Saint Paul\'s Epistle to the Galatians, Paul

¶ … Saint Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, Paul is continuing the overall castigation of the Galatian churches which is the overarching subject of the letter as a whole. Indeed, Paul's fierce tone in Galatians is the first thing that strikes the reader: Longenecker (2003) describes Galatians as "teem[ing] with impassioned fervor unequalled in any other Pauline letter" (p.64). The subject is the "backsliding" (so to speak) of the individual congregations in Galatia: Paul indicates at Galatians 4:8 that they had previously been Gentiles, and the third chapter will make repeated reference (as we shall see) to Paul's ministry among them, but it seems that more recently they were accepting missionaries from a Jewish sect that was not Christian in any sense that Paul is prepared to recognize: they have attempted to convert the Galatian congregations

begins with Paul's question (presumably rhetorical) of whether the churches have been subject to some kind of witchcraft: "O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?" ?(Gal. 3:1). Paul is couching this in such a rhetorically aggressive position precisely because he himself had witnessed the Spirit work miracles among the Galatian churches: "He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?" (Gal. 3:5). Paul's implication here is that true Christianity insists on the latter, the "hearing of faith" which had been credited with the "miracles" of Paul's own ministry -- the insistence on Mosaic law is credited, throughout the epistle to the Galatians, to the outside agitation of the rival Jewish sect who has been preaching in the region. A memorable example of the "works of the law" referenced here in 3:5 will come later in Galatians chapter 6, in which Paul addresses the issue of circumcision: required by mosaic law, but dispensed with in Paul's Christianity.

For now, Paul is content to outline the doctrinal differences between himself and this recent set of false preachers -- if they have tried to lure the Galatians into following the behavioral practices of Leviticus with reference to the Abraham of Scripture, Paul makes it clear here that spiritual affinity with Abraham (and with the God of Abraham, and of Christ) is attained through "faith" contrasted to doing the works according to Mosaic law:

Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. (Gal. 3:7-9)

This is presumably the same faithas the "hearing of faith" offered just before in Gal. 3:2 as Paul's own practice, and contrasted with the "works of the law" which he disparages there. Similarly, Longenecker (2003) notes that throughout Galatians "doing the law is disparaged as ineffectual and non-productive" (p. 68) -- one particularly relevant instance of this comes at Gal. 3:10, "For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them." The contrast between this incorrect belief in "law" and Paul's promotion of "faith" carries on in Gal.3:11-14 concluding with promise of the "blessing" that will come "through Jesus Christ" who allows them to "receive the promise of the Spirit through faith" (Gal. 3:14). Paul will explain away the law soon enough as something which was "added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator." (Gal 3:19). Christ has offered, in Paul's account here, a new dispensation unto the Galatians (and all of us): "the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed." (Gal. 3:22-3). These passages seem to indicate some kind of conception on Paul's part of the universality of sin, contrasted with the universality of redemption granted by faith in Christ.