Galatians 3: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Paul asks the Galatians whether they received the Spirit by doing what the law says or by hearing and believing, and he argues from Abraham that those who have faith are Abraham's children. He says everyone who relies on the law is under its curse, and that Christ took that curse by being hung on a tree. He then argues that the law, added because of wrongdoing 430 years after God's promise, cannot cancel that promise. The chapter closes by saying that all who belong to Christ are God's children, are one in him, and are heirs according to the promise.

Claim by Claim

1. 3:1
   • The speaker calls the Galatians foolish.
   • The speaker asks who has bewitched them.
   • The bewitching had the effect that they did not obey the truth.
   • Jesus Christ had been publicly displayed before their eyes as crucified.
   • The crucified Christ was set forth among them.
2. 3:2
   • The speaker wants to learn only one thing from them.
   • He asks whether they received the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith.
3. 3:3
   • He asks whether they are so foolish.
   • He says they began in the Spirit.
   • He asks whether they are now being brought to completion by the flesh.
4. 3:4
   • He asks whether they underwent so many things in vain.
   • He adds the qualification: if indeed it was in vain.
   • What they underwent is stated ambiguously: either sufferings endured or experiences received.
5. 3:5
   • Someone supplies the Spirit to them.
   • That same one works miracles among them.
   • He asks whether this is done by works of the law or by hearing with faith.
6. 3:6
   • Abraham believed God.
   • It was reckoned to Abraham as righteousness.
   • The Galatians' case is presented as corresponding to Abraham's.
7. 3:7
   • He tells them to recognize that those who are of faith are the sons of Abraham.
8. 3:8
   • The scripture foresaw that God justifies the Gentiles by faith.
   • The scripture announced the gospel beforehand to Abraham.
   • The scripture said to Abraham that all the nations would be blessed in him.
9. 3:9
   • Those who are of faith are blessed together with Abraham.
   • Abraham is described as the believing one.
10. 3:10
    • As many as are of works of the law are under a curse.
    • It is written that cursed is everyone who does not continue in all the things written in the book of the law to do them.
11. 3:11
    • No one is justified by the law in God's sight.
    • That no one is justified by the law is evident.
    • It is written that the righteous shall live by faith.
12. 3:12
    • The law is not of faith.
    • It is written that the man who does these things shall live by them.
13. 3:13
    • Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law.
    • Christ became a curse for us.
    • It is written that cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.
14. 3:14
    • The purpose was that the blessing of Abraham come to the Gentiles in Christ Jesus.
    • The purpose was that we receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
15. 3:15
    • He addresses them as brothers.
    • He says he is speaking in human terms.
    • Once a human covenant has been ratified, no one annuls it.
    • Once a human covenant has been ratified, no one adds to it.
16. 3:16
    • The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed.
    • Scripture does not say 'and to seeds,' as referring to many.
    • Scripture says 'and to your seed,' as referring to one.
    • That one seed is Christ.
17. 3:17
    • He states what he means.
    • God confirmed the covenant beforehand.
    • The covenant was confirmed in Christ.
    • The law came four hundred and thirty years afterward.
    • The law cannot annul that covenant.
    • Annulling the covenant would make the promise of no effect.
18. 3:18
    • If the inheritance is from the law, it is no longer from promise.
    • God gave the inheritance to Abraham by promise.
19. 3:19
    • He asks what purpose the law then serves.
    • The law was added because of transgressions.
    • The law was added until the seed should come.
    • The promise had been made to that seed.
    • The law was ordained through angels.
    • The law was ordained in the hand of a mediator.
20. 3:20
    • A mediator is not a mediator of one party.
    • God is one.
21. 3:21
    • He asks whether the law is against the promises of God.
    • He denies it emphatically.
    • If a law had been given that could give life, righteousness would indeed have been by the law.
22. 3:22
    • The scripture shut up all things under sin.
    • The purpose was that the promise, by faith of Jesus Christ, be given to those who believe.
23. 3:23
    • Before faith came, we were kept guarded under the law.
    • We were shut up until the faith that was going to be revealed.
24. 3:24
    • The law became our guardian and instructor unto Christ.
    • The purpose was that we be justified by faith.
25. 3:25
    • Faith has come.
    • We are no longer under a guardian and instructor.
26. 3:26
    • They are all sons of God.
    • They are sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.
27. 3:27
    • As many of them as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
28. 3:28
    • There is neither Jew nor Greek.
    • There is neither slave nor free.
    • There is neither male nor female.
    • They are all one in Christ Jesus.
29. 3:29
    • If they belong to Christ, then they are Abraham's seed.
    • If they belong to Christ, then they are heirs according to the promise.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

