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Galatians: Chapter 3:1-18
00:30:13
Dr. Michael Barber and Dr. James Prothro, professors of Sacred Scripture at the Augustine Institute Graduate School, study St. Paul's pivotal Letter to the Galatians.
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- [00:00]
A
And welcome back to our Bible study on Galatians. I'm Michael Barber. This is my dear friend Jim Prothero. We're both professors here at the Augustine Institute Graduate School, and we share affinity for St. Paul. Dr. Prothero has a great book coming out that introduces Paul's letters. I've co written a book with Brant Petrie, who's also a professor here, and John Kincaid on Paul. And so we spend a lot of time thinking about Paul sharing each other's books that study Paul. So it's really great to just have an opportunity to sit with you and work through Galatians. Now, when we left off, Paul was talking about how he does not nullify the grace of God. For if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. And so then he goes on to say in chapter three, O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this. Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun with the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain, if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith? All right, so what's Paul getting at here? Why does Paul say it was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? How does that fit what Paul's talking about here?
- [01:52]
B
Yeah, so all of a sudden we've jumped from Paul talking about his interaction with Peter at Antioch, right? He says, look, we're Jews, right? Not gentile sinners. But even we knew that we're not justified just by being circumcised by works of the law. So even we put our faith in Jesus, right? We knew that God's mercy and love and his life within us, right? To justify us and give us the Holy Spirit, we know that that comes through Jesus. So we put our faith in Jesus, right? And we follow him and trust in him. And now suddenly he breaks, right? O foolish Galatians. And this is one place where I really wish the ESV was a little bit sort of snarkier, because he doesn't. You could be, oh, foolish Deborah, right? In like some sort of Victorian play. But that ain't what's going on. He calls him ignorant, calls him stupid, right? Right. So he's just told him, like, this is the situation with me And Peter. Right, Right. And we're Jews. Right? Like, we actually, like, are circumcised. Right? Like, we have every reason to want to follow the law. You guys, your grandparents were worshiping trees, and then Jesus showed up to you and said, hello. He didn't say, go get circumcised. He didn't say, hello, you need to become part of the people of Israel and keep the food laws.
- [03:13]
A
If you're a Jew, I might consider giving you grace.
- [03:16]
B
Yeah, he didn't say that either. He just said, come to me. Right. Jesus has d and has been raised again. Receive the Holy Spirit, believe and be baptized, you guys. And that happened. So now he's going to point to their own experience, say, look, you received the message. You received the Holy Spirit.
- [03:34]
A
Did you receive the Spirit by works of law? In other words, was it because you were circumcised that you received the Holy Spirit? Of course not. Yeah, he's got this great proof by hearing and faith.
- [03:44]
B
Yeah, he's got this great proof to say, look, you received the Holy Spirit. You know you did, and you weren't circumcised. So you've, like, been given the life of God within you, and now you're like, yes, thank you, Lord, for the divine life, for righteousness, for this. I appreciate that. But you know what? I'm pretty sure now that I really have to go do this thing that merely has to do with my flesh.
- [04:09]
A
That's right.
- [04:10]
B
To go get circumcised. So Paul basically says, look, you guys who are wanting to get circumcised in Galatia, you're going backwards.
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A
Right.
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B
You already received the thing that everybody else was waiting for throughout all salvation history. You already got it. And now you're like, I should go back to Leviticus and start all over again.
- [04:31]
A
And so what he does is he goes on to show that it's not necessary to be circumcised in order to be justified by highlighting a very important figure. Abraham. Not Abraham Lincoln. We're talking about Abraham from the Old Testament. It's important to clarify that because when I was a college professor, I had a lot of students who asked me that question anyway.
- [04:52]
B
Abraham from the Old Testament, by the way, has a way better beard than Abraham Lincoln.
- [04:56]
A
Oh, yeah.
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B
At least as my children's Bible leads me to believe.
- [04:58]
A
Excellent. Very good.
- [04:59]
B
We're on good territory.
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A
This is important to note. Yes. Just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Genesis 15:6 is the passage Paul is quoting here. And this is a really important passage because see, now this is crazy. Genesis 15 comes before Genesis 17. All right, see, that is a really important point because see, in Genesis 17, that's when Abraham received circumcision. So Paul's point is even before. And he's going to spell this out even more clearly in Romans, but even before he received circumcision, he believed go. And it was counted to him as righteousness. The Greek word for being justified is based on the same noun for righteousness. Right. So just justified, you're righteous ified. I don't know how to people try to come up with a right. Wise people use that. Anyway, so the whole point is that Abraham received justification even before circumcision. And he says now then, that it is those of thy faith who are sons. I'm sorry, know then that it is those of faith who are sons of Abraham. And the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, in you shall all the nations be blessed. So then, though he says so then. So those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. So he does something really interesting here. He shows how Abraham can be the father of faith of Gentiles. Can you unpack that a little bit? Why does Paul make. What significance does Paul see in all of this for the Gentiles?
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B
Yeah, so one of the things we want to remember is that Abraham in scripture is in some ways. Right. You call him the first Jew.
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A
Right, Right.
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B
You've got people before him who are important. We've got Adam, Eve, we got Noah. Right. We got Abel, the just. Right. We've got all these people. But Abraham is the first one who has said like, okay, your family specifically, out of all the families of the world, is going to become a nation. And through that nation, I'm going to bring the Messiah. God says, I'll give you universal blessing to the world. And that's the covenant that God makes with Abraham. Right. That there will be blessing for the world through a descendant of Abraham.
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A
He's the father of Israel.
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B
Yeah.
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A
The father of Israelites. Right? Yeah, yeah. And Jews are from Judah, which is Abraham's great grandson, I think. Right? Great. Yeah, great grandson.
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B
But anyway.
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A
But yeah, that's where the line begins.
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B
That's right. So you've got a. You've got like a literal kind of genealogical line here.
- [07:42]
A
Right, Right.
- [07:43]
B
Paul is going to open this up a little bit and say, look, how. How do you guys think you're supposed to join Abraham's family and be part of this blessing. You guys think it's by circumcision, have a beard?
- [07:54]
A
Oh, no, yeah, right.
- [07:57]
B
Not the beard. You guys think it's by circumcision. But actually, right. The thing that happened to Abraham that we want, right? Becoming friends of God happened to Abraham when he trusted God's promise and picked up all his stuff and said, okay, God, I believe that you're going to give me an old man with an old wife, a family, so I'm going to pick up, leave the rest of my clan behind and kin, and get on down the road and go to this other land that you've promised me.
- [08:20]
A
Right?
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B
Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as justice, righteousness. He was justified, right? Friend of God. And so Paul is saying, look, you want to be a son of Abraham, you don't have to be circumcised. You don't have to be part of the actual genealogical lineage, right? If you want this blessing, that's not the way in.
- [08:40]
A
Right? In fact, Abraham was uncircumcised when he received the grace of faith, right? And so really, if you want to be like Abraham, the point isn't you have to be circumcised. The point is that an uncircumcised person can be declared righteous. And what I think Paul is getting at here is that God did that intentionally. And God justified Abraham before he was circumcised so that Abraham could be a model of faith both to the circumcised, but also to the uncircumcised Gentiles. And it's interesting here that Abraham is here identified as the man of faith, right? Faith isn't just accepting, I believe, the truth of the Gospel. No, it's more than that. Abraham is a faithful man who, among other things, is willing to offer his only beloved son Isaac on Mount Moriah as a sacrifice to God in faith. And so what justifies us is this faithfulness that grows, that matures throughout our life, as it does with Abraham. All right? So he goes on to say, for all who rely on works of the law are under a curse. For it is written, cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law and do them so according to the Torah, according to the law, if you don't keep all the commandments, you will be cursed. Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteous shall live by faith. And that's a quote quotation from the Book of Habakkuk, a prophet in the Old Testament. But the law is not of faith. Rather, the one who does them shall live by them. Leviticus 18:5. Let's unpack these Bible verses. Paul's just throwing all these Bible verses out at us. Why is he doing this? I mean, these poor Galatians, right? I mean, most of them are Gentiles. This gotta be tough for them to follow. It's tough for us to follow, too.
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B
Oh, that's right.
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A
Yeah.
- [10:48]
B
So here Paul's doing a lot of citing from the Old Testament. You gotta remember that the Old Testament for him is the authority is God's word. It's also the authority that the people who are preaching circumcision in Galatia are appealing to as well. And they're doing things like pointing to Genesis 17. See, Abraham got circumcised. Don't you want to be in Abraham's family? Get on it, son. And Here in verses 10 and following, we might think that something that Paul is doing, right? It's not just opening up to say, let's see what the Old Testament says about it. But specifically, let's see how the Old Testament itself shows us that your reading ain't quite right. So it starts off with this quote from Deuteronomy 27. Cursed is everyone who doesn't abide by all the things in this book of the law, right? Now, we don't know exactly what these other people were preaching to the folks in Galatia, but Beards, there's a way. But there's a lot of things in the law, right? And it may be that some of the people in Galatia were just like, okay, all I have to do is get circumcised. And Paul's like, no, if you want to put yourself under the law's authority, he calls it a yoke later, right? The thing that controls you and steers where you're going to go, right? Then you got to do the whole thing. And if you don't do the whole thing, then you're under a curse now. Well, we know that you don't get justified that way. Why? Because the prophet says so. The prophet Habakkuk, So he's using the Old Testament to say, look, if you just read in Deuteronomy and you just read in Leviticus, like, the one who does these things will live, right there. You go, do the stuff and you get life. He's like, look, Habakkuk already, by the word of the Lord has told us that that's not the right way to read this, that it's not just the case that if you just do all this stuff in Leviticus or Deuteronomy, then you'll have life, right?
- [12:32]
A
Because you could keep commandments for all the wrong reasons, right? I'm going to give to my neighbor so that people will think highly of me. I am going to honor parents because that's the culturally celebrated thing to do, right? I'm going to keep holy the Sabbath, because if I don't, then other people will think I'm a bad Israelite, right? So there are all kinds of motives for keeping the law. So it's not just enough that you keep the law. The key thing for Habakkuk is that the righteous live not just by keeping all these commandments, but by doing so in a way that's full of faith. You're living by faithfulness. That Greek word is so important. Again, it's not just like accepting a truth. It's about trust, right? Trusting in the Lord. And so when he goes on to say, but the law is not of faith, rather, one who does them shall live by them. Why does he say the law is not of faith? Oh, my goodness. Is he saying that the Mosaic law has nothing to do with faith? What's his point here?
- [13:37]
B
Well, of course, if you read the Old Testament law, it gets to both the external behavior and the internal heart. One of my favorite Passages in Deuteronomy 15 about poor brothers and sisters in Israel, and it says, when you look at your brother who's impoverished, doesn't just say, give him some cash or give him a job or whatever he says, do not say in your heart. Don't think. Don't let your heart start to go.
- [14:04]
A
Ah, right.
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B
Don't say in your heart, oh, well, the jubilee is coming and they'll be released from their debt. Oh, well, it's going to be the New year festival soon, and they'll get some crops.
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A
They'll be fine.
- [14:17]
B
Don't do that. You help them now. So it's about the inside and the outside in the Ten Commandments. What are the ninth and tenth commandments about?
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A
Thou shall not covet your neighbor's wife or your neighbor's beard.
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B
That would count under property, right?
- [14:32]
A
That's property. Yeah.
