This morning we're going to do a one hour or forty-five minute walk through of the book of Galatians. If you didn't already get a copy of these notes, we've got them up front. Bob will run them around—raise your hand if you need one. There are a couple in the back corner over here.

Also, if you've missed anything in the past that we've talked about, the whole growing set is up here. You can come grab anything from previous weeks. I'll always have these yellow cards up front. These give you web addresses—shortcuts to where the digital files are stored: PDFs and audio files for this class. Two weeks ago we did Jude. Three weeks ago we did Second Peter. If you missed those and want the digital copies or to hear them, grab one of these yellow cards.

Our goal here is to cover every book in the New Testament—27 books over probably about thirty weeks. Romans will get a couple weeks, some others will get a couple weeks, but mostly one week each. The purpose is to help you so that when you go back and read Galatians on your own, you'll know some things to look for. We want to make it so that this book and all its treasures will be easier to find.

So tell me—before you walked in this room, what did you already know about Galatians?

Eric: You're a Judaizer, you might as well just cut it all off.

Okay, so there's a lot going on there. A Judaizer may not be an obvious term for some of you. What it means is this: Jesus was Jewish. He came as the Jewish Messiah to the Jewish people. Then a bunch of non-Jews—Gentiles—started coming to the party. A Judaizer would be somebody who says to a non-Jew: "Hey, if you want to come to our party, you've got to first become like us. You must be Judaized." It's like saying if you want to be a foreigner coming to America, you've got to become a U.S. citizen to stay here.

The Judaizers told the Gentiles: "If you want to become a follower of Jesus, you need to become circumcised." And Paul is so aggravated by those telling people this that he literally says:

As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and cut the whole thing off.

He's saying he wishes those guys would just castrate themselves. He's so annoyed with them. That's a strong start. Eric, thank you for that.

What else do you guys know about Galatians?

Someone: Foolish.

The Galatians—he accuses them of being foolish:

You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Christ was portrayed as crucified.

Paul is on a tear. I'll just tell you: those two data points you mentioned support my contention about this book. It's far and away Paul's angriest letter. He tells people they should castrate themselves. He calls people fools. He does a whole bunch of other stuff. He's extremely agitated and angry throughout this letter.

Gil: It also puts the fruit of the Spirit in this letter.

Yes, okay, this is interesting. In this book—which is pretty angry—we find the fruit of the Spirit: love and joy and peace and patience. It's an interesting question, and we'll get there as the class goes on. How do we go from being angry at the Judaizers all wrapped around circumcision to the fruit of the Spirit? Is this just a P.S. add-on? Does it have any logical coherence to what preceded it? We'll get to that before we're done. Excellent.

Fetzer: It's probably one of the earliest letters he ever wrote.

Andy says it's one of the earliest letters Paul ever wrote—possibly one of the earliest.

Dating Galatians and the Gentile Controversy

There's a complicated element to dating Galatians. We don't have explicit dates—nothing that says Paul wrote this in 40 A.D. The dating is difficult because of how it relates to the Book of Acts.

The central event in Galatians is about a major controversy: Do Gentiles need to become Jews? Do Gentiles need to get circumcised? That exact same controversy occurs in the Book of Acts, in chapter 15. If you read Acts 15 and Galatians together, particularly Galatians 2, you'll see they're really similar, but there are some differences. It's hard to know: Did Galatians happen earlier than Acts 15? Did it happen after Acts 15? The way you answer that influences how you date the letter.

The most obvious difference between the two accounts is striking. In Acts 15, Peter is on the side of the Gentiles. He's defending against the Judaizers. He's defending the welcome of Gentiles. But in Galatians 2, that is not true. In Galatians 2, Paul rebukes Peter. He confronts him directly:

I said to Peter in front of them all, you are a Jew and yet you live like a Gentile. And yet you force the Gentiles to follow Jewish customs. — Galatians 2

You don't see any of that in Acts 15. So either Peter once knew better—Acts 15 comes first, and he begins to slip due to social pressure, which results in Galatians 2. Or Galatians 2 happens first, Peter gets rebuked, cleans up his act, and then Acts 15 happens later, with Peter already corrected by Paul. There's evidence that suggests both, and I don't actually know which is true.

