Galatians For You by Timothy Keller

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Paul outlines that the gospel is the A to Z of the Christian life.  It is not only the way to enter the kingdom; it is the way to live as part of the kingdom.  It is the way Christ transforms people, churches and communities.

 

Paul is showing the young Christians in Galatia that their spiritual problem is not only caused by failing to live in obedience to God, but also by relying on obedience to Him.  All we ever need is the gospel of God’s unmerited favour to us through Christ’s life, death and resurrection.  Paul calls them to live out the implications of the gospel.

 

Paul will explain to us that the truths of the gospel change life from top to bottom; that they transform our hearts, our thinking and our approach to absolutely everything. The gospel – the message that we are more wicked than we ever dared believe, but more loved and accepted in Christ than we ever dared hope – creates a radical new dynamic for personal growth, for obedience, for love.

 

Paul was a church-planting missionary.  After he planted a church and left a region, he continued to supervise new congregations through his letters.  The letter to the Galatians was written by Paul around AD50 (only 15/20 years after the death of Christ) to the Christian churches in the area of Galatia in Asia Minor. 3 things from the historical setting:

 

·       This letter addresses a social and racial division in the churches of Galatia.  The first Christians in Jerusalem were Jewish, but as the gospel spread out from that centre, increasing numbers of Gentiles began to receive Christ.  However, a group of teachers in Galatia were now insisting that the Gentile Christians practice all the traditional ceremonial customs of the law of Moses, as the Jewish Christians did.  They taught that the Gentiles had to observe all the dietary laws and be circumcised for full acceptance and to be completely pleasing to God.

·       Paul taught that the cultural divisions and disunity in the Galatian churches were due to a confusion about the nature of the gospel.  By insisting on Christ-plus-anything-else as a requirement for full acceptance by God, these teachers were presenting a whole different way of relating to God (a “different gospel” verse 6) from the one Paul had given them (“the one we preached” verse 8).  It is this different gospel that was creating the cultural division and strife.  Paul forcefully and unapologetically fought the “different gospel” because to lose one’s grip of the true gospel is to desert and lose Christ Himself (verse 6).  Therefore, everything was at stake in this debate.

·       Paul expounds in detail what the gospel is and how it works.  But the intended audience of this exposition of the gospel are all professing Christians.  It is not simply non-Christians but also believers who need continually to learn the gospel and apply it to their lives.  

 

 

CHAPTER 1 VERSES 1 – 9 THE UNIQUENESS OF THE GOSPEL

 

Paul’s tone and frame of mind that lies behind it – he is surprised and he also seems angry.  His language from the outset is remarkably strong.

 

First, Paul is astonished because these young Christians are taking hold of a gospel that isn’t really a gospel – vs 7 so they are in enormous danger.  They are in confusion – vs 7b.

 

Second, he is directly angry at the ones who are misleading the converts of the church – those who are trying to “pervert the gospel of Christ.”  He calls down condemnation on them (vs 9).  He is also angry at the Galatian Christians themselves, warning them that they are deserting the God who called them – vs 6b.

 

Who is he to say these things?  An “apostle” vs 1 – a man who has been sent with immediate divine authority.  The Greek word Apostolos means to be “sent”.  Paul’s phrase “not from men nor by man” drives home the uniqueness of the first apostles.  Those who are called to ministry by the Holy Spirit today are not “from men” either – the ultimate cause of their ministry is Jesus’ call and the ultimate authority for their ministry is Jesus’ word in the Bible.  But they are appointed “by man”.  This means that though ministers ultimately receive their call from God, they are called through the intermediaries of other human ministers, or through the election of a congregation.  Paul is saying that he did not receive his apostolic commission through anyone else at all.  No other apostles commissioned him.  He was commissioned and taught directly by the risen Jesus Himself (Acts 9 verses 1 – 19).  In vs 8 and 9 Paul says he was sent with a particular divine message – the gospel.  His divine teaching is the standard for judging who is orthodox and who is heretical – vs 9 “If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.”  Even an apostle cannot alter, revise or add to the message of Christ.  What he says is not the result of his study, research, reflection and wisdom.  It is God-given and both unchanging and unchangeable.

 

This divinely appointed Apostle reminds the Galatian Christians of his particular divine message – the gospel.  Who we are – helpless and lost – vs 4 “rescue”.  Jesus is not so much a teacher as he is a rescuer.  That’s what we most need.  Nothing in who we are or what we do saves us.  What Jesus did – “who gave himself for our sins”.  He made a sacrifice which was substitutionary in nature.  Christ’s death was not just a general sacrifice, but a substitutionary one.  He did all we needed to do, but cannot do.  If Jesus’ death really paid for our sins on our behalf, we can never fall back into condemnation.  Because God would then be getting 2 payments for the same sin, which is unjust!  Jesus did all we should have done, in our place, so when He becomes our Saviour, we are absolutely free from penalty or condemnation.  What the Father did: God accepted the work of Christ on our behalf by raising him “from the dead” vs 1 and by giving us the “grace and peace” vs 3 that Christ won and achieved for us.  Why God did it: this was all done out of grace – not because of anything we have done but “according to the will of our God and Father” vs 4.  We did not ask for rescue, but God in his grace planned what we didn’t realise we needed and Christ by his grace (v 6) came to achieve the rescue we could never have achieved ourselves.  Salvation is sheer grace. 

 

That is why the only one who gets “glory for ever” is God alone (vs 5).  If we contributed to our rescue … if we had rescued ourselves … or if God had seen something deserving of rescue or useful for his plan, in us … or even if we had simply called for rescue based on our own reasoning and understanding … then we could pat ourselves on the back for the part we played in saving ourselves. But Paul’s gospel is clear that salvation, from first to last, is God’s doing.  It is his calling; his plan; his action; his work.  And so it he who deserves all the glory, for all time.

 

Paul says that any change to the gospel means it becomes “no gospel at all” (vs 7).  Why?  Because Paul says, Christians were “called … by the grace of Christ” (vs 6).  God called us; we didn’t call him.  And God accepted us right away despite our lack of merit.  God accepts us and then we follow him.  Vs 7 Paul says that any teaching which adds keeping Mosaic ceremonial law to faith in Christ “perverts” the gospel.  Literally, the word he chooses to use means “reverses”.

 

If you add anything to Christ as a requirement for acceptance with God – if you start to say; To be saved I need the grace of Christ plus something else – you completely reverse the “order” of the gospel and made it null and void.  Any revision of the gospel reverses it.  That is why in vs 6 Paul says that the false teachers are producing a “different gospel”, which he quickly qualifies in vs 7 as “really no gospel at all”. 

 

What Paul battled in his day and Luther fought against in his, we witness in ours too.  Remember Paul condemns any teaching that is not based on the fact that:

 

·       We are too sinful to contribute to our salvation (we need a complete rescue)

·       we are saved by belief in Jesus’ work – the “grace of Christ” - plus nothing else

 

Here are 3 examples of current views that deny one or both of these 2 truths:

1.     In some churches, it is implicitly or explicitly taught that you are saved through your “surrender” to Christ, plus right beliefs and behaviour.  People are challenged to “give your life to Jesus” and/or to “ask Him into your life”.  This sounds very biblical but it still can reject the grace-first principle fairly easily.  People think that we are saved by a strong belief and trust in and love for God along with a life committed to Him.  Therefore, they feel they must begin by generating a high degree of spiritual sorrow, hunger and love in order to get Christ’s presence.  Then they must somehow maintain this if they are going to “stay saved”.  So functionally – that is, in actual reality – a church is teaching the idea that we are saved because of the level of our faith.  But the gospel says that we are saved through our faith.  The first approach really makes our performance the saviour and the second makes Christ’s performance the Saviour.  It is not the level but the object of our faith that saves us.

