Under-Realized Eschatology

Like Jesus and all the New Testament authors, the apostle Paul taught that the great age to come had begun with Christ’s death, resurrection and ascension. But he also taught that the trials of this age will not completely vanish from the world until the consummation when Christ returns in glory. And this meant that Christians live in what we might call the “already and not yet,” a time when this age of sin and death overlaps the age of eternal salvation to come.

But the fact that this age and the age to come exist simultaneously gave rise to serious problems in Galatia. They failed to realize just how much of the age to come was already present. As a result, we might call this false teaching, “under-realized eschatology,” meaning that their views diminished the significance of Christ’s first coming.

Now, Paul attacked the false teachers’ “under-realized eschatology” in every portion of the book of Galatians. In Galatians 1:3-4, Paul appealed to his doctrine of the latter or last days when he described Jesus in this way:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age.

Notice that Paul didn’t simply wish blessings from the Father and Christ for the Galatians. Instead, he drew attention to the purpose for which the Father had sent Christ. As he put it here, Jesus was sent “to deliver us from the present evil age.”

Many traditions in Israel had become hypocritical and legalistic, reflecting “this age” of sin. And those who now lived in “the age to come” were to reject these traditions. Paul taught that Jesus had come to deliver believers from this age and its old ways. To deny this truth in theory or practice was to deny the essence of who Jesus was.

A second way Paul revealed his concern over the Galatians’ under-realized eschatology was by describing his disagreement with the false teachers as a matter of the “gospel.” Listen to the way Paul summed up the matter in Galatians 1:6-7:

I am astonished that you are … turning to a different gospel — which is really no gospel at all.

Now we can be confident that the false teachers in Galatia had not stopped talking about Jesus. They still claimed to be Christians who had good news. So, why did Paul call their message “a different gospel,” or “no gospel at all”? Listen to the prophet Isaiah’s words in Isaiah 52:7:

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”

So, when Paul said that the false teachers had “no gospel at all,” he implied that they had denied that Christ had brought the age to come, the age of salvation, the age of the kingdom of God. By continuing to teach what had led so many in Israel to receive God’s judgment — namely that justification before God came by works of the law — the false teachers had rejected the true significance of the Christian good news. Here again, Paul revealed that the root of the problem in Galatia was that the false teachers had an under-realized eschatology.