galatians 1:1-1:5

the gauls

a long time ago, there was a tribe of people called the gauls. they lived in what we now call northern france.
around 400 BC, the natives began getting restless, and the gauls went on the rampage.
one group of gauls sacked rome in 390BC; another large branch moved into the balkans (what is now serbia/albania).

the balkans - always in trouble

now...around this time, alexander the great was busy uniting greece and conquering the persian empire.
his success there seems to pulled a lot of fighting age greeks out of greece, leaving a bit of a vaccum back home.
when he died, his empire split into 4 pieces, leaving much of the greek army splintered among those empires.

my big fat greek invasion

one set of the wily gauls who were in the balkans, seeing the wealth of greece and the opportunity, opted to invade. they had some success, and some failure, and they ended up withdrawing back, though 'historians' argue whether it was because they got beat or if it was because they had enough plunder to not make the fight to worthwhile.

plan b: turkey

anyway, about this time, a king in central turkey was having a nasty time with his brother. he offered a group of the gauls who had splintered off of the greek-invading gauls a sort of deal - come over here and help me fight my brother, and you can be part of my kingdom. the gauls came over, helped him beat his brother, and were given there own little piece of territory in north-central turkey/asia minor.

sweet home galatia

this region became known as galatia.
the gauls kept their territory, living as kind of an upper caste in their kingdom. they often served as mercenaries.
you art history types might remember a famous greek statue titled, "dying gaul", which shows one of these gauls dying in a fight against the king of pergamum. it's a great statue.

statehood

however, before you start thinking that galatians is actually a book to a bunch of french expats...
by the time of the roman empire, galatia was no longer just an ethnic area, but was the name for a state that had some other non-french/gaul territories.

2. paul and galatia

when we first meet paul (acts 7,8), paul is a named saul and was a pharisee guy; pharisee's were some super strict jewish guys.

phase 1: the violent saul

he was wholly against christianity, and expressed his views...rather forcibly.
in fact, that first scene in acts where you meet him, he's acting as witness as stephen is brutally murdered.
his next act is to go and round up christians for jail and persecution.

just a note here: we christians have quite a bit in common with the people who are most against us.
they are often the ones who have strong conviction and who are acting on it.
just food for thought on who your 'enemies' are...

phase 2: the conversion

acts 9; paul is on his way to damascus to persecute christians.
the note in acts is that he was 'breathing threats and murder'; so delightful, really.

on the way up, christ appeared to him, saying "saul saul, why are you persecuting me?"
christ talks to him, and leaves him blind after the vision, sending him to Damascus, where a christian named ananais is sent to pray for him to receive his vision again.

after a nervous ananais prays for saul, saul becomes a christian. he begins to preach that christ is the messiah in the synagogues, which was probably a bit confusing for both the jews and and the christians for a bit.
as you might expect, the jews were a bit perturbed by mr saul's conversion experience, and they began to plot how they could do away with him.
the plot became known however, and he managed to escape the city by being lowered in a giant basket from the city walls.

phase 3: some other stuff

after this, there is a long period where he does some things that acts doesn't discuss.
you'll get a few of the details on this period in galatians, which is the only record we have of this period in paul's life.

phase 4: the missionary journies

in acts 13, we pick up with saul again.
acts 13 through the end follows saul, now renamed paul, as he goes on 3 journeys to share christ with the gentiles.
these are creatively called "paul's 3 missionary journeys"

the first one is pretty relevant.
in the first journey, he goes north to turkey, including to some cities that were part of the roman province of galatia.

note: north vs south galatia
in all honesty, i should tell you that there are some who feel that this book wasn't written to people from the state of galatia, but actually to the ethnic area of galatia, a subset of the region. the ethnic gauls were in north galatia, so that theory is known as the 'north galatia theory', where as the one i'm pushing is known as the 'south galatia theory'.
if the north galatia theory is correct, then that would mean that paul visited the churches in question not on his first missionary journey, but later, perhaps on his third journey or one some other minor trip.

honestly, that's not the most important thing to know about the book.
i like knowing about it, as do some of you, so i mention it. but "we" all like the southern galatia theory, as do lots of others.
in fact, most do these days i'd say.

one thing to note on paul's first missionary journey...

on paul's first trip to galatia (the state) - the place where i think he's writing to - he was beaten to a pulp.
acts 14 - paul is in lystra, part of the galatian province. he heals somebody, and they think he's one of the gods.
but...amazing how those crowds can be fickle...v19 of 14:

19 But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium (neighboring cities), and having won over the crowds, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing him to be dead.

so, the jews in the area were noted for being pretty hardcore. pretty anti-christian.

