Welcome to our presentation of the book of Galatians. This collection is now joining Word Online.

Background

The books of Romans, which I have just finished recording, and Galatians, are very different. In fact, when you look at the writings of Paul, you find that every book has a different feel, a different mood. Romans is written very calmly, probably written over some period of time. It is a long book and Paul is a long way from the action in Rome. Whereas, the book of Galatians, which we are studying now, is written with a sense of urgency, intensity and even anger! Paul is troubled by what is going on in the Church.

In this first episode, I want to give some context for the book of Galatians, before we look at the opening passage. We have to go all the way back to the beginning of the story of the Early Church, as told in the book of Acts, and remember the starting point, in order to explain how we get to the situation described in this book. It all started in Jerusalem, with that amazing explosion of life, when the Church came into being, when the Holy Spirit fell on the Apostles. The Church grew quickly; thousands of people believed; churches were planted all around the Jewish area. Then persecution came, and the Christians spread out from Jerusalem and Judea. They went north to Samaria, and they went even further north to a city called Antioch, which is about 700 kilometres north of Jerusalem - a long way from the place of the birth of the Church. It is in this city that things began to happen that shape the story that ends up in the book of Galatians.

Paul, who was originally an opponent of the Church - a Pharisee working with the religious authorities in Jerusalem - has been miraculously converted on the Damascus road, as recorded in Acts 9. We studied all this when we looked at the collection on Word Online known as ‘The Spreading Flame’, the story of the book of Acts. The Damascus road experience is incredibly important for our story because everything changes from then onwards. Paul is commissioned by Jesus Christ to lead the mission out of the Jewish population into the non-Jewish ethnic groups around in the Roman Empire; we call them ‘the Gentiles’. He was going to lead the mission to the Gentiles. When the church grew in Antioch, it was mostly a Gentile church. The Apostle Barnabas was sent from Jerusalem to try and organise this growing church, and he brought Paul, who had been waiting for a call to mission, to join him. So, Paul and Barnabas ministered in Antioch and built up the church for at least a year.

Thousands of people became believers and then a call of God came to Paul and Barnabas. This is a key to understanding the Galatian story. In Acts 13: 2, when the leaders of the Church of Antioch gathered and Paul and Barnabas were amongst them, it says,

‘The Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul” (Paul’s other name) “for the work to which I have called them.”’

Acts 13:2, NIV

At that point, the church in Antioch realised that Paul and Barnabas needed to leave them and go further north. Antioch is on the border between Turkey and Syria today. They realised that God was calling Paul and Barnabas to go further into the country which we would call Turkey, known as Asia Minor in the Roman world. So Paul and Barnabas set off on a mission to go to places where the gospel had never been preached, in what we would call today, Southern Turkey. They first went to the island of Cyprus, and then to a number of cities that are named in the book of Acts: Perga, Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Derbe and Lystra. They planted churches there. The region is also known as Galatia; these are the Galatian churches that Paul is writing to.

He is writing this letter about a year or two after he has planted the churches. The reason he is writing is that soon after he left a great argument arose in those churches about the true nature of the gospel that Paul was preaching. Some Jewish believers from Jerusalem came in and contradicted Paul after he had left. Paul is now writing this letter in a state of great agitation, indeed of anger, because something has gone badly wrong in these churches. There were about six churches, maybe more that are not named in the book of Acts, just a handful of churches that Paul has planted on his first missionary journey.

Apostleship

‘Paul, an apostle - sent not from men nor by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead - and all the brothers and sisters with me, to the churches in Galatia: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.’

Galatians 1:1-5, NIV

Paul describes himself as an Apostle. The New Testament uses the word ‘apostle’ in two different ways. Firstly, it uses the term to describe those men who were appointed by Jesus Christ to be his ambassadors and representatives. These we call the ‘Apostles of Jesus Christ’. First of all, there were ‘the Twelve’, called by Jesus in his earthly ministry and then between his resurrection and his ascension - a six-week period - there were a few others who appear to join that group, probably Barnabas and James, Jesus’ half-brother. Then on the Damascus road, through an amazing, miraculous circumstance, Paul is called by Jesus Christ to be an Apostle with the same status as Peter and ‘the Twelve’ and the others that I have just mentioned. In the New Testament this group is known as ‘the Apostles of Jesus Christ’, appointed by him personally, in his earthly life or in the time of his resurrection.

