Deeper Commentary
CHAPTER 3
3:1- see on Rom. 1:18; Gal. 4:16.
O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?-
Literally, 'cast the evil eye over you'. Paul didn't
surely believe in such things, but like the Lord Jesus, he uses the
language of the day without as it were footnoting the fact he doesn't
literally believe in those things. Paul is writing to those who thought
they were now going to be saved by obedience to the Jewish law. But
Judaism taught that obedience to the Law shielded Judaists from the 'evil
eye' and magic spells. Paul is saying that the opposite is, as it were,
the case. They had been "bewitched" to return to the Law, and were thus
under, as it were, the curse which comes to those who seek justification
by it. He goes right on to talk about the "curse of the law" and how
believers in Christ are saved from this (Gal. 3:10,13). His references to
salvation from this "curse" must be read in the context of this opening
play on the idea of being bewitched or under a curse.
It was before your own eyes that Jesus Christ was openly displayed as crucified- Gk. 'placarded'
or 'written' (s.w. Rom. 15:4 "things writtten...", Eph. 3:3 "as I
wrote..."). The word of the cross was made flesh in Paul. People don't
read Bible text, initially- they meet us. And we are the word to them. When
Paul preached to the Galatians, he placarded forth Jesus Christ crucified
in front of them: his preaching of the Gospel involved a repeated and
graphic portrayal of the crucified Jesus of Nazareth as a historical event,
but witnessed in himself before their eyes
(Gal. 3:1). We are “in Christ” to the extent that we are Christ to
this world. In this sense He has in this world no arms or legs or face
than us. Paul was a placarding of Christ crucified before the Galatians;
to the Corinthians he was “the face of Christ” (2 Cor. 2:10 RSV). It was
this marred visage of Paul which had impressed the Galatians with how much
Paul was Christ-manifest: “You know how through infirmity of the flesh I
preached the gospel unto you at the first. And my temptation which was in
my flesh ye despised not, nor rejected; but received me as an angel of
God, [even] as Christ Jesus” (Gal. 4). He could truly say in Gal 2:20: “I
am crucified with Christ”, and that before their eyes “Jesus Christ has
been evidently set forth [‘placarded’], crucified among you… for I bear in
my body the marks of the Lord Jesus” (Gal. 3:1; 6:17). Thus to preach
through cross carrying means sharing in the Lord’s sufferings. It may mean
being crucified by our brethren for it as He was, physical hardship and
pain… but this is the ground of credibility for our witness.
It seems that Paul had gone through the process of crucifixion with them
so realistically, that it was as if Christ had suffered before their eyes.
If you have seen that, Paul says, and the vision remains with you, how can
you turn away? And this is a powerful motivator for us too. The man who
sees, really sees, something of the Lord's agony, simply won't turn away,
doctrinally or practically. But if we turn away from the consideration,
the motivation will not be there to keep on responding. In this sense the
crucifixion record almost has a mystical power in it, if it is
properly apprehended. Thus Paul could tell the Galatians that in him they
had seen Jesus Christ placarded forth, crucified before their own eyes
(3:1). Paul knew that when people looked at his life, they saw something
of the crucifixion of the Lord. The Galatians therefore accepted him "
even as Christ Jesus" (Gal. 4:14). He could describe his own preaching as
“this Jesus, whom I preach unto you…” (Acts 17:3), as if Jesus was right
there before their eyes, witnessed through Paul. As the Lord was Paul’s
representative, so Paul was Christ’s. The idea of representation works
both ways: we see in the Gospel records how the Lord experienced some
things which only we have; and we show aspects of His character to the
world which nobody else can manifest.
If we can rise up to all this, placarding forth the Lord's crucifixion
sufferings in our lives, then there will be a power and credibility to our
preaching which will be hard to resist. It was before the eyes of the
Galatians that they saw in Paul, Jesus Christ crucified (Gal. 3:1). But
the only other reference to the eyes of the Galatians is in Gal. 4:15-
where we read that they had been so transfixed by Paul's preaching that
they had been ready to pluck out their eyes. And where's the only other
reference to plucking out eyes? It's in the Lord's teaching, where He says
that if our eye offends us, we should pluck it out [Mt. 5:29- same Greek
words used]. The connection is surely this: Paul's personal reflection of
the crucified Jesus was so powerful, so compellingly real and credible,
that it motivated his hearers to rise up to the spirit of the very hardest
demands of the moral teaching of that same Jesus. Insofar as we genuinely
live out the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus, our preaching of His radical
moral demands will likewise be heeded. The crucified Christ that Paul
placarded before their eyes was " the truth" (Gal. 3:1; 4:14-16); and the
integrity and reality of that truth was confirmed by the congruence
between the example of Paul, and the reality of the crucified Jesus whom
he manifested to them. In Paul's body language, in his character, in his
response to problems and frustrations great and small, in the way he coped
with physical weakness, his audience somehow saw the crucified Christ. In
the same letter, Paul reminds the Galatians how they had initially seen
him preaching to them in a weak bodily state, and had seen Christ in him
then (Gal. 4:13,14). He says in Gal. 3:1 that they saw Christ crucified in
him. Perhaps the way Paul handled a sickness or bodily weakness which he
then had, somehow reflected to his audience the spirit of Christ
crucified.
