Written by Thomas R. Schreiner |
Friday, September 6, 2024
The most important question in life is how we are justified before God. In other words, what does it take for a person to be declared in the right before God at the final judgment? The answer is that righteousness before God doesn’t come by the works of the law. We are not right before God by our works since, as the one who is infinitely holy, God demands perfect obedience. Our works will only lead to judgment since we are all sinners, since we all fall short in many ways.
The Gospel in Galatians
One way to think about Galatians is to sketch it in three movements. These three movements roughly map onto chapters so that chapters 1–2 are the first movement, chapters 3–4 the second, and chapters 5–6 the third. The three movements can be described as the 1) the truth of the gospel (chs. 1–2); 2) the content of the gospel (chs. 3–4); and 3) the result of the gospel (chs. 5–6).
The truth of the gospel takes center stage in chapters 1–2. Jewish teachers accused Paul of proclaiming a false gospel since the latter argued that one didn’t need to keep the law or be circumcised to be saved. Paul strikes back by emphasizing that the gospel of free grace that he preached was revealed to him by Jesus himself on the road to Damascus. Anyone who departs from the good news declared by Paul, whether it was an angel, an apostle, or even Peter himself, would be condemned (Gal. 1:8–9). We learn from this that the gospel found in Galatians is the very truth of God, and we depart from it to our eternal peril. No compromise can be accepted or tolerated when it comes to the gospel, and all teachings and teachers must be evaluated and measured by the gospel revealed to us by Jesus Christ himself.
In the second movement, chapters 3–4 of Galatians, the content of the gospel is unfolded. The most important question in life is how we are justified before God. In other words, what does it take for a person to be declared in the right before God at the final judgment? The answer is that righteousness before God doesn’t come by the works of the law. We are not right before God by our works since, as the one who is infinitely holy, God demands perfect obedience.