The Hearing of Faith

Paul’s letter to the Galatians is one of the most passionate documents in the New Testament. He wrote it because something had gone terribly wrong in the churches he planted — and the problem wasn’t that people were ignoring Scripture. The problem was how they were reading it.

A group of Jewish-Christian teachers had come behind Paul and told the Galatian believers: “Yes, Jesus is the Messiah. Yes, believe in Him. But you also need to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses in order to be truly saved.” On the surface, this sounds reasonable — after all, circumcision was commanded in Genesis 17, and the law was given by God Himself at Sinai. These teachers weren’t quoting from pagan sources. They were quoting from inspired writings.

And that is precisely what makes Galatians so relevant today. The Judaizers’ error was not that they valued inspired writings. Their error was a hermeneutical one — they were reading inspired writings through the wrong lens. They were reading Moses through the lens of human performance rather than divine promise. They turned the gospel into a checklist.

A Modern Parallel

Many Seventh-day Adventists encounter a strikingly similar challenge when reading the writings of Ellen G. White. Like the Torah for Paul’s contemporaries, the Testimonies are genuinely inspired. They carry divine authority. But the question Paul forces us to ask is: Through what lens are we reading them?

Are we reading Ellen White the way the Judaizers read Moses — as a catalog of behavioral requirements that, if followed precisely enough, will earn us standing before God? Or are we reading her the way Paul read Moses — as a grace-saturated witness pointing to Christ and calling us to live in His transforming power?

The same inspired text can be read two entirely different ways, producing two entirely different spiritual experiences. One produces bondage, anxiety, and self-righteousness. The other produces freedom, joy, and genuine transformation. Paul’s letter to the Galatians is a masterclass in learning the difference.

“This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?”

— Galatians 3:2, NKJV

Paul’s question cuts to the heart of the matter. He uses two phrases that become the theological spine of the entire letter: “works of the law” (ergōn nomou) and “hearing of faith” (akoēs pisteōs). These are not merely two different doctrines. They represent two entirely different ways of engaging with God’s revealed Word.

“Works of the Law” — The Legalistic Lens

When Paul speaks of “the works of the law,” he is not criticizing the law itself. He is describing a particular way of reading and applying inspired instruction. The legalistic lens says:

• God has told me what to do. My standing before Him depends on how well I do it.
• Obedience is the condition for acceptance.
• Inspired writings function primarily as a behavioral standard against which I measure myself.
• The more precisely I follow the instructions, the more righteous I become.

This approach turns every inspired counsel into a pass/fail exam. The reader is always measuring, always comparing, always anxious about whether they’ve done enough. The focus is relentlessly on the self — my performance, my progress, my failures.

“Hearing of Faith” — The Grace Lens

The “hearing of faith” represents a fundamentally different posture toward the same text — but it is critical to understand that this posture does not lower the standard. It raises it. The goal is still obedience. Jesus Himself said, “Be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). That command is not softened or spiritualized away. But the hearing of faith changes how we arrive at obedience and whose power produces it:

• God has spoken, and His Word reveals Christ and His gift of righteousness — a righteousness that is both imputed and imparted.
• I am accepted in the Beloved; obedience is the fruit of that acceptance, not its condition — but it is real fruit, not theoretical.
• Inspired writings reveal what life looks like when Christ is living in me — they paint a picture of the life God actually intends to produce.
• The more deeply I trust the Promiser, the more naturally the obedience follows — because “it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).

This is the balance the whole of Scripture maintains. James says it plainly: “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). Paul himself in Galatians 5:6 does not say “faith instead of action” — he says “faith working through love.” The faith is real. The working is real. The love is real. But the energy comes from Christ living within, not from the flesh striving without.

Notice: the content of the inspired text doesn’t change. The same law of Moses stands. But the reader’s relationship to the text is transformed. Under “works of the law,” I read instruction and try to produce obedience from the outside in — and always fail. Under “the hearing of faith,” I receive Christ’s indwelling power and obedience is produced from the inside out. The works lens never arrives at the destination. The faith lens is the only road that actually gets there.

“Just as Abraham ‘believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.’ Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham.”

