Introduction to Galatians and Galatians 1 (Wednesday Evening Bible Study)

Introduction to Galatians and Galatians 1:1-24

• Introduction to Galatians
  • The letter to the Galatians has been likened to a sword flashing in a great warrior’s hand. Both Paul and his gospel were under attack. If that attack had succeeded, christianity might have become just another Jewish sect, dependent upon circumcision and on keeping the law, instead of being a thing of grace. It is strange to thin that, if Paul’s opponents had had their way, the gospel might have been kept for Jews and we might never had had the chance to know the love of Christ
  • It is impossible to possess a vivid personality and a strong character as Paul did and not encounter opposition; and it is equally impossible to lead such a revolution in religious though as Paul did and not to be attacked. The first attack was on his apostleship. There were many who said that he was no an apostle at all
    • From their own point of view, they were right. In acts 1:21-22, we have the basic definition of an apostle. Judas had to be replace. The one to be chose is described as someone who must be “one of the men who have accompanied us throughout the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us beginning for the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us” and “witness with us to His resurrection”. To be an apostle, it was necessary to have been with Jesus during His earthly life and to have witnessed His resurrection. That qualification Paul did not fulfill. Further, no so very long ago, he had been the chief persecutor of the Church
      • In the very first verse of the letter Paul answers that challenge. Proudly, he insists that his apostleship is from no human source and that no human hand had ordained him to that office, but that he received his call direct from God. Others might have the qualifications demanded when the first vacancy in the apostolic band was filled; but he had a unique qualification—he had met Christ face to face on the Damascus road
    • Further, Paul insists that for his message he was dependent on no on. That is why in chapters 1-2 he carefully details his visits to Jerusalem. He is insisting that he is not preaching some second-hand message which he received from a human source; he is preaching a message which he received direct from Christ. But Paul was no anarchic. He insisted that, although the message he received came to him in a unique and personal way, it had received the full approval of those who were the acknowledged leaders of the Christian Church. The gospel he preached came direct from God to him; but it was a gospel in full agreement with the faith delivered to the Church
    • But that gospel was under attack as well. It was a struggle which had to come and a battle which had to be fought. There were Jews who had accepted Christianity; but they believed that all God’s promises and gifts were for Jews alone and that no Gentile could be admitted to theses precious privileges. They therefore believed that Christianity was fro Jews and Jews alone. If Christianity was God’s greatest gift to men and women, that was all the more reason that only Jews should be allowed to enjoy it. In a way, that was inevitable. There were some Jews who arrogantly believed in the idea of the chose people. They could say the most terrible things: “God loves only Israel of all the nations he has made.” “God will judge Israel with one measure and the Gentiles with another.” “God created the Gentiles to be fuel for the fires of Hell.” This is the spirit which made the law lay it down that it was illegal to help a Gentile mother in giving birth, for that would only be to bring another Gentile into the world. When these particular Jews saw Paul bringing the gospel to the despised Gentiles, they were appalled and infuriated
    • There was a way out of this. If Gentiles wanted to become Christians, let them become Jews first. What did that mean? It meant that they must be circumcised and take on the whole burden of the law. That was the opposite of a ll that Christianity meant. It meant that a person’s salvation was dependent on the ability to keep the law and could be done by an individual’s unaided efforts, whereas, to Paul, salvation was entirely a thing of grace. He believed that no one could ever earn the fair of God. All that anyone could do was accept the love God offered by making an act of faith and appealing to God’s mercy. A Jew would go to God saying: “Look! Here is my circumcision. Here are my good deeds. Give me the salvation I have earned.” For Paul the essential point was not what we could do for God, but what God had done for us.
      • “But the greatest thing in our national life is the law. God gave that law to Moses, and on it our very lives depend.” Paul’s reply was that the founder of the nation was Abraham, to whom the greatest promises of God were given. And then he asked how Abraham gained the favor of God? Because he could’t have gained it by keeping the laws that was given 430 years after he was alive. He gained it by an act of faith. When God told him to leave his people and go, Abraham made an act of faith and went, trusting everything to Him. It was faith that saved Abraham, not law; and  it is faith that must save everyone, not deeds of the law. The real child of Abraham is not someone racially descended from him but one who makes the same surrender of faith to God
    • If all this is true, one very serious question arises: What is the place of the law? It cannot be denied that it was given by God; does this emphasis on grace simply wipe it out?
      • The law has its own place in the scheme of things. First, it tells us what sin is. If there is no law, we cannot break it and there can be no such things as sin. Second, and most important, the law really drives us to the grace of God. The trouble about the law is that, because we are all sinful, we can never keep it perfectly. Its effect, therefore, is to show us our weakness and to drive us to a despair in which we see that there is nothing left but to throw ourselves on the mercy and love of God. The law convinces us of of our own insufficiency and in the end compels us to admit that the only thing that can save us is the grace of God. In other words, the law is an essential stage on the way to that grace
      • In this epistle, Paul’s great theme is the glory of the grace of God and the necessity of realizing that we can never save ourselves
• Galatians 1:1-5
• Paul, an apostle—not from men or by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead— 2 and all the brothers who are with me: To the churches of Galatia. 3 Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father. 5 To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.
