The main thing going on in Galatians is that there are Jewish believers among the Christians who are teaching you have to be circumcised in order to be saved. It’s saying that you have to become Jewish in order to become Christian.

Satan has certainly switched tactics since then. Now many Jews think it’s impossible for a Jew to become a Christian, when in the beginning people thought you had to be Jewish to be a Christian.

Paul says people slipped in to spy on their freedom in Christ. What were they free of? They weren’t free to sin, but they were free from the law that no one could perfectly follow. We are given one new law, which is an old law: love others.

There is a moral law we are bound to. We don’t follow the ritual law that was just a shadow of purity in Christ. The new has come and the old has passed away.

The old man and old ways, sin, self, and the world are always trying to sneak back in, even Peter got caught up in it. He stopped eating with the Gentile believers. He feared man. He was pleasing man. He got rebuked soundly by Paul in front of everyone since many followed his example.

Paul gets the blessing of the apostles to be an apostle to the Gentiles. They send Paul on his commission with one instruction, “To remember the poor.” It was the thing Paul was eager to do.

I don’t see this much in the church today. Churches have benevolence committees. They do help people, but they make people jump through hoops, prove need, prove they are doing something to meet the need themselves, prove character with references, are not willing to help with ongoing expenses, and so on. They aren’t eager to help the poor. We take up enormous collections for buildings for ourselves, millions of dollars, while giving at best thousands to the poor and feeling good about ourselves for it.

Consider the poor. That’s God’s heart.