Lesson 10: Keeping the Right Focus
Read Galatians 3:1-29 - www.bible.com/bible/59/gal.3
1 O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.
2 Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?
3 Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?
4 Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain?
5 Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith— race,
6 just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”?

It is sometimes very easy for us to lose focus from what is most important in life. For example, we may focus on our financial well-being when we have lost our job, and we start begging God for another job. But our focus should be on Jesus who calls Himself our Provider.


Our verses today are a call back to Truth when we have lost our focus. In the Galatian church, someone had come in to tell the people they were following only a part of what Jesus had given to be obeyed – they were told they had to follow all the rules of the Law to be saved.

We need to first understand the basics of our Christian salvation, and then also understand the basics of our Christian life. Salvation comes only by God’s grace as we choose to believe Him and accept what He offers us in forgiveness and hope and eternal life. Nothing we can do can ever be good enough to move us one inch closer to God. The Bible says all our good works (righteousness) are like filthy rags compared to what Jesus offers us in His robe of righteousness (Isaiah 64:6).

If then, having been saved by His grace, do we think we can continue to live the Christian life by our own efforts? This is the question in Verse 3.

Paul’s answer to his own question is amazing and important. In Verse 4 he talks about our sufferings, wondering if they have been in vain. What do our sufferings have to do with our Christian lives and keeping us saved? Everything! Our suffering has the effect in our life of stripping away the things we trust in (health, money, job, ability, pride, and so on) until we learn to depend entirely on God. Our own abilities with which we have been born are of absolutely no good to God until we take our hands and our ownership of those abilities away, and give God complete control over them.

It is not we who can work miracles to help others accept Jesus. Every miracle done is accomplished by God alone. He may choose to work through us, but the power for it is always God’s.

*Which of your abilities have you not yet given to God to use for His kingdom? Release it to Him today.