I Fought The Law And It Brought Me To Christ (Galatians 3:15-29)
When I worked on the dock at the Post Office in Harrison, I got to choose the radio station. It was one of the few pleasures found in unloading trucks when it is 100 degrees outside. But Harrison only had 2 radio stations. So my choice was KHOZ 102.9, which was a country station. Or, Hits 96, which was the Classic Rock station. And “I Fought the Law” played quite often because I don’t choose the country station. And it just so happens that I know quite a lot of music from the 60’s and 70’s because of it.
The song gives scenarios that end with him fighting the law and the law winning, as it is so apt to do. But in the case of God’s Law delivered at Mt. Sinai, the goal was not to lock you up in prison. It was to lock you up under sin so that you would seek Christ by faith. It did arrange the civilization of the people of Israel after they’d left Egypt. It did reveal to the people how they ought to live before God. But more than that, it prepared people to take hold of the promises of God found in the Savior Jesus Christ.
It is this that Paul desires the churches of Galatia to wrap their minds around. The Law beats us almost to death and leads us to Jesus.
Justification Was Always By Faith (Galatians 3:15-18)
Paul is looking at two events. The first is God’s covenant with Abraham and the second is the covenant made at Mt. Sinai. This is a discussion that will take place over the next few weeks as Paul digs deeply into these two and how they relate to one another.
And this is very important for the context of the churches at Galatia. They have been influenced by Judaizers that came into town and began declaring that the church members must go through Jewish rights and law keeping in order to be declared right with God.
Here Paul discusses the two covenants. Even when people make covenants, a new covenant does not annul the first. That is, unless the new covenant says it annuls the first. And Mt. Sinai never annulled the first covenant. That’s Paul’s point.
Abraham, as we saw last week, believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness (Galatians 3:6). Abraham had no law to obey. He was an uncircumcised, Moon-worshipping Pagan that believed God and was counted righteous.
“Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith–just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”?” (Galatians 3:5-6 ESV)
God made promises to Abraham, and as we saw last week, the gospel was in the promises made to Abraham. Paul points this out when he says that “in you shall all the nations be blessed.” Contains the gospel. It was the gospel in veiled form. Jesus was the seed through whom all nations would be blessed. I say that it was veiled because Abraham didn’t see the end of all those promises. But it is not so with us today.
Today we can see the gospel in its fullness. We see that Jesus was the fulfillment of these promises. And we see that it was done by God the Son taking on human flesh, living a perfect life, and dying for our sins. Abraham didn’t see that, but we do. Abraham had faith in the promises though the gospel veiled, but we have faith in the promise of God and see the fullness thereof. As we saw last week, the response is the same.
Paul dives a little further into the promise given to Abraham and says that the promises were made to Abraham and his offspring (singular). And he argues that the singular seed was Jesus Christ. Today Jews argue that Paul’s reasoning is ludicrous. They say that this word is “a collective” noun. And the argument makes sense. It is similar to the word “crowd”, where we understand that there are many people within the “crowd”. But this is not how the word “offspring” and “seed” are used in the Book of Genesis. Remember, there was a singular seed through which the promise passed in the Book of Genesis.
Over and over we see the singular seed through which God’s promise passed in Genesis. Isaac received the blessing and not Ishmael. The blessing passed through Jacob and not Esau. And then we see that the blessing of a redeemer is passed from Jacob to Judah. And from which tribe did Jesus eventually come?
Remember, from the tribe of Judah came David, and eventually Jesus. Jesus is the singular seed that all of these promises found their fulfillment.
Now, repeatedly mentioning 430 years might seem strange. But Paul is making another argument. 430 years is a long time. And during this time there was no law given. These promises were long established by the time the people of Israel made it out of Egypt. And Paul’s argument is that Sonship was always through faith and not by keeping the Law.
