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Bible Reading Notes
Thursday, May 27th - Galatians 3: 1
Paul has recounted to the Galatians how he had visited Jerusalem to present both his gospel and Titus, the verifying Gentile fruit of that gospel. Paul also recounted his confrontation with Peter at Antioch, when Peter had let lesser considerations overshadow the great reality of Christ having made Jews and Gentiles together justified by their faith in Him alone. These things were written for the instruction and edification of the Galatians, who were being plagued by legalistic teachers who maintained that Gentile believers were not fully justified until they submitted to the rite of circumcision. While the apostle anathematized such teachers of a false gospel (Gal. 1:8,9), he now turns directly to the Galatians and challenges them for their having allowed themselves to be drawn away from the substance of salvation and back into redemption's shadows. False teachers rightly deserve to be condemned, but those conceding to them rightly deserve to be corrected. Faithful are the corrective wounds we receive from those who call us back to Christ when we drift from Him.
Thursday, May 27th - Galatians 3: 1
Paul does not anathematize the Galatians, but neither does he treat their drifting from Christ lightly. He makes very clear to them in this verse the seriousness of their problem. First, he informs them that they have a problem. No longer does the apostle speak in collective terms in which he included himself (cf. his use of we in Gal. 2:15-17). Rather, he speaks now pointedly to the Galatians, employing the pronoun, you. They were the ones drifting from Christ, not the apostle who had proclaimed Christ crucified to them and who continued to cleave to Christ alone by faith. While we share many sins as believers, we do not all wrestle with the same sins. A pastor who knows well his own heart and the character of his flock may often speak inclusively as we who struggle with our sins, but there will also be times when he must faithfully declare to at last some in the flock, Thou art the man!
Friday, May 28th - Galatians 3: 1
Paul does not anathematize the Galatians, but he does refer to them as having become foolish through their having allowed themselves to be bewitched. The devilish nature of the false teaching the Galatians had received and the deadly folly of their having received it is stated most starkly in Gal. 5:2-4, where Paul declares that if anyone receives circumcision as a religious rite, he will show himself to be severed from Christ. Let us be sobered by the knowledge that even seemingly small errors in faith and practice can have devastating consequences. Let us take heed, therefore, to what teaching we listen.
Saturday, May 29th - Galatians 3: 1
The Galatians' folly is evident by their having heeded assertions that the shadows of Christ were as essential as the substance of Christ. Their embracing of such legalistic teaching was done contrary to the redemptive fact that Christ had been crucified as the perfect atoning sacrifice for His people. This fact Paul had publically proclaimed to them, along with his teaching the justifying significance of the Savior's person and work having been apprehended by the faith of the Galatians. Faith lays hold of the facts of God's redemptive work; folly gropes for the imaginings of fallen, finite, and sinful man. Who but a fool would turn from the substance of bread to feed himself the shadows of bread?
Sunday, May 30th - Galatians 3: 1
The Greek word Paul uses that is translated foolish in our English versions literally means against the mind. Faith in Christ is supra-rational, but faith in anything other than or in addition to Christ is irrational. It is a Christian's duty to know truth, to think through his faith, and to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord. We are commanded to love God with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind (Mt. 22:37). Ignorance and folly are condemned in and dispelled by God's Word. To know Christ is to know the truth that sets us free. Satan seeks to lead us into ignorance, mental darkness, and confusion, for only when we are mentally incapacitated do his evil spells work on us.
Monday, May 31st - Galatians 3: 2-5
These verses summarize the folly of the Galatians in terms of their experience. Paul asks a series of questions designed to awaken them to the folly and failure of their new position. For these Galatians, works of the Law were supplanting God's grace and contradicting the Galatians' justification by faith. They had been bewitched into feeling an obligation and acting on it. By their own symbolic swooning (via circumcision), and their own cosmetic applications of legal obedience, they were attempting to attain a perfection they had come to believe was lacking in Christ crucified for them. Step by small and almost imperceptible step they had been led into such demonic folly. By his questions in these verses, Paul leads them from folly to faith, while he keeps us walking by faith away from folly.
