A Dive into Galatians (Part 2: Galatians 1:1-2:14)

The Greeting (1:1-5)
If you are like me (or like me when I was in high school), if and when you ever read one of Paul’s letters, you tend to skim through those initial verses in the first chapter where Paul is giving his greetings. Let’s face it, most of his greetings in his letters seem the same and can come across as boring. But actually, you shouldn’t skip over them too quickly, for they often contain some fundamental aspects of the early Christian worldview that are easy to overlook.

Here in Galatians, after making reference to God the Father and Jesus Christ (as he almost always does), Paul immediately makes this rather odd point that his apostleship came specifically (as in directly) from Jesus Christ and God the Father…and not from anyone else. Why is that important to note? Because that is going to get to the heart of the main issue Paul is going to deal with in Galatians. As will become obvious in 1:6-2:14, part of the reason Paul was writing to the churches in Galatia was because his apostleship (i.e. his street cred!) was being questioned by some Judaizers who had evidently gone around behind his back to these churches Paul had started and had told the Gentile Christians there that they, in fact, would have to become Jews if they wanted to be part of God’s people. They told the churches that Paul was wrong to tell them they didn’t have to get circumcised and submit to the Torah, and that he didn’t really have apostolic authority—he had “gone rogue.”

The other interesting thing to note in Paul’s greeting in 1:1-5 is that he emphasizes that it is the death and resurrection of Christ that has made it possible for people to be saved from the present evil age. What is that? To understand what Paul is talking about, you have to realize that he is articulating a “Christian revision” of the traditional Jewish worldview of that time. Basically, Jews viewed themselves as living in the old age—an age in which Satan ruled and that was characterized by things like foreign oppression, sickness, demonic possession…basically everything bad. They believed that when the Messiah comes, God would pour out His Spirit on His people, defeat their oppressors, and usher in the new Messianic age. The turning of the ages would happen all at once: turn the page from the “old, evil age” and move on to the “new Messianic age.”

The early Christian proclamation, though, added a pretty big wrinkle to that expectation. They said the Messiah had come, and shockingly, the Jews had rejected him.  He was crucified and buried, but then was resurrected and ascended to heaven. He would eventually return in the future to usher in that new Messianic age, but until then, they were all living in between the times. They were still living in the present evil age, but God had poured out His Spirit on Christ’s followers. In the Church was where God’s Spirit was at work and a taste of the age to come/Messianic age could be experienced, and the Church was commissioned to go throughout the Gentile world to gather Gentiles into God’s people, so that they could be saved from the coming destruction of the old age.

Paul’s Background (1:6-2:14)
The thing to remember in this section is that everything in it is Paul’s way of making two crucial points regarding his ministry and apostleship: (1) yes, he didn’t receive his apostleship from Christ’s apostles; he received his calling and apostleship directly from Christ himself; and (2) nevertheless, Christ’s original apostles completely supported him.

With that said, in 1:6-10, Paul first directly responds to the accusations certain Judaizers were leveling against him. Remember, these Judaizers had gone into Paul’s churches behind his back and had told the largely Gentile Christians that Paul was wrong—that they actually had to fully submit to the Torah in order to be part of God’s people. Basically, they were bad-mouthing Paul and telling his churches Paul was just trying to win their approval, but in reality, they had to submit to circumcision and become Jews.

There is no other way to say it, Paul’s reaction shows he was pissed. Not only does he insist those Judaizers were perverting the Gospel, but he goes so far to say that anyone (namely them) who preaches a different Gospel than the one he preached to them should be cursed. In fact, the wording is actually stronger: “Damn them!” As for the accusation he was try trying to win their approval by telling them they didn’t have to submit to Torah, Paul basically says, “That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard!” Why? Because his preaching doesn’t get him approval from anyone—both Jews and pagans get mad at him.

With that, Paul gives a bit of his own autobiography in 1:11-2:14, from the time of his own Damascus Road experience and conversion up to the time he confronted Peter in Antioch. In this section, Paul makes three points: (A) he got his Gospel from Christ himself; (B) even though he had minimal contact with the apostles, they supported him and agreed that Christ had sent him to the Gentiles; and (C) ironically, he—Paul—was the one who had to call out Peter for waffling on this issue regarding Gentiles being part of the people of God, even after Peter agreed Paul was right.

