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Lord's Prayer

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.

For Joy in God's Creation

O  Heavenly Father, who has filled the world with beauty; Open my eyes to behold your gracious hand in all your works; that rejoicing in your whole creation, I may learn to serve you with gladness, faithfully managing your bounty; for the sake of him by whom all things were made, your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Prayer for Holiness

Holy God, no one can put together what has crumbled into dust, but you can restore a conscience turned to ashes. You can restore to its former beauty a soul lost and without hope. With you, there is nothing that cannot be redeemed. You are love; You are Creator and Redeemer. I praise you with my every ounce.

I fear the lesson, my God, of the fall of Lucifer, full of pride. I pray you will keep me from such a terrible fate; keep me safe with the power of your Grace; save me from falling away from you. Save me from doubt. Incline my heart to hear your mysterious voice every moment of my life and thus be led to call upon you, for you are present in every thing and every moment.

Meditation

[The importance of temporal diligence in our spiritual lives.]

Dedication

Let me not forget you as I go forth into the world this day, blessed Lord; may my every word be a prayer, and my every act be testimony to your love and truth, and may I know your presence every second of this day.

Mason Barge 3/17/14

Think of the day ahead in terms of God with you, and visualize health, strength, guidance, purity, calm confidence, and victory as the gifts of His presence.

Size

Galatians 3:22, 25-27 (DP Bible)

The Function of the Law (Galatians #38)

22What [the Law] did was to confine together and guard those who followed it, showing them to live in sin.

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25-27 Now that true faith has arrived, you are no longer governed by a guardian. You have inherited God’s promise through your faith in Christ; for if you were baptized in Christ, you were clothed in Christ, as a child is clothed when he comes of age and can receive his inheritance.

Verbatim Bible

Notes on the Scripture

We studied the fundamental meaning of these verses yesterday, but there are two short (and unrelated) matters to discuss.

The first is how we are to understand verse 22; more precisely, what does Paul mean by saying we were “confined” and/or “guarded” by the Law? There is actually only one verb in the sentence: our DP paraphrase translation uses two verbs — “confine together and guard” — to give the both of the main possibilities, because the meaning of the single Greek verb is ambiguous and could support either meaning.

This is a compound verb made up of two roots, “together” and “to shut”. It is used in Luke to describe the fish caught by the apostles when Christ first called them. (Luke 5:6) So, it is natural to read this as referring to a sort of herding of the Hebrews into a distinct group, something that the Law certainly did.

ut things are not so easy, because the verb most commonly means, simply, to be put into prison (whether with others or alone). If that is how Paul intends it, we cannot see the Law as exalting the Jews, making them the “chosen people of God.” This is exactly how Judaism did (in the Old Testament) and does (today) look at the Law, but Paul see it very differently. He emphasizes (under this reading) that the Hebrews were singled out for God's discipline; they were made captives to the Law and were punished for breaking it. That they were punished is unquestionable. The ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom were dispersed forever in 722 B.C.; the Kingdom of Judah sputtered on through the Second Temple until it, too, was destroyed and dispersed by Rome in 72 A.D.

There is a third possible meaning, however, even more severe: that the Law actually separated the Hebrews from God's promise! It means not so much to wall in the subject, but to wall out something else, completely. The Law built a wall that denied the Hebrews access to God's promise for a period: they were tied to something that could not and cannot give eternal life: Because those to whom God gave the law were, by their nature as human beings, incapable of following the law, it formed an inpenetrable barrier between them and God.

The second point about these verses is minor but charming. The Greek custom, when a child came of age, was to give him (or her, as it applied also to girls) a new and different set of “grown-up” clothes. Many cultures have something similar — in the U.S., until around the 1940s, boys would not get long trousers until a certain age. But in Greek culture, it was quite important, and the new clothes would be accompanied by a ceremony, a meal, and a sacrifice to a household god.

So perhaps Paul means to invoke this custom, when he writes, “[I]f you were baptized in Christ, you were clothed in Christ, . . .” In fact, the paraphrase version of our DP Bible makes the allusion explicit.

Daily Inspiration

“ High-Quality Fruit ”

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