We are saved by faith
1 ① How foolish you are, Galatians! How could they bewitch you after Jesus Christ has been presented to you as crucified? 2I shall ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by the practice of the Law, or by believing the message? 3How can you be such fools: you begin with the Spirit and end up with the flesh!
4So you have experienced all this in vain! Would that it were not so! 5Did God give you the Spirit and work miracles among you, because of your observance of the Law or because you believed in his message? 6Remember Abraham:he believed God and because of this was held to be a just man. 7Understand then that those who follow the way of faith are sons and daughters of Abraham.
8The Scriptures foresaw that by the way of faith, God would give true righteousness to the non-Jewish nations. For God’s promise to Abraham was this: In you shall all the nations be blessed. 9So now those who take the way of faith receive the same blessing as Abraham who believed; 10but those who rely on the practice of the Law are under a curse, for it is written: Cursed is everyone who does not always fulfill everything written in the Law.
11It is plainly written that no one becomes righteous, in God’s way, by the Law; by faith the righteous shall live. 12Yet the Law gives no place to faith, for according to it:the one who fulfills the commandments shall have life through them.
13Now Christ rescued us from the curse of the Law by becoming cursed himself for our sake, as it is written: there is a curse on every one who is hanged on a tree. 14So the blessing granted to Abraham reached the pagan nations in and with Christ, and we received the promised Spirit through faith.
The promise, not the Law, was the gift of God
15 ② Brothers, listen to this comparison. When anyone has made his will in the prescribed form, no one can annul it or add anything to it. 16Well now, what God promised Abraham was for his descendant. Scripture does not say: for the descendants, as if they were many. It means only one: this will be for your descendant,and this is Christ. 17Now I say this: if God has made a testament in due form, it cannot be annulled by the Law which came four hundred and thirty years later; God’s promise cannot be cancelled. 18But if we now inherit for keeping the law, it is not because of the promise. Yet that promise was God’s gift to Abraham.
The Law was part of God’s pedagogy
19 ③ Why then the Law? It was added because of transgressions; but was only valid until the descendant would come to whom the promise had been made; and it was ordained through angels by a mediator. 20A mediator means that there are parties, and God is one.
21Does the Law then compete with the promises of God? Not at all. Only if we had been given a Law capable of raising life, could righteousness be the fruit of the Law. 22But the written Law has imprisoned all things under the power of sin, so that what was promised through faith in Jesus Christ, would be accomplished in those who believe.
We are now sons and daughters of God
23Before the time of faith had come, the Law confined us and kept us in custody until the time in which faith would show up. 24The Law then was serving as a slave to look after us until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. 25With the coming of faith, we are no longer submitted to this guidance.
26Now, in Christ Jesus, all of you are sons and daughters of God through faith. 27All of you who were given to Christ through baptism, have put on Christ. 28Here there is no longer any difference between Jew or Greek, or between slave or freed, or between man and woman: but all of you are one in Christ Jesus. 29And because you belong to Christ, you are of Abraham’s race and you are to inherit God’s promise.
