I gotta have my orange juice.

I don’t hold to the idea of an enduring covenant of bondage or of Hagar: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5.

But let’s imagine, for a moment, just for the sake of argument, that it does endure. What can we learn about it?

1. You call it a different gospel, a perversion (Gal. 1)
2. The teacher of it is twice accursed (Gal. 1)
3. To keep it is to please men, not God (Gal. 1)
4. To keep it is to be a false brother (Gal. 2)
5. To keep it is to live in bondage (Gal. 2, 4, 5)
6. To admire, imitate, or placate it is to be twice hypocritical, to be a sinner, a transgressor (Gal. 2)
7. To practice it is to reject Jesus’ death and to be estranged from him (Gal. 2, 5)
8. To keep it is to be bewitched, blinded, foolish, futile (Gal. 3)
9. Those who keep it are not sons of Abraham, and are cursed and disinherited, confined under sin, untutored (Gal. 3)
10. Those who keep it are not sons of God (Gal. 3, 4) but are slaves, and are to be cast out (Gal. 4) and cut off (Gal. 5)

Such a thing cannot have any enduring life in itself (see parts 1, 4). I am convinced that, if there is an appearance of something like this enduring, it is rather because the true religion spawns imitative false brothers in every generation (see part 5).

I think it is also fascinating that Paul’s treatment of the fruit of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit immediately follows all of this. Union with Jesus and his Spirit go together; but so does rejection.