followHIM - Galatians Part 1 • Dr. Jared Ludlow • Sept 25 - Oct 1

Episode Date: September 20, 2023

Are you living by faith or tradition? Dr. Jared Ludlow explores themes of faith and works, the power of commandments, and the grace of Jesus Christ.Show Notes (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese): https://followhim.co/new-testament-episodes-31-40/YouTube: https://youtu.be/KgPvdh6VUzwFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/followhimpodcastInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followhimpodcastSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/15G9TTz8yLp0dQyEcBQ8BYPlease rate and review the podcast!00:00 Part 1–Dr. Jared Ludlow02:10 Introduction of Dr. Jared Ludlow06:07 Background to Galatians09:08 Paul’s salutation10:33 Jewish backgrounds vs Gentile backgrounds14:43 Adding to the gospel18:39 Bondage vs freedom22:18 Liberty vs license25:36 Law of Moses vs the higher law31:08 Demonstrations of faith33:03 Becoming a new creature36:46 The gospel is for all nations40:53 The Jews misapplying Deuteronomy to Jesus43:25 Commandments lead to Christ48:39 Walking in the Spirit 49:25 End of Part 1–Dr. Jared LudlowThanks to the followHIM team:Shannon Sorensen: Cofounder, Executive Producer, SponsorDavid & Verla Sorensen: SponsorsDr. Hank Smith: Co-hostJohn Bytheway: Co-hostDavid Perry: ProducerKyle Nelson: Marketing, SponsorLisa Spice: Client Relations, Editor, Show NotesJamie Neilson: Social Media, Graphic DesignAnnabelle Sorensen: Creative Project ManagerWill Stoughton: Video EditorKrystal Roberts: Translation Team, English & French Transcripts, WebsiteAriel Cuadra: Spanish Transcripts"Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com

Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of Follow Him. My name is Hank Smith. I'm your host. I'm here with the fantastic John, by the way. Welcome, John. Thank you. Nice to be back. Yes, we are back for another week of Follow Him. John, we're going to be in the book of Galatians today. Paul is writing to the people of the region of Galatia, and we get a solid five chapters, I think, of doctrine and testimony of Christ. John, what are we looking forward to today? What's impressed you so far? Oh, I just love the idea of the gospel because it sounds like they're maybe getting a little off focus. And Paul says, no, you've got to get back to the gospel, the good news, and seems to reiterate that the whole time.

So I think all of us need that sometimes. I don't like that saying, but I've heard it that the best kept secret in the church is the gospel. We don't want that to be a secret. We want that to be the main thing, the good news and not to stray from that. So I'm looking forward to that. Excellent. Kind of like keep the main thing, the main thing. Right. Keep the main thing. John, we're joined today by a Bible expert, Dr. Jared Ludlow. He and I have been good friends for many years. Jared, what are we looking forward to in this lesson?

What is Paul going to teach these people? He's going to try to address some of the issues of kind of merging together new members of the church. You've got some Jewish background converts, and you've got Gentile background converts. And because of their different backgrounds, it's not an easy coming together. And so he's having to work through that and emphasize faith in Jesus Christ above everything. So he'll talk a lot about faith and faithfulness and how that relates to the law that a lot of the Jews were following before. And I think overall his effort is just to create a stronger, unified community that they're all on the same page and seeking the same goals. In these letters I've noticed, they all seem to have similar problems, some of them unique to their area, but often it's unity, people of different backgrounds coming together and doctrines that they're focusing on and that maybe they're losing track of. John, why don't you introduce Dr. Ludlow to our audience?

He joined us last year. Yes, we've had Dr. Ludlow before. Really glad to have him back. In fact, I want to say, Hank, last night I was with the Heber Valley Camp Senior Missionaries. It's up east of Heber. It's a young women's camp. I had no idea that there were 168 senior missionaries up there. Oh, my sister, are missionaries up there. What a delightful time. Oh, what they always say, Hank, and you know this, where do you find these guests? And that's why it's so fun to have such a wide variety of guests with powerful scholarly background and powerful testimonies.

