What is Galatians All About? — Paul Lamicela — Ep. 171

Jesus gave Himself to redeem us from the present evil age. That's a short sentence that gives us a lot of insight into that short, fiery letter that we know as Galatians in the New Testament. So how does Jesus bring us to a new age?

I'm here today with Paul Lamasella. Paul has taught the book of Galatians at Sattler College. He's also preparing for a one-week intensive course he's going to offer. On that letter, I will mention a little bit about that at the end, or you can find that in the show notes.

But mostly, we're going to jump right into the text of Galatians here. So Paul, you've said that when you sum up this letter to Galatians, Galatians 1:4, "Jesus gave Himself to redeem us from the present evil age," is kind of your summary. Could you unpack that for us a bit? First of all, thank you so much for having the opportunity to chat with you and, sort of by implication, your listeners. It's great.

Yeah, Galatians 1:4, "Jesus gave Himself for our sins," I think that being a crucial part, "in order to deliver us from the present evil age." So I think what we have in this short statement is a summary both of Galatians and of large portions of Paul's theology as a whole, which is encapsulated in a story.

So in Galatians, you have so much about these two contrasts. It's a very dichotomistic letter: the flesh and the spirit, the present evil age, the age to come, this euchia to cosmo, the elements of the world versus the new life, the Hagar and Sarah, and then old creation and new creation.

You also have so much about Jesus atoning death, His taking upon Himself the sins of Israel, the sins of Gentiles, facing the curse of Torah, and so that the blessing of Abraham could come, both to Jews and to Gentiles alike.

And what happens, I think, in this verse is that all of that, sort of all of those themes are being put into summary form.

So in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says that what he kind of gives a little encapsulation of his gospel message, things that are of first importance: Messiah died for our sins according to the Scriptures. In this verse, he doesn't specifically say the "for the Scriptures," "according to the Scriptures," bit, but his language alludes to Isaiah, the giving Himself for our sins. It's understood by scholars to be a reference to Isaiah 53 and other passages. So we have the same idea that for Paul in this verse, Jesus is giving Himself not in a surprising way, yes, but in a way that the prophets have foretold, as he said in other places. He's giving Himself for our sins, and that plural is important.

He's thinking here primarily that the human problem is not the devil, it's not the powers, but it's our rebellion against God and our sins that Jesus took upon Himself and atoned for. But all of that leads to, as he says in chapter 3, that cursed Jesus became a curse for us by taking upon Himself the curse, the ultimate exile, the ultimate curse of Torah, so that the blessing of Abraham, the inheritance, what is that? Well, for Paul, the inheritance ultimately, if you read in Romans 4, is the inheritance of the world. It's the new creation.

It's being adopted as God's sons and daughters, which can be said in another way as being transferred from the present evil age into the new creation, as he says at the end of Galatians, and actually a couple of places in Galatians 5 and 6 about being brought into new creation. Yeah, so maybe just a clarification there. So you're saying this contrast, the present evil age, which we get right up front in the letter, and new creation.

But for a lot of us, that term new creation is not one we're used to using as much. I know there's biblical scholars starting to talk about it a lot more. And you started to mention some of these terms, but what are the key maybe Bible words or familiar phrases to us that you have in mind when you use that term new creation? It's pretty comprehensive. And so I think the term is very important because it can't be collapsed into it includes almost everything you can think of, and yet it can't be reduced to just one of them.

So it is cosmic. When I say new creation, I do mean a restored heavens and earth eschatologically, that when Messiah returns and renews all things. But for Paul, and for the New Testament as a whole, that that very eschatological cosmic transformation has begun in Jesus' resurrection and the giving of the Spirit, just like in Genesis 1 where the Spirit hovers over the breath of Yahweh, hovers over the waters as God creates the world. So the Spirit being poured out on those who trust in Jesus is the sign that that new creation is dawning, that inwardly we're being freed from sin, we're being freed from the dominion of the devil, we're being freed from all the things that we were bound to in the old age, in the age of waiting for the coming of the Messiah.

And that, for Paul, is not separate from the cosmic transformation that's going to happen. I think for Paul, he would say, "No, the logical, if you would take the transformation of your heart that began when you trusted in Jesus and just kind of clicked and dragged it all the way to its end point, you would see your bodily resurrection and the whole world's transformation." It's one holistic thing. Maybe organic development, development of the same thing. I mean, to use another biblical scholar term, it's inaugurated eschatology, that the age to come has broken into the present world and we're experiencing in very small ways what will someday take over everything. As we're talking about Galatians, biblical scholars often like to dive into reconstructing the history of a church where a letter was sent to or whatever, and that can become a huge subject.

But are there any particular background things, maybe the church at Galatia or the situation there that we really should keep in mind as an introduction to this letter? Yeah, you're totally right that questions like this fascinate some, especially some types of scholars.