Galatians as "Mini Romans"

Galatians is sometimes referred to as mini Romans, and for good reason. It follows the same theological progression: we're broken, we need God, Jesus is the way. The very strong focus on external righteousness—credited to you and received as a gift—is very much present in Galatians.

The circumcision controversy is so important because of what's at stake. If we're made right before God by our ceremonial observances, by our religious practices, by our fulfillment of the legal obligations of circumcision, then as Paul puts it:

If righteousness could be gained through the law, well then Christ died for nothing. — Galatians

Paul is a ferocious advocate for a righteousness not based on observance to the law, but rather a righteousness based on faith in Christ imparted as an act of grace. This theme runs through both Romans and Galatians.

Abraham is key to Paul's argument in both letters. Abraham was considered righteous before he was circumcised. Paul appeals to Abraham to prove his point in both Romans and Galatians.

So you see a lot of these kinds of consistencies. Durian also asked—doesn't Paul defend the fact that he doesn't go into ministry right away? Well, he's not defending that fact; he uses that fact to defend the authenticity of his message. He's like, "Listen, I got this directly from God and I'm trustworthy." He walks through this. He spent fourteen years here and he does this, then he met this one. And it's one of the places we usually pull Paul's testimony—Paul's conversion story—out of a couple places in Acts, both where it happens in Acts and then he tells the story twice when he's on trial. But then the fourth point of that is Galatians, where Paul gives us yet another vantage point on how he goes from being oppositional to Christ to being a leader in the movement. So yes, you can watch through all that.

Okay, one or two more things. We good? Okay, Bob? The Galatians are a region rather than a specific city. Paul opts for the region. That's right. Okay, that's an interesting little note. And there's maybe one theological thing worth knowing there.

So we say the letter to the Thessalonians—Thessalonica is a city. The letter to the Ephesians—Ephesus is a city. The letter to Corinth—Corinth is a city. Okay? And you would think the letter to the Galatians—Galatia is a city—and you'd be wrong. Galatia is more like a state. Right? So it's like a letter to Chicago and a letter to LA and a letter to New York and a letter to Virginia. Okay? So this is a letter to the region of Galatia. And what makes that interesting theologically is that the Bible always treats cities as having one church. There's a church in Corinth. There's a church in Richmond. But there are churches, plural, in Galatia. Right? So if you look at the way he writes his letters—"to the church in Thessalonica," "to the church in Corinth"—he's specifically going to pluralize it in the opening of Galatians. Okay, so just note that.

Paul's Urgency and the Stakes

All right. Let's try to organize this. So it is, as I said, easily Paul's angriest letter. He is super hot. And he's not hot just because this happens to be an annoyance to him, but because he sees the graveness, the significance, the urgency of this theological error. Not just how deep the error is, but that if we move away from a righteousness imputed from Christ, received by grace through faith, into a works righteousness, he's like, "The whole gospel is gone. It's gone."

Look at how he says this. If you go to Galatians 1:6, I have it here:

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all. Evidently, some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preach to you, let him be eternally condemned. As we've said before, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned. — Galatians 1:6-9

This is strong language. So we're saying it's a different gospel. It's no gospel. It's a perversion of the gospel. Whoever's teaching this should be eternally condemned. And let's say that one a second time. Later on we're going to threaten them with emasculation, castration. Like, the stakes are super high. And so Paul is not diddling around the edges on this. He just comes at it hard. This is a big deal. Massive implications if we screw up the gospel of grace. Okay? So that's the first thing to capture: he's super mad because it really matters.