2.    In other churches, it is taught that it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you are a loving and good person.  This view teaches that all good people regardless of their religion (or lack of one) will find God.  This sounds extremely open-minded on the surface, but it is actually intolerant of grace, in 2 ways.

First it teaches that good works are enough to get to God.  If all good people can know God, then Jesus’ death was not necessary, all it takes is virtue.  The trouble is, this means bad people have no hope, contradicting the gospel, which invites “both good and bad” to God’s feast.  If you say people are saved by being good, then only “the good” can come in to God’s feast. The gospel offer becomes exclusive, not inclusive.

Second, it encourages people to think that if they are tolerant and open, they are pleasing to God.  They don’t need grace – they get eternal life for themselves.  And so “glory for ever” (v5) goes to them, for being good enough for heaven.  The gospel, however, challenges people to see their radical sin.  Without that sense of one’s own evil, the knowledge of God’s grace will not be transforming and we will not understand how much God is glorified by the presence of anyone at all in heaven.

3.    A third example is found in churches that are extremely intolerant of small differences of dress or custom.  The false teachers of Galatia wanted to impose many old rules and regulations having to do with dress, diet and ritual observances.  It is natural for us to associate them with highly regulated churches and religious communities which control their members very tightly and direct them into the right way to eat, dress, date, schedule their time and so on.  Or they may insist on a detailed observance of many complicated rituals.  Modern-day examples of the Galatian church would be highly authoritarian churches or highly ritualised churches, highly legalistic churches. 

 

How can we ensure the gospel we believe is actually true?  How do we know it is not merely a gospel that we feel is true, or are told is true, or think is true, or sounds to us as true – but a gospel that is true, objectively and therefore can save, really and eternally?

 

Paul lays down a plumb line for judging all truth claims, whether external from teachers, writers, thinkers, preachers) or internal (feelings, sensations, experience).  That standard is the gospel that he received from Christ and taught and which is found in this letter and throughout the rest of the bible.

 

“If we … should preach a gospel other than the one … let him be eternally condemned” (vs 8). 

 

By saying “we” Paul includes himself as a human authority.  He is saying that he must be rejected if he ever says: I’ve changed my mind about what the gospel is.  Paul tells us the gospel did not come to him through a process of reasoning and reflection; it was received, not arrived at.  So he is not free to alter it through reasoning and reflecting. 

 

Vs 8 Paul is saying that even his apostolic authority derives from the gospel’s authority not the other way around.  Paul is telling the Galatians to evaluate and judge both him as an apostle and his teaching with the biblical gospel.  The bible judges the church; the church does not judge the bible.  The bible is the foundation for and the creator of the church; the church is not the foundation for or creator of the bible.  The church and its hierarchy must be evaluated by the believer with the biblical gospel as the touchstone or plumb line for judging all truth claims.

 

Nor is the final plumb line for truth our personal experience.  We do not judge the bible by our feelings or convictions; we judge our experiences by the bible. 

 

The gospel is something we need to be uncompromising about.  A different gospel means you are deserting the one who called you (vs 6).  To abandon the gospel theology is to abandon Christ personally.  What you do in theology eventually affects your experience.  In other words, a difference in your understanding of doctrine leads to a difference in your understanding of who Jesus is – and means it’s questionable whether you really know him at all.

 

A different gospel is no gospel at all (vs 6 and 7).  This means that the gospel message by its very nature, cannot be changed even slightly without being lost.   The message of the gospel is that you are saved by grace through Christ’s work and nothing else at all.  As soon as you add anything to it, you have lost it entirely.  The moment you revise it, you reverse it.

 

A different gospel brings condemnation (vs 8 and 9).  To alter the gospel is to play with eternal life and death.  But it also means very practically that fear, anxiety and guilt will always be attached to different “gospels” even in this life.  Even Christians sometimes experience a sense of condemnation.  When they do, it is because, functionally, they are trusting in different “gospels”, different ways to earn salvation.  The “present evil age” (vs 4) can still influence believers.

 

 

CHAPTER 1VERSES 10 – 24 GOD’S AMAZING GRACE

 

Paul shares his testimony – autobiographical section of the epistle – Paul is recounting his conversion and early Christian experience.  Paul is not sharing his testimony for general inspiration or to point us to himself.  He’s using it to refute the claims of people who want to undermine his message, and he wants it all to point to the God of amazing grace.

 

He is defending himself from 3 attacks “some people” (vs 7) were making on him and his gospel message.

 

Paul refutes the idea that he came to his gospel message through his own reflection, reasoning and thinking.  He recounts that, until his conversion, he was “intensely” hostile to the church and to Christianity (vs 13).  He wanted to “destroy it”.  There was no gradual process of consideration, discussion, revision.  There was no way that Paul’s Christian message was the product of his own line of thinking.  Rather, it was the exact polar opposite of where he had been going.

 

Pre-Christian Paul was so violently opposed to Christ that even watching the faith and certainty of Christian martyrs had no effect on him.  His experience is strong evidence that his conversion was via direct revelation.  Acts 9 verses 1 – 9 shows that the risen Jesus met and instructed Paul directly. 

 

Paul undermines the claim that his gospel message was derived from others, from Christian leaders in Jerusalem (vs 16 and 17).  There were 3 years between Paul’s conversion and his first journey to Jerusalem (vs 18 and 19) and even then he did not get instructed by them in any methodical way.

 

Paul’s repeated reference to the apostles at Jerusalem suggest that “some people” (vs 7) were claiming that Paul had simply gotten his gospel message from this “headquarters”.  This would enable them to argue; We have also been trained at the Jerusalem HQ.  And we know that Paul did not give you the whole story.  There are other things you must do in order to be pleasing to God.”

 

Paul shows that his God-given gospel “checked out” with the message the other apostles had received from God.  Peter (vs 18), James (vs 19) and the churches of Judea (vs 22) were among those who “praised God” (vs 24) for what He had done for Paul, and for the message He had given Paul.  He did not receive his commission or message from the other apostles; but his message squared with the one the other apostles received from the risen Lord.

 

Paul’s testimony doesn’t only establish his authority as a gospel teacher. It also illustrates some aspects of what the gospel of grace is.  The gospel of grace underpins every step of the Christian life.

 

Paul was a man who had done many terrible things – he had “beyond measure I persecuted the church of God and wasted it.” (vs 13)  By the time Jesus met Paul on the Damascus road, he had killed many innocent people.  He was on his way to arrest and imprison more.  He was filled with hate.    And yet Paul was also a man who had done many religious deeds.  He had spent years seeking to live according to the Jewish customs and traditions.  He says that he had beaten almost everyone of his own generation (“my equals in mine own nation” vs 14) at being zealous for moral righteousness (vs 14).  And yet it had not made him right with God.    Paul is saying I’ve already been there and done that!  I know all about this subject!  You cannot make yourself acceptable to God by the most zealous and detailed following of moral, ethical, or cultural codes.

 

Paul was not only saved by Christ but also called to be a preacher and leader of the faith.  His testimony is a powerful witness to the beating heart of Christianity – the gospel of grace.

 

Grace is the free, unmerited favour of God, working powerfully on the mind and heart to change lives.  There is no clearer example than Paul that salvation is by grace alone, not through our moral and religious performance.   Paul’s experience proves vividly that the gospel is not simply “religion” as it is generally understood.  The gospel calls us out of religion as much as it calls us out of irreligion.

 

Paul can now recognise that God’s sovereign grace was working in his life long before his actual conversion.  When Paul says God “set me apart from birth” (vs 15) he means that the grace of God had been shaping and preparing him all his life for the things God was going to call him to do.  Paul had been resisting God and doing so much wrong but God was overruling all his intentions and using his experiences and even his failures to prepare him first for his conversion, and then to be a preacher to the Gentiles (vs 15).  The OT knowledge; the zeal; the training; the effort he was using to oppose God and his church (vs 13) – all were being used by God to break him and to equip him to be God’s instrument for building his church.  God had been working all along to use Paul to establish the very faith he had opposed (vs 23).

