Galatians

Philip Graham Ryken

• Publisher: P Publishing
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781596384552
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

Philip Graham Ryken interprets Galatians in line with Reformation teaching on this epistle, especially with respect to the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

1

Dear Recovering Pharisee

Galatians 1:1–5

Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead—and all the brothers who are with me, To the churches of Galatia. (Gal. 1:1–2)

Galatians is a letter for recovering Pharisees. The Pharisees who lived during and after the time of Christ were very religious. They were regular in their worship, orthodox in their theology, and moral in their conduct. Yet something was missing. Although God was in their minds and in their actions, he was not in their hearts. Therefore, their religion was little more than hypocrisy.

The Pharisees were hypocrites because they thought that what God would do for them depended on what they did for God. So they read their Bibles, prayed, tithed, and kept the Sabbath as if their salvation depended on it. What they failed to understand is that God’s grace cannot be earned; it only comes free.¹

There is a way out of Pharisaism. The way out is called the gospel. It is the good news that Jesus Christ has already done everything necessary for our salvation. If we trust in him, he will make us right with God by giving us the free gift of his grace. When we reject our own righteousness to receive the righteousness of Jesus Christ, we become former Pharisees.

Most former Pharisees have a problem, however. It is hard for them to leave their legalism behind. Although initially they received God’s grace for free, they keep trying to put a surcharge on it. They believe that God loves them, but secretly they suspect that his love is conditional, that it depends on how they are doing in the Christian life. They end up with a performance-based Christianity that denies the grace of God. To put this in theological terms, they want to base their justification on their sanctification.

This means that most former Pharisees—indeed, most Christians—are still in recovery. There is still something of the old legalist in us. Although we have been saved by grace, we do not always know how to live by grace. The gospel is something we received some time in the past, but not something we live and breathe. Galatians was written for people like us.

Freedom Letter

Paul’s epistle to the Galatians has been called the Magna Carta of Christian liberty. Its theme verse is a declaration of independence: “We know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ” (Gal. 2:16). Whenever the church has understood this gospel message, Galatians has brought life and freedom to recovering Pharisees.

This was true in the life of Martin Luther (1483–1546), the father of the Reformation. Luther had tried everything he knew to be a good Christian. He wrote, “I was a good monk and kept my order so strictly that I could claim that if ever a monk were able to reach heaven by monkish discipline I should have found my way there. All my fellows in the house, who knew me, would bear me out in this. For if it had continued much longer I would, what with vigils, prayers, readings and other such works, have done myself to death.”² Yet as hard as Luther worked, his conscience was still troubled by the thought that he was not good enough for God. He didn’t understand the gospel of grace. His breakthrough came when he discovered that Christianity was not about what he had to do for God; it was about what God had done for him in Jesus Christ.

The free grace of God in Christ, received by faith, was the great theme of Luther’s famous lectures on Galatians, which he began by saying: “I do not seek [my own] active righteousness. I ought to have and perform it; but I declare that even if I did have it and perform it, I cannot trust in it or stand up before the judgment of God on the basis of it. Thus I . . . embrace only . . . the righteousness of Christ . . . which we do not perform but receive, which we do not have but accept, when God the Father grants it to us through Jesus Christ.”³

Through Martin Luther, the book of Galatians taught the same lesson to the great Puritan preacher John Bunyan (1628–1688). In his spiritual autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, Bunyan describes how a battered old copy of Luther’s commentary came into his possession. He was surprised how old the book was, but he was even more surprised when he read it. He wrote, “I found my condition in his experience, so largely and profoundly handled, as if his book had been written out of my heart . . . I do prefer this book of Mr. Luther upon the Galatians, (excepting the Holy Bible) before all the books that ever I have seen.”⁴

Why does this epistle have such a liberating influence? Because the church is always full of recovering Pharisees who need to receive the gospel again, as if for the very first time.

Who Was Paul?

The letter opens with more argumentation than salutation: “Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead” (Gal. 1:1). The author’s name comes first, as was customary in ancient letters, and then his name is followed immediately by his credentials. Paul identifies himself as an apostle sent by God rather than men. Two things are obvious from this return address. One is that Paul was upset. In the Greek original, his words are terse: “Paul, apostle, not.” It is equally obvious that the reason Paul was upset was that enemies were trying to undermine his authority.

In the ancient world, an apostle was an official messenger, like an emissary or ambassador. The messenger had the authority to represent his superior, something like an agent who holds the power of attorney. In the New Testament, the term “apostle” has a more specific meaning. It denotes the official spokesmen for Jesus Christ, especially his original twelve disciples. These men were chosen, called, and commissioned by Christ himself to teach on his behalf (Luke 6:13–16; Mark 3:14–19).

Apparently, some critics were quick to point out that Paul was not one of the original twelve disciples. He was a latecomer, they claimed, who had not been commissioned directly by Christ himself. Therefore, he was only a second-rate apostle—his gospel was just hearsay.

If this is what people were saying about Paul, it is easy to see why he dispensed with the customary pleasantries and started his letter by defending his credentials. He was not merely being defensive. He understood that his opponents were making a personal attack in order to advance a theological error. They were devaluing Paul to disparage his gospel. If they could show that he was an impostor rather than an apostle, they could discredit his message of grace.

What was at stake, therefore, was not simply Paul’s reputation, but our salvation. The great New Testament scholar J. B. Lightfoot (1828–1889) began his commentary on Galatians by saying,“The two threads which run through this epistle—the defence of the Apostle’s own authority, and the maintenance of the doctrine of grace—are knotted together in the opening salutation.”⁵ Paul was not defending himself as much as he was defending the independence of his apostleship in order to defend the gospel. When it came to the good news about salvation by grace through faith, he refused to budge so much as a single micron.