— Galatians 3:6–7, NKJV

Paul makes a devastating move here. He reaches back to the Judaizers’ own hero — Abraham — and shows that even Abraham’s righteousness came by believing, not by doing. And he goes further: Genesis 15:6 was written before circumcision was given in Genesis 17 and centuries before Sinai. The pattern of faith preceding law is woven into the very structure of redemptive history.

This is not an abstract theological point. Paul is making an argument about how to read the Old Testament narrative. The Judaizers read the story of Abraham and extracted circumcision as the defining requirement. Paul reads the same story and extracts faith as the defining reality. Same text, different lens, radically different conclusion.

The Blessing and the Curse

“For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them.'”

— Galatians 3:10, NKJV

Here is Paul’s critical logic: If you choose to approach the law from the “works” lens — meaning you stake your standing before God on your performance — then you must perform perfectly. The law as a system of human achievement admits no partial credit. It is all or nothing. And since no one achieves perfection, the “works” approach guarantees only one outcome: the curse.

But this is not a critique of the law itself. Paul is exposing what happens when you misread the law — when you treat it as a ladder to climb rather than a mirror that drives you to Christ. The law read through faith says: “You cannot do this on your own. Let me show you your need so you will look to the Promise.”

“But that no one is justified by the law in the sight of God is evident, for ‘the just shall live by faith.'”

— Galatians 3:11, NKJV

“What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made.”

— Galatians 3:19, NKJV

Now Paul asks the question that the Galatians — and every modern reader — must wrestle with: If the law doesn’t save us, why does it exist? If obedience isn’t the condition for acceptance, why does God give specific instructions at all?

Reading Galatians 3:19 in isolation — “added because of transgressions” — can make the law sound purely restrictive, as though God gave it only to restrain sin. But Paul himself provides the essential clarifying context in his letter to the Romans:

“And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death.”

— Romans 7:10, NKJV

This changes everything. The commandment was ordained to life. Its design was never negative. The law was always intended to be a revelation of abundant living in God — a picture of what human flourishing looks like when a person is in right relationship with the Creator. It describes the freedom, the health, the wholeness, the joy of a life fully surrendered to God’s will. The law is not the enemy of life. It is a portrait of life.

But something went wrong. Paul says he found the commandment to be death — not because the commandment itself was defective, but because sin had hijacked it:

“For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me. Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Has then what is good become death to me? Certainly not! But sin, that it might appear sin, was producing death in me through what is good.”

— Romans 7:11–13, NKJV

Notice Paul’s logic carefully. The law is holy, just, and good. Its purpose is life. But sin — working through the “works” hermeneutic, through the self-effort lens — takes the very goodness of the law and turns it into an instrument of condemnation. When I read inspired instruction and hear only a demand I cannot meet, the commandment that was meant to show me the beauty of God’s design instead crushes me under the weight of my failure. The problem was never the law’s purpose. The problem is that sin uses the law’s holiness against us.

This is why Paul says the law was “added because of transgressions” in Galatians 3:19 — not to condemn transgressors, but to reveal the depth of the problem so that we would stop trusting in ourselves and look to the Seed, Christ, to whom the promise points. The law shows us that we cannot produce the life it describes. Only Christ can. And so the law, read rightly, escorts us from self-effort to saving faith.

The Tutor Analogy (3:24–25)

“Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.”

— Galatians 3:24–25, NKJV

The Greek word paidagōgos (“tutor” or “schoolmaster”) refers to the household servant who supervised a child and escorted him to the teacher. The paidagōgos was not the teacher — he was the one who brought the child to the teacher. His authority was real but temporary, and it was always in service of delivering the child to someone greater.

This is Paul’s master metaphor for how inspired instruction functions. The law is authoritative. The law is God-given. The law has genuine work to do in the life of the believer. But its work is always directional — it points beyond itself to Christ. The moment the law becomes an end in itself, it has been misread. And here is where the Romans 7 context brings it full circle: the paidagōgos is not marching the child toward punishment. He is escorting the child toward life — toward the Teacher who alone can produce in us what the law describes.

Application: The Writings as Tutor

Ellen White understood this principle perfectly. Consider how she described the role of Scripture and her own writings:

“In His Word, God has committed to men the knowledge necessary for salvation. The Holy Scriptures are to be accepted as an authoritative, infallible revelation of His will. They are the standard of character, the revealer of doctrines, and the test of experience.”

