Why Study Galatians?

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Elizabeth Woodson
My name is Elizabeth. This is Portia. We’re going to do some introduction soon, but you are in why study Galatians, so hopefully you’re in the right workshop. If not, keep your seat, because you’re going to have a great time. So, like I said, my name is Elizabeth Woodson. I am.. hey, I I am the founder and executive director of a ministry called the Woodson Institute. My heart is to equip believers to understand and grow in their Christian faith. I’m a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary, master’s in Christian education, and author of several books, including most relevant for this breakout, Live Free. Let me remember the name of my own book study on Galatians.

Portia Collins
Hello, everyone. I am Portia Collins. I was just jokingly telling Elizabeth that I hate introductions, like I don’t know when someone else introduces me, it’s fine, but when I have to introduce myself, it’s like, so I’m gonna do the best with this. I’m Portia Collins. I am from Mississippi. You probably already gathered that from the thick accent. I am a Bible teacher and author, author of Finding Freedom in Christ, an eight week study of Galatians. I live in Greenwood, Mississippi, with my husband, Mikhail, and my sassy eight year old daughter, Emory. Oh, thank you. See, Elizabeth, keeping it on track already. We want to take this moment to thank Crossway. Crossway is sponsoring this breakout session. Crossway is a nonprofit ministry that publishes gospel-centered Bible-based content that seeks to honor our Savior and serves His church.

Elizabeth Woodson
So, when I think about what we’re going to talk about today in this session, it really is the pressing need for us to study a book like Galatians, written by the Apostle Paul. I believe that he has just a masterful skill of taking deep theological truth and showing how it’s relevant to our human experience, and so somebody, in some sense, brought him a story about what the folks in Galatia were doing, and he knew their actions were attached to false beliefs. In the same way, I think if we take a look at the story our lives are telling, our weather, maybe that’s a little too close to home, the story, the lives of the lives of the people that you serve, who are in your church, who are in your community, or who you just follow online, and I think they’re telling an interesting story about what we believe, and are those beliefs actually aligned with the gospel, or have we drifted? What I think you will find as you read through the book of Galatians is that drifting from the gospel isn’t something for those who don’t believe, it is for those who do. And so, how can we be aware of this? How’s that? Paul is talking about relevant for us today. And so, I’m excited for our conversation. We know that many of you might have spent a considerable amount of time going verse by verse through the book. If you haven’t, we both have studies that will help you do that

Portia Collins
in the resourcing,

Elizabeth Woodson
yeah.

Portia Collins
You can walk away today, yes,

Elizabeth Woodson
with a good resource. Come on, but our hope is to tell you what the book is about, but also why it matters again. How do we know when we’ve drifted from the gospel, so we can make our way back home to the way of Christ, so Portia, can you just launch us off? Because Paul starts in a very unique way in the book of Galatians. Some might say it’s not soft, but what is he like riled up about?

Portia Collins
So I jokingly say that Paul does not pull his punches in this letter. If you read some of his other letters, he’s always like, ‘Grace and peace to you, and and he starts off this letter, like, ‘Look, y’all tripping, I’m astonished that you are deserting the gospel. And so he really, there’s a seriousness that he begins this letter with, and rightly so, because what is happening is a serious issue, and so Paul starts by first making note of how he is just surprised that they have deserted the true gospel, and his words here in the, in the beginning, they’re very intentional, because notice that he doesn’t say that they have rejected Jesus. What he says is they’ve added something to Jesus, which is very problematic, and so these false teachers, known as the Judy. Eyes ers, they basically say, hey, faith in Christ is good, but faith in Christ is not enough, you got to do something else, and so the issue here wasn’t really abandoning Christianity, it was supplementing Christ, and that can be just so sneaky and subtle sometimes, that even people like the Galatians, people like us, who had heard the gospel, believed the gospel, were in church, even they got duped by this, and so this is compelling, because I think legalism, which is what we’ll get to, that I’ll reiterate it, but it’s adding something to the gospel, is it offers a measurable progress, it basically it gives us something that we can point back to to ourselves, and we can feel good about it, gives us a sense of control, and so this was the case with the Galatians, and if we’re being honest, this is the case with many of us today, even as believers, and so the Galatians were tempted to put their trust in Christ plus their performance, and like I said, the same temptation exists for us today, whether it’s being tempted through our ministry successes, through our Bible knowledge, through parenting, or different convictions, and so we are all prone to drift in the same way that the Galatians did, and we need to hear Paul’s words just as much as they did. So, just because you’re a Christian, and you think, “Oh, I believe the gospel, I know the gospel, and you may even affirm that the gospel is singular. There is nothing that you add to it functionally, you could be falling into the same trap that the Galatians are falling into.

