Galatians looks deceptively easy to preach. Its great declarations seem almost ready-made for sermons: “a person is not justified by works of the Law,” “I have been crucified with Christ,” “there is neither Jew nor Greek,” “for freedom Christ has set us free,” “the fruit of the Spirit is,” and “neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything, but new creation.” Yet precisely because these sentences have acquired such enormous theological lives, Galatians is unusually vulnerable to being preached as a collection of Christian slogans detached from the argument that gave them meaning.

The preacher can also inherit a distorted version of the controversy before opening the letter. Paul’s opponents become people trying to earn heaven by doing good works; Judaism becomes a religion of legalism; Paul becomes an early Protestant protesting against an ancient Catholicism; Galatians 2 becomes a treatise on individual conversion; Galatians 3:28 becomes detached from Abraham and baptism; Hagar becomes “Judaism”; and chapters 5–6 become the practical application after the real theology has finished. Almost every one of those simplifications contains enough partial truth to make it persuasive while simultaneously reducing the letter.

A responsible preaching method therefore needs a deliberate bridge: whole-letter reading → close exegesis → historical and rhetorical situation → Paul’s scriptural and covenantal reasoning → Christ, cross, Spirit, and new creation → canonical and biblical-theological synthesis → contemporary proclamation. Skipping the historical stage turns first-century Jewish-Gentile conflict into abstract legalism. Skipping biblical theology makes Abraham, Sinai, Isaiah, inheritance, sonship, and promise mere background. Skipping participation and the Spirit makes justification strangely detached from the life Paul expects his churches to embody. Skipping the final pastoral movement produces a lecture rather than a sermon.

My governing preaching thesis is therefore broader than “Galatians teaches justification by faith,” while certainly including that truth: God has acted decisively in the crucified and risen Christ to rescue people from the present evil age, fulfil the promise to Abraham, create one family apart from Gentile submission to the Mosaic covenant, give that family the Spirit of the Son, form Christ within them, and liberate them for a cruciform life of faith working through love as participants in God’s new creation. Individual sermons should not force every clause of that synthesis into every paragraph, but a series through Galatians should eventually allow the congregation to see how those realities belong together.

Begin by Reading Galatians as One Letter

Before consulting a commentary, I would read Galatians aloud from beginning to end. It takes little time, and the effect is disproportionately valuable. One immediately hears things that disappear in paragraph-by-paragraph study: the repeated language of calling, gospel, Gentiles, cross, faith, promise, slavery, freedom, flesh, Spirit, circumcision, persecution, boasting, and Christ. One also hears Paul’s emotional movement from astonishment to autobiography, argument, personal appeal, allegory, warning, exhortation, and final handwritten challenge.

Jon Jordan is particularly useful pedagogically here because he repeatedly asks readers to return to the whole epistle rather than allowing detailed study to fragment it. That is excellent advice for preachers. Prepare each sermon from the passage in front of you, but reread the whole letter often enough that the sermon remains visibly part of Paul’s one pastoral intervention.

This also guards against preaching the famous verses as though Paul composed them independently. Galatians 2:20 follows the Antioch conflict and Paul’s argument concerning justification. Galatians 3:28 concludes a movement through Law, faith, baptism, Christ, Abraham, and inheritance. Galatians 5:1 emerges from the slavery-freedom argument of chapter 4. The fruit of the Spirit answers the question of what freedom actually produces. New creation in 6:15 brings the letter’s earlier language of cross, flesh, circumcision, and transformed existence to a climax.

A sermon series should therefore develop a cumulative vocabulary. When “freedom” appears in chapter 5, the congregation should already hear the slavery of chapters 3–4. When Paul says “new creation” in chapter 6, they should hear the rescue from the present evil age announced in 1:4. When the Spirit appears in chapter 5, they should remember receiving the Spirit in 3:2–5 and the Spirit of the Son crying “Abba” in 4:6. Good sequential preaching allows Paul himself gradually to teach the congregation how to hear Paul.

Read Paul’s Anger as Persuasion, Not Loss of Control

Galatians is emotionally intense. Paul expresses astonishment, calls his readers foolish, curses rival gospels, asks whether he has become their enemy, wishes his opponents would mutilate themselves, and ends by directing attention to his scarred body. A preacher can easily reproduce the temperature without explaining its function, leaving the congregation with a picture of an irritable apostle who becomes angry whenever doctrinal formulations differ.

Charles Cousar offers an important correction by reading Galatians primarily as deliberative rhetoric. Paul speaks about the past, but his goal is future action: the Galatians must not be circumcised and must continue living as free, faithful, Spirit-led people. Paul’s anger therefore belongs within an urgent act of persuasion. His autobiography, Scripture arguments, questions, affection, sarcasm, warnings, and exhortations all serve that pastoral purpose.

This greatly improves preaching because chapters 5–6 no longer appear to be “application after theology.” If Galatians is deliberative, Paul has been heading toward action from the beginning. Justification, Abraham, the Law, sonship, Hagar and Sarah, Spirit, and cross are theological arguments designed to enable a congregation to decide what kind of people they are going to be.

The pulpit should imitate Paul’s seriousness without merely copying his invective. There are occasions when a gospel distortion should be named forcefully, but Paul’s intensity is not permission for preachers to turn every secondary theological disagreement into Galatians 1:8–9. The preacher must first demonstrate why the issue actually touches the gospel before borrowing the apostle’s rhetorical temperature.

Do Not Turn Paul’s Opponents into Generic Legalists

A historically responsible sermon should resist the familiar picture in which Paul teaches grace while his opponents teach salvation by accumulating good works. The rival missionaries appear much more plausibly to have been Christ-confessing people who valued Israel’s Scriptures and thought that Gentile believers should receive circumcision and enter more fully into the Torah-shaped life of Abraham’s covenant family.

This changes the sermon question. Paul is not merely asking whether humans save themselves or God saves them. He is asking what Gentiles must become in order to belong fully to Abraham’s family. Must Gentiles become Jewish through circumcision and Torah identity, or has God already incorporated them as Gentiles through Christ and the Spirit?

Dunn, Fee, Cousar, Keener, Oakes and Boakye, Martin, and much modern scholarship are useful at this point because they prevent “works of the Law” from being casually paraphrased as “trying hard to be good enough for God.” Paul’s language eventually reaches beyond a few ethnic boundary markers, but circumcision, table fellowship, Jewish-Gentile identity, and covenant membership are not optional historical details. They are part of the crisis that gives Paul’s theology its immediate shape.

