The Apostle Paul, deeply concerned with those who had become believers during his missionary journeys throughout the province of Rome called Galatia and who had subsequently been led astray by certain Judaizers, submitted this stern and impassioned letter that in many ways paralleled his letter to the believers in Rome, which outlined clearly and dramatically that a person may only be saved (“born again,” “born from above” or “spiritually born”) and subsequently sanctified (spiritual growth) by faith alone in Christ alone.

This epistle is a “declaration of emancipation” from legalism of any type.  It is interesting to note that legalists do not spend much time with Galatians.  It is a rebuke to them.  This was Martin Luther’s favorite epistle.  He said, “This is ‘my’ epistle.  I am wedded to it.”  It was on the masthead of the Reformation.  It has been called the Magna Carta of the early church.  It is the manifesto of Christian liberty, the impregnable citadel, and a veritable Gibraltar against any attack on the heart of the gospel.  As someone put it, “Immortal victory is set upon its brow.”

This is the epistle that moved John Wesley. . . John Wesley went out to begin a revival—preaching from this Epistle to the Galatians—that saved England from revolution and brought multitudes to a saving knowledge of Christ. . . .

Galatians is the strongest declaration and defense of the doctrine of “justification by faith” in or out of Scripture.  It is God’s polemic on behalf of the most vital truth of the Christian faith against any attack.  Not only is a sinner saved by grace through faith plus nothing, but the saved sinner lives by grace.  Grace is a way “to” life and a way “of” life.  These two go together, by the way.

(Thru the Bible commentary by J. Vernon McGee)

The Pauline authorship of this letter has never been seriously questioned.  Both external evidence (Polycarp, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Origen, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria all attribute it to him) and internal evidence (personal reference 1:1 and 5:2, as well as the remark near the end in 6:11) attest to this.  Although there is disagreement as to the date of its writing, this letter was probably penned around A.D. 48, before Paul attended the Jerusalem Council where the issue of circumcision for Gentile Christians was decided.

Location

Many English-speaking and French people are of Celtic origin—that is, Scottish, Irish, Welsh or Breton.  Their ancestors came from a place called “Galatia,” which was an area in Asia Minor, now known as Turkey.  “Galatia,” “Celt,” and “Gaul” are all related words.  Around 278 B.C. a large number of Gauls left their home in southern Europe and settled in northern Asia Minor and their state eventually became known as Galatia.  Around 25 B.C. their territory became a Roman province.  Geographically the term “Galatia” was used for the north and politically it was used for the south—the Roman province of Galatia.

Northern Galatia was primarily pastoral with few developments and roads.  Southern Galatia was well developed with flourishing cities and a road system. It was southern Galatia’s highway along which Asiatic monarchs kept up their communication with the western coast of Asia Minor.  It was the primary highway between Syrian Antioch and Ephesus, on which Greek civilization flowed eastward.  Numerous Jewish and Greek colonies were established along this route.

Many notable Biblical scholars now agree that Paul traveled in southern Galatia during his first missionary journey during which he visited Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe (Acts 13:1-14:28).  It is believed that Paul went through northern Galatia on his second missionary journey (Acts 15:36-18:22) after passing through southern Galatia.  On his third missionary journey Paul visited the disciples in northern Galatia that had been converted on his second journey (Acts 18:23).  It is noteworthy that in the book of Acts Luke uses the word disciples rather than the word churches in connection with this visit.  The implication is that the Galatian churches were in southern Galatia and that there were only scattered disciples in northern Galatia.

Dr. Henry Clarence Thiessen, B.D., Ph.D., D.D., who was chairman of the Department of Bible, Theology and Philosophy at Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois, an authoritative evangelical scholar and author of Introduction to the New Testament, presents compelling data that indicates that Paul wrote this letter to the Galatian churches in southern Galatia.

Addressees

The churches of southern Galatia were established not by providential circumstance, i.e., by refugees during their flight from persecution resulting from their faith (Acts 8:1-4), but by the deliberate and organized practice of Paul during his purposeful missionary journeys along the principal roads of the Roman Empire.  They were the result of a purely missionary enterprise.

The religion of the Gentiles in the South Galatian cities was more oriental than Greek.  Its degraded type of sensuous worship could hardly satisfy the conscience even of a heathen community to which the influence of western civilization had come.  Greek philosophy and Roman morality created a nobler idea of human duty and divine government than could be reconciled with the popular religion.  Thus all the better feelings of educated men and women were stirred to revolt against the degraded superstition of the masses.

Into this conflict of religious ideas, the Jewish synagogue entered.  The Gentiles flocked to its higher and nobler conceptions.  However, while they gave adherence to the exalted ethics of the synagogue, yet they would have nothing to do with the sacrificial system which centered in the Jerusalem Temple.  To Paul’s preaching, they gave a cordial welcome.

In the synagogue at Antioch (Acts 13:14-43), the Jews heard the impotence of the law for salvation announced, and the Gentiles heard the offer of a salvation procured at the Cross and given in answer to faith in Christ alone.  From that hour, both Jew and Gentile recognized in Paul the foremost champion of the Gentiles, and the most formidable adversary of Judaism, which latter had been set aside by God at the Cross, but which, under an apostate priesthood, was still being nominally observed.

