The new faith in Christ made large claims for itself. It marked an advance upon Judaism and maintained that in Christ was fulfilled all the promises made by the prophets of the coming of the Jewish Messiah. It radically antagonized the heathen religions. It had a double task to win men out of Judaism and heathenism. Only by a careful study of these great doctrinal Epistles, and the circumstances out of which they arose, can it be seen how really great was this task.
The Great Question was: "On what terms does God save men? Does He owe salvation to any because of what they have done, or does He bestow it as an unmerited favor upon condition of trust and self-surrender?" Paul maintained that the sole basis of salvation is the grace of God through Jesus Christ to be appropriated by faith on the part of man. This is still the great question.
The Jewish Faith had been long in the world. Its prophets had two great themes, the Messiah and the Messianic Kingdom. All Israel, while observing feast and fast days, the precepts of the Mosaic law and offering sacrifices, looked forward to the coming of the Messiah and the establishment of His kingdom upon earth, as the supreme fulfillment of its hopes.
It is the contention of Paul in these Epistles that this Messiah has come in the person of Jesus Christ and fulfilled all the promises made to Israel, and that, through faith in Him, believers are released from the observance of the precepts of the Mosaic law.
There were two parties of Jews who sought to check the advance of the early church, with its all sufficient Savior. First, there were the Jews who denied any and every claim of Christ to be the Messiah; of this party were the rioters who drove Paul out of city after city and sought to kill him in the temple. Second, there were the Jewish Christians who "asserted that their faith was Judaism with a new prophet; that the law of Moses and Mosaic ceremonial practices were binding on Christians as well as on unbelieving Jews; that Gentile believers must first become proselytes to Judaism before they could become Christians; and lastly that circumcision was the only gateway to baptism." With the first class of Jews it was not so difficult to deal, for they were out and out antagonists, but the Jewish Christians, (who still clung to the Jewish law) were constantly making trouble not only amongst the Christian Jews, who had fully come out from under the law of Moses and expressed their faith in Christ, but also among the Christian Gentiles who had come out of the heathen religions. The masterly arguments of Paul, presented in Galatians and Romans, deal chiefly with the doctrine of justification by faith in Jesus Christ alone. In Gal. 5:1-4 he calls the return to Jewish belief and practice, "falling from grace."
The Heathen Faith.—The people of the Roman empire were idolaters. Temples for the worship of idols occupied prominent positions in every city. Some of them were very beautiful, from an architectural point of view. But the objects of worship, frequently, were of the basest sort. This worship caused a notorious laxness of view in regard to the relations between the sexes. This state of things is not overstated by Paul in his epistle to the Romans (1:18-23). It was this condition of idolatrous worship which led to the decision of the Jerusalem Council in regard to the Gentile converts (Acts 15:29). The Christianity which Paul taught called for a pure and upright life and a subjugation of human passion. We see the effects of former idolatrous lives manifesting themselves in the evils which Paul sought to correct in his letters to the Corinthians. It was no small conflict in which the Great Apostle to the Gentiles engaged when he sought to cleanse, through Christ, the base idolatrous hearts of the men of his times.
The New Faith in Christ.—Paul stands for spiritual freedom in Christ and loyalty to Him as Divine Lord without the necessity of observing the minute regulations of the Jewish ritual. He insists upon purity of soul and outward life as opposed to the laxness of the idolaters. Each individual soul is related to Christ to whom it is responsible.
Practical Bearing upon Present Day Living.—The things contended for, the evils scored in these Epistles may seem to belong to dead controversies, but they do not. While it is a fact that Christianity has freed itself from Judaism and the heathen religions have been conquered, the old evils still manifest themselves and the same remedies must be applied to them. Many to-day will do works of the law (Gal. 2:16) who have no use for Christ, or His church, thinking in this way to buy their way to God. These are the old Judaizers come to life again. They often know nothing and care less for spiritual things and heart righteousness. Sensuality, and all its attendant evils, driven from the old heathen temples, manifests itself in many ways; it still seeks to array itself in beautiful garments that it may lure many to ruin. There is need of repeating over again the arguments of Paul for a pure life lived in the faith of Jesus Christ, and the spiritual upbuilding of the soul through Him. Paul also insists upon good works as the outcome of faith, but faith must come first.
The Epistles of this Group were Written on the third missionary journey.