- [14:35]
B
But not to covet, not to desire in our heart something that somebody else has. Right? But when Paul gets at the law here, right. He's thinking about the sort of, like, law principle as, like a code in the way that these other people are, right? Saying, like, okay, so the Actual teaching of God always gets to our heart and our actions. Right. Hearts and hands and minds. But. Right. They're using it a different way. So he's going to say, like, look, if that's the kind of obedience you're talking about, that's not a faith.
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Right, Right.
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And faith is actually the key thing. Right. Is to trust God and keep saying yes to God, because you're going to fail at Commandment 600.
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A
Right.
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It's going to happen.
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A
Right.
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At some point. Right. But your faith can be constantly.
- [15:18]
A
And this is the key problem here is that a lot of people, it seems, in the churches of Galatia are being tempted to be circumcised because at the end of the day, they are not trusting in Christ. Here's something that I can do. Here's something that I can hold onto. Here's something I can point to. I did this, and I really wanna have that. And so Paul is saying, no, that's. That's wrong. That's not faith. Right. That's not trust in God. That's trusting in the work of your hands. It's trust in your own work. So it's opposite of faith in this way. So he says the law is not of faith. What he means here is this kind of law keeping is not an expression of faithfulness, of trusting in God. It's an expression of insecurity. Oh, my goodness, I'm not circumcised. There's something else that I have to do. So Paul goes on to say, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree. Now, that's of course, a reference to hanging originally, but in Paul's day, that line we know from works like the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are these ancient scrolls that show us the way ancient Jews thought, not the Dead Sea squirrels. That's a lot less interesting. The Dead Sea Scrolls are these ancient manuscripts, go back to the first century. Their crucifixion is related to hanging on a tree.
- [16:44]
B
Yeah, that's right. That's right. I was going to make a joke, but we've moved on into serious territory, so I won't do that. All right, but if you think here about, just compare, like, why does he redeem us from the curse by being cursed? And is he really cursed?
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A
Right, right.
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B
That's part of the point. Right? So Jesus is immortal, He's God, yet he has a human body. So he can die. He can experience death in his body. But when he does it, he breaks death.
- [17:18]
A
Right? Right.
- [17:20]
B
Notice here, the law, because of the way that it's written, curses anyone hung on a tree, like crucifixion, right? Which means that the law cursed God. Well, not exactly, but see, Paul is pointing out, like, look, the same way that Jesus breaks death by dying, but not deserving death in any way. And being immortal in his soul, being divine, he breaks the curse of the law because the law said, you're cursed, right? You're cursed by God.
- [17:58]
A
If you don't keep all the commandments, you're cursed by God.
- [18:01]
B
Right? But he's like, but I am God. So it, so it breaks the curse of the law in the same way that his dying breaks the power of death, and so he can redeem people from under the curse out of it.
- [18:11]
A
So those of the circumcision party and those who would advocate circumcision might be going around saying, hey, look what the law says. If you don't keep these commandments, then you're going to be cursed. You better get circumcised. Galatians. You better, you know, become a Jew essentially and join us and no longer be gentile. This is a problem, of course, because God wants to save all nations through Abraham, right? So in the ancient world, if you are circumcised, some people might say that makes you a Jew, right? But the promise to Abraham is that all nations will be blessed. You don't have to become a Jew in order to be saved. Well, what about these curses in the laws you're pointing out? Jesus has come to redeem us from the curses of. Of the law, right? So that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. So God promised Abraham through your descendants, all nations will be blessed. That means you don't have to be circumcised to be saved, because by definition, gentiles are non circumcised. Right? And so what Paul is getting at here is Jesus has come to set us free from these constraints that the circumcision party want to put people under. Because we're saved ultimately, not through what we do, but through the gift of God who is merciful, who's loving, and who wants to redeem us. Now he's going to go on later to talk about how the law, in a sense, served as a pedagogue, and we'll talk about that. And when we get to Galatians, chapter four, I'd like to zoom in here, though, on what he says here about you might receive the promised Spirit through faith. That seems to come out of nowhere, right? I mean, all of a sudden he's introduced the Spirit. He wasn't talking about the Spirit before. We were talking about the law, we were talking about other things. Now all of a sudden, he's talking about the Spirit. Where is that coming from?
