IN the book of Galatians in the New Testament, Paul is writing to defend his apostleship and his message, and he warns in the strongest of terms what happens when you mingle legalism and grace.

The legalism here was prescribed by the law of Moses, God's own word in the Old Testament. Mingle it with grace and you distort grace and make a mockery of the cross.

That is why Paul says in chapter two verse 16 that a person is not justified by works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. Three times he underscores it.

Christ's death is the only reliable basis for my right standing with God. Luther said that if we lose justification by faith alone and Christ alone, we have lost all true Christian doctrine.

The Judaizers were decent, gifted, winsome folk. They sounded better than everybody else, which is why they distorted the gospel so easily across Galatia. They even caused Peter to stumble into hypocrisy, which gave Paul a wonderful opportunity to explain what the gospel is and what it isn't.

The life we live should be cross-shaped. Helen Roseveare, a medical missionary in the Congo, was a nightmare to work with for four years.

She knew everybody hated her. Her pastor drew a line in the sand and said, "That's you, the big I."

Then he crossed it out with a stick, leaving the shape of a cross. She understood what it meant to live a cross-shaped life.

Paul mentions the cross 13 times in Galatians. Todd Wilson calls it the Christological centre of gravity. Like an astronaut on a space walk, if I am not attached to the cross, I drift off into the weird and wonderful ideologies of the world.

Paul explains three things. First, his approach. In 1 Corinthians 9 he says he lives apart from the law with the Gentiles to bring them to Christ, yet he obeys the law of Christ.

Some thought that made him a sinner. Absolutely not, he says. He would be a transgressor only by rebuilding what Christ pulled down, the dividing wall of hostility of Ephesians 2.

Second, the cost. Paul was willing to be misunderstood. Five times he received 40 lashes minus one, three times he was beaten with rods, once he was stoned.

Next to that, our complaints about a long service or a late lunch sound small. This frayed, tattered apostle says with huge confidence, "I have been crucified with Christ".

Third, the hope. For there to be a resurrection, there first has to be a death. Helen Roseveare died to her ambitions that night in the dust, and rose a new woman.

Galatians 2:21 says that if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing. John Stott put it simply: the law says do, Christ says done.

So are we living a cross-shaped life? That is the life he will bless and use.

Stephen Cousley

Minister

St Thomas Baptist Church, Exeter