Thematic Bible


Thematic Bible





You senseless Galatians! Who has bewitched you, when you had Jesus Christ shown crucified right before your eyes? This is all I want to ask you: Did you receive the Spirit through doing what the Law commands, or through believing the message you heard? Are you so senseless? Did you begin with the Spirit only to end now with the flesh?


and through his human nature put an end to the feud between us, and abolished the Law with its rules and regulations, in order to make peace and create out of the two parties one new man by uniting them with himself, Verse ConceptsNew ThingsLaws, AbolishedLaw, And GospelRitual LawRitualSalvation, Nature OfLaw, TemporaryAbolish, Evil ThingsAnnulmentTwo GroupsNew LifeChurch Distinct From IsraelMaking Peace With God


These men who are trying to force you to let yourselves be circumcised want to present a good appearance externally, to save themselves from having to stand persecution for the cross of Jesus the Christ. Verse ConceptsExclusivenessOutward AppearanceLiving For The MaterialNecessity Of CircumcisionOutward CompulsionSignificance Of Christ's CrucifixionPersecutionThe Crosstrying

But some members of the Pharisees' party who had become believers got up and said that such converts ought to be circumcised and told to obey the Law of Moses. The apostles and elders had a meeting to look into this matter. After a long discussion, Peter got up and said to them, "Brothers, you know that in the early days God chose that of you all I should be the one from whose lips the heathen should hear the message of the good news and believe it. read more.
And God who knows men's hearts testified for them by giving them the holy Spirit just as he had done to us, making no difference between us and them, but cleansing their hearts by faith. Then why do you now try to test God, by putting on the necks of these disciples a yoke that neither our forefathers nor we have been able to bear? Why, we believe that it is by the mercy of the Lord Jesus that we are saved just as they are." This quieted the whole meeting, and they listened while Barnabas and Paul told of the signs and wonders which God had done among the heathen through them. When they finished James made this response: "Brothers, listen to me. Symeon has told how God first showed an interest in taking from among the heathen a people to bear his name. And this agrees with the predictions of the prophets which say, " 'Afterward I will return, and rebuild David's fallen dwelling. I will rebuild its very ruins, and set it up again, So that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, And all the heathen who are called by my name, Says the Lord, who has been making this known from of old.' In my opinion, therefore, we ought not to put obstacles in the way of those of the heathen who are turning to God, but we should write to them to avoid anything that has been contaminated by idols, immorality, the meat of strangled animals, and the tasting of blood. For Moses for generations past has had his preachers in every town, and has been read aloud in the synagogues every Sabbath." Then the apostles and elders with the whole church resolved to select representatives and send them with Paul and Barnabas to Antioch. They were Judas who was called Barsabbas, and Silas, both leading men among the brothers. They were the bearers of this letter: "The apostles and the brothers who are elders send greeting to the brothers of heathen birth in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia. As we have heard that some of our number, without any instructions from us, have disturbed you by their teaching and unsettled your minds, we have unanimously resolved to select representatives and send them to you with our dear brothers Barnabas and Paul, who have risked their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. So we send Judas and Silas to you, to give you this same message by word of mouth. For the holy Spirit and we have decided not to lay upon you any burden but this indispensable one, that you avoid whatever has been sacrificed to idols, the tasting of blood and of the meat of animals that have been strangled, and immorality. Keep yourselves free from these things and you will get on well. Goodbye."

there is but one God, and he will make the circumcised upright on the ground of their faith and the uncircumcised upright because of theirs." Verse ConceptsCircumcision, spiritualMonotheismJustification Under The GospelGod Is OneNecessity Of CircumcisionRighteous By FaithThe Gospel To Jew And Gentile

Does this happiness apply to those who are circumcised, or to those who are uncircumcised as well? What we say is, Abraham's faith was credited to him as uprightness. In what circumstances? Was it after he was circumcised or before? Not after he was circumcised, but before; and he was afterward given the mark of circumcision as the stamp of God's acknowledgment of the uprightness based on faith that was his before he was circumcised, so that he should be the forefather of all who, without being circumcised, have faith and so are credited with uprightness,

If a man was circumcised when he was called, he must not try to alter it. If a man was uncircumcised when he was called, he must not have himself circumcised. Being circumcised or being uncircumcised does not make any difference; all that matters is keeping God's commands.

