Galatians 1:1-5

Galatians 1:1–5 KJV 1900

1 Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead;) 2 And all the brethren which are with me, unto the churches of Galatia: 3 Grace be to you and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ, 4 Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father: 5 To whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Introduction

An immediate response to personal attacks. 1

Paul’s first level of address begins with simply his name.

Saulos Paulos are two of Paul’s three names.

We do not know what Paul’s family name was.

Saul was his Jewish name.

As a Roman citizen, Paul’s father also gave him a uniquely Roman name, Paul.

After his salvation, as he grew into the role that God had given him, missionary to the gentiles, Paul became primarily known by his Roman name.

The people that would receive this letter knew Paul personally.

He had come and preached the gospel to them personally.

They had been saved out of paganism by the message that Paul delivered to them.

That message was, of course the gospel.

What is the message of the gospel?

It’s the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus in our place.

We are sinners, we know it deep down.

Jesus died to pay for our sins so we could be reconciled to God.

The people of Galatia had accepted the message of what Jesus had done for them and churches had been started throughout the region.

Satan will always oppose what God is doing.

The churches of Galatia were under intense attack.

Not the kinds of attacks that we think of in this early stage of the church.

When people think about the attacks against the early church, what do they think of?

Persecution?

Economic?

Political?

None of these describe the type of attack that precipitated the writing of this letter.

The greatest threat to the churches of Galatia was the attack of false teaching.

We will get into the intricacies of what was being taught as we study this letter.

Before we get into any of that, Paul addresses one aspect of this right at the beginning.

The false teachers had tried, as part of their tactics, to discredit Paul as an authoritative teacher.

The main thrust of their attack on Paul was that he was not a true Man of God.

The false teachers, we will discover, are Judaizers.

It’s not too hard to imagine how these attacks might have originated.

Paul was sent out of the church at Antioch, not Jerusalem.

Paul presents himself as an Apostle, but he was not one of the original 12, not was he voted into their number as Matthias.

Paul, a Jew, was seeing the greatest success among the gentiles.

Don’t forget, that Paul, pre-Damascus road, was an intense persecutor of those who followed Jesus.

No doubt there was plenty of material that could be used against Paul.

He was just a human, after all.

His detractors seem to have had some success in undermining Paul’s testimony among the Galatians.

Before he can get into the arguments of the letter, Paul has to reestablish his legitimacy as a preacher and an apostle.

He highlights the fact that his apostleship does not originate with man.

We will see later in the book that Paul’s knowledge of the gospel didn’t come from man either.

He was specifically taught and trained by Jesus himself.

Paul had no authority to appeal to other than Jesus, Himself.

This is in spite of the fact that if there was ever a man who could appeal to his human accomplishments and credentials, it was Paul.

In order for the Galatians to benefit from Paul’s letter they must believe that he is speaking from the Lord.

The same is true for us as we enter into this study.

What Paul has written here is not human wisdom or knowledge.

What we are reading today is the Holy Ghost inspired word of God.

Because of the problems and Paul’s disappointment with them, we should notice a lack of warmth in Paul’s opening.

A cold address. 2

If the opening to Galatians seems a little less flowery than usual to you, you’re right.

Have you ever had someone act super nice to you.

You think, wow they must really like me.

Then, the more you hang around them, you start to realize that they are just like that to everyone.

Does that kind of make you feel a little less special?

Paul is not flowery and overly-complementary to everyone.

Many of his letters, even Corinthians, start with commendations and complements.

Galatians does not.

We can see how the situation in Galatia and the personal attack on his character have affected Paul.

Paul simply acknowledges the intended recipients and the people who were with him.

A quick word on Galatia.

It is not a Jewish region.

The overwhelming majority of people in this area would have been a mixture of Gentile cultures.

You would have the Gaul, for which the region was named. These would have been early ancestors of the Celts.

You would have definitely had Greeks and Romans.

You would have also had Asians.

For the Judaizers to target this region is super sleazy.

Going in somewhere that someone else has worked hard to develop and establish...

