Faith is a funny thing. An agnostic has faith—faith that there is a god but that she, he or it doesn’t really care. An atheist has faith—faith that there is no god therefore the universe created and sustains itself. And then there are all of those other believing people who adhere to a belief system, religion or religions. It is important to understand a person’s beliefs based on the object of that belief. Is it science, religious tradition, humanity, self, politics or nature? Every person has some form of faith.
The Apostle Paul (formerly Saul) had faith in the ancient God of the Hebrews. By his own accounting, Paul had regarded himself as a Hebrew of Hebrews (see Philippians 3:5) legally bound and adhering to the Old Testament law. He was a God-fearing, religious zealot who believed in the God of people who had adhered to these religious practices.
A new religion had come on the scene while Saul was an influential religious leader. This religion was called The Way and people had been leaving this religion to follow the teachings and that person named Jesus, who they called the Christ—the Messiah—of The Way. In those days this had prompted Saul to actively pursue and punish those who had left the rules of his religion behind to take up a new faith. Several years later, Saul had a personal encounter with the Spirit of Jesus Christ. It was well after the resurrection of Jesus Christ that Saul was on his way to another town to route out and persecute even more Christians.
Acts 9:1-5
Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. 3 As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
5 “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.
“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied.
From this individual encounter with the resurrected and then heaven-based Spirit of Jesus, Saul was transformed into a full-bodied and spiritually enlivened person of The Way. After his name was changed to Paul and through the months and years that followed, he became one of the most ardent advocators for faith in Jesus Christ. It was really a remarkable transformation that led to the establishing of Christian churches through three arduous missionary journeys. One of those areas was Galatia, now modern-day Turkey. After helping to establish the Christian churches there, Paul branched out even further pointing the way to Jesus Christ as the Savior.
Throughout the New Testament we read many of his letters to new and to established churches. The letter to Galatians is a remarkable document that demonstrates a number of things: a well-established Christian community made up of Gentiles and Jewish converts, a community that had been alive and well because of faith in Jesus Christ, and a church being torn apart by legalism.
In Galatians 1:6-7 we get a sense of how astonished Paul was by the strife that was happening in this Christian community. “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.” While traveling about, Paul had learned of this terrible strife. It was not just that a group of people who had been as radically and wonderfully transformed as he had been, that had been worshipping together as one body, that had known the sweet and abiding personal relationship with the risen Savior, were now divided. As terrible as those things were, even worse was the loss of freedom in their faith. Some were now bound by legalism and others were being influenced to be bound in the same way. The kind of freedom that they had known was not the freedom of the anarchist or the self-made person. The freedom that was being sacrificed was the freedom to be like Jesus Christ and fueled by His power!
Paul, out of great love and compassion, wrote to them in what seems be an inordinately harsh way.
Galatians 3:1-5
You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. 2 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? 3 Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? 4 Have you experienced so much in vain—if it really was in vain? 5 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?
Here Paul is demonstrating the deep love and concern he has for these people. He knows the bondage of legalism before Christ fulfilled the Old Testament Law and set believers free to love God and their neighbors unrestrained. That bondage to the old law, not contrary to God’s commands (Matthew 5:17-20), was a comfortable way to live, or as James Edlin wrote, a means to an end. “Unfortunately, some of these early Christians misunderstood something very important about law. They thought it was a means of entering into relationship with God. Yet the catalog of laws is not a checklist of things people must do to be accepted by God. The Lord gave the laws to Moses only after He had rescued Israel and made them His people. As Paul noted, Abraham became the friend of God centuries before the law was ever given at Sinai. So, law was not designed to usher people into a relationship with God.”[1]
Yes, Abraham. Paul goes all the way back to a man who was formerly called Abram. We continue to read in Galatians 3.
6 So also Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”
7 Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham. 8 Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” 9 So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
There were two brothers, suddenly without their father, the patriarch of the family. They were probably wondering what to do. The Bible doesn't tell us much about the religion of Terah the father, Abram or Nahor his brother. We know that while they were in the Ur of Chaldeans there were numerous gods that were worshipped. It would probably be safe to think that Abram and his family were pretty open to being contacted in a mystical way, that they were religious people.
What Abram encountered next in his life was a new thing. Oh, but it was not just a new thing, but a new Person with a capital P. This Person was God himself initiating a relationship with a lower case "p" person named Abram. The Name of the One contacting Abram could be translated Jehovah. (In the English translations it is written "LORD" to indicate its holy nature.) This was the first name by which God identified himself to Abram. This is one of the many names of God that the ancient writers related to their audience. The New Bible Dictionary describes this name as that which "presents God as a Person, and so brings Him into relationship with other, human personalities. It brings God near to man, and He speaks to [Abram] as one friend to another…The name is no mere label, but is significant of the real personality of him to whom it belongs…[and] reflects] his character…When a person puts his 'name' on a thing or another person the latter comes under his influence and protection."[2] In this initiation God, the LORD, begins connecting his name and his character to an otherwise non-descript man named Abram.
