Law & Promise

Today on Renewing Your Mind. Galatians 3 In our previous 14 verses of Galatians 3, we saw Paul addressing the issue of Abraham. The Judaizers were insisting on circumcision, and Paul kind of upends them. I'm mixing my metaphors, but he does a 180 on them and asks them, how was Abraham saved? How was he justified? How was he reckoned righteous in the sight of God? And he was reckoned righteous in the sight of God by faith before circumcision came into practice. And so, he wants to understand, he wants the Galatians to understand in the light of what's going on in Galatia, what was going on in Jerusalem with Titus, what was going on in Antioch with Peter and Paul in that famous encounter, that the issue is the gospel. The issue is justification by faith.

Now, he's introduced Abraham. There are some things in Paul that are hard to be understood. Peter says that. And there is a verse here, verse 20, now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one. And I have no idea what Paul is talking about. I can give you my interpretation, and I'll do that in the course of this lesson, but I'm not ready to be executed for this interpretation.

There are many, many hours of scholarship that I could unearth and give to you, multiple meanings. And frankly, this is one of those statements where when I see Paul in heaven and I get a moment alone with him, I'll just ask him, what in the world did you mean in the third chapter of Galatians? Well, let's go back to the Reformation. We've said many times that the book of Galatians was hugely influential to Martin Luther and the inauguration of the Reformation and the spread of the Reformation. Within years, a few years of nailing those ninety-five thesis statements to the castle church door in Wittenberg, Luther responds by quickly writing three books.

One was on the Christian nobility of the German nation, followed by on the Babylonian captivity of the church, and followed very quickly by one book on the freedom of the Christian man. Well, Galatians is all about freedom, for freedom Christ has made us free. We'll see that when we come to chapter five of Galatians.

But in the course of that book, he made what some people have regarded as the most perfect expression of the relationship between law and gospel. He made these two propositions. A Christian is an utterly free man, Lord of all and subject to none. A Christian is an utterly free man, Lord of all and subject to none.

And then he gave a second proposition. A Christian is an utterly dutiful man, servant of all and subject to all. And in order to understand how he can say both things at the same time, you need to understand the gospel. In order to be righteous, we are wholly unable to obey God's law. But having been made free by the gospel, we are free indeed. We are free from the demands of the law in order to justify us.

We are free from its threats. But we're not free from its obligations upon us to obey from gratitude, to obey because we have experienced grace, to obey because we love God and we want to do what pleases God by the help of the Holy Spirit. Well, here in this section, Paul begins by asking the question, what does the law not do?

What does the law not do? And he answers it by, he calls it a human example, and it's going to be Abraham again, verse 15. Verse 15, to give a human example, brothers, even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified. He's talking about covenants. Some people think he's talking about last will and testaments, but I think he's talking about covenants, promises, agreements that are made, formal agreements, legal agreements, you know, where lawyers and stuff are involved. And, you know, when you buy a house and you sign a thousand pieces of paper for every conceivable contingency, and once that thing is done, there's no undoing it. It's signed and sealed, and there's no taking away, and there's no adding.

They try to conceive of every possible contingency. Well, he talks here in verse 16, now the promises were made to Abraham. He's already introduced Abraham, and Abraham, God made a covenant with Abraham.

You see it in chapter 12, and you see it in chapter 15, and you see it again in chapter 17 of Genesis. He made a covenant with Abraham. And once that covenant is made, the promises in that covenant, he would have a son. He would be the father of many nations and so on. And one very specific promise, and Paul engages now in some exegetical, fancy footwork here.

That's how I see it. He says, the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It doesn't say and to offsprings, referring to many, but referring to one and to your offspring, who is Christ. What was the promise? Well, the promise was that Abraham would have a son, that he would have many sons.

He would be the father of a nation. But it doesn't say sons. It says son in the singular, because what is it that actually fulfills the covenant that God makes with Abraham?

And the answer is Jesus. The reason why Abraham will have sons, and the point he wants to go on to make is that Gentiles, too, are Abraham's sons. Or to put it the other way around, Abraham is the father of the faith for Gentiles, too, spiritually speaking. He is our father. He is the father of the faith. We are children of Abraham.

It's one of the reasons why I was convinced of pedobaptism, because I saw a line of continuity from my relationship with Abraham running from Genesis all the way through into the pages of Galatians, and that there was a line of continuity rather than a line of discontinuity in the administration of the covenant sign and seal. Well, I think he's saying this not for the Jews' sake, the Jewish Christians' sake, who were more than happy to have Abraham as their father, but he's saying this perhaps to Gentile Christians, through what was Abraham to them? They hadn't grown up as children reading about Father Abraham.

Abraham wasn't. There wasn't an empty seat at Passover for the return of Elijah. So, all of this Old Testament stuff, what did it have to do with these Gentiles? And Paul wants them to understand that the narrative of the gospel that they now believe goes all the way back to the Old Testament. It goes all the way back to Abraham. And the story of the Old Testament is as much part of their spiritual story as it is part of the genetic story of Jewish Christians. Well, the point that he wants to make is that once a covenant is made, you can't undo the promises.