The contemporary bridge should then be drawn carefully. The sermon is not “those foolish Jews trusted rituals, and Christians must trust grace.” A more faithful question is: What do we add to Christ as a practical condition for full belonging? Churches can verbally affirm justification by grace while constructing hierarchies based upon ethnicity, education, class, politics, culture, respectability, denominational pedigree, or preferred spiritual practices. That application grows organically from Galatians without making Judaism the negative foil for Christian self-congratulation.

Keep Antioch Attached to Justification

Galatians 2:15–21 is one of the great theological texts of the New Testament, but the preacher should resist beginning at verse 16 as though Paul has suddenly changed from narrative into systematic theology. Peter has withdrawn from table fellowship with Gentile believers. Barnabas and other Jewish Christians have followed. Paul declares that this conduct is not “walking straight according to the truth of the gospel,” and from that concrete breach he moves directly into justification.

This means the doctrine has social visibility. Peter may continue verbally to affirm Christ while his changed table practice communicates that Gentiles occupy a less secure or less complete place unless they accommodate Jewish expectations. Paul regards this as a contradiction of the gospel because how God justifies people determines who can share the table.

Dunn helped modern scholarship recover this ecclesial dimension, while Cousar integrates the narrative and theological sections particularly well. Preaching should preserve both sides. Justification cannot be reduced to table fellowship or group membership; God really acts toward sinners through Christ. Yet justification also cannot be preached as an invisible transaction whose truth has no implications for whom believers recognise as brothers and sisters.

The application is therefore stronger than “do not be hypocritical like Peter.” Peter’s conduct reveals that orthodox confession can be contradicted by communal practice. A church can preach grace while its structures communicate graded belonging. The sermon should ask whether our tables, leadership, friendships, expectations, and cultural assumptions embody the gospel we claim to believe.

Preach Pistis Christou Without Making the Sermon Depend on Solving It

Galatians 2:16 and 2:20 contain one of the most famous grammatical disputes in Pauline interpretation: does pistis Christou refer to faith in Christ or the faithfulness of Christ? Cousar favours Christ’s faithfulness, while many major commentators retain the objective reading. The preacher should understand the issue but probably should not make an ordinary congregational sermon revolve around a technical genitive debate unless the audience can genuinely benefit from it.

The theological gain survives either decision. If “faith in Christ” is preferred, that faith responds to God’s prior action in the Son who loved and gave himself. If “Christ’s faithfulness” is preferred, Paul foregrounds the obedient self-giving of Christ while human believing remains necessary elsewhere in the passage. Neither reading permits “faith” to become the superior human achievement replacing the inferior achievement of Law-keeping.

Oakes’s relational account offers another useful homiletical insight. Pistis is not merely a momentary cognitive act occurring at conversion. Christian existence is lived in continuing relationship with the living Christ. Galatians 2:20 therefore moves naturally from crucifixion with Christ to a new life whose present existence is defined by relation to the Son.

The sermon should consequently direct assurance away from faith’s psychological quality and toward Christ. The central Christian claim is not “I believe hard enough,” but that God’s Son loved and gave himself, that believers have been brought into relation with him, and that their continuing life is now lived within that relation.

Let Abraham, Sinai, and Christ Give Galatians 3–4 Its Biblical-Theological Shape

Galatians 3–4 is frequently preached as a timeless contrast between two religious principles: law versus grace, works versus faith, human effort versus divine gift. Those contrasts contain truth, but Paul himself repeatedly reasons historically. Abraham receives promise; the Law comes 430 years later; the Law operates until the seed; the paidagōgos has a temporary role; faith comes; heirs move from minority to maturity; and the Son arrives in the fullness of time.

T. David Gordon’s covenant-historical reading is particularly useful here. His strongest insight is that “promise” and “Law” frequently function within Paul’s contrast of the Abrahamic and Sinaitic administrations, while the coming of Christ creates the new-covenant situation in which Gentiles receive the promised inheritance. I would not turn every occurrence of nomos into a technical synonym for “Sinai covenant,” but Gordon makes the preacher take Paul’s chronology seriously.

Matthew Harmon then widens the scriptural field. Abraham, the nations, inheritance, sonship, Isaiah, barren Zion, Spirit, and new creation form a biblical-theological network. Paul is not escaping Israel’s Scriptures; he is arguing from them concerning what God’s promises have become in the Messiah and among the nations.

A sermon should therefore avoid saying simply, “The Old Testament was Law, but Jesus brought grace.” Abraham’s promise precedes Sinai, the Law belongs to God’s own dealings with Israel, and Paul uses the Law and Prophets themselves to explain why Gentiles need not come under Sinai. The redemptive-historical claim is subtler and richer: the Mosaic administration has a genuine but temporally bounded role within a larger promise that reaches its messianic and multinational fulfilment in Christ and the Spirit.

Preserve the Apocalyptic Force of “Present Evil Age” and “New Creation”

Covenant history alone does not exhaust Paul’s language. Martyn’s great contribution is to remind preachers that Galatians describes something more dramatic than the orderly maturation of one religious administration into another. Christ gives himself to rescue from the present evil age, flesh and Spirit stand in conflict, enslaving powers dominate human existence, and the letter concludes with new creation.

Martyn can push this antithesis too far, especially when Torah itself approaches the status of an enslaving cosmic power. Yet the preacher should not solve that problem by domesticating Paul’s apocalyptic language. Christ has not merely supplied clarification concerning an existing religious system; something eschatologically decisive has happened that changes the world believers inhabit.

The best biblical-theological preaching allows salvation history and apocalypse to correct one another. Gordon and Harmon remind us that Christ fulfils a promise-bearing history; Martyn reminds us that fulfilment is not merely predictable continuity. The Messiah’s coming, cross, resurrection, and gift of the Spirit constitute God’s decisive intervention against the old age.

This provides a powerful contemporary bridge. The gospel is not merely spiritual advice for improving life inside an unchanged world. Christian proclamation announces that another order has begun in Christ, and therefore identities, loyalties, moral practices, fears, and social boundaries that appeared ultimate can no longer claim ultimate authority.

Preach the Spirit as Evidence, Presence, and Power

Galatians is one of the New Testament’s great letters about the Holy Spirit, even though it is rarely introduced that way. Paul’s first sustained appeal to the Galatians’ own experience asks how they received the Spirit. God continues to work among them by the Spirit. The Spirit of the Son cries “Abba” in their hearts. Christians walk by, are led by, bear the fruit of, keep in step with, and sow to the Spirit.

