TPT The Book of Galatians E-Book

Brian Simmons

• Herausgeber: BroadStreet Publishing Group, LLC
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: The Passionate Life Bible Study Series
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 175

Beschreibung

The book of Galatians proclaims heaven's freedom. Richly steeped in the glorious grace gospel of Jesus Christ, this letter releases us from religious bondage and teaches us to use that freedom to overflow with the fruit of the Holy Spirit.       This 12-lesson study guide on the book of Galatians provides a unique and welcoming opportunity to immerse yourself in God's precious Word as expressed in The Passion Translation®. Begin your journey with a thorough introduction that details the authorship of Galatians, date of composition, first recipients, setting, purpose, central message, and key themes. The lessons then walk you through every portion of the book and include features such as notable verses, historical and cultural background information, definitions of words and language, cross references to other books of the Bible, and character portraits of figures from the Bible and church history.      Enrich your biblical understanding of the book of Galatians, experience God's love for you, and share his heart with others.  

Leseprobe

BroadStreet Publishing® Group, LLC

Savage, Minnesota, USA

BroadStreetPublishing.com

TPT: The Book of Galatians: 12-Lesson Study Guide

Copyright © 2023 BroadStreet Publishing Group

9781424566266 (softcover)

9781424566273 (e-book)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Unless indicated otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from The Passion Translation®, TPT, copyright © 2017, 2018, 2020 by Passion & Fire Ministries, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ThePassionTranslation.com. Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Stock or custom editions of BroadStreet Publishing titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, ministry, fundraising, or sales promotional use. For information, please email [email protected].

General editor: Brian Simmons

Managing editor: William D. Watkins

Writer: Matthew A. Boardwell

Design and typesetting by Garborg Design Works | garborgdesign.com

Printed in China

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Contents

From God’s Heart to Yours

Why I Love the Book of Galatians

Lesson 1The Writer, the Readers, the Problem

Lesson 2Sent Out and Welcomed In

Lesson 3Peter, Paul, and the Rest of Us

Lesson 4How to Arrive at Righteousness

Lesson 5What the Law Did for Us

Lesson 6All God’s Children

Lesson 7Losing Ground

Lesson 8Who’s Your Mama?

Lesson 9Fragile Freedom

Lesson 10The Fruit Fight

Lesson 11The Burdens We Bear

Lesson 12Identifying with the Cross

Appendix Answer Key to Lesson 3 Timeline

Endnotes

From God’s Heart to Yours

“God is love,” says the apostle John, and “Everyone who loves is fathered by God and experiences an intimate knowledge of him” (1 John 4:7). The life of a Christ-follower is, at its core, a life of love—God’s love of us, our love of him, and our love of others and ourselves because of God’s love for us.

And this divine love is reliable, trustworthy, unconditional, other-centered, majestic, forgiving, redemptive, patient, kind, and more precious than anything else we can ever receive or give. It characterizes each person of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and so is as limitless as they are. They love one another with this eternal love, and they reach beyond themselves to us, created in their image with this love.

How do we know such incredible truths? Through the primary source of all else we know about the one God—his Word, the Bible. Of course, God reveals who he is through other sources as well, such as the natural world, miracles, our inner life, our relationships (especially with him), those who minister on his behalf, and those who proclaim him to us and others. But the fullest and most comprehensive revelation we have of God and from him is what he has given us in the thirty-nine books of the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament) and the twenty-seven books of the Christian Scriptures (the New Testament). Together, these sixty-six books present a compelling and telling portrait of God and his dealings with us.

It is these Scriptures that The Passionate Life Bible Study Series is all about. Through these study guides, we—the editors and writers of this series—seek to provide you with a unique and welcoming opportunity to delve more deeply into God’s precious Word, encountering there his loving heart for you and all the others he loves. God wants you to know him more deeply, to love him

more devoutly, and to share his heart with others more frequently and freely. To accomplish this, we have based this study guide series on The Passion Translation of the Bible, which strives to “reintroduce the passion and fire of the Bible to the English reader. It doesn’t merely convey the literal meaning of words. It expresses God’s passion for people and his world by translating the original, life-changing message of God’s Word for modern readers.” It has been created to “kindle in you a burning desire to know the heart of God, while impacting the church for years to come.”1

In each study guide, you will find an introduction to the Bible book it covers. There you will gain information about that Bible book’s authorship, date of composition, first recipients, setting, purpose, central message, and key themes. Each lesson following the introduction will take a portion of that Bible book and walk you through it so you will learn its content better while experiencing and applying God’s heart for your own life and encountering ways you can share his heart with others. Along the way, you will come across a number of features we have created that provide opportunities for more life application and growth in biblical understanding.

