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Skip Heitzig: Galatians chapter 1. Well, I'm with you when it comes to getting excited about this book. I feel like the psalmist in Psalm 45:1. He said, "My heart is overflowing with a good theme." The theme that the book of Galatians is all about is the theme of God's grace, God's unmerited, undeserved favor, and the liberty and freedom that we have because of that grace.

It is a great theme, although Paul's tone, as you will see, is not like a lot of his other books. You know when you open a letter, you can tell pretty quickly if it's going to be a friendly letter, or if it's going to be a little more rigid of a letter, or if it's going to even be an angry letter. The tone in Galatians is different than the tone in Ephesians, Philippians, or Thessalonians.

Paul puts his war paint on in this book. He puts his boxing gloves on. He is unhappy with a situation going on in the churches in Galatia. Because of that, he begins his letter differently. All of his letters begin with a salutation, but typically when Paul writes a letter, he writes words of commendation. He'll say things like, "You guys are awesome," or "May God open your heart because, like the Thessalonians, the word of God has sounded forth all over the place. Everybody's heard of it." He always has some word of commendation.

There is no word of commendation to the Galatians. Though he loves them, hence his letter to them, it is more of a polemic. It is more of a defense. It is more of an attack on those who have attacked him in the church of Galatia, those who are attacking this beautiful gospel of God's grace. The book of Galatians will rectify that.

Just to show you some of the language getting started—I know we're supposed to be starting Galatians 1, and therefore I'm going to take you to Galatians 2, in verse 4. Notice: "But this occurred because of false brethren secretly brought in who came in by stealth to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage." That's what he's worried about. Somebody's doing something that's bothering Paul because it is bringing bondage to the church of Galatia.

If you go over to chapter 4 and verse 3: "Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of this world. But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive adoption as sons."

Verse 9: "Now after you have known God, or rather are known by Him, how is it that you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements to which you desire again to be in bondage?" What is happening here? There was a group of people in the early church—we've run into them before and we run into them now again. They were called Judaizers. Have you ever heard that term, Judaizers?

Judaizers was a term to describe Jewish people who had become Christians but believed that the only way to be saved as a Christian was to become a Jew first. They were bringing people back to the Law of Moses, back to the rituals, back to the ceremonies, to keep the Law of Moses because, after all, the covenants that God made throughout history have been with the Jews, with Israel, the chosen people.

Now you have the gospel going to non-Jewish areas, Gentile areas, people believing in Jesus as the Messiah—not just the Jewish Messiah, their Messiah, their Savior. That caused some of these Jewish Christians to go, "Wait a minute, hold your horses, back up. Not so fast. They need to do something first before they just live in grace."

This was a problem early on in the book of Acts. In chapter 15, men from Judea went up to Antioch and said, "Unless you are circumcised and keep the Law of Moses, you cannot be saved." This was bothersome to Paul and Barnabas and Peter in Jerusalem. They all convened a council in Acts chapter 15 to settle the issue.

The issue was never really settled. It was settled in Paul's mind, it was settled in Peter's mind, and settled in Scripture, but it wasn't settled in the minds of some who seemed to be following Paul wherever he would go and bring his message of the gospel and would come in after Paul to bring people on their side, to talk smack about Paul.

They'd say, "Paul is unreliable and he's really not an apostle like you think an apostle should be. We are the apostles from Jerusalem. We represent the church in Jerusalem and we represent Judaism." They were trying to undo much of what Paul had done in giving the gospel of grace to the Gentiles. They became a problem. They became a thorn in Paul's side because they were bringing people back into bondage.

Basically, the Judaizers as Paul saw them were parasites because instead of going out on their own and starting churches, being a church planter, which is very difficult to do, going into an area to get a job, to share the gospel, to put up with all the flack you get to establish a local church—instead of doing that, they were just looking to see where Paul went and then when Paul left, they would go to that group and worm their way into the group that Paul started.

They weren't winning people to Christ; rather, they are weaning people from Christ, saying Jesus as Paul preached—faith in Jesus as Paul preached—is a good start, but it's only a start. You need more. You need to add something to that. You need to add circumcision. You need to keep the Law of Moses. They were taking people back.

I find this to be a trend even to this day. Some Christians get so excited about Hebraisms and Old Testament theology and some of the Jewish rites and rituals. The Passover and oh, I don't celebrate Easter, I celebrate Pesach. They try to get so original they become legalistic and they complicate things instead of just making it simple. That was going on and it raised Paul's ire, and he wrote this book.

