We understand St. Paul’s “Letter to The Galatians” more clearly by realizing that the ‘Galatians’ were ‘Gauls‘. They came into central Turkey after seizing much of Europe when they were known as “Celts”.
The “Gauls” were among the Celtic Tribes who ruled much of Europe over a thousand before Christ. Modern History often ignores Kings Brennus and Belinus who ruled in England, Wales, and France. Many Gaulish people followed the enlightened Momutine Laws that gave civil rights to all, with a “right to public maintenance” for “babies, the old, and foreigners who cannot speak The British Language”. Their culture strengthened them long before they built up the power to sack Rome in 390 BC. Eastern Gauls learned the best military tactics from Alexander the Great when they helped him wage war against the Thracians North of Greece in 335 BC.
Strabo’s “Geography” (7.3.8) was written when Jesus was on earth. He tells us many Celts who lived around the Adriatic Sea joined Alexander the Great, 300 years before Jesus. They were “received kindly by him” and he was startled to learn they “feared no one, unless it were that Heaven may fall on them’, though they did put above everything the friendship of such a man as he.”
Aristotle, the tutor of Alexander, did not think much of Celts, saying: “The Celts take arms and march against the waves because the courage of barbarians has an element of passion”. He said that while ignoring his own “passion for self-superiority” that drove him to demean those about whom he and others overcome by Grecian vanity felt superior.
Other Greeks had a better reason to hate the Gaulish Celts: an army of them tried to loot their Temple at Delphi. When Greek women stoned them, the Gauls changed their minds about attacking Greece.
After the Gauls reversed direction, they decided to invade and capture the part of central Turkey that came to be named after them: Galatia. After that success, they kept changing their minds. They fought with and against both Mithradates and Rome. They were so successful in adopting Roman leadership that many became Roman slave-traders. When St. Paul arrived in Galatia, he led many Gauls to become some of The World’s First Catholics.
After St. Paul founded Catholic Churches in Galatia, he learned how quickly Gauls would change their minds. He wrote The Bible’s most insulting letter to any group encouraging them to change their minds again, return to The Church he left them in Galatia, and “Be Catholic”.
God authorized St. Paul to preach in Galatia and moved him to write The Book of Galatians. His mission was confirmed by The First Pope. By 404, Pope Damasus had St. Jerome include The Book of Galatians in The Bible. It is still a lesson to every Catholic tempted to “change their minds” about being Catholic.
~
The Book of Galatians:
Chapter I
1. From Paul, an apostle appointed not by human beings nor through any human being but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead, (Paul is telling the Galatians that he was “Personally appointed by Jesus Christ and God the Father, naming Two Persons of The Holy Trinity and unspokenly recognizing that he had been moved to Galatia by The Holy Spirit.)
2. and all the brothers who are with me, to the churches of Galatia. (His fellow Disciples agree with what St. Paul is writing “to the (Catholic) churches” he brought to life in Galatia to live by God’s Word.)
3. Grace and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ
4. Who gave Himself for our sins to liberate us from this present wicked world, in accordance with the will of our God and Father,
5. to Whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
Willful Protestant Warning #1:
6. I am astonished that you are so promptly turning away from the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are going over to a different gospel (The mental inconsistency of the Galatians that led them to be for and against Mithradates, Rome, and other groups re-surfaced when they turned against the Catholic Teaching they initially embraced. Some Catholics intelligently wonder if later lapsed Catholics, like Luther, Calvin, and Knox suffered from what may have been a genetic flaw by being descended from surviving Tribes of Gauls in their lands.) 7. not that it is another gospel; except that there are trouble-makers among you who are seeking to pervert the gospel of Christ. (We see that every encouragement to ‘pervert the Gospel of Christ’ comes from “troublemakers”. (We St. Paul’s apply Warnings to Willful Protestants in every Age, including ours, about “troublemakers”.)
Willful Protestant Warning #2:
8. But even if we ourselves or an angel from heaven preach to you a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let God’s curse be on him. (This Verse lets us see that everyone who tries to teach any “perversion” of Catholic Teaching has St. Paul asking God to let “God’s curse” be upon them. That should frighten anyone who recognizes God’s Love for St. Paul.)
