OUR FATHER BEFORE WHOM THOSE WHO LIVE BY FAITH SHALL BE JUSTIFIED

Galatians chapter 3 verses 1 - 14 says this;

1 O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified? 2 This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? 3 Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? 4 Have you suffered so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain?

The Apostle Paul, aghast at the Galatians for drifting towards legalism as the means by which they accounted themselves righteous, calls them foolish. He rhetorically asked them if there were any works they did that brought the Spirit of God to them.  Clearly, they had done no such thing but rather a simply believed in the message of faith that was preached to them.

5 Therefore He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?— 6 just as Abraham “believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” 7 Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham. 8 And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, “In you all the nations shall be blessed.” 9 So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham.

Paul explains that all the supernatural blessings they had received were through faith and not by any attempt to fulfil the strictures of the law of Moses. In fact, faith, being the vehicle of righteousness unto salvation, was encoded into the story of salvation right from the very beginning during the life of Abraham who  believed the word of God upon hearing it and as such was the one through whom all those who came after in faith were blessed. 

10 For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse; for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them.” 11 But that no one is justified by the law in the sight of God is evident, for “the just shall live by faith.” 12 Yet the law is not of faith, but “the man who does them shall live by them.”

13 Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”), 14 that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

The attempt to gain justification by the law is futile because the law is a curse upon those who are under the law and who are unable to fulfil it.

But in our state, Christ, who was hanged on a tree, became a curse for us so that we were not longer cursed to be under the law that we could not fulfil but rather, by believing in the message of Christˋs victory on the cross, we could recieve the promise of the Spirit.

Amen.

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