NOTES for Gal 1:1-10; Gal 1:20-2:5

Paul begins his letter to the Christians of Galatia with a reproach that they, as we can see, easily and quickly abandoned what Paul had witnessed to them (vv. 6-7). And in his reproaches the apostle is extremely severe, excluding every possibility for a Christian to remain a Christian if he accepts the distorted gospel brought to the Galatians by certain preachers not named in the letter (vv. 8-10). At first glance, Paul's attitude toward a "different gospel" may appear overly harsh. Indeed, why not allow different points of view in the church on foundational matters?

But Paul, as we can see, looks at the matter differently, and not because he is worried about a lack of formal unanimity in the Galatian church. For him Christianity is not a search for truth, but truth itself; not a question, but the answer. In the search for truth, one can put forward various suppositions and different possible answers to foundational questions. But once it has been found, there is nothing more to search for and nothing more to suppose, because the true answer is always unambiguous and never hypothetical.

Of course, in our world, which is not yet fully transformed, and by means of our mind, which is not yet fully transformed, we are unable to see the truth in all its fullness, because both Christ and the Kingdom can be seen only with spiritual sight. But Paul speaks and acts as an inhabitant of the Kingdom and a witness of Christ. He bears witness to the One who is the answer, not to his own spiritual and intellectual searches. The point is not that the capacity for spiritual or intellectual search is bad in itself. The point is that it is out of place to ask questions when the living answer stands before you. Such a position can testify only to the insincerity of the search, or to delusion, to an unreadiness to see the truth that is revealed in such a way that, if the seeker received this revelation rightly, he would no longer have to search for anything. And the apostle does not want his Galatian brothers, having departed from Christ and the Kingdom that had opened to them as genuine reality, to find themselves again in the position of seekers, as if nothing had ever been revealed to them. Such a rollback would be a real spiritual catastrophe. It would mean the loss of the Kingdom, with completely unclear prospects for returning there later. Paul, of course, could not allow this, because the building up of the Kingdom was the meaning of the apostle's life and ministry.

Paul's words about ‘another gospel’ may at first seem excessively sharp and harsh, especially in the context of his mention of ‘an angel from heaven’. If even God's messenger is better not trusted when he brings some other good news, whom can one trust at all? Yet here, whether intentionally or not, Paul illustrates through a particular situation in the Galatian church an extremely important law of spiritual life, which might be called the law of spiritual self-identity. This law operates both where an individual is concerned and where a whole community, large or small, is involved. The law of spiritual self-identity links the fullness and reliability of a revelation received with the spiritual integrity of the human person.

As we know, the problem of the observer exists in many different spheres of human activity and manifests itself differently depending on what a particular person is doing. But it is especially acute in spiritual life. Here each person can see exactly as much as they are able to perceive. Of course, sometimes someone is shown more than they can take in. In that case, however, the person usually either subsequently forgets what was shown or reinterprets what was seen, adapting it to their own level of perception. What is reliable becomes unreliable—not because the revelation was incomplete or limited, but because the person does not measure up to what has been revealed.

For the reliability of revelation depends not only on the One who reveals, but also on the person who receives. For revealed truth to be perceived as not subject to revision, the person must remain inwardly true to themselves and be in keeping with the revelation received. If that correspondence is lacking, a person who has received a revelation often soon begins to look for something else that would allow what God has revealed to be ‘adapted’ to the customary and familiar human level.

This is how ‘other gospels’ appear, seemingly only supplementing the one first heard, but in fact distorting or limiting it. Then even a message from God's messenger will no longer be perceived adequately: it is wanted not for its own sake, but as a means of ‘adapting’ what was heard earlier. It is this very serious spiritual danger that Paul warns the Christians of Galatia about, hence the sharpness of his language: the situation was too serious to speak of it gently and evasively.

