At the beginning of the book of Galatians the apostle Paul tells us that Christ

….gave Himself for our sins that He might draw us out of this present evil age.
— Galatians 1:4

We tend to think of salvation in terms of our being delivered from God’s judgment, and so we might assume this refers to our future salvation from the wrath of God. However, if we allow the verse to speak for itself, we will see that it is telling is, not of a future salvation, but of a deliverance that needs to take place in our living on the earth today, namely, that we would be “drawn out of this present evil age” (cf. Acts 2:40).

This is a salvation we will gain as we pass through the basic stages in our experience of Christ, which Paul goes on to speak of in the rest of the book of Galatians: of Christ revealed in us (1:15-16), living in us (2:20), and eventually, even formed in us (4:19; see “Christ Revealed, Living, & Formed in Us”).

Then, as he is concluding this book, Paul writes that

…neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.
— Galatians 6:15

So, in brief, according to the book of Galatians the salvation we are called to enter into as the believers in Christ is not just that our sins would be forgiven so we are saved from the future judgment; rather, it is to draw us out of the present evil age and make us a “new creation” even today by our experience of the Christ who lives and dwells within us (cf. 2 Cor. 5:17).

But what does this actually look like? That is what we will consider in the next note in this series, a New Testament example of saints living in the reality of the new creation.

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—  14 May 2025 —