Galatians

What Galatians is about

Paul normally opens his letters by thanking God for the church he is writing to. Galatians has no thanksgiving. He goes straight from the greeting to astonishment that they are so quickly deserting the gospel, and the temperature does not drop for six chapters.

The issue is this. Teachers had arrived telling these mostly Gentile churches that faith in Christ was a fine start, but that to be fully part of God’s people they also needed to be circumcised and keep the Jewish law. Paul regards this not as a secondary difference but as a different gospel altogether, because it makes standing with God depend on something added to what Christ has done.

His argument runs on three tracks. He recounts his own history, including a public confrontation with Peter at Antioch over eating with Gentiles. He argues from scripture, that Abraham was counted righteous by faith centuries before the law was given, and that the law functioned as a guardian until Christ came. And he appeals to their own experience: they received the Spirit by believing, not by law-keeping, so why change now?

The letter’s most far-reaching sentence is in chapter 3. Everyone baptised into Christ has put on Christ, and 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. In a world organised entirely around those distinctions, that was not a small claim.

The last chapters guard the other flank. Freedom is not permission to do as you like; it is freedom to serve one another in love. And Paul contrasts the works of the flesh with the fruit of the Spirit — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Where it sits in the story

Galatians is probably Paul’s earliest letter, written before or around the Jerusalem council of Acts 15, which addressed the same question formally. It covers much of the same ground as Romans at a fraction of the length and at four times the heat.

Why it is worth reading

Because the instinct it opposes never goes away. Every generation finds some extra requirement to add to Christ, and Galatians is six chapters of refusing to add it.