The second sense that this term is used in the New Testament, is apostles of the churches. We have several examples of this, but these are not clearly seen in some English translations because other words are used to describe exactly the same Greek word. These are messengers, or representatives, sent out from a local church on a particular task. The two examples we have are a man called Epaphroditus, Philippians 2: 25, sent by the church in Philippi to help Paul in Rome and also in 2 Corinthians 8: 23, we have the ‘apostles of the churches’, or the representatives of the churches, who are carrying a large financial gift from churches in Greece to the church in Jerusalem.

Paul claims to be an Apostle in the first sense - appointed by Jesus Christ. Notice he says, ‘not sent from men nor by a man’, ‘not sent by a church or sent by Peter as a delegate.’ Far from it! Paul’s call came directly from Jesus Christ on the Damascus road, and this is very important for everything he says in the book of Galatians.

Greetings

He sends greetings from his team, ‘the brothers and sisters with me, to the churches in Galatia’ and he gives them the blessing of: ‘Grace and peace’ - a common blessing of Paul. Grace, in a sense means the blessings of the gospel, and peace means well-being in your life as a result of the gospel. That is a very pleasant opening start to the letter. Does it continue in the same pleasant way? When you write a letter, send an email, or a message on social media, it is customary, in most cultures, to start off in a very friendly and warm way in the first few sentences. That is what Paul normally does. Let us see what he does here.

A Reprimand

‘I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel - which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse! Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.’

Galatians 1:6-10, NIV

This is not a standard friendly greeting! It is quite different from the greetings that Paul normally sends to the churches. Let me give you an example: to the church in Philippians he says, at the very same point in the letter after an opening statement, he says, 1: 3:

‘I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now,’

Philippians 1:3, NIV

That is warm and friendly; that is Paul’s heart; that is fellowship with the church. But in Galatia there is none of that. Paul is shocked by what has just happened! He was only there about a year ago and something has gone wrong. Messages have come through to him of other people coming in.

Verse 6: ‘I’m astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ.’

What exactly has happened and what is the issue at stake? At this time in the Early Church most of the influential believers were still Jews. The heartland of the Church was Jerusalem, and the area surrounding it, Judea, where many churches were being planted. Peter looked after those churches, as we see in the book of Acts. The Jewish Christians were still struggling with one of the major changes that the gospel brings - the gospel means that the Jewish law from the Old Testament known as the Law of Moses - which we discussed extensively when we were studying in the book of Romans - this Law of Moses with over 600 commands, is no longer required of those who are disciples in Jesus Christ. It has been superseded by the New Covenant. That is what Paul preached. But some Christians of a Jewish background found this very hard to believe. They wanted the Gentiles who were coming in to become Jews in order to accept Christ. They felt that you had to adopt the Jewish faith in order to adopt the Christian faith. Some of these people with a different teaching had arrived in the churches in Galatia, had started speaking in the church communities and saying, ‘What Paul said isn’t enough. It’s not good enough. It’s not the whole message. You can’t be saved just through the death of Jesus, and just through repenting from your sins, or just through receiving the Holy Spirit’. We will talk about the Holy Spirit later - a very important part of the book of Galatians. They said, ‘That’s not enough. You need to obey the Jewish law’.

Another Gospel

In saying this they had four particular things in mind, practical things that they wanted them to do:

Firstly, they wanted the Gentile men to be circumcised; to be circumcised was a key sign of becoming a Jew.

Secondly, they wanted the churches in Galatia to worship on a Saturday, the Jewish day of worship, known in the Old Testament as the Sabbath, and to follow a Jewish tradition of worship, like in the synagogue.

Thirdly, they wanted - this was a very important one - the Gentile converts to stop eating certain foods that were prohibited by the Law of Moses, in other words, to change their diet and ultimately to change their pattern of socialising and relating to people in the community. What foods did they have in mind? Notably pork, some fish, shellfish, many birds and many insects. Many of these were regular foodstuffs for people living in the Roman Empire. Imagine someone coming in and saying to you, when you have become a Christian and you are very excited about your faith, that you have got to change your diet and change the way you socialise because as soon as you start eating like this you begin to eat separately from the people in the community around, because you would keep saying, ‘I can’t eat that and I can’t come to that meal. No, we can’t socialise there. No, there is some pork in that, so we will have to eat separately.’ That is what the Jews did; they ate separately from the Gentiles. These preachers came in and said to Paul’s converts to Christ, ‘You have got to separate from your families, your work colleagues and your social events in your street because you can’t eat those foods.’

