The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown (98 page)

Rather than comparing Galatians to speeches, Longenecker has sought to compare Galatians to the various kinds of letters written in the ancient world. Demetrius's handbook
On Style
describes 21 different kinds of letters. Some letters combine two or more of these categories. Based on epistolary formulas in Galatians, Longenecker suggested that
Galatians was a letter of rebuke and request. The outline below represents an adaptation of Longenecker's proposed structure of Galatians.
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OUTLINE

1. OPENING (1:1-5)
   
2. REBUKE: PAUL'S GOSPEL AND THE “OTHER GOSPEL” (1:6-4:11)
   
   1. Historical Section (1:6-2:21)
      
      1. No Other Gospel (1:6-10)
         
      2. Paul's Conversion, Visits to Jerusalem, and Encounter with Peter (1:11-2:14)
         
      3. No Justification by Works of the Law (2:15-21)
         
   2. Theological Section (3:1—4:11)
      
      1. Justification by Faith: The Example of Abraham (3:1-18)
         
      2. The Purpose of the Law (3:19-4:7)
         
      3. Don't Turn Back (4:8-11)
         
3. APPEAL: CHOOSE THE LIBERTY OF LIFE IN THE SPIRIT (4:12-6:10)
   
   1. Children of the Free Woman (4:12-31)
      
      1. Paul's Exasperation (4:12-20)
         
      2. An Illustration: Sarah and Hagar and the Two Covenants (4:21-31)
         
   2. Living a Life of Liberty (5:1-6:10)
      
      1. Stand Firm: The Freedom of the Christian (5:1-15)
         
      2. Walk by the Spirit, Not Under the Law (5:16-26)
         
      3. Fulfill the Law of Christ and Sow to the Spirit (6:1-10)
         
4. CONCLUSION (6:11-18)
   

UNIT-BY-UNIT DISCUSSION

I. Opening (1:1-5)

The need of the Galatian churches was so urgent that Paul did not wait until the body of his letter to begin to address their confusion. Even as he identified the sender and addressees of the letter and greeted his readers, he touched on the key issues that he would address more fully later. First, Paul defended his genuine apostleship. An “apostle” is one who is commissioned for a task by another and entrusted with authority to carry out that task. Paul stressed that his commissioning for service did not come from a body of people, nor was his commissioning communicated through a human who acted on God's behalf. Paul was commissioned for ministry by Jesus Christ and the Father.

By contrasting Jesus with human beings and by placing Jesus Christ beside the Father as the two sources of his commission, Paul implied the deity of Christ as well as affirming his own divine commission. Paul's mention of the resurrection should have led readers to recall that Paul's commissioning came from the glorified and resurrected Jesus so that his own apostleship was in no way inferior to that of the Twelve. Paul also referred to his colaborers
who accompanied him on his travels to demonstrate that his gospel was not an idiosyncracy affirmed only by him but that it was also embraced by other devout men.

Paul identified Jesus Christ from whom grace and peace come by appealing to his sacrificial death. Christ gave himself for our sins, bearing the curse that our sins deserved in our place so that we might escape that curse (see 3:13). Paul's opponents might have argued that the view that forgiveness is based on Christ's substitutionary atonement alone fosters reckless and immoral behavior. Paul anticipated the objection even before it was raised and insisted that Jesus' sacrificial death was not only intended to grant the believer forgiveness but also to rescue him from the corrupting influences of a depraved age.

This and nothing less fulfilled God's will for the believer. The believer is rescued from the present evil age when he recognizes that he belongs to the coming age and begins to live in light of this awareness (see Col 3:1—17). The coming age is the resurrection age in which the believer will be fully delivered from his corruption and is the age in which Christ will bring all things into subjection. Paul's brief summary of the gospel prompted him to burst into doxology, and rightly so. The gospel with its message about forgiveness and transformation displays God's eternal glory and urges his creatures to praise him as nothing else does.

II. Rebuke: Paul's Gospel and the “Other Gospel” (1:6-4:11)

Paul rebuked the Galatians for abandoning the one true gospel by accepting the Judaizers' claim that circumcision is necessary for salvation.

