Shownotes
Galatians 3: Faith, Law, and the Promise of Freedom
In this episode, we take a thoughtful walk through Galatians 3, exploring one of Paul’s most passionate arguments about the true source of righteousness—faith, not works. Paul’s confrontation with Peter sets the tone, reminding us that even spiritual leaders can lose their way. We reflect on how the Galatians, once grounded in the Spirit, were being swayed by the allure of religious performance. Through Abraham’s story, Paul illustrates how faith was always the foundation of God’s promise. We dive into the purpose of the law, why it could never save us, and how Christ fulfilled everything the law pointed to. This chapter calls us to wear our identity in Christ like a garment and reminds us that we are no longer bound by performance, comparison, or division—but united in grace.
Top Topics Covered:
1. Peter, Paul, and a Confrontation Worth Watching
Paul’s bold rebuke of Peter is more than a theological debate—it’s a necessary wake-up call for a church at risk of slipping into performance-based faith. We explore how Paul’s unwavering stand for the gospel challenges us today to confront uncomfortable truths with love and clarity.
2. Bewitched by Works: Why the Galatians Were Losing Their Way
Paul doesn’t hold back when he accuses the Galatians of being “bewitched.” They began with the Spirit but were turning back to the law, chasing validation through religious actions. This section breaks down the spiritual confusion and peer pressure they faced—and how we still fall into similar traps.
3. Abraham as the Model of Faith
Abraham believed before he acted. Before there were good works, there was faith—and it was this faith that God credited as righteousness. Paul uses this foundational story to prove that the blessing of salvation isn’t earned, but received.
4. The Purpose of the Law
Why did God give the law at all if it couldn’t save? We look at how the law acted as a guardian, a moral compass, and a mirror to show us how far we fall from God’s holiness. But its role was never to save—it was always to prepare us for the Savior.
5. Identity in Christ: No Jew or Greek, Male or Female
Paul’s radical declaration of unity in Christ breaks down social, cultural, and gender divisions. We discuss what it means to “put on Christ” like clothing—adopting a new identity that transcends all boundaries and redefining how we view ourselves and others.
Takeaways:
Galatians 3 teaches that righteousness comes through faith, not through our own performance. The law was never a tool for salvation—it was a guide to highlight our need for Jesus. We’re reminded that God keeps His promises, and His promise to Abraham is now fulfilled in Christ and extended to us. Putting on Christ is more than adopting good behavior—it’s accepting a new identity that changes how we think, act, and love. This episode encourages us to stop striving to earn God’s love and instead rest in the truth that we are already clothed in Christ’s righteousness. No matter our background or story, we are equally in need of grace and equally heirs of the promise.
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Transcripts
What does the story of Abraham have to do with works and faith? That's what we're going to talk about today in Galatians 3. Well, I have to tell you, oh gosh, I've just been sitting with this whole dramatic scene that we've been sitting with in Galatians. Hi, this is Jill from the Northwoods talking about the Bible one small chapter at a time. It's something that you don't sometimes want to look at. I don't like this idea that Peter and Paul had this debate and that Peter was being rebuked by Paul, but Peter needed to hear this. And when we see this confrontation, we don't want to look at it, I think. But we also can't look away from it. Peter's a guy who talked to Jesus more than anybody else in the gospel, and now he's getting it wrong. And Paul called him out about it. And Paul had bold statements into chapter 3. He's not backing away from it. He's letting the Galatians have it. And this is a full-on rebuke again. And Paul had this letter coming to them. He wants to help the church by being honest and diving into what they were getting wrong and how they were listening to other people. Did they listen to other people because they were afraid they had it wrong? Did they listen to other people because they wanted to look good to other groups of people? Like, you know, just get it right and look, you know, better to them? I thought it was interesting because, you know, like we see, you know, when Jesus was talking about the Pharisees, you got the idea that they were doing things the wrong way, talking about Sabbath, dressing up fancy, all these types of things, because they were trying to impress other people. And in this particular case, it almost seems like this is less about trying to be impressive but more trying to they just don't even know which way to turn and so they're just like the the shifting winds you know so he starts off by saying you foolish galatians who has bewitched you the word bewitched is a strong term who put you under a spell who um who has led you away in this dazzling way and they started to walk in the spirit received faith by the holy spirit now they're turning their backs and turning back to the law, which is interesting in of itself, because if they were primarily Gentiles, this wasn't even their law. This was not something that they were raised with, which maybe then, you know, there were more Jewish communities in southern Galatia, which maybe favors that a little bit more, but they're turning back to something that Jesus pulled away from, these works, these living by the law. Again, the law shows us where we I was driving 16-55. I get that. Instead, it doesn't save us. And we are free in the Spirit, not so that we can live foolishly, but we're not also bound by the law in the same way. Back to the work of flesh for saving yourself. And Paul is incredulous about this saying, did you receive the Holy Spirit by works of the law or hearing