Gordon Fee is indispensable for recovering this dimension. The recipients are already believers who possess the Spirit; they are not pagans asking how to enter Christianity. Paul therefore challenges their attempt to achieve completion by “flesh” after having begun by the Spirit. Circumcision cannot supply a covenantal completeness absent from people to whom God has already given his eschatological Spirit.

Oakes and Boakye deepen this by relating the Spirit to the living Christ. The Spirit is the Spirit of God’s Son; Christ lives in Paul; believers inhabit Christ and Christ acts within them through his Spirit. The Christian life is therefore not loyalty to a dead founder whose principles continue after him but participation in the life of the risen Messiah.

When preaching Galatians 5, the fruit of the Spirit should therefore not be converted into nine character traits Christians must manufacture with more determination. The text is about what God’s new-age presence produces as believers walk by the Spirit. Application certainly involves intentional obedience, but the grammar of the gospel remains gift before achievement, presence before fruit.

Take Paul’s Language of Regression Seriously

Neil Martin brings an especially useful preaching insight to Galatians 3–5 by focusing on the language of going back. Gentile believers formerly served beings that were not gods. How, then, can adopting Jewish observances count as returning again to their previous slavery? The sermon should not simply glide over that question.

Martin’s proposal is that practices can carry learned religious associations. Jewish Christ-followers might observe calendars, purity practices, vows, or other religious customs while understanding them within Israel’s covenantal monotheism and faith in Christ. Gentiles whose habits had been formed through pagan systems of religious reciprocity might encounter outwardly similar practices and reactivate old assumptions concerning how humans secure divine favour.

Whether the complete historical reconstruction convinces or not, the pastoral principle deserves serious attention. A practice cannot always be interpreted apart from the history of the person practising it. Something spiritually harmless to a mature believer can become spiritually destructive to another person because it reconnects them to an old system of fear, control, merit, superstition, or dependency.

That contemporary application should be handled carefully because the sermon is not permission to declare every traditional Christian practice legalistic. Martin’s point is almost the opposite: identical practices can mean different things within different webs of belief. The preacher should ask not merely, “Is this practice permitted?” but “What conception of God and grace does this practice reinforce in these particular people?”

Preach Baptismal Identity as Unity Without Forced Sameness

Galatians 3:26–29 should not be treated as an inspirational equality slogan accidentally inserted into an argument about justification. Paul has moved through Abraham, promise, Law, faith, sonship, baptism, and Christ to explain who the Galatian Gentiles now are. They are children of God, have been baptised into Christ, have put on Christ, belong to Christ, and therefore are Abraham’s offspring and heirs according to promise.

Oakes and Boakye make the declaration of “neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female” much more central than many commentaries do. Their phrase unity in diversity captures an important point. Paul does not solve the Jew-Gentile conflict by requiring Gentiles to become culturally Jewish, nor does he require Jews to stop being Jews so that everyone can become culturally Gentile.

Carr’s work on clothing and transformed selfhood adds useful conceptual depth. Putting on Christ reorganises human identity without annihilating every social distinction. Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female continue to exist as embodied social realities, but those distinctions can no longer govern access to Christ, Abraham’s inheritance, or status within God’s family.

The pulpit should therefore avoid both extremes. Galatians 3:28 does not imply that creation, embodiment, culture, or every social difference becomes meaningless; neither may it be reduced to purely “spiritual equality” that leaves domination untouched. The gospel creates one community in which real differences cannot become grounds for graded belonging.

Preach Hagar and Sarah Without Making Judaism the Villain

Galatians 4:21–31 is perhaps the passage in the letter most likely to be preached in a historically careless and ethically damaging way. The conventional Christian contrast is easy to state: Hagar equals Sinai, Judaism, Law, slavery, and earthly Jerusalem; Sarah equals Christianity, grace, freedom, and heavenly Jerusalem. Once framed that way, the sermon can quickly become a declaration that Christianity has displaced a failed Jewish religion.

That is already historically problematic because Paul himself is Jewish, his Scriptures are Israel’s Scriptures, and the conflict concerns Gentiles being urged by Jewish Christ-followers to take on circumcision. Cousar and other interpreters rightly insist that the passage belongs inside an intra-movement dispute concerning Gentile inclusion rather than a later contest between two separate world religions called Christianity and Judaism.

Ryan Heinsch now presses the point much further. His study of Genesis and Second Temple Jewish traditions argues that Hagar remains a foreign, non-Jewish figure, and he proposes that Paul allegorically makes her the covenantal mother of enslaved Gentiles. On that reading, the Galatians themselves risk returning to a Hagar-like condition of slavery; the passage is not Paul assigning Jewish people to Hagar’s line.

Several parts of Heinsch’s proposal remain contestable, particularly his handling of apo Sinai and the textual problem in 4:25a, so I would not preach the entire reconstruction as established fact. The homiletical correction is more secure: do not preach Hagar as though Paul has simply declared Jews enslaved and Christians free. Establish what the text actually says, acknowledge the interpretive difficulty, keep the Gentile Galatians in the centre of the warning, and allow the passage to confront the congregation’s own temptation to return to slavery.

Let Persecution and Suffering Belong to Participation in Christ

John Anthony Dunne recovers another strand frequently left scattered across Galatians. Paul may refer to the Galatians’ suffering in 3:4; 4:29 describes persecution; Paul says in 5:11 that he remains persecuted because of the cross; 6:12 says the circumcision advocates want to avoid persecution for Christ’s cross; and 6:17 ends with Paul bearing the “marks of Jesus” on his body.

Dunne interprets these references through participation in Christ. The cross is not only an event that accomplishes salvation for believers but also shapes the identity of those incorporated into the crucified Messiah. Paul has been crucified with Christ, believers have put on Christ, the flesh is crucified, the world and Paul are crucified to one another, and the apostle’s bodily scars visibly correspond to the Messiah whose gospel he proclaims.

The preacher must guard this theme carefully. Suffering is not intrinsically holy, abuse should never be spiritualised, and Christians must not be told that victimisation proves faithfulness. Dunne himself does not make suffering the basis of union with Christ; rather, in the particular Galatian controversy, avoiding the scandal and social cost of the cross is one reason circumcision becomes attractive.

