Galatians 3:1-14
Faith in Jesus was sufficient to save you (Galatians 3:1-5). … Paul reminds the people of Galatia that they were saved by faith in Jesus. Paul was there; he was the one who planted the church there and led many of them to become followers of Christ. Last week we saw one extreme in licentiousness, that grace is a ticket to do anything we want. That’s not what grace is for. This week we see the ditch on the opposite side: legalism. Those who are legalistic believe that works are more important than faith in salvation, that keeping the law is required for salvation.
Faith in Jesus was sufficient to save people in the Old Testament (Galatians 3:6-9). … Paul, writing to people who have started to think the law is what saves them, points out that even Old Testament characters, the fathers of the Jewish faith, were saved by faith. Abraham was saved because he had faith in God (Genesis 15), which occurred before circumcision (Genesis 17).
Works are not sufficient to save because you would have to continually do everything written in the law (Galatians 3:10-14). … If you’re going to make up for everything you’ve done wrong, then you need to do everything in the law all the time. If you slip up just once, you have failed. We are all cursed because none of us are capable of keeping the entire law for our whole lives.
Christ redeemed us from the law by becoming a sacrifice for us! He took our curse and gave us His righteousness and the Holy Spirit. All we have to do is accept this trade, this offer, this gift by faith.