3:1

The Galatians were mostly non-Jewish converts living in Galatia, a Roman province in what is now central Turkey. "Bewitched" translates a word associated with the evil eye, a spell cast by a hostile look; Paul is using it as a sharp figure of speech for how a sensible group could suddenly stop thinking straight. "Evidently set forth" does not mean "obviously" in the modern sense: the Greek word is used of a public notice posted up in the open where everyone could read it, so the sense is that the crucified Christ had been placarded in front of them.

3:2

"The law" throughout this chapter means the law of Moses, the body of commands Israel received at Mount Sinai and preserved in the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures. "Works of the law" means keeping those commands, and in this letter the argument centers on the practices that visibly marked out Jews from everyone else: circumcision, food rules, and the sacred calendar.

3:3

"Flesh" in the King James does not mean the body as opposed to the soul. It stands for human capacity and effort, life lived out of one's own resources. There is probably also a pointed edge here, since the specific thing being urged on the Galatians, circumcision, is a cutting of literal flesh.

3:4

The Greek verb behind "suffered" means simply to experience or undergo something, and only takes on the sense of suffering from context. It can be read either as "went through so much hardship" or, more neutrally, "had so much happen to you," and both readings have long been defended.

3:6

The quotation is Genesis 15:6. "Accounted" is a bookkeeping word: an amount entered in someone's ledger, credited to their account. "Righteousness" is not primarily an inward quality here but a standing, being in the right in a relationship or before a court.

3:7

Being a child of Abraham was not a sentimental phrase. Physical descent from Abraham defined who belonged to the covenant people and who inherited the promises made to him, so the claim that faith rather than birth makes someone Abraham's child was a claim about who counts as family.

3:8

"The heathen" in the King James simply translates the ordinary Greek word for the nations, that is, everyone who is not Jewish. It carries none of the modern overtones of savagery or irreligion. The quotation is from Genesis 12:3 and 18:18. The Greek verb is ambiguous in the same way the Hebrew is: it can mean "all nations will be blessed through you" or "all nations will pronounce blessings on themselves by naming you."

3:10

The quotation is Deuteronomy 27:26, the closing line of a ceremony in which the tribes of Israel stood on two mountains and called out curses on anyone who broke the covenant terms. "The book of the law" is the written law of Moses itself. The Greek version Paul quotes includes the words "all" and "everything," which the Hebrew text leaves implicit.

3:11

The quotation is Habakkuk 2:4. "The just" is an older English way of saying "the righteous," the person who is in the right. The Greek phrasing is genuinely ambiguous about which words go together: it can mean "the righteous person will live by faith" or "the one who is righteous by faith will live." The word translated "faith" can also mean faithfulness or steady loyalty, which is closer to the sense in the Hebrew original.

3:12

The quotation is Leviticus 18:5, where the commands are given with the promise that the person who keeps them will live by them.

3:13

"Redeemed" is a commercial word: to buy something back, or to pay the price that frees a slave or a prisoner of war. The quotation is Deuteronomy 21:23, a law about the corpse of an executed criminal hung up on a wooden post as a public display; the body had to be taken down before nightfall because it was under God's curse. The Greek word translated "tree" also means wood or a wooden stake, which is how early Christians could apply this line to a Roman cross.

