The letter (epistle) that the Apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians is similar, in one way, to the two letters he wrote to the believers at Corinth. The Galatian believers were in trouble, and Paul writes to them seeking to correct and help them. The difference between the two epistles is that the trouble in Corinth was bad practice, while the trouble with the assemblies in Galatia was that they were being led astray by bad doctrine.
Paul was amazed that the believers in the assemblies there so quickly turned away from the truth of the gospel that the Apostle had preached to them and were listening to those who were teaching “perverted” truth. So serious was the false gospel that the Galatians were listening to that Paul desired that any who taught such error would be accursed.
Paul reminds them that the gospel he had preached was what he had received by revelation from the Lord Jesus Christ. The Apostle who had been at the very top of Jewish learning and religion had been separated to the gospel by the grace of God. He had left, by God’s sovereign grace, the very thing to which the Galatians were being turned back.
The false doctrine that the Galatians were being drawn into and that Paul was combatting centered on the vital question of how man was to be blessed by God: Was it to be through the sovereign grace of God, or by man’s efforts at keeping the law? The Galatians were listening to false teaching which put them back under the requirements of the law in order to gain favor with God.
1. Who puts an end to man trying to find righteousness through the law?
Romans 10:___
2. Will anyone ever be justified by keeping the law? Romans 3:___
3. What is one thing that would result if it were possible for a man to be saved by his works? Ephesians 2:___
4. How does the writer of Hebrews refer to man’s works? Hebrews 9:___
5. It is by faith in the Lord Jesus that a sinner is made righteous before God. However, what does James have to say about a person’s faith, if he does not give any evidence of it by the way he lives? James 2:___