Having finished our study on James, today we turn back to Paul and look at the powerful book of Galatians. As such, we must first set the stage to our study by looking at Galatians as a whole. As with our study on Colossians and James, by understanding the background, author, date, and context of the writing, this will enhance our study and allow us to understand more about what the inspired writer was saying as well as its application to our lives.
The importance of Galatians is unquestioned. Galatians, though one of Paul’s shorter epistles, is highly esteemed as one of his greatest and most influential letters. Since both Romans and Galatians teach the doctrine of justification by faith, Romans has been considered by some to be an expansion of Galatians and Galatians has been called “a short Romans.”[1]
“In the whole Bible, there is no more passionate, comprehensive, yet concise statement of the truth of the gospel than Galatians.”[2] Salvation is through faith in Christ alone (2:16; 3:11-12). No work can earn salvation. Paul’s succinct refutation of the Judaizers in this letter has transformed the lives of many—from Martin Luther to John Wesley. In general, people want to earn their salvation by works that can easily be identified. In this letter, Paul reveals the arrogance of such thinking. It amounts to a desertion of the truth of the gospel and a turning away from God (1:6). Believers can stand justified before God only through faith in Jesus Christ; nothing else will save us.
OVERVIEW:
Apparently Paul became aware of a perversion of the gospel of grace that was actively infecting the Galatian churches. The false teachers who had come to Galatia since Paul’s ministry there were advocating salvation by “the works of the law”—that is, by keeping the law. Specific emphasis was placed on the Jewish rite of circumcision.
Paul’s letter to the Galatians was a swift and decisive attempt to counter this message, which was a different gospel.[3] Paul had to convince his “little children” in the faith, whom he had evangelized personally, that the new teaching was in fact a distortion of the gospel of Christ. In his argument Paul reasserted his authority as an apostle, which apparently had been minimized by the Judaizing teachers. Paul wrote not out of anger, but out of love. He saw the Galatians leaving the correct path by their additions to the gospel message, and he loved his fellow believers too much to allow them to go astray.
Galatians contains the three standard elements of a typical first-century letter: introduction (1:1-5), body (1:6-6:10), and conclusion (6:11-18). However, Galatians differs from many of Paul’s other letters. For example, most of Paul’s other letters contain an introductory thanksgiving section that serves as a prologue (Phil 1:3-11). The surprising absence of such a thanksgiving at the beginning of Galatians probably indicates the severity of the situation in Paul’s eyes. There is virtually nothing for which Paul can be thankful, since some of the Galatians were abandoning the gospel they had once embraced. Likewise, the letter contains no concluding greetings, whether long, like Romans 16:3-23, or short, like 2 Corinthians 13:12-13. There is only a terse benediction and concluding salutation (6:16-18).
“If there is one repeated phrase that summarizes the subject of Galatians, it is ’the truth of the gospel.’”[4] Unlike Romans, which presents the gospel as the answer to universal human sinfulness (Rom 3:23; 6:23), Galatians clarifies the gospel message against the subtle but deadly danger of works salvation. No sinful person has ever been granted eternal life based on works. What is more, everyone who lives by such a confidence in works is “cursed,” because no one can perfectly obey the law (3:10). Thus, to add works, rituals, or the law to the message of what it takes to become a Christian is to overturn the Gospel. The proper place of the law is to convict us of our sin demonstrating the urgent need for the redemption provided by Jesus Christ.
What then is the basic gospel that Paul goes to such lengths to clarify and safeguard? The only way a person can be justified before God is by faith in Jesus Christ (2:16). Paul emphasizes this point over and over. Faith in Christ, nothing more and nothing less, is the proper response to the gospel. This emphasis on faith is not about the historical dimension of the gospel that is open to reasonable inquiry: Jesus perfectly kept the Law of Moses (4:4), died on the Cross (2:20), and rose from the dead (1:1). Rather, Paul underscores faith in Christ because of the controversies in Galatia raged around the reception of the gospel in the lives of new believers.
Paul also addresses themes dealing with the Christian life, or living out the new freedom the believer possesses in Christ. Between the extremes of legalistic sanctification and hedonistic license, Paul charts a middle course of “faith working through love” and the power of the Holy Spirit (5:5-6). Thus, not only is justification by faith alone, but so is sanctification.
