Galatians 3:15-29 (4:1-7)

WHO NEEDS THE LAW?

 

If I say “don’t,” does that make you want to do it? When the waitress comes by with your food and says, “Be careful, the plate is hot,” don’t you want to touch it more? I usually do.

            The prohibition makes you want to test the limits. Laws tend to incite desires you wouldn’t otherwise have. As some have said, if there were no laws…no crime. Smart, eh?

            I found this on the web: “Despite decades of prohibition and the use of criminal sanctions to deter cannabis use, prohibition failed to prevent a number of negative public health and safety outcomes.” Cannabis is one of the most popular controlled substances in Canada. Crime involving cannabis was on the rise. The article states several negative outcomes of its effects; one being that criminals have trouble finding jobs and housing after their release.  (https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada)

            What do you do when the law doesn’t solve the problem of drug addiction and crime? On October 17, 2018, the Government of Canada decided to legalize cannabis, aka marijuana. If the law lacks effect, change the law.  

            If the law does not create good citizens, there must be something wrong with the law. So, who needs the law?

            Paul’s position on the law was that it was impossible to try to live by the law. If you break one, you break them all. And there are 613 commands of law in the OT. The Galatian believers must have thought, if we are saved by grace, why do we need the law at all? Let’s just live by grace. 

            Some Christians choose not to read the OT with its laws, violence, and gross sins. (example of strange laws: residents are commanded to build a parapet around the roof of the house; do not boil a kid in its mother’s milk). If we have the grace of the NT, what do we need the “Old” Testament for anyways? The old covenant has been replaced by the new, right? Not exactly!

            In Galatians 3:15-29, Paul wrote that the law and the promise are partners in the grand story of God’s grace in the Bible. From the OT to the NT, God speaks grace to his people. What does Paul say is the purpose of the law?

 

The Law does not Cancel the Promise (3:15-18)

 

Before we study the purpose of the law, we need to remember that the Promise God made to Abraham predates the Law given to Moses. Why does this matter?

            The Judaizers, the people pushing for observance of the law, appealed to Moses as their authority. Paul reminded them that the Lord spoke a promise to Abraham long before the law was given to Moses. That promise was received by faith, not by works. We can see the difference this way: In the promise to Abraham, God said, “I will…I will…I will…”But in the law of Moses, God said, “You must…you must…you must…” The promise presents the religion of God based on grace. But the law presents the religion of man – man’s duty, man’s works, man’s responsibility. The promise only had to be believed; the law had to be obeyed. 

            And if the promise to Abraham predates the law, then the promise cannot be invalidated by the law. Paul gives us a good example of how this works. He compares the covenant God made with Abraham to what we call a “last will and testament,” (man-made covenant ESV; irrevocable agreement NLT). A will is unalterable by any person other than the one making the will. If it is your will, you can add to it – no one else can. According to ancient Greek law, once a will is executed and ratified, it cannot be revoked. If I write a will and die, in other words, the law says the will must be honored. Paul compares God’s promise to Abraham to this kind of will. Of course, God doesn’t need to die for the will to have effect. The point is: God’s covenant with Abraham cannot be changed. The inheritance cannot be obtained by anything you do (law), but only by the promise (faith). 

            Paul’s logic flows like this:

1) The promises of grace made to Abraham came before the requirements of the law and can’t be changed (16a).

2) The promises of grace have always been about the gospel of Jesus right from the start (3:1b; 16b).

3) The law takes second place to God’s promise to bless the world through Abraham. It was given first and cannot be annulled (17). 

            The law does not cancel the promise.

 

The Peculiar Purpose of the Law (3:19-22)

 

If it is only by faith that a person can be right with God, why introduce the law at all? What does it do? Paul anticipates the question, “Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions…” (19a). That’s a curious expression. 

            There are four ways to interpret Paul’s meaning: the law functioned as a guardian before Jesus came to us. Until Jesus came, the law was either meant a) to restrain sin, teaching Israel how to live; b) to define sin, a measuring stick or plumb line to compare by; c) to deal with sin (which is why sacrifices are ordered); or d) to increase sin. That’s the weird one! But that’s the one Paul seems to intend. The law was meant to multiply sin so that it would be clear to everyone that the law itself was not an answer for the sin problem. The law reveals sin, but it doesn’t fix it.

            The second purpose of the law was to reveal the depth and depravity of human sin. The NLT puts it this way, “It was given alongside the promise to show people their sin.” Paul really hammers this home in his letter to the Romans; at least four times he says… (Romans 3:20; 4:15; 5:20; 7:7). 

Romans 3:20 “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”

Romans 4:15 “For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.”

Romans 5:20 “Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more…”

Romans 7:7 “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…” 

Martin Luther said that the main purpose of the law was to convict human beings of sin so that they would be drawn to Christ. The law reveals what we are really like underneath the exterior – sinful, rebellious, guilty, under the judgment of God, helpless to save ourselves. 

            It sounds then like the law contradicts the promise of salvation. “Is there a conflict between God’s law and God’s promises?” Paul asks. To which he responds, “Absolutely not.” He explained that if keeping the law made you right with God, then the law was all you needed to be good. But who keeps the law that well? Who here keeps the speed limit at 100? Who slows down going through Osborne? No one keeps the law perfectly. How is it possible to find harmony between the law and the promise? Only by seeing that we inherit the promise because we do not perfectly obey the law. Our inability to keep the law makes the promise that much more desirable and indispensable. 