Experience God’s Heart

This feature focuses questions on personal application. It will help you live out God’s Word and to bring the Bible into your world in fresh, exciting, and relevant ways.

Share God’s Heart

This feature will help you grow in your ability to share with other people what you learn and apply in a given lesson. It provides guidance on using the lesson to grow closer to others and to enrich your fellowship with others. It also points the way to enabling you to better listen to the stories of others so you can bridge the biblical story with their stories.

The Backstory

This feature provides ancient historical and cultural background that illuminates Bible passages and teachings. It deals with then-pertinent religious groups, communities, leaders, disputes, business trades, travel routes, customs, nations, political factions, ancient measurements and currency…in short, anything historical or cultural that will help you better understand what Scripture says and means.

Word Wealth

This feature provides definitions for and other illuminating information about key terms, names, and concepts, and how different ancient languages have influenced the biblical text. It also provides insight into the different literary forms in the Bible, such as prophecy, poetry, narrative history, parables, and letters, and how knowing the form of a text can help you better interpret and apply it. Finally, this feature highlights the most significant passages in a Bible book. You may be encouraged to memorize these verses or keep them before you in some way so you can actively hide God’s Word in your heart.

Digging Deeper

This feature explains the theological significance of a text or the controversial issues that arise and mentions resources you can use to help you arrive at your own conclusions. Another way to dig deeper into the Word is by looking into the life of a biblical character or another person from church history, showing how that man or woman incarnated a biblical truth or passage. For instance, Jonathan Edwards was well known for his missions work among native American Indians and for his intellectual prowess in articulating the Christian faith, Florence Nightingale for the reforms she brought about in healthcare, Irenaeus for his fight against heresy, Billy Graham for his work in evangelism, Moses for the strength God gave him to lead the Hebrews and receive and communicate the law, and Deborah for her work as a judge in Israel. This feature introduces to you figures from the past who model what it looks like to experience God’s heart and share his heart with others.

The Extra Mile

While The Passion Translation’s notes are extensive, sometimes students of Scripture like to explore more on their own. In this feature, we provide you with opportunities to glean more information from a Bible dictionary, a Bible encyclopedia, a reliable Bible online tool, another ancient text, and the like. Here you will learn how you can go the extra mile on a Bible lesson. And not just in study either. Reflection, prayer, discussion, and applying a passage in new ways provide even more opportunities to go the extra mile. Here you will find questions to answer and applications to make that will require more time and energy from you—if and when you have them to give.

As you can see above, each of these features has a corresponding icon so you can quickly and easily identify them.

You will find other helps and guidance through the lessons of these study guides, including thoughtful questions, application suggestions, and spaces for you to record your own reflections, answers, and action steps. Of course, you can also write in your own journal, notebook, computer document, or other resource, but we have provided you with space for your convenience.

Also, each lesson will direct you toward the introductory material and numerous notes provided in The Passion Translation. There each Bible book contains a number of aids supplied to help you better grasp God’s words and his incredible love, power, knowledge, plans, and so much more. We want you to get the most out of your Bible study, especially using it to draw you closer to the One who loves you most.

Finally, at the end of each lesson you’ll find a section called “Talking It Out.” This contains questions and exercises for application that you can share, answer, and apply with your spouse, a friend, a coworker, a Bible study group, or any other individuals or groups who would like to walk with you through this material. As Christians, we gather together to serve, study, worship, sing, evangelize, and a host of other activities. We grow together, not just on our own. This section will give you ample opportunities to engage others with some of the content of each lesson so you can work it out in community.

We offer all of this to support you in becoming an even more faithful and loving disciple of Jesus Christ. A disciple in the ancient world was a student of her teacher, a follower of his master. Students study, and followers follow. Jesus’ disciples are to sit at his feet and listen and learn and then do what he tells them and shows them to do. We have created The Passionate Life Bible Study Series to help you do what a disciple of Jesus is called to do.

