Galatians 1: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Paul opens his letter to the churches in Galatia by insisting that his role as an apostle came from Jesus Christ and God the Father, not from any human source. He says he is amazed that the Galatians are so quickly turning to a different gospel, and he twice declares that anyone who preaches a message contrary to the one they received should be under a curse. He then tells his own story: how he violently attacked the church, how God set him apart and revealed his Son to him, and how he did not go to the apostles in Jerusalem right away. The account backs up his claim that the message he preaches came by revelation and not from people.

Claim by Claim

1. 1:1
   • Paul is the writer.
   • Paul is an apostle.
   • Paul's apostleship is not from men.
   • Paul's apostleship is not through a man.
   • Paul's apostleship is through Jesus Christ and God the Father.
   • God the Father raised Jesus Christ from the dead.
2. 1:2
   • All the brothers who are with Paul join in sending the letter.
   • The letter is addressed to the churches of Galatia.
3. 1:3
   • Paul wishes grace and peace to the readers.
   • The grace and peace come from God the Father.
   • The grace and peace come from the Lord Jesus Christ.
4. 1:4
   • Jesus Christ gave himself for our sins.
   • He did so in order to deliver us out of the present evil age.
   • He did so according to the will of God and our Father.
5. 1:5
   • Glory belongs to him forever and ever.
   • Amen.
6. 1:6
   • Paul is astonished at the Galatians.
   • The Galatians are so quickly deserting the one who called them in the grace of Christ.
   • The Galatians are turning to a different gospel.
7. 1:7
   • That other gospel is not another gospel at all.
   • There are certain people who are troubling the Galatians.
   • Those people want to pervert the gospel of Christ.
8. 1:8
   • Even if Paul and his companions preach a gospel contrary to the one they preached to the Galatians, that preacher is to be accursed.
   • Even if an angel from heaven preaches a gospel contrary to the one they preached to the Galatians, that angel is to be accursed.
9. 1:9
   • Paul and his companions have said this before.
   • Paul says it again now.
   • If anyone preaches to the Galatians a gospel contrary to what they received, that person is to be accursed.
10. 1:10
    • Paul asks whether he is now seeking to persuade men or God.
    • Paul asks whether he is seeking to please men.
    • If Paul were still pleasing men, he would not be a servant of Christ.
11. 1:11
    • Paul declares something to the brothers.
    • The gospel preached by Paul is not according to man.
12. 1:12
    • Paul did not receive the gospel from a man.
    • Paul was not taught the gospel.
    • Paul received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.
13. 1:13
    • The Galatians have heard of Paul's former way of life in Judaism.
    • Paul persecuted the church of God beyond measure.
    • Paul tried to destroy the church of God.
14. 1:14
    • Paul advanced in Judaism beyond many of his contemporaries in his nation.
    • Paul was exceedingly zealous for the traditions of his fathers.
15. 1:15
    • God was pleased to act.
    • God set Paul apart from his mother's womb.
    • God called Paul by his grace.
16. 1:16
    • God was pleased to reveal his Son in Paul.
    • The purpose was that Paul might preach him among the Gentiles.
    • Paul did not immediately consult with flesh and blood.
17. 1:17
    • Paul did not go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before him.
    • Paul went into Arabia.
    • Paul returned again to Damascus.
18. 1:18
    • After three years Paul went up to Jerusalem.
    • Paul went to visit Cephas, that is, Peter.
    • Paul stayed with him fifteen days.
19. 1:19
    • Paul saw no other of the apostles.
    • Paul did see James, the Lord's brother.
20. 1:20
    • Paul writes these things to the Galatians.
    • Paul declares before God that he is not lying.
21. 1:21
    • Afterward Paul went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia.
22. 1:22
    • Paul was personally unknown to the churches of Judea.
    • Those churches were in Christ.
23. 1:23
    • The churches of Judea only kept hearing a report.
    • The report said that the man who formerly persecuted them now preaches the faith.
    • The report said that he once tried to destroy that faith.
24. 1:24
    • The churches of Judea glorified God because of Paul.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

1:1

"Apostle" is the Greek word apostolos, literally one who is sent out: an envoy or authorized representative who acts with the sender's authority. Paul's parenthesis uses two different prepositions, and the distinction is deliberate: "not of men" denies that his commission originated with any human group, and "neither by man" denies that any human being served as the go-between who conveyed it.

1:2

"Churches" translates ekklesia, which in ordinary Greek meant an assembly of citizens summoned to meet. In these letters it always means the people who gather, never a building. Galatia was a region of central Asia Minor, in what is now Turkey. The name covered both an older ethnic territory in the north, settled centuries earlier by migrating Celts, and a larger Roman province stretching south; which of the two Paul is writing to is disputed.

1:3

An ordinary Greek letter of the period opened with chairein, "greetings." Paul replaces it with the similar-sounding charis, "grace," meaning generosity freely given to someone with no claim on it, and adds the standard Jewish greeting shalom, "peace," which means settled well-being and wholeness rather than merely the absence of fighting.

