As we return this morning to our ongoing exposition of the letter of Paul to the Galatians, we’ve come to chapter 3, verses 15 through 29, to which I’d like to invite you to now turn if you would. You can find that on page 973 if you’re using one of our church Bibles. Paul is writing, you will remember, to counter the false teaching of some legalists who have gained a hearing in the Galatian churches. In chapter 3:1-14, in order to help the Galatians resist the temptation to legalism, Paul, we’ve seen, has contrasted works and faith and the curses and blessings that flow from them. And this time as we pick up the argument in verse 15, Paul now offers a third contrast, this time between law and promise. Let me say at this point, this is probably the most challenging section of the book of Galatians to interpret, and so I guess, buckle up. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
The simplest way I can think of to get at Paul’s teaching here was to simply highlight the three dominant motifs around which he is constructing his argument. If you’d look at the passage with me for a moment, let me try and show them to you. First of all, verses 15 through 20, the focus falls on the promise given to Abraham. The promise, set in sharp contrast to the giving of the law. This is where we will spend the bulk of our time. Paul wants the Galatians to see why they ought not to be legalists or to look for salvation to law keeping. And so he shows the superiority of the Gospel promise in the covenant with Abraham – the superiority of the promise to the law. Then secondly, verses 21 through 25, the focus falls on the role of the law as a guardian. Why did God give the law through Moses if it was not intended as a mechanism by which people could be saved? Well he says the law was given to be a guardian whose job it was to prepare his people for and to bring them to Jesus Christ. So 15 through 20, the focus is on the promise, 21 through 25, the focus is on the guardian, then 26 through 29, Paul turns to consider the benefit to us when instead of law keeping we do in fact trust the promise of God by faith alone. What happens? Well, Paul says we become the sons of God, heirs of God according to the promise. And so there’s the argument summed up really in three words. Have you got them? Promise, guardian and sons.
Before we take a closer look, let’s pause and pray and ask for the Lord to help us and then we’ll read the passage together. Let us all pray.
O Lord Jesus, how we need Your help now. This is a difficult part of the Scriptures. The Spirit has inspired it for our instruction and growth in grace, and so we come to You as hungry children, thirsting after righteousness, asking that we might be filled, even from this difficult part of Your holy Word. Give us light and understanding and indeed give us faith in Your precious Gospel promises, that resting on Jesus, the heir of the covenant, we might become the sons of God and heirs of God and co-heirs together with Christ. For we ask it in His holy name, amen.
Galatians chapter 3 at the fifteenth verse. This is God’s holy Word:
“To give a human example, brothers: even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified. Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, ‘And to offsprings,’ referring to many, but referring to one, ‘And to your offspring,’ who is Christ. This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.
Why then the law? 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. Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one.
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. But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.”
Amen, and we praise God that He has spoken in His holy and inerrant Word.
I recently read part of a research paper on the experience of institutionalization among prison inmates. Let me quote a key paragraph to you. “The process of institutionalization in correctional settings may surround inmates so thoroughly with external limits, immerse them so deeply in a network of rules and regulations, and accustom them so completely to such highly visible systems of constraint that internal controls atrophy. Or in the case of especially young inmates, fail to develop altogether. Thus, institutionalization or prisonization renders some people so dependent on external constraints that they gradually lose the capacity to rely on internal organization and self-imposed personal limits to guide their actions and restrain their conduct. If and when this external structure is taken away, severely institutionalized persons may find that they no longer know how to do things on their own or how to refrain from doing those things that are ultimately harmful or self-destructive.” In other words, often former prison inmates have become so institutionalized, so dependent on the structures of life behind bars, and so unable to function in ordinary society now without them, that they sabotage their rehabilitation and quickly return to prison.
