Reading: Galatians 1-2, Psalm 5

Today we start in on Paul’s letter to the Galatians. This was probably one of the earlier letters he wrote among those collected in the New Testament, and is usually considered to have been written around the same time as the first letter to the Corinthians. That letter addressed a situation where the Greek culture had invaded the church and caused the people to act poorly towards one another, and to engage in behaviors that were destructive to themselves, one another, and their witness for the gospel. In Galatia, the issues are the opposite. Someone who had followed Paul through the area began teaching that the gospel requires an absolute adherence to the law of Moses, including and most importantly circumcision. As he called out the “super apostles” of the church in Corinth for presenting a different Jesus, he calls out these teachers in Galatia for presenting a different gospel. The gospel of Jesus is neither a matter of absolute freedom to do whatever one feels like doing, nor a matter of restriction and adherence to a set of rules. Paul is horrified by both positions.

Let us take a minute and look at who the Galatians were. About 300 years before the birth of Christ, some enterprising Celts of a tribe called “Gauls” crossed the Aegean Sea and took over a region in the middle of modern day Turkey. Within a generation they had become a ruling class. A few generations after that Greek culture had done it’s usual thing and the invaders were almost wholly colonized by the culture around them. They spoke Greek, ate like Greeks, dressed like Greeks, and were generally referred to as Greeks. Some cultures resist invasion remarkably well, considering how often they get conquered. Anyway, the point is that by the time of Jesus these people were called the “Gallogeaeci” by the Romans, or the γαλάται (galatai) in Greek. Like pretty much everybody else at this time, they had been conquered by the Romans, who were also slowly being digested by Greek culture.

Enter Paul and his presentation of the gospel of repentance unto life in the name of Jesus. We do not know how large the Christian movement was in Galatia, but since the letter is directed to a group of churches, rather than that of a single city, we can gather that it was at least somewhat widespread.

Paul opens his letter with an appeal for the Galatians to remember the gospel that they first received, and to reject anything that runs contrary to it, even were it to come from an angel. Paul is taking care to focus the Galatians attention here. The message that Paul brought them was about repentance, faith, and a new life. It was not about secret revelations or requirements for access to any of it. As evidence he presents his own experiences. Though he is a Jew, he received a ministry to gentiles, and not to make them into Jews. Along with Peter, James, and the other apostles who are preaching the same message to the Jews, Paul’s goal is see both groups transformed into something even better as followers of Jesus. This is a pretty radical idea when you think about it. Generally the story is “become like me,” Paul’s story is “I’ve been transformed, be transformed too.” Paul recounts his own troubled past to the Galatians, how he persecuted the church and was mercifully saved by the intervention of God. He does the same with Peter, who Paul saw engage in hypocrisy to avoid looking bad to his Jewish visitors, and who Paul had to actively correct. Paul’s opening salvo against the false teaching that has infected the Galatian churches is to tell stories about how he and Peter are actually total screw ups. Not how most of us might start our argument.

Paul is aiming at a different target than most of us might see, though. At the end of chapter 2 he says we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Jesus Christ, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law. Paul went out of his way to talk about his own and Peter’s failures in order to say that line- even we are saved only by grace through faith! Those who are teaching that they must become obedient to the law of Moses are ignoring the fact that the very leaders of the Christian church could not keep the law of Moses. This is the same argument that Peter uses at the Jerusalem council: Why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will. The Galatians need to understand that no one is saved by keeping the law, just as the Corinthians needed to understand that no one is saved for unrighteous behavior. The gospel is simple, but nuanced. It is easy to understand, not cannot be changed in the slightest, or it will cease to be what it is: good news.