Tuesday, June 1st - Galatians 3: 1, 2
The Galatians had drifted from the fact of Christ crucified for their salvation (v.1). In vv. 2-5, Paul appeals to legitimate and undeniable aspects of their Christian experience from which they had also drifted. He begins his appeal to their experience with a question that touches on their initial reception of the Holy Spirit. He asks whether they had received the indwelling, edifying, and empowering Holy Spirit by God's grace through faith or by their own merit attained through their perfect works of the Law. The answer is obvious, for it is the cross of Christ that constitutes the witness of the Holy Spirit and is the power of God unto salvation for sinners. The true work of the Holy Spirit, so far as God's holy Law is concerned, is to turn poor sinners from the Law they have violated and to Christ crucified for all of their transgressions.
Wednesday, June 2nd - Galatians 3: 2
The perfect Holy Spirit manifests perfection in His application of redemption to sinners. Perfection for sinners is not in the Law, even though it is the holy Law of God, for the Law is powerless to save sinners. What the Law was incapable of doing, God Himself did for sinners through His Son's incarnation, perfect life, and redemptive death (Rom. 8:3). It is the death and resurrection of Christ that is perfect in its redemptive character and that perfects sinners as the Holy Spirit applies that redemption to them and they receive it through faith. The Galatians had seen this through Paul's preaching of Christ crucified and had experienced it through the regenerating and indwelling work of the Holy Spirit. Their works of the Law had absolutely nothing to do with their redemption in its accomplishment by Christ or application by the Holy Spirit.
Thursday, June 3rd - Galatians 3: 2, 3
Paul answers the question he posed in v.2 when he writes in v.3 that his misguided Galatians had, indeed, begun their new life in Christ by the agency of God's Holy Spirit. In v.3, the apostle exposes through his questions the folly of believers' seeking to replace their initial dependence upon the Spirit's work of applying to them the benefits of Christ's redemption with a dependence upon their own good works to perfect them in Christ. Such a shift in dependence entailed not only an abandonment of Christ (Gal. 1:6), but also an abandonment of the Holy Spirit. It is supreme folly to contemplate, let alone commit oneself to such manifold abandonment.
Friday, June 4th - Galatians 3: 3
When Paul refers to the Galatians having begun by the Spirit, he means that the Holy Spirit was the divine agency by which they had been regenerated and initiated by their faith in Christ into the kingdom of God's grace. It is specifically the work of the Holy Spirit to glorify Christ's person and work in the minds and hearts of believers (Jn. 16:13,14). This work of the Holy Spirit is consistent with the witness of God the Father at the baptism and transfiguration of Jesus when the Father declared: This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased (Mt. 3:17; 17:5). Not a single Person of the divine Trinity says anything about sinners' merit through their works of the Law.
Saturday, June 5th - Galatians 3: 4
In this verse, Paul reminds the Galatians of the many things they had suffered in connection with their faith in Christ. The way the apostle puts the question indicates the folly of their suffering manifold persecutions, not for the great blessing and reward of incomparable glory (Mt. 5:10-12), but for the vanity of their futile attempt to save themselves by the merit of their own works. Only a foolish and bewitched soul would exchange for the emptiness of an imperfect personal works-righteousness, the comforting treasure of knowing that current sufferings are not worthy to be compared with certain future glory--a glory that is made certain for believers only by the perfect work of Christ.
Sunday, June 6th - Galatians 3: 5
With this final question of the series of questions that probe the past and current experience of the Galatians, Paul asks whether Christ's continual provision of His Spirit to the Galatians was earned by their works of the Law, or was given by Christ as a gracious gift that the Galatians received by faith alone. This question makes clear that the Galatians (and all people in all ages) must either be certainly saved by Christ alone or certainly condemned by their futile attempts to save themselves. Christ gives His Holy Spirit not as a mere jump-start for believers to save themselves, but rather as the pledge and seal of a full salvation (Eph. 1:13,14). Believers work out that salvation by faith in Christ alone and with the reverential and rejoicing knowledge that God's Holy Spirit indwells them to enable them to will and do God's pleasure, which is that they hear and heed His beloved Son alone (Phil. 2:12,13).
