This week we’re starting a study on Paul’s letter to the churches in Galatia. It’s quite an interesting letter, and can be slightly confusing at times, but even Peter admits that Paul can be confusing! (2 Peter 3:15-16) Peter’s words are as true today as they were when he wrote them, including how the unlearned and those easily swayed distort Paul’s words. Hopefully, we can clear up any confusion through our study over the next few weeks.
The first thing to note about this letter is that Paul is writing it in order to correct the Galatians. They had become swayed by some individuals that were saying faith in Yeshua wasn’t enough and that they had to follow the Law in order to receive salvation. If we don’t go into this study remembering that righteousness, and therefore salvation, is not given through the Law, only faith in Yeshua, we might be confused by some of the things Paul wrote. His message is not one saying the Law is to be disregarded or that it is useless today, only that it is not what brings righteousness and no one should feel as though they are required follow it in order to be saved. As we go through the letter, this will start to make sense.
From the very first verse, we find something important to note. Paul takes the time to point out that he was sent by Yeshua Himself and YHWH Himself rather than by any man, including the apostles who were seen as leaders by the believers at the time (Galatians 1:1, 2:9). This is important not just for Paul’s message, but for us as believers.
First, Paul was trying to give the churches a message that was contradictory to one that was being given to them by some other people. Appealing to them from the point of view that his message was somehow more accurate than theirs without identifying a source higher than man would have been useless. In that case, it would have just be his word against theirs. Pointing out that his message came not from man but from Yeshua and YHWH places its validity above those other people’s message, and the first part of Paul’s letter is intended to prove the case that his message comes from above.
Second, we need to take a page out of Paul’s book in that we should place our revelation from YHWH (one that we have studied to confirm it was from Him) above any contradictory message from man, despite who they are. We’ll touch on this more as we continue, but for now, just understand that despite how well-read, well-studied, or well-renowned a person is, if we are confident in our studies of scripture and know that YHWH led us to a certain conclusion, we shouldn’t just fold over and take their conclusions. By all means, we should check them to see if they have any validity, similar to how John wrote that believers should test every spirit (1 John 4:1), but we should not just say, “oh, they must know a lot more than me, so what they say must be true.” There are plenty of high profile theologians that are just flatly wrong about things. That doesn’t mean there isn’t still something to learn from them however, so we shouldn’t just wholly dismiss them.
Moving forward in this letter, Paul continues his greeting and mentions something else very interesting. He states that Yeshua died to rescue us from “the present evil age” (Galatians 1:3-4). There are a some things to dig into on this particular phrase, but first it’s important to remind ourselves of when Paul wrote this letter. While no one knows exactly when any of the books of the New Testament were written, it’s believed that this letter was written around 50AD. Regardless, we know that it was written prior to the events of approximately 70AD, and the associated turmoil in the Roman Empire and the land of Judea, because Paul was killed by the empire prior to that time during all the Christian persecution that occurred.
The reason this is important to recognize is because it tells us that after Yeshua’s crucifixion, which was obviously a major spiritual milestone for mankind, the “age” people were in was still considered evil. In other words, Yeshua’s death and resurrection was not necessarily the turning point at which the world was renewed and made good, as prophesied in various places like Revelation (Revelation 21) and some of the gospels (Matthew 19:28-29, Mark 10:30, Luke 18:30). Let’s take a look at this for a moment, because this term “age” is used quite often in scripture and studying it usage can help us understand YHWH’s plan for mankind.
Admittedly, there is far too much with the term “age” for us to do a deep dive on everything this week. So, we’re going to do a “medium” dive, but perhaps we’ll do a deeper dive in a future study. For now, we’re going to stick to looking at a few verses that also use this word as well as how it was used in contemporary literature at the time.
The Greek word is aion, and it can be used in both a plural and singular form. When in plural form, it usually refers to eternity, as in, “all” the ages. We see this form in the prayer Yeshua taught (Matthew 6:13). In singular form, it refers to a certain period of time, and this is the form most often used in scripture. Similar to how philosophers like Plato and Aristotle used this word, in scripture it is connected to a “cosmic cycle,” or a period of physical time that has the same spiritual and moral characteristics.
By the previous few verses we identified, we know that there was considered a “current” age and an age that would come after it. The disciples even asked Yeshua what they should look for to know when it would be the end of the age they were in at the time (Matthew 24:3). As we saw in our previous revisit of the end, in response He prophesied the events of the Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire that occurred around 70AD. The fact that the age didn’t end with Yeshua’s crucifixion is confirmed in Paul’s letter to the Galatians when he says he’s still in that “present evil age.” We also see that in that age, there was an evil being, Satan, that had become powerful enough to blind people from Yeshua’s glory (2 Corinthians 4:4).
Yeshua gives quite a few prophesies regarding the age He was in (Matthew 13:36-43, Matthew 13:47-50), but what is most interesting regarding this word, and what is most relevant to us, is what we find in Paul’s writings. A really quick note though: if you do a study on this word you will find that sometimes it’s translated as “world,” but there is no reason in any of those cases for it to be translated that way. If the writer intended to convey the idea of the “world,” he would have written kosmos. Translating aion to world only confuses things and has a potential to cause inappropriate conclusions to be drawn during a study of scripture.
What we find in Paul’s use of the word aion is that he talks a bit about the coming age. If you believe he wrote Hebrews, which makes sense based on the phrasing and subject matter in that letter, Paul stated that those in his age got a “taste” of the miracles of the age to come (Hebrews 6:5). Isn’t that interesting? Paul himself was performing miracles like healing the crippled from birth (Acts 14:8-10), casting out demons (Acts 16:16-18), and even raising people from the dead (Acts 20:9-10). According to him, these were only a “taste” of what would happen in the age to come, which we know started after the Jewish revolt of 70AD. If you didn’t catch that, we are in that age right now, and despite what Paul wrote, there are those out there stating that these types of things just don’t happen like they did in Paul’s day. They state that because we don’t have some sort of laying-on-hands line of succession from the apostles we can’t do the same miracles they did.