But they did not insist that even my companion Titus, although he was a Greek, should be circumcised, to gratify the false brothers who had been smuggled in, who sneaked in to spy upon the freedom we enjoy in Christ Jesus, so as to reduce us to slavery again.

Why, I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ can do nothing for you. I insist again to any man who lets himself be circumcised, that he is under obligation to obey the whole Law. You people who propose to be made upright by law have finished with Christ; you have lost your hold upon God's favor. read more.
But we, by the Spirit, through faith wait for the uprightness we hope for. For in union with Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor the want of it counts for anything, but only faith acting through love. You were making such progress! Who has stopped your obeying the truth? That kind of persuasion never came from him who called you! A little yeast will make all the dough rise. I am confident in the Lord that you will not take a different view. The man who is unsettling you will have to pay the penalty for it, no matter who he is. And I, brothers, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? If that is the case, the cross has ceased to be an obstacle, I suppose!

So remember that you were once physically heathen, and called uncircumcised by those who called themselves circumcised, though only physically, by human hands. Verse ConceptsCircumcision, physicalBodyLiving For The MaterialNecessity Of Circumcision

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Through your relation to him you have received not a physical circumcision, but a circumcision effected by Christ, in stripping you of your material nature, Verse ConceptsBeing Born AgainParticipation, In ChristRitualTypesNew Birth, Described AsForsaking SinGod Stripping PeopleLiving Not For The MaterialTrue CircumcisionRemoving People From Your Lifeefficiency


I insist again to any man who lets himself be circumcised, that he is under obligation to obey the whole Law. You people who propose to be made upright by law have finished with Christ; you have lost your hold upon God's favor.


But if it is by his mercy, it is not for anything they have done. Otherwise, his mercy would not be mercy at all. Verse ConceptsJustification Under The GospelSalvation Not By WorksSaving GraceSalvation, Boasting ImpossibleJustified By GraceWorks Of The LawGrace Verse LawGod's GraceDebt


You people who propose to be made upright by law have finished with Christ; you have lost your hold upon God's favor. But we, by the Spirit, through faith wait for the uprightness we hope for. For in union with Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor the want of it counts for anything, but only faith acting through love.








You people who propose to be made upright by law have finished with Christ; you have lost your hold upon God's favor. But we, by the Spirit, through faith wait for the uprightness we hope for. For in union with Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor the want of it counts for anything, but only faith acting through love.


Some people came down from Judea and began to teach the brothers that unless they were circumcised as Moses prescribed, they could not be saved. This created a disturbance and a serious discussion between Paul and Barnabas and them, and it was agreed that Paul and Barnabas and some others of their number should go up to Jerusalem to confer with the apostles and elders about this question. The church saw them off upon their journey, and as they traveled through Phoenicia and Samaria they told of the conversion of the heathen, and caused great rejoicing among all the brothers. read more.
When they reached Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church, the apostles, and the elders, and they reported how God had worked with them. But some members of the Pharisees' party who had become believers got up and said that such converts ought to be circumcised and told to obey the Law of Moses. The apostles and elders had a meeting to look into this matter. After a long discussion, Peter got up and said to them, "Brothers, you know that in the early days God chose that of you all I should be the one from whose lips the heathen should hear the message of the good news and believe it. And God who knows men's hearts testified for them by giving them the holy Spirit just as he had done to us, making no difference between us and them, but cleansing their hearts by faith. Then why do you now try to test God, by putting on the necks of these disciples a yoke that neither our forefathers nor we have been able to bear? Why, we believe that it is by the mercy of the Lord Jesus that we are saved just as they are." This quieted the whole meeting, and they listened while Barnabas and Paul told of the signs and wonders which God had done among the heathen through them. When they finished James made this response: "Brothers, listen to me. Symeon has told how God first showed an interest in taking from among the heathen a people to bear his name. And this agrees with the predictions of the prophets which say, " 'Afterward I will return, and rebuild David's fallen dwelling. I will rebuild its very ruins, and set it up again, So that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, And all the heathen who are called by my name, Says the Lord, who has been making this known from of old.' In my opinion, therefore, we ought not to put obstacles in the way of those of the heathen who are turning to God, but we should write to them to avoid anything that has been contaminated by idols, immorality, the meat of strangled animals, and the tasting of blood. For Moses for generations past has had his preachers in every town, and has been read aloud in the synagogues every Sabbath." Then the apostles and elders with the whole church resolved to select representatives and send them with Paul and Barnabas to Antioch. They were Judas who was called Barsabbas, and Silas, both leading men among the brothers. They were the bearers of this letter: "The apostles and the brothers who are elders send greeting to the brothers of heathen birth in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia. As we have heard that some of our number, without any instructions from us, have disturbed you by their teaching and unsettled your minds, we have unanimously resolved to select representatives and send them to you with our dear brothers Barnabas and Paul, who have risked their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. So we send Judas and Silas to you, to give you this same message by word of mouth. For the holy Spirit and we have decided not to lay upon you any burden but this indispensable one, that you avoid whatever has been sacrificed to idols, the tasting of blood and of the meat of animals that have been strangled, and immorality. Keep yourselves free from these things and you will get on well. Goodbye."


