Galatians 1:1-5
Grace and peace to you, despite your stumbling that might deserve something else.
The opening verses of Paul’s letters are easy to fly past to get to the meat of the letter. They often sound similar, for one thing, and it sometimes seems like the skip-over yada yada yada parts that we tend to skim to get to the greatest hits.
I’m guilty of doing that, but let’s not do that this time.
Paul starts his letter to the Galatians, making it pretty clear that he has serious authority. It seems a strange thing to do, especially since he had been to Galatia and had taught the Gospel to the people there. Surely they already knew who he was, didn’t they?
People haven’t changed. I’ve been foolishly involved in plenty of arguments in which the foundation of using the Bible as a source is stripped away by the “red letter” only people, or those who think that if Jesus didn’t say it, we can ignore it.
How do you pull the rug out from under someone in a debate?
You suggest they don’t have the right or authority to be debating at all.
Maybe they are from the wrong denomination, they’ve associated with people or teachers you don’t approve of, they are a woman or lack a theological degree—it’s a long list, these strawman attacks in which we go after the person instead of the words. Maybe that’s why God uses unlikely sources to speak, like donkeys.
Anyway, once the person has been shown to be unlikely to have valid ideas or the right to say them, no point they make after that lands.
So why was this an issue for Paul? Remember, false teachers had gotten to the Galatians and told them Paul was not legit. This made them question everything he said by questioning his right to say them.
This is a common experience for us: how do we trust people we don’t know personally, and what kind of expertise or vouching will allow us to trust them and what they say? What we think about the messenger necessarily colors our view of the message.
Paul rightly knew that he had to establish his bona fides (once again) to address the doubt that had crept in to give his words weight. So he makes it clear that he is an apostle, one sent by Jesus Christ and God the Father, not by people who were propping up their favorite teacher. He also points out (verse 2) that fellow believers agreed with him on what he was about to write.1
The very next thing he does is extend grace and peace from God the Father and Jesus Christ, which is good because he’s going to drop the hammer in a bit.
A couple of things we note from this passage:
God the Father and Jesus Christ are two unique persons of the Trinity, not the same. They are both on the same divine level, and Paul is making it clear that Jesus is God.
God the Father and Jesus Christ directed Paul to extend grace and peace to the Galatians. That is, it wasn’t judgment and condemnation that was to be extended, which any fellow doubters out there will be relieved to hear once Paul really gets going and his words land. However convicting, it was grace and peace that were being extended, even if it didn’t feel like that.
Verse 4 is an incredible summary of the Gospel: Jesus died for our sins to rescue us from the evil in this world we live in, all done according to the will of God the Father, who is eternal, and to whom all glory will go forever.
We have a statement on who God is, a statement on how God works towards his wayward people, and a reminder of what Jesus did, all in the opening greeting.
Back to the grace and peace thing, though.
Grace is the central theme of this book. As we’ll find out, Paul will use the concept of grace as the balancing point of the entire argument he makes. And peace, extended to a group of churches that were now confused and likely fighting amongst themselves thanks to false teachers, definitely needed to be extended as well.
Grace is the heart of the Gospel. It’s a bunch of sinners who didn’t deserve God’s favor who got it anyway. You’ve probably heard the quote that mercy is not getting what you deserve (punishment), while grace is getting what you don’t deserve (salvation from evil).
In the verses we’ll cover next time, you’re going to see many of these same themes pop up again, as Paul defends himself and the Gospel he preached, along with reiterating what that Gospel is.
But just remember that Paul is writing this letter because the Galatians stumbled, and still God extends grace and peace to them. He is a gracious God, indeed.
If you’d like a worksheet for this lesson, you can get a copy here.
I will not lie: determining who to trust is very difficult today. A leader or teacher who says that X number of people and followers can’t be wrong is not a valid argument today. That is not the application to take from this passage. Please read more here.