Galatians Verse by Verse

By Grant R. Osborne

After the Apostle Paul returned from his first missionary journey, he heard that a certain group of legalistic Jewish Christians had infiltrated the churches he had established. These false teachers were teaching that new Christians had to be circumcised and follow the Old Testament law in order to be truly saved. Paul, realizing the gospel was at stake, wrote this letter in response.

In Galatians Verse by Verse, experienced New Testament scholar sets forth Paul's laser-focused argument: Jesus is not only the Messiah; he came to inaugurate a new era in salvation history. In this new era, Christians are not made right with God by obeying the law; justification is by faith alone. This frees believers to live their lives not trying to earn salvation, but instead joyfully keeping in step with the Spirit. Pastors, Bible study leaders, and invested laypeople will all benefit from Osborne's careful reading of the text and commitment to making sense of the New Testament without scholarly jargon.

The Osborne New Testament Commentary Series is a set of commentaries on every New Testament book. In each volume, Grant R. Osborne seeks to carefully exposit the text in plain language, bringing out the treasures in each book and making them accessible for today's readers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Release date: Jul 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9781683590378

Grant R. Osborne

Grant R. Osborne (Ph.D., University of Aberdeen) is professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. He also serves as series editor for the IVP New Testament Commentary Series, for which he contributed the volume on Romans. He has also written on Revelation for the Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament.

Book preview

GALATIANS

Verse by Verse

GRANT R. OSBORNE

Galatians: Verse by Verse

Osborne New Testament Commentaries

Copyright 2017 Grant R. Osborne

Lexham Press, 1313 Commercial St., Bellingham, WA 98225

LexhamPress.com

You may use brief quotations from this resource in presentations, articles, and books. For all other uses, please write Lexham Press for permission. Email us at [e-mail].

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Print ISBN 9781683590361

Digital ISBN 9781683590378

Lexham Editorial Team: Elliot Ritzema, Joel Wilcox

Cover Design: Christine Gerhart

Back Cover Design: Brittany Schrock

CONTENTS

Series Preface

Introduction to Galatians

Glossary

Bibliography

Subject and Author Index

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Literature

SERIES PREFACE

There are two authors of every biblical book: the human author who penned the words, and the divine Author who revealed and inspired every word. While God did not dictate the words to the biblical writers, he did guide their minds so that they wrote their own words under the influence of the Holy Spirit. If Christians really believed what they said when they called the Bible the word of God, a lot more would be engaged in serious Bible study. As divine revelation, the Bible deserves, indeed demands, to be studied deeply.

This means that when we study the Bible, we should not be satisfied with a cursory reading in which we insert our own meanings into the text. Instead, we must always ask what God intended to say in every passage. But Bible study should not be a tedious duty we have to perform. It is a sacred privilege and a joy. The deep meaning of any text is a buried treasure; all the riches are waiting under the surface. If we learned there was gold deep under our backyard, nothing would stop us from getting the tools we needed to dig it out. Similarly, in serious Bible study all the treasures and riches of God are waiting to be dug up for our benefit.

This series of commentaries on the New Testament is intended to supply these tools and help the Christian understand more deeply the God-intended meaning of the Bible. Each volume walks the reader verse-by-verse through a book with the goal of opening up for us what God led Matthew or Paul or John to say to their readers. My goal in this series is to make sense of the historical and literary background of these ancient works, to supply the information that will enable the modern reader to understand exactly what the biblical writers were saying to their first-century audience. I want to remove the complexity of most modern commentaries and provide an easy-to-read explanation of the text.

But it is not enough to know what the books of the New Testament meant back then; we need help in determining how each text applies to our lives today. It is one thing to see what Paul was saying his readers in Rome or Philippi, and quite another thing to see the significance of his words for us. So at key points in the commentary, I will attempt to help the reader discover areas in our modern lives that the text is addressing.

I envision three main uses for this series:

1.Devotional Scripture reading. Many Christians read rapidly through the Bible for devotions in a one-year program. That is extremely helpful to gain a broad overview of the Bible’s story. But I strongly encourage another kind of devotional reading—namely, to study deeply a single segment of the biblical text and try to understand it. These commentaries are designed to enable that. The commentary is based on the NIV and explains the meaning of the verses, enabling the modern reader to read a few pages at a time and pray over the message.