The promises are sealed, and they're binding. I remember when I was in a former church. There was a lady who had died, and I was made an executor of her will. She didn't have a lot of money.

We're only talking about maybe $10,000 or something like that. And she wanted to give half to the church and half to this cousin. And this cousin had played absolutely no part in this woman's life, and she only turned up out of the blue once she heard that she was a beneficiary in the will, and she wanted more than half. And she went to a lawyer, and the lawyer was a friend of mine, and he told me afterwards, she was quite insistent that she was entitled to more than half of this $10,000.

And I said, well, what did you do? And he said, well, I charged her $1,000 for the hours that I'd given to her, and she only got $4,000 because the promises were made, and they couldn't be undone. We weren't in a position to undo those promises. They were made, and they were signed and sealed, and it was a legal contract, and it couldn't be undone.

And just to teach her a lesson, he charged her $1,000, and that's a true story. But that's what Paul is talking about here, the promise that God gives to Abraham. And the point that you'll want to make is that it comes 430 years before the giving of the law, the promise of justification, the promise of being made right in the sight of God.

He believed, and he was reckoned righteous in the sight of God. That came 400-plus years before the law was given on Mount Sinai. The law on Mount Sinai played no part in Abraham's justification.

It was over 400 years into the future. And so, the law coming after cannot change, then, the provision that God made, the promises that God made in the covenant with Abraham. You understand why he's taking us down this road, because on the one hand, he's got Jewish Christians who are now beginning to insist on obedience to the law in some form or fashion in order to be justified, and he's got Gentile Christians who have no relationship, historic relationship, ancestral relationship, genetic relationship to Abraham. And he wants both sides to understand the significance of the promise that God made to Abraham, the promise that eventually leads to the giving of Jesus, to seed, not seeds in the plural, but seed as of one, meaning Jesus, that all of this comes to pass in Jesus Christ. The law cannot undo justification by faith.

Your obedience to the law cannot make justification by faith more certain. We do tend to default that way, don't we? When things are not going well, when we're in periods of non-obedience, when we're backslidden, a whole multitude of pastoral conditions, and we sometimes say to ourselves, if only I did a little bit more, if only I prayed just a little bit more, if I was sweeter or kinder or nicer or something, that I would be more justified. And Paul is saying, when you do that, you've turned the gospel on its head. And there is a tendency, there is a proclivity.

It's here in Galatia, but there is a default mechanism within all of us to start with the gospel and to continue in the flesh, to receive the Spirit by faith, but to continue in the flesh. And Paul says, no, that cannot be. So, let's ask the positive question. If we ask the question what the law cannot do, it cannot make us more justified. It cannot increase our justification. It cannot make more certain the promise that God made. The example here is Abraham. So, what does the law do?

Now, again, Paul isn't asking a comprehensive question here. The Reformation, for example, will divide the law into three uses. So, the first use of the law is the civil use of the law, the use of the law in providing stability for society, laws, general laws that maintain stability and order and what we call civilization, a measure of peace and harmony in a fallen world. And the law is a function.

In ancient Israel, the laws, the civil laws had a civil function. And then there was what John Calvin called the third use of the law, and that is the use of the law for sanctification, that the law provides the pattern of our obedience as Christians, not in order to be justified, but because we are justified, because we have a desire now within us, given by the Holy Spirit to live for Christ, to live for God. I've been crucified, and I now live for God. So, what is the pattern of that living for God?

What does that living for God look like? And it looks like obeying the law, so that catechisms and so on will often be preoccupied. Half a catechism, sometimes two-thirds of a catechism, will be an exposition of the moral law, an exposition of the Ten Commandments. But then that's not what Paul is talking about right here. He'll come to talk about that a little bit more in later chapters, but here he's still talking about justification.

He's still arguing with the Judaizers who are saying that unless you obey the ceremonial boundary markers, you cannot be assured of your justification. So, what is the purpose of the law? And he tells us in verse 19, why then the law? It was added because of transgressions.

Interesting, isn't it? It was added because of transgressions until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. Now, an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one, and I'm not sure what verse 20 means.

And no amount of high-powered scholarship can bring further light as to what Paul means. I think what he is saying is that he's drawing a contrast between Abraham and Moses, and the law was given through an intermediary. It was given through Moses, but the promise to Abraham just came through God Himself. God is one, and so he might be suggesting that there's something inferior to the covenant with Moses in comparison to the covenant with Abraham because of the use of this intermediary. That's a possible interpretation, and therefore he's extolling once again the Abrahamic covenant and the doctrine of justification by faith that we see in the life and narrative of Abraham. The law was added because of transgressions, and there's a sense in which Paul is saying exactly what he says in Romans 7 in verses 7 through 12.

