Bible Commentaries
Galatians

GALATIANS

I

AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

Galatians 1:1-17.

The letter to the Galatians is one of the second group of Paul’s letters. The first group consists of 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and this group, mainly on the great controversy with Judaizing Christians, consists of 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans.

On the letter to the Galatians we have abundant, good and accessible literature. The best book is by Lightfoot, and every preacher ought to have it in his library. I also commend Luther on Galatians. Galatians was the storehouse of Luther from which he drew the weapon of the Reformation. In short homilies he commented on this letter. His comments make a book of considerable size. Luther’s Commentary on Galatians is very valuable in showing the crucial point at issue between the Protestants and the Romanists in the time of the Reformation. Its German style makes heavy reading to an Anglo-Saxon. John Wesley said it surprised him more than any other book of fame. Perhaps a large part of his surprise grew out of the fact that he and Luther were opposed on the doctrines of grace. The third book which I commend is Dr. Malcolm McGregor’s Divine Authority of Paul’s Writings. He uses the letter to the Galatiana more than any other part of the Scriptures.

This letter was evidently written A. D. 57 or possibly 56. It was written from Corinth or from Macedonia, with a strong probability in favor of Corinth. The letter to the Galatians bears the relation to the letter to the Romans that 2 Peter does to Jude, and that Colossians does to the Ephesians. The chief topic in Galatians and Romans is largely the same. It is as if the letter to the Galatians were a fiery, offhand sermon, and after the storm of combat had passed away the preacher had quietly and calmly prepared a masterly treatise on the same subject, Romans being the great treatise and Galatians the offhand discussion.

The occasion of the writing of the letter is very much the same as that of 2 Corinthians: Paul had been challenged as an apostle and his gospel assailed by the emissaries from. Jerusalem. There are shades of difference between the issue at Corinth on this subject and the issue in the churches of Galatia and the church at Rome. But the most pronounced form of Judaistic teaching as contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ is the form that he combats in this letter. He got word that these churches had apostatized from what he considered the gospel, and had gone over root and branch to the Judaizers.

Here arises an Important question which in modern times has developed considerable controversy. Does the New Testament use the word "Galatia" in its ethnological sense or in its political sense? If it means Galatia as a place where the Galatians proper lived, there is very little reference in Acts to Paul’s preaching there. If it means the Roman province, including Galatia proper and certain sections of Phrygia and Lycaonia, then the churches in Galatia were the churches at Lystra, Derbe, and Antioch of Pisidia. We have a full account in Acts of the establishment of these churches. Dr. Ramsay, a very brilliant modern writer, has written a book to show that when Paul uses the term, "Galatia," he uses it in the sense of the Roman province inhabited by the Galatians. About 25 B.C. Asia Minor fell under the power of Rome, which, disregarding the old-time ethnological boundaries relating to nations, established provinces for purposes of government, sometimes including three or four of these nations. Ramsay makes a remarkably strong argument which has never been satisfactorily answered. But he leaves unanswered some strong internal evidences on the other side. For example: (1) It is hard to harmonize the contents of this letter with the account in Acts of the establishment of the churches in Antioch of Pisidia, Lystra, and Derbe. (2) All the characteristics of the people addressed in this letter fit better the Celtic population of Galatia proper. Like other Celts, whether in Gaul, Wales, or Ireland, their emotions were easily excited and as quickly subsided. (See Conybeare and Howson’s Life and Epistles of Paul on this point.) They were intensely emotional, easily enthused, bubbling over like a mountain spring, variable, and illogical. So we commend the research and scholarship of Dr. Ramsay and respect his masterly argument, yet many, in view of the counter arguments, deny that he has fully sustained the contention. While I myself am charmed and delighted with his book, and sometimes carried away almost to the point of agreement with him, yet, in spite of my prepossessions in his favor, the pendulum swings back to the old position that Paul is writing to Galatians proper, and not to a different people artificially enclosed in the Roman province of Galatia. The silence in Acts concerning his establishing real Galatian churches is no more than its silence concerning much of his work in other places.

Now we come to a matter of history. How do we account for such a multitude of Gauls colonized in Asia Minor? There are three words used to describe these people: Celts, Gauls, and Galatians. The Galatians evidently came from the territory that we now call France. Caesar tells us much of these Gauls – a restless people, bent on changes, migrating to broader fields. Earlier Roman history tells us that a great wave of these people crossed the Alps, swept over Italy, and under Brennus captured Rome itself. Later they passed into Greece and Macedonia, and a strong band, managing to get shipping, crossed the Bosporus into Asia Minor and settled a strip of country northwest of Tarsus about 200 miles wide and of considerable length. They went even farther and fought a great battle with the king of the Syrians, but were defeated. They were unlike the Romans, the Phrygians, or the Greeks – they were Gauls. An Irishman is a Galatian – quick, passionate, fickle. We have in this letter to deal with a class of people unlike any other that the gospel has yet reached. It is strange that Luther in his commentary makes these Galatians Teutons, or Germans. The latter shows when Paul first preached to them how impressible they were, subject to quick, deep emotion. It was easy to get a foothold among them, and easy to lose it.

