It can be said that the Galatians who lived in Asia Minor were evangelized by Paul when the apostle made his first missionary journey accompanied by Barnabas, and this community was also visited again by Paul when he traveled with Silas. After these events, Paul sent an important letter to the Galatians to strengthen the faith of this christian community.
In this letter, Paul emphasized the importance of the grace and the spiritual gifts over external forms such as circumcision. The sect of the Nazarenes at that time had not been established as an independent religion and many Jews converted to the faith communicated the need for the law of Moses to accept Jesus, and Paul as a doctor and apostle did not agree with this. In this epistle Paul set forth one of his fundamental ideas of his theology: "But we know that God accepts only those who have faith in Jesus Christ. No one can please God by simply obeying the Law. So we put our faith in Christ Jesus, and God accepted us because of our faith" Galatians 2:16.
For Paul, the Christian faith is a break with everything that came before, because the compliance with the law does not guarantee salvation, that is, eternal life, as happened to the rich young man who asked Jesus how to obtain eternal life and failed in his attempt because he loved riches more than anything. This is why Paul continued his teaching in his epistle to the Galatians and expressed his rejection of everything that binds man to error and suffering: "By his cross my relationship to the world and its relationship to me have been crucified" Galatians 6:14.
In Paul's logic, faith in Jesus is then a rejection of the natural man, that is, the old man, and his way of life, tied to the worldly passions and the fleeting desires, in order to seek the new man, the spiritual man, united by the charity to God. With the death and resurrection of Jesus, the promise of the Holy Spirit began to be fulfilled in believers, making them no longer citizens of the world but of the heavenly city. That is why the cross is a break with the worldly, just as Paul expressed it.
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