Verse of the Week - Galatians 1:1-5

Remember to try and memorize in phrases and to read the notes and about these verses. 

•  The letter is sent from Paul; he was the writer of it. And, because there were some among the Galatians who tried to lessen his character and authority, in the beginning he gives a general account both of his office and of the manner in which he was called to it. 
• He was an apostle. He is not afraid to call himself by this title.
• Paul acquaints the Galatians with how he was called to this office, and assures them that his commission to it was entirely divine, for he was an apostle by an extraordinary call from heaven to this office. 
• He was an apostle by Jesus Christ, he had his instructions and commission immediately from him, and consequently from God the Father.
• Paul adds, Who raised him from the dead, both to tell us that God the Father gave a public testimony to Christ’s being his Son and the promised Messiah, and also that,  his call to the apostleship was immediately from Christ, therefore from God the Father too.
• Thus does the apostle, being constrained to it by his adversaries, magnify his office, which shows that though men should by no means be proud of any authority they are possessed of, yet at certain times and upon certain occasions it may become needful to assert it.
• To whom this letter is sent—to the churches of Galatia. There were several churches at that time in this country, and it should seem that all of them were more or less corrupted 
• v. 3. The apostle, and the brethren who were with him, wish these churches grace and peace from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the usual blessing wherewith he blesses the churches in the name of the Lord—grace and peace. 
• Grace includes God’s good-will towards us and his good work upon us; and peace implies in it all that inward comfort, or outward prosperity, which is really needful for us; and they come from God the Father as the fountain, through Jesus Christ as the channel of conveyance. Both these the apostle wishes for these Christians. 
•  First grace, and then peace, for there can be no true peace without grace. Having mentioned the Lord Jesus Christ, he cannot pass without enlarging upon his love
• Jesus Christ gave himself for our sins, as a great sacrifice to make atonement for us; this the justice of God required, and to this he freely submitted for our sakes. 
• One great end was to deliver us from this present evil world; not only to redeem us from the wrath of God, and the curse of the law, but also to recover us from the corruption that is in the world.
• This present world is an evil world: it has become so by the sin of man, and it is so on account of the sin and sorrow with which it abounds and the many snares and temptations to which we are exposed as long as we continue in it.
•  Jesus Christ has died to deliver us from this present evil world, not presently to remove his people out of it, but to rescue them from the power of it, to keep them from the evil of it, and in due time to possess them of another and better world. 

Commentary notes are adapted from Matthew Henry's Bible Commentary at biblehub.com