Chapter 3

¹You senseless Galatians! Who has bewitched you, when you had Jesus Christ shown crucified right before your eyes? ²This is all I want to ask you: Did you receive the Spirit through doing what the Law commands, or through believing the message you heard? ³Are you so senseless? Did you begin with the Spirit only to end now with the flesh? ⁴Have you gone through so much, all for nothing?—if it really is for nothing! ⁵When he supplies you with the Spirit and works wonders among you, is it because you do what the Law commands, or because you believe the message you heard? ⁶Just as Abraham had faith in God and it was credited to him as uprightness.

⁷So you see, the real descendants of Abraham are the men of faith. ⁸The Scripture foresaw that God would accept the heathen as upright in consequence of their faith, and preached the good news in advance to Abraham in the words, “All the heathen will be blessed through you.” ⁹So the men of faith share the blessing of Abraham and his faith.

¹⁰For there is a curse upon all who rely on obedience to the Law, for the Scripture says, “Cursed be anyone who does not stand by everything that is written in the Book of the Law and obey it.” ¹¹That no one is accepted as upright by God for obeying the Law is evident because the upright will have life because of his faith, ¹²and the Law has nothing to do with faith; it teaches that it is the man who does these things that will find life by doing them. ¹³Christ ransomed us from the Law’s curse by taking our curse upon himself (for the Scripture says, “Cursed be anyone who is hung on a tree”) ¹⁴in order that the blessing given to Abraham might through Jesus Christ reach the heathen, so that through faith we might receive the promised Spirit.

¹⁵To take an illustration, brothers, from daily life: even a human agreement, once ratified, no one annuls or alters. ¹⁶Now the promises were made to Abraham and his line. It does not say, “and to your lines,” in the plural, but in the singular, “and to your line,” that is, Christ. ¹⁷My point is this: An agreement already ratified by God cannot be annulled and its promise canceled by the Law, which arose four hundred and thirty years later. ¹⁸If our inheritance rests on the Law, it has nothing to do with the promise. Yet it was as a promise that God bestowed it upon Abraham.

¹⁹Then what about the Law? It was a later addition, designed to produce transgressions, until the descendant to which the promise was made should come, and it was enacted by means of angels, through an intermediary; ²⁰though an intermediary implies more than one party, while God is but one. ²¹Is the Law then contrary to God’s promises? By no means. For if a law had been given that could have brought life, uprightness would really have come through law. ²²But the Scripture describes all mankind as the prisoners of sin, so that the promised blessing might on the ground of faith in Jesus Christ be given to those who have faith.

²³But before this faith came, we were kept shut up under the Law, in order to obtain the faith that was to be revealed. ²⁴So the Law has been our attendant on our way to Christ, so that we might be made upright through faith. ²⁵But now that faith has come, we are no longer in the charge of the attendant.

²⁶For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through your faith. ²⁷For all of you who have been baptized into union with Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. ²⁸There is no room for “Jew” and “Greek”; there is no room for “slave” and “freeman”; there is no room for “male” and “female”; for in union with Christ Jesus you are all one. ²⁹And if you belong to Christ, then you are true descendants of Abraham and his heirs under the promise.