Trying to turn it into something totally different...

It goes on today and it was going on back then.

All that needed to happen to stop this was for the Galatians to be faithful.

Instead, they allowed themselves to be led astray.

They allowed themselves to be removed from the truth.

A quick word on the people with Paul when he was writing this.

He’s probably actually in Corinth.

Galatians is one of, if not the first letter that Paul wrote.

He has his ministry team with them.

They are in the first few weeks and months of trying to get the church in Corinth started.

It is probable that some sort of team had come to Paul from Galatia to tell him about what was happening.

Possibly a faithful church was concerned about what was happening and came to get Paul’s help.

Their testimony would have informed Paul about the false teachers stirring up trouble.

Since he couldn’t leave Corinth, he would send this letter back with them.

After what he’s heard though, he doesn’t condemn them.

Instead, he gets dual use out of the traditional Pauline greeting.

Uncharacteristic defense of the work of Christ. 3-4

Though this may be the first preserved letter of Paul’s that we have, grace and peace would become synonymous with the apostle’s work

They are always in that order too.

God’s grace in our life leads to peace.

Grace is undeserved.

You cannot earn it.

It must be freely given or it is no longer grace.

Grace was not the rule of contemporary religion.

Come to think of it, neither was peace.

How do you describe peace?

Freedom from disturbance.

An end to war.

Christian peace is both of these.

It’s inner peace which comes from the war between us and our Creator being over.

No other religion can offer that.

Many claim to bring inner peace.

They cannot without also providing for an end to the war between the sinner and the Creator.

Only the gospel can do that.

This is what Paul reminds the Galatians in verse 4.

Typically, he would save these kind of explanations for the body of the letter.

For the Galatians, who are teetering on the edge of apostasy, he throws it into the introduction of the letter.

Jesus didn’t die on the cross to establish another belief system that would be like all the rest of the world’s religions

Every other religion in the world is built on a foundation of works based merit system.

We know that works-based religion is impossible to attain, and if it were, it would be impossible to maintain.

Works-based religion is a failed human experiment.

It can only...

Assuage the conscience, making us blind to our wickedness.

Discourage us when we fail to live up to the standard, causing us to abandon our attempts at morality.

Jesus died, was buried, and rose again on the third day not to give us another religion cast from the same wicked mold of Satan, but to deliver us from this present evil world.

Don’t think that Jesus only cares about delivering us from the Lake of Fire.

Jesus delivers us to the evil of this present world and the evil of this present world’s religions.

The Galatian churches were full of people who had received this deliverance were now willingly allowing false teachers to lead them back into a life of enslaved performance-based religion.

This is extremely troubling to Paul.

It should be extremely troubling to us to know that this is still going on in churches just like ours.

Like I said earlier, Paul has nothing to praise the Galatians for, in his introduction.

Instead, he praises God.

Doxology. 5

Paul ascribes glory to God for ever and ever.

The greek word is eons and eons.

Infinite unending glory to God.

He ends the introduction to his letter with the word that we typically use to end our prayers.

Amen.

Truth.

Let it be.

Application

This is going to be an exciting study.

I can’t wait to become good friends with the letter to the Galatians.

I can’t wait to see what kind of lessons we are going to learn together.

As we consider the introduction this morning I have to wonder about a few things.

Have you ever felt your religious position discredited because you didn’t measure up to some human’s expectations?

Remember, God expects His children to live holy lives.

He is in the business of sanctifying us and conforming us to the image of His Son.

However, your position in Christ has nothing to do with your performance but His.

You did not become a Christian by the work of man.

God performed the work of your redemption.

If Paul were alive today, what kind of a letter would our church get?

Would there be anything to commend?

Are we guilty of listening to false teachers?

I fear for the false teachers that we listen to as a majority conservative political church.

I fear for the false teachers that our young parents listen to when it comes to parenting.

I fear for the false teachers our teens are listening to on social media or in their school.

We must be on guard for teaching that contradicts the word of God.

Finally, we must remember that Jesus died to change our eternity as well as our present.