The material in the following chapters of this draft is being proofed.
They are NOT finished chapters. I invite you to read them and leave comments about what you liked, didn’t like, didn’t understand, etc.
Thanks,
Winn
Where Are We Going?
Reading the Storyline: New International Version (2011)
Reading the Storyline: Interpretative Paraphrase
Observing the Storyline
Interpreting the Storyline
Exhortation (5.7-12)
So What?
Living into the Story
Reading the Storyline: New International Version (2011)
You were running a good race. Who cut in on you to keep you from obeying the truth? That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. “A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.” I am confident in the Lord that you will take no other view. The one who is throwing you into confusion, whoever that may be, will have to pay the penalty. Brothers and sisters, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished. As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!
Reading the Storyline: Interpretative Paraphrase
Galatians, you are running toward your goal. You are free at last, even though those agitating you want you to stop short of the goal. They are trying to interfere with your run by adding their flavor of additives. Don’t allow them to accomplish their goal of detouring you from your goal. Remember, just a minute quantity of yeast can invade a complete loaf of bread. I trust you will not think differently about this issue. Those who are bent on troubling you will be judged. My greatest wish is that they would simply castrate themselves thus making their “additive” movement like a eunuch who has lost their ability to continue to sow their abbarate seed. Let it be so Lord!
Observing the Storyline
Interpreting the Storyline
Exhortation (5.7-12)
Paul turns to a commonly known metaphor of his day, running a race. In the ancient world, runners did not run around a track in prescribed lanes as we do in races today. They ran toward a post set before them and then after rounding it, ran back. Cutting in on a runner going full speed ahead would certainly cause the first runner to slow down or even trip. Paul is essentially saying that these Jewish missionaries were acting in an unsportsmanlike way by causing the Galatians to be kept from obeying the truth of the gospel that Paul had preached.
The New Living Translation translates verse 8 as an answer to verse 7. “You were getting along so well. Who had interfered with you to hold you back from following the truth? It certainly isn’t God, for he is the one who called you to freedom.” So the Galatians who were following the message of the Jewish missionaries could not blame God for their current mess, because God had not called them to a national-imperialistic gospel, but to a simple belief in what Jesus had done on the cross. When he writes “A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough,” he means that it only takes one person among them to cause the others to be infected.
He states that he is confident (Gal. 3.10) that they will not take the others’ view, but turn back to his view of the gospel. Those Jewish missionaries are going to pay a price (given by God) for misleading God’s people.
Finally, Paul ends with a sarcastic word about these missionaries. He wishes that they would castrate themselves. He is most likely referring to the actual rite that took place in Galatian temples of the priest of Cybele, the mother goddess of the earth, castrating themselves and placing their testicles in a box as a gift to their god.
So What?
Learning the indicative-imperative structure of Scripture (especially in Paul) will help you become what God had created you to become. A little grammar goes a long way. A modern reader of Galatians might want to know what in their present life have they added to the gospel of Jesus that would cause him or her to lose sight of what Jesus did on the cross.
Living into the Story
- Who is running around trying to trip you up with new sounding gospels and stories?
- Who causes you to be complacent by not thinking about your present status before God and in the world?
- Who is the leaven in your life?
- Who is causing your “lump” to swell up?
- If Paul were here in your local ecclesia today, would he preach the same message that he preached to the Galatians who had fallen under the spell of the Jewish missionaries?
- Whose spell have you fallen under?

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