Paul wrote this book, we believe, on his third missionary journey. He had gone to Galatia on his first journey—I'll talk about that in a moment. He went there again on his second journey. On his third journey, he heard things aren't going as well as you'd like, Paul, in Galatia. So he wrote this letter.

We don't exactly know from where. Some think he wrote it from Corinth. I believe he wrote it for the two to three years that he was living in Ephesus and teaching there. That was sort of a headquarters for him for a few years. He heard what was going on to his west over in Galatia, and so he writes this letter.

The letter of Galatians has been called the Christian's Declaration of Independence, and I like that. Paul's magnum opus was the book of Romans, but close to that is the book of Galatians and it really is, in a shortened form, our Declaration of Independence, more so even than Romans. It's all about freedom. It's all about liberty. It's all about being set free simply by God's favor, by God's grace.

Martin Luther loved this book. He loved the book of Romans too, but he loved Galatians. In fact, I brought with me—I just wanted to do this little show and tell tonight—I brought with me my copy of Martin Luther's commentary on Galatians. It's over 500 pages.

I brought this book because it's special in my library. This book itself was written by Martin Luther in the 1500s, but this is published not in German, but in English. This book was published in 1749. I'm holding a book that's older than America. This book was published over in Edinburgh, Scotland before America became a nation.

It's fun just to go through these pages and I have been going through it this week just reading some of the things Luther wrote about it. One of the first things he says in his opening remarks is, "I can't believe I've had this much to say about this book." That's how he begins it. He said, "But the book shows that I obviously had a lot to say about this book."

He loved it. He said about the book of Galatians, "It is my Katherine." Katherine von Bora was his wife. He said, "It's my Katie. It's my wife. I feel like I'm married to it. I'm wed to it. I love it that much on a spiritual plane." It so resonated with Martin Luther's fight against the papacy and the works and the laboriousness from which he had come. So it's a fun little aside to show you how much Martin Luther loved this book.

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This month, we want to thank you with a powerful resource bundle designed to help you know God more deeply and walk in the freedom He offers. It features Skip's book, Biography of God, a thoughtful, approachable look at God's character, His attributes, and the hope we gain when we understand who He truly is.

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Skip Heitzig: Now the emphasis of the book of Galatians is, in a word, justification by faith. We've talked about that, we've described that on a number of occasions, but this comes through loud and clear—that we are made right with God, just before God, simply by believing in Jesus. You don't add anything to it. The moment you do, it's not the gospel.

People say, "Yeah, but what about works?" We'll get to that. We'll get to that in the book of James, which we're going to start in a few weeks on a weekend. James takes the Christian life from a different perspective—that if it's true faith, if you are truly justified by faith, you will produce works. But here, Paul's emphasis, because of the Judaizers, is justification by faith.

You can see that by words that are repeated in the book of Galatians. The word "law" appears 32 times in this book. The word "faith" appears 21 times. So you have the law versus faith, and he is comparing the two on a personal level, on a doctrinal level, and on an applicational level.

A word about Galatia, because it begins by saying, "Paul, an apostle, not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him from the dead, and all the brethren who are with me, to the churches of Galatia." Galatians is a little bit different than some of the other letters Paul wrote because when Paul wrote the other letters, he was writing to one city.

Ephesus was a city; the book of Ephesians was written to those who lived in that city. Colossians was written to those who lived in the city of Colossae. Thessalonians were those who lived in Thessalonica. Not so Galatia. Galatia wasn't a city; Galatia was a province, an area, like a state.

It was an area that had several cities and when Paul went there on his first missionary journey, he established churches in several Galatian cities. First of all, Antioch of Pisidia—there's two Antiochs—Antioch of Pisidia, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe. These are all towns in southern Galatia.

Galatia literally means land of the Gauls, hence the term Galatia. The land where the Gauls live. GAUL. A Gaul were people originally from France who moved to this area of Asia Minor and it became known as their land, their country, the land where the Gauls moved and settled.

Most of the ethnic Gauls were up north. Most of the people who resided in the region from different backgrounds lived in the southern cities where Paul established the churches. So it's to a group of churches in the area. "To the churches," plural, "of Galatia."

The great theme of the book, as I've already stated, is the theme of grace. Now you tell me, what does grace mean? Unmerited favor. Any other definitions? Undeserved favor, God's lavish goodness.

Here's a way to think of grace. Think of it as an acronym: G-R-A-C-E. God's riches at Christ's expense. That is what grace is. God deals with you lavishly because of the expense that Jesus paid on the cross for you.