The topic is all about circumcision, as we've already said. That may be a little bit strange in our context because we don't generally think a great deal about that. I think the reason we don't think about it is because Paul won the debate. Right? This question has been answered and answered definitively. So the church has never, since this time, really struggled with "should we, shouldn't we, do we have to, do we need to?" But at that time it was a very live question. The letter is going to advocate very much for our salvation by faith alone, which again is why it's so akin to the book of Romans.

When you read through it, you're going to find lots of great language. One of my favorite passages in the whole Bible is here in Galatians, chapter 2:20. He says:

The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. — Galatians 2:20

I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing. — Galatians 2:21

Paul is deeply interested throughout this book that we would come to understand, that we would come to embrace, that we would seize and never let go of a righteousness given as a gift and received by faith. In the midst of it though, he's gonna have to clean up a couple messes.

If we stopped right there and just said, okay, yeah, you don't need to be circumcised, it's salvation by faith alone, there are at least two main questions that you're going to be left with. One of them is: okay, noted, we don't need to follow the circumcision laws. So what is the deal with the law? How are we done? Do we just throw out the Old Testament? Do we throw out the Pentateuch? Do we bother to read the Ten Commandments? If we're saved by grace through faith and not through adherence to the law, what is the purpose of the law?

So he's got to address how do we think of Moses? How do we think of the law? After he's finished making his case, he's gotta go on and clean up that mess.

And then there's another mess that's a little bit maybe less obvious. If I don't get to threaten you with punishment when you don't keep the rules, what do I do? How do we get you to keep the rules? If we're not constraining sin, if we're not compelling righteousness by talking about adherence to the law, what do we do? What else is going to be?

What is Paul's answer to that? It is the Holy Spirit's job. And this is exactly why Galatians 5 is ground zero for the fruit of the Spirit. After he's said it's not through the law, it's not through the law, it's not through the law, you're like, alright, fine. It's not through the law. But does that mean that we live licentious lives? Is it just complete antinomianism? And his answer is no, no, no.

If you live according to that, it's going to lead to death. The acts of sinful nature are obvious. But the fruit of the Spirit is love and joy and peace and patience. Against such things there is no law. — Galatians 5:21-23

If you ever wonder why Galatians—why this thing that's so wrapped around circumcision—gives us this exalted picture of life in the Spirit, it's because we just got rid of the law as a function of restraint in our lives, and God has offered us something new. Namely his self living in us, shaping us, making us love new things. That's kind of where that all fits in.

Jesus's Pattern of Three, Not Two

One of the things that I want you to notice when you read through Galatians is this: Paul is never original. He's never making anything up. All that he's doing is explaining things that Jesus said and did. He's explaining things that Moses said. He's steeped in the life of Christ, and he's steeped in the Old Testament.

One thing that Jesus was brilliant about—if you read the Gospels, you'll begin to notice this pattern—and Paul is gonna pick this up. Jesus loves to say something akin to this: there are not two kinds of people in the world, there are three.

We have a tendency to say there is religion and there is irreligion. And religion is good and irreligion is bad. And so stop being this irreligious pagan and come over here and be this good religious person. But Jesus never ever says that. In fact, he just knocks that Jenga tower over time and time again.

Jesus loves to tell stories where there are these two characters, one who is religious and one who is irreligious. Can you think of him doing this? The Prodigal Son. The Good Samaritan—very good. In the Good Samaritan, you've got the Good Samaritan, he's the irreligious person, and then you got the priest and the Levite and all these religious people. Then there's that parable about two people praying. You've got one person here beating his breast, like, I'm not even worthy to come before you. And then the other one is praying, God, I'm so glad that I am not like him, that I am so wonderful and righteous and good.

So he sets up these two things, and then what Jesus always does—we've got this bad, irreligious person, this dirty Samaritan, and you've got this good religious person, this Levite or this Pharisee. Then the story takes this horrible twist where the hero turns out to be a converted version of the irreligious guy. Right?

And what Jesus is doing is he's saying, you've got religion and irreligion. You think this is good, you think this is bad, and what I'm telling you is they're both bad. And instead what you need is some third thing that is neither one of these. And generally it is easier to get to the third one, shockingly, from the land of the irreligious. Right?

