Snatched Away!

  

From time to time I’ll read a story about someone falling onto subway tracks, unable to save himself or herself, when a bystander is transformed from being a bystander to being a savior – jumping down onto the tracks and snatching the person facing death away to safety.

 

Yesterday morning, as I began reading Galatians, I was struck by the word “rescue” in the following: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins so that He might rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forevermore. Amen.” (Gal. 1:3 – 5).

 

This brought me to Colossians 1:13 -14, “Who rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins…”

 

Also consider what Jesus told Paul about Paul’s calling, that Paul would open the eyes of the Gentiles “so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me.” (Acts 26:18).

 

We need to be rescued from the present evil age, which is the domain of darkness, the dominion of Satan…by and to our Lord Jesus Christ. But I don’t think we (professing Christians) believe this, for we live lives of accommodation rather than Gospel proclamation. We fail to recognize the hostility of the world to the Kingdom of God, and we usually seek the path of least resistance in our daily lives rather than obedience to Jesus Christ. Holiness is not something we pursue, and we’d rather convince others of our political persuasions than of their need for Jesus Christ. We are pretty much people of the present evil age.

 

For me, I need constant reminders that I am to live for others and not myself; that there is the quicksand of the temporal all around me; that I must not fall into self-righteousness, the love of money, materialism, or pursue what Francis Schaffer styled, “Personal peace and affluence.” I need rescue from the values of this present evil age – in their apparently “good” forms as well as their blatantly evil forms.

 

Every day I am convinced of my need of Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior.

 

But I want to go back to Galatians and the word “rescue,” for the Greek word for rescue in Galatians is different than the word translated “rescued” in Colossians (I’m using the NASB). The word used in Galatians is seldom used in the Greek New Testament, and the force of the word really means “to pluck” or “to snatch” or “to jerk.” We see this word in Jesus’ command, “If your eye offends you pluck it out.”

 

This is why I began this reflection with a person being snatched away from subway tracks, because this is the image that we have in the Greek verb – that of being snatched away from something. This is something that happens to us, we cannot rescue ourselves, we cannot cause ourselves to be snatched away from this present evil age – only Jesus Christ can do this for us.

 

Note that in order for Jesus to snatch us away that our sins must be forgiven, and in order for our sins to be forgiven that Jesus must “give Himself” for us. All three of the above verses in Galatians, Colossians, and Acts speak of the forgiveness of sins. O that we might see the hideousness and wickedness of sin, of all sin, not so much my neighbor’s sin but my own sin, and not just the sins that I commit, but the sinful person I am outside of Jesus Christ. I not only need my sins forgiven, but I need a change of nature – for without a change of nature I will continue to live the life of a sinner in spiritual death. I need to be snatched away from this present evil age.

 

I can take no credit for having been snatched away from spiritual death, I contributed absolutely nothing to this event – and when a person realizes that he has indeed been snatched away, that person is quick to recognize that he or she had nothing to do with the rescue – all credit, all glory, goes to the Rescuer, the Deliverer.

 

In looking at other English translations and paraphrases of Galatians 1:4 I haven’t seen any that convey the force of being “plucked” or “snatched,” perhaps the idea is too unusual to translate it this way – but we miss something by not considering the force of the word – for I think we can agree than should we ever fall onto subway tracks with a train’s lights coming toward us, that being snatched away to safety is our best hope of survival.