Wednesday in the Word

Paul’s words in Galatians 5:13–24 show that Christian freedom is not permission to do whatever we want, but a call to love others and to walk by the Spirit instead of following our old, “broken chooser” selves. In this episode, we trace Paul’s argument that the Spirit, not the Law, is what truly changes us—moving us away from the destructive “works of the flesh” and toward the beautiful “fruit of the Spirit.” 

In this week’s episode, we explore:

• How Paul answers the charge that his gospel encourages sin by showing that true faith leads to a pursuit of goodness, not indulgence
• What it means to be “called to freedom” and why using that freedom to serve our own desires contradicts the gospel
• Paul’s summary of the Law in the command, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” and how that shapes everyday choices
• The image of believers “biting and devouring” one another, and how legalism can fuel rivalry, judgment, and division in a church
• Paul’s definition of “the flesh” as our entire fallen selves—our natural, self-centered way of life apart from God
• What it means to “walk by the Spirit”: not mastering a technique, but trusting God’s invisible, sovereign work like the unseen wind
• The contrast between the evident “works of the flesh” and the “fruit of the Spirit,” and why these two patterns of life cannot coexist
• Paul’s warning that a life characterized by the works of the flesh will not inherit the kingdom of God, and how that calls us to honest self-examination and repentance
• Why the Law can diagnose our problem but cannot heal it, and how the Spirit alone produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control
• What it means that those who belong to Christ have “crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” and now live in hope of being made truly and fully holy

After listening, you’ll come away with a richer understanding of how Galatians 5:13–24 reframes both legalism and license, showing that neither rule-keeping nor “being true to yourself” can lead to life. 

Series: Galatians: Living by Faith

In this episode, we look at Paul’s urgent call in Galatians 5:1–12 to “stand firm” in the freedom Christ has given and refuse any return to law-keeping as a way to be right with God. Paul exposes how adding even a little requirement to the gospel turns grace into slavery and severs us from the only true source of righteousness. 

In this week’s episode, we explore:

• How Galatians fits together so far, and why chapters 5–6 focus on the freedom the gospel brings
• What Paul means by “For freedom Christ has set us free” and why returning to the Law is a “yoke of slavery”
• Why circumcision in this context represents a whole system of law-keeping as the basis for justification
• How seeking to be “justified by the law” actually cuts us off from Christ and from grace
• The contrast between life under the Law and “through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness”
• What Paul means by “faith working through love” and how genuine saving faith inevitably changes our values, choices, and relationships
• Paul’s concern about false teachers, the image of “a little leaven leavens the whole lump,” and the danger of subtle additions to the gospel
• Modern forms of “returning to the Law,” including spiritual disciplines or experiences treated as steps to a higher spiritual status
• The seriousness of our response to Jesus Christ, and the invitation to receive forgiveness and new life as a gift of grace

After listening, you’ll come away with a clearer grasp of why the gospel can’t be mixed with performance, how Galatians 5:1–12 guards your heart from legalism, and what it looks like to let faith express itself through love in ordinary life. 

Series: Galatians: Living by Faith

Galatians 4:21–31 gives us a vivid story of two mothers, two sons, and two very different ways of relating to God. In this episode, we unpack Paul’s difficult but powerful allegory of Hagar and Sarah to show that not all of Abraham’s physical descendants inherit the promise and that those who look to law-keeping for security are choosing slavery over the freedom Christ has already won. 

In this week’s episode, we explore:

• Why many consider this one of the hardest passages in Galatians, and how a basic grasp of Abraham’s family story (Hagar, Sarah, Ishmael, and Isaac) clears the fog
• What an allegory is and how Paul can use a real, historical story to illustrate a spiritual truth without turning the Old Testament into a book of hidden riddles
• How Abraham’s two sons, both physically related to him, end up with very different futures: Ishmael “according to the flesh,” and Isaac “through promise”
• The difference between the Old Covenant at Sinai (a conditional “deal” that exposes our sin) and the New Covenant in Christ (a promise based on God’s faithfulness, not our performance)
• Why Paul links Hagar with Mount Sinai and “the present Jerusalem,” and Sarah with “the Jerusalem above,” showing two spiritual lineages: slavery under law and freedom through faith
• How Isaiah 54’s “barren woman” becomes a picture of God creating a new, supernatural family by his Spirit—one that far outnumbers Israel’s physical descendants
• Paul’s startling claim that the real question is not just, “Is Abraham your father?” but “Who is your mother?”—law-based striving (Hagar) or promise-based faith (Sarah)
• The ongoing pattern of persecution: how those “born according to the flesh” have always mocked and opposed those “born according to the Spirit,” and what that means for believers today
• The call to “cast out the slave woman and her son” as a warning not to mix the gospel of grace with a return to law-keeping as the basis of our standing before God

After listening, you’ll see this challenging passage as a clear, searching invitation: to stop living as though you are under a deal you can never keep, and to stand instead as a child of promise. 

