Bible Book of the Month: Galatians

Though comparatively short, the epistle to the Galatians is, because of the significance of the doctrine it contains, one of the most important writings of the New Testament. All the evidence, both internal and external, confirms its authenticity as a product of the Apostle Paul’s pen. This evidence stands despite the attempts of certain radical continental scholars to discredit it and to relegate it to the spurious writings of the second century on the tendentious hypothesis that its history is incompatible with that of the Acts and its theology too advanced for that of the first century. Today, however, it is such scholars, and not the epistle, who stand discredited.

THE CONTENT

After the opening salutation (1:1–5) which, so far from being merely polite and perfunctory, is, as befits a Christian letter, warmly evangelical, Paul proceeds immediately to a matter of utmost seriousness: members of the Galatian churches had actually departed from allegiance to the Gospel which Paul had proclaimed to them, and had given heed to a different gospel, not that there was an alternative one (1:6 ff.). There is no passage in the whole of the New Testament which emphasizes more strongly the absolute uniqueness of the Christian Gospel, or more completely condemns those who seek to lead men into the Kingdom by some other way. So vital is this issue that Paul pronounces his anathema not only against the false teachers who had been deceiving the Galatians but also against himself, and even against any angels from heaven should they ever preach any gospel besides that which he had originally preached to them. It is here in this passage that the narrowness of the way which leads to life becomes most apparent. The innate perversity of man is constantly demonstrated in the fact that, generation after generation, he desires to multiply the ways of salvation, to invent easier roads, by-passes, alternative routes. But Paul insists that there is but one way which has neither rival nor variation.

This uncompromising attitude is not one of bigotry; it is the consequence, and the only possible consequence, of this Gospel that is no product of human invention or philosophy but is a revelation to Paul by Jesus Christ (1:11 f.). No wonder he is so confident about its uniqueness!

There follows an autobiographical section (1:13–2:2) which is in effect an explanation of the Apostle’s assertion that the Gospel he preached had been entrusted to him by God himself. Conscious as always (cf. 1 Cor. 15:9 f.; 1 Tim. 1:11 ff.) that it was due solely to God’s sovereign grace and predestined purpose that he, a persecutor and fierce enemy of the church of Christ, had been chosen, called, and commissioned, Paul describes how he sought solitude, conferring with no man, not even with the Apostles in Jerusalem. Indeed, it was only after an interval of three years that he went up to Jerusalem (cf. Acts 9:26 ff.) where he spent a fortnight with Peter and saw no other Apostle except James the Lord’s brother.

Then, 14 years later, Paul went up again to Jerusalem (2:1). By this we understand him to mean 14 years after his first visit mentioned in 1:18, and therefore some 17 years after his conversion. If this is correct, then in between these two visits was another, the purpose of which was to bring relief to the Christians of Judea who were enduring the rigors of poverty and famine. There may well be a covert reference to this intermediate visit in 2:10 where Paul remarks that he was zealous in remembering the poor. (It is the poverty-stricken members of the mother-church in Jerusalem who are intended. The important place which this charitable work had in Paul’s planning and ministry is indicated in passages such as 1 Cor. 16:1 ff.; 2 Cor. 8 and 9; Rom. 15:25 ff., and also Acts 24:17). The occasion of the visit referred to in 2:1 then will be the summoning of the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15), about 50 A.D.—an interpretation which seems to accord well with the subject matter of 2:3–10. On the problems involved in attempting to arrive at a chronology for Paul’s life from the data available, see Bishop Lightfoot’s essay on The Chronology of St. Paul’s Life and Epistles (in Biblical Essays, pp. 215 ff.), Kirsopp Lake’s excursus on The Chronology of Acts (in The Beginnings of Christianity, Vol. V, pp. 445 ff.), and the articles on the Chronology of the New Testament by C. H. Turner in Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible and by W. P. Armstrong in the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia.

The concluding part of chapter two is concerned with one of the main questions discussed at the Council of Jerusalem, namely, whether Gentile converts should be compelled to live like Jews. This was a crucial question for the early Church, not only in Palestine but also, as this epistle shows, for Christians in places like Galatia into which Judaizers had infiltrated. So crucial indeed was it that Paul recounts how he had on one occasion found it necessary to withstand even the Apostle Peter to his face and in the presence of others (2:11 ff.). Yet, despite the decision of the Council of Jerusalem, and despite the teaching which Paul had given when he took the Gospel to the people of Galatia, the Galatian Christians had culpably permitted themselves to be misdirected into accepting a Judaizing perversion of the Gospel (3:1 ff.).

The central significance of chapter three lies in the fact that it gives, with clear and compelling argument, the Christian answer to this false teaching. It is true that God’s covenant with its attendant promises was enacted with Abraham, the great ancestor of the Jewish people, and to his seed, and that the seal of that covenant was the sacrament of circumcision; but the essential link with Abraham, for those who wish to participate in the blessings of that covenant, is not circumcision, but faith (3:7). Moreover, the Gospel conveyed in the covenant was always, from the very beginning, intended for the whole world and not just for those who were Jews or who conformed to the requirements of Jewish ceremonial law. God’s promise to Abraham was that in him all nations would be blessed (3:8, 14).

