BIG IDEA:
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH PROVES THAT WE SHOULD CONTINUE TO LIVE BY FAITH
INTRODUCTION:
Ben Witherington: At Gal. 3:1 Paul begins the section of the letter where he will present his formal arguments to his converts so that they will not pursue a Judaizing course, and will instead continue to walk in the Spirit. Paul’s arguments have an urgency to them not least because he knows that if even some of the Galatians do listen to the agitators it will mean the division of the churches in Galatia – disunity and discord are bound to result. Thus, throughout what follows in the remainder of Galatians Paul will be arguing against beliefs and behavior that lead to discord and disunity and for beliefs that lead to unity and harmony in the Galatian churches. In other words his arguments are of a deliberative, not a forensic nature.
In a deliberative piece of rhetoric the ‘proofs’ or arguments seek not to prove something true or false, but to provide reasons for the audience to take up a certain course of behavior. . .
Paul’s deliberative arguments in this letter are of both the inartificial and artificial sort. The former are usually the stronger sort of arguments and include “decisions of previous courts, rumors, evidence extracted by torture, documents, oaths and witnesses” (Inst. Or. 5.1.2). In Gal. 3 alone we will find an appeal to the Galatians’ own experiences (they themselves are witnesses to what Paul is claiming) and to documents (Scripture and human wills, though the latter may be seen as an analogy with standing legal precedent or customs). Artificial arguments were generally thought to be less persuasive but often they would reflect the creativity of the rhetor. An excellent example of the latter is the innovative allegorical interpretation of the Sarah and Hagar story in Gal. 4. Undergirding all of his arguments is Paul’s appeal to the supernatural work of God already done among and within the Galatians. This sort of argument was considered extremely strong by the ancients, it provided “evidence of the highest order” (cf. Inst. Or. 5.7.35). It will be seen that Paul plays this trump card from the very first (3:1–5) so that he immediately has the Galatians on the spot. Unless they are prepared to renounce their own experiences of God, they must listen to Paul’s arguments about what conclusions they should draw on the basis of those experiences.
Philip Ryken: From start to finish, the whole Christian life is by grace through faith. A new life in Christ commences with faith, continues by faith, and will be completed through faith. To put this another way, the gospel is for Christians just as much as it is for non-Christians. We never advance beyond the good news of the cross and the empty tomb. There is nothing else to add to faith as the ground of our salvation because faith unites us to Jesus Christ. Works have no part in establishing the basis for our salvation, but are added to faith in much the same way that a building rests upon and rises from its foundation. Therefore, the Christian always looks back to the gospel and never to the law as the basis for his righteousness before God. . .
Recovering Pharisees that we are, we sometimes lose sight of the object of our faith: Christ having been crucified for our sins. But when we bring him back into the picture, and see him portrayed as the Savior who not only died, but also rose again, then we regain the vision to live for him by faith.
David Platt: Outline of Galatians Chapter 3
Main Idea: God’s covenant with Moses does not contradict His covenant with Abraham, but rather complements it, and both covenants find their fulfillment in Christ and His salvation.
I. God’s Covenant with Abraham
- By grace alone, God blesses His people.
- Through faith alone, God’s people receive His blessing.
II. God’s Covenant with Moses
- We all disobey the law of God.
- We all deserve the wrath of God.
III. God’s Covenant through Christ
- Jesus fulfills the law of Moses.
- Jesus completes the promise to Abraham.
Bruce Barton: Paul used a rhetorical method often used by orators of his day called a diatribe (using ironic, satirical, and sometimes even abusive speech to make a point). This common Greco-Roman technique was intended to rebuke the listener. The Galatians would have been familiar with this approach.
Van Parunak: Structure of Galatians chapter 3:
There are six questions, alternating between questions about their intelligence and motivation, and questions about the content of their faith and walk. The three substantive questions pose two contrasts: works/faith and flesh/Spirit. These are arranged chiastically, with works/faith on the outside, and taken up in the first section following. The basic argument is, “After all you have seen first-hand, how can you be so foolish as to be drawn away with this error?”
