Overview:
The letter to the Galatians was written in the mid-50s AD, most likely in Ephesus. There is an ongoing debate among scholars as to whether “Galatians” refers to the inhabitants of the Roman province of Galatia (situated in the southeastern area of Asia Minor, i.e., modern Turkey), or the tribes living to the north of that province, who were related to the Celts and the Gauls of western Europe. In any case, the letter was written by Paul to churches which he had founded on his earlier missionary trip through that area. Galatians is extremely important from a theological standpoint, as it deals with the question of whether Gentiles must adopt Jewish practices in order to become Christians. The conflict between Paul on the one hand, and Peter and James on the other is openly portrayed, and there is little or no attempt to paper over the differences such as we find in Acts. Galatians is widely accepted as a genuine letter written by Paul himself, and there is no serious disagreement on this among biblical scholars.
1:1 In the opening, Paul emphasizes that he is an apostle, and that he has come to that office not by the appointment of men, “but through Jesus Christ and God the Father.” Contrast this opening with that of 1 Thessalonians, where Paul introduces himself as simply “Paul.”
1:6-7 Paul quickly comes to grips with the issue, which is the falling away of the Galatian Christians from the gospel that Paul taught them. This is blamed on the teachings of agitators who “want to pervert the gospel of Christ.” We are not told who they are, but we may suppose them to have been another Christian faction, opposed to Paul, perhaps a group who insisted that the followers of Jesus be circumcised and follow the Jewish food laws. As we shall see, these are the main points of contention between Paul and the leaders of the Jerusalem church.
1:8-9 In case the Galatians were disposed to hear from both sides, and weigh the pros and cons of each, Paul lays a curse on anyone who teaches a gospel different from what he preached to the Galatians. In fact, he curses them twice. In an age where magic and sorcery seemed very real to people, such a curse may well have carried a powerful disincentive to associate with anyone who taught a doctrine opposed to Paul. There is a different view, expressed in the first letter of John, where the believers in Christ are advised to “not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God.” (1 John 4:1) Paul himself seems to countenance such a view in 1 Thessalonians 5:21, telling his followers to “test everything.” Here in Galatians, though, they are told not to test, but to reject, all teachings other than Paul’s.
1:10-12 As is his custom, Paul does not defend his version of Christian doctrine directly, but instead delivers a personal defense. Paul insists that his motives are pure – that his purpose is to please God, not men – and also that his teaching is trustworthy because he got it not from men, but directly from God, “through a revelation of Jesus Christ.”
1:15 Paul claims that God chose him before birth as the one who would preach the gospel of Jesus to the Gentiles. Predestination is a recurring theme in Paul’s letters. See Romans 8:29-30, as well as Ephesians 1:5. Of course, if individuals are predestined to be saved or damned, there is nothing a person can do about his own fate, and there is no point in trying to convert people to Christ, when those who are going to be converted have already been pre-selected by God.
1:16-17 The revelation mentioned here is generally thought of as the conversion experience described three times in the book of Acts (Acts 9:3-9; 22:6-16 and 26:12-20). However, Paul gives no details that might allow us to compare his experience with the versions described in Acts. See the commentary on Acts for a description of the discrepancies among the three versions.
Paul says here that after his revelation experience, he “did not confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia.” Acts, however, gives a different itinerary, saying that after the revelation Paul was “with the disciples at Damascus” for several days. (Acts 9:19)
1:18-19 The discrepancies continue between Paul’s account in Galatians and the story in Acts. Here, Paul says it was three years after his conversion that he went up to Jerusalem, and on that visit he only met with Peter (Cephas) and James “the Lord’s brother.” Acts, on the other hand, has Paul after his conversion “immediately” proclaiming Jesus as the son of God in the synagogues of Damascus, but he fled the city when “the Jews” plotted to kill him. At that point he came to Jerusalem and “attempted to join the disciples [but] they were all afraid of him.” (Acts 9:26) Unlike in Galatians, there is no 3-year hiatus expressed or implied in the Acts account.
1:22 After a fifteen day visit in Jerusalem, Paul travels to Syria and Cilicia. At that point, he was “still not known by sight to the churches of Christ in Judea.” But again, Acts tells a different story, saying that Paul “went in and out among them at Jerusalem, preaching boldly in the name of the Lord.” (Acts 9:28-29) So how could he have not been known by sight to the churches in Judea, which includes Jerusalem?
