Galatians 5:1-6 – Freedom from The Law, To Love in Christ

Paul concludes his argument from Sarah and Hagar in verse 1 with a tautology:

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

They are children of the free woman, so they should start acting like it! The reason Christ, the Messiah, God in human flesh, came was to rescue us from the condemnation of the law. The primary purpose of the law (the first use we talked about in chapter 3) is to show us our inability to obey it, and drive us to Christ. Why go back to the law and act like it could do anything to make us acceptable to God? That’s why Paul has emphasized slavery, because nobody wants to be a slave! Nobody grows up with aspirations to be a slave. The very idea of being owned by someone else is odious, and if the Galatians allow themselves to be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to them at all. Again we are confronted with the dichotomous nature of Christianity, either/or. It’s one way or the other. There is no squishy, undefined middle where we can call our own shots.

If a man lets himself be circumcised, he is then obligated to obey the entire law, all of it. It’s either all law, or Christ. Most Christians do not understand this because the issues are not so stark as Christ and cutting off male foreskin. The issues seem more subtle, but the dichotomy is just as sharp. If I just do X, and don’t do Y, then God will like me more. I will be more acceptable to him. But that is impossible! The only way the law can ingratiate us to God is if we keep, in Jesus’ words, every jot and tittle. That’s a lot of jot and tittles! We tend to forget that even if we could keep all the external demands of the law, our intentions would condemn us (see the sermon on the mount!). Paul puts it plainly:

 ⁴ You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.

Remember, to be justified is to be declared righteous, and in a legal and authoritative sense. The law, the ought or ought not of existence, that which is rooted in God’s character, cannot declare us righteous because we can’t keep it! So stop thinking you can! If you do, then you have rendered Christ inoperative, abolished everything he came to accomplish. This is where Christians tend to confuse justification with sanctification. Sure, we got right before God initially by faith, but now I need to work at it if I’m going to stay there. Wrong! Our righteous standing before God is by grace, his unmerited favor in granting us the righteousness of another. Read I Corinthians 1:30 very carefully. You’ll see that Jesus is also our sanctification! That verse transformed my relationship to God when I finally got it, when I knew my standing before God was secure no matter what I did or didn’t do. Did that cause me to all the more want to do what I ought not to do? Not at all! Just the opposite. Such great love and grace only made me fall in love with God all the more, and yearn to please him all the more. Just because I’m not very good at it doesn’t mean my failures ruin the relationship. That’s what repentance is for, because as Paul says next:

⁵ For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope.

The word translated justified in verse 4 is a variation of the same word for righteousness in this one. How can we wait for what we already have? Aren’t we already justified? Yes, but we are not fully sanctified. That will only happen when we see Christ face to face, when we shed this rotting flesh of a body, and enter his presence, then fully when we receive a glorified, resurrected body. That’s why we trust (by faith), and don’t labor under the impression that we have to earn this. We can’t! The way Paul caps off his argument is beautiful:

⁶ For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

The word for “has any value,” ischuó-ἰσχύω, is expansive in its meaning. Properly, embodied strength that “gets into the fray” (action), i.e. engaging the resistance. For the believer, 2480 (isxýō) refers to the Lord strengthening them with combative, confrontive force to achieve all He gives faith for. That is, facing necessary resistance that brings what the Lord defines is success. In other words, the law (circumcision) has no power to enable you to obey it. If you are somehow able to obey, thinking you are “pulling it off,” and by golly God likes me now(!), your pride will be your downfall. Arrogance and self-righteousness are not far behind. No, we can completely give up the idea of any kind of full and perfect obedience to the law. We now trust God (faith) in Christ, and learn to love him through our obedience. Big difference! That will reflect itself in a humility that could never be obtained by the law, and a desire in the core of our being to obey the greatest commandments.

Galatians 4:21-31 – God’s Promise: The Slave Woman, and the Free

In the rest of the chapter Paul roots his argument of law and promise in biblical history, specifically the story of Sarah and Hagar. He is speaking to those “who want to be under the law,” it’s authority, and asks the rhetorical question, “are you not aware of what the law says?” He then quotes Genesis saying, “For it is written that Abraham had two sons . . .” Before I get into the content of what is written, we notice that Paul calls Genesis “the law.” Sometimes Jesus and the New Testament writers use the law to refer specifically to the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible written by Moses. At other times the law refers to all the writings outside of the prophets (“the law and the prophets”). The New Testament writers saw all of the Old Testament as the divinely inspired, authoritative, and infallible word of God, which is why we do too! Once we establish that the New Testament is historically reliable, we can also trust the testimony of Jesus and the apostles about the Old. The story of Abraham and Sarah upon which the promise is rooted in history, actually happened, and to that we turn.

Abraham, as we know, had two sons, one by a slave woman, the other by what Paul calls “the free woman.” Then he says:

²³ His son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a promise.

