The preacher stands before the church and opens the Bible. The congregation, gathered in Jesus' name, believes God will speak a word to them as the word is read and proclaimed. In our hearts we ask, "What word does God have for us today?"

A lay leader stands before a church in Galatia and opens Paul's letter. The anticipation dwarfs anything we experience before present-day sermons, even at our attentive best. As they gather on the Lord's Day to sing and pray, we can imagine the first recipients of his letter asking, "What word does God have for us through our brother Paul?"

Just as we expect God to move among us when the word is proclaimed, so Paul expected God to act in Galatia when his letter was read. Paul believed God would change the hearts and minds of those who listened.

"Paul an apostle, sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead . . ."(1:1). As the first sentence is read, attentive Galatian listeners most likely feel exposed and discovered. With these beginning words, Paul lets them know that he knows; he knows they are listening to rival Missionaries who question his authority. Perhaps the Missionaries asked, "Was Paul truly an apostle set apart by Jesus, or was he set apart by himself or some other human authority?" Can he be trusted?" Instead of rejecting the questions, the Galatians made the questions their own.

As we shall see in 1:11-24, the Missionaries imply that Paul learned the gospel from the apostles in Jerusalem and then changed the message without their approval. Paul insists that no human commission or authority sent him to preach. He has no obligation to follow any "party line" or please any constituency. Sent by the Father through Jesus, Paul's only aim is to please God. When it comes to the source of his call and the content of his message, he looks to God and God alone.

Though set apart by God through Jesus Christ and not by any human authority, Paul remains connected to his sisters and brothers in Christ. He writes not as an isolated individual but as a person in community, bringing greetings from "all the brothers and sisters who are with me" (1:2). The larger Christian community shapes his thinking. When Paul speaks of Jesus, 'who gave himself for our sins' (1:4), many scholars believe he borrows from an early Christian hymn. Since Paul wrote for congregations in which the praises of God were sung, borrowing from a familiar hymn would have been an appropriate literary move. Regardless of its source, v. 4 performs a hymn-like function by concisely articulating the community's core beliefs. We sing our faith to help us understand our faith, and Paul used a hymn-like refrain to define the gospel he preached.

Human beings were created to live in right relationship with God, with each other, and with all creation. Human sin disrupts these relationships, and because of our sinfulness, we cannot make our relationships "right." Jesus "gave himself for our sins" when he died on the cross, taking upon himself the sin that separates us from God and each other. At the cross, Jesus took the initiative, reaching out to a creation that rejected its creator. On the cross, God's determination to live in relationship with humanity was on display. Jesus "gave himself for our sins" to create a new family in which love for God, neighbor, and creation reigns.

On the cross, Jesus did more than forgive individual sins. He defeated the power of sin in order "to set us free from the present evil age" (1:4). Paul divides human history into two ages: the present evil age in which sin has dominion, and the age to come in which God will reign completely and sin will be no more. Paul personifies the present evil age, saying it has the power to enslave human beings and shape them according to its will. More than a description of the way things are, "the present evil age" is a force from which human beings must be liberated. The present evil age leads people away from love of God, neighbor, and creation. Human beings remain responsible for their sins, but they live in an age that shapes them to be sinners.

The New Testament identifies numerous agents that do the work of the present evil age. In Galatians, Paul focuses on the "elemental spirits of the world" (4:3, 9; see ch. 7) and "the flesh" (5:16; see ch. 9). Paul does not envision demons invading and possessing individuals, with each person a puppet in the devil's hands. Instead, Paul sees the elemental spirits and the flesh at work within larger corporate structures of human existence. He identifies areas in which the elemental spirits have corrupted both pagan and Israelite religious systems and shows how the flesh sows dissension and discord within congregations. But the influence of these agents is not limited to religions and churches. Governmental, economic, and cultural systems fall prey to the corrupting influence of the elemental spirits and the flesh, so that nations, communities, and individuals are shaped to be compliant citizens of the present evil age.

Confronted by the horrors of Nazi Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, "How can one close one's eyes at the fact that the demons themselves have taken over rule of the world, that it is the powers of darkness who have here made an awful conspiracy?" (Dawn, 8). In 1930s Germany, good Christian people endorsed, empowered, and followed an evil leader. Our German sisters and brothers remain responsible for their active or implicit endorsement of Nazi rule. They also were shaped by the present evil age to walk down a destructive and genocidal path, all in the name of national glory.

In the same vein, how could slavery and segregation be endorsed, sanctioned, and defended in what is known in America as the Bible Belt? All who benefited from, participated in, or did not speak out against this system are responsible for their own sinful actions. They were also influenced by the present evil age that works against the purposes of God. They were people of great faithfulness and great sinfulness, just as we are. They were unable to overcome the influence of the present evil age in their corporate lives, and thus they individually participated in an evil system.

