Galatians 3:7-14
Chapter 3
The Scriptures predicted that through faith, God would grant true righteousness to the Gentiles. For God’s promise to Abraham was this:
In you, all the nations
shall be blessed.
So now those who walk by faith receive the same blessing as Abraham, who believed;
but those who depend on following the law are under a curse, for it is written:
Cursed is everyone who does not always
fulfill everything written in the law.
It is clearly written that no one becomes righteous in God’s way through the law: by faith, the righteous shall live.
Yet the law does not depend on faith, because according to it: whoever does the works of the law will live by them.
Christ rescued us from the curse of the law by becoming cursed himself, for our sake, as it is written:
Cursed be everyone
who hangs on a tree.
The blessing given to Abraham reached the Gentiles through Christ Jesus so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.
Commentaries
The Law and Faith.
In contrast to the experience of living in Christ, Paul finds the Galatians’ attitude confusing. Guided by his rabbinic logic, he seeks to show them how far they can fall if they now accept the Law as a condition for salvation (3). For Paul, the mystery of the Scriptures has been revealed through Jesus’ death and resurrection. From this perspective, he sees Abraham becoming a friend and servant of God because of his act of faith, trusting and placing his destiny in his Creator’s hands (6). Whoever adopts this same attitude of the Patriarch is connected to him, is his descendant, even if from another race or people, because through him “all nations will be blessed” (8). Circumcision and the Law appeared later as a seal and confirmation of the faith response of Abraham and his descendants. But instead of leading them to depend on God for salvation, it made them believe they were self-sufficient. As a result, they fell into the “curse,” instead of the “blessing” promised to Abraham. Yet, Christ, who bears this curse, frees us from it and grants and extends to all the “blessing” promised to Abraham, which is now fulfilled in the gift of the Spirit.