The occasion of Paul’s preaching among them, as we learn from the letter itself and other sources, was providential; that he was taken, when trying to get to another point, with a great sickness – that thorn in the flesh – so that he was unable to travel because of his almost total blindness and feebleness, and that his preaching to them resulted in marvelous manifestations. The account harmonizes with the marvels of the recent great revival in Wales or with what has been called "the sanctified row" in a Methodist camp meeting. Nowhere else in Paul’s ministry was there such enthusiasm – such demonstrations in receiving his message. We learn in Acts of two visits that Paul made to Galatia.

The genuineness of the book has never been questioned. Men who are ready to deny the authenticity of other books of the Bible all agree that this is genuinely Pauline. First and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans have never been questioned. The letter seems to be divided into the following outline:

1. Introduction (Galatians 1:1-5).

2. Historical narrative (Galatians 1:6-2:1-21) in which he defends his gospel and apostolic authority.

3. The doctrinal part of the epistle (Galatians 3-4), relating to justification by faith without works.

4. Galatians 5-6 are devoted to exhortations based on the doctrine.

Let us take up the introduction: "Paul, an apostle (not from men, neither through man, but through Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead)." Even in the introduction he strikes the keynote of the letter. In that parenthesis of the first sentence he marches square up against the opposition, the Judaizers having contended that he was neither one of the twelve, nor commissioned by them. He concedes the fact, but turns it in his favor. He is an apostle though not of men, not as Matthias, who was elected, but he received his apostleship direct from the Lord. Usually Paul leads up to his subject by gradual approaches, but here he abruptly leaps into the middle of things. This letter is like dropping a coal of fire into a powder magazine.

"I marvel that ye are so quickly removing from him that called you in the grace of Christ unto a different gospel; which is not another gospel: only there are some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ." At the outset he recognizes that this revolt did not originate with them. It was superinduced, imported. Nor did he believe that it was merely human opposition. It was a matter of amazement to him that people who had welcomed him so lovingly, heard him so tenderly and obeyed him so joyously, should, in such a short time, be switched off completely from the true gospel. All through the letter we see that the wonder is in his mind, and he evidently attributes it to some power more than human: "O foolish Galatians, who did bewitch you, that you should turn a somersault in theology and doctrine so quickly?"

He does not mince words: "But though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach unto you any gospel other than that which we preached unto you, let him be anathema." There is but one gospel – the gospel of grace through Jesus Christ. Anything different is not gospel, though an angel brings it. It is to be rejected, and the one who brings it should be counted as accursed from God. Paul was a mild man, exceedingly courteous and patient, suffering a great many personal indignities, but when one struck at the gospel he preached he was full of indignation and fiery wrath, because he believed that gospel to be the only hope of the lost world: "As we have said before, so say I now again, if any man preacheth unto you any gospel other than that which ye received, let him be anathema."

The skeptic argues against the New Testament because so much of it is devoted to issues local and transitory. But this is to misread and misinterpret human history. The natural man is ever ready to prefer works to grace. If he cannot have a salvation all of works, then he insists on a salvation partly of works and partly of grace. He will at any time prefer rites and ceremonies to spiritual things. In medieval time, the dark ages preceding and necessitating the Reformation of the sixteenth century, all Europe under Roman Catholicism, reverted to the old covenant with its priesthood, sacraments, types, burdensome ritual and imposing customs and ceremonies, mixed up with compromises and borrowings from heathendom around. Luther made this letter the banner of the reformation for Central Europe, and we need it now as much as when Paul wrote it or Luther used it. There are hundreds of pulpits today that do not preach the gospel, and even some Baptists are aping Rome.

I am reminded of the interview I had with Sam Jones when he came to Waco. He was sick and I called on him. The first thing he asked me was, "What do you think of me? What do you think of my gospel?"

"I think," I said, "you are a thousand miles from the gospel. I would suggest that when you get back to that big congregation you preach a gospel sermon for variety, just to show what a different thing it is from what you are preaching. You are preaching pretty good morality. Not only are you not preaching the gospel, but you are creating a false impression on the public mind, that heeding what you preach they will be saved."

He burst out laughing and said, "I like you. You come to hear me when I get well and I will preach a gospel sermon."

He did preach a really great gospel sermon on the blood of Jesus Christ. But he stopped at that. In his next sermon he was picking his teeth before the audience and said: "Look here, the thing to do is to join the church and then get religion. Join the church whether you have any more religion than a horse." Those were his exact words.

I turned to Dr. King, a Presbyterian, and said, "I think we just as well leave."

"Yes," he said, "I think so."

And I did not go back any more.

Paul felt just that way – that the salvation of men was a matter too important to be trifled with, and there was only one thing that could save men and that was the gospel of Jesus Christ; that the church and ordinances were for the saved, not for the unsaved; that the gospel of Christ is a distinct thing from the moral or ceremonial law of Moses; that the preacher should preach the gospel of salvation, grace, and freedom, and then go back to the weak and beggarly elements of the types was to Paul a matter of amazement.