Series: Galatians: Living by Faith

In Galatians 4:12–20, Paul steps out from behind the role of apostle and theologian and speaks as a pastor and friend whose heart is breaking for his people. This episode looks at his personal appeal to the Galatians—how he reminds them of their shared history, exposes the motives of the false teachers, and models a kind of leadership that serves, suffers, and tells the truth even when it costs him. 

In this week’s episode, we explore:

• How this passage marks a change in tone in the letter, as Paul moves from argument to affection, pleading with the Galatians as people he loves
• What Paul means when he urges them, “become as I am, for I also have become as you are,” and how his willingness to live like a Gentile displays gospel-shaped freedom and humility
• The story behind Paul’s “bodily ailment,” how the Galatians first welcomed him despite his weakness, and why their joyful gratitude for the gospel seems to have faded
• Paul’s piercing question, “Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth?” and what that reveals about the cost—and necessity—of honest, loving correction
• How the false teachers “make much of” the Galatians in order to shut them out and win them over, and why spiritual flattery and exclusion are such powerful tools of manipulation
• Paul’s contrasting posture as a spiritual parent, “in the anguish of childbirth” until Christ is formed in them, showing leadership that is willing to suffer rather than control
• The way peer pressure and the desire to be “inside the circle” can draw believers toward a distorted gospel that confuses spiritual authenticity with rule-keeping
• Five leadership principles that emerge from Paul’s example:

After listening, you’ll come away with a more personal sense of Paul’s heart for the Galatians and a clearer picture of what Christlike leadership looks like in the church. 

Series: Galatians: Living by Faith

Paul’s words in Galatians 4:1–11 show the sharp contrast between living like a spiritual minor under strict supervision and living as a mature son or daughter in God’s family. Using the picture of an heir who is treated like a slave until the right time, Paul explains how the law functioned as a temporary guardian, how Christ’s coming changes our status forever, and why going back to a rule-based religion is like an adult trying to move back into childhood. 

In this week’s episode, we explore:

• How Paul’s image of a child-heir under “guardians and managers” helps us understand the law’s temporary role in God’s plan
• What it means to be “enslaved to the elementary principles of the world,” and why Paul likens life under the law to spiritual kindergarten
• The significance of “the fullness of time” when God sent his Son, born of a woman and born under the law, to redeem those under the law and secure our adoption
• Why adoption as sons is central to the gospel, and how it moves us from being condemned lawbreakers to beloved family members and heirs
• The meaning of the Spirit of God crying “Abba, Father” in our hearts, and how this intimate address to God expresses both reverence and deep personal relationship
• How Paul shifts from “we” to “you,” addressing both Jewish and Gentile believers, and showing that all who trust Christ share the same status as sons and heirs
• The contrast between former slavery to idols—“those that by nature are not gods”—and knowing and being known by the one true God
• Why returning to “days and months and seasons and years” is not harmless tradition, but a step back into spiritual childhood and bondage
• Paul’s sober fear that his labor among the Galatians might be “in vain,” and what that reveals about the danger of trading grace for religious performance

After listening, you’ll gain a clearer sense of what it means to move from slavery to sonship—to leave behind a life managed by rules and live instead as someone who belongs to the Father through Christ. 

Series: Galatians: Living by Faith

Galatians 3:23–29 pictures the law as a kind of spiritual basic training—good, necessary, and protective, but never meant to be our permanent way of relating to God. In this episode, we trace Paul’s argument that the law served as a strict guardian in our spiritual “childhood,” preparing us for Christ, and that through faith we now stand before God as mature sons and daughters, clothed in Christ and equal heirs of Abraham’s promise. 

