Derek Thomas

There are those, and he mentions those who trouble you, those who want to distort the gospel.

Who are these?

They're Judaizers.

They're fanatics for the Torah.

They're followers of Moses.

You remember how John will say in the prologue of the gospel, the law came by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

That's a relative contrast, but it's made in absolute terms.

John doesn't mean that there's no grace and truth in Moses, and he doesn't mean to say there's no law once we believe and follow Jesus.

But relatively speaking, Moses is about law.

Jesus is about grace and truth.

And Paul here wants to emphasize that point.

grace and truth part of the gospel, and he's deeply suspicious that there are those among them who are leading them astray.

They were folk who were concerned, for example, about what about Gentiles, Gentiles who come to faith?

and they come to believe in Jesus as the Messiah.

But they weren't circumcised like the Jews.

They didn't observe Jewish food laws.

They didn't observe the ceremonial calendar, Passover and tabernacles and so on.

And were they to be…were these

ceremonial boundary markers that identified Jewishness and Judaism and the religion of Judaism, were these things to be imposed upon the Gentiles?

It's the issue that would be before the Jerusalem Council in Acts chapter 15.