But if it is by his mercy, it is not for anything they have done. Otherwise, his mercy would not be mercy at all. Verse ConceptsJustification Under The GospelSalvation Not By WorksSaving GraceSalvation, Boasting ImpossibleJustified By GraceWorks Of The LawGrace Verse LawGod's GraceDebt

But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the good news, I said to Cephas, right before them all, "If you live like a heathen, and not like a Jew, though you are a Jew yourself, why should you try to make the heathen live like Jews?" We who are Jews by birth, and not sinful heathen, but who know that a man is not made upright by doing what the Law commands, but by faith in Christ Jesus??ven we believed in Christ Jesus, so as to be made upright by faith in Christ and not by doing what the Law commands??or by doing what the Law commands no one can be made upright. read more.
If through our efforts to be made upright through Christ, we have ourselves been proved as much "sinners" as the heathen, does that make Christ encourage sin? By no means. I really convict myself of wrongdoing when I start to rebuild what I tore down. For it is through the Law that I have become dead to the Law, so that I may live for God. I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I that live, but Christ that lives in me. The life I am now living in the body I am living by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I refuse to nullify the mercy of God. For if uprightness could be secured through law, then Christ died for nothing!

You people who propose to be made upright by law have finished with Christ; you have lost your hold upon God's favor. But we, by the Spirit, through faith wait for the uprightness we hope for. For in union with Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor the want of it counts for anything, but only faith acting through love.

This is the freedom with which Christ has freed us. So stand firm in it, and do not get under a yoke of slavery again. Why, I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ can do nothing for you. I insist again to any man who lets himself be circumcised, that he is under obligation to obey the whole Law. read more.
You people who propose to be made upright by law have finished with Christ; you have lost your hold upon God's favor. But we, by the Spirit, through faith wait for the uprightness we hope for. For in union with Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor the want of it counts for anything, but only faith acting through love. You were making such progress! Who has stopped your obeying the truth? That kind of persuasion never came from him who called you! A little yeast will make all the dough rise. I am confident in the Lord that you will not take a different view. The man who is unsettling you will have to pay the penalty for it, no matter who he is. And I, brothers, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? If that is the case, the cross has ceased to be an obstacle, I suppose! I wish the people who are upsetting you would go on, and have themselves emasculated! For you, brothers, have been called to freedom; only do not make your freedom an excuse for the physical, but in love be slaves to one another.

For I consider what we suffer now not to be compared with the glory that is to burst upon us. For creation is waiting with eager longing for the sons of God to be disclosed. For it was not the fault of creation that it was frustrated; it was by the will of him who condemned it to that, and in the hope read more.
that creation itself would be set free from its bondage to decay, and have the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that all creation has been groaning in agony together until now. More than that, we ourselves, though we have in the Spirit a foretaste of the future, groan to ourselves as we wait to be declared God's sons, through the redemption of our bodies.

This is the freedom with which Christ has freed us. So stand firm in it, and do not get under a yoke of slavery again. Why, I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ can do nothing for you. I insist again to any man who lets himself be circumcised, that he is under obligation to obey the whole Law. read more.
You people who propose to be made upright by law have finished with Christ; you have lost your hold upon God's favor. But we, by the Spirit, through faith wait for the uprightness we hope for. For in union with Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor the want of it counts for anything, but only faith acting through love.