That is, Paul explained the gospel in synagogues and meeting halls but he also ministered privately to people in their homes. Paul had both a public and private ministry. He preached publicly, in the synagogue and the hall of Tyrannus and privately, to the church that met in the home of Aquila and Priscilla 1 Corinthians This was a way of describing the essence of the gospel message. Peter, for example, had urged Jews to repent and turn to God and have faith in Jesus as the Messiah , 16, In the second part of his speech, Paul drastically changed the subject and tone.
He turned from his past work to the future, centering on his forthcoming trip to Jerusalem. Or we can take the phrase as telling us Paul was being moved by the Holy Spirit, who was impelling him to make the trip. Perhaps it is best to understand the phrase as representing a combination of the two ideas. That is, Paul may have felt himself to be divinely compelled to go to Jerusalem. In this, his concern to take an offering to the poor saints in Jerusalem loomed large.
In the words of Richard Longenecker, Paul. If the Spirit had compelled him, God had not revealed the purpose of his journey. But the Spirit told Paul that great trials awaited him there. His concern about the trip was already expressed in Romans, which was probably written in Corinth, during his third missionary journey. In spite of the warnings and his own fears, he refused to back away from the trip.
This familiar metaphor of the athlete competing in the games and finishing the race is paralleled in his own epistles 2 Timothy , with 1 Corinthians ; Galatians ; Philippians Paul used the protection of the Roman government and any other means possible to escape persecution and death.
His goal was always to preach the gospel on another day. Yet, he seems to have emphasized common elements of the two trips. As Jesus was handed over to the Gentiles Luke , so would Paul be But the accused—again in both cases—was declared innocent by the Romans Luke ; 14 , 22 ; Acts ; ; Luke, writing several years after the event, could see that there was a more important reason for going to Jerusalem than just delivering a gift of money.
The city continued to be the one that killed all the prophets, as it did Jesus. Now, only the final consequences were to be worked out—the war with Rome, and the destruction of the city and temple. The beginning of those shattering events were but a decade away. In the third part of his speech, Paul began discussing his dire future expectations. Paul was bidding farewell to the Aegean world of Asia and Achaia. If he escaped Jerusalem with his life—which was not certain—he was off to Rome and the western Mediterranean.
Once again Paul defended his record. As the watchman, he had warned the church and elders to follow the Way of faith and love. Paul insisted that the elders must keep watch over their own spiritual condition.
We find a similar phrase in Romans Although there are few places in Acts in which the significance of the cross is discussed, this verse is a clear assertion of the doctrine of the atonement. They must nurture it with good spiritual food, providing guidance and pastoral care.
Jesus capitalized on it, applying it to his disciples Luke ; ; ; John This expression also has Old Testament roots in the watchman of Ezekiel However, the shepherds or overseers, unlike the prophets, were to watch over the spiritual house of Israel, the church of God. The wolves were the ones who threatened the herd, the church. In the fourth part of his speech, Paul spoke of wolves in terms of what Paul foresaw would occur in the church after his passing. As Paul looked toward the future, he painted a somewhat dismal prospect for the Ephesian church.
They are described in the letters to Timothy, who apparently ministered to the church in Ephesus 1 Timothy ; ; ; ; 2 Timothy ; ; A generation later, the Ephesian church, while rooting out some heresy, had become so loveless that the risen Christ threatened it with a loss Revelation In fact, 2 Timothy referred to a wholesale revolt of the churches throughout the entire province of Asia.
The apostasy in the Asian churches must have begun when Luke wrote Acts. He told his disciples they would be like sheep among wolves Luke Now, Paul was telling the elders that he had warned them for three years—the entire time he was with them—about the danger of apostasy And thereby fully accepts them into the people of God just like him under the same terms, the shedding of Jesus' blood.
But then when certain people come from Jerusalem out of concern, or concern for their consciences, out of fear of them, or whatever, he withdrawals from table fellowship with these Gentiles.
And Paul realizes the implications of that are Christ's blood was not enough for them. Somehow they would have to add to that work and become like full ethnic Jews. And what has happened in Paul's whole theology is his whole view of God has had to be reconfigured to realize that Jesus Christ is just as much Lord as the Father. So he has re-juggled his conception of God himself to include Jesus in the deity.
