Salvation through faith alone
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📚✭O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, that you should not obey the truth? Before your eyes Jesus Christ has been clearly portrayed among you as crucified. 2 📚✭This one thing I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? 3 📚✭Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now going to be made perfect by the flesh? 4 📚✭Have you suffered so many things in vain? If indeed it is in vain. 5 📚✭The One who grants the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does he do it by your works according to the Law, or by your hearing with faith? The illustration of Abraham
6 📚Even as Abraham✭ believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness✭. 7 📚✭Understand, therefore, that those who believe, they are the ones who are the children of Abraham. 8 📚And the Scripture✭, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles through faith, announced the gospel in advance to Abraham, saying, “In you all nations will be blessed✭”. 9 📚✭So those who have faith are blessed with believing Abraham.
Trying to be saved through the law brings a curse
10 📚✭For as many as are of the works of the Law are under the curse. For it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the Law”. 11 📚✭But it is clear that no one is justified by the Law in the sight of God, for, “The righteous will live by faith”. 12 📚✭And the Law is not of faith; but, “The man who does them will live through them”.
Christ has rescued believers from the curse of the law
13 📚✭Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the Law, being made a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”)✭, 14 📚✭so that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit✭ through faith.
God’s promise and God’s law
15 📚✭Brethren, I speak of man’s ways: no one annuls or adds to a human covenant once it has been confirmed. 16 📚✭Now the promises were made to Abraham and his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings”, meaning many; but, “And to your offspring”, meaning one person, who is Christ. 17 📚And this I say, that the Law, which came four hundred and thirty years later, cannot set aside the covenant previously confirmed by God in Christ, and so make the promise void. 18 📚✭For if the inheritance✭ comes by the Law, it is no longer by promise. But God gave it to Abraham by promise.
19 📚✭What purpose then does the Law serve? It was added because of transgressions, until✭ the offspring, to whom the promise was made, had come. And it was ordained through angels✭ by the agency of a mediator. 20 📚✭Now a mediator is not a mediator of one party only; but God is one.
21 📚Is the Law then against the promises of God? Certainly not. For if a law had been granted that could have given life, then surely righteousness would have been by the Law. 22 📚✭But the Scripture has included everyone under sin, so that the promise which comes through faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
23 📚But before faith came, we were kept under the Law, confined for the faith that would later be revealed. 24 📚✭Therefore the Law was a tutor in charge of us to bring us to Christ that we might be justified by faith✭. 25 📚✭But now that faith has come, we are no longer under this tutor.
We become God’s children through faith
26 📚✭For you are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. 27 📚For as many of you as were baptized into Christ✭ have put on Christ✭. 28 📚There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female – in Christ Jesus you are all one✭. 29 📚✭And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, and heirs according to the promise.