The Gospel is cosmic in its scope, not exclusive. Again, the seed of the promise is not the Jewish nation but the one person of Jesus Christ (3:16): in him alone the covenant has its fulfilment and its fruition. It is, therefore, all important to be united to Christ, for otherwise a man can have no part in the covenant; and this union with Christ is realized by faith—not by the Jewish law, which is not of faith but of works (3:11 f.). The law, indeed, shuts us off from Christ because it shuts us all up under sin, since all (Jews as well as Gentiles) are law-breakers (3:22 f.). Thus our justification cannot be by law (which we have all broken and under which accordingly we are all found guilty), but only by faith which appropriates for its own the perfect atoning work of Christ as our Law-Keeper and our Sin-Bearer (3:13). It is this faith which unites us to Christ, whatever our racial or social background may be, and thereby constitutes us “Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise” (3:24 ff.).

Besides the requirement of circumcision, the false teachers in Galatia were demanding the observance of “days, months, seasons, and years,” which in fact involved a retrogression to the “beggarly rudiments” of the ceremonial law which with the coming of Christ had been superseded and abrogated (4:9 f.). These “days” were doubtless Sabbath days, insisted on instead of the first day of the week which for the Apostolic Church had become consecrated as the Lord’s Day (cf. the Seventh-day Adventism of our time); the “months” would be the celebrations connected with the appearance of the new moon (cf. Col. 2:16); the “seasons” would refer to the Jewish festivals such as those of the passover, pentecost, and tabernacles; and the “years” should be understood in connection with the custom of observing sabbatical and jubilee years.

The Galatian Christians were in reality being robbed of the freedom which they had found in Christ and were being brought into an unevangelical bondage. This Paul illustrates by his famous allegory of Sarah, the freewoman, and Hagar, the bondmaid (4:22 ff.). It is plain that Paul does not resort to the use of allegory in the extravagant and artificial manner of his contemporary Philo and of a number of the early fathers of the Church (not to mention the penchant for “spiritualizing” Scripture which is characteristic of certain groups today) who thought they could discover esoteric meanings everywhere in the Old Testament without respect to the obvious sense of the words. This had the effect of making the Bible a repository of mystical teaching available only to those with ingenuity enough to unearth it. Paul’s allegory, however, follows naturally from the historical events relating to Sarah and Hagar: Isaac, the son of the freewoman, was in the line of promise; Ishmael, the son of the bondmaid, was cast out with his mother. Hagar he links with Sinai (where the Law was given) and with “Jerusalem which now is” (Judaism), and Sarah with “Jerusalem which is above” (the evangelical city of freed men). The parable is obvious: those who through faith are one with Christ “are not children of the bondmaid, but of the freewoman.” Verse 5:1 should be taken with chapter four and should read, as the conclusion to the argument that has gone before: “For freedom did Christ set us free; stand fast, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of bondage.”

But Paul finds it necessary to remind the Galatians that Christian liberty is something very different from license (5:13). Faith works through love (5:6—an assertion which shows that, so far from being at variance with James, he entirely concurs with his admonition that “faith without works is dead”), not through contention (5:15), nor through fleshly lust (5:16). There is, indeed, an implacable warfare waged between the flesh and the Spirit; for the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit are complete contraries (5:17 ff.). The Christian lives in the sphere of the Spirit and must conduct himself accordingly, knowing that he, together with the affections and lusts of his flesh, has been crucified with Christ (5:24 f.; 2:20; 6:14). And so the Apostle appeals for the manifestation of Christian kindness, humility, and helpfulness (5:26; 6:1 ff.), solemnly warning his readers of the irreversible truth that according as a man sows, either to his own flesh or to the Spirit, so he will unfailingly reap either corruption or life everlasting (6:7 f.).

The fact of the matter was that the Judaizers by whom the Galatian Christians were being misled were, because of their unwillingness to face persecution for Christ’s sake, seeking to avoid the offense of the Cross (6:12; 5:11). But not so Paul: the cross of Christ, with all its offense to the world, was his glory (6:14); and in his body he carried proudly the marks of the Lord Jesus (6:17) which plainly showed to whom he belonged—just as a slave was sometimes branded with the mark of his owner, or a soldier with that of his commander. Paul’s marks were the scars which testified to the severe afflictions and persecutions he had endured in the service of Christ.

FATHERLY CONCERN

The tone of this letter is, in the main, one of rebuke and disappointment because of the serious error into which the Galatian believers had been drawn away. But the impulse behind it is one of deep affection and fatherly concern for their spiritual well-being. They are his little children whom he has brought to the new birth, and for whom he longs that Christ may be formed in them (4:19). They had made such a good start (5:7): how could they have been so undiscerning as to allow themselves to be bewitched and turned aside (3:1)? The exclamation, “See with what large letters I write to you!” (6:11), vibrates with affection—Paul has taken his secretary’s pen and written some words with his own hand, in large characters, to assure the Galatians that it is he, their own Apostle and father in the faith, who is addressing them with loving solicitude. And, most touching of all, he gently reminds them of the remarkable affection with which they had received him when first he had preached the Gospel to them. So keen was their love that they would willingly have plucked out their eyes and given them to him had that been a means of alleviating the infirmity with which he was then beset (4:13–16). The precise nature of this incapacitating affliction is unknown, though many conjectures have been offered. But what little Paul says would seem to indicate that it was a humiliating and even repulsive complaint, and also that it had forced him to stop in his tracks and so had been the cause, humanly speaking, of the Galatians hearing the Gospel from his lips, preached though it was in physical weakness.

HELPS FOR STUDY

The commentaries by Chrysostom (fourth century), Luther and Calvin (15th century), Lightfoot (1865), and in our own day, Herman Ridderbos (1953) may be consulted with much profit. Bishop Lightfoot’s volume contains, apart from the matters dealt with in his Introduction, no less than 18 valuable excursuses and dissertations.

PHILIP EDGCUMBE HUGHES

Editor, The Churchman

London, England

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.