Galatians 1:1-12
Lesson Focus
Paul reminds us that following the life and teachings of Jesus is enough to help us mature into Christlike disciples.
Lesson Outcomes
Through this lesson, students should:
Understand Paul’s purpose for writing to the churches in Galatia.
Understand that Paul is not addressing a distinction between Law and the Gospel. He’s addressing a false assertion that Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension are not sufficient in themselves for our salvation.
Catching Up on the Story
Paul’s letter to the churches in Galatia is unique among the available epistles penned by Paul. On the surface, from the salutation onward, it appears that Paul sticks to typical rhetorical standards. What is notably missing is any prayer of thanksgiving for the Galatian Christians. The absence of a prayer of thanksgiving is telling and portends the arguments and disagreements Paul’s friends deal with.
The Provence of Galatia was situated in what we would now call southern Turkey. Paul’s opening leads us to believe that the letter isn’t written to just one church but to all the churches in the area. After the letter had been read to the congregation and possibly copied, it would have traveled to the next church in the area. Because of this, the issues that Paul will deal with in this letter are rather widespread, making Paul’s writing all the more urgent.
Since at least since the Reformation, Paul’s letter to the Galatians has been thought to be about the differences between salvation through obedience to the Law and salvation through the grace of Jesus and his death on the cross. To put it more distinctly, the issue at hand was between faith and works. N.T. Wright notes that Martin Luther largely developed this viewpoint during the Reformation. In fact, Wright believes that the argument about faith/works is actually Luther filtering his interpretation of the letter through his political and religious context and struggles with the Roman Catholic Church (Wright, 14). At the same time, many suppose that Galatians is about how to be saved from sin to go to heaven when you die. Of course, this is not to say that Paul isn’t concerned with salvation and the relationship between faith and works; it’s just not his emphasis in this letter (Wright, 14).
Instead, the main question Paul’s letter to the churches in Galatia poses is, who are the legitimate people of God? A few secondary questions: How can you tell who would be vindicated as God’s people when Jesus returns? What does purity and holiness look like for the people of God? In other words, “Who will inherit God’s coming kingdom on earth as it is heaven, and how can you tell in the present age?” (Wright, 21). The answer to those questions is more complicated than “those who have faith” or “those who keep the law perfectly.” At the risk of oversimplifying, those who have been and are lovingly being formed into the likeness of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit with the help of the community of faith can confidently proclaim they are a part of God’s people.
What’s the Problem?
The question of who can count themselves as the true people of God comes to the forefront in Galatia because of the social and political dynamics at play in the region. For some time, Jews in the Roman Empire had enjoyed relative peace and safety. They had been granted a religious exemption from engaging in the normal religious scene. Any citizen who did not engage in the religious practices of the Empire and of the local deities would have been seen as strange and thus rejected. Religion, politics, and social life were so strongly linked that for a person to fully engage in the life of their community, they needed to participate in current religious practices.
It might be hard for us to fully grasp the position that these Jews and early Christians were in. While we might share a religiously pluralistic society, the integration of faith and society is not the same. Everyone in Galatia would have been religious. Because Jews were monotheistic, worshipping only one God, the Empire allowed them to abstain from the practices of the day. If, however, these new followers of Jesus claimed to still be thoroughly Jewish while not observing the law, it might bring undo attention to the Jewish population, causing trouble and placing their religious exemption in jeopardy. With this background in mind, we gain a better understanding of why the Jews and Jewish Christians were insisting on converts to keep the entire law.
On Christ’s Authority
Since the question at hand in Galatians is who the true people of God are, Paul begins the letter by asserting his authority as one sent from God, an apostle. Paul believes his authority is greater than any of those seeking to lead the Galatians astray because his authority comes straight from the crucified yet risen Christ and not from any human authority. In Paul’s world, the one sent to convey news or engage in business carries the same authority as the one doing the sending. In other words, by claiming he is sent directly by Jesus, Paul’s words and teachings carry the same weight as if Jesus were there in person (Bruce, 72).