The covenant with Abraham was not annulled when God gave the Law at Sinai. The Law at Sinai was stacked on top of it, but was not necessary to it. The inheritance was never intended to be given by the Law. It was always given through promise. And we would call this promise being declared righteous and brought into God’s family.
How is it that a Jew was declared righteous before God? Was it the keeping of the Law or faith in God’s promise?
Paul’s answer here is that it is through faith in God’s promise.
Application:
You will often hear Christians say that Old Testament believers were saved by works and now we are saved by grace. But that is not the case. It was never the case that Old Testament believers could be, on their own, holy and righteous before a holy God.
The Law didn’t annul the promises to Abraham and to his seed, that is ultimately Jesus Christ.
On a few occasions, I have heard people discuss what happened when parents died and the will was in the courts. It’s often horrible. And the inheritance can be stuck in court for years as people try to figure things out. The lawsuits are brought early on because a long standing agreement will not likely be overturned. Can you imagine a person getting the inheritance and then a few generations later that being overturned? The Great Grandkids have to pay the difference. That’s not going to happen.
Nor was Law going to supplant promise after that 430 year gap. And, Paul’s argument here is that Law will never supplant promise.
The Law’s Purpose Is To Bring Us To Faith In Christ (Galatians 3:19-24)
Paul’s next statement makes a lot of sense. He just jumps into the next logical question. “Why then the law?” What purpose does the Law hold?
Paul’s answer is this, “it was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary.”
It was added because of transgressions.
It was typically though that law would reduce sin. That is true. And it is a principle that we understand today. Enforcement of law helps to curb transgressions.
But if this is true, does that mean that the Law is contrary to the promise?
Paul’s answer is that it does not. There is no law that can give life.
“Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law.” (Galatians 3:21 ESV)
There is no law that can give life. There is no law that can bring about forgiveness of sins. Rather than making people right with God through works it trapped everything under sin. The Law did something, it revealed our sinfulness and our guilt before God.
Paul goes a little further into this line of thought in the Book of Romans.
“What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”” (Romans 7:7 ESV)
How do I know that I am a sinner? The Law tells me so. How do I find out that my covetousness is a sin? How do I find out that lying is a sin? Lust? The Law reveals that to me. And because we are image bearers, the Law is written on our hearts. Our conscience tells us that we have rebelled against God because of the Law.
Why?
So that I could take hold of the promise by faith. And Paul says that this was the case until the coming faith would be revealed. The coming faith is Jesus Christ. The coming faith is what Abraham only saw in shadows.
And here Paul goes further. He says that the Law was our guardian to bring us to Christ. The Roman world was very familiar with these guardians. And our English translations have trouble figuring out what to call them. Some translations say “tutor”. Some say “guardian”. We just struggle to figure out what to call them.
A well-to-do Roman would charge a slave to watch over their boys. This would be a well educated slave that was given responsibility to watch everything that the boy did. He was to teach the boy how to live as an honorable man in the Roman world. And the boy was not to leave the house without him. He was to watch over the entire life of the boy, tell him what he was doing wrong, correct him, and give the boy a whole-life education.
The boy felt the weight of this guardian and desperately wanted to reach maturity and get away from him. Remember, he was always there. He was always reprimanding. He was always critiquing. Such is the Law.
The Law was always there. It always informed them of their failures. It always informed them of where they’d sinned. And it always informed them of how far they’d fallen. That is, until maturity came and the guardian brought us to Christ.
The guardian brought the boy to honorable manhood. The guardian of the Law brings us to faith in Jesus Christ.
As Augustine, who died around the year 430, put it,
“The children of [of Abraham] were put in the hand of [Christ] the Mediator so that He Himself might liberate them from sin when they were forced by their transgression of the law to admit that they needed grace and mercy from the Lord.” (Augustine)
What does the Law do to us? Does it not drive us to the Savior?
We look into God’s holy law, His righteous standard and we don’t glory in our own goodness. We gaze into that mirror and we see that we have a problem.
