The work that sets you free.
The work that sets you free.
Galatians, Part 2: The gospel is a free gift given freely and unconditionally to sinners just as they are.
It is hard to overstate the importance of Paul’s letter to the Galatians. In many ways, it is a litmus test that reveals one’s understanding of the gospel specifically and the Christian life as a whole. My pastor and mentor from Jupiter, Florida, Dr. Jim Blalock once remarked that Galatians “is the signpost at the fork in the road between truth and error.” This is just to say that if you get Galatians wrong, you’ll likely get the rest of the faith as well. Early twentieth-century Lutheran pastor and theologian R. C. H. Lenski echoes this sentiment when he comments:
Galatians is the impregnable citadel, a very Gibraltar, against any attack on the heart of the gospel. This epistle is the grand arsenal which is stocked with the weapons that assure victory in the ceaseless battle for the central truths of the gospel. (7)
The contents of this powder-keg epistle make it one of the most important books to study and understand. And that’s not merely the opinion of pastors, scholars, and church historians, Paul thought so, too. After all, Galatians is the only letter he wrote himself. Rather than dictating these words to a transcriber, Paul pens these words in “large letters . . . with [his] own hand” (Gal. 6:11). The truth of the gospel is a matter of eternal consequence, which is why Paul begins by addressing the issue at hand right away (Gal. 1:6). A “different gospel,” which was no gospel at all, was threatening to undo all that Paul and company had just done. Written on the heels of Paul’s first missionary journey, during which he spent several months evangelizing the congregations of Southern Galatia, this letter was composed as a response to the false doctrines of the Judaiziers that were troubling the self-same congregations.
To be sure, Paul isn’t responding with this forceful letter because his reputation is on the line. Rather, he responds in such a forceful manner because the gospel is on the line. He wasn’t concerned about his reputation; he didn’t care if he had the “approval of man” or not (Gal. 1:10). Neither did he write this epistle to “save face” among his peers. He wrote it because the gospel isn’t up for debate, revision, or modification. More to the point, Paul wanted it to be undeniably clear that “his gospel” wasn’t his or anyone else’s for that matter. “For I would have you know, brothers,” the apostle writes, “that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1:11–12).
The gospel — the good news concerning how God has promised to rescue the world from sin through the person of Jesus — is a message that is always revealed to us. In the eras of the Old Testament, the gospel was revealed through the providence and promise of God the Father. When history shifts into the days of the New Testament, the gospel is revealed through the person and work of God the Son. But notwithstanding the era or period of history, the gospel always comes about through apokalupsis, that is, through revelation (Gal. 1:12). It is “neither a human invention,” writes Jason Micheli, “nor is it a religious tradition. It is a revelation” (20). The good news of God’s “grace and peace” being poured out on sinners through his Son Jesus is not only a message all about God, but also a message that only comes from God. The gospel is decidedly not a human concoction. No mortal could come up with something so intricately interwoven into the fabric of human history, not even one as skilled in the Scriptures as Saul of Tarsus. Paul emphasizes this very fact when he relays the story of his conversion and calling.
Prior to being a preacher of Jesus, Paul was Jesus’s fiercest opponent (Gal. 1:13–14). He gleefully wreaked havoc on anyone and everyone who said they believed that Jesus was the Messiah (Acts 8:3). He took a disturbing delight in “violently” laying waste to “the church of God,” so much so that he made it his lot in life not only to promote “the traditions of [his] fathers,” but also to annihilate anyone who dared to believe otherwise. Nevertheless, even as Paul was “breathing threats and murder against the disciples” of Jesus (Acts 9:1), God was orchestrating a divine interruption of his best-laid plans. As Paul set his sights on Damascus, with legal documents in hand authorizing him to incarcerate and/or execute any who “belonged to the Way” (a.k.a. Christians), he was suddenly greeted by none other than Jesus of Nazareth.
In a burst of light, the recently crucified Galilean Teacher appeared in the flesh right in front of Paul the Pharisee. And not only did he appear in front of him but he drew him to himself, communicating to him God’s divine purpose and plan for his life. God the Father, Paul muses, “called me by his grace, [and] was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles” (Gal. 1:15–16). The zealous Jewish student from Tarsus was to be a preacher of grace to the Gentiles, “to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God” (Acts 26:18). That small segment of road between Jerusalem and Damascus was privy to one of the most uncanny and unparalleled displays of grace known to man, as Paul the persecutor is transformed into Paul the preacher. His “Pharisaic career,” comments R. C. H. Lenski, “crashed before grace,” thereby making “pure grace stand out in its supreme effectiveness in Paul’s own experience” (56). And the only one who is credited for pulling this off is God alone.
Interestingly enough, Paul records that he didn’t get any subsequent “consultation” after this event nor did he discuss his experience with a body of elders or with the apostles or “with anyone” (Gal. 1:16–17). Instead, he ventured into the Arabian desert where he spent an unknown amount of time being shown in the Word of God through the Spirit of God how to understand the Gospel of God. This isn’t to discredit the authority of the apostles or the value of having trustworthy peers speak wisdom into your life. Rather, this accentuates the revelatory aspect of Paul’s commission as an apostle of Jesus Christ. He wasn’t out for accolades or applause. Neither did he care what men thought. Paul’s prevailing inspiration was to be faithful to the gospel that God gave him to preach.