Willful Protestant Warning #3:
9. I repeat again what we declared before: anyone who preaches to you a gospel other than the one you were first given is to be under God’s curse. (May every Victim of Protestantism be blessed to think logically about that “double curse” that St. Paul pleads with God to fall upon those who unrepentantly provide alternatives to Catholic Teaching! Every time one of us is led to follow “another gospel”, we may increase the “curse” that will fall on those who led us astray.)
10. Whom am I trying to convince now, human beings or God? Am I trying to please human beings? If I were still doing that I should not be a servant of Christ. (Will we try to obey God, or will we refuse to be a “servant of Christ”, by teaching confusion to Catholic Belief, and risk being eternally among the “twice-cursed” people upon whose souls St. Paul asked God to provide at their Judgment?)
Willful Protestant Warning #4:
11. Now I want to make it quite clear to you, brothers, about the gospel that was preached by me, that it was no human message.
12. It was not from any human being that I received it, and I was not taught it, but it came to me through a revelation of Jesus Christ. (St. Paul is reminding those who initially followed his teachings to “Stay Catholic” because his teachings were a “revelation” directly to them from Jesus to St. Paul to them.”)
Forgiveness for repentant Willful Protestants, including St. Paul!
13. You have surely heard how I lived in the past, within Judaism, and how there was simply no limit to the way I persecuted the Church of God in my attempts to destroy it;
14. and how, in Judaism, I outstripped most of my Jewish contemporaries in my limitless enthusiasm for the traditions of my ancestors. (St. Paul reminds them that he was widely famed for persecuting The First Catholics.)
15. But when God, who had set me apart from the time when I was in my mother’s womb, called me through his grace and chose (St. Paul is telling us that He was made Catholic when the DNA molecules knit together in his ‘mother’s womb’ blessed him with a mind that could receive and live The Word of God.)
16. to reveal his Son in me, so that I should preach him to the Gentiles, I was in no hurry to
confer with any human being, (St. Paul was led to deal directly with The God Who told him to “Be Catholic”. So, he did not: 17. . . go up to Jerusalem to see those who were already apostles before me. Instead, I went off to Arabia, and later I came back to Damascus. (At that time, “Arabia”, lands ruled by the sons of Ishmael, extended Northwards to the East of Palestine in the Arabian Kingdom of Nabatea.)
18. Only after three years did I go up to Jerusalem to meet Cephas. I stayed fifteen days with him (Two
“Miracles” happened! St. Paul studied The Prophets and the Old Testament for three years, about as much time as Peter and the “Apostles to The Circumcised” studied with Jesus. He compared The Only Testament of The Time with what he learned from God’s “revelation” about Jesus and The Church. He did not seek guidance from other early Catholics, including The Twelve Catholic Bishops who reported to Peter, The First Catholic Pope to whom Jesus specifically spoke His Church-Creating Word in Mt. 16:18-20: “And I say unto you thou art Peter and on this rock I build My Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I give you the keys to The Kingdom of Heaven.”
The First“Miracle”? St. Paul showed that one could become a good and faithful Catholic without Jesus doing more than showing His Light! The Second “Miracle” was that as soon as Saul became a Catholic, he went to Peter to be sure he was not in any disagreement with The Catholic Church. Unlike later Protestants, St. Paul did not invent his own Marketing Plan and build a new denomination upon it that argued with Any Catholic Teaching. What a “Miraculous” lesson for every inventive Profiteer of Protestantism!
After St. Paul had confirmed The Truth of Catholic Teaching for himself, he spent 15 days with Peter and only saw one other Apostle, James. The rest, we may assume, were already spreading Catholic Teaching in the Catholic parishes and Dioceses they created in the vast area between India and England.)
19. but did not set eyes on any of the rest of the apostles, only James, the Lord’s brother.
20. I swear before God that what I have written is the truth. (St. Paul knows better than anyone that he is condemning his immortal soul if he is bearing false witness!)
21. After that I went to places in Syria and Cilicia;
22. and was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judaea which are in Christ, (Paul is confirming that those Churches were Catholic.)