As I was thinking about that, it struck me that Paul might easily have found, and actually almost suggest as much in some of the language he uses in the chapter, he might have easily found in that tragic picture an apt description of the Galatian Christians themselves. And I wonder if you find it in a description of the habits of your own hearts, like an institutionalized prisoner who has now been released, the Galatians keep on trying to return to the old slavery, the old bondage, the old prison of law keeping and self-salvation. Even though they’ve now received their freedom in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, they find themselves sabotaging their liberties and running back to legalism. I wonder if you can relate to that. You know better, of course. In your head, you know your salvation is a free gift received by faith alone. And yet haven’t you found that your institutionalized heart, trained as it is by the relentless legalism of our sinful flesh, keeps trying to go back to jail, back to the shackles of living on the basis of our own merits, still believing deep down that somehow, “God will really love me, really accept me, really finally approve of me if I could just measure up this time, make the grade, pass the test, keep the law.” Haven’t you found that to be true in your own heart? That’s why the Galatians found the teaching of the legalists who showed up in their church so very attractive and Paul writes, as he does here in this part of the letter. We might say he wants to help them, to help us with the process of rehabilitation. He wants us to learn how deep and wide and real our freedom now is in Jesus Christ and to give us the kind of confidence and the equipment we need to begin to live in that freedom gladly and boldly and with joy.
The Promise
And he starts, as I said earlier, with a focus on the promise, on the promise. Look with me at verses 15 through 20. The issue, you will remember, is the relationship of the law of Moses to the promise made to Abraham. Paul has mentioned the promise to Abraham back in verse 6, he mentions it again in verse 8, and he contrasted those who trust the promise with those who seek to live by the law in verses 10 through 14 that we looked at last time. The law, he said in verse 10, only ever leads to a curse. But verse 14, the blessings of Abraham come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. And now having raised the issue of the law and the promise, he illustrates for us the relationship between them – notice this – by appeal to human covenants. You see how he does that in verse 15? Would you look there please? Verse 15, “To give a human example, brothers: even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified.” Now we don’t really deal with covenants very often anymore, so this isn’t the easiest of illustrations for us, although you might still come across a covenant perhaps in the context of purchasing your own home. There might be a homeowner’s association covenant that requires certain things from you and stipulates certain conditions for living in your new neighborhood. But even with that, the covenants we are used to can all be changed and modified and amended.
Paul likely here has human covenants – covenants between two human beings – from the Old Testament scriptures in mind. And those sorts of covenants were binding on the parties involved even in those cases where they were made under false pretenses. We saw one of those when we worked our way through the book of Joshua recently. Do you remember it in Joshua chapter 9? The Gibeonites deceived the people of Israel into making an alliance with them. And even though it was predicated on a lie, on a deception, the Israelites were compelled to honor their covenant commitment because they had made a covenant. And Paul’s point is in these kinds of bonds, even in merely human covenants like that, can’t be broken once they have been ratified. Now verse 16 reminds us God gave His covenant promise to Abraham and to his offspring. And according to verse 17, the Mosaic law, which then came 430 years later than the Abrahamic covenant, does not annul a covenant promise previously made by God so as to make the promise void. Just like in those inviolable human covenants, God’s promise to Abraham cannot later be amended, not even by the law of Moses.
Now we are going to come back to verse 16 later on, but that is essentially Paul’s entire argument here in a nutshell. I wonder if you’ve got it – have you grasped his argument? The Abrahamic covenant focused on a promise of grace is still in effect, right now, today, it is still in effect, and the Mosaic law has not repealed it or suspended it in any way. It doesn’t make the previous promise void.
And as simple, actually, as that point is, it was vital for the Galatians and it is vital for us clearly to understand because the legalists wanted the Galatians to think that the law was superior. “Oh sure, that’s how it was for Abraham,” they would say, “but that was then and this is now. These days there is a new arrangement in force.” So I imagine them saying something like, imagine it’s sort of like the relationship between the 1789 Constitution of the United States of America that replaced and superseded the 1777 Articles of Confederation. So they started with the articles and then they superseded it with a new constitution. They started with the promise to Abraham, but that was superseded and rendered obsolete by the covenant now through Moses and the giving of the law. “And now you know what that means of course, don’t you, Galatians? If you really want to follow Jesus faithfully, you’d better get after it and learn to keep the ceremonial and the religious and the moral demands and the law of Moses because that’s the constitution under which we now operate and live.” That’s what the legalists were saying. “Not so fast,” Paul replies. “You have actually misconstrued entirely the relationship between the covenant with Abraham and the law of Moses. That’s not at all why the law was given.”