Monday, June 7th - Galatians 3: 6-9
In v.1, Paul challenges the Galatians' drift from Christ crucified. In. vv.2-5, the apostle challenges their drift from the person and work of the Holy Spirit, as well as from their experience of sanctification, as they grieved the Spirit who alone enabled them to do works of holy and loving power, and, instead, depended on themselves vainly trying to earn God's favor. In vv. 6-29, Paul contends that the Galatians had drifted from the testimony and teaching of Scripture. He begins by taking his readers back to the Lord's justifying Abraham by faith in order to show that the righteous do not live by their feeble attempts to fulfill God's Law, but rather live by faith. The more we grasp the whole counsel of God, the less we will wrest any portion of Scripture to our own destruction (2 Pet. 3:14-16).
Tuesday, June 8th - Galatians 3: 6-9
The witness of Christ, of the Holy Spirit, and of Scripture all agree. Christ said Himself that the Scriptures testify of Him (Jn. 5:39). The Word of God as a whole, and every portion of it when rightly understood in its context, proclaims that God is the Savior of His people through the person and work of His Son alone. Not an iota of the Word teaches us to save ourselves.
Wednesday, June 9th - Galatians 3: 6
In addition to their having drifted from Christ crucified, from the Holy Spirit's person and work, and from the testimony of Scripture, the Galatians also had drifted from Abraham, the father of the faithful, as well as from the faith of Abraham and from the righteousness that is imputed by God and received by faith. The Galatians' acceptance of the false teaching of self-justification through works righteousness had gained them nothing and was costing them everything that pertained to true salvation. Theirs was a grievous and most costly foolishness that all who read Paul's letter to them do well to avoid like the worst of plagues.
Thursday, June 10th - Galatians 3: 6
Paul commends to his wayward Galatians the example of Abraham. That great patriarch did not contribute perfecting works to a salvation that was imperfect and merely potential. Instead, Abraham contributed nothing except his sin and his being, at the time of his justification, near to his death that would have been the wages of his sin. Abraham was not a contributor to but was entirely a recipient of salvation. In the passage from which Paul quotes in this verse (Gen. 15:1-6), Abraham merited nothing before God, but rather he received what the Lord promised, and what the patriarch knew he could not himself produce. Abraham acknowledged his inability naturally to produce the son God had promised, but instead of his trying harder to produce that son of promise, he grew strong in his faith, believing God to have power to provide what He had promised (Rom. 4: 18-22). It was that faith alone that was reckoned by God to Abraham as righteousness. So it is by faith alone in Christ alone that righteousness has been reckoned to us.
Friday, June 11th - Galatians 3: 6, 7
The faith of Abraham was not unique to that patriarch. Instead, Abraham's faith was the proto-type of justifying faith for all believers. True sons of Abraham are not descended from his loins but rather from his faith. All those who have been united to Christ by faith have come to possess a faith like Abraham's, and they alone are true descendants of that great father of faith and possessors of a righteousness that is provided by God and accepted by God. Read Rom. 4:1-25 for an expanded consideration of the faith of Abraham.
Saturday, June 12th - Galatians 3: 6-8
The testimony of Scripture is not only that Abraham by faith in God was justified (v.6), but also that the immense and everlasting blessing the patriarch enjoyed as a man justified by faith would be shared by people from every nation who would come to possess a faith like that of Abraham (v.8). Therefore, while God promised Abraham a son in Isaac as a wonder of the Lord's gracious power (Gen. 15:4), at the same time the patriarch received from God a promise of a multitude of descendants who would outnumber the stars of heaven (Gen. 15:5). This multitude of descendants was promised to Abraham prior to the Lord's promises of Isaac (Gen. 12:2,3), and Paul here makes explicit what was implicit in that promise, namely, that the blessing of salvation would be enjoyed not only by the natural descendants of Abraham (the Jews) but also by people among all the nations of the world (Gentiles). The significance of this prior promise of divine blessing upon the Gentiles indicates that they would be fully justified by their faith and not by their being made to become Jews, just like Abraham was justified prior to his being circumcised (Rom. 4:9-13).