Before this first missionary journey, the Christian churches had been predominately Jewish.  The teachers were Jewish with an Old Testament background.  While interpreting the Old Testament in a new light, they yet fixed their hopes on the future kingdom of a national Messiah.  But now, the newly formed churches were predominately Gentile, and the Gentiles recognized the Lord Jesus, not as a world-Savior.  Thus, the Galatian Christians were not for the most part, the fickle-minded Gauls of North Galatia, but Greeks and Jews of flourishing cities situated on the highways of commerce and government.

(Galatians in the Greek New Testament for the English Reader by Kenneth S. Wuest, Professor of New Testament Greek, The Moody Bible Institute of Chicago, Illinois)

Judaizers

Judaizers represent that element within the Church (Body of Christ) from then until now who refuse to accept that salvation and sanctification of man is based solely on the love and grace of God by faith alone in Christ alone.  They do this by insisting that self-effort must be a part of any effort to achieve the approbation (approval) of God and any pathway to eternal and/or temporal spiritual life.  A Judaizer simply cannot believe that salvation is strictly a matter of God reaching down to man in grace with the free-gift of salvation by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, on the cross of Calvary.  To the Judaizer man must participate and help God in the “salvation plan,” thereby denying the sufficiency of Jesus Christ and His efficacious work at Calvary.  Specifically in the case before the Galatians there were Judaizers who insisted that non-Jewish believers must adhere to Jewish law and tradition, particularly the Law of Moses with emphasis on circumcision, in order to be fully justified before God.

The root of the Judaizer teaching is found in Genesis 3:7 whereby man in his feeble and inadequate self-effort attempted to cover his shame and nakedness with plant material, only to discover that his fallen state could only be covered by God’s effort of providing him a covering which employed the shedding of innocent blood (Genesis 3:21) and which portended the future sacrifice of the Son of God on Calvary’s cross.  The Judaizer model is even better illustrated by the historical and factual account of Cain and Abel, sons of Adam and Eve, in Genesis 4.

Kenneth S. Wuest, Teacher Emeritus of New Testament Greek of The Moody Bible Institute, Chicago, Illinois, in his exposition entitled Galatians in the Greek New Testament for the English Reader accurately exposed the Judaizer tendency as it relates to Cain and Able—the expose follows.

Adam had instructed his sons, Cain and Abel, as to the proper approach of a sinner to a holy God, namely, by means of a blood sacrifice which pointed to and symbolized the actual sacrifice for sin which God would some day set forth, even the Lord Jesus.  However, the offering of such a blood sacrifice in itself would not result in the salvation of the offerer.  That offering was to be only an outward visible manifestation of an inward fact, namely, the act of that offerer in placing his faith in the coming virgin-born child who would crush the head of the serpent, Satan.  Without that act of faith, the offering of the sacrifice would be a mere form, and a mockery in the eyes of God.

Cain’s reaction to this instruction was that he rejected the teaching of salvation through faith in a substitutionary sacrifice, and substituted for it his own personal merit and good works.  Abel followed the instructions of his father, his faith leaped the centuries to the Cross, and he was declared righteous.  Since the time of these two men, these two diametrically opposed tendencies are seen in the human race.  We see them in the history of Israel.  There always was the remnant in Israel, a little group which offered the symbolic sacrifices as an indication of a real living faith in the future substitutionary sacrifice, and there was always the larger group, which, while it went through the ritual of the Levitical sacrifices, yet exercised no heart faith to appropriate a salvation offered in grace on the basis of justice satisfied by the atonement, but depended upon personal merit and good works for salvation. . . .

From this latter group came two attacks against New Testament truth, inspired by Satan, two attempts of the Adversary to destroy the newly-formed Christian Church.  One of these was the attempt to substitute good works for faith in Christ.  This was met by the letter to the Galatians.  The other was the attempt to invalidate the atoning worth of the Cross by urging the Jewish wing of the Church to return to the Levitical ritual of the Temple.  This was met by the Book of Hebrews.  The first was aimed at the Gentile wing of the Church, the second, at the Jewish group in the Church.  The Judaizers were members of this unsaved group in Israel, seeking to maintain a corrupt form of the Jewish national religion as against the Christian Church which had been formed at Pentecost.

The Judaizers mutilated the message of the gospel by substituting works for grace.  They emphasized certain human attainments and merits, such as circumcision and being a member of the nation Israel, in addition to keeping the Mosaic Law and the achievement of ecclesiastical positions within the religious system.  Judaizers were a constant problem during the days of the early Church, as seen not only within the book of Galatians, but also in Acts 15:1, Romans 2:17-3:8; 9:30-10:3; Philippians 3:2-6; and various others passages within the New Testament.  They constantly endeavored to destroy the work of the Apostle Paul, because he was the chief exponent of grace and he was the “Apostle to the Gentiles.”  They attempted to nullify Paul (1) by depreciating his apostolic position, by setting up the Twelve Apostles as the “real interpreters” of Christ in order to discredit Paul’s authority as a teacher of grace; and (2) by substituting a salvation-by-works system for the doctrine of pure grace by faith alone in Christ alone—which was what Paul preached.

Outline

This letter to the Galatians may roughly be divided into three sections.  First, there are the personal comments from Paul in chapters 1 and 2.  Second, there is the doctrinal portion in chapters 3 and 4.  Finally, there are the practical applications found in chapters 5 and 6.  A proper understanding of this letter from the hand of Paul will solidify a believer’s understanding of God’s one and only plan of salvation (including sanctification) for all mankind, which is totally of grace by faith alone in Christ alone.