Elizabeth Woodson
Yeah, because I think about they’re in their local gathering, and what they’re hearing is, oh, it can’t just be that easy, like it can’t just be Jesus and faith that you have to also do these things. We know that that they’re also trying to figure out what they need to do with their past faith, and so it’s kind of this trying to figure out what it means to be new in Christ, but it, it is too easy, right? You have to earn, you have to work, there has to be some effort that we provide that the Lord is just not going to show up for you just simply because you’re His, you got to earn it, and we know this, and we’re going to get ahead of ourselves and behind ourselves throughout this entire conversation. We

Portia Collins
knew this,

Elizabeth Woodson
but I think about the conversations I have with women, and you know, we can have this check box type of Christianity, where if I don’t go to church and I don’t read my Bible, where I feel bad praying because I don’t think God wants to hear from me, and so again, it is that, how can we take having awareness of what our lives say about what we actually believe, but what Paul knew, and I think I love just the fierceness with which he starts the book, he knew what was at stake, because Jesus plus anything is no gospel at all, and will lead us in my own words to a gutter every time, and that’s not what the Lord has for us. That they were chains and weights were being put on them that Christ came to set us free from, and so we see this urgency for people to know, and so I think about even conversations around why theology matters. Why should I take time to learn all these ideas and concepts? Because what you believe about God affects how you show up in the world, and if you believe something wrong, your life’s going to reflect that. And the Lord just has so much more for us. So, you’ve already opened up the door about legalism. So, what else? Like, how do we see it show up in our lives, and what are we really believing when our faith has that kind of bent towards it?

Portia Collins
Yeah, well, I think fundamentally, if we start like what is legalism, it is adding something, anything to the gospel that is legalism in Galatia. In the case for the Galatians, that adding was coming in the form of circumcision. They thought that, hey, okay, we believe in Jesus Christ, we believe we receive the gospel, but also to be true Christians, we also have to be circumcised, and so, like I said, these false teachers, these Judaizers were basically saying, yeah, faith is necessary, but it’s not sufficient, and that sounds so crazy when we say that out loud, when we really think about that, it sounds crazy, but that is exactly what they were doing, and so Paul is explaining, he understands, and I. Already knows, but he’s taking these Galatians, and he’s pulling them to the side, and he’s saying, “Hey, anytime we add anything to Christ as a requirement for righteousness, we have abandoned the gospel altogether. It’s no gospel at all, just as Elizabeth has just said, and so legalism is fundamentally a religion of human achievement. It puts us on the platform, and it takes Jesus off. And you know, if we want to start probing now and say, “Hey, well, how does this show up? You know, it shows up in how we view ourselves and where we find our identity. You know, if you lose a part of your life, your job, like, is your identity now tanked or shifted because of that, that means you likely was adding something, you’re adding that performance or adding your ability to be Debbie Do-Good or Christian to the gospel. The gospel says that I am His, that I am secure, that I am righteous, no matter what changes in our lives, no matter how much, whether we do brilliantly well or whether we just completely mess up the gospel, keeps us in the same position, and that position is secured through Christ Jesus, and so, like I said, essentially, legalism is basically saying, hey, I’m going to add something to it, there is more that needs to be supplemented that I need to put in with this for me to be righteous or seen as good in good standing before God.

