Author
The letter to the Galatians was written by the apostle Paul (1:1). Unlike several of Paul’s other letters (e.g., 1 Thess 1:1), he does not mention a co-sender who might have served as a coauthor. Paul tells us more about himself and his past in Galatians than in any of his other letters (2 Cor 11:21—12:10; Phil 3:4–11), and a number of themes that we especially associate with the apostle Paul appear in this letter (e.g., justification by faith, freedom from the law, the conflict between the flesh and the Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit), as do treasured verses of his personal testimony (2:20; 6:14).
Date
The year in which Paul wrote this letter is disputed. At the center of the debate is Gal 2:1–10, where Paul describes a meeting in Jerusalem in which the leaders of the Jerusalem church validated his (law-free) gospel. Differences between his account in 2:1–10 and the account of a meeting in Acts 15:4–29 have convinced many interpreters that these are different occasions; the meeting referred to in Galatians is then thought to have taken place during Paul and Barnabas’s trip to Jerusalem mentioned in Acts 11:29–30. Other interpreters doubt that Gal 2 and Acts 15 can refer to different meetings, highlighting the similarities between the accounts and attributing differences to the different emphases of the two writers.
If the incident referred to in 2:1–10 took place at the time of Acts 11:29–30, then the absence in Galatians of any reference to the meeting of Acts 15 (a meeting of importance for the subject matter of the letter) presumably means that it was written before that meeting took place (around AD 48). In that case, Galatians is Paul’s earliest letter still in existence—and likely the earliest known Christian text.
If 2:1–10 describes the same meeting as Acts 15, then the letter could have been written at any subsequent date. In neither case can we know for certain where Paul was when he wrote the letter, though Antioch is a plausible suggestion for the first interpretation (cf. Acts 14:26–28) and Ephesus for the second (cf. Acts 19:1, 8–10).
Recipients
The letter was written “to the churches in Galatia” (1:2), to people identified as “Galatians” (3:1). In Paul’s day Galatia was a Roman province in the central region of what is now Turkey. Since it included various southern cities mentioned in Acts 13–14 as evangelized by Paul and Barnabas (Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe), many interpreters think the letter was written to believers in these cities (this view is called the “South Galatian hypothesis”). The inhabitants of these cities were not, however, ethnically Galatian; ethnic Galatians were found farther north, in the area of the city of Ancyra. For that reason, other interpreters think the letter was sent to believers in the northern region (this view is called the “North Galatian hypothesis”) even though Acts never mentions Paul’s missionary activity in that area (unless Acts 16:6 and 18:23 are so understood). Since the narrative of Acts is not an exhaustive account of all Paul did, the North Galatian hypothesis is possible, but the South Galatian hypothesis seems more likely.
After Paul (and probably Barnabas) evangelized the Galatians, missionaries of a different sort visited them. These opponents of Paul believed that Jesus was the Messiah promised to the Jews, but they saw the coming of the Jewish Messiah as no reason to doubt that God’s people were still the Jews or that God’s will for their lives was still to be found in the Mosaic law. In their view, believing in Jesus as the Messiah was a first step if Gentiles were to be saved, but it needed to be followed by circumcision and a commitment to observe the law of Moses. Aware that what they were saying departed from the message of Paul, they appear to have suggested Paul was no true apostle—at least not an apostle on a level with those (like Peter and John) who had accompanied Jesus throughout his ministry. Paul, they apparently contended, received his message secondhand through what others told him about Christ, and he got the message wrong. To address the issues and counter the danger posed by these teachers, Paul wrote his letter to the Galatians.
Overview
The undercutting of his apostleship requires Paul to begin his letter by insisting that he received both his apostleship and his message not from human sources but through a revelation from Jesus Christ himself (1:1, 11–12, 15–16). His contacts with the Jerusalem apostles were limited—he did not receive his message from them (1:16–24)—but the leaders of the Jerusalem church approved his apostleship and message (2:1–10).
Paul then turns to the issue of law observance. Granted, the law prescribes a path to righteousness and life by obeying its commands (3:12), but since human beings transgress these commands (3:10) and live “under the control of sin” (3:22), neither righteousness nor life is attainable through the law (2:21; 3:21). Christ, in dying, took upon himself the law’s curse on transgressors (3:13), so that those rightly subject to that curse might be delivered from it and live a new life, apart from the law, empowered by the Spirit (4:5; 5:18). This does not make the law a bad thing, but it does mean that God never intended the law to provide the path to life (3:21); its purpose is more limited (3:19–24), and God intended the covenant to which it belonged to apply only for the period from Moses until the coming of Christ (3:17–19). For the Galatians to be circumcised would thus mean binding themselves to a covenant that required fully observing its commands (5:3) and cutting themselves off from Christ and his grace (5:4).
Believers, though not “under the law” (5:18), are nonetheless to “walk by the Spirit” (5:16). As they do so, God’s Spirit within them will produce fruit that no law condemns (5:22–23) and a love that represents the true fulfillment of God’s law (5:14).
Themes
Important themes in this letter include the nature of Paul’s apostleship and the origin of his gospel (1:1—2:10); justification (by faith, not by works of the law [2:11—3:14; see note on 2:16]); the nature and role of the law (3:10–25); the freedom of the believer (4:21—5:1, 13); the gift of the Spirit (3:2–5, 14 [see note on 3:2]; 4:6–7); the ongoing struggle between the flesh and the Spirit in the life of the believer (5:16–17); and Christian ethics (as focused on love, 5:14; as walking in the Spirit, 5:16; and as producing the Spirit’s fruit, 5:22–23).
Outline
I. Introduction (1:1–10)
A. Salutation (1:1–5)
B. No Other Gospel (1:6–10)
II. The Origin and Defense of Paul’s Gospel (1:11—2:21)
A. Paul Called by God (1:11–24)
B. Paul Accepted by the Apostles (2:1–10)
C. Paul Opposes Cephas (2:11–21)
III. Law and Gospel (3:1—4:31)
A. Faith or Works of the Law (3:1–14)
B. The Law and the Promise (3:15–22)
C. Children of God (3:23—4:7)
D. Paul’s Concern for the Galatians (4:8–20)
E. Hagar and Sarah (4:21–31)
IV. Instructions in Christian Living (5:1—6:10)
A. Freedom in Christ (5:1–12)
B. Life by the Spirit (5:13–26)
C. Doing Good to All (6:1–10)
V. Conclusion: Not Circumcision but the New Creation (6:11–18)