He has had to adjust his sense of how Israel fulfills her destiny to reach the nations. It's through Jesus. And he realizes now that Israel has always been a spiritual concept, a root, a tree that includes natural branches and now grafted in branches. So it's very, very important for him that there be this picture of one people of God, the true Israel made up of all who trust in Christ Israel's Messiah.
Student: So there's not like you've got Israel on the one hand and then the church on the other, sort of two roads kind of headed the same direction that someday will meet up again? Kidd: No, for Paul he sees it completely differently than that. He sees the whole narrative of Old Testament history being the bringing together of all of God's promises for his people through Jesus the Messiah. And now everybody who belongs to Jesus the Messiah belongs to the Father because Jesus the Messiah is the one true obedient, faithful Israelite who receives God's favor for his obedient life, for his keeping the moral law keep the Mosaic law, living in obedience to his heavenly Father.
All of those who belong to him are covered by him and are just as much citizens of the kingdom of God, just as much citizens of Israel as those who are ethnically so. Student: Reggie, in Galatians 5, Paul says that if you receive circumcision then Christ will have no value or benefit.
But yet later in his ministry he allows Timothy to be circumcised, can you help me understand that? Kidd: Yeah, well when we were talking about how if you add the shedding of your blood to what Christ did, well, that just doesn't work.
For Paul, once we are clear about not needing to shed our own blood and we got that straight, then he is perfectly happy to talk with Jews about continuing the practice of circumcision. In fact, Paul is accused time and again of going around telling Jews to stop being Jews but Paul never does that. It's important to understand that Timothy is a Jew on his mother's side. So I guess the real question is why he was never circumcised in the first place and what Paul does is have him regularized in the eyes of the Jewish community.
Now it's not like Timothy has to get circumcised to be saved but in order for Paul to gain any sort of access to a Jewish community that's already hearing him wrongly saying that Jews should not practice Judaism. It's really important for him to have a half-Jew who is part of his ministry team to show that he is a pious Jew even at the same time that he is a follower of Christ.
Student: So is that kind of like later on in his ministry towards the end when he is in Jerusalem and he takes the Nazirite vow, that he is not doing away with Judaism per se more that Christ is that fulfillment of the Jewish faith? Kidd: Yes, he would have Jews understand that the fulfillment of the story that they have been birthed in, that they have been immersed in, and that has shaped them is Jesus the Messiah.
And they don't have to step out of that story to have a relationship with Jesus the Messiah. Student: So Reggie, this letter then seems to be written to a church that's having a hard time mixing cultures.
You've got the Jews in the church and you've got the Gentiles, and trying to really figure out what does it mean to be the church? It's not just something that the early church dealt with is it?
I mean, we have a lot of different cultures in the church today. How should we go about blending? Kidd: Well Graham, it is important I think to realize that for Paul the blending of cultures wasn't secondary. It was at the heart of his gospel.
And that is why he says so strongly here in Galatians 3, "All those who have put on Christ, all those who have been baptized in him have put him on and are heirs.
And he really did expect that to get worked out in the hard stuff of life, of Jews and Gentiles learning how to love each other, of slave and free learning how to love each other, slave and free, rich and poor, and people from all kinds of ethnic backgrounds, and certainly that does mean different tastes and different preferences.
Because part of what he was seeing was this great vision that goes back…like at the end of Psalm All of the ends of the earth, all the families of the earth as well as the faithful sons of Jacob and Israel, those who are rich, those who are poor, those who have already died, those who have not been born being this great assembly that the Messiah would bring together.
And yes, it's no different today. People are called in the skin that God gave them, with the color hair, the color eyes, the same ethnic background that they have. But they are also called to relate to people who look, think, feel, speak a lot differently than they do around the person of Jesus Christ and to have a higher loyalty than just those backgrounds.
Student: So it's kind of like we are who God has made us to be and each one of us being different can see a little bit different perspective of God and when we interact together we get a more full picture of who he is. Kidd: Well, as long as Jesus is at the center of it. I mean I have been in fellowships throughout the course of my years as a Christian where there have been really deep differences. You know, some of us are tongue speakers and some are not tongue speakers.
Some of us feel like we should only sing Psalms and we shouldn't have instruments to them and others feel like we need to sing the hippest music around. Some of us really feel called to a ministry of evangelism and others feel that we are called to ministry of social justice.