The effort we should consciously make to allow the life of Christ to be
lived in us, is a natural outflow of the basic doctrine: that Christ was
our representative. If we love Him and the record of His life, we will see
in Him and His living the essence of our own: the same betrayal, barriers
with His family and all close relationships, the pouring out of the love
of God to a world and people who misunderstood, who thought they
understood but didn’t, who were blind, who thought they saw, who only
broke from the petty materialism of their lives to listen to Him because
they thought they might get some personal benefit…all the time, He poured
out His grace and the Father’s love. And He kept on to the final
unspeakable, unwriteable, unenterable agony at the end. And even there, we
sense He was not gritting His teeth trying to be patient, trying not to
sin…He was pulsating with a love for men, a care for Pilate (comforting
him that another had a greater sin); concern for the women who wept
crocodile tears, that they might really repent; praying for forgiveness
for those who knew not [i.e., fully] what they did; preaching to the
thieves in whispers, each word taking an agony of pain, heaving Himself up
on the nails to get the air to speak it… To love one’s neighbour as
oneself is to fulfil the law (Gal. 5:14; Rom. 13:10); and yet the Lord’s
death was the supreme fulfilment of it (Mt. 5:18; Col. 2:14). Here was the
definition of love for one’s neighbour. Not a passing politeness and
occasional seasonal gift, whilst secretly and essentially living the life
of self-love and self-care; but the love and the death of the cross, for
His neighbours as for Himself; laying down His life “for himself that it
might be for us” in the words of Bro. Roberts. In Him, in His time of
dying, we see the definition of love, the fulfilment of the justice and
unassuming kindness and thought for others which was taught in the Mosaic
Law. And we through bearing one another’s burdens, through bearing with
their moral and intellectual and spiritual failures, must likewise fulfil
the law, in a voluntary laying down of our lives for each other (Gal.
6:2). And in this, as with the Lord, will be our personal salvation.
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1 Cor. 11:26 AVmg. makes the act of breaking bread a command, an
imperative to action: “As often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup,
shew ye the Lord’s death, till he come". If we are going to eat the
emblems, it is axiomatic that we will commit ourselves to shewing forth
His death to the world, like Paul placarding forth Christ crucified in our
lives (Gal. 3:1 Gk.). The Passover likewise had been a ‘shewing’ to one’s
family “that which the Lord did unto me" (Ex. 13:8), the redemption we
have experienced.
3:2 Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by doing works of the law, or by hearing with faith?- This is not a reference to receipt of the miraculous Spirit gifts; for only some received these in the first century. 3:5 is clear about the difference: "He that supplies to you the Spirit and works miracles among you". Not all had the miraculous gifts, indeed Paul downplays their importance in 1 Corinthians. But all the Galatians are spoken of as having 'received the Spirit'. I suggest this refers to the gift of the Spirit which all believers in Christ receive at baptism (Acts 2:38)- the internal power towards holiness and spirituality, Christ in us, His mind / spirit within us. The same words are used in Jn. 7:39 of how the Spirit was to be received once Christ was glorified and had poured out this gift upon His people. This Spirit is received by the believers, not by the world, and is within us (Jn. 14:17). The receipt of this Spirit means that we in our hearts can cry "Abba, Father" (Rom. 8:15). Later in our chapter here, Paul speaks of receiving the Spirit as receiving the blessing of Abraham (Gal. 3:14)- the blessing which in Acts 3:26 is defined as the power to turn us away from sin. Paul's immediate point here is that the Spirit was received by them not because they obeyed law, but because they had believed and been baptized into Christ. Gal. 4:6 is quite clear that the Spirit received by all the Galatian converts was a gift of Divine relationship within their hearts: "And because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father".
Paul's whole argument from now on in
Galatians is that they have been given the Spirit as a result of faith in
Jesus as Christ. They would not have gotten this from obedience to the
Mosaic law. So they should not seek to return to the law. In this context,
he will expound the promise to Abraham. We are familiar with this promise
as referring to an eternal inheritance of the land promised to Abraham,
and it is clear from Hebrews 11 and Acts 7 that in a physical sense,
Abraham and his seed didn't receive that promise in their lifetimes. They
will be resurrected and receive it when the Lord returns to earth. But the
promises to Abraham were not solely about that. They also involved the
promise of Yahweh being their personal God, and Acts 3:26,27 interprets
the promised blessings as involving the psychological turning of the seed
away from sin. For the path to eternal inheritance of the earth involves
personal transformation and forgiveness of sin, which we receive right
now. All this was also implicit in the promises to Abraham. And so here
Paul dwells more on this dimension of the promises. He will go on in
chapter 4:6 to speak of God sending the Spirit of His Son into the hearts
of the Galatians, so that they along with Jesus can address Yahweh as
Abba, daddy. As He was the begotten Son of God, so believers can go beyond
being merely adopted sons to being actual sons, in that they are "in" the
Son of God, and all that is true of Him becomes true of them. The
groundwork for that reasoning is here in Galatians 3- that all that is
true of the singular seed of Abraham (who is Christ, :16) becomes true of
us who are baptized into Him. And so the singular seed in this way becomes
a plural seed, as many as the stars of the sky. As explained on :14, "the
promise" to Abraham is specifically the promise of the Spirit, in this
context. Galatians will go on to develop this theme; Christians are those
who have been born after the Spirit (Gal. 4:29), allowing the Spirit to
bring forth fruit in them (Gal. 5:5,16-18, 22,25) through sowing to the
Spirit (Gal. 6:8).
3:3 Are you so foolish?
Having begun in the Spirit-
The reference is to having begun spiritual life at their baptisms by
receiving the Spirit (see on :2).
