A faithful servant would not say, as a wicked one does in a familiar parable, “My master is delayed,” and live like there is no tomorrow and no duties to honor (Matt. 24:48). Faithfulness goes beyond what Paul calls “eye-service” and serves as well when unseen as seen (Eph. 6:6; Col. 3:22). For many of us faithfulness shows itself in our work because it must do so, lest we find ourselves unemployed. 

The gospel is the good news that the perfect life of Jesus and His substitutionary death on the cross can be ours for the trusting, not ours for the working. God has promised to reckon the work of Christ to our account, though we ourselves are sinners and will be sinners to the day we die.

It is not good that we are sinners. None of us who come to Christ in faith do so believing that we have nothing to be saved from. We know that our evil deeds must be forgiven if we are to enjoy the eternal favor of God. In that sense, our salvation depends on what God has done for us in Christ, not on what we have done for ourselves. Indeed, even our sanctification is a work done primarily by God rather than a work done by us with an “assist” from God. To that extent, our growth in Christlikeness is affected by what we do but not determined by what we do, since God Himself drives forward the sanctifying process by His Spirit and we are His happy captives. But in Paul’s day, adversaries of the gospel slipped into Galatia and preached a different gospel, which was, as Paul says, no gospel at all.

Today, the false teachers of Galatia are often called “Judaizers” because they argued that gentile believers must submit to Jewish practices in addition to faith in Christ for salvation. In short, they argued that Jesus is not enough. His perfect life credited to our account is not enough, they said, and neither was his substitutionary death on the cross. Instead, the Judaizers argued that God requires a synergistic (“working together”) hybrid of faith in Christ and works of the law, the latter to include especially circumcision, dietary laws, and holy days. However, as Paul argues, the logic of their false gospel was such that it engaged the entire Old Testament law. All efforts to “do the right thing” or “measure up,” would have this effect, Paul implies, if those efforts are undertaken for the purpose of self-justification.

To the untrained Christian eye, the Judaizing argument sounds plausible. Why not keep the Old Testament law just to be on the safe side? But it is a sham. One tincture of human effort dropped in for sake of justification always pollutes the whole. It is always good that we obey, that we love God and neighbor. It is never good that we strive to do either one for the purpose of seeking to be justified by the works of the law, since that kind of striving diminishes the sufficiency of Christ and his work

But now comes the obvious question: If we do not and cannot obey for the sake of justification, why would anyone bother to obey at all?

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