Latest / Reformed Thinking / Faith, Not Law: The Heart of Paul’s Argument (Galatians 3) | F. F. Bruce

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Faith, Not Law: The Heart of Paul’s Argument (Galatians 3) | F. F. Bruce · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome back to the Deep Dive. This is our deep dive on
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  reformed thinking, and today we are looking at what is, well,
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  maybe the logical apex of Paul's entire argument in his letter to
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  the Galatians. It really is a turning point.
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  We're focusing on just 4 verses, but they are incredibly dense.
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  We're in Galatians chapter 3, verses 26 through 29.
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  The whole argument builds to this crescendo.
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  So our mission today is pretty straightforward.
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  We want to unpack what these words meant then and what they
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  mean now, because they define the completely new spiritual
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  status of believers. Right.
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  Paul is showing what happens when you move from being under
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  the law to being in Christ. Exactly.
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  We're looking at the consequences of faith, not just
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  for your identity, but for the whole community.
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  The very structure of it. Our research really centers on
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  Paul's logic here. He's been building this case for
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  justification by faith, and now he shows how that one truth just
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  demolishes all the old human divisions.
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  It grants every single believer this the this astonishing
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  unified identity. And the central claim, the one
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  thing you can't miss, is that you get into God's family only
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  one way. Through faith.
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  Yes, only through faith, not by obeying rules, not by a
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  ceremony, and definitely not because of who your parents
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  were. The status itself is just
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  breathtaking when you think about it, to be a son of God in
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  Christ Jesus. OK, let's unpack that.
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  What does that status truly mean, especially in the Roman
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  world Paul was writing to? What?
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  It's an immediate, and I mean immediate and dramatic elevation
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  in status. More than they would have
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  expected. Far more to get the shock value
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  you have to see who Paul is talking to.
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  When he says you and verse 26, he's referring back to the we he
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  used earlier. So he's talking to everyone, Jew
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  and Gentile believers together. Yes, as one unified group.
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  He's not talking to two separate clubs trying to merge and think
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  about it just a few verses before in verse 7, he told them
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  that those who come through phase get this really respected
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  title Sons of Abraham. Which, for the gentile
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  Galatians, that would have been huge.
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  That's what the agitators were promising them if they just got
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  circumcised. Exactly.
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  That was already a high status. But Paul doesn't stop there.
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  He goes higher. He says you're not just sons of
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  Abraham. You now have the highest
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  possible status. You are sons of God.
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  And the pathway to that status is what matters most in this
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  argument. It is.
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  It's secured the test the states that's through the faith.
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  By being so specific, Paul is just systematically excluding
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  any other possibility. No works of a law, no family
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  tree, no ritual. It's all about faith
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  apprehending God's action. So this relationship is what
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  theologians call adoption. That's the term, yes.
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  Oh, they say in the Greek. Now we use the word adoption
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  today, but we have to be careful.
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  The Roman legal context for this word was so much more powerful
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  than ours. Wait.
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  Hold on a second, why was Roman adoption so much more
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  significant than our modern concept?
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  Because when a Roman head of household, the Peter Familias,
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  adopted a son, it was a total legal reset.
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  That adopted son was instantly, and I mean instantly granted all
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  the rights of a natural born son.
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  All of them, every single one. And here's the critical part.
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  His old life was legally erased. All his previous debts, any
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  legal troubles, any claims from his old family gone, wiped
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  clean. He started a completely new
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  legal life with full inheritance rights.
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  Wow, so that's the picture Paul is painting.
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  That is the power of Uthasai. Believers become God's sons and
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  daughters through this amazing legal act of adoption in Christ
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  Jesus. It's a spiritual status they get
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  right away through the Holy Spirit.
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  And Paul comes back to this later, right?
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  He does in chapter 4. He calls the spirit the spirit
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  of sonship. So while we experience the
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  freedom of that status now, the full public ceremony, the the
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  investiture into the inheritance, that's still to
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  come. That's the future glory he talks
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  about in Romans 8, precisely that focus on the present
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  reality, that status in Christ Jesus.