Are you now
perfected in the flesh?- The function of
the Holy Spirit is to guide our spiritual development unto maturity or
'perfection'. Obedience to Law will not achieve this. The same word is
used in describing how the Lord has "begun a good work [with]in you" and
will perform or 'perfect' it until the day we meet the Lord (Phil. 1:6).
This work is essentially within us. We are in a program of
development, and attempting to justify ourselves by work will interrupt
that program.
3:4 Did you suffer so many things in vain? If it be indeed in vain-
The connection is with Paul's thought in Gal. 2:21 a few verses earlier-
that if we are justified by works, then Christ has suffered in vain. And
our sufferings, which are a sharing in His sufferings, will likewise be in
vain. Paul several times uses this powerful idea of life "in vain". If we
do not enter the Kingdom, if we refuse to be new wineskins, then the blood
of the new covenant flows out wasted on the ground. All is vain, compared
to salvation. This general attitude to life under the sun and all human
endeavour is indeed powerful.
3:5 Does he
that supplies to you the Spirit- As noted on :2, this refers to
the gift of the Spirit in the hearts of believers after baptism. The same
word for "supplies" is used in Col. 2:19 of how the Lord Jesus as the head
of the body supplies nourishment to every part. Because we are baptized by
one Spirit into the one body, and are made to drink into that one Spirit.
The Lord Jesus is indeed
an active Lord. He ministers psychological, spiritual strengthening to all
parts of His body, which is the church. The gift of the Spirit at
baptism is as it were supplemented. We are 'filled up' with the Spirit,
but that filling up needs to be continually experienced. The 'supply' of
the Spirit is different to the 'working miracles among you' which is
mentioned in the next clause. It is this non-miraculous supply of the
Spirit which Paul has in view when he writes of "through your prayer and
the supply of the spirit of Jesus Christ... my God shall supply all your
need according to His riches" (Phil. 1:19; 4:19). And His enrichment is
through the gifts of His Spirit (1 Cor. 1:5).
And works miracles
among you, do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?- See on :2 Did you
receive the Spirit. Note the present tenses. Despite the apostasy in
Galatia, the Lord Jesus still actively ministered His Spirit and enabled
miracles to be done, just as God did to an apostate Israel in the
wilderness. Even in the first century, the work of the Spirit was not just
confined to the miraculous gifts; thus "He that supplies to you the Spirit
and works miracles among you" suggests that there was a
non-miraculous work of the Spirit then. It seems clear that the miraculous
gifts of the Spirit were not possessed by all first century believers; and
yet the epistles often imply that all believers had received the Spirit
(e.g. 2 Cor. 1:22). The resolution of this is in the fact that all
believers then and now receive the non-miraculous effect of the Spirit.
Indeed, Jude 19 suggests that 'having the spirit' could just refer to
someone who is not "sensual", i.e. of the flesh. John was "filled with the
Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb... (going) in the Spirit and
power of Elijah... waxed strong in spirit" (Lk. 1:15,17,80); but "John did
no miracle " (Jn. 10:41). David associated having God's holy Spirit with
having free fellowship with Him due to sins being forgiven, paralleling
the holy Spirit with "a right spirit within me... a clean heart" (Ps.
51:10,12); and Paul spoke of God's willingness to forgive us as "the
spirit of grace" (Heb. 10:29), i.e. His spiritual gift. Paul's reasoning
in Gal. 3:5,6 is similar- the Spirit is ministered to us by faith, in the
same way as Abraham's faith resulted in righteousness being imputed
('ministered') to him. Thus imputed righteousness is made parallel to the
gift of the Spirit.
3:6- see on Phil. 3:6.
Even as Abraham believed God, and that faith was imputed to him for
righteousness- His faith was weak,
just as faith was weak in Galatia. See on Rom. 4:1-4,18,19. Paul's point
in Rom. 4:3-5 is that Abraham was counted as righteous for his faith and
not because of his works; the promises of the Kingdom salvation were made
to him whilst he was uncircumcised.
3:7
Know that they that are of faith, the same
are sons of Abraham-
'Of' in the sense of being the descendant of. Faith is the defining family
characteristic of the Abraham family- and not race or physical descent.
"The real descendants of Abraham are the people who have faith" (GNB).
3:8- see on Rom. 9:17.
And the scripture, foreseeing that God would make the Gentiles righteous
by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham- Abraham was promised that "all the nations" [i.e.
"the Gentiles"] would be blessed. Paul strains from this [so it could seem
to those not used to rabbinic exegesis] that this blessing was not stated
to be in response to any works- so it must therefore have been offered
purely on the basis of faith. If they were to be given a blessing not on
the basis of works, but on account of Abraham' singular seed, Jesus...
then such blessing would involve them being counted righteous, i.e. worthy
of blessing, just because they believed this promise.
When it says: In you shall all the nations be blessed- This was 'preached to Abraham'; and he chose to
believe it. It was spoken to him before he had done any works of obedience
or before he had believed anything. He was told, effectively, that he
would be blessed / saved. And he believed it. The Gospel likewise comes to
us out of left field, as it were. We are promised that we shall be saved-
and if we believe it, we shall be.
3:9
So then, they that are of faith
are blessed with faithful Abraham-
"With" translates sun, the idea being that
believers are blessed by association with Abraham. And :27-29 explain that
this is through baptism into Christ, who is Abraham's specific seed.
Verses 10-13 are a parenthesis concerning the curse of the Law. If read
without the parenthesis, the flow of thought goes straight on: "They which
be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham (v.9)... that the blessing
of Abraham might come on the Gentiles" (v.14).