So I wanted to say hello to them, but also we're so glad to have Dr. Jared Ludlow back, another one of these guests with this amazing testimony and background. Jared has been teaching with ancient scripture at BYU since 2006. Previous to that, he spent six years teaching religion and history at BYU Hawaii. Jared received his bachelor's degree from BYU in Near Eastern Studies, a master's degree from UC Berkeley in Biblical Hebrew, and a PhD in Near Eastern Religions from UC Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union. Served his mission in Campinas, Brazil, and also served in Germany and Israel, teaching twice at the Jerusalem Center. He's married to Margaret Nelson. They have five children, Jared Jr., Joshua, Joseph, Marissa, and Malia. Thank

you for coming back, Dr. Ludlow. Thank you. It's my pleasure to be here. Absolutely. John, you know, one of my favorite quotes from Richard L. Evans is, it is good to be faithful. It is better to be faithful and competent. And when I think about faithfulness and competency, Jared Ludlow is high on my list of people. He is both faithful and competent. And Brother Ludlow, you are the publications director at the RSC. And for those, we've talked about this a little bit before, but that's Religious Studies Center. But if you go to rsc.byu.edu, our listeners will be amazed at the resources that are there, many by authors

and teachers that we've interviewed here on Follow Him. John, I don't think there's a website I recommend more often to my students than rsc.byu.edu because they're frequently asking questions that probably aren't going to be answered in general conference where they're asking about a specific passage or they're asking about a certain time in church history. And the RSC website does answer a lot of those questions, a nonstop plethora of gospel knowledge. What do you think is available to people through the RSC? Hundreds and hundreds of articles and book chapters can be about church history. They can be about scripture, about living the gospel in one's life. It's kind of self-help type things. You can look up a Come Follow Me schedule that gives some potential additional resources for that week's scripture

block. And Jared, I would also add that Religious Education has a YouTube channel that the RSC uses. So yeah, both audio, visual, as well as print. We try to put up there as much as we can to help readers answer questions, dive deeper, and learn more. Awesome. John, you did a quick shout out, and I need to do one as well.

I was at church the other day in Castle Rock, Colorado, and Patty Pfeiffer came up to me and just gushed about the podcast. And you're right, over our guests. So Patty, thank you so much for listening. All right, Jared, what do you want to do here? How do we approach the book of Galatians? Do we need to have some background before we jump in? Probably a little helpful just to kind of set the stage.

This is always one of the challenges with Paul's epistles is he seems to be responding to something. Sometimes it's direct questions or sometimes it's a situation he's heard about. In this case, I think it's more a situation that he's heard about. And we don't get necessarily the other side of it. And we kind of can decipher it a little bit by what he's saying. And in this case, as we mentioned already, he's talking to a region, Galatia, which is in central Asia Minor, or today, Turkey. And from what I understand, it ran all the way from the Black Sea down to the Mediterranean Sea, just in the middle section of the country there. A lot of cities within there that Paul visited throughout his missionary journeys.

It mentions Galatia a couple times in Acts 18.23. It mentions Galatia in, I think, 16.6, I believe. And so he has traveled through this area and has helped start some of these congregations. And this is a letter back, and it's probably meant to be like what we call a circular epistle or letter that they can pass around. We sometimes read letters over the pulpit from our church leaders, and the idea is that everybody can get that information. And so he's heard of some issues that concern him. I would say this is one of his more passionate letters. He is very, I don't know if riled up is too strong of a phrase, but he's heard that

there's some that have come to teach in these congregations that he used to teach in and are kind of overturning some of the things that he was teaching. So he's not afraid to kind of boldly share why he thinks they're wrong and trying to bring these members back to the previous understanding that they had. And we don't really know exactly the date of when this is written and even necessarily where it was written from, but we know that, again, it's writing back after he's been through this area a couple of times. So, Jared, what I'm hearing, it reminds me of when I was a kid and I would hear my mom talking on the phone and I would hear one end of the conversation and I'm trying to pick up what is being said on the other end of the conversation, but I could tell when she was riled up. I could tell if she was frustrated. I don't know what was being

done or said, but I could tell when she was frustrated. That's a great analogy. And I think it's true of a few of these epistles, isn't it? Where it sounds like he's responding to questions, but we haven't seen the questions. Or he's responding to reports, but we haven't seen the reports. And so it's like watching Jeopardy or something. We're reading the answer. Now we have to figure out what the question was. That's a good way to put it, a one-way conversation. Yeah. One indication of his kind of jumping