Both women became pregnant the same way by the same man, the way all women become pregnant, but it is the motivation not the how that is important to redemptive history. Remember that God promised Abraham an heir, in fact several times, but God was in no hurry to provide that heir, to say the least. God’s timing and ours rarely match. So like Eve, Abraham listened to his wife when she suggested that because the Lord had kept her from having children (how typically short-sighted and human that is! It’s the Lord’s fault!) that he should have sex with her maidservant (what Paul calls “the slave woman”), Hagar. He did, and Ishmael was born, whom Paul never names in this passage. (Muslims must conveniently ignore this passage.)

Thus was we see the contrast to flesh, sarx-σάρξ, as I’ve mentioned a constant theme in Paul’s writing, to the promise. The implications of the word and concept flesh are many, but the primary connotation in Paul is human effort to achieve divine ends, which is impossible. The essence of flesh is lack of trust in God’s promises, in God’s faithfulness and character. It is even worse than that because, as we can see in Sarah’s words, it is a charge against God, an accusation, that he doesn’t have the goodness, love, or power to pull off his promises to us. God “kept” Sarah from having a child, so let’s take it into our own hands! Of course when that happens, disaster ensues. And isn’t this so real to the human condition? To our condition? To trust or not to trust, that is the real question.

Paul’s point is bigger than any material historical consequences of that decision because he says “These things can be taken figuratively.” The women represent two covenants. One is Mount Sinai (law), and bears children who are slaves. He says it represents Jerusalem at that time, which likely refers to the temple, and everything associated with it as a means to relationship with God. The irony is that everything about the temple is meant to keep sinners away from God. The whole temple system, and the law which it represents, as the entire book of Hebrews argues, is completely inferior to the New Covenant in Christ’s blood. Then Paul contrasts this physical Jerusalem with the one “that is above,” and that is free, “and she is our mother.” To establish the contrast he quotes Isaiah 54:1, where God exhorts the barren woman to be glad because she will have more children than the one who has a husband.

Remember there are no chapters in the original, and this verse is like a capstone to the incredible redemptive passage of Isaiah 52:13-53. Sarah was in fact barren, and it was only by the almighty sovereign power of God that she had Isaac, the child of the promise. The entire redemptive purposes of Isaiah’s Suffering Servant, Christ, are God’s alone to accomplish. In the title of a wonderful book by John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied. That would be us! The children of the promise, like Isaac, not the children of the slave woman. What’s funny is that Paul quotes “Scripture” as saying:

 “Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son.”

This is actually Sarah speaking, and she doesn’t say free woman, but “my son Isaac.” Irony abounds! It was her fault that the slave woman had Abraham’s son. It was her lack of trust in God’s promise that caused the tension, but in case we haven’t noticed, God uses sinners to accomplish his redemptive purposes! The Bible is full of sinners, save one. No mere sinner, including us, can thwart God’s purposes in Christ!

³¹ Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman.

Paul will expound on what this means for the Christian life in the next chapter, but freedom does not mean license, or antinomianism (against law). It means we are no longer slaves to the law of sin and death because of God’s promise. We are set free because of him! Not us! Going back to redemption applied. The work of Christ in redeeming us as slaves isn’t applied because we believe it, but we believe it because it is applied to us by the Holy Spirit. Big, huge, difference! And oh how comforting that it is not up to us!

Galatians 4:8-20 – Now That Your are Known By God . . . .

Paul now sets up a contrast between when they did not know God, and now that they do. Previously they were “slaves to those who by nature are not Gods.” The slavery he’s mentioned previously, a word he uses 13 times in the letter (more than even Romans), is in relation to the law apart from being in Christ. Here is how he sets up the contrast:

⁹ But now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles?

The contrast is stark. First, the driver of the relationship isn’t us, that we know God, but by God, that we are known by him! We do know God in Christ, but it is not primarily about us doing the knowing, the searching, and seeking to establish the relationship. The searching and seeking only comes to those whom God knows in Christ after the relationship with him has been established by him. He always and forever is the initiator in the relationship, we respond. You might say that the relationship by his Spirit within us is a lifelong exposing and rooting out of that which is contrary to him, or in a word, sanctification (I John 1:9).

The phrase “weak and miserable” relating to the principles is a strong as the concept of futility can be expressed in Greek. Weak is pretty straight forward, without strength, but miserable, ptóchos-πτωχός, is just flat out pathetic, (of one who crouches and cowers, hence) beggarly, poor, properly, bent over; (figuratively) deeply destitute, completely lacking resources (earthly wealth). The extreme opposite of rich. He asks what should be a rhetorical question, but unfortunately is not, “Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again?” Basically they are becoming “religious” again (“observing special days and months and seasons and years”), thinking that their relationship with God is established and maintained in doing certain things. Is is not! Observance gets us nothing without Christ. Observance doesn’t get us Christ. If we think it does, we’re exchanging the observance for Christ! Which is why he says, “I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you.” The concepts are mutually exclusive. Observance and obedience, not to rituals, but to a person, flow out of the relationship.

