Tom Schreiner: Communicating the role that the law played in God’s overall plan of salvation was one of the New Testament church’s biggest challenges. As Jews accepted that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah, they struggled to understand how to bring their Jewish roots into this new reality. The Christian who had come out of Judaism had to reconcile their understanding of what the law actually accomplished and how it worked. In their understanding, the law purified them and made them righteous. Was that true? If not, why were they given the law? In his online course on Galatians, Thomas R. Schreiner explains Paul’s take on the law from Galatians 3:19–20. The following post is taken from Schreiner’s course. Why was the law given? “Then why was the law given? It was added on account of transgressions”—Galatians 3:19a–b If the law is not the primary covenant but is subordinate to the Abrahamic covenant, and if eschatological salvation is obtained through the
Galatians
The greatest of enemies
But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now. Galatians 4:29 “The persecution of the true church, of Christian believers who trace their spiritual descent from Abraham, is not always by the world, who are strangers unrelated to us, but by our half-brothers, religious people, the nominal church. It has always been so. The Lord Jesus was bitterly opposed, rejected, mocked and condemned by his own nation. The fiercest opponents of the apostle Paul, who dogged his footsteps and stirred up strife against him, were the official church, the Jews. The monolithic structure of the medieval papacy persecuted all Protestant minorities with ruthless, unremitting ferocity. And the greatest enemies of the evangelical faith today are not unbelievers, who when they hear the gospel often embrace it, but the church, the establishment, the hierarchy. Isaac is always mocked and persecuted by Ishmael.”
Nullifying the grace of God
Ray Ortlund: I do not nullify the grace of God. Galatians 2:21 “What eloquence is able sufficiently to set forth these words: ‘to nullify grace,’ ‘the grace of God,’ also that ‘Christ died for no purpose’? The horribleness of it is such that all the eloquence in the world is not able to express it. It is a small matter to say that any man died for no purpose. But to say that Christ died for no purpose is to take him quite away.” Martin Luther, Commentary on Galatians, on Galatians 2:21. Paul asserted that he did not nullify the grace of God. By implication, Peter was nullifying the grace of God when his conduct was “not in step with the truth of the gospel” (Galatians 2:14). How on earth did Peter do that, and is there any chance we could do that again today? With Paul, Peter believed the gospel at the level of doctrine. Speaking for Peter and
The Necessity and Danger of Polemical Theology
Justin Taylor: D. A. Carson argues that polemical theology is biblical but can also be dangerous: . . . any robust theology that wounds and heals, that bites and edifies and clarifies, is implicitly or explicitly engaging with alternative stances. In a world of finite human beings who are absorbed in themselves and characterized by rebellion against God, polemical theology is an unavoidable component of any serious theological stance, as the Bible itself makes clear. But then he points to the dangers: Nevertheless there is something wrong-headed about making polemical theology the focus of one’s theological identity. This can be done in many ways. There are well-known scholars whose every publication has an undertone of “everyone-has-got-this-wrong-before-me-but-here-is-the-true-synthesis.” Some become far better known for what they are against than for the overflow of their worship or for their generosity to the needy or even for their affirmation of historically confessed truth. Still other Christians develop websites and ministries whose sole aim is to confute
The Great Antithesis of Galatians 3
A helpful summary from Dane Ortlund: Our Natural Intuitions The Gospel of Grace Activity: works (3:2, 5, 10) faith (3:2-9, 22-25) Source: law (3:2, 5, 10-13, 17-24) promise (3:17-19, 22, 29) Power: flesh (3:3) Holy Spirit (3:2, 3, 5, 14) Key OT figure: Moses (3:15-22) Abraham (3:6-9, 14, 16-18) Identity: slaves (3:22-29) sons (3:7, 26-29) Verdict: condemnation justification (3:6, 8, 11, 24) Recipients: insiders only anyone (3:7-9, 14, 26-29) Eternal result: curse (3:10-13) blessing (3:8-9, 14) Social result: disunity (3:28–29) unity (3:28–29)
The greatest enemies
But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now. Galatians 4:29 “The persecution of the true church, of Christian believers who trace their spiritual descent from Abraham, is not always by the world, who are strangers unrelated to us, but by our half-brothers, religious people, the nominal church. It has always been so. The Lord Jesus was bitterly opposed, rejected, mocked and condemned by his own nation. The fiercest opponents of the apostle Paul, who dogged his footsteps and stirred up strife against him, were the official church, the Jews. The monolithic structure of the medieval papacy persecuted all Protestant minorities with ruthless, unremitting ferocity. And the greatest enemies of the evangelical faith today are not unbelievers, who when they hear the gospel often embrace it, but the church, the establishment, the hierarchy. Isaac is always mocked and persecuted by Ishmael.” John.
