"What would your life be like without the Savior, without faith?"
That was the question asked a group of pastors this week at our Tuesday afternoon gathering. Many of us answered. I knew immediately -- without the freeing work of God's grace in my heart, in my spirit, in my life, I knew I would not be alive. This meant, I would not be married to my most wonderful Karen, I would not be the father of my amazing daughters. Without Jesus, I would not be here at all.

It was a staggering revelation to me -- staggering for in a moment looking back at all the places God had moved in my life in order to draw me closer to Him and His work of grace, I knew were it not for the grace of God, I would have wandered from the faith and from life.

Where would you have been? What has knowing the living God accomplished in your life? What difference has Jesus made? (share a moment with someone near you)

Paul knew what difference Jesus had made -- indeed, many knew that the one who once had persecuted the church was preaching the faith he once tried to destroy. Paul knew that in Jesus, who gave himself for our sins, was rescue from this present evil age. No, we are not removed from the world, but we are transformed so that the world is taken out of us.

Paul knew that his own "worldliness" -- his political ambition and the rage he felt toward the church -- was countered and cleansed by faith in Jesus. He had been enslaved to sin and God had rescued him and brought him into another kind of slavery; a slavery to God in which Paul had found freedom.

This is what Paul knew: Jesus had made all the difference.

So, 14 years after his conversion and those inroads into preaching, Jesus led Paul back to Jerusalem, back to meet privately with Peter, James and the others, back to present to them the gospel he was preaching among the gentiles, to make certain, as he wrote in this letter, that he had not run his race in vain. His gospel did not include obedience to the Jewish law, but was a Gospel of Freedom, a Gospel that was not just good views but good news.

Paul tells this story to his readers as another "proof" of his credentials to have preached to them in the first place and as proof that his message was worth listening to. Last week I listed some of the proofs that Paul gave then of the divine origin of his life in Christ as testimony to them as well, and now Paul adds this affirmation.

Paul reports that the leaders in the "Mother Ship" of the faith in Jerusalem did not have anything to add to his message, but recognized the grace given to him as an apostle along with them in the preaching of the Gospel and gave "the right hand of fellowship" to Paul and his companions. This is not a handshake after a business deal, but the words refer to a mutual recognition of being in Christ. As when you meet with someone who shares the faith and you encounter a kinship of spirit, so these leaders recognized the same Spirit in Paul as dwelled in them.

They also affirmed Paul's call to preach among the Gentiles and only asked him to remember the poor in his ministry, which he wrote was the very thing he was eager to do. To demonstrate mercy and compassion is to act out the character of God in society and this is a vital aspect of our freedom in Christ. This is why we have a food bank locally, why we reach out to the homeless, why we send funds to help with street ministries elsewhere. So Paul uplifted here that reality of the freedom we have in Christ to care for the poor.

While in Jerusalem, not even Titus, who was a Gentile, was compelled to be circumcised, Paul wrote. Paul used the word "compelled" -- clearly there were people there wanting him to become "Jewish" in order to be a true Christian. They wanted him to have a "permanent sign of his faith".

Paul wrote that this issue was raised by those who had "infiltrated" their ranks, who had come to "spy out" the freedom they had in Christ in order to as Paul says, "to enslave us". The freedom they were spying upon was this very freedom to accept Christ as a Gentile and not have to become Jewish by keeping Jewish law and practices as a consequence.

The gift of the Gospel was this freedom in Christ.

They were freed from the ritualistic requirements of law, freed to enter this gift of freedom, first, and then learn to obey God as He leads, second. Certainly the freedom Paul was preaching was not a carte blanche freedom--it did not say anything you might do is beneficial to your well being. Paul will deal with this later. But again, freedom was primary. It is the fresh air of the Gospel that blows into our lives. It is the heart of the gospel message: God has set you free!

Paul names these infiltrators as false brothers, true conspirators, who had smuggled themselves into this private meeting with the purpose of enslaving them to their demands.

What would this have been like? Was there a battle of words over Titus' presence? Did they circulate unsigned letters or petitions? How did they infiltrate and then make their desires known?

All this we don't know, but we know they did so secretly, with a wrong spirit, with a motive to enslave others to their viewpoint.

And we do know what Paul wrote to the Galatians in the 5th verse: "We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might remain with you."

Has the truth of the Gospel remained with you?

On Wednesday afternoon I attended a continuing education event sponsored by George Fox University in Newberg and heard Dan Kimball and others speak on what was called recalibrating church for this century. Their uniform theme was to get back to Jesus, which I could state another way, get back to freedom.

Dan shared a story from his pastoral ministry in Santa Cruz, California. One day he went into the gym -- he visits about every 3 years, he said -- and was being shown around by the young woman there, being told how to use the equipment, and chatting during the tour. At one point she turned and asked him what he did for a living to which he said, "I'm a pastor." At the word pastor the woman reacted, recoiled from him and said, "Yuck! Pastors are creepy."