Certain unnamed people troubled the Galatians by telling them that the freedom in Christ proclaimed by the apostle Paul was an illusion and that they had to follow the thorny road of Old Testament legislation toward God. What mattered, they said, was not whether you loved God and other people, but whether, for God's sake, you washed the dishes correctly and observed the other rituals. Therefore, at the very beginning of the letter, the apostle says that Christ gave Himself for our sins. Among other things, this means that what the apostle proclaims is not religion. By definition, religion is our human path toward reunion with an infinitely distant God. The point is not even that the law, like everything else in human religiosity, is no such path (the apostle writes about this at length to the Romans). Against his opponents he sets the fact that God Himself has already crossed the path that separated us; He Himself has overcome that distance.

We cannot help sharing the apostle's astonishment at how easily our human nature bows beneath the yoke of an impersonal law, distancing itself from the God who has drawn too close. Such is the psychological difference between faith and religiosity. This is important to keep in mind, because each of us needs to examine ourselves: do you live by faith or by religion?

All the earliest church communities included both Jews who had turned to Christ and recent pagans. Yet Jews still found it difficult to sit at the same table and break bread with the uncircumcised.

We may suppose that this was not always a matter of religious observance alone. It is quite possible that, in principle, in theory, many of the Jews who insisted on circumcision were prepared to acknowledge that it was not in itself essential for a Christian. But only in general, only in principle. When it came to the actual life of the church, those same people might well insist that everyone be circumcised, simply as a matter of custom, for the sake of peace in the community, so as not to unsettle newly converted Jews.

There would seem to be nothing very wrong with that. Indeed, there would not have been, had the circumcised not eventually begun to insist on the spiritual significance of circumcision as such. And that was something the apostle could no longer accept.

Generally speaking, Paul did not require religious observance of anyone, nor did he insist that it must be absent. He himself was and always remained a Jew, but he understood perfectly well that religious observance in itself neither helps nor hinders the Christian life. Provided, of course, that it does not become an end in itself or have a spiritual significance attributed to it that it does not actually possess.

Yet, judging by Paul's words, that is precisely what happened in the Galatian church. Circumcision came to be regarded there—apparently under the influence of local Jewish teachers—as obligatory not only for Jews but also for recent pagans who had accepted Christ. Circumcision began to be reinterpreted as a specifically Christian rite and therefore as obligatory for Christians; the view spread that the uncircumcised would not be saved or enter the Kingdom. And here the apostle naturally had to intervene—not because he opposed circumcision on principle (one could hardly expect that of a Jew who had no intention whatever of renouncing his Jewish identity), but because he considered any attempt to make a Christian's spiritual life conditional on religious observance a distortion or diminution of that life.

Once again, Paul reminds us who matters most and who comes first. How often we really do seek people's favor and do things so that they will speak well of us. But Paul speaks plainly and sternly: “If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.” We keep trying to combine the incompatible: to please both God and people, to follow our heart while still being liked by everyone around us. We fear human condemnation. We look over our shoulders: what will they say? What will they think? Paul does not look back. He has chosen his path and knows that he is following the path God appointed for him. Everything else is unimportant. Whatever anyone may say, we will be servants of Christ only if we give up the idea of pleasing each and every person.

As we can see, Paul did consult with the other apostles about his ministry (vv. 1-2). Judging by the fact that the question concerned circumcision, Paul did bring it before the Church so that it would not bring splits and divisions into the churches (vv. 3-5). But for Paul himself this was not so much permission to preach what he preached about religion in general and circumcision in particular, as it was testimony from the Church itself, testimony that for him was as binding as any other testimony. He does not wait for any confirmation from people of the spiritual authenticity of his ministry, even if those people are the apostles themselves (v. 6). Yet the apostles, as we can see, confirmed the authenticity of Paul's ministry (vv. 7-10).

Here the apostle reveals to us a very important principle of spiritual life and spiritual ministry: its uniqueness and unrepeatability. That is why evaluating someone else's ministry is far from simple. Every revelation is always unrepeatable and fully understandable only to the one for whom it is intended. To evaluate its authenticity, one must be able to see another person's revelation through the eyes of the one to whom it was given, and that is far from easy. It is another matter when a person lives not by his own revelation but by other people's ideas and opinions, while it seems to him that those opinions are his own. There everything is much more definite. That is why Paul assesses rather sharply the attempts of the Galatian Christians to follow preachers who rely not on the experience of revelation but on their own human constructions. One must not hinder a person from doing God's work. But one can and must warn him when he tries to replace God's work with human works.