3:10
For as many as are of the works of the law
are under a curse-
See on 3:1 Bewitched you.
For it is written: Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do all
things that are written in the book of the law- The quotation is from the LXX of Dt. 27:26. The
Masoretic text is different: "Cursed is he who doesn’t confirm the words
of this law to do them". This is an example of where so often the NT seems
to prefer to quote the LXX over the MT. This has significant implications
for any who insist upon the earth being 6000 years old as based upon the
OT genealogies, for the figures are significantly different in the LXX.
3:11
Now it is evident that no one is justified by
the law before God! For, The righteous shall live by faith- The thought is very
similar to that in Romans. Rom. 2:13 uses the same phrase para Theos
to reason that the doers of the law are justified before God; and
nobody does the entire law. But here (as in Rom. 1:17) Paul uses a related
but slightly different argument. He says that we are not justified by
deeds "before God" because of the very existence of the concept of
justification by faith; and he quotes Hab. 2:4 as an
exemplification of this.
3:12 And the law is not of faith- Today likewise, legalism does not
induce faith. It is our awareness of our disobedience and a deep sense of
inability to be righteous which leads us to the faith which is a throwing
of ourselves upon Divine grace and the Lord's cross.
But: He that does the commandments shall live in them- The 'living' in view, in the context, seems to be
'living eternally'; for Paul has just said that the righteous shall live
[eternally] by faith (:11). He therefore understood Lev. 18:5 to mean that
life eternal was possible through perfect obedience to the Mosaic law:
"You shall therefore keep My statutes and My ordinances; which if a man
does, he shall live in them". Notice that "in them" is added by the
translators to make better sense of the simple statement that the obedient
man "shall live". The truth of this interpretation is in the fact the Lord
Jesus was indeed perfectly obedient to the Law and therefore lived for
ever; He had to die for multiple reasons, but it was not possible that
death should hold Him, seeing He had the right to eternal life through His
perfect obedience; and therefore He was resurrected.
3:13- see on Acts 5:30.
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us- See on 3:1
Bewitched you.
For it is written: Cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree- The idea is not that
for some reason, being hung on a tree made a person "cursed". Those who
had sinned unto death, according to the law of Moses, were "cursed" by
that law; and those dead, legally cursed people were then hung on a tree.
The point is that we have each become cursed by the Law of Moses through
failing to completely obey it. And the perfect Lord Jesus was our
representative; He there on the cross was and is everyman. It flows
naturally from this that we would wish to immerse ourselves into His body
there on the cross, identifying with Him, so that His resurrection can
become ours. That is of course the meaning of baptism, but the spirit of
that identification is to carry on through daily life and thought
afterwards.
Note that Paul likens the Lord on the cross to the body of the criminal
lifted up after death, not in order to lead to death (Gal. 3:13;
Dt. 21:23)- as if he understood the Lord to have been effectively dead
unto sin at the time the body was lifted up on the cross. It was as if the
idea of the cross had been lived out throughout the Lord’s life; He was
dead as He lived, and dead to sin at the point that His body was lifted up
on the tree.
3:14
This was so that upon the
Gentiles might come the blessing of Abraham in Christ Jesus, so that we
might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith-
The blessing promised to Abraham is here understood as the Spirit
which has been promised. See on :2. The Holy Spirit gift is that promised
in Acts 2:38,39: "repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ to
the remission of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy
Spirit. For to you is the promise, and to your children, and to all that
are afar off". This gift was understood as "the promised Holy Spirit"
which the Lord received to give to us at His ascension: "Therefore, being
exalted by the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the
promise of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:33). This is the reference of Eph.
1:13: "In whom you also believed, having heard the word of the truth, the
gospel of your salvation, and were sealed with the Holy Spirit of
promise", or, 'the promised Holy Spirit'. This sealing is within the human
heart, as 2 Cor. 1:21,22 makes clear: "Now he that establishes us with you
in Christ and anointed us is God, who also sealed us and gave us the down
payment of the Spirit in our hearts". The Holy Spirit Comforter was
clearly promised in the uppper room discourse of Jn. 14-16. The blessing
to Abraham is defined in Acts 3:26 as being turned away from our
inquities: "To you first, God, having raised up His servant, sent him to
bless you, in turning every one of you away from your sins". The blessing
was not only of eternal inheritance of the earth; it was the blessing of
having God as our personal God, and of course the path to eternal
inheritance is only through forgiveness and being changed into spiritual
people.
Paul was so positive about his Galatians, many of
whom he says seemed to be departing from the Christian faith. He feared he
may have “laboured in vain” for some of them (Gal. 4:11), but he writes of
his expectations in a totally positive way: “Christ hath redeemed us… that
the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ:
that we might receive the promise of the Spirit [i.e. salvation]” (Gal.
3:13,14). “For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ
Jesus; for as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on
Christ… then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise”
(Gal. 3:27-29)- yet Paul could write this despite knowing his readers’
lack of faith in Christ (Gal. 1:6; 3:1,3-5; 4:9,11,19,21; 5:4,7).
“And because ye are sons… thou art no more a servant, but a son: and if a
son, then an heir of God though Christ” (Gal. 4:6,7). “So then brethren we
are not children of the bondwoman but of the free” (Gal. 4:31). If we
believe that we ourselves will be there, we will spark off an upward
spiral of positive thinking in the community of believers with whom we are
associated. Think carefully on the Lord’s words to the Pharisees: “For ye
neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go
in” (Mt. 23:13). If we don’t believe we will be there, we end up
discouraging others.
