Paul's letter to the Galatian Christians teems with impassioned fervour unequalled in any other Pauline letter. It reveals an embattled Paul in a fierce struggle to preserve his own apostolic credentials, the gospel that he preached, and of course the spiritual health of Galatian communities that he had founded a few years earlier. It contains some of Paul's most bold and impetuous theological reasoning, reasoning that he seems to have adjusted somewhat in content and tone in his later letter to the Roman Christians. In Galatians, we get a glimpse of Paul in a mode of impulsive reflex, assembling theological arguments to influence the corporate and personal life of the Galatian Christians in a situation that deeply disturbed him.

The Christians to whom Paul wrote were Gentiles (4:8) living in churches spread over some distance in the area of Asia Minor known to us today as Turkey. (Scholars continue to dispute the precise location of these churches, whether to the north towards the Black Sea or to the south closer to the Mediterranean.) They had affectionately received Paul and his message at an earlier date (3:1; 4:13–15), sometime in the late 40s. As a consequence of Paul’s ministry among them, the Galatian Christians had profound experiences of the Spirit (3:2–5) that instilled in them a hardy sense of Christian identity that continued for some time (5:7a).