Paul then addresses his relationship to the Galatians, and the mutual concern they had for one another, at least initially. He tells them that what first allowed him to preach the gospel to them was an illness, and they treated him as if he were an angel (messenger) of God. Many think this illness is the “thorn in the flesh” Paul refers to in 2 Corinthians 12, and that it has something to do with his eyes because he says that they would have torn their eyes out and given them to him. But something has happened to sour the relationship, and it is “those people,” obviously referring to those who preach another gospel that is no gospel at all.

It’s clear to Paul that these people are eager to alienate them from him, that they want to win them over, but it is not for good. Paul shares his concern for them, and in a most graphic way:

¹⁹ My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.

This tells us something of the challenge of being a minister of the gospel. I remember being in seminary, and talking to a guidance counselor at the school about my career plans. I told him I didn’t necessarily feel called to the ministry, and I’ll never forget his response. He said being a minister, a pastor, is hard enough if you feel compelled and called to be one, so if you don’t, it is not for you!

The phrase, Christ is formed in you comes from a word we’re familiar with, morphoó-μορφόω, properly, taking on the form that properly embodies a particular inner-essence. Christ being formed in us is us being transformed to be Christ! He’ll get into this more as he continues to push home the contrast of slavery to the law to the freedom we have in Christ, and what that freedom looks like lived out in real life. That is a great prayer, though, one I think I’ll take up daily, that God would form Christ in me!

Galatians 4:1-7 – In the Fullness of Time . . . .

Paul has just finished saying if we belong to Christ we are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. He now distinguishes the heir as a child who owns everything, but is still subject to others until “the time set by his father.” This heir is in effect no different than a slave. In the same way, when we were children we “were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.” Paul doesn’t say what these principles are, but they are contrary to or in contrast to “in Christ.” Then he writes these profound words:

⁴ But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, ⁵ to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

I read a book not too many years ago by historian Paul L. Maier called In the Fullness of Time which reflected on meaning of those words. God brought the ancient world to the perfect moment in which he could reveal his son for our salvation. The Greeks through the conquering genius of Alexander the Great had Hellenized much of the known world, so that Greek had become the lingua franca throughout Europe, much of Asia, and northern Africa. Now a language of an obscure people in the Middle East could be translated into a language most people in that world could understand. But that would not be of much help if that message could not easily travel throughout that world, and God would use Roman might and ingenuity to accomplish that. Roman roads and law made it possible for the message to safely travel throughout the empire, and beyond. For example, the seven churches John mentions in Revelation were connected along postal routs, and letters could easily travel back and forth.

The fullness of time also has another, more important meaning, and that is all the history that preceded it. The history of redemption started with God’s promise to Adam and Eve, that her offspring, or seed, would crush the serpent’s head. All the people and events we read about in the Old Testament had to happen exactly the way they did, when they did, how they did, that Christ might be revealed when the timing was perfect. Only then would it make sense that when Jesus said the whole Old Testament was about him, we could discern exactly what that means. We could now know the reason he had to be born of woman and born under law, that as an actual flesh and blood human being he could redeem, or purchase, those of us who are also under the law.

The idea of under is to be under the authority of the thing, as Paul explained in the previous chapter. He said, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.” And he did this that we might legally be adopted as sons of the Father. What this tells me is that I could do nothing to make this happen; I trust Christ for what has already been accomplished for me. As Jesus proclaimed with his dying words, “It is finished.” The telos, or end, or purpose of his mission had been accomplished. On the cross he didn’t just make our salvation possible, but actual. The world redemption implies an actual transaction took place on the cross, even as money changes hands when you purchase something. The means by which the transaction is applied to us is faith, or trust, but our faith didn’t make what was possible, actual, but made what was actual, actual. Therefore our salvation is an objective fact upon which we can trust, not a subjective internal state. The latter happens, we are transformed from death to life, but only because of an historical event on which we can rely. We are transformed because our relationship to God is transformed:

⁶ And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 

As adopted sons not only have we been redeemed from slavery, and are now heirs of the Creator of the universe, he himself in the person of his Holy Spirit has been given to us, lives in us. Of course that is incomprehensible because we know the depth of our own sin and wretchedness. How can this be? It can be because of the power of what Christ accomplished on the cross. It allows a perfectly holy and terrible God (terrifying to sinners), to make his abode in and with sinners, and not be tainted by it. Mind blowing! Just as Jesus touched lepers and was not tainted by them, the eternally clean making clean, so can our holy, eternal God now fellowship with his adopted children, and not be tainted by us. We who were once his enemies, hating he who was our judge, jury, and executioner, now cry out Abba! Father! And this cry comes from the depths of our being, almost a wailing, as a babe wailing for its mother. As I’ve called it many times, a radical relational reversal has taken place, and it’s all of God! Paul puts it this way:

⁷ So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

In the ancient world this was as definitive as definitive could be. We can be no more secure in our position before God than God has made us, in Christ. He’ll continue to pound this home in the rest of the chapter.

Galatians 3:26-29 – We Are All One in Christ Jesus According to the Promise

Previously in this chapter Paul discussed that we are justified by faith, not by observing the law, and that the promise given to Abraham was to his offspring, or seed, which was Christ. When you read the context of those quotes, God is promising Abraham that his offspring, or seed (Paul emphasizes that it is singular and not plural), that they (he) will be given or inherent that land. The Lord is referring to all the land Abraham can see, the land of Canaan, modern Israel, and that he will give him this land “forever.” Why would Paul interpret the promise as to one person, and that Christ?

First, because that is the true meaning of the text. The first rule of biblical hermeneutics, or interpretation, is that Scripture interprets Scripture, and Paul’s writing is Scripture, inspired revelation from God. Second, the point of redemption, what God promised Adam and Eve in Genesis 3, was never about a plot of land. Jews and dispensationalists miss that these two promises are connected. And when God says he will give him and his offspring the land “forever” it proves it can’t be physical because the earth and the universe itself won’t last “forever.” No, the promise has to be to Christ because only he can fulfill the obligation of the covenant of works, which is predicated on full obedience to the law. Only Christ could fully obey the law (John 8:46), and since we can’t we are driven by that same law to Christ by faith. So Paul can then say:

²⁶ You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. ²⁷ For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

What Christ inherited from the promise, “the land,” is now given to us who have put on, or been clothed with Christ. Our identity and position before God is now Christ! That’s why it’s ridiculous to think the law is the means to favor with God; there can be no more favor or acceptance than “in Christ,” one of Paul’s favorite phrases. And the NIV is disappointing, as it’s latest translation so often is, by trying to be inclusive. Here it translates huios- υἱός, literally son, as children. Paul, and therefore God, did not use the word children. If he had wanted to use the word children he would have used it. Son had a completely different meaning in the ancient world than children because it implied authority and inheritance.

In the male dominant cultures of the ancient world being a son had distinct legal advantages, which is why Paul says several times in Romans, and once here in Galatians and in Ephesians, that we’ve been adopted to sonship, a variation of the same word for son used in verse 26. We haven’t been adopted to be a mere child, but a son! Boy or girl, man or woman, we are all sons in Christ! And with all it implies for spiritual authority and inheritance. And he states the very radical, completely novel for the time, implication for what being “in Christ” actually means:

²⁸ There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 

It is absolutely impossible for us to grasp how stunningly different this was in the world of the first century, and I mean the entire world, not just the Greco-Roman world into which Paul was writing. Not only was this leveling counter-intuitive to the ancient mind, whether you were Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, it was ridiculous! All these distinctions mattered, and they were accepted as the natural order of things by everyone.

Then Christianity comes along and turns the world upside down, literally. I recently read a book by British historian Tom Holland called, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World. Holland as a young man was enamored of the ancient classical world of Rome and Greece, but the more he learned about it the more uncomfortable he became. He finally realized why, and wrote this book. All of his assumptions about how the world ought to be, he realized, came from Christianity, not the classical world. This radical egalitarianism Paul is teaching is taken for granted so much today that people have no idea where it came from, as if it was the natural order of things. It isn’t! And it came from Christ through Paul!

When I use the word egalitarianism, it is important to define the word in the context in which Paul implies it. Simply it means, “a belief in human equality especially with respect to social, political, and economic affairs.” There are some Christians who embrace the label at its most secular, as a position that obliterates all distinctions, specifically between male and female. So male leadership in the church and home is not a requirement because there is, Paul says it right here, no male or female. So women can equally be leaders in every way men can be. Of course you don’t find this radical leveling at work in the early church, or in any church prior to the 20th century, but the egalitarian Christian will say that’s just because it took time for the church, and society, to work out the full implications of such ideas, of what Paul actually meant by, “you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

The very big problem with such a position is that it is not at all biblical. Paul’s theology at this point does not negate the order of creation, that God created man, male and female he created them. He made man first, then woman from man. The revelation of God in Christ didn’t change this fundamental, and obvious, point about the reality of the sexes. Jesus did change, radically, the position of women in the ancient world, as can be seen in his and Paul’s ministry, but he wasn’t, nor was Paul, an egalitarian in any sense of the word. In the terminology of this debate, they were complimentarians.

Paul ends the chapter with:

²⁹ And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

Just as Christ was Abraham’s seed according to the promise, so too are we Abraham’s seed according to that same promise. Paul will continue to drive home this point in the next chapter, then end his argument with implications of living according to this promise.

