Getting to the Heart of the Matter

How do we keep the "main thing" consistently the "main thing?" In Paul's letter to the Galatians we are going to find a community that drifted from the "main thing." They began with great trust in Christ and great reliance on the Spirit and great connection as community. Paul later found them to be distant from what they were in the beginning when they came to Christ, much more legalistic with less reliance on Christ and less reliance on the Spirit.

Their focus became distorted because there were others that came after Paul that visited the Galatian believers - legalizers and revellers in the flesh - Paul calls them - who took away the Galatians "freedom in Christ" and burdened them with rules and regulations that robbed them of their Spiritual fervor and their incredible trust in Christ. These men who visited came "from James" says Paul. We assume they were not necessarily sent by James but were part of the Christian community in Jerusalem and felt that Paul was undermining the Christian community by not emphasizing the Law and its requirements along with faith in Christ.

Given the tension between the Jewish Hebrew speaking Christian community and the Jewish Greek speaking Christian community, it is no surprise that there would be plenty of criticism by both these groups concerning Gentiles coming to Christ and not following Jewish beliefs. Paul attempts to correct some of the biased thinking presented by the men from Jerusalem by reminding the Galatians of what God did for them when they came to Christ and how the Spirit was so evident and present among them.

It was a challenge in these early stages of the Gentile outreach by Paul and his missionary team as Gentiles came to Christ and the Spirit was given them without their converting to Judaism. Even Peter the Apostle was unsure of what this meant even though he had a clear encounter with the Centurion Cornelius and his band of men and saw God give them His Spirit when they believed on Jesus. What we see is a struggle to define what it meant to be a follower of Christ and how Jew and Gentile factored into the mix as members of the same community.

This week's class we will look at Galatians in detail and see what Paul was addressing and attempt to understand what was going on in this community and the believing community at large.

Digging Deeper

For those of you who want to dig deeper, one of the questions that arises from Galatians is what is Paul's view of the Law given that he so clearly says it no longer applies to the believer who puts their trust in Christ. For a very detailed look at Paul and the Law visit the blog: Rabbi Saul [www.rabbisaul.com/articles/] and click on the link below called Paul and Torah: An Introductory Overview by Tim Gallant.