almost right into it is most of these epistles have a certain format that they follow where they have a salutation, I guess is what you would call it at the beginning. And this is the first five verses of chapter one. And, you know, usually identifies Paul. He gives his title, an apostle, and who he's writing to. He says to all the brethren, and here probably, you know, I would say brethren and sisters, all the members which are with me under the churches of Galatia. And then he gives kind of this grace be unto you,

grace and peace. So kind of a blessing to them. But what's missing from the normal pattern in these epistles is a thanksgiving section. So he's not as thankful maybe to have to write this. Once he ends with verse five, which is kind of a praise or a doxology to God, then he just jumps right in. You're so soon removed from what I called you to and so forth. And so he jumps right into that issue. That's interesting. Yeah. I've noticed that with Romans and Corinthians, it's a lot of compliments and a lot of almost gushing over the people. This is not so much. I marvel that you were so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel. And it's that other gospel that's going to pop up over and over again throughout this epistle.

And I think the basic bottom line issue here is that there have been some Jewish background believers, Christians. It's hard because sometimes we use some of these terms and they're little anachronisms here. Because technically we don't have full-fledged Christianity here and Judaism on the other side. You have Jewish background Christians or believers in Jesus, and they're coming and trying to convince the members of this region that they need to be circumcised and obey the law of Moses in order to be saved. And for Paul, that is not the message he's been sharing and what he wants to share. If a Jew is already circumcised and they come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, that's fine. And he'll say it a

couple of times, whether circumcised or uncircumcised, that doesn't really matter. But to require it, to demand it as a step to salvation in Christ, that's the other gospel that he's preaching against. Verse 8, it's interesting in context here, he just says, even if I were to come or another angel from heaven and preach another gospel from what I already preached, don't listen to them. That person would be accursed. Because remember, Paul's testimony comes from the risen Lord. He's not going back to Jesus' parables. He's not going back to his Sermon on the Mount and these kinds of things. He always goes back to the resurrection and the risen Lord because that's the experience he had on the road to Damascus. He knows he can't deny that. And that's the testimony that he keeps

coming back to. It's interesting how I myself, when I served as a missionary, and I've heard many other who served as missionaries, we get this verse thrown at us a lot. A lot, yeah. Verse 8, that we're somehow preaching another gospel. But my response always is, no, we're not. We're preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. And that's what Paul is trying to say here is, as long as you're preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ and the grace that can come through him, that's the message they need to keep. But when they start veering off and thinking, well, we need to do these other things in order to access Christ or access salvation, then that's

the problem. So they're adding two requirements for salvation. Would you say that? Yeah. They're saying we need to do these things in addition to faith in Christ, to things that such as baptism and other things. Now, to their defense, they probably think this is what we need to be teaching because this is what Jesus did. We often use the phrase, what would Jesus do? Well, Jesus was circumcised. Jesus observed Passover. Jesus went to the temple. He did all of these things. In fact, we sometimes use the phrase, Jesus fulfilled the law. Well, when you look at it early on, like in the Sermon on the Mount, what he's saying there is, I'm keeping the law. I'm keeping it perfectly so that I can fulfill the mission that I've been

sent with. It's only later on, and I would say particularly in 3 Nephi, when he visits the Nephites, that when he uses fulfill the law, he's now meaning I brought it to completion. It's no longer binding. But this is where a lot of early Christians were struggling, trying to figure out, well, if Jesus did these things, shouldn't I be doing them also? Yet, because of how the atonement was fulfilled and helped fulfill the law, and then the revelation that Paul received on the road to Damascus, he learns that no, we don't need to keep doing all of these things in order to achieve salvation. If they do them, that's fine. But if they require them of others, that's not fine. Jared, I want to hit this verse 8 just a little bit longer because

we do have some missionaries that listen. So, Jared, as I read verse 8, but though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. Would I be correct in saying that Paul is emphasizing Christ is the Savior. By him, we are saved. If anybody comes along and teaches something other than that, that is wrong. Would that be a fair way to say it? Yeah. It goes back to verse 6, that initially you were called into the grace of Christ. If you're trying to preach anything beyond what Christ has asked of us, then yes, you are preaching your own gospel or your own message, and you'll be accursed. So, Jared, let's say I'm a missionary out in the field and someone wants to talk about Galatians 1, verse 8, and says, I'm preaching another gospel that Joseph Smith added to the gospel. What would be an effective

response? Well, I'd start by saying he's not there to preach another gospel. Yes, we might be adding some understandings about it and different experiences. That's a whole part of ongoing revelation and restoration. But Joseph Smith kept it Christ-centered. Our Articles of Faith 3 and 4 talk about we need the atonement of Jesus Christ, and it's faith in Jesus Christ and baptism to him. And that's the gospel that Paul was preaching here. So if Joseph Smith had come along and tried to put himself in place of Christ, then yes, I think we could definitely say he's accursed and is failing in this verse. So it's not so much that he added to the gospel. It's more he didn't change the foundation. Yes.

