A review of the epistle
It may be helpful, in conclusion, if we attempt to review the whole epistle, or at least to underline its main themes.
We have seen that the background, the situation which led to it being written, was the presence of certain false teachers in the Galatian churches. Directly or indirectly Paul refers to them throughout. They were troubling the church. The same word occurs in Galatians 1:7 and 5:10 and means to ‘disturb, unsettle, throw into confusion’ (Arndt–Gingrich). And the confusion they were spreading was caused by their wrong ideas. They were perverting the gospel, and Paul confronts them with hot anger.
There were three main points at issue between Paul and the Judaizers, and they are still vital issues in the church today. The first is the question of authority: how do we know what and whom to believe or not to believe? The second is the question of salvation: how can we get right with God, receiving the forgiveness of our sins and being restored to his favour and fellowship? The third is the question of holiness: how can we control the sinful desires of our fallen nature and live a life of righteousness and love? Addressing himself to these questions, Paul devotes approximately the first two chapters of the epistle to the question of authority, chapters 3 and 4 to the question of salvation, and chapters 5 and 6 to the question of holiness.
1. The question of authority
This was the basic issue. Paul and Barnabas founded the Galatian churches on their first missionary journey by their preaching and teaching. After their departure other teachers arrived – teachers who claimed to have the authority and backing of the Jerusalem church and who began to undermine the teaching of Paul. As a result, the Galatians were in a dilemma. Here were two sets of teachers, each claiming to bring God’s truth, but contradicting one another. Which were the Galatians to listen to and believe? Both seemed to have good qualifications. Both were holy, godly, upright and intelligent people, and both were plausible, attractive and seemed authoritative. Which were they to choose?
The same situation obtains in the church today except that, instead of a simple alternative between two viewpoints, we are faced with a bewildering variety of opinions to choose from. Moreover, each group has its particular appeal; its spokespersons are reputable scholars; and its supporters include theologians and bishops. Each group sounds reasonable and reinforces its case with strong arguments. But they all contradict one another. So how can we know which to choose and whom to follow?
We must see clearly what Paul does in this situation. He asserts his authority as an apostle of Jesus Christ. He expects the Galatians to receive his gospel not just because of it, but because of him; not because of its superior truth, but because of his superior authority. The authority the Judaizers boasted was an ecclesiastical authority; they claimed to come from and to speak for the Jerusalem church. Paul insists, on the other hand, that both his mission and his message came not from the church but from Christ himself. This is the argument of Galatians 1 and 2, in which he boldly sets out his claim and then supports it by going over the history of his conversion and his subsequent relations with the Jerusalem apostles. It was Christ who authorized him, not they, although, when he did later consult with them, they gave their wholehearted backing to his mission and message.
Conscious of his apostolic authority, Paul expects the Galatians to accept it. They had done this on the first missionary journey, receiving him ‘as if I were an angel of God, as if I were Christ Jesus himself’ (4:14). Now that his authority is being challenged and his message contradicted, he still expects them to recognize his authority as Christ’s apostle: ‘I am confident in the Lord that you will take no other view’ (5:10). The original message, which he had preached to them (1:8) and which they had received (1:9), was to be the standard. If anybody preached a gospel different from this, however impressive that person might be, ‘let them be under God’s curse!’
Almost deafened by the hubbub of voices in the contemporary church, how are we to decide whom to follow? The answer is the same: we must test them all by the teaching of the apostles of Jesus Christ. ‘Peace and mercy’ will be on the church when it ‘follows this rule’ (6:16). Indeed, this is the only kind of apostolic succession we can accept – not a line of bishops stretching back to the apostles and claiming to be their successors (for the apostles were unique in both authorization and inspiration, and they have no successors), but loyalty to the apostolic doctrine of the New Testament. The teaching of the apostles, now permanently preserved in the New Testament, is to regulate the beliefs and practices of the church of every generation. This is why the Bible is over the church and not vice versa. The apostolic authors of the New Testament were commissioned by Christ, not by the church, and wrote with the authority of Christ, not of the church. ‘To that authority [sc. of the apostles],’ as the Anglican bishops said at the 1958 Lambeth Conference, ‘the Church must ever bow.’ If only it did! The only church unity schemes which can be pleasing to God and beneficial to the church are those which first distinguish between apostolic traditions and ecclesiastical traditions and then subject the latter to the former.
2. The question of salvation
How can sinners be ‘justified’, accepted in the sight of God? How can a holy God forgive sinful people, reconcile them to himself and restore them to his favour and fellowship?
Paul’s answer is straightforward. Salvation is possible only through the atoning death of Jesus Christ on the cross. The epistle is full of the cross. Paul describes his preaching ministry as portraying Christ crucified before people’s eyes (3:1) and his personal philosophy as boasting in the cross alone (6:14). But why was the cross the subject of his preaching and the object of his boasting? What did Christ do on the cross? Consider these three statements in Galatians: he ‘gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age’ (1:4); ‘the Son of God . . . loved me and gave himself for me’ (2:20); and ‘Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us’ (3:13). That is to say, the sense in which he gave himself for us is that he gave himself for our sins, and the sense in which he gave himself for our sins is that he became a curse for us. This phrase can mean only that God’s ‘curse’ (his righteous displeasure and judgment), which rests upon all who break his law (3:10), was transferred to Christ on the cross. He bore our curse that we might receive the blessing which God had promised to Abraham (3:14).
