not matter 01:52:06.780 --> 01:52:10.220 in order to be saved with regard to salvation. 01:52:11.580 --> 01:52:12.940 There is slave and there is free, 01:52:12.940 --> 01:52:15.260 which is to say that hierarchy is real. 01:52:15.980 --> 01:52:18.780 There is a real social hierarchy. 01:52:19.420 --> 01:52:22.540 God has created different men with different gifts. 01:52:23.420 --> 01:52:27.980 And that creates all of our hierarchies in civilization. 01:52:28.540 --> 01:52:31.900 It creates betters and lessers. 01:52:31.900 --> 01:52:34.940 It creates those with greater talents and those with lesser talents. 01:52:35.580 --> 01:52:37.420 That is not to say they are lesser men. 01:52:37.420 --> 01:52:38.620 That is a different thing. 01:52:39.660 --> 01:52:42.460 It is to say that some men are more capable than others. 01:52:45.500 --> 01:52:47.900 And so there is slave and there is free 01:52:48.940 --> 01:52:51.340 with regard to the natural order of things. 01:52:51.340 --> 01:52:54.940 And finally, there is male and female. 01:52:55.580 --> 01:52:58.220 And that is a very real distinction. 01:52:58.940 --> 01:53:00.780 You are one or you are the other. 01:53:01.660 --> 01:53:04.460 And so you are either male or female. 01:53:05.260 --> 01:53:06.860 The exclusive or in English. 01:53:07.580 --> 01:53:09.020 You cannot be both. 01:53:09.020 --> 01:53:10.060 You must be one. 01:53:11.020 --> 01:53:14.780 And so anyone who attacks any of those three truths 01:53:15.580 --> 01:53:18.940 is attacking scripture, is ultimately attacking God, 01:53:18.940 --> 01:53:22.140 is anti-Christian, is a false shepherd, is a wolf. 01:53:23.100 --> 01:53:25.100 So if anyone tells you that if you are male, 01:53:25.100 --> 01:53:27.900 oh you can be female today if you choose to be, no. 01:53:29.260 --> 01:53:31.260 And we did not go over this in the episode, 01:53:31.260 --> 01:53:34.940 but those same words in Greek can be masculine and feminine. 01:53:35.500 --> 01:53:37.260 So if you are a male you are masculine. 01:53:37.260 --> 01:53:38.780 If you are a female you are feminine. 01:53:39.420 --> 01:53:42.860 So if someone tells you as a male you can be feminine, that is a wolf. 01:53:44.300 --> 01:53:46.620 The second one going in reverse order. 01:53:47.580 --> 01:53:50.780 Hierarchy is part of God's created order. 01:53:51.340 --> 01:53:56.140 So those who seek to subvert it are seeking to subvert God's created order. 01:53:56.700 --> 01:53:58.620 What we have today is atomization. 01:53:58.620 --> 01:54:04.380 We have so many individuals who have taken themselves to be purely individuals. 01:54:04.380 --> 01:54:05.340 I stand alone. 01:54:05.340 --> 01:54:06.380 I am my own thing. 01:54:06.380 --> 01:54:07.980 I am an island unto myself. 01:54:10.060 --> 01:54:13.100 All of this stems ultimately, of course, from pride. 01:54:14.060 --> 01:54:17.100 The declaration that God's created order does not matter, 01:54:17.100 --> 01:54:19.100 and I can be and do whatever I want. 01:54:21.420 --> 01:54:22.540 And that's simply not true. 01:54:24.300 --> 01:54:25.500 We already went over that. 01:54:25.500 --> 01:54:27.660 If you're male you're male, period. 01:54:27.660 --> 01:54:28.140 Forever. 01:54:28.780 --> 01:54:29.980 You will be male in eternity. 01:54:32.620 --> 01:54:35.820 The gifts that God gave you, you have no control over those. 01:54:37.260 --> 01:54:41.100 He decided how intelligent to make you, how tall to make you. 01:54:41.820 --> 01:54:46.220 All of these things are from God because everything you have is a gift from God. 01:54:47.340 --> 01:54:51.660 And so a rejection of those things is a rejection of the created order, 01:54:51.660 --> 01:54:53.180 is a rejection of the Creator. 01:54:54.700 --> 01:54:59.500 And finally, one of the ones that has most stridently attacked these days, 01:54:59.500 --> 01:55:01.500 not that hierarchy isn't certainly, but 01:55:04.060 --> 01:55:07.820 the simple fact that God created the races of man. 01:55:08.860 --> 01:55:10.540 We see that all throughout Scripture, 01:55:10.540 --> 01:55:13.900 we address this in multiple episodes, many episodes at this point. 01:55:13.900 --> 01:55:15.660 We did a series on race. 01:55:17.180 --> 01:55:18.860 Race is a very real thing. 01:55:18.860 --> 01:55:21.340 It is part of God's created order. 01:55:21.340 --> 01:55:23.740 And to reject it is to reject God. 01:55:24.780 --> 01:55:27.260 And so one of the truths that a Christian must pull out 01:55:27.980 --> 01:55:31.980 from this verse in Galatians is that there is Jew and there is Greek. 01:55:32.700 --> 01:55:36.300 Drop in any national term you want there. 01:55:36.940 --> 01:55:39.100 There is Japanese and there is French. 01:55:39.180 --> 01:55:40.300 There is German. 