Paul's letter to the Galatians is the Emancipation Proclamation for all Christians. You will remember that President Lincoln signed a document that declared that all slaves within the Union were free. Unfortunately, the slave owners were not so willing to deliver this document to their captives, and many of the slaves remained in slavery for years. In the letter to the Galatians, Paul declares to all believers that we are sons (and daughters) of God, and therefore that we have been set free from the shackles of the Law which bound us for so long.

The revolutionary nature of this letter just cannot be overstated. When Paul wrote this letter to a small group of Gentile believers in the region of Galatia, none of the New Testament had yet been written. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John had not been circulated because they had not yet been written. No one had read or even heard of Romans, Philippians, Ephesians, 1 John, or Acts. Until this time the Christian faith had been primarily contained within Jewish social circles, and everyone knew that Jesus ministered, died, and rose again in Jerusalem and Judea. The first 15 years of the Church had seen thousands of new believers added to the faith, but almost every one of them was either Jewish or else had converted to Judaism. The apostles had not yet realized just how much their gospel was for the whole world, and when they preached to the Gentiles they did it cautiously and sparingly, remembering Jesus' words: "It was to the lost sheep of Israel that I have come"(Matt.15:24).

But when Paul set out from Antioch in Syria, he went deliberately to the Gentiles to preach the good news of salvation in Christ. Whenever he entered a new town, he would go first to the one place where a decorated Pharisee like himself could always receive a hearing: the synagogue. Time after time, however, one or two messages sufficed to get him kicked out of those places forever, so he went next to the people he had come for in the first place: the Gentiles. He did not preach the gospel as a footnote to Judaism and the Law of Moses. He gave no special attention to the temple which was in Jerusalem. He simply presented Christ crucified and risen for the forgiveness of the sins of everyone who believes. He taught them that they were now "in Christ," so that all the riches of grace that are in Him were now theirs. He told them that they had received the Holy Spirit into their hearts, and that their life was now lived in dependence on Him inside of them. Paul left each of the four churches in Galatia with this gospel after just a few months in each place, passing through each town only once more a few months later, and even then staying for only a few days. He went back to Antioch in Syria, leaving these four fledgling churches to the grace and mercy of God.

But a storm was brewing in Jerusalem over the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles. Some men from Jerusalem went down to Antioch and told the believers there (many of whom were Gentiles) that they must be circumcised in order to be Christians. While the controversy swirled around this one issue, there was quite a bit more at stake than just circumcision. The ultimate matter in question was this: "What is the Christian's relationship to the Law of Moses?" The Jews had debated among themselves for months over this, but Paul was quick with his response: "Any man who is in Christ is a totally new creation. He died with Christ on the cross, and was set free from all law, forever!" Perhaps it was at this time that Paul had his confrontation with Peter which turned the tide for freedom in Christ. Peter had given in to pressure from these men from Jerusalem (who they were is a mystery) and sat down with them at a meal, far from where the Gentiles were sitting. Paul boldly rebuked Peter "to his face" in the plain sight of the entire church in Antioch. What he told Peter was revolutionary, and he will repeat it in this letter that we are about to read. Perhaps it was this confrontation which provoked Paul to go to Jerusalem personally to settle the whole issue of circumcision and the believer's relationship to the Law.

We do not know for sure whether Paul wrote the letter to the Galatians before or after this historic meeting in Jerusalem. But the story told in the second chapter greatly resembles that meeting, and the chronology that Paul narrates in the first chapter puts this story at the same time as that meeting in Jerusalem (recorded in the fifteenth chapter of Acts). The position which Paul takes at this meeting is radical and liberating for every Gentile that has ever been born, including ourselves today. Paul went home to Antioch with a letter from the apostles stating that Gentiles were not obligated to be circumcised.

The victory was short-lived, however, because news soon reached him that men had gone to Galatia to teach the naive believers there that they were under every obligation to follow the Mosaic Law. Certain unnamed men who claimed to be important ministers of the gospel told these four churches that Paul was a second-rate teacher who had no authorization (from Jerusalem) to minister and who had not had the nerve to teach them "the whole gospel." He was supposed to teach them to follow the Law of Moses, but was obviously afraid that this would be unpopular among these oppressed Galatians (most of whom were slaves in the service of wealthier men). These men claimed that, back in Antioch of Syria, Paul rightly taught the necessity of circumcision for true Christian obedience, but that teaching such a practice might have lost the favor of the Galatian people.

When Paul heard this he enlisted a friend to write down his words and he began to dictate what would become the most widely circulated letter that the early Church would ever read. What Paul says in this letter would open the door to our freedom in Christ. The theme of this letter is the freedom which comes from being born of God by the Holy Spirit. What Paul puts forth in a piecemeal fashion in this letter he will later expand into a panoramic picture of the faith in the book of Romans. But in both letters everything hinges on the fact that we are so one with Christ that when he died, we died. When he was raised, we were raised. Paul will spend a whole chapter (Romans Seven) expounding upon and illustrating the fact that believers have died to the Law once for all.

Without a doubt we living in America in the twentieth (and the twenty-first) century need to hear Paul's words as much as they did. The Galatians are not the only ones who have been wrongly put under law by well-meaning (?) teachers. Over the years piles of rules and regulations have accumulated and now we bear the heavy burden of those traditions. We need to rediscover our freedom in Christ just as much as they did so long ago.

As you read the first two chapters of Galatians (which we will review in the next section of this study) keep in mind that Paul was writing to believers. This church was two or three years old and Paul himself had preached the gospel of grace to them. They were not merely in danger of believing in a salvation by works, because Paul had clearly preached a gospel of grace to them. While some were even questioning this, the next problem at stake here was their total spiritual stagnation under the burden of at least 613 laws found in the Torah. These young believers had been told that, if they were ever going to be the kind of Christian that God wanted them to be, they would have to begin living by the Law. It would be hard, yes, and it would take a lot of discipline and study to get it all right, but it would please God for them to learn to delight in His Law. Sound familiar? Read the first two chapters of this exciting letter and hear how Paul addresses this issue. But be careful-- it just might change your life!