Elizabeth Woodson
Sometimes I see it in the ways in which we look at other people, and so this person isn’t doing all the things I’m doing, so we would never say it to them, but we’re like, well, I’m the better Christian, and many of us might have some of y’all is like, yeah, I’ve said that, gotcha, yeah, I

Portia Collins
got you, and it is,

Elizabeth Woodson
and some of us have stories of someone in our church experience who said or done that to us, that you don’t live up to this line, and so God’s goodness and his blessing and his grace are not yours, that you have to try harder, and we will penalize you until you do, until you meet the standard, and what to me is just really overwhelming about the Gospel is that Christ died for us, not when we had it together and we were perfect, and had all our ducks in a row, that he knew what we did, know what we are doing, and what we will do, and he saved us anyway, and so this perfectionism, like you said, this performance is a space which we find legalism.

Portia Collins
I was gonna say, so you know, if legalism is on one side of the coin, then we have this, what I call $10 word licentiousness. If you want a good word, go back at home, tell your kids y’all being licentious. But what is this? Because we know that me, you, and I know we don’t want to assume that you guys know, we’re going to unpack it for you, but we know that legalism and licentiousness are two sides of the same coin, and so unpack that for us. What is, is that, and you know, how does it, how does this kind of fold into what we see in Galatians?

Elizabeth Woodson
If I think about legalism as trying to earn God’s grace, I would say licentiousness is taking the grace for granted, so there is this sense of when we are come to Christ, that there is a way we ought to live. Licentiousness says, well, He saved me, and I can kind of live however I want to. I’ve got my get out of, I got my fire insurance free card, and so I don’t need to worry about following the way of the Lord, because we all know that there are plenty of things God calls us to do that are wonderful and beautiful, and there are wonderful and beautiful things that are also really hard in denying ourselves and realizing that we are not our own authority, and one of the dominant narratives in our moment today is that the person you need to trust the most is that little thing inside of you, and so licentiousness is living without license, like we’re just out here, and again, what I think people are trying to achieve is the good life on their own, and it can be connected to pleasure, and it can connect kind of, this – we’re living by the guide of our stomach, so to speak. I think Paul talks about this in Philippians, instead of the guide that is the Holy Spirit and our trying God.

Portia Collins
I think that ultimately both legalism and licentiousness, people. Chase both, because they think that that’s the path that’s going to lead them to freedom, and it’s not. There is nothing that you can do that is going to secure that kind of freedom, and there is nothing that you cannot do, meaning I’m just going to live any kind of way I want to live that can secure that freedom, that freedom only comes by way of Jesus Christ. So I was also thinking, as you were talking, that at the root, like what we see Paul doing here, is he’s correcting a foundational problem, and the problem is belief, and to some degree we can say unbelief, because it is unbelief in the true gospel, but really there is still some element of belief there, but what they’re believing is false. So I think it’s, it’s important to qualify these as, and I always say this. I say we all believe something. Everybody, even the person who says I’m an unbeliever, they believe something. So it’s where your belief is is placed. And in this case, they had a false belief that basically said I can find righteousness, security, identity apart from Christ, that’s exactly what they were saying. Even though they may have believed, it’s almost like, hey, Jesus, you know, cleared the plate, and now I gotta put something on the plate, and they don’t realize he, the plate, he the meal, he everything, it ain’t nothing that you add, you know, to this, and so it’s that whole idea that I can do, or I can be apart from Christ,

Elizabeth Woodson
and you really see Paul masterfully unpack this in Galatians. I like to say we love Galatians one and two, and five and six. Say it again, love some fruit of the spirit, love it,

Portia Collins
love it.

Elizabeth Woodson
Nobody’s quoting Galatians four, Sarah and Hagar, nobody’s quoting that passage, but what he does is he uses these logical proofs to break down what Portia just said, that he wants to show them without doubt that what the way to relationship with God is only through Jesus, and so he uses the Holy Spirit, uses Abraham, uses Moses, uses the law, and it is this very intentional and methodical push to say anything else you think is going to help you on that play is not going to, and so as you’re reading through, I would just love for you to have an appreciation of how much work, how much work Paul puts into helping them understand truth. Again, they can be some sums heavy, and I would say tight ideas, but it is he wants to make sure that they understand what’s clear for them in their culture. I also love Paul, because Paul is, um, he’s a master of so many things, he understands their culture so well, and that we will be able to do the same. We understand the culture we are living in, our women are living in, and then we’re able to break down their false gospels that they are being introduced to with the same way that Paul does.

