Galatians 3:2-5 :

I just want to learn this from you. Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by hearing of faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now completed in the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain, if it is indeed in vain? He therefore who supplies the Spirit to you, and works miracles among you, does he do it by the works of the law, or by hearing of faith?

What an honor it is to be able to share this with you. God’s grace is so amazing and we see it here in these words. God’s Holy Spirit is alive and at work in the world today. The presence and absence of the Spirit is an indicator of the doctrine that God truly supports. It is amazing how simple the Christian life is, yet how complicated it becomes when it is perverted by our flesh, the world, or Satan.

Paul is asking rhetorical questions here in order to remind these Christians when they were truly being blessed by God. In asking these questions, the correct understanding of the law’s inability to make us righteous is made more clear. When we are working the law, we are doing it in our flesh. The Holy Spirit doesn’t come to us by working in the flesh. That is what we read here. The Holy Spirit only shows up “by hearing of faith.” In the HCSB and ESV versions it says “by hearing with faith.” This is critical. We receive the Holy Spirit by first receiving God’s Word. This strikes hard against the false teaching going on today.

Some popular teaching today says that what you believe isn’t important. Paul here in the Bible says that believing is is critically important. Christianity is not a state of mind that is disconnected from belief. Rather, belief in God’s Word is absolutely necessary. If you receive “a spirit” without the Word of God, it is not the Holy One.

Paul also references the miracles that had been done among them. Have you ever wondered why miracles aren’t happening around us? I believe it’s because we lack “hearing of faith.” We need to invest time studying these words that God has given us and believe them. God’s Spirit is responsive to this according to these words we read here and will supply us with His power. If we ignore God’s Word, how can we expect the Holy Spirit to work among us?

In this context, we can see why legalistic “churches” are so dead. The Spirit is not with them because they don’t depend upon the “hearing of faith” and get the Holy Spirit’s presence as a result.

Another important thing to notice here is Paul’s reference to being “completed in the flesh.” This is a huge error in the teaching of many “churches.” We don’t start out believing that Jesus died for us and then become obligated to follow God’s laws to maintain our righteousness. Since God’s law was written to the flesh, an attempt to follow it constitutes a departure from dependence on the Holy Spirit. I think that this kind of teaching is often created by preachers and perhaps even governments in order to try to implement control over the “flesh” of men. The problem is that it never really works. People get even more sinful when they are told “do not touch” or “do not do.” The best that people can do is to put on an act in public. This is not at all what God wants and it is exactly what Jesus spent effort on earth fighting against. God wants our hearts and only by hearing the Word of God and believing it will our hearts be changed.

Galatians 3:1 :

Foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you not to obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was openly set forth among you as crucified?

I have discovered that there are different kinds of obedience. When someone says “you should obey,” it can be confusing because it is difficult to be certain what they mean. The difference between the kinds of obedience can be the difference between a false gospel and the real one.

The difference in the kinds of obedience has to do with what you are obeying.

You can obey the law and that leads to legalism. This is not what Paul is urging the Galatians to do here. It is very clear that it is not because of everything else he says. To read it that way would be to read it completely out of context.

It is easy to read it as “obey the law” because it is natural to want to earn your way. In many ways, the world also encourages this way of thinking. It is not a surprise that we may quickly read “obey the law” in this passage instead of what it says.

The other kind of obedience is obedience to the truth. In order to obey the truth, you first must believe that there is a truth. That’s a major problem in our culture today. There is little respect for the whole idea of “truth.” You can just hear the words ringing in the air: “What’s true for you isn’t true for me…” Well, first of all, to obey the truth we have to get rid of that ridiculous and inconsistent idea. For if you were to believe that statement, you would be believing “a truth,” one that by your own admission is not permissible. To attempt to believe in what you do not believe in will probably lead to insanity. I recognize that it is not uncommon for humans to be inconsistent, but this is a very basic idea. I believe that what is really happening is that people don’t really believe the truth that they are saying. They are probably saying it to get out of a confrontation. This is not the way to “obey the truth.” First, a person needs to learn the truth.

When you obey the truth, your life is lived in a way consistent with it. The book of James in the Bible makes a big point about this. You don’t look in a mirror and walk away from it as if it didn’t show you anything. When you see yourself in the mirror, and believe what it shows you, you usually take some kind of action consistent with what you see. When you change your appearance because of what you see in the mirror, you are taking what you see in the mirror as truth. That’s the same as the message about Jesus. If we really believe that Jesus died and took our sins away without any of our righteousness taking a part in it, then we shouldn’t try to add laws and rules in. If we don’t really believe that Jesus was enough, then we start to pervert the truth and work for our own righteousness.

Galatians 2:17-20 :

But if, while we sought to be justified in Christ, we ourselves also were found sinners, is Christ a servant of sin? Certainly not! For if I build up again those things which I destroyed, I prove myself a law-breaker. For I, through the law, died to the law, that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I that live, but Christ living in me. That life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me.

I believe that what we read here today is the key to Christian living. If you are struggling with sin, please pay close attention to these words of scripture for they are what help me even now.

