Grace-living means being freed from the fear of judgment and condem­nation to live out the life God has designed for us, namely to do good. These last two chapters of Galatians contain the practical outworking of the theology of justification by grace that comes through the Lord Jesus Christ. It comes down to simply doing good. That seems to be a no-brainer and all religions teach that. The huge difference for the Christian, though, has to do with the basis for doing good and the motivation for it. We Christians do good not because our standing with God is in question or our eternal destiny hangs in the balance. Rather we are now free from inferior motivations, free from guilt and rejection that the Law brings. So, with a clean slate as it were, we are freed to live a life that is characterized by doing good.

God didn’t create us strictly for our own benefit. Likewise He didn’t justify us and save us from the Law for our own benefit. We were created and saved to do “good works” (Eph 2:10). Therefore it makes sense that Paul follows his intense doctrinal teaching on justification with an equally intense challenge to do good.

In our passage today, he first gives the general injunction that doing good should be our characteristic lifestyle and reputation. But the command focuses on the fellowship of believers; we should “especially” do good to one another in the “household of faith.” We are part of the same family, we share the most important truth and reality, that of being justified before God by His grace. There is a special benefit in the community of faith, of doing good for one another. Unfortunately, being justified doesn’t automatically result in benevolent behavior. We still need to be reminded, no, we need to be commanded to do good to believers.

Anyone who has been part of a church discovers just how difficult this can be. Some give up and quit fellowshipping with believers because they are so fleshly, so immature. But others, along with Paul, see church, the fellowship of Christians in church, as an incubator for growing in love and good deeds. Community is always messy and a church is a community of believers in the truest sense. Rather than expecting perfection from others, we each need to attend to doing good especially to those whom we call brother and sister in Christ, even those to whom it is difficult to do good!