NOTES for Gal 1:1-10

Certain unnamed people disturbed the Galatians with the report that the freedom in Christ proclaimed by the apostle Paul is an illusion, and that one must go to God by the thorny path of Old Testament legislation. What matters, they said, is not whether you love God and people, but whether, for God's sake, you wash the dishes correctly and observe the other rituals. Therefore at the very beginning of the epistle the apostle says that Christ gave Himself for our sins. This means, among other things, that what the apostle proclaims is not religion. By definition, religion is our human path of reunion with an infinitely distant God. And the point is not even that the law, like everything else in human religiosity, is not such a path (the apostle writes about this in detail to the Romans). He sets against his opponents the fact that God Himself has already passed the path that separates us, Himself has overcome this distance.

One cannot help joining the apostle's amazement at how easily our human nature bends under the yoke of an impersonal law, moving itself away from the God who has come too near. Such is the psychological difference between faith and religiosity. And it is important to keep this in mind, because each of us needs to examine himself: are you living in faith or in religion?