Can't Earn the Spirit

GracePointe Church of Christ in Elizabethtown, PA

Paul focuses on the experience of the Galatians in a comparison between obeying the law of Moses and believing what they heard about Jesus…at the center of this is a question about what exactly prompted the powerful outpouring of the Spirit in the congregation. Paul knows it was the acceptance of the Gospel of Jesus and not the strict obedience to the Law. But this is what legalists try to do, they try to claim that it is strict obedience that gives you the right relationship with God, and it is like they are in a “bewitched” state in which the experience of the Spirit is somehow connected to their own exceptionalism. How do we balance our “human efforts” with the rest we receive in Christ?