Plenty can happen in fourteen years. You can embed some crooked thinking or get it straight. You can assume some practices are essential or decisively affirm that they play no part in your identity; present or future.
Fourteen years ago, I was living at the same address in a home that has since been bulldozed for a new one to take its place. I had a one-year-old daughter who recently turned 15. Fi and I were having animated conversations about whether the world needed one more church and, more specifically, my suitability for leaving such a church. She was certainly right to be asking at least one of those questions!
When Paul writes of returning to Jerusalem after 14 years at the top of Galatians 2, it’s not because he is uncertain about the potency, possibility, or component of the Gospel. On the contrary, he has complete clarity; Jesus plus nothing equals everything. Paul’s concern for the mission project – the possible delusion and destruction of the Gospel through addition. Namely, cultural Mosaic ceremonial laws as a prerequisite for salvation.
Paul’s desire is not to be right, theologically correct, or doctrinally superior; it’s that the person and work of Jesus would be seen for all it has secured: salvation, abundant life, freedom, and righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith (Philippians 4:9). Nothing less, nothing else.
There seem to be plenty of moments in scripture telling us to remember and many others encouraging us to forget. Regarding God’s salvation work in Jesus, Paul wants us to do both.
He wants us to live lives established in the Gospel and living from the Gospel. It was never transactional but relational, so he wants us to remember where our living hope comes from. Every step of obedience, every worship response, every purposed good work, he wants us to connect to the Gospel.
Loving others? He loved us first and gave himself up for us. (Ephesians 5:2)
Preferencing others? Jesus made himself nothing for us. (Philippians 2:7-8)
Looking out for the poor? It was at the heart of Jesus’ mission. (Luke 4:8-19)
Laying down our lives for Christ? It’s the foundation of our lives in Him. (Matthew 16:24-25)
Jesus never wants our hope to be in anything other than his sufficient saving work for us.
But there’s some stuff Paul wants us to forget as we continually remember the Gospel. First, he wants us to forget our useless attempts at self-righteousness through rule-keeping.
When Paul says to the Philippians: “Forgetting what is behind and training to what is ahead…”, I reckon he’s not talking about a moment but of half a lifetime of zealous rule-keeping. He tells them, “I consider them (righteousness based on the law) garbage that I might gain Christ and be found in Him”.
To forget is not just to cease to recall, but to resist any attempt to resort to another gospel…which is no gospel at all (Galatians 1:7).
So, Paul might say, remember never to forget, and forget to ever remember or return, because Jesus plus nothing equals everything.