Galatians is a letter that has had massive impact in the history of the church. Of course there is the famous case of it being a part of Martin Luther’s own exodus from Rome and his expression of justification by faith alone. John Wesley would be stirred in a similar way, partly with the help of Luther’s commentary—though he would find other elements of that work repugnant to reason. Over the past few decades, the epistle has had to return to its post of polemical focus in the Reformed church, as the Calvinistic churches (old and new) found themselves flanked by the New Perspectives on Paul to the left and the Federal Vision to the right. No sooner had the dust cleared on these controversies than a new Progressivism, complete with its Marxist analysis and proposed solutions for racial tensions, reared its head—when in Galatians, the Apostle to the Gentiles held out the biblical explanation and the gospel solution all along. Even if such things do not seem to touch upon the spirituality of our churches (and they do), it would do us well to regularly come back to this epistle.

Author

Paul is recognized to be the author of Galatians, even by many liberals: e. g. Kümmel.1 If the South Galatian theory is correct,2 then this may very well be the earliest of the Apostle’s letters (see chronology in 1.2). Paul’s protégé Timothy came from one of the cities of this southern region, Lystra. It was during the first missionary journey of Paul that this region was evangelized and the churches were planted. This early / southern view makes more sense of the personal care that Paul seemed to have for this group. Otherwise we would have to suspect Paul of being dishonest in the affections he expressed for them — not only his zeal, but in calling them “my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you!” (4:19) 

Paul’s former way of life is crucial to this letter. For one thing, he makes it part of his argument in the first chapter. It had been claimed that he was some sort of “second-hand” apostle, in the sense that he was not among the inner circle of the Jerusalem church. He had not spent time with Jesus, as had Peter, James, and John. In reply the Apostle does something interesting. On the one hand, he wants to argue that his apostleship is no less than theirs, and yet on the other hand he wants to distance himself from the authority of the “pillars” of Jerusalem. He accomplishes both in one Person: Jesus Christ. It is because Paul had been encountered by the resurrected Lord that he was invested with the same right of apostleship as they (cf. 1:11-24). This revelation of Jesus also gives Paul something greater than mere equality with the other Apostles. It means that his gospel is not man’s gospel at all. It is straight from God. 

Another reason that Paul’s former way of life carries weight in this letter is by way of contrast with the Judaizer error. The contrast is effective because Paul could speak from a position of intellectual expertise. He knew the law and he knew what it meant to try to attain righteousness by it. But he could also speak from a position of emotional attachment to the Jewish interpretation. Here a scholarly indifference or attempt to show detachment from the subject would have been less effective, not more. Indeed no one could find a more zealous Jew than Paul was (cf. 1:14, cf. Phi. 3:4-6). If this Apostle could formerly persecute Christians because of what regarded to be their threat to Judaism, then these Judaizers were amateur law-defenders by comparison!  

A word about Paul’s disposition, or his psychological makeup. Much like Luther, the Apostle Paul did not suffer from the false humility that characterizes our generation. In his Notes on Galatians, J. Gresham Machen called the Apostle “A man who could say ‘No,’”3 for this very reason. What he meant was not primarily something about tone, but rather about the importance of contours in what we believe and what we will stand for. Paul knew where to draw a line and where to let others walk on both sides. Galatians is an example of the former; Romans 14 is an example of the latter. In this way Paul was master at both polemics and charity at once. Consequently this epistle must be unintelligible to those who pit Christian freedom and unity against the insistence that some hills are worth dying on.

Recipients and Occasion

The text itself speaks of “the churches of Galatia” (1:2) indicating several. And yet there is still the question: Which Galatians? Could it have been the evolved form of the name for ethnic Gauls who had migrated to Asia Minor in the third century B.C.? Or does it refer merely to those many different people groups assimilated in the Roman province by that name? If the former, then these churches were in the north; if the latter, then in the south. Most scholars have opted for the latter for some of the reasons discussed within ‘chronology’ below. By the ‘south,’ we mean the region including cities such as Pisidian Antioch, Lystra, Iconium, and Derbe. 

Now what was the occasion for the letter? A controversy had broken out in the churches sometime after Paul had left them. We know this as the “Judaizer controversy,” though some have called it the controversy over circumcision. The name is used for a group of Jewish believers—or, at least, professing believers—who had infected many of the Greek churches with the notion that one had to keep the Old Covenant rite of circumcision in addition to having faith in Christ. Not long after Paul had established these churches, certain false teachers distorted the one true gospel, and also seemed to attack the Apostle on a personal level. It was not only circumcision which provided the occasion for this controversy about the role of works in justification. The practice of table fellowship with Gentiles, from which the Jews had formerly restricted themselves, had corrupted the Antioch church that had previously championed the unity of all people groups in Christ. Ryken puts it concisely and practically:

