Theopedia

Epistle to the Galatians

“…a man is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.”

— Galatians 2:16

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Overview

The Epistle to the Galatians is a letter of the apostle Paul to a group of churches he had founded in the Roman province of Galatia, in central Asia Minor.1 Written to Gentile converts being pressed to add circumcision and law-keeping to faith in Christ, it defends the gospel of justification by faith alone, arguing the case both from Paul’s own apostolic commission and from the Old Testament itself.2

Author and Date

The letter names Paul as its author (Gal. 1:1) and its opening chapters recount his own conversion, calling, and early ministry in autobiographical detail (Gal. 1:11-2:14), a claim scholarship has not seriously disputed.2 Its date, by contrast, turns on which of Paul’s recorded visits to Galatia (Acts 16:6; 18:23) the letter presupposes, and commentators differ. Reading Galatians 4:13 as implying two prior visits, Elijah Porter Barrows places the letter after Paul’s second missionary journey, about AD 56 or 57.2 Michael J. Kruger instead dates it to about AD 48, among the earliest of the New Testament writings, on the view that its Galatia is the southern province Paul evangelized on his first missionary journey (Acts 13-14).3 On this earlier reckoning Galatians is Paul’s earliest surviving letter, written before the Jerusalem council of Acts 15; on Barrows’ reckoning it follows Paul’s second missionary journey and 1 Thessalonians, which he identifies instead as Paul’s earliest epistle.4 The letter’s own text does not settle the question, and both datings remain represented among conservative interpreters.

Historical and Literary Context

Paul had preached the gospel to the Galatians “at the first” with such effect that they received him “as an angel of God,” professing simple faith in Christ apart from the law.1 After his departure, Judaizing teachers moved in, insisting that Gentile believers be circumcised and keep the Mosaic law to be saved, the same demand Acts 15:1 records elsewhere in the early church.2 The Judaizers demanded specifically the keeping of the Mosaic law, and the law of circumcision in particular, by Gentile converts (Acts 15; Gal. 5:3; 6:13).5 They also disparaged Paul’s own standing, arguing he was not one of the original Twelve and had received his gospel secondhand, so that defending his apostolic authority became inseparable from defending the gospel he preached.2 Under this pressure the Galatian churches, which “had begun well” (Gal. 5:7), were being drawn from grace toward “a different gospel” (Gal. 1:6), and Paul writes to reclaim them, mixing severity toward the error with tenderness toward the people who had embraced it.2

Structure

The letter falls into three parts.2

  • Chapters 1-2: Paul’s apostolic authority and gospel. Paul recounts his conversion and calling to show that his gospel came to him “not from man” but “through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1:12), and that the Jerusalem apostles recognized it as such (Gal. 2:1-10), including his public rebuke of Peter at Antioch for compromising it in practice (Gal. 2:11-14).
  • Chapters 3-4: justification by faith argued from Scripture. Paul argues that the Galatians received the Spirit by faith, not by the works of the law (Gal. 3:1-5); that Abraham himself was justified by faith (Gal. 3:6-9); that the law brings only condemnation, not justification (Gal. 3:10-12); and that believers are, through Christ, heirs of the Abrahamic promise rather than slaves under the law.6
  • Chapters 5-6: freedom and life by the Spirit. Paul turns to exhortation, urging the Galatians to use their Christian liberty rightly, to walk by the Spirit rather than gratify the flesh, and to bear one another’s burdens, closing with his resolve to glory only in the cross of Christ (Gal. 5:13-6:18).7

Major Themes

Justification by faith alone, apart from works of the law

Galatians states the doctrine plainly: “a man is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ” (Gal. 2:16). John Gill reads this as teaching the same truth he draws from Paul’s parallel statement in Romans, that a man is justified by faith “without the works of the law.”8 A right standing before God cannot rest on the sinner’s own obedience to the law, since the law demands a perfection no fallen sinner can render and admits nothing short of it.8

Christian liberty against a false gospel

Having secured justification by faith, Paul presses the Galatians not to surrender it: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal. 5:1). John Calvin reads the whole epistle as turning on more than a dispute over ceremonies: the false teachers were instilling “the most pernicious opinion, that this obedience was sufficient to merit the grace of God,” so that Paul’s real subject is the believer’s freedom from seeking justification by any works at all, ceremonial or otherwise.9

The fruit of the Spirit versus the works of the flesh

Paul sets two ways of life against each other: “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other” (Gal. 5:16-17), before naming the visible fruit of each (Gal. 5:19-23). Charles Hodge takes this passage as describing the ordinary condition of the believer: the Spirit dwells in every Christian as in a temple and there exercises a “life-giving, controlling power,” while the flesh is not merely sensuous appetite but fallen nature acting apart from the Spirit, locked with it in a conflict from which the believer, having crucified the flesh with its passions, does not disengage but continues to struggle against it.10

Union with Christ: crucified and alive in him

Paul describes his own new life as inseparable from Christ’s: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). Thomas Goodwin reads this alongside Paul’s account of his death to the law in Romans 7, as one and the same conversion: the death Paul died was to his former confidence in his own obedience, and the life he now lives, he lives “by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”11

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Elijah Porter Barrows, Companion to the Bible (New York: American Tract Society, 1867), 458. ↩ ↩2

  2. Barrows, Companion to the Bible, 459. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  3. Michael J. Kruger, The Question of Canon: Challenging the Status Quo in the New Testament Debate (Nottingham: Apollos, 2013), chap. 3, “The Writing of Canon,” 79. ↩

  4. Barrows, Companion to the Bible, 472. ↩

  5. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 14, “The Only Begotten Son of the Father.” ↩

  6. Barrows, Companion to the Bible, 460. ↩

  7. Barrows, Companion to the Bible, 461. ↩

  8. John Gill, A Body of Doctrinal Divinity; or, A System of Evangelical Truths, Deduced from the Sacred Scriptures, 2 vols. (London: Printed for the Author, and Sold by George Keith, 1769), book VI, chap. 8, “Of Justification”: “And to the same purpose are the words of the apostle, in Galatians 2:16. The reasons why a man’s own righteousness cannot be the matter of his justification before God, are… it is imperfect, and the law will not admit of an imperfect righteousness for justification; it requires perfect, sinless obedience.” ↩ ↩2

  9. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845-1846), book 3, chap. 19, sec. 3. ↩

  10. Charles Hodge, “Chapter XVIII. Sanctification,” in Systematic Theology, Volume III (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), 222-223. ↩

  11. Thomas Goodwin, The Work of the Holy Ghost in Our Salvation, in The Works of Thomas Goodwin, vol. 6 (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1863), 380. ↩