Speaker 1
Absolutely.

Portia Collins
So, tell me now, I’m about to get in your business. Oh, all right. Have you had any struggles with believing false gospels? Like, give me your testimony. Where, where have you found yourself sometimes believing false gospel? And don’t just give me when before you really came to Christ, because I know it’s probably some struggles in there, even now, as a ministry leader. This

Elizabeth Woodson
wasn’t on the sheet portion. I know I like curve

Portia Collins
balls, I like curve balls, but yeah, give it to me.

Elizabeth Woodson
Yeah, and when I think about probably what I do, probably the sharp edge is perfectionism, and I also live on the online places, and so social media, we live in a prestige culture. Your value based upon likes and follows, and so it is very, very hard for me not to internalize, oh, your value is based upon how much you produce, your value is based upon how much people like what you produce, and to bring that into my relationship with the Lord, and so when I have all these accomplishments to put before Him, oh God feels real good about Elizabeth. And then when I don’t have as many, or I see someone else and comparison starts to rise up in my person, then the thoughts of, oh, you’re not enough, or you need to do more, that I start to determine the path of my life and what it means to be faithful to God based upon somebody else’s path and not my own path, and so one really practical way is the Lord has got me together about I need you to pray more, I need you to come before me more with what you’re trying to do and the things that I’ve set out for you, that just because somebody places it before you doesn’t mean it’s what’s best for you, distraction and purpose. And despising the small things, all these things I think that I can struggle with, and it really is because perfectionism and achievement, and the Lord is continually unraveling me from that, because it doesn’t produce good things, and it really, that I miss the goodness God places before me, because I’m putting things on my plate that don’t belong there.

Portia Collins
Yeah, yeah, that resonates with me 100% Because, hi, I’m Portia, and I am a recovering perfectionist. I struggle with it. I struggle with that too, you know. And there is nothing inherently bad about excellence and doing good things. It’s when we start to think that we’re, we’re doing something, that we’re adding something to our lives as believers, as Christians, because of what we do. And I’ve struggled with that. I’ve struggled, and God has used very hard things to expose that I actually had had this problem that I was actually falling prey to a false gospel, so it’s when I have failed miserably at something and I have felt like every part of me has just been ruined. God reminds me it’s like, okay, so why you so bent out of shape about this? Is it, is it because that you actually had attached some of your identity to your performance and what you can do, as opposed to me? And so, yeah, I’ve struggled with that. I, it stems all the way back from when I was younger, I grew up, as I always say, churched, meaning I was in the church all the time. My mama was the organist and my grandmother was the pianist, and so, you know, if the musicians there, you know, you go, if ain’t nobody else there, the musicians gonna be there, okay? They gonna leave, they do a couple of songs, and me being daughter and granddaughter, I was in tow all the time, so I learned a lot of things about church and about the faith at an early age, but I didn’t really have a true understanding of the gospel, the gospel that I understood was a false gospel, which is no gospel at all. Y’all gonna leave out of here saying that, okay? It’s a false gospel, which is no gospel at all. And so what I believed was it was like I knew that Jesus was good and that he was the Savior, but I thought that Jesus cleaned the slate, and I had put some back on it, and as a result it had me in this place of where, like, this seesaw on days when I had done great, you know, when I read my Bible, and I didn’t cuss, and I hadn’t done anything else. Oh, yes, I’m going to heaven, but on days when I had, I was painfully aware of how I blew it. Oh, I’m a bust hell wide open. That was my mindset, that’s what I thought. And I mean, it reminds me of what James says: a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. I was unstable because I was resting in myself in my performance, and God used the book of Galatians to just completely dismantle that and show me that I am saved in my good, even the good that I produce as a believer. Now is not because Portia is so great, it’s because of Christ, who is in Portia, is

Elizabeth Woodson
great. I love that. Come on, testimony.