 

Examples – Joseph – he became his brothers deliverer.  The apostles insisted that the people who tried to oppose Jesus only served to further God’s purposes.

 

Why did God choose, prepare and then call Paul, the proud persecutor of his church?  It was simply because God “was pleased” to do so (vs 15).  God set his loving grace on Paul not because he was worthy of it, but simply because God took delight or pleasure in doing so.  This is how God has always worked – Deuteronomy 7 verses 7 and 8.

 

God does not love us because we are serviceable; he loves us simply because he loves us.  This is the only kind of love we can ever be secure in, of course, since it is the only kind of love we cannot possibly lose.  This is grace.

 

Grace has continued to work in and through Paul.  The apostle testifies not only of who he was and of how God converted him, but also of what a life lived under God’s grace looks like.

 

First, we read that God was pleased “to reveal his Son in me, so that I might preach” (vs 16)  What Paul means here is not immediately clear.  What does it mean that God revealed Jesus “in” Paul?  Paul is combining 2 experiences in one.  On the one hand, God obviously revealed Jesus to Paul on the road to Damascus.  There Paul finally realised who Jesus was.  He had a personal encounter with the living Christ.  But secondly Paul immediately realised that he was being called to show others who Jesus was.  So we can say that God revealed Christ to Paul so that He could reveal Christ through Paul.

 

This shows the difference between a mere religious or moral person and a Christian.  A Christian has more than an intellectual belief in Christ; they sense a personal relationship.  And they know that this relationship is not given to them solely for their own personal comfort and joy.  They know they have a responsibility to reveal Christ to others through what they are, do and say.

 

Secondly, we see something of Paul’s own path of growth and discipleship.  He had solitary time with God.  During his 3 years in Arabia (vs 17 and 18) we assume he learned from God much that he later taught.  We do learn about the importance of study and reflection and the development of our own personal acquaintance with God.  Paul’s point here is that he went to Arabia rather than Jerusalem for his first sustained time of reflection and preparation.

 

Paul went up to Jerusalem not for instruction but for both accountability and unity (vs 18).  Even Paul must work on unity with the other apostles and must demonstrate that his message squares with theirs.  How much more do we have the same responsibility?  We too must be deeply rooted in church communities.  We have to avoid picking what we need here and there without ever becoming grafted into a cohesive community of other believers.

 

Such a Christian life, rooted in relationship with God through Christ and in unity with and service of other believers, leads to praise of God.  The Christians in Jerusalem “praised God because of me” (vs 24).  The change in Paul’s life and his service to others did not lead people to lionize Paul, but to love God.

 

Vs 10 Paul’s testimony starts with “For do I now persuade men or God? Or do I seek to please men?”  A question with an obvious answer – God.

 

The gospel removes a “man-pleasing” spirit – the drive to “win the approval of men”.  It replaces that spirit with its opposite – not needing to win or seek human approval for what you do.  In other words, the gospel produces confident and fearless followers of Jesus, doing what is right without concern for the approval and good opinion of others.  Paul says that he couldn’t be a “servant of Christ” if he were a people-pleaser.

 

The “fear of man” must refer to a view of people that causes you to elevate their importance, to hold them in awe, to crave their approval and to fear their disapproval.  It is a situation in which your desire for their blessing amounts to adoration and worship and in which you give some form of human approval the rights and power over your heart that only God should have.  It means you will be as devastated by the loss of this approval as if you felt criticised or condemned by God.

 

When Saul disobeyed God (1 Samuel 15 verse 24) it was because he was afraid of public opinion.  When Samson gave in to Delilah (Judges 16) it was because he was afraid of losing her sexual attention. 

 

How does the gospel destroy man-pleasing – “the fear of man”.  By freeing us and motivating us to seek “to win the approval of …God” (vs 10)  In the gospel we discover that trusting in Christ brings God’s full and complete favour and approval.  When he sees the believer. He sees Jesus and so he says to us “With you I am well pleased.” (Mark 1 verse 11)  God is pleased with us.  And because God is pleased with us, we can live in a way which pleases God, the Creator of the cosmos.  Paul seeks to please God, rather than people (vs 10).  He urges Christians to sacrificially obey God because this is “pleasing to God” (Romans 12 verse 1)

 

The Christian is assured of God’s love and approval.  God is pleased with us in Christ.  So the Christian longs to obey God, not himself so that God will save him, but out of gratitude to God who he knows has already saved him.  And so Paul lives as a “servant of Christ” (vs 10).  God’s approval liberates us to live in a way which God approves of.  The gospel is both a powerful assurance, and a powerful motivation to live in radical obedience.  We do not live God’s way in order to become his children, but out of gratitude that we are already God’s children.

 

 

GALATIANS 2 VERSES 1 – 10  GOSPEL UNITY

 

Paul moves us on to a time “14 years later” than his first visit to Jerusalem, when he “went up again” along with 2 trusted members of his mission team, Barnabas and Titus (vs 1).

 

Why did he go?  “In response to a revelation” from God externally and “for fear internally” (vs 2).  Why was he afraid?  At first glance, it might seem that Paul was concerned that he had been wrong in his message or in his methods, and so he went back to Jerusalem to meet with the other apostles “privately” to “set before (the leaders) the gospel that I preach” (vs 2), to get confirmation that he was doing things correctly.  But that is impossible for several reasons.

 

First, Paul went to Jerusalem “in response to a revelation” from God (vs 2).  He was an apostle with direct access to God.  He had received his gospel from the lips of the visible, risen Christ.  It makes no sense for someone getting revelations from God to go and get authorization from someone else!  Second, if he had been uncertain, why wait 14 years before heading back to Jerusalem?  And third Paul said in chapter 1 vs 8 that the Galatians should reject even Paul himself (“we”) if he should come and say he’d changed his mind about the gospel.

 

Nothing was threatening Paul’s certainty, but something was threatening his fruitfulness.

 

If the other apostles did not confirm his message and renounce the false teachers, it would be very hard for him to retain his converts.  False teachers were telling these young Christians that Paul was preaching a gospel that was inadequate and not as full as the original apostolic gospel preached by the Jerusalem leaders.  They insisted that Paul taught an “easy believism” that was his own very eccentric message.

 

Paul knew his message was God-revealed and therefore true.  But he would not be able to keep his churches in sound gospel teaching if he could not disprove this falsehood.  That is why Paul feared he was in danger of “running (his) race in vain” (vs 2).  He was afraid that his ministry would be stifled and relatively fruitless.

 

Equally, Paul’s trip was not “for fear” that the Jerusalem apostles didn’t have the true gospel.  What he did fear was that the Jerusalem apostles might not be true to that gospel.  They might not stand up to the false teachers, but rather, allow their own cultural prejudices to entice them to let those teachers continue to make such damaging claims.

 

On the one side of this dispute we have Paul, who is saying: The gospel of faith in Christ is for people of all cultures.  On the other we have his opponents, claiming: Not all Jewish people are Christians, but all Christians must become Jewish.

 

If the Jerusalem apostles had sided with, or even merely tolerated, those who were teaching against Paul, this would have split the church in two.  Neither side would have accepted the other fully and would have questioned if the others were saved!  Paul’s Gentile churches would doubt the Jewish churches really had faith in Christ and the Jewish churches would also doubt the salvation of the Gentiles.

