Galatians 2:16 - The faith “OF” Jesus Christ, his faithfulness, not ours. Israel’s labor of love under the law contract was a system of performance according to demand. They had to deal with their neighbors according to a strict system of rules and regulations. The law told them how to deal with one another. The law had apprehension as a motivating factor.
Understand love “agape” has much more to do with attitude in action, than it has to do with emotions direction that does what’s in the best interest of another individual. This is a work of righteousness. No one has ever measured up to the labor of love as Christ expressed that work of righteousness during his walk on earth. Christ not only fulfilled the outer demands of the Law Program, he fulfilled the inner demands as well.
Christ always did the will of the Father, he never went contrary at anytime to the will of the Father. God’s design was that Christ fulfill the law, so God could join us. To be in Christ, joined to our Savior, requires that you believe that something happened to the sins that Christ died for. God raised Jesus Christ from among the dead as proof that the payment Christ made for all the sins of the world was sufficient to satisfy God’s justice where the sins Christ died for are concerned.
Our labor of love under the Age of Grace has had the apprehension aspect removed entirely. We are to serve others today based on how God expressed his love to others through Christ and what God accomplished for them, who God made them and us to be in our Savior by joining us to our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Romans 6:3 - “know you not” when you trusted Christ as Savior, something happened that took place outside the realm of your sensation, outside the realm of your feeling. People oftentimes base their salvation and their relationship to God on their emotions. From Paul’s perspective, these people are “walking after the flesh.”
They are walking in relation to the flesh, thinking that their relationship with God is based upon either the feelings of their flesh (emotions) or the capacity of their flesh to produce righteousness through their performance. One of the main purposes of worship, as some people define it, is to get a touch from God; to get the emotions at a peak.
They feel close to God when they are in a situation that stimulates their emotions. They find themselves on an endless quest for emotional satisfaction, because they relate their closeness to God upon feeling. Paul wants us to recognize that Justification and Sanctification are not based upon feelings at all.
Feelings are not an outward demonstration of an inward manifestation, as some would have us believe. Justification and Sanctification has nothing at all to do with a religious physical formality, it is rather, a reality, and Paul wants us to understand that and appreciate it as being true!
Galatians 3:1-3 - Having been taught by Paul, these people begun in belief, but then some false teachers came along and these sealed saints became confused in their thinking. These people were saved, but they reverted to a walking after the flesh identity; not a identity in Christ.
The problem with the foolish Galatians was not the fact that they were slipping back into a sinful lifestyle. The problem with the foolish Galatians was incorrect thinking. They were slipping back away from the reality of grace and back into a works for righteousness to maintain a righteous standing with God concept.
They knew about the crucifixion, they knew about the resurrection, and they knew what it had accomplished. They had been foolishly duped, the law was never successful at making anyone good before God, it was not given for that purpose. They needed to be straightened out where their thinking was concerned.
Paul provided the correction by asking these people if they knew the source from which their new identity had been derived. Did it come from first believing or from later doing? Let us remain in our minds with that concept and not move away from that in our thinking. Paul is saying, “Do not let your thinking become foolish thinking and go back to dealing with God according to rules and regulations.”
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