Dual Panel1O YOU dear idiots of Galatia, who saw Jesus Christ the crucified so plainly, who has been casting a spell over you?
2I will ask you one simple question: did you receive the Spirit by trying to keep the Law or by believing the message of the gospel?
3Surely you can't be so stupid as to think that you begin your spiritual life in the Spirit and then complete it by reverting to physical observances?
4Has all your painful experience brought you nowhere? I simply cannot believe it!
5Does God, who gives you his Spirit and works miracles among you, do these things because you have obeyed the Law or because you have believed the gospel?
6You can go right back to Abraham to see the principle of faith in God. He, we are told, "believed God and it was counted unto him for righteousness."
7You may be certain, then, that all those who "believe God" are the real "sons of Abraham".
8The scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the gentiles "by faith", proclaimed the gospel in the words spoken to Abraham, "In thee shall all nations be blessed."
9All men of faith share the blessing of Abraham who "believed God".
10Everyone, however, who is involved in trying to keep the Law's demands falls under a curse, for it is written: Cursed is everyone which continueth not in [all things] which are written in the book of the Law, To do them.
11It is clear that no one is justified in God's sight by obeying the Law, for: The righteous shall live by [faith].
12And the Law is not a matter of faith at all but of doing, as, for example, in the scripture: He that [doeth] them shall live in them.
13Now Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the Law by himself becoming a curse for us. For the scripture is plain: Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.
14God's purpose is therefore plain: that the blessing given to Abraham might reach the gentiles through Christ Jesus, and the promise of the Spirit might become ours by faith.
15Let me give you an everyday illustration, my brothers. Once a contract has been properly drawn up and signed, it is honoured by both parties, and can neither be disregarded nor modified by a third party.
16Now the promises were made to Abraham and his seed. (Note in passing that the scripture says not "seeds" but uses the singular "seed", meaning Christ.)
17I say then that the Law, which came into existence four hundred and thirty years later, cannot render null and void the original "contract" which God had made, and thus rob the promise of its value.
18For if the receiving of the inheritance were to depend on the Law, then it does not depend on promise. But God gave it to Abraham by promise.
19Where then lies the point of the Law? It was an addition made to underline the existence and extent of sin but only until the arrival of the "seed" to whom the promise referred. The Law was appointed by means of angels, by the hand of an intermediary.
20The very fact that there was an intermediary is enough to show that this was not the fulfilling of the promise. For the promise of God needs neither angelic witness nor any intermediary but depends on him alone.
21Is the Law then to be looked upon as a contradiction of the promises? Certainly not, for if there could have been a law which gave men spiritual life then that law would have produced righteousness.
22But, as things are, the scripture has all men "imprisoned" under the power of sin, so that to men in such condition the promise might be given to all who believe in Jesus Christ.
23Before the coming of this faith we were all imprisoned under the power of the Law, with our only hope of deliverance the faith that was to be shown to us.
24The Law was like a strict tutor in charge of us until we went to the school of Christ and learned to be justified by faith in him.
25Once we have that faith we are completely free from the tutor's authority.
26For now that you have faith in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God.
27All of you who were baptized "into" Christ have put on the family likeness of Christ.
28Gone is the distinction between Jew and Greek, slave and free man, male and femaleyou are all one in Christ Jesus.
29And if you belong to Christ, you are true descendants of Abraham, you are true heirs of his promise.