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8 October. Galatians chapters 1-3
The first of St Paul’s letters or epistles that we are covering is that to the Christians in Galatia. Paul is concerned that they, whom he has previously taught the ‘gospel’, are now listening to others with different ideas about how to live as a Christian. His use of the word gospel is interesting, since his letters were written before the biographies of Jesus that we call “the Gospels”. The word simply means ‘good news’. It refers here to the teaching that Jesus came, not simply as a rabbi or healer, but as God in human form to reconcile all people to God.
I mentioned in yesterday’s post (on the letter of James) that whereas James insisted on the importance of ‘works’ (right living according to ethical principles), Paul stressed equally strongly that only faith in Jesus matters, and that trying to make oneself right with God by obeying the Law (religious rules) actually fights against all that Jesus came for. How can these two contemporaries, who knew and largely respected each other, offer in the earliest surviving Christian writings two such opposed views?
For one thing, as Paul explains towards the end of his autobiography that occupies the first chapter and a half of the letter, his calling by God was to bring the gospel to the gentiles (non-Jews) who might be used to hearing all kinds of different religions with their various rituals, whereas James, along with Peter (Cephas) and others, were called to bring it to Jewish believers.
There is a very telling verse here: “for until certain people came from James, he [Cephas/Peter] used to eat with the Gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction” (2:12). It seems that James, who was concerned that his Jewish Christian hearers should not lose sight of the high moral standards that Jews were expected to follow, insisted on the new converts being circumcised. They might therefore have assumed that they had to obey the regulations too. Paul however felt that he had to emphasise that both circumcision, and keeping the regulations, were quite unnecessary for someone who had not grown up in the Jewish culture.
Few new Christians today come from Judaism (though there are a few, who style themselves ‘Messianic Jews’). For most, they will need more to take in Paul’s teaching that unlike all other religions, Christianity is not about conforming to rules, it is about being conformed by the Holy Spirit to the likeness of Jesus in the way that we live. He showed that loving God and your neighbour is not optional; but it is not achieved by the keeping of many regulations.