Sunday, June 13th - Galatians 3: 9, 10
In v.9, Paul makes a transition from the faith of Abraham to the blessing the patriarch obtained through that faith. In v.10, Paul makes clear that the only alternative to anyone receiving that blessing through a faith like Abraham's is a curse. Apart from a justifying faith in the person, promise, and provision of God through Christ, all people are sinners earning death as their wages and, after death, condemning judgment (Heb. 9:27). Even those who try to obey God's Law are cursed, because no sinner can keep the Law perfectly as Christ has done for those who receive His person and work by faith.
Monday, June 14th - Galatians 3: 9, 10
Paul divides all of humanity into two and only two orders of being. People are either of faith or of the works of the Law. Those who are of faith are blessed by having Christ as their penal substitute, who has propitiated God's holy wrath against them because of their having been sinful violators of His holy Law. Those who are of the works of the Law may try, more or less, to obey God's holy Law, but are doomed to fail personally, perpetually, and perfectly to perform such obedience. Accordingly, they must face divine condemnation for their own sinful violations of God's Law. From our human perspective, we behold many variations among the whole of humanity; but in the eyes of God, all men either trust Christ for salvation or rely on their own foolish understanding and filthy rags of self-righteousness to justify them before the God whose Law they have perpetually violated.
Tuesday, June 15th - Galatians 3: 11, 12
These verses advance the contention Paul states in vv.9,10 when he writes that those who are of faith are blessed while those who are of he works of the Law are cursed. Not only are those relying on self-righteousness attempting an obviously impossible thing when they endeavor personally, perfectly, and perpetually to establish their own performing of the Law as the basis for their acceptance by God; they also are attempting something that the Word of God itself clearly curses. Moses declared that God commanded the people of Israel to obey His Law with all their hearts (Dt. 26:16), and that they would be blessed if they so obeyed perfectly and cursed if they failed to obey perfectly (Dt. 27:26; 28:1-68). The subsequent history of Israel showed that the curses stated in Deuteronomy came upon the nation of Israel. Accordingly, by the lessons of redemptive history, we learn the cursed end of the works of the Law, while Scripture clearly states, centuries before Israel received God's Law, that Abraham was by faith regarded as righteous by God.
Wednesday, June 16th - Galatians 3: 11, 12
It may be objected that if God clearly commanded His people through Moses to keep His Law with all their hearts, when He really meant that He would only justify those who were of faith, then the Lord was being disingenuous in His dealings with His people. Paul responds in v.12 that the Law itself shuts up all people to faith. In sum, the Law is but a part of God's revelation to man. It is the holy standard of man's duty, but no sinner has any hope of keeping the Law. Hence, a sinner who endeavors to save himself by his own works of the Law is cursed. The Lord has always made this clear in His Word, saying in Lev. 18:5, which Paul cites in this verse: a man may live if he does them. The only man who ever did perfectly obey God's Law was Christ, whose justifying work sinners receive by faith and rejected by their foolish endeavor to justify themselves by their own works of the Law.
Thursday, June 17th - Galatians 3: 13
From a discussion of the faith of Abraham and the blessing of that faith, Paul turns to the object of saving faith and the substance of faith's blessing in this verse. While God's Law is holy and good and is the standard of that holiness without which no man can see the Lord, the terms of man's salvation never depended on the performance of sinful men--whether Jew or Gentile. Rather, it depended upon the performance of a Son (Gen. 3:15), who was foreshadowed in Abraham's son, Isaac, and fulfilled in Christ, by whose work on the cross redemption from the curse of the Law was accomplished for all who receive it by faith.
