Galatians chapter 3

vs 1

Woah! Who else does Paul call foolish? The Galatians are getting schooled. Paul says that since Jesus was clearly portrayed to them as crucified, and just before he has said that if the law gave righteousness then Christ died for nothing, obviously Jesus died for a reason! So who has Bewitched (lit. baskaino, the only time it's used in the NT) them to make them forget this, or to make them such fools?

vs 2

So Paul calls on them - not to remember what they were taught, but to remember their experience. They have received the spirit - was it through observing Jewish law, or was it through hearing and believing the gospel?

vs3

Foolish again! Bam! They are going about it completely the wrong way. When you start with the free gift of salvation marked by the spirit, why would you then try to work your way to salvation?

vs 4

My Interlinear Bible has a typo here, and puts vs 4 only as far as "suffered for nothing". But anyway, the Galatians have obviously suffered for their faith. Even though the gospel is a free gift, they are still expected to suffer for it - not because that is God's demand as part of the cost, but because people will make you suffer for it because the world you live in is against God.

Had they then suffered for the wrong thing?

vs 5

Paul goes to experience again - this time adding miracles done in their midst.

There is an important theological question about these verses - is Paul saying once for all that no matter how weak or new in the faith, if you have believed then you will see miracles happen? If he is, then it would suggest that miracles occur because you have the base amount of faith required to allow miracles to occur. This means that the argument "Oh you weren't healed because you don't have enough faith" is bupkis unless they in fact have no faith. So if you say that to someone, you are then judging them as a non-Christian.

vs 6

This verse of the OT gets a lot of use doesn't it? Here in Galatians, also in Romans (Galatians is sometimes called a "mini-Romans") and then in James.

vs 7

Why does Paul start talking about being children of Abraham? Who cares about Abraham when you can be children of God? Should Paul be getting with the program here?

No, because the Jews care about Abraham, and the Judaisers are Jews (or Jewish Christians). So they turn up with their OTs and thump them saying "You must be circumcised to be a son of Abraham". Paul is saying "No, those who believe are children of Abraham fools!"

vs 8

And Paul then shows that the OT is as missional as the NT. The OT proves that God had a heart for the gentiles, and you can take it all the way back to the promises he made to Abraham. So when mission speakers are reading mission into Abraham, don't get all high and mighty and say "That's an eisegetical reading into the text", because it comes from Galatians 3.

vs 9

There's an interesting study you can do, going through the NT and looking at the different authors and how they each define the term "faith". The greek term Paul uses here is "pistis", and the NASB lexicon definition is "conviction of the truth of anything". That is the word used first to say "faith" in this verse. But the second time, Paul uses the term "pistos", which has a different connotation. It can mean "faithful", but also means (as in this context) "believing, trusting".

I don't want to draw too long a bow here, but the difference between them (as I see it) is that one denotes a belief of conviction - that is, to be assured of the truth of something. Interestingly, this is the one that one would generally use of someone who "has faith", in the terms of religious beliefs. The second one is belief of trust - which is more than just a conviction of something as being true, it is a belief that you can trust someone or something.

The reason I bring all this up is because the KJV calls Abraham "faithful", which might be a correct interpretation of the word, but I think it misses the context. The NASB uses "Abraham the believer", which again is correct for the word, but I think it is too vague. The NIV says Abraham is the "man of faith", and that is just as confusing. The problem is that if you put something like "Abraham, who trusted God" then people would jump down your throat because it doesn't say "God" in the greek, and "the man who trusted" sounds stupid.

vs 10

Well, Deuteronomy 27:26 smacks down anyone who thinks they should be trying to follow the law. Bad legalist, smack! The law is actually a curse - not because the law is bad, but because we suck so hard we can't follow it.