Paul commences his epistle to the Galatians by establishing the essence of the gospel in the grace of God manifested in Jesus Christ.

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   Conforming to the customary style of correspondence, Paul utilizes a typical and proper first-century epistolary form of greeting. In only two sentences, which comprise five verses in the popularly accepted versification of the scriptures (not part of the original), Paul identifies himself as the author, the Galatians as the recipients, and extends his greetings.

   Writing, as they did in the first-century, on a papyrus-reed scroll which would be progressively unrolled as it was written or read, there was obvious benefit to naming the author at the beginning (cf. Acts 23:26 for example), rather than at the conclusion as is customary in contemporary letter writing. Otherwise the entire scroll would have to be unrolled to ascertain the identity of the letter-writer. Though Paul is the author of this letter, it is likely that he utilized the services of a scribal amanuensis as he often did in his correspondence (cf. Rom. 16:22). The secretary to whom he dictated remains unnamed in this letter, but it appears that Paul took the pen and signed-off in "large letters" (6:11) at the conclusion to verify his authorship.

   Paul could hardly wait to get to the issues that were unsettling him, but with epistolary propriety he begins the letter with two sentences of greeting. The form is formal and functional. The tone is tense and terse. The mood is muted and matter-of-fact. The statements are succinct and staccato.
One might be tempted to think that these are just gracious words of greeting in customary courtesy, but these are much more than just a formulaic stereotypical prescript of opening words. These two initial sentences are freighted with foundational theological import which give us a foretaste of the themes of the entire epistle as Paul defends his personal apostleship and defends the soteriological significance of the "finished work" of Christ in His crucifixion and resurrection. We do well to give due attention to the words Paul uses in his greeting.

1:1 ­ Paul identifies himself with his Roman name, "Paul". As the "apostle to the Gentiles" he seldom utilized his Hebrew name, "Saul" (cf. Acts 7:58; 9:4; 13:9; 26:14), a probable name-sake of the great Benjaminite king of Israel (cf. Phil. 3:5), perhaps regarding such as his former name.

   When reviewing Paul's Hebrew background, it would appear that if ever there was a least-likely candidate to become the "Christian apostle of grace," it might well have been Paul. All natural phenomena were stacked against him. By race and culture he was a Hebrew, a Jew, taught from birth his inherent superiority as one of "God's people," and driven to excel to prove the propriety of such pride. By religion, which was melded with his culture, he was engaged in the performance righteousness of keeping the Law of old covenant Judaism. By denomination he was identified with the meticulous perfectionism of the traditionalist separatists, the Pharisees. By vocation he was apparently trained as a lawyer-priest under Gamaliel, perhaps being groomed for the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Supreme Court. By stature Paul was likely a little man, for that is the meaning of the name, "Paul." He may have been repulsive in his physical appearance (cf. 4:14,15). Just visualize a little Jewish lawyer of the strictest Jewish sect; physically bald-headed, bug-eyed, hump-backed and bow-legged. His size may have contributed to a "banty-rooster complex" that carried over into his personality as he combatively attempted to prove himself capable, arrogantly striving to prove himself self-sufficient. If God could transform such a man into the "apostle of grace," then God can transform any man by His grace! To think that such a man could have written this epistle of grace-emphasis to the Galatians is "amazing grace" indeed!