— The Great Controversy, Introduction

“Little heed is given to the Bible, and the Lord has given a lesser light to lead men and women to the greater light.”

— Colporteur Ministry, p. 125

Notice the direction: the lesser light leads to the greater light. And the greater light is not merely the Bible as a text — it is Christ Himself, the Living Word to whom all Scripture testifies (John 5:39). Her writings function like the paidagōgos — escorting us to Christ. When we read her writings as a destination rather than a directional guide pointing us to Jesus, we have fundamentally misread them. We have committed the Galatian error.

“Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law?”

— Galatians 4:21, NKJV

This verse is stunning in its implications. Paul addresses people who want to live “under the law” — and then asks, “Do you not hear what the law actually says?” In other words: if you read Moses correctly, Moses himself will liberate you from legalism. The problem was never with the text. The problem was with the reading.

Paul then uses the story of Hagar and Sarah as an allegory for two covenants — two ways of relating to God:

The genius of Paul’s allegory is that both covenants come from the same Bible. Hagar and Sarah are both in Genesis. The Judaizers and Paul were both reading Moses. The difference was not in the text but in the covenant relationship through which they read it.

Paul is essentially saying: “You can stand at Sinai in one of two ways. You can stand there as a slave, hearing only demands you cannot fulfill. Or you can stand there as a child of promise, hearing the voice of a Father who is forming Christ in you.”

“Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.”

— Galatians 5:1, NKJV

Many readers assume that the circumcision debate in Galatians is the main point. But circumcision is actually Paul’s case study — the specific issue through which the deeper hermeneutical problem was expressing itself. Circumcision was commanded by God in Genesis 17. It was a legitimate, inspired instruction. The problem was not that the Judaizers wanted people to follow something in Scripture. The problem was why they wanted them to follow it and what they thought it accomplished.

“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love.”

— Galatians 5:6, NKJV

This verse is Paul’s thesis statement for the entire letter. The external act — circumcision or uncircumcision — is not the point. What matters is “faith working through love” (pistis di’ agapēs energoumenē). Faith is the root. Love is the fruit. And the energy (energoumenē) comes from God working within, not from human striving.

The Lesson — Not the Parallel

Now, an important distinction must be made. Circumcision was set aside in the New Testament — Paul could say “neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything” precisely because the ritual itself was no longer required under the new covenant. But many of the standards we find in inspired counsel — healthful living, simplicity in dress, discernment in entertainment, faithful Sabbath-keeping — still stand. They are not circumcision. They are not ceremonial relics to be discarded. They are God-given principles that describe the abundant life Christ produces in His people.

So the parallel with circumcision is not that these practices can be set aside. The parallel is hermeneutical — it is possible to take a practice that God still calls us to and read it through the wrong lens. When that happens, a God-given principle that was meant to be the fruit of a living relationship with Christ gets reduced to a litmus test for spiritual standing. Consider how differently these same practices sound depending on the lens:

• Healthful living: Through the works lens, it becomes a rigid dietary code enforced by guilt. Through the faith lens, it is a grateful response to the God who designed our bodies and calls us to honor Him in how we care for them (1 Corinthians 6:19–20).
• Simplicity in dress: Through the works lens, it becomes an external checklist of prohibitions. Through the faith lens, it flows from a heart so captivated by Christ that outward adornment fades in importance beside the “incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit” (1 Peter 3:3–4).
• Discernment in entertainment: Through the works lens, it becomes a forbidden list. Through the faith lens, it is the natural fruit of a mind being renewed by the Spirit — “whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just . . . meditate on these things” (Philippians 4:8).
• Sabbath-keeping: Through the works lens, it becomes a set of rigid rules. Through the faith lens, it is a weekly gift of rest and delight in the God who made us and redeemed us — a foretaste of eternal fellowship with Him (Isaiah 58:13–14).

In every case, the practice stands. The standard is not lowered. What changes is the power source and the motive. The question Paul forces us to ask is: Am I doing this because Christ’s love compels me and His Spirit is transforming me? Or am I doing this because I believe my performance earns me standing before God?

The first is the hearing of faith. The second is the works of the law. The behavior may look identical from the outside, but the internal reality is radically different — and it produces radically different fruit.