Okay. I mean, we want to have more experiences with deity. that show that God and the Father and Jesus Christ are continuing to reveal and to lead and guide. And yet it's reiterating what has been taught before. We still have the New Testament. We still have the Old Testament. Those haven't been replaced. They've just been added to. I like that.

And Paul himself, I'm sure, is going to add to the things he taught. So he can't mean add to would be equal to accursed, because I don't think Paul is saying, I taught you everything there is to know. You have no more to be taught. Don't be taught by anyone else. He's saying, don't let the foundation of what I taught you change. Yeah, I feel like Paul is warning against an alternate plan of salvation, another way to be saved. And there's a phrase that I've picked up, and maybe I just have been listening better, but the last couple of general conferences, I've heard this, the doctrine of Christ emphasized.

I mean, I remember Elder Achmed Corbett talking about the doctrine of Christ emphasized. I mean, I remember Elder Ahmed Corbett talking about the doctrine of Christ, and I think if our listeners want to just read the last half of 2 Nephi 31 again, and you will see what Jared just mentioned, Article of Faith 4, faith in Jesus Christ and repentance and baptism and being cleansed by the Holy Ghost. And that's the doctrine of Christ. That's the gospel. There isn't another gospel. And relying wholly upon the merits of Christ, 2 Nephi 31, 19, that's the gospel. And that's what Paul is saying. There isn't another alternate plan of salvation. This is it. That helps me. Go to 2 Nephi 31, think doctrine of Christ, think article of faith four. And then you know, no, this is the gospel.

This is the gospel that we believe. There is only one way. Yeah. There's only one way under heaven whereby man can be saved. That's 2 Nephi 31. There's not an alternate plan of salvation. Jared, so how are these people, not just the people of Galatia, but it sounds like all of them, how are they supposed to balance this, the law of Moses being fulfilled,

yet some things are going to stay around? How are they supposed to know what we're supposed to keep and what we're not supposed to keep? That is what they are struggling with and trying to understand, because there's certainly commandments, such as the Ten Commandments, that they're expected to continue to live and so forth. In fact, I think Paul alludes to this later in chapter 5, where he likes to contrast bondage of the law, meaning you have to keep everything if you're going to keep anything, is kind of his rhetoric. So it's kind of a bondage of the law versus freedom that comes through Christ.

But he is very careful that we don't go too far with that and say, well, then whatever I do, it's okay. I'm free to do whatever I want. And he says, no, maybe picking up here, verse 13 of chapter 5, you've been called unto liberty, only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh. In other words, to just follow whatever natural man instinct you want to follow. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. And so he starts talking about things that we might be tempted to do by just following the flesh or following what we want to do. So in verse 17, he talks about... This is the same chapter? So in verse 17, he talks about the flesh lusteth against the spirit.

Yes, still chapter 5, the spirit against the flesh. And verse 19, the works of the flesh are manifest in adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies. I mean, he gives this whole list of vices, a lot of which are against other people. And that's why he emphasizes thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself first. If we truly loved our neighbor, we're not going to be murdering them. We're not going to be hating them. So then on the flip side, he talks about a law of Christ. So I think that's what Paul is trying to emphasize over and over again is follow Christ. Well, how do we know for following Christ? It's through the Spirit.