23. they simply kept hearing it and said, ‘The man once so eager to persecute us is now preaching the faith that he used to try to destroy,’
24. and they gave glory to God for me. (May “glory be given” to God for everyone who respects Every Word of Jesus enough to avoid the “curse” of willful disobedience, be In His Church, and receive “the keys to The Kingdom of Heaven”.
~
A “New Idea” about “An Over-l00ked Miracle of Papal Power” may connect Chapter 1 and Chapter 2:
In the fifteen days St. Paul spent with The First Pope, did St. Peter ordain him as a Catholic priest and Cardinal-Bishop? We know that St. Paul spent the next years establishing parishes and Dioceses of many Catholic Churches for the next 14 years. Those Catholic Churches were led by Ordained priests who provided The Seven Catholic Sacraments, including Communion and Absolution. They can only be provided by Ordained Catholic priests to early Catholics throughout and beyond The Roman Empire.
Could those Catholic priests and Bishops in the vast areas of Syria and Cilicia have been Ordained if St. Peter, The First Pope, had not personally Ordained St. Paul with the same Hierarchical Authority that the other Disciples had been given to Ordain priests and Bishops to form Catholic Churches and Dioceses between India and the Western fringes of Europe and North Africa?
Chapter 2
1. It was not until fourteen years (spent reviewing Every Prophecy and tradition about The Messiah, converting many early Catholics, and leaving Catholic priests and Bishops to serve them)) had gone by that I traveled up to Jerusalem again, with Barnabas, and I took Titus with me too.
2. My journey was inspired by a revelation (God ‘revealed’ to Paul that he must be sure all his teachings were in accord with those of The First Pope and his Cardinal-Bishops who were founding Catholic Parishes and Dioceses throughout and beyond The Roman Empire and that their teachings must be in accord with St. Paul’s.) and there, in a private session with the recognized leaders, I expounded the whole gospel that I preach to the Gentiles, to make quite sure that the efforts I was making and had already made should not be fruitless. (Therefore, the Ordinations he had performed were validated by that early Church Council.)
3. Even then, and although Titus, a Greek, was with me, there was no demand that he should be circumcised;
4. but because of some false brothers who had secretly insinuated themselves to spy on the freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, intending to reduce us to slavery (Those who argue with Catholic Teaching do so for the same reason: “to reduce us to slavery” to their personally profitable lies and laws. They often “insinuate” themselves near The Church, and in this case, they made an effort to find that Titus was not circumcised.) 5. people we did not defer to for one moment, or The Truth of The Gospel preached to you might have been compromised. . .
6. but those who were recognized as important people — whether they actually were important or not is questionable: There is no favoritism with God — those recognized leaders, I am saying, had nothing to add to my message. (Saints Peter, James, John, and the others could find nothing to “add” to St. Paul’s teachings.)
7. On the contrary, once they saw that The Gospel for the uncircumcised had been entrusted to me, just as to Peter the gospel for the circumcised, 8. for He who empowered Peter’s apostolate to the circumcision also empowered mine to the Gentiles,
9. and when they acknowledged the grace that had been given to me, then James and Cephas and John, who were the ones recognized as pillars, offered their right hands to Barnabas and to me as a sign of partnership: we were to go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.
10. They asked nothing more than that we should remember to help the poor, as indeed I was anxious to do in any case. (Both groups of Catholic Evangelists shared the same message to both Jewish and Gentile people.)
11. However, when Cephas came to Antioch, then I did oppose him to his face since he was manifestly in the wrong.
12. Before certain friends of James arrived, he used to eat with Gentiles; but as soon as these came, he backed out and kept apart from them, out of fear of the circumcised. (Those who were “circumcised” were claiming special favoritism from God that put them “above” the Gentile Catholics. Peter was appearing to countenance letting Faith in Jesus be pulled down to the level of the status-seeking “circumcised”.)
13. And the rest of the Jews put on the same act as he did, so that even Barnabas was carried away by their insincerity. (Some of those who had been circumcised thought they were superior to uncircumcised Gentiles. In every age, Willful Protestants value self-serving beliefs and personal opinions more than our Catholic Faith in Jesus. St. Paul knew The Early Church Hierarchy must teach and practice that “No earthly concern is as Important as The Faith in Jesus taught by our One, Holy, and Apostolic Church” which would soon be known as “Catholic!” Those who believed in “The Superiority of the Circumcised” were similar to Catholics who join anti-Catholic groups like the Freemasons in later times.)
