Sermon Number 06
Law and Faith Compared, Part 2 (3:6-9)
Jim Bordwine, ThD
Introduction
REVIEW
As I noted in the last sermon, the previous section (the bulk of chapters 1 and 2) concluded with Paul's definitive statement regarding the heart of his gospel: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”(2:20) By God's grace, we are delivered from the condemnation of the Law as Christ takes our place under God's wrath. Clearly implied already, then, is the notion that Law-keeping and faith are extreme opposites; they are contrary ideas regarding how a sinner is justified before God. One is based on our efforts to please God and the other is based on God's willingness to give us what we could not attain.
After making such statements, Paul now offers to the Galatians a side-by-side comparison of Law and faith. In chapter 3, verses 1-14, he shows how Law-keeping and faith are antithetical; he shows how the former can only confirm the sinner in his sin and bring condemnation, and how the latter unites the sinner to all the blessings of redemption. As Paul makes this comparison, he continues to emphasize the role of faith.
We are considering this section under three points. First, in the last sermon, we saw the place of faith in the history of the Galatian churches (vv. 1-5). In the first five verses of this chapter, Paul appeals to the Galatians' first contact with the gospel. He reminds them that their present fascination with the Law is completely out of accord with the manner in which they came into the Kingdom. By listening to the teaching of the Judaizers, the Galatians were contradicting the origin of their relationship with God.
Paul goes on and asks: “who has bewitched you?”(v. 1) These people heard the gospel preached, they heard that Christ was crucified for sinners and that His sacrifice paid for sins and enabled the transgressor to be reconciled to God; they were familiar with Paul's gospel and they knew that his gospel was one which declares that salvation comes by grace through faith, not by works through diligence. So, what happened? Paul says that the Galatians were “bewitched.”He uses a word which means “to charm”or “to bring evil upon another by feigning praise.”Apparently, the message of the Judaizers was presented in a manner which appealed to the pride of the Galatians. Whatever was said was designed to entice the Galatians and take advantage of their fleshly desire to be exalted.
In Paul's gospel, the sinner's sin is paid for not by himself, but by Christ; the sinner's pride is vanquished as he must acknowledge the sacrifice of the Savior on his behalf. The message which Paul preached would never have led the Galatians to believe that they would have to, at some point subsequent to their initial reception of the gospel, begin working for their salvation. Paul points out the obvious: the present state of the Galatians was not compatible with their beginning.
Paul forces the Galatians to admit that they are departing from what they previously professed to believe. They could not console themselves with the thought that the Judaizers were simply helping them achieve a deeper understanding and more consistent practice of the gospel which Paul preached. This was another gospel, as Paul said before; this was not the gospel which frees and saves, it was the counterfeit gospel which enslaves and condemns.
By leading the Galatians in a review of their Christian history, Paul reminds them that they first encountered God when they believed the gospel, not when they kept His Law. He teaches that Law-keeping does not result in one receiving the Spirit or experiencing the miracles of God. These things come by grace through faith. Based upon these few verses, therefore, faith is the element which saves and which brings forth God's favor.
END OF REVIEW
This brings us to Paul's second illustration of the prominence of faith:
02. The Place of Faith in the Abrahamic Covenant (vv. 6-9)
6 Even so Abraham BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS RECKONED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS. 7 Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham. 8 The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “ALL THE NATIONS WILL BE BLESSED IN YOU.”9 So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer.
As we consider these verses, I want to point out that Paul's citation of Abraham accomplishes three things. First, he is undermining the integrity of the Judaizers by showing that their chief patriarch, Abraham, was declared righteous by God without keeping the Law of God. This is a major blow against the Judaizers; if Paul's words are believed by the Galatians, then the Judaizers have lost all credibility. What is just as important to note is the fact that the Law about which the Judaizers were so concerned had not even been given by God when Abraham walked the earth. By showing that Abraham was saved by grace through faith alone, Paul is exposing the Judaizers for heretics.
Second, Paul mentions Abraham because, as this passage says, the gospel which Paul preached and which these Galatians believed and which the Judaizers were opposing was preached to Abraham first. Long before Paul, long before the Judaizers and long before the Galatians, God revealed the essence of the gospel to Abraham; and what He revealed to Abraham had governed the relationship between God and His people ever since. Paul confirms the integrity of his ministry by using Abraham as an example of a man who was saved according to what Paul has been preaching. Paul's reference to Abraham proves that he was not preaching some novel doctrine. Contrary to what the Judaizers implied, Paul's message was ancient and he was being faithful to the revelation of the past; it was the Judaizers who were contradicting what God already revealed about the nature of salvation and the place of faith.