            The peculiar purpose of the law is to show us how sinful we are. If there were no law, we would not know how much we need salvation. 

 

What We Were Under the Law (3:23-25)

 

John Stott said, “Everybody is either held captive by the law because he is still awaiting the fulfilment of the promise or delivered from the law because he has inherited the promise. More simply, everybody is either living in the OT, or in the NT, and derives his religion either from Moses or from Jesus…he is either ‘under the law’ or ‘in Christ.’” 

            If we live under the law, we are prisoners. Paul said, “…the scriptures declare that we are all prisoners of sin…”(22a). The Greek word here means “to be under military guard.” If the purpose of the law is to reveal sin in us, it shows us not only that we sin, but that we are imprisoned by sin. In other words, everyone is a prisoner of sin (imagine orange prison garb). Every breathing person has sinned and can’t help sinning. 

            The law also functions like a guardian, Paul illustrates. In the Greek world there was a household servant known as a “paidagogos,” (pedagogue). This slave was a “guardian of boys.” He was not a schoolteacher but more like a “babysitter.” But you wouldn’t want this guy as a babysitter; he was a strict disciplinarian. He was often harsh to the point of cruelty and used a cane to beat the boys if they broke the rules, came home late from school, etc. It sounds rough, but the purpose of this fellow was to make sure the boys learned the right stuff to become men. That’s what living under the law was like, somebody holding a stick ready to smack you when you do something wrong. 

            Galatians 4:1-7 speaks further of this relationship. For a time, the child is under the slave, even though he is an heir to his father’s estate. He is treated like a slave and is disciplined as such. But when he matures and inherits his father’s property, the slave is no longer there with a cane to thrash him. Paul uses this picture to show us how we are no longer under the law’s harsh discipline, but under the freedom of grace in Jesus. He said, “But when the fulness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons,” (4:4-5). We have grown up; we’ve taken our place as adult children (heirs) of the promise. 

            The law was always meant to be temporary. Now that Jesus has come, we are no longer under the law, but under grace.

 

What We Are Now in Christ (3:26-29)

 

The last four verses of this chapter are full of Jesus Christ. Before the way of faith in Christ was available to us, we were under the guardianship of the law. But now in Christ we are no longer living in fear of the rod. 

If you have seen the depictions of residential schools in print or in cinema (like 1923 with Harrison Ford), you sit in bewilderment that humans could treat other humans with such gross abuse. It saddens and angers you. The harshness of the law is like that. 

In Christ, we find freedom from that abusive existence. Paul says, “For you are all children of God through faith in Jesus Christ” and if you have been baptized, you “have put on the character of Christ” and “you are all one in Christ Jesus” and “you belong to Christ.”

I want to emphasize two pictures in this new existence we enjoy. The first is of baptism. The way Paul describes it, the person who believes in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins, has taken off the clothes of sin (the prison clothes) and put on the new clothes of Jesus himself. In the Early Church, baptism candidates would put on pure white robes representing the new life they were entering in Christ. The reality is that we are “wearing Jesus;” like putting on his jersey, joining his team, identifying with his life. Like wearing the jacket of our beloved, everyone can see who we belong to, and we act in a way that tells people we are “taken.” 

The second picture demonstrates that there is no race, class, or gender distinction between those who are in Christ. Paul said, “There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus,”(28). That doesn’t mean that gender is blurred or unimportant. It does mean that being from one ethnicity or another, rich or poor, or a man or woman does not keep you from enjoying the status of a child of Abraham. 

Grace is liberating. Life in Jesus is freedom. You are children of freedom!

 

Many Christians evaluate the condition of the world with its wars and troubles and crimes and say, “The world is getting worse and worse.” Quietly, I respond, “No it isn’t. The world is as bad as it ever has been since the beginning of sin.” The world is not getting worse, you are just seeing the worst of it. Television and media flood your senses with the sins of the world. You may have had blinders on. It’s always been bad. That’s sin. And the law reveals how bad sin is. 

            We may read the OT and conclude, “Yeah, you’re right, the world is pretty bad.” The OT reveals how wicked humankind can be. Wait a minute, I’d say, when I read the OT, I see grace. I see that whenever the actors in that drama sinned, God showed them incredible grace. Even when they should have been punished severely, God kept loving them and holding to his promise. 

            The law is not contrary to the gospel. The law anticipates the gospel. Through the law we realize how much we need the gospel. It leads us to grace. 

            John Stott said, “Not until the law has bruised and smitten us will we admit the need of the gospel to bind up our wounds. Not until the law has arrested and imprisoned us will we pine for Christ to set us free. Not until the law has condemned and killed us will we call upon Christ for justification and life. Not until the law has driven us to despair ourselves will we ever believe in Jesus. Not until the law has humbled us even to hell will we ever turn to the gospel to raise us to heaven.

            What are you struggling with in terms of the “have to” and “should” of life? What standard are you trying to live up to but is unrealistic? Do you feel the pressure to be perfect?

            That’s the spirit of the law. And that’s okay if you receive it the right way. By that I mean, admit you won’t and can’t measure up to that perfection. Let it remind you that you fall short (for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God). Let your mistakes, your sins, your faux pas, lead you to grace – let them be a celebration of what Jesus has done – he met all the requirements for you. He is perfect so you don’t have to be. 

            Christ Jesus has set us free from the fear of the law. Why live in it any longer? 

 

                                                            AMEN