“Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in – who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery – to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.”

(Galatians 2:4-5 ESV)

Each generation has its own incarnations of legalism. The particulars (always the particulars!) change, but the spirit of it remains the same. Legalism is our human attempt to navigate around a relational, personal God using our own clever attention to detail. It’s the belief that if we do our work to pristine and exacting perfection, we can go through our days and get into heaven without having to look Him in the face.

In Paul’s day, the primary legalists inside the Christian movement were the Judaizers. Their position sounded plausible. After all, if Gentiles submitted their lives to Christ, wouldn’t it be even better if they also followed the Jewish law? Then they’d be above reproach! God would obviously be pleased with that.

And yet Paul, who referred to himself as a Jew among Jews, did not view their addition to the gospel to be legitimate, and he said that he did not yield to the Judaizers’ ideas even for a moment. Why? Out of stubbornness? No – “so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.”

In saying that he was “preserving the gospel,” Paul indicated that such additions to the gospel are not mere additions – in fact, they chip away at the gospel itself, making it less of what it is supposed to be.

By taking this stance toward adding rules to the gospel, Paul was following the example of his Lord. Jesus told the Pharisees that in adding their own extrapolated rules to the Law of Moses, they heaped heavy burdens on men’s backs – burdens they did not try to carry themselves or help their fellow man carry. (Matt. 23:3-4) Every rule comes with a certain weight to it. If man has invented the rule instead of God, odds are good that the weight of the rule – the cost it exacts from us – will not be worth what we gain by following it.

Yet what did Jesus say about what kind of weight He was putting on our shoulders? “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matt. 11:30) That is because in accepting His yoke, we are yoking ourselves to Him, and He to us – and we discover that He is the one doing all the heavy pulling. In covering us with His blood, he gives us His righteousness to wear, which we could never achieve on our own.

But we cannot accept His yoke without looking Him in the face.

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” (Gal. 5:1 ESV) We can submit ourselves to extra rules that did not come from God, but if we do, we take upon ourselves the yoke of those whose hearts do not trust the salvation that comes from God. We forsake the easy yoke and the light burden, and we cease to walk side-by-side with Jesus.

But we do not just jeopardize our own souls when we choose the heavy yoke. Paul said he was preserving the gospel “for you” – for the Galatian believers. He recognized that if he submitted to the Judaizers, he would pass along a corrupted model of the Christian faith, and he would rob everyone who listened to him of the freedom, purchased by Christ, that was rightfully theirs. And while the scope of our influence is significantly smaller than Paul’s, we too have the power to warp the gospel in the minds of those around us.

So Paul did not yield, not even for a moment. If we are wise, we will take the same stance. Not because we have something to prove, but because we have something to preserve: the gospel in all its fullness – a life lived looking into the face of God.

_{Photo by Kind and Curious on Unsplash}

---