Verse 25 of chapter 5, if we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. And that walk in the Spirit, I think, is probably a little play on words that Paul is doing here because in Jewish tradition, halakha, or a term they use for the law, following the law has the root of walking. It's how you walk. We use the phrase sometimes, you walk the walk, rather than just talk the talk. Well, he's saying rather than

walking in the law of Moses, walk in the Spirit. And we can come back and talk about some of the fruits of the Spirit later, but that's, I think, what he's trying to get at is we're not completely free to do whatever we want. There's still aspects of the law given through Moses and others before him and after him that we need to follow. But what we need to really emphasize is loving our neighbor as ourself and walking in the spirit. I liked what you said. You talked about liberty, and I remember hearing somebody say once, don't confuse liberty with license, license to do anything you want. No, that's not what we're talking about here. I was reading in Andrew Skinner and D. Kelly Ogden's commentary, and they said, it's called verse by verse,

Paul teaches in this epistle that Christ is not secondary to the law of Moses. The law with its specific requirements cannot bring salvation. Only Christ can. Salvation comes through the merits of Christ alone. And then this reminded me of what you said, Jared. This epistle has been called the Declaration of Independence from Judaism. The terms free and freedom are used 11 times in the brief letter. This epistle is full of kind of this language of, again, bondage or slavery, more literally in the Greek, but then the reverse of that, the freedom, the liberty. And when we fully understand bondage to sin, for example, then we come to appreciate

the atonement of Jesus Christ that can release us from that bondage. I think it's President Benson that said we never fully appreciate the atonement of Jesus Christ until we understand the fall. Yeah, understand the fall and how much in need we are to be freed from the bondage of sin and death and other things. By using this language in somewhat of an analogous rhetoric, Paul is likening that to how the law of Moses can bind us down because, again, we sin through the law. If there's no law, then we have no sin. So having the law automatically brings sin. And therefore, Christ comes to help overcome this sin. When I read some of what Paul is talking here in Galatians, I always think back to Abinadi when he's talking to the priests of Noah. If you remember in there, he asked them at one point in chapter 12 of Mosiah, he asked the priest, does salvation come by the

law of Moses? What say ye? And they answered and said that salvation did come by the law of Moses. And I think a minute I probably realized, wait, I didn't ask the question quite the right way. Because the law of Moses, if it was followed correctly, could lead to salvation. If they understood that it pointed to Jesus Christ, that the law itself by itself couldn't save them, but it taught principles and doctrines that helped them point towards Jesus Christ. And so he follows up here and says, well, I know if you keep the commandments of God, you shall be saved. Because I mean, this is what Nephi had to do and others. They had to keep the law of Moses and it led them to God. So if you keep the commandments of God, you shall be

saved. But then he goes on and explains that it's not the law alone, that there is this role that Jesus Christ plays in relationship to the law that brings salvation. I think the Book of Mormon provides some good examples of people that were keeping the law of Moses with the right attitude of pointing towards Christ. You know, we can also look at 2 Nephi 25-23 when Nephi says, you know, we know it is by grace that we are saved after all we can do. And we've butchered that last part in our interpretation so much, but I think basically what he's saying is all we can do right now is keep the law of Moses until Christ comes. It reconciles us to God if we do it properly and if we're looking towards a future Messiah who will come and bring us full salvation. But then he warns his people, but when Christ comes, then we need to keep whatever law he tells us. He's worried already that they might feel like the law itself will be good enough, and that when the Messiah actually comes,

we don't need to worry about what he says because we've already got the law. And sure enough, that's what we see happen both in the Book of Mormon and in the New Testament, is many rejected Jesus and what he was trying to teach, thinking, we've already got the law. We've already got what we need, so why do we need Jesus? And yet, Nephi says, no, when he comes, you need to do whatever he teaches. And so, we're back to that law of Christ, that walking in the law of Christ. None of us can keep the law perfectly. It helps us confront the fact that we need more.

I love that you brought up Abinadi, because I feel like the last two verses of Mosiah 16 are his whole thing in a nutshell, maybe the last three verses. He says, And now ought ye not to tremble and repent of your sins, and remember that only in andinadi putting it all together. Yeah, teach the law of Moses.

Teach it's a shadow of things to come because redemption comes in christ jared i'm going to try to articulate something and you tell me how far off i am okay it seems from what we've read in chapter five paul is saying the savior freed you the savior's gospel freed you from a lot of the ceremonies, rituals, duties, and responsibilities that come with the law of Moses. And you're free from those things. But just because you're free from those things doesn't mean you should then go after the lusts of the flesh. You should live a higher law, love, joy, peace, long-suffering. Am I on the right track? Yeah, particularly when you think his primary audience are Gentile background believers.

