Unlocking The New Testament

Galatians 1

David Pawson says of Galatians, that it is the Magna Carta of Christian Liberty. It wrestles with issues caused by the differences between Judaism and Christianity in the early church. It came to a head with the issue of whether a person is saved by faith or by works. The Judaisers were saying that they needed to start with faith and then go on to keep the Law. So Paul asked the Galatians: having started in the Spirit, are you going to continue in the flesh? Paul was fighting for ‘faith alone’ as the means of salvation. He emphasized the need to ‘go on believing’. David says to introduce the Law at any stage is to put believers under a curse because the only pass mark Jesus would accept for the Law is 100%. Galatians explains why God gave the Law. In speaking on the 3 themes of the book, David says that Legalism is an enemy of Liberty but what people don’t always realize is that License is too. It is a delicate edge we walk in the Liberty of the Spirit. It’s so easy to slip either into Legalism or into License. Real freedom is the freedom not to sin.

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Galatians 2

David Pawson says that many Christians love the letter to the Galatians while others don’t like it. Paul was emotional about its subjects. Galatians ‘strips off all spiritual veneer’. It was this book which triggered Luther’s Reformation. David says that we need to talk together about our differences. In Galatians, Paul tackles ‘fundamental issues without which you lose the Christian Gospel’. Peter and Paul had a disagreement on one of these issues and this had to be put right. Paul, though a Jew, was a Roman citizen and spoke the Greek language so he was equipped for the mission God had for him. David says that later leaders who come in and take over another’s work often lead it astray and this was happening in Paul’s time. Jewish believers had come into the church in Galatia to try to convince the members that they needed to keep the Law as well as believe in Jesus. They were adding to Paul’s message of the Gospel. This would bring them back into slavery to the flesh, and negate the work of Christ, so Paul angrily wrote against this teaching to rescue those he had won to the Lord.

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