- Gal 3,1 A good number of these Galatians are of Jewish origin, the others already have some notion of the Old Testament given that it is read in Church meetings (the New Testament does not yet exist). Paul then will recall first their own experience in baptism, when they received the Spirit; he will later interpret this experience in reading the Old Testament. You begin with the Spirit and end up with the flesh (v. 3). This phrase has a double meaning. First the Galatians experienced the working of the Holy Spirit and his miracles and now they want to receive circumcision in the flesh. In another sense, they started with the truth of God which was in Jesus: that is the spirit. Now they go back to Jewish observances which, though they come from God, many times remained, as any religious practice, at a human level: the flesh. Those who disturbed the Galatians said: you belong to Christ, but Christ is a descendant of Abraham and a Jew. Then follow Abraham and do as the Jews do: and so, along with Christ, you will be children of Abraham. Paul reports that one is not a son of Abraham or a son of God by race: this is a point which he develops more in Romans 4. Let us not think that such prejudices have disappeared. There are some who think they are Catholics because they have been baptized at birth: they forget that without faith, baptism is meaningless. Righteousness or justification (3:8). Like in Romans Paul will use this word abundantly. It means that through faith we are set right with God and our self is re-ordered so as to enter his ways. Gal 3,15 We know that, in the Bible, Testament and Covenant mean the same: the Old Testament is the first covenant of God with humankind. Here Paul compares God with someone making a testament. First God made a solemn covenant with Abraham. He did not demand anything of him, but made a promise to him. All that God expected of Abraham's children in order to save them was that they would trust him. After such an important initiative from God, the Law which the Lord gave to Moses later did not really change the situation. Therefore, Paul says, most of the Jews are wrong when they are so concerned about observing the Law and so little concerned about opening their hearts. Gal 3,19 In the preceding paragraph Paul began to show that there were different stages in faith history. The Jews already saw a progression in the revelation of God: they spoke of successive covenants of God with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses. For them the progress was that God had given a more complete law and that his choice was narrowing to the point of concentrating all his promises on the small Jewish community. Paul, as we have seen, shows that progress is elsewhere: God has replaced a religion where faith was, in fact, obedience to a law, by faith which is gift of self to God, as response to God, person to person. Here Paul says more: there is a pedagogy of God in this change. The Law led us to the school (3:24): let us look at the word pedagogy: in Greek it signifies take the child to school. At this time the children of well-to-do families were entrusted to a servant called pedagogue who took the child to school but did not teach. Here Paul says: the Law was the servant, while Christ is the master. Why then the Law? Paul will raise the question in Rom 3:1; 5:20; 7:7. He gives here his response in 4:1. He points out the negative character of the Law which constantly denounces and condemns: The Law closed out every viewpoint other than that of sin (v. 22). It is good that for a time God obliges us to keep our eyes fixed on our sins, our infidelity and ingratitude towards him, but he is much more concerned in making us grow, consequently becoming able to deal with him, person to person. Some will say: This simplicity with God, we shall have up there. That, however, is not what God wishes. He wants his kingdom to be among us now. The Law was the means of leading the Jewish people to a better understanding of human hard-heartedness in relation to God, and giving them a sense of sin. It served as an education of a people during a certain time. With this we can understand v. 19: with Moses as their mediator. Paul does not consider the Law something divine and eternal, dictated by God himself. He thinks that God let the angels in charge of diverse historical forces decide together on this temporary arrangement, so that the law would fit a particular time and circumstance; then Moses had to reconcile their diverse demands. The same thought is expressed in 4:3. In short, the Old Testament already contains the divine truth, but it has come down to us through mediators who adapted it to their ways and obscured it. For each of us, it is necessary to have been submitted to a law, to have learned to obey without discussion during our early years. This first formation is irreplaceable; later we shall know how to obey our conscience without confusing it with our caprices. It was the same for God's people as a whole: the Law led them to the freedom of the Gospel (5:1). So, if Christ has already taught us, why return to Jewish practice? As long as the heir of the host is a child (v. 1). God made people to be free, holy, strong, in the image of Christ. No one is born as an adult; she must be a child first. Similarly humankind has to go through infancy. There was a primitive society, a naive science, a simple culture, a transitional religion. People remained among slaves; Paul saw them dependent on created forces that govern the world. For him the laws of nature as well as the rules and prejudices of primitive peoples are one with the invisible forces of good and evil (the word we translated as created forces also means directing principle: Eph 3:10; Col 2:15). Now, through Christ, the great door of freedom opens to us. First, Christ liberates people from religious superstitions and from the prejudices which prevent them from knowing the Father and from becoming his children. He came born of a woman and subject to the Law (v. 4). Christ saves humans because he is a man. Christ came first as the savior of the Jewish people and, to save them, he became one of them. He received his whole formation from the Law, namely, from the people and religion of the Old Testament. This Law was highly positive, but, as time passed, we had to be redeemed from the yoke of this Law to receive the fullness of divine truth. We must see in this obedience of Christ born of woman and subject to the Law a fundamental disposition of the plan of salvation: God saves us by becoming one of us. The same is now true of the Church, which saves people rather than giving to them or being interested in them. The Church cannot bring them a permanent and transforming salvation if it does not share in their very condition. This is the reason why the Lord wants Third World churches to bear the cross of the people of their continents: their marginalization, their sufferings and humiliations, in order to lead them to authentic salvation. When there are only middle-class churches following occidental or Roman patterns, Third World people cannot be saved. You want to be enslaved again? (v. 9). We soon tire of liberty, for it always complicates life. It would be much simpler to be told: This is right, that is a sin. Paul said to the Galatians: You belong to Christ, be guided by his Spirit. Did they really want to be more pliable with their ready-made judgments? Were they ready to restrain that kind of pride which accompanies the eagerness for social recognition? If not, there would be no Spirit. The Galatians actually preferred to walk along familiar paths. They kept certain festive days and obeyed the rules just like the Jews; they were, in fact, quite content with a mediocre faith and a love that risks nothing.
