Is God’s grace really for everyone?

Yes. In Galatians 2:1-10, the Apostle Paul shows that God welcomes outsiders into His family by grace, without making them earn it. In this study, Dr. Toby Holt explains why this was such amazing, unexpected good news.

For centuries, the Jewish people and the Gentile, or non-Jewish, nations were bitter enemies. So it shocked many to learn that God planned all along to bless “all the families of the earth,” just as He promised Abraham. Paul brought along Titus, a Gentile believer, as a living test case. The leaders in Jerusalem did not force Titus to be circumcised or to keep the Jewish law — proof that faith in Jesus needs nothing added to it. As Holt puts it, the ground is level at the foot of the cross.

Questions this study answers:

1. Did God always plan to save people from every nation? Yes. God’s promise to Abraham was that all the families of the earth would be blessed through him. Welcoming outsiders was not a backup plan; it was God’s design from the start.

2. Who were the Judaizers? They were teachers who said that believing in Jesus was not enough, and that people also had to be circumcised and keep the Jewish law. Paul resisted them because they were adding human rules to God’s free grace.

3. Why does Paul say there is no “first class” and “second class” in the church? Because everyone is saved the same way — by grace through faith in Christ. There is no room for ranking people by race or background, for in Christ there is “neither Jew nor Greek.”

“Yet not even Titus who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised.” — Galatians 2:3 (NKJV)

Speaker: Dr. Toby Holt is the President of New Geneva Theological Seminary, a Reformed seminary in Colorado Springs. He is known for clear, down-to-earth Bible teaching, and his sermons have been downloaded more than 1.9 million times on SermonAudio.

Listen and go deeper: This is Part 3 of the ten-part Galatians study. Find the whole series, along with verse-by-verse studies of other books of the Bible, at newgeneva.org. To support this teaching ministry, visit newgeneva.org/give.