That intrigued him so they talked a bit further as he asked her if she knew any pastors, personally. No, she didn't. Then he asked why she had that opinion about them. And her entire response to pastors had come from those she had seen on TV whom she viewed as fakes in their fancy suits and as greedy with their constant grasp for money.

Dan stayed, worked out, and as he drove away was struck with this thought: even though this young woman works at this gym to which most likely many pastors and other Christian people come, she has had no encounter with anyone who had adjusted her opinion.

She became an example in my mind of how we lose the truth of the Gospel -- in this gospel of Freedom we have been set free not to come to church, but set free to live a life that is in contact with those around us in society who do not know the Lord, to get to know people, to love people, to the point that they are prompted to ask, as Peter wrote in one of his letters: "Would you tell me about the hope that it is you?"

We are free in Christ to challenge one another to continue to live in this freedom to "be the church" wherever we are. And to challenge one another to resist all those who would bind freedom keeping the truth of the Gospel from remaining with us.

You see, not only is every Christian story a Freedom story, as we looked at last week, but every Christian story is a truth story as well. The gospel of freedom is the Gospel of truth. What God has done in Christ cannot be redone in a better way. To hold to the truth of the Gospel we hold to what God has done and continues to do.

I was struck with this fact most profoundly in the first week of the Truth Project as the DVD lecture presented scriptures detailing how Jesus came to "bring" truth in personal form as he had been born to testify to the truth.

With a quick survey in the New Testament we find we are to: know the truth (for it will set us free), hold to the truth, testify to the truth, receive the truth, listen to the truth, be sanctified by the truth, hear the truth, rejoice with the truth, present the truth, tell the truth, believe the truth, wear the truth like a belt, correctly handle and divide the word of truth, acknowledge the truth, obey the truth, walk by the truth, live by the truth, and love in the truth. (Jn 3:21, 5:33, 8:32, 17:17; 1 Cor 13:6;Gal 4:16, Gal 5:7; Eph 1:13, 4:15, 6:14; 2 Th 2:13; 1 Ti 2:4, 1 Pt 1:22; 1 Jn 1:6,8, 2:21, 3:18, 2 Jn 1:1; 2 Jn 1:4)

This is in contrast to what people often do when they distort the truth, suppress the truth, exchange the truth of God for a lie, reject the truth, refuse to love the truth, have not believed the truth but instead delight in wickedness, wander away from the truth, do not acknowledge the truth, oppose the truth, turn from the truth to myths, . (Acts 20:30; Ro 1:18, 25; 2 Cor 2 Th 2:10, 2:12; 2 Ti 2:18, 2 Ti 3:7, 3:8, 4:4; Titus 1:14; James 5:19)

What would this life have been like without the truth of the Gospel?

Dismal for certain and also not free.

Remember the truth of the gospel and how God used His Word to set you free from the bondage to sin and this present age and be prepared to challenge those challengers.

There will continue to be those who challenge the freedom given through Christ. And there will be opportunities for us to use our freedom to challenge those around us to embrace the truth of the gospel. That is without question.

The only question I continue to be left with is will we stand in the truth and face the challenges when they come?

I was struck with this as I wrote to our congressional leaders in Washington this week because of the nomination of David Ogden to the position of deputy attorney general of the United States. Now with you I wonder what a letter or phone call accomplishes, but also believe that if enough people speak we will be heard -- just like the wonderful Dr Suess book Horton Hears a Who when all the people of Whoville finally create a loud enough noise for them to be heard--just before they get dropped into the boiling beetle juice!

David Ogden is a man who is a threat to freedom -- parental freedom, as he believes the government has the right to decide what is best for each child without any proof of wrongdoing by the child's parents. He is a threat to children for he has consistently opposed the legality of using filters on library computers to protect children from see pornography. And he will be in an office which is to enforce our nation's pornography laws, when he has a history of representing Playboy and other purveyors of pornography in high-profile legal cases.

The thing that struck me beyond the need to pray more for our government and our President to make wise appointments to these positions was that we may end up with folk like Mr Ogden directing areas of our government and may end up with laws that diminish our freedoms. What will we do if and when this happens?

With Paul I want to be a part of the resistance, part of a number of people who hold to the truth, who walk in the truth, who live by the truth, and who will not allow anything to keep them from remaining in the truth of the gospel.

With Paul I want to be a part of a movement of people who are still in ministry in their communities, reaching out to the poor and seeking to make a difference one life at a time.

With Paul I want to stand up because I know that my life has been changed because of Jesus -- I have been set free and will not be subject again to the bonds of slavery.

Will you join me?