1:4

"World" here translates aion, which means an age or era, a stretch of time, rather than the planet or the people on it. The contrast being drawn is between one period and another, not between earth and heaven.

1:5

"Amen" is a Hebrew word carried over untranslated. It means "truly" or "let it be so," and was spoken by hearers to endorse a statement or a blessing they had just heard.

1:6

"Removed" is weaker in modern English than the Greek verb behind it, which was used of deserting a post, defecting, or switching sides. "Gospel" translates euangelion, simply "good news": in ordinary usage the announcement of a military victory or the accession of an emperor, the kind of report a herald would carry.

1:7

The King James uses "another" twice, but the Greek uses two different words. In verse 6 it is heteros, another of a different kind; here it is allos, another of the same kind. The sense is that what they are turning to is a different sort of thing altogether, and not a second example of good news at all.

1:8

"Accursed" translates anathema, a thing handed over to a deity and so permanently removed from ordinary human use. In Jewish usage it referred to something placed under a ban and devoted to destruction. It is stronger than cursing in the sense of swearing at someone.

1:9

"As we said before" is ambiguous. It may refer back to verse 8, written a moment earlier, or to something Paul had said in person when he was with them.

1:10

"Persuade men" is not persuasion in the sense of winning an argument. The Greek verb here carries the sense of trying to win someone over, to conciliate or get on the right side of them. "Servant" translates doulos, a slave: a person owned by another and belonging entirely to that owner, not a hired worker who could resign.

1:11

"Certify" in 1611 meant to inform or make known. It did not mean to guarantee or to issue a certificate. "Not after man" means not according to a human source or standard.

1:12

"The revelation of Jesus Christ" is ambiguous in the Greek in the same way it is in English. It can mean the revelation that came from Jesus Christ, with Jesus as the one doing the revealing, or the revelation whose content was Jesus Christ, with Jesus as the thing revealed. Both readings are defensible.

1:13

"Conversation" in 1611 meant a person's whole manner of life and public conduct, not talking. "The Jews' religion" translates Ioudaismos, a rare word at the time covering the entire Jewish way of life, loyalties and observances together. "Wasted it" uses "waste" in its older sense of ravaging or laying waste, a word used of an army destroying a city.

1:14

"My equals" means his contemporaries, people of his own age and standing, not people equal to him in ability. "The traditions of my fathers" refers to the accumulated body of ancestral custom and interpretation handed down orally alongside the written law, which the Pharisees in particular held binding.

1:15

"Separated me from my mother's womb" uses the standard language of a prophet's call in the Hebrew scriptures. Isaiah 49:1 and Jeremiah 1:5 describe a commission fixed before birth in almost these words, and a reader in Paul's time would have heard the echo.

1:16

"Heathen" translates ta ethne, "the nations," the ordinary Jewish term for everyone who was not Jewish. It carried no suggestion of being uncivilized or irreligious; "Gentiles" is the usual modern rendering. "Flesh and blood" is a set idiom for human beings as mortal creatures, so "conferred not with flesh and blood" means he consulted no person. "Reveal his Son in me" is ambiguous in the Greek: it can mean to me, within me, or through me to others.

1:17

People always "went up" to Jerusalem regardless of which direction they were traveling from, because the city sits on high ground and because of its standing. "Arabia" does not mean the modern Arabian peninsula. It refers to the kingdom of the Nabateans, whose territory lay south and east of Damascus and reached close to the city itself.

1:18

"To see Peter" translates a verb, historesai, that means to visit someone in order to get information from them, closer to interviewing or consulting than to dropping in. Many early manuscripts read "Cephas" here rather than "Peter"; Cephas is the Aramaic word for rock and Peter is its Greek equivalent, so both are the same name for the same man. The "three years" are counted by the ancient method, in which any part of a year counts as a whole one, so the span could be as little as somewhat over one year.

1:19

The Greek can be read two ways: that James was an apostle and the only one besides Peter whom Paul saw, or that Paul saw no other apostle but did also see James, who was not counted among them. This James is not the disciple James the son of Zebedee, but a brother of Jesus who later led the Jerusalem congregation.

1:20

"Behold, before God, I lie not" is a formal oath formula, swearing with God named as the witness. Writers used it at exactly this kind of point, where a disputed account of their own movements needed backing.

1:21

Syria and Cilicia were neighboring Roman provinces on the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean. Cilicia contained Tarsus, Paul's home city, and its capital was Antioch, so this was familiar ground rather than new territory.

1:22

"Unknown by face" is an idiom meaning they had never met him in person, though they knew of him by reputation. Judea was the region around Jerusalem, the heartland from which the first congregations spread.

1:23

"The faith" here does not mean one person's trust. It means the whole message about Jesus that the believers held to.

1:24

"Glorified God in me" uses "in" the way older English often did, to mean "because of" or "in connection with." The praise is directed at God for what had happened to Paul, not at Paul himself.