Click here to watch my video reflection on our text for today, or keep reading for my written reflections: 

Today’s reading is from Galatians 3: 1-5: 

You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited as crucified! 2 The only thing I want to learn from you is this: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard? 3 Are you so foolish? Having started with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? 4 Did you experience so much for nothing?—if it really was for nothing. 5 Well then, does God supply you with the Spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard?

Man, today Paul shares with us something huge, something we have to come to understand as Christians, something so very important.  We are saved by grace through faith.  We don’t save ourselves by our works, we are saved by grace through faith.  We established that last week. 

But here is what we do, and here is our mistake. We believed we are saved by grace through faith, but then we are sanctified (we grow) through our works.  We believed we are saved by grace, but sanctified through works. 

This is not so. This is not right. This is not what the Bible teaches.  

Our faith so often feels frustrating because that is what we practically believe. What does that mean? It means we don’t think we are doing enough. We need to do more. We need to work harder, we need to be better. We try really hard to be good and faithful. 

And it doesn’t work. And we feel like a failure and like faith doesn’t work. Because we are trying to do ourselves.  We saved by faith and sanctified by works. We are saved by faith and sanctified by faith.  It is all faith. It is all grace. 

It is all God’s work, not ours. Our job is not to bow up and do more. Our job is to surrender.  Our job is to get out of the way and let God work. That’s the key. It is not our efforts and goodness. It is not our work. It is His. 

It’s always His.  We don’t save ourselves, we don’t grow ourselves.  God does it all. 

Our job is to realize we can’t do it on our own.  Our job is to surrender to the spirit and let the spirit work in us and through us.  That is the key. That is how we grow. 

We don’t save ourselves. We don’t grow ourselves. God does it all.  

Tomorrow we’ll look at Galatians 3: 6-14.  

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