Third, these verses provide the covenantal perspective on the gospel which is essential to a proper understanding of the gospel and which becomes pivotal in some of the remarks which Paul makes in the immediately following context. However we define the gospel, we must take into account that what Abraham was told by God was the gospel. These verses tie together the Old and New Testaments and show the continuity between the Testaments; these verses bring unity to the Body of Christ which is composed of Jews and Gentiles. These verses unite in the very area where the Judaizers were causing division.
We're talking about only four verses here, but these four verses silence the Judaizers and give vital insight regarding the nature of the gospel. The “even so”which introduces v. 6 is meant to identify Abraham as an example of the truth which Paul has been teaching, viz., that salvation comes by faith, not through the keeping of the Law. Paul makes reference to contact between the LORD and Abraham which is recorded in Gen. 15:
1 After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, saying, “Do not fear, Abram, I am a shield to you; Your reward shall be very great.”2 Abram said, “O Lord GOD, what will You give me, since I am childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?”3 And Abram said, “Since You have given no offspring to me, one born in my house is my heir.”4 Then behold, the word of the LORD came to him, saying, “This man will not be your heir; but one who will come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir.”5 And He took him outside and said, “Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.”And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”6 Then he believed in the LORD; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.
In this passage, childless Abraham hears the wonderful news that God would give him an heir and that through his descendants, Abraham would become the father of a multitude too great to be numbered. Abraham rightly associated God's promised blessing to the existence of descendants and Abraham had no heir at this point to carry on after him. A servant stood to become Abraham's heir, as he declares to the LORD. However, the LORD promises a son to Abraham and then says: “Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them…. So shall your descendants be.”God is promising something incredible, something truly unbelievable from Abraham's perspective. He had no heir, yet the LORD is telling him he will end up with descendants too numerous to count. In response, the Scripture says “[Abraham] believed in the LORD, and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.”
Later, in Gen. 17, the LORD reveals more details about this promise and puts Abraham under obligation to apply the sign of this promise, which is circumcision, to the males in his household. Paul's point here, however, is that Abraham was counted righteous based upon his faith. He believed the LORD and God counted Abraham as righteousness. The key element in Paul's reference to Abraham's experience is the patriarch's faith. This is the matter under consideration. Paul is comparing faith and Law as means whereby a sinner finds acceptance before God. Law clearly played no part in Abraham's standing before God because the Scripture declares that Abraham believed in the LORD and that led to God's reckoning of Abraham as righteous.
The Greek term which appears in v. 6 in Gal. 3 and which is translated “reckoned”(logizomai) means “to count a thing as or to be something.”This word has to do with how something or someone is viewed. In Abraham's case, he was counted by the LORD, or viewed by the LORD as righteous because he believed what the LORD told him about blessing the world through the patriarch's descendants, the chief one of which, of course, is Jesus Christ (as Paul explains shortly). Abraham's faith was in God's promise. Those who believe as Abraham believed are the “sons of Abraham,”Paul adds (v. 7)
Those who desire to be identified with Abraham preach salvation by grace through faith alone, not salvation by Law-keeping. Those who preach Law-keeping have nothing in common with Abraham and he is the one to whom God made the magnificent promise of world-wide blessing. Abraham's experience proves that righteousness is not attained through works, but through faith. Paul wants the Galatians to understand that the Judaizers are deceiving them; the Judaizers are even betraying their own history as God's covenant people.
Verse 8 is crucial in this section where Paul is comparing faith and Law: “The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham…”. Just what was going on when God spoke to Abraham? God was revealing that He would “justify the Gentiles by faith.”That is an incredibly significant declaration. The multitude which would come forth as Abraham's descendants included and was composed mostly of Gentiles-the very Gentiles to whom Paul was writing this epistle and the very Gentiles who were abandoning the doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone. By listening to the Judaizers, the Galatians were denying the truth of the gospel and were opposing God's previously revealed plan to save them by faith.
Abraham did not hear a plan which was applicable only for some; he heard the gospel, which declares that God justifies on the basis of faith in a Redeemer, not on the basis of Law-keeping. This, too, is a clear and powerful refutation of the Judaizers' doctrine. God never planned or promised to justify (that is, count as righteous) anyone, least of all not the Gentiles, by Law-keeping; His promise to them was one based on faith, not works. The Judaizers are here exposed as liars and as the most wicked examples of deceivers. They are contradicting God Himself, not to mention their rich heritage as Jews.
God established a covenant with Abraham and this covenant has at its heart the doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone. Abraham was not asked to keep God's Law before God included him in this arrangement. As was shown before by Paul when he reviewed the history of the Galatians, faith is also the key here in the Abrahamic covenant. God spoke and Abraham believed; God promised and Abraham had faith. The redemption of the world concerning which God spoke to Abraham would come about by God's grace, not by the merits of those to be redeemed.
