The Jewish Christians who followed Paul to Galatia claimed the Bible required men to be circumcised to join God’s family (cf. Genesis 17:10-14). No doubt some Galatians thought, “Why not hedge our bets? We’ll trust in Jesus AND follow the rituals these other teachers tell us to carry out.” But Paul was emphatic: there was no splitting the difference. “Faith working through love,” not ritual purity, was what mattered, and no one could trust in them both for salvation.

• Scholar William Barclay summed up Paul’s words this way: “To Paul all that mattered was faith which works through love. That is another way of saying that the essence of Christianity is not law but a personal relationship to Jesus Christ. The Christian’s faith is founded not on a book but on a person; its dynamic is not obedience to any law but love to Jesus Christ.” What choices and actions help you build and maintain your personal relationship with Jesus?
• The kind of Christianity the “Judaizers” wanted inevitably had strong cultural and ethnic implications. But Paul, himself born in that ethnic group and culture, said, “Now if you belong to Christ, then indeed you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to the promise.” Do you ever struggle to accept believers in Jesus who come from some ethnic, cultural or denominational background different than yours? How can we all learn to more fully live into our common identity as “Abraham’s descendants”?