01:55:40.300 --> 01:55:41.180 There is Russian. 01:55:41.180 --> 01:55:41.980 There is American. 01:55:43.340 --> 01:55:44.940 These things are real and they exist. 01:55:46.220 --> 01:55:52.700 We cannot reject either on the one hand that these things do not matter in terms of salvation 01:55:52.700 --> 01:55:56.300 because that is to reject salvation by faith alone. 01:55:57.020 --> 01:56:02.140 And we cannot on the other hand reject that these things are real and part of the created order 01:56:02.140 --> 01:56:06.460 because that is to reject the first clause of the Creed. 01:56:06.460 --> 01:56:09.420 It is to reject God the Father is Creator. 01:56:09.420 --> 01:56:13.820 It is to reject what He has done in this world and stated, 01:56:13.820 --> 01:56:15.020 this is my work. 01:56:15.020 --> 01:56:16.220 This is true. 01:56:16.220 --> 01:56:21.980 You must believe it because you cannot deny the creation without denying the Creator. 01:56:22.860 --> 01:56:24.220 Those are one and the same. 01:56:26.780 --> 01:56:31.020 And so for the Christian, we must pull out both the negative truth from this 01:56:31.820 --> 01:56:33.660 and the positive truth, so to speak. 01:56:34.620 --> 01:56:36.540 And this isn't just a command. 01:56:36.540 --> 01:56:40.460 This isn't just you must absolutely do X, Y, and Z. 01:56:42.060 --> 01:56:47.100 This is God's word to us, His truth, and there is blessing in believing that. 01:56:47.900 --> 01:56:52.780 Because I mentioned today we have so many individuals who feel atomized, 01:56:52.780 --> 01:56:54.540 who feel separated from everything. 01:56:54.540 --> 01:56:59.340 You have women who realize in their thirties or forties or God forbid their fifties 01:56:59.340 --> 01:57:00.780 that they wanted to have children. 01:57:00.780 --> 01:57:04.380 Because certainly by the time you're in your fifties, it's too late. 01:57:05.980 --> 01:57:08.860 Yes, there's the occasional outlier, but it's very seldom. 01:57:11.500 --> 01:57:15.900 If we live our lives in accord with what God has designed, 01:57:15.900 --> 01:57:19.740 in accord with the way that He has made us, we are going to have happier lives. 01:57:20.620 --> 01:57:25.900 And so saying that anyone can do anything is just lying to people and making them miserable. 01:57:25.900 --> 01:57:26.700 That's from Satan. 01:57:26.700 --> 01:57:28.780 That's a subversion of hierarchy. 01:57:28.780 --> 01:57:31.340 He is the one who wants to sow chaos and discord. 01:57:32.140 --> 01:57:34.060 That is not what God does. 01:57:35.260 --> 01:57:36.540 God is a God of order. 01:57:38.780 --> 01:57:39.660 This is His order. 01:57:40.540 --> 01:57:41.580 We see it in this verse. 01:57:42.140 --> 01:57:43.340 We see it in creation. 01:57:43.980 --> 01:57:47.420 Because the truth isn't just here in the special revelation that is Scripture. 01:57:47.980 --> 01:57:49.260 It's out there in the world too. 01:57:49.900 --> 01:57:52.860 All of these things can be known from natural revelation. 01:57:53.740 --> 01:57:55.420 And all of our ancestors knew them. 01:57:55.660 --> 01:58:02.700 And so what we want, not just for those who are listening and not just for those who agree with us, 01:58:03.260 --> 01:58:09.580 but for all Christians in all places, and all peoples we want to be Christian, of course, 01:58:11.820 --> 01:58:16.780 we want people to live in accord with what God has created. 01:58:16.780 --> 01:58:18.460 Because that is the best way to live. 01:58:19.260 --> 01:58:21.580 That is, in fact, the only way to have a good life. 01:58:22.540 --> 01:58:27.660 And so, yes, on the one hand, if you just recognize these truths, you will have a better life. 01:58:27.660 --> 01:58:33.260 Because God does bless you when you live in accord with the nature He has given you. 01:58:34.380 --> 01:58:37.740 But the fullness of that blessing is when you are in Christ. 01:58:38.940 --> 01:58:44.540 And so it is when you have faith, when you are an offspring of Abraham, an heir according to promise. 01:58:45.500 --> 01:58:51.660 And so, again, we encourage you to go and read the fullness of the letter to the Galatians. 01:58:51.660 --> 01:58:53.580 It'll take you 10, 15 minutes. 01:58:54.220 --> 01:58:55.420 See God's blessings. 01:58:55.900 --> 01:58:57.180 See why this matters. 01:58:57.580 --> 01:58:59.420 See what God says in His words. 01:59:00.700 --> 01:59:02.940 You are what God created you to be. 01:59:03.740 --> 01:59:08.460 Whether it's a Jew or a Greek, slave or free, whatever talents, abilities, 01:59:08.460 --> 01:59:12.380 wherever in the hierarchy He's placed you, and whether you are male or female, 01:59:14.620 --> 01:59:16.220 that is what God created you to be. 01:59:16.860 --> 01:59:17.740 That is a good thing. 01:59:18.860 --> 01:59:20.380 Live your life accordingly.