Galatians 1: 1-5
This letter to the Galatians is like the Constitution for Christianity. Our Founding Fathers in America gathered to amend the Articles of Confederation, to fix all the issues it had that made it unfit to undergird the new government, and everyone had a different idea, not one agreed with anyone else on anything.
So they decided to pray about it and meet in the morning. They did, and came out with a whole new document.
The only comparison I wish to make here is that God led our American Founding Fathers to draft the Constitution that brought this Nation into the greatest prosperity any Nation of the World had ever enjoyed.
And God is the One who called Paul and taught him and led him to found all these churches.
Some Jews came from Jerusalem and brought in the idea of following the Mosaic Law in order to be a Christian, and Paul wrote this Epistle to set the record straight.
Paul, an Apostle
An Apostle was a "founding father" of the Christian faith, to lay the foundation of Christ for succeeding generations to build on. Now that the foundation is laid, no more "founding fathers" are needed.
(not sent from men nor through the agency of man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead),
Paul was not sent from any human agency, but was called directly by Jesus Himself on the Damascus road, and taught directly by Him when he went to Arabia (see Vs. 11, 16-17).
and all the brethren who are with me,
He is saying that all the believers who are with him, in particular the teachers, agree with his stance on what constitutes true Christianity.
To the churches of Galatia:
There is more than one congregation here, Paul is writing to several churches he founded in this geographical area.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,
Paul is already laying the groundwork for the arguments he will set out. Grace is the opposite of works, and peace comes from God, not what we do.
God had Paul write to these believers so that all of us, all the way down to today, would have the proper foundation to our faith; so as he refutes these Jerusalem legalizers, he is also refuting all the other wrong ideas that have come into the church through the whole time of this church age.
who gave Himself for our sins so that He might rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father,
Jesus gave His own life "for" us, and this word, hyper, denotes "substitution," as our Sacrificial Lamb of God He took our place individually in death, fulfilling the personal sacrifice of Leviticus 1, paying off our sin-debt for us.
This is to "rescue" or "deliver" us, exeletai, which denotes not a "deliverance from" but a "rescue out of" the power of evil and the values of this evil World-system around us through the power of the risen Christ in His Holy Spirit within each Christian. (We will one Day be delivered from the very presence of the evil, when He returns as King.)
This is all according to what God planned before He made anything.
to whom be the glory forevermore. Amen.
Paul usually puts a doxology like this at the end of his letters, but he puts it here at the beginning to set the preeminence of the Lord Jesus Christ and his work above any human criticism or praise.
O my Father, I pray that You would show us what You want us to know, how to lay the basis for our faith in You, and to have Your Truth undergirding everything we think, say, and do.
Help me, Father, as I read Your letter to me, to draw out of Your words the meanings and understanding that I will share with those who come here to read them. I pray for them, as they read, to consent with Your Word; and if I have misconstrued any point, that they would have the boldness to call me on it, so that I will be able to study further to extract the fullness of the extent of Your Truth that we need to apply today to our attitudes and lifestyles, to promote Your Kingdom.
And every eye shall see, every knee will bow, and every tongue will proclaim that Jesus is our Christ, the Lord God Almighty, to the eternal glory of Almighty God the Father, for ever and ever. Amen.
Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus!