“By trying to base their justification on their sanctification, the Galatians were in danger of exchanging God’s grace in the gospel for performance-based Christianity.”4

Of all of the epistles of the New Testament, identifying factions in the church would seem easiest to do in this case. At the very least we can identify Judaizers and Gentile believers being pressured to conform. Then there was the pressure on Jewish Christians, such as what intimidated Peter. One commentator speculates that “it may well be that it was the sheer force of pressure from non-Christian Jews that was the ultimate motivation for the Judaizers.”5

Purpose

Aside from calling this the “Judaizer controversy” and recognizing the prevelance of circumcision and table fellowship, there remains some debate about the purpose of this letter. The chief reason for disagreement in our day results from the New Perspective on Paul. Since there is diversity of opinion among the “New Perspective(s)” we will interact only with N. T. Wright, as he is the one who has gotten all the press among American seminarians anyway. In his book on Justification he asks, Why “would a Jew of Paul’s pedigree have come to think that belonging to the ethnic people of God, and living under its ancestral law, was a matter of slavery?”6 His answer begins with the “food fight” of Chapter 2 in Antioch and works out from there.

In other words, Wright does not see the ethnic barrier between Jews and Gentiles as a manifestation of the more fundamental barrier between God and the sinner. The solution that is called “justification” is not about how an individual gets right with God, but is about who all have the right to be called the people of God. It is eccelsiological and not soteriological. The new perspective (of Wright at least) is that justification should be defined as God’s declaration of who is in Christ.7 In order to pull all of this off, Wright has to recast the phrase “works of the law” to mean exclusively those marks of being an ethnic Jew, as in the ceremonial law. Thus, for Paul, to be justified by works of the law would only mean to be declared “God’s people” by virtue of being a Jew.  

Against this new perspective, I am in full agreement with the majority Reformed tradition on the meaning of Galatians. Could we say that “Galatians is not about justification?” In one sense I suppose we can say that—if what we mean is that Paul’s whole chief end is not to uphold that doctrine, or that “one is not saved by getting the doctrine of sola fide correct.” However no reputable Reformed scholar has ever claimed, as N. T. Wright seems to imply, that justification is the summum bonum of the Christian journey or that one is justified by correct articulation of the doctrine. These are caricatures. Instead justification is central to Galatians insofar as the Judaizing error threatened Christian liberty and unity. And this error was an error precisely over the doctrine of justification. Consequently this epistle just is about justification by faith alone in that polemical and instrumental sense. Galatians 3:3 is, I believe, crucial for understanding the way in which the correct doctrine was being threatened: “Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” It would seem that Galatian Christians knew the doctrine, or at least had once known it. It must be that there are ways to compromise sola fide along the path, by confusing elements of sanctification with justification. In other words this was a more subtle error—and therefore very probably a recurring error—that we may realize at first glance. For this church it may have been circumcision and kosher eating that functioned as the occasion. Today, others things will substitute with great stealth.

Outline

My own outline of the book would be as follows:

I. INTRODUCTION

A. Greeting (1:1-5)

B. Backdrop of the Controversy (1:6-10)

II. BIOGRAPHY

A. Paul’s Calling from God (1:11-17)

B. Paul’s Independence from Jerusalem (1:17-2:10)

C. Paul’s Stand Against Jerusalem (2:11-14)

III. DOCTRINE

A. Justification by Faith Alone (2:15-21)

B. Faith Alone versus Works of the Law (3:1-14)

C. Faith Alone Receives the Promise (3:15-4:8)

D. Paul’s Personal Appeal (4:9-20)

E. The Allegory of the Slave and Free (4:21-31)

IV. APPLICATION

A. Our Freedom in Christ (5:1-15)

B. The Fruit of the Spirit (5:16-26)

C. Practical Applications (6:1-18)

Intertextuality, Canon, and Redemptive History

1 Thessalonians is a candidate to be earlier. Otherwise Galatians is the oldest of the NT books. In any event it must fit within the years 48 and 55 AD, and the theory of it being written in either 48 or 49 is most plausible. The key early events to factor in are the arrival of Paul in the Galatian region (47 / 48) and the Jerusalem Council (48 / 49). There is a good case to be made of the letter fitting within those two dates. Why is this? 

First there is the matter of reconciling chronology of Acts and Galatians in general. For example, how do Galatians and Acts line up in terms of the number of visits that Paul made to Jerusalem? A chart depicting the common way of lining up the events could look as follows:

Many resolve this by concluding that the second visit of Galatians refers to 2 and 3 in Acts. Hill matches only 2 with 2, and infers from this that the letter was written before the Council. If Paul wrote Galatians after the Council it would be odd to not cite the Council’s decision. What could be more powerful to his argument! Naturally this is a rationale for the early view of 48 / 49. However it is objected that Timothy’s circumcision occurs in the same region as the Galatians were, and this after the Council. Hill replies that this was to minister in Jewish synagogues. Paul was quite willing to make concessions to be all things to all people. This is nothing other than balancing these two complementary virtues in the Apostle’s ministry: that is, the polemical necessity of Galatians with the call to charitable, liberating maturity in Romans 14. 

