The following sermon is by John MacArthur, pastor, author, and Bible teacher with Grace

to You.

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And now unleashing God's truth one verse at a time.

Here's Grace to You, Bible teacher John MacArthur.

Open your Bible if you will to Galatians 4.

For those of you visiting with us, Galatians is a book in the New Testament written by the Apostle Paul,

one of thirteen New Testament books that he wrote.

It's the first one that he wrote in terms of chronology.

And it is a book designed really to do one thing and that is to proclaim the fact that salvation is by faith alone in Jesus Christ.

That salvation does not come to those who are good or do good works or religious or involved in religious ceremonies, rituals,

whether they be circumcision, baptism or any other right or ritual.

Those cannot achieve salvation nor do they partly achieve salvation as if there's a combination between faith and works.

Paul's message in Galatians is that God forgives the sins of those who believe in Jesus Christ and no works play any role in that at all.

Works are the result of salvation, not the reason for it, not the cause of it.

So Paul has been defending the doctrine of justification by faith alone into chapter 4.

And now in verse 12, he sets aside his arguments and this is a much different portion of Scripture.

In fact, it's a bit of a shocking change in the character of this book.

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