Galatians 4 – The Listening Plan

Devotional

I am afraid for you, lest I have labored for you in vain.

– Galatians 4:11

How would one know if they’d labored in vain? If the outcome you’d planned for was not the outcome you’d achieved, then the labor expended might have been in vain.

Paul had labored to preach the simple Gospel of salvation by grace through faith. But some in the church at Galatia had strayed from the simplicity of the Gospel and were seeking to be righteous before God by their keeping of the Old Testament Law. That’s why his heavy words at the beginning of Chapter 3…

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified? This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?

– Galatians 3:1-3