This is what Abraham heard, this is what he believed and this was, according to Paul, the glorious gospel which saves all who have the faith of Abraham. When Abraham was told “All the nations will be blessed in you,”the fulfillment of that promise was beyond his control; it depended directly upon God, the One who spoke the promise. Abraham could contribute nothing to what God promised to do, he could only believe the word of the LORD, and that is what he did. Abraham heard the promise and Abraham had faith in the LORD that this promise would be kept. There was no need or room for Abraham to do anything except believe what God told him.
So, if justification comes by faith, what does this say to the Galatians? It says that they were gravely mistaken and had put their souls at risk. It says that they had been fooled, tricked, led astray. It says that the doctrine of the Judaizers was not the doctrine of God, was not the blessed gospel which saves. The Galatians had one option and that was to repudiate the Judaizers immediately-they must rid themselves of this heretical teaching as quickly as possible. The blessing of the gospel, the world-wide blessing which was revealed and promised to Abraham comes to those who do what Abraham did-believe the LORD. Only by imitating the faith of Abraham could the Galatians hope to inherit the blessing of Abraham. If they insisted on following a Law-based approach to justification, then redemption was closed off to them.
What Paul says left no room for the teaching of the Judaizers. They are exposed by Paul, they are destroyed by Paul, they are left without a response by Paul. He takes Abraham and does away with the notion of justification by Law-keeping while, at the same time, opening the door to heaven to the Gentiles. Abraham, the father of the Jews, is Abraham, the father of the Gentiles. There is no place for Law-keeping as a means of approaching God because God does not justify sinners, Jew or Gentile, on that basis.
Verse 9 summarizes Paul's teaching in this section: “So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer.”It's that simple. Choose Law and you lose the opportunity for salvation; choose faith as a means of justification, and you gain redemption. The blessings promised to Abraham, which were, in essence, the gospel, come when the sinner believes in God's promise of redemption. If the sinner insists on trying to become acceptable before God based on the Law or on works, then the sinner will never know forgiveness.
Conclusion
As I close, I want to comment on three characteristics of the faith which Paul defends in this passage. As he describes God's encounter with Abraham and as he writes about the role played by Abraham's belief in the establishment of the covenant between the patriarch and the LORD, Paul makes it clear that simple faith, simple belief of God's promises is the essential element in our salvation. So, let me say a word first about the simplicity of faith.
Sinners, due to their fallen natures, have a tendency to reject the simple and choose the complicated when it comes to being acceptable to God. Our hearts lead us to think that redemption cannot be a matter of unadorned belief in the word of God. We want to find a more demanding method of pleasing God and gaining His favor. The Galatians, for example, were listening to the Judaizers for no other reason than that the doctrine of the Judaizers made salvation more difficult and this increased level of difficulty made more sense to the poor Galatians. They had trouble accepting the notion that salvation is by grace through faith alone and so, they were easy targets for the Judaizers who were ready to nurture the doubts of the Galatians with their talk of human effort.
But Paul's citation of Abraham's experience forever settles the question of what the sinner must do to be saved. He must only believe. Doesn't that sound wonderful? He must only believe that God is telling the truth when He declares that He will save us and that we cannot save ourselves. What could be simpler? What could be more beautiful? The utter simplicity of believing God, illustrated in Abraham's experience, is a blessed characteristic of our faith. You are not asked to do more. Make sure that you understand this aspect of your salvation; and, by all means, make sure that your children grow up knowing the value of simply believing what God says.
Added to the simplicity of faith is a second aspect and that is the importance of faith. While believing what God promises in the gospel may be a simple step, in terms of what it actually involves, it is, nevertheless, a crucial step. Abraham heard the words of the LORD and, as the Scripture says, he believed. This was an almost effortless response on Abraham's part; however, had he not believed, then he would have been rejecting the gospel, according to what Paul says in this passage, and the wonderful relationship which developed between Abraham, Abraham's descendants (Jew and Gentile) and the LORD could not have happened. Faith is not just simple, it is important.
If you are saved, it is because you have believed what God tells us about redemption. And if you do not believe what God says, then you are not saved. Here again are the simplicity and importance of faith illustrated. Without simple faith, salvation is impossible; this makes simple faith pretty significant, does it not? In our lives, we do not normally associate that which is simple with that which is indispensable. That's part of the reason why the Christian gospel is rejected by many. How can something which is so important also be so simple? Surely, something as crucial as salvation must require an act or acts equally impressive. This is common thinking, but it is wrong.
And, as a third characteristic which is at least implied in Paul's comments on Abraham's experience, I would list the availability of faith. What I mean here is that belief, saving faith, is something which can be exhibited by anyone-not just the mature, not just the well-trained, not just the moral person, but by anyone. The nature of faith or belief is such that all people, adults and children, can have it. This is why the gospel has universal appeal and applicability.
the simplicity, importance and availability of faith