Three pairs of themes emerge from this. Each has a “good” and a “bad” side.
a) Law vs. Promise, two modes of divine communication with man.
b) Works vs. Faith, the responses appropriate to each of them.
c) Flesh vs. Spirit, the source of the strength for the appropriate response.
Thomas Schreiner: II. Paul’s Gospel Defended from Experience and Scripture (3:1–4:11)
A. Argument from Experience: Reception of Spirit by Means of Faith, Not Works (3:1–5)
- The Galatians are bewitched (3:1)
- The Spirit received by faith (3:2)
- Progress in the Christian life by the Spirit (3:3)
- The futility of apostasy (3:4)
- The conclusion: the Spirit’s presence by faith (3:5)
B. Argument from Scripture: Blessing of Abraham by Faith (3:6–14)
- Members of Abraham’s family by faith (3:6–9)
- Righteousness as a consequence of Abraham’s faith (3:6)
- Conclusion: faith needed to belong to Abraham’s family (3:7)
- The gospel of universal blessing through Abraham (3:8)
- Conclusion: faith needed for Abraham’s blessing (3:9)
- Curse of law removed only in Christ (3:10–14)
I. (:1-5) THE ARGUMENT FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE = OUR OWN ENTRANCE INTO SPIRITUAL LIFE WAS BY FAITH NOT WORKS
John MacArthur: Although experience in itself is not entirely reliable evidence of spiritual reality, it is nevertheless a powerful apologetic when closely linked with and built on scriptural truth.
Thomas Schreiner: Structure: The argument in this paragraph is vigorous and pointed. Paul opens with an exclamation (3:1a), and then each of the succeeding units has a rhetorical question (3:1b–5), which indicates that the Galatians themselves are able to answer the questions posed. In other words, the answers are obvious and plain to anyone with an ounce of perception. Since the argument consists of rhetorical questions, linking words do not connect the verses. The paragraph closes (3:5) with an inference (“therefore,” [οὖν]) drawn from 3:1–4 (though v. 5 is also set as a rhetorical question).
A. (:1) The Foolishness of Forgetfulness
- Stinging Rebuke
“You foolish Galatians“
Difficult for the Galatians to hear these words. They needed to be set straight.
Howard Vos: In a word, Paul’s message to the Galatians here is that their reason and experience should have convinced them of the all-sufficiency of faith. He breaks into a remonstrance at the beginning of this chapter. “O foolish Galatians” means not that the Galatians were naturally stupid or senseless but that they have been foolish in allowing themselves to come to the place of denying the sufficiency of Christ. Paul declares the mixture of law-keeping with faith in Christ irrational and implies that they should have been able to come to this conclusion themselves.
John MacArthur: You foolish Galatians reflects a combination of anger and love mixed with surprise. Paul was incredulous, hardly able to believe what the Galatians had done. Like many believers before and after them, they had been victimized by Satan and induced to slip away from the moorings of the truth by which they had been saved. Those believers were especially foolish because they had been so carefully and fully taught, having been on many occasions over the years privileged to sit under the teaching of Paul himself, whose very heartbeat was the gospel of God’s grace.
Anoetos (foolish) does not connote mental deficiency but mental laziness and carelessness. The believers in Galatia were not stupid; they simply failed to use their spiritual intelligence when faced by the unscriptural, gospel-destroying teaching of the Judaizers. They were not using their heads. . .
The Galatians had foolishly fallen into Judaistic legalism because they had stopped believing and applying the basic truths of the gospel Paul had taught them and by which they had been saved. By sinful neglect of their divine resources, they compromised the gospel of grace. They followed their whims and impulses rather than God’s revealed truth, and in so doing forsook the basic truth of the gospel, that men come to salvation and live out salvation only by faith in the Person and the power of Jesus Christ. The Christian life is neither entered nor lived on the basis of good feelings or attractive inclinations but on the basis of God’s truth in Christ. Christians who rely on self-oriented emotions instead of Scripture-oriented minds are doomed to be “tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming” (Eph. 4:14). When they judge an idea on the basis of how good it makes them feel or how nice it sounds rather than on the basis of its harmony with God’s Word, they are in serious spiritual danger.
David Desilva: Calling them “unthinking” is an effective way of challenging their openness to the message and advice of the rival teachers. While it is tempting to translate the Greek here as “stupid,” Paul is not making a statement about the Galatian believers’ intellects per se, but about their refusal or failure to apply them in their current situation. Had they done so, they would not have been led so easily to give the rivals’ advice serious consideration.
- Serious Deception
“who has bewitched you“
Robert Gromacki: In a sense, the Galatians were victims of an evil spell. They must have been hypnotized or awestruck by the forceful oratory of the key Judaizer.
Ben Witherington: The idea of the evil eye is known in earlier Jewish literature (cf. Deut. 28.54; Sir. 14.6, 8; Wis. 4.12) and it is common in the papyri (cf., e.g., P. Oxy. II. 292[12] from about A.D. 25 cf. P. Oxy. 6.930[23]). Basically the concept is that certain persons (or even certain animals or demons or gods) have the power of casting an evil spell on someone or causing something bad to happen to them by gazing at them. The eye was seen as the window of and to the heart, the channel through which one’s innermost thoughts, desires, intentions could be conveyed. This concept was closely connected with notions about envy, jealousy, greed, stinginess, as Plutarch makes clear (Quaest. Conviv. 680C-683B). In first-century society there was great fear of the evil eye, and there were various practices, such as curses, the use of amulets, spitting, that were thought to ward off or neutralize the effects of the evil eye. Especially children or the unwary were thought to be vulnerable to the malign influence of the evil eye. For example Virgil bemoans what has happened to some children saying “I do not know what eye is bewitching my tender lambs” (Ecol. 3.103). Broadly speaking the casting of the evil eye fell under the category of sorcery, and there was of course a widespread belief in these sorts of black arts in the Greco-Roman world. . .
Paul never actually accuses his opponents of witchcraft, precisely because he does not believe he is dealing with magic, but rather with Judaizing, and so the discussion of witchcraft societies while interesting is not directly germane here, because Paul is using the evil eye language polemically and metaphorically.
Philip Ryken: Doctrinal error has two primary sources: human ignorance and demonic malevolence. The church in Galatia faced both problems. The Galatians themselves were so foolish as to abandon the gospel, but as we shall see, they were doing so because they were under spiritual attack.
- Clarity of the Gospel Message
“before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified“
Warren Wiersbe: It was “Christ and Him crucified” that Paul had preached in Galatia, and with such effectiveness that the people could almost see Jesus crucified for them on the cross.
Almost as clear as if they had been standing at the cross observing.
Ralph Martin: He is especially puzzled when he recalls how clearly the picture of the crucified Lord has been presented to them, presumably by his vivid preaching of the cross. “Portrayed” literally means to post a notice in public, like a modern bulletin board—the ancient method of giving out notices of a political or social event.
Timothy George: Paul put special stress on the finality of the cross. He proclaimed Jesus Christ as estauromμenos, literally, as having been crucified. This perfect participle relates to Jesus’s cry from the cross, “It is finished!” The work of redemption was completely accomplished through that perfect atoning sacrifice.
David deSilva: “Christ crucified” is Paul’s shorthand expression for the larger proclamation of the gospel, holding up the most distinctive image and facet of that message (see also 1 Cor 1:23; 2:2). It is also the image that captures most graphically the costliness of this gift or favor of God that some Galatian Christians are, in Paul’s view, in danger of setting aside (2:21). The emphasis on Paul’s proclamation of the crucified Messiah in 3:1 grows organically out of Paul’s emphasis on the death of Christ in 2:21 and his conviction that the very value of Christ’s death is now at stake. We might paraphrase Paul’s underlying challenge thus: “We emphasized the redemptive and eschatological significance of Jesus’s costly death on the cross while we were among you; how could you now, then, be so unreflective as to begin to entertain the idea that you will fall in line with God’s righteous standards by following the Torah?”
B. (:2) The Only Game Plan That Works
- KISS = “Keep it Simple, Stupid” — Fundamentalism
(emphasis on the basic essentials)
“This is the only thing I want to find out from you“
- How did you enter into the Spiritual Life? (Law vs. Faith)
“did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law,
or by hearing with faith?”
Reception of the Spirit is evidence of salvation and union with God — Rom. 8:9
Robert Gromacki: If the Judaizers had been correct, then it would have been impossible for the uncircumcised Gentile converts to have received the Spirit at all. Yet the Galatians ‘were filled with joy, and with the Holy Spirit’ as the result of Paul’s evangelistic efforts (Acts 13:52). To accept the heresy of the Judaizers would be to deny the presence of the Spirit in their lives.
Ben Witherington: The verb ‘received’ is in the aorist indicating a definite event in the past. Paul is referring to what happened to the Galatians at the point of their conversions. As Dunn points out, the phrase about receiving the Spirit is something close to a technical phrase for early Christians when they wanted to talk about conversion (cf. Rom. 8:15; 1 Cor. 2:12; 2 Cor. 11:4; Gal. 3:14; Jn. 7:39; Acts 2:38; 10:47; 19:2). “It focuses the fact that for Paul and the first Christians this was the decisive and determinative element in the event or process of conversion and initiation; hence the nearest thing to a definition of ‘Christian’ in the NT, in Rom. 8:9 makes possession of the Spirit the sine qua non. Moreover it cannot really be understood in other than experiential terms (as though ‘receiving the Spirit’ was a matter of purely rational conviction, or simply a deduction to be drawn from the fact of their having been baptized). The appeal is clearly to an event which Paul could expect them vividly to remember …” G. D. Fee emphasizes that Paul is referring to what he deems to be unimpeachable evidence, which suggest he is surely referring to some dynamic experiences of the Spirit in Galatia that could have been neither forgotten nor denied. The point of this appeal is of course that Paul takes the reception of the Spirit as irrefutable evidence that God had accepted these Gentiles, and had accepted them without their having to submit to the Law of Moses and do “works of the Law.”
Thomas Schreiner: The reference to the Spirit confirms that the conversion of the Galatians is in view, for the Spirit is the sign that one belongs to the people of God (cf. 1 Cor 2:12). At conversion the Holy Spirit is poured out in one’s heart (Rom 5:5). Those who belong to Christ and are genuinely Christians have the Spirit dwelling in them (Rom 8:9; cf. 8:14–15). Conversely, the natural person does not have the Spirit (1 Cor 2:14). The Spirit authenticates one’s salvation and functions as the guarantee that God will complete his saving work (2 Cor 1:22; 5:5; Eph 1:14).
John MacArthur: The Holy Spirit is not the goal of the Christian life but is its source. He is not the product of faithful living but is the power behind it. A higher level of living does not bring the Holy Spirit; rather submission to the Holy Spirit, who already indwells the believer, includes a higher level of living.
Scot McKnight: For Paul, receiving the Spirit is the identifying characteristic of the Christian. To be a Christian is to be indwelt by the Spirit, and to be indwelt by the Spirit is to be a Christian (cf. Rom. 8:9–11). The Spirit of God is the definition of the Christian. Paul says that the Christian’s very beginning is with the Spirit (v. 3), and he contends that God works among Christians through the Spirit (v. 5). Faith brings the blessing of Abraham, and this blessing is the “promise of the Spirit” (v. 14). Later, he says that those who are truly sons of God are those who have been granted the Spirit, who calls out “Abba, Father” (4:6). What Paul is talking about here may be an experience, and it may very well be a charismatic one, but it is not some experience subsequent to faith in Christ. For Paul, faith in Christ means being granted God’s Spirit. This granting of the Spirit ends the age of the law. Abraham’s promise is the promise of the Spirit (3:14), and when the law had run its course, God sent his Spirit (4:4–6). So it makes sense that those who live in the Spirit are not under the law (5:18).