Christians recognize and accept that Jesus died in their place for their sins. This is very true, but this verse tells us something even more and it is extremely important for us to not miss it. Not only did Jesus die that day, but I did too. If you are a believer, then you also died. In fact, you were crucified.

I have found it crucial in my Christian walk to recognize this fact! I died.

This is important for more reasons than I probably understand right now but I want to mention two. First, it explains why the law is dead and powerless to us. If you read the law, you will see that it is only good for those who are living because the ultimate punishment for failure is to die. If we have already died, then the law has lost its power over us. Attempting to re-cover the law also results in bringing up our corpses and walking around in them in order to, somehow, start being good in them. We would essentially be building up what we destroyed and in doing so, immediately start law breaking.

When I say that the law is dead to us, I don’t mean to say that it doesn’t express and define what righteousness is, I just mean that it doesn’t apply to us now, because, we died. This also explains why we eat pork don’t keep the Sabbaths and feasts, and especially why we don’t offer sacrifices. The law still stands against anyone who dares to live within its reach. If you are not a Christian, and don’t think you are that bad, you obviously haven’t read the law and definitely haven’t understood it’s interpretation given by the Messiah when He talked to the Jews here on earth.

Second, the fact that we died means that we are living in a different way now. We were raised in Christ and now He is living His life in us. We need to maintain this recognition in order to understand the issues that are really going on inside of us as Christians. We still have this body, but when we recognize it to be dead and that we are only alive by Christ, we start to live differently by this faith. It is actually Jesus who lives in us because of our faith in Him.

When you become a Christian, it is by faith. When you live as a Christian it is also by faith in the life of Jesus. Jesus is alive and active in you right now! That is the blessing of being a Christian. That is what will cause us to overcome evil. This is what will make life worth living. This is what you already have if you accept it by faith.

Galatians 2:21  :

I don’t make void the grace of God. For if righteousness is through the law, then Christ died for nothing!

I really don’t need to say much today. Paul said it very clearly. When you mix the law in as a way to gain righteousness you become an anti-missionary. You preach, through your life, that Christ’s death was without reason.

It is clear in the gospels that Jesus willingly went to His death. John the Baptist said that Jesus was the lamb of God. He was a sacrifice for the sins of man. If man was able to be righteous without Jesus sacrifice, then Jesus didn’t do anything by dying for the sins of mankind that couldn’t have been done by mankind without Him.

The true way to salvation is very narrow and has a very small door. You must believe in Jesus death for your righteousness, or try to do it on your own. You can’t have it both ways. This is how legalism voids God’s grace. Any work on your part for your own righteousness, keeps you from coming to God on the right terms. Grace is always undeserved. If you think that your righteous acts help you get righteousness, even a little, then it ruins grace.

Jesus said that no man comes to the Father but by Him. The law obviously doesn’t do the job because you have broken it by lying, cheating, or desiring something that wasn’t yours. It doesn’t make you good, it shows how bad you really are.

Is Paul saying that we shouldn’t do what the law says? No. We should be doing what God would do as Christians, but our goal is not to follow laws, but to follow Jesus and His commands. We can’t actually become a good person by trying. Becoming a good person is a gift. We should live a life that is consistent with that gift. Since the goodness or righteousness is already ours, we should live it out. We don’t need to follow laws to to be righteousness because God is alive in us right now. We should submit to Him and live.

Galatians 2:15-16  :

“We, being Jews by nature, and not Gentile sinners, yet knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law, because no flesh will be justified by the works of the law.

The Jews had the best legal system in the world. If you were to follow it, you would be civil and able to live a holy life on the earth. The Jews experienced, however, that this was not humanly possible. They experienced it so well that Paul and Peter decided to give it up to follow Christ. That is what we read here.

Do you realize that they knew that had to give up the law in order to follow Christ? This was obvious to them. I believe that it was Jesus that made it so obvious. When you read the gospels you read how the disciples were constantly failing to be good, while, at the same time, Jesus was constantly doing what was right. The light of Jesus righteousness shown brightly on the backdrop of the disciples stumbling.

It is a very wrong idea to think that if they had only tried harder, they would have been able to live properly without the need for sacrifice. That is what we call self-righteousness. That’s the kind of righteousness that God defined in the law. He, wisely, also defined a system of sacrifice. Does that mean God wasn’t a positive thinker? No, it means He was realistic about our condition, even when we were not. One man did succeeded at being self-righteous, however.

These Jews were able to come to the realization that no one can be made righteous by the works of the law. They can be made clean by sacrifice, but not by their works. Now these Jews stopped sacrificing animals for their sin. They were demonstrating that they were depending on some other way to be made clean.

The world “justified” has been said to mean: Just as if I’d never sinned. I think that these Jews knew that there was no animal that could really take the blame for their sin. Things were now quite different. Jesus was a man and He lived a sinless life right in front of them. His death was the only sacrifice that was actually able to do take care of our problem.