2.Church Bible studies. I have written these commentaries also to serve as guides for group Bible studies. Many Bible studies today consist of people coming together and sharing what they think the text is saying. There are strengths in such an approach, but also weaknesses. The problem is that God inspired these scriptural passages so that the church would understand and obey what he intended the text to say. Without some guidance into the meaning of the text, we are prone to commit heresy. At the very least, the leaders of the Bible study need to have a commentary so they can guide the discussion in the direction God intended. In my own church Bible studies, I have often had the class read a simple exposition of the text so they can all discuss the God-given message, and that is what I hope to provide here.

3.Sermon aids. These commentaries are also intended to help pastors faithfully exposit the text in a sermon. Busy pastors often have too little time to study complex thousand-page commentaries on biblical passages. As a result, it is easy to spend little time in Bible study and thereby to have a shallow sermon on Sunday. As I write this series, I am drawing on my own experience as a pastor and interim pastor, asking myself what I would want to include in a sermon.

Overall, my goal in these commentaries is simple: I would like them to be interesting and exciting adventures into New Testament texts. My hope is that readers will discover the riches of God that lay behind every passage in his divine word. I hope every reader will fall in love with God’s word as I have and begin a similar lifelong fascination with these eternal truths!

INTRODUCTION TO GALATIANS

Several years ago Harold Lindsell, the editor of Christianity Today from 1968 to 1978, called for a battle for the Bible. In this remarkable letter Paul is engaged in the battle for the gospel—the first great theological battle in the history of the church. It took place when a group of conservative Jewish Christians became upset over the Gentile mission that had begun with Peter and Cornelius (Acts 10–11) and continued with Paul’s first missionary journey (Acts 13–14). They were bothered that Peter and Paul had been converting Gentiles without mandating that they become Jews by being circumcised and following the Mosaic law. These Judaizers visited some of the churches Paul had established, telling the members that they had to become Jewish proselytes before they could become Christian converts. Paul learned that many in the Galatian churches were starting to accept that teaching, and his alarm led him to pen this letter.¹ This helped produce the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15 in which the church officially decided that Gentiles did not need to be circumcised and follow the law to become Christians.

AUTHOR

Galatians has always been considered one of Paul’s chief letters (with Romans and the Corinthian correspondence), and virtually no one has ever doubted that Paul an apostle (Gal 1:1) wrote it. There are so many signs of his hand in the letter, such as his emphasis on the centrality of the gospel and on justification by faith. The first two chapters are almost autobiographical in nature, detailing four key episodes in Paul’s early Christian life: his conversion and early ministry in Arabia (1:13–17); his first Jerusalem visit, when he was accepted by James and Peter (vv. 18–24); his second visit, when his apostolic ministry was accepted by the pillars of the church (2:1–10); and the incident of his having to correct Peter to preserve the essence of the gospel (vv. 11–21).

Virtually all of Paul’s letters were written by an amanuensis,² a scribe who wrote down Paul’s message. This was likely due to Paul’s poor eyesight (see commentary on 4:13–15), with Paul personally signing the letter to authenticate that it was indeed his own (6:11). Frequently in the Roman world an amanuensis would add a good deal of supplementary material, but with this letter the task certainly amounted to dictation—the letter is so personal that we can only conclude that all of the content stemmed from Paul himself. This is not to suggest that the freedom to fill in explanatory material was never used by an amanuensis in New Testament letters. In later volumes of this series I will argue that this may have been the case in the Pastoral Letters and also in 1 Peter.

RECIPIENTS AND DATE

The debate over the recipients and date has consumed nearly everyone who has studied this letter, because so much of the background context changes depending on which view you choose. The letter is addressed to the churches of Galatia (1:2; 3:1), and there are two main theories regarding who these Galatians were: the North Galatian hypothesis and the South Galatian hypothesis. The difference hinges on whether Galatians is meant to describe the people ethnically or geographically. Ethnically, the Galatians were the Gauls (= Gaulatians) who had migrated into the northeast part of modern-day Turkey in the third century BC, which would make North Galatia more probable. If the North Galatian hypothesis is true, the letter would have been written during Paul’s third missionary journey (AD 52–57).

However, Rome had established the geographical province of Galatia in 25 BC. It was located in the eastern half of modern-day Turkey and extended from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea, encompassing several ethnic groups. In this case, Paul would have thought of the cities of the first missionary journey as part of Galatia, since they occupied the southern portion of this Roman province. This would mean that the letter was written to the churches established on Paul’s first missionary journey, just prior to the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15.