Friday, June 18th - Galatians 3: 13
Paul has shown from Scripture how the Law of God is but a part of God's revelation--a part that was never intended to serve as a basis for sinful man's salvation. Scripture prescribes faith for all who would be saved, from the time of Abraham (Gen. 15:6) through to the time of the prophet Habakkuk (Hab. 2:4), and beyond to the end of the world (Rom. 4:23-25). In this verse, Paul brings to the attention of his readers the object of saving faith. It is to the person of Christ and His redeeming work that faith unites the believer. Faith is the sole instrumental cause of our salvation; Christ is the sole material cause of our salvation. Neither the Word of God nor the God of the Word recognize or require any other cause.
Saturday, June 19th - Galatians 3: 13, 14
In these two verses, Paul writes of redemption accomplished (v.13) and applied (v.14). The work of redemption speaks of a costly purchase. In this case, the cost was infinite, since every sin committed by sinners is committed against an infinite God. Christ paid that infinite cost by His incarnation, wherein He assumed our nature and lived a perfect life in fulfillment of the Law of God. By His death on the cross, He took upon Himself our penalty and provided for us His perfect human righteousness, infused with infinite merit due to the perfect union of His divine with His human nature. Our works of the Law could not begin to pay such an infinite price.
Sunday, June 20th - Galatians 3: 13, 14
Paul declares that Christ redeemed us. We were unable and unwilling to redeem ourselves. All that we contributed to the transaction of redemption was our sin and all of its infinite guilt before and debt to God. We could not possibly have redeemed ourselves, but we who have faith in the person and work of Christ have received freely this redemption of infinite and effectual value.
Monday, June 21st - Galatians 3: 13, 14
Believers have been redeemed from the curse of the Law by Christ. That curse of divine condemnation comes justly upon every sinner due to his repeated and ceaseless violation of God's holy Law. However, by the grace of God, Christ took on our curse. By His sufferings--that included His humiliated station in life, His death on the cross, and His enduring the condemnation that we deserved--He satisfied the divine justice that we had offended and so provided for us a perfect righteousness (Gal. 2:21). Our attempts at self-righteousness cannot compare with this.
Tuesday, June 22nd - Galatians 3: 13, 14
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law by becoming a curse for us. It was not by persuasive arguments or by powerful appeals that we were redeemed. Nor was our redemption accomplished by material expenditure. The transaction of saving redemption was intensely personal. The curse of God was upon all people, because all had sinned (Rom. 3:23). But by the grace of God, Christ, who knew no sin, was made to be sin for us, so that in Him and by His atoning work we would be made the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21; 1 Pet. 2:24,25). Not one of us could to any degree have borne the curse that we earned. We should be eternally grateful that Christ graciously became the cursed One in our place.
Wednesday, June 23rd - Galatians 3: 13, 14
Christ was crucified on a cross. He did not simply die, nor was he killed by sickness or injury. He was executed as a criminal in a way that indicated His bearing in His death the curse of God. Scripture clearly states that a dead man hung on a tree indicates that such a man was cursed by God (Dt. 21:22,23). Not a single detail of the redeeming work of Christ was incidental. Every detail was part of His comprehensive, perfect, and absolutely necessary work to redeem His people. Our haphazard and half-hearted works of the Law cannot compare to His saving work.
Thursday, June 24th - Galatians 3: 13, 14
Christ suffered to satisfy divine justice and to justify His people. He accomplished His costly work of redemption in order to remove from us our sin, guilt, and corruption, and to save us from the curse of God. Christ also applies to us this costly and perfect redemption through the work of His Holy Spirit (Jn. 16:7-15). That is how the blessing of God comes to the Jew first, but also to the Gentiles, who receive it in all of its perfection and power by faith alone (Rom. 1:16). By such faith we become beloved children of God (Jn. 1:12), not workers who have earned our place in heaven.
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