Galatians 3:1-14 More About The Fight

Paul was in a battle for the hearts and souls and minds of those Christians he loved in Galatia.  The enemies – the Judaizers – were trying to capture their hearts with their Gospel+ arguments, and Paul was going to fight hard to get them back.  He first asked them about what they’d personally experienced.  They’d been bewitched into forgetting what it was like when they became Christians – the burden that had been lifted from them.  They’d been seduced by the legalists’ tantalizing proposal that their experience wasn’t complete – that there was something more to do.  Who’d want to miss out by skipping an important step, after all?  That’s what got them – a lack of trust that Christ was all they needed.

 

My commentary says, “Since the Judaizers wanted to take believers back into the law, Paul quoted the law!  And, since they magnified the place of Abraham in their religion, Paul used Abraham as one of his witnesses!”  The law said God’s righteousness was credited to Abraham’s account only because he believed God’s promise.  The Judaizers that their physical relationship to Abraham guaranteed their salvation.  They failed to understand that “God has no grandchildren,” my commentary said.

 

Paul also noted that the law mentioned that Abraham’s blessing was going to be for the Gentiles as well, who weren’t physical descendants of Abraham.  So how was that going to work in their arguments?

 

Paul also quoted from the law, “Anyone will be cursed who does not always obey what is written in the Book of the Law.”  None of the Judaizers could dare claim that they’d always obeyed everything in the law, so those teaching legalism were clearly cursed!

 

Paul wasn’t finished with them.  He was just getting started.

 

Father, thank You for showing me plainly years ago how much You loved me by setting me free from all of the demands of the law.  You weren’t giving me a license to sin.  You were instead giving me a reason not to sin – the love of You and Your Son shown to me on the cross.  And love is a much better reason to obey than a curse.

 

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford