Galatians 1 Study Notes

1:1 Paul referred to himself as an apostle to assert that his authority for speaking to the problems in the Galatian churches came from God, not men.

1:2 Paul referred to all the brothers who are with me to show that he was hardly alone in the views he expressed in this letter. The phrase the churches of Galatia indicates this letter was to be read in multiple congregations, as was Revelation (Rv 1:4,11).

1:3 Grace begins and ends every one of Paul’s NT letters. Peace translates the traditional Hebrew greeting shalom.

1:4 Along with the resurrection, Christ’s redemptive death is the heart of the gospel message (1Co 15:1-4). Paul emphasized both the death and resurrection of Christ at the beginning of Galatians (Gl 1:1) to begin to counteract the message they had recently heard that claimed salvation came through “the works of the law” (2:16). Rescue us from this present evil age looks ahead to being freed from “slavery” to “the elements of the world” through Christ (4:3-4), and previews the “new creation” wording in 6:15.

1:5 A key issue between the competing views of the gospel (salvation by grace vs. salvation by works) has to do with who gets the glory. Works-salvation provides a basis for a person to “boast” (6:13; Eph 2:9), while appreciation for the undeserved grace of God prompts the believer to give God alone the glory forever.

1:6-7 Verse 6 is abrupt. Paul was amazed at the Galatians’ defection from the gospel of grace. To reject the gospel message is the same as rejecting God. After Paul left Galatia, the Galatians heard and responded to a different gospel they thought was better, but it was actually no true gospel.

1:8-9 The purity of the gospel is so important that even the apostles or an angel should be cursed eternally (Gk anathema) if they tampered with it.

1:10 The words please people preview Peter temporarily “deviating from the truth of the gospel” (2:14) to please a delegation from Jerusalem (2:12).

1:11-12 Paul did not say when his direct revelation from Jesus Christ came, but “reveal his Son in me” in v. 16 may imply that it was related to his conversion on the Damascus Road (Ac 9:1-9; 22:6-10; 26:12-18).

1:13-14 Paul communicated three things to his readers: (1) he had advanced much farther in Judaism than those who had distorted the gospel, (2) he was far more zealous for the Jewish traditions than these false teachers, and (3) ironically, Paul’s zeal and advancement in Judaism led him to persecute the church before his conversion.

1:15 The phrase God, who . . . set me apart and called me sounds like Is 49:1, which refers to the messianic servant, and Jr 1:5, which refers to the prophet Jeremiah. Paul knew that his callings to salvation and apostleship were both undeserved (Rm 1:5).

1:16-17 On reveal his Son in me, see note at vv. 11-12. On Paul’s calling to preach Christ among the Gentiles, see Ac 9:15; 26:17-18; Rm 1:5; 16:26. After his conversion (Ac 9:3-9), Paul did not feel any compulsion to travel immediately from Damascus to Jerusalem to consult with the authorities on the gospel. He went to Arabia (see Ac 9:23-25; 2Co 11:32-33), then back to Damascus.

1:18 Because of how time was computed in Paul’s day, it cannot be known whether the three years in this verse speaks of three full calendar years or one full year plus portions of two additional years. It is also not known whether the three years is figured after: (1) Paul’s conversion (vv. 15-16), (2) his departure for Arabia (v. 17), or (3) his return from Arabia to Damascus (v. 17). His trip to Jerusalem was to get to know the apostle Peter (the Greek equivalent of the Aramaic Cephas, meaning “rock”; Mt 16:18). If there were differences between Paul and Peter over the gospel message, they would have come out during this visit.

1:19 James, the brother of Jesus (Mt 13:55; Jms 1:1), is nowhere else listed as one of the twelve apostles (i.e., the Eleven, without Judas Iscariot, who was replaced by Matthias; Ac 1:23-26). But since he was in the upper room before Pentecost (Ac 1:13-14) and was the senior pastoral figure in the church at Jerusalem (see Ac 15:13; 21:18), James was considered to be virtually an “apostle.”

1:20 If anyone in Galatia doubted that Paul had previously had a harmonious discussion about his gospel message with Peter, and possibly with James, he solemnly affirmed in this verse that it was true.

1:21 Paul probably spent most of his time in Antioch and Tarsus.

1:22 That Paul was personally unknown to the Judean churches agrees with the silence about him in Acts from when he went to Tarsus (Ac 9:30) until Barnabas went there to bring him to be involved in the church in Syrian Antioch (Ac 11:25-26).

1:23-24 Since the Judean churches glorified God because Paul was preaching the faith he once tried to destroy, it is clear that they did not disagree with the gospel as he preached it.