- [20:06]
B
Well, so the gift of the Holy Spirit, right, is what we receive in redemption and being brought into the new covenant. So think about Pentecost, right? Peter has preached his sermon and all the people from everywhere around go, what should we do? Because they're cut to the quick. And Peter says, repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And you will receive the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Peter, God will forgive your sins and give you the Holy Spirit. Let's talk about justification, right? The promise of the Spirit would come with the Messiah and make everybody God's sons and daughters and give people that intimate relationship with God to connect them where God's Spirit is poured out onto their hearts.
- [20:50]
A
And this is actually, Can I just give one passage here, because Ezekiel 34, my computer's about to die because I didn't plug in the battery. And so I want to make sure I read this before it goes out. In Ezekiel, there's a promise from God in the future age, he's going to save his people. And he says, I will give you a new heart and a new spirit. I will put within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you. And here's my favorite line. And cause you to walk in my statutes and be able and be careful to obey my rules. This is a key passage we know in Paul's day for Jewish hopes. We see this in Jewish documents like the Dead Sea Scrolls, right? We know that this was a very important passage to many Jews who were looking forward to the new Covenant age. That would, you know, was associated with the coming of the Messiah. And one of the fascinating things here is when Paul is talking about the Promised Spirit, right? He's going to go on in Galatians, talk about how the Spirit has been poured out in our hearts, which is another allusion to Ezekiel 34. Go on elsewhere to talk about that. We are justified by God's gift. We are not worthy, we're sinners, we're uncircumcised, right? Gentiles. Well, we are. I Mean, not all Christians are. Obviously, there are Christians who are Jewish, like my wife, from Jewish stock. But the key idea here is that I'm talking about myself because I'm a Gentile, right? We're given the gift of the Spirit, but the gift is meant to transform us. It's meant to enable us. I can't keep the law. The law was given. I died through the law. The law tells me all these commandments. These are all the commands I'm supposed to keep. Whoever doesn't curse it be everyone who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the law. Oh, my gosh, I'm in trouble, right? But the Spirit comes to enable me to keep God's commandments and to do things that I otherwise would be unable to do on my own. And so I can have faith that in fact, not only will God justify me, but that I will be rightefied. I righteousified. I will be made righteous because of that gift that comes with justification. Anyway, just wanted to make that point because my computer is, like I said, just about out of gas. So.
- [23:21]
B
Yeah, well, it's beautiful as well when Paul moves straight on from what we just talked about into the next section too, because on the one hand, right, we've talked about, right, God promises the new covenant. Ezekiel 34 says, I'm going to give them a covenant of peace in chapter 36, those verses there, right, where he's going to give them a new heart, a new spirit, Jeremiah, chapter 31. So I'm going to give them a new covenant to forgive their sins and make them walk in my ways and.
- [23:50]
A
Know me and write my law on their hearts.
- [23:55]
B
So in a sense, right, like, we can talk very much about Jesus being the new covenant. On the other hand, it's new and it's not. It's definitely not like plan B. And Paul actually is going to come in to make this point in just a second. So can you tell us a little bit about his argument about covenants and which one really is first and which one really is older, Right?
- [24:21]
A
So one of the things he's going to go on to do in chapter three is he's going to unpack. He says he's going to. So here's the thing. In the ancient world, you know, it's very different than our understanding today. In our view, whatever is new is the shiny thing. That's what we want. That's what. But what Paul actually wants to show is that the new covenant is actually something that precedes the old covenant. When you think of the old covenant as that which is associated with circumcision and the Mosaic law. Because what he wants to show us is that when God promised Abraham, I'm going to bless all nations through you, he didn't say if they're circumcised. Right. If they keep all these Mosaic laws. Right. The law is given, Paul will later say, because of transgression. Why the law, it was given because of transgressions. Jesus says something very similar in Matthew 19. He's talking about divorce and remarriage. They say, well, why did Moses go give us permission to divorce our wives? Jesus? Well, I wasn't the way it was from the beginning. Right from the beginning, two were made flesh and God is brought together. Let no man put asunder. Jesus says God allowed for divorce. Moses permitted divorce because of your hardness of heart. Likewise, Paul says the law was added because of transgressions. And so this idea that you can be saved by faith is already there in Abraham before his circumcision.