I'm one that loves the theology and the ideas more than I do arcane discussions of certain reconstruction. Like that, there's always— So you weren't going to write a whole lot about North Galatian versus South Galatian theory and getting the precise date of the letter and things like that. Some of that's important, and I have my views on it. One of the other important questions is its relationship to the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15.

Yeah, and so I have some views on it. But I think for most listeners, I think the most important things to keep in mind are sort of for Galatians. Now, for some other letters, it may be different. But for Galatians, I think most of the background stuff can be fairly easily deduced from the text, that most of the background stuff that's crucial to understanding the letter.

It is important to recognize that the opponents or these Judeizers, or however you want to call them, are people who are claiming to be part of the Jesus community. That's important. I think it's important to understand that Peter is indeed failed here, but was not fundamentally opposed to what Paul was teaching, that there was good relationship, I think, between them. So when— Yeah.

But I don't think for this particular letter, some of that reconstruction, the basic contours are— If you read Galatians and you read the book of Acts for some of the basic stuff going on in the church and how Peter was relating to Gentiles and so on, you get a lot of it. Yeah, yeah.

So just to get deeper into the text of Galatians, one thing that struck me the last time I was reading through Galatians was these sections where Paul seems to be comparing the Torah, the law given to Moses, almost to pagan religion or pagan religious practices when he talks about them as the elements of the world or however you want to translate that. And then you did a series on Galatians, a much longer series on the Think Truth podcast, and I noticed that you really latched on to that same theme. And maybe you could talk about that a bit here. And yeah, by the way, we'll have that link to that series in the notes for those of you who want to—listens who want to dive deeper into Galatians.

Yeah, that's such a fascinating—such a fascinating question.

I like to compare and contrast the letter to Galatians with some texts and just some general background of the Qumran community.

So I did this when I taught at Sattler, when my opening lecture was actually on Galatians 1:4, but with the background of the Qumran community, which is, for those who may not be familiar, it's a sectarian group of very, very religious and eschatologically minded separatist Jewish people who lived out in the desert and tried very hard to have a pure community. And is that the community, just for reference, that we get the Dead Sea Scrolls from? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, that's right. They and other Jewish people agreed with Paul about the idea of two ages: the present evil age that would be followed by the age to come when God would right Israel's wrongs and restore all things and give people hearts that would follow Him better and stuff like that.

They agreed with Paul on all sorts of things like that. They obviously agreed that eschatology was very important. They agreed that having communities, pure communities, was very important. But where Paul differed—well, one of the things that I think would have been the most shocking to other Jewish people was not the fact that Paul drew a sharp line between sort of these two buckets, the old age and the age to come, but what Paul put in the two buckets. So if we read some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, one of the things that's the expectations for the age to come is that people would follow Torah super, super carefully. Finally, Israel would be faithful to Torah.

Paul, though, says, "Yeah, I agree with that there are these two ages, but I relegate Torah to the old age." That is mind-blowing. That is just so contrary to what these dedicated people of Qumran, but any Jewish observer, at least most, would think.

And it leads Paul to make these strange sort of associations between Sabbaths and what seemed like pagan observances and things like that. And you're like, "Why?" So he does the same thing in Colossians. But I think this is where what we talked about earlier about the framework for Paul of Galatians 1:4, "Jesus died for our sins in order to deliver us from the present evil age." I think this is where we see this again, that for Paul, being part of the old age, there's so many things associated with it, right? If you're a Gentile, it means bondage to idolatry that can express itself in pagan practices and things like that, whatever. If you were Jewish, though, you weren't off the hook.

You were still in bondage. And Paul sees that Torah is, in a sense, it's a good thing in that it keeps Israel distinct and keeps their behavior at bay to some degree as they await their age of maturity. So Paul has these two metaphors for what it's like to be under Torah. One is like you're a minor. The other one is you're a slave, right? So these are these two things, and they're both important. So there's a sense where you're a minor, you're under special rules. In another sense, you're enslaved. But when Messiah comes, all of that, you're now not a minor anymore, and you're not a slave anymore. And so the Torah itself and its observances is all part and parcel of that old age and the old world, the old creation.

And I think using the phrase elements of the world, which is a phrase that has multiple meanings, but most often refers to what we would think of as the building blocks of matter, right? So I mean, we have a much more developed understanding of the particles that make up the material world, but air and fire and water and earth and things like that and other materials. But the basic building blocks of the world. But also, it could be used to refer to beings, spiritual, supernatural beings that were over, thought to be over the cosmos. I think for Paul, catching it in those terms, saying, "Sabbath observance, pagan calendrical observances, those are all part of the basic building blocks of the old creation that Jesus has come to wipe away and usher in, in its place, the new creation."

