—Galatians 3.1–9—

¹ You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. ² I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? ³ Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by human effort? ⁴ Have you experienced so much in vain—if it really was in vain? ⁵ Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by your observing the law, or by your believing what you heard? ⁶ So also Abraham "believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness."

⁷ Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham. ⁸ Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: "All nations will be blessed through you." ⁹ So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

The beginning of Galatians three talks about the fact that works aren’t enough, you have to have faith. As is the case today, many of the people were trying to earn their way into heaven and that just isn’t possible.

Of course actions are important to, as James 2:26 says, “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.” It is impossible to have faith without deeds, but what Paul is saying is that you can have deeds without faith.

We like the Galatians sometimes need to be reminded that the deeds are only important if we have the faith to back it up, because we are saved through faith. It is also much harder to strengthen your faith that your deeds. Faith requires a long-term commitment to wanting to know and follow God’s plan and there are several ways that we can do this. Reading, memorizing and meditating over God’s word is a great way to see His faithfulness and begin to build up more trust in Him. The biggest thing you can do is to pray, how can you have a relationship without communication? God is always there and he loves to talk to you.