- [25:57]
B
Yeah, Maybe I can just read these verses here in 1518.
- [26:00]
A
Oh, you want to go to 1518? Great. All right. Yeah, let's do it.
- [26:02]
B
Yeah, yeah. So he says, let me give a human example, brothers. Even when a man made with a man made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it's been ratified. Now, the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It doesn't say offsprings referring to many, but one to your offspring who is Christ. This is what I mean. Right now Paul's going to. So he's just now said like, right, God made this promise to Abraham for blessing for the world, for justification, Right. That everybody would be his children in this way. Right. And that it was going to come through his offspring. And Paul says, yeah, just the one, his one. Not all of his descendants, but the capital D descendant, Jesus Christ. Right. It comes to us in Christ. But now in verse 17, he's going to go, okay, okay, this is what I mean. This is what I mean. The law which came 430 years afterward does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God so as to make the promise void. For the inheritance comes by the law. It no longer comes by promise, but God gave it to Abraham by a promise. God made this promise to Abraham before he was circumcised that it would come about through Jesus Christ, that many nations would be in Abraham's family and be righteous, be friends with God. Right. Transformed and saved. Paul says, look, if you want to take the law as adding something to the Abraham promise. You're wrong. The law came 430 years later, right? There was Abraham, then there was Isaac, then there was Jacob. Jacob had 12 kids. They went and lived in Egypt for 400 years, and then they came out. And then God gave Moses the law on the top of Mount Sinai. You want to take the big law thing onto you? That's a covenant that God made, but it can't nullify the one that he made in the first place, right? It can't change plan A, and it can't mess with that promise. Just like, nobody can pop in later and be like, hey, thanks for leaving me all that stuff, but I want to change your will real quick now that you're dead and gone. Let me just change that up a little bit, right? Paul says, no, it doesn't work that way, right? This is the promise that Jesus is Jesus. The covenant that Jesus brings to us in fulfillment is actually the original one, right?
- [28:27]
A
And it's so important for us to remember this because I think so many Catholics can, so many of us. I put myself in this category. We could often, out of a lack of faithfulness, start to think that being a disciple is ultimately just about checking boxes, right? It's like, okay, which box do I need to check today? Right? I gotta say this prayer. I've gotta do this good work. I've got it. And don't get me wrong, I don't want to say prayer isn't important. We shouldn't say prayers. We shouldn't do good works. But at the end of the day, we don't put our trust in those things. It's not like, oh, if I don't say that novena prayer on the eighth day, oh, gosh, I blew up my novena. It was supposed to be day eight.
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B
I didn't do it.
- [29:08]
A
I better start the whole thing all over again, you know? And. But a lot of times we can put our faith in these kinds of. These actions that we do. And this is something I think Paul is warning us against even now in his writing, that we don't want to imagine that God first isn't interested in loving us as we are, giving us his grace as we are, and then enabling us by His Spirit. It's only by His Spirit to keep the laws that he's given us and to become like Christ again. We have so much we could unpack here. If you want to go deeper into Paul, I want to encourage you to check out that short course we have on Paul. I also want to thank all of you who are regular contributors to the Augustine Institute. You make these Bible studies possible. You make it possible for our students to take classes who aren't able to afford courses there. So much that you do. Thank you so much for your help. We'll be back next time. And look further at what Paul says about the law in Galatians, chapter 3. Until then, may God bless you and your family.