   Immediately after his name, Paul identifies himself as "an apostle." In its generic meaning in the Greek language this word referred to someone who was sent or dispatched as an envoy, emissary or messenger to perform a particular task as a delegate or ambassador. The Greek Orthodox churches have traditionally referred to their missionaries as "apostles" throughout the centuries. In Christian terminology the designation of "apostle" also had a more specific or inclusive meaning stemming back to Jesus' selection of twelve disciples, also known as the twelve "apostles" (cf. Lk. 6:13). These men were regarded as having been called to a specific foundational mission-task wherein they carried with them the authoritative empowerment of Christ Himself (cf. Matt. 28:18). When one of the twelve, Judas, committed suicide after his betrayal of Jesus, a replacement was carefully selected in the person of Matthias (Acts 2:21-26), but thereafter additional persons were regarded as having such foundational authority as apostles also (cf. Acts 14:14; Rom. 16:7; Gal. 1:19; Phil. 2:25; I Thess. 2:6). In identifying himself as "an apostle," Paul is apparently including himself among those who were called by Christ Himself for such a foundational mission-task. There were others who were "apostles of the churches" (II Cor. 8:23), being sent out by the commission of local churches, as Paul himself was from Antioch (Acts 13:2-4), but Paul was keen to identify himself as having more than an ecclesiastical commission as a missionary of a local church. He considered himself as being specifically selected by Christ Himself in His risen form, thereby having divine authentication and invested with divine authority as an apostle.

   The necessity of defending his apostleship seems to have been a result of such being questioned and challenged by the trouble-making agitators who had infiltrated the Galatian churches. Their argument might be reconstructed thusly: "What right does Paul have to claim to be an apostle? He is not one of the original twelve appointed by Jesus during His earthly ministry. When they selected a successor for Judas, it was Matthias who was picked, not Paul; Paul was not even in the running. This little pip-squeak was a leader in the Jewish hit-squad of murderous, terrorist persecutors of the church, killing Christians far and wide. How can he be considered an apostle? He is a 'Johnny come lately' with no valid credentials or certification. He has no official appointment of the hierarchy of the church in Jerusalem, complete with proper ordination papers. He is just a self-appointed apostolic impostor!" Religion in general is absorbed in seeking such external credentials. "What seminary did you graduate from? What degrees do you have? Have you been duly appointed, licensed or ordained after having met the scholastic qualifications of an accredited institution and creditable denomination?" It does not matter if what one has to say is true or not; only if one is a qualified speaker, having met the self-determined qualifications of agreement with the belief-system and procedures of those offering the credentials. Such ingrown accreditation was equally prevalent in Jewish religion as it is in Christian religion. What a far-cry from the biblical model of a Christian indwelt by the Spirit of Christ, called to minister by the authority of Christ, accredited by the manifestation of the divine activity of the life of Jesus Christ, and authenticated by the grace-dynamic of the ontological presence and activity of Jesus Christ by His Spirit.

   Countering their religious misrepresentation of his call to be an apostle, Paul defends the authenticity and authority of his apostleship by parenthetically noting that his apostolic sending was "not from men, or through a man." His commissioning as an apostle was not just an ecclesiastical commissioning from a local church, as occurred in Antioch (cf. Acts 13:2-4), nor even from the church in Jerusalem, but was more extensive. Neither was he commissioned with a subordinated-commission from Peter or one of the original twelve apostles. His was not a mediated human commission. He was not a religious representative or agent, sent out by men under denominational directive to build their empire.

Paul maintained that his apostolic commissioning was "through Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead." As "the authority of the person commissioned is that of the person who commissioned him"1 (cf. Jn. 13:16). Paul was asserting that his was a divine authorization, authentication and credential-ization, supernaturally imparted by the risen Lord Jesus Himself. It was not human action or the action of an organizational ...ism that authenticated Paul's apostolic ministry, but the divine action of God, by Whom he was sent, put and empowered. This did not make him an "independent" apostle, but one who was dependent on Jesus Christ alone, as he remained receptive to the direction of the divine Spirit.

