OK, ya’ll. IT’S TIME.
We’re going to start our Bible study journey by getting into one of Paul’s letters to the early churches in Galatia. The purpose of this letter (or “epistle”) was to address the rumors he’d heard about the Christians there.
Why did Paul write to the Galatians?
Paul had heard that there were people who were abandoning the gospel of Jesus—the good news that Jesus died to fully pay the penalty for our sins (Romans 3:23; John 3:16-17).
Why were the Galatian believers forgetting the gospel?
Because they were confused by other teachings they heard that contradicted what Paul had been teaching them about salvation through God’s grace alone.
Jewish believers were insisting that anyone new to the faith must adhere to their own religious practices, the laws from Moses, and other rules based on Jewish traditions.
Why was this teaching bad?
Some chose to follow these requirements, which was likely a source of much frustration, shame, and anxiety. Others just went the other way and decided they could do whatever they wanted because of God’s grace.
So this caused a lot of the new believers to fall into a wide pitfall trap with legalism on one side and absolute lawless debauchery on the other. Paul knew he had to intervene!
NEXT TIME: Galatians 1:1-5
Every Wednesday, I’ll start a new topic where we can discuss each section as we work our way through Galatians. Next time, we’ll talk about the first 5 verses of Galatians 1. [posted]
Read ahead if you like so you can share your thoughts in the future, or just read it in the next posted topic and join in the conversation.
If you have any questions or comments about Galatians or anything related to our 412teens Bible Studies here, please feel free to reply to this topic.