A. Historical Section (1:6—2:21)
Because the Judaizers dismissed the gospel that Paul preached, Paul demonstrated that his gospel was of divine, not human, origin. Jesus Christ had himself revealed this gospel to Paul. Paul's gospel clearly was not derived from his Jewish background. His loyalty to Jewish tradition only prompted him to seek to destroy the church and the faith. Likewise, Paul's gospel was not derived from the other apostles or the leaders of the Jerusalem church (1:11—12). In fact, he did not consult with these prominent Christian believers until years after his conversion.

When he did finally consult with the apostles and the leaders of the Jerusalem church, they heartily approved Paul's gospel and encouraged his continued ministry to the Gentiles. Moreover, Paul discovered that some of these prominent church leaders did not behave in a manner that was consistent with the gospel that they all proclaimed. Paul had been forced to challenge the church leaders for this hypocrisy (2:11—14). Paul's challenge demonstrated that his apostolic authority was in no way inferior to theirs.

Paul reminded these Christian Jews that even they were saved by faith in Jesus Christ and not by obedience to the law. If even Jews were not saved by the law, surely the law was not the means of Gentile salvation. By their union with Christ, believers have participated in Jesus' death. They have died to the law and the law no longer exercises authority over them. But Christ indwells believers, which enables them to live righteously. The believer's
gratitude for Christ's great love and enormous sacrifice motivates the believer's righteous living.

B. Theological Section (3:1—4:11)
Paul continued his assault on the false gospel of the Judaizers with a series of theological arguments. First, the Galatians' own religious experience confirmed the centrality of faith rather than the law (3:1—5). The Holy Spirit was conferred on the believers when they believed the gospel. His presence in them was proven by the occurrence of miracles. This implied that faith, not the law, was the real basis for salvation. Second, the law's description of Abraham demonstrated that faith was the means by which a person was declared righteous by God (3:6—9). Although Abraham was known as the father of the Jews, the OT foretold that people of all nations would share the blessing of justification by faith.

Third, salvation by the works of the law requires complete and absolute obedience. A person who does not keep all of the law all of the time is actually cursed by the law. In his substitutionary death, Jesus bore this curse for sinners in order to free them from the law's curse. Fourth, God's covenant with Abraham, which was based on faith, preceded the giving of the law by 430 years (3:15—16). The covenant based on faith still takes precedence.

Fifth, the law was not given in the first place to provide salvation but to lead sinners to Christ (3:19—26). The law brought about knowledge of sin and condemned all humanity for that sin; thus the law was intended to drive sinners to look to Christ for salvation. Sixth, Gentile believers are not second-class citizens of God's family (3:27—4:7). Christ has abolished spiritual distinctions among believers. God has adopted believers, both Jews and Gentiles, as his children, and they have equal status with God. Seventh, observing the Jewish ritual calendar as a means of salvation was nothing more than a lapse back into the paganism from which the Galatians had been delivered (4:8—11).

III. Appeal: Choose the Liberty of Life in the Spirit (4:12-6:10)

After explaining the faults of the Judaizing heresy, Paul appealed to the Galatians to return to the true gospel (4:12—20). He began his appeal by reminding the Galatians of the intimate relationship that he had shared with them, warning them that the Judaizers did not care for them the way Paul did. In fact, the Judaizers' ministry to the Galatians had selfish ulterior motives.

The apostle used an allegory about Sarah and Hagar to teach that the true children of Abraham were free, not enslaved to the law, and that they had always been persecuted by the false children of Abraham who lived in slavery (4:21—31). He urged the Galatians to expel the Judaizers from their congregations, warning that circumcision could not be separated from the other demands of the law. If circumcision were required for salvation, the entire law became obligatory.

The apostle thwarted suspicions that faith without law led to immoral living by appealing to three sources of righteousness for the believer: the Spirit, faith, and the influence of the church (5:15—26). The righteousness that the law demanded was produced by the
Spirit through faith. Faith working through love is what pleases God and fulfills the law. The life that the Spirit produces is characterized by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self-control. This lifestyle was fully consistent with the law's moral demands. Moreover, if a believer lived sinfully, fellow believers in the church had the responsibility to restore the believer to righteous living.

