a pearl downunder: Galatians

God called me through his grace. [Audrey West]

The letter from Paul to the churches in Galatia starts with Paul introducing himself. This was standard for letters at that time. You couldn’t send of an email, or a quick postcard. A letter would take time to be delivered. Often letters were written by skilled people, at times helping with phrasing of the letter as well as the physical writing of the letter. Paul would have dictated his letters to such a person, in chapter 6 we will read where Paul puts pen to paper himself.

A letter would start with who the letter was from, and then who it was written to, Paul would usually include a greeting, such as:

May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace.

In many of Paul’s letters there is a prayer of thanksgiving, such as in Philippians 1:3

“I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, …..” [NRSV]

But no prayer of thanksgiving for the churches in Galatia, instead we get:

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ..” Gal 1:6

Paul is an interesting person in many ways. He was born in Tarsus, in what is now Turkey. Tarsus was what we might call a cosmopolitan city – there were philosophers and street preachers, mystery religious cults and it was a centre of Greek culture. [LTJ 261]

But Paul was also a Jew, with impressive credentials. His family followed the custom of circumcision on the 8^th day, and he was from the tribe of Benjamin. As a young man he studied the Law with a school of Pharisees. [LTJ 261, 2]

And he was a Roman citizen, which means his family were likely to be socially prominent. [LTJ 261] being a Roman citizen had its advantages.

We first meet Paul in the book of Acts, he is the young man who looked after the coats of those who stoned Stephen, and Luke notes that Saul approved of the killing of Stephen. [Acts 7: 58, 8:1]

We read of his transformation on the road to Damascus in chapter 9 of Acts. Paul would have known quite a bit about Jesus, from his time as a persecutor of the early church. [Loader]

But back to the place of letters and chapter one.

From this letter we see that Paul had met the people he was writing to, and as with other letters Paul wrote, he is responding to a particular situation. In this case it seems that someone has come after Paul has left, teaching a different ‘gospel’, though as Paul points out, there is only one gospel.

Paul is known as a missionary to the gentiles. There were many in Jerusalem who thought that to be a follower of Jesus, you needed to first become a Jew. The focus of the letter to the Galatian churches is that God acts in our lives and that the love and mercy of God are not dependent on our works, or our goodness, or our struggles, or our Jewishness, or culture, or anything else.

This letter shows Paul’s concern and anger that the people are moving away from the gospel of grace and freedom that he taught them, but as sending a letter is not a quick thing, he needs to be clear, and not hot headed, as the letter is written. He also needs to make sure he covers all the arguments that would have been made against him, such as not being one of the apostles and that he never met Jesus in the flesh.

Paul is clear that it was God who called him, not any person; that Jesus was revealed to him so that Paul would proclaim the message to the Gentiles.

And the message he proclaims is that

“God is compassionate to all, offering a right relationship to all, Jew and Gentile, without discrimination. So Paul argues from the nature of God, from the heart of the gospel.” [Loader]

It can be hard to accept, that we are loved, that is the very nature of God, not our own doing.

“It is why we are so hard on ourselves, and insist we must keep rules: no one deserves to be given a love such as this.” [Andrew Prior]

I wonder how often we are pulled away from the gospel of grace.

It is easy to judge people, to judge ourselves.

I can remember thinking I wasn’t good enough for God, or anyone else, to love me. I thought my friends were just being nice to me because they were such good people – I mean who would want to spend time with me?

An encounter with Jesus changed that – I knew that I was a loved daughter of the living God. A person loved by God, not because I am good enough or bright enough or know enough of the bible. We are all loved by God because that is the nature of God.

Isn’t that awesome!

There are still some people who try to put limits and boundaries on God’s love and grace. These days it isn’t about becoming a Jew before you can be a Christian, but I have been told that as a woman I shouldn’t be preaching or teaching, that this puts me outside God’s grace. At times I have heard of a whole lot of boxes that must be ticked to ensure our salvation:

Going to church
Not taking drugs or drinking alcohol
Sexual purity
Keeping the ten commandments
And I am sure you can think of some more

Being held in God’s love and grace is about the nature of God, it isn’t about how good you are or how well you keep the rules. Paul could show what a wonderful Jew he had been, how diligent he had been at defending God.

There are signs of our freedom in Christ, but they are our response