Galatians 3:15-25 – The First Use of the Law: It Drives us to Christ

The second half of chapter 3 is more concise gospel profundity from Paul, now regarding the law and the promise. Paul argued in the first part of the chapter that the law can’t justify us before God, declare us righteous, because the law is a curse to those who can’t keep all of it. We can only be declared righteous by faith (trust). Now Paul argues that we are children of the promise through Abraham:

¹⁶ The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,” meaning one person, who is Christ.

Paul is referring to three verses in Genesis, 12:7, 13:15, 24:7, and he sets these promises referring to Christ in contrast to “The law, introduced 430 years later.” I’ve mentioned this many times before, but God is never in a hurry. To give us some sense of how long the law was in coming, the first British settlement in America, Jamestown, was founded in 1607, just 413 years ago! These promises, and Paul’s use of them, speak to the amazing coherence of Scripture. In Genesis 3, when God is meeting out his judgment against Adam and Eve, he says:

¹⁵ And I will put enmity
    between you and the woman,
    and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
    and you will strike his heel.”

The woman’s offspring is her “seed,” which is Christ. The covenant, promise, of redemption was already given to Adam and Eve before they were even cast out of the Garden. Scripture is one very long unfolding of that promise, confirmed to Abraham, and not “set aside” by the law, which is why the promise came first. There was such a long time between the promise and the revealing of the law, I think, so that God could make sure the two would never be confused. Alas they were, and always are. The sinful human heart thinks it can attain via the law what is only available via the promise, which is why understanding that we are children of the promise, and not children of the law, is so important. Paul speaks of “the inheritance,” obviously referring to the redemption from the curse of the law in verses 13 and 14, that can only come from the promise, given to Abraham by his grace, his unmerited favor.

So if we can’t gain favor, or righteousness, before God through the law, what is the purpose of the law? Theologians since the Reformation have talked about the “three uses of the law,” which are implied throughout Scripture. Paul here explains the first use, the law revealing sin and showing us our need for grace. The law is not opposed to the promise, as some obviously claim, because the law drives us to the promise as our only hope! This use of the law is what drives us to daily repentance, and well deserved humility, because we are just not very good at it, obedience to the law unto righteousness. Which is why 1 John 1:9 is such an important verse. We are not purified “from all unrighteousness” by our own obedience, but by God’s work in our heart. We obey as best we can, but we leave the cleansing, sanctification, to him. Paul states the first use as plainly as it can be stated:

²³ Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. ²⁴ So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. ²⁵ Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

The word guardian might sound familiar, paidagógos-παιδαγωγός, from which of course we get our word pedagogy, the art of teaching. It is fascinating to see what this word in it’s fullness means in relation to the law, properly, a legally appointed overseer, authorized to train (bring) up a child by administering discipline, chastisement, and instruction, i.e. doing what was necessary to promote development.

One of the reasons I am convinced Christianity is The Truth is because I find it impossible to believe, in fact totally inconceivable (a word that means what I think it means in this context), that it could be made up. Remember this, when critics say that Christianity isn’t The Truth, what they are saying is that it is in fact made up, it would have to be, right? I always ask myself, could it be, and the answer is always, no! Take this understanding of the law. There is no possibility, none whatsoever, that Paul, or any other human being could have made it up. It had to be revealed. Throughout all of recorded history, every religion and every philosophy, every human speculation or conjecture, assumes human beings having to earn whatever favor comes from “the gods,” be they secular or religious.

Yet here is Paul saying that law has absolutely nothing to do with earning the favor of God, but showing us that is impossible! The primary use of the law, the first use, is to drive us to Christ, to show us our need, that we are helpless and hopeless in and of ourselves to do anything to change our relationship to our Creator. We stand condemned, and the harder we try, the more condemned we are. Now that Christ has come, faith (trust) has been revealed (the only way we could ever know it) as the only means to right relationship with our Creator, which is why when Jesus died the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The way into the holy of holies, which would previously have killed anyone who entered but the High Priest once a year, is now open to anyone through simple childlike faith (trust) in Jesus. No wonder so many people have a hard time with Christianity; it’s too simple! I have to DO something, don’t I? Nope. Trust him, and you’re good, forever.

Galatians 3:1-14 – Faith vs. Observance of the Law

This passage has to be the most clear and concise declaration of the gospel in the New Testament. The simplicity of it makes it impossible to confuse what Paul is telling the Galatians, and us, about the essence of the gospel. First he writes these immortal words:

You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?

Paul is ticked off! The word bewitched, baskainó-βασκαίνω, properly, to exercise evil power over someone, like putting them under a spell. They’ve basically become thoughtless zombies who are uncritically accepting the word of “the circumcision group” he mentioned previously. It isn’t circumcision per se that is the problem because that is a minor medical procedure, but turned into a religious ritual to gain acceptance before God makes it much more. Here’s the point:

Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. ² I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? ³ Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?

