Galatians 1:4 - Printer Friendly

ESV: who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father,

NIV: who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father,

NASB: who gave Himself for our sins so that He might rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father,

CSB: who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.

NLT: Jesus gave his life for our sins, just as God our Father planned, in order to rescue us from this evil world in which we live.

KJV: Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father:

NKJV: who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father,

Paul understood his life to a have a singular purpose. He had been commissioned by Christ to take the message of salvation through Christ to the world. It is not surprising, then, that he includes the simple facts of what he will call "the gospel" at the very beginning of his letter.

Paul has already described Jesus Christ as the person who God the Father raised from the dead. Now he adds to that, building on the greeting from the previous verse. He has wished his readers "grace and peace" from God the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now Paul describes exactly who Jesus Christ is by describing what the Lord did and why He did it.

First, Jesus gave Himself. Paul uses this language about Christ's death on the cross repeatedly in his letters (1 Timothy 2:6; Ephesians 5:25; Titus 2:14). Nobody took Jesus' life from Him against His will. He gave it freely (John 10:17–18). It's true that the Jewish religious leaders called for His death and that the Romans executed Him, but they could not have done so without Jesus' willingness to be sacrificed.

Why was He sacrificed? "For our sins." Jesus gave Himself to the death penalty we earn with our sin (Romans 6:23). He became our substitute on the cross, paying what we owed.

Why did He pay it? In part, He did it "to deliver us from the present evil age." Humanity was trapped in a world built from our own sinful choices. Jesus paid the only exit fee, the ransom, to make it possible for us to escape into a deathless life.

He also gave Himself "according to the will of our God and Father." Jesus' death on the cross was an act of submission to the plan and purpose of God.

Galatians 1:1–5 begins Paul's letter to the Christians in Galatia with a brief greeting. Paul immediately defends the fact that he has been made an apostle of Jesus Christ by the same God that raised Christ from the dead. He is not a ''man- made'' apostle, as his accusers are saying. His authority is genuine. Next, Paul gives a quick, beautiful explanation of the trustworthy gospel that he preaches: Jesus gave Himself for our sins to deliver us from this age of evil according to God's will.

Paul begins his letter to the Galatian churches abruptly, compared to his other writings. He has heard they are deserting the gospel which he preached and they believed: the good news that Jesus died to fully pay for all our sins on the cross. The Judaizers taught that these Gentiles must also follow the law of Moses to be saved and openly questioned Paul's authority. Paul makes the case that he has been made an apostle by Christ, who appeared to him and revealed the truth to him apart from the other apostles.

Galatians 1 begins one of the most-loved books about God's grace in all of Scripture. This and the following chapter detail Paul's biography, as he makes the case that he has been made an apostle by Christ and therefore his message is trustworthy. Chapters 3 and 4 go into depth about exactly what the gospel of God's grace is and why it is true. In chapters 5 and 6, Paul teaches about how Christians should live in the world as people who have received the grace of God through faith in Christ.

Galatians is sometimes called “a short Romans” for its similar themes of justification and sanctification through faith. A group of Christians known as “Judaizers” were preaching a gospel of legalism, rather than grace. Paul’s main purpose in writing the letter to the Galatians was to reiterate the true nature of the gospel: we are justified (made righteous) and sanctified (made more Christlike) through our faith in Jesus Christ alone. This letter was probably written shortly before the church elders in Jerusalem issued their official refutation of the Judaizers, commonly called the Jerusalem Council.