Proclaimer Blog
The purpose of Galatians
I’m doing some work in Galatians at the moment. It’s a tough letter, as you know, over which several big debates rage. And the preacher can’t avoid taking a view on some of these fundamental questions, if he’s going to have deliberately sharp and text-driven applications, as he should.
The big one is the question of the letter’s overall purpose. Which of these questions is Paul primarily answering in Galatians:
1) how does someone join the people of God?
2) how does a believer go on securely as a member of God’s people?
As I read two of the best recent big commentaries, Tom Schreiner goes mainly with #1 and Doug Moo with #2 (I simplify, of course). Now, which of these the preacher of a Galatians series plumps for, or which of them he unthinkingly assumes, will determine the direction of a great deal of his sermon applications.
For what it’s worth, I’m persuaded of #2. Three key bits of evidence from the letter that persuade me in this direction are:
i) The beginning and end. 1.4 and 6.15 speak explicitly not of forgiveness or rescue from divine wrath but of delivery from this present evil age and of being part of the new creation.
ii) The explicit purpose of 3.1-6. The issue at stake seems not to be whether or not Christ is an effective entry-point for Gentiles into God’s people, but about whether they need to add law-observance to that faith in order to be completely/securely delivered on the last day.
iii) Chs.5 & 6 are the climax of the whole argument: righteous living, which is necessary for security/confidence as a believer, is produced by the Spirit who comes to those who have faith in Christ, and not any more by law-observance itself (I phrase this carefully, lest I accidentally become antinomian). If you go with option #1, chs.5 & 6 seem instead to be a less satisfactory add-on: don’t abuse the truth of justification by faith; let the Spirit produce his fruit in you.
Whatever you think of this detail, my preacher’s-lesson is simply: the less well thought through a preacher is on the letter’s basic aim, as he dives into a series on some/all of Galatians, the more his applications along the way are likely to be blunt, repetitive and predictable.