Either Paul was wrong, or those theologians are…or perhaps we’re wrong, we’re still in the same age as Paul, and a new age didn’t start around 70AD like we think it did. Well, let’s check another couple statements by Paul to see if we can get any clarification on that. In another verse from Hebrews, the phrase “consummation of the ages” is used (Hebrews 9:26). A similar phrase is used in Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth (1 Corinthians 10:11). When you look at these verses in context, Paul’s view of where he was at in YHWH’s overall plan for man becomes clear.
Paul saw the time period he was in as a significant point in history, maybe even the most significant point in history. A consummation of something is the entire completion of it, meaning as far as that thing goes, there is nothing else to do. To the Corinthians, he used the word telos, which we’ve looked at before. It means the completion of a process, or the ultimate purpose or goal of something. And when he uses these phrases, he clearly states that this completion has come upon those living at the time. In other words, the completion wasn’t complete yet, meaning Yeshua’s sacrifice (which had occurred prior to Paul’s writing) was not the culminating event for all the ages up to that point.
To put it another way, because this is important to understanding where we are in YHWH’s plan, Paul was anticipating an event in the lifetime of those he was writing to that would mark the culmination of a plan that was being executed throughout all the ages prior; since the creation of man and his sin in the garden. According to Hebrews, Yeshua’s sacrifice occurred around the time of the culmination of the ages, and while it wasn’t the culmination it enabled the culmination to occur because it was the sacrifice to end all sacrifices.
When you put that all together, it becomes clear what the culmination event was. The destruction of the temple in 70AD, and therefore the end of all conduct of sacrifices, marked the culmination of a plan set in motion by YHWH thousands of years earlier in the garden of Eden. As in previous major events imposed by YHWH on man, like the flood for example, there was a period of transition from one age to another. Just as Noah was given a warning by YHWH and direction to build an ark, the flood itself was the culminating event, not Noah’s preaching (2 Peter 2:5) or the time period from him starting the ark build until its completion, which all the wicked people would have been watching (Genesis 6:13-22).
Let’s take a look at one more verse that uses aion in a very interesting way and gives us an idea of what was actually occurring holistically over the course of all those ages Paul was talking about. Chapter 11 of Hebrews is a great chapter on faith, what it is, and examples of it in scripture. It’s worth a read regularly to remind ourselves of what it means to have and act in faith, but for our purposes this week we find that in one verse the word aion is used and in various versions of the Bible it is translated to universe or worlds (Hebrews 11:3).
When we translate this word to ages, which is what the Greek word actually is, and take a look at some of the other Greek words in this verse, we find a slightly different message than what every translation presents. The writer of Hebrews just finished a lengthy explanation of how Yeshua’s sacrifice was perfect and atoned for all sins of mankind for all time, so it doesn’t quite make sense that now, when talking about faith, he writes about YHWH’s act of the creation of the universe. Instead, he continues the thought process of this sacrifice, but this time he associates it with the fact that essentially no one saw it coming, but now they are seeing those prophecies being fulfilled.
There are three key words to look at in this verse in order to see what the writer intended. First, the word translated to “was formed,” or “was created,” (“were framed,” if you’re reading one of the King James versions) is actually katartizo. This Greek word does not mean created or formed, for that the writer would have used various other words. It means “to restore,” “to perfect,” or “to mend.” In other words, fixing a thing that already existed but was somehow broken. For example, this word is used in various other verses to talk about mending fishing nets (Matthew 4:21, Mark 1:19). Peter even uses it to talk about how YHWH will perfect the believers he was writing to (1 Peter 5:10). He certainly wasn’t saying that YHWH would create them again from nothing!
So, what we can see in this first part of the verse is that we know by faith that through YHWH’s spoken word the ages have been mended. We know that through Yeshua’s sacrifice the ages were fixed after they were initially broken in the garden of Eden through sin. The second half of the verse contains the other two words we have to look at, since it talks about the seen and unseen and we may be confused with it talking about seeing physical things vice something else.
The word phaino is translated to seen and the word blepo is also translated to seen, yet these Greek words have two different meanings. The latter is indeed used primarily to refer to a physical seeing with one’s eyes. The former however, is used more in the context of a revealing, or of something becoming evident to someone that wasn’t evident before. By understanding these differences, we can see that in the context of the first half of this verse, the second half should say, “…in which out of things not evident, the things we see have taken place.”
When we put it all together, we find that the writer says, “By faith we understand that the ages were mended at YHWH’s spoken word, in which out of things not evident, the things we see have taken place.” He was saying that even through all the studying of scripture man did up to the point of Yeshua’s crucifixion, no one identified that the Messiah had to be sacrificed as a part of the plan to resolve the brokenness that was caused by sin, but now that we saw the sacrifice and all the miraculous events surrounding it, by our faith we know that’s what occurred. The only thing left to finalize the abolishing of the sin sacrifices by Yeshua’s sacrifice was to destroy the place where the sacrifices continued to occur, which happened in 70AD. This destruction was executed in conjunction with the judgment on those that rejected their Messiah, the Son of YHWH.
Well, I certainly didn’t expect to only get four verses in to this letter, but I hope you got something out of our “medium” dive into the usage of the word aion! It’s pretty interesting to think of Yeshua’s sacrifice as a mending, isn’t it? Next week, we’ll continue in the letter to the churches of Galatia, and I promise we’ll get through more than four verses! We hope you have a great week! Shabbat shalom and YHWH bless you!
-Rob and Sara Gene
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