- Gal 3,1 A good number of these Galatians are of Jewish origin, the others already have some notion of the Old Testament given that it is read in Church meetings (the New Testament does not yet exist). Paul then will recall first their own experience in baptism, when they received the Spirit; he will later interpret this experience in reading the Old Testament. You begin with the Spirit and end up with the flesh (v. 3). This phrase has a double meaning. First the Galatians experienced the working of the Holy Spirit and his miracles and now they want to receive circumcision in the flesh. In another sense, they started with the truth of God which was in Jesus: that is the spirit. Now they go back to Jewish observances which, though they come from God, many times remained, as any religious practice, at a human level: the flesh. Those who disturbed the Galatians said: you belong to Christ, but Christ is a descendant of Abraham and a Jew. Then follow Abraham and do as the Jews do: and so, along with Christ, you will be children of Abraham. Paul reports that one is not a son of Abraham or a son of God by race: this is a point which he develops more in Romans 4. Let us not think that such prejudices have disappeared. There are some who think they are Catholics because they have been baptized at birth: they forget that without faith, baptism is meaningless. Righteousness or justification (3:8). Like in Romans Paul will use this word abundantly. It means that through faith we are set right with God and our self is re-ordered so as to enter his ways. Gal 3,15 We know that, in the Bible, Testament and Covenant mean the same: the Old Testament is the first covenant of God with humankind. Here Paul compares God with someone making a testament. First God made a solemn covenant with Abraham. He did not demand anything of him, but made a promise to him. All that God expected of Abraham's children in order to save them was that they would trust him. After such an important initiative from God, the Law which the Lord gave to Moses later did not really change the situation. Therefore, Paul says, most of the Jews are wrong when they are so concerned about observing the Law and so little concerned about opening their hearts. Gal 3,19 In the preceding paragraph Paul began to show that there were different stages in faith history. The Jews already saw a progression in the revelation of God: they spoke of successive covenants of God with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses. For them the progress was that God had given a more complete law and that his choice was narrowing to the point of concentrating all his promises on the small Jewish community. Paul, as we have seen, shows that progress is elsewhere: God has replaced a religion where faith was, in fact, obedience to a law, by faith which is gift of self to God, as response to God, person to person. Here Paul says more: there is a pedagogy of God in this change. The Law led us to the school (3:24): let us look at the word pedagogy: in Greek it signifies take the child to school. At this time the children of well-to-do families were entrusted to a servant called pedagogue who took the child to school but did not teach. Here Paul says: the Law was the servant, while Christ is the master. Why then the Law? Paul will raise the question in Rom 3:1; 5:20; 7:7. He gives here his response in 4:1. He points out the negative character of the Law which constantly denounces and condemns: The Law closed out every viewpoint other than that of sin (v. 22). It is good that for a time God obliges us to keep our eyes fixed on our sins, our infidelity and ingratitude towards him, but he is much more concerned in making us grow, consequently becoming able to deal with him, person to person. Some will say: This simplicity with God, we shall have up there. That, however, is not what God wishes. He wants his kingdom to be among us now. The Law was the means of leading the Jewish people to a better understanding of human hard-heartedness in relation to God, and giving them a sense of sin. It served as an education of a people during a certain time. With this we can understand v. 19: with Moses as their mediator. Paul does not consider the Law something divine and eternal, dictated by God himself. He thinks that God let the angels in charge of diverse historical forces decide together on this temporary arrangement, so that the law would fit a particular time and circumstance; then Moses had to reconcile their diverse demands. The same thought is expressed in 4:3. In short, the Old Testament already contains the divine truth, but it has come down to us through mediators who adapted it to their ways and obscured it. For each of us, it is necessary to have been submitted to a law, to have learned to obey without discussion during our early years. This first formation is irreplaceable; later we shall know how to obey our conscience without confusing it with our caprices. It was the same for God's people as a whole: the Law led them to the freedom of the Gospel (5:1). So, if Christ has already taught us, why return to Jewish practice? As long as the heir of the host is a child (v. 1). God made people to be