“Well okay then, smarty pants. What is the law for?” That’s the question Paul anticipates in verse 19. You see the question in verse 19? “Why then the law?” If the law isn’t an upgrade from the Abrahamic covenant, what is it? Why was the law given? If it wasn’t to replace the covenant with Abraham, what is its function? Paul gives us two reasons. Can you see them in the text? First of all he says the law “was added because of transgressions.” That is to say, it was added to the Abrahamic covenant to expose and unmask not how good we are at obeying God but how prone we are to disobey Him. The rabbis said that there were 613 commandments in the law of Moses and they thought that God’s purpose in giving them all was to show people how to secure by their obedience the saving favor of God. “Just do these things and you will live.” But that’s not at all the point of the law. The law, rather, was to reveal just how incapable we actually are of doing any of these commandments in such a way as to meet God’s standard. The law was added because of transgressions. It was added to expose not how easy it can be for us to earn divine acceptance but how utterly short we will fall of ever even coming close.
Now do you see how profound the lie is that we tell ourselves when we begin to believe we can merit our way into God’s good books? I mean, do you really think you can show up on judgment day, clutching in your fist the tattered ribbons of your best efforts in life and proudly hold them up before the Lord Jesus and say, “Lord, here is my entrance fee, paid in full, in the sweat of my own brow and the labor of my own hands. Now on the basis of these good works of mine, let me in.” Is that your plan? That’s a terrible plan! If you can’t see it now in the clear teaching of our passage, let me assure you on that day you will come to see just how filthy and meager and twisted and rotten your very best deeds actually are. The stench will expose your piety for the polluted mess it is, your noblest philanthropy will turn your stomach on that day as you see in the pristine radiance of Christ’s own true holiness just how self-serving and full of sin it has all been, and you will know then, if you don’t realize it now, that in truth, all our righteousness is as filthy rags. So why did God give the law? It was added because of transgression. It was added so that you might not have to wait for that terrible coming day when it’s going to be too late to find a remedy for your sin. It was added to show you, you need a Savior right now, right now.
There is another reason, he says, the law was given. Look at verse 19 again. It was added, secondly, “until the offspring should come to whom the promise was made.” Now that connects back to verse 16 to which I said we would return. So look back at verse 16 with me just for a moment and notice Paul making a little aside from the main point of his argument where he tells us about the focal point of the covenant God made with Abraham. The promise, he said, was “made to Abraham and to his offspring.” The Greek word translated there as “offspring” is literally, “and to his seed.” And Paul is observing the very simple, obvious, grammatical fact that the word “seed” is singular. Of course “seed” can mean one single seed or it could be used as a collective noun meaning, “many seeds.” When the sower sows his seed, we know he’s not sowing one, single seed in the entire field; he is sowing many seed. That’s a collective noun. And Paul is here reflecting on that very simple, grammatical observation and he knows that the promise to Abraham and to his seed means a promise to all the children of Abraham collectively. He uses the word in precisely that sense later on in the chapter at verse 29.
But vitally, he says, here in verse 16, the primary reference of the seed isn’t actually plural or collective but it is singular and particular because there was always one particular seed, one particular child in view when God made His covenant with Abraham. It was a promise to Abraham that in his seed, singular, in his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, all the nations of the earth would be blessed. And just as the word “seed” in the Abrahamic covenant is grammatically both singular and collective, so Jesus is also theologically a singular and a collective person. He acts as an individual upon whom the promise of God falls, in whom that promise is fulfilled. But He also acts for us as the representative of His people. We are in Him. He acts in our place. And since Jesus is both singular and collective, the singular and collective sense of this word “seed” of Abraham lends itself very well to the purposes of God in making the promise in this particular way.
And Paul’s point in making that observation is simply that in the coming of Jesus, the promise has been fulfilled. God has kept His Word. And now, verse 19, he explains the law was added only until that promise might be fulfilled. In other words, the whole complex system of the Mosaic law was temporary. That would have been devastating to the Galatian legalists who loved the law of Moses so very much. It wasn’t meant to be binding forever. It’s not the Abrahamic covenant that was made obsolete when the law came along, but rather the Mosaic law that has been made obsolete by the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant. Jesus has come; Moses is done. That’s the point. So why would you imagine for a moment that you could get right with God by trusting in your law keeping, in your adherence to this now obsolete system? The Mosaic system is done away with now that Jesus has arrived.
