Sabbath School Questions 19 NOV 2011

Galatians


19 NOV 2011


Gal 3:26-4:20

1. Does the Gospel make Jews out of Gentiles?

2. Is this adoption into the Promise or the Law? (Gal 3:29; 4:28)

3. If baptism represents death and resurrection yet we are still alive, what dies?

4. How is this revealed in Christ’s baptism, ministry, death and resurrection?

5. Christ says that the works are not His own and that we would do greater works (John 14:8-12). What is the connection between baptism and the works of God in us?

6. In Gal 3:23-24 Paul states the Law was like a Governess. In Gal 4:3 he states, as heirs, we were in bondage to the elementary principles of the world. How does this connection between the Law and elementary principles of the world work together to describe the purpose of the Law?

7. How does Paul’s distinction between the Law and the Spirit parallel Christ’s revelation to Pontius Pilate that His Kingdom is not of this world? How does it reveal the new covenant in which we now abide?

8. In what ways does the Law reveal the means by which humanity seeks to aspire to divinity in its fallen state?

9. How is the Law successful at revealing human futility in aspiring to divinity?

10. What did Christ reveal to us, as one of us, that the Law failed to reveal?

11. Was the Spirit manifest in Christ as a result of His works or works of the Law? Was the Spirit manifest at His baptism?

12. If Paul refers to the Law as the elementary principles of this world (which are bound by the principles of cause and effect), that the Law does not justify (Gal 2:16), nor does it impart life (Gal 3:21), and Christ states that the works are not His but the Father’s; what could have caused the outpouring of the Spirit in Christ’s life?

13. If we view the outpouring of the Holy Spirit as the effects of human causality then aren’t we applying the principles of the world to the Spirit? Wasn’t this what the “false brethren” among the Galatians doing? Do we do this?

14. How then is the Spirit poured into us if not by our works? Is it what we do/what we don’t do? How do we become these earthen vessels? How, like Christ, are we poured out?