2:1 Paul now describes a second visit to Jerusalem, fourteen years later. Scholars are not unanimous in identifying this visit with that described in chapter 15 of Acts, but the issue discussed is the same in both passages – i.e., the extent to which Gentiles must adopt Jewish practicies when they join the Christian movement. So the possibility that they are indeed describing a single meeting seems strong. The New Oxford Annotated Bible concludes that “This visit is probably the one mentioned in Acts 15:2.” (p.1411) However, if that is the case, there are several discrepancies in the two accounts. Paul says here in Galatians that he presented his case “privately before those who were of repute.” Paul names James, Peter (Cephas), and John as those who were “reputed to be pillars” (v.9), but in Acts the issue is set before “the apostles and the elders” for public, not private, debate. (Acts 15:6) This group is referred to as “all the assembly” in Acts 15:12, and speeches are made before them, so it does not appear that the Acts account mirrors Paul’s description of a private meeting before a few men of repute.
Also, the resolution of the issue in vv.9-10 - i.e., to “remember the poor,” bears no resemblance to the specific directives given to Paul and Barnabas in Acts – i.e., that the Gentile converts must “abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from unchastity.” (Acts 15:29)
Finally, Acts includes the issue of clean and unclean foods as a topic dealt with in the Jerusalem conference, but in Galatians this issue does not come up until a later visit to Antioch by Peter. (Galatians 2:11)
2:4 Paul characterizes the opposition as “false brethren” who are trying to bring Paul and his followers “into bondage.” “Brethren” is commonly used to mean fellow Christians, so it is unlikely that Paul is here describing opposition from “the Jews.” His opponents, therefore, must have been Jewish Christians who believed that Gentile converts must follow Jewish practicies, at least with regard to circumcision and the food laws, which are the main points of contention described here and in Acts. The “bondage” that these false brethren try to inflict upon Paul’s faction most likely refers to the bondage of the Mosaic law. On numerous occasions in his letters Paul makes the point that Christians are no longer subject to the Mosaic law because of the freedom given to them by Jesus’s sacrifice. See for example, Romans 7:6, where Paul tells his fellow Christians that “now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.”
2:5 Expressing his fierce independence and refusal to compromise, Paul declares that he “did not yield submission even for a moment.”
2:6 It is clear that Paul is not impressed by those who were “reputed to be something.” Those men of repute, whom Paul later identifies as James, Peter, and John (v.9), were the brother and two disciples of Jesus himself. So Paul, by insisting on his own interpretation of Jesus’s death and resurrection, holds to a view of Christianity that is at odds with the apostolic tradition, rather than consistent with it. Peter himself had been appointed by Jesus to be the rock upon which the church would be built (Matthew 16:18), so Paul’s opposition to him indicates that he was either unfamiliar with this appointment or didn’t care.
2:11-12 After describing an apparent agreement in vv.9-10, Paul now reveals that the dispute continued when Peter (Cephas) came to Antioch. Paul shows no respect whatsoever for Peter, who, as we have seen, was appointed by Jesus to be the foundation of the church. When Peter came to Antioch, Paul “opposed him to his face.” Paul paints Peter as indecisive and lacking in courage, as he tips back and forth on the issue of eating with the Gentiles. It would appear from Paul’s description that James is the real leader of the Jerusalem church, as Peter defers to him on the question. This James is not James the son of Zebedee, who was one of Jesus’s original twelve disciples, but James “the Lord’s brother” mentioned in 1:19.
The general observation which must not be lost here is that even in the earliest days of the Christian movement, there was no consensus as to what it meant to be a Christian. Those who were most closely associated with Jesus – i.e., Peter, John and James – obviously thought of themselves as members of a Jewish movement, whose members were expected to continue following Jewish practices, as Jesus himself taught. (See Matthew 5:18; 8:4.) But Paul, whose view eventually won out, was a rebel, teaching a radical interpretation of Jesus’s resurrection and its relation to the law of Moses.
2:13 Paul seems to be losing support, as even his close colleague Barnabas is persuaded to join those who advocated circumcision for Gentile converts.
