The Epistle to the Galatians

The Epistle to the Galatians is a letter Paul addresses to the Churches of Galatia, in Asia Minor, which he himself had founded. Scarcely had he left when other preachers came there to teach that faith in Christ was not enough: to be saved, the converted Gentiles would still have to be circumcised and to keep the Law of Moses. Circumcision was the sign of God’s covenant with Abraham, the mark of belonging to the chosen people; to require it of the Gentiles was to place them under the whole Law and to hold faith in Christ insufficient. The stake therefore touched the heart of the Gospel, and Paul writes to defend the one thing that saves, the grace of Christ received by faith.

One Gospel

Against those who add to the Gospel, Paul lays down a rule without appeal: there are not two good tidings. “Even if we ourselves, or an angel from heaven, should proclaim to you a good news other than the one we proclaimed to you, let him be cursed!” Galatians 1:8 His authority does not come from men: the Gospel he preaches he received from Christ himself on the road to Damascus. “The Good News I proclaimed is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any human being, nor was I taught it; it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” Galatians 1:11-12 To add to this Gospel circumcision as necessary for salvation is in truth to empty the Cross: “if you get yourselves circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you.” Galatians 5:2

Justified by faith

The heart of the letter holds in a single phrase: man is not made righteous before God by the observance of the Law, but by faith in Christ. “A person is not justified by the works of the Law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.” Galatians 2:16 Paul recalls that he held firm on this point even to withstanding the apostle Peter to his face: come to Antioch, Peter shared the table of the converted Gentiles, then withdrew from it for fear of the party of the Law, and Paul resisted him openly: by ceasing to eat with them, Peter implied that these believers were not full brothers as long as they did not keep the Law, which denied the Gospel. What faith works is a new life in which the believer no longer belongs to himself: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” Galatians 2:20

The Law and the promise

Paul does not reject the Law: he puts it back in its place. The promise made to Abraham, received by faith, precedes the Law by several centuries, and the Law that came after does not annul it. The Law had a function, provisional and good, to guard and lead the people to Christ, like the pedagogue who brings the child to school. But the Law one does not keep in full turns its curse back upon the transgressor, and from that curse Christ redeems us by taking it upon himself: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law by becoming a curse for us.” Galatians 3:13 Paul reads here a word of the Law itself, “one who is hanged is a curse of God” Deuteronomy 21:23: hung on the gibbet of the Cross, Christ takes on the condition of the accursed to deliver those the Law condemned. “The Law was our guardian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith.” Galatians 3:24 Christ having come, the barriers the Law raised fall, and all the baptized are equal in him: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:28

Sons, and not slaves

The ground of Christian freedom is an adoption. This adoption has a precise source, which Paul states first: “But when the fullness of time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, to redeem those who were under the Law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” Galatians 4:4-5 The Son himself enters under the Law and into our flesh, born of a woman, to make us by grace what he is by nature. By baptism, the believer becomes a son of God by being united to Christ, the Son: what Jesus is by nature, the baptized becomes by grace. He receives the Spirit who makes him say to God the very name Jesus gave him, Abba, the tender Aramaic word of the child to his father. “Because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying out, ‘Abba! Father!’” Galatians 4:6 To return under the Law as under a yoke would be to go back down from the condition of son to that of slave.

The two women, the two covenants

To ground all this in Scripture, Paul rereads the story of Abraham, who had two sons by two women: “Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman.” Galatians 4:22 Ishmael was born of the slave Agar, according to the flesh; Isaac, of the free woman Sara, according to the promise. Paul reads in them a figure of the two covenants: “these women are two covenants. One, from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery, is Hagar.” Galatians 4:24 Agar, the slave, stands for Sinai and the Jerusalem here below, held in the bondage of the Law; Sara, the free woman, stands for the Jerusalem above: “the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.” Galatians 4:26 Like Isaac, born because God had promised it and not by human strength alone, the believer is made a child of God by the grace received in faith, and not because he keeps the Law. And so Paul applies to him the word spoken to Abraham: “Drive out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman will not share the inheritance with the son of the free woman.” Galatians 4:30 We are not children of the slave, but of the free woman. This is why Paul presses the Galatians to stand firm: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” Galatians 5:1

Freedom according to the Spirit

This freedom is not the right to do anything. Freed from the Law, the believer is led by the Spirit, and the Spirit bears in him a fruit that no law needs to command: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” Galatians 5:22-23 The faith that saves is therefore not a dead assent: it works through charity, and this charity fulfils the whole Law. The Church has always read Paul so: man is justified by grace, in a living faith that works through love, and not by the mere strength of an outward observance. The freedom of the Gospel does not abolish the moral life; it fulfils it from within, by the Spirit of the Son. Paul closes the letter by bringing everything back to the Cross, far from any pride in circumcision: “May I never boast in anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Galatians 6:14 For what counts is neither to be circumcised nor uncircumcised, but to be a new creation.