 

The other apostles had stayed in Jerusalem, and they had not worked out the implications of the gospel for Gentiles who were converting from paganism. They simply had not confronted most of theses issues practically.  It would have been extremely easy for them to miss the implications of the gospel when it came to living as a Gentile Christian.  It would have felt natural for them to say Of course all Christians should eat kosher! Or something similar.  But the ramifications of such a “small” mistake would have been enormous.  There would have been 2 opposing parties within Christianity that were hostile to each other on the fundamental point of whether we need to add external behaviours to internal belief in Christ in order to be saved.

 

That’s why Paul said that “the freedom we have in Christ” (vs 4) was under threat, and therefore that the very “truth of the gospel” was at stake (vs 5).  This meeting could have ended up splitting the church; and at such an early stage in its life, two virtually different religions would have emerged.  No wonder Paul felt fear.  The stakes could not have been higher.

 

It was crucial that Paul “took Titus along also” (vs 1).  Titus “was a Greek” (vs 3) – a flesh and blood uncircumcised Christian.  Paul’s “false brothers” (vs 4) who “came in privily to spy out” – the church – would have insisted that, in order to be saved, Titus needed to trust Christ and live according to Jewish rituals, such as circumcision.  So in Titus, Paul confronted the other apostles with a concrete test case.  The Jerusalem meeting could not be an abstract discussion.  Would they require Titus to be circumcised or not?

 

“But neither Titus who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised.”  By God’s grace the Jerusalem apostles rose to the occasion and “walked the walk” rather than just “talking the talk”.  They did not insist on Titus’ circumcision before having fellowship with him.  “God accepteth no man’s person” (vs 6)  Externalities are to do with our doing; internalities have to do with our being; and Christianity is about who I am in Christ, not what I do for him.

 

Paul says “they added nothing to my message” (vs 6).  The Jerusalem apostles agreed that it is faith in Christ alone and not any other performance or ritual, that is necessary for salvation.  Their acceptance of Titus was proof that they had accepted Paul’s ministry and these radical implications of the gospel.

 

The implications of this are fundamental to our understanding of what the Christian faith is.  The countless regulations for “cleanliness” in the laws of Moses were designed (among other things) to show us how impossible it was to make ourselves perfectly acceptable before a holy God.  But these “false brothers” had used the regulations in order to teach the exact opposite: that we could make ourselves pure and more acceptable to God through strict compliance with them.

 

The number of times the NT talks about this mistake shows how easy it is to get it wrong.  “The gifts and sacrifices being offered were not able to clear the conscience of the worshiper.  They are only a matter of food and drink and various ceremonial washings – external regulations applying until the time of the new order” (Hebrews 9 verses 9 and 10)  Only in Christ can we become “holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation” (Colossians 1 verse 22).  In other words, these ceremonial laws have not been so much abolished or replaced as fulfilled.  They are fulfilled in Christ; it is Christ who makes us clean.

 

So the acceptance of Titus by Jewish believers was a vivid illustration of this principle, that an individual becomes spiritually clean and acceptable through Christ, and not through any deeds or rituals.  We need to keep repeating this truth to ourselves and each other, just as the NT did.  Gentiles could become full members of the people of God without becoming Jewish in custom or culture.  The acceptance of Titus was a radical public statement of the implications of the gospel.

 

In vs 4 Paul characterizes the 2 sides of this argument in an illuminating way.  The “false brothers” who had infiltrated the Gentile churches wanted, he says “to make us slaves”, preventing them from enjoying “the freedom we have in Christ Jesus”.  Paul is saying that the biblical gospel gives freedom, while his opponents “earn your salvation” message would lead people only into slavery.

 

How does the gospel give freedom?  First, the gospel leads to cultural freedom.  Moralistic religion tends to press its members to adopt very specific rules and regulations for dress and daily behaviour.  Why?  If your salvation depends upon obeying the rules, then you want your rules to be very specific, do-able and clear.  You don’t want: Love your neighbour as yourself, because that’s an impossibly high standard which has endless implications!  You want: Don’t go to movies or Don’t drink alcohol or Don’t eat this type of food.

 

But rules and regulations like this get into the area of daily cultural life.  If the false teachers had had their way, an Italian or African could not become a Christian without becoming culturally Jewish. Christians would have to form little cultural ghettoes in every city.  It would mean far too much emphasis on external cultural separation rather than on internal distinctiveness of spirit, motive, outlook and perspective.  Elevating cultural propriety to the level of spiritual virtue leads Christians to a slavish emphasis on being culturally “nice” and “proper”, as well as promoting intolerant and prejudiced attitudes.

 

Second, the gospel leads to emotional freedom. Anyone who believes that our relationship with God is based on keeping up moral behaviour is on an endless treadmill of guilt and insecurity.  As we know from Paul’s letters, he did not free Gentile believers from the moral imperatives of the 10 Commandments.  Christians could not lie, steal, commit adultery and so on.  But though not free from the moral law as a way to live, Christians are free from the it as a system of salvation.  We obey not in the fear and insecurity of hoping to earn our salvation, but in the freedom and security of knowing we are already saved in Christ.  We obey in the freedom of gratitude.

 

So both the false teachers and Paul told Christians to obey the 10 Commandments but for totally different reasons and motives.  And unless your motive for obeying God’s law in the grace-gratitude motive of the gospel, you are in slavery.  The gospel provides freedom, culturally and emotionally.  The “other gospel” destroys both.

 

 

GALATIANS 2 VERSES 11 – 21 LIVING IN LINE WITH THE GOSPEL

 

Paul’s visit to Jerusalem established the great, uniting truth that we are saved by faith in Christ: nothing else, and nothing more.  Now he switches his focus from standing alongside Peter in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, to standing against him in Antioch, a Gentile city.  Both times, what matters to Paul more than anything is the gospel – the gospel which he summarizes for the first time in the letter as “justification by faith.”

 

Vs 11 – 2 apostles met together and one of them recalls that he “opposed” the other “to his face because he was to be blamed.”  Why?  Paul explains the issue simply – Peter had changed his eating habits “he did eat with the Gentiles but … he withdrew and separated himself fearing them which were of the circumcision.”  Far more surprising than Peter stopping eating food with Gentiles would have been the fact that he had started eating with them in the first place.

 

The OT instituted the “clean laws”, a complicated series of regulations for worshippers to follow in order to be “ceremonially clean” and acceptable for the presence of God in worship.  People could not draw near to God if they ate certain “unclean” foods, if they had touched dead things, if they had a disease or touched someone who did, and so on (Leviticus 11 verse 15 and 20).  This “ceremonial” law was a teaching method by which the holy God showed that sinful people cannot go into His presence without cleansing.  Despite Jesus explaining that with his arrival the time for these laws had passed (Mark 7 verses 14 – 23), God had to send Peter a vision to show him why the ceremonial law was finished.  He saw a great sheet full of animals forbidden for eating in the OT and he heard a voice saying: “kill and eat … Do not call anything impure that God has made clean” (Acts 11 verses 7 and 9).  Immediately Peter meets a repentant Gentile, Cornelius, who receives Christ and is born again. Peter realises “God does not show favouritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him.” (Acts 10 verses 34 – 35).

Afterwards, he eats with Gentiles despite criticism (Acts 11 verse 2). Even later, he argues that the Gentiles have been “purified (made clean) by faith” (Acts 15 verses 7 – 9).  Peter began eating with Gentiles because God had shown him that no one is “unclean” in Christ.

 

So when Peter withdrew from the Gentiles, he was guilty of “hypocrisy” (vs 13).  He had not changed his convictions – he knew the food and dress laws were only “Jewish customs” and he didn’t keep to all of them (vs 14). But when it came to Gentiles, he had simply stopped acting in accord with those convictions.  And this hypocrisy was infectious “insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away their dissimulation.” (vs 13)

 

What caused this hypocrisy?  “fearing them” (vs 12).  Likely, Peter was afraid of criticism from “which were of the circumcision” – which is Paul’s way of describing “salvation-through-Christ-plus-something” teachers.