  • To te church of Galatia, some people had come who said that Paul was not really an apostle and that they need not listen to what he had to say. They based this attempt to belittle Paul on the fact that he had not been one of the original twelve; that he had been the most savage of all the persecutors of the Church, and that he held no official appointment for the leaders of the Church. Paul’s answer was not an argument; it was a statement. He owed his apostleship not to any human appointment but to a day on the Damascus road when he had met Jesus face to face. His authority and his task had been given to him direct from God
    • Paul was certain that God had spoken to him. No on can make another person a minister or a servant of God. Only God Himself can do that. The real test of Christians is not whether or not they have gone through certain ceremonies and taken certain vows; it is have they seen Christ face to face? 
    • The real reason for Paul’s ability to toil and suffer was that he was certain his task had been given to him by God. He regarded every effort demanded from him as a God-given task
      • It is not only people like Paul who have a task from God; to each one of us God gives a task. It may be one about which everyone will know and which history will remember, or it may be one about which no one will ever hear; but in either case it is a task for God. Many humble tasks are a divine commission
      • Paul’s God-given task was to evangelize a world; to most of us, it will simply be to make disciples
  • At the very beginning of the letter, Paul sums up  his wishes and prayers for his friends in two tremendous words
    • He wishes them grace
      • There are two main ideas in this word. The first is that of sheer beauty. The Greek word means grace in the theological sense; but it always means beauty and charm; and, even when used in a theological sense, the idea of charm is never far away from it. If the Christian life has grace in it, it must be a lovely thing. Far too often, goodness exists without charm and charm without goodness. It is when goodness and charm unite that the work of grace is seen. The second ideas is that of undeserved generosity, of a gift, which is never deserved and could never be earned, given in the generous love of God. 
    • He wishes them peace
      • Paul was a Jew, and the Jewish word shalom must have been in his mind, even as he wrote the Greek word eirene. Shalom means far more than the mere absence of trouble. It means everything which is to our highest good, everything with will make the mind pure, the will resolute and the heart glad. It is that sense o love and care of God, which, even if our bodies are tortured, can keep our hearts serene
    • Finally, Paul sums up in one sentence of infinite meaning the heart and the work of Jesus. “Gave himself for our sins to rescue us…”
      • The love of Christ is a love which gave and suffered
      • The love of Christ is a love which conquered and achieved. IN this life, the tragedy of love is that it is so often frustrated; but the love of Christ is backed by an infinite power which nothing can frustrate and which can rescue its loved one from the bondage of sin
• Galatians 1:6-10
• 6 I am amazed that you are so quickly turning away from him who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7 not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are troubling you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, a curse be on him! 9 As we have said before, I now say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, a curse be on him! 10 For am I now trying to persuade people, or God? Or am I striving to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.
  • The basic fact behind this letter is that Paul’s gospel was a gospel of free grace. He believed with all his heart that nothing anyone could do could ever earn the love of God, and that therefore all that people could do was fling themselves on God’s mercy in an act of faith. All they could do was take in wondering gratitude what God offered; the important thing was not what we could do for ourselves but what God had done for us
  • It was this gospel of the free grace of God that Paul had preached. After him, there came others preaching a jewish version of Christianity. They declared that, if people wanted to please God, they must be circumcised and then dedicate their lives to carrying out all the rules and regulations of the law. Every time a deed of the law was performed that was a credit entry in a person’s account with God. They were teaching that it was necessary to earn the favor of God. To Paul that was utterly impossible
  • Paul’s opponents declared that he was making religion too easy and was doin so to make himself look better to others. In fact, that accusation was the opposite of the truth. After all, if religion consists in fulfilling a set of rules and regulations, it is possible to satisfy its demands; but Paul is holding up the cross and saying: “God loved you like that”! Religion becomes a matter not of satisfying the claims of law but of trying to meet the obligation of love. We can satisfy the claims of law, for they have strict and statutory limits; but we can never satisfy the claims of love, for if we gave our loved ones the sun, the moon, and the stars, we would be left feeling that that was an offering far too small. But all that Paul’s Jewish opponents could see was that he had declared that circumcision was no longer necessary and the law no longer relevant
  • Paul denied that he was trying to just make himself look better with others. It was not other people he was serving: it was God. It made no difference to him what people said or though about him; his master was God. And then he brought forward an unanswerable argument: “If I were trying to gain favor with other people, I would not be the slave of Christ.”
