Galatians Context Information

 Read Galatians 1:1-5

1.  Who is the author?

Read Acts 13:13-14:28

2.  Audience:  “the churches of Galatia.”  Gentile Christians in Derbe, Lystra, Iconium, (Psidian) Antioch were in political Roman Galatia.  Date:  48-49 AD.  We’ll use the South Galatian Theory to date this. 

3. What are some verses in Galatians that support that the church there was mostly Gentile?

4. What do the following verses tell you about the Galatian churches and about Paul’s relationship to them? Galatians 3:1-5, 4:19-20, 5:7-9

 

Historical Circumstances:  A group of Jews had been persuading Galatians to be circumcised and live under the Law and attacking Paul’s apostleship and authority to deliver his message. 

Literary

Purpose:  Paul wrote Galatians to defend attacks on his apostleship (his calling) and a correct growing legalism heresy in Galatia (his message). 

Themes:  Christ vs. Law, circumcision vs. uncircumcision, Spirit vs. flesh, bondage vs. freedom, slaves vs. heirs, works vs. faith, a promise, tutorage

Redemptive

This letter was written during the proclaimed kingdom, more specifically the apostolic era.  It comes after the resurrection of Christ, but before His return, during the time when His apostles are establishing His church.

Commentary

Keller, Tim.  Paul’s letter to the Galatians, Commentary 

      Keller explains that Paul is arguing, not just over racial and cultural barriers, but over the nature of the Gospel:

By insisting that Christ-plus-anything-else as requirement for full acceptance by God, these teachers were presenting a whole different way of relating to God (a “different gospel” 1:6) from the one Paul had given them (“the gospel I preached” 1:8).  It is this different gospel that was creating the cultural division and strife.  Paul forcefully and unapologetically fought the “different gospel” because to lose one’s grip of the true gospel is to desert and lose Christ himself (1:6).  Therefore, everything was at stake in this debate. 

Keller applies this truth to modern day Christian culture:

It is very common in Christian circles to assume that “the gospel” is something just for non-Christians.  We presume that the gospel is a set of basic “A-B-C” doctrines that Christians do no need to hear or study one they are converted.  Rather, they should move beyond the gospel to more “advanced” doctrines.  But the great declaration of the gospel of grace in Galatians was written to believers who did not see the implications of the gospel for life-issues confronting them.  Paul solves the disunity and racial exclusivity not with a simple exhortation to “be better Christians,” but by calling them to live out the implications of the gospel.  So Christians need the gospel as much as non-Christians do.  Their problems come because they tend to lose and forget the gospel.  They make progress only as they continually grasp and apply the gospel in deeper ways… The gospel is the way that anything is renewed and transformed by Christ- whether a heart, a relationship, a church or a community.   All our problems come form a lack of orientation to the gospel.