The contemporary bridge is therefore about allegiance rather than glorifying pain. What compromises become attractive when faithful identification with Christ becomes socially costly? Paul’s answer is not to seek suffering but to refuse to exchange the cross for a more respectable identity when faithfulness demands endurance.

Preach Freedom as Liberation for Love, Not Autonomous Choice

“For freedom Christ has set us free” sounds extraordinarily contemporary, which makes it extraordinarily easy to mishear. Paul’s freedom is not the modern sovereign self finally released to determine its own meaning. Only a few verses later, the people who have been called to freedom are commanded paradoxically to become slaves to one another through love.

Fee, deSilva, Cousar, Keown, and others are particularly useful because they keep Spirit and community inside the definition of freedom. Freedom from the Mosaic covenant as the defining structure of Gentile belonging does not mean freedom from obedience, moral formation, responsibility, or community. The alternative is not Law versus ethical emptiness but Law versus the Spirit-generated life of God’s new people.

The command to love one’s neighbour also complicates simplistic preaching about Paul rejecting the Law. Paul can make severe claims concerning life “under Law” and then say that the whole Law is fulfilled through love. The preacher should allow that tension to stand long enough for the congregation to see that Paul’s question is not whether God cares about holiness but how God creates the holy people the Law itself points toward.

Galatians 5–6 therefore gives Christian freedom a surprisingly communal shape: love, patience, gentleness, restoration, bearing burdens, sharing material goods, perseverance in doing good, and concern for the household of faith. Freedom reaches maturity not when no one can tell me what to do but when the Spirit makes me capable of giving myself for another person.

Let Christ Being “Formed in You” Connect Gospel and Transformation

Galatians 4:19 deserves more theological and homiletical attention than it often receives: Paul is again in labour until Christ is formed in the Galatians. Frederick David Carr makes this expression central to his account of human transformation because it joins other remarkable statements concerning crucifixion with Christ, clothing with Christ, slavery becoming sonship, crucifying flesh, and new creation.

Carr’s major contribution is to show that Paul does not imagine salvation as an unchanged autonomous person receiving a new legal status and then independently attempting improved behaviour. Relationship with Christ, the Spirit, baptism, community, the old and new ages, bodily practices, and moral action all contribute to the identity of the transformed person. The believer remains a recognisable self, yet the governing conditions of that self’s existence have changed.

That insight prevents a false choice between justification and transformation. Galatians certainly insists that Gentiles do not establish their righteous standing through Torah observance. Yet the same Paul can say “Christ lives in me,” describe believers as clothed with Christ, labour until Christ is formed in them, and expect the Spirit to produce observable fruit.

The sermon should therefore retain Paul’s order. Transformation does not become an additional work by which people secure the inheritance. It is the outworking of the new existence God has already created in Christ and the Spirit. Grace does not merely change God’s verdict over an untouched person; it begins changing the kind of person who lives beneath that verdict.

Let New Creation Be the Horizon of the Whole Letter

Galatians 6:15 is too important to be treated as one final Pauline flourish before the benediction. “Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; what matters is new creation” answers a controversy that has occupied the entire letter. The rival teachers boast in circumcised flesh; Paul boasts in the cross; Paul and the world have become crucified to one another; and the old ethnic badge is relativised before God’s eschatological act.

Martyn rightly gives new creation cosmic scope. Carr adds anthropological scope: the new creation generates new forms of selfhood and moral existence. Oakes and Boakye add communal scope: the new life of the risen Christ enables a unity in which ethnic differences no longer divide God’s family. Fee adds pneumatological scope: the Spirit is already the experienced power of the age to come.

These are not four competing sermons. Together they show why Paul’s final claim is so large. The gospel changes the believer’s relation to God, the covenantal basis of belonging, the power governing moral life, the boundaries of the community, and the world within which all those relationships are interpreted.

A final sermon in a Galatians series should therefore resist ending merely with “stop being legalistic.” Paul’s horizon is much more positive. God is creating a people whose boast is the cross, whose life is the Spirit, whose unity is in Christ, whose freedom becomes love, and whose existence already belongs to the new creation.

High-Yield Passage Bridges for Preaching Galatians

Galatians 1:1–10 — Gospel, Grace, and Rescue from the Present Evil Age

Begin with the remarkable density of the opening. God raises Jesus from the dead, Christ gives himself for sins, the purpose is rescue from the present evil age, and all of this belongs to the will of God the Father. Before Paul says anything about justification or circumcision, the gospel has already been framed christologically and apocalyptically.

Martyn is especially useful for preserving the cosmic scale, while Cousar helps explain why the abrupt move from greeting to astonishment functions rhetorically. The Galatians are not merely considering an alternative denomination; Paul thinks the rival message distorts the one gospel because it changes the significance of what God has already done in Christ.

The pulpit bridge should therefore begin with gospel before error. Christian preaching is not first a catalogue of religious dangers but announcement of God’s action. Only after the congregation has seen the rescue accomplished through Christ does Paul’s severity toward “another gospel” become intelligible.

Galatians 1:11–2:14 — Paul’s Story as Evidence of the Gospel’s Power and Freedom

Paul’s autobiography should not become a sermon series about leadership credentials. His former persecution, divine revelation, Gentile calling, limited early contact with Jerusalem, later meeting with the recognised pillars, refusal to circumcise Titus, and confrontation with Peter together demonstrate the independence and practical implications of his gospel.

Cousar is especially helpful here because he does not require a detailed reconstructed accusation against Paul before the narrative makes sense. Paul’s biography itself demonstrates reversal: the persecutor has been transformed into the apostle to the nations, and Jerusalem’s recognition confirms that Gentile believers do not need circumcision added to Paul’s gospel.

Antioch then exposes the practical issue. A sermon can ask whether fear of influential people can make even mature Christian leaders behave in ways that contradict convictions they verbally hold. Peter’s problem is not ignorance alone but failure to enact what the gospel means when real social pressure arrives.

Galatians 2:15–21 — Justification and the Crucified-with-Christ Life

Establish the connection with Antioch before explaining “works of the Law.” Then work carefully through justification, pistis Christou, dying to Law through Law, crucifixion with Christ, Christ living in Paul, and the Son who loved and gave himself. The paragraph simultaneously contains forensic and participatory language and should not be forced to choose between them prematurely.

Moo, Schreiner, Longenecker, and Cousar help with the exegetical questions, while Carr becomes particularly useful once “I have been crucified with Christ” is reached. The declaration is not merely emotional devotional language. Paul describes an identity whose former governing relationship has died and whose present life is constituted through Christ.

