Today, I am reading and commenting on  Galatians 1-6.

In his letter to the Galatian believers Paul addresses two issues in the Galatian Church.  Having written that I went back to the passage to compose my thoughts about the first issue and realized that in some ways they are different expressions of the same issue. Paul begins by writing that the reports he is receiving suggest that the Galatian believers were being led astray by some teachers who had arrived and claimed to be preaching the Gospel, but were teaching something contrary to what Paul taught.  Paul insists that anything contrary to what he originally preached to them is NOT the Gospel and anyone who so preached should be under God’s curse.  Paul points out that he was not attempting the approval of any human beings (note the similarity to what he wrote to the Corinthians about things other teachers were saying about him).  Paul writes that if he was seeking human approval he would not be a follower of Jesus.  Which suggests that the two issues Paul addresses later in this letter were about attempts to please others rather than God.

Which brings me to the first false teaching Paul counters in this letter.  Some among the Galatian believers were teaching that followers of Jesus needed to follow the Law of Moses, including circumcision for the men, but not limited to that.  Those who followed this teaching were insisting that Christians needed to practice the feast days of Judaism and all other aspects of the Law of Moses.  Paul points out that if we seek to gain righteousness through following the Law, we will be enslaved by the Law, but that we have been freed by Christ and are no longer bound by the Law.  Paul writes that we must choose whether we will live in slavery to the Law or the freedom of Christ.  Paul makes the point that we cannot succeed in being good enough to get into heaven, we can only get into heaven by accepting God’s gift through Christ and putting our faith in Him.

Having established that we have been called to freedom in Christ, Paul then addresses the second false teaching he wanted to counter.  Paul writes that we should not use our freedom in Christ to indulge our sinful desires.  Rather we should humbly serve others with love.  Rather than use our freedom to satisfy our physical desires, we should seek satisfy the Spirit.  He gives a list of the sort of things which grow out of seeking physical pleasure.  I am not going to rewrite that list here because Paul’s list in the passage is well written.  I am however going to reproduce at least part of the list of things which Paul tells us grows out of seeking the please the Spirit, because no one can claim there is anything wrong with any of these: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Whatever we choose to do, we should ask ourselves in what way that action is an expression of one or more of the things on that list.   If the answer is that it is not in any way an expression of something off of that list, we should refrain from that activity and replace it with something which is an expression of that list.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.