That the one God of the whole world, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God who gave the Torah, had now unveiled in Jesus the final stage of the plan to bring justice and healing to the world

N.T. Wright Rom comm 451

One well-worn path through these thickets has been made by those who insist that the agitators are legalists: proto-Pelagians who are trying to persuade the Galatians to seek justification by performing good moral deeds.  Among the many problems this view faces …

The question at issue was not, How can individual sinners find salvation? but rather, Are Christian Jews bound, by the Jewish kosher laws, to eat separately from Christian Gentiles, or are they bound by the gospel to eat at the same table with them? 

What, then, does Paul’s “ethics,” if we should call it that, have to do with the fundamental thrust of the letter as a whole? (a question that occurred to when listening to a recent Galatians  sermon, which was somewhat isolated moralisms, though he did mention Jesus and the Spirit..)

p. 52 : “the following observat”

“First, the god of whom Paul speaks is without question the one God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

“Second, in line with this, Paul believes that this God has a purpose for the created world.”

“Third, this God is revealed and known in the Jewish Scriptures,”

now “the single promised multiethnic monotheistic family”

[Galatians]

11 But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, *