When they had an eight-day-old male child, they didn't circumcise them. And so do they need to go through circumcision now? They weren't raised with eating kosher. Do they need to eat kosher now? Do those things, I don't know if custom is the right word now, is how Paul is viewing some of these. These are customs now. They're not requirements for salvation. Some people say, well, Paul is totally against the law and trying to remove it completely. I think he's more, if you want to do those things, go ahead. If you want to eat kosher because you've been raised kosher and the thought of eating some of those non-kosher things just doesn't sound appealing at all, well, then fine, go ahead. But again, don't require those, particularly those who haven't been raised the same way, to have to do it for salvation. And

don't think to yourself that if I do these things, it will bring me salvation. We sometimes talk about in our church, checklist kind of salvation. If I just do these things, I can check off, I've done my scripture reading, I attend church every Sunday, then I'll be saved. Well, that's not how we earn salvation. Now, does that mean we're not supposed to do those things? No, those things can be good and they help us, but all of it is to help us in a relationship to Christ. I'm assuming Paul would say, if some Jewish Christians, if we want to use that term, Jewish background Christians want to keep doing what they're doing, good. But just don't think that that's going to bring you salvation without focus on faith in

Jesus Christ. And so Galatians is kind of the ground zero of this whole faith versus works debate that arises in Christianity later on. And so it becomes practices equals works versus works of the law that really is what Paul is talking about. If you have faith in Jesus Christ, that's what brings you salvation, not the works of the law. It's not whether you should be doing these practices of baptism or repentance or these kinds of things. That's a whole different thing. That's part of our relationship with Jesus Christ and what he's asked us to do to come unto him. But when Paul says faith versus works, he's talking about the works of the law. This is really helpful.

He's talking about the works of the law of Moses and that those things are no longer. Then why are they there? I think that's coming up. It's a, it was a schoolmaster to bring them to Christ. So like you said, I mean,

I'll hear people say, well, if you have to do something like be baptized, hey, that's a work. And we're not saved by our works when we're going, well, actually that's about our relationship to Christ. And when Paul was talking about works, he was talking, as you just said, works of the law of Moses. Am I getting that right? Exactly. Exactly. That's helpful. And Christ has asked us to do some things, to come unto him, to demonstrate that faith.

I think he makes it pretty clear with, if you love me, keep my commandments. There's still commandments. There's still requirements. I think with Nicodemus, there's no way you can really wiggle out of the fact that baptism is necessary to enter the kingdom of of god you know to keep my kingdom of heaven that's what he's trying to teach and that spiritual rebirth is necessary but again it's all always in context with jesus christ on that relationship with him now because baptism doesn't mean anything yeah without the lord and what's the great commission?

Is it at the end of Matthew? Go ye into all the world, preach the gospel to every creature, baptizing them. That was part of one of the last things Jesus said in the gospel was go baptize them. It's about our relationship to Christ, not a checklist to work, but it's we're baptized because he asked us to be, to follow him. He preaches baptism over and over again, and the symbolism, Epistle of the Romans, he talks about that new life that comes through baptism, and certainly that's what he wants. And Paul believes in repentance, too. I think it's pretty obvious. He uses the phrase new creature, I think, here in Galatians 15.

He says, for in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creature. I mean, that's what it's all about is that spiritual rebirth. Whether it's circumcised or uncircumcised, that doesn't matter, but it's a new creature. He uses the term circumcision a whole lot, and some people get a little squeamish, queasy with that. But I think he's really using it as just part of the entire law. You could also look at the kosher laws, all the holiday type things. And again, he's not necessarily throwing them all out, but he's saying they just don't matter in the end to salvation. What matters is that we change, that we're a new creature. As we were preparing for this, I thought Paul uses, just like you said, that phrase

to describe, and it's in the book of Acts too, those of the circumcision. That's one way to say Jews who keep the law of Moses. Again, from the Jewish Christian perspective, they again would say, well, this is what Jesus did. And we have in the New Testament, his circumcision and his giving his name. We see that with John the Baptist as well. And they also would go back to Abraham and say, well, this is part of the covenant that God made with Abraham. So, of course, we're going to keep this and continue doing this. And so Paul, one of the challenges he's having and why he goes back to Abraham as well is he tries to show a couple of things with Abraham, first being that Abraham was counted as righteous, was a friend of God before he was circumcised, before he did that. And so if we pick up in Galatians chapter 3, he says, even as Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him