And that's what Jesus shows over and over again. You got the religious guy who thinks he's self righteous. You got the irreligious guy who knows he is unrighteous. And then you've got this one who has found imputed righteousness. And it's an entirely different thing. That I'll show you that in a few minutes. That theme is gonna show up in the book of Galatians in a way that is a dramatic capturing and impressing of the teaching of Jesus. That you think there's two ways to live, but I'm telling you, there is a third. And it's the one that you want. Okay? So we're going to watch for that.

So these are the things to watch for. Let's take a look at some of the anger stuff. Okay? So skim through on that front page. I already read you the astonished one. And then he's gonna do this thing where he gets super in Peter's face, right?

When the Jews began to draw back, he rebukes Peter and not even just Peter but Barnabas. — Galatians 2:12

This is a big deal. Who is Barnabas to Paul, you guys? He had to be his partner. That's right. What was the first thing you said? I said, happy. Wasn't he? Yes. So Barnabas was his partner, but he was something prior to being Paul's partner. Do you remember this? Yeah, Ellen? He was the one who brought Paul before the apostles. That's right.

So when Paul becomes a Christian, nobody wants to touch him. They're all terrified of him. But Barnabas is the one guy that is willing to wade through all these frightened people, put his arm around Paul and welcome him in. So he's going to become Paul's partner, but before he's Paul's partner, he's Paul's senior. He's his advocate. He's his sponsor. He's his gateway in. And then by this time, Barnabas is led astray. Peter is completely off the rails. It is a big deal.

So Paul is writing, he's rebuking the leader of the church, the one who's brought him in. It's incredible. Look at what he says there in that inset quote.

When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel—remember how chapter one sets this up, "you're perverting the gospel? It's a different gospel. It's no gospel. And if you keep it up, you deserve to be condemned to hell"—he says, when I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, "You are a Jew. You live like a Gentile, not like a Jew. How is it then you force the Gentiles to follow Jewish customs? We who are Jews by birth and not 'Gentile sinners' know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ." — Galatians 2:14-16

Sounds like Romans, doesn't it?

So we too have put our faith in Jesus Christ that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law, no one will be justified. — Galatians 2:16

That's about as clear as you can make it. That's a big deal. Right?

Then he's gonna give Eric's favorite verse in the Bible. It's Galatians 5:12.

As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves. — Galatians 5:12

It's a big deal. Okay? So that's all the stuff. So when you read through it, you might just highlight—man, Paul is really ticked about this. What's going on here? You'll see that. And I've just highlighted every time circumcision shows up, it's all over the letter.

And he even says this. I wanna hear what do you guys think this means?

Mark my words. I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again, I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. — Galatians 5:2-3

Now, live in The United States, and I don't know what the numbers are, but it's very likely that the majority of the men in this room are circumcised. Right? It's become kind of like standard medical practice in The United States for lots and lots and lots of people. So does it—if the Bible is true and we take the Bible literally, is it the case that any man in this room is lost forever and Christ will be of no value? If you let yourself be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all.

Again I declare to you: every man who lets himself be circumcised is obligated to obey the whole law. So if you got circumcised when you were born, are you out of luck? And if not, why not? Because isn't that what the Bible says? You with me?

Chris, if you use that as the clothing of righteousness that would make you adorable from the Lord, then yes. Okay. So what Chris said is: if you use your circumcision as the cloak of your righteousness, then yes. Does this make sense?

So it's not the fact—and Chris is right to kind of just punchline this. It is not being circumcised or not being circumcised; neither condition matters. But if because you are circumcised you feel like therein lies my righteousness, that is what Paul is saying is bad news. Right? So yeah, sure, it's fine, no problem, either way. But if you're depending on it, it's like: stop it.