Why was Christ crucified? So we could work our way to God, and tack him on at the end? No! He just said ending chapter 1 that “if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” Christ was crucified specifically because we could never, ever, gain acceptance before God by the law, by obedience to it, by what we do or don’t do. The phrase “believing what you heard” is in Greek “the hearing of faith,” or trust, pistis-πίστις, as we’ve seen throughout the New Testament. Intellectual assent is not faith, nor is mere belief. Here is one definition of trust: Firm belief in the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing; confidence or reliance. Faith (trust) is only as valid as the object of that faith (trust). Either we place that faith (trust) in our own works (“means of the flesh”) or Christ. God did now give them his Spirit or work miracles among them because they obeyed the law, but because they believed, trusted, what they heard.

He then makes the case that he made extensively in Romans (written after Galatians), that Abraham was justified by faith, he “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Those who believe are children of Abraham, which includes Gentiles, who as God told Abraham were always part of the plan, included in the promise. Those who have faith (trust) are blessed along with Abraham. There, as we’ll see, is no more Jew and Gentile, that division is gone in Christ by those who have faith in Christ. This was something many Jews had a very difficult time with, and still do.

Then he turns to the law, and tells them that if they depend on observing the law, they are under a curse, because it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.” The quote is from Deuteronomy 27, and is the capstone of many curses to be read out loud to the people of Israel when they cross the Jordan into the promised land; not a very appealing welcome. Either you do everything the law requires, or you’re doomed! Contrary to the the law, Paul says, is faith. Then he quotes Habakkuk 2: “the righteous will live by faith.” It is interesting that Paul leaves out one word in the Old Testament passage, his, or “his faith.” It is hard to tell who this “his” refers to, but our faith, trust, is certainly important, but it’s foundation is Christ’s faith, who trusted his father unto death on a cross.

If we insist on being justified by our obedience to the law, then we negate faith, trust. The ideas are mutually exclusive. He quotes yet another Old Testament passage, this time in Leviticus 18, “The person who does these things will live by them.” In other words, if obedience to the law is the means to the end of our acceptance before God that doesn’t require faith. Even worse, the curse promised for disobedience is the actual inevitable end because we can’t keep the whole of the law. So God addressed that in Christ:

¹³ Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.”

This passage in Deuteronomy 21 is what initially so horrified Jesus’ followers at his crucifixion. The Messiah under God’s curse? Impossible! Inconceivable! The only thing that could make them believe Jesus really was their Messiah was a resurrection. Nothing else could explain the rise and endurance of Christianity. The purpose of this redemption was that the blessing given to Abraham could be given to the Gentiles as well, that we all “might receive the promise of the Spirit.” The only way the promise could be universalized was through Christ! It was never just for Abraham and the Jewish people.

Galatians 2 – Peter’s Hypocrisy and the Gospel

In chapter 1 Paul writes that the only true gospel was revealed to him by Jesus Christ, and he also establishes that his calling is from God, not man. He tells them of his short first visit to Jerusalem three years after his conversion, and now starts this chapter telling them of another visit 14 years later. In one sense that’s a spec of time (the older you get the more of a spec it becomes), but in another it’s a lot of time. He is basically confirming his central contention, that his gospel and teaching was divinely revealed, and not from the other apostles. Fourteen years is a long time to teach and spread what is fundamentally in agreement with the apostles, but not from them. He is establishing his independence and authority as an apostle.

On this visit he decided to take along Barnabas, a faithful and Jewish ministry partner, and Titus, a Gentile. This was probably the visit referred to in Acts 15 to bring famine relief to the church in Jerusalem, and he says he went “in response to a revelation.” In other words, he didn’t necessarily want to go or feel the need to go, or go because he felt he lacked anything in the execution of his ministry to the Gentiles. He did it because he wanted to set before “those recognized as leaders” the gospel he preached to the Gentiles. Bringing along Titus was strategic because in their many years of ministry together he never felt compelled to be circumcised even though he was a Greek. In other words, it had no bearing on his ministry whatsoever.

What prompted the letter to the Galatians was that some believers who were Pharisees were teaching that Gentiles must be circumcised and keep the law of Moses. In other words, they had to become Jews to become Christians. Paul says that this is a direct attack on the freedom they had in Jesus Christ, and would make them slaves. He doesn’t say slaves to what, but it is clearly the law, as we’ll see. Paul of course rejects this so that the gospel might remain among them. You can’t have both the law as a means to salvation, and the gospel, and he claims the leaders in Jerusalem added nothing to his gospel message. In fact they recognized that Paul’s task was to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, and Peter to the Jews. God was clearly at work in both of their ministries. James, Peter, and John gave Paul and Barnabas “the right hand of fellowship” when they saw the grace God had given to Paul. That could possibly be a reference to God calling Paul to be his servant when he was once a persecutor of the church.

