GalatiansGalatians

JamesJames• 3/17 – 10 AM

• Room #330

• “I am surprised at you! In no time at all you are deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ, and are accepting another gospel. Actually, there is no "other gospel," but I say this because there are some people who are upsetting you and trying to change the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel that is different from the one we preached to you, may he be condemned to hell!” (Galatians 1:6-8 – GN)

• “As for the rumor that I continue to preach the ways of circumcision (as I did in those pre-Damascus Road days), that is absurd. Why would I still be persecuted, then? If I were preaching that old message, no one would be offended if I mentioned the Cross now and then—it would be so watered-down it wouldn’t matter one way or the other.

• Why don’t these agitators, obsessive as they are about circumcision, go all the way and castrate themselves!” (Galatians 5:11,12 – The Message)

• “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel…” (Romans 1:16,17 – NET)

• “And now I want to remind you, my friends, of the Good News which I preached to you, which you received, and on which your faith stands firm. That is the gospel, the message that I preached to you. You are saved by the gospel if you hold firmly to it…” (1 Corinthians 15:1-2 – GN)

• “Let us give glory to God! He is able to make you stand firm in your faith, according to the Good News I preach about Jesus Christ...” (Romans 16:25 – GN)

• “Let me tell you, my friends, that the gospel I preach is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any human being, nor did anyone teach it to me. It was Jesus Christ himself who revealed it to me. You have been told how I used to live when I was devoted to the Jewish religion, how I persecuted without mercy the church of God and did my best to destroy it. I was ahead of most other Jews of my age in my practice of the Jewish religion, and was much more devoted to the traditions of our ancestors.” (Galatians 1:11-14 – GN)

• “Immediately after my calling—without consulting anyone around me and without going up to Jerusalem to confer with those who were apostles long before I was—I got away to Arabia. Later I returned to Damascus, but it was three years before I went up to Jerusalem to compare stories with Peter. I was there only fifteen days—but what days they were! Except for our Master’s brother James, I saw no other apostles. (I’m telling you the absolute truth in this.) Then I began my ministry in the regions of Syria and Cilicia.” (Galatians 1:17-21 – The Message)

• “Fourteen years later I went back to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. I went because God revealed to me that I should go. In a private meeting with the leaders I explained the gospel message that I preach to the Gentiles….My companion Titus, even though he is Greek, was not forced to be circumcised, although some wanted it done. Pretending to be believers, these men slipped into our group as spies, in order to find out about the freedom we have through our union with Christ Jesus. They wanted to make slaves of us, but in order to keep the truth of the gospel safe for you, we did not give in to them for a minute.” (Galatians 2:1-5 – GN)

• “Later, when Peter came to Antioch, I had a face-to-face confrontation with him because he was clearly out of line. Here’s the situation. Earlier, before certain persons had come from James, Peter regularly ate with the non-Jews. But when that conservative group came from Jerusalem, he cautiously pulled back and put as much distance as he could manage between himself and his non-Jewish friends. That’s how fearful he was of the conservative Jewish clique that’s been pushing the old system of circumcision. Unfortunately, the rest of the Jews in the Antioch church joined in that hypocrisy so that even Barnabas was swept along in the charade.”

• But when I saw that they were not maintaining a steady, straight course according to the Message, I spoke up to Peter in front of them all: ‘If you, a Jew, live like a non-Jew when you’re not being observed by the watchdogs from Jerusalem, what right do you have to require non-Jews to conform to Jewish customs just to make a favorable impression on your old Jerusalem cronies?’” (Galatians 2:11-14 – The Message)

• “Yet, we know that people don't receive God's approval because of their own efforts to live according to a set of standards, but only by believing in Jesus Christ. So we also believed in Jesus Christ in order to receive God's approval by faith in Christ and not because of our own efforts. People won't receive God's approval because of their own efforts to live according to a set of standards.” (Galatians 2:16 – GODS WORD)

• “We know very well that we are not set right with God by rule-keeping but only through personal faith in Jesus Christ. How do we know? We tried it—and we had the best system of rules the world has ever seen! Convinced that no human being can please God by self-improvement, we believed in Jesus as the Messiah so that we might be set right before God by trusting in the Messiah, not by trying to be good. Have some of you noticed that we are not yet perfect? (No great surprise, right?) And are you ready to make the accusation that since people like me, who go through Christ in order to get things right with God, aren’t perfectly virtuous, Christ must therefore be an accessory to sin? The accusation is frivolous. If I was “trying to be good,” I would be rebuilding the same old barn that I tore down. I would be acting as a charlatan.”

• “What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn’t work. So I quit being a “law man” so that I could be God’s man. Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not “mine,” but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that. Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God’s grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily. Trust in Christ, Not the Law.” (Galatians 2:16-21 – The Message)

• “You foolish Galatians! Who put a spell on you? Before your very eyes you had a clear description of the death of Jesus Christ on the cross! Tell me this one thing: did you receive God's Spirit by doing what the Law requires or by hearing the gospel and believing it? How can you be so foolish! You began by God's Spirit; do you now want to finish by your own power? Did all your experience mean nothing at all? Surely it meant something! Does God give you the Spirit and work miracles among you because you do what the Law requires or because you hear the gospel and believe it?” (Galatians 3:1-5 – GN)

• “Consider the experience of Abraham; as the scripture says, ‘He believed God, and because of his faith God accepted him as righteous.’” (Galatians 3:6 – GN)

• “Abram put his trust in the LORD, and because of this the LORD was pleased with him and accepted him.” (Genesis 15:6 – GN)– “For he is not a [real] Jew who is only one outwardly

and publicly, nor is [true] circumcision something external and physical. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and [true] circumcision is of the heart, a spiritual and not a literal [matter].” (Romans 2:28-29 – Amplified)