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  That's really what defines this whole new existence, isn't it?
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  It's the cornerstone. The phrase itself either saw or
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  in Christ Jesus. Let's get a bit technical for a
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  moment, because it really matters here.
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  This isn't just saying faith in Christ Jesus.
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  Right. If Paul wanted to say faith in
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  Christ, he had a specific way of doing that, usually with what's
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  called the objective genitive this is.
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  Instead, a Christie ESO defines the new place of existence.
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  It's it's like the new environment the believer lives
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  in now. It's their new operating system,
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  and the scholarship on this confirms that for Paul, these
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  phrases in Christ, in the Lord, they aren't just, you know,
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  abstract theological ideas. What some scholars call
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  theologue MENA. Yes.
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  They're not just jargon. They describe a real, lived,
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  verifiable Christian experience in that 1st century.
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  So the relationship is more than just being a follower.
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  Oh, much more. It's a relationship of of
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  existential union. Believers are fundamentally
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  united with Christ. They participate in him and
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  they're fully incorporated into him.
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  This wasn't some idea Paul just came up with late in the game.
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  Not at all. The very core of the early
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  Christian experience depended on the identity of Jesus as Lord.
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  He becomes the new head of a new humanity, a sort of second Adam.
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  That idea of union, It sounds a lot like what we see in the
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  Gospel of John. It resonates very closely with
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  it, especially that Johan an idea of mutual abiding.
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  The vine and the branches. Exactly, John 15.
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  The branches get their life, their very essence, from the
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  vine. They only exist because they're
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  part of that single life source. That's the kind of intimate
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  participation Paul is describing, but he's grounding
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  it in a shared corporate reality.
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  And that corporate union, that idea, leads us straight to one
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  of Paul's most famous metaphors for this whole thing.
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  The body of Christ. The body of Christ.
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  Absolutely. Paul takes this idea of
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  incorporation and just runs with it, using the analogy of a
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  physical body all over his letters.
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  First Corinthians, Romans 12. The whole believing community is
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  the body and individuals are the members.
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  Yes, and every individual, no matter who they were before, is
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  an essential, unified member of this one living thing.
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  What's interesting is that our sources say scholars have had a
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  hard time finding a perfect parallel for this inclusive
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  Christ idea. They have some have tried to
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  link it to the Hebrew concept of corporate personality, where one
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  person, like a king or a patriarch, could stand for the
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  whole nation. But that doesn't quite fit, does
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  it? It falls short because corporate
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  personality is more about representation.
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  The members of the group still keep their individual identities
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  separate. Paul's idea of being in Christ
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  is much more radical. It implies an actual
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  participation in Christ's own story, His death, his
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  resurrection, and a total rewrite of the believers
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  existence within him. So it's more than just having a
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  representative. Much more.
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  Others have tried calling appelling mysticism, but that
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  term can be really misleading. How so?
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  Because we tend to think of mysticism as this absorption of
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  the individual into the divine. You lose your own personality,
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  right? But Paul's vision is relational,
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  not absorptive. You're still you, but your
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  identity is now found within this new relationship to Christ.
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  You don't lose yourself, but you absolutely lose your old self.
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  You gain a new identity that defines everything.
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  This is why trying to draw it out in, you know, geometrical
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  diagrams, which some academics have tried, it just fails.
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  You can't put this reality in a box.
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  Just how do we grasp it? Look at Paul himself.
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  Look at how he saw his own own life in Second Corinthians he
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  calls himself a man in Christ. And even more powerfully, back
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  here in Galatians 2.20, he says I have been crucified with
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  Christ. It is no longer I who live, but
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  Christ who lives in me. Exactly.
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  For him, this faith union was as real and tangible as Christ's
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  love for him. It wasn't just a theological
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  concept for quiet moments, It was the living reality for every
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  single moment. This brings us to a really key
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  point of debate then, the relationship between
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  justification by faith and this participation in Christ, right?
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  Are they the same thing? If you're declared righteous by
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  faith, is that identical to being incorporated into the body
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  of Christ? And that's not just splitting
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  hairs, it's a serious discussion.
