In my experience, most Biblical commentators who write on Paul spend a couple of pages talking about where a particular church was located. I must honest…that doesn’t mean too much to me today. Paul writes to the Romans…where is that? (hint…Italy). Paul writes to the Galatians…where is that? (Middle East…Asia Minor…good enough for me). Paul writes to the Philemonites…where is that (hint…Philemon was a person, not a place). So let just say that Galatia was in the middle east and leave it at that.
Paul went to Galatia on his first missionary trip (there were three of these and detailed accounts can be found in the book of Acts). Paul went to Galatia and a couple of other cities such as Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe and then went back there on his second and third trips to check on them.
His usual M.O. was to establish a church, appoint elders, and then go on to the next place, and if possible, check back with them to see how they were doing on a separate trip. More often that not, when Paul would check on them, they had issues….I think Guy Fieri stole this idea for his show “Triple D Nation”…but his restaurants were usually doing pretty well on the recheck
So Paul comes into Galatia, establishes churches, and moves on. Not long after he leaves, a group a people who are called false teachers show up and work to undermine all that Paul had done. They are often referred to as “Judaizers” as they would take a perverted form of Judaism and try to wedge new Christian believers into it…square peg and a round hole.
In this particular case, Paul had been teaching that as Christians, the Galatians (most of them Gentiles, or non-Jews) they did not have to follow any of the Jewish rules such as a special diet, celebrating particular holy days, and the rite of circumcision. There was a certain freedom in being a Christian that was not available if you were Jewish and still followed all the laws.
These Judaizers follow right behind Paul and tell the same people in Galatia that following Jesus was good and everything, but if you really wanted the complete package, well then drop the BLTs, don’t work on Saturday and well, if you were a guy, guess what…suck it up buttercup…there was a scalpel with your name on it.
This letter that Paul writes to the Galatian church is his way of correcting that bad theology and practice of these false teachers. Although the Bible divides the Galatians story into six different chapters, we can also look at the story as having a mere three chapters. The first chapter (in the Bible it is chapters 1-2) is Paul telling or retelling the Galatians his personal journey of faith. The second chapter (3-4 in the Bible) is Paul’s theology is refuting what the false teachers were saying). The third chapter ((5-6 in the Bible) is what we would call ‘application’. Now that I know all of this, what do I do with it?
The story of the Galatian church will continue…
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