- Lesson 6 in the Connect360 unit “A Cry for Freedom: Grace That Is Still Amazing” focuses on Galatians 3:15-29.
Remember that Paul’s approach to the Gentiles in chapter 3 moved from alienation to reunion. He had a more conciliatory tone when he called these Gentile Galatians his brothers and sisters. The purpose of his words throughout Galatians was to reclaim for these Gentiles their confidence in Christ. He would not have them to be circumcised as the Judaizers were insisting.
Paul wanted the restrictions the Judaizers were threatening them with to be removed as far as the east is from the west. Paul wanted them to know because they trusted Jesus as the fulfilment of the promise, they now lived freely under grace. They no longer were in need of the Law to regulate them. From this point forward, Christ would live in them. They were members of the body of Christ. They now lived by faith in the Son of God who loved them and gave himself for them (2:21).
When the Roman child reached maturity, or came of age, he put on the toga of an adult citizen, and took off his childhood garments. When we are baptized through faith in Jesus Christ, we put on his clothes of righteousness on our behalf. The Judaizers were attempting to have the Galatians take off their adult togas and put on their children’s clothing again. How foolish! Paul’s letter was to remind them they, too, were Christian adults and were equal in Christ to the Jewish believers.
Galatians 3:28—“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”—is a favorite verse of many. First-century Pharisees prayed every morning, “I thank thee, God, that I am a Jew, not a Gentile; a man, not a woman; and a free man, not a slave.” Possibly the interfering Judaizers still prayed that every morning. In Galatians 3, Paul took the wind out of their sails and the poison out of their words of division. May we do the same.
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