In this chapter the Apostle Paul tells of the Council of Jerusalem, described in detail in the Book of Acts. It discussed what should be done with Gentiles who had immediately come to believe in Christ and did not know the Law—in particular, whether they needed to be circumcised and observe all the provisions of the Law binding on Jews. Paul and Barnabas’ testimony about the conversion of the Gentiles, their firmness in defending their views, and their obedience to the Church show us how the first Christians resolved the problems that arose. Attentiveness to another person’s opinion, joint discussion of what was happening, and the adoption of a decision were the chief ways of settling disputed questions.

It should be said that Christ’s words that “the truth will make you free” are illustrated very well by this text. One might suppose that Paul, a Pharisee and a disciple of Gamaliel, should have opposed the conversion of Gentiles altogether. Yet here he bears witness to those who do not know the one God. He should have defended the letter of the Law, but he insists that the essential thing in conversion is to accept Christ crucified and risen and to receive the Holy Spirit. And the first named among the Twelve Apostles who supported him is not Peter, as usual, but James—the very James who, though a Christian, continued to observe all the provisions of the Law so scrupulously that the Jews called him righteous. Such freedom in the outward practices of believers is possible only when the Holy Spirit lives and acts among them.

The Apostle Paul is, after all, distinguished by an astonishing boldness that one is sometimes tempted to call impudence. Just consider what he says: after God revealed His Son to him, he “did not confer with flesh and blood”! Generally speaking, communicating only with God directly and ignoring the Church is a straight road to founding a sect... Wait. Does Paul ignore the Church? No, and no again. He comes precisely into the Church, becomes part of it, and begins to preach Christ—not apart from the Church. What he does not seek is human instruction or approval. God’s calling is sufficient for him, and he does not have to go to the apostles to have his calling confirmed. He joins the community that already exists and then goes out to preach... In essence, by not trying to contact the apostles, he is also not trying to obtain any additional authority. He does not need confirmation from human beings.

Speaking about his own spiritual path, Paul does not stress by chance that, while at one time he was a zealous adherent of Judaism, he later became a witness of Christ, who sent him to preach the gospel to the Gentiles (vv. 13-17). Apparently, in this way the apostle was answering possible reproaches that he himself had sharply changed his views on foundational questions of spiritual and religious life. If that is so, why should the Christians of Galatia not do the same, especially since the changes in their worldview were far less radical than those Paul had experienced?

But the apostle immediately notes a fundamentally important point concerning his spiritual path: the absolute sincerity of his search. If at first he was a zealous supporter of Judaism, it was not because he wanted to be "like everyone else," but because he was sincerely convinced that the way he lived and believed was right before God.

It was precisely this sincerity that helped him meet Christ and acquire the Kingdom. But one meeting on the Damascus road was not enough. Now he had to change his life decisively in order to become a witness of Christ. Here too Paul remained true to himself. He did not begin looking for anyone to confirm the truth of his revelation; he simply went to do the work God had entrusted to him (vv. 15-19).

Such sincerity is a pledge both of spiritual sobriety and of freedom from spiritual error. A spiritually sincere person will never look for detours in spiritual life in order to avoid problems, find an easier way to live in the Kingdom, or seek compromises where they are inadmissible. The preachers who distort the gospel, of whom the apostle speaks, were apparently insisting on the strict obligation for all Christians to observe Jewish religious prescriptions. This was caused most of all, no doubt, by the desire to avoid conflict with the Synagogue, which otherwise became inevitable. Clearly, such "spiritual searches" had nothing to do either with spirituality or with a genuine search. They could only distance a person from the Kingdom, as Paul does not grow tired of reminding them.