14. When I saw, though, that their behavior was not true to The Gospel, I said to Cephas in front of all of them, ‘Since you, though you are a Jew, live like the Gentiles (by not eating with those who eat what the Jews called ‘unclean food’ and were, thereby, ‘unclean’) and not like the Jews, how can you compel the gentiles to live like the Jews?’
A “New Idea?” Only Catholics realize that Peter may have privately asked Paul to publicly criticize the favoritism he and other Catholic Bishops seemed to be showing for the circumcised Jewish believers. It may have been at Peter’s request that St. Paul provided Peter and his circumcised Bishops with a public reason to stop showing apparent preference to:
15. We who were born Jews and not Gentile sinners
16. have nevertheless learned that someone is reckoned as upright not by practicing the Law but by faith in Jesus Christ; and we too came to believe in Christ Jesus to be reckoned as upright by faith in Christ and not by practicing the Law: since no human being can be found upright by keeping the Law. (This was a complete condemnation of using Old Testament Law as a way to Heaven after “Faith in Jesus” had replaced Old Testament Laws as God’s Way to Heaven.)
17. Now if we too are found to be sinners on the grounds that we seek our justification in Christ, it would surely follow that Christ was at the service of sin. Out of the question! (St. Paul exposes the lunacy of making obedience to old laws more important than Faith in Jesus.)
18. If I now rebuild everything I once demolished, I prove that I was wrong before. (He cannot return to believing that following tradition is as important as Faith in Jesus.)
19. In fact, through the Law I am dead to the Law so that I can be alive to God. I have been crucified with Christ
20. and yet I am alive; yet it is no longer I, but Christ living in me. (This is a validation of The Call to Catholic Communion that Jesus repeated 14 times: “If you do not eat My Body and drink My Blood you do not have life in you.”) The life that I am now living, subject to the limitation of human nature, I am living in faith, faith in the Son of God Who loved me and gave Himself for me.
21. I am not setting aside God’s grace as of no value; it is merely that if saving justice comes through the Law, Christ died needlessly. (No one could argue with that!)
Chapter 3 begins with an insult!
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? (This Chapter begins with something unusual: St. Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, is identifying and insulting one group of people he wants to save, and not just in Galatia! He is writing to every Lapsed Catholic on earth for the past 2,000 years and tells us they have had “a spell put” on them!)
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? (For the second time, the word “stupid”, used only 19 times in the entire Bible, is chosen to describe people and groups who focus on earthly concerns instead of the far more important Soul-Saving Faith that leads to obeying Every Word of Jesus!)
4. Can all the favors 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? (They are “stupid” for thinking God would ever contradict His Word the way Willful Protestants do.)
6. Abraham, you remember, put his faith in God, and this was reckoned to him as uprightness. (The opposite of “uprightness” is “downwrongness”, which is chosen by all who think obeying laws is more important than living by “faith in Jesus”, The Prophesied Messiah.)
7. Be sure, then, that it is people of faith (Catholic Jews and Gentiles) 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.” (It was not until Jesus came that “all nations could be blessed in’ Abraham.“) 9. So it is people of faith who receive the same blessing as Abraham, the man of faith. (Those with faithful obedience to God have “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, (The word “all” is a universal condemnation of those who refuse to make ‘faith in God’, The Prophesies, and He Whom they predicted The Paramount Principle of their life.) 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.’ (And, “all” are, again, “cursed”. Many people hate those who are not “cursed” because their lives are reminders that the souls of “law-worshipers” cannot get into Heaven. We understand from previous Verses that being “cursed” two times is the result of “stupidity” that takes the form of refusing to have “faith” in He Who Fulfilled The Prophecies.)
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 that whoever complies with it will find life in it. (Those who do not base their life on “faith” are denied The Body and Blood of Jesus Christ in Catholic Communion for choosing to not have “life in them”.)