Simple overview:
- Introduction (1:1-10)
- Personal – Paul defends his Gospel (1:11-2:21)
- The source of the gospel – by God’s revelation alone
- Doctrinal – Paul defends justification by faith (3:1-4:31)
- The content of the gospel – justification by faith alone
- Practical – Paul defends freedom in Christ (5:1-6:18)
- The effect of the gospel – live free by the Spirit alone
AUTHOR:
The writer of Galatians identifies himself as Paul (1:1). He claims to be an apostle, and then goes on to argue at length for the apostolic authority behind his gospel message. Much of the personal information he gives in the course of his defense corresponds to the narratives about Paul in Acts, as well as to the autobiographical material in Phil 3:4-6. The use of the Old Testament in chapters 3 and 4 fits Paul’s rigorous training in Judaism.
The Pauline authorship of Galatians has, except for a few radical critics, been generally acknowledged. Even when the higher critics of 19th-century Germany were denying apostolic authorship of book after book, the Tübingen school regarded Galatians as Pauline. The reasons for this are based on the clear testimony of both internal and external evidence. Importantly, the author of the letter calls himself Paul both in the salutation (1:1) and later in the body of the letter (5:2). Most of chapters 1 and 2 are autobiographical and harmonize consistently with the events of Paul’s life recorded in Acts. The theology presented in this letter perfectly corresponds with the theology Paul expresses in his other writings, notably the book of Romans.[5]
The external evidence for Pauline authorship of Galatians is also convincing. In the second and third centuries, Galatians was attributed to Paul and quoted by Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen. Even the heretics of that time, including Marcion, assumed it was written by Paul.
It must be concluded that no real doubt existed in the early church nor should any exist today as to the Pauline authorship of Galatians.
AUDIENCE:
Paul addresses his letter “to the churches of Galatia” (1:2) and to readers he expressly calls “Galatians (3:1), but it is not easy to determine what this means precisely. So the question becomes where was “Galatia,” and who were the “Galatians.” At the time Paul was writing, the word Galatians had two meanings and could be used with an ethnic or political meaning.
For one, it referred to the area in Asia Minor where the Gauls had settled after migrating from western Europe through Italy and Greece. The territory was limited to the north central and east central areas of Asia Minor and its principal cities were Ancyra, Pessinus, and Tavium. But in 25 b.c. this kingdom was converted to a Roman province, and territory was added to the south, including the cities of Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe.
A debate has raged for centuries over whether Paul wrote his Galatian letter to Christians living in northern or southern Galatia. The North Galatian theory held that Paul visited the geographical district of Galatia in the north and established churches there. This church-planting ministry would have taken place on Paul’s second missionary journey after he left the southern Galatian region and before he came to Troas (cf. Acts 16:6–8). A second visit to the northern territory is apparently described in Acts 18:23.
The South Galatian theory was advanced by Sir William Ramsay.[6] In this view the churches addressed in the epistle were those of Derbe, Lystra, Iconium, and (Pisidian) Antioch, cities Paul visited initially on his first missionary journey (cf. Acts 13–14). Thus while there is no account in Scripture of churches having been established in North Galatia, even on the second missionary journey, churches were established in South Galatia, according to Acts.[7]
Other arguments which tend to favor the South Galatia theory are: (1) that the main roads from Paul’s hometown of Tarsus pass directly through the cities of South, not North Galatia; (2) the Judaizers were not likely to bypass the southern cities for the northern cities; (3) a large Jewish element which could be addressed by the Judaizers lived in the southern cities; (4) representatives of South Galatia accompanied the offering for the poor in Jerusalem but none were from North Galatia (cf. Acts 20:4); and (5) Barnabas who is mentioned but not introduced (cf. Gal. 2:1, 9, 13) would not have been known by the believers in the northern cities since he traveled with Paul only on the first journey. For these and other reasons many New Testament scholars now favor the view that Paul wrote the Galatian letter to Christians in the cities of South Galatia
Either way, here is a simple way of looking at the addressees of Galatians:
- Multiple churches with a common problem (1:2)
- Founded by Paul (3:1-3; 4:13-14)
- Revered Paul as an “angel of God” (4:14)
- Loved Paul enough to sacrifice their eyes for him (4:15)
- Primarily Gentiles = not yet circumcised (5:2)
- Familiar with the Old Testament (3:6-9)
- Saved long enough to be “mature” in their faith (5:7-12)
- Had fallen prey to a new, deviant gospel (1:6-10)
DATE:
To a great extent, assigning a date for Galatians depends on making a decision about the destination of the letter. If the churches of Galatia were founded on Paul’s second missionary journey in the northern part of Galatia (Acts 16:6), the earliest the epistle could have been written was around 52 A.D. The similarity in content between Galatians and Romans, among other things, has led some to date the letter in the mid-50’s (generally thought between 53-57 AD). On the other hand, if Galatia is understood to be southern Galatia, including Lystra, Iconium, and Pisidian Antioch (Acts 14:21), congregations planted on Paul’s first missionary journey, it is generally considered that the epistle was written from Antioch of Syria in about A.D. 48 just before the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15). (Just a note, the northern theory will then say this book was written from Corinth instead of Antioch).
