Most of the time when I feel guilty, it’s because I am.

Sometimes, it’s only because of some screwed up experience from my past or some sicko moralistic twist on the Scriptures.

The prescription for both is a big dose of God’s grace.

If my guilt comes from the outside–false guilt that’s taught by works-based systems–grace delivers me from the lie. God is rescuing me from what is not true about me.

If my guilt comes from the inside–true guilt generated by the indwelling Spirit–it’s an expression of grace and love. God is rescuing me from what is true about me.

Now I know what you’re thinking. “How can I tell the difference?”

Live in community. Entrust yourself to the truth coming from those who are maturing in Christ. Trust grace to work through those who love you enough to tell you what is not true of you…and what is true.

This is a big reason for what the Bible calls fellowship.

My organizational communication training was decidedly non-Christian. As a young man I cut my leadership teeth as a squad leader on an elite firefighting crew for the U. S. Forest Service, the Fulton Hotshots. After college, I served as an officer in the United States Army in various leadership positions in a tank battalion. The communication was often crass, even profane, as you might imagine.

What it was not was unclear, vague, or mysterious. Firemen and soldiers have a refreshingly distinct way of telling you exactly what they think about you or the organization. They tell you…exactly what they mean!

What Do Christians Learn to Tell You?

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“Those who seemed to be something added nothing to me, gave me the right hand of fellowship, [and] desired only that we should remember the poor.”

(Selected from Galatians 2:6-10).

In 49 AD a delegation of Judean religious teachers came to the predominately Gentile church at Syrian Antioch and started teaching the Christians that those who were not circumcised as followers of the Law of Moses could not be saved from their sin by simple belief in Jesus (Acts 15:1). They were part of a conspiracy to undermine the Gospel of grace sending emissaries of the lie to the daughter churches planted by the church at Antioch (Acts 15:23).

The most vulnerable to the lie were the fledgling assemblies of the Roman province of Galatia. Paul and Barnabas had planted these churches on their first missionary journey (Acts 13-14). One historian describes the inhabitants of Galatia: “Fickleness is the term used to express their temperament. Their religious tendencies were marked by passion, ritualism, and mysticism.” (Lightfoot, The Epistle of Paul to the Galatians)

Paul’s response is swift and strong. He will not tolerate this false gospel—that works are essential to salvation—to take root in the lives of these new Christians and churches. On the eve of the Jerusalem Council, Paul writes his most passionate letter, reminding the church of the real basis of our salvation.

In the first section of the epistle proper (1:11-2:21) Paul defends his apostleship. He begins by vindicating his gospel. The source of the gospel he taught was divine, not human. Paul received his gospel and the commission to preach it directly from the Lord Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus (1:11-24). When Paul did consult with the apostles fourteen years into his ministry (2:1-10), they affirmed his refusal to circumcise Titus to make Judaizing legalists happy because that would have undermined the Gentiles’ understanding of the gospel. They added nothing to his gospel, but they did heartily endorse his ministry, as long as he didn’t forget the poor:

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