3. like oil and water; mixing jews and gentiles

the other piece you have to understand to make sense of this book is the difference between jew and gentile, and what was wrong with jewish theology of the time.

jew vs gentile

the jews were spread all over the roman empire.
they even worked to convert gentiles to judaism, per the promises of the prophets (see isaiah about egypt and assyria being part of god's people).
but...there was a bit of a debate. sort of different denomenations without judaism.

- some taught that gentiles could follow the basic laws of judaism (the 7 rules given to noah), ditch idols, and worship god, and that was enough.
- others taught that the gentiles had to become jews. become circumcised, keep the feasts, the whole deal

these two categories were refered to as "god-fearers" (those who agreed with the old testament but who weren't circumcised) and proselytes (those who 'became jewish' and who were circumcised).
you can imagine that it was much easier to be a woman.

so...there was a debate about what to do with converts, and to what extent they should follow the law.
and the lynch pin for the varying views was a small bit of foreskin.

a plan: the jerusalem council

these issues on what the gentiles should do were tricky enough that the church leaders had a meeting in jerusalem to talk it over.
you can read about it in acts 15. creatively, the meeting is called the jerusalem council.

basically, they say that gentiles can be gentiles and still be god's people.

incidentally, one of the reasons we like the south galatian view, where paul is writing to people he met on his first trip, is that makes this letter an event right around the meeting in jerusalem, instead of something dealing with an issue that had already been settled for a few years.

the law and innocence

this keeping the law or not for gentiles problem is kind of the setting for the book.
the real problem is how we escape our guilt.

paul and the judaizers

paul taught that salvation is the result of christ's death on the cross; it's something that we accept, not something we work to.
some other jewish folks came along behind paul and kind of undid that part about not working to it. they basically said, "oh yes, jesus is good, but the law too."

maybe a bit like jesus and the pharisees?

remember back to jesus...his chief opponents were the pharisees.
the pharisees talked about how they were rightous because they followed their laws.
jesus talked about how people need to ask for forgiveness, because everyone was guilty.

this is very human stuff, strangly seductive.

somehow, the idea that we can earn something is somewhat better than the idea that we can't.
if it also means that we are better.

it's the sort of shift that says, well, this may be a bit harder, but You can do it, You aren't like them, You are better.
arrogance calls us forward.

somewhere along the lines of milton's words for satan - "better to reign in hell than serve in heaven"

so...that's going to be the basic problem of the book.
some jewish folks had convinced many that they had to follow jewish law, that christ wasn't enough.
paul is quite upset. remember that paul used to be a pharisee...you could say that he is a reactionary, but it might be best to say that sometimes you knew the dangers of your background rather well.

4. paul writes a letter

all right. a token of text: gal 1:1-4

this is a stock roman letter opener

from ___ (some details) to ___, greetings.
thus you'll see that paul's letters all pretty much follow that formula, with grace and peace or something similar for his 'greeting'.

v1 note that paul is defending his apostleship

"an apostle...not sent from men nor through men, but through jesus christ and god the father"
this will prove to be a major theme in the book - notice it here, that paul is saying he is god's messenger and that we had dang well listen to him.

a thought on this. as you read galatians, think about the difficulty that paul the apostle had with the church.
and then ever so deliberately recalibrate your expectations for the church.
we should expect to serve, and expect difficulty.
we should also expect that correct beliefs are hard to maintain. there is a reason we get together every week to hear the bible taught, to listen to the words over and over again that have been handed down through the generations.
it's easy to end up someplace wrong, and it doesn't take long. we value teaching for a reason.

v3-5 the gospel, compacted

3. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,
4. who gave Himself for our sins so that He might rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father,
5. to whom be the glory forevermore. Amen.

we go from "grace and peace", the greeting piece, straight into details about christ.
christ gave himself for our sins so that he might rescue us from this persent evil age.

at the very beginning, paul is starting in - we didn't rescue ourselves through circumcision or the law.
christ gave himself for our sins; that's it. it was a rescue, not an escape.

this was done to the will of our god and father, to whom be the glory forevermore.

this whole deal was the will of god. it was god's plan, not god's fix for a mistake.

so - as you read this book, and we'll talk about this later - you'll notice that these verses are indicitive of what you'll see in the book.

1. intro: ancient history.