The Gospel, the Cross and Justification by Faith: Galatians 3:1-14

Welcome to Series 2 in our studies of the book of Galatians.

Recap and Background

Galatians naturally falls into two sections. The first section is more about Paul telling his story: how he came to Galatia, what happened beforehand and defending his position as an Apostle. Series 2 is more specific in that Paul explaining theologically what he means by the gospel and how to avoid various errors. In Series 2 he also goes on to describe in a wonderful way in chapter 5, the life of the Holy Spirit - the power and energy for living the Christian life.

In Series 1 Paul told the Galatians about his initial call to apostleship by Jesus Christ, and how he spent three years in Arabia after he had been converted, how he went to Jerusalem and met the Apostles for the first time, and then how he went back to the city of Tarsus, where he came from originally. He explained a little about the church in Antioch, which he helped to form with an Apostle called Barnabas, from Jerusalem. This was the first Gentile church that developed in the New Testament age, 700 kilometres north of Jerusalem, and became the mother church for the mission to the Gentiles. He spoke about various meetings he had had with Peter and the other Apostles - two meetings in Jerusalem and then one meeting when Peter came to Antioch - and how, during these meetings, they had been trying to work out the relationship between the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Old Testament Law of Moses. In the last episode, we saw a very unlikely and painful description of Peter and Paul in conflict in the church in Antioch, when Paul challenged Peter that his behaviour did not match up with his beliefs concerning the gospel being free of Old Testament legal requirements.

Paul has been talking a lot about his story in order to underline his authority and to explain why he feels so passionately that the Galatians have gone wrong. They have been deceived! They initially believed the gospel and welcomed it from the preaching of Paul and Barnabas. Churches were founded - about six different churches that we can identify from the book of Acts. Probably just a few months, after Paul and Barnabas had left them, some teachers came from Jerusalem, without authorisation from the Apostles, and falsely taught the Gentile believers in these churches that they must obey the provisions of the Law of Moses, specifically: the Jewish food laws; the law of circumcision; the law of the Sabbath; and they must obey the religious festivals of the Jews. Paul was horrified that this message had got to these new churches that he cherished and loved so much. These were the very first churches he had ever planted and he wanted to protect them against false teaching.

Now, he continues his explanation of why the gospel is so important and why legalism is so dangerous.

Paul’s Challenge to the Galatians

“You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? Have you experienced so much in vain - if it really was in vain? So again I ask, does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard? So also Abraham ‘believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.’”

Galatians 3:1-6, NIV

This passage begins with a huge challenge: ‘You Galatians have been bewitched! Someone has cast a spell over you!’ What incredibly powerful language Paul uses here - the language of sorcery; the language of witchcraft; the language of the occult. We know in the modern world that occult powers operate; witch doctors operate; black magic and white magic operate, and people use spells and incantations to achieve many purposes claiming divine power; or claiming the power of ancestors. This is satanic power. Some of those spells are used in order to make people change their thinking.

I went on a website recently of someone in Africa, who offered witchcraft services, if you paid a certain amount of money. Some of the offers he made were that the person you would like to marry would change their mind and accept your offer of marriage, or that the person who is going to interview you for the job will be favourably disposed and give you it. This is the work of witchcraft; it is the work of changing people’s minds. Paul says that the spiritual effect of going back under the Law of Moses now, has had the effect of changing the minds of the Galatians and confusing them about the gospel. A spell has been cast over them. They have rejected Paul’s gospel and accepted that they need to keep all these rules and regulations.

The Gospel Preached by Paul

What were the key elements in Paul’s gospel that he outlines here? The most important thing comes in verse one: “Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified.” When he describes Christ as “portrayed as crucified”, he means a number of different things. He means, first of all, that he described to them the actual historical event; Jesus died on a Roman cross. That is part of it but he also described to them the significance of the crucifixion. The crucifixion was a sacrificial action based on a principle that God established in the Old Testament – the principle of atonement: the fact that one animal or one person might die in the place of another and literally take upon themselves the sins of that person. It is God’s one and only way of dealing with sin. He set up the sacrificial system of the tabernacle and temple with animal sacrifice, to explain to the Jewish people this principle of atonement. But it was fulfilled supremely and permanently by Jesus Christ dying on the cross as an act of atonement for your sins and for mine. Paul explained all this very clearly to the Galatians, “Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified” An invitation was given to them: ‘If you put your faith in Jesus Christ and if you turn away from the things you have done to live independently of God and rebelliously towards God, then you will be forgiven because Christ will take those sins from you permanently, and then you will receive; the Holy Spirit will come upon you. God’s very presence will come inside you and you will feel his presence and you will know in your heart of hearts that this is true. You will feel a connection to God. You will feel that he is your Father.’ That is the sort of thing that Paul preached to the Galatians in his visits. He remembered all those things when he said, “Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified.”

