Daily Devotional | A Proper Boasting

In his 1876 volume How to Write Letters, J. Willis Westlake provides several ways to end a letter appropriately. “Yours respectfully,” “Your loving daughter,” and “We remain, dear sir, your obedient servants” highlight the relationship between the writer and the recipient and the author’s reverential posture.

In the conclusion of Galatians, Paul first calls attention to his large and personal penmanship (v. 11). He employed scribes to record much of his writing, but here he wrote with his own hand. The excessive size of his script was likely for emphasis. But even though Paul penned the conclusion, the content of this valediction is less personal than his other epistles. He offers no greetings, no desire to visit them, no request for prayer. His strained relationship with the Galatians may be the reason for a more distant tone.

What Paul does in these verses is return to his main exhortation—reject the false teachers (v. 12). As in 4:17–20, Paul attacks the credibility of these infiltrators. They were focused on their own gain. They wanted to avoid persecution (v. 12), probably from the local Jewish community. They wanted to build their own reputation.

In contrast, Paul writes: “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (v. 14). A bold and shocking statement! The Roman cross was a horrific, shameful torture device. In human terms, there was nothing about it to garner praise or pride. But Paul turns the false teaching on its head. If the infiltrators boasted in their religious accomplishments and actions, Paul boasted in the sacrificial suffering of Jesus, which set him and all true believers at odds with the world (vv. 14–16).