• “What, then, was the purpose of the Law? It was added in order to show what wrongdoing is…” (Galatians 3:19 – GN)

• “What is the use of the Law? It was given later to show that we sin.” (Galatians 3:19 – CEV)

• “What, then, is the purpose of the laws given to Moses? They were added to identify what wrongdoing is.” (Galatians 3:19 – GODS WORD)

• “But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.” (Galatians 3:23-25 – KJV)

paidagogospaidagogos

• “a boy leader, that is, a servant whose office it was to take the children to school”

• “in charge of us” (GN, NIV)• “child custodian” (NASB)• “guardian” (GODS WORD, NET, NLT)• “tutor” (ESV, NKJV)• “trainer” (Amplified)• “pedagogue” (R-D)• “slave” (NJB)

• “Until the time when we were mature enough to respond freely in faith to the living God, we were carefully surrounded and protected by the Mosaic law. The law was like those Greek tutors, with which you are familiar, who escort children to school and protect them from danger or distraction, making sure the children will really get to the place they set out for. But now you have arrived at your destination: By faith in Christ you are in direct relationship with God.” (Galatians 3:23-26 – The Message)

• “Be under obligation to no one---the only obligation you have is to love one another. Whoever does this has obeyed the Law. The commandments, ‘Do not commit adultery; do not commit murder; do not steal; do not desire what belongs to someone else’---all these, and any others besides, are summed up in the one command, ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’ If you love others, you will never do them wrong; to love, then, is to obey the whole Law.” (Romans 13:8-10 – GN)

• “Shall we say, then, that the Law itself is sinful? Of course not! But it was the Law that made me know what sin is. If the Law had not said, ‘Do not desire what belongs to someone else,’ I would not have known such a desire.” (Romans 7:7 – GN)

• “It must be remembered, of course, that laws are made, not for good people, but for lawbreakers and criminals, for the godless and sinful, for those who are not religious or spiritual, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for the immoral, for sexual perverts, for kidnappers, for those who lie and give false testimony or who do anything else contrary to sound doctrine.” (1 Timothy 1:9-10 – GN)

• “For no one is put right in God’s sight by doing what the Law requires; what the Law does is to make us know that we have sinned.” (Romans 3:20 – GN)

• “I gain wisdom from your laws, and so I hate all bad conduct.” (Psalms 119:104 – GN)

• “Well then, if we emphasize faith, does this mean that we can forget about the law? Of course not! In fact, only when we have faith do we truly fulfill the law.” (Romans 3:31 – NLT)

• “Do not deceive yourselves by just listening to his word; instead, put it into practice. If you listen to the word, but do not put it into practice you are like people who look in a mirror and see themselves as they are. They take a good look at themselves and then go away and at once forget what they look like. But if you look closely into the perfect law that sets people free, and keep on paying attention to it and do not simply listen and then forget it, but put it into practice---you will be blessed by God in what you do.” (James 1:22-25 – GN)

ConscienceConscience

• “I will make you and the woman hate each other; her offspring and yours will always be enemies.” (Genesis 3:15 – GN)

• “When we were minors, we were just like slaves ordered around by simple instructions (the tutors and administrators of this world), with no say in the conduct of our own lives. But when the time arrived that was set by God the Father, God sent his Son, born among us of a woman, born under the conditions of the law so that he might redeem those of us who have been kidnapped by the law. Thus we have been set free to experience our rightful heritage.

• You can tell for sure that you are now fully adopted as his own children because God sent the Spirit of his Son into our lives crying out, “Papa! Father!” Doesn’t that privilege of intimate conversation with God make it plain that you are not a slave, but a child? And if you are a child, you’re also an heir, with complete access to the inheritance. Earlier, before you knew God personally, you were enslaved to so-called gods that had nothing of the divine about them.” (Galatians 4:3-8 – The Message)

• “But now that you know God---or, I should say, now that God knows you---how is it that you want to turn back to those weak and pitiful ruling spirits? Why do you want to become their slaves all over again? (Galatians 4:9 – GN)

• “Freedom is what we have---Christ has set us free! Stand, then, as free people, and do not allow yourselves to become slaves again. Listen! I, Paul, tell you that if you allow yourselves to be circumcised, it means that Christ is of no use to you at all. Once more I warn any man who allows himself to be circumcised that he is obliged to obey the whole Law. Those of you who try to be put right with God by obeying the Law have cut yourselves off from Christ. You are outside God's grace. As for us, our hope is that God will put us right with him; and this is what we wait for by the power of God's Spirit working through our faith.” (Galatians 5:1-5 – GN)

• “For if we are in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith activated and energized and expressed and working through love.” (Galatians 5:6 – Amplified)

• “Use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?

• My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit. Then you won’t feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. Why don’t you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence?” (Galatians 5:13 – 18 – The Message)

• “God’s Spirit makes us loving, happy, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled. There is no law against behaving in any of these ways. And because we belong to Christ Jesus, we have killed our selfish feelings and desires. God's Spirit has given us life, and so we should follow the Spirit.” (Galatians 5:22-25 – CEV)

• “As for me, God forbid that I should boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of that cross, my interest in this world died long ago, and the world’s interest in me is also long dead. It doesn’t make any difference now whether we have been circumcised or not. What counts is….

• whether we really have been changed into new and different people. May God’s mercy and peace be upon all those who live by this principle. They are the new people of God.” (Galatians 6:14 – 16 – NLT)