In this week’s episode, we explore:

• What Paul means by “before faith came,” and how the law functioned as protective custody, fencing in human rebellion and teaching right from wrong
• The picture of the law as a harsh but caring guardian or drill instructor—necessary for spiritual immaturity, but not meant to define life after Christ has come
• Why “graduating” from the law doesn’t mean despising it, but recognizing its purpose: to expose our sin and drive us to be justified by faith in Christ
• How baptism works as a public marker that we have “put on Christ,” identifying ourselves with him the way clothing publicly identifies us
• What it means that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female—and in what sense those distinctions no longer matter
• How Galatians 3:28 has been misused to erase all gender and social distinctions, and why good Bible study insists on context, coherence, and the author’s purpose
• The shared spiritual story of every believer: all of us equally sinful, equally in need of the law’s discipline, and equally welcomed as heirs through faith alone

After listening, you’ll see more clearly what it means to move from spiritual childhood under the law to adult sonship in Christ. 

Series: Galatians: Living by Faith

Paul presses his third major argument in Galatians 3:15–22 by asking a simple question: are you relating to God on the basis of a deal you must uphold, or a promise he has sworn to keep? Using the everyday world of wills, contracts, and family relationships, Paul shows that God’s promise to Abraham came first, still stands, and cannot be undone or upgraded by the later law of Moses—which was given not to replace the promise, but to expose sin and drive us back to faith in Christ. 

In this week’s episode, we explore:

• How Paul’s illustration from a human covenant or will helps us see that once a promise is ratified, you don’t later come back and attach conditions without breaking it 
• The difference between a “deal” (an if–then agreement with mutual responsibilities) and a “promise” (a one-sided commitment that stands regardless of the other party’s performance) 
• What it means that God’s covenant with Abraham was a promise, and how that promise runs through Abraham’s line not by physical descent alone, but through those who share his faith in Christ, the true “offspring” 
• Why the giving of the law 430 years later does not cancel or rewrite the earlier promise, and how Paul contrasts God’s gracious inheritance with the conditional demands of the Mosaic law 
• Paul’s answer to the question, “Why then the law?”—that it was added “because of transgressions,” to spell out God’s standard, close every loophole, and show us just how deeply we break his commands 
• The significance of the law being given “through angels by an intermediary,” and how the presence of a mediator highlights the law as a two-party deal, in contrast to God’s direct, one-sided promise to Abraham 
• What it means that Scripture “imprisoned everything under sin”—that the law boxes us in, proving we are lawbreakers so that we will look away from our performance and cling to the promise by faith in Jesus Christ 
• How this passage exposes the way many of us live as if we are holding up our end of a spiritual deal—afraid to fail, desperate to look like we have it all together, and quietly terrified someone will see through us 
• The freeing claim of the gospel that your worth is not tied to your résumé, godliness record, or family performance, but to God’s unwavering promise to love and redeem sinners through the blood of Christ 

After listening, you’ll come away seeing Galatians 3:15–22 as an invitation to step off the treadmill of religious deal-making and live as a child of promise. You’ll better understand why the law cannot give life, why God gave it anyway, and how its true purpose is to drive you back to the certainty of God’s promise in Christ—a promise that gives you the freedom to be honest about your failures, and the security of knowing that your hope rests not on what you can offer God, but on what he has pledged to do for you. 

Series: Galatians: Living by Faith

Paul’s words in Galatians 3:1–14 cut through all spiritual confusion: are we made right with God by our efforts, or by trusting what Christ has already done? In this episode, we look at Paul’s first two arguments for justification by faith—drawing both from the Galatians’ own experience and from the story of Abraham—to show that the cross of Christ is completely sufficient, and that adding law-keeping only leads us back under a curse rather than into God’s blessing. 

In this week’s episode, we explore:

• Why Paul calls the Galatians “foolish” and “bewitched,” and how their shift toward law-keeping shows they have forgotten the power and clarity of the cross
• Paul’s question about how they received the Spirit—by “works of the law” or by “hearing with faith”—and why their own conversion story answers the debate
• What it means to “begin by the Spirit” and not try to be “perfected by the flesh,” including the symbolism of circumcision as a human mark versus the Spirit as God’s mark
• How their early suffering and the miracles among them confirm that God was at work through faith in the gospel, not through their performance of the Mosaic law
• Paul’s move to Scripture and to Abraham as the key example that righteousness has always been counted on the basis of faith, long before the law was given at Sinai
• The difference between being Abraham’s physical descendants and being his true “sons” who share his faith and receive the same blessing
• The sobering reality that “all who rely on works of the law are under a curse,” because the law demands complete obedience, not sincere effort or “mostly good” lives
• How Christ “became a curse for us” on the cross, taking our place under God’s judgment so that we might receive the blessing of Abraham and the promised Spirit by faith
• Key terms like atonement, propitiation, and expiation, and why the classic Christian view sees the cross as absolutely necessary for satisfying God’s justice and freeing sinners
• The sharp contrast between law and gospel: the law saying “Do this,” and the gospel proclaiming “Christ has done it all”