The truth is that Paul was not sent from men. His apostolic commission did not come, for example, from the church at Antioch. Nor was he sent by a man, as if his call had come through someone like Barnabas or Peter. No, Paul was an apostle by the will of God. God had set him apart from birth, called him by grace, and revealed his Son to him (see Gal. 1:15–16). Thus his commission was neither originated nor mediated by mere human beings.

Paul’s opponents said that his gospel was not God’s word to man, but a man’s word about God. Skeptics make the same argument today. They accuse Paul of Tarsus of inventing Christianity. They say that Jesus of Nazareth was a teacher of love and a model of sacrifice, but then Paul came along with all his complicated Greek concepts and turned Christ into Christianity.

At the beginning of his letter to the Galatians, which was one of his earliest letters, Paul explains where his Christianity came from. It came straight from the mouth of Christ. Paul was “an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1:1). His authority was not human, but divine. Therefore, Paul’s message is God’s own message about salvation from sin. Anyone who sets aside his apostolic teaching sets aside the gospel truth of Jesus Christ.

Who Were the Galatians?

Paul addressed his pastoral letter “to the churches of Galatia” (Gal. 1:2). This apparently simple phrase has generated a good deal of scholarly discussion. Who were the Galatians?

The old theory was that the Galatians were the Celts and the Gauls (literally, the “Gaulatians”) who lived in northern Asia Minor. Luke reports that Paul and his companions “went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia” (Acts 16:6; cf. 18:23). Perhaps both Luke and Paul (see Gal. 3:1) were referring to the ethnic Galatians who lived in the north.

The main problem with this view is that none of the churches in northern Asia Minor are mentioned anywhere else in the New Testament. This would be surprising if those churches were the scene of a major theological conflict and the recipients of one of Paul’s most important letters.

The newer theory is that Paul was writing to churches in southern Asia Minor. Ethnically speaking, the people who lived there were not Galatian. However, the Romans had turned Asia Minor into one large province, and they had been calling it “Galatia” since before the time of Christ. Paul, who was a Roman citizen, may well have been using a proper provincial title to refer to Christians who were not necessarily Galatian by birth. Indeed,“Galatians” may have been the only suitable term that included all the people in all these churches.

To give a modern example, consider the way the Russians incorporated Georgians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, and other ethnic groups into the former Soviet Union. Although these groups retained their ethnic identities, they were sometimes referred to as “Russians.”

One good reason for thinking that Paul was writing this circular letter to churches in the south is that he had planted churches there himself. The main cities in the southern part of the province of Galatia were Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe—the very cities Paul visited on his first missionary journey.

Furthermore, Paul’s recollection of the way the Galatians responded to the gospel (Gal. 4:12–15) corresponds to Luke’s description of those cities in his history of the early church (Acts 13:1–14:28). The way Luke summarizes Paul’s preaching to these churches is especially striking: “Therefore, my brothers, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. Through him everyone who believes is justified from everything you could not be justified from by the law of Moses” (Acts 13:38–39 NIV). As we shall see, justification by faith in Jesus Christ, apart from the law, is exactly the message Paul wanted to urge the Galatians not to forget.

Whether the Galatians who received this correspondence lived in the north or the south, which is more likely, there is little doubt as to why Paul was writing to them. One of the best summaries of his message comes from the first Latin commentary written on the letter, by the theologian Marius Victorinus (d. c. 303): “the Galatians are going astray because they are adding Judaism to the gospel of faith in Christ. . . . Disturbed by these tendencies Paul writes this letter . . . in order that they may preserve faith in Christ alone.”⁶

Religious traditionalists, probably from Jerusalem, were trying to teach the Galatians a new gospel. These men dogged Paul’s footsteps all over Asia Minor. Often they are called the “Judaizers” because they wanted to require Gentiles to follow Jewish customs. They taught that a Gentile had to become a Jew before he could become a Christian. In short, their gospel was Jesus Christ plus the law of Moses.

To be specific, the Judaizers wanted Gentile believers to be circumcised. Their theology is summarized in Acts 15, where we read that “some men”—possibly the very men who caused trouble in Galatia—went down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching: “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved” (Acts 15:1). Not surprisingly, this teaching was especially popular among believers who were former Pharisees (Acts 15:5). The church has always been full of recovering Pharisees who want to add human effort to God’s grace.

The Risen Christ

To help Christians—especially recovering Pharisees—rediscover the gospel of grace, where should one start? Well, before receiving the gospel again for the first time, people have to know what the gospel is. So th...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Series Introduction
• Preface
• 1. Dear Recovering Pharisee (1:1–5)
• 2. No Other Gospel (1:6–10)
• 3. The Origin of Paul’s Religion (1:11–24)
• 4. Gospel Freedom Fighter (2:1–10)
• 5. The Battle for the Gospel (2:11–16)
• 6. Dying to Live (2:17–21)
• 7. By Faith Alone (3:1–5)
• 8. Father Abraham Has Many Sons (3:6–9)
• 9. The Old Cursed Cross (3:10–14)
• 10. The Promise before the Law (3:15–18)
• 11. The Law Leading to Christ (3:19–25)
• 12. All God’s Children (3:26–29)
• 13. From Slavery to Sonship (4:1–7)
• 14. A Plea from a Perplexed Pastor (4:8–20)
• 15. Two Mothers, Two Sons, Two Covenants (4:21–31)
• 16. The Only Thing That Matters (5:1–6)
• 17. Why Christianity Is So Offensive (5:7–12)
• 18. Liberty without License (5:13–18)
• 19. How to Grow Good Spiritual Fruit (5:19–26)
• 20. The Spiritual Life (6:1–6)
• 21. You Reap What You Sow (6:7–10)
• 22. Glory in the Cross (6:11–18)
• Index of Scripture
• Index of Subjects and Names