 

But in addition, racial pride must have entered into it.  It had been drilled into Peter and all the Jews, since their youth that Gentiles were “unclean”.  While hiding beneath the façade of religious observance, Peter and other Jewish Christians were probably still feeling disdain for Christians from “inferior” national and racial backgrounds.  Peter was allowing cultural differences to become more important than gospel unity.

 

Paul does not primarily see his fellow apostle’s behaviour as rude, or unmannered, or unwelcoming as we might.  Fundamentally, he sees that something deeper is going on.  Peter is “not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel” (vs 14).

 

Literally Paul says that he was “not ortho-walking with the gospel” (prefix ortho means to be straight).  This means, first that the gospel is a truth – it is a message, a set of claims.  It includes the fact that we are weak and sinful, that we seek to control our lives by being our own saviours and lords, that God’s law was fulfilled by Christ for us, that we are now accepted completely though we are still very sinful and flawed and so on.

 

And crucially it means, second, that this gospel truth has a vast number of implications for all of life.  It is our job to bring everything in our lives “in line” with the thrust or direction of the gospel.  We are to think out its implications in every area of our lives and seek to bring our thinking, feeling and behaviour “in line”.

 

The gospel “truth” is radically opposed to the assumptions of the world.  But since we live in the world, we have embraced many of the world’s assumptions.  Christian living is therefore a continual realignment process – one of bringing everything in line with the truth of the gospel.

 

Peter’s sin was basically the sin of nationalism.  He insisted that Christians can’t be really pleasing to God unless they become Jewish.  But nationalism is just one form of legalism.  Legalism is looking to something besides Jesus Christ in order to be acceptable and clean before God.  Legalism always results in pride and fear, psychologically and exclusion and strife, socially.  Many examples today of similar sorts of exclusive social behaviour based on a failure to understand and live out justification by faith.

 

Paul sees the principle behind Peter’s changed eating practices.  And in speaking to him about it, he points to the principle rather than simply aiming to change his behaviour.  God did not have fellowship with you on the basis of your race and culture (vs 15).  Though you were good and devout, your race and customs had nothing to do with it (vs 16).  Therefore, how can you have fellowship on the basis of race and culture (vs 14)?

 

Paul uses the gospel to show Peter the spiritual roots of the mistake he’s making.  Paul says the roots of racism are a resistance to the gospel of salvation.  In other words, racism is a continuation of works-righteousness in one part of our lives; it is born of a desire to find a way to feel we are in some way “better” or “righteous”.  It is forgetting that we are saved by grace; a failure to bring our relationships with other cultures in line with grace-salvation.

 

Paul did not simply say: You’re breaking the rules (even though Peter was), but: You’re forgotten the gospel: your own gracious welcome in Christ.  Paul did not focus so much on the sinful behaviour as on the sinful attitude of self-righteousness that lay beneath it.

 

Christians tend to motivate others with guilt.  We tend to say You would do this if you were really committed Christians, indicating that we are committed and all that is needed is for others to become as good as we are!  This is why so many churches quench the motivation of people for ministry.  In our shoes, Paul would say: Remember the grace God has showered on you – what does living out and enjoying that grace look like in this situation?

 

The climax of Paul’s speech to Peter “I withstood him to the face” (vs 14) comes in vs 16 “we have believed in Jesus Christ that we might be justified by the faith of Christ and not by the works of the law for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.”  “Justified by faith” is central to the Christian faith.  It is Paul’s nutshell summary of the gospel.  But we often assume that we (and everyone else) have grasped what it means and what impact it will have on our lives.  And even in saying we mustn’t assume we all understand it, we often forget to spell out what it is we mustn’t assume!  But since we see here that even an apostle such as Peter needed to learn more about what it means to be justified by faith, it’s likely that we do too!

 

Connect the concept of justification by faith with Paul’s controversy with Peter.  Essentially the dispute was about cleanliness.  Jews did not eat with Gentiles because they were “unclean” and you had to be “clean” to worship God.

 

When Peter refrained from eating with Gentiles, Paul reminded him of what he had learned through revelation (Acts 11 verses 8 – 10, 15 verses 8 – 9) that in Christ we are “clean”.  In the OT you had to be “clean” – keeping the ceremonial laws – to go to worship, to be acceptable in the eyes and presence of God.  Though the word “clean” does not show up in vs 11 – 13 that is what circumcision and eating and all the rules and regulations were about.

 

It is in this context that Paul introduces “justification” (vs 15 – 16).  So justification is essentially the same thing as being clean.  To be justified is to be acceptable for fellowship with God.

 

The word justification has a legal reference and therefore it provides a different perspective on our salvation in Christ.  The opposite of “clean” is “polluted”; but “cleansing” isn’t sufficient to convey what Christ does for us.  Cleanliness alone suggests that God accepts us because Christ “cleanses” and gets rid of our sinful thoughts and habits; so we become acceptable to God by actually becoming righteous in our attitudes and actions.

 

But the opposite of “justified” is “condemned”.  Justification means that in Christ, though we are actually sinners, we are not under condemnation.  God accepts us despite our sin.  We are not acceptable to God because we actually become righteous: we become actually righteous because we are acceptable to God.

 

If we are justified by faith in what God has done, we are also not justified by what we do.  Law observance is not what saves (vs 16).

 

That’s what Paul means when he says “For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.”  He died to the law’s condemnation.  If we are not justified by the law, but by Christ then the law cannot condemn us.  If I am feeling condemned and if I fear that God will no longer hear my prayers or care for me, then I have simply forgotten that I am dead to the law.  I’ve forgotten that it can’t harm me. 

 

How did Paul die to seeking salvation-by-law-keeping “through the law”?  Because it was as he tried to obey it that he realized that he simply couldn’t.  Paul is saying I would not have known what sin was except through the law.  And I would not have known how unable I am to keep the law except through the law.  It was by really listening to the law that Paul saw he needed a Saviour.

 

Vs 17 and 18 If someone who knows they are justified by faith sins, is it because justification-by-faith-in-Christ promotes sin?  Not at all!  But if someone who professes faith in Christ keeps on with the same sinful lifestyle, rebuilding the sinfulness that Christ died to destroy the penalty for, making no effort to change, then it proves that this person never really grasped the gospel, but was just looking for an excuse to live in disobedience to God.  So it is likely that Paul is thinking of 2 different people in these 2 verses: a justified and repentant sinner in the first and a non-justified and unrepentant rebel in the second.

 

Vs 19 is Paul’s brief commentary on how someone who is truly justified by faith will view life.  Because Paul died to the law, he can now “live for God”.  The implication is that before he came to faith, while he was trying to save himself through keeping the law, Paul never really lived for God.  He was being very moral and good – but it was all for Paul, never for God.

 

When Paul was obeying God without knowing he was accepted, he was obeying to get a reward – for what he could get from God, not out of sheer love for God himself.  Now that he is justified and accepted, Paul has a new motive for obedience that is far more wholesome and powerful.  He wants simply to live for the one “who loved me and gave himself for me”. (vs 20)

 

Paul wants us to understand that our acceptance gives us a new and stronger motive for obeying God than justification by works ever could.

 

The law itself showed me that I could never make myself acceptable through it.  So I stopped “living to it”.  I died to it as my saviour.  Though I obeyed God before, it was simply to get something from Him; it was for my own sake.  Now I obey him simply to please him.  I now live for him.

 

Vs 20 on its own would suggest we just sit back and let Christ give us the power to live rightly.  Vs 21 alone would mean we have to do it all ourselves.  The 2 sentences (which are 1 in Greek) taken together show us that we are to live out our life on the basis of who we are in Christ.