3:15- see on 1 Cor. 15:57.
Brothers, I speak in human terms. Though it be but a man's covenant, yet
when it has been confirmed, no one makes it void, or adds thereto- The confirmation of
the covenant was 'previous' to the giving of the Law of Moses (:17). The
confirmation was in the fact that God made an oath by Himself (Heb.
6:13-18); the promise itself, and then His word of oath, made two
immutable things in which it was impossible for God to lie. The simple
covenant of salvation was that anyone who believed the promises to Abraham
and associated themselves with his seed will be eternally saved and
blessed. Nothing has been added or subtracted from that ever since it was
given. The Lord's death was yet another act of confirming that covenant,
and appealing to men and women to believe it and participate in it; but
His life and death did not of themselves add anything to the salvation
covenant promise given to Abraham, and which forms the basis of the
Gospel. And likewise, the law of Moses did not void nor add to that
covenant.
3:16
Now to Abraham were the promises
spoken, and to his seed. He did not say: And to seeds, in the plural, but
in the singular: And to your seed, who is Christ!-
A case can be made that the whole New Testament is a
form of Midrash on the Old Testament, re-interpreting it in the
light of Christ. In this case, Gen. 22:18. Paul so often employs the same literary devices found in
the rabbinic Midrashim, e.g. al tiqra [read not thus, but
thus- Gal. 3:16 is a classic example].
3:17
This is what I mean; the law which came years
afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to
make the promise of no effect-
The confirmation of the covenant [s.w. :15 "confirmed"] was in that God
swore it with an oath. The promise to save people who believed in His
offer of blessing / salvation was absolutely certain. The logic of the
argument here could suggest that actually, salvation was open to Gentiles
in Old Testament times if they simply believed in the Abrahamic covenant.
For it was not in any sense annulled; the Lord's death was simply an extra
confirmation of it, and enabled believers to identify with the seed.
Gal. 3:15-20 stresses how the Law came after the promises to Abraham, and
cannot disannul them. Reasoning back from Paul's writing, we can arrive at
some understanding of what the Judaists were saying. Their position was
that baptism of Gentiles into the Abrahamic covenant was fine, but they
must keep the Law for salvation. Paul is pointing out that the promises to
Abraham offer eternal inheritance in the Kingdom on the basis of faith and
grace, and neither the Law of Moses nor any other form of legalism can
change that fundamental basis. An appreciation of the promises will
therefore root us in the wonder of salvation by grace, to the point that
we will reject all forms of legalism whenever they are proposed in the
ecclesia, and whenever our own flesh seeks to justify itself by works
achieved rather than by humbly accepting forgiveness of sins. That the
Lord's death took away the Law can be assented to us and passed by. But
the RV of Romans draws a difference between "the law" and "law"
without the article, i.e. legality. Because we are saved by grace, no
legal code, of Moses or anyone else, can save us. Therefore we are free-
but that freedom is so wonderful that we are under “the law of Christ",
the rigid principle of always seeking to act as this Man would do, who
freed us from law. Otherwise, we end up replacing one form of legalism
[under Moses] with another, a set of laws given by Jesus. He has
saved us in prospect, outside of any law. And we are to rejoice in this
and yet respond to it. Dostoevsky's epic The Brothers Karamazov is
really a parable of the terrible burden of this freedom and the
forgiveness of sins. In it, Jesus returns to earth. He is arrested, and
the Inquisitor visits Him in the middle of the night. He tries to explain
to Jesus that people do not want freedom. They want security. He argues
with Jesus, that if one really loves people, then you make them happy- but
not free. Freedom is dangerous. People want law, not responsibility; they
want the neurotic comfort of rules, not the danger of decision making and
the burdens it brings. Christ, says the Inquisitor, must not start up this
business about freedom and grace and the commitment and responsibility it
demands. Let things be; let the church have its laws. And will Jesus
please go away. The life of grace to the extent that it must be lived is a
radical confrontation- it creates the necessity of making pure freewill
decisions to do and think acts of grace in response to God's grace. Grace
has been presented as the easy way out. It isn't. It is far, far more
demanding than legalism.
3:18 For if the inheritance is of the law, it is no more of promise-
The inheritance of "the land of promise" was made possible before
the Law of Moses was given. Israel were given Canaan on the basis of the
promises to Abraham, and not the Law of Moses.
But God has granted it to Abraham by promise- Abraham was not given
any set of laws he must obey. He was simply asked to believe, and go
inherit the promised land. And the Gospel to us is really also that
simple. Its very simplicity is why the demand for faith is so intense, and
why people would prefer to slip back into some legal system, with a
promised reward for obedience which can never be a certain hope because of
our disobedience in some ways.
3:19
For what, then, was the law? It
was added because of transgressions- The descendants of Jacob / Israel were not righteous, although they
were God's people. The law of Moses was given to them "because of
transgressions". And yet the very existence of the Mosaic Law generated
sin, and thereby the experience of God's wrath upon His people (Rom.
4:15). So why were Israel given the Law? In some ways (and this isn't the
only reason) to confirm them in their sinfulness. The original Mosaic Law
was "holy, just and good" in itself (Rom. 7:12). But later, God gave
Israel "laws that were not good" (referring to the Halachas of the
Scribes?) so that they would go further away from Him (Ez. 20:25). He must
have done this by inspiring men to say things which were genuinely
communicated by God, but which were false.