13. Christ ransomed us from the curse of the Law by being cursed for our sake since Scripture says: Anyone hanged is accursed, (Jesus let Himself be “hanged” on the cross to let all those who believed “law” is more important than “faith” could be proud to “look upon He Whom they pierced”.)
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 (of God!) 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, (430 years is the time the Twelve Tribes spent in Egypt before God gave The Ten Commandments of His Will) 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. (Catholics understand that laws let something closer to “Good Order” be provided before being replaced by Faith in Jesus.)
20. Now there can be an intermediary only between two parties, yet God is one. (This is a clear reference to The Three in One of The Holy Trinity as described by The Church against Whom “the gates of hell shall not prevail”.)
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.
The purpose of The Law is made clear in the next seven verses:
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 who has been Baptized 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. (The “heirs” have become “progeny of Abraham” by having photons, electrons, atoms, and molecules in their souls and minds aligned with Abraham’s similar “Structure of Obedience to God”, beginning with The Sacrament of Baptism to be similar children of God.)
Chapter 4: God rewrites His Will to replace “Old Beneficiaries” with “New Beneficiaries”.
1. What I am saying is this: an heir, during the time while he is still under age, is no different from a slave, even though he is the owner of all the property; (St. Paul gives us legal rulings that prevail in most nations.)
2. he is under the control of guardians and administrators until the time fixed by his father. (The parent or person providing the inheritance decides at what age a child may take possession of properties that are being left to them.)
3. So too with us, as long as we were still under age, we were enslaved to the elemental principles of this world; (Everyone who is not yet blessed to be Catholic is still “enslaved to the elemental principles of this world”, a fact that many resent too much to consider. Vanity always makes the vain and arrogant hate those who adopt a Higher Principle than they want to accept.)
4. but when the completion of the time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born a subject of the Law,
5. to redeem the subjects of the Law, so that we could receive adoption as sons. (As soon as we are Catholic, we become “the children of God” and “the heirs of The Kingdom”.)
6. As you are sons, God has sent into our hearts the Spirit of his Son crying, ‘Abba, Father’;
7. and so you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir, by God’s own act. (It is only Faith in Jesus that lets us be “an heir by God’s own act”.)
8. But formerly when you did not know God, you were kept in slavery to things which are not really gods at all,
9. whereas now that you have come to recognize God — or rather, be recognized by God — (That ‘rather be’ is an important insight!) how can you now turn back again to those powerless and bankrupt elements whose slaves you now want to be all over again? 10. You are keeping special days, and months, and seasons, and years (replacing Faith with Obedience to Laws) 11. I am beginning to be afraid that I may, after all, have wasted my efforts on you. (As St. Paul realizes how far the Galatians have fallen back into self-serving error, he begins to lose hope!)
12. I urge you, brothers, to be like me, as I have become like you. You have never been unfair to me; (St. Paul did not “lose hope”, but kept trying to explain the simple facts to them. May we all be as patient and committed to God and love others enough to encourage them to be “heirs of God”!)
13. indeed you remember that it was an illness that first gave me the opportunity to preach the gospel to you,
14. but though my illness was a trial to you, you did not show any distaste or revulsion; instead, you welcomed me as a messenger of God, as if I were Christ Jesus himself. (An illness like leprosy or visible cancers would have caused “distaste or revulsion”. So would disfiguring injuries inflicted on him by establishment profiteers with scourges, whips, and clubs.)
15. What has happened to the utter contentment you had then? For I can testify to you that you would have plucked your eyes out, were that possible, and given them to me.
16. Then have I turned into your enemy simply by being truthful with you? (The enemies of God had time to work on changing those changeable Gaulish minds after Paul recovered and left Galatia. It was easy for Profiteers of Protestantism to replace belief in Jesus with disbelief because the entire world was on their side.)
17. Their devotion to you has no praiseworthy motive; they simply want to cut you off from me, so that you may center your devotion on them. (The foundation of every anti-Catholic thought is willful disobedience to The First Commandment, “You shall have no other gods before Me.” The Profiteers of Every Kind of Protestantism, even those who do not recognize The Existence of God, are focused on getting supporters for every kind of pride, envy, greed, gluttony, anger, lust, and sloth.)
