This Sunday we begin a series of six lessons from the Epistle of Paul to the Galatians. The Galatian churches were those to whom Paul had brought the saving gospel of Christ during his second missionary journey. These were the cities like Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe.
Paul had brought them the good news of what Christ had done to save them from the eternal judgment that dooms sinners. He pointed them to Christ atoning life, death and resurrection as the only hope for sinners rather than any obedience or sacrifice that we could offer. Our hope of salvation doesn’t depend upon our having kept the law, but on Christ’s righteous life and his sacrificial death and victorious resurrection.
It all depends on Christ. HE is the one who saved us from this evil; age of the world.
But now come some apparently well-meaning teachers with the message that salvation depended upon a proper obedience to the laws of Moses. Undoubtedly they said many things that were true, but the thrust of their teaching was to make salvation conditional on something we would do. In the final analysis, such faith is not faith in Christ but in self, and a return to the present evil age from which Jesus saved us.
As we go through these lessons we will learn how important it is to cling to the absolute truth of Scripture because even a “little” error can destroy faith and lead to damnation. We will also learn that in every way our hope is in Christ and not in our obedience to the law. In fact our obedience, imperfect though it may be, is a result of our being rescued from this present evil age and is a result of the same saving power that brings us to spiritual life and faith.