After listening, you’ll come away with a firmer grasp of why the cross is enough—why you cannot improve your standing before God by adding your own works to Christ’s finished work. 

Series: Galatians: Living by Faith

In this episode, we trace one of the most startling moments in the New Testament: Paul publicly rebuking Peter in Antioch over the very heart of the gospel. Working through Galatians 2:11–21, we see how a conflict over table fellowship exposed a deeper question—are we made right with God by faith in Christ alone, or by faith plus our own efforts at law-keeping? 

In this week’s episode, we explore:

• What happened when Peter stopped eating with Gentile believers out of fear of the “circumcision party,” and why Paul called this hypocrisy rather than a change in theology
• Why this confrontation had to be public, and how Paul’s boldness shows that the truth of the gospel—not personalities or reputations—was on the line
• How Paul’s question “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile… how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?” exposes the contradiction of demanding law-keeping from others
• What it means to be “justified by faith in Jesus Christ and not by works of the law,” and why no amount of religious effort can ever satisfy God’s justice
• The picture of God’s wrath and our bondage to sin, and why our “broken chooser” means we cannot simply decide to become righteous on our own
• How Christ’s death answers the problem of guilt, and his resurrection life, given by the Spirit, answers the problem of our ongoing slavery to sin
• The Reformation language of justification by faith alone: forensic justification, “simultaneously just and sinner,” and why God’s verdict is not a legal fiction
• The difference between righteousness being infused into us versus imputed to us—and why it matters that we are saved by Christ’s righteousness credited to our account
• Paul’s climactic claim that if righteousness could come through the law, then “Christ died for no purpose,” and how that question presses us to abandon all confidence in ourselves

After listening, you’ll come away with a clearer grasp of what it really means to be justified by faith alone—and why this doctrine is not a theological side issue but the center of Christian hope. 

Series: Galatians: Living by Faith

In Galatians 2:1–10, Paul takes us into a crucial meeting in Jerusalem where the question is on the table: Is there more than one valid version of the gospel, or is there only one truth that never changes? Fourteen years after his conversion, Paul lays his message before the “pillars” of the Jerusalem church, brings along Titus as a living test case, and shows that the gospel he preaches—faith in Christ apart from law-keeping—is exactly the same gospel the other apostles affirm. 

In this week’s episode, we explore:

• Why Paul went up to Jerusalem “because of a revelation,” and how this likely connects to the famine visit in Acts 11 rather than the later council in Acts 15
• How the presence of Barnabas (a Jewish believer) and Titus (a Gentile, uncircumcised believer) turns this trip into a real-time test of competing gospels
• What’s at stake in the demand to circumcise Gentile believers, and why Paul calls those pushing it “false brothers” who want to drag believers back into slavery
• How Titus stands as a concrete example that faith in Christ alone is enough for full inclusion in the people of God—no extra conditions, no added rituals required
• The significance of Paul’s private meeting with James, Peter, and John, and what it means that they “added nothing” to his message but instead extended the right hand of fellowship
• Why remembering the poor in Jerusalem matters theologically, not just practically, as an expression of gospel-shaped unity between Gentile and Jewish believers
• How this passage models a gospel that can be verified—confirmed by multiple witnesses and ministries—not just claimed by one person with a private spiritual experience
• The danger of trying to “modernize” or soften the gospel to make it more attractive, and how those efforts often end up changing the message rather than simply clarifying it
• Paul’s reminder that God shows no partiality and does not recruit “superheroes,” but delights to use ordinary, flawed people whose usefulness rests on grace, not credentials or reputation

After listening, you’ll come away with deeper confidence that there is one true gospel, given by God and confirmed across the apostolic witness, and that it does not need to be adjusted to fit any age or audience. 

Series: Galatians: Living by Faith