August 24th 2019 – Galatians 1:1

In studying a New Testament epistle, it is advisable, even necessary, to say some- thing about the people to whom the epistle was first written, and the circumstances and time of its writing. There are two views as to the date and destination of the epistle. Some think that 'Galatia' refers to the northern part of what we know as Asia Minor, and others that it refers to the southern part of that land, the Roman province of Galatia. This distinction is important for a number of reasons, particularly with regard to the date of writing, for Paul visited the southern part - Antioch in Pisidia, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, on his first missionary journey, in AD 47/48. But he did not go near the northern part till his second missionary journey (Acts 16:6; 18:23). Dependent, therefore, on which part of the country he wrote to, the epistle must be dated either shortly after AD 47/48, and therefore his earliest epistle after he had visited the northern regions.

One or two considerations help us to solve this question. The first is this: we know that the great controversy raging in the epistle has to do with the Jewish legalisers - the Judaisers, as they were called, that is, those who maintained that to be a good Christian one had also to be a good Jew, observing the Jewish law - who were adding 'conditions' to God's free salvation, and saying 'Except ye be converted after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved'. We know that this very major issue came up for discussion in AD 49 in Jerusalem (cf Acts 15). Here, in the epistle to the Galatians, Paul is writing about this very subject. But he does not even mention the decree promulgated by the apostles in Acts 15; and this would surely seem to prove conclusively that Galatians was written before that decree was promulgated, that is, before AD 49. And therefore, also, the epis- tle must have been written to the south Galatian Church, to those in Derbe and Lystra, Iconium and Antioch.