THE NORTH GALATIAN HYPOTHESIS

This view is generally preferred for several reasons, beginning with the term Galatia itself, which points to the Gaulic tribes of the north (so the foolish Galatians of 3:1 would not have been people of the southern cities). Also, when Luke speaks of the region of Phrygia and Galatia in Acts 16:6, it would be natural to assume he is speaking geographically, thus of northern Galatia. Phrygia and Galatia seem to be two distinct areas, which would go against the southern hypothesis.

Against this view the term Galatians was used in the first century to speak of people in the southern region; indeed, there was no other term Paul could have used of them. Paul’s travels through the region also call the North Galatian hypothesis into question. His ministry to the southern cities is extensively described in Acts 13–14, while the northern area seems to be mentioned only in passing on the second journey in Acts 16:6 (traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia) and in 18:23 at the start of the third journey (traveled from place to place throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia). However, a growing number of scholars interpret 16:6 and 18:23 as referring to the Roman province and therefore to ministry in south Galatia, and that may be preferable in light of the arguments in favor of the south Galatian hypothesis. Therefore South Galatia receives extended coverage in Acts, while North Galatia, as I have noted, gets hardly any mention at all. It seems that if North Galatia merited a major letter, it would have received more coverage in Acts.

THE SOUTH GALATIAN HYPOTHESIS

One of the strongest arguments for this position is the absence of firm material in either Acts or Paul’s letters for a ministry in the northern part of the province (as noted above). Moreover, that area did not have much Roman influence and lacked Roman roads, and Acts seems to indicate that Paul tended to follow the Roman roads in his missionary journeys. Further, Paul in his letters tended to use Roman imperial names for cities and regions, which would have meant that Galatia would refer in his writing to the Roman province and rather than to the ethnic territory in the north.

The mention of Barnabas in Galatians 2:13 would also favor the south. There is no evidence that Barnabas ever reached the northern area, since he and Paul split up at the beginning of the second journey (Acts 15:36–40). Finally, the events described in Galatians 1–2 fit much better with the time prior to the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15.

While there are strong arguments for both positions, and we will never have certainty, I am convinced that the southern hypothesis is the closer fit and that the background material in Galatians 1–2 supports that view. Therefore, it is my conclusion that this letter was written to the Gentile churches that Paul had established in the southern region of the Roman province of Galatia between his first missionary journey in Acts 13:1–14:20 and the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15:1–21—thus about AD 48. Whichever hypothesis is chosen, though, it is certain that Paul’s opponents were a group of Jewish Christian false teachers who were demanding that Gentiles be circumcised and follow the Mosaic law.

OCCASION AND OPPONENTS

Paul’s ministry method that guided him throughout his life was established on his first missionary journey. He went first to the synagogues and proclaimed Christ to his Jewish countrymen, as well as to the God-fearers, Gentiles who were seriously interested in Judaism. Then, when Jewish jealousy (Acts 13:45; 17:5) over the success of his mission stirred up serious opposition, he switched his attention to the Gentiles. This of course is stated directly as his mission method in Romans 1:16.

During that first journey groups of converts, mainly Gentiles, were established into a thriving set of churches. After Paul had returned from this journey a group of Jewish Christian opponents visited all of the churches he had established, teaching that Gentiles had to become Jews—be circumcised (6:12) and submit to the Mosaic law (3:5)—before they could be saved. The converts would have been familiar with this expectation, since as God-fearers many of them had previously accepted the Mosaic law and had seriously contemplated submitting to circumcision. These teachers were disturbing or agitating the new converts (1:7; 5:12), but not for a good cause; their true goal was not really to make them followers of God but to gather followers for themselves so they could brag about their success (4:17; 6:13). Also, they desired to avoid persecution (6:12) and did not wish to be viewed as part of a radical new movement challenging mainline Judaism. So their heresy was not christological (having to do with the doctrine of Christ) but soteriological (related to the doctrine of salvation). They accepted Jesus as both Messiah and Son of God, but circumcision and law were for them at the heart of the gospel—and that message constituted false teaching. Theirs was not Christian but a different gospel (1:6).