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  Some scholars like EP Sanders, They argue that righteousness by
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  faith and participation in Christ ultimately amount to the
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  same thing. Yes, Sanders would say that what
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  we see here in Galatians 3, this whole picture of moving from the
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  law into Christ, that this is closer to Paul's central thought
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  than say, the more legal courtroom like language of
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  acquittal in Romans 5. And his reasoning is based on.
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  What it's rooted in his view of covenantal gnomism.
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  He sees Paul's main concern as being about who belongs to the
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  people of God. So for him, justification is
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  just the event that gets you in the community, which is the body
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  of Christ. So they're functionally the
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  same. But that's not the only view.
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  The more traditional Reformed understanding, which our
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  research highlights, is that Paul actually works to
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  distinguish the two. Precisely, and this view argues
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  that keeping them distinct is crucial.
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  Why? What's at stake?
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  Clarity. Clarity about the basis of our
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  salvation and the nature of our Christian life.
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  If we blur them together, we risk confusing the unchangeable
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  basis for our acceptance. That's justification with a
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  dynamic process of living out that new life.
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  That's sanctification, which flows from participation.
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  So justification is an act. Sanctification is a work.
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  The Westminster standards are very clear on that.
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  Justification is a one time act of God's grace.
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  Sanctification is a lifelong work of God's grace, distinct
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  but inseparable. And Paul himself experienced
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  them both at the same time on the Damascus Rd.
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  Simultaneously. But he didn't confuse them.
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  One is the legal title, the other is the lived reality.
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  You see it perfectly in Philippians 3.
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  Paul says he's thrown away his own righteousness to gain the
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  righteousness that comes through faith in Christ.
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  That's justification. Yes, and because he has that
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  secure status, then he can make it his life's goal to know
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  Christ, to experience the power of His resurrection, and to
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  share in his sufferings. The objective status is the
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  foundation for the subjective experience.
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  OK, so the means by which this incorporation is publicly shown
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  is then brought up in verse 27. Right ASOI, Grayson, Ipositi,
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  all who were baptized into Christ.
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  So baptism into Christ is the public right that incorporates
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  the believer placing them in Christ.
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  Now in Romans 6 he uses this to talk about ethics.
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  Don't keep sinning. But here the focus is different.
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  Here, the whole point is about status and unity.
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  It's the public declaration that you are now a citizen of this
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  new reality. And it's interesting that this
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  is the only time Paul even mentions baptism in the whole
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  letter to the Galatians. It is so we could be pretty sure
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  the Galatians would have heard this and immediately thought of
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  their own initial water baptism into the name of the Lord Jesus.
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  Which brings us right back to the central problem of the
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  letter. The agitators are pushing
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  circumcision. So is Paul just swapping one
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  saving ritual for another? Is he giving baptism the same
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  kind of saving power they were giving to circumcision?
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  That would be a massive contradiction, wouldn't?
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  It it would undo his whole argument.
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  Exactly. Paul, after fighting tooth and
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  nail against the idea that an external right like circumcision
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  could save you, is not about to turn around and give that same
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  power to baptism. He's not someone who believed in
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  efficacy. Ex.
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  Opera Operato. By the working of the work
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  itself. Right.
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  The idea that just doing the ritual automatically confers
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  grace. That's not Paul.
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  For Paul, grace comes through faith.
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  If you asked him when he was saved, he wouldn't point to his
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  baptism by Ananias, he'd point to the Damascus Rd. when Christ
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  appeared to him. So his baptism was an outward
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  sign of an inward reality that had already happened.
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  It was a seal, a public testimony.
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  We see that sequence in Acts 9. He's filled with the Spirit and
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  he's baptized. So why use baptism as the marker
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  here if it isn't the cause? Because of what we could call
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  the initiation complex in the early church, it was all one big
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  experience. You repented, you believed you
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  were baptized with water, and you received the Spirit.
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  It was often this single holistic event.
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  Paul uses the public act baptism to stand for the whole thing.