Until the seed should come to whom the promise had been made. The law was given through angels by the
hand of a mediator-
The promise was made to
the Lord Jesus, therefore, when as yet He did not exist. In this sense the
promises were spoken to Christ, the seed of Abraham (:16). God's word of
promise likewise spoke to us right back then in Abraham's time- even
though we had not then associated with his seed.
3:20 Now an intermediary implies more than one party, but God is one-
The oath of God to Abraham was a unilateral undertaking. He alone passed
through the burning pieces. Likewise the mediation of the Angels implied
two parties in a contract- but actually the covenant was unilateral, only
God bound Himself by terms and conditions. He simply wanted to pass on the
blessing to us. All we have to do is believe it and accept the covenant.
Reflect a moment upon the sheer power and import of the fact that the
Father promised things to us, who are Abraham’s seed by faith and
baptism. The Law of Moses was a conditional promise, because there were
two parties; but the promises to us are in some sense unconditional, as
God is the only “one” party (Gal. 3:19,20). And as if God’s own
unconditional promise isn’t enough, He confirmed those promises to us with
the blood of His very own son. Bearing this in mind, it's not surprising
that Ps. 111:5 states that God "will ever be mindful of His
covenant". This means that He's thinking about the covenant made with us
all the time! And yet how often in daily life do we reflect upon
the fact that we really are in covenant relationship with God... how often
do we recollect the part we share in the promises to Abraham, how
frequently do we feel that we really are in a personal covenant with God
Almighty? In Genesis 15, He made a one-sided commitment to Abraham. The
idea of the dead animals in the ceremony was to teach that 'So may I be
dismembered and die if I fail to keep my promise'. Jer. 34:18 speaks of
how Israelites must die, because they passed between the pieces of the
dead animal sacrifices in making a covenant. But in Gen. 15, it is none
less than the God who cannot die who is offering to do this, subjecting
Himself to this potential curse! And He showed Himself for real in the
death of His Son. That was His way of confirming the utter certainty of
the promises to Abraham which are the basis of the new covenant which He
has cut with us (Rom. 15:8; Gal. 3:17). Usually both parties passed
between the dead animals- but only Yahweh does. It was a one-sided
covenant from God to man, exemplifying His one-way grace. The Lord died,
in the way that He did, to get through to us how true this all is- that
God Almighty cut a sober, unilateral covenant with us personally, to give
us the Kingdom. We simply can't be passive to such grace, we have no
option but to reach out with grace to others in care and concern- and we
have a unique motivation in doing this, which this unbelieving world can
never equal. From one viewpoint, the only way we can not be saved is to
wilfully refuse to participate in this covenant. The Lord laboured the
point that the "unforgivable sin" was to "blaspheme the Holy Spirit" (Mk.
3:28-30; Mt. 12:31-37; Lk. 12:10). But it's been demonstrated that this is
a reference to Jewish writings and traditions such as Jubilees 15:33
"where not circumcising one's child is unforgivable, because it is a
declaration that one does not belong to the covenant people".
3:21 Is the law then against the promises of God?
God forbid! For if there had been a law given which could give life,
truly righteousness would have been of the law- Under inspiration,
Paul so often addresses the unspoken thoughts of his readers. If salvation
was promised by faith alone under the Abrahamic covenant, then why ever
introduce a law which was impossible to keep? This connects on the same
large scale canvas with the question as to why God allowed sin, why there
is even the concept of sin. And Paul speaks to these natural and obvious
concerns. His answer is that we had to realize our desperation, our need,
our hunger, our inability to achieve salvation by any other means- so that
we would throw ourselves upon God's grace in Christ as it is presented in
the Abrahamic covenant. Perhaps it was the lack of human interest in that
wonderful covenant which led God to introduce the Mosaic Law- in order to
thereby drive man to Christ. Likewise God uses human sin in order to bring
us to Him. If there were no sin, no Law to place accent upon human
desperation, then who would need Christ? How much less glory would be
given to God and His grace if in fact there was no sin, if there had been
no law... It was in this sense that the Law was a teacher / teaching slave
to bring us to Christ. Not in that people understood the types and
patterns as being Messianic; for here in Galatians 3, Paul says that
mankind was "shut up" to all that; but rather in bringing us to know our
desperation.
To be given life is paralleled with being given righteousness. Those
without sin can live for ever; so the imputation of righteousness means
eternal life.
3:22 But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus
Christ might be given to those who believe- See on :14. Sin occurs as a major them in Paul’s
writings– not just in Romans, where he speaks so much about sin without
hinting that a supernatural ‘Satan’ figure is involved with it. He sees
sin as playing an almost positive, creative role in the formation of the
true Christian, both individually and in terms of salvation history. He
speaks of how the Mosaic law was given to as it were highlight the power
of sin; but through this it lead us to Christ, through our desperation and
failure to obey, “that (Gk. hina, a purpose clause) we might be
righteoused by faith” (Gal. 3:24–26). The curses for disobedience were “in
order that (Gk. hina) the blessing of Abraham would come upon
the Gentiles” (Gal. 3:10–14); “the Scripture consigned all things to sin,
in order that (Gk. hina) what was promised to faith in Jesus
Christ, might be given to those who have faith” (Gal. 3:22). Note that it
was the Law, “the Scripture”, which consigned things to sin– not a
personal Satan. My point is that sin was used by God, hina, ‘in
order that’, there would be an ultimately positive spiritual outcome.