In addition to impugning Paul’s gospel, these teachers were calling his apostolic authority into question, telling the Galatian churches that Paul was not a true apostle like the Twelve. Paul responded in Galatians 1 that his apostolic commission was not secondary or derivative, coming from the other apostles, but primary, conferred on him directly from Christ. In chapter 2 he showed that his gospel also came directly from Christ and was affirmed by the other apostles as identical to their own.

These opponents belonged to a movement that began in reaction to the universal gospel proclaimed first by Peter, after the conversion of Cornelius in Acts 11, and then by Paul. At first nearly everyone agreed with Peter’s defense in Acts 11:4–17 of the coming of the Spirit on the Gentile God-fearer Cornelius, recognizing that even to Gentiles God has granted repentance that leads to life (Acts 11:18). Very quickly, however, a group, many of them former Pharisees and all of them completely committed to the necessity of circumcision and following the Torah for Gentile as well as Jewish converts to Christianity, began to dispute this. They were called the Judaizers—those who wanted to make all Christians followers and practitioners of Judaism.

After Paul had disputed this position in his Galatian letter, the Jerusalem Council decided against the Judaizers in Acts 15. Still, they continued to reject that decision and travel around to the Gentile churches, insisting that the Gentile believers become Jewish before they could be Christian (as in Phil 3:1–4:1). In Galatians 1:6, 8 Paul insisted that these Judaizers were proclaiming a different gospel and were under God’s curse. To follow their teaching, he declared, was to fall into apostasy and to stop being Christian. So these enemies of the gospel, though claiming to be Christians, were unbelievers—as, by extension, were their followers.

A small minority of scholars, drawing support from the material on freedom in Christ in 5:13–6:10, has argued that Paul’s opponents were libertines. However, there is little evidence that Paul was addressing a different religious movement in that passage from the one he argues against in the rest of the letter. It is much more likely that Paul was repudiating a possible misuse of Christian freedom. In short, Paul was using a free/slave distinction against the Judaizers, contending that they were turning Gentile converts into slaves to the law rather than pointing them in the direction of freedom in Christ. That led Paul to explain how Christian liberty could be misused in a libertine—an immoral—manner.

A more substantial recent argument related to the Christ versus Torah issue behind Galatians comes from the movement called the new perspective on Paul. E. P. Sanders reinterpreted the works of the law in Galatians to mean that salvation for the Jews came through divine grace on the basis of their corporate election as a covenant people; the issue for them, then, was not one of getting in but of staying in. The Jewish view, Sanders argued, was based not on salvation by works—legalistic salvation—but on salvation by God’s grace, and the goal for the Jews was that of maintaining their place in the covenant. This perspective has come to be known as the covenantal nomism view. J. D. G. Dunn built on it, positing that the problem addressed in Galatians was the Jewish use of the works of the law as boundary markers to maintain Jewish separation from Gentiles. In this view Paul was opposed not to a legalistic religion but to a divide between Jew and Gentile in the church.³

This movement has led to a significant reassessment of the belief that the Jews of Paul’s day believed in works righteousness. Judaism was not in this view a purely legalistic religion, devoid of grace. On this Sanders was correct. Nevertheless, there were distinct legalistic aspects of first-century Judaism, and the whole tenor of Galatians shows that the Judaizers’ movement was a legalistic one. Paul was indeed opposed to the separation of Jew and Gentile, but he was even more opposed to a works-oriented religion (Gal 3:10; 5:1–3). While he did not regard Old Testament Judaism as a legalistic religion, it had become legalistic in light of the salvation-historical shift to faith in Christ. The eschatological salvation the Jews anticipated has become a reality in Christ, and in light of this development trust in the law has become works righteousness, since it involves a rejection of faith in Christ.

OUTLINE

I.The false gospel and the true gospel (1:1–2:21)

A.Introduction: the centrality of the cross (1:1–10)

1.Greeting to the church (1:1–5)

a.The author and recipients of the letter (1:1–2)

b.The salutation and power of the cross (1:3–5)

2.The occasion of the letter: the dangers exposed (1:6–10)

a.The danger: turning to a false gospel (1:6–7)

b.The invocation of the divine curse (1:8–9)

c.Paul’s model: not trying to please people (1:10)

B.The divine source of Paul’s gospel (1:11–24)

1.Thesis: the origin of Paul’s gospel in a revelation from Christ (1:11–12)

a.Not of human origin (1:11–12a)

b.The true source: revelation from Jesus Christ (1:12b)