 

Vs 20 is a restatement of vs 14; we need to live our lives “in line” with the truth of the gospel.  Now that Christ’s life is my life, Christ’s past is my past.  I am “in Christ” (vs 17) which means that I am as free from condemnation before God as if I had already died and been judged, as if I had paid the debt myself.  And I am as loved by God as if I had lived the life Christ lived.  So “it is not me that lives, but Christ” is a triumphant reminder that, though “we ourselves are sinners” in Christ we are righteous.

 

Then Paul follows up with vs 21, to say Now when I live my life and make my choices and do my work, I do so remembering who I am by faith in Christ, who loved me so much!  The inner dynamic for living the Christian life is right here!  Only when I see myself as completely loved and holy in Christ will I have the power to repent with joy, conquer my fears, and obey the One who died all this for me.

 

Paul finishes by reminding Peter that the Christian life is about living in line with the gospel throughout the whole of life, for the whole of our lives.  We must go on as Christians as we started as Christians.  After all, if at any point and in any way “righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” (vs 21).  Christ will do everything for you, or nothing.  You cannot combine merit and grace.  If justification is by the law in any way, Christ’s death is meaningless in history and meaningless to you personally.

 

 

GALATIANS 3 VERSES 1 – 14 YOU NEVER LEAVE IT BEHIND

 

Paul has shown in the second half of chapter 2 that we are saved when we stop trusting in our moral efforts or the law (we die to it) and trust in the work of Christ, which creates a whole new motivation for everything we do (we live to God).  The gospel is the way we enter the kingdom of God.  But now Paul will show the gospel is much more than that.  We are not only saved by the gospel, but we also now grow by the gospel.  Paul is saying that we don’t begin by faith and then proceed and grow through our works.  We are not only justified by faith in Christ, we are also sanctified by faith in Christ.  We never leave the gospel behind.

 

That is really the subject of chapters 3 and 4.  In chapter 3 verses 6 – 14 he will make a case for this from the scriptures.  Chapter 3 verses 15 – 25 uses the example of a legal will to underline it and to discuss the role of the law of God in a gospel based life.  Chapter 3 verse 26 to chapter 4 verse 20 picks up on the example of adoption, and discusses the privileges of being brought into God’s family.  And chapter 4 verses 21 – 31 returns to Scripture to look at the life of Abraham and his 2 sons, pulling together the threads of the 2 chapters.

 

In vs 1 – 3 Paul reminds the Galatian Christians how it was that they came to Christ from paganism.  “Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you” (vs 1)  This portrayal was achieved through preaching through “what you heard” (vs 2 and 5).  Paul isn’t referring to a literal picture but a metaphorical one.

 

The essence of this message is not how to live but what Jesus has done for us on the cross.  The gospel is an announcement of historical events before it is instructions on how to live.  It is the proclamation of what has been done for us before it is a direction of what we must do.

 

But it also says that this message gripped the heart.  Jesus was “clearly portrayed”.  The NIV translates the Greek as “clearly”; it also means “graphically”, “vividly”.  This probably is a reference to the preaching’s power.  It was not dry and lecture-like.  It “painted a picture” of Jesus, giving the hearers a moving view of what Christ did. “  A Christian is not someone who knows about Jesus, but one who has “seen” Him on the cross.  Our hearts are moved when we see not just that he died, but that he died for us.  We see the meaning of his work for us.  We are saved by a rationally clear and heart-moving presentation of Christ’s work on our behalf.

 

This is what had happened to these Galatians.  “they believed what they heard” (vs 2).  Verses 2 and 3 are parallel sentences; Paul is underlining a point through repetition.  He contrasts “believing” with “observing the law” and “beginning with the Spirit” with “attaining … by human effort.”  To “believe” the gospel is not merely to assent to assertions about Christ (eg He died, He rose) but to stop trying to attain salvation by observing the law.  The word Paul uses is epi-teleo, “completion”.  He is describing our normal course of life.  Paul says we stop “observing the law” (vs 2) or “trying to attain our goal” (vs 3).  To “believe” in Christ is to enact a revolution in what we trust for our sense of our completion or perfection.

 

The result of believing the vividly-portrayed gospel of Christ was that the Galatians “received the Spirit” (vs2).  The Holy Spirit enters a life through belief in salvation by grace alone through Christ alone. The new birth Paul is describing is directly and inextricably connected to believing the gospel.

 

In these Christians lives something has changed.  They had believed what they heard about Christ crucified; they had received the Spirit; but now they are “foolish” and “bewitched” (vs 1).  Vs 3 Paul says that the way the Spirit entered your life should be the very same way the Spirit advances in your life.  He says this twice, strongly: “After beginning with the Spirit are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?” (vs 3).  The Greek word translated “effort” is sarki, “flesh”.  Are you trying to attain your goal through the flesh?

 

Vs 5 Paul is even stronger.  He moves into the present tense and says that right now the works of the Spirit – even miracles – occur “because you believe” (not “because you believed”) and because you no longer “observe the law”.  The Spirit works as Christians don’t rely on their own works, but rather consciously and continuously rest in Christ alone for their acceptability and completeness.  Paul links the Spirit and the gospel in the most inseparable terms.  The Spirit works as you apply and use the gospel

.

Paul now wants us to consider Abraham (vs 6).  Paul is countering the claims of the Judaizing teachers, who say: It’s great that you have faith in Christ; now, to remain acceptable to God, you need to live as Jews.  And the father of the Jews is Abraham.  The people of Israel began when God promised Israel’s ancestor, Abraham, that He would make his descendants into a great nation, living in a God-given land, blessed by God (Genesis 12 verses 1 – 3)

 

Paul is calling Abraham as a witness for his case.  Consider Abraham he says to these Gentile Christians, because the ancestor of the Jews will show you that you really have been ‘bewitched’ (vs 1) by these Judaizing teachers.  Why?  Because when we look at Abraham, we see a man who “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness” (vs 6).  What is most important about Abraham is that he was a “man of faith” (vs 9).  Paul is saying: The father-founder of the Jewish people would agree with me.

 

In vs 6 Paul is quoting from Genesis 15 verse 6.  The Greek word Paul uses is elogisthan, from the word logos, to speak.  It means to be “declared” or “accounted”.  It was usually an accounting term that meant that money was being received and counted as payment toward some end.  In general, the English term “credited” means the same thing – to confer a status on something that was not there before.

 

So what does it mean that Abraham’s faith was “credited to him as righteousness”?  Of course faith in God’s word and promise results in righteousness!  If we believe God exists, and that we owe Him our obedience and worship, then out of that will flow righteous living.

 

When the Bible tells us God credits Abraham’s faith as righteousness, it means that God is treating Abraham as if he were living a righteous life.  When God “credits righteousness”, He is conferring a legal status on someone.  He treats them as actually righteous and free from condemnation, even though they are still actually unrighteous in their heart and behaviour.  They are “justified”. 

 

Paul is saying “Those who believe are children of Abraham” (vs 7).  What matters is not physical descent from Abraham (being Jewish) but spiritual descent (having the same faith as he did).  “Those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham” (vs 9).

 

What does it mean to “have faith” like Abraham?  First, he shows us that saving faith is believing the gospel-promise.  Notice that it does not say that Abraham believed in God (though he certainly did!)  Believing in God is not saving faith.  Rather, he had to believe and trust what God actually said in His promise to save.

 

You can’t believe God without believing in God but you can believe in God without believing God!

 

Second Abraham shows that saving faith is faith in God’s provision, not our performance.  Abraham was childless with a barren wife.  He could not have children – yet God promised that his offspring would be as innumerable as the stars (vs 5 and 6).  God would come down into history and do a mighty deed that did not depend on human ability at all.  The promise of an heir depended wholly on God, not on Abraham at all.  Abraham had to believe that God would do it.