On the cross, Jesus invaded the present evil age and set us free from its power and influence! He does not transport us out of this age or make us immune to its influence, but frees us from its dominating power. People who gave witness to a power greater than Hitler, slavery, and segregation lived out of a spiritual freedom that guns, chains, and Jim Crow could not take away. Whenever people's actions reflect a freedom from the ways of this present evil age, they point others to the cross. The cross is the focal point of Christ?s invasion, the place where the enslaving power of the present evil age was defeated.

In his introductory remarks, Paul celebrates Christ's gift of freedom from the present evil age. In his concluding remarks, he celebrates the new creation (6:15) brought into being through Christ. The two images serve as bookends for the entire letter. In the new creation, life exists according to God's will so that people live in right relationship with God, each other, and all creation. Though the new creation will not be fully revealed until Christ returns, it is already present in the world. The new creation is visible from within the present evil age whenever God's will is done "on earth as it is in heaven."

The task of the church is to give witness to God's new creation in the midst of the present evil age. Slowly but surely, the Spirit-empowered church advances further into the turf of the present evil age, but not through the means of this age. With the cross as the example, the church takes territory not by violence but through sacrificial service. The church relies on overwhelming love, not overpowering force. Instead of dominating the world from above, the church subverts the present evil age from within as salt and light and yeast in the dough.

By insisting that Gentiles follow the law, the Missionaries of Paul's day remained firmly planted in the present evil age. Keeping the rules mattered more to them than Christ's liberating work. If the Galatians followed the Missionaries, they would enter slavery to the law, another form of slavery to the present evil age. If they remained focused on Jesus, however, they would experience a taste of God's new creation. They would give witness to the new creation through lives of faithfulness and love.

After celebrating grace and freedom with a hymn-like refrain in v. 4, Paul ends his introduction with a doxology of praise to God the Father, "to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen." In response to the liberating grace of Jesus received according to the will of the Father and experienced through the presence of the Spirit, Paul gives glory to God. No mention is made of a debt human beings must repay because of what Christ has done, nor is there any suggestion that human beings must make themselves worthy of Christ?s work. God has bestowed an undeserved gift on humanity, and the human response is to give praise to the Giver.

With the word, "amen," Paul establishes his letter as an act of worship. Author and recipients are co-participants in an offering to God. The word "amen" is not a means for ending a particular train of thought, nor does it signify the conclusion of a personal prayer. The "amen" draws the Galatians and Paul together into God's presence. The "amen" flows from Paul's "conviction that his own words can and will become the active word of God, because God will be present as the letter is read to the Galatians in their services of worship" (Martyn, 106).

Theologian Marva Dawn begins her lectures and sermons by extending her arms to the audience/congregation and saying, "The Lord be with you." With arms extended, the audience/congregation responds, "And also with you." She writes,"We say these phrases to remember that we are a community listening to God together. I can't teach well if those present don't work on the topic with me side by side." The listener response is a commitment of participation in the words that follow (Dawn and Peterson, 10).

We do not know if the Galatians joined Paul in saying "amen" at the conclusion of v. 5. But such a response would have been appropriate and consistent with Paul's intentions. If they were not already anticipating a word from God, Paul's "amen" jolted the Galatians awake and raised the stakes. What follows are not simply greetings from a beloved brother or teachings from their founding pastor. The reading of Paul's letter was an event in which God would speak. God would do something through Paul's words, and the Galatians had to decide if they would be open to the Spirit's movement in their midst.

North American Christians tend to view the gospel in individualistic terms, so in 1:4 we expect Paul to speak of Jesus, "who gave himself for our sins so that we might experience forgiveness of our sins." Paul calls our individualistic focus into question when he instead says Jesus "gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age." The forgiveness of our personal sins is certainly included in Christ's rescue, but Paul's emphasis is corporate. On the cross, Jesus defeated the present evil age and all its agents and created a people who give witness to the new creation. One of the church's Spirit-empowered gifts is the ability to recognize the present evil age.

Two extremes characterize the way modern Christians approach Paul's talk of "the present evil age," "the elemental spirits of the world," and "the flesh." Some Christians see the devil at work in every area of our lives, invading our thoughts, twisting our actions, and manipulating our circumstances. Others locate evil spiritual forces within an outdated ancient world-view. Whenever the Bible speaks of such forces, the terms must be translated "into categories more readily available and comprehensible to the modern mind." Both approaches enable us to "evade rather than engage the disturbing things" Paul says about the present evil age (Harink, 74). The first approach over-personalizes the demonic and the second dismisses it, but either way, the power of corporate evil is not addressed.

Rather than personalizing the demonic or translating it into modern terms, why not take Paul's terms at face value? The suffering, violence, and hatred of the world are too great to attribute solely to human sinfulness. We need only look at the newspapers for evidence of a "present evil age" that works against the purposes of God.

The church recognizes the present evil age when its life is shaped by corporate worship. As we pray, sing, and hear God's word read and proclaimed, God speaks and awakens us to the present evil age and its influence. The new creation is revealed as the church offers itself to God in worship, and the congregation is shaped to give witness to that creation as we depart and go into the world.

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