Some people seem to have the gift of no matter what they do they make money, and other people can't, you know? They would know how to spend it if they had it but they don't know how to make it. And it's so easy for us to develop our spiritual relationships around lines of affinity and common likes and common stations in life.
But the whole call of the gospel is to orient our lives around something else. It's not just gathering people around me that are different just for the sake of difference. It's a matter of finding that which really binds and that's the cross of Jesus Christ. And so it means being committed to relationships of heroic forbearance and saying, "You know, I really don't, you know. I suspect I know how you are going to vote for in this coming election and that person stands for things that I think are totally wrong.
But because you and I are brothers in Christ I want to understand what it is about that person that attracts you. I might have something to learn from you. And you know what? And then we become a city on a hill the light of which can't be hidden.
Student: Reggie, I have heard people say, "I am under grace so I don't have to obey the law. What the expectation is and how Paul helps us understand that in Galatians?
Kidd: Yeah Dusty, people who say that have kind of a distant memory or faint echo of what Paul is doing in Galatians but it's really off. In the first place for Paul, the law itself was a gift of God's grace. It was the law that helped people see their need for a redeemer. It was also the law that gave the charter for, well, here's what a people looks like when they are formed into the image of God and when they together are living as his people, as his kingdom, as his society, as his city, as his family.
For Paul the concern is the way that the law's gracious function of being the incubator for the birth and the career and the death and resurrection of Jesus. It's done its job. It's brought us to Christ. And to the extent that it convicts us personally of our sin by showing us that we can't keep the commandments, it's done a very gracious job for us.
On the far side of that, for Paul, the law still stands because he can sum up the whole law in "Love your neighbor as yourself. But with the Galatians in particular, it's important for them to understand that the dynamic of that transformation, the transformation of the person into one who bears the image of God, is not through this, "I must keep these commandments. And then walking in the Holy Spirit who comes to live in us and to make Christ's life effective in us.
And so that's why he talks in Galatians 5 about the fruit of the Spirit being love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, self-control. Then he says, "Against these things there is no law. It's like, you know when you first learn to drive you read the driver's handbook but the point is to learn how to drive. And at some point you need to get behind the wheel and drive. And these folks have all that they need in order to drive and they are going like, "Okay, I am going to read the driver's manual while I drive.
The text is there and now it's been embodied in Jesus. So live in him. You will fulfill the law and you will find that you are being made over into the image of Christ. Student: So in that sense law isn't like this bad thing. It is good but the Galatians are having a problem with following it when they should be living by faith.
Is there any place where Paul kind of does the other thing, where people are living too much without the law and so he tells them go back and look at that and do that? Kidd: What we will see two lessons from now when we get to the Corinthians is people who are doing exactly the opposite. They think that they have so much arrived at the great eschaton that they don't need…In fact, in 1 Corinthians 4 he says, "You need to be careful to not go beyond what is written. And by contrast in Galatians , he says, "Look folks, the only thing that matters is faith working through love.
And here is where we kind of get back to Paul's whole eschatology thing. What makes him so profoundly good as a pastor is that he reads people's hearts and he reads their hearts in light of his sense of God's timeline.
And the Galatians are trying to turn the clock back and go back under the law as though Christ had not come, as though it was necessary for some other shedding of blood.
And he's going, "You guys don't get it. With the Corinthians, they think that they are so far beyond the constraint of the Scriptures that he has to remind them of how much wisdom there is for us in Scripture. And so he calls them out of a, sort of a pretend future that they are in and he says, "No you need to get back into the sloppy already not yet" where because we are still sinners, God's law still tells us what we need to know about who God is.
And if we think we need to live apart from his rules we are kidding ourselves. Like in chapter 3, he is talking about Abraham's seed saying that he wasn't talking about plural seeds but only one and obviously that can only mean Christ. But then they say but the original meaning was plural and Paul is just reading Jesus into the Old Testament.
Is that what he is doing here? But when you go back to Genesis, I think you find on a closer read that he is reading the text for what happens in Genesis. In Genesis 12 and 15, God gives the promise of seed. And you know, it's a singular noun but it's got a multiple meaning.
It's got a plural meaning. But I did not see any other of the apostles , only James the brother of the Lord. As to what I am writing to you, behold , before God , I am not lying. Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. The ditch is equally useful to those who want to maintain a traditional faith within a pure ahistorical vacuum. But the idea that there is a great gulf fixed between historical exegesis and Christian theology — this Enlightenment presupposition is precisely what ought to be challenged, not least when commenting on a biblical text.