 

Abraham was “a man of faith” (Galatians 3 verse 9).  But there is another way to live.  We can “rely on observing the law” (vs 10).  This person “lives by them (the law)” (vs 12).  To “live by” something means to rely on it for our happiness and fulfilment.  Whatever we live by is essentially the bottom line of our lives – what gives us meaning, confidence, and definition.  It is very illuminating to ask: What do I live by?  What is my life based on?  What, if I lost it, would make me feel as if I had no life left?  These are all questions that lay bare the foundation of your life.

 

To have Abraham-like faith brings blessing (vs 9).  The result of living by the law is that we are “under a curse” (vs 10).  This “curse” has 2 aspects.  Theologically, anyone who says: I can be saved by obeying the law must then be prepared to really look at what the law commands.  To love God wholly, we would have to obey the law wholly.  To be blessed by God instead of cursed by Him, we would have to look at the law and satisfy its every demand.  And that cannot be done.  Objectively, attempting the salvation-by-law-observance means we are cursed.

 

This means that, psychologically, everyone who is seeking to save themselves by their own performance will experience a curse subjectively.  At the very least, attempting to be saved by works will lead to profound anxiety and insecurity, because you can never be sure that you are living up to your standards sufficiently, whatever they may be.  This makes you over-sensitive to criticism, envious and intimidated by others who outshine you.  It makes you nervous and timid (because you are unsure of where you stand) or else swaggering and boastful (because you are trying to convince yourself of where you stand).  Either way, you live with a sense of curse and condemnation.

 

How then can we escape the curse and enjoy the blessing promised to the nations (vs 8).  Of course it is all because of what Jesus did.

 

He brought us into blessing by “becoming a curse for us” (vs 13).  Paul quotes Deuteronomy 21 verse 23 “Cursed is everyone who is bung on a tree”.  When a person was executed in the OT it was usually by stoning.  Then the body was hung on a tree as a symbol of divine rejection.  It was not that the man was cursed because he was hung, but rather he was hung as a sign of his curse.  Paul draws the connection to Christ, whose execution was on a cross-tree to show that He experienced the curse of divine rejection.  There, he freed us (“redeemed us”) from the curse of the law by taking it for us.

 

The word “for” means “on behalf of” or “in place of”; Jesus was our substitute.  He received the curse we earned (vs 13) so that we might receive the blessing he earned (vs 14).  Our sins and curse are given, or imputed, to him; His righteousness and blessing and Spirit are imputed to us.  It is a 2 fold imputation.

 

Notice that Paul doesn’t simply say that Jesus redeemed us by “taking a curse” but by “becoming a curse”.  Jesus was treated as if He were a sinner; He was treated as liable for all that a wicked person would be liable for.  Legally speaking, He became sin.

 

Why is that so important to realize?  Because it shows the stunning claim regarding what happens to us when we believe.  If Jesus “became” a sinner to us, then we have “become” righteous in the same way.  If his taking the curse means that He was regarded by God as a sinner, then our receiving the blessing means that we are regarded by God as if we are perfectly righteous and flawless.

Salvation means much more than forgiveness.  We do not simply have our slate wiped clean; we also become perfect in God’s sight.  And we stay perfect in God’s sight.  We do not begin by trusting in Christ’s curse-becoming, blessing-giving death for us, and then continue “by human effort” as though we must now earn ongoing blessing.  That is “foolish” (vs 1).  We go on as we began, having our hearts melted and molded by knowing and trusting Christ crucified.  We never move on from the gospel – we never can and never need to.

 

 

Verses 15 – 25

 

Whenever we hear the radical claims of salvation by grace, we should immediately be prompted to ask: If we are ‘free from the law’, does that mean we don’t have to obey the law of God?  If I am always saved only by Christ’s performance and not my own, why should I strive to live a holy life?  Do I have any obligation to keep God’s law and why?

 

 In fact there is no more practical question than that of the relationship of a Christian to the law of God. 

 

In the flow of this letter Paul has established that we are saved, justified, redeemed only by faith in Christ and not through any righteousness of our own.

 

First, Paul wants to underline what the law does not do.  So he takes ‘an example from everyday life’ (vs 15).  He points out that human contracts are binding and difficult or impossible to voice.  “As no one can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case” (vs 15).  The word Paul uses is diatheke (translated “covenant”), a word for a legal will.

 

Once a will is duly and legally made, we consider it binding no matter what changes in conditions may occur.  So it is with God’s promises. 

 

Paul knows that some might see that Moses’ law was “introduced 430 years later” than God’s promises of salvation to Abraham (vs 17) and conclude Ah! This changes things!  If we are to get the blessing of Abraham, we will now have to obey the law of Moses.

 

But Paul says and shows, that this is a false conclusion: “The law … does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise.” (vs 17)  The law of Moses cannot turn God’s promise to Abraham into something other than what it is – a promise.  How can the coming of the law change the very nature of God’s promise to Abraham that there would be a supernatural intervention, by grace, to provide blessing (Genesis 12 verses 1 and 2, 15 verses 1 – 6)?

 

If the law of Moses came as a way of salvation, then it means that God had changed his mind.  It would mean that God had decided that we didn’t need a Saviour, and that he would give out his blessing on the basis of performance, not promise.

 

If the law had this function, it would not add to the promise; it would “do away” with it altogether (vs 17).  “For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it is no longer depends on a promise” (vs 18).  The principle is that the very concepts of “promise” and “law” are mutually exclusive.  Paul is adamant: either something comes by grace or works; either it comes because of the giver’s promise or the receiver’s performance.  It is either one or the other.

 

For a promise to bring a result, it needs only to be believed, but for a law to bring a result, it has to be obeyed.

 

A gift promise needs only to be believed to be received, but a law-wage must be obeyed to be received.

 

If the law of Moses was intended to be the means for salvation, then the promise to Abraham would not have been a real promise.  And “in this case”, the promise is sealed by a covenant.  Paul is taking us back to Genesis 15.  When Abram asks God “How can I know that I will gain possession” of the promised blessing (vs 8), God tells him to get a cow, a goat, a ram, a dove and a pigeon.  Abram knows what to do with them – he “cut them in 2 and arranged the halves opposite each other.” (vs 10)  This was the way a covenant was signed in Abram’s day.  Each covenant maker would pass between the halves of the animals. 

 

Abram never walks between the halves!  Abram fell into a deep sleep (vs 12).  The only thing that passes through is “a smoking firepot with a blazing torch which appeared and passed between the pieces.” (vs 17).  What is this strange fire?  It’s God – “on that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram” (vs 18).

 

The promise by God to Abram is a covenantal promise.  And it is a covenant that relies in no way on Abram, but only on God.  He would die before He broke His promise to bless Abram and His descendants, and through one particular descendant (your seed, Galatians 3 vs 16) to offer blessing to the world.  And in the end, He did die, on a cross, as that “seed”, the man Jesus Christ.

 

With Genesis 15 in mind, Paul is simply pointing out to the Galatians the impossibility of God adding obedience-demands to His covenantal promise.  He had himself guaranteed that He would keep his promise – how and why then could the law “do away with the promise” (vs 17).

 

Therefore the law of Moses must have a different purpose.

 

What direct relevance Paul’s argument here would have had to the Galatian Christians (and to us today).  They were not part of physical Israel and were not alive either when the promises were given to Abraham, or when the law was given to Moses.