2:14 This is indeed a bold way of speaking to the disciple who was designated by Jesus as the rock of the church.
2:16 Here Paul directly challenges the notion that observing the law is the way to be justified before God. “A man is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.” The opposing point of view is found in the letter of James, where we read that “a man is justified by works and not by faith alone” (James 2:24), and that “faith without works is dead.” (James 2:20, KJV) Christian apologists have spent much effort trying to reconcile these two views, but with little success. See the discussion in Mike Davis, The Atheist’s Introduction to the New Testament (Outskirts Press, 2008), pp.97-99.
2:19-21 Here we have the theological argument by which Paul justifies his stance on the law. He has died with Christ’s crucifixion, and no longer lives. Instead, Christ lives in him. So the law no longer applies, because “if justification were through the law, then Christ died to no purpose.” In a different context, Paul declares that “the law is binding on a person only during his life.” (Romans 7:1) If a person’s own life ends when he dies with Jesus in the crucifixion, then there is no longer any requirement to obey the law.
3:1 Having built up his own reputation and authority in chapter 2, Paul now turns on the Galatians themselves, and berates them for falling away from what he has taught them.
“Bewitched” is not necessarily to be taken figuratively. Considering the superstitious nature of the times, Paul is very likely insinuating that the Galatians have fallen under the control of an evil spell.
3:6 Paul continues his argument of justification by faith, and not works, by appealing to Hebrew scripture. Abraham “believed in God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” This passage quoted from Genesis 15:6 comes before the requirement of circumcision is given to Abraham in Genesis 17:10. Thus, Paul argues, Abraham was counted as righteous before circumcision through his faith in God. Therefore, according to Paul, circumcision cannot be required for justification before God. However, once the circumcision requirement was instituted, it was declared by God to be an “everlasting” covenant (Genesis 17:13), so neither Paul nor anyone else has the right to abrogate it. Furthermore, the book of Genesis does not support Paul's reasoning that Abraham was rewarded for faith and not for obedience to God's law. Genesis 26:5 explicitly states that Abraham's descendants will prosper because Abraham obeyed God's commandments.
3:10 Those who rely on works of the law for justification are under a curse. This curse is not laid upon them by Paul himself, as in 1:8-9, but is taken from Deuteronomy 27:26, which says “Cursed is he who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them.” Paul then reasons that we are no longer subject to that curse because Christ has redeemed us from it through his crucifixion. Therefore, observance of the law is no longer required. However, some awkwardness arises when we look at the other curses in Deuteronomy 27. There we find curses not only upon those who fail to follow the law, but also upon those who murder their neighbor, or lie with beasts, or commit incest with their sister or mother-in-law, or mislead a blind man on the road. Did Jesus’s crucifixion relieve us of these curses as well? Are all these actions now permissible? Paul’s argument from scripture is typical. He has cherry-picked passages that support his point, while ignoring other passages that would lead him into absurdities.
3:13 The point in this verse is that Jesus has taken the curse of the law upon himself, thus redeeming us all from that curse. But the verse that Paul cites in support of his argument is a double-edged sword. “Cursed be every one who hangs on a tree,” is from Deuteronomy 21:23. But Jesus himself was hanged on a tree, as suggested here by Paul, and explicitly stated in Acts 10:39. One who is cursed is not in God’s favor, so arguing on this basis gets Paul into the awkward position of proving that Jesus has fallen out of favor with God.
3:16 Here Paul makes a point which seems to undermine his larger argument. God’s promise was made to Abraham and his “offspring” (RSV) or “seed” (KJV,NASB,NIV). He is quoting from the Septuagint translation of Genesis 22:17-18, where the Greek “sperma” is the word for “seed.” Paul makes the grammatical point that “seed” in this passage is singular and so must refer to one person, not many. The “seed” of Abraham to whom the promise was made is thus, according to Paul, Christ. But his argument up until this point is that the promise was made to Abraham’s collective posterity, including the Gentiles, that it was made before the circumcision requirement, and that therefore the promise of justification through faith is available to Gentile believers without requiring them to be circumcised. Arguing here in v.16 that the promise was extended only to Jesus Christ himself invalidates the previous argument. Note also that the passage from Genesis 22 which Paul quotes here comes after the circumcision requirement was handed down in Genesis 17:10.
