Galatians Verse by Verse (Osborne New Testament Commentaries)

Grant R. Osborne

• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781683590378
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Comentario bíblico

THE CENTRALITY OF THE CROSS (1:1–10)

Nearly all New Testament letters are constructed according to the first-century pattern followed by Jewish, as well as Hellenistic, letters: They begin with the identification of the writer, followed by acknowledgment of the recipients and a greeting in the form of a prayer-wish. This is a very ancient form, as evidenced in Daniel 4:1: “King Nebuchadnezzar, To the nations and peoples of every language, who live in all the earth: May you prosper greatly!”

In his greeting Paul goes beyond the statements of typical first-century letters and provides an introduction to the main themes of his letter. In Galatians there are two:

1.Paul was an apostle not by human appointment but by divine commissioning (1:1a). This leads into the opening of the body of the letter and to Paul’s defense of his apostolic office (vv. 11–24).

2.Christ offered himself as a sacrifice on the cross to rescue us from evil (v. 4). Paul stresses this to prepare for the central part of his letter, defending the gospel and the cross against the attempts of the Judaizers (see vv. 6–7) to declare the law the basis of salvation (3:1–4:7).

One critical aspect of this greeting is the absence of the customary thanksgiving and prayer, which are replaced here by Paul’s rebuke of the Galatians for being taken in by the false arguments of the Judaizers. The only other of Paul’s letters to make this change is Titus, which also centers on the dangers of heresy.1 The impression we get from such a substitution is that the situation in Galatia was so fraught with danger that there was not much for which Paul could be thankful. Paul was stressing the seriousness of the problem. The Galatians needed to repent and correct their course immediately, before it was too late.

PAUL GREETS THE GALATIAN CHURCHES (1:1–5)

THE AUTHOR AND RECIPIENTS OF THE LETTER (1:1–2)

As in each of Paul’s letters, he begins by identifying himself as “Paul,” the Hellenized form of his Jewish name, Saul (Acts 7:58). He always calls himself Paul in his letters, probably to stress that God has called him to be the apostle to the Gentiles (Acts 26:17–18). As in most of his letters he also includes his title as “apostle,” the Greek word apostolos, indicating that he has been “sent” by God and given divine authority to speak for the Lord. Behind this is the Old Testament idea of the shaliach sent with the authority of God as his official spokesman (note, for example, the role of Ahijah in 1 Kgs 14:6). There is the air of a prophet behind the concept, and here Paul is emphasizing the divine commission underlying his office in the church. Jesus, who called his twelve disciples “apostles” from the beginning (Luke 6:13), also designated Paul an apostle on the Damascus road, a fact Paul will stress in verses 2–17.

The Judaizers were challenging Paul’s apostolic office, so here at the outset he points out that he has been “sent [apostellō] not from men or by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father.” It is unusual to stress both plural and singular—“not from men nor by a man,” and by so doing Paul is emphasizing that neither any human source (the church) nor human individual agent (for instance, James or Peter, vv. 18–19) was responsible for his office.2

The change in prepositions stresses this even more strongly. The source (apo: “from”) and agent (dia: “by”) of Paul’s apostolic office were in no sense human. In stressing that he was neither inferior nor superior to the Twelve but equal to them, Paul is neither denigrating his own status nor placing himself above the others or trying to usurp their authority. In verses 18–19 he reports that he had traveled to Jerusalem after his conversion to get to know them (see Acts 9:27–28).

The true agents behind Paul’s apostolic authority were Christ (God the Son) and God the Father. Paul is always trinitarian in his theology (the Spirit is implied), picturing the Godhead acting in concert at all times. Notice that Christ and the Father are found twice in this greeting—as joint agents of Paul’s apostolic commission (1:1) and as the true greeters of the Galatians (v. 3). In his other greetings Paul tends to mention them only in the latter sense, so the authority issue underlying this letter is a special emphasis here. Everything Paul will say stems from the Three-in-One. To the Greek way of thinking any superior could send an apostle (a “sent one”), but Paul makes it absolutely clear that it was God and Christ who had sent him, and they alone. His apostleship is not of human origin but is derived entirely from divine action.

Further, his authority comes from the God “who raised [Christ] from the dead” (v. 1) The center of Paul’s theology is not the Mosaic law or circumcision, as is the case with his opponents, but the Risen One. Behind his gospel is the power of the resurrection. The power in the true gospel is exclusively centered on the Lord, who was raised as the firstfruits for God’s people (1 Cor 15:20, 23) and inaugurated the new age of the Spirit and the church. When the Galatians surrendered to the false teachings of the Judaizers and returned to the law, they were rejecting this new age and the law’s fulfillment in Christ for the mere promise of the Mosaic ordinances.