God is good. He is holy. He is righteous. He is just. And we are not. We look into the Law and see how often we have failed. And how often we have probably failed today. And what does it cause us to do?
Well, it doesn’t cause us to think highly of ourselves. It doesn’t raise our self-esteem or our feeling of self-righteousness.
It should move us to look away from ourselves and toward the Savior.
That is the main purpose of the Law.
Does God’s Law reduce sin in the world? Absolutely.
Does God’s Law help us to know how we are to order our lives? What kind of life is pleasing to God? Yes indeed.
But more than that, God’s Law leads us to Christ where we find forgiveness of sins.
And I, along with many other scholars would argue that Paul is using Law here in broad and not narrow way. He has in mind, obviously from the context of Galatians, different rites and ceremonies. But it seems to me that he has the entire system of the Law in mind here.
Imagine this with me for a moment. A Hebrew man walked into the temple and took with him a young spotless lamb as a sacrifice for his sin. The priest laid his hand upon the lamb and symbolically placed the sins of the man upon that spotless lamb.
In that moment, he understood that the lamb took his punishment. He saw that the cost of his sin was the death of another. And he did this repeatedly throughout his life. What was this to eventually cause him to see?
What is it that Jesus did? Jesus died in our place. And when Jesus came, the Jewish observers of the Law were supposed to see that Jesus fulfilled all of it. When Christ came they were to see that it all pointed to Jesus.
The Law points us to Jesus. We see our failings. We see our misery. And the Law beats us to death until we see that there is salvation nowhere else.
We were miserable sinners, but we needed help seeing that we were miserable sinners. God’s wrath was hanging over our heads, but we needed help seeing that God’s wrath was hanging over our heads. Salvation was accomplished for us, but we needed help seeing that we couldn’t do it on our own.
We Are Made Sons Of God By Faith (Galatians 3:25-29)
We are in “the seed” by faith. We are no longer under a guardian. We have been united to Christ by faith. As Christians, we are baptized and put on Christ.
You were in rebellion against God. And this was revealed to you by the Law. You saw your guilt and need for the Savior. God the Son took on human flesh and dwelt among us. He lived a perfect life and accomplished all righteousness for us. He died on the cross and paid the punishment for sin. And three days later he rose from the grave “for our justification”. And all those that turn from ruling their own lives and trying to make it on their own find forgiveness of sins and are made “sons of God”.
You who trust in Christ are baptized and have “put on Christ”. We are united to Him by faith. He bore our sins in His body on the tree. And we are given the righteousness of God.
“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV)
Christ took my sin and shame. And I am given “the righteousness of God”.
And because of this, all barriers, hierarchies, cliques were to be removed from the Galatian churches. Some had been circumcised. Some had been keeping ceremonial days. But there was to be no hierarchy in Christ.
The gospel puts all of us on the same footing. We have the same need for salvation. We have the same Savior. We have faith in the same Savior. Therefore, “there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28).
The social differences existed. But they were all one in Christ Jesus. We are “heirs according to the promise.”
Application:
We all come from the same desperate place. Lost and in need of a Savior.
We all come to the same Savior, who lived, died, and rose for us.
We are all heirs according to God’s promises.
And if this truth gets embedded within you, it does something to you.
Look around. I hope that you don’t see a hierarchy of believers. I hope that you don’t see people that are less worthy than you. I hope you don’t see people that need Jesus less than you do.
I was in a conversation with a guy once that kept telling me how often he comes to church and how much he did. And with every conversation he was implying that he was a better church member than everyone else that attended. I believe that he really saw himself on better footing than everyone else.
That’s not how we are supposed to see each other. We’re not supposed to be measuring ourselves by how much we do. Our salvation is supposed to spur us on to good works, but not as a method of meriting Heaven or meriting status among other believers.
That hierarchy is gone. There aren’t people that are better than others within our midst. There is a group of people here that are part of the fallen race of Adam, that merited eternal punishment, that found redemption in the Christ.
R. Dwain Minor