Galatians-Week 3-How many sons does Father Abraham have?

To finish up Chapter 3, Paul writes:
26You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, 27for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.

16. So we're all "heirs according to the promise." What's the promise?

Thanks to Jesus, we're all heirs, God's chosen people through Abraham. John 1: 12 says: Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.

We believers have been clothed with Christ. Whatever is in Christ belongs to you and to me if we believe: the love of the Father, access to the Father, the full resources of the Father.

And even more importantly...there is no distinction in our new family. Superficial and temporary differences have no place in our body.

How does the law lead us to Christ?
External conformity to the law is easy. What about internal conformity?

One last comment on the law...here's what Jesus said about it (the Message version):
Matthew 5:17-20

"Don't suppose for a minute that I have come to demolish the Scriptures— either God's Law or the Prophets. I'm not here to demolish but to complete. I am going to put it all together, pull it all together in a vast panorama. God's Law is more real and lasting than the stars in the sky and the ground at your feet. Long after stars burn out and earth wears out, God's Law will be alive and working.

"Trivialize even the smallest item in God's Law and you will only have trivialized yourself. But take it seriously, show the way for others, and you will find honor in the kingdom. Unless you do far better than the Pharisees in the matters of right living, you won't know the first thing about entering the kingdom.

Galatians-Week 3-Then, what's law got to do with it?

Here's a confession: I break the law sometimes, usually on the way to work. And on the way home. I drive faster than the posted speed limits, even though I understand in my head that driving laws are in place for my safety and others. I also rip tags off of pillows and walk my dog in the park that says "No dogs allowed." I'm a rebel.
What about you? Have any similar challenges under the law?

16. If the law can't save us, why did God give it to Moses in the first place?
That answer is pretty easy. Paul outlines it in the next verses:

15Brothers, let me take an example from everyday life. Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case. 16The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say "and to seeds," meaning many people, but "and to your seed," meaning one person, who is Christ. 17What I mean is this: The law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise. 18For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on a promise; but God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise.
19What, then, was the purpose of the law? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come. The law was put into effect through angels by a mediator. 20A mediator, however, does not represent just one party; but God is one.

21Is the law, therefore, opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not! For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. 22But the Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe.

23Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. 24So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. 25Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.

In a nutshell: the law makes us aware of our sin and need for salvation, our utter inability to do it ourselves.

Abraham's covenant is better than Moses' law and Abraham was saved 430 years before God gave Moses the commandments (and isn't it just another sign of Paul's superiority that he has that fact at his fingertips?). In God's covenant with Abraham, God said "I Will" but the commandments said "Thou Shalt"...dooming them to failure! The responsibility for the covenant was on God who does not fail. Only 1 part was required to do anything for success and that party was God. Unlike the commandments which was more of a 2 party agreement...that totally depended on you and me for success. And here's the truth about that: man can't succeed and God can't fail.

So then why did the tablets come down?
They lead us to Christ. They show us our sinfulness, our inability to please God through our own works, our need for mercy and grace. Grace means nothing unless you know you gotta have it. Thanks to the "Thou shalts" we know we must have grace.

Are people inherently good? Are there any laws that you routinely break? Can anyone keep the perfect law of God?

Galatians-Week 1-A New Gospel?

Here's the next part of the letter, Galatians 1:6-10:

6I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! 9As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!
10Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Paul's letters usually start out with a peaceful greeting, an encouraging word to struggling groups of Christians, but, to me, it seems he's just a little put out with the Galatians...the churches that he'd established and invested the time to teach the gospel as it had been directly revealed to him...these believers were being misled...they were deserting. Different translations will have different words but Paul was amazed or astonished that they were deserting, willfully leaving the gospel.

7. So what's this "new gospel" we've been hearing about?
Unfortunately, we don't have a letter from the Judaizers outlining their dogma, but it's easy to see that it's contrary to Paul's message of salvation by grace through faith. The Judaizers agreed that Christ was the Messiah, but they wanted to make salvation for the Gentiles contingent on a type of conversion to Judaism or, really, to make Gentiles subject to the rules of Judaism (specifically, circumcision) before they could be saved.

It's easy to see why the Galatians would have been, at the very least, confused by the Judaizers. I also sometimes wonder about how easily I am saved. Simple faith is all it takes, but it seems like there should be so much more. And the Judaizers have a simple solution to that: yes, you can say that Christ is who He said He was, but then why don't you also try to live under the law perfectly like we've tried and failed to do for centuries? (I don't know if they really said that. I may be paraphrasing.)

Do you see why Paul reacted to strongly? A righteous Pharisee who knew the law and did his best to live it, converted and taught personally by Jesus Christ himself, committed to spreading His gospel...to be confronted again by the law, creeping its way back into the early church to confuse the new believers in Galatia.

What was Paul's gospel before conversion? What is his purpose after conversion?
What kinds of substitute gospels to people preach today that tempt people to depend on something besides Christ for security and salvation?

The MacArthur NT Commentary says this:

Satan's primary target for false teaching is the doctrine of salvation, because if people are confused about that they have no way of coming to God in the first place and thus remain under Satan's influence and control. He teaches lies about church organization, Christian living, the Lord's return, and many other things. But his first concern is to undermine the heart of the gospel, which is salvation by grace, made possible through the Person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We can talk about whether Paul was changing the gospel to make people like him tomorrow...but I'm thinking "No" is the answer.