Application should therefore move beyond the question “Have you tried to earn your salvation?” The passage asks what truly determines our standing, our belonging, and the life we now live. Christian faith rests upon the self-giving Son and produces an existence increasingly defined by him.

Galatians 3:1–14 — The Crucified Christ, the Spirit, Abraham, Blessing, and Curse

Paul begins this theological section with the Galatians’ experience: Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified and they received the Spirit apart from works of the Law. The argument then moves to Abraham, Scripture’s anticipation of blessing for the nations, the curse connected with the Law, Christ becoming a curse, and the promised Spirit reaching the nations.

Fee is especially valuable because he refuses to let the Spirit disappear once the discussion turns toward Abraham. Harmon supplies the scriptural connections, while Gordon helps preserve the historical distinction between promise and the later Sinaitic administration. The sermon should therefore show how cross, Abrahamic blessing, Gentile inclusion, and Spirit belong to one argument.

The temptation is to preach Galatians 3:10 mainly as “nobody can perfectly obey every commandment.” That may belong to wider Christian theology, but Paul’s actual scriptural argument deserves more patient treatment. Let Deuteronomy, Habakkuk, Leviticus, Abraham, curse, and the Gentile promise do their work before converting the paragraph into a generic evangelistic outline.

Galatians 3:15–4:7 — Promise, Temporary Law, Baptism, Sonship, and the Fullness of Time

This is the natural place for Gordon’s covenant-historical insight. The promise precedes the Law, the later Law cannot annul the promise, the Law has an “until,” and the arrival of Christ changes the status of those who had lived under guardianship. The sequence is temporal as well as theological.

Harmon helps connect promise and inheritance to the larger biblical story, while Oakes and Boakye draw attention to the striking present identity announced in 3:26–29 and 4:6–7. The Galatians are not merely told what religious system they escaped; they are told who they now are—children of God, clothed with Christ, Abraham’s offspring, heirs, and people into whose hearts God has sent the Spirit of his Son.

A sermon should therefore allow doctrine of adoption to become experiential without becoming sentimental. “Abba” arises because God sends the Spirit of the Son. Christian identity is simultaneously covenantal, christological, pneumatological, and familial.

Galatians 4:8–20 — Do Not Become Again What Grace Has Already Delivered You From

Martin becomes particularly important here because Paul’s language is genuinely strange. Former pagans who served beings that were not gods are warned that adopting religious observances can amount to returning to the same enslaving condition. The preacher should state that problem openly rather than smoothing it away.

Paul then changes register dramatically and appeals to their relationship with him. Their former welcome has become alienation, rival teachers court them for self-interested purposes, and Paul uses maternal language to describe his anguish until Christ is formed in them. Cousar illuminates the rhetorical pathos; Carr illuminates the transformation language.

The contemporary bridge is powerful when handled carefully. Christians can return psychologically and spiritually to old systems even while using new religious vocabulary. Fear, performance, manipulation, status, magical thinking, or transactional views of God can be baptised into Christian practice unless Christ is genuinely being formed within us.

Galatians 4:21–5:1 — Hagar, Sarah, Promise, Freedom, and the Danger of Supersessionism

Do the exegetical work before announcing the allegory’s modern equivalent. Genesis, Paul’s allegorical language, Sinai, the two Jerusalems, Isaiah 54, promise, slavery, Spirit, inheritance, and the transition into 5:1 all require careful attention. Harmon is useful for Isaiah and biblical theology; Longenecker for the classic exegetical discussion; Heinsch for the major recent challenge to assumptions about Hagar.

The safest homiletical centre is the Galatians’ threatened movement from freedom back into slavery. Paul wants Gentile believers to recognise themselves as children of promise and stand firm in the freedom Christ has given. That centre can be preached strongly without declaring that contemporary Jews are Hagar’s children or that Judaism is intrinsically a religion of slavery.

The preacher should also acknowledge interpretive uncertainty where it exists. Heinsch’s account of Hagar as mother of enslaved Gentiles is innovative and deserves serious engagement, but it should not simply replace one unquestioned certainty with another. Responsible preaching can say, “This traditional interpretation is more contested than many Christians realise,” and then explain what remains clear in Paul’s argument.

Galatians 5:1–15 — Freedom, Circumcision, Faith Working Through Love

The first sentence belongs with the Hagar-Sarah argument but also launches the ethical movement that follows. Freedom must be defended because circumcision in this situation signifies entering a covenantal arrangement Paul believes incompatible with what Christ has accomplished for these Gentiles. Yet Paul’s summary is not simply “faith rather than works”; it is faith working through love.

Oakes and Boakye are especially useful here because relational pistis and unity-in-diversity converge. Christian existence is continuing trust in the living Christ expressed in a community where Jew and Gentile belong together without one being assimilated into the other.

The sermon should resist both legalism and libertarianism. Circumcision cannot complete what Christ and Spirit have begun, but freedom does not make the neighbour irrelevant. Paul’s freedom immediately bends outward into love.

Galatians 5:16–6:10 — The Spirit Creates the Life the Gospel Requires

Avoid preaching the works of the flesh and fruit of the Spirit as two lists detached from everything before them. Flesh and Spirit have already appeared within Paul’s argument, and the Spirit is the gift by which the Galatians began Christian existence. The ethical contrast therefore belongs to the old and new modes of life described throughout the letter.

Fee and deSilva are especially useful for this movement. Carr then helps explain why ethics is transformation rather than merely regulation: people whose identity has been reorganised through Christ and Spirit should increasingly embody the form of life corresponding to that new reality.

The plural and communal context also deserves emphasis. Rivalry, jealousy, factions, envy, restoration, burden-bearing, generosity, and doing good are community practices. The fruit of the Spirit should not be preached solely as a private personality-improvement programme; Paul envisions a congregation whose common life displays the Spirit’s presence.

Galatians 6:11–18 — Persecution, Boasting, Cross, New Creation, and the Marks of Jesus

The final paragraph condenses the entire letter. The rival teachers want circumcision partly to avoid persecution and to boast in the Galatians’ flesh. Paul boasts only in Christ’s cross, through which the world has been crucified to him and he to the world. Circumcision and uncircumcision are then relativised before new creation, and Paul points finally to the marks of Jesus carried in his body.