3:17 Paul notes that the Mosaic law, which came over 400 years after the covenant to Abraham, cannot possibly supercede the covenant that was already made under which Abraham’s faith secured justification for himself and all his posterity. He neglects to mention that the circumcision requirement, which was the major issue in Paul’s dispute with the Jerusalem Christians, was not given as part of Mosaic law, but was itself a sign of the covenant between God and Abraham. Thus, Paul cannot use the fact that Mosaic law came 430 years later to dispense with the requirement that all males descended from Abraham be circumcised throughout all their generations. (Genesis 17:9)
3:19 Paul now turns to the question of why God instituted the Law at all, given that justification had already been secured by faith through Abraham. He says that the law “was added because of transgressions.” But how could there be any transgressions before there was a law to transgress? In fact, Paul contradicts this position elsewhere, by declaring that the Law itself is what brought about sin. “If it had not been for the law, I should not have known sin.” (Romans 7:7) “Through the Law comes knowledge of sin.” (Romans 3:20) Paul cannot have it both ways. He cannot argue that the Law was added because of transgressions (“sins” in Luther’s German translation), and then turn around and say that there was no sin until the Law came.
3:24 The Law was only a temporary custodian, an intermediate solution while waiting for Christ to arrive, when those chosen by God’s grace might be justified through faith.
3:25 The Law no longer applies. This is the radical contribution that Paul makes to the formulation of Christian theology. Christianity will not be a branch of Judaism which requires its followers to continue their observance of Mosaic law. Instead, Christian faith replaces the Law. “Now that faith has come, we are no longer under a custodian.”
4:1 Here Paul begins a new argument to convince the Galatians to return to the gospel he had taught them. As children they were no better than a slave, but in receiving the gospel of Christ they became free. Why would they want to return to slavery by rejecting the true gospel preached by Paul?
4:4 Paul reminds us that Jesus was born of a woman. But Jesus himself said that no one born of a woman is greater than John the Baptist. (Matthew 11:11) Therefore, Jesus himself was no greater than John the Baptist, and thus could not himself have been divine.
4:7 Paul continues the argument based on the freedom given by the gospel, telling the Galatians, “Through God you are no longer a slave but a son.” Apparently this freedom in Christ does not apply to all cases, because in 1 Corinthians 7:22 Paul says that “he who was free when called is a slave of Christ.” In the letter to the Ephesians, slaves are advised to obey their masters and to serve God as “slaves of Christ.” (Ephesians 6:6)
4:13 We do not know what the “bodily ailment” was that caused Paul to preach the gospel to the Galatians. Perhaps the illness caused him to stop in the area when he had originally planned to pass right through. In any case, Paul does not attribute his mission in Galatia to the influence of the Holy Spirit, but to a chance illness that just happened to strike him when he was in the area.
4:14-16 Paul contrasts his warm welcome and generous treatment by the Galatians with their ungrateful rejection of what he had taught them.
4:22-26 This allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament story of Hagar may be Paul’s response to the preaching of his rivals among the Galatians – i.e., the Jewish Christian preachers who taught a more exclusive version of Christianity whereby Gentiles must become Jews in order to be accepted into the Christian community. Paul argues that these rival preachers “appealed to Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah but drew the wrong lesson. Hagar, the slave woman, does not represent the descendants of the Gentiles, but the present, earthly Jerusalem and the enslaving covenant of the Law given on Mt. Sinai; Sarah, the free woman, represents the heavenly Jerusalem and the covenant of God’s promise to Abraham – she is the mother of all who have been made free in Christ.” (Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, pp.472-473.) As is often the case with allegorical argument, some of the correspondences are arbitrary, in addition to which Paul, while appealing to Genesis, sets forth details which do not appear anywhere in the Genesis account. “Paul states boldly that the two women are ‘two covenants’ (v.24) even though Gen 17:21 refers to only one covenant. . . . Paul focuses on Hagar, who is said to come from Mount Sinai, a detail not mentioned in Genesis.” (The Oxford Bible Commentary, p.1162.) Paul needs to connect Hagar with Mt. Sinai in order to have her represent the Law which was given upon Sinai, but Genesis simply refers to her as “Hagar the Egyptian.” (Genesis 16:3; 21:9; 25:12)
4:27 This quotation from Isaiah 54:1 is meant to support Paul’s interpretation of the Hagar story. But it is not consistent with his point, because it was Sarah who had the husband, not Hagar. Thus, the Isaiah passage offers encouragement to the desolate woman (Hagar, whom Abraham sent away in Genesis 21:14) who will have “more children than she who has a husband,” (i.e., Sarah).
