October 5, 2025 | Unrest: The Curse of Self-Reliance | Galatians Part 8

Unrest: The Curse of Self-Reliance | Galatians Part 8

Galatians 3:6–14

just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”?

Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”—so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. (ESV)

In “Unrest: The Curse of Self-Reliance,” Jed Gillis teaches from Galatians 3:6–14 that God counts faith as righteousness, just as he did with Abraham. The blessing promised to the nations flows through faith, not human performance. When we try to bargain with God by doing more or doing better, we place ourselves under the law’s demand to keep everything, and that brings a curse and inner unrest. Paul points us to Christ, who redeemed us from the curse by becoming a curse for us on the cross. In him, the blessing of Abraham and the promised Spirit come to Jew and Gentile alike through faith. The call is to lay down self-reliance and rest in Jesus, where real peace replaces the constant trial of proving ourselves.

Transcript of Unrest: The Curse of Self-Reliance | Galatians Part 8

Bargaining for Blessing

Jed Gillis: We're all tempted. We don't usually say it this way, but we'll think something like this. If I do better, if I stop sinning in this way or that way, or if I stop sinning so much, maybe God will start blessing me again. Maybe it's for the first time. Maybe you say, well, if I just. Live a good enough life, maybe God will bless me to start with. Maybe you think he hasn't done that. But maybe you say, God has blessed me many ways and right now life feels difficult, so if I just do better, God will bless me again.

We're all tempted to make these kinds of deals and they leave us exhausted spiritually and emotionally. They leave us worn out, but that's the kind of bargain our human hearts want to make. Teenagers, for you, maybe it sounds like if I can just do a little bit better, get the right grades, perform well enough in sports, in relationships, maybe I'll be good enough for my parents.

Maybe it's a wife who thinks if I can just do everything right, maybe my husband won't get angry. Or a husband who thinks if I can just do enough things to please her, our interaction will be better. And we make all of these kinds of bargains in our minds. We think if I'm just productive enough. If I get enough things done and say no to enough sins, God can start blessing me again. I'll finally be okay.

The church at Galatia, they were tempted with exactly that bargain. They had come to Christ through the cross. They had come to salvation through faith. And now they were being told if you want that to be really secure, if you really want God's fullest blessing, you've got to add to that faith, your human performance, your keeping the law.

That's what they had been told, and Paul has told them at the beginning of this chapter, foolish Galatians, how did you start? You started by relying completely on Christ. Why do you think now that the favor of God rests on your performance?

God Doesn't Make Deals, He Makes Promises

Jed Gillis: Paul's message is simple and liberating throughout the rest of this book. God doesn't make those kinds of deals. God makes promises. God didn't make a deal to use his illustration with Abraham that said, Abraham, if you'll just do better, then maybe you'll find blessing. He made a promise I will make of you a great nation. And Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.

This passage in Galatians, and really the whole book is not about some ancient theological error. It's about the war in all of our hearts between grace and self salvation, between grace and self-reliance.

Reading Galatians 3:6-14

Jed Gillis: So let's read beginning in verse six. Just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the scripture for seeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith preach the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, in you shall all the nations be blessed. So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith for all who rely on works of the law are under a curse. For it is written cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law and do them. Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law. For the righteous shall live by faith, but the law is not of faith. Rather, the one who does them shall live by them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree so that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the Promised Spirit through faith.

God's Blessings Flow Through Faith

Jed Gillis: We're gonna take this passage in in three sections. The first, really from verse six, down through verse nine, tells us that God's blessings flow through faith. There's one means. There's one way that God's blessings flow, and that is through faith.

We talked a few weeks ago about the word justification, and we see it used in this passage, verse eight. God would justify the Gentiles by faith. He's describing exactly what he describes at the end of verse six, to say, Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. He was justified. By faith. This phrase, justification or being justified is that you're declared righteous. You're declared that you're not condemned.