Indeed this appears to be the genius of God, to work through human failure
to His glory. This view of sin, which any mature believer will surely
concur with from his or her life experience, is impossible to square with
the ideas of dualism, whereby God and ‘sin’ are radically opposed,
fighting a pitched battle ranging between Heaven and earth, with no common
ground. No – God is truly Almighty in every sense, and this includes His
power over sin. The life, death and resurrection of His Son were His way
of dealing with it – to His glory.
3:23
Now before faith came, we were held captive
under the law-
Paul sees the Law as a
prison house, a law which held us captive in bonds. In the first century,
a person was defined not so much by their unique personal character,
credit was not given for who they had become or stopped being... but
rather by the place in society into which they were born. And so these
group-oriented people came to live out the expectations of society- and so
the whole process rolled on through the generations. It was continuity
rather than change, tradition rather than transformation, which was
valued. Change was seen as some kind of deviancy- whereas the Christian
gospel is all about change! The past was seen as more glorious than the
present and the future, a pattern to be followed- whereas the Gospel of
the future Kingdom of God on earth taught that the best time is ahead.
And so often Paul compares the "past" of our lives with the much better
"now" in Christ (Gal. 3:23-27; 4:8,9; Rom. 6:17-22; Eph. 2:11-22; 5:8).
Imprisoned
until the coming faith would be revealed-
On one level, the Mosaic Law was a set of such intricate regulations that
was almost impossible to keep. And yet it led men to Christ as a gentle
slave leading the children to the teacher. I don’t think that the Law of
Moses led people to Christ in the sense that they cracked the various
types and worked it all out. There’s not one example that I can think of
where an Old Testament character did this. Indeed it could appear from
Gal. 3:23 and other New Testament passages that until Christ actually
came, the Old Testament believers were “shut up unto the faith which
should afterward be revealed”. Therefore the types etc. of the Law of
Moses couldn’t have been perceived by them in the same way as we
understand them. Hence the Lord’s comment that many righteous men had
longed to understand the things of Jesus which the disciples saw and heard
in reality. “In other ages” those things of Christ were not made known to
men as they were revealed in the New Testament by the preaching of the
apostles and New Testament prophets (Eph. 3:5). The Old Testament prophets
even seemed to understand that the things they saw and wrote were not so
much for themselves as for us (1 Pet. 1:12). Or as Paul says here in Gal.
3:23: “Before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the
faith [in Jesus] which should afterwards be revealed”. The Law was a
shadow created as it were by the concrete reality of Christ. We can look
back and see it all now, but I don’t think the types predicted anything to
the people of the time. So how then did the Law lead people to Christ? Was
it not that they were convicted of guilt, and cried out for a Saviour?
“The law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded,
grace did much more abound: that… grace might reign… unto eternal life by
Jesus” (Rom. 5:20,21). This was the purpose of the Law. And thus Paul
quotes David’s rejoicing in the righteousness imputed to him when he had
sinned and had no works left to do- and changes the pronoun from “he” to
“they” (Rom. 4:6-8). David’s personal experience became typical of that of
each of us. It was through the experience of that wretched and
hopeless position that David and all believers come to know the true
‘blessedness’ of imputed righteousness and sin forgiven by grace. Perhaps
Gal. 3:22 sums up what we have been saying: “The Scripture [in the
context, this refers to the Mosaic Law] hath concluded all under sin, that
the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe”.
And Paul goes on to say in this very context that the law brings us unto
Christ (Gal. 3:24). It brings us- not those who lived under the law. How
does it do that? By convicting us of sin, ‘concluding’ us as being under
the control of sin.
3:24 So
that the law became our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be
justified by faith
- The ultimate teacher must be the Lord Himself, not the pastor or
speaking brother. The Law was a paidogogos, a slave who lead the
children to the school teacher. And the teacher, Paul says, is Christ
(Gal. 3:23-25). He uses the whole body to make increase of itself in love-
not just the elders. As explained under 3:21, the law's bringing men to
Christ was not in that people understood the types and patterns as being
Messianic; for here in Galatians 3, Paul says that mankind was "shut up"
to all that; but rather in bringing us to know our desperation, to
highlight our sin, our chronic lack of steel within the soul to bring
ourselves to obedience.
3:25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor-
The idea could be that the "tutor" was in fact a slave who lead the child
to the teacher, and remained with them until the teacher came. The terms
"Christ" and "faith" are thus put for the same thing- 'justification by
faith in Christ'. "Faith" is put for the object of that faith, which is
Christ.
3:26 For you are all sons of God ,
through faith in Christ Jesus-
The "all" suggests that as Christ is the son of God, so are we. For by
being baptized into Christ, all that is true of Him becomes true of us.
Entering the body of Christ carries this implication. We must aspire to be
united, with neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female etc., because "ye
are all one man in Christ" (Gal. 3:28 RV). We "are all sons of God" (3:26
RV) because of our baptism into the Son of God. And so Paul goes on to
reason that just as Christ was "the heir" (cp. "this is the heir…"), who
is "lord of all", "even so we…" were kept under the law for a time (Gal.
4:1-3). The basis of our unity is that there is only one Jesus, and by
being in Him we are living lives committed to the imitation of that same
man. It's painless enough to read Gal. 3:27-29- that all those baptized
"in Christ" therefore are in a status where there is neither Jew nor
Gentile, no human barriers between us. But this is actually something we
have to live out in life in order for it to become reality.