5:1 Having made his arguments as to why his version of the gospel is the true one, Paul now exhorts the Galatians to stand fast in the true faith – i.e., the one that Paul has taught them.
5:2-4 Paul now warns his readers that if they become circumcised, “Christ will be of no advantage to you.” Circumcision is thus not merely a matter of indifference. Receiving circumcision obligates a man to “keep the whole law,” which most cannot do. And worse, “You are severed from Christ.” This warning presupposes a primarily, if not exclusively, Gentile audience, as Jewish converts would already be circumcised. In 1 Corinthians 7:18 Paul advises that all those called to Christianity should remain in the state from which they were called. Those who are already circumcised should remain so, while those who are uncircumcised should not undergo the procedure. 1 Corinthians 7:19, and even Galatians 6:15, seem to make the issue a matter of indifference, but the warning here in Galatians 5:2-4 indicates that much more is at stake.
5:12 “I wish that those who unsettle you would mutilate themselves!” Paul is so vehement in his opposition to the circumcision faction that he wishes the knife would slip and cut off their genitals when they are doing the operation. “This is what Paul said and meant. The KJV gives a very different meaning, but is incorrect.” (The Interpreter’s Bible, vol.10, p.554.) In his letter to the Philippians, Paul refers to the circumcisers as “dogs,” “evil-workers,” who “mutilate the flesh.” (Philippians 3:2)
5:14 Paul collapses the whole law into one commandment: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Although this commandment does appear in the Old Testament (Leviticus 19:18), there is no scriptural basis for substituting it in place of the rest of the commandments. According to Jesus, the entire law can only be condensed to two commandments (Matthew 22:37-40), so he and Paul do not agree on this matter of condensing the entire Jewish law into a single maxim.
5:16-17 The evil nature of the flesh is a recurring theme in Paul’s theology. He seems to leave no room for compromise here, or for any accommodation to the demands of ordinary daily life. He commands his readers, “Do not gratify the desires of the flesh.” These desires are “against the Spirit.” Such a position might be understandable in the context of an immediate arrival of the kingdom of God. Paul clearly believed that Jesus would return in the very near future, and thus had no reason to consider the long-term consequences of his instructions, which, if followed, would have resulted in a rapid decline of the Christian population. In 1 Corinthians 7:29 he warns that “the appointed time has grown very short,” and advises even the married brethren to live as though they were celibate.
5:19 Here we have a list of the works of the flesh, which include, among others, “drunkenness” and “carousing.” Paul strongly implies that Christians do not do these things – they are only the actions of those who adhere to the flesh, and oppose the Spirit. He does not seem to consider that a person might become a Christian, and still adhere to these works of the flesh. But the outlook is not encouraging for those who lapse back into the ways of the world after having received the Spirit. For those backsliders, their fate will be worse than before (2 Peter 2:20-21. See also Hebrews 10:26-27.)
5:24 True Christians have “crucified” their flesh and thus should no longer be tempted by “its passions and desires.” Paul’s position is that even though Christians are no longer under the law, their rejection of the flesh and acceptance of the Spirit will guide them to behave morally without requiring any type of strict legal code. We know, of course, that this view is overly optimistic.
6:2 Here the Christians are exhorted to “bear one another’s burdens.” But in v.5 we find that “each man will have to bear his own load.”
6:6 We might wonder whether “him who teaches” is meant to refer to Paul himself in his relations with the Galatians, or whether he is simply stating a general principle. Elsewhere, Paul goes out of his way to emphasize that he supported himself during his missionary travels, so as not to be a burden to his hosts. E.g., 1 Thessalonians 2:9.
6:11 Paul closes the letter with some words written by his own hand, indicating that the main portion of the letter has been written by a scribe taking dictation from Paul.
6:13 Paul takes a parting shot at his opponents, telling the Galatians that those who want them to be circumcised do not themselves keep the law, and thus are hypocrites.
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