Imperishable Inheritance

I’ll be lead­ing a study this sum­mer over Paul’s let­ter to the churches at Gala­tia. Gala­tians pro­vides an amaz­ing look into the rela­tion of law/gospel, works of the law, wor­ship in truth, the rela­tion between the Mosaic/Abrahamic Covenants, fruits of the Spirit, the Chris­t­ian life, and much more. But first I need to give you prag­matic details.

This will also be the offi­cial web­site for the study. Through­out the study I will pro­vide mate­ri­als on here that we will exam­ine. Here is ten­ta­tive out­line for the study. The study will span 12 weeks, but the 4th of July we will not meet due to the hol­i­day (I fig­ure most will be out of town and/or with their families).

The first week will be a study over hermeneu­ti­cal method­olo­gies and exe­ge­sis (vs. eise­ge­sis). Here we will study the redemptive-historical hermeneu­tic that Paul uti­lizes par­tic­u­larly in chap­ters 3–4. We will learn the impor­tance of proper exe­ge­sis and expo­si­tional learn­ing this week. It will pro­vide us a frame­work to approach our tex­tual study.

We will then spend a week in overview of the book. We will con­trast var­i­ous the­o­ries on author­ship, con­tent, audi­ence, etc. We will also uncover the char­ac­ter­is­tics and themes of Paul’s writ­ing in this book and com­pare it to his other works; then we start exposit­ing start­ing with Gal 1:1–15. Each suc­ces­sive week will be a selected, the­mat­i­cally con­gru­ent, sec­tion of Galatians.

I will pro­vide var­i­ous jux­ta­po­si­tions on inter­pre­ta­tions of this work. I will also inter­act with doc­tri­nal and prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion of the text (from Paul’s per­spec­tive). The most excit­ing part is that we will look into the New Per­spec­tive on Paul and whether we should aban­don or embrace this doc­trine (hint: the for­mer). This let­ter is packed with doc­trine, and study­ing this book and its doc­tri­nal impli­ca­tions will go hand-in-hand.

There will also be var­i­ous doc­u­ments to down­load and review dur­ing the course of the study. The first doc­u­ment is Gala­tians from the New Amer­i­can Stan­dard Ver­sion. I have cho­sen this ver­sion because I believe it is the best trans­la­tion in Eng­lish from the Crit­i­cal Text of the New Tes­ta­ment. I have it avail­able for down­load with notes pages. Please check the area for other doc­u­ments for download/printing.

But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been cru­ci­fied to me, and I to the world. For nei­ther is cir­cum­ci­sion any­thing, nor uncir­cum­ci­sion, but a new cre­ation. — The Apos­tle Paul (Gal 6:14–15)