With this in mind, I offer here 1 a brief account of the major exegetical issues that meet us in Galatians; 2 a suggestion of which major theological questions might profitably be put to the letter, and what answers might arise; and 3 some proposals about how these two tasks might be brought into fruitful interaction with one another through the work of a commentary and the further work not least preaching that a commentary is supposed to evoke.
The basic task of exegesis is to address, as a whole and in parts, the historical questions: What was the author saying to the readers; and why? These questions ultimately demand an answer at the broadest level in the form of a hypothesis to be tested against the verse-by-verse details. One may, perhaps, allow the author some imprecision, particularly in such a heated composition, but if even a small number of details do not fit the hypothesis, it will be called into question.
Exegetes of course have ways of making things fit. As though Paul, of all people, would be content to write a letter that was merely a set of conventional noises whose meaning could thus be reduced to a set of evocative grunts! Failing that, one can suggest that a puzzling verse simply reflects a moment where either Paul or his amanuensis lost the train of thought.
When did Paul write the letter? One well-worn path through these thickets has been made by those who insist that the agitators are legalists: proto-Pelagians who are trying to persuade the Galatians to seek justification by performing good moral deeds. Among the many problems this view faces is the question, Why then does Paul spend so long, in chapter 5 in particular, warning the Galatians against what looks like antinomianism?
It will scarcely do to say though many have that he has suddenly focused on a quite different problem, with perhaps a quite different set of opponents or agitators. A different basic analysis seems called for — one that will hold the two emphases of the letter if that is what they are in a single larger context, and that will perhaps question whether what appear to our post-Enlightenment and post-Reformation eyes as two separate, almost incompatible, emphases, would have appeared like that to either Paul or his readers.
Since two hundred years of research has failed to solve them, is there not something to be said for bracketing them and going straight into reading the text? A similarly large-scale question to be addressed is, Why does Paul spend so long recounting his early visits to Jerusalem and his meeting with the apostles there? Almost one-quarter of the letter , 36 verses out of is devoted to this subject, and there may be further echoes of the subject elsewhere e.
But Paul at least reckoned it necessary to preface the body of the letter with this introduction rather than something else; and, since his introductions are normally good indicators of the main thrust of the letter, we should at least make the attempt to investigate the possible integration of the first two chapters with what follows. A question that relates to this but has recently taken on a life of its own particularly since the appearance twenty-five years ago of the commentary by H.
Betz is, To what rhetorical genre does the letter belong? But it is important not to let the literary tail wag the epistolary dog. Paul was an innovator, living in two or more worlds at once, and allowing them — in his own person, his vocation, his style of operation, and his writing — to knock sparks off each other or, as it might be, to dovetail together in new ways. Consideration of literary genre must always remain in dialogue with the question of what the text actually says.
Neither can claim the high ground and dictate to the other. The same is true of the various forms of structural, or structuralist, analysis. A good many things that have traditionally been read as abstract ideas or beliefs did in fact come with heavy agendas attached in the areas of social grouping, organization, and culture, and we ignore this at our peril. Just because every word and phrase carries a social context and dimension does not mean that Paul is not setting out a train of thought, a sequence of ideas.
We must beware, here as elsewhere, of false antitheses. These are exactly the sorts of questions, once more, that will tend to make the theologian impatient. Of what relevance, people sometimes say and often think, are these questions for the major and urgent issues that crowd in upon the church and its proclamation to the world?
The answer is that each of them demonstrably affects how we read the key texts for which the theologian or preacher is eager. The question of justification by faith itself is intimately bound up with them. The question at issue was not, How can individual sinners find salvation? The detailed exegetical debates that have swirled around these verses have, as often as not, been caused by a sense that the traditional reading does not quite work, does not quite fit the words that Paul actually used.
Attention to the wider context on the one hand, and to theological issues of how the basic concepts function in general and in Paul in particular, may provide fresh ways forward. And if that is so, a Careful reading of this passage in Galatians might well send shock waves through the reading of other Pauline texts, such as Romans and Philippians 3.
The long argument of , which forms the solid center of the letter, offers almost endless puzzles for the exegete, down to the meaning of individual words and particles and the question of implicit punctuation the early manuscripts, of course, have for the most part neither punctuation nor breaks between words. And it is here that the larger issues of understanding Galatians, the questions that form the bridge between exegesis, history, and theology, begin to come to light.
And to that with Moses? And to the Torah, the Jewish law, which, though giving substance to the historical Mosaic covenant, seems to have taken on a life of its own? Does he see it as a historical sequence of covenants and promises that have now reached their fulfillment in Jesus? These questions can, of course, only be resolved by detailed examination of the text, verse by verse and line by line. But it is important to notice here the way in which, classically within the discipline of Pauline scholarship, two questions, in principle separable, have in fact been fused together in uncomfortable coexistence.
The two have often been allowed to spill over into each other. Conversely, if Paul is perceived to stand in a positive relation to Judaism at the historical level — i. Anyone who wishes thus to skate to and fro between history of religions and theological analysis should be warned that the ice here is dangerously thin. The fact that Paul criticized some aspects of his native Judaism and that he announced a gospel to the Gentiles does not mean that he broke with Judaism in order to do so.
For the same reason, he was now announcing to all the world that the one true God was addressing, claiming, and redeeming it by the Jewish Messiah, the Lord of the world. This discussion should be sufficient to show the way in which the exegetical and theological issues that arise from Galatians 3 and 4 are bound so closely together that it is impossible to separate them.
But we should also note the way in which such deliberations have also invoked, from various angles, the wider contexts both of theology and of contemporary meaning. Equally, if it is supposed for a moment that Paul simply saw himself as a good Jew who merely knew the name of the Messiah, but otherwise had nothing to add to his Jewish heritage, all chance of understanding him is lost.
The only way of dealing with Galatians 3 and 4 is for all these issues to be on the table at the same time. The exegetical problem s of Galatians 5 and 6 grow out of, and contribute further to, these questions, but add extra ones of their own.
But to approach the chapters thus is to be further puzzled. Paul does not say quite what from this perspective we would expect. The detailed instructions of which, if they have a connecting theme, are still not so tightly sewn together as the previous argument continue to refer not to a general need for the Galatians to behave in a proper fashion, but rather to a particular social situation within which certain styles of behavior are particularly appropriate.
And the letter closes with a strong statement of the basic point that, arguably, Paul has been making all through: Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision matters, since what matters is new creation. This exegetical problem is of course of huge interest to theologians, but it will not be solved by broad generalizations that sit loose to the detail of the text, or to its historical and social origins.
After this brief review of the exegetical problems of the letter, it is now time to approach the matter from the other end. What theological issues might we hope to see advanced by the study of this text, and what problems face us as we press such questions? In both cases all we can do is to note some possible questions out of the many that could arise, and to suggest some possible answers.
The object of the exercise here is to be exemplary rather than in any way exhaustive. We have already mentioned justification, and the interrelation of theology and ethics with its subset, the interrelation between justification by faith and life in the Spirit. These are not the major questions that systematic theologians have struggled with throughout the history of the church; indeed, Paul himself is capable of writing letters in which one or both play little or no role.
But we cannot imagine Paul writing a letter in which Jesus Christ played no part, or in which the purpose and nature of the one true God were not under consideration; and these are of course the central subject matter of traditional Christian systematic theology.
What, first, does Paul have to say in Galatians that will address the traditional questions about God? Such questions concern, for instance, the identity and description of God, or a god; how knowledge of this god is to be had whether innate in humans, specially revealed, or whatever ; the relationship of this god to the world; the power and operation of the god, not least his or her activity within the world; what one can say about evil in the world, and what if anything this god might be doing about it; the nature of human being and existence; the question of appropriate human behavior.
Allowing Paul to address these questions from his own angles, we can at once make the following observations, which, though quite obvious, are not always highlighted. This God is the creator of the world, and pagan idols are shams, or demons in disguise.
Even if Paul sometimes seems to be saying that the God of Israel has behaved in an unforeseen, perhaps an unpredictable, maybe even an unprincipled, fashion, it is still the God of Israel he is talking about. We should expect Paul therefore to be on the map of first-century Jewish thought about God — and this is indeed the case, though not always in the ways one might imagine.
When we glance across at the other Pauline letters, and out into the rest of the NT, we find at this point a remarkable unanimity. Despite two millennia of Jewish protest to the contrary, the NT writers, with Paul leading the way chronologically, firmly believe themselves to be writing about, worshiping, and following the will of the one God of Israel, and rejecting paganism.
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