Galatians

No. 12 Galatians 6:1-5
Galatians is one of Paul's sharpest letters. He wrote it to churches he had founded in central Asia Minor after rival teachers arrived insisting his Gentile converts had to be circumcised and keep the whole...
No. 62 Galatians 3:10-14
Paul is writing to churches in Galatia where other teachers have arrived insisting his Gentile converts must be circumcised and keep the law of Moses. This passage is the sharpest edge of his argument, and it...
No. 130 Galatians 4:8-14
Paul is arguing with Gentile Christians in Galatia who have started keeping the Jewish calendar under pressure from other teachers. This passage is where the argument turns personal.
No. 363 Galatians 3:15-20
Paul is making an argument that can feel technical, but its point is one of the most freeing in the New Testament, and it turns on a matter of timing. He starts with something everyone understands: once a...
No. 451 Galatians 2:1-10
This passage recounts a high-stakes meeting in Jerusalem. Paul goes up to lay his gospel before the leaders of the church, and there is real tension in the room. Certain false brothers had slipped in, Paul...
No. 904 Galatians 4:21-31
Paul is fighting for the freedom of the Galatian believers, who are being pressured to put themselves back under the law. Here he reaches into Genesis for an image. Abraham had two sons: Ishmael, born to the...
No. 1556 Galatians 5:1-6
Paul urges the Galatians to stand firm in their freedom. For freedom Christ has set us free, he says; do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. He warns them against turning back to the law as a way of earning...
No. 1677 Galatians 1:18-24
Paul recounts his early years as a believer. Three years after his conversion he went up to Jerusalem, stayed briefly with Peter, saw James the Lord's brother, and then went off to the regions of Syria and...
No. 2256 Galatians 4:15-20
Paul writes to the Galatians, who are drifting from the gospel he preached, with the anguish of a spiritual parent. He recalls their former love for him, grieves that telling them the truth has seemingly made...
No. 2258 Galatians 5:7-12
Paul writes to the Galatians with a mix of grief and concern, for they had begun so well and were now being drawn off course. You were running well, he says; who hindered you from obeying the truth? This...
No. 2635 Galatians 5:22-26
Paul names the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things, he says, there is no law. And he adds the way it grows: if we...
No. 2641 Galatians 1:11-17
Paul tells the Galatians how his gospel came to him, and in the telling he reveals something about grace. He had been a violent persecutor of the church, advancing in his old religion beyond his peers,...
No. 2883 Galatians 3:1-9
Paul is exasperated. Foolish Galatians, he writes, who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was portrayed as crucified. Then he asks one question that cuts to the root: did you receive the...
No. 2956 Galatians 6:11-18
Paul takes up the pen himself for the closing, writing in large letters. Those pressing you to be circumcised, he says, only want to make a good showing in the flesh and avoid persecution for the cross. But...
No. 3066 Galatians 1:6-10
Paul is astonished that the Galatians are so quickly deserting the God who called them in grace, for a different gospel, which is no gospel at all but a distortion by those who would trouble them. And he says...
No. 3344 Galatians 6:6-10
Paul states a law as certain as any in nature: do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. Sow to your own flesh, and you will reap corruption; sow to the Spirit,...
No. 3585 Galatians 5:13-21
Paul addresses the danger of misusing Christian freedom: you were called to freedom, brothers, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh; rather, through love serve one another. Freedom in...
No. 4024 Galatians 2:11-21
Paul recounts confronting Peter for hypocrisy, drawing back from the Gentile believers out of fear, and it leads him to state the heart of the gospel: a person is not justified by works of the law but through...
No. 4044 Galatians 4:1-7
Paul explains the great change the gospel brings. Before Christ, he says, we were like children who, though heirs, were no better off than slaves, held in bondage. But when the fullness of time had come, God...
No. 4053 Galatians 1:1-5
Paul opens his letter to the Galatians by naming, right at the start, the heart of the gospel. He describes the Lord Jesus Christ as the one who gave himself for our sins, to deliver us from the present evil...
No. 4146 Galatians 3:21-29
Paul explains the purpose of the law and then declares the great unity that the gospel creates. The law, he says, was a guardian, a guide to lead us to Christ, until faith came; but now that we are justified...