You must be in fellowship prior to your Bible study, so that the spiritual information you receive can become a source, of blessing to your soul and produce spiritual growth.
7 Ye did
run [trecho] well [kalos]; who [tis] did hinder [anakopto][egkopto] you [humas] that ye should [peitho] not [me] obey [peitho] the truth [aletheia]? KJV-Interlinear
7 You were
running well; who hindered you from obeying the truth? NASB
Paul often uses the terms, running or running in a race, to describe the Christian life that is on its proper course and advancing and functioning as it is supposed to function. And, initially the Galatians had been approaching their Christian life with gladness and zeal, but then they got distracted with false teachings requiring them to do things in order to have or even to hang on to their salvation.
Part of that false teaching was the requirement of following the Mosaic Law and specifically of being circumcised.
This false teaching was being promoted by followers of Judaism, who had been opposing Paul and Pauls teaching of salvation by faith.
Paul has been explaining throughout this book, that works, which is the subject of the Law, is a dead end path to nowhere. That the Mosaic Law taught not salvation by works, but that works cannot be kept, illustrating why they cannot be kept, and that something else greater than works, was necessary in order to save as well as maintain ones spiritual life after salvation. That something else is faith.
Faith, is often times called the Law of Christ or the New Covenant of Christ. But faith is faith no matter what phrase you describe it by.
Paul tells the Galatians, that they have been doing well and doing things right, but then what happened?
And the question is rhetorical, as we already know what happened.
They got distracted by false teaching, and they got distracted because they drifted away from correct teaching. They are the cause of their own problem.
Obeying the truth, is a phrase that simply means they listened to false things and followed them, rather than continuing with correct teaching.
And when anyone does not pursue and engage in correct teaching, then they by default, will drift away to false teachings. And unfortunately that is the state of our world today.
People seem to want to come and go in their daily life with little regard to what or how they should pursue their spiritual life, if they even think of it in the first place. And when they do, it is all pretense and therefore they get led astray. Pretense is a form of works in disguise and is a trap for false ideas.
The Galatians did not continue following Pauls teachings and so they came up with bad ideas.
People today, have access to good daily bible studies, but they don’t pursue them, and therefore they get fouled up. And the sad part is that they do not realize that they are fouled up until it is too late.
After all, to give ones-self up for a few minutes every evening for a bible study, seems to be a huge burden on the use of ones time. So the priority of ones life is on the many things in life that you do, rather than on the small investment in ones eternal future.
Esau traded away his whole eternal future for a single meal. That was a stupid trade. But then people trade away their entire eternal future simply by ignoring their eternal future. Again, a stupid trade.
Especially when following a daily study takes so little time when compared to everything else that you do in the course of a day.
