PAUL: NAVIGATOR AND CORRECTOR (Galatians 4:8-20)

Extracted from The Maxwell Leadership Bible

The apostle Paul knew that, in his role as a leader of the Galatian Christians, God had called him to navigate the church. But more than that, Paul knew what to navigate his fellow Christians toward.

False teachers were trying to convince the Galatians to rely on their own works for salvation instead of the grace God had poured out on them in the person of Jesus. This Paul could not ignore.

Something within each of us tempts us to believe that we need to add something to God's perfect plan of salvation - to believe that, without our own efforts, we just aren't going to make it into the kingdom of heaven. This remains just as true today as it was in the days of the first-century church.

Paul attempted to correct the errant course the Galatians had chosen by pointing out that no one can add anything to what Jesus already has accomplished on the Cross. No one can do a single thing to make themselves "more acceptable" to God.

To navigate means to make course corrections, to steer toward something. Godly leaders know they are to navigate their people to one thing only: the Lord Jesus Christ who died for their sins on the Cross.