Portia Collins
Okay? Am I supposed to be setting you up?

Elizabeth Woodson
No, you get.. I’m gonna say something. So, the question might be, okay? Y’all have talked about false gospels, you’ve talked about legalism, licentiousness. How can I know if I’m sitting in this space? And so, what I like to tell people is, pay attention to three categories: your time, your money, and your relationships. How are you spending your time? How are you spending your money? And how are you spending relationships? How are you showing up in your relationships? Right, and so when we’re hitting the buy button at Amazon, I got boxes in front of my door, too. Am I hitting that button because I trust the Lord, or am I hitting that button because of comparison, or control, or comfort? Why am I hitting? And really, what I want to implode to you is the power of the pause, that you would pause enough to be aware of your life. You don’t need, if you have an hour to journal, I’d love that for you. If you got 15 minutes or five minutes, but while you put your mascara on, that’s enough time too, and that you would pause. And so, how is my money being spent? And why? How am I spending my time? A lot of my ministry friends talk about the difficulty of getting kids to student ministry. Uh, because I live, I’m from Texas, and in Texas, football is king, and so you’re gonna show up to the football practice, but you’re gonna show up to youth group. Why? Because my value and my priority for my kids is in this sports program, and not growing their relationship with the Lord. Why do I spend my time the way I do? And then, how do I treat the people around me not when I’m feeling good, but when I’m frustrated, when I feel out of control, when I’m disappointed. All of these tell a story about how I am living into what God has presented for us in the Scriptures, or I’m trying to grasp for it on my own. Control and comfort to me are two common categories we will fall into that are kind of the first space of the drift, and we will go to those places instead of finding those things in the Lord.

Portia Collins
Yeah, and I love how that drift, you point out that, like, this is, of course, personally it impacts us, like personally we see it in how we spend our time, but how does this drift impact us corporately?

Elizabeth Woodson
Yeah,

Portia Collins
because we know that whatever we do is not just limited to us, you know, or how we’re drifting, it doesn’t just impact us individually, because we’re part of a body, it impacts our entire body. So, give me a little bit of

Elizabeth Woodson
that. Yeah, one of the things that was really instrumental for me, or moving for me, as I was studying Galatians, is what Paul chooses to do in chapter two. Paul could have told any story, and he chooses to include a story when Peter decides that he wants to mistreat Gentile Christians, because some of these Jewish officials have showed up, and all of a sudden, in the words of the folks, the young kids, as I’ll say, he was acting funny, he didn’t want to, he didn’t want to eat with them anymore, and so you see how Paul Peter’s belief leads him to mistreat other people, and so you kind of have this dynamic of corporate consequences or impact in chapter two, but you also have it at the end of Galatians that what Paul talks about is when we are able to move in the fruit of the gospel, placing our full trust in Christ and being dependent on the spirit, then that’s going to change how we treat one another. Paul has this, it’s at the very end, and it’s probably one of my favorite verses in Galatians. It is Galatians six, I can’t see 15, for both circumcision and uncircumcision mean nothing. What matters instead is a new creation, and when he’s talking about a new creation, he is talking about this third kind of humanity that’s never been seen before, right? It is where everybody is one, we’re brothers and sisters, we are family, that is his ability for all of us, so he talks about it at the end. Where is it? End of.. oh, here it is. Galatians 328 There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female, since you are all one in Christ Jesus, that there is this unity and oneness, and he’s like, y’all are missing the point, you have lost the plot. What matters is not that you get to earn your salvation by doing these extra things. What matters that you get to live in the grace that’s been given, so you can be people who freely give grace. So, again, how we show up with the gospel affects how we become witnesses of the gospel. And one of the things I love about traveling and speaking is the conversations I get to hear with, have with people, and I hear their stories and their church experience. And many of you have probably also had this conversation with people of why people are leaving the church, and not all the time, but many times the reason they leave the church is because of an experience with someone who claimed they were following Jesus. What we believe about God matters, and it will affect how we treat people, and so I think Paul brings that to our attention in the stories and instructions that he gives, that the impact isn’t just your justification or sanctification, glorification, it is someone else’s experience in the body of Christ, in a way that says the gospel is in fact true, and it is the more beautiful and better way to live life, and so that, that to me, it just, as I was walking through, I was like, “Oh, there’s just so much more that is at stake for us as a church, and to me, it’s a beautiful opportunity for us to show the world this new creation that Paul talks about, what it means for us to be one and unify this true family of Christ,