for righteousness. And this goes back to Genesis 15, 6. and I think this is a key verse for Paul. It says in Genesis 15.6, And he, Abraham, believed in the Lord, and he counted it to him for righteousness. Of course, righteousness is a key thing that we're all seeking, that God considers us righteous. And elsewhere he uses the term justification. Well, justification has that same notion of you're declared righteous. Everything is right with God. You're doing everything you're supposed to. Paul is trying to emphasize that Abraham was already counted righteous or deemed righteous before chapter 17 of Genesis when he is circumcised

and that becomes part of this Abrahamic covenant. Again, as part of Abraham, Abraham is also promised that it's not just his literal descendants that will be blessed. So verse 7 says, know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. And by faith he means not the work of circumcision that happened later. And the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the heathen, by heathen there you can say nations of the earth, Gentiles.

We're in Galatians 3, right, Jared? Yes, correct. Galatians 3.8. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the nations, I would say, through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. And so notice how he keeps emphasizing that faith and faithfulness, etc. But it's now open to all nations. As long as they have that faith and that relationship with God, they can be deemed righteous or justified even without the circumcision. And so that's

partly why he keeps coming back to circumcision is because I think his opponents, if you will, that have come into the congregations later are teaching the Galatians, no, you need to be circumcised because that's part of the covenant. And he's trying to say no. And that's the different gospel that was being taught. Now, this is really making sense now. I like this. Continuing on in the next verse, it says, for as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse.

Meaning, I think, John, you mentioned earlier that it's basically impossible to keep everything of the law, so therefore you're going to be falling short of all the blessings of God. But then he quotes from Deuteronomy 27-26, and we see this phrase or this passage used a few places in the New Testament in talking about the crucifixion of Jesus. Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them. Then he quotes from Deuteronomy 27, 26, which is kind of like what John said,

that cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them. So if you don't do all of it, then you are cursed. According to the law. Yeah. And the only way to overcome that is, he says, through faith. So verse 11, he says, when no man is justified by the law on the side of God because you're not keeping everything, it is evident that the just shall live by faith, or by faith that the righteous shall live. And the law is not of faith, but the man that doeth them shall live in them. And so Christ, he says in verse 13, hath redeemed us from the curse of the law. How? He was made a curse for us. And this is the

passage where we see sometimes in the New Testament that cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree. So it's a reference to the crucifixion of Jesus, that because Christ becomes the cursed one hanging on a tree or on a cross, then he's able to redeem us from the curse of the law, redeem us from falling short of being able to keep everything in the law. It's not really that different from us today. Can we keep all the commandments of the gospel? No. We need Christ to provide an avenue for repentance and forgiveness, sanctification, etc., in order to be back right with God. And so, really, verse 14 is that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. And that's really what he's trying to get at with going back

to Abraham and the promises made to Abraham, both that he was deemed righteous before he was circumcised, that all nations would also become blessed by the covenants through Abraham. But it takes Christ in the middle of that to overcome our falling short of the law. This is so interesting to me. It reminds me of when we were back in the book of John, in John 6, when Jesus taught this hard doctrine to them of, you have to drink my blood. And for them, they were like, yeah, but the law says you're not supposed to eat blood. And he explains it later. But in the time, and this very thing, I'm so glad you brought this up.

I was reading in Richard Holzapfel and Thomas Wayman's book, Making Sense in the New Testament, and they said, why was it a stumbling block to teach Christ crucified? For Paul and other first century Jews, the disciples' declaration that Jesus had been crucified was an oxymoron. The Messiah could not be crucified. A crucified man could not be the Messiah. For the law states, as you just said, Jared, he that is hanged is accursed of God. That's Deuteronomy 21-23. Apparently, Jewish interpretation of Deuteronomy eliminated any possibility that righteous man, let alone the Messiah, would be crucified. This may explain Paul's initial bitter opposition to the disciples. However, after meeting Jesus on the road to Damascus, Paul reread the Hebrew Bible through the lens of the resurrection. Jesus had provided such a lens to the disciples

following his death and resurrection. When Paul discovered what he now tells the Galatians is that the Messiah had been crucified, had been cursed. However, it was not for his own sins. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. That's Galatians 3.13. For it is written, cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree. The Messiah stood in our place, acting as a proxy for us, being made a curse for us. That really helped me with that verse. He was made a curse for us in verse 13. The idea of trying to reconcile Deuteronomy, he that hanged is accursed of God. No, he became the curse for us.

