Intro: Galatia was a large province extending as a strip of land in central Asia Minor from near the Mediterranean to near the Black Sea. Jerome Murphy O'Connor in his Paul a Critical Life, suggests that the Galatia Paul wrote to was a group of churches in the original Galician area somewhat east of present day Ankara; this area had been colonized by Celts, originally from western Europe. They were considered uncivilized barbarians by the Greeks in the vicinity.

1:1 Generally speaking the apostles were the disciples of Jesus. When Judas defected, Matthias was selected by lot to replace him. After his experience on the Damascus Road, Paul assumed the role of an apostle, and in this verse he makes that claim. He deserved the name because the word means one who establishes the church, and he above all those we know, fit that role.

1:4 These words were for Paul a code name for the fallenness in which they lived (and in which we live today). In the N.T. the world usually has that connotation.

1:6 Paul had apparently received word from the Galatians informing him of the denunciation of his leadership and his gospel, doubtless at the instigation of the judaizers. The "other gospel" that Paul mentions here is the necessity to be circumcised to be a Christian in good standing. He had taught them specifically that circumcision is not required to be "in Christ", and further that do to it properly required one to observe every letter of the O.T. law.

1:7 The New English Bible has distort.

1:11-12 Again and again Paul appeals to his direct experience as opposed to anything given by men. This in essence is the conflict reported in this book- between authority and experience. It is also the age old conflict in the church between the authority of tradition and the authority of direct experience. We all fly from the platform of tradition, the lessons of our parents, but we go beyond that when we get in touch with our Heavenly Parent, who teaches us new things. Look at John 14:12.

1:15 You may understand the meaning of this phrase better by reviewing the story of the birth of Samuel.

1:17 The Arabia of Paul's day is the country we call Jordan today.

1:21 This suggests that Paul had returned to his native town, Tarsus, in the province of Cilicia, along the northwest tip of the Mediterranean, adjacent to Syria.

2:1 Paul refers here to what I called the Great Council, that you may read about in Acts 15.

2:2 What he means is that God told him to make the trip.

2:8 By this he means the Jews of course.

2:9 Peter, James, and John endorsed Paul's calling to the Gentiles and asked only that he remember the poor in Jerusalem.

2:10 This led to Paul's habit of raising money to take to the poor in Jerusalem.

2:16 Here Paul first mentions what is to become the primary argument of the letter.

2:20 Here is the basic mystical theme of Paul's christology: Christ died for all; hence the old man in us dies and the new man is raised with Christ. We live in Christ.

3:17 This verse is tricky: as I understand Paul, he's saying that the grace of Christ was promised to Abraham; the law came 430 years later, and it cannot take the place of the promise (covenant) to Abraham.

3:19 That's certainly a truism. Without transgressors there is no need for the law.

3:24-25 For a good explanation of the schoolmaster look at Phillip Schaff's History of Christianity.

3:27 Another beautiful expression to live into.

3:28 All one in Christ! Quoting Murphy-O'Connor on page 205, "those under the law acquire a functional unity through obedience to commandments, [but] the Christian community is an organic unity; its members are the integral parts of a living being."

4:3 In Paul's analogy here those not yet commited to Christ are under bondage. The elements of the world is a metaphor for what we call the materialistic, the worldly, the fallen, anything but love. Elsewhere he refers to us as slaves of Christ, pursuing the analogy yet further. The operative word is commitment: commitment to Christ or to the devil (in any one of his many forms). These analogies may seem repulsive to some, but attractive to others.

4:6 Note how the King James Version (and most of the others) make Jesus a Son and us as sons. I found this arrangement in all the translations I looked at except the Phillips, where it's son in both cases. At least one instance- although later he uses the upper case S for the Son of God. This is important to me because it bears on the matter of our true relationship with Christ. Are we disciples or brothers (siblings)?

4:7 This concludes the matter for me. We should perceive ourselves as sons and daughters of God. That's what Paul plainly tells us in this epistle. (In the gospel of John Jesus calls us friends.)

4:9 In the context these are circumcision and the other compulsions of the legalistic Jew; this is what the judaizers at Galatia meant to enforce, and it directly contravened Paul's gospel; so he got hot under the collar about it.

4:13 Interpreters tell us that Paul had some sort of physical ailment that led to his going to the region east of Ankara, where they say the Galatians whom he ministered to lived.

4:22 Here begins Paul's historical analogy of bondage and freedom. He makes Abraham's son by the bondmaid as the type of the law and his son by the freewoman (his wife) as the type of grace, or the promise, or freedom.

5:4 'Fallen from grace' means to stop trusting in God and begin trusting in your own goodness.

5:12 True malice here!

5:14 Here in a capsule is the whole letter. The only problem with this (for today) is that the word, love has been so distorted, corrupted, and altered out of all recognition to the original connotation, so that the meaning of the commandment is almost lost.

5:16ff Here is the last and most essential opposition: between flesh and Spirit. Be advised that Paul uses these two words in a very special sense: walking in the Spirit means to live in Christ. By flesh he does not mean the physical; he means sin, evil, bad acts, failure to love. (Unfortunately the gnostics and others have taken Christ to mean anti-material, and concluded that all matter is evil and spirit alone of value. Paul never meant that although it may seem so from these verses.)

5:19ff Note that the "works of the flesh" are divided between physical and spiritual activities (not in the sense in which Paul used the word Spirit.

5:22f The fruit of the spirit is worth remembering and trying to adhere to.

6:2 Another magnificent verse, an amplification of 5:14.

6:5 Obviously there are two different kinds of burdens: those we should share, and those we should bear.

6:16 Using this term Paul meant the faithful church, those who understand and live by the liberty of Christ, rather than as slaves of the law.

Then you may pass it on to your children, or even your great grandchildren.