Galatians Historical Background | Why was Galatians written?

Galatians is a book where we can see a different side of Paul. He has been pushed and challenged, and when he writes this book, he is angry! So why is he so upset? Paul is writing this book toward the end of his first missionary journey, where he focused primarily on the region of southern Galatia. For almost two years he traveled through the area, where he proclaimed the good news about Jesus, planted many churches and experienced the power of the Holy Spirit. This mission trip marked the beginning of a major transition in the church: for the first time countless Gentiles became followers of Jesus!

But despite all of Paul's successes, he has gone through some pretty intense persecution, including one time when he received a public stoning, to the point where they thought he was dead! But that is not the reason Paul is angry in this letter. He is angry because a group of false teachers have been coming after him and undoing much of the hard work he had done. They were leading these Galatian churches astray. So who were these false teachers and what did they teach? To better understand this situation, let's take a look at the close but complex relationship between Christianity and Judaism, and how each of them viewed a group we know as Gentiles.

In the first century, Judaism considered Gentiles to be unclean sinners and contact with them was unacceptable. That is why the Jews stayed away from them so as not to become impure. However, there was a provision for Gentiles who recognized the God of Israel and who wanted to worship Him, but it was not easy. These Gentiles needed to fully commit to the Jewish way of life. What did this mean? This meant that first they had to be baptized, then the males had to be circumcised, and then they had to follow the laws of Moses, especially the dietary laws and festivals.

These requirements were too much for many Gentiles, so very few converted completely to Judaism. Some Gentiles, however, took a middle path. They recognized the God of Israel and were baptized, but they did not want to comply with the requirement of circumcision. These Gentiles were called "God-fearing." And, although they attended synagogues and were friendly to Jews, from a Jewish perspective they were still considered impure. All this changed with Jesus. After his death and resurrection, Jesus' disciples received the power of the Holy Spirit to boldly proclaim his message to all those around them. They understood that Jesus was the promised Messiah and Savior of Israel, and that He was the One to whom the entire Old Testament ultimately pointed.

Jesus had now freed them from the burden of following the sacrifices and ceremonial works of the Old Covenant law. The only thing needed to make things right with God was faith in Jesus! These first Christians were Jews, and initially they only thought about proclaiming this good news of their Messiah to other Jews. After all, they had been awaiting the arrival of their Messiah for a long time. Through his proclamation of the good news about Jesus, many Jews became convinced that Jesus was the Messiah and became Christians. Unfortunately, the majority refused to accept Jesus as their Messiah.

Instead, they chose to continue following the laws and traditions of the Old Testament, rather than becoming followers of Jesus. With that, things between Jews and Christians began to get tense, but there was one thing that made them even more tense. God began calling Christians to do something bold and completely countercultural: bring the good news about Jesus to the Gentile world. By stepping forward in faith and obedience, many Gentiles became followers of Jesus and joined his community of believers. As time went on, so many accepted the faith that the Gentiles were beginning to outnumber the Jewish believers in the church!

As more Gentiles converted to Christianity, some of the Jewish Christians began to get angry. Even after becoming followers of Christ, they continued to maintain their traditional Jewish view of remaining separate from the Gentiles. Now should they just accept them? What would the rest of your Jewish community think? They feared being rejected or even persecuted for being too friendly with Gentiles. So what did they do? Out of fear, they compromised the Gospel message. They decided that faith in Jesus alone was not enough to have a right relationship with God. They taught that righteousness before God was earned through faith in Jesus + fulfillment of the works of the law.

They required Gentiles who wanted to become followers of Jesus to go through all the Jewish conversion laws. In other words, Gentiles must first convert to Judaism in order to become followers of Jesus. That is why these false teachers are called “the circumcision group” or “Judaizers.” So what did these Judaizers do next? After Paul planted a church in one city and then moved to the next location, they would come after him and attack Paul's credibility. They claimed that he was not even a true apostle, but a false teacher who taught them an incomplete Gospel message. They accused him of proclaiming an easy gospel to the Gentiles in order to get many converts, yet he was leaving them as impure God-fearers.

The Judaizers would later teach this new church what they called “the true message of the Gospel, what Paul did not tell them.” They had a strong influence on some of these early churches, turning the new Christians into what Paul calls in this letter “a different gospel.” So why was Paul angry? Because Jesus gave the Galatians the greatest gift in the world: they were justified by faith in Him and they threw it all away. They were trying to gain his favor through fruitless works, rather than accepting the only path to salvation. Now that you know some of this

background

and how the Judaizers were compromising the Gospel message, how does reading the book of Galatians help you?

What is Paul's message to the Galatians and how do we live that message today? When we truly learn to stand firm in our faith and walk in the freedom that God has for us, this is the Galatians Effect.