Daily Direction Reading PlanSample

We all know that cooks put yeast in bread to make it rise. Too much yeast is not good; too little is not good, either. Still, a little yeast can go a long way. That was the point the Apostle Paul made writing to the Christians in Galatia (chapter 5). He told them that just as a little yeast makes a whole loaf of bread rise, so a little false teaching could infect an entire church and cause great damage. Paul had taught the people that faith in Christ's work on the cross could give them right standing with God. After Paul left, other teachers came along and insisted that faith in Christ was not enough, that people needed circumcision, and they needed to keep all the laws that Moses gave. To these teachers, if faith alone could save people, they would soon indulge in all kinds of sinful behavior. Paul argued to the contrary. He said when a person repents and turns to God by faith, God's Spirit sets them free from the bondage to sin. The Holy Spirit enables them to live in ways that please God. Instead of being slaves to the flesh and slaves to the law, they are now set free to engage in acts of love. For Paul, that was the purpose of the law in the first place. But what the law could not do, God did by allowing His Son to pay our sin debt by dying on the cross. Paul had it right. By dying and rising again, Jesus opened the way for God's Spirit to live inside of us. He enables us to do God's will.