free, holy, strong, in the image of Christ. No one is born as an adult; she must be a child first. Similarly humankind has to go through infancy. There was a primitive society, a naive science, a simple culture, a transitional religion. People remained among slaves; Paul saw them dependent on created forces that govern the world. For him the laws of nature as well as the rules and prejudices of primitive peoples are one with the invisible forces of good and evil (the word we translated as created forces also means directing principle: Eph 3:10; Col 2:15). Now, through Christ, the great door of freedom opens to us. First, Christ liberates people from religious superstitions and from the prejudices which prevent them from knowing the Father and from becoming his children. He came born of a woman and subject to the Law (v. 4). Christ saves humans because he is a man. Christ came first as the savior of the Jewish people and, to save them, he became one of them. He received his whole formation from the Law, namely, from the people and religion of the Old Testament. This Law was highly positive, but, as time passed, we had to be redeemed from the yoke of this Law to receive the fullness of divine truth. We must see in this obedience of Christ born of woman and subject to the Law a fundamental disposition of the plan of salvation: God saves us by becoming one of us. The same is now true of the Church, which saves people rather than giving to them or being interested in them. The Church cannot bring them a permanent and transforming salvation if it does not share in their very condition. This is the reason why the Lord wants Third World churches to bear the cross of the people of their continents: their marginalization, their sufferings and humiliations, in order to lead them to authentic salvation. When there are only middle-class churches following occidental or Roman patterns, Third World people cannot be saved. You want to be enslaved again? (v. 9). We soon tire of liberty, for it always complicates life. It would be much simpler to be told: This is right, that is a sin. Paul said to the Galatians: You belong to Christ, be guided by his Spirit. Did they really want to be more pliable with their ready-made judgments? Were they ready to restrain that kind of pride which accompanies the eagerness for social recognition? If not, there would be no Spirit. The Galatians actually preferred to walk along familiar paths. They kept certain festive days and obeyed the rules just like the Jews; they were, in fact, quite content with a mediocre faith and a love that risks nothing.
- Gal 3,1 A good number of these Galatians are of Jewish origin, the others already have some notion of the Old Testament given that it is read in Church meetings (the New Testament does not yet exist). Paul then will recall first their own experience in baptism, when they received the Spirit; he will later interpret this experience in reading the Old Testament. You begin with the Spirit and end up with the flesh (v. 3). This phrase has a double meaning. First the Galatians experienced the working of the Holy Spirit and his miracles and now they want to receive circumcision in the flesh. In another sense, they started with the truth of God which was in Jesus: that is the spirit. Now they go back to Jewish observances which, though they come from God, many times remained, as any religious practice, at a human level: the flesh. Those who disturbed the Galatians said: you belong to Christ, but Christ is a descendant of Abraham and a Jew. Then follow Abraham and do as the Jews do: and so, along with Christ, you will be children of Abraham. Paul reports that one is not a son of Abraham or a son of God by race: this is a point which he develops more in Romans 4. Let us not think that such prejudices have disappeared. There are some who think they are Catholics because they have been baptized at birth: they forget that without faith, baptism is meaningless. Righteousness or justification (3:8). Like in Romans Paul will use this word abundantly. It means that through faith we are set right with God and our self is re-ordered so as to enter his ways. Gal 3,15 We know that, in the Bible, Testament and Covenant mean the same: the Old Testament is the first covenant of God with humankind. Here Paul compares God with someone making a testament. First God made a solemn covenant with Abraham. He did not demand anything of him, but made a promise to him. All that God expected of Abraham's children in order to save them was that they would trust him. After such an important initiative from God, the Law which the Lord gave to Moses later did not really change the situation. Therefore, Paul says, most of the Jews are wrong when they are so concerned about observing the Law and so little concerned about opening their hearts. Gal 3,19 In the preceding paragraph Paul began to show that there were different stages in faith history. The Jews already saw a progression in the revelation of God: they spoke of successive covenants of God with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses. For them the progress was that God had given a more complete law and that his choice was narrowing