And I think the easiest way for us to understand this really, we can talk in theological terms, but we can just think about what we often do. If you are criticized, if someone around you looks at you and they say, I think this is a problem. Well, our natural instinct is to provide some reason, some argument for why we should not be condemned, or if I were to use the theological terms, we try to provide some reason to justify ourselves.

That might sound like I did these good things. So I want you to count my good performance as justifying or as successful. Now you can put whatever good things you want, but the reasoning of the way we go about it, someone looks at you and said you did something that wasn't good, and you say, but I did these good things. You should count that as justifying. You should not condemn me.

We might do something else. We might say, well, I couldn't do what's really good. I have an excuse. In other words. I didn't have the ability to do what's really good, and so I want you to count my best. Whatever I could do, I want you to count my best as justifying. That's another kind of evidence when we say, I, I don't want you to condemn me. Here's a reason why I should be approved or justified.

It might be merely, well, I did this wrong, but I didn't do all these other bad things. So in that case, I want you to count my self-control and my restraint as justifying I'm not as bad as I could be. So it's enough.

We might just point at somebody else and say, yes, I did wrong, but they did worse things. So by comparison, I want you to count the comparison as, as justifying I should be approved.

That's the way justification. If we take it out of a theological term, put it into our everyday experience, that's the way it works. Someone looks at you, thinks you did something wrong. Here's my reason. All of them, all the things I just described, they rely on either, well, they all rely on my performance. Either it was good or it was better than somebody else. And they all are asking you to count something as justifying. Count my good works as justifying. Count my excuses as justifying. Count my comparison. They're all saying, you shouldn't condemn me, and I want you to count something about my performance as giving me approval as saying I should not be condemned.

Here is the radical transformation of the gospel. What makes Christianity different from every other religious answer out there.

Paul's message is that instead of looking to anything about your performance and saying, count this as righteousness, count this as I'm approved. He says, no. What happens is you trust God, you have faith, and God counts that faith as righteousness.

It's not count my good works as good enough that I don't have to be condemned. It's I trusted in God. And God says, because of my grace to you, I count your trust in Jesus Christ as you standing approved.

I want you to see this is not God playing fictional games. This is not God saying you really blew everything, you're really terrible, and that's the standard that counts. But I guess since I don't want to condemn everybody, I have to pretend like some people are okay. That's not what he's doing. It's the same thing when I say here, I've done good things. Count my good works as my approval. God is just saying by grace, he transforms what counts as enough. What counts as good. It. And he says, it's not about your performance. I will count your trust in Christ as enough to be righteous, to be approved, to be accepted, to not stand condemned.

And he uses this example of Abraham. Abraham rested in the promise of God. And that that trust, that rest, that faith, that is what God counted as enough for approval. That is what God counted as enough, as worthy. He looked at Abraham. Abraham believed God. This text tells us nothing about what Abraham did because it's not about his performance. Abraham believed God. He trusted. He rested in. He relied on the promise of God. And Romans tells us he thought on it and he grew strong in his faith. He kept thinking on it and said. That's incredible. This promise is amazing. Look at what God has done and it grew and it grew and that is what God looked at that trust and said, that counts for justification. He counted his faith as righteousness.

The Sons of Abraham

Jed Gillis: So he continues still in the big picture to say God's blessings flow through one means faith. Verse seven says, know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. Those of faith, those who rely, those who rest, those who trust are the sons of Abraham.

Now, this phrase, sons of Abraham, gets used two different ways throughout the New Testament. It's not used that many times, but it's used in two different ways. Sometimes it just means ethnic Jews, they're racially Jews. Sometimes it means that, but in other cases, like here, like in Romans nine, when he says, not all are children of Abraham, because they are his offspring. It is the children of the promise. Children of faith.

We see an example in in Luke when Jesus is talking with Zacchaeus and he says, salvation has come to his house today. He is a son of Abraham. He was a Jew before. Right? But that's not what he's talking about there. He's saying he shares certain characteristics with Abraham as a person of faith.