What, then, must we do to be saved? In a sense, nothing! Jesus Christ has done it all in his curse-bearing death. Our only part is to believe in Jesus, to trust him without reservation to apply to us personally the benefits of his death. For ‘a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ’ (2:16). The only function of faith is to unite us to Christ, in whom we receive justification, adoption and the gift of the Spirit.
The Judaizers, on the other hand, were disturbing the church by insisting that faith in Jesus was not enough. Circumcision and law-obedience must be added to it. Paul vigorously denies this distortion of the gospel. If people could win salvation by the law, he says, then ‘Christ died for nothing’ (2:21). If we contribute our works to the winning of salvation, then we take away from the adequacy of Christ’s work. If in his death he bore our sin and curse, then the cross is a sufficient sacrifice for sin and nothing whatever needs to be added to it. This is ‘the offence of the cross’ (5:11), because it tells us that salvation is a gift freely bestowed on the ground of Christ’s death and that we can contribute precisely nothing to it.
So the church is ‘the family of believers’ (6:10). Faith is the chief mark of God’s children. We are a family of believers, and faith is the factor which unites us with all God’s people of every place and age.
a. Faith unites us with God’s people of the past
If we believe, we are the children of Abraham (3:7, 29), for he was justified by faith (3:6) just as we are. In Christ we inherit Abraham’s blessing (3:14). So it is faith which binds the Old and New Testaments together and makes the Bible one book instead of two. As we read the Old Testament authors, we have no difficulty in recognizing them as our fellow believers.
b. Faith unites us with God’s people of the present
‘So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith . . . There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (3:26, 28). This shows that if we are in Christ by faith we are both ‘children of God’ and ‘all one’. External distinctions of race, rank and sex are all rendered null and void. As far as our relationship to God is concerned, they count for nothing. It is being ‘in Christ’ that matters. And Paul refuses to tolerate any teaching or action which is inconsistent with this. So he criticizes the Judaizers for their insistence on circumcision and opposes Peter to his face when he withdraws from table-fellowship with uncircumcised Gentile believers.
Faith still abolishes distinctions today. We have no right to deny our fellowship at the Lord’s Table to any Christians who are in Christ by faith, on the ground that they lack episcopal confirmation, total immersion, the right skin colour, an acceptable culture or anything else. There is a place for order and discipline in each church, to ensure that its members are in Christ by faith. But there is no place for ecclesiastical, social or racial discrimination. The church is ‘the family of believers’; it is faith in Christ crucified which levels and unites us.
3. The question of holiness
The Judaizers caricatured Paul’s gospel that justification was by grace alone through faith alone; they hinted that in this case good words did not matter and you could clearly live as you please. Paul denies this too. He agrees that Christians are ‘free’ and urges them to ‘stand firm’ in the freedom for which Christ has set them free (5:1), but he adds, ‘do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh’ (5:13). Christian freedom is not licence. Christians have been freed from the bondage of the law in the sense that they have been delivered from the law as a way of salvation. But this does not mean that they are free to break the law. On the contrary, we are to ‘fulfil the law’ by loving and serving one another (5:13–14).
How is it possible to become holy? We have seen how Paul describes the Christian’s inner conflict between ‘the flesh’ and ‘the Spirit’ and the way of victory through the control of the Spirit over the flesh. Those who belong to Christ, he says, ‘have crucified the flesh’, totally rejecting its evil ‘passions and desires’ (5:24). This is part of our repentance. It took place at our conversion, but we need to remember and renew it daily.
Christ’s people also seek to be ‘led by the Spirit’ (5:18), to ‘keep in step’ with him (5:25) and to sow in his ‘field’ (6:8), by disciplined habits of thinking and living, so that his ‘fruit’ will appear and ripen in our lives. This is the Christian way of holiness.
The last verse of the epistle is a fitting conclusion: ‘The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit’ (6:18). For the Christian life is lived by the grace of Christ, and this grace (unmerited favour) is expressed in the three areas which we have been considering.
First, the answer to the question of authority is Jesus Christ through his apostles. Christ appointed and authorized the Twelve and later Paul to teach in his name, and promised them the Holy Spirit in special measure to recall his teaching to their minds and to lead them into all the truth. So ‘all that Jesus began to do and to teach’ during his life (Acts 1:1) he continued through his apostles, and he intended people to submit to this apostolic authority as being his authority: ‘Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me,’ he said. ‘Whoever listens to you listens to me; whoever rejects you rejects me.’
Second, the answer to the question of salvation is Jesus Christ through his cross. Jesus Christ came not only to speak but to save, not only to reveal but to redeem. On the cross he bore our sin and curse. And if we are in Christ crucified, united to him by faith, all the blessings of the gospel – justification, adoption and the gift of the Spirit – become our personal possession.
Third, the answer to the question of holiness is Jesus Christ through his Spirit. Christ not only died, rose and returned to heaven, but sent the Holy Spirit to replace him. This Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, who dwells in every believer. And one of the greatest works of the Holy Spirit is to transform us into the image of Christ, to form Christ in us (Gal. 4:19), to bring forth in our lives his ‘fruit’ of Christlikeness.
So we have Christ through his apostles to teach us, Christ through his cross to save us and Christ through his Spirit to sanctify us. This in a nutshell is the message of the epistle to the Galatians and indeed of Christianity itself. It is all included in the epistle’s last words: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ – his grace through his apostles, his cross and his Spirit – be with your spirit, brothers and sisters. Amen.