   Jesus Himself was sent into the world by the Father (cf. Jn. 17:18), and is thus to be regarded as the prototypical "apostle" (cf. Heb. 3:1), who in turn sends others into the world to minister and proclaim the gospel of grace in Him. By His resurrection from the dead He was authenticated as the Messianic Savior, "declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead" (Rom. 1:4). In identification with the Lord Jesus Christ, having been confronted with the risen and living Lord Jesus on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:4-6; 22:1-9; 26:12-19; I Cor. 15:8-10), and called to be an apostle to the Gentiles (Acts 26:17), Paul believed such to be the divine, supernatural authentication of his apostleship. Knowing that he was who he was by the grace of God (I Cor. 15:10), Paul was confident that he did what he did as an apostle by the spiritual empowering of the ontological dynamic of the resurrected Christ, the very divine power that "raised Jesus from the dead" (Eph. 1:18-21), becoming the "power of His resurrection" (Phil. 3:10), as Jesus who said, "I am the resurrection and the life" (Jn. 11:25) functioned within him. Paul's theology was a resurrection-theology that recognized the dynamic empowering of the risen and living Lord Jesus in himself and all other Christians as God functioned by His grace. Paul's unwavering confidence of such spiritual identity and commission may have sounded arrogant, but when one knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that he has been met by God and sent by God, then he can bank everything on that identification, even to the point of saying that "to reject me is to reject Christ in me." That was Paul's sense of authenticity and authority as an apostle.

   The fact that Paul links "Jesus Christ and God the Father" twice in these first two sentences of the epistle (1:1,3), may serve to indicate that there was a deficiency in the Christological and Trinitarian understanding of the intrusive false-teachers in Galatia. As the Christian gospel is based upon the intrinsic and essential oneness of the mutual deity of God the Father and God the Son, Paul categorically affirms such in these verses. Jewish theology denies such a divine oneness in distinction, and the theology of the Judaizers may have equivocated on this unity as well. Regardless of the reason, Paul affirms the Christological oneness that Jesus Himself explained when He said, "I and the Father are one" (Jn. 10:30).

1:2 ­ Paul does not stand alone in his position concerning the gospel of grace in Jesus Christ alone. He indicates that he "and all the brethren who are with me" are sending this concerned correspondence to the Galatians. Such a generalized and inclusive reference to "all the brethren" would surely include his co-laborers and fellow-workers, perhaps Barnabas, Timothy, Silas and Sosthenese (depending upon where he was when the letter was written) who were his colleagues and associates in the ministry. "All the brethren" could also refer to all of the Christians in the local congregation in the community where he was residing at the time of writing, or even to the entirety of the Christian brethren in the universal household of faith (Eph. 2:19), God's family. Since he indicates that they are "with him," and this probably has reference to physical location rather than to ideological solidarity, Paul is likely referring to those physically surrounding him in the location where he wrote the letter.

   Where was Paul when he wrote this letter? We do not know! If this letter is the earliest of Paul's epistles as we have speculated, then it may well have been written from Antioch of Syria between the first and second missionary journeys.

   The import of Paul's including his co-laborers and/or the local congregation in this greeting was probably to indicate that he was not an independent, "loose cannon," "lone-ranger" apostle, as may have been the charge of the infiltrating teachers in Galatia. Paul had the solid support of many others who endorsed what he taught and lived. Obviously, "all the brethren" did not participate in the writing of this letter, but they stood with him in the advocacy of the gospel of grace.

   As Paul addressed this letter "to the churches of Galatia," we confront once again the question of the identity of the recipients. As noted in the introductory chapter, there have been two primary interpretations of the identity of "the churches of Galatia": (1) the "north Galatia" interpretation which prevailed for eighteen centuries of church history, identifying the Galatians according to their ethnic settlement in the north of Anatolia, in conjunction with the early (pre 25 B.C.) and later (second and third century A.D.) borders of the Roman political province of Galatia, and (2) the "south Galatia" interpretation which has predominated in modern nineteenth and twentieth century biblical interpretation, which takes into consideration the well-documented southern extension of the Galatian political province in 25 B.C. to include the cities of Lystra, Derbe, Iconium and Antioch of Pisidia, making this the proper designation of the territory when Paul wrote this letter in the middle of the first-century A.D. The historical evidence, as well as the biblical evidence of Paul's having visited these southern cities on his first missionary journey (Acts 13,14), with no record of his having established churches in the northern part of the province, combine to present a most reasonable option of identifying the recipients as the Christians of the churches in the aforementioned southern cities.