By opening his letter this way, Paul wishes to get ahead of any question regarding the truth of the message he declares. In all likelihood, Paul’s opponents prefaced their message with an attack on Paul’s authority, accusing him of being a “people pleaser” (v. 10). We’ll have an opportunity to unpack what “people pleaser” means a bit later.
Astonished
The body of Paul’s letter begins with a rather startling accusation: the Galatians are following a different gospel. What other gospel could they possibly be following? Who are the ones proclaiming this other gospel? Why would the believers in Galatia so readily accept something other than what they received from Paul?
Paul does not give us a full description of those who have infiltrated the Galatian churches, but based on what we have already established, we can make some rather safe assumptions. First, the gospel the Galatians are following is not really a different gospel at all. We might call it Jesus’ good news, plus a continued adherence to the Torah or Jewish law. In other words, whoever came to Galatia after Paul believed that Paul had proclaimed only half of the good news. They suspected that Paul did so to curry favor with the surrounding Gentile population.
The reality for Jewish people, particularly for those living in the diaspora and not in Israel, was that they were constantly surrounded by idols. An examination of Israel’s history shows that idols were bad for your health. Idols had the power to pollute and corrupt you, keeping you from being holy. True and right worship of the one true God was the only way to be fully human (Wright, 22). Strict adherence to Jewish law was not about an individual earning salvation and a one-way trip to heaven through good works. It was about working toward the holiness of Israel so that they might take their rightful place in God’s kingdom when God establishes it on earth as it is in heaven. In other words, keeping the Law impacted much more than the individual. The future of Israel as a people and a nation depended on their holiness. A rather lengthy excerpt from N.T. Wright sums it up nicely:
The problem, then, was not simply one of what today we might call “legalism.” Yes, the Pharisees insisted on strict adherence to the Torah over against other Jews who were prepared to relax regulations, especially when they were with gentiles. But this was not because they were trying to amass enough “good works” to ensure that they went to heaven when they died. It was because they knew, on good biblical grounds, that God had called Israel to be holy, to be his special people—and that their holiness or otherwise would be directly linked to the great redemption they had been promised. If all Israel kept the Torah for a single day, said a later rabbi, then the Messiah would come. We do not know whether Pharisees in the early first century AD would have known that saying, but we can be sure that they believed its mirror image: if Israel failed to keep Torah and compromised with the idolatrous world in the way that Deuteronomy had warned against, not only would the Messiah not come, not only would Israel’s God himself not come back at last to establish his kingdom with power and glory, but the pagans with whom the wicked had colluded might do once again what Babylon had done half a millennium earlier.” (Wright, 42)
Groups like the Pharisees saw Jewish Christians who were not following laws like circumcision and dietary restrictions as a threat to the unity, wholeness, and holiness of Israel. For those like the Pharisees who came to understand Jesus as more than just a man, following Jesus was perfectly fine, but not at the expense of the rest of the Law. Following Jesus was not enough to truly be counted as one of God’s chosen people.
Two Threads
The two threads that make up the background to Paul’s letter to the Galatians, living in an idol-infested world and the insufficiency of Christ to truly mark someone as part of God’s people, need to be brought together. Let’s look at it as a timeline of sorts.
First, Paul proclaims the good news about Jesus Christ to Jews and Gentiles alike. The good news is that with Jesus’ death and resurrection, a good deal of God’s promises to Israel are fulfilled, bringing with it the beginning of “the age to come” (which is shorthand for God’s kingdom here on earth) and the defeat of the powers of evil that entrap people in sin resulting in death. Paul understands that Jesus has fulfilled the Law, continually giving grace to those who turn and repent. As we will see later in the letter, baptism is the sign by which we are marked as God’s people. No other sign is needed: not circumcision, not even strict dietary laws.
Second, the good news takes hold in Galatia and surrounding areas. It’s likely that most of those who receive Paul’s message are Gentiles, though some were also likely Jews or converts to Judaism. Christ’s church is established, and eventually, Paul leaves Galatia. Not long after Paul leaves, a rival “gospel” is proclaimed in the Galatian churches. The new word is that baptism and faithful obedience to Jesus is not enough. Jesus’ death and resurrection are insufficient to mark someone as a child of God.