The Judaizers, the agitators here in Galatia, they've been coming and saying, yes, you came through Jesus. Now to really solidify and make your standing secure, to really be a son of Abraham, you need to keep the law. You need to follow circumcision. You need the works of the law to really be a son of Abraham and inherit the blessing that comes through Abraham. You've got to follow this law. And Paul says, no, no, the sons of Abraham in that sense, by the way, sons and daughters of Abraham in that sense are those who believe. Know then verse seven, it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.

So we can pause a second and say, well, what? What does that even mean? Why would I want to be a son of Abraham? It's not just so we can sing the kids song, you know, father Abraham as many sons. It's not the point.

If you think about Genesis, think about the story. You start in the garden, the fall happens, and then there's a promise in Genesis three. The promise is there'll be a seed of the woman who's going to come, who's going to crush the serpent.

And if you were sitting at that point in Genesis three, having seen Paradise, having seen what sin did, ruining the relationship between them and the relationship with God, hearing God pronounce the curse, you would say, yes, please. Let someone crush this serpent's head. When's that seed coming? Let's get that son here. Let's do it. Like you're ready. You're excited.

And then if we follow through Genesis, what happens? Well, they have a son. They have another son. He crushes the wrong head and you say, wait a minute. I thought that was our hope. I thought blessing was coming back. Now it's not. Then you get through years and years and years, but in the story you get to Noah. And the evil rampant around the world. And if you remembered that promise, you say, when is God gonna fulfill that? When is he gonna bring blessing back? We feel curse. When does he bring blessing back? You continue. You get the tower babble, you see the wickedness of people's hearts. And then you get to Abraham.

And if you're reading it and you didn't know the whole story, and you didn't know there was still a whole lot of Old Testament left. Before Jesus comes, you'd say, is he the one? Is Abraham gonna bring blessing back?

So in the flow of Genesis, one of the things drawn, we're drawn to is that we're we're held. There's this tantalizing idea that God is going to bring blessing back the blessing of paradise. The blessing of crushing the serpent of crushing Satan. God's going to bring that blessing back. And so we get to what's quoted here in verse eight, the scripture for seeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preach the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, in you shall all the nations be blessed?

What blessing? Well, there's a lot of blessings we could talk about. But one of them in the flow of Genesis is nothing less than the undoing of the curse that comes from sin. God is going to provide the means of doing that. As Paul says in the next chapter, from the seed that comes from Abraham in, you shall the nations be blessed.

And if you were sitting in Genesis three, you'd say, yes, I want that blessing. Undo the curse in this world. I feel the weight. God, I want you to change that, and I want to be part of it.

So Paul looks at these Galatians who are being told, here's how to really be a son of Abraham and experience all the blessings, the undoing of the curse. You do it by following the law and relying on it. After faith in Christ. And Paul says, no, no, no, not by Jesus plus anything. By relying on Jesus only. Because then you are a person of faith in Christ and you share in the blessing that comes through Abraham. In you shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.

In verse eight, this is the same way Paul used the word gospel earlier in the book. Remember he said, if anyone comes preaching a different gospel, a different good news, a different message that promises you a kind of peace and rest and security and fulfillment. He says, if anyone comes preaching a different message, let him be accursed. Here he says, the scriptures preached this message, not in all its detail, but the scriptures preached this good news that said, faith in God results in this sweeping blessing.

So he concludes with verse nine. So then those who are of faith. Those who rely, who rest in the promise of God are blessed. Along with Abraham, the man of faith, he's undercutting their argument because they're saying Abraham was a man of work, so if you want his blessing, you've gotta have work. So he says, no. Abraham was counted righteous because of his belief, not his performance, not his works because of his belief.

So. This first section teaches us that God's blessings on the biggest scale, God's blessings flow through faith, not performance.

Performing for an Invisible Judge

Jed Gillis: Really every one of us is in a trial, like a courtroom every day. We might not physically see a judge and a jury, but we are constantly at least tempted to give evidence to plead our case before this invisible judge of why I should not be condemned, I should be accepted.

