1. The cross and salvation (1:3-5)
1. The cross and salvation (1:3-5)
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
These words form part of Paul’s introductory salutation. Usually such an epistolary greeting would be casual or conventional. But Paul uses it to make a carefully balanced theological statement about the cross, which indicates what his concern in the letter is going to be.
First, the death of Jesus was both voluntary and determined. On the one hand, he ‘gave himself for our sins’, freely and voluntarily. On the other, his self-giving was ‘according to the will of our God and Father’. God the Father purposed and willed the death of his Son and foretold it in the Old Testament Scriptures. Yet Jesus embraced this purpose of his own accord. He set his will to do his Father’s will.
Secondly, the death of Jesus was for our sins. Sin and death are integrally related throughout Scripture as cause and effect, as we have seen. Usually the one who sins and the one who dies are the same person. Here, however, although the sins are ours, the death is Christ’s: he died for our sins, bearing their penalty in our place.
Thirdly, the purpose of Jesus’ death was to rescue us. Salvation is a rescue operation, undertaken for people whose plight is so desperate that they cannot save themselves. In particular, he died to rescue us ‘out of the present evil age’. Since Christ inaugurated the new age, the two ages at present overlap. But he died to rescue us from the old age and secure our transfer into the new, so that already we might live the life of the age to come.
Fourthly, the present result of Jesus’ death is grace and peace. ‘Grace’ is his free and unmerited favour, and ‘peace’ is the reconciliation with him and with each other which grace has achieved. The life of the age to come is a life of grace and peace. Paul continues to allude to it in the following verses, in which he expresses his astonishment that the Galatians have so quickly deserted the one who had called them ‘by the grace of Christ’ (v. 6). For the call of God is a call of grace, and the gospel of God is the gospel of grace.
Fifthly, the eternal result of Jesus’ death is that God will be glorified for ever. The references in verses 3–5 to grace and glory, as part of the same sentence, are striking. Grace comes from God; glory is due to God. The whole of Christian theology is encapsulated in that epigram.
Here, then, in one pregnant sentence, is Paul’s first statement in Galatians about the cross. Although it was determined eternally by the Father’s will, Jesus gave himself voluntarily for us. The nature of his death was the penalty for our sins, and its purpose was to rescue us from the old age and transfer us to the new, in which we receive grace and peace now, and God receives glory for ever.