5 – Galatians 3:1-9
Intro
- There are false teachers in the Galatian churches preaching what Paul calls a different gospel (1:6), which is no gospel at all.
Take inventory of your personal walk with God (vs. 1)
- Bas-kai-no
- “Bewitched” refers to the old superstition -the old superstition of the “evil eye,” according to which some persons had the power of hurting and even slaying with a glance. The spiritual life of the Galatian churches seemed to Paul as if it had been sucked out of them by the baleful glitter of some evil eye.
- To “bewitch” here involves two ideas.
- A pernicious influence exercised on the recipient.
- he envious, jealous spirit of the agent. (Emilius Bayley, B. D.)
- To “bewitch” here involves two ideas.
- The Church as a whole.
- No outward temptation has any power to seduce, unless we choose to allow it.
Remember how you were saved in the beginning (vs. 2-3)
- Honesty, generosity, righteousness–these have not justified, cannot justify. Why not abandon this vain method, and try the Lord’s appointed way “the hearing of faith”?
- Personal hearing. Each for himself.
- Hearing of the gospel. The faith that saves does not come by just hearing whatever comes first; it only comes by hearing the testimony of the Spirit to the appointed Saviour.
- Attentive hearing.
- The hearing of faith. Accepting the gospel as God’s message, and depending upon it fully and wholly. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
- The Church is the product of the Holy Ghost. This is the doctrine of the whole of this text; it is the cord by which all its parts are bound together. Throwing the minds of the Galatians back upon the beginning of their religious life, whether as Churches or as individual believers, the apostle reminds them that then they received the Holy Ghost. They began in the Spirit. This truth admits of a twofold application. First, in relation to the Church as a whole; secondly, in relation to those who compose its members.
Remember how you were tried for your faith and not works (vs. 4)
- When a man is to run a race of forty furlongs, would you have him sit down at the nine-and-thirtieth, and so lose the prize? We do not keep a good fire all day, and let it go out in the evening, when it is coldest; but then rather lay on more fuel, that we may go warm to bed.” He that slakes the heat of his zeal in old age will go cold to bed, and in a worse case to his grave. Though the beginning be more than half, yet the end is more than all.
- Unless you continue faithful to the end, all your former Christian life must remain without the recompense God longs to bestow. Your struggles, your self-sacrifice, will all be unrewarded. The apostasy of the closing days of your life would render worthless the fidelity of all your previous years. You have done so well, that if now you do not fail you will have an abundant entrance into glory. It is not God’s will that any who have suffered with Christ should miss the honour and blessedness of reigning with Him.
Remember who was preached and the power behind it (vs. 5)
- Not the works of the law. The folly of this supposition may be seen by the endeavor to work for the inspiration of the poet; but poets are born, not made. So are apostles and Christians.
- By the hearing of faith. We do not call the genius a deserving man, but a “gifted” man; so is the apostle in working miracles, and the Christian in exerting his influence for good.
Remember the teaching of scripture (vs. 6-9)
- Its antiquity–preached to Abraham.
- Its universality.
- `In its objects: heathen, all nations.
- In its terms: faith.
- The slowness but sureness of its development: foreseeing.
- Its gratuitousness: justification
- Its blessedness.
- Fellowship in Abraham’s privileges on earth.
- Fellowship with Abraham in heaven.
Jeremy Kamer Ministries 