   Since the problem of the interloping false-teachers appears to have been a regional problem, and not just centered in one particular local church, Paul addresses the letter to all the churches in the region. There was probably only one copy of the letter affixed with Paul's signature of "large letters" (6:11), so the letter became a circular letter carried from city to city by the courier, or (less likely because it might have been intercepted by the infiltrators) passed on from church to church.

   Paul wanted those Christians who had been "called out" in the "churches of Galatia" to recognize that their calling was to live by God's grace in Jesus Christ in order to manifest the life of Jesus (cf. II Cor. 4:10,11) in their Christian lives. They were not "called out" to fall-back into Judaic performance, but to be a radically different community living individually and collectively in the dynamic of God's grace.

1:3 ­ As Paul, the "apostle of grace," begins and ends all of his epistles with some reference to the grace of God, the Galatian epistle is no exception (1:3; 6:18). The first word of the second sentence is "Grace." The standard salutation used in Greek letters of that day was the Greek word charein, meaning "greeting" or "rejoice." Paul does not use the customary formulaic greeting, but chooses a similar Greek word, charis, which expresses the totality of the function of the gospel of Jesus Christ. From Paul's perspective the entirety of Christianity could only be explained by God's grace, the complete and all-sufficient activity of God, deriving out of His Being, and expressed in the living Lord Jesus. Paul had experienced grace in a personal way. Grace had overwhelmed him and transformed him on the road to Damascus, radically changing him from an adamant advocate of the Judaic Law to an available vessel of God's continuing grace. For Paul, grace was not an impersonal force detached from the living Lord Jesus. Grace was not merely a kindly-inclined disposition of God's unmerited favor toward sinners. Nor was grace just an initial threshold endowment sufficient for personal conversion in regenerative grace. Grace is the personal and divine action of God in the Person of Jesus Christ ­ the ontological dynamic of Christological activity as the risen Lord Jesus in the form of the Spirit of Christ functions to be all and do all in the Christian. Christianity is the dynamic grace of God in Jesus Christ!2

   Thus understood, one can understand that grace stands in diametric opposition to any functional performance of the Law ­ from all legalistic performances to please God, appease God, or seize God. The old covenant Law was a document with no dynamic, a proposition with no provision, a regulation with no resource, an explanation with no empowering, an expression with no energizing, letters with no life, a mandate with no Messiah, governance without grace. So when Paul heard that the Galatian Christians were being seduced into defection and desertion from the grace-dynamic of Jesus Christ by reverting back to legalistic performance of the Law, he was appalled that they would go backwards from the greater to the lesser, from the superior to the inferior, from the gospel to religion, from grace to law, from freedom to bondage, from faith to "works," from son to slave, from fulfillment of promise to functional performance. The severity of the situation, which amounted to the abandonment of the gospel, prompted Paul's tirade of rebuke and censure in this epistle.

   How can it be that so many religious commentators down through the centuries have failed to grasp the importance and intensity of Paul's conception of grace? So often there is less comment on this verse with its foundational greeting of grace than on the verses fore and aft in this introduction. Does this not expose that many commentators are spiritually sterile and theologically constipated, with no real understanding of the grace of God in Jesus Christ? They fail to recognize that Paul's reaction to the Galatian problem is predicated on his understanding of grace, which is referred to throughout this epistle (1:3,6,15; 2:9,21; 5:4; 6:18).

   Along with grace, Paul mentions "peace," which as a concomitant to grace is derived "from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ." Although this could be regarded as but an equivalent to the Hebrew greeting "shalom," this word is also best understood as being invested with the full force of Christian theological understanding. It obviously conveys far more that the classic Greek understanding of the absence of conflict or war. In Pauline theological thought peace was always a result of God's grace activity in Jesus Christ. By God's grace one can have the spiritual condition of "peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. 5:1), in place of spiritual animosity and alienation. By the indwelling presence of God's grace in Jesus Christ, the Christian can have the "peace of God which surpasses all comprehension" (Phil. 4:7) ruling in his heart (Col. 3:15). As the Spirit produces the fruit of peace (Gal. 5:22) as internal character, the living Lord Jesus who is Himself "our peace" (Eph. 2:14) manifests His life in peaceful external relationships with others (I Thess. 5:13; Heb. 12:14). Such peace is always a result of God's grace.