How to read the Bible, and how not to
Ray Ortlund: “Against those forms of Judaism that saw the law-covenant not only as lex [law] but as a hermeneutical device for interpreting the Old Testament, Paul insists that the Bible’s story line takes precedence and provides the proper hermeneutical key.” D. A. Carson, “Reflections on Salvation and Justification in the New Testament,” JETS 40 (1997): 585. There are two ways to read the Bible. We can read it as law or as promise. If we read the Bible as law, we will find on every page what God is telling us we should do. Even the promises will be conditioned by law. But if we read the Bible as promise, we will find on every page what God is telling us he will do. Even the law will be conditioned by promise. In Galatians 3 Paul explains which hermeneutic is the correct one. “This
Nothing worse than substituting Jesus with self-righteousness
From a recent FB status update by John Fonville: “As destructive and defiling sexual sin is to the individual and church-and it is!- moralistic idolaters in the church are ultimately far more destructive and Christ-denying because they erect all manner of extra-biblical requirements for holiness that God’s law doesn’t forbid or require! And they substitute Christ and His righteousness for a Christ-denying, self-righteousness. Thus, they shift the ground of justification from Christ to self. Paul begins 1 Corinthians by addressing the Corinthians as “saints” (1:2). But he begins his letter to the Galatians by calling them cosmic traitors and pronouncing a curse of final judgment on any who proclaim or receive a different gospel (Gal. 1:6-9).”
The Book of Galatians in 30 Tweets
By David Mathis: Paul is en fuego in his letter to the Galatians. He’s flaming with a righteous apostolic anger. Best advice perhaps is don’t try this at home. But do read it at home. Hear it preached. Study it. Write about it. Even tweet it. Whatever it takes to have Paul’s blazing fire warm the coals of your love for Jesus and for his gospel of grace. Here’s installment number four in tweeting Paul’s epistles. We started with Romans. Then 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians. Now batting: The Book of Galatians. For starters, here’s a one-tweet summary of the letter: Jesus’s astounding grace is to be admired and appreciated, not added to. #Galatians What follows are 29 more designed to walk you through six red-hot, gospel-rich chapters, each with a Galatians hashtag. Grab a Twitter account and help us get #Galatians trending today, if you would. Here’s the full slate of Galatians tweets we’ll be dispensing throughout the morning: Chapter 1 Jesus gave himself
…the enemy of the best!
“That both heathenism and Jewish legalism, very different from one another, are here bundled together in contrast with the liberty of the Gospel is plain from the fact that the observances which are referred to are applied to both. The law observed externally as a superstitious system without faith was doubtless a bondage to elemental spirits of this age, as heathenism was. Not only the bad, but often and much more the good, is the enemy of the best!” William Still – Notes on Galatians (Aberdeen: Didasko Press, reprinted 1972) p. 59. (HT: Nicholas T. Batzig)
The cross severs a love affair with the world
Thomas Schreiner, Galatians (Zondervan, 2010), 392: The cross plays a bookends role in the letter [of Galatians], for just as Paul begins the letter by featuring the freedom won in the cross, so too he closes the letter by underlining the significance of the cross. Paul’s only boast is in Christ’s cross, by which he is crucified to the world and the world is crucified to him (6:14). The cross and eschatology are inseparable. Just as the cross liberated believers from the present evil age (1:4), so too it crucifies attachment to this world (6:14). The opponents boasted in circumcising converts and took pleasure in external accomplishments because they lived to win the applause of others (6:12–13). They lived for comfort in order to avoid persecution. The cross severs a love affair with the world and grants a person (by grace!) a desire to boast only in the cross. A new reality—a new age—has begun through the cross, and Paul summons
Moo on Justification in Galatians
Crossway has made available Doug Moo’s essay, “Justification in Galatians” (PDF) from Understanding the Times: New Testament Studies in the 21st Century: Essays in Honor of D. A. Carson on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, ed. Köstenberger and Yarbrough. An excerpt: Paul’s teaching on justification in Galatians strongly endorses the traditional Reformation emphasis on justification by faith alone. In contrast to some recent reconfigurations of this doctrine, the Reformers did not mean by this teaching that a person gains only initial entrance into the state of salvation by faith alone—the ultimate verdict being based on faith plus works. They intended to assert that the eschatological gift of justification, at whatever “time” or in however many stages it might be manifested, came by faith alone. Paul seems to be saying just this in Galatians. Faith is the means not only of entering into relationship with God but also of maintaining that relationship and of confirming that relationship on the day
Already Not Yet 