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  But we have to be absolutely clear on one thing.
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  Utterly clear, especially from reform standpoint.
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  The creative life giving power here is the spirit, not the
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  water. We see that again and again.
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  Galatians 4. Romans 8.
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  Absolutely. Water baptism by itself is no
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  guarantee. Paul makes that point powerfully
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  in 1st Corinthians 10 when he talks about Israel in the
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  wilderness. They were all baptized into
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  Moses and the cloud and the sea, but many of them still perish
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  because of unbelief. The external right is not enough
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  without the internal reality from the Spirit.
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  Precisely the sign and the thing signified.
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  OK, so following the mention of baptism, Paul uses this
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  incredible metaphor in the second-half of verse 27.
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  Sri Sinha, Justa, you put on Christ.
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  Another powerful image for incorporation.
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  It's like you were baptized and in that moment you were clothed
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  in Christ Himself. And the grammar here is so
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  important. This is an indicative statement.
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  It's a statement of fact you have put on Christ.
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  It's something that has been done to you and for you.
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  But that fact immediately demands a response, which is why
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  in Romans 13 he uses the imperative put on the law of
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  Jesus Christ. And this reveals one of the core
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  principles of Pauline ethics, what's often called the
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  indicative imperative oscillation.
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  OK. Break that down for us.
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  Paul's ethics are not based on a just try harder model.
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  They're based on a spiritual reality that God has already
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  accomplished by grace. So he's saying, be what you are.
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  That's it in a nutshell. Since God has already made you
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  this new thing, you are righteous.
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  You have been incorporated. You have put on Christ your
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  daily life. The imperative must start to
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  line up with that new reality, the indicative.
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  Can you give us another example of that?
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  Sure. Look at Roman 6.
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  Paul declares that believers have died to sin.
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  That's the indicative, the fact. So the imperative follows.
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  Consider yourselves dead to sin and stop letting it rule you in
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  practice. Or in Colossians where he says
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  they have put off the old self and have put on the new self.
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  Right, that's the indicative. Therefore, they must live like
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  it, setting their minds on things above.
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  The commands are always grounded in the accomplished work of
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  Christ. So here in Galatians 3, the
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  focus of putting on Christ is primarily about the new status.
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  It's primarily about the new order of existence that creates
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  this incredible unity. Elsewhere, like in Colossians
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  and Ephesians, the metaphor of putting on the new person is
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  loaded with ethical commands, put on kindness, humility, and
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  so on. But here the main point is your
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  new standing before God and each other.
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  Where did Paul even get this metaphor of clothing?
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  Was this a common idea? Well, there are a few
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  possibilities. The most straightforward 1 is
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  just practical. From the act of baptism itself.
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  Right converts would take off their old clothes, go into the
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  water, and then be given new, often white clothes afterwards.
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  So putting on Christ would have been an immediate, powerful
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  image for that transformation. But some have suggested he
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  borrowed it from Pagan religions.
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  That theory has been put out there and some of the Greco
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  Roman Mystery religions putting on a new garment was part of an
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  initiation rite that was supposed to grant immortality or
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  some kind of divine status. But our research suggests Paul
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  wasn't influenced by that. That's right.
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  Those theories really don't hold up because Paul's theology is so
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  deeply rooted in the Old Testament.
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  A much better background is right there in the Hebrew
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  Scriptures. Where you see metaphors of being
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  clothed in righteousness or salvation.
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  Exactly. Psalm 132, Isaiah 61.
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  This idea of being clothed in a divine attribute given by God
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  fits perfectly with Paul's theology of an imputed
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  righteousness received by faith. Now here's a subtle point.
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  Paul might not have been thinking of Pagan rites, but his
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  Gentile converts might have been.
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  And that's a great point. They might have heard his
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  language through their own cultural filters, trying to find
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  similarities to things. They are new.
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  And that's precisely why constant, clear teaching was so
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  vital, to make sure the focus was always on Christ's work, not
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  on the power of the symbol itself.
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  So this new unified status, achieved by faith and sealed by
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  this incorporation, leads directly to probably the most
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  explosive statement in the whole passage.
