This is week three of the  Blogged Bible Study. Each week I will be posting on Thursdays as mentioned previously and others will be posting other days of the week. You can read the other posts by connecting to the links in my blogroll. They are also found by going to Philter48.

Galatians 3:14 The Promise of the Spirit

The posts on the Blogged Bible Study this week have been so good and in depth.  I read and reread the passages and asked the Lord to show me what he would have me comment on this week.  After reading the passages and thinking about the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, the Promise given to Abraham, how righteousness cannot be achieved through the law by works but by the grace of God given to us as a gift when we believe and confess the name of  Jesus as Lord of our life, and that we who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.  I could elaborate on these so much more but what caught my eye was verse 14 which says:

Galatians 3:14  He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the spirit.

I did a little study in the end part of this verse when he talks about the promise of the spirit and this is what I found. The promise of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament as spoken by God through the prophet Ezekiel. Ezekiel 36:26 says, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove you from your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”   When we are born again and receive the Holy Spirit our heart becomes more pliable to the things of God. We receive teachable hearts, more compassionate hearts,  as a result of this hopefully.

 In John 14:16-17  Jesus said, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever, the Spirit of  Truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you .”  I must rely on this Spirit of Truth that lives inside of  me to be my Counselor and to reveal all truth to me. No Spirit, no truth. 

John 16:7-11  Jesus told the disciples this: “But I tell you the truth: it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me; in regard to righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and in regard to judgment, because the prince of this world  (Satan) now stands condemned. I especially see a lot of similarity in what Paul is talking about in Galatians  in John 16:7-11 regarding sin and righteousness and judgment and how it reinforces Paul’s words about righteousness cannot be obtained through the law. It’s all there in the red words of Jesus and it came to Paul also I believe by the Holy Spirit.  As I look back on my testimony I can definitely see the work of the Holy Spirit convicting me and showing me my need for redemption through the work done on the cross. Where in the Old Testament there had to be blood sacrifices for atonement (The Old Covenant)  in the New Testament we see Jesus being that blood sacrifice and the Holy Spirit coming at the request by Jesus from the Father as spoken by Jesus.

I don’t know about you but I know that without the Holy Spirit I would be trying to be  “good” and trying to live by the Law or maybe some other moral code.  It would be like what it says in Romans 10:3-4  “Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.”  And it is the Holy Spirit who enables us to believe.