Portia Collins
and that is so good, Elizabeth. Is because I think one of the things that for all of us we can hear these things and affirm them and say yes, I get that, I know that, but I would, I would challenge you to think beyond what you just affirm and know to how you are functionally operating, how you’re functionally operating in your individually, but also corporately, because we cannot display the beauty of the gospel while we are functionally living or internally living and believing a false gospel, you can’t live that if you believe a false gospel, and you, you are functionally, functionally operating in that, then you are diminishing the beauty of the true gospel that God, that people can see through God’s work in and through your life, and in and through the community that you are a part of. Does it make sense what I’m saying, and so that’s my challenge to you, is to ask, are there ways where I am drifting, where I am attempting to supplement the gospel in some way? Am I judging Judy over there? And I’m sorry if your name’s Judy, am I judging Judy because she ain’t she missed Bible study two weeks in a row, or am I checking on Judy? Am I loving Judy because this is exactly what Paul is saying? He’s basically saying y’all trying to keep the law, but what you don’t even realize, the law was designed for you to love all of the law could be summed up in this love your neighbor as yourself. This is what he’s pushing toward, and so ask yourself and challenge yourself, in what, what ways am I, am I mad at Judy? Because Judy is politically affiliated with this. This is a big one that we’re doing now. We are supplementing and making requirements that the Bible never.. we’re building parameters that the Bible never built, and we’re making them qualifiers for being believers. When the only requirement is, what, Elizabeth? What’s the requirement? Elizabeth,

Elizabeth Woodson
faith in Jesus.

Portia Collins
Come on, y’all heard him, you know. So, just like I said, challenge yourself to think through, not just because I know we say a lot of stuff that you feel like I already know that I believe that, but this is more than just what you say you believe, it’s actually how you’re living,

Elizabeth Woodson
so good thing it is, is that we, our first impulse can be to judge and not to love, and I have found this: it’s easy to love people who are lovable. We’re not talking about those people, come on now, we’re talking about the ones where you feel the pressing need for the Holy Spirit in your life, and we always have another option of our words kind, are they harsh? Do we show the benefit of the doubt and to love, or do we criticize and say you’re not welcome here? I worked through a summer Bible study on the book of Mark, where the man with leprosy, and so talking about how he got cleansed, and how he was able to walk back into the fellowship, and so in the Bible study, one of the questions we had to answer is like, Who would not be welcoming your fellowship? Like, who, if they walk through the door, you know, people will start whispering. It’s those kind of like on the ground questions that help us see. Oh, that’s the place that the drift is starting to catch me, and I need the Holy Spirit to bring me back, because what we’re talking about again isn’t the easy stuff. This is the hard stuff, but it’s a hard stuff that’s worth it, because it points people to the Lord.

Portia Collins
Amen. Amen. Okay, so here’s the thing, we know, I know, y’all. I’m unintentionally funny. I really don’t be trying to be funny. Somebody told me I missed my calling as a comedic storyteller. But seriously, we know, okay? Drift, we see with the Galatians, it is had – we’ve defined what drift is, drifting from the true gospel. We see what it looks like, we know it happened with them, we know that it’s likely happened or happening with us. What is the hope? What’s like now? What now that we’ve identified the problem, we see what it is. What is the hope? What’s next?