We do not know the identity of those who brought a rival gospel to Galatia, but we might be able to assume that either Jewish converts to Christianity or Jews looking out for their own good are responsible. Both Jews and Jewish converts have cause to proclaim Jesus’ insufficiency to mark one as a child of God. Keep in mind that the Jews had a deal with the Romans that exempted them from participating in emperor worship. It is reasonable to assume that Paul’s opponents in Galatia are keen to ensure that those who follow Jesus look and act like good Jews. Failure to do so might cause the Romans to crack down on Jews, ending the exemption they enjoyed and the relative peace that went along with it. Circumcision is the universal sign that a person belongs to the Jewish faith. New believers in Galatia are encouraged to fully establish their membership in the Jewish family by following the Jewish Laws.
Finally, Paul writes his friends in Galatia, communicating not only his authority as an apostle but also his astonishment that his friends have wandered off the Jesus path so quickly. What Paul is most concerned about, however, is maintaining the sufficiency of Christ for salvation and the inauguration of God’s kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven.
In the final verse of this opening passage, Paul is incredulous at the charge that he wishes to please people with the message he proclaims. Paul believes that those encouraging new Christians to adopt Jewish laws are actively seeking to please people so that they might maintain the privileged position they occupy within the Roman Empire. In no uncertain terms, Paul declares that if safety from persecution is what he was seeking, he would not now be a servant of Christ.
So What?
I find it difficult to be too hard on the purveyors of this other gospel. They honestly thought they were doing the right thing by assimilating Christians into the Jewish faith. They wanted to maintain the peace and possibly save some lives. On the other hand, the turn toward protecting what they have is a decidedly un-Christlike move. Rather than proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah for the sake of the world’s salvation, they chose to limit Jesus’ importance and sufficiency.
As we move through Galatians, more of Paul’s opening will come into focus. These first ten verses still have something to say to us today. Paul reaches through time to confront us with a few questions: Is Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension sufficient? Or have we added to or subtracted from the fullness of the good news? Do we change the content of our message to not ruffle people’s feathers? How do we demonstrate our faithful following of Jesus to other believers and non-believers?
For the most part, the questions listed above are weighty and important and should be pondered regularly. Of those questions, we can only answer one definitively: Yes, Jesus, death, resurrection, and ascension are sufficient to make salvation available for all creation and people. The other questions, however, must be addressed regularly as a body of believers. If we truly believe the Spirit is leading us, we’ll be open to these questions, even when the answers might reveal we haven’t been as faithful as we might have been.
Discussion Questions
Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.
Describe a time when you’ve received a message from someone (text, voicemail, email, regular mail) and didn’t understand what it meant. What was missing that confused the message?
Describe a time when you could explain to someone what a message meant. Why were you able to help the other person understand the message?
Reading one of Paul’s letters only gives us half the story or conversation. What might we need to know to fully understand Paul’s letter to the Galatians? How might this information change the way we understand the letter?
In the Catching Up on the Story section, we were presented with several questions: Who are the legitimate people of God? How can we tell who will be vindicated as God’s people when Jesus returns? What does purity and holiness look like for the people of God? These questions are still relevant to us today. Spend some time discussing these questions. How should we answer them today?
Why would some Christians insist that converts to Christianity conform to many aspects of the Jewish Law? What was at stake if converts didn’t conform?
Paul calls what the Galatians have heard “another gospel,” which he says isn’t another gospel at all but a Jesus plus the Law. What other “gospels” might other Christians proclaim? What makes them illegitimate?
Have you ever read something in the Bible, heard a sermon, or read a book that totally changed your opinions about what the gospel is or what faithfully following Jesus entails? If so, explain.
What can we do to ensure that we are faithfully following Jesus’ gospel?
Who might Jesus be calling us to become?
What might Jesus be calling us to do?
Works Cited
Bruce, F. F. The Epistle to the Galatians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1982).
N.T. Wright, Galatians, Commentaries for Christian Formation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2021).
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