Martyn is indispensable for the new-creation horizon, Dunne for persecution and Paul’s bodily participation in the crucified Messiah, and Carr for the relationship between cosmic and human transformation. The sermon should allow those dimensions to reinforce one another rather than choosing between an objective cross and a transformed Christian life.

This is also the right place to draw the series together. The cross determines Paul’s boast, the Spirit determines the community’s life, Christ determines belonging, love determines the use of freedom, and new creation determines the world in which circumcision and uncircumcision can no longer establish ultimate status.

A Practical Commentary Workflow for Preaching Galatians

Richard N. Longenecker — Galatians — Word Biblical Commentary

Longenecker remains my preferred primary exegetical anchor because he gives the preacher substantial help with Greek, Pauline chronology, Judaism, scriptural interpretation, rhetoric, historical reconstruction, and theology without forcing everything through one interpretive framework. Galatians 3–4 especially benefits from his breadth because Abraham, Law, inheritance, sonship, and Hagar-Sarah require multiple kinds of evidence simultaneously. His age means later apocalyptic, New Perspective, relational-pistis, Paul-within-Judaism, and transformation research must be added from elsewhere.

I would normally begin with Longenecker after reading the passage repeatedly for myself. The preacher’s task at this stage is not yet to find sermon illustrations or application but to identify where the genuine exegetical problems are and prevent a familiar theological tradition from silently deciding the text before the evidence is examined. Longenecker is especially good for that foundational work.

Douglas J. Moo — Galatians — BECNT

Moo is the commentary I would use to test competing interpretations after Longenecker has established the terrain. Traditional Protestant, New Perspective, apocalyptic, pistis Christou, justification, Law, curse, Abraham, and Spirit debates are normally presented sufficiently clearly that the preacher understands why intelligent interpreters disagree before choosing a position.

His particular strength for preaching is restraint. Moo usually resists allowing a fashionable large theory to settle a local text automatically, which is valuable when a sermon must communicate one responsible interpretation without pretending that every alternative is foolish. I would consult him especially before preaching Galatians 2:16, 3:10–14, 3:19–25, and 5:2–6.

J. Louis Martyn — Galatians — Anchor Bible

Martyn should be read when the sermon has become too small. His apocalyptic interpretation restores the present evil age, enslaving powers, cross, Spirit, and new creation to the scale of Paul’s argument and forces the preacher to ask whether Galatians is proclaiming not merely a better religious arrangement but God’s decisive eschatological intervention.

I would not adopt all of Martyn’s treatment of the Law or his reconstruction of the Teachers, so he works best beside Longenecker, Moo, Harmon, or another commentary capable of pushing back. His homiletical gift is nevertheless enormous: he prevents justification from becoming a mechanism operating inside an unchanged universe. In Galatians, salvation means that God has done something to the world.

Matthew S. Harmon — Galatians — Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary

Harmon is particularly useful during the transition from exegesis into biblical theology. Abraham, promise, Isaiah, Servant, Jerusalem, inheritance, sonship, the nations, Spirit, and new creation remain active scriptural categories rather than being replaced prematurely by later theological terminology. This makes him especially useful for Galatians 3–4 and for any sermon attempting to explain how Paul’s gospel fulfils Israel’s Scriptures without reducing them to a few proof texts.

The preacher should still distinguish strong verbal allusion from broader thematic resonance, and Harmon occasionally sees a denser scriptural network than every reader will find equally persuasive. Used responsibly, however, he gives Galatians something essential: a route from Paul’s local argument into the larger biblical story without bypassing the text.

Craig S. Keener — Galatians

Keener should be consulted whenever application depends upon claims about ancient social reality. Circumcision, slavery, adoption, inheritance, household structure, honour and shame, patronage, ethnicity, philosophical ethics, and religious practice all had concrete first-century meanings that contemporary readers can unintentionally replace with modern assumptions.

The danger with a resource this rich is carrying too much background into the pulpit. I would use Keener to change interpretation, not to impress the congregation with facts. If an historical detail does not clarify Paul’s argument, Christ, the identity of the community, or the force of an application, it probably belongs in the preacher’s notes rather than the sermon.

Charles B. Cousar — Reading Galatians, Philippians, and 1 Thessalonians

Cousar is one of the most useful bridging commentaries because his interest lies exactly between detailed exegesis and theological proclamation. He treats the final form seriously, reads substantial literary units, asks how Paul persuades as well as what Paul believes, and gives Christ, the Spirit, and the composition of God’s people sustained theological attention. His predominantly deliberative reading also keeps the sermon oriented toward the action Paul is trying to elicit.

I would especially use Cousar in Galatians 1–2 and 5–6. He helps prevent autobiography from becoming a defence of personality, justification from becoming detached from table fellowship, and exhortation from becoming an appendix. The commentary’s older bibliography means it should be supplemented by more recent scholarship, but its literary-theological judgement remains unusually useful for preaching.

Peter Oakes & Andrew K. Boakye — Rethinking Galatians

Oakes and Boakye now belong prominently in the biblical-theological stage of preparation because they ask what positive existence Paul offers his hearers. Relational pistis, the living Christ, death-to-life, resurrection, Spirit, and unity-in-diversity give the preacher a framework in which the Galatians are not merely people being told what to stop doing but people being reminded who they already are in Christ.

I would use them particularly for Galatians 2:20, 3:26–29, 4:4–7, 5:5–6, and the movement into chapters 5–6. Their elevation of Galatians 3:28 toward the centre of the letter may go further than every interpreter will accept, but it provides an important corrective to sermons in which ecclesial unity is treated as a minor consequence of a purely individual gospel.

T. David Gordon — Promise, Law, Faith

Gordon is most useful when preparing Galatians 3:15–4:7 because he makes Paul’s temporal reasoning impossible to ignore. Promise, the 430-year sequence, the arrival and termination of the Law’s custodial role, the coming of faith, heirship, minority, and the fullness of time all belong to a covenant-historical movement rather than merely illustrating the timeless superiority of faith over effort.

His framework should be tested rather than simply adopted, since he can make “Law,” “promise,” and “faith” function as technical covenantal synecdoches more consistently than every passage necessarily requires. Nevertheless, he gives preachers an important safeguard against describing the Old Testament as legalism and the New Testament as grace. Paul is distinguishing covenantal epochs within the one scriptural history through which God brings the Abrahamic promise to fulfilment.

Neil Martin — Regression in Galatians

Martin belongs in preparation whenever the sermon reaches Galatians 3:3, 4:8–11, 5:1, or the larger question of why Torah could constitute regression for Gentile believers. His attention to religious habituation, pagan assumptions, Jewish-Christian practice, and pastoral accommodation generates a considerably more sophisticated answer than simply declaring Judaism another form of pagan legalism.