Sometimes the invisible judge in our mind is God. Sometimes in our mind it feels like presenting evidence to other people. And they're the judge. Probably most often, we act like we are the judge. And we're trying to give evidence to ourselves for why we are okay, why we are accepted, and when someone questions your worth or when someone says you failed in some way, when you're criticized. If you instinctively point to, well, I've worked hard. I'm not as bad as they are, I meant, well, I did the best I could. I've got all these excuses. It's all based on human performance and it will leave you exhausted.

Instead, Paul is telling us the one evidence that counts before God is faith. Do you trust his promise? Do you rest in the promise of God? Abraham believed God, and that was enough for God, the judge of the universe, to look at him and say, righteous, accepted, loved, favored, graced.

Abraham trusted God. Every other kind of defense, we mount leads to restlessness and we feel the curse. Only faith leads to peace and blessing. God's blessings flow through faith.

All Self-reliance is Cursed

Jed Gillis: So let's go to verse 10. This next section teaches us not only is that the way God did it, but all self-reliance is in fact cursed.

Notice verse 10. For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse for what is written, cursed Be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law and do them.

I want you to notice what he pronounces here is not merely those who do not obey the law. Literally, you could translate it for all who are of the law. Just like the previous verse said, Abraham was the man of faith. Literally, you could say all who are of the law.

But not only does he say that he, there's also this word here, cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law. Who does not remain, who does not continue in the things written in the book of the law.

In other words, the contrast here is not merely between. Depending on Christ and doing works. I want you to hear this carefully. It's not merely a contrast between I depend on Christ and I do good things. It's the contrast between I depend on Christ and I depend on works.

Paul is not sitting here saying, well, forget it. Do whatever you want. There's no commands to be had in the New Testament. Now, clearly, Paul's about to give you plenty in this book. He's not contrasting dependence on Christ with doing works. He's contrasting dependence on Christ with depending on works.

When you want to justify yourself, you don't point to works. You point to faith in Christ. No matter how successful you've been in your works. Paul is pointing to them for that specific contrast. He's saying these people are of the law and they are under a curse.

Uh, one of the traditional views of this passage, which is, is right but not complete, I think, is to say, well, justification by works can't be right because we fail to keep the law in every point. Now, that's true, that's accurate, but I think there's two reasons that Paul's making a deeper point than just that here.

One is the beginning of this chapter. He's already said, you started out right now, continue the way you started. You started out by faith. Now continue. In other words, he's not only talking about initial salvation, he's talking about the way we continue to walk, and especially since this quote tells us all who abide by all things, all who continue in the law.

In other words, even if you could look back on your life up until this point and you could say, I have kept God's law perfectly. You would still feel not rest, not peace. You would still feel curse. Because if you are judged by the standard of performance, then yesterday's performance can never be good enough to give you confidence going forward.

What if you mess up tomorrow? Even if you had kept it perfectly and tomorrow you blow it, what good was that confidence in your performance then?

In other words, we could say, what is this curse? He says, you're under a curse. What does he mean? It can't only apply to initial salvation, although it does apply there, but not only. So theologically, we could say all the law and its punishment. God says that those who do not have righteousness before him face eternal punishment and separation from him. There is that element of the curse. That's the extreme, that's the end.

But how do we experience it now? Think back to the fall. God pronounced some things about a curse there. He told Adam, you will labor and you will find thorns.

Have you ever tried to get rid of thorns in the middle of underbrush? I was doing some of that the other day, going back over the same area that I did last year and trimming out big sections of thorns. And guess what I plan to do next year about this time? Because part of the curse for Adam was as you try your best to grow the food, it's never enough and the things that come and choke it out and make it bad, they just come back and back and back.

Do you ever feel the futility around your efforts that say it's never enough? That's the curse. It doesn't have to be literal thorns. Speaking to Eve, God said there'll be pain in childbirth, so even good things, even wonderful gifts from God hurt. In this fallen world, the best things you have are mixed with sadness and suffering and pain. That's part of the curse. This is the present experience that we have of the curse.

