Galatians is a public letter. Such letters were an established and popular method of communication in the Greek and Roman world of the New Testament.1 They were generally dictated by the author and written down by an amanuensis.2 Most letters from the time included an address, a greeting, a body (containing the main argument) and a conclusion. In the New Testament letters, we find that Christians changed a greeting into a wish for grace, and also substituted a customary wish for health with thanksgiving and prayer3.
Unique to Galatians is the greeting used by Paul, which is longer than the greetings we find in his other letters (see 1 Corinthians 1:1–3; 2 Corinthians 1:1–2; Ephesians 1:1–2; Philippians 1:1–2; Colossians 1:1–2 etc.).4 He uses this greeting to anticipate the content of the letter in a summarized way.5
The letter to the Galatians can be broadly divided as follows:
Paul’s defence of his apostleship (Galatians 1:1 – 2:21)
Paul’s defence of the gospel (Galatians 3:1–5)
Application of the gospel to Christian living (Galatians 5:13 – 6:18)
1 Paul, an apostle not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead