Chapter 3

1You foolish Galatians! Who put you under a spell? Right before your eyes, Jesus the Messiah was clearly portrayed as crucified.

2I want to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive God’s Spirit by doing what the law requires, or by hearing the message and trusting it?

3Are you really so foolish? After beginning by God’s Spirit, are you now trying to reach the goal by human effort?

4Did you suffer so much for nothing—if it really was for nothing?

5God supplies you with the Spirit and does powerful things among you. Does he do this because you obey the law’s requirements, or because you hear the message and trust it?

6In the same way, “Abraham trusted God, and God counted him as being right with him.”

7Understand, then, that those who trust God are Abraham’s true children.

8Scripture foresaw that God would put non-Jews right with himself through faith. So it announced the good news to Abraham beforehand: “All nations will be blessed through you.”

9Therefore, those who trust God are blessed along with Abraham, who trusted him.

10Everyone who relies on obeying the law’s requirements is under a curse. Scripture says, “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the Law.”

11It is clear that no one is put right with God through the law, because Scripture says, “The person who is right with God through faith will live.”

12But the law is not based on faith. Instead, it says, “The person who does these things will live by them.”

13The Messiah bought our freedom from the law’s curse by becoming a curse for us. Scripture says, “Everyone who is hung from a tree is cursed.”

14He did this so that Abraham’s blessing would come to non-Jews through Jesus the Messiah, and so that through faith we would receive the Spirit God had promised.

15Brothers and sisters, let me use an everyday example. Once a human agreement has been legally confirmed, no one cancels it or adds new terms to it.

16Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his descendant. Scripture does not say, “and to your descendants,” as though it meant many people. It speaks of one: “and to your descendant,” who is the Messiah.

17Here is my point: the law, which came 430 years later, cannot cancel an agreement that God had already confirmed and so make the promise invalid.

18If the inheritance depends on the law, it no longer depends on a promise. But God graciously gave it to Abraham through a promise.

19Why, then, was the law given? It was added because people were breaking God’s commands, and it was to remain until the promised descendant came. The law was put into effect through angels and delivered by a mediator—a go-between.

20A mediator is not for one party alone, but God is one.

21Is the law, then, opposed to God’s promises? Absolutely not! If a law had been given that could produce life, then being right with God truly would come through the law.

22But Scripture declares that everything is imprisoned under sin’s power. This was so that what God promised on the basis of faith in Jesus the Messiah could be given to those who believe.

23Before faith came, the law kept us under guard. We were confined until the coming faith could be revealed.

24So the law served as our guardian until the Messiah came, so that we could be put right with God through faith.

25But now that faith has come, we are no longer under that guardian.

26Through faith in Jesus the Messiah, all of you are God’s children.

27All of you who entered union with the Messiah through baptism have clothed yourselves with the Messiah.

28There is no longer Jew or non-Jew, enslaved person or free person, male and female. All of you are one in Jesus the Messiah.

29If you belong to the Messiah, then you are Abraham’s descendants and will inherit what God promised.