Sermon Number 08
The Purpose of the Law, Part 1 (3:15-22)
Jim Bordwine, ThD
Introduction
Thus far in our study of Paul's epistle to the Galatian churches, we have covered an Introduction to the letter; we have examined what Paul has to say about his gospel-he spoke of the uniqueness, origin, integrity and heart of his message; we have, most recently, considered Paul's comparison between faith and Law as opposite systems of gaining God's saving favor. Throughout this letter, there has been one recurring truth and that is that the keeping of the Law does not win for the sinner justification before God.
Whenever he has spoken of the Law, so far, Paul has spoken negatively. He has emphasized again and again that the sinner cannot earn God's favor through good works. He has stressed that salvation is by grace through faith alone. He has pointed to historical examples to support this contention. Paul has done everything possible to show that the teaching of the Judaizers is wrong and destructive to the true gospel. He has berated the Galatians, pleaded with them, challenged them and exhorted them-all in an effort to get them to see how dangerous was the path on which they had embarked.
Finally, after putting to rest the notion that justification comes by Law-keeping, which Paul did decisively in the previous section (3:1-14), the apostle provides the Galatians with a positive perspective on the Law of God. It does serve a purpose, it is important and the Law should be respected, even by those who have been saved by grace through faith alone. The problem all along has been that the teaching of the Judaizers was wrong; they were presenting an erroneous view of the Law; they were making the Law serve a purpose for which it was never intended. Therefore, beginning in 3:15, Paul explains the true purpose of God's holy Law.
01. The Law: Identifier of Transgressions (3:15-22)
Paul is going to provide a couple of perspectives on the Law to show it true purpose and how it does, indeed, aid in the plan of redemption. The Law does not serve the purpose of making us acceptable before God, but it does have a role to play in salvation. The first perspective is revealed to us in vv. 15-22:
15 Brethren, I speak in terms of human relations: even though it is only a man's covenant, yet when it has been ratified, no one sets it aside or adds conditions to it. 16 Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, “And to seeds,” as referring to many, but rather to one, “And to your seed,” that is, Christ. 17 What I am saying is this: the Law, which came four hundred and thirty years later, does not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to nullify the promise. 18 For if the inheritance is based on law, it is no longer based on a promise; but God has granted it to Abraham by means of a promise. 19 Why the Law then? It was added because of transgressions, having been ordained through angels by the agency of a mediator, until the seed would come to whom the promise had been made. 20 Now a mediator is not for one party only; whereas God is only one. 21 Is the Law then contrary to the promises of God? May it never be! For if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law. 22 But the Scripture has shut up everyone under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
Paul begins with a simple lesson in contractual obligations. He uses an illustration from everyday life, an illustration to which the Galatians could easily relate, to make a point about the Abrahamic covenant and it's relationship to the Law of God. Borrowing from standard rules of doing business, Paul writes: “Even though it is only a man's covenant, yet when it was been ratified, no one sets it aside or adds conditions to it.” (v. 15) His point is that whenever men formalize an agreement, whenever the steps have been taken to make an arrangement official, then that agreement remains in force no matter what. No one can come along after the agreement has been confirmed and make changes in the stipulations; it is illegal to modify the terms of the covenant once it has been agreed to by all parties involved. Once the ratification has taken place, that agreement (or “covenant,” as Paul calls it) is in force and all parties must abide by it.
Well, Paul says, God made certain promises to Abraham and his seed (v. 16). The context of that encounter between God and Abraham shows us that God did, indeed, establish a covenant, an agreement, with Abraham in which God promised to be Abraham's God and the God of Abraham's descendants while Abraham, for his part, was required to demonstrate faith in this promise by applying the sign of circumcision. Paul is inviting a comparison between a covenant involving only men and one involving God. He is using a technique in which one argues from the lesser to the greater in order to establish the validity of a conclusion.
If this is how the documents which govern the affairs of men are handled, Paul says, if the covenants between mere men are treated with respect and allowed to stand as written once they are ratified, what about a covenant or agreement in which God Himself is involved? This is where Paul was headed. Certainly, he reasons, any covenant in which God is a party should be treated just as respectfully as a covenant where only men are involved. All, of course, would immediately see Paul's point and agree with him. So, he returns his readers to consideration of the Abrahamic covenant, which was mentioned previously.