As for the specifics of this section, Paul points out that he was originally a zealous persecutor of the “Church of God,” but that when he encountered the risen Christ (around AD 34-35), Christ had revealed to Paul that he was to take the Gospel to the Gentiles. After that happened, instead of immediately going to Jerusalem to consult with the original apostles, he went off to Arabia for a time and then returned to Damascus. It was only three years later that Paul went back to Jerusalem (AD 36), and he was only in Jerusalem for fifteen days, during which he met only with Peter and James. He then moved back to his hometown of Tarsus, and later Antioch.

Fourteen years later (circa 49 AD) he went back to Jerusalem with Barnabas and Titus to meet privately with James, Peter, and John to make sure they were in agreement with his work among the Gentiles (this would have been after his first missionary journey). Paul points out that even though there were some “false brothers” who had a problem with what Paul and Barnabas were doing, James, Peter, and John had no problem with it. They acknowledged that just as Peter had been entrusted with being an apostle to the Jews, Paul had been entrusted with being an apostle to the Gentiles. Evidently, these “false brothers” pressured Titus, who was a Gentile Christian, to get circumcised, but Paul insisted that shouldn’t be done.

Apparently, though, after that private meeting in Jerusalem, Peter had made his way up to Antioch and was openly interacting and eating with the Gentile Christians there. After all, Peter had his encounter with Cornelius (Acts 10-11), so he fully understood that the Spirit had been poured out on Gentiles. Yet, when some men from Jerusalem who were affiliated with James showed up in Antioch, Peter backed away from the Gentile Christians, and this caused some other Jewish Christians (even Barnabas) to follow suit and to separate themselves from the Gentile Christians.

When that happened, Paul openly confronted Peter on his hypocrisy and argued the very point of the Gospel is that salvation is made possible through faith in Christ and not through doing the works of the Torah. Basically, Peter knew better, but for some reason, he capitulated to those Judaizers in Antioch. By doing so, he ended up humiliating and belittling his Gentile Christian brothers by implying they really aren’t good enough, effectively regulating them to the status of second-class citizens in the Kingdom of God. By doing this, he created division among the believers. And Paul was going to have none of that.

Conclusion Thus Far
This initial part of Galatians is not interesting just because of the brief autobiography Paul gives. Yes, it presents an enticing historical puzzle that scholars love to try to figure out as they compare it to what is laid out in Acts. More importantly, though, it lays the foundation for some of the most important and fundamental theological truths of Christianity that Paul will elaborate on in the rest of the letter.

To fully understand what Paul is getting at here, one first has to get a grasp of what we mean by “Judaizers.” Remember, as of AD 49, the sect of the “Nazarenes”-soon-to-be-understood-as-“Christians” was still seen primarily as a new group within Judaism. Pretty early on, though, the Christians found that the Holy Spirit was pushing them to proclaim the Gospel to the Gentiles. The natural question thus became, “If Gentiles accept Christ and receive the Holy Spirit, what should we have them do?” If that meant they were to become part of God’s people, well, the Jews had always understood “God’s people” to be those bound to the Mosaic Covenant—so, naturally, these “Judaizers” reasoned that the Gentile Christians would have to submit to the Torah and the Mosaic Covenant, because that’s what God’s people have always done. It was a very logical rationale…if you thought Christ and His movement was just another movement within Judaism.

Paul, though, insisted that Christ was the fulfillment of the Mosaic Covenant, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit was signaling that something new had begun. It wasn’t that the Torah was bad—it had just served its purpose and was no longer needed. If I can put it this way, the Torah was like a road sign that told you which way was the way to Chicago and how many more miles it was to get there. That’s needed when you’re traveling. But once you get to Chicago, you don’t need the road sign anymore.

Not to equate Chicago with the Kingdom of God, but that’s going to essentially be what Paul is going to be arguing regarding the ramifications of Christ’s death and resurrection and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. It has very practical implications for how we, as the people of God, are to live our lives…and it exposes our very natural tendency to reduce the Gospel to just another version of some kind of rule-keeping. More on that in the next post.