Galatians 1-3

The Voice

1 Paul, an emissary^[a] commissioned directly by Jesus the Anointed One and God the Father (who raised Him from the dead)—not (as some claim) an agent of men or any person— ² and all the brothers and sisters with me to you, the churches of Galatia.

³ May the grace and peace of God the Father and the Lord Jesus the Anointed live in you; ⁴ He is the very Savior who rescues us from this present, perverse age dominated by evil by giving His life according to our Father’s will to deal with our sins. ⁵ May God’s glorious name forever receive honor. Amen.

⁶ Frankly I am stunned. I cannot believe that you have abandoned God so quickly—even after He called you through the grace of the Anointed One—and have fallen for a different gospel. ⁷ Actually there is only one true gospel of the Anointed, and you—because of divisive prodding by others—are accepting a distorted version which is not the gospel at all!

⁸ No matter the source of the false gospel, even if it is preached by us or a heavenly messenger, ignore it. May those who add to or subtract from the gospel of Jesus be eternally cursed! ⁹ Listen again: if anyone preaches to you a gospel other than what you have accepted, may he find himself cursed!

¹⁰ Do you think I care about the approval of men or about the approval of God? Do you think I am on a mission to please people? If I am still spinning my wheels trying to please men, then there is no way I can be a servant of the Anointed One, the Liberating King.

¹¹ Know this, dear brothers and sisters: the good news I brought to you isn’t the latest in fiction or the product of some creative mind. ¹² It is not a legend I learned or one that has been passed down from person to person, ear to ear. I was gifted with this message as Jesus the Anointed revealed Himself miraculously to me. ¹³ Surely you are familiar with my personal history, with my dedication to the teachings and traditions of Judaism. I persecuted the church of God—in fact, I meant to destroy it. ¹⁴ I excelled in the teachings of Judaism far above other Jewish leaders, and I was zealous to practice the ways of our ancestors. ¹⁵ But God—who set me apart even before birth and called me by His grace—chose, to His great delight, ¹⁶ to reveal His Son in me so I could tell His story among the outsider nations. I didn’t confer with anyone right away, ¹⁷ nor did I go to those who were already emissaries^[b] in Jerusalem. I went straight to Arabia and later returned to Damascus.

¹⁸ After living this adventurous mission for three years, I made my way to Jerusalem and spent 15 days with Cephas, whom you know as Peter. ¹⁹ But I didn’t see any emissary^[c] other than James, our Lord’s brother. ²⁰ (You can be certain that what I am offering you is an authentic account. Before God, it’s the whole truth—I wouldn’t lie.) ²¹ Later I journeyed to Syria and Cilicia; ²² and since I had spent so little time in Judea among the churches of the Anointed One, no one there could pick me out of a crowd. ²³ But stories of my call and mission preceded me: “The very man who wanted to kill us all is now preaching the faith he once labored to destroy.” ²⁴ And so they praised God for the miracle He did in my life.

2 ^1-2 As a result of a revelation, I returned to Jerusalem 14 years later; and this time Barnabas and Titus accompanied me. When I arrived, I shared the exact gospel that I preach to the outsiders. I first shared God’s truth privately with those who were people of influence and leadership because I thought if they did not embrace the freedom of my good news, then any work I had done for Jesus here and any in the past would be spoiled.

³ Listen carefully. None of the Jerusalem leaders insisted that Titus be circumcised, although he is Greek. ⁴ Some people who were pretending to be our brothers and sisters were brought in to spy on the freedom we enjoy in the Anointed One, Jesus—their agenda was clear: they wanted to enslave us. ⁵ But we didn’t give in to them. We didn’t entertain their thoughts for a minute! We resisted them so the true gospel—and not some counterfeit—would continue to be available to you.

⁶ It makes no difference to me (or to God for that matter) if people have power or influence. God doesn’t choose favorites among His children. Even the so-called pillars of the church didn’t contribute anything new to my understanding of the good news. ⁷ But it quickly became obvious to them what God was doing: He had entrusted me to carry the good news to the uncircumcised, just as Peter was called to preach to those who were circumcised. ⁸ God was at work in the ministry of Peter, as emissary^[d] to the Jews, and was also moving and working with me in my ministry to the outsider nations.

⁹ When James, Cephas (whom you know as Peter), and John—three men purported to be pillars among the Jewish believers—saw that God’s favor was upon me to fulfill this calling, they welcomed and endorsed^[e] both Barnabas and me. They agreed that our ministries would work as two hands, theirs advancing the mission of God among the Jews and ours toward the outsider nations, all with the same message of redemption. ¹⁰ In parting, they requested we always remember to care for the poor among us, which was something I was eager to do.

¹¹ But when Cephas came to Antioch, there was a problem. I got in his face and exposed him in front of everyone. He was clearly wrong. ¹² Here’s what was going on: before certain people from James arrived, Cephas used to share meals with the Gentile outsiders. And then, after they showed up, Cephas suddenly became aloof and distanced himself from the outsiders because he was afraid of those believers who thought circumcision was necessary.