David deSilva: If the Galatian Christians can attest from their own religious experience that they had received God’s Holy Spirit and experienced God’s presence in their midst as a result of trusting in Jesus and in what his death secured for human beings, they will come to see that
(1) they have received the blessing that was promised to Abraham concerning “all the nations” (3:14),
(2) they have enjoyed God’s complete acceptance and are already sons and daughters of the living God and thereby also heirs of God’s promise (4:6–7), and
(3) they have received from God all that they need to live beyond the power of the flesh and to conform to God’s righteous standards, thus enjoying God’s approval at the end (5:13–25; 6:7–10), all on the basis of having trusted in Jesus and relying upon the favor God is showing to the world through Jesus.
They are poised to deduce that they could not gain anything more by turning to performing the works of the Torah. Their trust in Jesus was enough to render them holy to the Lord, hence allowing the Holy Spirit to rest upon them and dwell among them. There was no need to perform the traditional rites by which Jews had kept themselves holy to the Lord, with holiness being defined in terms of maintaining their ethnic distinctiveness from the gentile nations. Indeed, turning to the Torah as a means of making their possession of these blessings more secure would express a “vote of no confidence” in Jesus, whom they had hitherto trusted solely (cf. 2:21; 5:2–4).
C. (:3) The Foolishness of Switching Horses Mid-Race (Spirit vs. Flesh)
“Are you so foolish?
Having begun by the Spirit are you now being perfected by the flesh?”
Howard Vos: Are you so irrational? You must acknowledge that your salvation and spiritual power came on the basis of faith. Having begun “in the sphere of the spirit” do you now wish to be perfected “in the sphere of the flesh,” that is, to go into the keeping of ordinances? Of course their conversion experience had brought about a spiritual change. Now apparently some were arguing that a really spiritual person should keep the law. This was to exalt flesh above spirit, to ignore spiritual enablement for daily living, and to violate what Paul must have clearly taught them when present with them (cf. Phil 1:6; 2 Co 8:6).
Thomas Schreiner: The term “flesh” here is used in the technical Pauline sense, referring to reliance on the old Adam, the unregenerate person. The opposition between the Spirit and flesh represents the eschatological contrast between this age and the age to come (cf. 1:4), with the flesh representing the old age and the Spirit the age to come. The age to come has penetrated this present evil age, and hence it does not make sense for the Galatians to turn back to the old age now that the new has arrived.
Douglas Moo: Of course, Paul is not denying the importance of “doing” in the outworking of the salvation bestowed initially by the Spirit. Faith certainly “works” (5:6), and a true work of God’s Spirit will always issue in works of obedience (5:22–24). But the agitators were apparently insisting that becoming a “son” of Abraham and attaining ultimate righteousness with God were based on faith + torah observance. It is this synergism with respect to righteousness that Paul denies.
The concern that Paul expresses in this verse reaches to the rhetorical heart of Galatians. The Galatian Christians have started well; they have received the Spirit and have been justified by their faith in Christ, a gift of God’s grace. But the agitators have come on the scene, arguing that people can go free in the judgment only if they add to their faith the “works of the law.” Paul seeks to persuade the Galatians not to buy into this scheme: as they began, with the Spirit and with faith, so they must continue (see 5:5).
Nijay Gupta: It is important to recognize that flesh and Spirit for Paul are not different parts of the person, like skin and soul. As Frances Taylor Gench explains, these are two ways of portraying the self in relationship to God and the world. “Flesh” describes “human nature as a whole when it is dominated by sin and thus has broken away from God. It denotes a self-centered existence, in which the entire perspective of the human being is turned in upon himself or herself, so that the self becomes the center of all values.”
Kathryn Greene-McCreight: Yet in the fullness of time Jesus, human flesh of that same created order, comes like us in every way except sin. In his coming, he restores our human flesh to health. But in Gal. 3:3 Paul mocks the Galatians for their foolishness, manifest in their betrayal of the gospel promise. Having begun their life in the Lord through Paul’s public preaching in the Spirit, do they really now think they can bring it to perfection through the flesh, either as the foreskin (circumcision) or as the stomach (dietary laws) 8 They have experienced the Spirit for nothing.
D. (:4) The Need for Perseverance
“Did you suffer so many things in vain — if indeed it was in vain?“
Scot McKnight: Paul’s third question pertains to the early experiences the Galatian converts had in persecution. What Paul envisages is simple: after their conversion to Christ (according to the Pauline gospel), the Galatian converts experienced persecution at the hands of others (probably at the hands of Jews, perhaps also the Judaizers; see 4:29). Now Paul asks, “Have you suffered so much for nothing?” In other words, had you simply converted to Judaism immediately, you would never have experienced the persecution you encountered for converting to Christ. If you suffer as a Christian, it is for something; but if you suffer as a Christian and then toss it all away by converting to Judaism, your suffering as a Christian would be for nothing. So, he asks, was this all in vain? Paul is both shaming the Galatians and appealing to his standard argument (see 4:29; 5:11) that those who are persecuted are in the right and those who persecute are in the wrong.
Craig Keener: Although Paul rejects here the idea that his converts are already apostate, he recognizes the possibility that some could follow Christ pointlessly (3:4), or “in vain,” and that his labor for them could be in vain, if they failed to persevere (2:2; 4:11; cf. 1 Cor. 15:2; 2 Cor. 6:1; Phil. 2:16; 1 Thess. 2:1; 3:5).
Timothy George: Three times in Galatians Paul has raised the specter of the absurd consequences of justification by works. In 2:2 Paul raised the possibility that his missionary labors may have been in vain. In 2:21 he raised the stakes and suggested that if righteousness could be gained through the law, then even Christ would have died in vain. Now here in 3:4 he queried the Galatians about whether the Spirit had not been given to them in vain. In effect, he was saying to them: “See where this kind of theology will lead you! If salvation is not the work of God from first to last, then the preaching of the gospel is vanity, the cross of Christ was a farce, and the gift of the Holy Spirit means nothing!” By presenting these terrible alternatives to the Galatians in such a startling way, Paul sought to jar them from their folly and break the spell that had left them bewitched.
E. (:5) The Key to the Distribution of Spiritual Blessings
On what basis does God provide these blessings?
“Does He then, who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among
you, do it by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith?”
Ben Witherington: Paul does not mention miracles very often in his letters, but there are sufficient references to let us know that the work of the Spirit from time to time took this form in Paul’s churches (cf. Rom. 15:19; 2 Cor. 12:12). There is no indication that these miracles were all performed by Paul and/or his co-workers when he was present with the Galatians. Paul concludes this first division of his first argument by reminding his converts of the obvious – these things did not occur through works of the Law but rather from hearing and believing the Gospel message.
David deSilva: Paul’s reliance upon the converts’ awareness of this Spirit urges us to value the living experience of God in our times of worship and to help our fellow disciples cultivate an awareness of God’s presence and of God’s hand at work in their lives. Pastor and parishioner, counselor and counselee, teacher and student alike must be able to find the irrefutable signs of God’s love, acceptance, and favor in their lives, and our life together as a Christian community should be directed, at least in part, toward positioning people for transforming encounters with the living God. Without the active presence of God’s Spirit in our lives, we lack, in Paul’s view, the very inheritance promised in Christ (3:14) and the key to our transformation into the likeness of Christ (5:5–6, 13–25).
Scot McKnight: Paul has sustained here a vigorous polemical argument on his behalf, and it is highly appealing to the Galatians since it is drawn from their experience. Their experience, from front to back, confirms the message of Paul and counters the message of the Judaizers. God’s Spirit comes to us and stays with us through faith; God’s Spirit has nothing to do with “observing the law.”
II. (:6-9) THE ARGUMENT FROM THE EXAMPLE OF ABRAHAM = FAITH IS THE ONLY REQUIREMENT FOR BOTH JEWS AND GENTILES
Ben Witherington: It is clearly important to Paul to be able to use a text which shows that Abraham’s faith, his being reckoned as righteous, and the promise of blessing (cf. already Gen. 12:2) all came before there is any mention what-soever of circumcision as a covenant sign (Gen. 17) or of Abraham’s faithful and obedient deed in regard to the offering of Isaac in sacrifice (Gen. 22), and most importantly it came centuries before the giving of the Mosaic Law and covenant. From this it follows in Paul’s mind that right-standing with God and the promise of God cannot be said to be dependent on keeping the Mosaic Law, but rather on faith.