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  Verse 28 The great leveling. Paul uses this phrase EQ.
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  Which is a really emphatic way of saying there is absolutely
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  not. And then he lists the three
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  great divisions of humanity that in Christ are gone.
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  It's a radical declaration. And this threefold statement,
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  Jew, Greek, slave, free, male, female.
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  It seems to directly mirror a traditional Jewish morning
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  prayer. It does.
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  There was a well known prayer where a Jewish man would thank
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  God for three things, for not being made a gentile, a slave or
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  a woman. Now we need to be careful with
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  the context of that prayer. We do.
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  It wasn't necessarily meant as a put down of those groups.
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  It was more about thanking God for the religious privileges and
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  responsibilities that were open only to free Jewish men, like
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  the duty to keep the whole law or to read the Torah in the
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  synagogue. So it was about privilege, not
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  inherent worth. Generally, yes.
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  And what's fascinating is that this kind of formula existed
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  elsewhere. The Greeks had a similar one,
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  attributed to philosophers like Thales and Socrates, being
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  thankful for being born a human, not a beast, a man not a woman,
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  and a Greek not a barbarian. So Paul takes these fundamental
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  hierarchical categories of the ancient world.
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  And he declares that inside the Christian community they have
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  been completely abolished. Let's break them down one by
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  one. First, and this is the most
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  radical for the situation in Galatia, neither Jew nor Greek.
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  This was the deepest, most fundamental division in the
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  ancient world. It was a wall built by law, by
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  culture, by centuries of history.
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  And even if a Gentile converted to Judaism, they still had to
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  crossover to the Jewish side. The distinction remained.
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  It did. The whole system was based on
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  that distinction. And that is exactly what the
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  agitators in Galatia were trying to enforce.
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  They were demanding circumcision, saying Gentiles
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  had to essentially become Jews to be fully saved.
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  But Paul's gospel completely shatters that.
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  It does. His principle is absolute
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  equality before God. Since the law couldn't give life
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  to anyone, Jew or Gentile, then everyone is in the same boat.
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  Everyone is morally bankrupt and in need of God's grace.
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  So the law free gospel puts everyone on the exact same level
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  in Christ. There's no more Jew or Greek.
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  OK then, the social dimension neither slave nor free.
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  And this is another one that is hard for us to really grasp.
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  The impact of slavery was the bedrock of the Roman economy and
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  social structure. A slave was property.
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  They had no rights, no legal standing, none.
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  But Paul's teaching just turns that whole system on its head,
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  at least within the church. His line in First Corinthians 7
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  is just a masterpiece of redefinition.
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  It is the Christian slave is the Lord's Friedman.
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  They have ultimate spiritual liberty and the free person
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  their Christ's slave. Bought with a price, their
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  worldly status, whether they are a piece of property or Roman
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  citizen, is totally irrelevant to their standing in Christ.
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  And this wasn't just a nice theory, it had real practical
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  impact inside the churches. A revolutionary impact.
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  A slave had equal rank and standing with a free person.
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  And it went further. A slave, if they were
• 19:10
  spiritually gifted, could be a leader in the church they could
• 19:12
  teach, and their owner, if they were in the same church, would
• 19:15
  have to spiritually submit to their own slave in that context.
• 19:19
  The story of Anessimus in Philemon really brings that to
• 19:22
  life. It does.
• 19:23
  Paul sends the runaway slave Anessimus back to his owner
• 19:26
  Philemon, but says receive him no longer as a slave but as a
• 19:30
  beloved brother. The spiritual relationship
• 19:32
  completely redefines the social one inside the church.
• 19:35
  We even have historical records of ex slaves like Calixtus who
• 19:38
  rose to become the Bishop of Rome.
• 19:40
  Astonishing. And finally, the third pair,
• 19:42
  neither male nor female. And here the Greek phrasing
• 19:45
  shifts a little bit to the sun Kalu.
• 19:48
  Which echoes the language of creation in Genesis 1.27.
• 19:52
  Male and female, he created them.