And what’s more, not only is the Mosaic law temporary, Paul says it is inherently inferior. That becomes clear when you consider not just when it was given – 430 years after the promise – but how it was given. Look again at verses 19 and 20. Paul says the law was put into place “through angels by an intermediary. Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one.” Now let me admit, frankly here this is the most difficult verse in an already very difficult passage and there are countless scholarly interpretations of it. So let me cut to the chase and tell you what I think it means. I think Paul is saying the Mosaic law was given to Israel third-hand. That is to say, it came from God through angels, through Moses, to the people. It used intermediaries. But not so, the promise. God made the covenant promise to Abraham directly. God is one. He makes the promise unilaterally and He assumes personal responsibility for fulfilling the promise personally and completely. All the obligation rests upon Him and He will surely keep His words. Paul wants the Galatians, remember, who are being tempted toward legalism, to realize if they trust to their own religious performance for acceptance with God they will forever be unsure that they had done enough.
Remember Paul says in verse 20 an intermediary implies more than one. That is to say, the law is two-sided. There’s the law maker and the law keeper. There are conditions to be met. There are penalties if you break the law. It says, “Do this and live.” But if law keeping is the basis of your hope before God, then the question has to be, “Have I really done what the law requires of me and have I done it well enough? Have I done it rightly? Have I really measured up? Have I made the grade?” The point is, there’s no peace for you, none, no confidence before God, none, if your confidence rests on the work of your own hands, on your doing, on your attempts to keep God’s law. That’s what Paul is saying to us. But the promise, oh the promise, that’s a different matter entirely because the promise came completely from God. He made it. He keeps it. The promise is one-sided and guaranteed by the character of the promise maker. And He’s already kept that promise, hasn’t He? In sending His Son He has kept His Word, so if you put your hope there, if you rest your faith there in the promise made and kept in Jesus Christ, well now you can have confidence before God. You can know you are secure forever in His saving love because His acceptance of you had nothing to do with your doing and everything to do with His promise making and promise keeping. You may legitimately doubt yourself, but you have no right to doubt His promise. Trust the promise and there you will find peace and security. And so that’s the first thing I want you to see here – the promise.
The Guardian
And then more briefly and secondly, look at verses 21 through 25 – the guardian. The promise. Now, the guardian. Paul elaborates a little more for us on the function, the true purpose of the law, in the history of salvation. And he uses another everyday illustration from his own culture and context that may seem a little strange to us. He says the law is like a “paidagogos” – that is, a guardian or a school master or a home tutor. In the ancient Greco-Roman world, wealthy children were often entrusted to the care and tutelage of a servant who was not infrequently caricatured in popular culture as inflexible and severe and grumpy and mean. Even today it’s not uncommon for some teenagers to complain that their teacher in this or that subject is more like a prison guard than an inspiring teacher.
And that’s the image that Paul is working with here to describe the way the law worked in the old covenant. Notice how he argues. In verses 21 and 22, he essentially restates his main point. “The Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.” And then in 23 through 25, he explains how that worked out in history. There was a period, he says, when God’s people were held captive under the law. He’s talking about the old covenant, the Old Testament age under the Mosaic economy. That was the time, he says, “before faith came.” They were “imprisoned until the coming of faith would be revealed.” He’s not denying that God’s people had personal faith in God’s promises in the old covenant. Remember earlier he told us that “Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.” So there was faith in the Old Testament. He’s talking about two eras, and one era he designates the era of law and the other the era of faith. “When faith came” – he’s talking about the new covenant and the old covenant.
