THE LETTER OF PAUL TO THE

Galatians

Salutation

1Paul an apostle—sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead—²and all the members of God’s family^* who are with me,

To the churches of Galatia:

3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,⁴who gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father,⁵to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.

There Is No Other Gospel

6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—⁷not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.⁸But even if we or an angel^* from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed!⁹As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed!

10 Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant^* of Christ.<!– 11 –>

Paul’s Vindication of His Apostleship

11 For I want you to know, brothers and sisters,^* that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin;¹²for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

13 You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it.¹⁴I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors.¹⁵But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased¹⁶to reveal his Son to me,^* so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being,¹⁷nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus.

Paul was a tentmaker not a priest or minister

Paul is difficult to read, often because we underrate his radicalism and interpret it as arrogance. This business of “being apppointed by God” for example, is easy to see as one-upmanship, whereas it is truly a refusal to think of his Christian faith as a religion. He is not part of an organised cult with appointed priests and officials: he is carrying  good news: a way of relating to God and other people which rejects all religious baggage and is based on the conviction that the God who is beyond the universe has come to the world in Jesus Messiah, showing his love for his creatures in his self-sacrifice on a Roman cross. He has come, so we do no need to find a way to him or of pleasing him. That’s what religion does. Paul’s good news is that we can dispense with all that and simply trust God’s love here and now in the shared life of the open community of God’s children. Anyone  who seeks to re-introduce the trappngs of religion-Jewish religion as in this case, Greek religion as in Corinth- is accursed because he/she is allied with those who in the name of religion, crucified Jesus Messiah. That’s why Paul wants to emphasise that he’s not part of a hierarchy but a human being to whom God has come in Jesus.

More than fifty years ago I was reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Letters and Papers from Prison” in which, as he awaited execution by the Nazis, he set out his view of “religionless Christianity”.This has often since been misunderstood as a familiar process of making Christianity acceptable to a scientific culture. Bonhoeffer himself said that he was not seeking to dispense with the traditional faith in the incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, far less with faith in the Creator, but to interpret all of these without the trappings of religion. For Paul, Jewish religion means trying to win God’s approval by obedience to ritual and moral law; Greek religion means trying to find a way to the Godhead. In both cases those who are “good” at the religion have to mediate the means of salvation to others. God has come and revealed himself, Paul says. Away with all this hocus-pocus and self-justfying regulation. If God has hidden nothing, there’s no room for those who claim to know God’s will or mystery better than others. Old religious boundaries and hierarchies are blown away by this faith.

Matthew 13:44-52