Paul frequently greets his readers on behalf of one or more associates (for instance, 1 Cor 1:1; 2 Cor 1:1). Only here in verse 2, however, does he send greetings from “all the brothers and sisters with me,” an amorphous group rather than a list of specific individuals. This could refer to all his associates, which would make sense since he regularly mentions his ministry team in the salutations of his letters. However, “brothers and sisters” elsewhere in Paul’s letters always refers to all the saints. Construed in this way, this would suggest that Paul is talking about all the believers, including those in Jerusalem who would soon side with him at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15). He wants to present a united front as he addresses the problems in Galatia.

In other letters Paul commends his readers and describes them further; see, for example, 1 Corinthians 1:2, “to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people.” Here his address is “to the churches in Galatia”—the churches of South Galatia that Paul had founded on the first missionary journey (Acts 13–14).3 His terse identification of his audience is likely an implicit rebuke, suggesting in effect that there was little for which he could commend them at that point.

THE SALUTATION AND POWER OF THE CROSS (1:3–5)

This was Paul’s first letter, and the salutation he uses here would become standard in all his letters. It builds on the basic pattern in ancient greetings, with “grace” (charis) the Greco-Roman hello and “peace” (eirēnē, the Greek version of the Hebrew shalom) the Jewish hello. Paul infuses both with Christian content and turns them into fulfilled promises, saying in effect, “The grace you have always wanted and the peace you have always hoped for are now offered to you by God and Christ.” Grace is the New Testament concept at the heart of God’s plan (“It is by grace you have been saved,” Eph 2:5, 8), and peace plays a similar role, summarizing the Old Testament promises of shalom, as well as the New Testament hope (“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you,” John 14:27). In Christ, all human yearning and hope can finally be realized.

A key phrase in Galatians is “God the Father,” which appears three times in this opening section (1:1, 3, 4). Paul emphasizes that the saints have become the children of God through adoption and now have a loving, merciful Father who cares for them and is involved deeply in their lives (Rom 8:14–17). Paul next stresses the lordship of Christ, who is sovereign over his creation (see Col 1:16, 20 for Christ as the agent of creation).

In verse 4 Paul makes clear that the only hope for sinful humankind lies in Christ’s atoning sacrifice, and it is he who will bring this evil world to its deserved end and open the gates of eternity for the faithful. The gospel is encapsulated in the trumpet call of victory and salvation: “who gave himself for our sins.” This is the means by which God’s grace and peace are made available to us, echoing Isaiah 53:6 (“the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all”) and 53:12 (“he poured out his life unto death … [and] bore the sin of many”).

This is one of the primary themes of the letter—that salvation comes to us not by means of the law but entirely by the atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Paul’s words here could be a fragment of an early Christian creed, but it is more likely that Paul himself wrote them to emphasize the voluntary nature of Christ’s sacrifice. Jesus died “for our sins”; while the preposition (hyper) could mean “on behalf of,” in material like this it often incorporates the idea of substitution. This is the basis of the doctrine of substitutionary atonement—that Jesus, the only righteous One, died on the cross as our substitute, so that our sins could be forgiven based on his sinlessness.

Christ did this to “rescue us from the present evil age.” The idea of rescue is taken from the exodus, which is often spoken of as God “delivering” or “saving” his people from the Egyptians (see, for example, Exod 18:8–10). Later the terminology came to be used of God’s future delivery of his people in the messianic age to come (Isa 31:5). Here that promise comes to full fruition, for in Jesus God has rescued his people “from the present evil age.”

Scripture speaks of “this age” (as opposed to “the age to come,” see Eph 1:21), the present age that remains under the control of evil and the ways of this world (Eph 2:2). The difference Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection have made, however, even in this age, is that God’s people have been granted authority over the cosmic forces of evil (Mark 3:15; 6:7) and given divine strength to overcome these opposing forces (Rom 8:37; Eph 6:10–12). Paul’s reference to the present evil age foreshadows his argument in the central section of the book (Gal 3–4), in which he will clarify that the law belongs to the old dispensation that the age of Christ has culminated (or “ended,” Rom 10:5). Christ has fulfilled the law (see Matt 5:17–20), and believers live in Christ rather than under the law.

This rescue from the present age has been accomplished “according to the will of our God and Father” (Gal 1:4) The incarnation of Christ, his redemptive and atoning death on behalf of humanity, and his victorious resurrection all resulted from God’s will. When God created this world he knew that it would succumb to evil, and he predestined the coming of Christ to save it from the power of sin. The entire Bible is dedicated to tracing God’s rescue of this world by first giving the law and then detailing its fulfillment in the coming, death, and resurrection of Christ, which together constitute a single redemptive event in salvation history.