Then an amazing thing happened in Antioch after this that publicly proved Paul’s point. When they were back in Antioch and Peter came to visit, Peter had no problem eating with the Gentiles, then all of a sudden would no longer eat with them. The reason is that some Jews came from James, what Paul calls “the circumcision group,” and Peter started to pull back from the Gentiles. Other Jews started to join Peter in this, even Barnabas, because well, it’s Peter, the leader of the church. But this leader is not above hypocrisy, and Paul calls him out on it in front of everybody, not in private. He tells them that Peter is “not acting in line with the truth of the gospel.” We can see in this episode why God chose Paul and not Peter to make sure his gospel broke out of the confines of the narrow Jewish religion.

We forget exactly just how Jewish the early Christians were, that they perceived themselves as Jewish first, and then as followers of a Jewish Messiah who fulfilled their religion. We remember Peter’s astonishment at his vision in Acts 10 that the Holy Spirit would come on the Gentiles too. They couldn’t imagine their Jewish Messiah replacing their Judaism. They were of course right in a way, but not in the way God had in mind. Peter, Paul says, lived as a Gentile eating among them. Jews were forbidden from eating with Gentiles, but there was Peter doing it. Now the Jews come and he can no longer eat with them? How can he then be part of forcing Gentiles to follow Jewish customs, like circumcision? He can’t have it both ways.

Paul then lays out the essence of the gospel, “that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.” The word justified simply means to be legally declared righteous, and the law cannot do that, only trust in Jesus can. Paul reiterates it plainly: no one can be justified by observing the law. Just because I sin, Paul says, doesn’t mean Christ promotes sin. In effect the law kills me so that I might live for God. Then he lays down, if you will, the gospel law:

²⁰ I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. ²¹ I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”

The contrast could not be more stark, the dichotomy more complete; it’s one or the other. Absolutely nothing we can do can gain us favor with God, nor can God ever owe us because we’ve obeyed the law. If we could or he did, then the cross becomes meaningless. This is so completely counter intuitive to everything that is “naturally” within us. That’s why as simple as the gospel message is, it’s a tough sell. Pride is so deep seated in the human sinful soul that we insist, by golly, we’ll earn God’s favor! Paul hasn’t minced words to the Galatians, but we’ll see that he’s just getting started.

Galatians 1:11-24 – Paul’s Gospel, A Revelation from Jesus Christ

After Paul starts the letter with a rebuke that the Galatian Christians are turning to a different gospel he let’s them know why they should accept the gospel he preaches:

¹ I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. ¹² I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.

Not of human origin in Greek is “according to man,” so this gospel hasn’t been made up by human beings, or by any particular person, but rather it was revealed to Paul by Jesus the Jewish Messiah. We would be familiar with the Greek word for revelation, apokalupsis-ἀποκάλυψις, properly, uncovering (unveiling). This claim of Paul’s is of course remarkable, if true, and it is either true or not. If it is not true he either made it up or is deluded.

The Apostle Paul may be the most significant apologetic for the truth of Christianity that God has given us. His writings are the earliest that we have. All scholars agree his earliest letters are from the early 50s, a mere 20 or so years from the events that are the basis of this gospel. Think about it, Y2K as it came to be known, was 20 years ago. The devastation of 9/11 was almost 20 years ago. What adult or teen living at the time doesn’t vividly remember details of those events and those years? And the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth was all so dramatic that is was unforgettable, and impossible to make up. You don’t make up something everyone who experienced it remembers. And everything Paul proclaims about Jesus was confirmed by Jesus’ closest followers and eyewitnesses, as we’ll see later in this chapter, just a few years after it all happened.

The reason skeptical, non-Christian scholars do not question the basic outline of Jesus’ life and death is primarily because of Paul. Everything Paul writes is perfectly consistent with the gospel writers, and everything we find in the gospels is consistent with Paul. These scholars also believe something happened to transform the early Christians who were then willing to boldly proclaim a risen Jesus, and die, for that proclamation. Their anti-supernatural bias keeps them from accepting that proclamation, but the evidence compels the open minded that Paul’s claim here is in fact the truth. We must always remember that Paul was an extremely dedicated Pharisaic Jew, and would be the last person to turn a mere human being into God. By making this contrast, Paul is plainly affirming the deity of Christ, or Jesus of Nazareth, a man, but much more than a man. Paul does not make this up; nothing could cause a pious, dedicated Jew to make such a thing up. Our conclusion? It must be the truth!

Paul establishes his credibility on exactly this point, that because he was a zealous Jew he persecuted the church and tried to destroy it. He had a visceral hatred for Christians because he believed they perverted his beloved Judaism, and we know that meant killing them. There is only one thing that could change the mind of such a man, an actual revelation from God:

¹⁵ But when God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace, was pleased ¹⁶ to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, my immediate response was not to consult any human being. ¹⁷ I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went into Arabia. Later I returned to Damascus.

God had this planned all along, and it was all God. From birth he was developing this Saul of Tarsus who would become the Apostle Paul, probably the most influential man in history. And Paul is eager to affirm that his authority as an apostle didn’t come from the original apostles;

¹⁸ Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days. ¹⁹ I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord’s brother. ²⁰ I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie.

