Sunday, the Lord’s Day, calls us to remember the resurrection of Jesus Christ and to rest in the gospel He finished for us. The empty tomb announces that salvation is God’s work from first to last, yet in every age believers face the nagging question of grace versus works. Can our deeds help secure peace with God, or does grace stand alone as the ground of our standing and the source of our life (Ephesians 2:8–9; Romans 3:24)?
The Apostle Paul writes to the Galatians with urgency because teachers had begun to mix law-keeping with faith, turning good news into a burden and shifting eyes from Christ to human effort (Galatians 1:6–9). In Galatians 3 he shows why the mixture will not hold. From experience, from Scripture, from the law’s curse and Christ’s cross, from the priority of promise, and from the law’s temporary role, he proves that sinners are made right with God by grace through faith in Christ alone (Galatians 3:1–14; Galatians 3:15–25).
Words: 2438 / Time to read: 13 minutes
Historical and Cultural Background
To hear Paul’s letter as the first readers did, we need the setting. God gave Israel His law at Sinai to reveal His holy character and to teach a redeemed people how to live as His own, but the law was never a ladder by which sinners could climb into His favor (Exodus 20:1–17; Leviticus 18:5; Romans 3:20). Sacrifices pointed beyond themselves to a fuller atonement still to come, a once-for-all offering that would actually remove guilt rather than cover it for a time (Leviticus 16:15–16; Hebrews 10:1–4).
Long before Sinai, God declared Abram righteous when he believed the promise, showing that faith, not performance, is the way sinners receive God’s favor (Genesis 15:6; Romans 4:3). That promise included blessing for all nations through Abraham’s offspring, a word that set the hope of rescue on a coming Son rather than on law-keeping, and it is a word God swore to keep (Genesis 12:3; Genesis 22:16–18). The Greco-Roman world knew patronage and favors, but biblical grace is deeper and cleaner: the Holy God grants undeserved favor to the guilty and makes enemies into children by faith in His Son (Ephesians 2:1–5; Romans 5:8–10).
The early church wrestled with how Gentiles join God’s people. The Jerusalem Council confirmed that salvation is through the grace of the Lord Jesus and not through the yoke of the law, freeing the nations to come in by faith while honoring God’s moral will for His people (Acts 15:7–11; Acts 15:19–21). Paul writes into that world and warns the Galatians that to add works to grace is to trade liberty for slavery, because it moves trust from Christ’s finished work to our unfinished record (Galatians 5:1–4; Galatians 2:21).
Biblical Narrative
Paul begins with the Galatians’ own story. They had received the Holy Spirit, witnessed miracles, and tasted new life, not because they performed the law but because they believed what they heard about Christ crucified and risen (Galatians 3:1–5). Their experience was not an accident; it was the pattern of the new covenant in which God pours out His Spirit on those who hear with faith, sealing them as His own in the Son (Ephesians 1:13–14; Acts 10:44–48). If life began by the Spirit through faith, why would they attempt to finish by the flesh through rule-keeping (Galatians 3:3)?
To steady them, Paul reaches back to Abraham. Scripture says, “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness,” and Paul draws the conclusion that those who have faith are the true children of Abraham (Genesis 15:6; Galatians 3:6–7). The Scripture had announced in advance that God would justify the nations by faith when it said, “All nations will be blessed through you,” so those who rely on faith share Abraham’s blessing (Genesis 12:3; Galatians 3:8–9). Justification—God declares sinners righteous by faith—did not begin with Paul’s preaching; it is the old path revealed anew in Christ (Romans 5:1; Romans 3:26).
Then Paul speaks of the law’s curse. The law demands perfect and unbroken obedience, and all who rely on it for standing with God fall under its curse because none have kept it entirely (Deuteronomy 27:26; Galatians 3:10). The prophet had said, “the righteous will live by his faith,” and Paul insists that life comes that way still; law and faith are different roads, and only one leads to life (Habakkuk 2:4; Galatians 3:11–12). The curse is not a problem we can outwork; it is a sentence lifted only by Another.
Christ steps into that sentence. “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us,” Paul writes, pointing to the cross where the sinless One bore the penalty the law required so that the blessing promised to Abraham might come to the nations and we might receive the Spirit by faith (Deuteronomy 21:23; Galatians 3:13–14). The gospel is not advice about self-improvement; it is news about a substitute who saves, the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world and who rose on the third day as the Scriptures promised (John 1:29; 1 Corinthians 15:3–4). By His cross He disarmed the powers and removed the record of debt that stood against us, nailing it there (Colossians 2:13–15).
Paul then argues that the promise stands apart from the law. Human covenants, once ratified, are not set aside, and the promise God made to Abraham and to his Seed was not canceled by the law which came centuries later (Galatians 3:15–17). If inheritance depends on the law, it no longer depends on the promise, but God gave it to Abraham by grace through promise, so faith, not performance, is the way in (Galatians 3:18). The law had a purpose, but it was never meant to take the place of the promise.
Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, to expose sin and to guard Israel until the Seed came, serving as a custodian that led us to Christ so that we might be justified by faith (Galatians 3:19–24). Now that faith has come, believers are no longer under the custodian; they are sons and daughters of God through faith in Christ Jesus, baptized into Him, clothed with Him, and heirs according to promise (Galatians 3:25–29). The movement is not from grace to law but from promise to fulfillment in Christ, where the blessing to the nations is poured out and the Spirit is given without price (Isaiah 55:1; Acts 2:38–39).
Theological Significance
Grace and works cannot share the same foundation for our standing with God. “If by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace,” Paul writes, drawing a clear line that protects the gospel from drift (Romans 11:6). The cross does not make salvation easier for us to earn; it proves that we cannot earn it at all, because the price required the blood of the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us (Galatians 2:20; 1 Peter 1:18–19). God justifies the ungodly, crediting righteousness apart from works to the one who believes, so that boasting is silenced and mercy is praised (Romans 4:5–8; Romans 3:27).
Justification—God declares sinners righteous by faith—is the courtroom verdict that stands over every believer because Christ’s obedience and blood are counted to them (Romans 5:1; Romans 3:24–26). This verdict is not a feeling we maintain; it is a gift God grants, and He seals it by the Spirit who bears witness that we are His children and heirs (Romans 8:15–17; Ephesians 1:13–14). Because the verdict rests on Christ, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Him, and nothing in all creation can separate them from His love (Romans 8:1; Romans 8:38–39).
How then do works fit? They are fruit, not root. We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared in advance for us to walk in, but those works are the result of grace, not the reason for it (Ephesians 2:10). The grace that saves also trains, teaching us to say no to ungodliness and yes to a self-controlled and godly life while we wait for our blessed hope, the appearing of our great God and Savior (Titus 2:11–13). James teaches that living faith acts, not to add to Christ’s merit but to reveal its reality, because faith without deeds is dead (James 2:17; James 2:26). Paul and James do not argue; they address different errors. Paul denies that works can justify; James denies that a lifeless claim can save (Romans 3:28; James 2:18).
Set within God’s unfolding plan, these truths keep their shape. God keeps distinct the calling of Israel and the calling of the Church even as He saves Jew and Gentile by the same grace through the same faith in the same Savior (Romans 11:25–29; Ephesians 3:6). The promises tied to land and throne remain secure and will be fulfilled as written when the Son of David reigns openly, while the Church in this age enjoys every spiritual blessing in Christ and bears witness to the nations (Luke 1:32–33; Ephesians 1:3; Acts 1:8). Progressive revelation shows the pattern: God speaks, confirms, and fulfills without undoing His earlier word, so that faith rests on His integrity, not on shifting human efforts (Hebrews 1:1–2; Matthew 5:17–18).
Spiritual Lessons and Application
Galatians calls us to guard the gospel. We resist any teaching or habit that moves our confidence from Christ to ourselves, whether it takes the form of rule-keeping to earn favor or spiritual performance to secure assurance (Galatians 1:6–9; Galatians 5:1). We confess freely that apart from Christ we can do nothing, and we rejoice that in Him we are accepted, adopted, and sealed, so we live out of gratitude rather than fear (John 15:5; Ephesians 1:5; 2 Timothy 1:7). When accusations rise, we look to the cross where God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).
The Spirit who came by faith leads us now. We walk by the Spirit and do not gratify the flesh, bearing the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control as evidence of a new life given by grace (Galatians 5:16; Galatians 5:22–23). We practice the means of grace—Scripture, prayer, fellowship, the Lord’s Supper—not to earn standing but to enjoy communion with the One who saved us (Acts 2:42; John 6:35). We aim to keep in step with the Spirit, crucifying the flesh with its passions and desires because we belong to Christ and His life is at work within us (Galatians 5:24–25; Romans 8:13–14).
This message steadies our view of good works. We do not do them to move God toward us; we do them because God has moved toward us in Christ. We forgive because we have been forgiven, we give because He gave Himself for us, and we serve because the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many (Ephesians 4:32; 2 Corinthians 8:9; Mark 10:45). We do not measure ourselves against others; we boast only in the cross and learn to say with Paul, “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me,” living by faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us (Galatians 6:14; Galatians 2:20).
Grace also gives rest to troubled consciences. When we fall, we run to the throne of grace for mercy and help, remembering that our Advocate pleads His blood, not our record, and that He is able to save completely those who come to God through Him (Hebrews 4:16; 1 John 2:1–2; Hebrews 7:25). Assurance grows as we keep looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who endured the cross and sat down at the right hand of God, where our life is hidden with Him (Hebrews 12:2; Colossians 3:3–4). The more we see His sufficiency, the less tempted we are to rebuild what He has torn down, and the more eager we are to walk in the good works He prepared (Galatians 2:18; Titus 3:8).
Conclusion
Grace and works cannot occupy the same ground in our justification. Grace saves the undeserving through the finished work of Christ, received by faith, and then produces the works that display new life. The law exposes sin and points to the Savior; the promise brings us into blessing; the cross removes the curse and opens the floodgates of the Spirit; and faith rests not in what we offer to God but in what God has given in His Son (Romans 3:25–26; Galatians 3:13–14). To mix grace with works is to empty grace of its meaning. To receive grace by faith is to find freedom, sonship, and a life eager to do what is good (Romans 11:6; Galatians 4:6–7; Titus 2:14).
Hold the line Paul drew. Stand firm in the liberty for which Christ has set you free, and refuse any yoke that would turn His gift into a wage. The Spirit you received by faith will carry you, strengthen you, and conform you to the image of the Son until the day He appears and faith becomes sight (Galatians 5:1; Romans 8:29–30; 1 John 3:2). Until then, boast only in the cross, walk by the Spirit, and let your works be the music of grace.
“But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.” (Titus 3:4–7)
All Scripture quoted from:
New International Version (NIV)
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.