To determine the date, the possible role of the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) in the controversies addressed in Galatia must also be considered. If Galatians was written after the Jerusalem Council had made its authoritative decisions, Paul most likely would have centered his argument on those decisions, or at least made an unmistakable reference to them.[8] Since he did not, Galatians probably date from 48 A.D. This means it is one of the earliest NT books.
While some chronological problems remain with this view (that is, the southern Galatia view), it is perhaps the best of the available options. After the first missionary journey Paul and Barnabas returned to Antioch. Peter came down from Jerusalem to visit them, fellowshipped with them, and then withdrew from the Gentile Christians only to be publicly rebuked by Paul for his inconsistent behavior. Meanwhile, Judaizing false teachers had infiltrated the churches in Galatia, denying Paul’s authority as an apostle and teaching that circumcision was necessary for salvation. Reacting quickly and vigorously to Peter’s actions and the threatened lapse of the Galatians into legalism, Paul wrote this strong letter prior to attending the Jerusalem Council.
PURPOSE:
The Judaizers in Galatia both discredited Paul and proclaimed a false gospel. It was necessary that Paul vindicate his apostleship and message, a task he undertook in the first two chapters. In this autobiographical section Paul demonstrated convincingly that his apostleship and his message came by revelation from the risen Christ. In chapters 3 and 4 Paul contended for the true doctrine of grace, that is, for justification by faith alone. Finally, to show that Christian liberty does not mean license the apostle, in chapters 5 and 6, taught that a Christian should live by the power of the Holy Spirit and that when he does he manifests in his life not the works of the flesh but the fruit of the Spirit.
Galatians was written to remedy a desperate situation, to call early Christians back from the Mosaic Law to grace, from legalism to faith. It is an emphatic statement of salvation by faith apart from works and is as relevant today as when it was originally penned.
The controversy at Galatia can be boiled down to these simple statements:
- Strikes at the very heart of and substitutes “another” gospel (a non-gospel)
- Misrepresents grace
- Eliminates the Cross
- Brings bondage
Among the many great verses in Galatians, there are two key verses:
2:16 – “nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified.” (NASB)
5:1 – “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.” (NASB)
Central idea of Galatians:
Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
Paul’s appeal to modern believers:
- Guard the truth/purity of the Gospel
- Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone
- Never forget what grace cost Christ!
- Christ set us free from the Law by bearing its/our curse on the Cross
- Never allow grace to be a cloak for sin
- We are justified by faith alone, and set free from sin, not for or to sin
- Always walk in and by the Holy Spirit
- Let us not abuse grace but stand firm and live free by the Holy Spirit
- Cherish and champion the Cross
- Let us joyfully embrace the cross and live by faith in Jesus, the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us
[1] Donald K. Campbell, “Galatians,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, eds. John F. Walvoord and Roy B. Zuck, vol. 2 (Wheaton: Victor Books, 1985), 587.
[2] Earl D. Radmacher, Ronald B. Allen, H. Wayne House, eds., Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Commentary (Nashville: Nelson, 1999), 1514.
[3] Earl D. Radmacher, Ronald B. Allen, H. Wayne House, eds., Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Commentary (Nashville: Nelson, 1999), 1514.
[4] Earl D. Radmacher, Ronald B. Allen, H. Wayne House, eds., Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Commentary (Nashville: Nelson, 1999), 1514.
[5] Earl D. Radmacher, Ronald B. Allen, H. Wayne House, eds., Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Commentary (Nashville: Nelson, 1999), 1515.
[6] Donald K. Campbell, “Galatians,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, eds. John F. Walvoord and Roy B. Zuck, vol. 2 (Wheaton: Victor Books, 1985), 588.
[7] Donald K. Campbell, “Galatians,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, eds. John F. Walvoord and Roy B. Zuck, vol. 2 (Wheaton: Victor Books, 1985), 588.
[8] Earl D. Radmacher, Ronald B. Allen, H. Wayne House, eds., Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Commentary (Nashville: Nelson, 1999), 1516.