Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead.
(Galatians 1:1)
Read: Galatians 1:1-5
Devotion: When you receive a letter or a card in the mail, what do you do? Most adults open the envelope and begin reading the message that the letter contains starting from the beginning. But if you are a child and it’s a birthday card, you usually open it up and scan for money. Then you might read the message.
Too often, believers can come to the Epistles like a child opening their birthday cards. All we care about it is the profit we will get from it rather than cultivating a desire to truly know what the letter says. We see this tendency when we come to the introductions of the New Testament letters. We read them, but we read them quickly to get to the meat of the letter. We don’t care too much about how Paul introduces himself; we just want the truths that make us feel good and the commands that help us live rightly.
Now, God intends for us to get these things from Scripture, and it certainly not a sin to seek out truths that set our heart at peace and look for practical commands to help us in our daily walk with the Lord. The Holy Spirit inspired the Scriptures precisely so that we would come to a saving knowledge of Christ and receive many things for our spiritual benefit!
My intention is not to criticize our desire to gain from the reading of Scripture. If our mindset when we come to the Scriptures is merely what we’ll gain from a reading of it, however, then we are coming to the Scriptures with a lopsided, and potentially dangerous, mindset. When we are focused only on ourselves and what we want, then we won’t have hearts that are ready to receive what is actually in God’s Word. Instead, we will be reading our Bibles with the strong temptation to gloss over things or even to change the meaning of what we’re reading because we don’t initially resonate with it or it makes us uncomfortable. Again, this sort of attitude can be seen in how we view the introductions.
The introductions to the Epistles are not frivolous words to be skipped over because they were only relevant to the original recipients of the letters. They, like the rest of the Scriptures, are the inspired Word of God meant to relay and teach eternal truths to Christ’s people. We do a great disservice to ourselves when we skim past them to get to the ‘important’ parts of the letters, not only because we are missing out on the valuable truths in those introductions contain but also because those introductions help us to understand the rest of the letter.
This is especially the case with Paul’s letters. Paul’s introductions are usually jam-packed with spiritual truths that are relevant to the issues he addresses in the body of the letter. Take, for example, Paul’s letter to the Galatian churches. These were largely Gentile churches that were being bruised and battered by false teachers. These “Judaizers” they’ve been called sought to convince the Galatians that they truly weren’t God’s people unless they become circumcised and started following the Mosaic Law. These false-teachers were teaching a works-based righteousness; a false gospel that, if believed, would sever the Galatian Christians from Christ (Gal 5:4). To accomplish the task of detaching the Galatians from the gospel, the false teachers took aim at Paul’s apostleship and questioned the origin of the message he preached.
With that context, take a look again at how Paul begins his letter to these confused and beleaguered Christians. He made it clear that his apostleship doesn’t have a human origin (v. 1; see Gal 1:12). He didn’t just appear on the scene one day calling himself an apostle. Nor did some obscure teacher grant him the title of apostle. Paul received his apostleship, and all the authority and gifting of that office, through Jesus Christ and God the Father (1:1).
Then look at verse 2. Paul isn’t a rogue Christian peddling a strange doctrine that no one has ever heard of. Instead, all of the brothers who are with him agree with him in the message that the is writing to the Galatians. In verses 3-4 he encourages the Galatian believers with some much-needed gospel truth. Contrary to what they’re being led to believe by the false teachers, God is their Father (v. 3), and Christ gave himself for their sins to deliver them from the present evil age (v. 4). All of this was accomplished according to the will of their God and Father who is worthy of all glory forever (v. 4).
And this is all just scratching the surface. We don’t have the time to properly address these truths in depth, but are you beginning to see how important these introductions are? Let us be people of the Word who value every word in the Word!
Ponder and Pray: Consider what your favorite Epistle introduction is and why. Finish by sharing prayer requests and praying to our God and Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Editor’s Note: For more on Paul’s letter to the Galatians, see Derek Brown’s article, “6 Solid Reasons Why You Can Trust Paul’s Gospel.”