So that's a beautiful teaching. It just emphasizes again the absolute necessity of a Redeemer. That we couldn't do it alone. And the law itself couldn't do it. Yeah, the law couldn't do it. And for the Jews' initial reaction to if the Messiah wouldn't be crucified, that's a stumbling block because of the way they read Deuteronomy 21. I think that's fascinating, and I love that Paul clears that up right there. John, Jared, let's try to bring this into 2023.

If I'm listening to this, what could be the lesson I get? I'm hearing commandments are good, but commandments lead us to Christ. They're not what saves us. Keeping the commandment isn't what saves me. Keeping the commandments brings me to Christ, and He saves me. Paul says in chapter 3, verse 24, the law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, our tutor, our guardian until the Messiah came. What do either of you think of that idea. Yeah, I think the law taught, again, principles and doctrines that were supposed to help the children of Israel understand and point towards the coming of the Messiah, as well as gospel principles, for lack of a better thing. I remember Gerald Lund one time drawing two circles. The first circle is the law of Moses. The second circle is the law of Christ. And in the first circle,

he put performances and ordinances for the law of Moses, that there are certain things that we're supposed to do, ordinances we're supposed to partake of. And think of the whole sacrificial system. You think of eating kosher and all of these things. But then he drew an arrow to the second circle, which was the law of Christ, and there are certain gospel principles that these are supposed to point to and that we're supposed to learn from. And then he drew below it two more circles and he reversed them. Law of Christ teaches us gospel principles, and then he draws a narrow to the second one, daily implementation of practices and ordinances and things. He likened it to two different ways that our Father in Heaven taught His children.

One way is to focus on giving them more detailed, like a schoolmaster, here's the things you need to do, but I hope you learn these things in the process. I mean, as a professor, we don't give homework just because we want to give homework. We often have to grade it, and that's no fun. But we're hoping that they learn something in the process that it points them to something better. Whereas what the law of Christ maybe does is gives us gospel principles, and then we need to kind of know, then how do we implement that? What are the performances I need to be doing? When it says keep the Sabbath day holy, what does that mean to me? What do I need to be doing to keep the Sabbath day holy? And so in the end, we're basically doing similar things,

but just in reverse order, I guess you could say. That's fascinating. Yeah, I like that. These are things we do, but the Savior is the Savior. He is, was, is, and will always be the Savior. Keeping the Sabbath day holy is not the Savior, and reading my scriptures is not the Savior, and going to the temple is not the Savior. Jesus is the Savior. And when that's in our mind, and that doctrine of Christ, faith in Christ, and repentance, and

being born again, those other things are, I like the way you said that, those things that are performance, they're things we want to do, we like to do, but they keep us focused on that Christ is the Savior. Is that a fair way to restate it? Yeah. They lead us to him. I really like this. I'm going to try to state it too. So in the law of Moses, there was prescribed commandments, rituals, practices that pointed towards Christ and gospel principles.

Christ comes and does the reverse he teaches gospel principles and then we are to find ways that we implement those in practice and and all of it pointing us to christ that the savior yeah so things like keeping the sabbath day holy that hasn't gone away president nelson has made it very clear that it's a sign in our relationship with our Father in heaven how we keep the Sabbath day. sometimes provided, or I would say more often the additional law that was added on later on, added even more requirements and prescriptions and things like that. But the principle is still the same. We want to keep a Sabbath day holy to show our Heavenly Father that we revere Him and that we honor Him and that we can set aside a period of time from our other activities to demonstrate that love for Him and provides opportunity, obviously, for other types of worship on that day. We just may not be given the same strict list. I use the word strict because that's how Abinadi talks about

it. It's a strict law that was given to the people. And that may go with a schoolmaster because sometimes schoolmasters can be strict on the things that they need to be doing. It all comes back to the gospel is that Jesus came to save us. In some ways, it goes back to what we talked about earlier with walking in the Spirit. As we become tutored in the gospel principles, we'll better know by walking through the Spirit the things that we should be doing, the people we need to reach out to to help, the things we can help our family with. My wife constantly is thinking of how can she help her children improve to have good lives and so forth. And so these kinds of things come as we ponder upon gospel principles and think, how can I implement some of these things in my day-to-day life?

Please join us for part two of this podcast.