2. I want to learn only this from you: did you receive the Spirit from works of the law, or from faith in what you heard?
3. Are you so stupid? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?
4. Did you experience so many things in vain?—if indeed it was in vain.
5. Does, then, the one who supplies the Spirit to you and works mighty deeds among you do so from works of the law or from faith in what you heard?
6. Thus Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”
7. Realize then that it is those who have faith who are children of Abraham.
8. Scripture, which saw in advance that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, foretold the good news to Abraham, saying, “Through you shall all the nations be blessed.”
9. Consequently, those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham who had faith.
10. For all who depend on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not persevere in doing all the things written in the book of the law.”
11. And that no one is justified before God by the law is clear, for “the one who is righteous by faith will live.”
12. But the law does not depend on faith; rather, “the one who does these things will live by them.”
13. Christ ransomed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who hangs on a tree,”
14. that the blessing of Abraham might be extended to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
15. Brothers, in human terms I say that no one can annul or amend even a human will once ratified.
16. Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his descendant. It does not say, “And to descendants,” as referring to many, but as referring to one, “And to your descendant,” who is Christ.
17. This is what I mean: the law, which came four hundred and thirty years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to cancel the promise.
18. For if the inheritance comes from the law, it is no longer from a promise; but God bestowed it on Abraham through a promise.