Galatians 2:11-14  :

But when Peter came to Antioch, I resisted him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before some people came from James, he ate with the Gentiles. But when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing those who were of the circumcision. And the rest of the Jews joined him in his hypocrisy; so that even Barnabas was carried away with their hypocrisy. But when I saw that they didn’t walk uprightly according to the truth of the Good News, I said to Peter before them all, “If you, being a Jew, live as the Gentiles do, and not as the Jews do, why do you compel the Gentiles to live as the Jews do?

In United States culture, confronting someone often is treated as something unacceptable. It’s as if the proper thing to do is let everyone be who they are and don’t “impose your views on someone else.” Sometimes, I believe confrontation is treated as a bigger sin than adultery.

Now either the culture is wrong, or the Bible is.

Paul, here, gives himself as an illustration of good behavior as he confronted Peter. This is something we need to carefully consider. It may have seemed harmless at the time but Peter was actually misleading other Christians.

Not unlike our culture today, Peter was giving in to the pressure of his peers and doing something in front of them that he would not have done if they weren’t there. He was confusing the Gentile Christians by going along with the Jewish ones that were judging Peter by who he was eating with. Peter acted like he wasn’t the sort of Jewish Christian who would eat with the Gentiles even though that’s exactly what he had been doing before they came. You can imagine how confusing this probably was to the new Gentile Christians.

Our society today gives us plenty of pressure to conform as do many of our churches. We see here that honesty is the only proper thing to do, especially when it is concerning something that affects the gospel. In this case, the hypocrisy was causing some Gentile believers to wonder if Peter actually believed that they should be following the law after they became Christians. Paul knew that the fact was that a little law spoils grace. Grace must be absent of law as law must be absent of Grace. When you come to God by grace you are not expected to pay. When you come by law, you must pay. There is no mixing! A little law means you are going to have to pay and grace is destroyed.

Notice how Paul confronts Peter. He said he did it “to his face” and “before them all.” Now that isn’t politically correct is it? Paul was clearly thinking of the gospel and how much this precious truth needed to be protected. It needed to be maintained for those who would be confused and be tempted to wander from it. Paul was not thinking of the “great men of the Church” here. He was concerned about the believers who were being affected by the hypocrisy.

He was bold and wanted to quickly stunt the growth of this disease and he did in the face and out loud! That is how we must defend our one gospel. There is only one and it is easily corrupted.

I am learning that the way to lose concern over your confrontation is to remember the silent ones we are actually defending. The people who hurt when we are hypocritical are usually in greater danger than the ones for whom we are attempting to put on a show. This is a simple way that almost anyone can be a true hero. Stand up for the truth for the sake of those without a voice! I am thinking of millions of small voices that have been aborted in the world. I am also thinking about the persecuted Christians like the ones in Afghanistan, Iraq, China and the Sudan. Confrontation may make us look bad to some, but there are those whose lives will be protected if we speak the truth.

Lastly, it should be clear that Peter is not a pope. He’s just a guy who God made a leader in the Church and a writer of the Bible. We are all very important to Jesus. He died for all of us. Notice that Peter sinned after he had the Holy Spirit. Notice how Peter always comforts us in regard to forgiveness because he kept stumbling! We all stumble and we all continue in forgiveness when we confess our sins to God.

Galatians 2:7-10 :

but to the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the Good News for the uncircumcision, even as Peter with the Good News for the circumcision (for he who appointed Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision appointed me also to the Gentiles); and when they perceived the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas and John, they who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcision. They only asked us to remember the poor—which very thing I was also zealous to do.

Here we read that James, Peter, and John all agreed that Jesus had spoken to Paul and that they were behind his work with the Gentiles. We also read that it was Peter’s job to work with the Jews.

Notice how God did the work and man merely recognized and agreed with the direction. Peter didn’t decide that Paul should go to the Gentiles, Jesus did. James, Peter, and John recognized and agreed with what Jesus did.

Also notice, that although they gave Paul a “rule” that he should remember the poor, it was already in Paul’s heart to do it.

Notice that there is no “lord of men” here other than Jesus. Peter is hardly seen as a “Pope” here in this letter. He is merely one of the ones “reputed to be pillars.” Isn’t it wonderful how the leadership came together in agreement. This is also an important thing for us to pay attention to. Leadership isn’t supposed to be at odds. Either the leadership should come together, or it should cleanly spilt apart (along the lines of what is Biblical). Allowing disagreement while looking like things are together is not acceptable. We are to be of one heart and mind in Christianity. That’s another reason why the Bible, the Word of God, is so important. We need to come together behind it.

Lastly, remembering the poor is something that we should be very zealous to do. If we are not remembering, it demonstrates a heart problem. I believe that the Bible indicates that one of the reasons people are poor is because they fail to see the appropriate motivation for work. The Bible teaches us that we should be working in order to have to give to others. The desire to give to others, is a Christian’s proper motivation for working. Paul worked as he preached and it supported his ministry whenever he was able to do it. This is one reason why taxation for things like welfare is troublesome. Aside from the whole point of liberty, government re-distribution leaves the heart of man out of the process of giving. It is so important for a civil society to give from the heart. It is hard to give when the government does it for you and for things you don’t approve. Also, civil giving starts with your own family not the government. Then, God’s people are next… See the problem?