As Paul continues telling his story, he recalls his visit to Jerusalem after having spent three years in Arabia and Damascus (Gal. 1:18–20). Even still, he wasn’t getting influenced or instructed in the doctrines of the gospel; he wasn’t visiting the headquarters of the early church in order to get a “stamp of approval” from the apostles to do what he was already doing — namely, preaching Jesus. Rather, Paul ventured to Jerusaelm in order to join the work of the church as one of their own (Gal. 1:21–24; Acts 9:26–30), as an apostle in his own right. His authority and his message were entirely divine; a result of God alone (Gal. 1:1, 11–12). Paul was an apostle of Christ called to preach nothing but Christ only because of Christ.
The Judaizers, however, were weasels. They had infected the churches of Galatia with a false claim that “Paul’s gospel” was only a “half-gospel” he had devised in order to amass a following. They perverted the purity of the gospel by insisting that other subsequent measures of faith and fealty were required before a sinner was truly justified. After Paul stopped laughing at the preposterous notion that he was out for the approval of man, he shared the story of his calling, primarily because he knew he was a living, breathing testament to the fact that the gospel story is entirely of God. No human could ever conceive of something like grace, let alone the earth-shattering news that the grace of heaven spilled out onto sinners when the Lord of heaven died on a raggedy Roman cross. The gospel is always a divinely sourced announcement.
Not only is it divinely sourced, but it’s also historically sound, as Paul illustrates when he references another visit he made to the city of Jerusalem. Meeting with “those who seemed influential,” Paul, Barnabas, and Titus revel in the “truth of the gospel” together (Gal. 2:1–2). To be sure, this private conference isn’t Paul back-tracking on the point just made; he meets with “those who seemed influential” — whom we learn to be none other than Peter, James, and John — in order to get all of the “gospel ducks in a row” since the noise emanating from the “false brothers” was growing louder and more disorienting. A better way to imagine this undisclosed meet-up of Paul and the other apostles is to think of it like those scenes where the good guys open the weapons cabinet to suit up for a looming conflict with the bad guys. In this case, however, Paul’s “ammunition” wasn’t bullets or arrows. It was Titus.
Even Titus, who was with me was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in — who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus so that they might bring us into slavery — to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. (Gal. 2:3–5)
It’s not by happenstance that Titus tagged along with Paul and Barnabas on this trip. Paul takes him to prove a point. If “the truth of the gospel” was proven by Paul’s own life as “Exhibit A,” then Titus was “Exhibit B.” Even though he was a Gentile, he wasn’t forced into the rite of circumcision prior to being received into the household of faith. In fact, the only ones worried about whether or not he was circumcised were the “false brothers” who were causing such a stink in the first place. As they side-eyed Titus, they made it abundantly clear how much they disapproved of Paul’s traveling companion since he wasn’t following the laws of Moses. But no matter how much spit they spewed, Paul didn’t budge, not even an inch.
He wasn’t about to give their demands a second thought. Their insistence that believers have to do “something else” besides putting their faith in Christ was accomplishing nothing except putting believers back into bondage, which, of course, is contrary to the gospel of God. The good news is that nothing is required of us before we believe. God’s “grace and peace” have come to us in the person and work of Jesus in an act of divine promise and providence that is wholly independent of us. We don’t have to make anything of ourselves prior to receiving God’s favor, and nor are we under the law’s demands to stay in his favor after we believe. The gospel is a gratuitous gift from start to finish. It’s grace all the way through and all the way down.
You and I are utterly powerless to put ourselves in a position that makes us favorable in God’s eyes. We can’t work our way into anything resembling a right standing with the Judge of Heaven, no matter how much or how hard we try. There’s nothing we can do or not do, in and of ourselves, to merit or maintain our salvation. The law can’t do it. Our best efforts can’t do it. We are wrecked and ruined by the daunting holiness of God. It is only the gospel that comes from God that concerns what God in Christ has already done that ever brings “grace and peace” to sinners by gifiting them the holiness of God through Jesus’s passion and death. Every sinner, whether Jew or Gentile, is saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone all for the glory of God alone (Gal. 2:15–16).
The gospel that we proclaim has nothing to do with what we must do to make peace with God. Rather, it’s all about what Jesus Christ has done to make peace on our behalf. He took the blame for us. He took the fall for us. He suffered humiliation, crucifixion, and death for us. The revelation of the gospel tells us that we stand justified because Christ stood condemned in our stead. He did it all. Nineteenth-century Scottish preacher and hymn writer Horatius Bonar puts it like this:
The gospel places in our hands [a] pardon which no prayers or exertions of ours can make more free, or more near; a pardon flowing directly from the finished propitiation of the cross; a pardon for the ungodly and the unworthy; a pardon which, while it glorifies Him who pardons, brings immediate liberty and deliverance to the pardoned one. (65)
The gospel is a free gift given freely and unconditionally to sinners just as they are. Those caught “dead in trespasses and sins” have no other lifeline. For every Paul, every Titus, and every single stinking sinner reeking of smut, the gospel of God invites you to rest and trust only in the Son of God. It is his work that saves and sets you free.
Works cited:
Horatius Bonar, How Shall I Go to God? And Other Readings (London: Religious Tract Society, 1881).
R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul’s Epistles to the Galatians, to the Ephesians, and to the Philippians (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1961).
Jason Micheli, A Quid without Any Quo: Gospel Freedom According to Galatians (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2023).