Galatians3chapter 3

Galatians 3:1

The verb behind evidently set forth, proegraphe, describes a public placard: Paul had posted Christ crucified before Galatian eyes like an official notice. Bewitched translates ebaskanen, the language of the evil eye, and Paul's point is that only a spell could explain turning from a crucifixion they had seen so plainly preached. The chapter's whole argument begins at the cross, the third beat of the letter's crucifixion chain after 2:20.

Galatians 3:2-5

Paul's first proof is the Galatians' own experience: the Spirit came by the hearing of faith, before any law-keeping entered. Verse 5 keeps both verbs in the present tense, he that ministereth the Spirit and worketh miracles among you, an ongoing supply and ongoing works of power in the churches as Paul writes. Wesley reads the ministration as God's continuing gift, and the text presents miracles as the normal accompaniment of faith's hearing, not a sealed past.

Galatians 3:6-9

Paul reaches back past Sinai to Genesis 15:6, where Abraham believed God and righteousness was reckoned to him with no law yet given. Verse 8 makes the larger claim: Genesis 12:3, in thee shall all nations be blessed, was the gospel preached beforehand to Abraham, so Gentile justification by faith was in the promise from the start. They which are of faith, Jew or Gentile, are the sons who share faithful Abraham's blessing.

Galatians 3:10-12

Three citations carry the argument. Deuteronomy 27:26 puts under a curse everyone who does not continue in all things written in the law, so law-keeping as a way of justification demands a perfection no one renders. Habakkuk 2:4, the just shall live by faith, states the other way, and Leviticus 18:5 shows the law's own principle is doing, not believing. The two principles cannot be mixed, which is the letter's whole quarrel.

Galatians 3:13-14

Christ redeemed us from the law's curse by absorbing it, and Paul proves it from Deuteronomy 21:23: cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree. The hanged man under Moses bore a visible sentence, and the cross put the Messiah in exactly that position, the exchange at the center of the gospel. The result runs in two directions at once: the blessing of Abraham reaches the Gentiles, and the promise of the Spirit is received through faith, tying verse 14 back to verse 2.

Galatians 3:15

Paul argues from the lesser to the greater: even a human covenant, once ratified, cannot be annulled or amended by a later party. The word diatheke covers both covenant and testament, and the legal picture is a settled instrument no codicil can override. If men honor that finality, God's ratified promise to Abraham stands beyond amendment.

Galatians 3:16

Paul presses the singular of Genesis 22:18: not to seeds, as of many, but to thy seed, which is Christ. The Hebrew zera is a collective noun, and Paul knows it; his argument is that the promise line always narrowed toward one representative in whom the many are included, Isaac not Ishmael, Jacob not Esau, until it rests on Messiah. The covenant lane of the Genesis 3:15 seed thread arrives here at its person.

Galatians 3:17-18

The law arrived four hundred and thirty years after the covenant was confirmed, and a later instrument cannot cancel an earlier ratified one. Clarke follows the reckoning that runs the figure from the promise to the exodus, where Exodus 12:40 in the Septuagint and Samaritan text counts the sojourning in Canaan and Egypt together. Inheritance by law and inheritance by promise are two different titles, and God gave it to Abraham by promise.

Galatians 3:19-20

It was added because of transgressions: The law was added, a word that concedes it was never the foundation, to expose transgression until the promised Seed came. Ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator gathers a tradition the New Testament states three times, here, in Acts 7:53, and in Hebrews 2:2, with Deuteronomy 33:2 in the Greek behind it: the heavenly host attended Sinai. The promise needed no such machinery; God spoke it to Abraham alone and in person, which is Paul's point in the compressed verse 20.

Galatians 3:21-22

Paul heads off the inference that law and promise are rivals: God forbid. The law fails to justify only because it was never given to give life; had any law been able to quicken, righteousness would genuinely have come that way. Instead the scripture shut up all under sin, a jailer's phrase, so that the promise would come by faith of Jesus Christ to those who believe.

Galatians 3:23-25

Schoolmaster translates paidagogos, and the figure needs its custom: the pedagogue was the household slave who walked the boy to school, guarded his conduct, and had no authority once the child came of age. The law's office was custodial and temporary, keeping Israel under guard and walking her to Christ. After faith is come, the escort's commission is complete, which is honor to the law's purpose, not contempt for it.

Galatians 3:26-27

The address turns from we to ye all: every believer in the Galatian churches, Gentile included, is a son of God through faith in Christ Jesus. Put on Christ is clothing language; Chrysostom hears the toga of the come-of-age son, the dress that declares the standing verse 25 announced. Baptism is presented as the believer's public investiture with Christ himself, not a work added to faith.

Galatians 3:28

neither Jew nor Greek: The three pairs, Jew and Greek, bond and free, male and female, name the deepest divisions of the ancient world, and in Christ Jesus none of them grades a believer's standing. The verse levels access to sonship and inheritance; it does not erase Israel's promises, which Paul defends in Romans 11, nor the created distinction of the sexes he teaches elsewhere. Henry reads it as the charter of the one body: all are one in Christ Jesus, one new man drawn from every rank.

Galatians 3:29

heirs according to the promise: The chapter's argument closes in a single line: if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed. Union with the one Seed of verse 16 makes believers seed in him, and heirs not by law but according to the promise. The inheritance question raised at verse 18 is settled by belonging, and chapter 4 will unfold what coming into that inheritance means.