Jude wrote a short letter urging believers to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). Although 25 verses in length, it is packed with substance. Toward the end of the letter, he urges believers to continue “building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying” while intentionally rescuing others from the various deceptions that attack the faith (Jude 20-21). How he describes this rescue mission is quite telling.
He says that some people are wrestling with doubt and need a kind of mercy that walks alongside them, guiding them toward the truth that our faith is built upon (Jude 22). He continues to say that there are others who we need to show “mercy with fear” by being cautious not to fall into the same deception so that we ourselves need rescue (Jude 23). There is still another group of people who are dangerously close to the fire. They require urgent and passionate rescue “by snatching out of the fire” (Jude 23).
It is with this kind urgency and passion that we find Paul, the author of Galatians, as he wrote this letter. The Galatian believers were not only walking toward the fire of spiritual catastrophe, they were near its heat and dangerously close to being burned. They were exchanging the freedom of Christ for the slavery of works, trading liberty for bondage, and standing at the edge of spiritual fire. The gospel was at stake. Urgency and passion were necessary.
The Galatians were exchanging the freedom of Christ for the slavery of works, trading liberty for bondage, and standing at the edge of spiritual fire.
This explains the tone of Galatians. Unlike Paul’s other letters, there is no word of commendation, no expression of thanksgiving, no warm greeting of joy. Instead, the letter opens with a burst of heat. Paul’s words are thunderous, even sarcastic at times, full of fatherly anguish and righteous fury. The English Bible translator, J.B. Phillips, rendered Galatians 3:1 as, “O you dear idiots of Galatia.” The New Testament scholar, Richard Longenecker, described Paul as a “lion turned loose in the area of Christianity.” Time was short, danger was great, and Paul would not waste a single word.
This kind of urgency was necessary because spiritual freedom was at stake. It was a matter of life and death. Paul knew from personal experience the crushing bondage of legalism. Once bound tightly in Judaism, chained by traditions and rituals, Paul zealously persecuted those who proclaimed freedom in Christ. But when the risen Jesus confronted him on the Damascus road, the shackles fell off. Grace triumphed over law. Life replaced death. Bondange gave way to freedom.
This experience shaped Paul’s ministry. No one understood better what it meant to be enslaved under the law—and no one championed more fiercely the freedom that comes through faith in Christ alone. That is why Martin Luther, the protestant reformer who cried out against legalism in favor of grace, identified Galatians as his favorite of all books:
“The Epistle to the Galatians is my epistle. To it I am as it were in wedlock. It is my Katherine.”
Paul knew that the Galatians were about to surrender the very thing Christ died to secure: freedom. His letter is therefore a bold, passionate, uncompromising plea to cling to the gospel of grace, to resist all forms of legalism, and to stand firm in the liberty that Christ has won.
Paul was the apostle of freedom.
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