Chapter one states the real purposes and intent of this letter. Here, Paul states very emphatically that it was God the Father and Jesus Christ that appointed Paul to do the work that Paul was going to do. We see in verses three through five that Paul says a simple prayer recognizing God the Father and Jesus Christ asking for blessings and re-emphasizing the death and rising of Jesus. This is a very important section that is usually ignored in Bible study. However, based on the history documented earlier in this article, it is an important stand that reflects and parallels the remaing letter. Where the issue was Jesus or Jesus/Moses on the same level of godship, the Apostle Paul shows his perspective that Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice and the rituals and commandments of Moses' time were replaced by the atonning work of Jesus. In verses six through ten, Paul turns his focus to the business at hand. There is a problem here of people teaching a different gospel. This different gospel was turning people away from Jesus and the work on Calvary. Paul asks God to deal with the people promoting the different gospel as he, through this letter, attempts to restore the true teachings of Jesus many of these affected people once believed.

Paul, in the rest of chapter one, testifies of how he went from persecuting the Christians, to taking the message of Jesus to the Gentiles. What we see here is a man that has been changed from the best of the Pharasees to a supernaturally natural follower of Christ. According to theologians, it took Paul numerous years of trials and tests to reevaluate his perspectives and position in order to bring Paul in line with God's heart in order to reach the world for Christ. Paul's life definately reflected the John 3:30 mentality of "He must increase, I must decrease". In the latter years of Paul's life, his view of himself becomes less and less favorable because he spends more and more time glorifying God. It was at this crossroads where the prejudices of Paul were burned away and were replaced by the Great Commission to reach and edify the same ethnic group he once killed in "the name of God".

Many of us today have similar degrees of prejudice that really blinds us from implementing God's plan to let the whole world experience forgiveness, salvation, deliverance, and redemption. In fact, a break down of the word "prejudice" is revelationary. The prefix "pre" means "before, or in front of". Judice comes from the root "judge" or "judicial". Therefore, when we are prejudiced, we "judge before" getting the real facts about someone, someone's culture, and someone's heritage. The words of Jesus reflect heavily here when Jesus said "Judge not, lest ye be judged". I find this psychologically amazing how one culture can outright judge another culture as derogatory and the other culture retaliates by judging back at the culture that judged them. Usually we do two things when we see prejudice occur. We usually keep our mouths shut in denial or in fear of "ruffling the feathers" and making the comfort zones worse and more miserable for us. The second thing we do is that we join in the prejudice through ignorances learned or embracing a coarse joke told to us. We do either of these two things even if this sinful attitude is considered the "cultural norm". As we see the repentance and progression that the apostle Paul experienced, we as Christians need to experience the same repentance and progression in this same area of prejudice and in other areas of our lives as required. We must learn to live by the commandments of Jesus and the Scriptures instead of the cultural norms around us.

Paul chooses to challenge the thinking of false teachers using Scripture and basic apologetics. Paul wrote the letter to Galatia with the annointing of God as well as implementing a well thought out plan of attack to combat the heresy. Yes, Paul thought. Thinking is something that is seen as evil or humanistic by many Christians today. We teach people to do what the "elite televangelists" do and not to think and discern if their teachings are right or wrong. To question is considered as lack of faith, rebellion, and "touching God's annointed". In other words, we are supposed to be numb and mindless and only do Christianity the way a certain preacher tells us to without thought or question. The same thing goes on in corporate America where assembly line workers are deterred from trying to make their lives easier, assemblies correct, and quality higher. Instead, upper level management thinks these decisions out and the rest are expected to do. God gave us a brain to think and to comprehend. That is one of the many reasons I love the ministry of Ravi Zacharias (Let My People Think). Ravi encourages us to think and implement a stragetic defense of our faith using the Scriptures and using the annointing of God on his life. His messages are carefully and skillfully detailed as he shows that thinking is a gift from God and not a sinful pleasure that has to be eliminated in the name of "holiness".