it by faith? We don't get the Holy Spirit by our works. It is another freely given gift from God. And this is such a question. Did God begin with the works he did in you because of you following the law? Did he get to you because you were good, real followers and doing the right thing? Or did he transform in a miracle you, your faith, your heart, the works that were started in you? all the things that Jesus did in faith, not because laws were followed correctly. So now he brings in Abraham, which is really interesting because he is such an anchor of the Jewish faith. Obviously, the Pharisees are thinking, we're doing what Abraham told us to do. And instead, he's saying, what really was the deal with Abraham? This is going to be important. And Abraham was a guy who came from Ur, traveled and became in this land in Israel and being the father of the Jewish people. Abraham believed in God. The Jews loved saying, we're children of Abraham. And it said that because Abraham believed in God, he was credited with righteousness. Before he did anything, before he left his front door, before All the things that Abraham did in his faith, God credited righteousness to him. It wasn't declared because of all his good actions. He hadn't even done his actions yet. It was because of his faith. He uprooted his life. He traveled to a new land. He trusted in the word of God that he would be the father of nations. That's faith. And Paul says, there's your model right there. It wasn't because Abraham did the right things and Abraham didn't always do the right things. Abraham had righteousness through faith. God preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham and said, through you all nations shall be blessed. This wasn't a land offering or some kind of a promise of wealth. It was about the coming salvation. It was the promise that would be fulfilled in Jesus, that all those who are in faith would be blessed along with Abraham, a man of faith, because of his actions. And we do remember Abraham as faithful, but that's the idea is that he was saved just like we were all saved through faith. Paul gets even more intense, if that's even possible. All that rely on works of the law are under a curse because the law demands perfection. You have to follow every law exactly as it's written. And cursed is everyone who doesn't do all the things. If you screw up one of these things that were written in the book of the law, you're cursed by that now. The law shows us how much we fall short. It's our speedometer saying, you're going 60 miles an hour in a 55 zone. It's showing a scale and saying, hey, dude, you put on 10 pounds over Christmas. It's not fixing the problem. It reveals the problem. And I think the Bible sometimes, like I said, I look at it as a plan. That's where we use a weight on a line so we can tell whether or not something is up and down. You know, now I don't know what I did with it. I have a level, right? So I can see what is up and down. It measures straightness. And that's what the Bible is doing for us. That's what the law does for us. It gives us a standard. But it doesn't fix us. It doesn't make us righteous. It doesn't save us. And in fact, the more we know about it, the more we realize we have missed the mark. Which is why we need Christ to come here, redeem us from this terrible curse, and then save us from the law. And so you can see where Paul is giving that differentiation between what they're doing and what he wants them to do. And Paul goes on to quote Deuteronomy, Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree. Christ became that curse for us. So hanged on a tree, that's Jesus. Wood Tree, right? And so he became that curse for us so that we could be saved from that curse. So the blessing promised to Abraham, salvation through a relationship with God, including all nations of the world, comes through Christ. And we receive it through faith. That's very powerful. And reminding them they're not getting saved by the law. So Paul makes that point that the covenant, is confirmed. We have a new covenant in Christ. You can't subtract from it. You can't remove it. You can't annul it. You can't replace it with something else. The promise came through Abraham first. The law came 430 years later. It didn't replace that promise. The inheritance didn't come through the law. And if it did, it wouldn't be based on a promise of God anymore. Instead, you know, if it said, oh, you have to do all these things or you can't go to heaven or you can't be righteous, then none of us can. Then we're done. Then this whole thing is over with. But God gave it to Abraham in a promise, and God keeps his promises, and therefore we are saved through the righteousness of Christ. So then the complicated part comes in. Then why the law? Paul says that it was added because of the transgressions of the people. until Jesus came. The law had a role. It served a purpose, sort of as a guardian or a tutor, about what it is that we should do and how we should act. It showed people how far that they were from God's holiness. This is what is separating you from God. Prepare for the coming of the Savior who is going to save you. It's, again, putting speed limit signs everywhere. We all know how to drive safely. And if we did drive safely and we did so out of love because we wouldn't want to harm another person, that would be great. But we don't. So we have to have speed limit signs everywhere. We're sinners. We need signs. We need speed limits. It'd be nice. What was that phrase? If we were all angels, we wouldn't need laws. And if we were all devils, we wouldn't listen to them. I forgot the famous speech. But that's the idea. Because we are sinners, we need those signs. And even when we have them, we speed anyway, we break the law anyway. The law didn't reduce sin, it highlights it to us, and it shows us why Jesus was necessary to us. I think Paul gets that better than anyone, because he was the guy who was trying to do all the things, and then he realizes, oh, I'm not doing any of those things. God called us to be loving