Derek Thomas

a man 20 years older than he is here.

And here he comes across passionate, zealous, sometimes right on the edge.

Something's happening in the church in Galatia that's upsetting him, and he doesn't spare anything.

And at one point says that some witches have cast a spell on them, and they're retreating from the gospel.

We can't think of Galatians without thinking of the Reformation and Martin Luther and a wonderful commentary that he wrote on Galatians that was hugely significant.

It was in part telling folk where he was in his journey and his understanding of justification by faith and the gospel.

And in another sense, it was a vehicle to propel the Reformation on a certain path

One thinks a hundred years later of John Bunyan's Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners where he recalls that it was Luther's commentary on Galatians that affected him and brought about eventually the wonderful book Pilgrim's Progress, which next to the Bible is the most important book for Christians to read.

We won't spend a lot of time here on when this was written for reasons that will become clearer later in this little series.

I think this was written before the Jerusalem Council.

There are issues that arise here that also arose at the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, and Paul could easily have cited the decisions that were made there to underline what he thinks the Galatians should or shouldn't be doing, but he doesn't do that, which makes me think that

Galatians was written before Acts 15 and therefore perhaps around Acts 11, 12, that sort of era and roughly around 50 A.D.,

A key verse in this opening section, and we're looking at chapter 1 and verses 1 through 9 in this first session, and a key verse is verse 6, "'I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.'"

And there's the heart of Galatians.

What is the gospel?

And Paul is passionate about wanting to defend what's at the very core, what is of the very essence of the gospel, and that is the doctrine of justification by faith alone in Christ alone, apart from the works of the law.

Paul had come to Galatia.

This is perhaps a couple of years, two or three years after he first visited Galatia.

Galatia is…

Modern Turkey, think of it that way.