Elizabeth Woodson
I think what’s next is us being able to recenter ourselves in Christ. That is always the anchor that keeps us from drifting out from the shore, and so I think about again my story of perfectionism and achievement, and just really even the thoughts that can. Whirl around in my mind, it is Elizabeth. What you have is enough, and even if that means, because here’s what I’ve also noticed, living for the Lord doesn’t mean we won’t experience social consequences, and that you trust the Lord to carry you and keep you, because you know my identity is in Him. He loves me, not because of how many things I do, but because he created me, and so if he tells me that I don’t need to go this way, or he tells me you don’t need to post four times a week, it’s enough. If he tells me in this relationship that’s really hard, and this person hasn’t given me the apology that I desire, or the reconciliation hasn’t happened, he’s still enough. And so, to me, one of the ways is, How can we recent ourselves in Christ? And it is coming back to the truth that He has left for us in Scripture, to rehearse the truth, even when it doesn’t feel true, and pray for the Holy Spirit to do a work in our hearts based upon it.

Portia Collins
Absolutely, you stole my answer, but it’s okay. But no, seriously, if you notice Paul, as he’s identifying this problem with the Galatians, and he’s, I mean, he really going off like in chapter three, he’s like, ‘Oh, foolish Galatians, who have, who has bewitched you? Like, as he’s doing all of this, he is also very pointedly making a point, okay, a huge deal, and what he is showing them is you are trying to do this, you’re trying to do that, but really it is the gospel. He’s constantly calling them back to the gospel. He’s constantly reminding them. He doesn’t say you need to do better, be better performers. He doesn’t, you know, challenge them in that way. What he does is he puts in front of them the gospel, the work of the spirit in our lives, and so what I think, how we begin to really make our way back from drift and find freedom in Christ. Y’all see what I did there, that’s the title of my Bible study. Or

Elizabeth Woodson
you can live free, you can just live free,

Portia Collins
just live free. Okay, I got it. But the way that we truly find freedom is by, like you said, recentering the gospel, but specifically remembering who Christ is, what Christ has done, and who He has called us to be, who we are in Christ, and that is the question that we should be asking questions we should be asking ourselves every day in everything. When I feel like I am on top of the world, and I just really knock that to-do list out this week, I still need to come back to those fundamental questions. Who is Christ? What has he done for me? Who am I in Christ? Over and over, when I feel like I have completely blown it. Who is Christ? What has Christ done? Who does he call me to be? And you also will notice that, like I said, Paul is making this point over and over in his writing in the book of Galatians, and he’s centering, or he’s focusing on how we are justified, how we are adopted, how we are united with Christ, how we have life in the spirit. At no point does he point back to ourselves, he keeps in different ways. He is, it’s almost like he’s being redundant, but it’s intentionally so, because we are prone to wonder, we’re prone to forget, and we need the gospel in front of our faces every single day, not even every day. Every, I need it in front of my face every moment.

Elizabeth Woodson
Come on,

Portia Collins
because I could be all right right now. Two minutes from now, I didn’t slid way on somewhere

Elizabeth Woodson
else, not slid that I think, and I want to, because our examples have fallen into the category of legalism, but I think licentiousness, where you just don’t think the way of Jesus is better.

Portia Collins
I got somebody too.

Elizabeth Woodson
Okay, I

Portia Collins
got somebody too. You want me to share now?

Elizabeth Woodson
You can share now.

