Galatians – Life in the Spirit / Saved by Faith
Reading: Galatians 3:1-9; 23-29 Preacher: Rev. Phil Swain
As we journey toward Pentecost, we’re beginning a new series exploring what it means to live a life in the Spirit through key passages from Paul’s letter to the Galatians. This week, Paul opens with a bold challenge—calling the Galatians “foolish” and asking what has led them astray. Was Paul against the law? Not at all. We’ll see how he confronts a legalistic mindset, not the law itself. God has always been focused on offering us a relationship – through faith. The law was never the way in, but a way of living in response to love already given. Come and discover how you are invited into God’s family—and how we can live by the Spirit in response.
Sermon Text
Today we’re beginning a new sermon series in the lead-up to Pentecost—but in many ways, it’s really a continuation, or perhaps a shift in focus, from our previous series on the early church. We’re still looking at the early church and the ministry of Paul, but instead of the book of Acts, we’re turning to Paul’s letter to the Galatians.
So, how much do you know about Galatians?
It was written by the Apostle Paul around 49 CE to the churches in Galatia (modern-day Turkey)—churches he helped establish just a couple of years earlier during his first missionary journey.
But why did Paul write this letter? What was the crisis?
This is key to understanding Galatians. Here’s a helpful summary:
Paul writes the letter to the Galatians to confront a crisis: some members of these early Christian communities were being influenced by Jewish-Christian teachers who insisted that Gentile believers must follow the Jewish law—especially circumcision—to be fully accepted by God.
This idea is central to the letter, and while we’ll explore it more in a moment, our sermon series is actually focused on something slightly different. In the lead-up to Pentecost, we’re asking: what does it mean to live a “life in the Spirit”?
If Pentecost is the celebration of God giving the Holy Spirit to the church, then how are we called to live in response?
Paul addresses this throughout Galatians—but to really understand his teaching on the Spirit, we need to understand the bigger issue behind it: What must we do to be accepted by God? What makes us right with God?
Today’s reading comes from Galatians chapter 3, and the next two sermons—next week and on Pentecost—will come from chapter 5, both deeply focused on what life in the Spirit looks like.
But before we get there, I want to give you a 90-second summary of chapters 1 and 2, because they lay the foundation.
In Galatians 1, Paul opens with a passionate defence of the true gospel he received directly from Jesus, expressing shock that the Galatians are turning to a distorted version that adds conditions to grace.
In Galatians 2, Paul recounts a key moment when he confronted Peter, who had stopped eating with Gentile believers under pressure from certain Jewish Christians. Paul calls it out—this isn’t the gospel. We are justified by faith in Christ, not by law. And then Paul ends the chapter with that beautiful line of transformation: “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”
And that brings us to chapter 3, which Eunice is going to read for us now.
Sermon continued
In preparing for this sermon, I had what I’d call an “aha” moment—or maybe more accurately, an “oh…” moment. As in, “Oh… I think I’ve been slightly misrepresenting something in my preaching for the past 25 years.”
Let me explain, and you can decide for yourself.
I’ve often summed up Paul’s argument in Galatians (and Romans, and Ephesians, and nearly every other letter) like this:
- Judaism says: If you want to be right with God, you have to follow the law.
- But Paul says: That’s impossible—no one can perfectly follow the law. Therefore, we’re saved not by works, but by grace—as Paul so beautifully writes in Ephesians:
“It is by grace you have been saved, through faith—not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8–9)
You’ve probably heard me say this many times—and at face value, it sounds like Paul is offering grace in contrast to Judaism’s legalism. But here’s where my “oh” moment came in.
One of my favourite go-to podcasts is the Narrative Lectionary conversation between Bobby, a Protestant Bible lecturer, and Amy, a Jewish Hebrew scholar. This week, Amy offered a powerful insight: Judaism does not teach that we are made right with God by following the law. Rather, it teaches that the covenant itself is an act of grace—a relationship that God initiates with love and faithfulness.
She pointed to Abraham—just like Paul does in Galatians. God chose Abraham before the law existed, not because he was perfect or law-abiding, but simply out of grace. God says: “I will be your God, and you will be my people.” The covenant begins not with Abraham’s achievement, but with God’s choice.
Or take the Exodus: Why did God rescue the Hebrew people from Egypt? Because they obeyed the law? No—the law hadn’t been given yet. Because they were spiritually faithful? The text doesn’t say that. It says God heard their cry and responded with compassion.
