God gives his Spirit to those who believe in Jesus
1 You Christians in Galatia are foolish! Someone has taught you to believe crazy ideas! I taught you clearly that Jesus Christ died on the cross as a sacrifice on our behalf. You understood that. 2 I only want you to tell me one thing: When you received God's Spirit, was it because you had obeyed the rules of God's Law? No! You received God's Spirit because you believed the message about Christ. 3 Do not think like fools! You first became believers by the help of God's Spirit. So do not think that you can use your own human strength to complete God's work. 4 You have suffered in many ways as believers. Surely this could not be without any good purpose.
5 God gives you the gift of his Spirit. He also does powerful miracles among you. But he does not do these things because you obey the rules of his Law. No, he does them because you believed the message about Christ.
6 Think about our ancestor Abraham. The Bible says, ‘Abraham believed God. As a result, God accepted Abraham as right with him’. 7 So you should understand who Abraham's children really are. They are the people who trust God.
3:6Abraham was the first ancestor of the Israelite nation. He was the father of Isaac and the grandfather of Jacob.
8 The Bible already said what would happen at a future time. It said that God would make the Gentiles right with himself, if they believed in him. God showed this good news to Abraham a long time before it happened. He said to Abraham, ‘I will bless people from all nations because of you.’ 9 So God did not bless only Abraham when he trusted God. God also blesses all people who trust him as Abraham did.
10 Some people try to obey all the rules of God's Law. They think that they will become right with God if they do this very well. But those people are under a curse of God's punishment. It is written in the Bible: ‘God will curse anyone who does not continue to obey all the rules in his Law.’ 11 We know that the Law cannot cause anyone to become right with God. The Bible says, ‘The righteous person will live because he trusts God.’ 12 But the Law does not tell people to trust God. It tells people about all the things that they must do. The Law says, ‘The person who obeys all the rules in God's Law will live’.
13 So God's Law puts us under a curse, because we have not completely obeyed it. But Christ took that curse away from us, because God punished him instead of us. The Bible says, ‘If someone's body is hanging on a tree, it shows that God has cursed him.’ 14 Christ died on the cross so that God would bless the Gentiles, as he promised to Abraham. And if we believe in Christ, we can receive God's Spirit that he promised.
