Now what has upset Paul so much that he writes like this? He does not write like this anywhere else in the New Testament. The Corinthian letters are filled with passion and emotion, but not like this! Romans has a lot of deep theology, as does Galatians, but not like this! There is thunder here.

Jerome was right. Paul is upset because a major controversy has exploded within the church. This controversy began in Jerusalem. It spread to Antioch, and now it has found its way into the newly-established churches of Asia Minor including those of Galatia, to whom Paul is writing this letter. So, what is this quarrel about? If I were to tell you that it is about the question of the place of the Jewish law in the life of the Christian, then you might just say, “Well, that is not too interesting or relevant to my life.” But, if I say to you that this controversy is really about racial reconciliation within the church; and that it is also about the way you and I must go to heaven (if we get there at all), then it would bring it a little closer to home.

Advertisement

I want us to look at this controversy. It is a controversy about racial reconciliation. This was indeed one of the presenting issues at stake in this dispute. But behind that, there is a deeper foundational cause. We must get to the root of that. A lot of our problem in dealing with racial reconciliation in our country today, and in our churches today, stems from our dealing only with the symptom and not with the cause. Galatians confronts us with the cause.

There are five parts to this story. You can think of this as a drama, if you wish, a play in five separate acts. So follow this drama as it unfolds.

Act I: The Background

The background has to do with the fact that Christianity was cradled within Judaism. Judaism was a religion beset by a double hatred: the world hated the Jews, and the Jews hated the world. If you do not believe that, just read any of the pagan authors that we think about when we think of the intelligentsia of the Roman Empire. Cicero, for example, spoke of Judaism as a barbarous superstition. Or Cassiodorus, the great historian, who said that the Jews are the “vilest of people.” There was anti-Semitism in the ancient world. There was prejudice against the Jews on the part of the Greeks and the Romans. This attitude was deep and it was lasting, and it showed itself in all kinds of ways.

But there was also a prejudice, or at least a simmering hostility, on the part of the Jewish people against the Gentile world. Many of the rabbis interpreted the covenant with Abraham as a social contract according to which any kind of contact with a Gentile was automatically a sin. You could not walk down the road with a Gentile without committing a sin. You certainly could not eat with a Gentile without committing a sin. If you were an observant Jew of the strictest kind, you were even forbidden to help a Gentile mother in childbirth for, said these rabbis, “You are only bringing another Gentile into the world.” The Gentiles, they said, had been created by God for only one purpose, and that was to be fuel for the flames of hell.