Now, here's the thing: It's unlikely—very unlikely—that anyone in this room is depending on their circumcision to be their righteousness. Probably not. However, it is very likely that people in this room are depending on something else to be their righteousness. Your foreskin has probably never crossed your mind, and you're probably tired of me saying things like that. But it is very, very likely the case that your hope is not really in the finished work of Christ, but in something you've added to it. And that is what we're talking about here. That is what this letter is about.

The circumcision is an essential part of the Old Testament law, but it's not the only part. And so if you're depending on circumcision to cloak your righteousness, you're out of luck because you have to fulfill the entire law. There's lots beyond circumcision.

That's exactly right. Today, whatever your hook is in—if it's not the grace of the gospel, if it's not his righteousness given to you, whatever you're ginning up on your own—you've got to do all of it. That's right.

So what Kelly is saying is: it's not just if you're depending on your circumcision. The law doesn't say if you're circumcised, you're saved. The law comes with six hundred and thirteen things. Alright? Six hundred and thirteen specific obligations. And Paul is saying: listen, listen, time out. There is a fork in the road. There is such a thing as works righteousness. There really is. There is a path which, if you take it and follow it perfectly and completely, God will declare you righteous. And then there's a path of righteousness that is given as a gift received by faith.

Paul says: be very careful because if you start down the fork of works righteousness, you better finish the path. And good luck with that. Because there's only been one person who has ever lived that was able to do that. And it's not you. Right? So he's saying if you go down this path, you've got to finish it, and you never can, which is what drives us to Christ.

Keep in mind too that all Jews who came to Jesus were circumcised when they came to Jesus. All circumcised. You mean they had already been circumcised when they were eight days old? They were circumcised on the eighth day. That's right.

So for the Jews, they're not asking the Gentiles to do something they hadn't already done. Of course, they did it when they were eight days old, right? And they're demanding that the Gentiles step into this. And that's when Paul is saying: no, no, no, you don't understand. He's making one new man out of the two. The church will be comprised of Jews and Gentiles, not just Jews and Gentiles who became Jews. But he's combining the two.

Abraham first received the covenant of circumcision and the promise, but it was his faith that was counted as his righteousness. Circumcision was just the sign of the promise that God had already made. But what's cool about Galatians is that you have that argument, and then you leave from circumcision and then you replace it with the Holy Spirit who is the one who circumcises your heart, as it were.

Both of them work like this: your faith is counted to his righteousness and then you receive the promise. So the circumcision was the sign of the promise. But then also: "I will send the promise of my Father upon you. You will receive the Holy Spirit to guarantee your inheritance."

And it actually all fits together. So let me try to summarize what Lily said in case you couldn't hear it. What you see in Abraham—this is by the way, this is another Romans argument.

Romans 4, Paul makes the point that Abraham is the one to whom God said, "I will credit you righteousness based on your faith." And of course, Abraham is the father of the Jews. He's the one who is circumcised, all this kind of stuff. But Paul says, "Hey, did you ever notice something? Did you notice that God credited righteousness to Abraham? Was it before or after he got circumcised?" And the answer is it was before. And so in this way, Abraham is the father of those who are circumcised and believed, and he is the father of those who were not circumcised and believed.

It's a very clever, interesting observation. And Lilly is pointing out that in the same way that the circumcision—that real faith precedes the sign—in the same way what God is doing under the new covenant is there's this imputation of his gift and his grace and then these things that flow out of it. There's a sequencing here that's consistent.

Robin, I have a question. When Paul took his vow as a Nazareth—yes, yes. Okay, so this is interesting. So Timothy—he's got a Jewish mom and a Greek father. Do I have that reversed? His mom is Jewish, and his father is Greek. And so he's not circumcised as a baby. He's growing up in this interethnic way. He's taught the Scriptures from a young age, he's never been circumcised. He becomes a follower of Christ, becomes a leader in the church, and Paul sends him out on a missionary journey. And in a radical departure from Galatians, he circumcises Timothy as a 25 year old, which can't be any fun at all. So how do we make sense of this? Is Paul being inconsistent with the work in Galatians or with the message of Galatians? How are we to understand that?

