August 21 | Galatians 5:16-24
DAILY READING
REFLECTION
Heart Replacement Therapy
By Gene Pierce
If they aren't careful, a casual reader could come away from this week’s devotions with a misguided message: "bad" people disobey God’s laws and receive His wrath; "good" people obey God’s law and are blessed.
While those results are true, Paul’s letter to the Galatians challenges us with instructions about exactly how our hearts can change from bad to good.
Paul does list 15 examples of sin, including promiscuity, drunkenness, witchcraft, hatred, discord and jealousy (and then still says “and the like”!). These are serious offenses; many were punishable by death under the law of Moses.
However, instead of affirming religious courts with human judges to determine a person’s sins and appropriate punishment or correction, Paul lays out a different path to God’s blessing. Paul instructs the Galatians to live by the Spirit and replace their sinful nature.
In previous times, God blessed specific believers with His Spirit and mandated a covenant of atonement for sin by the blood of animals. With Pentecost in Acts 2, the Holy Spirit went “worldwide”.
Paul was not alone in this call to be filled with the Spirit and not live by the flesh. Peter settled Acts 15’s Council of Jerusalem debate over “Christian” behavior by declaring, “Why should we put a yoke on the necks of the disciples that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear?”
Paul and Peter reject our all too typical approach of “making your mind up not to sin”, “turning over a new leaf” or “making a resolution.”
We all need a totally new start. The old ways just won’t work. We must rely on the Spirit to transform us and our behavior, not our own strength of will.
Think of it like the homes UALC work teams rebuilt after the massive floods in North Carolina. A house might be still standing, but the foundation, wooden walls and roof had been made deadly defective and dangerous. To live safely, the homeowner must completely tear the house down and start all over.
So it is in our faith. We can commit our lives to Christ, but our hearts, ruined by a flood of sins, must be completely replaced by the Spirit.
With the Spirit a new home can be built and our lives transformed to a life of love, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control, just as Paul told the Galatian church members. The Spirit, not our own effort, must be relied on to change us.
We are no better than the Galatians Paul counseled in today’s reading. So ask God to replace your damaged heart with the new heart of the Spirit. Then you can grow into the fruit of the Spirit that pleases God most.
PRAYER: Lord, break open our hearts and rebuild us into a life that is powered by the Holy Spirit and helps us be more like Christ, pleasing you and showing good fruit to the world around us. Give us that new heart daily, to Your glory and praise. Amen.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gene Pierce is a longtime member of UALC and our International Missions Committee and former Council member, still learning how to balance life, work and faith. Gene and his wife Elaine are blessed to be parents of four and grandparents of nine.
Thank you, Gene! This is exactly what I needed to hear today.