Paul wants to show that there were certain redemptive provisions in place before the Law was given, which means, following Paul's analogy of human contracts, that the original covenant stipulations spoken by God to Abraham are what governs salvation, not the stipulations of the Law which came long afterward. Immediately, therefore, the apostle demonstrates that the Law could not have the function of justifying sinners because sinners are justified by faith, as was so plainly illustrated in Abraham's contact with the LORD. The Law has a role, in fact, it has a couple of functions, but one of those functions is not to serve as a means of justification before God.
Paul continues and tells us something heretofore unknown about the Abrahamic covenant. He interprets some of the language which was exchanged between God and Abraham and explains that the promise made to Abraham and his seed had a particular application to the Messiah: “He does not say, 'And to seeds,' as referring to many, but rather to one, 'And your seed,' that is, Christ.” (v. 16b). I say that this information was unknown prior to Paul because the story itself, recorded in Genesis, does not include such an interpretation. The information is there, to be sure, but the correct and full interpretation was absent until the time of Paul.
Just before this section began, Paul mentioned that Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law by becoming a curse for us. We saw there that Paul was establishing some kind of relationship between faith and Law and that Christ was the link, as it were. Here, in our present passage, Paul more plainly ties together the element of faith, which he has been extolling, and the element of Law, which he has been opposing. That which ties the two together is the Christ, or, to put it another way, faith and Law “meet” in the Savior. God promised to be the God of Abraham and to bless the nations of the earth in his seed. Paul says that the ultimate seed to which this promise had reference was Jesus Christ.
Whatever was to come to the nations of the world would come by and through Christ, the seed of Abraham; and whatever was to come would come by faith, which God clearly demonstrated in His contact with the patriarch. Since Christ is the center of the gospel, so to speak, this means that any relation to Him or any sharing in the promise made to Abraham, would involve faith. Once again, then, Law-keeping is set aside as having anything to do with the fulfillment of the promise of world-wide blessing which was made to Abraham and realized in Abraham's seed, Jesus Christ.
Now, Paul is going to continue developing this idea momentarily. At this point, however, he restates a prior truth: “What I am saying is this: the Law, which came four hundred and thirty years later, does not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to nullify the promise.” (v. 17) The “promise” to which Paul refers in this passage, as I have stated, is God's pledge to bring blessings to the whole world in the seed of Abraham. This promise, as Abraham's contact with the LORD and as Paul's prior interpretation demonstrate, was based upon faith. Given the nature of a covenant, therefore, Paul concludes that the promise made to Abraham that salvation would come by faith cannot be set aside in favor of a Law-based system of justification, especially when that Law was not given until four hundred and thirty years after the covenant with Abraham was made.
Once again, the conclusion has to be that the Law has nothing to do with justification because God made it clear that justification was based on faith and He made it clear that His intention to bless the world would be based on faith. The Law has a role, as I noted, but that role is not one of justifying the sinner. All of this is leading up to Paul's declaration regarding the right perspective on the Law.
Simple logic, Paul insists, supports his conclusion: “If the inheritance is based on law, it is no longer based on a promise…” (v. 18) Promise and law, or faith and law, cannot both be operative in this matter, he says. If what God pledged to Abraham is based upon faith, as was illustrated when the Scripture said that Abraham “believed in the LORD,” then that same fulfillment, that “inheritance,” as Paul labels it here, cannot also be based upon the keeping of law.
Only one scheme can be true-either God fulfills the promise He made based upon the faith of the sinner who accepts what God said, or He fulfills the promise based upon the sinner's ability to keep the Law and thus earn God's favor. But Paul has just proven that the latter cannot possibly be true because the covenant between God and Abraham was ratified long before the Law existed. This means, without a doubt, that what is promised in that covenant comes to the sinner who has faith. “God has granted it to Abraham by means of a promise,” Paul writes at the end of v. 17.
This really is the end of the debate regarding the relationship between faith and Law-keeping. This subject has occupied Paul's mind up to this point, but now he has dispensed with the Judaizers' notion that Law-keeping merits God's saving response. Now, Paul can ask that all-important question: “Why the Law then?” (v 19) If the Law is eliminated as a means of justification, if Law-keeping has nothing to do with the sinner's justification before God, if the Judaizers are absolutely in error regarding the validity of the Law in the matter of making a sinner acceptable in God's sight, then why the Law? Why was the Law given? What was its purpose? What role does it play? Paul answers these questions. The Law does have a valid function; it has more than one valid function, as a matter of fact.
