Paul’s Letter to the Galatians
By: Terry Scott
Paul was a slave of the Messiah just as Jew and Gentile should be to Jesus (Yeshua). Paul was preaching the gospel of Jesus to bring the different cultures together (Jew and Gentile). Many people look only at the spiritual applications of Galatians. This study will also look at the natural applications.
There were 4 ways mentioned to approach how we read the book of Galatians:
1. Traditional approach in which Paul is against the Torah (Law vs Gospel). Doing vs Faith
(Galatians 5:15). Faith vs Works.
2. New Prospective approach describing how Paul was against boundaries that divided the Jew and Gentile. These boundaries were the cause of the division between the two. The Gentile church had tried to remove the Jewish boundaries by erasing the Jewish identity. You do not need to remove boundaries. Both the Jew and Gentile need to be who God has made them to be.
3. Apoltidie Approach: Paul was not against Judaism but was against the Laws causing the
division between the Jew and Gentile. He was against the way the Jews were making the
Gentiles to live like Jews. In Galatians 3 Paul strongly rebukes the Galatians and tells them who should they believe the Laws of the Jews or by trusting in what they heard and being faithful to the Messiah. Ethnic Identity is something we should not fight over both to the (Jew) circumcised and (Gentile) uncircumcised.
We are all under the Messiah who have chosen to follow him.
Bilateral Ekklesia following Jesus as a Jew looks different than a non-Jew (Gal 3:28). Gender
and Ethnicity are put together they are linked together. You cannot separate them.
4. Replacement Theology: This is anti-Jewish (Raciest). Any interpretation that removes the
Jewish people from the new testament, and who they are. This comes out by the way they read their text. If you do not cultivate both Jew and Gentile it will be divided. Reality without the Jewish Ethnic identity is anti-bible. The motives of Jews were to ask the Gentiles to be circumcised and follow the Torah. The Jewish authorities maintained the status quo at the synagogues. Paul was upset because the Gentiles were being forced to be Jew and put aside their lives, when in fact the Gentiles were not required to follow the Jewish customs. In this case, It was dealing with circumcision and association between the Jewish people and the gentiles.
Galatians shows the difference in the ethnicity between two different cultures and how even
though they are different they can maintain a relationship with each other if they are
both established in Yeshua the messiah. Paul was against boundaries that divided the two
groups (Jew and Gentile). Galatians was talking to a mixture of Jew and Gentile. Bible translators talk of a changing church to synagogue because they discovered that the Galatians met in Jewish social spaces. Paul strongly rebuked Peter when he saw how Peter moved away from the Gentiles when the Jews came into the room at the Antioch Incident.
Peter felt a personal loss because he saw how the Galatians were being treated and how they had followed traditional Judaism instead of following what Paul had taught them to follow the Messiah and not men. Paul was very upset and called Peter out because of his hypocrisy asking him why he did remove himself from the Gentiles table and went to sit with the Jews. He then called out the Galatians asking them why they were allowed to follow another. The division remains between the Jew and Gentile today. I believe God is raising the Messianic Body of believers as one new man in Messiah. The Messianic church will bridge the gap between the Jew and the Gentile church as well as bring in the lost by following the words of Yeshua to “love your neighbor as yourself. Through love, you have fulfilled the law.
Finally, Judaism is a culture, pattern of life.