Fourthly, they wanted them to follow the big Jewish religious festivals, Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles – big events with local celebrations, but also to encourage them to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to share in those festivals in Jerusalem.

These preachers were changing everything, and upsetting the Gentile converts and telling them they were going to have to change the whole way they lived because they were not Jewish enough. The Gentile converts were really confused by this. It was a different message. Paul actually says, ‘it’s a different gospel’, in this passage. It is a gospel based on rules and regulations. Paul is going to be fighting back against this very strongly indeed in the book of Galatians, all the way through the book of Galatians.

Paul’s Gospel

He says that if anybody comes, whoever they are, even if they are an angel, and they are preaching a different gospel from Paul, then don’t follow them. In other words, the apparent authority of the person preaching is less important than the content of what they preach. That is an important message for the modern world because in many parts of the Church, we will follow people because of their apparent authority in our culture. Maybe they have a high status in the Church; maybe they have a high status in the community; maybe they claim to be prophets with a new and unique message from God. This happens all over the world. Many people are self-proclaimed prophets. We can learn from Paul because he says, it doesn’t matter who they are, what matters is the gospel that Jesus gave to the Apostles, which of course Paul received from Jesus Christ personally, and dramatically, on the Damascus road. It had a huge impact on him. He immediately understood the power of the Christian gospel and he preached this gospel, which essentially said, that what Christ has done on the cross in dying for us, as a substitute and as a sacrifice, is sufficient to forgive our sins and lead us to having new life, and receiving the Holy Spirit, if we repent and believe. There are no other requirements to enter the Kingdom of God. That is Paul’s fundamental gospel. What the Jewish teachers were bringing to the Galatians, was the message that there are other things required. ‘You haven’t really got salvation yet because you haven’t enacted some basic Jewish regulations from the Old Testament; circumcision; Sabbath observance; eating food according to Jewish food laws and following our festivals.’

Paul knew that as soon as people started to think like that, they would lose sight of the power of the gospel. The power of what Jesus has done on the cross will be diminished in their eyes. They will get confused and muddled. So he says, unambiguously, ‘It is a different gospel. Don’t believe it.’

Paul’s Motive

He claims that his motive is purely to please God. It is interesting to note here that Paul is willing to be unpopular for the sake of the truth. He was going to be very unpopular because a great conflict was going to arise as a result of this. We will follow how this conflict developed in subsequent episodes.

As we come to the end of this opening and rather dramatic episode, I hope you have been able to get a feeling of the background to this intense discussion that Paul is starting with the Galatians. He can’t get back to see them and that is a great frustration to Paul. He always wants to be there in person. But so often we see in his writings, that he can’t be there; he has to depend on a letter which will have to be read out to the churches. So he puts into the letter great depth of emotion and feeling, as well as very clear communication of the things that he wants to teach them.

Reflections

All the way through our study of Galatians, we will come back to the same point and I will make it here very clearly: the centrality and uniqueness of what Jesus did on the cross needs to be upheld in our thinking, in our worship, in our preaching, all the time, because it will constantly be challenged by teachings which reduce the significance of what Jesus did on the cross, and increase the significance of what we can contribute to our salvation which will suggest to us that we, somehow or another, need to make a direct contribution to our own salvation by our good works. That is a constant challenge. It is a spiritual challenge that Paul brings to our attention - first of all in this episode, but he will do so throughout almost the whole of this letter.

Another reflection is concerning authority. Many things are taught in churches. Many people claim different sources of authority but we have a clue here as to what the primary authority is. The primary authority in the Church comes through the Apostles of Jesus Christ: ‘the Twelve’ and the others appointed by Jesus Christ in the period of his resurrection, including Paul. How does their authority come down to us? We live 2000 years later. It comes down through their writings, or those people who were directly associated with them and wrote with their authority. People like Luke, who was Paul’s friend, and Mark who was Peter’s associate and wrote his Gospel based on Peter’s recollections of Jesus’ life. But the books that Paul wrote are amongst the most important in the whole Bible, in order for us to truly understand what the gospel is. We have looked at that in the book of Romans. You may not have seen that collection; I would encourage you to look at that. That is the biggest explanation of the gospel that Paul gives anywhere. But here, in Galatians, he focuses on a particular issue concerning alternative gospels that come in and compromise the truth. We can trust the authority of Galatians because we trust the authority of Paul, because he was given his authority by Jesus Christ, the ultimate source of authority.

I hope you have enjoyed this introduction to this turbulent, exciting, and challenging book called Galatians. I look forward to welcoming you back as we continue.