He tells us how he got his gospel: “For I make known to you, brethren, as touching the gospel which was preached by me, that it is not after man." In other words, "I did not educate myself into this gospel and did not get my conception of it from any man on earth, but by direct revelation Jesus Christ made known to me what the gospel is." Some men now get their conceptions from reading Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Paul did not; they were not then written. Some men get their conceptions from hearing others who had heard Christ. But the gospel facts were communicated directly to Paul, and that is why I insist on saying, "Five gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul" – and Paul’s gospel is the most comprehensive of all. Note the beginning and the end of each gospel: Mark commences with Christ’s public ministry and stops at Christ’s resurrection. Matthew commences at Abraham and stops with the resurrection. Luke commences with Adam and stops with Paul in the city of Rome. John commences in eternity before the world was and stops with the revelation of paradise regained. Paul commences where John does in eternity and goes beyond him to the turning over of the kingdom to the Father. Paul shows in Corinthians how he received his knowledge of the Lord’s Supper and his gospel: "For I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed took bread; and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, This is my body, which is for you: this do in remembrance of me. In like manner also he took the cup, after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood; this do, as often as ye drink it, in remembrance of me" (1 Corinthians 11:23-25). "I make known unto you, brethren, the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye received, wherein also ye stand, by which also ye are saved, if ye hold fast the word which I preached unto you, except ye believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which also I received: that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried; and that he hath been raised on the third day according to the scriptures" (1 Corinthians 15:1-4). As bearing upon the history of Paul, and as bearing upon the nature of the gospel that he preached, the letter to the Galatians contains some historical facts of incalculable importance that can be found nowhere else.

He proceeds in the rest of chapter I to recite what had been his attitude before his conversion; that he persecuted the church; that he had advanced beyond others in the Jewish religion, and was exceedingly zealous in the traditions of the fathers. In other words, these Galatians were going back where Paul was before he was converted. He adds that his being an apostle and in the ministry was not an afterthought with God, as some people teach. He scouts any such idea. He said, "God set me apart from my mother’s womb." He was born about the time Christ was born. The mission of Paul was as clear to omniscience as the mission of Christ. To him all great things root back in eternity – in the divine purpose, in election, in predestination, in foreordination. He could not conceive of God as being surprised by some new set of events that had accidentally come to the front, necessitating a new adjustment to fit these unexpected events. "And called me through his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles." Notice the connection of the thought: "I was set apart from my mother’s womb. When I got to be a man he revealed his Son to me, that is, in my conversion, and called me to preach to certain people."

He combats one of their objections that his information was secondhand: "Straightway I conferred not with flesh and blood; neither went I up to Jerusalem to them that were apostles before me; but I went away into Arabia; and again I returned into Damascus." There is a seeming conflict between Luke’s "Straightway he preached in Damascus" (Acts 9:20), and Paul’s "Straightway" (Galatians 1:16). He did commence to preach in Damascus, but he did not confer with anyone, nor go up to Jerusalem to know if the men there would approve of what had been done, but he says, "I went away into Arabia," that is, he went to Mount Sinai, and there, on the scene of the giving of the law, which these Jews are trying to persuade the Galatians is the way of salvation, he received his gospel and studied out the great problems of the meaning of the Sinaitic covenant and its contrast with the new covenant which he discusses in this letter in a way that we find nowhere else in the Bible.

The Galatian churches were going back to Mount Sinai to be circumcised, to keep the whole law as a way of life, to put themselves in bondage to a yoke that their fathers were not able to bear – going back to a covenant that gendered bondage and ended in death. He is compelled to say, "I went away into Arabia." In other words, "God sent me there before he sent me to preach, that I should understand the difference between the law and the gospel; that I should, on the scene of the giving of the law, comprehend the purposes of that law."

QUESTIONS

1. What books constitute the first group of Paul’s letters, and what books the second?

2. What are three books on Galatians commended?

3. What is the date of his letter?

4. Where written?

5. What relation does this letter bear to the letter to the Romana? Give examples of such relation.

6. What was the occasion of this letter?

7. Where was Galatia, what do we know from Acts about its people, and what churches were in Galatia?

8. What is Dr. Ramsay’s contention, and what your reply?

9. Who were the Galatians, and what their characteristics?

10. Give an account of their migration into Asia Minor.

11. What was the occasion of Paul’s preaching to them, and what the results?

12. Locate in Acts the account of two visits that Paul made to Galatia.

13. What of the genuineness of the book?

14. Give a brief outline of the book.

15. What charge against him may be inferred from his introduction, and how does he reply to it?

16. How did Paul regard his gospel?

17. What is the doctrinal importance of this letter, and what the author’s illustration?

18. What is the fifth gospel, and how does it compare with the other four as to their beginning and end?

19. What was Paul’s attitude before his conversion, and what great doctrine does he make the basis of his conversion and call into the ministry?

20. How does Paul answer their charge that his gospel was second band?

21. Where in Acts may we insert the history in Galatians 1:16-17?

22. Why did Paul go into Arabia before he commenced to preach, how long there, and what the bearing of these facts on Christianity? (See author’s sermon on, "But I Went into Arabia.")