3:27
For as many of you who were baptized into
Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ- Elsewhere Paul urges already baptized believers to
clothe themselves with Christ, to put on [s.w.] the new man etc. Baptism
is a putting on of the Lord Jesus, a union with Him; but it is something
essentially ongoing. The Lord Himself spoke of sharing His baptism as
being the same as drinking His cup, sharing His cross (Mk. 10:39); which,
again, is a process. Likewise Peter saw baptism as not only the one off
act, but more importantly a pledge to live a life in good conscience with
God (1 Pet. 3:21). 'Obeying the truth' is not only at baptism, but a
lifelong pursuit (Gal. 5:7). The whole body of believers in Christ are
being baptized into the body of the Lord Jesus in an ongoing sense (1 Cor.
12:13 Gk.), in that collectively and individually we are growing up into
Him who is the Head (Eph. 4:15). See on Col. 2:6; 1 Pet. 1:23.
3:28 There can be neither Jew nor Gentile, there can be neither slave
nor free, there can be no male and female-
for you all are one in Christ Jesus-
For Paul to calmly teach that baptism into Christ meant that there was now
no longer differentiation between male and female, slave and free, Jew,
Greek or any other ethnic group- this called into total question all the
first century understandings of society. Indeed, the idea that Gentiles
could become spiritual "Jews", and that the Jews weren't the real
children of Abraham, was an intentional reversal of the categories around
which society had been built. Much of the early 'geography' of the first
century involved stereotypical descriptions of ethnic and geographical
groups, usually ending up with praising the Greco-Roman peoples as being
superior in every way to all others. Yet this worldview, which was
accepted even by the despised ethnic groups about themselves, had to be
ended for those in Christ. Being in Him was to be their defining
feature. This was equally radical for the Jews, who held themselves above
these stereotypes about themselves. Contrary to what is often claimed,
Paul went out of his way to show that contemporary views of women were
unacceptable for those in the Lord. His teaching here is that in Christ,
there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male or female, is
surely conscious allusion to the Jewish traditional morning prayer for
men: “My God, I thank thee that I was not born a Gentile but a Jew, not a
slave but a free man, not a woman but a man”. He is surely saying that for
those in Christ, the Jewish male world-view is unacceptable.
It was hard psychologically for Jews to convert to Christianity. There
were elements of Christian teaching which were a direct affront to
Judaism. Part of being a Christian was to expect to be treated by the Jews
in just the same way as they had treated Jesus. The Sabbath was replaced
with keeping the first day of the week for worship; the food laws were
reduced by Paul’s inspired teaching to parts of “the weak and beggarly
elements”. The Jewish hatred of the Christians is revealed by the riots
that ensued when the Gospel was preached in the synagogues, and in the
persecution of the Christians at the hands of the Jews in Jerusalem,
Damascus and in the Asian cities (according to the letters in Rev. 2,3).
The insistence that Jewish converts be baptized would have been hard of
acceptance; for Gentiles took just such a ritual bath when they converted
to Judaism. For orthodox Jews to submit to baptism demanded a lot- for it
implied they were not by birth part of the true Israel as they had once
proudly thought. The Jews thought of Israel in the very terms which Paul
applies to Jesus: "We Thy people whom Thou hast honoured and hast called
the Firstborn and Only-Begotten, Near and Beloved One". The New Testament
uses these titles to describe the Lord Jesus Christ- and we must be
baptized into Him in order to be in His Name and titles. The Lord Jesus
was thus portrayed as Israel idealized and personified, all that Israel
the suffering servant should have been; thus only by baptism into Christ
of Jew and Gentile could they become part of the true seed of Abraham, the
Israel of God (Gal. 3:27-29). The act of baptism into Christ is no less
radical for us in our contexts today than it was for first century Jews.
All we once mentally held dear, we have to give up.
Gal. 3:27-29 explains that through baptism into the Abrahamic covenant,
there is a special unity between all in that covenant. Slave and free,
male and female, Jew and Gentile are all thereby united, as they were in
the early church. David Bosch comments: "The revolutionary nature of the
early Christian mission manifested itself, inter alia, in the new
relationships that came into being in the community. Jew and Roman, Greek
and barbarian, free and slave, rich and poor, woman and man, accepted one
another as brothers and sisters. It was a movement without analogy, indeed
a sociological impossibility". Likewise ecclesial life today can seem "a
sociological impossibility", but through the power of the most basic facts
of the Gospel preached to Abraham, this incredible unity is possible. As a
nexus "without analogy", the true Christian community of itself ought to
attract the attention of earnest men and women- just as the Lord
predicted. Our unity should be the basis of our appeal to men. And yet our
divided state is a tragic witness against us in this regard. Because there
is neither Jew nor Gentile in Christ means that in practice, amongst those
that "have put on the new man [a reference to baptism into Christ]… there
cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian,
Scythian, bondman, freeman [clear allusion to Gal. 3:27-29]. But Christ is
all, and in all. Put on therefore… a heart of compassion, kindness,
humility, meekness, longsuffering; forbearing one another and forgiving
one another" (Col. 3:10-13 RV). These things are what the promises
to Abraham are all about in practice! Because we are all now united in
Christ in our status as Abraham's seed, therefore we must see to it
that through kindness, patience etc. there really is not Jew and
Greek, or division of any kind, between us.
3:29- see on Mt. 25:34.
And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and the heirs
according to the promise!- The promise was made
to two people- Abraham and his seed, the Lord Jesus. By being in Christ,
all that is true of the seed is true of us. And so the paradox is
fulfilled- the singular seed (:16) is also as many as the stars of the
sky.
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