The emerging faith was open-spirited and unformed. What it might become in the decades ahead was anyone’s guess. In fact, there were many varieties of Christian faith emerging in the first decades of the Jesus movement. Later, some were declared heresies, for example, certain world and body denying philosophies and spiritual practices, often labeled as Gnostic, as well as unbridled charismatic movements led by those who saw themselves as direct conduits of the Holy Spirit’s wisdom, the Montanists. It is clear that there was diversity of theology, practice, and experience in the early Jesus movement, some of which, in the course of centuries, gave birth to the diverse theological and worship styles of our time.
In this dynamic and open-ended context, Paul’s Letter to the Galatians emerged and eventually gained the status of scripture. The Jewish sect, inspired by the Galilean healer and teacher, was going global and Paul was, according to Acts of the Apostles and his own affirmation, its leading messenger. In the course of his ministry, Paul founded churches throughout the Mediterranean world. Paul’s authority and apostleship were grounded in an audacious claim. Despite the fact he had persecuted the first followers of Jesus, he claimed that God had chosen him for a particular spiritual task. Paul had encountered the Risen One on the road to Damascus and he believed that this encounter gave him the same authority as Jesus’ first disciples. Paul’s mystical experience of the Risen One came with the call to mission. The Risen Christ gave Paul the vocation of sharing God’s good news with the Gentiles, the ethnic and religious outsiders he once viewed as spiritual inferiors.
The region of Galatia was at the heart of Paul’s mandate to reach out to the Gentiles. Journeying from his home base, as some scholars believe, Antioch in today’s Syria, Paul shared the good news in what is today central Turkey. He helped shape and may have planted small Christian communities in towns such as Derbe, Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch of Pisidia. Paul’s straightforward message of spiritual liberation touched the hearts of many Gentiles. The good news of Christ’s death and resurrection and the opportunity for new life in Christ inspired mystical and charismatic experiences and no doubt “signs and wonders” in the communities Paul founded. Some new members of the Jesus movement cried out “Abba, Father,” in response to the liberating news of God’s grace in Jesus Christ. They were, as Paul writes in the Letter to the Galatians, spiritually free and untrammeled by ritual and doctrine, including those of Jesus’ own religious tradition. They experienced themselves as new creations, freed from sin and guilt, as the spirit of Christ transformed them, body, mind, and spirit.
But spiritual honeymoons, like relational honeymoons, don’t usually last forever. As in the case with couples who fall in love, the initial excitement and belief that “love conquers all” often gives way to old habits and patterns of behavior. Paul heard stories of churches in trouble and reverting to past behaviors and belief systems. Rumors surfaced that his word of grace was being compromised by those who taught a return to Jewish dietary and spiritual practices, most particularly ethnically-separate table fellowship and male circumcision. Paul’s tone is angry and urgent. The fate of the Galatian churches and his mission to the Gentiles was at stake.
Galatians is no armchair theology, but a passionate argument for the grace of God, the unity of the church, and the equality of all Christians, despite differences in ethnicity, social standing, economics, and sexuality. In the providence of God, Paul’s letter was preserved and his faith vindicated. As New Testament scholar N.T. Wright asserts, Paul’s passionate Galatian letter gave birth to Christian theology. As I told my Galatians Bible study participants at South Congregational Church, we are here as Gentiles because of Paul’s message to the Galatians. Apart from Paul’s clarion call to Christian freedom, the Jesus movement might have remained a Jewish sect, defined by its adherence to the Jewish law, dietary habits, and practice of circumcision. Paul’s open-spirited and – dare I say – radical and progressive message enabled the Christian movement to become global in scope. The global reach of the gospel depended on its message becoming accessible to people in every time and place, beginning with the Gentile communities of the Roman Empire.
Paul’s passion is to share the good news without hindrance of culture or ritual. Accordingly, putting burdens on Gentile believers stands in the way of spreading Christ’s message of salvation. As N.T. Wright asserts, “it is absolutely imperative that all those ‘in the Messiah’ belong to the same table. Separation is not an option.”2
Galatians has been described as one of the greatest pieces of religious literature. Paul’s passionate message shaped the Christian vision of grace, faith, biblical interpretation and unity. These are still issues for us as we make it up as we go along in the context of our pluralistic and postmodern spiritual landscape.
From the perspective of biblical scholarship, the Letter to the Galatians “presented a glimpse of the controversy that surrounded the expansion of the Christian movement into the Gentile communities of the Mediterranean world.”3 Galatians was one of the formative texts of the sixteenth Protestant Reformation. Although Martin Luther may have seen – and thus to some extent distorted – Paul’s message in light of his own experience of guilt and grace and subsequent conflict with the Roman church, whom he identified with Jewish legalism, its message has nevertheless transformed lives and provided a normative vision of conversion experiences. Perhaps, beyond Paul’s original intent, Galatians, along with the Letter to the Romans, has shaped the contours of grace and provided a template for understanding God’s ability to transform persecutors into proclaimers and sinners into saints.
Galatians is a contemporary book. It asks us to consider the boundaries of Christian faith. It invites us to discern what is theologically and behaviorally essential to Christianity. Galatians has been an inspiration in the fight for equality in the church and the world for women, minorities, and most recently gay and lesbian persons. Galatians takes Jesus’ vision of radical hospitality and applies it to the real and imperfect churches where we worship. Accordingly, its message encourages personal spiritual freedom and the liberation of institutional structures.
Reflecting what John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg describe as the “radical Paul,” Galatians has been described as the magna carta of Christian freedom through its portrayal of open ended faith without fences or boundaries. Today’s readers of the letter to Galatians are challenged to affirm both diversity and unity in Christian experience and, in the process, extend our freedom in the body of Christ to the whole world.
As you begin your Galatians journey, remember Paul’s message of graceful transformation: in light of God’s suffering love on Calvary, what matters above all else is God’s new creation in your life and in your congregation. Let Paul’s passionate faith inspire you to embrace God’s wondrous diversity, whether in theological and liturgical differences in your congregation or Bible study group, and the various expressions of divine creativity in culture, ethnicity, and sexuality. Let the call to Christian unity guide your group conversations, inspiring you to listen and respond in ways that build bridges rather than walls.
A Word of Thanks and a Word on Perspective
Every commentator has a perspective, which shapes her or his understanding of scripture, and I am no exception. Raised in the evangelical wing of the American Baptist Churches, I grew up with revival preachers and altar calls as well as my Baptist minister father’s more low key approach to the gospel. The message I often heard was that we were sinners saved by grace, and transformed by Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross on Calvary’s hill. It was that message that inspired me to “come forward” with tears in my eyes at nine years of age, dying to sin and accepting Jesus as my personal savior. As a teen, I found this small town evangelical faith too spiritually confining and too certain of itself and became as student and practitioner of Buddhism and Hinduism as well as North American Transcendentalism. Eventually, my journey led me back to grace, that is, Grace Baptist Church, in San Jose, California, where a long-haired college student was welcomed with all his questions and doubts. It was at Grace Baptist that I began to formulate my own theology, a creative synthesis of evangelical experience, mystical experiences, spiritual practices, and progressive process theology.
I am still a child of grace. I come at scripture