“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?”
– Galatians 3:2 –
In the sixty verses of Galatians 3 and 4, we have Paul’s strongest message defending salvation by grace and justification by faith, warning and admonishing against legalism. His arguments were not half-hearted. His opponents had used every type of argument to deceive; he was going to use the full weight of truth to save. Paul presented the Galatians’ own testimony as an argument for the truth. They became believers when they saw the gospel and became foolish when they stopped looking at the gospel.
The key word in Paul’s question in Galatians 3:4:
“Have you suffered so many things in vain?”
The apostle had been with these believers in their first steps. He knew about their transformative experience and how they had come out of darkness into the wonderful light of the gospel. What is happening now?
The arrival of the legalist bewitched Galatians. Paul treated them as foolish, not in the sense of wicked, but in the sense of spiritually backward. Paul strengthened his argument by saying that they had seen the crucified Christ and had heard, believed, obeyed, and were born into God’s family.
As indicated in today’s verse, the mention of receiving the Holy Spirit appears eighteen times throughout the epistle. Was this reception by faith or by works? Of course, it was because they believed, and the Holy Spirit led them to Christ.
In the Garden of Eden was the tree of life. All the paths in the garden led there. Because of our sin, we lost access to it. When the cross of wood raised Christ on Calvary, like the old serpent in the wilderness, the hidden tree of life, and was seen by everyone. Today, there is only oone way to the tree of life, and that way is Christ. The Galatians foolishly looked the other way.
Which way are you looking? Please, look at the Cross.
“In the matchless gift of His Son, God has encircled
the whole world with an atmosphere of grace as real
as the air which circulates around the globe.
All who choose to breathe this life-giving atmosphere
will live and grow up to the stature of men and women in Christ Jesus”
(Steps to Christ, p. 68).
Let us all look at the Cross. Jesus is the only way, truth, and life. May God bless you today…