   Perhaps Paul's mention of peace is a precursor of the freedom motif that will be presented later in the epistle. The peace of God is experienced as contentment when the Christian is free to be man as God intended, manifesting the character of Christ by God's grace. On the other hand, legalistic performance of behavioral rules and regulations never brings inner peace, only the chaffing and frustration of imperfect performance and inability.

   Note once again, as mentioned in verse 2, the combination of "God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ." In Christian theology it is impossible to disconnect God the Father and God the Son. They are inextricably one! The Greek word kurios, translated as "Lord," is constantly employed throughout the New Testament as the translation of the Hebrew word Yahweh, signifying that Jesus is indeed one with Jehovah-God.

1:4 ­ In further explanation of the grace of God, Paul continues to explain that it was the Lord Jesus Christ "who gave Himself for our sins." What an act of divine grace! We owed a debt we could not pay; He paid the debt He did not owe. Voluntarily submitting to the sacrifice of His own life in death by crucifixion, Jesus vicariously and substitutionally paid the price of death for the sin of mankind. He took the death consequences of our sin, that we might have the grace of His life. It was this remedial action of death by crucifixion, with the subsequent restorative action of resurrection-life, that was the objective of Christ's redemptive and regenerative advent. "He came to give His life a ransom for all" (Mk. 10:45; I Tim. 2:6), and "gave Himself for us" (Gal. 2:20; Eph. 5:2,25; Titus 2:14), "obedient to the point of death, even death on cross" (Phil. 2:8), doing everything necessary to allow man to be restored to God's intent by His grace. The crucifixion of Jesus is the crucial defining event wherein we can behold the crux of differentiation between the human performance of religion and the once-and-for-all performance of the "finished work" (Jn. 19:30) of Jesus Christ, whereby God "not sparing His own Son...freely gives us all things" (Rom. 8:32) by His grace. What more can we do? Nothing! Only receive His divine life and activity.

   But this is not all! The effects of God's grace go beyond the remedial benefits of propitiation, and lead on to the liberation of mankind in the triumph of Christus Victor,3 as Christ's crucifixion and resurrection allow Him "to deliver us out of this present evil age." Mankind, by their failure to understand spiritual derivation (cf. I Cor. 2:14), have misunderstood the extent to which the fallen world of men "lies in the Evil One" (I Jn. 5:19), the "god of this age" (II Cor. 4:4), the diabolic power of the devil "energizing in the sons of disobedience" (Eph. 2:2). When the risen Lord Jesus confronted Paul on the road to Damascus He commissioned him to go to the Gentiles in order to "turn them from darkness to light, from the dominion of Satan to God" (Acts 26:18). Paul understood clearly that he had been "delivered from the domain of darkness, and transferred into the kingdom of Christ" (Col. 1:13). It is in that light that Paul here explains that the grace of God in Christ has delivered and rescued us by lifting us out of, and extricating us from, the context of the enemy's controlling power. This does not mean that we are delivered out of the physical world in some form of escapist withdrawal, for we are still "in the world," but "not of the world" (Jn. 17:11,16). Nor does it mean that the fallen world-order is being transformed into the kingdom of God. Rather, once-and-for-all by the death, burial, resurrection and Pentecostal outpouring of Jesus, God has delivered mankind from Satan's power. "He has disarmed the rulers and authorities,...having triumphed over them through Him (Jesus)" (Col. 2:15). This ultimate victory of Christ over all diabolic forces is the theme of John's Revelation.4

   Such deliverance and extrication from Satan's dominion becomes efficacious for each individual Christian when he/she is spiritually regenerated. It is not just a futuristic expectation that is progressively realized as we are delivered from the present evil age by the suppressionism or perfectionism of behavioral performance, even though there are "not yet" ramifications of deliverance. Paul's point is that we have been delivered from the devil's power at a particular point in time (aorist tense) ­ objectively in the redemptive work of Jesus Christ on the cross, and subjectively in spiritual regeneration.