Amy’s point was clear: Judaism has always understood the covenant as grounded in grace. Even salvation is not a transaction of works for reward, but a divine gift, a blessing offered to those who trust in God.
And Paul, as a deeply trained Jewish rabbi, would have known this. So that raises the question: If Paul isn’t arguing against Judaism or the law, then what is he arguing?
I think today’s reading helps us find the answer. Let’s walk through it together and see what Paul is really saying. Let’s return to Paul’s words in Galatians 3 with that fresh lens.
Paul is not railing against Judaism. He’s not dismissing the law.
He’s confronting something deeper—something that people struggled with in the churches in Galatia (and maybe we still struggle with):
- The idea that we’re not enough for God.
- That we have to earn our place in God’s family.
- That righteousness, acceptance, salvation—has to be worked for.
Paul calls this thinking not just wrong, but foolish.
“You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?” (v1)
So, some context here about what the Galatians did that prompted such a strong reaction from Paul?
Paul had come through on his first missionary journey and preached the Good News of Jesus … and some had believed and received the Holy Spirit, and the joy and freedom that comes with knowing they were fully accepted by God.
But then, after Paul left, some Jewish-Christian teachers arrived and began convincing them that faith in Jesus wasn’t enough—that to truly belong to God’s people, they needed to also adopt the practices of the Jewish law, especially circumcision. In other words, they were being told, “Yes, Jesus… but also the law.”
Paul is heartbroken—not just because they changed their minds, but because they were beginning to believe that God’s love and acceptance had to be earned rather than simply received. Paul reminds the Galatians that they started their journey of faith by simply trusting God’s grace. They experienced the Spirit — not because they obeyed all the rules, but because they believed the good news. So why, Paul says, are you now turning to a system where your worth is measured by how well you perform?
God doesn’t work that way! Neither in Judaism nor in Christianity. God is a God of grace. God does not require perfection, but God says, “You already belong. You are already loved. You are my child. Live in my grace.”
So then, what is the point of the law?
Well, Amy (the Hebrew scholar) explains it like this…
Abraham and Sarah were made right with God simply because they trusted God, not by following the law. God offered them a covenant out of love and grace. Abraham and Sarah, then chose to live in that blessing and try to reflect that blessing in all that they did. They lived grace-filled lives in response to God’s grace.
Or the Hebrew people that God brought out of slavery in the Exodus, were not saved because of their adherence to the law, but out of God’s love and compassion for them. In response to this act of love and grace; God gave them the law… not as a means to earn salvation or to prove themselves worthy of the covenant —it was meant to be a guide, a way of living in response to God’s grace.
Similarly, in the last part of our reading, Paul uses the idea of the law being like a guardian – something to guide and shape God’s people until the fullness of God’s promise came in Jesus. The law was never meant to save us, but it was given to help us live in alignment with God’s heart.
So what do we do with that? How do we respond to God’s grace shown to us in Jesus? By committing to follow the law? Maybe, following God’s law is a good things to do … but as Paul wants to argue in Galatians, as Christians we don’t have to follow the Hebrew law. Even in response to God’s grace, we don’t have to follow the law. Instead, Paul encourages us in Galatians 3 to … “live in the Spirit”. Live a life in the Spirit!
But what does that mean? Well, this is what we are going to explore over the next two week … but Paul does give some hints in our reading today. In verse 26, Paul says that in Jesus, we are all children of God through faith. God sees us a part of the family. God adopts and embraces you as one of God’s own. How do you reflect that identity?
If God has arms wide open to embrace and include all those who respond, how do we reflect that inclusion? How do we put aside our labels, or prejudices, or preconceptions and live out that in Jesus there is no Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus?
If God has welcomed us with radical grace and declared, ‘you belong with me’ … how do we in response, live lives of radical grace and generosity to others?
As I said, we will explore this more in the weeks to come, but to put it simply … how do we respond to God’s graciousness? We live in the Spirit. We seek to love others. We strive for goodness. We walk in step with God’s ways—not to earn a relationship with God, but because we already have one.
That’s the shift Paul is calling for in Galatians:
- From striving to responding.
- From fear to freedom.
- From law-keeping to Spirit-living.
So the invitation today isn’t to work harder at being good enough for God… It’s to remember that by grace, you already are enough for God. You are enough for God. In response, may we live out that grace with joy and love in the Spirit. Amen.