to the point of concentrating all his promises on the small Jewish community. Paul, as we have seen, shows that progress is elsewhere: God has replaced a religion where faith was, in fact, obedience to a law, by faith which is gift of self to God, as response to God, person to person. Here Paul says more: there is a pedagogy of God in this change. The Law led us to the school (3:24): let us look at the word pedagogy: in Greek it signifies take the child to school. At this time the children of well-to-do families were entrusted to a servant called pedagogue who took the child to school but did not teach. Here Paul says: the Law was the servant, while Christ is the master. Why then the Law? Paul will raise the question in Rom 3:1; 5:20; 7:7. He gives here his response in 4:1. He points out the negative character of the Law which constantly denounces and condemns: The Law closed out every viewpoint other than that of sin (v. 22). It is good that for a time God obliges us to keep our eyes fixed on our sins, our infidelity and ingratitude towards him, but he is much more concerned in making us grow, consequently becoming able to deal with him, person to person. Some will say: This simplicity with God, we shall have up there. That, however, is not what God wishes. He wants his kingdom to be among us now. The Law was the means of leading the Jewish people to a better understanding of human hard-heartedness in relation to God, and giving them a sense of sin. It served as an education of a people during a certain time. With this we can understand v. 19: with Moses as their mediator. Paul does not consider the Law something divine and eternal, dictated by God himself. He thinks that God let the angels in charge of diverse historical forces decide together on this temporary arrangement, so that the law would fit a particular time and circumstance; then Moses had to reconcile their diverse demands. The same thought is expressed in 4:3. In short, the Old Testament already contains the divine truth, but it has come down to us through mediators who adapted it to their ways and obscured it. For each of us, it is necessary to have been submitted to a law, to have learned to obey without discussion during our early years. This first formation is irreplaceable; later we shall know how to obey our conscience without confusing it with our caprices. It was the same for God's people as a whole: the Law led them to the freedom of the Gospel (5:1). So, if Christ has already taught us, why return to Jewish practice? As long as the heir of the host is a child (v. 1). God made people to be free, holy, strong, in the image of Christ. No one is born as an adult; she must be a child first. Similarly humankind has to go through infancy. There was a primitive society, a naive science, a simple culture, a transitional religion. People remained among slaves; Paul saw them dependent on created forces that govern the world. For him the laws of nature as well as the rules and prejudices of primitive peoples are one with the invisible forces of good and evil (the word we translated as created forces also means directing principle: Eph 3:10; Col 2:15). Now, through Christ, the great door of freedom opens to us. First, Christ liberates people from religious superstitions and from the prejudices which prevent them from knowing the Father and from becoming his children. He came born of a woman and subject to the Law (v. 4). Christ saves humans because he is a man. Christ came first as the savior of the Jewish people and, to save them, he became one of them. He received his whole formation from the Law, namely, from the people and religion of the Old Testament. This Law was highly positive, but, as time passed, we had to be redeemed from the yoke of this Law to receive the fullness of divine truth. We must see in this obedience of Christ born of woman and subject to the Law a fundamental disposition of the plan of salvation: God saves us by becoming one of us. The same is now true of the Church, which saves people rather than giving to them or being interested in them. The Church cannot bring them a permanent and transforming salvation if it does not share in their very condition. This is the reason why the Lord wants Third World churches to bear the cross of the people of their continents: their marginalization, their sufferings and humiliations, in order to lead them to authentic salvation. When there are only middle-class churches following occidental or Roman patterns, Third World people cannot be saved. You want to be enslaved again? (v. 9). We soon tire of liberty, for it always complicates life. It would be much simpler to be told: This is right, that is a sin. Paul said to the Galatians: You belong to Christ, be guided by his Spirit. Did they really want to be more pliable with their ready-made judgments? Were they ready to restrain that kind of pride which accompanies the eagerness for social recognition? If not, there would be no Spirit. The Galatians actually preferred to walk along familiar paths. They kept certain festive days and obeyed the rules just like the Jews; they were, in fact, quite content with a mediocre faith and a love that risks nothing.
