Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Galatians 1

By adding the word “apostle” (GK 693) Paul at once highlights his claim to be commissioned by Jesus to preach the Gospel with authority and to plant Christianity. It was this commission that was being challenged by the Galatian legalizers. Greek-speaking Jews had used the word “apostle” for authorized representatives. With the coming of Christ, Christians applied it to those commissioned by Christ as authoritative bearers of the Gospel.

It would seem from Ac 1:21–26 that two major prerequisites for being an apostle were: (1) to have been an eyewitness of Christ’s ministry from the time of the baptism by John up to and including the resurrection, and (2) to have been chosen for the office by the risen Lord. At first the number of those so commissioned was twelve (Matthias was chosen to replace Judas), but there is no indication either in Acts or elsewhere that the number was always so limited.

Paul obviously claimed to have fulfilled the conditions as the result of his Damascus experience; and Luke, who clearly endorses Paul’s claim, also speaks of Barnabas as having this office (cf. also James, the Lord’s brother, implied in 1 Corinthians 15:7; Silas and Timothy in 1 Thessalonians 2:7, cf. 1:1).

The difficulty that Paul’s enemies saw was not in the number twelve, but rather that Paul did not meet the proper conditions. They could claim that he had never met Jesus, and he had certainly had not been an eyewitness of Christ’s ministry. They could claim too that he had never received a commission, at least not like the formal and official action when Matthias was chosen. Paul answered by entirely overlooking the matter of his not being an eyewitness of Christ’s earthly ministry, though undoubtedly he considered his Damascus experience to be the equivalent of this, and by denying that his status required a human decision. Instead, Paul claimed that his apostleship came to him directly from and through God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ in his experience on the Damascus road. His reference to the resurrection stresses the important point that it was the risen and glorified Lord of the church who commissioned him.

From Paul’s normal habit of including the names of his fellow missionaries at the beginning of his letters, it would appear that “the brothers” mentioned here are his fellow missionaries, though their actual identity cannot be known for sure. The interesting point is that Paul does not name these fellow missionaries, as he does elsewhere, not wanting to give the impression that his Gospel requires additional support. It was, after all, received directly from God. At the same time, he wishes to remind the Galatians that the Gospel that had been preached to them, far from being a Pauline oddity, is actually the received doctrine of all the Christian church and its missionaries.

Paul’s nearly standard formula of Christian blessing and greeting seems particularly appropriate at the start of this letter. Normally, Paul alters the traditional Greek greeting (chairein) to the important Christian word “grace” (charis; GK 5921). This is always striking, but it is doubly striking here, inasmuch as it occurs in a letter to churches where the sufficiency of salvation by grace was being questioned and perhaps even denied. In the same way, “peace” (eirene; GK 1645), the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew greeting shalom (GK 8934), is appropriate, for it denotes that state of favor and well-being into which people are brought by Christ’s death on the cross and in which they are kept by God’s persevering grace. To choose law, as the Galatians were doing, is to fall from grace. To live by works is to lose the peace with God that was purchased for believers by Christ’s atonement (cf. Romans 5:1).

Paul characteristically joins the names of the Father and Son together in the statement that they are the source of grace and peace (cf. Jn 17:21). But inverting the order, as he does here (from v.1 to v.3), heightens the effect.

To the doctrines of the Christian faith already stated in germinal form—the source of authority in religion, the person and character of God, the divinity of Christ, the resurrection, grace, and peace—Paul now adds a statement affirming the substitutionary death of the Lord Jesus Christ and its outcome in delivering humankind from sin. All this, he asserts, is according to the “will” (GK 2525) of the Father. It is hard to imagine a statement better calculated to oppose any intrusion of human will or merits in the matter of attaining salvation. This phrase, unique here in Paul’s greetings, is undoubtedly added for the sake of the erring Christians in Galatia.

Salvation that began in the eternal will of God (cf. Romans 9:16) led to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, who died as a substitute for sinners. Paul then articulates the goal of his death: to “rescue us from the present evil age.” The word “rescue” (GK 1975) implies a “rescue from the power of.” Thus, it strikes the keynote of the latter, ethical section of the letter, beginning in ch. 5. Believers are not rescued out of the present evil world (though that will also be true eventually), but from the power of evil and the values of the present worldsystem through the power of the risen Christ within the Christian.

Paul does not usually include a doxology at the beginning of a letter, but the doxology here serves an important purpose. It sets the Gospel, centering in the preeminence of the Lord Jesus Christ and his work, above any human criticism or praise. The fact that the glory of God and the giving of glory to God will last forever contrasts markedly with “the present evil age,” which is passing away (cf. 1 Corinthians 7:31; Ephesians 2:2–7).