Come Alive: Galatians and Ephesians: Conversations with Scripture

providing cultural context and insights that bridge the gap between the world of the Bible

and our world today. Each book includes a daily reading, a daily insight and a daily

reading prompt that will help you reflect on the text and build the skills to read the Bible

for yourself with more confidence and understanding. Discover a new and unexpected

way to engage with Scripture and experience the Bible not as a distant, confusing

document, but as a living, breathing conversation between God and humanity that

continues to speak into our ever-changing world.

Galatians and Ephesians

Galatians is unique among Paul’s letters in that he did not write it to a single church (like

the church at Rome or the church at Philippi) or to an individual (as with 1 and 2

Timothy) but to a collection of churches within the region of Galatia, a rugged area in

what is today southwestern Turkey.

The Galatians were a Gentile people who had come to faith in Christ from the

pagan religions that dotted the landscape of Asia Minor. As Gentiles, they were steeped

neither in the way of Moses nor in the customs of the synagogue. Their naivete toward

all things Hebrew became one of the great ironies of Paul’s letter and the occasion of its

writing. The Galatian drama involved several false teachers who had slipped into the

churches’ congregations and sown both confusion and discord as the Gentiles were

persuaded to accept Jewish legal requirements. In some of Paul’s most majestic

language he calls on the Galatians to accept the true gospel of grace.

Ephesians is written to the church in Ephesus - a singular congregation in a

cosmopolitan city. The city of Ephesus was located on the western coast of Turkey on

the Aegean Sea. You can visit the remaining ruins of the city on any excursion to that

region of the world. Like Galatia, the people in the Ephesian church were primarily

gentile. Their drama differed slightly from their neighbors’ in that it involved merging

Jews and Gentiles together within the same congregation. How could God make

something new and different out of two people so separate and distinct?

Filled with more of Paul’s lofty prose, Ephesians emphasizes the reconciliation

between Jews and Gentiles in Christ, and gives instructions for Christian living.