The Law “was added because of transgressions, having been ordained through angels by the agency of a mediator, until the seed would come to whom the promise had been made.” (v. 19b) Before dealing with the first portion of this sentence, I want to explain the next two phrases. The statement that the Law was “ordained through angels” refers to the ministry of the angels on Mt. Sinai when the Law was given to Moses. Their precise role is not revealed in Scripture, but it is clear that angels attended that event (cf. Heb. 2:2). And, Paul's mention of a “mediator,” refers, no doubt, to Moses who received the Law from God and delivered it to the people of Israel.
The Law of God, as we know, is His holy character put into codes of moral conduct. It was “added because of (or, “for the sake of”) transgressions,” Paul explains. The idea is that the Law of God was provided to identify sin. The Law declares that which qualifies as righteous and everything contrary to the Law is wicked and subject, therefore, to God's judgment. The Law awakens in the sinner a sense of guilt; the Law makes the sinner aware of his condition; the Law makes the sinner apprehensive as he comes to understand that he is living under the wrath of God.
The Law, then, reveals to the sinner his moral corruption and this is necessary that the sinner might then begin to look to the promise of blessing from God. Without the Law, the sinner's condition remains hidden from him, but the Law shows him that, at every moment and in every manner, he is falling far short of God's holy standard. How will he be saved from the wrath of God? How will he ever be made right with God? The Law causes these kinds of questions to rise in the mind of the sinner and this prepares the sinner for the gospel, as Paul explains shortly when he talks about a second, related function of the Law (v. 24).
God's Law functioned in this capacity “until the seed would come to whom the promise had been made.” Now that “seed” is Christ, as Paul stated before. The Law was the accuser of sinners until Christ came; the Law hounded sinners until Christ came. When Christ, the seed of Abraham, came, He faced the Law and, as Paul wrote previously, died in our place to pay for our transgressions against the Law. Once Christ came and accomplished this, once He came and faced the Law for sinners and suffered the penalty of Law-breaking, the Law ceased to be a threat to all those who have Christ as Savior. The Law can no longer accuse me because Christ died in my place under the Law. The Law was not set aside, but came with it's full force upon my Substitute.
The promise of redemption was made to Abraham, the Law was given to identify the character of sinners and intensify anticipation of judgment and Christ came to receive that judgment in the place of all who would have faith in Him. Faith, once again, triumphs; faith delivers from death; faith brings salvation. This is what Paul has been teaching all along; it is faith which saves and faith alone. The Law can only condemn, but by faith, we can have a Savior who receives the Law's condemnation for us.
We come now to v. 20, which has given rise to over 400 interpretations! It is a somewhat strange statement: “Now a mediator is not for one party only; whereas God is only one.” The best explanation seems to be the one which sees Paul making a contrast between the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants. God spoke directly to Abraham when He made the promise of world-wide blessing; however, God used Moses as a mediator when He delivered the Law to the people. The idea is that the Abrahamic covenant was of a more personal and, therefore, effective nature because in it, God spoke directly to Abraham. This notion helps Paul convince the Galatians that Moses ought not to be exalted over Abraham, as would have been the teaching of the Judaizers.
Anticipating the response that he is setting the promise of God and the Law of God in opposition to one another, as if God said one thing and then said another, contradictory, thing, Paul asks: “Is the Law then contrary to the promises of God?” (v. 21) His answer: “May it never be!” The Law was never intended to achieve the same goal as faith; faith and Law do not serve the same function. This is why they are not contrary to one another and this is why Paul could not be accursed to making God sound contradictory (except by those who continued to insist that the Law played a role in justification).
If law could impart life or bring justification before God, Paul adds, then “righteousness would indeed have been based on law.” But, as Paul has argued so successfully, God's plan was to base justification upon faith, not the impossible task of perfect Law-keeping. Another way to look at this is to say that the fact that God did not give a law which could impart life, is proof that justification cannot be attained by that method. The problem, of course, is fallen man's nature. He cannot obey God because his nature is corrupted and he is, from the point of conception, morally opposed to God and righteousness. Paul makes this very point in v. 22: “But the Scripture has shut up everyone under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.”
