Galatians 3: FREEDOM and thankful for the gift of FAITH

Galatians 3 is a powerful proclamation of the freedom from the entanglements of Judaism and the law. This chapter screams out: “FAITH, faith counted for righteousness (vs6), faith includes us as family (vs 7), faith through which God declares us righteous (vs 8), faith that brings blessing (vs 9), faith which sustains life (vs11), faith found in Jesus Christ (vs 22), and faith that leads to freedom (vs 24,25).

Paul declares the freedom that all who run to Christ find. He is proclaiming freedom from the Judiastic system and the law (the schoolmaster). He is rejoicing and demonstrating the same truths decided at the Jerusalem Council.

Imagine the dangers
and differences had the council of Jerusalem gone in the opposite direction. The letter to Galatia would have been so much different, most likely not even written. The book of Hebrews would not been so Christocentric and  would have stripped the church of its essence. At that council we find in Acts 15:11 their declaration of "We believe that through grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved". This verbalized 3 sola's long before the Reformation: Faith, Grace, Christ. This was not just salvaged at the council but continued to be the foundation of much of the epistles. If the council had not definitively verbalized this and broken from Judaism, it's possible we could have had a legalistic Judeo-Christian crossbreed, full of works and stripped of its power to save.

How different Galatians 3 would look under such legalistic tyranny. Changing the message into “The just shall live by keeping the law and exercising faith” alters the message of freedom in Christ to a message of slavery to the law. The message of Christ as mediator that Paul declares would fall flat because of our lack of merit and turn Christ merely into a trophied hero to honor instead of Savior to trust for a righteousness we could never achieve. Instead Christ sets us free through his gift of faith and ushers us into the blessing of freedom as His child.