For the sake of time, I'll just answer that for you because there are a bunch of other things I want to get to as well. It's not at all inconsistent. He was not circumcising Timothy for Timothy's righteousness. He was not imputing to Timothy some gift of righteousness. Rather, what he was doing is he was making him culturally relevant. What he was doing would be more like Hudson Taylor. Do you know who Hudson Taylor is? What's he famous for? Missionary to China. And what in particular was new in his approach? Do you know what he did that was so odd? He dressed in their apparel. You can think of a missionary showing up from England to China wearing a coat and tie, looking weird. He's like, we're not going to do that. He puts on a silk robe, whatever they wear in China. He wears his mustache like a Chinese person. He enters into their culture so as to not bring cultural barriers to the message. It's just good missiology. He's making himself relevant in that context.

And in a similar way, Timothy was like, okay, I will do what you do. It would be like—I don't know what ridiculous things Andy Fetzer has done, but he spent his whole life working with high school students, which explains some of his immaturity in a lot of ways. If you're going to hang out with high school kids all day, you've got to do high school kid stuff. That's what he's doing. Paul doesn't circumcise Timothy as a way to make him righteous. He's just dressing him up like a Chinese person because he's working with Chinese people. That's what's going on there essentially.

The Racial Dimension

Now, since we're talking about Chinese people, that reminds me of one other thing. We are largely a white community here at Church of the Holy Spirit. The framing that I've just given you—this whole Galatian thing—is all through the lens of theology. It's all about doctrine. It's all about salvation by grace through faith. But don't miss this. If we were in a community that had greater racial diversity, and in particular, if we were in a community where there was greater consciousness of some of the difficulties of being in a minority culture in a majority context, then you would have a whole different lens on this.

This is a letter about racism. You've got a bunch of Jews—this is a race of people. And then a bunch of Gentiles show up, and when the Gentiles show up, the Jews refuse to sit at the same table with them and they back off from them. Is this beginning to sound at all familiar?

We have in a white majority context the ability to just look at that purely through a theological lens. But this is a very human story with grave racial and ethnic implications. And part of what Paul is rebuking is the bad theology. Your theology is bad. But he's also rebuking the endemic racism. And at the core of racism is the claim that I am better than you and we are better than y'all. That's what's happening here.

And so when you read this, I spent some time working in a university context with a number of people that weren't white, that weren't like me. And it was so helpful to be in their community and have them point things out to me that, man, I could read this all day long and I just didn't have a life experience that would force me to see it from that perspective or enable me to do that.

And so I would just encourage you when you read Galatians, don't stay in this particular theological bent and blind yourself to the racial implications of this because that's a big part of the story of what's going on in Galatians. Groovy? Okay. Let's see. Go to the back page. Let's see. Themes you're gonna wanna see as you chase through it: freedom, sonship, slavery. Okay? The opposite of freedom is slavery. The opposite of slave is son. Okay? So Paul is framing it out. You live in a house, and in that house, you are either the child of the one who owns the home, and as such, you are free, or you are the slave who does the work in the home.

There's a major theme that runs through Galatians, and it's part of his defense. He's like, you're not slaves. You're free. You're not slaves. You're sons. Right? So watch that as you go through it. The freedom of slavery, the sonship—major themes there.

And do not—here's what I want you to do. Do not translate sonship to daughtership. Okay? Don't. We have a tendency to say we're sons and daughters of the king. Okay? Paul doesn't say that. And when he doesn't say that, when he doesn't say you're a daughter of the king, right, when he invites you into sonship, he's not excluding the ladies. He's inviting you higher up and deeper in. Because in his cultural context, it's the sons, it's the men that inherit everything. It's primogeniture. Right? It's the eldest male who's gonna get everything.

