Background to Galatians Podcast
Today, we begin a brand new study of Galatians, the ninth book in the New Testament. Galatians was written by the Apostle Paul to the churches in the province of Galatia.
We are given some background of the churches' beginning in Acts 13-14. These were churches begun by Paul when he was on his first missionary journey, traveling with Barnabas into the cities of Antioch, Iconium, Derbe, and Lystra. These were the cities of Galatia.
The Apostle Paul wrote Galatians from the city of Corinth. He wrote it to address the legalism (requiring someone to perform in a certain way to attain God's acceptance or Justification) that was being put forward there by confused teachers and none other than .... the Apostle Peter. We will see that Paul gets in Peter's face to correct his legalistic tendencies in chapter 2.
Again, Paul wrote this letter to confront those who were confused about Justification. You see, these men had come to the Galatia region from Jerusalem, teaching what Paul calls heresy in chapter 1. To be more specific, these confused teachers were teaching that in order to be real Christians the Gentiles would have to be circumcised, keep the law of Moses, and obey all the Old Testament rituals.
To substantiate his point, Paul uses Abraham to teach biblical theology. He writes that Abraham was given the promise of Justification by faith four hundred years before the Law (teaching on Sanctification) was given. The law cannot change the promise. In fact, the purpose of the law was different than the purpose of Justification. This is where most heresy comes from, people confuse the two. As we work through Galatians, the difference will become clear.
Every religion requires good works to be made right with God or Justification, except Christianity! Hinduism teaches renunciation of the world and to become one with the "spirit of the universe." Buddhism teaches eight principles by which man lives and thus find himself on the way to salvation. Islam says that a man must pray five times a day and give alms and fast on the month of Ramadan and obey the commands of Allah. In every case salvation is said to be achieved by something we do.
Paul concludes Galatians with a portrait of the spiritual man which is teaching on Sanctification. The main theme in the book of Galatians is freedom which is the point of our Sanctification.
I close with a quote from the late Mike Yaconelli which I find appropriate at this point. He said, “Accepting the reality of our broken, flawed lives is the beginning of spirituality not because the spiritual life will remove our flaws but because we let go of seeking perfection and, instead, seek God, the one who is present in the tangledness of our lives. ”
