People of the Way

Many ancient Christian communities did not call themselves "Christians" and they did not refer to their faith as "Christianity." They called themselves "People of the Way" and referred to their practice as "The Way."

This is a good springboard for considering the cornerstone of Paul's theology: justification by faith.  "Justification" is from the Greek "Dikaioo" (to be made righteous) and "Faith" from the Greek "Pistis" (conviction and persuasion).  We become righteous through our conviction that God has already redeemed us through the cross of Christ.  And we arrive at this knowledge by following Jesus as the original disciples were called to do.  Through our fellowship with Christ and with those who follow, we come to realize who God is and the wonder that God redeemed us before we could even speak God's name.  This is why the early followers of Jesus referred to themselves as "People of the Way." It is not a coincidence that followers of Jesus stopped referring to themselves with this term when the Church became institutionalized and made compulsory by Rome.  Christianity became just another set of abstract principles and practices that people followed in order to be identified as Christians.

In his epistle to the Galatians, which arose out of the controversy about whether you needed to follow Jewish religious practices to be a follower of Jesus, Paul is not setting Gentile Christianity against Jewish Christianity.  Rather, he is revolutionizing the very notion about what religions is.  Judaism was just used as an example of works-righteousness--the notion that you needed to do something to achieve redemption, which was shared by all religions.  Paul was questioning this underlying assumption of all religions 

We don't run around doing good works to achieve redemption.  We run around doing good works because it is the natural consequence of truly knowing that in Christ God has already redeemed us and redeemed the whole world .