Today I was reading Galatians 3, where Paul confronts a lie that had started circulating in the church: that faith in Jesus was not enough, and that if someone really wanted to belong to the family of God, they also needed to obey the law.

And you can almost feel the question underneath it:

Is there something else I have to do to really belong?
Could it really be this simple—that Jesus paid it all, and I receive it by faith?

Paul sounds frustrated because the Galatians are drifting back into a way of thinking that says belonging must be earned. So he reminds them of Abraham, who received the promise before the law ever existed. He reminds them that Christ became a curse in our place. He reminds them that they have already received the Holy Spirit.

His point is clear: the law was good, but it was never the thing that saved you. So now that Christ has come—now that the promised one has done what the law never could—why would you go back to living as though your standing with God depends on you?

But old habits die hard.

As I sat with that today, I started thinking about marriage.

Marriage is a covenant. A promise. On my wedding day, when I walked down the aisle, made vows, and signed the paperwork, it was a done deal. I was married.

Galatians 3:18 says, “For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on the promise; but God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise.”

So think about marriage in those terms.

What if someone said, “Yes, you are married now, but only as long as you make enough money every year. Only as long as you sleep in the same bed every night. Only as long as your body stays attractive. Only as long as you keep meeting all the expectations. So make sure you work hard, because your marriage depends on your performance.”

That sounds absurd.

And yet this is often how we think about God.

We may not say it quite that bluntly, but we live as though our place in his family hangs in the balance based on whether we are reading our Bible enough, praying enough, serving enough, giving enough, attending enough.

And I am not saying those things do not matter. They do. I do those things, and they are good gifts. But they are not what secures me.

The covenant was not created by my effort, and it is not sustained by my effort. It was established by God, and I entered into it through faith in Jesus Christ—through his life, death, and resurrection on my behalf.

That means my relationship with God can be close or distant in experience, warm or cold in affection, attentive or neglectful in practice, and yet the covenant itself does not rest on the strength of my grip on him, but on the strength of his promise to me.

That changes things.

Because in marriage, intimacy can grow or suffer depending on how two people live together. Communication matters. Attention matters. Presence matters. But those things are not what create the covenant in the first place.

In the same way, I do not spend time with God in order to make him keep me. I spend time with him because he has already made me his.

I read his Word not to earn belonging, but because I belong.
I pray not to stay saved, but because I am known.
I seek him not so he will finally love me, but because in Christ, he already does.

Something clicked for me today.

If I am honest, I have often lived as though I need to earn my place in the family of God. As though I need to prove that I am worth keeping around. As though his love is secure one day and shaky the next, depending on how well I perform.

But Galatians 3 will not let me live there.

The inheritance is by promise.
The covenant is held by God.
Christ has already borne the curse.
The Spirit has already been given.

So I can stop striving to become someone worth loving, and instead rest as someone who already is.

And from that place of rest, I can draw near.
Not because I am afraid of losing him,
but because he has already claimed me as his own.