So go.

Read God’s words.

Hear what he has to say in them and through them.

Meditate on them.

Hide them in your heart.

Display their truths in your life.

Share their truths with others.

Let them ignite Jesus’ passion and light in all you say and do. Use them to help you fulfill what Jesus called his disciples to do: “Now wherever you go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And teach them to faithfully follow all that I have commanded you. And never forget that I am with you every day, even to the completion of this age” (Matthew 28:19–20).

And through all of this, let Jesus’ love nourish your heart and allow that love to overflow into your relationships with others (John 15:9–13). For it was for love that Jesus came, served, died, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven. This love he gives us. And this love he wants us to pass along to others.

Why I Love the Book of Galatians

A mighty wave of freedom is sweeping over the church today. It is a freedom purchased for us at the cross of Jesus. His blood, his nails, and his suffering become a doorway into true spiritual freedom. I love the book of Galatians because it presents to me and to every other believer the wonderful, joyous freedom of Christ. He has set us free from death, sin, vanity, and demonic powers. Our soul-freedom cannot be made more complete or perfect. We cannot better what Christ has done for us. Caution: reading Galatians may make you dance with joy!

Paul didn’t wait long after his conversion before he realized how the churches of Galatia needed this freedom. They had been entangled with their past relationship with the law and the traditions of their ancestors. They needed the wise words of Paul to show them how they could step into the full freedom of the gospel. It excites me to know that when I read Galatians, I may be reading the first book Paul wrote.

I love Galatians because it also gives me a glimpse into the life and ministry of the apostle Paul himself. Paul was twice blinded: once to the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and then blinded again by the revelation that he had been persecuting Jesus, not just his followers. Paul gives us other details in Galatians that we read nowhere else in his writings. For example, he went into the desert to meet with God after his conversion. He may have even journeyed to Mount Sinai—the very place where Moses gave the law—to learn from God firsthand about heaven’s freedom in the gospel.

The book of Galatians is a gospel presentation of God’s endless grace. This grace-filled gospel brings heaven’s freedom into our lives—freedom to live for God and serve one another, as well as freedom from religious bondage. We can thank God today that Paul’s gospel is still being preached and heaven’s freedom is available to every believer. We are free to soar even higher than keeping religious laws; we have a grace-righteousness that places us at the right hand of the throne of God, not as servants, but as sons and daughters of the Most High. That’s why I love this book.

But perhaps my favorite theme in Galatians is the life of the Spirit. The fruit of the Holy Spirit is that glorious relationship we can have, not with keeping rules and traditions, but with keeping in step with the Holy Spirit. He will conquer every residue of our old life, bring us into the truth of the gospel, and produce the fruit of Christ’s life in us. The Holy Spirit wants to meet you and give you a taste of heaven’s freedom as you read through this study guide. Let him speak to you. Let him lead you into the deeper truth of the glorious freedom Christ has given to us.

LESSON 1

The Writer, the Readers, the Problem

(Galatians1:1–10)

“Stop!”

“Don’t take another step!”

“Look out!”

Reading those words, you can immediately think of situations where they might apply. Situations with genuine imminent danger, maybe even life-threatening circumstances. Situations that demand sharp, maybe even harsh, confrontation, certainly not nuance or politeness. A mother calling out to her young children as they run toward a busy street. A police officer waving down a car due to a serious road hazard ahead. A scout leader guiding his troop along a flooded riverbank. A driver-training instructor who sees danger before the student does.

Or maybe these could be the words of an apostle, firing off a sternly worded warning to new churches full of new Christians. That’s Paul’s letter to the Galatians.

As we embark on a study of Galatians, we must note the urgency of its message. When Paul penned it, there was no time for pleasantries or comfort. The fledgling churches of Galatia were facing a spiritual emergency, and the outcome would be eternal. Paul wrote to confront, to warn, and to correct these new Christians who were naively embracing false teaching that threatened to corrupt the pure message of Jesus’ good news. These dangerous ideas were already swaying the members of the new church, so it appeared to Paul that the infant Christian movement in Galatia was being smothered in its cradle.

