For am I now trying to persuade people, or God? Or am I striving to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ, Galatians 1:10.
Watch a child at a piano recital. She plays the last note, and before she bows, before she even takes a breath, her eyes go out into the crowd looking for her mother’s face.
Most of us never stop doing that. We just learn to do it so smoothly that nobody notices.
A little over a week ago I spent three days with the church in Waterford, Michigan, for their men’s weekend. We worked through Galatians, Luke 15, and a few other texts with one question in front of us: what happens to a person when he stops auditioning for God? The men heard it first, but nothing in it belongs only to men. All of us have an audience. Over the next several days I want to walk you through that same study. We’re calling it Nothing Left to Prove. We’ll start with the problem and end at a father’s table. Today we’ll identify the problem.
Who’s in Your Audience?
So, put it out there, because most of us have never said it out loud.
Some of us are still performing for a parent. Maybe your dad has been gone twelve years. He never once said he was proud of you, or he said it one time and you’ve been chasing the second time ever since. You’re fifty-two years old and he’s still up in the bleachers. You check his face before you check your own conscience.
For others it’s a boss. You rewrote the same email four times in your head last night. You know exactly how this morning’s meeting will feel, and you’ve already rehearsed your part.
It might be your husband or your wife. You love them. You’d die for them. And there’s a part of you that’s always quietly waiting on a grade.
Then there are the people you grew up with. You still talk a certain way around them, and you still laugh at things you don’t think are funny.
Even a church can become an audience. You know how to look faithful on a Sunday morning. You know when to nod, what to say in class, and how long a prayer should run. Late at night you’ve wondered how much of that is you and how much of it is for them.
And some of us are playing to a scoreboard we built in high school: the salary, the house, the grades the kids bring home, the number of people who liked the picture we posted. Nobody else is keeping that score anymore. You still are.
I’ll go first. For years, my audience was other preachers in the part of the brotherhood I grew up in. Before I preached a lesson or published an article, I ran it past them in my head. Would they approve? What would they say? Would someone take one sentence and decide I’d drifted? That audience shaped what I said. It shaped what I left unsaid, too. It took me a long time to see it.
Here’s what all of those have in common. The audition never ends. You get the part and then find out there’s another audition next week. A good week buys you a good week, and that’s all it buys. Applause is the sound a crowd makes when you’ve given it what it wanted, and it always stops. Then you’re standing there waiting for the next round.
Applause feels like freedom while you’re hearing it. But, for a lot of us it’s become a cage.
A Gospel Turned Back Into an Audition
Galatians isn’t a calm letter. Paul usually opens with thanksgiving. Here he skips it and goes straight to the trouble: I am amazed that you are so quickly turning away from him who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel, Galatians 1:6.
What was going on? Teachers had come in behind Paul and told these Gentile Christians that faith in Jesus was a good start. To really be accepted by God, they also needed to be circumcised and keep the law. In essence it was: Jesus gets you in the door, and then the performance starts. That’s the whole crisis in Galatia. The gospel had been turned back into an audition.
Those same teachers said Paul was the crowd-pleaser, a man who shaded his message to suit the room. Paul’s answer in Galatians 5:11 and 6:17 amounts to “Look at my scars.” People who please crowds don’t get stoned and run out of town.
At the end of the letter, Paul names the real crowd-pleasers: Those who want to make a good impression in the flesh are the ones who would compel you to be circumcised—but only to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ, Galatians 6:12. A good impression in the flesh. That was the motive. They adjusted the gospel to fit a crowd.
One Owner
So, when Paul writes Galatians 1:10, he’s writing from the middle of controversy. Read the verse slowly and listen for one small word: or. Persuade people, or God? Please people, or be a servant of Christ? There is no third option.
Most of us have spent years trying to live in the and. I’ll follow Jesus, and I’ll make sure nobody at work thinks I’m strange. I’ll raise my kids in the faith, and I’ll do it without ever making anybody uncomfortable. That sounds reasonable. It even sounds mature. Paul says it won’t work.
Look at the word servant. Paul uses doulos, the ordinary word for a slave, someone who is owned. A first-century slave didn’t have a career plan. He had a master, and his days belonged to somebody else. Paul gladly wears that title. He has one owner.
Jesus said the same thing: No one can serve two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other, Matthew 6:24. He was talking about money. Put applause in that sentence and it works the same way.
There’s one more small word in the verse: still. If I were still trying to please people. Paul knew that life from the inside. I advanced in Judaism beyond many contemporaries among my people, because I was extremely zealous for the traditions of my ancestors, Galatians 1:14. That’s a scoreboard. Saul of Tarsus knew where he ranked among the men his age. He had the credentials, he was a prominent teacher, and had the approval of everyone who mattered in Jerusalem. And he was so busy climbing that he persecuted the very God he thought he was pleasing.
The most religious person can be the most caged. Saul’s audience wore robes and sat in the Sanhedrin. It was made of religious people, and it was still an audience.
Bars Made of Faces
Living for applause starts small: a little silence here, a little going along there, years of checking the crowd’s face before checking God’s.
So, what does the cage look like on an ordinary day of the week?
It looks like the conversation you keep not having. Your friend’s marriage is coming apart, or another friend is drinking more than anyone wants to admit. You say nothing. You tell yourself it isn’t your place, and you call it respect. You know it’s something else. You don’t want to lose them, and you don’t want them to think less of you.
It looks like a parent who’s never once prayed out loud with the kids. Leading might mean failing, and failing in front of the people who know you best is the thing you fear most.
It looks like someone who can quote the right verses on Sunday and has never once been honest with another Christian about what’s going on inside.
And it can be quieter than that. You do the right thing and then wait to see if anybody noticed. You serve. You show up. You give. Every bit of it has a little string tied to it, running back to somebody’s face.
Now, notice what Jesus bluntly said to a crowd of religious leaders: How can you believe, since you accept glory from one another but don’t seek the glory that comes from the only God? John 5:44. How can you believe? According to Jesus, the approval habit gets in the way of faith itself. If you keep collecting glory from people, you won’t go looking for the glory that comes from God.
That’s the cage. Its bars are made of faces. Most of us have lived in it so long we’ve stopped noticing the bars.
Whose Face Do You See?
I’m going to do something preachers don’t usually do. I’m not going to fix this today. There aren’t three steps out of the cage at the bottom of this post.
You need to feel the weight of the problem before the answer will mean anything. Someone who doesn’t believe they’re caged has no use for a key. Tomorrow we’ll open Galatians 4, and Paul will tell us what God has already done about it.
For today, take one question with you. Don’t answer it fast.
When you picture yourself finally getting it right, being good enough or faithful enough, whose face do you see?
Is it a parent’s? A boss’s? The people you grew up with? The family in the pew behind you? Or is it the face of the One who owns you?
If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ. Be honest with God about which one you’ve been. We’ll pick it up tomorrow.
MEMORY VERSE
For am I now trying to persuade people, or God? Or am I striving to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.
Galatians 1:10 (CSB)
Challenge
For the next few days, pay attention to the moment right after you do something well: a good meeting, a kind word, a job finished. Notice where your eyes go and whose reaction you’re waiting for. Write that name down. Don’t try to fix anything yet. Just tell God whose name you wrote.
