September 16, 2014

From Jim McGuiggan... THE GALATIAN PROBLEM

THE GALATIAN PROBLEM

1. It seems very clear that while Paul had problems with some non-Christian Jews [see Acts 13:45-46, 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16 and elsewhere] he was not addressing them when he wrote his scathing letter to the Galatians.
2. The people he was so angry with were Christian Jews; that is, Jews who had received Jesus as the Messiah and committed themselves to him.
3. The proof of that is that they were offering “a gospel” to Galatians who were already in Jesus Christ [Galatians 3:1-5]. In addition, Paul becomes specific in 2:4-14 and levels an accusation against his fellow Christian Jews [including Peter and Barnabas].
4. So what exactly was Paul enraged about? It’s clear that Paul was called by God to a mission peculiarly [not exclusively] to Gentiles as surely as Peter [and others] were commissioned with the gospel to the Jews [Galatians 2.7-8]. What troubled Paul was that some Christian Jews came into the region where he had established churches among the Gentiles and they were demanding that these Gentiles live as Jews. That is, to be Torah observant [including being circumcised] if they were to be saved and blessed in Jesus [Galatians 2:14b, 5:11-5 and compare Acts 15:1].
5. And what was wrong with that? It’s usual for us to say that these Christian Jews were teaching salvation by keeping “the moral law” rather than requiring membership in the Jewish community. It’s usual to hear that they were teaching salvation by personal virtue and merit but neither of those proposals is what Paul talks about. Read again the entire second chapter and see that it is about binding on Gentiles the Torah, the Jewish law with the food laws, circumcision and all that goes with it [compare also 4:17, 21-31 and 5:1-2].
6. Yes, we’re told, but since the Mosaic Law required sinlessness then to bring Gentiles under the Mosaic Law was in effect laying on them the demand for sinlessness. [See 3:10-12 which is used to support this claim that the Mosaic Law demanded sinlessness. Click here for a related piece.]
7. But did these Christian Jews believe they were sinless? Did they believe they were required to be sinless? Did they not believe that they were sinners and aren’t the psalms filled with people who confessed sin and asked for forgiveness and thanked God for graciously granting it? The notion that the OT demanded sinlessness is false. Note Acts 15:11 and note again that Peter was indicted in Galatians 2.
8. So when the Jewish Christians who were disturbing the churches Paul had established independent of Jewish law observance demanded that Gentile Christians become Jews they were not asking the Gentiles to earn their salvation by good works; they were not trying to bring Gentiles under a law that demanded sinlessness. That wasn’t what enraged Paul.
9. Let me repeat, the Jews that Paul is angry with in Galatians are Christian Jews who believed in forgiveness of sins in Jesus. The problem was that they believed that everyone had to be a Torah-observant Jew or turn to Judaism in order to get forgiveness and blessing in the Messiah [see again Acts 15.1].
10. This implied that all that God had been doing through Paul [and others] among the Gentiles had not brought salvation or blessing. Paul’s divine commission to the Gentiles [see again Galatians 2:7-8] was being undermined and the Gentile saving relationship to Jesus was denied. In effect, God had not and was not saving these people by the gospel Paul proclaimed. The “true” gospel, these people claimed, was not Paul’s—it was the gospel with an exclusively Jewish twist; a gospel Paul said was no gospel at all [Galatians 1:6-9].
11. There was no necessity for Jews to cease being Jews to find forgiveness and life in Jesus [see Romans 10:9-10, Acts 21:18-26 and 1 Corinthians 9:20 but note Galatians 2:14].Nevertheless there was something fundamentally wrong about Jews demanding that Gentiles become Jew in order to find life in the Messiah.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, theabidingword.com.

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