George Brunk: So whose champion is Abraham? Is he the champion of those advocating full observance of the Law, or is he the champion of Gentiles freed from the Law through their faith in Christ? In this part of Galatians, Paul is trying to wrest Abraham from the grasp of his opponents, who are using Abraham as Exhibit 1 in their argument that they are right and Paul is wrong.
Remarkably, Paul does not merely seek to neutralize his opponents’ use of Abraham as their prime example. Instead, he boldly and creatively turns the tables on his opponents and shows how, understood correctly, Abraham is actually Paul’s Exhibit 1 in his defense of the gospel! In Abraham, Paul finds proof of the fact that right standing with God is fundamentally a matter of faith responding to promise, not of obedience responding to Law. Furthermore, God’s promise to Abraham foreshadowed the inclusion of the Gentiles in the people of God when that promise spoke of Abraham being a blessing to all nations. The whole gospel message is prefigured in Abraham!
A. (:6) Abraham was Justified by Faith
“Even so Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness“
Before the law was given; before Abraham was circumcised.
John MacArthur: The Judaizers doubtlessly used Abraham as certain proof that circumcision was necessary to please God and become acceptable to Him. After first calling Abraham to leave his homeland of Ur of Chaldea, the Lord promised, “And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:2-3). Abraham and his descendants were later commanded to be circumcised as a sign of God’s covenant and a constant illustration of the need for spiritual cleansing from sin: “This is My covenant, which you shall keep, between Me and you and your descendants after you: every male among you shall be circumcised” (Gen. 17:10). (The cutting away of the foreskin on the male procreative organ signified the need to cut away sin from the heart—sin that was inherent, passed from one generation to the next; cf. Deut. 10:16; Jer. 4:4; Col. 2:11.)
Putting those two accounts together, the Judaizers argued, “Isn’t it obvious that if the rest of the world, that is, Gentiles, are to share in the promised blessings to Abraham, they must first take on the sign that marks God’s people, the Jews? If all the nations of the earth will be blessed in Abraham, they will have to become like Abraham and be circumcised.”
Robert Gromacki: The time of his faith was before he was circumcised (Gen. 15:6; cf. Gen. 17:9-27). The Judaizers argued that since Abraham believed and was circumcised, the Galatians would also have to be circumcised in order to receive the righteousness of God. However, a righteous standing was imputed to the patriarch at the moment of faith. The argument is decisive: If circumcision is necessary for salvation, then why did God give His righteousness to the patriarch before he submitted to the rite? A man is not justified before he is saved.
Thomas Schreiner: Faith is counted as righteousness because it unites believers to Christ, who is their righteousness.
Philip Ryken: What, then, must we believe? Notice the object of Abraham’s faith: he put his trust in God. “Abraham believed God” (Gal. 3:6), and this was credited to him as righteousness. What Abraham believed was not simply God’s promises, which he could hardly believe, but God himself. Abraham put his faith in the faithful God—the God who made him the promise. When Abraham didn’t know where he was going, or how he was going to get there, he trusted God to get him where he needed to be. When he didn’t have any children, or any reason to think he ever would, he believed that God would make good on his promise. Against all hope and beyond all doubt, Abraham committed himself and his whole life to God. The Scripture says, “No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was ‘counted to him as righteousness’ ” (Rom. 4:20–22).
David Platt: God gave Abraham the promise by grace, and Abraham trusted the promise through faith, and that faith led to radical obedience. When you trust God, you do things that seem crazy to the world, not because you’re earning salvation, but because you believe God. This is the whole point of Hebrews 11, which we’ve referenced earlier.
B. (:7) Faith = The Common Denominator for Believing Jews and Gentiles
“Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham“
Van Parunak: Conclusion: If you are characterized by faith, as was Abraham, you are associated with him, and can claim to be his “son“–even more than those who, though genetically descended from Abraham, yet are so unlike him in how they seek to please God.