IV. Conclusion (6:11-18)

Paul concluded the letter with his characteristic signature. His concluding remarks reminded the Galatians again of the selfish motives of the Judaizers, humanity's inability to keep the law, and the necessity of experiencing the new creation (transformation through the Spirit's activity) in order to belong to the true Israel. Finally, Paul pointed to the scars that he had received in his ministry for Christ as marks proving his identity as a true servant of Christ.

THEOLOGY

Theological Themes

Justification by Faith Versus Works of the Law
Paul stressed that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. Since the Protestant Reformation, texts such as Gal 2:15—16 and 3:6—14 have been interpreted as teaching that, because of Jesus' sacrificial death, sinners are declared righteous by the heavenly judge through faith in Christ rather than by personal acts of obedience. Recent scholarly discussions have questioned this traditional understanding at several levels. Scholars have suggested new interpretations of the meaning of justification, the identity of the “works of the law,” and the nature of faith. N. T. Wright has argued that “justification” is not the imputation of God's righteousness or Christ's righteousness to the believer but is actually an anticipation of God's final judgment of the individual. That final judgment involves an examination of the totality of the believer's life and is not dependent upon a mere profession of faith.
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Wright's explanation of justification is a helpful corrective to views that completely ignore the role of works in eschatological judgment. Galatians 5:19—21 makes clear that a life characterized by the “works of the flesh” excludes a person from the kingdom of God. Thus one's life and deeds have a definite role in final judgment. But the premise that the works of the flesh disqualify a person from kingdom entrance does not lead to the implication that the fruit of the Spirit qualifies a person.
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Paul did not assert that the believer's actual righteousness qualifies him to inherit the kingdom, even though a clear statement to that effect would have nicely balanced his contrast of the fruit of the Spirit and the works of the flesh. Paul's silence at this point confirms the message that permeates the entire letter: the righteousness that qualifies an individual to pass the scrutiny of
divine judgment is an alien righteousness imputed to the believer on the basis of his or her faith. Although imputed righteousness (justification) and imparted righteousness (sanctification) are inseparable, they are distinguishable. Ultimately, it is the former rather than the latter that makes the believer acceptable to God.
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J. D. G. Dunn has argued that, although “works of the law” refers in general to the deeds prescribed by the Torah, the term primarily referred to the rituals and activities that distinguished Jews from Gentiles such as circumcision, Sabbath keeping, and the observance of purity laws. Thus Paul's insistence on justification by faith apart from the works of the law was not addressed to people who attempted to earn salvation through moral achievement but to those who mistakenly believed that one had to become a Jew in order to be saved. However, a large amount of evidence suggests that the “works of the law” on which some Jews depended for their salvation included efforts to keep all the prescriptions of the law and not just those that distinguished Jews from Gentiles.
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Paul's free citation of Deut 27:26 in Gal 3:10 stresses the necessity of fulfilling every element of the law in order to evade the curse of the law. This suggests that the totality of the law and not just Jewish “boundary markers” were in view in the phrase “works of the law.” Moreover, Paul's insistence that “even the circumcised don't keep the law themselves” (6:13) suggests that his opponents were concerned with more than circumcision, Sabbath, and purity issues.
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Finally, some scholars argue that the phrase that is normally translated “faith in Christ”
(pistis Christou;
e.g., 2:16) should actually be translated “Christ's faith/faithfulness” and refers to Christ's faithfulness to God, particularly as expressed through his obedient death.
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However, the statement “we have believed in Christ Jesus” (2:16); the references to “hearing with faith” (3:2,5); the example of Abraham's faith (3:6—9); and the reference to Christ as the object of faith (3:26) all support the traditional interpretation.
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Galatians teaches that believers are declared righteous by God, both now and in eschatological judgment, based on Christ's sacrifice and in response to their faith in Jesus and not through obedience to the OT law.