¹ You stupid people in Galatia! After you have had a clear picture of Jesus Christ crucified, right in front of your eyes, who has put a spell on you?

² There is only one thing I should like you to tell me: How was it that you received the Spirit -- was it by the practice of the Law, or by believing in the message you heard?

³ Having begun in the Spirit, can you be so stupid as to end in the flesh?

⁴ Can all the favours you have received have had no effect at all -- if there really has been no effect?

⁵ Would you say, then, that he who so lavishly sends the Spirit to you, and causes the miracles among you, is doing this through your practice of the Law or because you believed the message you heard?

⁶ Abraham, you remember, put his faith in God, and this was reckoned to him as uprightness.

⁷ Be sure, then, that it is people of faith who are the children of Abraham.

⁸ And it was because scripture foresaw that God would give saving justice to the gentiles through faith, that it announced the future gospel to Abraham in the words: All nations will be blessed in you.

⁹ So it is people of faith who receive the same blessing as Abraham, the man of faith.

¹⁰ On the other hand, all those who depend on the works of the Law are under a curse, since scripture says: Accursed be he who does not make what is written in the book of the Law effective, by putting it into practice.

¹¹ Now it is obvious that nobody is reckoned as upright in God's sight by the Law, since the upright will live through faith;

¹² and the Law is based not on faith but on the principle, whoever complies with it will find life in it.

¹³ Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law by being cursed for our sake since scripture says: Anyone hanged is accursed,

¹⁴ so that the blessing of Abraham might come to the gentiles in Christ Jesus, and so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.

¹⁵ To put it in human terms, my brothers: even when a will is only a human one, once it has been ratified nobody can cancel it or add more provisions to it.

¹⁶ Now the promises were addressed to Abraham and to his progeny. The words were not and to his progenies in the plural, but in the singular; and to your progeny, which means Christ.

¹⁷ What I am saying is this: once a will had been long ago ratified by God, the Law, coming four hundred and thirty years later, could not abolish it and so nullify its promise.

¹⁸ You see, if the inheritance comes by the Law, it no longer comes through a promise; but it was by a promise that God made his gift to Abraham.

¹⁹ Then what is the purpose of the Law? It was added to deal with crimes until the 'progeny' to whom the promise had been made should come; and it was promulgated through angels, by the agency of an intermediary.

²⁰ Now there can be an intermediary only between two parties, yet God is one.

²¹ Is the Law contrary, then, to God's promises? Out of the question! If the Law that was given had been capable of giving life, then certainly saving justice would have come from the Law.

²² As it is, scripture makes no exception when it says that sin is master everywhere; so the promise can be given only by faith in Jesus Christ to those who have this faith.

²³ But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the Law, locked up to wait for the faith which would eventually be revealed to us.

²⁴ So the Law was serving as a slave to look after us, to lead us to Christ, so that we could be justified by faith.

²⁵ But now that faith has come we are no longer under a slave looking after us;

²⁶ for all of you are the children of God, through faith, in Christ Jesus,

²⁷ since every one of you that has been baptised has been clothed in Christ.

²⁸ There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither slave nor freeman, there can be neither male nor female -- for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

²⁹ And simply by being Christ's, you are that progeny of Abraham, the heirs named in the promise.

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The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) is a Catholic translation of the Bible published in 1985. The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) has become the most widely used Roman Catholic Bible outside of the United States. It has the imprimatur of Cardinal George Basil Hume.

Like its predecessor, the Jerusalem Bible, the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) version is translated "directly from the Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic." The 1973 French translation, the Bible de Jerusalem, is followed only "where the text admits to more than one interpretation." Introductions and notes, with some modifications, are taken from the Bible de Jerusalem.

Source: The Very Reverend Dom (Joseph) Henry Wansbrough, OSB, MA (Oxon), STL (Fribourg), LSS (Rome), a monk of Ampleforth Abbey and a biblical scholar. He was General Editor of the New Jerusalem Bible. "New Jerusalem Bible, Regular Edition", pg. v.

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