2.Paul’s conversion and early failure to consult others (1:13–17)

a.His past animosity (1:13–14)

i.Persecution of the church (1:13)

ii.Zeal for Judaism (1:14)

b.His apostolic call (1:15–16a)

c.His decision not to consult others (1:16b–17)

3.Paul’s first Jerusalem visit: not seeking the approval of the apostles (1:18–24)

a.Time in Jerusalem: met only Cephas and James (1:18–20)

i.Very short time with the two apostles (1:18–19)

ii.Oath regarding the truth of Paul’s claims (1:20)

b.Time in Judea and Syria: unknown to these people (1:21–24)

i.Not recognized in either region (1:21–22)

ii.Known only by report (1:23–24)

C.The pillars accept Paul as an apsotle (2:1–10)

1.The trip with Barnabas to Jerusalem (2:1–5)

a.The purpose: presentation of his gospel to the Gentiles (2:1–2)

b.Circumcision not required (2:3–5)

2.The approval of the pillars (2:6–10)

a.Nothing added to Paul’s gospel (2:6)

b.The validity of Paul’s Gentile and Peter’s Jewish ministries (2:7–8)

c.The right hand of fellowship from the pillars (2:9)

d.Request to remember the poor (2:10)

D.Conflict with Peter and the essence of the gospel (2:11–21)

1.Rebuke and the defense against Peter (2:11–14)

a.The rebuke at Antioch (2:11)

b.The situation: withdrawal from the Gentiles (2:12a)

c.The reason: pressure from the circumcision group (2:12b–13)

d.Rebuke and correction by Paul (2:14)

2.The true essence of the gospel (2:15–21)

a.Definition: justification by faith, not by the works of the law (2:15–16)

b.The problem of sin: from the law, not from Christ (2:17–18)

c.The solution: died to the law, crucified with Christ (2:19–20)

d.Grace through Christ, not the law (2:21)

II.The defense of the gospel (3:1–4:11)

A.Defense of faith over the works of the law (3:1–18)

1.The defense from experience: the reception of the Spirit (3:1–5)

a.They must have been bewitched (3:1)

b.They received the Spirit by faith (3:2)

c.The Spirit is antithetical to the flesh (3:3)

d.The question of an empty religious experience (3:4)

e.The Spirit and miracles come by faith, not works (3:5)

2.The defense from Scripture: Abraham and faith (3:6–14)

a.Thesis: faith credited as righteousness (3:6)

b.The children of Abraham come by faith (3:7–9)

i.Faith the requirement (3:7)

ii.The gospel announced to Abraham and the nations (3:8)

iii.The means: with Abraham the Gentiles rely on faith (3:9)

c.The removal of the curse (3:10–14)

i.The curse on those who rely on the law (3:10)

ii.The righteous must live by faith (3:11–12)

iii.Christ redeemed us by becoming the curse (3:13)

iv.Abraham’s blessing comes to the Gentiles (3:14)

3.The subsidiary nature of the Mosaic law (3:15–18)

a.The permanent nature of a human covenant (3:15)

b.The promise given to Christ as the seed of Abraham (3:16)

c.The priority of the Abrahamic covenant (3:17)

d.The inheritance given via an eternal promise (3:18)

B.The law’s temporary purpose (3:19–29)

1.The law’s purpose as a temporary instrument (3:19–25)

a.The purpose behind its interim status (3:19–21)

b.Two analogies behind the law’s purpose (3:22–25)

i.The law as a prison (3:22–23)

ii.The law as a guardian (3:24–25)

2.The identification of believers as the children of God (3:26–29)

a.Faith as the basis of sonship (3:26)

b.The results of sonship (3:27–29)

i.Clothed with Christ (3:27)

ii.Oneness in Christ (3:28)

iii.Heirs of Abraham (3:29)

C.Spiritual liberation from slavery (4:1–11)

1.The salvation-historical switch from slavery to sonship (4:1–7)

a.The analogy of slavery (4:1–3)

i.The submission of an heir, while a child, to custodians (4:1–2)

ii.Application to the enslavement of Jews and Gentiles (4:3)

b.The solution for this slavery (4:4–7)

i.In the sending of the Son (4:4–5)

ii.In the sending of the Spirit (4:6–7)

2.The folly of returning to the law (4:8–11)

a.The past: enslaved to false gods (4:8)

b.The present: known by God (4:9–10)