So how was it that they forgot all those things and suddenly began to believe that it was not just about that but that they had got to earn their way into salvation, that God wanted them to fulfil all these rules and regulations? If they weren’t circumcised then they couldn’t enter into the Kingdom of God. Paul didn’t say anything about circumcision. That is not a requirement. They now thought they had to obey the Jewish food laws to be acceptable to God. But Paul didn’t preach anything about the food laws. He didn’t say they had to obey the food laws.

They were confused. Two messages were coming to them and Paul was very agitated. An alternative gospel had been presented to them and so he speaks very powerfully in this passage, asking them a number of questions, “Who has bewitched you?” “Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard?” “Are you so foolish?” He is challenging them and engaging them in debate, asking what had gone wrong for them to go off the track altogether. He wanted to remind them that they had received the Spirit by believing what they heard. He reminds them that they had an amazing experience of being born again. They would remember that joy: ‘I’m free of my sins. I’m reconciled to God. I’m in his family.’ Paul was there when they were believing and repenting and maybe being very tearful, very joyful and very excited. He asks, “Have you forgotten all these things? Has a great heavy hand of legalism come upon you? What has gone wrong with you?”

Abraham’s Example

He ends this passage by connecting their experience to the father of the Jewish people, Abraham. The point of this is to bypass this discussion about the Law of Moses and go back before the Law of Moses and explain to them that they should be focusing on but Abraham’s faith, not Moses’ Law because he is the person who gives us an example of what it is to live by faith. Paul was asking them to live by faith but Abraham was the first person.

“So also Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” This is a reference back to Genesis 15, when Abraham and his wife Sarah were unable to have children. God had already promised they would have children and Abraham was struggling to believe that this could ever happen. They were very elderly and infertile and it didn’t seem possible. One day God spoke to him and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars - if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” God made him a promise - a promise that depended on a miracle. It says, and this is crucial, this is what Paul’s thinking about, “Abraham believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” True faith brings us into a right standing with God. Just faith. Faith alone. This faith is very active and it involves believing in the miraculous. Abraham had to believe in something astonishingly miraculous. But he accepted deep down in his heart that it was true and it would happen and so he believed.

Paul is asking the Galatians to be like Abraham. He portrayed Jesus Christ as crucified and was asking them to trust him, to trust God and believe in Christ and then their salvation is secure. It doesn’t require anything else to be added in.

Our Forefather, Abraham

“Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham. Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and he announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: ‘All nations will be blessed through you.’ So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith”

Galatians 3:7-9, NIV

There is a wonderful promise here. Anybody who has faith is connected to Abraham. In many of our cultures today, we are connected to our ancestors, to our forefathers, and we think of them as very important in our sense of identity. Paul says here, for a Christian your sense of identity should be founded on the fact that you are connected to Abraham, the first man of faith in the Jewish people. You are a child of Abraham. If you have the same faith as Abraham you are in the same family as Abraham. You don’t have to be Jewish; you can be any race - no racial distinctions in the family of God.

At the very beginning, Abraham experienced, another extraordinary promise that came before the one I just mentioned to you. Paul refers to the very beginning of the story about Abraham. He was a man who lived in a country which today we call Iraq, and God called him and his family to leave that country and to look for another country. He promised him that they would find a country which would be given to Abraham (he didn’t own any land at the time) but he would be a landowner in this Promised Land. It is a land that God had designated for Abraham. So he went on a journey of thousands of kilometres over many months, perhaps even years, in order to arrive at the land which eventually he discovered to be Canaan, the Promised Land. God spoke to him concerning this journey and he promised him three different things.