   The Christian has been lifted up out of, and above, the diabolic dominion of the Evil One who presides over "this present evil age." We have been "saved from this perverse generation" (Acts 2:40). This is not a linear conception where two ages abut one another on a chronological time line; one ending where the other begins. Rather, the two ages, world-orders, or kingdoms overlap and exist simultaneously in the present. This allows for the cosmic dichotomy and conflict between the satanic and divine spiritual orders of operation ­ between the fallen, evil world order and the kingdom of God in Christ. The Christian has been "taken up out of the present evil age" in order to live in the Lordship reign of Jesus Christ in the kingdom of God. Though he still has his feet on the ground living in the world, the Christian individual is no longer a slave to sin (Rom. 6:16-18) and self-orientation via satanic energizing (Eph. 2:2). We are no longer in "bondage to the elemental things of the world" (Gal. 4:3), the "weak and worthless elemental things" (Gal. 4:9). We do not have to be sucked into the conflict of the fallen world's ways, or succumb to the seemingly irresistible conformity of the ideologies and methodologies of the present age. Because we "have been delivered out of this present evil age," we do not have to "be conformed to this world, but can be transformed by the renewing of our minds, that we might prove what the will of God is" (Rom. 12:2).

   One of the major players on the plane of the perverted and diabolic world-order is religion. Yes, religion is the devil's playground!5 The religious Judaizers who had pushed their way into Galatia are surely to be represented in the same manner that Paul describes the troublemakers who invaded Corinth: "false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore it is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness..." (II Cor. 11:13-15). When Paul indicates that Christians "have been delivered from this present evil age," he is countering the intrusive servants of Satan, religious though they be, who were advocating legalistic performance of the Law in order to deliver them from the evil age. Paul regarded such as "worthless" (Gal. 4:9) and antithetical to the gospel of God's grace-dynamic in Jesus Christ within the kingdom of God.

   Only by the operative of God's grace in the past and present work of Jesus Christ can we recognize "the will of our God and Father," and realize that this as been God's plan from the beginning, to restore man by the "finished work" of Christ to function as He intended by His grace. The continuity of that divine grace (cf. Rom. 8:32), operative by the Spirit of Christ, enables and empowers Christians to live in conformity to God's will for man, which is always the expression of the divine character of Christ in our behavior. God's will is not a mystical maze to be analyzed or a problematic puzzle to be deciphered. God's will is always Jesus Christ ­ His life lived out in humanity to the glory of God!

1:5 - Recognizing that the grace-dynamic of God in Christ is essential to the teleological objective of God in His creation, Paul concludes his introductory greeting by noting that it is God the Father "to whom be the glory forever." God can only be glorified by the grace-expression of His own all-glorious character being expressed in His creation. For mankind this necessitates the presence of God in Christ by His Spirit dwelling in the spirit of man in order to manifest His character by His grace unto His own glory. Man is "created for God's glory" (Isa. 43:7), and we are to "do all to the glory of God" (I Cor. 10:31), but this can only be accomplished as God by His grace "does exceedingly abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to His power that works within us, unto His glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever" (Eph. 3:20,21). The glory of God is not a result of the utilitarian productivity of religious performance, whereby men of utmost sincerity and tireless activity attempt to do great things for God. Such endeavors only carry the designation, "Ichabod" ­ the glory of the Lord has departed (I Sam. 4:21). God is only glorified by His own grace-activity expressing His own all-glorious character unto His own glory. Such doxological teleology is the intent of God "unto the ages of the ages," forever and ever, eternally, perpetually, without limit and without end.

   "Amen." So be it. Let it be. May God confirm such as a verity by His grace.