We can read about this in Acts 9. Luke doesn’t give us an indication that any time passed between verses 25 and 26, but three years had passed since he made his escape from Damascus and “went up to Jerusalem.” And when Paul says he’s not lying, given everything we know about his life and conversion, it’s easy to believe that he is in fact not lying! All the churches in Judea that hadn’t yet met Paul only heard the strange story that, “The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” He says they praised God because of him, and of course they would!

I mentioned the word deluded above in regard to Paul, that if what he’s saying is not in fact true, and if he’s not purposefully lying, then he has to be! Does the Apostle Paul come off as someone who is delusional? As someone who is easily deceived? Someone not in his right mind? There is only one reason people reject the testimony of Paul (humanly speaking): an anti-supernatural bias. They reject the miraculous a priori; before they ever come to the text, to the evidence, they’ve made their conclusion. Their bias blinds them to the obvious, and the common sense conclusions based on it, that Paul’s message is true. We’ll see, and of course have already seen, that Paul takes it very seriously.

Galatians 1:1-10 – There is No Other Gospel

If we thought Paul was kind of harsh to the Corinthians, that was mild compared to this letter to the Galatian Christians. Galatia is in modern day Turkey, and Paul likely founded the church on his first or second missionary journey. He shows none of the personal affection for them like he showed the Corinthians. Rather, this letter starts on point, and ends there. He starts as he does all his letters, establishing his authority as an apostle, but does so more forcefully here:

Paul, an apostle—sent not from men nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead— ² and all the brothers with me.

Unlike other greetings, he establishes that his apostleship, and thus authority, comes directly from divine sources, not human ones. And the only reason this matters is because of the resurrection, that Jesus of Nazareth died on a Roman cross, and came back to life again. That fact alone is what made Christianity, the apostolic religion, worth fighting and dying for, and Paul is fighting for it here. Next he extends similar greetings as in his other letters, but also expands on that as well:

³ Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, ⁴ who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, ⁵ to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

His greetings in Romans is more extensive, but it is redemptive-historical because that is the purpose of that letter, whereas here it is laser focused on soteriology, or the doctrine of salvation, how we are saved. Then he gets right to it:

⁶ I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— ⁷ which is really no gospel at all.

Paul is incredulous that they are abandoning the gospel of grace. We’ll see exactly what this means, but Paul’s asserting here that there is only one gospel, and it is the gospel of God’s unmerited favor. In other words, his favor cannot be earned; the gospel is not the law. Some people are perverting “the gospel of Christ,” and throwing them into confusion.

⁸ But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be under God’s curse!

Too bad Mohamed and Joseph Smith didn’t pay attention to this verse! And to drive the point home he repeats the exact same phrase, but instead of what was preached, it’s what the Galatians accepted.

Of course there are very many others since the very first proclamation of the good news who preach another gospel, and still do. The reason is very simple: the law, and the requirement to obey it, is inscribed on our being. All human beings have a conscience, know what they ought to do, and think if they do it, then by golly God owes them! It’s common sense really. If God lays out the rules, we obey them, we’re good! Paul will explain, as he does in more detail in Romans, that the law is not the means of our salvation before God, but our condemnation.

The word for under God’s curse, or just accursed, is a familiar one in English: anathema-ἀνάθεμα, properly, place up, referring to something pledged (given up) to destruction; a divine curse/ban (“accursed”); an “oath-curse.” It’s not good. The use of this term is, of course, not accidental, by Paul or God speaking through Paul. The choice is stark, the dichotomy absolute: either Christ takes God’s curse for us, for our sin, or we endure God’s curse ourselves, for our own sin. There is no in between. It’s fascinating how many people, like I said it’s natural after all, want to live before God in that “in between.” They’ll even, like Paul implies, call it gospel while it is in fact law, turning grace into obligation, i.e., God is now obligated to us, we’ve put him in our debt.

We tend to think that sin, the natural inclination of the sinful human heart, is first and foremost about doing bad things, of transgressing God’s law, but in fact it’s far worse. Sin is also misunderstanding the purpose of the law for sinners who are dead in their sin. If the wages of sin is death, and if God promised Adam that they day he transgressed he would surely die, then sinners are, well, dead! Not mostly dead, a la Westley in The Prince’s Bride, but all dead. There is no amount of law keeping that can turn a heart of stone into a heart of flesh. If we insist on the law as the means of our favor before God, we are anathema. It cannot be any other way. We’re stubborn though, and even the most committed Christians fall into the trap of turning the gospel into law, which is why the proclamation of the gospel is the job of the Church, and it needs to be a lifelong obsession for the Christian, our daily focus of prayer and praise to our Savior God.

He ends the brief purpose statement of his letter claiming that he is not seeking approval from men, but from God. If he were still trying to please men, he would not be a servant of Christ. In other words, he’s coming at them with both barrels blazing. He will speak the truth, and let the chips fall where they may.