Through our study of Galatians, we will learn what this false teaching was, why it was so deadly, and how Christians must remain vigilant against it today. In doing so, we will also see clearly the pure, uncorrupted good news for everyone. We will relish its declaration of radical grace for both personal salvation and practical, godly living.

Who Wrote This Letter?

•Who penned the letter to the Galatians, and how did he describe himself (Galatians 1:1)?

•Where are Paul’s intended readers? How does he describe them (v. 2)?

•In his initial greeting, he blesses his readers, hoping they will experience what two spiritual realities?

In the New Testament, only a small subset of the Christian community received the title of apostle. In the broadest sense, it means anyone who is sent out with a message. In the narrower, more common biblical sense, it refers to the hand-picked men whom Jesus himself sent out to disciple the nations. As we will see, Paul believed he was this type of apostle. Here, Paul made it clear what he meant when he told us who was doing his sending.

•Paul insists that his apostleship is from Jesus himself and not merely from another well-respected Christian. Why do you think this is important to establish from the start? What difference might it make to Paul’s readers?

There was no one better to write this passionate defense of the true gospel than the apostle Paul. Because of his religious background, he once promoted some of the same anti-gospel ideas. As a devout Jew, he was a life-long student of the Old Testament (Acts 22:3). He had been a member of the Pharisees, an especially disciplined order of Jews who championed strict adherence to the law of Moses (Philippians 3:5–6).

When some Jews began to preach the good news about Jesus rising from the dead and God’s free gift of salvation through him, the pre-converted Paul was furious. He was convinced that this new teaching was heresy and had to be stamped out. He persecuted these Jesus followers wherever he could find them, raiding their homes and meetings to drag them off for punishment (Acts 8:3; 22:4–5). There was no greater enemy of Jesus’ message than Paul.

Then Jesus met him. That’s right! The resurrected Jesus personally confronted Paul while he was on his way to persecute some more Christians in Damascus (22:6–13). From that moment on, the man who had been the unrivaled scourge of Christians became one of their chief spokesmen (9:20–22). More than that, his conversion included a calling to take the pure good news of Jesus to non-Jews too (22:14–16). Non-Jews like the Galatians.

Who Received This Letter?

Paul wrote many letters to believers to whom he had preached the good news. Sometimes he sent his letters to individuals like Titus and Philemon. Sometimes his letters went to believers in specific cities like Thessalonica or Corinth. This letter to the Galatians was for all the Christians living in the region, no matter to which local group of believers they belonged.

•Compare Galatians 1:2 to 1:13. Why do you think Paul wrote about the churches and the church? Which is bigger, the church or the churches? What is the difference?

   THE BACKSTORY

Galatia was a province of Rome that encompassed much of what we think of today as the Central Anatoly Peninsula of Turkey. Ankara, Turkey’s modern capital, was an important city even then. It was the provincial capital located in northern Galatia. While Paul may have traveled that far north during his ministry, the named towns and villages of Galatia where he preached the gospel and strengthened the churches were all in its extreme south.

Paul’s Recorded Ministry in the Region of South Galatia

Acts Passages

Town/City

Key Events

Response/Results

13:14–52

14:1–7

14:8–20

14:20–23

16:1–6

18:23

When Was Galatians Written?

Galatians is the first of the shorter letters in the New Testament (placed after the long ones to the Romans and Corinthians). It was almost certainly the first to be written chronologically, probably during the long period of time that Paul stayed in Antioch after his return from his first ministry tour of Galatia (Acts 14:26–28), likely sometime between AD 47 and 49.

A handful of biblical scholars think Paul may have written the letter to the Galatians later in his ministry, perhaps after his second missionary journey, but the vast majority opt for a much earlier date.2 Among the reasons are these:

1.Paul encountered the Galatians on his first missionary journey before he ministered in the other cities that would receive his other epistles.

2.His “how quickly” comment in Galatians 1:6 indicates that he is addressing a crisis that cropped up shortly after his initial work in Galatia.

3.The issue at stake throughout the letter is the Judaizing of gentile believers (more about this shortly). This issue raged for a relatively short period of time at the beginning of gentile outreach until the apostles and other leaders in Jerusalem gave a definitive answer to the conflict at the Jerusalem Council around AD 50 (see Acts 15).

4.