Billboard of CNN Story
What’s going on when a church puts up a large billboard publicly acknowledging itself to be among those who have been acting like jerks?
A friend sent me a link to a CNN interview about a Texas billboard that “shouts out” to passing traffic “What a Bunch of Jerks“. The billboard is accompanied by an internet web address for the church’s open letter of confession.
For a couple of reasons, I found the story especially interesting. I’d been thinking about a New Testament letter written by the Apostle Paul– that seemed to me to be just as edgy, and open to the public as this Texas billboard.
After listening to the CNN interview, I felt even more motivated to understand what the Apostle Paul had in mind when he wrote to a group of Jesus’ followers saying that he felt like a woman in labor as he waited for Christ to be formed in them (Gal 4:19 NLT).
Paul’s letter to the Galatians makes it clear that he believed something was very wrong with the church members he was writing to. He said in several different ways that, even though his readers wanted to be known as followers of Christ, they were thinking and acting in ways that were hurting one another, and giving others reason to stay away.
So what was Paul seeing that caused him so much pain and led him to the conclusion that others probably were no longer seeing Christ in his readers?
In short, the Galatians had forgotten how to reflect the life of Christ. In the process they had become a bunch of bad actors, hypocrites, legalists, and critics—rather than a people who reflected the life and help of Christ among one another and to their world.
Their mistake was to think that because Jewish moral and civil laws were so good, followers of Christ could not go forward by leaving behind Jewish laws of circumcision and kosher.
But as Paul knew so well, as good as the moral, civil, and ceremonial laws of God were, attempts to comply with those laws could never change someone from the inside out (Gal 2:19-21).
Relying on the law rather than on Christ to love others through them– had caused the Galatians to be acting like “Kosher police”. In the process they not only lost their sense of mission to the gentiles but , in the process, became critical, judgmental and dangerous to one another (Gal 5:14-15).
Christ-likeness of heart requires relying on him to live his life in us—by the Spirit he gives to those who believe in him.
In today’s terms, the Texas billboard could have been the Galatians confession…even while Paul felt like a woman in labor waiting for Christ to be formed in his “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control” (Gal 5:22-23).
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