and love our neighbor. And while Paul thought he was upholding all the rules, he was going and hunting down people, hauling them back so they could be punished. He gets it. And that's what makes this whole thing really kind of interesting that Paul is saying that. He also then goes on to say an interesting theological note that the law was in place, was put in place through angels by an intermediary. And that usually, most people think, refers to Moses. that essentially that Moses receiving the law through angelic meditation on Mount Sinai, he came and gave us that law. But right now we don't need a go-between. Christ is our mediator. He brings us directly into God. We don't have to pray to anybody else. We don't have to have anyone mediate beyond us. We don't have to have anyone stand between us and God. There's no more curtain. We are direct communication with God. And so if the law could give lies, righteousness would be through the law. Scripture says that we're all imprisoned under sin. The law is imprisoning us. We sped. Now we're in jail. And so the promise comes through faith in Jesus Christ for those who believe. And that's what gets us out of jail. We're the church. The church is now that entity. And so before faith came, we were captive under the law. You know, while he didn't have faith, while All of us didn't have faith. We didn't have anything. The law was a guardian to us, trying to show us how far we were apart, trying to show us the holy life. But now Christ has come and we're no longer under that guardian. We are sons of God through faith. And as many, he says, of you were baptized into Christ, have put on Christ. It's so beautiful. I mean, it's not even just that we're trying to be like Christ. We're not trying to just, oh, I'm trying to think. Do the best we can. Instead, we're putting Christ on like clothing. It's not a behavior that we're just doing. It's our identity now. We look different because we wear Jesus. And the revolutionary part, and this is always such a huge chapter, there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, you are all one in Christ. This is a huge radical statement. And people like to take this one particularly out of context and do different things. In the ancient world that this was, there were divisions all the time. And the Galatians knew it more than anybody else. The Jews looked down on the Gentiles. The Gentiles thought the Jews were ignorant. Men looked down on women. And the free looked down on the enslaved. And vice versa. We all looked poorly at each other. And he's saying that those categories are not things that God uses when he looks at his children. We are all the same. Now, you will get in that. That doesn't mean that there aren't men and women anymore, or free and enslaved, or Jews and Gentiles. It's not that these disappear as an entity. We're God's children in that. We are God's loved in that. And so that doesn't mean, like I said, those distinctions disappear. Clearly, there are men and women, and men and women Women are different. Social statuses still exist. And when it comes to being loved by God and being heirs, there's no distinction. We are united in Christ. So keep, I guess, that in its proper perspective and don't try to read into it what we all have our different views of what we would want to read into it. And so that, in the end, is the promise of Abraham. You are Christ's. You are Abraham's offsprings. all of us, heirs in that promise that was given to Abraham. The promise didn't die out, it was fulfilled by Jesus, and now it's ours too. What I'm going to meditate on is this idea that the law was never meant to save us, it was meant to guide us, it was meant to show us our distance from God so that it would lead us to the Savior. And this week, I, you know, consider those areas in my life, I think, where I'm still trying to earn God's love. Still trying to prove my word. And instead, trying to learn how to rest in the idea that righteousness is given through faith in Christ, just like Abraham had faith, trusted in God. It wasn't his actions. And I shouldn't be trusting in my actions either. But instead, God keeping his promise, always keeping his promises. And what I'm going to pray about is that he promised Abraham centuries ago that all of this rebellion and waiting would be fulfilled. And it was fulfilled in Jesus Christ being sent to us to bear the curse of the law that I couldn't fulfill. Paul couldn't. I mean, honestly, if Paul couldn't fulfill it, no one could. And I hope to walk in faith and not in fear. I hope to have certainty that that promise is upheld all the time. His words are better than my performance. I mean, obviously. And we're saved through his words and not by our performances. And when I see other people, you know, and I see other people say that, that you have to do this or do that, we're all loved by God equally. And we're all equally then also needing his grace. And what I'm going to share with other people is that when Paul says that you've put on Christ, he's using this image of putting on clothes. And in the ancient world, clothing was sort of a symbol of identity. We saw that, right? The Pharisees were walking with their fancy robes. The Romans have their soldier outfit on. We all put on identities when we wear different kinds of clothes. And when we put on Christ as our clothing, we should be looking at that as a whole brand new identity. We're no longer defined by our past or what we did or our culture or our failures, but instead now we have that righteousness of Jesus. We don't simply just believe in Christ. We wear him, and that changes everything with us. It changes how we act and how we think and how we speak. All right, everyone, thanks so much. Appreciate you watching, listening. Again, if you want to say something, put a comment here. You can email me at jill at startwithsmallsteps.com. I hope you're enjoying this. I'm so glad we're getting into these letters all so different and addressing different problems. So anyway, I appreciate you being there. Have a great day.