18. Devotion to a praiseworthy cause is praiseworthy at any time, not only when I am there with you. (Our salvation depends on being among “You are My friends if you obey My commands.” even when no Catholics are there to help us stay Faithful to He Who Fulfilled The Prophecies.) 19. My children, I am going through the pain of giving birth to you all over again, until Christ is formed in you;
20. and how I wish I could be there with you at this moment and find the right way of talking to you: I am quite at a loss with you.
21. Tell me then, you are so eager to be subject to the Law, have you listened to what the Law says?
When St. Paul runs out of arguments, he turns to Mary for help!
22. Scripture says that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave girl and one by the freewoman.
23.The son of the slave girl came to be born in the way of human nature; but the son of the freewoman came to be born through a promise. (The Immaculate Conception of Mary made her “The Freewoman”, the only woman in Creation who was “free” from Original Sin!)
24. There is an allegory here: these women stand for the two covenants. The one given on Mount Sinai — that is Hagar, whose children are born into slavery;
25. now Sinai is a mountain in Arabia and represents Jerusalem in its present state, for she is in slavery together with her children. (The “present state of Jerusalem” was a place confused by Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, Herodians, Edomites, Romans, and traders worldwide. Few were blessed to believe in He Whom they “lifted up before men” so those who hated Him could congratulate themselves when they would “look upon He Whom they pierced.”)
26. But the Jerusalem above is free, and that is the one that is our mother; (This is why Catholics are the only people on earth blessed with These Words in The Holy Rosary: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.” May all Willful Protestants be blessed to realize The Programming Power of God allows Him to have a truly “freewoman” come to earth who is “free from original sin by Her Immaculate Conception” and choose to let herself be chosen to be “The Mother of God”, bringing The Soul-Saving Second Person of The Holy Trinity to earth in Human Form! That lets us conclude our prayer: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen!) 27. as scripture says: Shout for joy, you barren woman who has borne no children! Break into shouts of joy, you who were never in labor. For the sons of the forsaken one are more in number than the sons of the wedded wife.
28. Now you, brothers, are like Isaac, children of the promise;
29. just as at that time, the child born in the way of human nature persecuted the child born through the Spirit, so now.
30. But what is it that Scripture says? Drive away that slave girl and her son; the slave girl’s son is not to share the inheritance with the son of the freewoman. (For Heaven’s Sake, “Be Catholic” so we “inherit” God’s Blessings instead of the “curses” St. Paul asks twice to be visited upon those he identifies as willfully “stupid” two times!) 31. So, brothers, we are the children not of the slave girl but of the freewoman. (May all be blessed to not be too “stupid” to understand that Every Word of God takes form in St. Paul’s Teachings to those “cursed” with being “disinherited” from God’s “keys to The Kingdom of Heaven” that Jesus died to leave to “the children of God”.)
Chapter 5
1. Christ set us free, so that we should remain free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be fastened again to the yoke of slavery. (Christ did not “set us free” because He wanted us to return to any kind of “slavery”. He wants us to “remain free” so that we may go to His Judgment and find ourselves among the people He promises are in Heaven: “You are My friends if you obey My commands. (John 15:14)“ Willful, unrepentant disobedience will not let us be among them.)
2. I, Paul, give you my word that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you at all. (We do not “benefit” by putting any human teaching “before” Faith in Jesus.)
3. I give my assurance once again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is under obligation to keep the whole Law; (If we put ourselves under obligation to obey One of the Old Laws, we are obligated to obey all of them, and will be distracted from The Faith in Jesus that is our only Hope of Heaven.)
4. once you seek to be reckoned as upright through the Law, then you have separated yourself from Christ, you have fallen away from grace. (God’s “grace” takes earthly form in Faith in Jesus with nothing between us and Him.)
5. We are led by the Spirit to wait in the confident hope of saving justice through faith,
6. since in Christ Jesus it is not being circumcised or being uncircumcised that can effect anything — only faith working through love.
