Galatians

Paul writes this letter to a group he calls the Galatians. Galatians had both an ethnic and a political meaning. The ethnic Galatians were Celts who migrated from central Europe to Asia Minor in the third century and settled near modern day Turkey. But there was also a Roman province called Galatia. So Paul either wrote this to the people or to the province.

Paul had founded a church among these believers. But a false teacher had come to Galatia and was advocating salvation by "the works of the law" instead of by grace. So the new teaching was in fact a distortion of the gospel of Christ.

This letter speaks about the still simmering controversy regarding circumcision. A similar crisis had erupted at Antioch when believers from Judea, known as Judaizers, taught the believers that unless you were circumscribed according to the custom of Moses you could not be saved. They insisted that a person from a non-Jewish background had to first become a Jew ceremonially by being circumcised before he could be admitted to the Christian faith.

This whole circumcision issue was a matter of pride to the Hebrew people. It became a badge of their spiritual and national superiority and fostered a spirit of exclusivity. They came to regard the Gentiles as the "uncircumcision" a disrespectful term implying non-Jewish people were outside of the circle of God's love. So the issue became charged with emotion and brought a lot of discord and division.