And here is the beautiful paradox: the person who reads these standards through the faith lens — who receives them as a description of what Christ is producing within — actually arrives at more genuine, more consistent, more joyful obedience than the person who white-knuckles their way through a checklist. The prophet Ezekiel reveals how God accomplishes this: “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them” (Ezekiel 36:27). God’s goal is genuine obedience. His method is the indwelling Spirit. We do not discard the standard — we receive the power to meet it.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.”

— Galatians 5:22–23, NKJV

Paul’s concluding argument is profoundly practical. He says: you want to know whether you’re reading from faith or from works? Look at the fruit. The “works of the flesh” — which include not just obvious sins but also contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions (5:20) — these are the natural harvest of a legalistic reading. People who live under the “works” hermeneutic become judgmental, competitive, anxious, and harsh.

The “fruit of the Spirit” is what grows when someone reads inspired counsel through the “hearing of faith.” Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness — these are not achievements. They are fruit. They grow naturally from a person who is abiding in Christ and receiving inspired counsel as a revelation of what God is doing in them by grace.

And notice Paul’s final line: “Against such there is no law” (5:23). When the Spirit is producing this kind of life, you don’t need the law as an external enforcer. The law is being written on the heart (Jeremiah 31:33). The person who walks in the Spirit fulfills the law — not by strenuous effort to keep a checklist, but because the Lawgiver Himself is living within.

The Full Witness of Scripture: Faith That Works

But we must be careful not to leave this as though grace were merely an inner feeling. The whole of Scripture insists that genuine faith produces real, visible obedience. The fruit of the Spirit is not an abstraction — it shows up in how we live, eat, relate, worship, and serve. Consider the weight of the biblical witness:

“Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. . . . For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.”

— James 2:17, 26, NKJV

“Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He who says, ‘I know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.”

— 1 John 2:3–4, NKJV

“Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.”

— Hebrews 12:14, NKJV

James and Paul are not in tension — they are looking at the same reality from two angles. Paul says: you cannot produce righteousness by self-effort. James says: if your faith has not produced righteousness, it was never genuine faith. Both are true. The grace hermeneutic does not lower the standard of obedience. It is the only road that actually arrives at the standard, because God Himself is producing the obedience from within.

This is the ancient promise running from Moses through the prophets. God told Israel He would “circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live” (Deuteronomy 30:6). Ezekiel saw it fulfilled in the new covenant: “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes” (Ezekiel 36:27). Paul experienced it personally: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12–13).

The pattern is always the same: God does the inner work. Real obedience flows outward from the transformed heart. And inspired writings — both Scripture and the Testimonies — describe what that obedient life looks like, not to condemn us, but to show us the destination toward which God’s grace is carrying us.

“The law requires righteousness — a righteous life, a perfect character; and this man has not to give. He cannot meet the claims of God’s holy law. But Christ, coming to the earth as man, lived a holy life, and developed a perfect character. These He offers as a free gift to all who will receive them.”

— Steps to Christ, p. 62

“The condition of eternal life is now just what it always has been — just what it was in Paradise before the fall of our first parents — perfect obedience to the law of God, perfect righteousness. If eternal life were granted on any condition short of this, then the happiness of the whole universe would be imperiled.”

— Steps to Christ, p. 62

Notice the balance: the standard is perfect obedience. Ellen White does not soften that. But in the very same passage, she says this perfect righteousness is offered as “a free gift to all who will receive.” The standard is not lowered. The power to meet it is given. That is the hearing of faith.

Sowing to the Spirit (6:7–10)

But Paul does not end his letter with an abstract theological statement about the Spirit. He closes with one of the most sobering and practical passages in all of his writings:

“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life. And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.”

— Galatians 6:7–9, NKJV

This is Paul — the same apostle who has just spent five chapters demolishing legalism — telling the Galatians that what they do matters. There is real sowing and real reaping. There is real effort involved in the Christian life. Grace is not passivity.

As Douglas Moo observes in his commentary on Galatians, human effort is required — not for justification, but because a believer must actively sow to the Spirit. Sowing to the Spirit means choosing, day by day, to place yourself where the Spirit works: in the Word, in prayer, in service, in obedience to the counsel God has given. It means reading Ellen White and then, by the Spirit’s power, doing what she describes — not to earn standing, but because sowing determines reaping.