When he says all who rely on works of the law, all who rely on their human performance, they feel a curse. Yes. There's a sense that if eternally, if you rely on your performance, you face punishment and condemnation. Yes, scripture teaches that, but that's not all he's saying. He's saying right now, even if your faith is in Jesus Christ for your eternal destiny, but if right now in your life you say, but I'm, I'm really relying on my performance right now to justify myself before others, before God, before myself, you will feel the curse.

We call it a lot of things. You'll feel discomfort, pain, unrest in your soul. Whatever it is, you will feel this curse and Paul drives you to say performance, reliance on your performance always leaves you restless because it's never good enough for tomorrow. If you depend on your performance, you can never confidently say it is finished.

But Jesus did. There's something that faith in Christ can give you that your performance could never do it, not because you're not good enough, but because you're the nature of your performance. Your performance has to keep going. It has to continue. You can't fail tomorrow. You can't find rest. So part of the curse, if you rely on your performance is to find that it's never enough.

And if by faith you rely on Jesus and he counts that as righteousness, you say, he said it is finished so my soul can rest.

So Paul continues, verse 11. It is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteous shall live by faith. In other words, God has already told you the means that you become righteous. It's counted, faith is counted as righteousness. He's already told you the ble way to get the blessing. It's through faith. If life, if true life comes through faith. Then no one is gonna be justified by their performance. Whether it's your performance of God's law or your own law, doesn't matter. No one can be justified that way because God has already said approval comes through faith alone.

Now, you might, someone might come up, maybe the false teachers would say, wait a minute though, when we say you need to keep the law, we think you need to trust Jesus. Of course. So what we're really doing is saying that the law and faith work together. In fact, they might say something like, in keeping the mosaic law, that is your faith.

Might not hear that phrase that way today, but you might hear people say things like, your baptism is your faith. Your giving is your faith. No, that's not what Paul's doing here. What he's doing, in fact, in verse 12 is specifically noting the law and the faith are not mutually compatible ways to come to God.

You can't say I'm justified by total reliance on Jesus, and I'm justified by my performance since the law is not of faith. If God's blessings flow through faith, then they come not through performance and obedience of the law.

And he quotes from the Old Testament here, the one who does them, who keeps the law shall live by them. There is a sense in which if you could keep the law perfectly, you would live. But here's one of the big points that Paul is making through this section.

In theory, if you could keep it perfectly, the law could give you that life with God. But the law or human performance can never, ever give you rest with God. Because again, you have to keep going. You have to keep it tomorrow.

The law was never able to give you rest with God. It could never, in that sense, undo the curse. That's why all who rely on works of the law feel that curse, and God loves you so much that he didn't leave you with the law as a way to theoretically earn life, but never be able to have peace. God did not leave you that way.

Instead, the third section, verse 13 and 14, grace through Christ breaks the curse and opens the way for God's ultimate blessing through faith. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

John said earlier, he asked you the question, why does the passion of Christ matter? Why does the suffering of Christ matter? Because if Jesus didn't suffer under that curse, then he didn't give you peace from it.

While we were driven by our fears and our compulsive desire to say, I feel this curse. I feel this unrest. I want peace in my soul. We're driven by it. Where can I find a refuge? We were enslaved and Christ redeemed us. He bought us from that slavery. From the curse of the law. Yes, the theological eternal separation from God. That curse, yes. But also the experience of that curse right now, just like I said last week, the gospel is not about your past rescue and your future hope alone. It's your past rescue and your future hope. And in between your present rest, the peace for your soul. Jesus died to free you from the eternal consequence of your sin. Yes, but he died to redeem you from the experience you have of the curse of the unrest in your soul now.

Christ redeemed us from the curse by becoming a curse for us. He took God's wrath. He took the father's wrath completely. So there's none left for those who trust in him. That means the theological curse is taken care of.