7. You began your race well; who came to obstruct you and stop you obeying the truth? (Who but the demons of evil like those within the “certain friends of James” above in Gal. 2:12 would want you to stop“obeying The Truth”?) 8. It was certainly not any prompting from Him who called you! (Jesus does not want anyone to commit any sin because:
9. A pinch of yeast ferments the whole batch.
10. But I feel sure that, united in the Lord, you will not be led astray, and that anyone who makes trouble with you will be condemned, no matter who he is. (As long as we stay “united in The Lord” we maintain our Faith in Jesus and may be saved.) 11. And I, brothers — if I were still preaching circumcision, why should I still be persecuted? For then the obstacle which is the cross would have no point any more. (And, every enemy of Jesus would rejoice!)
12. I could wish that those who are unsettling you would go further and mutilate themselves. (Actually, they have already “mutilated” their souls by willfully choosing to reject “Faith” in He Who Fulfilled The Prophecies they choose to ignore. We are reminded that mutilating the body was practiced by some priests of the goddess Cybele who would show their holiness by castration. Others would whip, slash, and disfigure themselves. Jesus made such showing-off even more ridiculous.)
13. After all, brothers, you were called to be free; do not use your freedom as an opening for self-indulgence, but be servants to one another in love,
14. since the whole of the Law is summarised in the one commandment: “You must love your neighbor as yourself.”
15. If you go snapping at one another and tearing one another to pieces, take care: you will be eaten up by one another. (One sentence describes how 50,000 denominations of Willful Protestants spend their time: “devouring one another.”)
16. Instead, I tell you, be guided by the Spirit, and you will no longer yield to self-indulgence.
St. Paul goes on to define and describe the dangers of “self-indulgence”, the cause of every sin that keeps souls from Heaven:
17. The desires of self-indulgence are always in opposition to the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit (This “Spirit” is The Holy Spirit, The Third Person of The Holy Trinty. It also describes the Guardian Angel in us who leads us closer to God.), are in opposition to self-indulgence: they are opposites, one against the other; that is how you are prevented from doing the things that you want to.
18. But when you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law. (We are faithfully obeying God, The Highest Power, as we strive to maintain the faith that keeps us pleasing to Him.)
Sixteen specific examples of ways we indulge ourselves that keep souls out of Heaven:
19-21. When self-indulgence is at work the results are obvious: 1. sexual vice, 2. impurity, 3. and sensuality,
4. the worship of false gods 5. and sorcery; 6. antagonisms and 7. rivalry, 8. jealousy, 9. bad temper, 10. quarrels, 11. disagreements, 12. factions and 13. malice, 14. drunkenness, 15. orgies, 16. and similar things. And about these, I tell you now as I have told you in the past, that people who behave in these ways will not inherit The Kingdom of God. (This is a Direct Promise “revealed” by God describing those who “will not inherit The Kingdom of God” !)
Ten specific examples of things that will help us get our soul into Heaven:
22-23. On the other hand the fruit of the Spirit is 1. love, 2. joy, 3. peace, 4. patience, 5. kindness, 6. goodness, 7. trustfulness, 9. gentleness and 10. self-control; no law can touch such things as these.
24. All who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified themselves with all its passions and its desires.
25. Since we are living by the Spirit, let our behavior be guided by the Spirit
26. and let us not be conceited or provocative and envious of one another. (The list of sixteen things that will keep our soul out of Heaven was just expanded to 19 by adding: 17. conceited, 18. provocative, and 19, envy!)
Chapter 6
1. Brothers, even if one of you is caught doing something wrong, those of you who are spiritual should set that person right in a spirit of gentleness; and watch yourselves that you are not put to the test in the same way. (We must “watch ourselves” and pray to be guided to avoid every “self-indulgence”.)
2. Carry each other’s burdens; that is how to keep the law of Christ. (If we are blessed to “Love God and our neighbor as ourselves”, we will do more and more to give our neighbors the help we would like to get.”)
3. Someone who thinks himself important, when he is not, only deceives himself; (Thinking ourselves to be “important” is one of the most tempting “deceptions”! Catholics may try to avoid beginning as many sentences with the word “I”. It is always interesting to see how often the word “I’ begins both our thoughts and the words that let thoughts take form outside ourselves.”)
4. but everyone is to examine his own achievements, and then he will confine his boasting to his own achievements, not comparing them with anybody else’s. (We are not to think or say: “I am better than you.” We hope to be able to truthfully say, every day and in every way, “I am better now than I was.”)