In Genesis 12: 2 - 3 he said, “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

Paul has this promise in mind and he links it to Christ. There are three things that Abraham is promised here. First of all, ‘a name’ - that means a son or a family. He didn’t have a son; he couldn’t have a son; he was infertile at this particular time. God promised him a miraculous son who would be born to his wife Sarah, and the son came and his name was Isaac. The second promise was ‘a nation’. From Isaac a nation will form, a whole tribe of people who will have a land. That is the second promise and that involves the Promised Land. ‘Your children, your descendants will live in this Promised Land. I am going to give you a name and a nation’. The third promise was ‘a blessing’. Abraham would be a blessing to all the nations of the earth. The people who gathered in the land, Isaac and his descendants, became the people of Israel, and they were to be the means by which all the nations of the earth will be blessed. That is basically what God promised to Abraham in these remarkable verses, which Paul has in mind here in verse 8, “All nations will be blessed through you.” In Paul’s mind, the Jewish people, the children of Israel, who were the promised people in the Promised Land, would bless the world through the Jewish Messiah. When the Jewish Messiah came from those people, in that land, a blessing went out to the whole world - the blessing of salvation.

Abraham is the inspiration for our understanding of the doctrine, or the truth, of justification by faith alone. He believed God simply and sincerely, when God told him impossible, miraculous and remarkable things. When Paul said to the Galatians that if they want to know God; if they want an eternal destiny with him; if they want to find purpose in life; if they want to find forgiveness and a clear conscience, the only way to do it is through believing in Jesus Christ, in his death on the cross - it was something incredible to them. They had never heard anything like it. It was astonishing! Paul clearly portrayed Christ as crucified and all they had to do was believe by faith, turn away from their old life and receive the Spirit. That was the basis for salvation. After that they were baptised. Paul wants to preserve the simplicity of the gospel against the threat of this false teaching that has come to the Galatians and deeply and profoundly confused them.

Faith not Law

“For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.’ Clearly no one who relies on the law is justified before God, because ‘the righteous will live by faith.’ The law is not based on faith; on the contrary; it says, ‘The person who does these things will live by them.’ Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, as it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.’ He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Holy Spirit.”

Galatians 3:10-14, NIV

Paul is pointing out here that the law in itself does not impart faith and cannot bring salvation and that its era is over. We should be looking to Abraham as our inspiration rather than Moses and the Law of Moses. The blessing given to Abraham has now come to the Gentiles. By faith we receive the promise of the Spirit. Paul is here introducing the theme of the Holy Spirit, which he will develop later because the most crucial aspect of this is that what Paul preaches becomes real to people through a miraculous event which is, the Holy Spirit of God begins to work in their lives and they begin to sense deep down, ‘this is true’. They feel it in their inner being and they experience that sense of forgiveness and joy and relationship with God. Paul had seen that happening in the Galatian churches with his own eyes. He could see the work of the Holy Spirit and he is reminding them that that is reality, which they need to hold on and not be deceived by the people who were leading them astray’.

Let me end with an analogy. Imagine that you are travelling in a bus or a car on a journey you have done many times. In order to get from one place to another you need to go through a busy town. There is only one road through the town and it takes a long time: there are a lot of traffic lights; a lot of obstacles along the way; and a lot of people going to market. When you go on the journey you slow down for a long period of time, and you have to go through all the traffic regulations before you get to the other side and you can get back on the road again. Imagine that situation. You have been doing that for many years. Then one day the government decides to build a bypass. They build a beautiful road that goes round the town. The bypass lasts about two kilometres and when you come towards the town you remember how slow it was to go through it but now there is a totally different route. On the bypass, there are no obstacles and you get to the other side really quickly. In effect that is what the gospel of Jesus Christ does to the Law of Moses. It has been bypassed. We can go straight through to the other side without going through the laws and the regulations and the delays of the traffic and the congestion in the town. We need to stay on the right road and that is Paul’s message here.

Reflections

As we reflect on this in conclusion, we notice a theme here of powerful delusion. It is quite possible for people who have accepted the Christian faith to come into a wrong understanding because of other influences - to get really confused. If people get confused, they might leave the Christian faith. Very often they become burdened by a sense of false responsibility to do things that God never commanded them to do, in order to gain his acceptance. Paul wants to prevent this happening at all cost. Is it happening to you? Is your understanding of the gospel as clear and as simple as I have described it to you and as clear and simple as Paul preached to the Galatians? Go back to that foundational gospel if you are tempted to reinterpret it in any way.

All religions tend to have a system of rules and regulations to attain right standing with God, to gain his favour. The wonderful news of the Christian faith is that, by believing in Christ and being born again you automatically become favoured and blessed by him, because you have been forgiven. Then for the rest of your life, your responsibility is not to gain your salvation but to live it out, because we are thankful to God and we love him. We will then obey the things that he calls us to do after our conversion. Paul tells us more about that in chapter 5.

Thanks for listening to this episode and I hope you will join us again for the next one.