Chapter two continues the testimony of Paul many years later. Verses one through ten describe meetings Paul and Titus had in Jerusalem with the church leaders of the day. I find verse three interesting. Verse three describes how Titus was Greek and in a nutshell "he was not forced to be circumcised". This was interesting. You see, in Jerusalem, circumcision was being used as a "benchmark" to measure "real Christianity". Like the false teachers in Galatia that said that Jesus was "an additional" teaching to the laws of Moses, the false teachers in Jerusalem were teaching that you had to be circumcized to be a "real Christian". In other words Paul had seen this before with a different benchmark, but with the same legalistic spirit. Here, Paul tells of how this was causing a deeper division between the Jews and the Gentiles. I love how Paul approached this issue, he did not usurp the church leaders of Jerusalem and tried to deal with this from the bottom of the scale going upward. Paul went directly to the church leaders to discuss his concerns in order to bring truth and change from the top downward. The results of this meeting proved positive that the same mission of reaching souls for Christ and ministering the poor was accomplished. Paul and the church leaders in Jerusalem came out in agreement and support for their respective ministries. In verse nine, they realized that Paul was more equipped to reach the Gentiles for Jesus and James, Peter, and John were more equipped to reach the Jews for Jesus. Clarity was achieved with the common goal of Jesus, but neither side made the other side see things their way only and forced the other side to do Christianity their way. In other words, the Jew and Gentile church leaders realized that unity in Christ did not involve uniformity and unanimity of practice of everybody have to do things "the one and only way".

Today, many denominations, organizations, ministries, and Christian political action groups refuse to come together in unity unless the unity becomes unanimity in their favor. They think that the Gospel is theirs instead of God's and therefore added and deleted from it what they wanted to. These people are trying something that Paul did not do, and that was to force everyone to see things their way. Therefore, what they have done is created similar benchmarks in modern times and judged (actually "pre-judged") other Christians as "real" or "apostates" by taking their "benchmarks" and interraveling them to appear that Scriputres say stuff besides what the Scriptures say. The Scripures turn from teaching us how to worship "HE" (Jesus) into how can the scriptures be twisted to fit my petty theologies called God, i.e. "ME". Like the Jews who viewed the act of circumcision as an rite of superiority in the spiritual and physical realms, many today see themselves as spiritually superior because of the benchmark that they have established, obtained, and maintained instead of the atonement of Jesus Christ. What happens is that exclusiveness is fostered and fed while at the same time the gap between Christian organizations who do not see eye to eye (or is it I to I) widens. Our war of superiority amongst ourselves takes preeminence and all of our resources instead of the war of compassion to reach out to other nations, cultures, ethnic groups as Jesus originally intended in the Great Commission. We exalt ourselves to Godship as idoltry instead of God by choosing to decide by our benchmarks and our state of unanimity who is out of God's will and God's love. At the same time, both sides claim to hear from God that their viewpoint is God's only viewpoint and do whatever it takes (books, seminars, raising money, etc) to propogate their viewpoint as the one and only viewpoint of God to eliminate the other Christian viewpoint in the name of fighting apostacy instead of coming together in the common bond of Jesus and the works done on Calvary. Like I have said in other articles before, this benchmark becomes their focus as all of the Scriptures are twisted to enhance their viewpoint. The tragedy is that many sinners and true Christians become spiritually amputated from the pursuit of God that is within them by the spiritual land mines laid down to trap the enemy. Therefore, we hurt more people than we actually help. We lose more people than we save.

The rest of chapter two deals with this elitist mentality. We see Paul rebuking Peter in Antioch some time after the meeting between Paul and James, John, and Peter. We see in verse twelve that Peter had stopped fellowshipping with Gentile believers because he feared other Jews sent down by James. Peter would fellowship with Gentiles when by himself but when fellow Jews came, Peter would disfellowship with the Gentiles and only fellowship with the Jews. Peter wanted all ways possible instead of only God's way. In otherwords, the agreement and change that was made to see the common unity of the Jews and the Gentiles while recognizing the cultural differences had been shut down in Peter's own life by Peter himself. Paul therefore openly rebuked Peter and corrected him. In fact this playing of all sides was the first issue addressed in verse 14 when Paul saw through the clutter Peter was in. Paul brings balance back to the fold in verses 15 and 16 explaining the old covenant differences between Jews and Gentiles and then sealing the point of New Covenant atonement that it is now faith in Jesus Christ that brings us to relationship with God and not the laws of Moses. Paul further expounds on this point where he states that Christ did not "change the standard", but fulfill the standard. For it was by the law that Christ went to the cross to die for our sins in order to conquer sin, death, hell, and the grave and make the perfect sacrifice to bring us from law, but unto grace. Because it is righetousness comes through the atonement and grace of God. If righetousness came by the law, then the death of Christ was useless.

You see, when we place add-on benchmarks to the Word of God, what we really do is re-implement the law and it's legalistic regiments as our standard instead of the atonement and grace of Jesus Christ. Paul states that we are crucified in Christ, not crucified by the benchmarks we create. This is where "HE" (Christ) lives in me and dictates my every action instead of "ME" living in me and fullfilling the desires of the flesh.

Click Here for part three of The Galatia We Live In.