Portia Collins
So, as I said, I grew up churched, and I mean it’s two sides of the same coin, so it’s like it’s so intricately woven together, but there was like a part of me that felt like I was justifying or outweighing my bad by the good things, so my achievement was actually connected to the fact that behind the curtain Porsche had some ugly stuff. Okay, some promiscuity. Of abortion just being her own idol, these ugly things, and those.. how did I get there? Because I thought the path to freedom is doing what I want to do, just living any kind of way. Then I would experience that guilt, and then try to outweigh it with the good stuff, and just going back and forth like a double-minded crazy man, and it is through, like I said, the book of Galatians. Um, this, this was such a personal.. I don’t even want to say project for me, but this was my first solo literary work, um, and it was a Bible study. It wasn’t just like what we call traditionally a trade book, and the reason why I picked this is because of what – how God used this book to radically change my life, and I distinctly remember, after, like I said, living years in this vacillating back and forth, I had, you know, I was guilt-ridden, ridden from some of the decisions that I had made, and then I was just worn out from trying to perform and keep up, and it was, it led me to a place of despair, I was broken, completely broken, to the point where I didn’t want to live anymore, and this was right after I graduated college, and I was in my first big girl job, and I had an apartment, and I was so desperate that I went back to, I was just like, okay, I just got to go back to at least those basic things I learned when I was going to church with Mommy and Grandma, read your Bible, you know, and pray, and so every evening I would come home, and I would pick a book or passages to read, and this particular evening I picked Galatians, and it was nothing special or supernatural, it was because it was six chapters, and I was sure that I could read it in one sitting, but God, but God used even that, and I remember I was reading, actually, in the New Living Translation, because I grew up reading King James Version, and no shade if you still read King James Version, but I don’t speak old English, and so I struggled to understand it at that time, and so I was reading in the New Living Translation, and it was as if I can’t even say that it was a translation, it was God’s word coming to life for me, and God showed me who I was in Him, and it is by believing faith in who Christ is and what he does to make us right. See, here’s the thing, we think that we don’t realize that if we’re going to get it right by keeping the law, we got to keep all parts of the law for every part of our life, in thought, in word, and deed. All of us disqualified, because even if you ain’t said or do it, you thought it, and so seeing those things, it made me realize, and Paul does this all in sixth chapter, it made me realize I fall so below the standard, I could never attain this, and it was like, duh, this is what I’m trying to get you to see, you can’t, and this is why you need Jesus. And then on the back end, it was like, okay, well, if Jesus, you know, cleans me up and he gets rid of all this dirt I got, now what do I get to live any kind of way? And then Paul says in chapter five, nope, let me show you chapter five, now you live in this way, not because you’re earning it, but because it is a byproduct of the spirit working in you. And y’all, my life changed for real, like I was not.

Portia Collins
I got up off of that floor, I was face to the floor, sobbing, because it find like it just all I can say it was the miraculous work of God, where the gospel finally hit me, and I realized what Who Jesus is, what He had done, and Who He called me to be, and it changed my life, and I’ve been coming back to that over and over, even as my decisions of my life have changed, I ain’t doing the stuff that I used to do, but I always say new level, new devil, so I go to a different, different level, and then it’s something else, so it may not be promiscuity, it might be spending or something, so but the gospel is so beautiful, and the thing is, we never get tired of it. We can come back to it over and over. I’m sorry, I know that was long.

Elizabeth Woodson
Nah, girl, they appreciated it. We could, we could sit here. You can tell me, and Portia love this book, and what I will say. A kind of, as we come to a close, is that the gospel sets us free. What Paul says in chapter five, for freedom Christ sets us free. Stand firm, then, and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery. That’s the goal, that the best life you could ever have is only with Jesus, and so, whether you’re trying to earn it through some route of legalism or you feel you can find it on your own, living in your own way, both of those will fail you, and so the same urgency that Paul had is the urgency I believe we need to have, that you know women in your community, even if it’s just you in your own life, that we would not step back into the slavery we were saved from, that we would live into the freedom that God has for us, in the fruit of that knowing who Christ is, what He’s done for us, and what He calls us to do. And so, again, there are a couple of resources that we have for you, mine is Live Free, an eight week study on the book of Galatians. It’s with Lifeway. I also have a book called Habits of Resistance: seven ways you’re being formed by culture and gospel practices to help you push back. That book was birthed out of a study of Galatians. Portia, what you got?

Portia Collins
I have Finding Freedom in Christ. Now, why can you bring your book? Now, I feel bad. Don’t feel

Elizabeth Woodson
bad, I should feel bad.

Portia Collins
Finding freedom in Christ, an eight week study of Galatians, published by Crossway. Again, shout out to Crossway. Thank you for sponsoring this breakout. And, yeah, go buy both of them, y’all. I’m not gonna tell you about one by both of them, because you love us, right? Thanks, y’all.