As often happens when Paul makes a key point that gets at the core of the gospel, here in verse 5 he is overcome by the enormity of the truth and breaks out in doxological praise. After discussing the love and grace of God and the redemptive sacrifice of Christ, he lifts his voice in worshipful praise to the glory of God for his gift of salvation in Christ.

The glory of God is a defining theme of Scripture, as the heavenly scenes of Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4 demonstrate. All that he has done in creation and redemption attests to his majesty and splendor. The concept of Shekinah, seen during the time of the Israelites’ wilderness wanderings in the pillar of fire by night and the cloud by day, indicated the glory of God “dwelling” (Hebrew: shakan) among his people. When the tabernacle was dedicated, a cloud covered it (Num 9:15–23), signifying the Shekinah glory entering God’s house. In John 1:14, this divine glory is pictured as having dwelt among us in Christ: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling [or ‘tabernacled’] among us.” Paul’s prayer here is for this glory to be eternal, “forever and ever,” reflected in the eradication of evil and the wondrous eternal glory of the heavenly home awaiting.

PAUL IS WRITING TO EXPOSE THE DANGER TO THE GALATIANS (1:6–10)

THE DANGER: TURNING TO A FALSE GOSPEL (1:6–7)

Paul expresses horror at the disturbing news he has received about the Galatians, using an expression of amazement: “I am astonished.” In the Gospels this verb describes the awe or wonder of those who witness the miracles of Jesus, but here Paul uses it negatively to convey his shock at hearing about their abandonment of the true faith. When he speaks of the Galatians “so quickly deserting,” he probably means so soon after their conversion. This echoes Exodus 32:8, where after the golden calf incident God condemned the people who had been so “quick to turn away from what I commanded.” Similarly, in Judges 2:17 the Israelites “prostituted themselves to other gods” and “quickly turned from the ways of their ancestors.” Like the Israelites, the Galatians had become a new set of wilderness wanderers.

They were not simply deserting Paul’s gospel teaching but were turning away from “the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ”—from God the Father, whose will in verse 4 led to their rescue from evil. It is one thing to turn from Paul but quite another to turn away from (the meaning of “desert”) God, who in his mercy had seen fit to call them from the sin of this world to the grace of Christ. While they assumed that their strict adherence to the law would draw them nearer to God, it was having the opposite effect! The grace of God in Christ is at the center of the doctrine of salvation in this letter, and this salvation centers on the cross. By turning away from God the Galatians were not living in the grace of Christ as they had been called to do.

The key problem of the Galatians was that through being swayed by the Judaizing false teachers they were in the process of “turning to another gospel.” Note the progress of the action in verse 6—they were not only “turning away” from God but “turning to”4 another gospel. As we will see in verse 7, this “gospel” of Paul’s opponents was not truly a gospel, though it was being proclaimed as such, and the Galatians were beginning to accept it as truth. Paul demands that they realize it has no connection with the gospel of Christ and is actually “another gospel.”

The word “gospel” in its noun and verb form occurs fifteen times in Galatians (five times in this introductory section alone: 6, 7, twice in 8, 9). In both Hellenistic and Jewish contexts the term meant “good news.” In the Old Testament it refers to the proclamation of new kingdom realities, and is prominent in Isaiah (40:9; 41:27; 52:7–10; 60:6; 61:1). Both there and in the New Testament it refers not only the coming of salvation in Christ but also to the arrival of the kingdom of God, and both thrusts are present here. God is altogether absent from the so-called gospel of these heretics; in reality, the gifts of salvation and the kingdom blessings come only through Christ and the cross, not through the law.

I have earlier described the history and purpose of the Jud...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series Preface
• Introduction to Galatians
• The Centrality of the Cross (1:1–10)
• The Divine Source of Paul’s Gospel (1:11–24)
• The Pillars Accept Paul as an Apostle (2:1–10)
• Conflict with Peter and the Essence of the Gospel (2:11–21)
• Defense of Faith over the Works of the Law (3:1–18)
• The Law’s Temporary Purpose (3:19–29)
• Spiritual Liberation from Slavery (4:1–11)
• Paul’s Relationship with the Galatians (4:12–20)
• Freedom over Slavery: An Allegorical Argument (4:21–31)
• The Law’s Threat to Freedom (5:1–12)
• Freedom in Love and by the Spirit (5:13–24)
• Living Life by the Spirit (5:25–6:10)
• Concluding Thoughts (6:11–18)
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Subject and Author Index
• Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Literature