Now what can we say about the place of Galatians in relation to Paul’s other letters, the other New Testament books, and therefore in the whole realm of New Testament theology? The first thing we can do is answer the recurring liberal supposition that Galatians is basically reactionary. In other words we are told that this is Paul at his worst — such is the way I hear the suggestion, anyway — and thus we cannot form our understanding of the gospel upon it. Cole responds to this by saying, “If it is argued that this centrality of justification by faith is only so because the letter to the Galatians was written in controversy, the answer was that it was written in a controversy about the very nature of the gospel.”

In the first place, Paul’s “peculiarities” about justification were not unique to the controversy in Galatia. Acts 13 gives us a clue. There Paul is preaching in Pisidion Antioch, and he contrasts true justification against the works of the law of Moses (v. 44). This shows us that justificaiton by faith alone, apart from works of the law, was central to the early preaching. The Galatians would have been exposed to this message from the time of his first missionary journey there. If they were not, then, once again, it would make Paul’s astonishment at them — for departing from it (cf. 1:6-7) — wholly unintelligible. One is given the impression that because it is a diatribe, because Paul is passionate, that he could not possibly be in any careful, reasoned, teaching mode. But one might as well make the same judgment about Jesus’ words in Matthew 23 when he is verbally torching the Pharisees.

Paul’s itinerary across the region may be tracked in the book of Acts (cf. 13-14, 16:6, 18:23). Some would say confidently that this epistle was written from Antioch.

If we ask what is the place of this letter in redemptive history, one good way to view it is in relation to the gospel opening up to the Gentiles in the book of Acts. This may be nothing but a curious byproduct of the birth of Christianity—if it had not been foretold in the Prophets. 

Genre and Tone: Polemical or Pastoral?

There is not much to talk about with respect to the surface of genre. Galatians is obviously an epistle. However, there is some distinction to be observed. Within epistles, we observe greetings and salutations, but also narrative; and often the purpose of the narrative is discovered in those seemingly insignificant “sign-offs,” and vice-versa. Likewise, each contains doctrinal clues. Notice also that there is a clear transition point right at 2:15 from narrative to didactic. It is certainly didactic beforehand, and Paul never leaves the personalized tone when he does set forth doctrine, often by way of contrast. Such a transition is not only didactic, but it introduces the very core doctrine that remains at the heart of the entire doctrinal section. The main way that this transition aspect affects exegesis of the passages just following is in how the narrative directly preceding informs the sense Paul gives to justification either by faith in Christ or by our works of the law. It is even suggested by Moo that this text relays to us the substance of what Paul had told Peter when they were at odds. He derives this from the syntactical relation between the two verses (14 and 15).

Going back to the big picture, this is universally recognized to be the most polemical of Paul’s letters. Tenney describes the tone of the letter as “warlike.”8 This letter is no so easy to force into one style. Because it is an epistle it has the structure of a sustained argument—and we reject the notion that because it is highly passionate that it must therefore lack this logical quality—but because there is enflamed reaction, there are caustic elements that we cannot ignore. He uses biting sarcasm in 3:1 about them being bewitched, and in 5:12 about the troublemakers hopefully emasculating themselves, and hyperbole about the Galatians gouging their own eyes out (4:15) as a gesture of love! He uses practical imagery of a last will and testament, a tudor-child relationship, and an allegory of two mothers, who also happen to be two mountains, two cities, and ultimately two covenants: two ways of relating to God. All of that to say that in Galatians, the quality of a diabtribe and that of a personal letter and that of a logic treatise never cancel out each other. They all come together.

Matthew Henry says, “the apostle endeavors to impress upon these Galatians a due sense of their guilt in forsaking the gospel way of justification; and yet at the same time he tempers his reproof with mildness and tenderness toward them, and represents them as rather drawn into it by the arts and industry of some that troubled them.”9

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1. cf. D. A. Carson & Douglas J. Moo, An Introduction to the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005), 457.

2. cf. R. Alan Cole, Galatians: an Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1989), 18-25, for a treatment of this controversy favoring the South Galatian theory. A more thorough examination, favoring the South, can be found in Herman Ridderbos, The Epistle of Paul to the Churches of Galatia (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1953), 22-35.

3. J. Gresham Machen, Notes on Galatians (Birmingham, AL: Solid Ground Christian Books, 2006),

4. Philip Ryken, Galatians: Reformed Expository Commentary (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 2005), xiii

5. I. Howard Marshall, New Testament Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 211.

6. N. T. Wright, Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009), 113.

7. Wright, Justification, 116.

8. Merril C. Tenney, New Testament Survey (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1985), 271

9. Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishing, 1991), 2294.