It’s been two and a half years since I published my book How To Gain Victory Over Sin. Since that time, I’ve been working on updating and expanding it. The second edition is now virtually complete and I’ve received my proof copies from Amazon to look over. Aside from tweaking the cover and correcting any last-minute typos, the book should be available within a month.

While the first book hasn’t been a best seller (I don’t have a big company doing advertising for me), it has done well. Google Play currently shows a 4.7 star rating, and GoodReads.com a 4.6 star rating. The e-book is free through Google Play and Smashwords. Kindle charges 99 cents over which I have no control. The printed book is 6 dollars. The second edition will also be a free e-book, and the printed edition might go up a dollar since the book is bigger.

Here’s a short excerpt from the second edition…

Two thousand years ago, a couple of missionaries established some churches in what is now central Turkey. The region was then a Roman province called Galatia, and the missionaries, Paul and Barnabas, were on their first missionary journey.

The first city in the province they came to was Antioch of Pisidia. When they arrived, Paul preached the message of justification by faith apart from works of the law of Moses. Many Jews and Gentiles gladly heard and believed the message, but some Jews who didn’t raised a persecution against the missionaries and ran them out of town.

In Iconium, Paul again preached the gospel. As before, many believed, and many didn’t. The Jews who didn’t believe stirred up the people to violence, forcing Paul and Barnabas to flee from that city as well.

In Lystra, they proclaimed Christ to the people again, but the Jews from Antioch and Iconium followed them there and moved the crowds to stone Paul to death. Thinking he was dead, they dragged him out of the city. But Paul survived, and, ignoring the danger to himself, he revisited those same cities, urging the new believers to continue in the faith and endure the persecutions that would result. But it wasn’t long after Paul and Barnabas left the region that the young believers allowed the enemies of the gospel to come in and teach a different “gospel,” and this is where the letter to the Galatians comes in.

The epistle to the Galatians is somewhat unique among Paul’s letters to the churches. It is the only one where Paul did not give thanks to God for his readers. Instead of thanksgiving, Paul expressed his alarm:

I marvel that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different “good news”…

This church had some serious problems…worse even than that of the carnal Corinthians. Only in this letter does Paul warn his readers of a curse, and only in this letter does he come close to losing his temper. After all the suffering he went through to bring the gospel to them, Paul was frustrated to see them falling away so quickly. Why was this happening?

When Paul departed from Galatia, he not only left behind new believers, he left behind the Jewish legalists that persecuted him. With Paul gone, they were able to freely attack the churches with the Law of Moses.

But Paul didn’t abandon the young Gentile believers. Having witnessed the same problem in his home church as well, he traveled to Jerusalem with Barnabas and Titus to address this very issue with the other apostles.