Galatians 1 and Isaiah 1

Well, it's a Friday night, and what am I doing? I'm sitting on my couch by myself, watching The Cosby Show, eating a cheese sandwich (Emmentaler and Fontina!) and drinking lemonade. And there may or may not be Nutella involved; I'm not at liberty to say. ;) And speaking of Nutella, enter this sweepstakes. Anyhoo...

In my most recent post, I challenged you--and myself, also--to read a minimum of one Bible chapter per day. Yesterday, I read Galatians 1 as my chapter. I must admit, I'm a pretty big fan of Paul's. I love his writing style: educated yet simple, elegant yet understandable, intelligent yet accessible, challenging yet uplifting. Oh wait--I just described the entire Biblical message! Although the entire chapter was well-executed, there's always been one verse in the first installment of Galatians that I really love:

Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ. 

That verse, ever since I first discovered it, has spoken volumes. There's not much I feel like I could extrapolate on; the verse is pretty self-explanatory. If we're not "seeking those things which are above" (Colossians 3:1; see the next verse also), then we are inadvertently seeking the things that are of this world, and not of God's perfect universe. The point of this verse is to show us that we can't live in two worlds. There are no grey areas. In formal logic, the law of the excluded middle clearly states that something is either true, or it isn't. (Sounds redundant, I know.) But applying this logical law to other areas of our lives, we see that we can't have our cake and eat it too. (My quoting of that possibly has something to do with Holiday in the Sun, which I watched today for nostalgic purposes.) Fact of the matter is, we can't serve both God and ourselves.

Today, I read the first chapter of Isaiah. Isaiah is one of my favorite books, and for so many reasons! I love its poetic prose and powerful elegance. And not only that, but the book is prophetic, featuring a lot of Jesus (although the first chapter isn't Christ-centric). In this chapter, I really liked verse 15, and the image that I got when I read it. I now suddenly have the inspiration for a drawing... Also, I think of "Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean."

Also to my liking were the 16th and 17th verses:

Wash yourselves and be clean! Get your sins out of My sight. Give up your evil ways. Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the cause of orphans. Fight for the rights of widows. 

I love these two verses for their straightforward commands. (Though they are by no means easy directions.) To cleanse oneself spiritually takes quite some time. In fact, I don't think the process, once begun, ever truly stops. We must give up our evil ways and hide them not only from ourselves, but from the Lord. We must learn to do Christlike things. We must be just and help those who are less fortunate, including orphans and widows. And it's not easy.

In some ways, to me, this little passage is just as powerful as The Great Commission and in many ways, you can't have one without the other. In order to spread the gospel, we must first live it for ourselves. Instead of being stereotypical hypocrites, we should be exemplary human beings. We should practice what we preach.