| 1 How foolish you are, Galatians! How could they bewitch you after Jesus Christ has been presented to you as crucified? | |
| 2 I shall ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by the practice of the Law, or by believing the message? | |
| 3 How can you be such fools: you begin with the Spirit and end up with the flesh! | |
| 4 So you have experienced all this in vain! Would that it were not so! | |
| 5 Did God give you the Spirit and work miracles among you, because of your observance of the Law or because you believed in his message? | |
| 6 Remember Abraham: he believed God and because of this was held to be a just man. | |
| 7 Understand then that those who follow the way of faith are sons and daughters of Abraham. | |
| 8 The Scriptures foresaw that by the way of faith, God would give true righteousness to the non-Jewish nations. For God’s promise to Abraham was this: In you shall all the nations be blessed. | |
| 9 So now those who take the way of faith receive the same blessing as Abraham who believed; | |
| 10 but those who rely on the practice of the Law are under a curse, for it is written: Cursed is everyone who does not always fulfill everything written in the Law. | |
| 11 It is plainly written that no one becomes righteous, in God’s way, by the Law: by faith the righteous shall live. | |
| 12 Yet the Law gives no place to faith, for according to it: the one who fulfills the commandments shall have life through them. | |
| 13 Now Christ rescued us from the curse of the Law by becoming cursed himself for our sake, as it is written: there is a curse on everyone who is hanged on a tree. | |
| 14 So the blessing granted to Abraham reached the pagan nations in and with Christ, and we received the promised Spirit through faith. | |
| 15 Brothers, listen to this comparison. When anyone has made his will in the prescribed form, no one can annul it or add anything to it. | |
| 16 Well now, what God promised Abraham was for his descendant. Scripture does not say: for the descendants, as if they were many. It means only one: this will be for your descendant, and this is Christ. | |
| 17 Now I say this: if God has made a testament in due form, it cannot be annulled by the Law which came four hundred and thirty years later; God’s promise cannot be cancelled. | |
| 18 But if we now inherit for keeping the law, it is not because of the promise. Yet that promise was God’s gift to Abraham. | |
| 19 Why then the Law? It was added because of transgressions; but was only valid until the descendant would come to whom the promise had been made; and it was ordained through angels by a mediator. | |
| 20 A mediator means that there are parties, and God is one. | |
| 21 Does the Law then compete with the promises of God? Not at all. Only if we had been given a Law capable of raising life, could righteousness be the fruit of the Law. | |
| 22 But the written Law has imprisoned all things under the power of sin, so that what was promised through faith in Jesus Christ, would be accomplished in those who believe. | |
| 23 Before the time of faith had come, the Law confined us and kept us in custody until the time in which faith would show up. | |
| 24 The Law then was serving as a slave to look after us until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. | |
| 25 With the coming of faith, we are no longer submitted to this guidance. | |
| 26 Now, in Christ Jesus, all of you are sons and daughters of God through faith. | |
| 27 All of you who were given to Christ through baptism, have put on Christ. | |
| 28 Here there is no longer any difference between Jew or Greek, or between slave or freed, or between man and woman: but all of you are one in Christ Jesus. | |
| 29 And because you belong to Christ, you are of Abraham’s race and you are to inherit God’s promise. | |
