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To all paid subscribers, please engage with the newly published devotional study guide on Galatians and let me know your thoughts.
Just read one section a day to enter the theological minefield of Galatians and wrestle with its challenge to hierarchy, fellowship, the politics of identity, the meaning of belonging, the power of the Spirit and the reanimating life of the new order!
Introduction to Weeks 1–2
The ethicists of the golden age of Greek philosophy were consumed with the question, ‘how do I live a good life’? In the 21st century West, a more pressing question seems to be, ‘who am I’? Remarkably, both questions converge in an intricate juxtaposition in Paul’s letter to the Galatians.
It is unclear whether Paul was writing to ethnic Gauls or to a multi-ethnic group living in the Roman territories known as Galatia. What we can say more surely, is that Paul happened upon some gentile or possibly pagan ‘Galatians’ (Galatians 4:8–9) as he journeyed through their cities and made a pitstop due to an illness, whereupon he shared the good news of Jesus the Messiah (Galatians 4:13).
Sometime following his departure, unknown believing Jewish preachers infiltrated the Galatian house churches insisting that gentiles needed to be circumcised to be included within the covenant people of God (Genesis 17:10-14). Being circumcised, however, meant taking on the entire yoke of the Mosaic Law (Galatians 5:3; cf. James 2:10; 4 Macc. 5:20–21). Paul discovered that these rival preachers had not only questioned the completeness of his gospel but his apostolic authority. In the pages of Galatians, we have Paul’s rebuttals...