What he's saying is that men and women, both, you are treated as the heirs of the king. Okay? So we have a tendency to try to make this language more inclusive, say sons and daughters, and that's fine at some level, but I want you to understand that Paul is not excluding the women by talking about the sons. He's inviting you to be heirs with the men. The women are not excluded in the way that he's framing it. We just have a different cultural lens from which we view that. Does that make sense? We are all invited. We are all heirs, and it's all for us, male and female. This stuff comes to us.

What do we got? Okay. Let me so you'll see—I mentioned the vertical, the horizontal. You'll see both aspects of the racial and the doctrinal, so watch for that. As I mentioned, if we're going to get rid of the law, we still have to figure out what's going to constrain our behavior. That's gonna be the spiritual life. It's gonna be the Holy Spirit. The acts of the sinful nature are obvious. The fruit of the spirit is this dramatically superior list. Watch that. Notice the logic of how this works in your life. You do not need to be constrained by the law. We live in a different era. God has a different function of dealing with us. But you are constrained. You are empowered. You are directed by the spirit of God who lives in you. Right?

If you wanna dig down a little deeper on that, you might look at First Corinthians 2 into 3, you might look at Romans 8. These would probably be Galatians 5, First Corinthians 2, Romans 8. Those are probably the most important texts on the spirit-filled life, which is one of the most important concepts you could possibly understand. So that might be a thread that you'll pull on.

And then finally, here's the last thing I wanna hit. I wanna talk more about this thing where Jesus says there's two kinds of people in the world except there's a third. There's the religious and there's the irreligious. Watch what Paul does with this. Okay? This is so interesting. Go to the very bottom of back page. Paul's going say, your old irreligion and your new religion are basically the same thing. Okay? It's a very stunning claim. Look at what he says here in chapter 4 verse 8. He says:

Formerly when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. — Galatians 4:8

Okay? You gotta know, his audience here is a bunch of Gentiles that have become Christians. So when they were Gentiles, they were pagans. Right? They were worshiping rocks. They were not Jews. They didn't follow the Ten Commandments. They were just a bunch of idolaters, a bunch of polytheists. They were pagans. Right? Back in those days, when you did not know God, when you were one of them, check it out, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods.

But now—now you're Christians. Right? Now you know God or rather you're known by God.

And as they're becoming—if they come to this community and they're starting to adhere to the law, they're being circumcised, they're believing what they're being told about their need to have external adherence to law—they've gone from irreligion into religion. And look at how Paul characterizes it. He says:

Formally when you didn't know God, you were slaves to those who are not gods. But now that you do know God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again?

He says, you were slaves in irreligion, and now you're becoming slaves to religion. And it's the same thing. Stop it. Don't go back by going what you think you're doing is going forward, but you're really just going back. You've been invited to something altogether different.

This is exactly how Jesus frames things. You think there's two ways to live, and you think that religion is better than irreligion. But self-righteousness is no better than unrighteousness. And what you need is imputed righteousness. Come to Christ. Cling to him for his grace. That's what he's saying.

He says:

You're observing special days, months, seasons, and years. You think you're trying to get points for the things that you're doing, but we left points behind because the great point giver has given us full credit.

That's what's going on in Galatians. We can probably give you guys a minute. Question or comment or anything else you want to remark on before we head in?

[Harrison asks about whether Paul is writing to Gentiles or Jews or a mix]

It's mixed, right? So that comment right there is clearly to the Gentiles in the party that's coming along and being Judaized. And so I would say he's probably chiefly writing to the Gentiles that are being Judaized. But certainly in that community there's going to be a mix of people. His distress is not that Jewish Christians are continuing to live Jewishly. They're welcome to do that. His distress is that the Gentiles are jumping into this and thinking they need to do it. And that's what he's super angry about.

So it's a mixed community, but he's distressed that the Jews are deceiving the Gentiles, and he's distressed that the Gentiles are believing the deception.

Alright. So this week, if you like, go read Galatians. This might give you some things to notice. And I would love to hear, as you go and read these on your own, what discoveries you're making. We'll do it again next week.