 

And yet in their own lives, they were in danger of the same misunderstanding as Paul here argues against in redemptive history.  The misreading that Paul is correcting is that God promised to bless his people, but that this blessing was achieved or kept by law-obedience.  And as Paul has already pointed out, the Galatian Christians were “after beginning with the Spirit … now trying to attain (their) goal by human effort.” (vs 3)  Paul is establishing that an offer which begins by grace, as a free promise, must continue to be made on the same basis – or stop being a promise.  As soon as it becomes based on performance, it can no longer be a free gift.  This was no less true of the Galatians’ acceptability before God than it was of ancient Israel’s.

 

It is common for believers to begin their Christian lives by looking beyond themselves at “Christ … clearly … crucified” (vs 1), relying on God’s promise that Christ has taken our curse and given us his blessing.  But as we go on, it is tempting and easy to look within ourselves at our own “human effort” (vs 3) resting in our own performance to give us our sense of acceptability before God.  Doing this makes us radically insecure – it cuts away our assurance and prompts us to despair or pride.

 

Paul wants the Galatian Christians to turn their ears from the false teachers so that they will drag their eyes away from themselves and back to the cross.  Whatever the reason that God commands His people how to live, it cannot be in order to gain acceptance from him.  The promise precedes the law.  The law cannot co-exist with the promise in bringing blessing; the law does not set aside the promise as the source of blessing.  Israel was a nation which was to rely on God’s promise; the individual Christian no less so.

 

In vs 19 Paul tells us what the point of the law is!  It was “added because of transgression” until Christ came.  The law did not come to tell us about salvation, but about sin.  Its main purpose is to show us our problem, that we are law-breakers; and to prove to us that we cannot be the solution, since we are unable to be perfect law-keepers.

 

The rest of vs 19 and vs 20 is extremely cryptic.  Some commentators think Paul is saying that God spoke the law to the people through a mediator, namely Moses, but that He spoke the promise directly to Abraham.  But this is not at all certain.  No one is sure what Paul means or how this fits into the argument.  Fortunately, the thrust of Paul’s argument and its other supporting points are clear, so it is not urgent that we decode these sentences to understand him.

 

In vs 21 Paul returns to the statement with which he began vs 19.  God never intended his law to “impart life”, otherwise we could become a righteous through it.  In fact, “the scripture (ie the OT) declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin” (vs 22).  Paul’s Greek is a bit more vivid than the English here.  He says, literally that “Scripture imprisoned all the world to sin.”

 

This is the purpose of the law.  It shows us that we do not just “fall short” of God’s will, requiring some extra effort to do better, but that we are completely under sin’s power, requiring a rescue.

 

The law has the power to show us that we are not righteous; but it cannot give us the power to be righteous.  In fact, as we see God’s standards and try and fail to keep them, the law shows us that we do not have that power.  “Righteousness” cannot “come by the law” (vs 21). Ironically, if we think we can be righteous by the law, we have missed the main point of the law.

 

In summary, Paul says, the law shows us our sin ”so that what was promised … might be given to those who believe” (vs 22).  The law does its work to lead us toward recognition of our need for salvation-by-grace.  The law, then, does not oppose the promise of salvation-by-grace-through-Christ but rather supports it, by pointing out to us our need of it.

 

Paul uses 2 metaphors to characterize the way the law works in a Christian life.

 

First, the law is a guard.  “Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed” (vs 23).  The Greek words for “held prisoners” and “locked up” mean to be protected by military guards.

 

Second, the law is a tutor, a paidagogos, under whose “supervision” (ie tuition) we live.  “The law was put in charge to lead us to Christ.” (vs 24)  In the homes of Pauls day, the tutor or guardian was usually a slave who supervised the children on the parents’ behalf. 

 

In both cases, the guard and the tutor remove freedom.  In both cases, the relationship with the “law” is not intimate or personal; it is based on rewards and punishments.  And in both cases, we are treated as children or worse.

So Paul describes all non-gospel-based religion as being characterized by:

 

a)                   A sense of bondage

b)                   An impersonal relationship with the divine, motivated by a desire for rewards and a fear of punishments

c)                   Anxiety about one’s standing with God

 

But the second metaphor (unlike the first) shows us that the law’s true purpose is instructive.  It points beyond itself, just as the tutor seeks to prepare the children for lives as adults, as free persons.  The law points to:

 

a.     A life not of confinement, but of freedom

b.    Not an impersonal, but a personal relationship with God

c.     Not immaturity but maturity of character

 

And so the OT demands that people “love the Lord your God with all your heart” (Deuteronomy 6 verse 5) and that we must be “people who have my law in your hearts” (Isaiah 51 verse 7).  The law (if we are really listening to it) continually emphasizes that we need a righteousness, a power, a love for God that is beyond ourselves and beyond the law.  We need salvation-by-grace.

 

The law locked us up “until faith was revealed” (vs 24).  Once faith had come, “we were no longer under the supervision of the law” (vs 25).

 

Our efforts to gain God’s approval by obedience to his law show us that we must go beyond the law to find that approval.  When we see this, and allow Christ to be our Saviour, we have learned the lesson the law sought to teach us as our tutor.

 

But for the Christian, the law has already achieved its purpose of being our guard and our tutor.  Does this mean we can now forget about it?  Absolutely not (as Paul would say!).

 

The law was our “supervisor” until we found Christ and was thus like a guardian over a child until he or she reaches maturity.  But let’s draw out the analogy.  Is it the design of child-rearing that when the child grows to maturity he or she then casts off all the values of the parent or guardian and lives in a totally different way?

 

No.  If all goes well, the adult child is no longer coerced into obedience as before, but now has internalized the basic values and lives in a similar manner because he or she wants to.

 

So Paul is indicating not that we no longer have any relation to the values of God’s law, but that we no longer view it as a system of salvation.  It no longer forces obedience through coercion and fear.  The gospel means that we no longer obey the law out of fear of rejection and hope of salvation-by-performance.  But when we grasp salvation-by-promise, our hearts ar filled with gratitude and a desire to please and be like our Savour – and the way to do that is through obeying the law.  And once we come to the law motivated by gratitude, we are better in our obedience of the law than we ever were when we thought that our obedience might save us.

 

Why? First if we think that law-obedience will save us, we become emotionally incapable of admitting just how searching and demanding it is.  For example, Jesus says that to resent or disdain anyone is a form of murder (Matthew 5 verses 21 – 22).  Only if we know that we cannot keep it completely but that we don’t need to keep it at all to be saved because Christ did it for us, will we be able to admit just how broad and deep this command is.  If we are seeking to be saved by our obedience of it, we will constantly be trying to limit the scope and application of God’s law, in order to make it manageable for us to keep.

 

Second, grateful joy is a motive that will lead to much more endurance in obedience than fearful compliance.  Fearful compliance makes obedience a drudgery that can’t take adversity.  In short, the gospel allows us truly to honour the law in a way that legalistic people cannot.  Without the gospel, we may obey the law, but we will learn to hate it.  We will use it, but we will not truly love it.  Only if we obey the law because we are saved, rather than to be saved, will we do so “for God” (vs 19).  Once we understand salvation-by-promise, we do not obey God any longer for our sake, by using the law-salvation-system to get things from God.  Rather, we now obey God for his sake, using the law’s content to please and delight our Father.

 

Law and grace work together in Christian salvation.  Many people want a sense of joy and acceptance but they will not admit the seriousness of their sin.  They will not listen to the law’s searching and painful analysis of their lives and hearts.  But unless we see how helpless and profoundly sinful we are, the message of salvation will not be exhilarating and liberating.  Unless we know how big our debt is, we cannot have any idea of how great Christ’s payment was.  If we think that we are not all that bad, the idea of grace will never change us.

 

The law shows us as we really are.  And so the law points us to see Christ as he really is: our Saviour, the One who obeyed the law on our behalf and then died in our place so that we might receive the promised blessing.  The law allows us to love Jesus, and enables us to show our love in grateful obedience to him.