St. Paul wrote this epistle because, after his departure from the Galatian churches, Jewish-Christian fanatics moved in, who perverted Paul’s Gospel of man’s free justification by faith in Christ Jesus.
The world bears the Gospel a grudge because the Gospel condemns the religious wisdom of the world. Jealous for its own religious views, the world in turn charges the Gospel with being a subversive and licentious doctrine, offensive to God and man, a doctrine to be persecuted as the worst plague on earth. As a result we have this paradoxical situation: The Gospel supplies the world with the salvation of Jesus Christ, peace of conscience, and every blessing. Just for that the world abhors the Gospel.
These Jewish-Christian fanatics who pushed themselves into the Galatian churches after Paul’s departure, boasted that they were the descendants of Abraham, true ministers of Christ, having been trained by the apostles themselves, that they were able to perform miracles.
In every way they sought to undermine the authority of St. Paul. They said to the Galatians: “You have no right to think highly of Paul. He was the last to turn to Christ. But we have seen Christ. We heard Him preach. Paul came later and is beneath us. It is possible for us to be in error–we who have received the Holy Ghost? Paul stands alone. He has not seen Christ, nor has he had much contact with the other apostles. Indeed, he persecuted the Church of Christ for a long time.”
When men claiming such credentials come along, they deceive not only the naive, but also those who seemingly are well-established in the faith.
–Martin Luther, in his commentary on Galatians of 1535
Read by yours truly to begin a series of sermons on the Book of Galatians at Christ/Saint Paul’s Yonges Island, S.C. this fall.
The words just leap off the page all these many years later.
Allowing that some of the credit is to the translator, I am nonetheless impressed with the clarity and directness of the passage, and how utterly clear and modern it seems. As a pedagogical exercise, I have read some of Luther in German. I must go back and read more.