Scot McKnight: The fact is, Abraham’s circumcision (Gen. 17) came after his pronouncement of acceptance (15:6). Thus his descendants are those who believe, those who opt for the faith system (along with Christ and the Holy Spirit); they opt out of the works system.
Timothy George: Paul’s rebuttal was a stinging rebuke to the theology of the law-centered agitators. Descent by blood or physical procreation does not create sons of Abraham in the sight of God any more than the alteration of one’s private parts does. The true children of Abraham are those who believe, literally, those who ground their relationship with God and thus their existence on the basis of faith. Paul’s argument resonates with the discussion Jesus held with the Jewish leaders of his day concerning their status as children of Abraham. If Abraham were your real father, Jesus said, you would act more like him, you would embody his characteristics—rather than those of the devil to whom you really belong (John 8:31–47). Paul already had hinted at the presence of the evil one in Galatia (cf. the “bewitcher” of 3:1). Now he suggested that those who seek to be right with God through physical lineage or human effort will at the end of the day be found outside the people of God altogether, locked up forever in “this present evil age” of darkness and sin (1:4).
C. (:8) OT Prophecy Paved the Way for the Inclusion of the Gentiles in the Blessing of Justification by Faith
“And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith,
preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying,
‘All the nations shall be blessed in you.'”
Ben Witherington: Verse 8 presents us with the personification of Scripture. It is said that Scripture foresaw what was going to happen in regard to Gentiles being included in God’s people in the NT era, and that therefore it pre-preached the Good News to Abraham about this matter. Paul sees the Scriptures as alive, active, speaking, even locking people up under sin (Gal. 3:22). Paul is able to say this because he identifies what Scripture says with what God says. Verse 8 could as easily be read “God, foreseeing what was going to happen to the Gentiles … spoke to Abraham in advance”. Scripture is seen as a written transcript of the living divine Word that comes directly from the mind and mouth of God, and so can be personified as it is here. Verse 8 then says that it was always in the mind of God to justify the Gentile nations “out of faith” (ἐϰ πίστεως), that is by means of faith.
Howard Vos: Abraham was not given the full revelation of what the gospel was but only the word that all the Gentiles were to be blessed in him. “In thee” indicates that from his line blessing would flow to “all the Gentiles,” a veiled reference to the Messiah. The Hebrew of Genesis 12:3 has “all families of the earth.” What the blessing was can only be understood in connection with the first part of the verse; it has to do with justification by faith. Justification came to Abraham by faith in the promise; justification comes today by faith in the Fulfillment of that promise.
Ralph Martin: A second Scripture citation is needed to oppose the Judaizers’ argument and their appeal to Abraham. Earlier still in the Genesis story of Israel’s ancestors God had given a first promise to Abraham (Gen. 12:3, repeated in 18:18) that he was to be ancestor, not of Jewish people only but of “all nations,” a wide inclusion quoted by Paul in Galatians 3:8. The word for “nations” in the Greek Bible can also mean “Gentiles”; here it refers to the Galatians. How then can the Judaizing teachers claim that the Galatians must become Jews in order to be complete Christians? Paul’s logic is clear and leads to 3:9—those who believe are blessed in the same way as Abraham the believer.
D. (:9) Summary: The Bottom Line for God’s Blessing = Faith
“So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer.”
Van Parunak: God did promise to bless the Gentiles through Abraham, and certainly, among all Gentiles, those who share Abraham’s faith can count on receiving that blessing.
Ben Witherington: Verse 9 provides a conclusion on the basis of what Paul has argued in vss. 6–8. Those who live from faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. There is a sense in which Paul believes that Abraham was the first one to hear the Gospel of justification by grace through faith and accept it, and thus a sense in which he is seen as a prototype of the Christian, even more daringly a prototype or antitype of the Galatian Gentile Christians. In other words, if this Gospel was good enough for Abraham providing him with the full blessing it should be good enough for the Galatians as well.