I would present his reconstruction to a congregation as an illuminating proposal rather than settled historical fact. Its greatest homiletical contribution is the recognition that practices exist inside webs of meaning and personal formation. The pastor can then ask how apparently Christian practices today might reactivate pre-Christian assumptions concerning fear, control, merit, reciprocity, or divine favour.

John Anthony Dunne — Persecution and Participation in Galatians

Dunne should be consulted whenever suffering, persecution, cross, bodily identity, or Paul’s “marks of Jesus” become prominent. His great contribution is to make these features speak to one another rather than leaving them dispersed across individual exegetical notes. Participation in the crucified Messiah can have visible and costly social consequences, especially where circumcision offers a way to reduce the scandal of the cross.

His Isaianic framework is stimulating but more cumulative than certain, so I would test individual echoes against Harmon, Longenecker, and other commentators before making them part of a sermon. The central homiletical insight is nevertheless strong: Christian participation is not merely mystical interiority. Belonging to the crucified Christ can shape the body, reputation, relationships, and social cost of discipleship.

Ryan Heinsch — The Figure of Hagar in Ancient Judaism and Galatians

Heinsch is now essential specialist reading before preaching Galatians 4:21–31 responsibly. His survey of Hagar within ancient Judaism challenges the entrenched assumption that Paul straightforwardly makes the non-Jewish Hagar a symbol of Jews, Judaism, or Torah observance. His alternative interpretation of Hagar as covenantal mother of enslaved Gentiles is provocative and exegetically substantial even where individual claims remain contestable.

The greatest pastoral value is methodological. Preachers should know that the passage has a history of supersessionist interpretation and that the conventional Christian-versus-Jewish reading is not simply “what the text obviously says.” Heinsch enables a sermon to preserve Paul’s warning about slavery and freedom without turning Jewish people into the permanent negative character in a Christian theological drama.

Frederick David Carr — Being and Becoming

Carr should be read when moving from Paul’s participatory language toward theological anthropology and Christian formation. His Galatians chapter connects 2:19–20, 3:23–29, 4:1–11, 4:19, 5:24, and 6:14–15 into a sustained account of transformation in which believers undergo changes of identity, relationship, moral agency, and governing sphere.

I would not import all of Carr’s modern terminology into a sermon, because “subjectivity” and related conceptual categories can obscure rather than clarify for ordinary hearers. The preacher should instead absorb the underlying insight: salvation in Galatians involves people becoming genuinely different kinds of selves because Christ lives in them, the Spirit inhabits them, and old powers no longer possess the same authority over their identity and action.

Jon R. Jordan — From Law to Logos

Jordan belongs at the pedagogical and final-form stage rather than the technical stage. His great contribution is teaching readers to recognise Galatians as an ancient letter, ask about author, audience, occasion, and purpose, and then reread the whole letter repeatedly while individual interpretive pieces are added. That is excellent sermon-series discipline.

His “Law to Logos” language is memorable but should be handled cautiously because Logos belongs characteristically to Johannine rather than Pauline vocabulary and can imply a simpler replacement relationship than Galatians itself permits. The underlying pastoral instinct is valuable, however: the sermon should keep directing readers toward Christ as the decisive reality through whom Scripture, Law, freedom, Spirit, and Christian identity must now be understood.

John Stott — The Message of Galatians

Stott remains useful late in preparation because he can turn theological substance into lucid proclamation. Grace, cross, justification, freedom, flesh, Spirit, and Christian service are stated memorably, and his exposition repeatedly demonstrates how a sermon can be doctrinal without becoming an academic lecture.

His weakness is historical compression. The first-century Jewish-Gentile controversy and later developments in Pauline scholarship require stronger resources beside him, and I would not allow his Reformation-shaped categories to establish the exegesis before Longenecker, Moo, Keener, Cousar, and others have been heard. After that work has been done, however, Stott remains one of the best resources for recovering homiletical clarity.

A Working Sequence from Study to Sermon

I would begin by reading Galatians itself repeatedly, preferably aloud, and marking repeated terms, direct address, contrasts, rhetorical questions, scriptural quotations, transitions, and imperatives. Jordan’s pedagogical approach is useful here because the preacher should retain a whole-letter map before detailed commentaries inevitably fragment the material.

I would then establish the immediate passage with Longenecker and Moo, using Keener where historical context matters and Tan where the argumentative structure remains uncertain. At this stage the task is to determine what Paul is actually saying and how the paragraph functions before asking what theological theme would preach particularly well.

The next stage is interpretation within the whole letter. Cousar clarifies rhetorical purpose and literary-theological movement; Martyn tests whether the passage has sufficient apocalyptic force; Fee restores the Spirit; Harmonreconstructs the scriptural world; and Oakes and Boakye ask what the text says about present life in the living Christ and the unity of the community.

I would then add the relevant specialist rather than reading every specialist every week. Gordon for covenant history and Galatians 3–4; Martin for regression and 4:8–11; Dunne for persecution and cruciform participation; Heinsch for Hagar-Sarah; Carr for participation, transformation, and new creation. This keeps specialist scholarship genuinely specialist rather than allowing an exciting monograph to become the controlling theory of every sermon.

Only then would I move decisively toward the pulpit with Stott, Timothy George, Fee, or another explicitly theological and pastoral voice. The sermon should be simpler than the research that produced it. The goal is not to display the interpretive scaffolding but to construct something strong enough that the congregation can live inside it.

Common Ways to Mispreach Galatians

The first danger is turning Judaism into legalism. Paul’s dispute concerns Gentile circumcision and Torah within a Jewish messianic movement, not a simple contrast between a false Jewish religion of works and a true Christian religion of grace. Historical care here is both exegetical and ethical.

The second danger is reducing justification to private experience. Antioch shows that the truth of justification affects who eats together and who is recognised as fully belonging. A sermon can affirm forensic justification strongly while still asking what kind of community such justification necessarily creates.

The third danger is making “faith” another human achievement. Whether pistis Christou is read objectively or subjectively, Paul’s gospel begins with God sending the Son and the Son giving himself. Human trust answers divine action; it does not replace Law-keeping as a more successful technique for impressing God.