Because of what Jesus did on the cross for you, that is enough for God to treat you as though you were flawless, as though you were without sin. He justifies you, just as if I'd never sinned. Justified. So God's riches at Christ's expense. Grace is the great theme of this book.

Paul—let's begin again—an apostle. What's an apostle? How many are there? Well, there are 12 in a technical sense, in a primary sense. Paul, of course, wasn't one of the original 12 even when Judas died and defected and then killed himself. They had to replace him; they didn't replace him with Paul. Paul wasn't even in the picture. They replaced him with Matthias in the book of Acts.

That's because there were certain qualifications to be one of the original apostles. You had to be with Jesus in his earthly ministry, you had to have been a witness of his resurrection—by the way, Paul qualified for that—you had to have certain signs that accompany an apostle—Paul qualified for that.

But there were other people besides the 12 who were called apostles in the New Testament. So I just want you in your mind divide doctrinally the original 12 apostles versus an apostolic calling, not of the original 12.

What do I mean by apostolic calling? What I mean is the word "apostle" simply means sent out or sent on a mission. So all of you, in that sense, all of you are apostles. You're sent out, you're commissioned by God.

For example, Barnabas is called an apostle in the New Testament. Timothy is called an apostle in the New Testament. Silvanus is called an apostle, Andronicus, Junia, are all called apostles in the New Testament in a secondary sense.

"Paul, an apostle, not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him from the dead." You know how Paul got saved. He was Saul of Tarsus who had a very interesting meeting on the road to Damascus. He was going there to—he was part of the Jewish cancel culture. He was canceling all Christians.

He was arresting them, throwing them into prison, even threatening them with death. An interesting thing happened to him on the way to Damascus. He got saved. He was called by Jesus because Jesus appeared to him on the Damascus road. He didn't receive it from men. It wasn't through man. It was a direct calling because of a direct revelation of Jesus Christ to him.

There are some groups, some denominations, some segments of Christianity and even Christendom—those who I would consider outside Christianity but are part of Christendom—who make a big deal about what they call apostolic succession.

The Catholic Church is one of those groups. "We can trace our lineage from this Pope to that Pope to that Pope had his hands laid on him all the way back to Peter." The Mormon church will do the same. They have 12 apostles and they have an apostolic succession. The Eastern Orthodox Church: apostolic succession.

Paul comes on the scene and says, "I'm not part of that. It wasn't that I got my hands laid on me by Peter." In fact, he just said, "Yeah, I met with Peter. I was just with him a couple weeks, but that's it." It wasn't a big deal. What was a big deal, bigger than Peter, bigger than a Pope, bigger than the Orthodox Church, is Jesus Christ personally commissioned him.

We often get the question: "What gives you the authority? Who is it that grants you the authority as a pastor, as a church, as a leader?" It's a good question. It's a fair question. It's a question they asked John the Baptist as he's baptizing down by the Jordan River, at the Jordan River. "Who gave you the authority? Where'd you get it?" They asked Jesus Christ this same question.

They asked Paul the same question and evidently the Judaizers were saying he doesn't have any real authority like we do. "We're part of the original gang, the covenant people of the Jewish race in Jerusalem." So they made a big deal out of it.

Paul said, "Bigger than getting ordained by man, I've been commissioned and ordained by God." By the way, we have an ordination service here at this church. We take young men in the ministry, we train them up, we license them, and eventually we ordain them, but we never see ordination as we are the ones commissioning them or we are the ones ordaining them.

We are simply recognizing that God has ordained that individual. It's more of a ratification. We can't call or equip anybody in ministry. We can come alongside and augment what God has given in terms of a gift, but we can never provide what God hasn't naturally, supernaturally provided.

But when He does, naturally, supernaturally provide in a person's life, we can look at a person, recognize it, and say, "Yeah, we ratify that. We'll give you an ordination certificate which is saying we agree that God has His hand on your life." But that's all we can do. It has to come from God and with Paul, it did. It came directly as a direct revelation through Christ and God the Father who raised Him from the dead.

Boy, I better put my foot on the gas. "And all the brethren who are with me." We don't know who those brethren are. Could have been Luke, could have been Tychicus, could have been a number of people. "To the churches," plural, "of Galatia."

Remember, Paul started preaching the gospel and churches were formed in Antioch of Pisidia, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe. A great work of God had been established on Paul's first missionary journey. "Grace to you," Paul begins his letters typically like this. "Grace to you and peace from God."

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