3:14

"Gentiles" means everyone who is not Jewish. It is the same group the King James called "the heathen" in verse 8.

3:15

The Greek word here covers both a covenant, a binding agreement, and a will or testament, the legal document disposing of a dead person's estate. Paul is trading on both senses. "Confirmed" means formally ratified, made legally binding; "disannulleth" is simply the older English for cancels or sets aside.

3:16

The promises are quoted from Genesis, where God repeatedly tells Abraham that the land will go "to your seed" (Genesis 12:7, 13:15, 17:8, 24:7). In Hebrew and in Greek, as in the older English word "seed," the noun is a collective singular meaning offspring or descendants, and normally refers to a whole line of descent rather than one individual. Paul is pressing the fact that the word is grammatically singular, a style of close argument from the exact wording of scripture that was familiar in the Jewish interpretation of his day.

3:17

The 430 years comes from Exodus 12:40, which gives that figure for how long Israel lived in Egypt before the exodus and the giving of the law. Other ancient texts and traditions count the span differently, but Paul's point does not depend on the exact number, only on the law coming long after the promise.

3:18

"Inheritance" continues the legal picture from verse 15. What was promised to Abraham was an estate in the ordinary sense: land, descendants, and blessing reaching the nations. An inheritance comes to an heir because of who the giver is and what the giver decided, not as payment for work done.

3:19

Jewish tradition in this period held that angels were present and active when the law was given at Sinai, a detail drawn from texts such as Deuteronomy 33:2 in its Greek version. The "mediator" or go-between is Moses, who stood between God and the people and carried the law from one to the other. The phrase "because of transgressions" is open at both ends in the Greek: it can mean the law was added to hold wrongdoing in check, or added to expose wrongdoing for what it is.

3:20

This is one of the most disputed sentences in the letter, and interpreters have proposed hundreds of readings of it. The bare argument seems to be that a go-between by definition stands between two parties, whereas the promise to Abraham was made by God alone, with no second party and no intermediary.

3:21

The King James "God forbid" translates a stock Greek expression of strong denial that contains no word for God at all. It is closer to "absolutely not" or "out of the question."

3:22

"Concluded" here does not mean reached a conclusion. In 1611 English it could mean to shut in or confine, and that is the sense of the Greek: everything is locked up, penned in, with sin as the jailer. The word translated "all" is grammatically neuter and means "all things," a wider sweep than "all people."

3:23

The verbs are from guarding and imprisonment: the first is used of a garrison holding a city under watch, the second of locking someone up. The picture is protective custody as much as punishment, a holding pattern until the appointed time.

3:24

"Schoolmaster" is misleading. The Greek word is paidagogos, and he was not a teacher. He was a household slave assigned to a boy of a well off family, responsible for walking him to and from school, minding his manners and keeping him out of trouble until he came of age. The role was temporary by design and often resented, which is exactly the point of the comparison.

3:26

The Greek says "sons." The word is not merely a synonym for children here: sonship carried the legal right to inherit, which is where the argument goes in verse 29. Since verse 28 says the distinction between male and female no longer applies, the term covers everyone in the community.

3:27

"Put on" is the ordinary word for putting on clothes, and it was also used of taking on a role or a character, the way an actor puts on a costume. Early Christian baptism involved going down into water, and in some places new believers were dressed in fresh clothing afterward, which may lie behind the image.

3:28

These are the three fundamental divisions of the ancient social world: ethnic and religious (Jew and Greek, Greek here standing for everyone who is not Jewish), legal (slave and free, in a society where a large share of the population was owned property), and sexual. The last pair does not use the word "nor" like the others but says "male and female," the exact wording of Genesis 1:27 in its Greek version.

3:29

An heir is the person legally in line to receive a family's estate. Paul is putting the Galatians, who are not descended from Abraham at all, in the position of the recognized heir.