• 19:54
  It does, and by saying in Christ there is no male and female,
• 19:59
  Paul is directly challenging that third part of the prayer
• 20:03
  about religious privilege. But again, we have to be really
• 20:06
  precise about what he is and isn't saying.
• 20:08
  We do. He is definitely not pushing
• 20:11
  some gnostic idea about returning to a pre creation
• 20:13
  androgynous state where gender just disappears.
• 20:16
  That's not the point at all. Paul is focused on the practical
• 20:19
  reality of life in the church. So.
• 20:21
  What is being abolished? Here, the inequality of
• 20:24
  religious role and status. The old covenant marker was
• 20:27
  circumcision, which by its very nature excluded women from the
• 20:30
  primary sign of the covenant. The new covenant marker is
• 20:33
  baptism, which is for everyone, male and female alike.
• 20:37
  That distinction is gone. And this had real effects.
• 20:40
  It's why Paul could talk about women who labored side by side
• 20:42
  with him in the gospel, or why he recognized their right to
• 20:45
  pray and prophecy in the church. Exactly.
• 20:47
  The spiritual discrimination is removed.
• 20:49
  OK, but this is where people get stuck, right?
• 20:52
  Because how do we reconcile this absolute statement of equality
• 20:56
  in Galatians 3.28 with other passages like in First
• 21:00
  Corinthians 14 or First Timothy 2 that seem to well place
• 21:04
  restrictions on women's roles? That is the critical
• 21:06
  interpretive question and the position that many commentators
• 21:10
  take, which is reflected in our sources, is that Galatians 3.28
• 21:14
  is the foundational principle. It's the theological bedrock.
• 21:17
  So the other passages have to be understood in light of this one,
• 21:20
  not the other way around. Exactly.
• 21:22
  The equality is the rule. Any specific local restrictions
• 21:25
  are the exceptions, often dealing with particular problems
• 21:27
  of disorder in a specific church.
• 21:30
  Those local instructions cannot be used to overturn this radical
• 21:33
  Universal Declaration of spiritual equality in Christ.
• 21:36
  So just to be clear, Paul isn't saying all worldly distinctions
• 21:39
  vanish. No, the slave free distinctions
• 21:42
  still existed in Roman law. Male female distinction still
• 21:44
  existed in family life. But inside the new Society of
• 21:47
  the church, any sense of superiority, of higher or lower
• 21:50
  status, was completely wiped out.
• 21:53
  The standard for greatness was no longer rank, but service,
• 21:55
  just as Jesus taught. And all three of these points
• 21:58
  come together in the final verse of this section, verse 29.
• 22:01
  The grand summary Pate got Jumio's este ESO.
• 22:06
  You are all one by being in Christ Jesus.
• 22:10
  He doesn't use the body metaphor here, but it's the same idea as
• 22:14
  Romans 12. We are one body in Christ.
• 22:17
  It's the exact same idea. He's emphasizing the miraculous
• 22:20
  unity of these groups that the world thought could never be 1.
• 22:23
  And if you are in Christ, then you are also Christs.
• 22:27
  It's possessive language. You belong to Him, and that
• 22:31
  belonging is marked by the presence of the Spirit.
• 22:33
  As Romans 8 says, if you don't have the Spirit of Christ, you
• 22:36
  don't belong to Christ. And this belonging leads to the
• 22:38
  final massive payoff of the whole argument.
• 22:41
  Yes. Now do I post them as these?
• 22:44
  Then you are Abrahams offspring. Because Christ himself is the
• 22:48
  singular offspring, the sperm of Abraham.
• 22:51
  As Paul argued earlier in the chapter.
• 22:52
  Then anyone who belongs to Christ by faith is also counted
• 22:55
  as Abrahams offspring. And that just completely
• 22:58
  demolishes the Judaizers entire case.
• 23:00
  They were saying you need physical descent or a physical
• 23:03
  right to be a child of Abraham. Paul says no, the true child of
• 23:07
  Abraham is Christ, and the only way to get in on that family is
• 23:11
  through faith, union with him. So believers become the
• 23:14
  spiritual sperma, and because they are the offspring.
