GALATIANS MESSAGE
1 MESSAGE TO FOLLOW
1:6 I can't believe your fickleness—how easily you have turned traitor to him who called you by the grace of Christ by embracing a variant message!
7 It is not a minor variation, you know; it is completely other, an alien message, a no-message, a lie about God. Those who are provoking this agitation among you are turning the Message of Christ on its head.
2 MOTIVE IN MINISTRY
1:10 Do you think I speak this strongly in order to manipulate crowds? Or curry favor with God? Or get popular applause? If my goal was popularity, I would
3 SOURCE OF TRUTH
1:11 Know this—I am most emphatic here, friends—this great Message I delivered to you is not mere human optimism.
12 I didn't receive it through the traditions, and I wasn't taught it in some school. I got it straight from God, received the Message directly from Jesus Christ.
n't bother being Christ's slave.
4 CIRCLE OF FELLOWSHIP
2:11 Later, when Peter came to Antioch, I had a face-to-face confrontation with him because he was clearly out of line.
12 Here's the situation. Earlier, before certain persons had come from James, Peter regularly ate with the non-Jews. But when that conservative group came from Jerusalem, he cautiously pulled back and put as much distance as he could manage between himself and his non-Jewish friends. That's how fearful he was of the conservative Jewish clique that's been pushing the old system of circumcision.
13 Unfortunately, the rest of the Jews in the Antioch church joined in that hypocrisy so that even Barnabas was swept along in the charade.
14 But when I saw that they were not maintaining a steady, straight course according to the Message, I spoke up to Peter in front of them all: "If you, a Jew, live like a non-Jew when you're not being observed by the watchdogs from Jerusalem, what right do you have to require non-Jews to conform to Jewish customs just to make a favorable impression on your old Jerusalem cronies?"
5 STANDING BEFORE GOD
2:16 We know very well that we are not set right with God by rule-keeping but only through personal faith in Jesus Christ. How do we know? We tried it—and we had the best system of rules the world has ever seen! Convinced that no human being can please God by self-improvement, we believed in Jesus as the Messiah so that we might be set right before God by trusting in the Messiah, not by trying to be good.
6 GIFT OF THE SPIRIT
3:2 Let me put this question to you: How did your new life begin? Was it by working your heads off to please God? Or was it by responding to God's Message to you?
5 Answer this question: Does the God who lavishly provides you with his own presence, his Holy Spirit, working things in your lives you could never do for yourselves, does he do these things because of your strenuous moral striving or because you trust him to do them in you?
7 CHRISTIAN MATURITY
3:3 Are you going to continue this craziness? For only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God. If you weren't smart enough or strong enough to begin it, how do you suppose you could perfect it?
8 INHERITANCE FROM FATHER
3:18 No, this addendum, with its instructions and regulations, has nothing to do with the promised inheritance in the will. What is the point, then, of the law, the attached addendum? It was a thoughtful addition to the original covenant promises made to Abraham
9 RELATIONSHIP TO GOD
4:6 You can tell for sure that you are now fully adopted as his own children because God sent the Spirit of his Son into our lives crying out, "Papa! Father!"
7 Doesn't that privilege of intimate conversation with God make it plain that you are not a slave, but a child? And if you are a child, you're also an heir, with c
JEWISH CUSTOMS AND LAW
4:31 Isn't that conclusive? We are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman. omplete access to the inheritance. 5:1 Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you.
10 USE OF FREDOM
5:13 It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don't use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that's how freedom grows
11 DIRECTION FOR LIFE
.16 My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God's Spirit. Then you won't feed the compulsions of selfishness.
17 For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day.
12 CONSEQUENCES OF ACTIONS
6:8 harvests a crop of weeds. All he'll have to show for his life is weeds! But the one who plants in response to God, letting God's Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real life, eternal life.
9 So let's not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don't give up, or quit.
13 WHAT REALLY MATTERS
6:12 These people who are attempting to force the ways of circumcision on you have only one motive: They want an easy way to look good before others, lacking the courage to live by a faith that shares Christ's suffering and death. All their talk about the law is gas.
15 Can't you see the central issue in all this? It is not what you and I do—submit to circumcision, reject circumcision. It is what God is doing, and he is creating something totally new, a free life!
