1. Background
2. Sensing God
Take at least a full minute on each of the following senses. How can you experience God through each one? What do you experience or learn about his glory? His relationship to you and creation?
Sight (Look around, Enjoy what you see, Look for new things, Notice the views, How can what you see inspire communication with God, How does God “show up” in what you see)
Hearing (Close your eyes to focus better, What do you hear, What don’t you hear, What is pleasant or unpleasant, How do loud sounds or music reverberate in your body)
Taste (Try eating or drinking something, How does God show up in what you can taste, What does it mean to be the Bread of Life, What does it mean to eat and drink his flesh and blood)
Touch (Touch the textures around you, Feel the breeze and the sun, How can you experience his love and care, Hold something in your hand and see how it inspires communication with God)
Smell (Close your eyes to focus better, What do you smell, What don’t you smell, What is pleasant or unpleasant, Which scents help you feel more closely attuned to God, Which scents distract you, trouble you, or make you feel disconnected from God)
3. Gratefulness
Spend time enjoying the new awareness of God’s presence with you.
Thank God for this new awareness.
4. The Word
Hold the passage in your hands as you pray a prayer for God now to show up through the study of His Word.
Read through the passage a few times. One time take note of the characters in the passage. The next time take note of the question, command, or statement sentences. The next time take note of the contrasts and comparisons in the passage.
5. Contemplate
Use these questions as a starting point for worshipful interaction with God from the passage
1. What words or phrases are repeated most?
2. What does this passage teach us about the law?
3. What does this passage teach about Christ’s relationship with the law?
4. What is the role of the Spirit?
5. What can we learn about justification from this passage?
6. What is blessed and cursed according to this passage?
6. Evaluate
Spend some time in silence with God and the passage. Evaluate what parts of your life live up to this passage, and which parts might need to change.
Pray for God’s strength to continue in what is good and to change what does not live up.
Thank God for this new awareness and the time spent with Him today.
17 “But if, in seeking to be justified in Christ, we Jews find ourselves also among the sinners, doesn’t that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not! 18 If I rebuild what I destroyed, then I really would be a lawbreaker.
19 “For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”[ ]
Faith or Works of the Law
1 You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. 2 I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? 3 Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?[ ] 4 Have you experienced[ ] so much in vain—if it really was in vain? 5 So again I ask, does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard? 6 So also Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”[ ]
7 Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham. 8 Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.”[ ] 9 So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
10 For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.”[ ] 11 Clearly no one who relies on the law is justified before God, because “the righteous will live by faith.”[ ] 12 The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, it says, “The person who does these things will live by them.”[ ] 13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.”[ ] 14 He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.
2:21 Some interpreters end the quotation after verse 14.
3:3 In contexts like this, the Greek word for flesh (sarx) refers to the sinful state of human beings, often presented as a power in opposition to the Spirit.
3:4 Or suffered
3:6 Gen. 15:6
3:8 Gen. 12:3; 18:18; 22:18
3:10 Deut. 27:26
3:11 Hab. 2:4
3:12 Lev. 18:5
3:13 Deut. 21:23
تبغى تتواصل مع مسيحي؟ تواصل معنا بكل امان الحين.
