The book of Galatians has been conferred with such titles as the Magna Carta of spiritual liberty, the battle cry of the Reformation, and the Christian’s declaration of independence.
It is clearly the Holy Spirit’s charter of spiritual freedom for those who have received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Many church historians maintain that the foundation of the Reformation was laid with the writing of Martin Luther’s commentary on Galatians.
The great German Reformer said, “The epistle to the Galatians is my epistle. To it I am, as it were, in wedlock.
Galatians is my Katherine [the name of his wife].” It was out of his careful and submissive study of Scripture, especially the book of Galatians, that Luther discovered God’s plan of salvation by grace working through faith, a plan unalterably contrary to the thousand-year-old Roman Catholic teaching of salvation by works. Merrill C. Tenney wrote of Galatians: “Christianity might have been just one more Jewish sect, and the thought of the Western world might have been entirely pagan had it never been written.
Galatians embodies the germinal teaching on Christian freedom which separated Christianity from Judaism, and which launched it upon a career of missionary conquest.
It was the cornerstone of the Protestant Reformation, because its teaching of salvation by grace alone became the dominant theme of the preaching of the Reformers.”
(Galatians [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957], p. 15.) The message of Galatians is the message of the Christian’s spiritual freedom, his deliverance by Christ from the bondage of sin and religious legalism.
Its message is particularly relevant in our own day, as personal freedom has become the dominant emphasis of countless philosophies both within and without Christendom.
Perhaps because Paul was so intensely concerned about the matter of gracious salvation in Christ and about the violent attacks on the gospel being made by the Judaizers, Galatians is the only one of his epistles that gives no word of commendation to its readers.
After a brief salutation, the apostle immediately states the problem that prompted the letter: “I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you, and want to distort the gospel of Christ” (1:6-7).
From that point until the closing benediction (6:18) the letter is a flashing sword wielded by a burning heart. At first thought it seems strange that Paul would have words of commendation for the worldly, divisive, immoral, and immature Corinthian believers and yet have none for the saints of Galatia.
To the Corinthians he wrote, “I thank my God always concerning you, for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, that in everything you were enriched in Him, in all speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you, so that you are not lacking in any gift, awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 1:4-7).
But for the churches of Galatia the apostle had no such praise. The difference was that, as bad as the Corinthian situation was, the major problem there (with the notable exception regarding resurrection; see 1 Cor. 15) did not pertain so much to right doctrine as to right living. In the Galatian churches, on the other hand, the very heart of the gospel was being undermined by false teachers.
The gospel of grace was being trampled, and in its place was being offered the gospel of works, which is no gospel at all but a distortion of God’s truth (Gal. 1:6-7) that leads to damnation rather than salvation (Rom. 3:20).
Galatians is not a detached theological treatise but a deeply personal letter written from the grieving heart of a godly man for his spiritual children, whose faith and living were being undermined by false teachers.
His heart cry to the Galatian believers was, “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal. 5:1).
