Galatians

To the one who will walk slowly through my letter to the Galatians, grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I want to tell you why I wrote it, before you begin.

I had labored among these churches. I had come to them weak, ill in body, and they received me as though I were an angel of God, as Christ Jesus himself (Galatians 4:14). They would have torn out their own eyes and given them to me. I loved them. And then, after I had gone, others came behind me — men who spoke of Christ but could not leave the finished work of Christ alone. They said, in effect: faith in Jesus is well and good, but you must also be circumcised, you must also take up the law, you must add your keeping to his cross, or you are not truly God's. And my children began to believe it. They began to turn.

Understand me — I did not write this letter calmly. I was in the pain of a mother in labor a second time over the same children (Galatians 4:19). For this is not a small quarrel about customs. This strikes the very heart. If a man could be made right with God by keeping the law, then Christ died for nothing (Galatians 2:21). Do you see why I could not be gentle? To add anything to the cross is to empty the cross. It is another gospel, which is no gospel at all.

So I wrote hard. I named names. I would not yield submission for even a moment, that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you (Galatians 2:5). Not for their sake only — for yours, reader, sitting where you are now.

Here is the one thing I would have you carry through every morning of your reading: you were justified by faith in Christ, and you go on the same way you began — by the Spirit, by faith, by grace, not by your own performance. "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free" (Galatians 5:1). When you rise each day tempted to earn what has already been given you, or to fear that your standing depends on your striving, come back to this letter and let it cut that lie away again. Carry the freedom. Do not let anyone put the yoke back on your neck.

The story behind this letter

This is one of my earlier letters, written in fierce urgency to a cluster of churches in the region of Galatia — congregations I myself had founded on my missionary travels, made up largely of Gentiles who had turned from idols to the living God. I had preached Christ crucified among them, they had received the Spirit, and I had moved on to other fields.

The crisis came after I left. Teachers arrived — often called "Judaizers" — insisting that Gentile believers must be circumcised and must keep the law of Moses to belong fully to God's people. They were undermining my authority as an apostle and, far worse, corrupting the gospel itself. Word reached me that the Galatians were being swept along. This letter is my response, and it is the only one of mine that opens with no word of thanks — I go straight to my astonishment that they were so quickly deserting the gospel (Galatians 1:6).

The letter moves in three clear movements. First (chapters 1–2), I defend where my gospel came from: not from men, but by revelation of Jesus Christ. I recount my own history — the persecutor, the calling, my dealings with the apostles in Jerusalem, my confrontation with Peter at Antioch — to show that the good news I preached them is the true and only one. Second (chapters 3–4), I reason from the Scriptures: Abraham was counted righteous by faith long before the law was given (Galatians 3:6); the law was our guardian until Christ came (Galatians 3:24); we are now sons and heirs, not slaves. Third (chapters 5–6), I turn to how this freedom is lived — not as license for the flesh, but walking by the Spirit, whose fruit is love, joy, peace, and the rest (Galatians 5:22–23), bearing one another's burdens, and so fulfilling the law of Christ.

The great themes, then: justification by faith apart from works of the law; the sufficiency of the cross; the gift of the Spirit; freedom from bondage; and the paradox that this very freedom is meant to be spent in love. Read it slowly, and let each morning's passage press the same question the whole letter presses — will you receive everything from Christ, or try to add something of your own?