June 11, 2023

Galatians 2:15-21

In adding to the Gospel, Peter was annulling the Good News of what God had gone ahead and done for us in Jesus Christ. Each of us is attracted to false gospels; Paul even says that the law is written on our hearts— we WANT to be told what to do, if only so we can judge our neighbor’s shortcomings. All of us have fallen short of righteousness, scripture says, but that doesn’t stop us from measuring distances.

Each of us, like Peter, adds lists of shoulds to what others must do to be justified, made righteous, before God. And more often than not, the shoulds and musts prescribed to others and ourselves directly contradict Jesus’ words. Or worse, the shoulds and musts we prescribe to others run contrary to the lives we live.

Shoulds and musts are dangerous to the Church. Over the past few months, in three docuseries, we have seen what happens when shoulds and musts are added to the gospel. Whether it was at Hillsong Church, an international megachurch that covered up years of sexual abuse by multiple pastors, across multiple continents, or the Duggars on TLC who used the shoulds and musts of purity culture to control the women and girls in their family, law was required to earn righteousness all the while those doing the prescribing were abusing people in the pews and home. Shoulds and must are dangerous because, inevitably they are the way we create God in our image.

Paul makes the point that shoulds and musts, the law prescribed to Gentile Christians by their Jewish Christian counterparts, was an attempt to rebuild barriers that Jesus had already broken down. Paul argues that what we do, the lovely church person things we do, do not make us any better in the eyes of God. And because these acts do not make us more right before God, those shoulds and musts serve only as distractions from the good of the Good News of Jesus Christ.

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