Until the age of faith when Christ came, he says, verse 24, “the law was our guardian.” There’s that word, “paidagogos” – school master, personal tutor. “The law was our guardian until Christ came.” So the Mosaic law was given to prepare God’s people like a severe school master imposing harsh discipline so that they would be ready to receive Christ and the salvation He brings by faith alone, having learned under the law how impossible salvation by works really is. But now that the age of Christ has come, verse 25, “we are no longer under that guardian.” the movement from the old to the new covenant, from the Mosaic guardian to the coming of faith in Christ, has rendered the need to observe the whole complex Mosaic system completely redundant and obsolete. Legalism, whether it is the hard legalism of the Judaizers who wanted people to become Jews before they could become Christians, or the soft legalism that we invent for ourselves where we still think that God is going to approve of us by our own efforts and our own deserving, legalism in all its forms is completely excluded. In fact, it never was appropriate, even in the old covenant, but especially now, Paul says, in the age, he says, the age of faith when the Mosaic code itself is done away with, there is absolutely no warrant for anyone trusting to their own efforts their own goodness, their own religion. The point is, you live today in an era Paul calls the age of faith. Only faith can save you. Why are you trusting yourself? Only faith in the heir of the promise, the Lord Jesus, can bring you into right standing before God.
Sons of God
And what a difference that makes. Look at the last thing Paul tells us in verses 26 through 29. When you give up on all your attempts to justify yourself, when you use the law as it was meant to be used – to show you how much you need Jesus so you finally come in desperate faith trusting Him to get you right with God – when you do all of that, what happens? So what? Verse 26, “In Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” Having come to Christ out of paganism and been baptized upon profession of their faith in Jesus, Paul says the Galatians are now in Christ. They put Christ on. Christ clothes them with His righteousness. You put Him on like shiny new robes to cover all the filth of your sin. And that means that now when judgment day comes you can stand before the Lord Jesus Christ and hold up for His inspection not the filthy, tattered ribbons of your sin-stained works, but the robes of Christ’s own righteousness. And you can say to Him, “In all honesty now, Lord, I never could pay the entrance fee into Your holy kingdom, but all my misdeeds are covered now under the cloak of Your perfect obedience and blood. Though I surely don’t deserve it, nevertheless, You paid the fee in full for me. Fling wide the doors and welcome me home.” And He will when you are robed with the righteousness of Jesus, of His doing and not your own.
And that truth – don’t miss this now – that truth makes belonging in His kingdom radically accessible to everyone. It makes belonging to His kingdom radically accessible to everyone. Look at verses 28 and 29. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring,” his seed, “heirs according to promise.” “You don’t need to become Jewish to become a Christian, Galatians.” That’s what the legalists were trying to tell them to do. Now that Christ has made the Mosaic code obsolete, the doors of the kingdom are flung wide to everyone who believes neither your history, your background, or your pedigree can make you more acceptable to God. And differences of sex or class or ethnicity can in no way hinder your privilege or access to God because the kingdom of Jesus Christ isn’t for a chosen few anymore, for elites. It’s not for the great and the good. It’s not for the white folks or the Jewish folks or the rich folks. It’s for all who believe, no matter who you are.
That means you. You are invited to belong to the family of Abraham, to be welcomed into the kingdom of Jesus Christ, to receive the promise for free as a gift of grace. All you must do is to trust Abraham’s heir, the seed of the promise, the Lord Jesus Himself. Trust the Gospel promise, why don’t you. Listen to the instruction of our guardian, God’s law, who points you not to yourself except to show you how utterly destitute you are of all hope there. He points you instead to Christ, the only One who has ever fully obeyed, that resting on Him you might become a son of God, that is to say, an heir, standing to inherit the blessing, trusting in Christ. May the Lord help us then, all of us, to do just that. Let us pray.
Our Father, this is a complicated and difficult passage. We have labored our way through it but the message at its heart is simple and clear. Help us, please, to receive it, to embrace it gladly. Not what my hands have done, Thy work alone O Christ. That’s the message. Help us, Lord Jesus, to stop our foolish attempts to make You approve of us by our busy obedience but instead, repenting even of our repentance, turning from all confidence in our own deadly doing, help us to trust in the doing, in the “It is finished,” the “done” of Christ’s obedience in our place, that resting on Him we may know at last real peace – that Your acceptance of us is a free gift. For we ask it all in Jesus’ holy name, amen.