Study Desk

For we cannot act against the truth, only for it.

So we rejoice whenever we are weak and you are strong; indeed, what we pray for is that you become perfect.

I write these things while away from you, so that when I am with you I will not have to use my authority to deal sharply with you, for the Lord gave it to me for building up and not for tearing down.

who gave himself for our sins, so that he might deliver us from the present evil world-system, in obedience to the will of God, our Father.

But even if we — or, for that matter, an angel from heaven! — were to announce to you some so-called "Good News" contrary to the Good News we did announce to you, let him be under a curse forever!

For you have heard about my former way of life in [traditional] Judaism — how I did my best to persecute God's Messianic Community and destroy it;

and how, since I was more of a zealot for the traditions handed down by my forefathers than most Jews my age, I advanced in [traditional] Judaism more rapidly than they did.

Not until three years later did I go up to Yerushalayim to make Kefa's acquaintance, and I stayed with him for two weeks,

and they praised God for me.

Not even for a minute did we give in to them, so that the truth of the Good News might be preserved for you.

On the contrary, they saw that I had been entrusted with the Good News for the Uncircumcised, just as Kefa had been for the Circumcised;

For prior to the arrival of certain people from [the community headed by] Ya‘akov, he had been eating with the Gentile believers; but when they came, he withdrew and separated himself, because he was afraid of the faction who favored circumcising Gentile believers.

even so, we have come to realize that a person is not declared righteous by God on the ground of his legalistic observance of Torah commands, but through the Messiah Yeshua's trusting faithfulness. Therefore, we too have put our trust in Messiah Yeshua and become faithful to him, in order that we might be declared righteous on the ground of the Messiah's trusting faithfulness and not on the ground of our legalistic observance of Torah commands. For on the ground of legalistic observance of Torah commands, no one will be declared righteous .

For it was through letting the Torah speak for itself that I died to its traditional legalistic misinterpretation, so that I might live in direct relationship with God.

When the Messiah was executed on the stake as a criminal, I was too; so that my proud ego no longer lives. But the Messiah lives in me, and the life I now live in my body I live by the same trusting faithfulness that the Son of God had, who loved me and gave himself up for me.

I do not reject God's gracious gift; for if the way in which one attains righteousness is through legalism, then the Messiah's death was pointless.

Have you suffered so much for nothing? If that's the way you think, your suffering certainly will have been for nothing!

For everyone who depends on legalistic observance of Torah commands lives under a curse, since it is written, "Cursed is everyone who does not keep on doing everything written in the Scroll of the Torah."

The Messiah redeemed us from the curse pronounced in the Torah by becoming cursed on our behalf; for the Tanakh says, "Everyone who hangs from a stake comes under a curse."

For if the inheritance comes from the legal part of the Torah, it no longer comes from a promise. But God gave it to Avraham through a promise.