This is a letter the Apostle Paul wrote to the churches he had helped to start in the region of Galatia (which is today located in central Turkey). In this letter, Paul vehemently opposes the false teachers that were leading the Christian Galatians astray and undermining their faith and the blessings that should have been theirs in the Gospel. The particular false teaching Paul was addressing was the belief that in order to be a good Christian and progress in one’s good standing before God, a Christian needed to adhere to the practices of the Mosaic covenant, beginning with circumcision.

The argument from these false teachers was essentially this:

(1) The Ten Commandments and the rest of the Mosaic Law was given by God (through Moses) so it is obviously good (a position Paul would agree with and advocate in his Romans Epistle),

(2) The Laws of Moses have stood the test of time over the previous 1400 years, and God does not change (but Paul argues in this letter that the covenant from God for us has changed),

(3) the Mosaic covenant is therefore God’s sanctification roadmap for a Christian who wants to progress in their faith (which Paul fiercely disagrees with), and

(4) God will like us better if we do good things (a proposition Paul argues is diametrically opposed to the real Gospel of Jesus Christ).

Paul was adamant that this false teaching be exposed as unacceptable for several reasons:

1. It resulted in plunging believers into the bondage of spiraling guilt that comes from not being able to keep all the rules,

2. It stole their joy and peace,

3. It misdirected their affection away from Christ and the tremendous blessings He had won for them on the cross, and placed their focus and loyalty on the false teachers,

4. It robbed them of the freedom God wants them to have. This is the freedom  of focusing on following the leading of the Holy Spirit in their daily lives (not some set of rules, no matter how good that set of rules was, or where it came from, even if it came from God which was the case of the Laws of Moses).

In this letter, Paul condemns those who teach that our approval before God is based on the good things we do. Not to misunderstand: Paul is a great advocate of Christians walking in the good works God has prepared for them to walk in (Eph 2:10), but NOT if we think those good works improve our right standing before God. (Paul teaches that our right standing before God is dependent ONLY on what Christ has done—not what we have done.) In short, Paul denounces the idea that our right standing before God is based on the good things we do, but instead our righteousness is based only on the work that Christ did on the cross for us, and we cannot add to that by doing good things (Gal 2:21).

Paul emphasizes that this freedom we have from the condemnations from the Laws of Moses frees us to live a life of following the leading of the Holy Spirit. In this letter, he teaches at some length what the effects of following the leading of the Holy Spirit will and will not look like.

This is an important letter for the modern Church because so many church leaders are enticed to take advantage of our natural human (fallen nature) tendency to think we should be rewarded by God for the good things we do, and from that, imposing lists of do’s and don’ts on their congregations, ending up guilting them into behaviors that are advantageous to the worldly operation of the institutional church—and thereby destroying the power and blessings of the

Gospel and obfuscating a healthy vibrant relationship with Jesus Christ for all involved. Galatians is God’s antidote to that malady.