Read Genesis 12:.1-9
The great God of the universe chose to interact with a man who appears to be of no particular significance. Why didn't God approach and seek out some great King of the world, some phenomenal leader of people? Instead God, who created the heavens and the earth, tapped a man on the shoulder who was living in a pagan culture, surrounded by pagan gods of all sorts, and whose life really hadn't amounted to much of anything yet. If one of us was God we might look over the entire earth to find the greatest person to give these things and these promises to. But we are not God.
As humans we will give love generally because someone loves us back. We love a dog because he wags his tail and is so very happy to see us. We love our spouses because they have promised and demonstrated at some level a return of love. We love our children because they grab hold of our leg and grin up at us like we were the sunshine itself. We love our friends because they tell us it is great to be with us. But God loves us without any of that. Abram had not made any singular commitment to Jehovah. We have no record of Abram telling his friends that he was going to serve only one god. We have no record that Abram had made himself a reputation of being a particularly holy man. And yet, God came to him personally and made some incredible promises. And God did this not because Abram was such a singularly spectacular human being, but simply because God chose him.
What did God promise to Abram? Several very important things: 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. I hope we can grasp the significance of these promises. God will take a childless man and make his descendants into not just a family, not just a clan, but into an entire nation! God will take a lowly man and makes him great—people would talk about and study and know about Abram/Abraham for the rest of human history! God promised to protect and bless this man, by protecting and blessing those who protected and blessed him. And to top it all off, everyone on the earth would be blessed through this one insignificant man who had now been made significant by Jehovah God himself. It would be one thing if we saw that Abram deserved this, but he did not deserve God’s love any more than any of us. One big God on one side, one little non-descript person on the other. All Abram had to do was follow. And so he did. That is faith in the one, true living God.
This is what Paul was pointing the Galatian church to—a faith that was not bound to laws that were not even created at the time of Abraham. He was demonstrating that their personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ surpassed the laws that were being foisted upon them.
To be compassionate towards those who are bound in legalism, the human effort to make one acceptable to God, is a good thing—for a time. But in the Galatian church a line had to be drawn. At risk was true Christian love and, even more devastating, the collapse of grace-filled lives with Jesus Christ! Therefore, Paul used strong language to compel them to return to their initial freedom to love God with all their hearts, all their souls, and their minds and love their neighbors as themselves—as Jesus taught. (Matthew 22:37-40)
Here's some more strong language from Paul in Galatians 3:10-14.
10 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.” 11 Clearly no one who relies on the law is justified before God, because “the righteous will live by faith.” 12 The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, it says, “The person who does these things will live by them.” 13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.” 14 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 Spirit.
There is a lot to unpack in these few verses, so for the sake of the focus on this Bible study, let’s abbreviate. The quote in verse 10 is from Deuteronomy 27:26, a recounting of the Law before Moses died. Even in this passage, captured generations after Abraham, the pressure of living under that Law was immense! This is why they had to constantly offer sacrifices—to cover the sins that would happen. This is what the agitators in the Galatian church were pressing down on the believers in Jesus Christ. In their minds, if Jew and Gentile did not follow the law the only outcome was curses. What an awful faith-less, grace-less life!
But Jesus Christ made all the difference! Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. Oh, that those who are bound even today in a faith-less life understand this and be grateful, living humble lives under the grace of God the Father, the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Paul goes on to describe the role of the Law in Galatians 3:23-25.
23 Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. 24 So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. 25 Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.
The Law was our friend—if not a freeing friend, a friend indeed. For without the Law, we would not know what sin was and therefore would not know the need for our God and Savior. The new freedom is what the Galatians had already learned and were being turned from. What a heartache to watch someone’s spiritual life shrivel up because the freedom bought by Jesus Christ is withdrawn!
Once set free from the Law that guarded us, we can be like Abraham and Paul—free to follow God wherever he leads, free to be confident in that direction because God loves us, free to reach out to others who were enemies before. We are given new identities, a new belief system, a new faith that surpasses them all.
Galatians 3:26-28 reads: So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Paul makes this great announcement of identity. Once you take that step of faith in Jesus Christ, it doesn’t matter what other people, your culture, your influences, even yourself have told you who you are—in Christ you are free all that God wants you to be with the blessed unity of the Christian community!
Amen
© M.R.Hyde 2025
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