• 23:17
  They are heirs, climoy. That's the end goal, receiving
• 23:21
  the promised inheritance. And since there's no Jew or
• 23:24
  Greek, it means Gentile believers are full fellow heirs
• 23:28
  with the Jewish believers. Absolutely, their future is
• 23:30
  secure. But it's not just a future hope,
• 23:33
  Paul says they have a down payment on it now.
• 23:35
  He does. The Spirit acts as the aroth,
• 23:37
  the guarantee, the earnest money of that inheritance.
• 23:41
  Ephesians One makes that so clear.
• 23:43
  We have the down payment now and we're waiting for the full
• 23:45
  inheritance which comes on the day of final redemption, but our
• 23:49
  status is locked in. It's guaranteed today.
• 23:51
  These principles all packed into these 4 verses, which is so so
• 23:56
  revolutionary it's hard to imagine.
• 23:57
  Even in these small house churches, the ideology was just
• 24:00
  volatile. Can you just imagine a dinner in
• 24:03
  one of those churches? You have a Roman citizen, a
• 24:06
  Jewish man, a Gentile slave, and a woman.
• 24:09
  And they all have equal spiritual standing, equal access
• 24:12
  to God, equal access to God, equal potential for leadership.
• 24:17
  It's a complete to the rigid hierarchies of that society.
• 24:21
  It's a direct threat to the social order.
• 24:23
  It is. The Roman Empire was built on
• 24:25
  those distinctions, and our historical sources show that by
• 24:28
  the 2nd and 3rd centuries, the Roman authorities really did see
• 24:32
  Christianity as a disintegrating ferment in the body politic.
• 24:36
  They. Weren't afraid of the theology,
• 24:38
  they were afraid of the social consequences of the theology.
• 24:41
  The egalitarian consequences A community where a slave could be
• 24:44
  treated like a brother and women could participate in public
• 24:47
  worship that looked like a threat to public order and
• 24:50
  loyalty to the state. It's incredible to think that a
• 24:53
  theological argument about salvation by faith had such
• 24:56
  immediate, disruptive social effects.
• 24:58
  It really is. It shows that theology is never
• 25:00
  just abstract, it creates a new reality.
• 25:03
  But we also have to admit the influence went both ways.
• 25:07
  While the Church was influencing Pagan society with these ideas,
• 25:10
  over time the rigid hierarchical structure of Roman society began
• 25:14
  to influence the church back and perhaps led to a watering down
• 25:18
  of the radical equality that Paul lays out so clearly right
• 25:21
  here. So we have come through the
• 25:24
  logical climax of Paul's argument in Galatians 3.
• 25:27
  To sum it all up, the flow is this true faith leads to
• 25:30
  participation in Christ that's sealed by baptism, and that
• 25:33
  results in this radical new legal status, Sons of God by
• 25:37
  adoption. And that status just wipes away
• 25:39
  all the earthly divisions, racial, social, gender, and
• 25:42
  secures your place as an heir to the promise God made to Abraham.
• 25:45
  That's the. Argument in a nutshell.
• 25:47
  So what does this all mean for us today?
• 25:49
  The doctrine Paul lays out here, it didn't just change how people
• 25:52
  relate to God, it fundamentally rewired how they had to relate
• 25:55
  to each other, creating this unified body that just
• 25:58
  transcends all our human definitions of who's important
• 26:01
  and who's not. It's a powerful vision.
• 26:03
  So here's a thought to leave with you as you reflect on this.
• 26:06
  If the scholarly consensus is that any practical restrictions
• 26:10
  on roles we find elsewhere in Paul's letters have to be
• 26:12
  interpreted in light of the complete spiritual equality he
• 26:15
  states here in Galatians 3.28, this reality that all believers
• 26:19
  are one in Christ Jesus, then how must our own understanding
• 26:22
  of authority and of giftedness and freedom in the church today?
• 26:25
  How must that be continuously challenged to live up to this
• 26:28
  revolutionary community?