I think that's kind of what Paul's getting at. Gets us into some of the interesting parts of Galatians with the idea of shifts, the idea of growing up. And of course, one of those key themes in Galatians is the Spirit is now present. It's what makes everything new and so on. So if you could talk about that a bit, the Spirit in general in Galatians. That's one of the most important items in the letter, topics in the letter. So whenever I teach Galatians or talk about Galatians, I always ask students, "So when you go to Galatians 3," and Paul starts out in the chapter saying, "You foolish Galatians," which I'm still daring someone to start a sermon with, "You stupid people in my church."

But at any rate, Paul says, "You foolish Galatians, who's tricked you?" And then he says, "Let me ask you one question." And I think a lot of us would expect the question to be something different from what he asks. We would expect it to be maybe like, "Did you, when you started following Jesus, how did you do it? Did you receive him into your heart? Or did you feel an inner peace? Or did you start having a new power to live victory over sin?" Or something like that.

But why does he choose, "Did you receive the Spirit by works of Torah or by hearing with faith?" Why does he ask the question about the Spirit right here in the context of this controversy over, "Do people who believe in Jesus need to be circumcised and follow Torah?"

So if the question is, "Do I need to be circumcised and follow Torah?" Why bring in this thing of, "How did you receive the Spirit?"

And the reason is that this is not arbitrary or random, but that in the Old Testament and in Jewish expectation, but especially in passages like Joel or Ezekiel, the giving of the Spirit is the sign that the eschatological fulfillment has dawned. It's the sign that new creation has come.

And so if the Spirit, if you've received the Spirit, that is proof positive that the fulfillment of God's promises have dawned and that you've been swept into it. And if it's the case that you've been swept into the fulfillment of all of God's promises through faith, why on earth would you want to step backwards and back into the days of waiting, into the days of bondage, into the days of slavery, into the days of being a minor, but also bound to sin and go back to Torah? It just doesn't make any sense when you know that you've been swept into the new age because you've received the Spirit, and that happened not by Torah, but by faith.

So for Paul, receiving the Spirit is what it means at this stage in history to have been swept into God's new creation.

And so the fact that the Galatians, Gentiles, received the Spirit is one of the arguments that Paul uses to say, along with other scriptural arguments about Abraham's life and such, that the Judaizers are just flat wrong. And just to note one thing that you really stressed in the other podcast I was listening to and is important to keep in mind is that whole thing of the Spirit starts out with freedom, and then you get to the end, and there's also this strong emphasis, "Do not use your freedom for bad things. Through love, serve one another," and leads right into the fruit of the Spirit, which is the character qualities or ethics, if you will. Right.

So of course, this is going to be a big question for, say, if you're one of the Judaizers, you're like, "Okay, so you're bringing these Gentiles who were—okay, so many of them may have been God fearers or something or been familiar with Judaism and attracted to it or whatever. But people from a pagan background who have been into all sorts of debauchery and whatnot, and you're now telling them, 'And you don't have to follow Torah.' How on earth do you expect them to live an upright life? This is bad. This is just really bad news."

And Paul says, "No, they're expected to fulfill Torah because they have the Spirit. The Spirit's presence in their life frees them from sin and frees them from the old age." Part of what it means to be in the old age is to be bound to sin. And so for Paul, if you have the Spirit, you don't need the Torah anymore, but you have to and you will walk in a way of godliness. And this is going to demand instruction. It's not all automatic for Paul. Obviously, he's always giving instruction and fighting with churches about how, "No, no, no, no, you really don't need to stop doing this and keep doing this." It's a journey. It's a path.

You have to sow to the Spirit so that you reap eternal life and such things. But it's a different way of thinking about it, a more internalized way of thinking about ethics. It's a matter of transformation and not adherence to an externalized code. So yeah, for those of you listening and wanting to learn more about Galatians, well, first of all, read it and read it more than one time and think carefully about it.

But a couple of other opportunities to help with study. One is the longer podcast series that Paul did on Think Truth. We'll link that in the notes. But also, I'd like to have Paul tell us just a little bit about the one-week course that you're going to be offering coming up. Yeah. So I've been doing every year a class on how the whole Bible fits together. And I'm planning to do a little new mini one-week intensive course in January, small group. So there's lots of interaction and discussion just going through Galatians.

So I'm excited about that. Good opportunity for anyone who's interested in diving deeper in a group, in a community setting. And you got information on your website for that? Yeah. Biblicalstoryline.org. So yeah, thank you, Paul. This has been a great conversation. Thank you for joining us for this episode. And thanks to our donors and partners for making this possible. For more episodes, please subscribe or visit our website at anabaptistperspectives.org. You can also leave a comment or review to help more people find our content.