Will Vaus

  Listen for God’s word to you from Galatians 3:1-14… You foolish   Galatians!   Who has bewitched you?   Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified.   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?   Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?   Have you experienced   so much in vain—if it really was in vain?   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?   So also Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Understand, then, that those who have faith   are children of Abraham.   Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed...

We are in the middle of a series on Paul’s letter to the Galatians which I have titled   Plug into the Power of Grace.  Listen for God’s word to you from Galatians 2:11-21… When Cephas   came to Antioch,   I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.  For before certain men came from James,   he used to eat with the Gentiles.   But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group.   The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas   was led astray. When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel,   I said to Cephas   in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew.   How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs? “We who are Jews by birth   and not sinful Gentiles   know that a person is not ...

This is a passage you will never see embroidered and hanging on the wall of someone’s home. But it is important, nonetheless. Listen for God’s word to you from Galatians 2:1-10. Paul says… Then after fourteen years, I went up again to Jerusalem, this time with Barnabas. I took Titus along also. I went in response to a revelation and, meeting privately with those esteemed as leaders, I presented to them the gospel that I preach among the Gentiles. I wanted to be sure I was not running and had not been running my race in vain. Yet not even Titus, who was with me, was compelled to be circumcised, even though he was a Greek. This matter arose because some false believers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves. We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. As for those who were held in high esteem—whatever the...