What then shall we say? That the law is sin by no means. Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, you shall not covet. But sin seizing an opportunity through the commandment.

There was a sense in which sin used the very commandment itself, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin was dead. I was once alive apart from the law. He was alive in a worldly sense. He was alive in the sense that he thought he was a good person. He was alive in the sense that he thought that he could make himself right with God.

It's like the rich young ruler. What must I do to be saved? And Jesus takes him to the law. And Jesus takes him to the law. It's amazing, isn't it, that Jesus doesn't say to the rich young ruler, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.

But this man had no sense of his need. He didn't know why he needed to believe in Jesus. He needed to understand something about his sin.

So, Jesus took him to the law. He was alive. He thought he was alive. Actually, he was dead. He was dead in trespasses and in sins, but people who are dead in trespasses and in sins don't think they're dead. They think they're alive.

But actually, they're dead people walking. And Paul says, I was like that once, but I died, and I came to life again. I came to life in union and communion with the Lord Jesus. Well, you see what Paul is saying here about the law. Why was the law given?

Well, it was given in a sense to point out to us the contours of sin. I mean, how would I know what sin is unless the law had said, Thou shalt not covet? The law that says, you must not murder, you must not steal, you must not bear false witness.

Well, how would I know that unless there was law? So, the law multiplies and sharpens and brings into focus, it's like a lens bringing into focus the exact identity of my sins. But there's also something even more subtle about the law. There's something about our fallenness that actually uses the law to exacerbate our sin, to bring forth all manner of sinfulness. This is what the Reformers called the pedagogic use of the law.

It's like a pedagogue. You know, Paul talks here, Scripture, verse 22, imprisoned everything under sin. There's a graphic picture. The natural man imprisoned, locked in a cell and he cannot get out, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. Now, before faith came, we were held captive. There it is, imprisoned again. We were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. Now, Paul may be speaking of that in a personal sense, that he was held captive in his own personal experience, or he may be talking about the era of the Old Testament, that there is a sense in which the law came by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. And he may be speaking here more in what we sometimes call redemptive historical terms, rather than in experiential terms. So then, the law was our guardian pedagogue in Greek.

Children, teenagers, and they were tutored by guardians who often would inflict punishment for noncompliance. You know, sometimes it's like the difference. What's the difference in the Old Covenant and the New Covenant? And it's like the difference between being at home and your parents, and there are three hundred and fifty-six rules, and then you graduate, and you're on your own, and you're not under all of those rules. You've grown up.

You're an adult. And maybe that's what Paul means here, that the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. Well, again, there's more. Paul is now going theologically deep, and we'll continue in our next session in chapter 3 and verse 25. And tomorrow we'll learn why we no longer need that guardian that Dr. Derek Thomas was referring to there. Dr. Thomas is teaching from the book of Galatians this week on Renewing Your Mind.

We're glad you could be with us. Paul wrote this letter to the churches in Galatia to counter the Judaizers. Christians there were facing a grave error that needed to be refuted.

The fact is that the church in the twenty-first century is in just as much danger. The gospel is being distorted in our day, and we must be equipped to defend it. That's why we encourage you to request this fourteen-part series by Dr. Thomas. It's contained on two DVDs, and for your donation of any about to Ligonier Ministries, we will send it your way.

You can reach us by phone at 800-435-4343, or if you prefer, you can give your gift online at renewingyourmind.org. We see throughout the New Testament that the apostles were required to contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. In this series, Dr. Thomas urges us to be well grounded in Scripture so that we are equipped to do the same.

So we hope you'll reach out to us to request this series. Again, it's titled No Other Gospel—Paul's Letter to the Galatians. Your donation, by the way, goes beyond your neighborhood, beyond your city, even beyond your country, and impacts believers around the world. Last year alone, Ligonier Ministries reached more than fifty-six million people.

That's twice the number we reached in 2020. If you're one of our ministry partners, please know that we could not have done that without you. Dr. Sproul called you the backbone of this ministry because of your commitment to pray for us and provide a recurring monthly donation.

So thank you. Fifty-six million is a big number, to be sure, but when you consider there are almost eight billion souls on the planet, there's plenty of work to do. So if you're not a ministry partner but you recognize the importance of what we do, would you consider joining me and the thousands of others who are committed to reach even more people with these theologically rich resources in multiple languages, including Spanish, French, Portuguese, and even Farsi? If you'd like to join us and become a ministry partner with your monthly gift of $25 or more, please mention it while you're on the phone with us. We'll add you to this very special group of people. Again, our phone number is 800-435-4343. Thank you for your support. Well, the apostle Paul wrote to the church in Galatia because false teachers were deceiving the people there. There's a sense in which these Judaizers wanted to put the Christian church back under the old covenant, under the bondage, the imprisonment, the way in which the law was like a big dark cloud that imprisoned them. Join us again Tuesday for Renewing Your Mind. you