This is the final piece of the balance Paul builds throughout Galatians. The hearing of faith is not a passive posture that simply receives and then sits idle. It is a living, active, sowing faith — empowered by the Spirit, directed by inspired counsel, and bearing the real, tangible fruit of a transformed life. As Paul tells the Philippians: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12–13). We work — but it is God who works in us. Both are true. Both are essential.

Everything Paul teaches in Galatians can be synthesized into a practical framework for how we approach the writings of Ellen White — or any inspired counsel.

Five Principles from Galatians for Reading Inspired Writings

Before reading any passage from Ellen White, remind yourself of the gospel: you are already accepted in Christ. His righteousness is your standing. Now read the passage not as a condition to meet but as a revelation of what abundant life in Christ looks like.

Like the paidagōgos, inspired counsel is meant to escort you to Jesus. If a passage makes you feel hopeless, condemned, or far from God, you have misread it. Go back and ask: “How is this pointing me to my need for Christ and His power to transform me?”

Circumcision was a real, God-given practice — but Paul says what ultimately matters is “faith working through love.” Similarly, Ellen White’s specific counsels often express timeless principles. Read for the principle and let the Spirit guide the application, rather than treating every detail as an eternal, uniform requirement.

Your reading of inspired writings should be producing the fruit of the Spirit. If your study of Ellen White is producing love, joy, peace, longsuffering, and kindness, you are on track. If it is producing anxiety, judgmentalism, comparison, and despair, the problem is not with the text — it is with the hermeneutical lens.

When Ellen White described her writings as “a lesser light to lead men and women to the greater light,” she was not simply pointing people from her books to the Bible as a text. She was pointing them to Christ — the Living Word to whom all Scripture testifies. Jesus Himself told the Pharisees, “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me” (John 5:39). The greater light is not a book — it is a Person. Ellen White’s writings point to Scripture, and Scripture points to Christ, and Christ by His Spirit produces in us the very obedience the law describes.

“The glory of the gospel is that it is founded upon the principle of restoring in the fallen race the divine image by a constant manifestation of benevolence. . . . This is the condition of the final salvation of every soul.”

— Testimonies for the Church, vol. 4, p. 294

The paidagōgos has done his job when the child is not merely informed about the Teacher, but transformed by the Teacher — walking in genuine obedience, produced by a living relationship with Christ.

Paul’s letter to the Galatians reveals a principle that runs through all of redemptive history: inspired writings can be read from two fundamentally different postures, and the posture determines everything.

The Galatian error is not an ancient problem. It is a perennial temptation for every community that takes inspired writings seriously — and that is exactly what makes Galatians so essential for Seventh-day Adventists who value the writings of Ellen White.

But here is the critical balance: the opposite of legalism is not lawlessness. Paul never told the Galatians to stop obeying God. He told them to receive the power to obey from the right source. The hearing of faith does not discard the destination of obedience — it is the only road that actually arrives there. As A. T. Jones put it so simply in his 1888-era studies: “With the Pharisees, men must work in order to be justified. With the Lord and Paul, men must be justified in order to work.” The works are real. The obedience is real. The question is whether it flows from the inside out by the Spirit’s power, or is imposed from the outside in by human effort.

The solution is not to abandon the writings. Paul never told the Galatians to throw away Moses. The solution is to read them rightly — through the hearing of faith, as an escort to Christ, as a revelation of what the Spirit is producing in the life of every believer who abides in Jesus. And as that abiding deepens, the obedience the law describes becomes not a burden but a delight — because the Lawgiver Himself is living within.

“If you love Me, keep My commandments.”

— John 14:15, NKJV

“The closer you come to Jesus, the more faulty you will appear in your own eyes; for your vision will be clearer, and your imperfections will be seen in broad and distinct contrast to His perfect nature. This is evidence that Satan’s delusions have lost their power; that the vivifying influence of the Spirit of God is arousing you.”

— Steps to Christ, pp. 64–65

That is the voice of the “hearing of faith.” Not a checklist. Not a lowered standard. A tender invitation to draw closer to Jesus — where clearer sight of our need leads not to despair, but to deeper dependence on the only One who can make us whole and produce in us the perfect obedience the law was always pointing toward.

“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

— Galatians 2:20, NKJV