Between his mentioning of the present evil age (Gal. 1:4) and the world (6:14) Paul speaks of the Jewish religion and tradition (1:13-14). He also speaks about circumcision and the law (2:3; 3:10-13; 5:3-6; 6:13). To the Jews, circumcision and law are both good terms. The Jews were required to be circumcised and to always keep the law. However, these were components of the present evil age at the time of Paul. Circumcision and the law were evil because these two religious items kept people away from Christ and the Spirit. God’s eternal purpose can be fulfilled only in Christ and through the Spirit. Therefore, in Galatians besides the line of religion, including Judaism, tradition, circumcision, the law, and the world, there is also the line of Christ and the Spirit (3:1-3, 14; 4:19). This shows that anything related to worshipping, pleasing, or serving God apart from Christ and the Spirit is religion, which is evil in the eyes of God. Paul was in the Jewish religion, he advanced in it beyond many of his contemporaries, and he was abundantly zealous for the traditions of his fathers. However, it pleased God one day to reveal His Son, Christ, in him (1:15-16a). This is not a matter of being religious or of keeping the traditions; it is a matter of Christ in us. In 2:19-20 Paul says, “I through law have died to law that I might live to God. I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.”
If we still try to keep the law, we will be kept from Christ and will go back into religion. Although almost no one would consider that to keep the law is evil in the eyes of God, Paul was bold to say that in his experience it was evil, because keeping the law separates people from Christ (5:1-4). We should not try any longer to keep the law. What God wants today is simply that we would live by Christ. We need Christ to be not only our Redeemer but also our life and our person. He must live in us, and we must live by Him. Moreover, Christ must be formed in us (4:19), and we must put Him on by being baptized into Him (3:27). Christ is not only our life; He is also our covering and the realm, the sphere, in which we live and walk. This also is altogether not a matter of religion. It is a matter of Christ being everything to us. He is our Redeemer, life, person, clothing, realm, and atmosphere. We live by Him, we live in Him, and we walk in Him. He is everything to us.
Paul also tells us that the Spirit is the reality of Christ in our experience (vv. 1-3, 13-14). We have received the Spirit, God bountifully supplies to us the Spirit, and God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts (v. 5; 4:6). Since we have the Spirit, we must walk by the Spirit, live by the Spirit, sow unto the Spirit, and reap eternal life of the Spirit (5:16, 25; 6:8). We need to do everything in the Spirit, who is Christ experienced by us. In order to experience Christ, who is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17), we need to exercise our spirit. Galatians 6:1 says, “Brothers, even if a man is overtaken in some offense, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of meekness,” and the final verse of Galatians says, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit” (v. 18). We need to exercise our spirit to touch Christ and experience Him as grace in our spirit. This is God’s economy, which is versus religion. At Paul’s time there was mainly one religion, but today there are many religions that teach people to worship God, to serve God, and to try to please God apart from the experience of the living Christ. If the age at Paul’s time was evil, the age today is much more evil. If Paul unveiled to the saints that they should not be under the influence of that religious age, how much more do we need to be delivered from the influence of religion in our own age.
As we observed the things in the religious centers that we visited, we were deeply impressed with the traditional, superstitious, false, and dirty things that we saw. The Lord Jesus was born in Bethlehem near Jerusalem, but He was raised in Galilee, where He continued to live. Even when He came into His ministry, He did not stay in Jerusalem for long; He went there mainly for the annual feasts. We do not find in the Gospels that He chose to stay in Jerusalem even for one night. The last time the Lord went to Jerusalem for six days, He stayed in Bethany, going into Jerusalem only during the day (Matt. 21:1, 10-11, 17). Most of His life and work were in Galilee, and all the disciples whom He called, except for Judas, were from Galilee, not from Judea (cf. 10:4). When the Lord ascended, the angels called the disciples “men of Galilee,” and on the day of Pentecost the people said, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?” (Acts 1:11; 2:7). When I was young, I was taught that the Lord Jesus was raised in Nazareth and lived in Galilee simply in order to suffer and be despised. When we were in Israel, however, we realized that the Lord needed to be in Galilee because the atmosphere in Jerusalem was too religious. The Lord could not do much there.
The Lord Jesus came not to the secular world but to the religious world, but He did not care for that religion, the holy city, the holy temple, or the worship in the temple. Rather, He began something new. There were certain spiritual persons in Jerusalem, such as Simeon, Anna, and Nicodemus (Luke 2:25, 36; John 3:1), but the Lord purposely did not go there to call His disciples, because that region had been altogether spoiled by religion (cf. 2:23-24). The situation there was incurable, hopeless, and helpless. Instead, the Lord Jesus gave up that region and went to Galilee of the Gentiles, where there was little influence of religion. There He called young Galilean fishermen, such as Peter and John. He did this in order to have a new beginning for God’s New Testament economy. God’s New Testament economy could not be carried out by the people in Jerusalem, who had been fully drugged by religion.
If we read the New Testament carefully, we can see that the twelve apostles were young people. When James and John were called, for example, they were working with their father, indicating that they were not very old, perhaps in their younger twenties (Matt. 4:21-22). Three and a half years later, when they were the elders of the first church, the church in Jerusalem, they were probably only in their late twenties. There was a change at that time that caused the older ones, the priests and scribes, to be out of date, because their religion could not fulfill God’s purpose. Those who were drugged with religion became useless for the Lord’s purpose, and because of this the Lord left them behind and went to a new region to call young fishermen and have a new beginning. One day the Lord brought these disciples far away from the holy city and the holy temple to Caesarea Philippi in the northern part of the Holy Land, close to the border. It was there in the clear atmosphere that He gave them the vision of Christ and the church (16:13-18), and it was there on Mount Hermon that He was transfigured (17:1-2).
The religious age today is no better than the age at the Lord’s time. If the religion at His time was hopeless, religion today is even more hopeless, and the Lord cannot have His way in it. Therefore, the Lord desires a new beginning in “Galilee.” Today’s Galilee is the United States, and the “Sea of Galilee” is the college campuses. Today the Lord is traveling around the “Sea of Galilee” to call young “Galilean fishermen.” After the Lord called the young disciples in Galilee, He trained them there. He did not carry out much training in Jerusalem. In Jerusalem Nicodemus came to the Lord Jesus with certain kinds of arguments (John 3:1, 4), and when the Lord healed the impotent man in Jerusalem, this stirred up an evil debate (5:1-10, 16). Later the Lord also forgave the sinful woman and cured the blind man in Jerusalem (8:10-11; 9:1, 6-7). However, most of the training that the Lord exercised over the disciples was carried out in Galilee. Then after three and a half years of training, the Lord told the disciples to remain in Jerusalem and wait there (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4). They were trained in Galilee but sent to Jerusalem. Today the Lord is coming to visit many campuses around the “Sea of Galilee” to call many “fishermen” to follow Him and be trained by Him. Then after a certain amount of time, He will send them to Europe and to Israel. In this way, the Lord will gain both “Galilee” and “Jerusalem,” that is, the United States, Europe, and Israel. However, for this purpose we must be young; we must not grow old. If we become old, we are finished with the Lord’s move.
We need to bring these matters to the Lord and ask Him to show us the real situation today. This is truly an evil age, and we must all be delivered from it. The religious world is crucified to us, and we are crucified to the world. Now we are the young Galilean followers of Jesus, who are under His training in order to bring His testimony to “Jerusalem,” that is, to Europe and to Israel.