5. Each one has his own load to carry. (Those who carry “faith” find that Mt. 11:28:30 is Catholic Truth: “My yoke is easy and my burden is light”.)
6. When someone is under instruction in doctrine, he should give his teacher a share in all his possessions.
7. Don’t delude yourself: God is not to be fooled; whatever someone sows, that is what he will reap. (Every person who lives in “faith” knows and tries to live by Two Simple Facts: 1. “I cannot fool God. 2. I insult Him if I think I can.”)
8. If his sowing is in the field of self-indulgence, then his harvest from it will be corruption; if His sowing is in the Spirit, then His harvest from the Spirit will be eternal life. (The Book of Galatians comes to an end with the reminder of the fact that “self-indulgence” will condemn our soul. If “The Spirit” guides us, we will do what St. John promises in John 4:36 and “harvest eternal life”. Seldom has the difference between evil and good been so eternally clear.)
9. And let us never slacken in doing good; for if we do not give up, we shall have our harvest in due time. (We must never tire of trying to let The Spirit guide us better with each passing hour and day.) 10. So then, as long as we have the opportunity, let all our actions be for the good of everybody, and especially of those who belong to the household of the faith. (Every day tests how well we are letting “The Spirit” guide us. Every day brings us closer to, or farther from, Heaven.)
(The Letter concludes with a handwritten note in “large letters” that St. Paul added to what he had probably dictated to a secretary. He returns to the original subject: condemning the clever manipulators who wanted Catholics to return to being “enslaved” to their self-serving ideas of the Law“.)
11. Notice what large letters I have used in writing to you with my own hand. (He wants to be sure they have no excuse to replace “faith in God” with obedience to the “law” that God had just replaced.)
12. It is those who want to cut a figure by human standards who force circumcision on you, simply so that they will not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. (These manipulators wanted rewards from the establishment by pretending people could please God by equating “True Faith” with God-revoked “Laws”. For 2,000 years, they have burdened believers with “laws” that pretend to do “good” while driving obedient people into taxable situations. Every nation that allows special interests to hurt Faith, Freedom, and Families soon destroys itself. That destruction from “law-givers” always includes attacks on all who will stand for Freedom from “laws” that are passed to provide income for those who put self-serving “laws” in place. It becomes clear in every nation when Catholic Churches begin to be destroyed.
13. Even though they are circumcised they still do not keep the Law themselves; they want you to be circumcised only so that they can boast of your outward appearance. (They want to “boast” about their power to corrupt Catholic beliefs that threaten established governments and religions.)
14. But as for me, it is out of the question that I should boast at all, except of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. (St. Paul knows it is a sin to “boast” about anything except The Cross of Jesus that let The Son of God be “lifted up before men” so they could “look upon He Whom they pierced”, and “look proudly” on all they “crucify” in every land and time.
15. It is not being circumcised or uncircumcised that matters; but what matters is a new creation. (Catholics make ourselves “a New Creation” by understanding that The Loving Programmer has downloaded “The New Salvation Program” based on the life and death of He Who Fulfilled The Prophecies. We now see that Program operating within The Creation Program that modern telescopes let us see is 30 trillion light years from one side to the other.) 16. Peace and mercy to all who follow this as their rule and to the Israel of God. (After Jesus, “the Israel of God” replaced “the Israel of man”. Enough“Faith in Jesus” to support Catholic Teachings has become the only way to Heaven, much to the discomfort of many Willful Protestants of every Christian and non-Christian denomination.)
17. After this, let no one trouble me; I carry branded on my body the marks of Jesus. (Interesting that The Letter to the Galatians nears the conclusion with a “boast” of the scars from many painful injuries inflicted on him for breaking the “laws” of establishments that paid the scourgers’ salaries.)
We know it was only The Catholic Faith St. Paul gave his life to defend from his words describing Catholic Communion in 1 Corinthians 10:16-21: “Is the cup of blessing which we bless not a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is the bread which we break not a sharing in the body of Christ?”
That lets Catholics reach the end of The Letter to The Galatians and know that St. Paul’s ending prayer is for our immortal souls:
18. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, my brothers. Amen.
~
May God bless us all to be better Catholics.