   What an introductory greeting in two sentences! As noted earlier, these are far more than customary courtesies to be read at a glance. In these opening sentences Paul has laid the foundation for his understanding of the Christian gospel and for all that he has to say in the remainder of the letter. Granted, when we continue the letter these words of greeting appear to be "the calm before the storm," but they are most important if we are to understand Paul's perspective of the severity of the situation in the Galatian churches. Only by understanding the gospel of grace in Jesus Christ which Paul preached and lived, can we begin to comprehend and appreciate the reaction he unleashes as he continues this epistle.

   Be forewarned, though, that when anyone, in any age, stands with Paul in proclamation and defense of the gospel of grace in Jesus Christ alone, he/she will inevitably be charged with trafficking in the abstract, the nebulous, and the ambiguous. He/she will be labeled as advocating mysticism, subjectivism, or existentialism. He/she will be cautioned about allowing too much freedom wherein people might become lawless or licentious libertines. Natural, religious men are afraid that if Christianity is not structured, regulated, and administrated with clear-cut and concrete guidelines, then it will disintegrate in a myriad of perversions. Apparently there is no faith that God is competent in His omnipotence to control His people and His church by the power of His Spirit.

   The self-promoting religious teachers will inevitably appear whenever and wherever the gospel of grace is introduced, and like the religious moles in the churches of Galatia, they will be advocating legislated behavior by keeping moralistic rules according to pre-set parameters, thinking that such will "deliver them from the evil age". Religion always seeks a codification of conduct in "thou shalts" and "thou shalt nots," with defined procedures and techniques for achieving such a self-defined criteria for "spirituality." Seeking "pat answers," they develop a static ordo salutis which is part of their "statement of faith" in an epistemological belief-system. Leadership is regulated by acceptable qualifications and credentials to develop a "chain of command" structure wherein everything is controlled and predictable. Success will be measured by quantifiable statistics in buildings, budgets and baptisms. Tangible expression of Christian commitment will be encouraged through financial giving, regular attendance, and personal involvement in church programs.

   Meanwhile, the Christian peoples, like sheep willing to follow a shepherd, will probably be open and receptive to such religious direction. Grace seems so risky and unpredictable. It cannot be managed or controlled. One cannot even project the probability of its results. Yes, as Jesus Himself said, "the wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going" (Jn. 3:8). Religious performance, on the other hand, seems so safe and secure with its well-defined parameters of rules and regulations, complete with "how-to" books full of techniques and formulas for obedience. The leaders clearly explain their expectations, and tell you what to do, offering tangible criteria of success with visible rewards. What people cannot seem to see is that when you have such a perimeter of fences, such a regimen of enforced labor, and such strong links to hold you together, you are enslaved in the confining prison of religion, and no longer free to participate in the gospel of grace in Jesus Christ.

   It appears that the majority of Christians, if given a choice of working on a chain-gang or walking across a swinging suspension bridge with no handrails, would opt for the chain-gang labor. It is tiring and monotonously predictable, but you can't fall off. It may kill you, but it's a methodical way to go! The swinging-bridge of grace is scary. It is as unpredictable as God Himself. Security is only found as we "fix our eyes on Jesus" (Heb. 12:2) and are "led of the Spirit" (Rom. 8:14; Gal. 5:18), trusting Him to keep us standing by His power (I Pet. 1:5). That requires faith! Many there are who will choose the chain-gang of religion over the swinging-bridge of grace, but Paul's epistle to the Galatians will forever be the clarion call to such peoples, encouraging them in no uncertain terms to accept nothing more and nothing less than the grace of God in Jesus Christ alone.

1    Bruce, F.F., The Epistle to the Galatians: A Commentary on the Greek Text. The New International Greek Testament Commentary series. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1982. pg. 72.
2    cf. Fowler, James A., The Grace of God. Fallbrook: C.I.Y. Publishing. 1993.
3    cf. Aulén, Gustaf, Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of the Atonement. London: S.P.C.K., 1931.
4    cf. Fowler, James A., Jesus Christ: Victor Over Religion, A Commentary on John's Revelation. Fallbrook: C.I.Y. Publishing, 1993.
5    cf. Fowler, James A., Christianity is Not Religion. Fallbrook: C.I.Y. Publishing. 1995.