The fourth danger is flattening Paul’s account of the Law. “The Law is bad” cannot account for the divine origin of Israel’s Scriptures, Paul’s continuing use of Torah, the Abrahamic promise, the Law’s temporary historical role, or his positive statement that love fulfils the Law. Conversely, “nothing really changed concerning the Law” cannot explain Paul’s language of before, after, until, guardian, freedom, and fullness of time.

The fifth danger is preaching Christian freedom as individual autonomy. Paul’s free people become servants through love, walk by the Spirit, carry burdens, restore one another, and do good. Freedom in Galatians is relational and communal before it can become a slogan about personal choice.

The sixth danger is turning the fruit of the Spirit into self-improvement. The fruit belongs to the Spirit’s presence and arises within a community where flesh manifests itself through rivalry, jealousy, factions, envy, and destructive relationships. The sermon should ask what the Spirit is producing among us, not merely whether each individual has achieved a sufficiently pleasant personality.

The seventh danger is preaching Hagar as Judaism. Whatever final interpretation one adopts, Heinsch and wider recent scholarship make it irresponsible to move casually from Paul’s complex allegory to “Jews are enslaved, Christians are free.” The Gentile Galatians themselves stand under Paul’s warning about slavery.

The eighth danger is romanticising suffering. Dunne helps recover persecution as a dimension of cruciform participation, but no preacher should use Galatians to sanctify abuse or discourage people from seeking protection. The cross shapes Christian fidelity; it does not make evil treatment good.

The ninth danger is separating justification from transformation. Paul can insist upon justification apart from works of the Law and simultaneously say that he has been crucified with Christ, that Christ lives in him, that believers put on Christ, that Christ must be formed within them, that flesh is crucified, and that what finally matters is new creation. The preacher should preserve both grace and genuine change without making the second the meritorious cause of the first.

A Possible Twelve-Sermon Series Through Galatians

A twelve-sermon route could begin with Galatians 1:1–10, announcing the one gospel as God’s rescue from the present evil age, followed by 1:11–2:10, where Paul’s transformed biography and Jerusalem’s recognition establish the divine origin and Gentile direction of his mission. Galatians 2:11–21 can then bring Antioch, justification, faith or faithfulness, and crucifixion with Christ together rather than splitting the narrative and doctrine into separate sermons.

Galatians 3:1–14 can centre cross, Spirit, Abrahamic blessing, curse, and the nations. Galatians 3:15–29 can trace promise, the temporary role of the Law, baptism, Christ, and the creation of one Abrahamic family. Galatians 4:1–11can then move through slavery, sonship, the Spirit’s “Abba,” and the danger of regression, allowing Gordon, Fee, Oakes-Boakye, and Martin to illuminate different dimensions of the same passage.

Galatians 4:12–20 deserves its own sermon because Paul’s pastoral relationship, changed affection, rival courtship, maternal anguish, and “Christ formed in you” reveal what apostolic ministry is trying to produce. Galatians 4:21–5:1can then address Hagar, Sarah, promise, Isaiah, freedom, and the interpretive dangers of supersessionism with the care such a difficult passage requires.

Galatians 5:2–15 can preach freedom, circumcision, the offence of the cross, pistis working through love, and serving one another. Galatians 5:16–26 can develop flesh and Spirit as rival modes of existence rather than merely two lists of bad and good behaviour. Galatians 6:1–10 can show what Spirit-produced freedom looks like socially through restoration, burden-bearing, generosity, and persevering goodness.

The series can conclude with Galatians 6:11–18, where circumcision, persecution, boasting, cross, crucifixion to the world, new creation, the Israel of God, and Paul’s bodily marks bring almost every major thread together. The sermon should end where the letter ends: not with admiration of Paul’s theological ingenuity but with the grace of Jesus Christ defining the life of a people whose identity and world have been transformed.

The Biblical-Theological Bridge in One Movement

The movement of Galatians can be stated without reducing its complexity. God promised blessing to Abraham and the nations; Sinai entered later with a genuine but temporally bounded role; Israel’s Messiah came in the fullness of time, gave himself upon the cross, bore the curse, and inaugurated the new age; Gentiles receive Abrahamic blessing and the Spirit without first becoming Jews; Jews and Gentiles therefore become one in Christ without forced assimilation; and the Spirit forms a community whose freedom becomes love while Christ is progressively formed within them.

That movement is simultaneously covenant-historical and apocalyptic. Gordon helps us see the historical sequence; Martyn helps us feel the eschatological rupture. Harmon shows that Paul remains inside Israel’s Scriptures; Oakes and Boakye show the positive community emerging in relation to the living Christ; Fee makes the Spirit central; Carr demonstrates that this new creation transforms persons; and Dunne reminds us that participation in the crucified Messiah can have costly bodily consequences.

Martin contributes the pastoral warning that people can return to old religious patterns even while adopting practices that appear more advanced or respectable, while Heinsch warns us that Christian preaching can itself regress into distorted interpretation when Hagar becomes a weapon against Jews. The result is a theological bridge broad enough to honour both the original crisis and the canonical significance of the letter.

The Sermon Claim Galatians Ultimately Presses Upon the Church

Galatians does not merely ask Christians to affirm that salvation is by grace. It asks whether Christ is sufficient to constitute the people of God, whether the Spirit is sufficient to generate their new life, whether human distinctions will be allowed to become conditions of belonging, whether freedom will become self-service or love, and whether the cross or some more respectable badge will determine their boast.

Nor does Galatians permit grace to remain abstract. The justified become a shared table. The Spirit received becomes the Spirit followed. The freedom announced becomes service through love. Baptism into Christ becomes a community in which inherited differences cannot grade access to the inheritance. Crucifixion with Christ becomes crucifixion of the flesh and of one’s old relationship with the world. New creation becomes a new kind of human and communal existence.

The deepest movement from exegesis through biblical theology into proclamation can therefore be stated this way: the God of Abraham has fulfilled his promise through the crucified and risen Messiah; Gentiles receive the promised Spirit without becoming Jews; all who belong to Christ share one inheritance; and the church is now called to live in the freedom, cruciformity, unity, and love appropriate to God’s new creation.

That is why preaching Galatians should be simultaneously gospel-centred, historically Jewish, covenantally informed, apocalyptically alert, Christologically focused, Spirit-dependent, socially concrete, anti-supersessionist, transformational, and pastorally urgent. The preacher does not need to make Galatians relevant by extracting a slogan from it. The challenge is to let Paul’s actual argument become sufficiently clear that its relevance can no longer be missed.