Week 1 of the Summer Reading Plan!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

I hope you guys are as excited as I am. As we go through our Summer Reading, I will be posting these blog posts at the beginning of each week. In these posts I will highlight some of the more important ideas in our reading, as well as provide some background to things that need a little more explanation. This blog post is not a replacement for reading the Word of God. Though there will be many times that I will summarize and explain, we still need to be getting into our habit of daily Bible reading and quiet time. This post is simply supposed to serve as an extra study reference as we dig deeper into the Word.

With that being said, as we dive into this week, I want to answer the question that might go through your mind: What is Paul's deal?

I mean, he starts out this letter with his usual greeting, and then he goes straight into disappointed dad mode (vv. 6-9). And more than that, by the time we reach verse 8 he's over here talking about curses from heaven! I'm sure when this got read in Galatia they were thinking, "Geez, take it easy, man!"

So what has Paul all wound up? The answer is in verses 6 and 7:

Apparently, some teachers who had sprung up in the Galatian church were teaching a "gospel" different from the good news of Jesus Christ that Paul had brought to them. This upset Paul for two main reasons:

1 - This new "gospel" that the Galatian church had been fed was no "gospel" at all. The word "gospel" literally means "good news," and I think we can all agree that the good news of Jesus coming down to die for our sins so that we can live eternally with God is indeed good news! But this new teaching that had come into the church was not the lifesaving message of Jesus.

The people bringing this different gospel may have said, "We know our message is different from Paul's. He has his truth, and we have ours." (That sure sounds familiar, doesn't it?) Paul's first point was to remind the Galatians that there was only one truth. There's no such thing as another gospel.

2 - This new "gospel" that was being taught had one goal: confusion. It may have had elements of Christianity, it may have used the right words, and it maybe even quoted (twisted) some scripture verses to fit its point, but ultimately it was going to lead the people who followed it to destruction. Paul knew that there was only one way to heaven, and he was incredibly passionate that the people in the Galatian church not be turned away from the true gospel and thrown into confusion. People's eternities were literally at stake!

In the next chunk of verses (vv. 10-24), Paul pleads his case to the Galatian church as to why the gospel he brought them is the "good news" from God Himself.

Paul reminds the church in Galatia that he isn't preaching this message of good news in order to gain favor with people, popularity, or wealth. He reminds the church that he exists for one reason: to be a slave for God.

He emphasizes his point by reminding the Galatians of his own testimony, how he was not taught the gospel by a disciple or some other men, but by Jesus Himself. He adds further to that point by reminding them that he didn't even go to the apostles for three years after his conversion, but spent those years alone with God, learning and growing in his own faith.

Only after those three years did he go back and visit some churches. And they spread the word that the man who was once persecuting them was now teaching among them—all by the grace and transformational power of God.

Fourteen (yes, 14!) years later, Paul went to Jerusalem and met with some of the apostles and other church leaders. While he was there he presented the gospel that he had been preaching throughout Syria and Cilicia. He points out specifically that the other apostles "added nothing" to his message, seeing that he clearly and completely understood the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now, as we get into section 3 (which is kind of interwoven with the end of section 2), we get into the whole idea of circumcision.

Circumcision was a big deal to a lot of Jewish believers, because they thought that in order to be saved, you had to be circumcised. This was a whole ordeal that Paul and the apostles had to deal with, and it also stemmed from a little bit of pride from the Jewish people, who oftentimes saw themselves as better than the Gentiles (anyone who wasn't Jewish).

Now Paul specifically brings this up because it all ties into the story he will get into in section 3, but he points out that when he met with prominent Christian leaders in Jerusalem, they had zero problem with his buddy Titus (who was a Gentile and uncircumcised). He includes these details to further drive home the point to the Galatian church that circumcision and ethnicity have nothing to do with salvation.

To wrap up this week's reading, we get into section 3, which I will lovingly refer to as "The Peter Incident."

In this section Paul tells a story about Peter making a trip to a church in Antioch, where Paul was. (Your translation may call Peter "Cephas". This is just Peter's Greek name, not a completely different person.)

In this story, Paul recounts how Peter came to the church in Antioch and all was going well until some friends of James came onto the scene. These "certain men from James" were Jewish Christians, most likely from Jerusalem, who came and visited the church where Peter and Paul were.

Well apparently, the presence of these Jewish church leaders caused Peter to start acting differently. Before they came, he was hanging out and eating with the Gentiles and Jews in the church, but when these visitors came he decided that he was going to just hang out with the Jewish people who had been circumcised. (Paul points out that Peter had done this specifically to avoid judgement from these Jewish leaders.)

This rightfully upsets Paul, for a number of reasons. First, Peter was treating these Gentile Christians like second-class citizens because of their ethnicity, even though Peter knew better. Even worse, his bad behavior led the other Jews in the congregation to follow suit and also begin to treat the Gentile Christians differently.

Because Peter had done these things publicly, Paul decides to call him out publicly. (Can you imagine how awkward this dinner party was? Yikes.)

Paul knows that Peter doesn't live his life according to Jewish customs anymore, so he asks:

I'm sure at this point you can hear a pin drop in the room. But Paul continues, and reminds Peter that we are not saved because we followed the Jewish law to the letter, but rather because God extended grace through Jesus Christ. Paul wraps up his thoughts in this incredible statement:

Paul points out that we don't have to follow every letter of the Mosaic law in order to receive God's grace! Hallelujah! We have a different option—an option where we die to ourselves, put aside our wants, and allow Christ to live through us. But Paul reminds us to not treat the grace of God as "meaningless"—we have been given great grace, and we need to live it out! As we continue in Galatians, we'll get to what living it out looks like, but first Paul is going to really hammer home the point that we aren't saved by following Jewish customs, including circumcision.

And that's Week 1! Week 2 will get into faith and the role that it plays in salvation and in living out our lives for Christ. See you next week!