Galatians: the freedom of the gospel

About the book

The letter is from Paul, "an apostle — sent not from men nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father," to "the churches of Galatia" (Galatians 1:1-2), and it closes with large letters in his own hand (Galatians 6:11). Hardly anyone doubts that Paul wrote it; it is one of the letters by which scholars measure what is Paul's.

After Paul left, teachers came who insisted that Gentile believers be circumcised (Galatians 6:12), the same question that led to the council in Jerusalem in Acts 15 (Acts 15:1). Paul wrote in alarm and grief. Where his letters usually give thanks, this one goes straight to the point: they are turning to "a different gospel" (Galatians 1:6), which is no gospel at all.

Which churches, and when, scholars debate. Galatia was first the land of the Galatian people in the middle of Asia Minor, around today's Ankara; the Roman province of Galatia reached south to Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe. Older interpreters mostly read the letter as sent to churches in the northern Galatian lands Paul passed through (Acts 16:6), since "O foolish Galatians!" (Galatians 3:1) best fits the Galatian people themselves; that would date it to the mid-50s. Since the late nineteenth century many scholars, noting that Paul uses the Roman names of provinces and that Acts tells of the churches he founded in the south, have taken it as sent to the southern churches of his first journey (Acts 14:21); on this view the Jerusalem visit of Galatians 2 is often taken as one before the council, and the letter as Paul's first, about AD 48. Both views have many scholars behind them. The map under the Jesus tab follows the early date and sets Galatians first among Paul's letters; either way it belongs to the map's era of the church (c. AD 30–90).

How it unfolds

Key passages

At Antioch Paul opposed Peter, who had drawn back from eating with Gentile believers (Galatians 2:11), and set out the heart of the gospel: we "know that a man is not justified by works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ" (Galatians 2:16). Justification is taught at length in Faith and justification, in the doctrine course. This faith is a life joined to Christ:

I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

Galatians 2:20

In his lectures on Galatians of 1535 Martin Luther taught that a Christian's righteousness is not one we achieve by our doing but one we receive from Christ, and he urged readers to say the words ‘me’ and ‘for me’ in this verse with all their force, as spoken to themselves Luther, Lectures on Galatians.

All who belong to Christ by faith are God's sons and heirs: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28). So "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free" (Galatians 5:1): do not take up the yoke of slavery again. Yet this freedom is no opportunity for the flesh; it is to "serve one another in love" (Galatians 5:13), and in that life the Spirit bears fruit:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Galatians 5:22-23

The book and Christ

As the lesson on Genesis showed, Paul reads God's promise to Abraham as the gospel told in advance, and its promised seed as Christ (Galatians 3:8, 3:16). The law, coming 430 years later, did not cancel the promise (Galatians 3:17); it "became our guardian to lead us to Christ" (Galatians 3:24). Then, at the time God had set, he sent his Son:

But when the time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive our adoption as sons.

Galatians 4:4-5

The price of that redemption was the cross. "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us" (Galatians 3:13): Paul reads at the cross Deuteronomy's word that one hung on a tree is under God's curse (Deuteronomy 21:23). As the risen Jesus explained himself from Moses and all the Prophets (Luke 24:27), Galatians tells one story, from Abraham through the law to Christ.

Reading it

Its six chapters can be read in one or two sittings. Read it aloud from Galatians 1 to the end at one sitting, as the churches of Galatia heard it. Read Paul's story in chapters 1–2 beside Acts 9 and 15, and the argument about Abraham in chapters 3–4 beside Romans 4. On Christians and the law, see Do Christians have to keep the Old Testament law? Then go on to Ephesians.

Practice