But he experienced, Hebrews tells us he felt all of the sufferings that we feel he was tempted in always like we are. He felt what it's like to say, I've gotta do this job again. He felt what it's like to get rid of a thornbush and know it's coming back. He felt what it's like to say, I want to make this relationship better and to feel like you have to keep working on it and keep working on it and keep working on it. He felt those things. He took not only the future curse and the wrath, but the experience of that curse living in a fallen world he took on himself so that he is able to help those who are tempted. He's not a high priest who can't be touched with our feelings when we feel the unrest and the curse. He's a high priest who knows every bit of it.

And so the peace we have now is a taste of the grace of God that foreshadows a perfect reversal of the curse that we sang about earlier, and we look forward to when there is no curse of sin in you or around you, because God, through Jesus makes all things new.

And verse 14 tells us why he did that. So that through Christ, only through Christ, and only through faith, the blessing of Abraham. We've talked about pieces of it in creation, history, the undoing of the curse in a fallen world. That's part of it. The crushing of the serpent in our individual lives, the justification we have by faith, just like Abraham received it, we participate in it. We are justified by faith that we might receive the promised Spirit. When we think about God as the trinity, that the Spirit of God can come and live with us. Because we don't have to be condemned, we say I'm justified by faith. He has counted that as righteousness. So the blessing of Abraham comes to us in cosmic ways when we look at the Spirit, when we look at justification.

But for us today, that blessing is also rest. It's peace from the curse of thinking I have to keep measuring up day after day after day, or I'll lose it.

So really the message of this section and the book is a whole, it's that any attempt at self-reliance always brings the curse of unrest to your soul. The more you rely on yourself, the more you find it doesn't work, and it's frustrating the more you rely on your performance, and our lives are full of attempts to chase this rest.

We do it all the time. One generation thinks you can find rest by accomplishing more and more and more and more, and the next generation says, that doesn't work. So instead it becomes work-life balance and taking stuff off my to-do list and now I've done it the right way, so I'll have rest.

That generation will also find that human performance does not give you rest. One group of believers thinks they'll find rest by keeping a laundry list of commands. My soul is okay because I keep all the external things. Another group of believers. He thinks my soul is okay because I'm going to ignore all the commands.

They're both performance and they'll both find it doesn't touch the rest we need in our souls because the only rest sufficient for your soul is the unmerited favor of God that he poured out through the blood of Jesus Christ for you.

And yet we are constantly driven to escape our unrest.

We know that if somebody uses, for example, drugs to try to escape anxiety and stress, it's dangerous. We know it sort of works for a moment, but we know it's addictive and deadly. We know that if someone seeks to avoid stress and anxiety through sexual impurity, the scripture teaches it's dangerous. And destructive. We know that if someone seeks to avoid this unrest through numbing entertainment and just escape for their lives, it causes problems. It is destructive and it is deadly. We know if you pick one thing other than Jesus and say, that is the rest for my soul, it becomes addictive and ugly and dangerous.

Here's the more subtle danger for us. We're not addicted to one thing. We'll take a little of this one and a little of this one and a little of this one and a little of this one, and look to our performance. Not in one area, but in all of them. We are not addicted to the specific thing. We're addicted to our performance, and it's just as deadly and just as dangerous. Because human performance never lets you cry out it is finished.

This is our maybe our great American addiction. My independence and my productivity and my resources give my life value and worth. And when we chase that, we feel the curse of unrest because it's never enough. The truth is though, it's not just American. It looks different perhaps, but it's a human addiction. It comes in different disguises. Some look more religious, some look less religious, but it's an addiction to trying to solve the unrest in our souls by some form of our performance.

And Paul says, if you want rest for your soul, it's never coming from your performance. It is only coming through the cross of Jesus Christ through the unmerited undeserved favor of God poured out on you through Jesus. That's why he ends this book saying, far be it for me to boast in anything else but the cross of Christ. 'Cause that's all that can give your soul rest. That's all that can free you from the curse you feel now and the curse we deserved forever.

I invite you to take a moment, close your eyes and respond to God, and then we'll sing together.