Galatians is Paul’s dissertation, from a judicial standpoint, on the doctrine of salvation. And he has spent the brunt of his argument delineating the merits of grace versus law. He has shown in detail the difference between salvation by grace alone, as opposed to salvation by faith plus works. In particular, he was answering the Judaiser’s teaching that you needed to be circumcised and follow the dietary and ceremonial laws of the Jews in order to really be saved. Paul called such legalism “slavery.” And he described salvation by grace through faith as “freedom.” But some of the difficulty comes

Read More…

Paul has reached the last stage of his legal argument for the doctrine of justification by faith.  During his missionary journey’s to the region of Galatia he had preached the gospel, and the Galatians were converted and he had established churches there for them.  But then not too long afterwards certain men from Jerusalem had come to those churches and began to teach these new converts that they were not fully saved until they had become circumcised and adhered to certain ceremonial and legal requirements of Judaism. So Paul wrote the letter to the Galatians refuting that false teaching and

Read More…

Paul has reached in this passage the final part of his argument for the Galatians to turn away from the legalistic teaching of the Judaisers. Paul has appealed to them on so many levels, using various scriptures and illustrations to show that our salvation is by grace through faith, not faith plus the law. Paul had even appealed on the basis of his relationship with the Galatians as the founding father of their churches in order to encourage them to abandon the Judaizers teaching. But the final argument has the authority of scripture as Paul goes to the very law

Read More…

I want to take a diversion of sorts this morning from our normal verse by verse exposition of Galatians.  But I do so having been provoked by Paul in chapter 3 of Galatians.  If you will remember, in his argument of faith vs works, Paul introduces the example of Abraham in chapter 3 vs 6.  And throughout the rest of that chapter, Paul makes the point that it is those who are of the faith of Abraham who are the sons of Abraham.  Now he is making this point because the Judaisers had come into the churches of Galatia and

Read More…

One of the dangers, I suppose, of putting my address on public announcements or advertising, is that people know where you live. I had a visitor a few nights ago who I hope was not prowling about my house after dark. He did however leave a letter on my mailbox addressed to me. So it was evident that he knows me, but he didn’t sign it, which is kind of concerning that he wants to be anonymous. The bottom line of the letter he left was to inform me that generations of Bible teachers and scholars have gotten wrong the

Read More…

Paul has written this letter to the Galatians to counter false teaching which has entered the churches in Galatia.  He had founded these churches, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe and others during his first missionary trip.  But in no time at all, Jews from Jerusalem had come to the churches and spread a malicious doctrine that you had to conform to Jewish law, particularly that of circumcision and other ceremonial laws, in order to be truly saved. So Paul spent the first two chapters of his letter reestablishing his apostleship and authority in giving them the gospel.  Now he adds to that

Read More…

As I have said previously, this is Paul’s first letter, or first epistle, that he writes in his ministry.  And the subject of this letter is to write the Galatians a defense of his apostleship, and a defense of his gospel and the doctrine of justification by faith.  Now we have looked at his autobiographical details in chapter one in which Paul defended his apostleship.  He did that by explaining his conversion on the road to Damascus, and how the Lord Jesus spoke to him directly. Then we read that immediately following his conversion, he did not immediately confer with

Read More…