  • What is in his mind is this: slaves had their master’s name and sign stamped on them with a red-hot branding iron; Paul himself bore on his body the marks of his sufferings, the brand of slavery of Christ. “If I were out to gain favor with others, would I have these scars on my body?” The fact that he as marked in this way was the final proof that his aim was to serve Christ and not to please others
  • It is when people see that we are prepared to suffer for the faith which we say we hold that they begin to believe that we really hold it. If our faith costs us nothing, others will value it at nothing
• Galatians 1:11-17
• 11 For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel preached by me is not of human origin. 12 For I did not receive it from a human source and I was not taught it, but it came by a revelation of Jesus Christ. 13 For you have heard about my former way of life in Judaism: I intensely persecuted God’s church and tried to destroy it. 14 I advanced in Judaism beyond many contemporaries among my people, because I was extremely zealous for the traditions of my ancestors. 15 But when God, who from my mother’s womb set me apart and called me by his grace, was pleased 16 to reveal his Son in me, so that I could preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone. 17 I did not go up to Jerusalem to those who had become apostles before me; instead I went to Arabia and came back to Damascus.
  • It was Paul’s contention that they gospel he preached was not simply something he had heard from others; it had come to him direct from God. That was a bold claim to make, and it demanded some kind of proof. For that proof, Paul had the courage to point to himself and to the radical change in his own life
    • He had been a fanatic for the law
      • And now the dominant center of his life was grace. This man, who had with passionate intensity tried to earn God’s favor, was no content in humble faith to take what God lovingly offered. He had ceased to glory in what he could do for himself, and had begun to glory in what God had done for him
    • He had been the chief persecutor of the Church
      • He had devastated the Church. The word he uses is the word for utterly destroying a city. He had tried to make a scorched earth of the Church; and now his one aim, which he was prepared to devote himself to and even to di for, was to spread that same Church over all the world
      • By the laws of cause and effect, everything that happens must have an adequate cause. When someone is proceeding headlong in one direction and suddenly turns and proceeds headlong in the opposite direction; when quite suddenly all values are reversed so that that person’s life turns upside down, some explanation is required. For Paul, the explanation was the direct intervention of God. He had laid his hand on his shoulder and stopped him in mid-career. That is the kind of effect which only God could produce. It is a notable thing about Paul that he is not afraid to recount the record of his own shame in order to show God’s power
  • He has two things to say about that intervention
    • It was not unpremeditated; it was in God’s eternal plan
      • God sends every individual into the world with a part to play in His purpose. It may be a big part or it may be a small part. It may be to do something of which the whole world will know of ro something of which only a few will ever know
    • Paul knew himself to be chose for a task
      • He though of himself as chose not for honor but for service, not for an easy life but for battles. It is for the hardest campaigns that generals choose their best soldiers and for the hardest studies that teachers choose their best students. Paul knew that he had been saved to serve
• Galatians 1:18-24
• 18 Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to get to know Cephas, and I stayed with him fifteen days. 19 But I didn’t see any of the other apostles except James, the Lord’s brother. 20 I declare in the sight of God: I am not lying in what I write to you. 21 Afterward, I went to the regions of Syria and Cilicia. 22 I remained personally unknown to the Judean churches that are in Christ. 23 They simply kept hearing, “He who formerly persecuted us now preaches the faith he once tried to destroy.” 24 And they glorified God because of me.
  • When we look at this passage alongside the last section of the preceding one, we see just what Paul did when the hand of God stopped him in his tracks
    • First, he went away to Arabia
      • He went away to be alone, and for two reasons. First, he had to thing out this tremendous thing that had happened to him. Second, he had to speak with God before he spoke to other people
      • There are so few who will take the time to face themselves and to face God; and how can anyone meet the temptations, stresses, and strains of life without first thinking things out and thinking them through?
    • Second, he went back to Damascus
      • That was a courageous thing to do. He had been on the way to Damascus to wipe out the Church when God intervened—and all Damascus knew that. He went back at once to bear his testimony to the people who knew best what he had been
    • Third, Paul went to Jerusalem
      • Again he took his life in is hands. His former friends, the Jews, would be out for his blood, because to them he was a deserter. His former victims, the Christians, might well ostracize him, unable to believe that he was a changed man
      • Paul had the courage to face his past. We never really get away from our past by running away from it. We can deal with it only by facing it and defeating it
    • Fourth, Paul went to Syria and Cilicia
      • That was where Tarsus was. It was there that he had been brought up. There were the friends of his youth. Again he chose the hard way. They would no doubt regard him as quite mad; they would meet him with anger and mockery. But he was quite prepared to be regarded as a fool for the sake of Christ
  • In these verses, Paul was seeking to defend and prove the independence of his gospel. He got it from no human source; he got it from God. He consulted no one else; he consulted God. But he unconsciously presented himself as the man who had the courage to witness to his change and preach his gospel in the hardest places of all