God's word declares to us that we are sinners; we are creatures incapable of perfect obedience; we are creatures marked by hostility to God and His character. There are no exceptions, as Paul indicates. We are all “shut up under sin,” he writes. The term translated “shut up” (sugkleio) means “to encircle, to enclose, to restrict.” This word was used to describe fish being caught in a net. The point is that there is no escape. So, the word of God, Paul says, confines us all to the category of sinners and therefore, we are unable to win God's blessings by our conduct. Whatever we do is corrupted because we are, by nature, morally corrupt people. The only option is faith or belief in God's wonderful and merciful promise to save us Himself by sending a Savior who will do what we cannot do.
Conclusion
In terms of application, I would mention three things briefly. First, this passage is a perfect illustration of a tried and true element in Biblical interpretation: Scripture interprets Scripture. The proper understanding of God's contact with Abraham and His promises to Abraham depends upon Paul's remarks in this passage. He makes one simple statement, but it puts a whole new light on God's covenant with Abraham: Paul says that God's reference to the “seed” of Abraham finds it's ultimate fulfillment in Christ Jesus. This is what God meant, according to Paul, when He told Abraham that “in your seed, the nations of the earth shall be blessed.”
To understand Scripture, all of Scripture has to be studied. This is why what is called “proof-text” theology is so untrustworthy. This is where someone simple quotes a verse, often out of context, to prove some point. Without the advantage of having studied the whole Bible, this method can be quite unreliable. When Paul explains what was going on between God and Abraham in Gen. 12, 15 and 17, he provides a perspective which we simple would never have gotten looking at those chapters by themselves. This passage, then, is an encouragement to us to be people who study the whole word of God so that we will be fully informed and fully capable of teaching it to others and fully capable of defending it before its critics.
Second, this passage also emphasizes, once again, the fundamental truth that salvation is by grace through faith alone. This is, of course, Paul's primary theme in this letter. Instead of attacking the Law, as he has done previously because of the destructive influence of the Judaizers, Paul speaks positively of the Law in these verses. He accomplishes the same end, however, which is demonstrating that faith and Law-keeping are opposites. God never intended that He be approached through Law-keeping, but always intended that sinners come to Him by believing His promise to save them in Christ.
This epistle confronts us again and again with the great truth that we are saved by faith alone. It is a truth of such fundamental importance that it bears repeating over and over again in various ways as Paul does in this letter. If this truth is lost, then the way to redemption is lost, too. This is why Paul guards it, defends it and emphasizes it in this letter. If the sinner doesn't believe the promise of God in the gospel, the promise that He will accept Christ's death as payment for the sinner's sin, then the sinner has no recourse, but remains in a state of condemnation. This means that we cannot speak too much of faith, we cannot explain it to our children too many times, we cannot review this doctrine too many times as adults and we cannot thank God enough for making salvation available in this manner.
Third, and finally, these verses remind us what happens to us when we are confronted by God's Law. Paul says that the Law was given “on account of transgressions.” As I explained, this means that the Law was given by God to expose the sinner's true condition and reveal to the sinner the utter futility of trying to win God's favor through his own efforts. Exposure to the Law of God is an entirely beneficial experience no matter what your spiritual state, but it is of particular value to those who may not yet be in the Kingdom of Christ.
Think again of those questions which I suggested are brought to the mind of the sinner when he hears the holy Law of God and realizes that God holds him to a standard of perfection. How will I be saved from the wrath of God? How will I ever be made right with God? The Law causes these kinds of questions to rise in the mind of the sinner and this prepares the sinner for the gospel. This is going to be Paul's next area of attention, but I want to take advantage of what he says in our passage and urge any who are here who have yet to be saved to consider those questions. How will you be saved from the wrath of God? How will you ever be made right with God?
Don't count on yourself, count on Christ. Don't believe in yourself, believe in Christ. Don't think that you are going to win God's saving favor by being a decent person; instead, listen to the Law of God, read just the Ten Commandments, and realize that the condemnation you sense in that exercise can be avoided only by finding Another to take your punishment for being a Law-breaker. That other One is Jesus Christ, the sinner's Substitute.