¹³ The rest of the Jewish believers followed his lead, including Barnabas! Their hypocritical behavior was so obvious— ¹⁴ their actions were not at all consistent with everything the good news of our Lord represents. So I approached Cephas and told him in plain sight of everyone: “If you, a Jew, have lived like the Gentile outsiders and not like the Jews, then how can you turn around and urge the outsiders to start living like Jews?” ¹⁵ We are natural-born Jews, not sinners from the godless nations. ¹⁶ But we know that no one is made right with God by meeting the demands of the law. It is only through the faithfulness of Jesus^[f] the Anointed that salvation is even possible. This is why we put faith in Jesus the Anointed: so we will be put right with God. It’s His faithfulness—not works prescribed by the law—that puts us in right standing with God because no one will be acquitted and declared “right” for doing what the law demands. ¹⁷ Even though we are seeking a right relationship with God through the Anointed, the fact is we have been found out. We are sinners. But does that mean the Anointed is the one responsible for our sins? Absolutely not! ¹⁸ If I reconstruct something I have worked so hard to destroy, then I prove myself a sinner.

¹⁹ The law has provided the means to end my dependence on it for righteousness, and so I died to the law. Now I have found the freedom to truly live for God. ²⁰ I have been crucified with the Anointed One—I am no longer alive—but the Anointed is living in me; and whatever life I have left in this failing body I live by the faithfulness of God’s Son, the One who loves me and gave His body on the cross for me. ²¹ I can’t dismiss God’s grace, and I won’t. If being right with God depends on how we measure up to the law, then the Anointed’s sacrifice on the cross was the most tragic waste in all of history!

3 Galatians, don’t act like fools! Has someone cast a spell over you? Did you miss the crucifixion of Jesus the Anointed that was reenacted right in front of your eyes? ² Tell me this: Did the Holy Spirit come upon you because you lived according to the law? Or was it because you heard His message of grace through faith? ³ Are you so foolish? Do you think you can perfect something God’s Spirit started with any human effort? ⁴ Have you suffered so greatly for nothing—if it was indeed for nothing? ⁵ You have experienced the Spirit He gave you in powerful ways. Miracle after miracle has occurred right before your eyes in this community, so tell me: did all this happen because you have kept certain provisions of God’s law, or was it because you heard the gospel and accepted it by faith?

⁶ You remember Abraham. Scripture tells us, “Abraham believed God and trusted in His promises, so God counted it to his favor as righteousness.”^{[g] 7} Know this: people who trust in God are the true sons and daughters of Abraham. ⁸ For it was foretold to us in the Scriptures that God would set the Gentile nations right by faith when He told Abraham, “I will bless all nations through you.”^{[h] 9} So those who have faith in Him are blessed along with Abraham, our faithful ancestor.

¹⁰ Listen, whoever seeks to be righteous by following certain works of the law actually falls under the law’s curse. I’m giving it to you straight from Scripture because it is as true now as when it was written: “Cursed is everyone who doesn’t live by and do all that is written in the law.”^{[i] 11} Now it is absolutely clear that no one is made right with God through the law because the prophet Habakkuk told us, “By faith the just will obtain life.”^{[j] 12} The law is not the same thing as life formed by faith. In fact, you are warned against this when God says, “The one who observes My laws will live by them.”^[k] I am trying to tell you that ¹³ the Anointed One, the Liberating King, has redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. It was stated in the Scriptures, “Everyone who hangs on a tree is cursed by God.”^{[l] 14} This is what God had in mind all along: the blessing He gave to Abraham might extend to all nations through the Anointed One, Jesus; and we are the beneficiaries of this promise of the Spirit that comes only through faith.

¹⁵ My dear brothers and sisters, here’s a real-life example I can give you: With a last will and testament, when all the property is accounted for, the document is signed, witnessed, and notarized; and afterward no one can make changes to it. ¹⁶ In a similar way, God’s promises established a binding agreement with Abraham and his offspring. In the Scriptures, it is carefully stated, “and to your descendant” (meaning one), not “and to your descendants”^[m] (meaning many). Therefore, in these covenant promises, God was not referring to every son and daughter born into Abraham’s family but to the Anointed One to come. ¹⁷ What this all means is that the law given to Israel comes along some 430 years after the promise made to Abraham; so it does not invalidate the covenant God previously agreed to or in any way do away with His promise. ¹⁸ You see, if the law became the sole basis for the inheritance, then it would put God in the position of breaking a covenant because He had promised it to Abraham.

¹⁹ Now you’re asking yourselves, “So why did God give us the law?” God commanded His heavenly messengers to deliver it into the hand of a mediator for this reason: to help us rein in our sins until the Offspring, about whom the promise was made in the first place, would come. ²⁰ A mediator represents more than one, but God is only one. ²¹ “So,” you ask, “does the law contradict God’s promise?” Absolutely not! Never was there written a law that could lead to resurrection and life; if there had been, then surely we could have experienced saving righteousness through keeping the law. But we haven’t. ²² Scripture has subjected the whole world to sin’s power so that the faithful obedience of Jesus the Anointed might extend God’s promises to everyone who has faith. ²³ Before faith came on the scene, the law did its best to keep us in line, restraining us until the faith that was to come was fully revealed. ²⁴ So then, the law was like a tutor, assigned to train us and point us to the Anointed, so that we will be acquitted of all wrong and made right by faith. ²⁵ But now that true faith has come, we have no need for a tutor. ²⁶ It is your faith in the Anointed Jesus that makes all of you children of God ²⁷ because all of you who have been initiated into the Anointed One through the ceremonial washing of baptism^[n] have put Him on. ²⁸ It makes no difference whether you are a Jew or a Greek, a slave or a freeman, a man or a woman, because in Jesus the Anointed, the Liberating King, you are all one. ²⁹ Since you belong to Him and are now subject to His power, you are the descendant of Abraham and the heir of God’s glory according to the promise.