ACC ~ Galatians 3 v8a

THE ONE WHO GAVE THE LAW DECREED BEFORE THE LAW THAT THE GENTILES BE JUSTIFIED BY FAITH ALONE. CHRYSOSTOM: For since they were perturbed by the greater antiquity of the law and the fact that faith came after the law, he destroys this surmise of theirs, showing that faith is older than the law. That is obvious from Abraham, since he was justified before the appearance of the law. … “The one who gave the law,” he says, in effect “was the one who decreed before the law was given that the Gentiles should be justified.” And Paul does not say “revealed” but “preached the gospel” [beforehand to Abraham], so that you may understand that even the patriarch rejoiced in this kind of righteousness and greatly desired its advent. HOMILY ON GALATIANS 3.8.

HOW JOSHUA’S CIRCUMCISED PEOPLE ANTICIPATE THE SPIRITUAL CIRCUMCISION OF JESUS’ PEOPLE. JEROME: God, providing that the descendants of Abraham should not be mixed with the other nations … marked off the Israelite people by a particular rite: circumcision. … After that for forty years no one was circumcised in the wilderness. They were living without any intermixing with other nations. … As soon as the people crossed the river Jordan and the host poured out onto the territory of Judea in Palestine, he made provision by a necessary circumcision against the future error from miscegenation with the Gentiles. But the fact that the people are said to have been circumcised a second time by their leader Joshua signifies that circumcision had ceased in the wilderness, though practiced in Egypt for a good reason. Believers now are cleansed by our Lord Jesus Christ through a spiritual circumcision. EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS 3.7.

Gal