Q. What is the Galatian controversy? Is it saying Christians don’t have to obey the Law anymore?

Q. What is the Galatian controversy? Is it saying Christians don’t have to obey the Law anymore?

A. The book of Galatians is a misunderstood book by many and this is a good question. There are two main themes of Galatians. First, Paul was teaching that gentiles did not have to convert to Judaism to have a place in the Kingdom of G-d and to be saved through ritual circumcision. Second, Paul is not criticizing the written Torah but the Oral additions to it. So, let’s look at the circumcision issue. In the first century, oral traditions were added to the body of Jewish law. This is in violation of Deut. 4.2. These additions made up 95% of Jewish law. One of the additions said that gentiles had to convert to Judaism to be saved, and the sign of that is circumcision. That law was based on several Scriptures in the written Torah, Gen. 17 and Exo. 12. Many today still think a gentile believer needs to be circumcised, citing these same Scriptures and using the same line of thinking as these first century “Judaizers” and my response to that is the same as Paul. G-d clearly showed they did not in Acts 10 with Cornelius. That whole chapter is about how G-d has accepted people and it is not about doing away with the food laws, again a misinterpretation. Peter said the vision he saw was about people, not food (v28). Now there are several terms that need to be clarified in order to understand what Paul was saying in Galatians. When he says “not under the law”, there is no “the” in Greek. It should read “not under law.” It’s the same when he says “works of the law.” It should say “works of law.” Now, when Paul said the gentile believer (or Jewish for that matter) is not under law, or works of law, and knowing that 95 % of the body of Jewish law was oral additions of man, what was he saying? He was saying that the oral law has no authority over a believer. Oral laws were written by men and men makes mistakes, but the written law of G-d was written by G-d and He doesn’t. So, the Galatians did not have to obey man’s laws concerning gentile conversion to Judaism, which included circumcision. G-d had already showed them that gentiles were being saved and filled with the Spirit without circumcision, so why listen to people who say they were lacking in some way. They were already accepted by G-d. To accept circumcision is accepting man’s law and now it becomes a dead work. So, Paul says in Gal. 5.3 that if they accept circumcision according to the oral law additions, they were to obey “the whole law.” When he says the “whole law” he means all the oral additions of man. If you accept it as having authority over you, than accept all of it. G-ds written law was already accepted as having authority, so he has to mean the oral additions here. Also, in Gal. 4.9-10 he says they were turning to the weak and beggarly elements, where they desired to be in “bondage” again by observing days, months, times and years. To suggest that Paul is saying that the L-rds festivals in the Torah are “weak and beggarly” is ignorant and inconsistent on how believers felt towards the written laws of G-d. Again, what Paul is talking about is the additional Jewish festivals, holy days, fasts and feasts in the oral law, not commanded by G-d. Some of these include Chanukah, Purim, the fasts listed in Zech 8, the fast of Esther, the feasts of Acra and Nicanor, the feast of Wood-carrying, the New Year for Tree’s, (actually there were many “new years” in the oral law), semi-public fasts on Monday and Thursday, doubled the opening and closing days of Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. There’s not enough room in this article to list them all, but it was these additions he was alluding to, not what was written in the Scriptures. Paul was angry over the fact that these Galatians started out “in the Spirit” but felt they had to be perfected in the fleshly human additions. He never once hinted that believers were not to obey the written law of G-d found in the Scriptures. I hope this helps.