When we study this letter, we need to remember that the people who were causing the trouble were not only inside the Christian community but were convinced that those who accepted the practices of Judaism were the only real Christians. The Judaizers were different from the hostile Jews who had tried to kill Paul as a blasphemer on various occasions (Acts 14:19, 17:5, 13, 18:12). The Judaizers were concerned with a vital question which runs through the Jewish Scriptures-How is sinful man to get right with God? The answer of the Jew to that question was that his life had to be lived according to the Law which God had given Moses. The Jew accepted the Law as the revelation of God's will for his people. The Judaizers had become convinced that the answer of the Jew was the right answer to the question about how a man may get right with God.

Jesus himself had said that he had not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it (Matthew 5: 17) and it is understandable that those who had followed Judaism before becoming Christians continued to follow the Law, seeing this as compatible with the teaching of Jesus.

The problem of the old and the new in religion appeared in the life and teaching of Jesus. The religious leaders of the Jews finally demanded his death because he was seen as a dangerous threat to their religious authority. Jesus did not teach rejection of the Jewish Law but his whole attitude, life and work introduced a new religious principle which in the end would make the Jewish Law unnecessary. Jesus called men to a total commitment to God far beyond the requirements of the Jewish Law. His teaching and his own life showed that total, loving obedience to God came from a new inner attitude, not from following a code of laws. Jesus did not offer an improved or modernized code of laws to his fellow Jews; instead, he challenged all those he met to accept the absolute claims of God in their day-to-day lives, from moment to moment. Nothing was outside the attention of God in the life of the person who was totally committed to God. Jesus said, 'I tell you, then, that you will be able to enter the Kingdom of heaven only if you are more faithful than the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees in doing what God requires' (Matthew 5 :20). 'You must be perfect-just as your Father in heaven is perfect!' (Matthew 5:48).

Jesus Christ left it to his followers in the early Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to interpret what he had done in his life, work, death and Resurrection, and the New Testament is the record of their interpretation. It is not surprising, though, that the way was not always clear to the early Church as they moved away from the old to the new. Galatians 2: 11-14 shows that even Peter had moments of uncertainty.

Jesus had warned that an old coat cannot be mended with a new patch, neither can new wine be put into old bottles (Mark 2:21-22).

an old coat cannot be mended with a new patch, neither can new wine be put into old bottles

Difficult decisions had to be taken before the separation of the Christian faith from Judaism, but without this separation, the universal nature of the Christian faith would not have been realized.

It was the achievement of Paul to clarify for the early Church what really made a person a Christian. Paul made it clear that the only way in which a sinful person, irrespective of whether Jew or Gentile, can be put right with God is through faith in what Jesus Christ did on the cross and in his Resurrection, giving his life as a sacrifice of reconciliation for all mankind and breaking the power of sin. When the power of sin had been broken, the Jewish Law became unnecessary, because its function had been to teach men what sin was. God had revealed his will in the Law to his people when they did not know Christ, but when they knew Christ, the Law had no further function. Paul had discovered, from his own experience and from the experience of the Church, that when a sinful person made a response of total commitment to God, through Jesus Christ, then God accepted and forgave that person, giving liberation from the power of sin and empowering through the Holy Spirit to lead a new kind of life, in a state of reconciliation with God. The inner transformation in the person was the result of the grace of God, not the result of any attempts by the person to follow the Jewish Law. Paul had been put right with God through Jesus Christ, not through his scrupulous observance of the Law. It was from this understanding, based on his own experience, that Paul was convinced that it would bring no benefit at all to the Gentiles to accept the Jewish Law and circumcision.

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