Galatians 1
May 29, 2016
This is part 1 in a 6 part sermon series on Paul's letter to the Galatians
Paul’s letter to the
Galatians
Paul’s letter to the Galatians is widely regarded as one of
the most important letters of the new Testament.
It’s sometimes called the spiritual equivalent of the Magna
Carta or the Declaration of Independence.
In other words, it is a letter that declares freedom,
and it is a letter on which our understanding of our faith
rests.
Luther said it was his favorite book, calling it his “Katie
Von Bora” (his wife) because “he was married to it”.
It is an important letter that’s worth our time,
not just for the sake of the letter itself, but for what it
has meant to Christians.
I know that some people here know lots of stuff about the
bible,
but we all come here from different places and
I want to make sure we all have a basic understanding
of the New Testament where we find Galatians.
The New Testament
The first part of the New testament is the four gospels, and
Acts.
These are written in story form.
They are a narrative of Jesus life and for Acts, the life and work of the Apostles in the early church.
They are a narrative of Jesus life and for Acts, the life and work of the Apostles in the early church.
The rest of the New Testament (except for Revelation) are
letters written to individual people or to congregations or to groups of
congregations in a region.
They are not stories of Jesus, they are talking about the
faith, what it means to live as followers of Jesus, what to believe, how to
understand, how to behave, and a lot of it, is how to live in a world that
largely does not believe in Jesus.
The first section of letters – 12 of them were written by
Paul, or are credited to Paul.
The rest are written by other people.
The 12 letters written by Paul are put in order by their
size.
Romans being the longest and Philemon being the shortest.
Not all are Written
by Paul
Scholars don’t believe that every letter accredited to Paul
was actually written by Paul.
That sounds bad, but it’s not as horrible as someone doing
it today.
Could be another follower or student,
could be paying honor to Paul.
But some letters were inevitably written by people trying
to use the accredited author’s name to get their own agenda
across.
Of the letters accredited to Paul, the ones that they
believe were written by Paul are:
Romans
first & Second Corinthians
Galatians
phillipians
first Thessalonians
philemon
Everyone thinks that Paul wrote Galatians.
And they believe that the letter was written from 40-60 AD.
Letter to the
Galatians
Now, the letter
to the Galatians was not written to one church or even one city, but to a whole
area, a province, a region, some even think a certain ethnic group.
Paul visited the area of Galatians in both of his trips to
this area.
In Paul’s time, Galatia was a province of the Roman Empire, and
the Galatians were subject to Rome.
We’ll talk more about that next week.
Galatia is where
modern day Turkey is today.
THE LETTER TO THE
GALATIANS
Paul’s letters, and all letters at that time, I think,
They don’t start with “Dear June”. or “To whom it may
concern” or “sir or madam”
They start more like memos, they have a line that says FROM
clearly
and a line that says who it’s TO clearly.
Now most of Paul’s letters start very clearly, like
this (2
Corinthians)
From: Paul
an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, (and Timothy our brother)
To: The church of God that is in Corinth,
including all the saints throughout Achaia.
Grace to you and peace
from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
(Philippians) From: Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus
To: All the saints in Christ Jesus who are in
Philippi, with the bishops and deacons.
Grace to you and peace
from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Every other letter by Paul has the same short FROM and TO
and the same kind of greeting or shorter,
“grace to you and peace.” Or “Grace to you and Peace from God our
Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.”
But look at Galatians:
From: Paul
an apostle – sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities, but
through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead – and all
the members of God’s family who are with me,
To: The churches of Galatia
Grace to you and peace
from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to
set us free from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and
Father, to whom be the glory forever. Amen.
What are a couple of things you can pick up just from his introduction?
If I opened this e-mail up, I would dread reading the rest
of it!
If you were writing a letter to someone a letter, you
usually start it with some nice pleasantries.
And Paul USUALLY does
“I give thanks to my
God always for you because of the Grace of God that has been given to you in
Christ
Jesus…” 1 Corinthians
Jesus…” 1 Corinthians
“We always give thanks
to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers…” 1 Thessalonians
But in Galatians, Paul has no niceties, no compliments to
shower them with, he just goes right into it:
What is Paul’s emotion here? Just from the verses here, what is he
accusing them of?
Why was Paul so angry?
A little back story
on paul
Paul was the apostle that was specifically sent to the
Gentiles --
That is the people who were not Jewish -- to share the
message of Jesus with them.
Christianity started as a movement inside Judaism,
but Paul was sent to those outside Judaism.
And the Galatians would have formerly been pagan, like most
people in the Roman Empire.
Paul went to this
area of the empire and apparently was sick or injured,
and the Galatians welcomed him and helped him
so he stayed there quite a while and started some churches.
Paul shared the story of Christ’s crucifixion and
resurrection
and told the Galatians that he died to free all people.
You became a part of Jesus family by just believing Jesus
Christ is the son of God
and by being baptized .
But now, someone was coming into these churches in Galatia
and are “perverting the gospel of Christ”.
We don’t know who that is, but it’s probably followers of
some of the other disciples.
They’re not just messing with Paul’s teachings.
They’re not just changing or adding a couple of rules.
According to Paul, they are perverting the gospel.
They are changing the main idea that:
everyone is invited
to be a part of Christ’s family no matter who or what they are.
That there is no distinction between the children of God.
The relationship that God had with the Jews,
God is now coming to share with the whole world,
circumcised and uncircumcised.
And if you say that People have to become
circumcised, and have to become Jewish to be a part,
that is perverting the gospel of Christ.
And the way that these interloping Christians were selling
it to the Galatians was
by questioning Paul’s
authority as a real apostle
and by questioning his motive in spreading the gospel as he
did
10 Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? Or am
I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a
servant of Christ.
Paul has apparently been accused of changing the real
message because he’s trying to please people.
I also think this part
is funny, because he’s been so rude in his letter so far, and he’s like, “you
think I’m a people pleaser now?”
When I was on internship, we had these events and the
interns and supervisors would meet together and have a meal and share. And the
time came to our unique, urban church in Milwaukee. We talked about our vision
at Reformation, we tried to model the congregation on the kingdom of God where
everyone was welcomed and valuable, everyone counted, everyone had a voice, no
matter what their background or if they’d been in prison or on drugs. And one
of the supervisors was obviously not buying it. He said, “what is this the
60’s” and we were like, “What?” He said, “Sounds to me like you’re just
kowtowing. Like you’re just trying to please everyone instead of following the
word of God.”
I think that sometimes when we proclaim the gospel as
Lutherans,
with an understanding of God’s welcome and love for all
people
we get accused of “just trying to make people happy” instead of serving God.
I know I have been accused of that.
We’re just bowing down to culture, we’re just trying to get more members,
We’re just bowing down to culture, we’re just trying to get more members,
we’re just being politically correct,
we’re just trying to bend or break some of the laws to make
some people happy.
The people were apparently saying that when
Paul told the Galatians they didn’t need to be circumcised,
that he was just
trying to “make them happy”
he was “Seeking human approval.”
He was just trying to soft-sell the requirements in order to
get more gentile followers.
But Paul was not sharing this message in order to make some
people happy. This is Jesus message to all people.
And it’s the same for us too.
We don’t welcome people just to please them or to make a
good show
for the neighborhood, or cause we’ll get more people in here
on Sunday.
We share this gospel
because it is the truth as we understand it from God.
It is the story of Jesus as we have received it from Paul
and other teachers.
I like to make everyone happy,
but I don’t share this message to make people happy.
I share it because I firmly believe that’s what God wants
from us.
That’s God’s vision of the kingdom on earth.
That is what God’s Word tells me.
That is what I have been driven to by the Spirit.
That is what Paul is saying to the Galatians. This is the gospel.
God loves unconditionally-- circumcised or uncircumcised. If
you put a requirement on, you don’t have the gospel.
How the letter has usually been talked about
This letter has usually been talk about Christianity
in opposition to Judaism:
Judaism is about a bunch of laws and Christianity is about
being freed from those laws and rules.
This has sometimes been used to fuel anti-Semitism in
Christianity and has even been a cause for violence.
In Luther’s case, he made it about the
Church laws of the Roman Catholic church vs. the gospel of
Jesus.
And this letter is about these things,
but I hope you see as we go through this letter,
that it’s about more.
It’s about slavery
(all kinds of slavery, mostly the kind that we impose on ourselves)
and freedom.
When Paul met the Galatians,
the gospel freed them
like its freed so many people.
But did they need to be freed from Jewish law?
Did they need to be freed from the harsh requirements of the Christian
church?
They were freed from something else,
and then they adopted new laws in the name of
Christianity
enslaving themselves and dividing themselves again.
CONCLUSION
NT Wright, a popular biblical commentator today writes about
Galatians:
Imagine you’re in
South Africa in the 1970’s/ Apartheid is at its height.
You embark on a risky
project: to build a community center
where everybody will be equally welcome, no
matter what their color or race.
You’ve designed it;
you’ve laid the foundation in such a way that only the right sort of building
can be built.
Or so you think.
You are called away
urgently to another part of the country. A little later you get a letter. The
new group of builders and building on your foundation. They have changed the
design,
and are installing two
meeting rooms, with two front doors, one for whites only and one for blacks
only.
Some of the local
people are mightily relived. They always thought that there was going to
trouble, putting everyone together like that.
Others though, asked
the builders why the original idea wouldn’t do.
Oh, said the builders
airily, that chap who laid the foundation had some funny ideas.
He didn’t really have
permission to make that design.
He’d got a bit
muddled. We’re from the real authorities. This is how it’s got to be.
If the Galatians had just stopped believing,
stopped gathering in Christ’s name and went back to their
old Pagan religion,
I think Paul would
have been sad, but okay.
We wouldn’t’ have gotten this letter.
By saying you had to follow a specific rule or be a certain
type of person in order to be followers of Jesus,
they were changing the building, changing the whole premise.
They were changing his message.
They were changing Jesus message.
They were changing Jesus message.
And he wasn’t going to let that go without addressing it.
This was God’s message and it was given to Paul to share and
to protect.
This was the message that had set Paul free and set the
Galatians free too.
And this is this same wonderful message of Jesus that we are
given.
The message that we have been given to protect and to share.
and the one that sets us free too.
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