Galatians 3

Galatians 3:1-29

Division 2. (Galatians 3:1-29.)The Contrast between Law and Faith. Paul comes now, at once, to the question of doctrine, but, as has already been said, he takes it up in a way in which we have not seen it in Romans. His historical treatment of it was indeed the plainest possible argument that he could use for those whose eyes were as dull as those of the Galatians had got to be. The broad facts of the history were there and none could deny them. God had given the promise to Abraham, a simple, unconditional promise, in which He had pledged His whole truthfulness to fulfil His word, long before the law was given at all. The argument at once brings in the authority of God Himself to settle the question.

1. He appeals to them, however, in the first place, as having received that Spirit of Christ which was the distinctive feature of Christianity. It was nothing less than a bewitchment for them now not to obey the truth, when Christ Himself -Christ crucified, as announced in the gospel, yet in the power of His grace -had been received in faith and owned by them. It was in consequence of their reception of Him that the Spirit was given. Manifestly through all the dispensation of law there was nothing like this. There was no Spirit of adoption.

It had never come to any by the works of the law. It now came in universally as the result of the hearing of faith. As has often been said, if it were declared in the Old Testament that God was a Father to Israel, this was the very opposite of owning as His family those who were truly His children -for all were not of the true Israel even, that were Israelites. It was a nation in the flesh that God had been pleased to take up, and to put them in a certain relation to Himself not in that spiritual relation which Christianity implied, for as to any of this people of God, there was no settlement of the eternal question. They might drop out of this place into hell. There was no security as to those in mere Judaism.

Thus the Galatians had experience of the power of the gospel and of its being a power which the Jew, as such, knew nothing of. They had suffered, too, for the gospel, as the apostle implies. Was it all a mistake? Had it been in vain? The Spirit was “ministered” manifestly through those who preached the gospel to them and who preached, as would ordinarily be the case then, with accompanying signs and wonders on God’s part, in witness to His word. Was it by the works of the law (according to that principle) that these things were wrought, or according to the opposite manner of the hearing of faith?

The law said doing, not hearing. The gospel said hearing, not doing. But in this Christianity only went back to the pattern of the one whom God had, in His wisdom, set in an unmistakable place in connection with the Jew himself. Abraham was the one through whom they expected all their blessing; but Abraham, as the record was, “believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness.” In his case there were no works of the law, when the law as yet did not exist. If then in him faith was reckoned for righteousness, -if in him, God, having found no righteousness in man, took up the principle of faith for righteousness, it is evident that those who were truly his children would be accepted according to that principle. They which were of faith would be the children of Abraham. The Scripture then had expressly anticipated the justification of the nations through faith. It had preached, as it were, the gospel unto Abraham in the announcement that in him all the nations should be blessed. “In him” could not mean because of his merit, as the Jew perhaps was ready to aver; for as to him all merit had been disclaimed: but, on the contrary, that the nations should be blessed on that principle of faith which God had brought to the front, and acknowledged with regard to Abraham. They which were of faith, therefore, would be blessed with believing Abraham. 2. Now, to this the law could not be added. It was, as we have seen again and again precisely the reverse of this principle. In faith there is the renouncing of self, the turning to Another on that account. On the other hand, in the law, no question of Another comes in at all. It is “the man that doeth them shall live by them”; but then, alas, that means curse, and curse only.

As many as were of the works of the law, (as many as were on that principle), were under the curse; not that law works were bad works; clearly, the very reverse; but it was written “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them.” That is the principle as announced by the apostle, when yet Christianity had come. He certainly knew what he was speaking of. He certainly did not believe that Christianity had modified this in any measure, so as to make a certain amount of legal works acceptable to God. The law said “all things,” and the apostle says after it, “all things.” No one has title to alter this in the least. But then the curse was as manifestly on every one; and how blessed, therefore, the grace which had declared in the Old Testament itself the opposite principle, when it was said by the prophet that “the just shall live by faith.” That was the plain renunciation of the law for justification in the sight of God, for “the law is not of faith,” as we have seen. It is the man that doeth them: it is not the work of Another, it is the man’s own work by which he is to live.

Christ, therefore is out of question here. If we will be justified upon the principle of the law, we must give up Christ. 3. But, in fact, redemption has come for us. We were, says the apostle, hopelessly under the curse of the law. That was all that it could do for us, and when Christ came, instead of there being any relinquishment of this, on the contrary, He Himself had to redeem us from the curse of the law as made Himself that curse. A strange way this may seem to be expressed in, indeed, “for it is written, Cursed is everyone that hangeth upon a tree.” One would say that the mere hanging upon a tree could neither in itself be the curse, the true curse upon sin, nor, on the other hand, mark out, of necessity, those who were under the curse. It was, as we should say a thing apparently perfectly arbitrary.

An innocent man might hang upon a tree, just as a man steeped in guilt to the uttermost might never hang there. Why is it then that the law expresses itself after this manner?

And here we must move carefully, for mistakes have been made on different sides as to this. We have to remember that, while in itself the law was a system of earthly government, though of divine appointment, on the other hand, in its purport spiritually it went beyond this altogether. As an earthly government -the government of an earthly people -it did not in its rewards or penal sanction go beyond the earth. It never said of the keeper of its commandments, “He shall go to heaven;” nor of the convicted sinner, “He shall go to hell.”* This has been often spoken of, yet needs to be fully understood; for if it is not, confusion must result. God meant that the conviction of man by it should be fully accomplished, and therefore put both penalty and reward in a sphere cognizable by him, and not in an eternity as to which he can speculate as he pleases. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die,” and “the man that doeth them shall live by them,” were meant to speak plainly in the common language of men; and thus speaking, the issue of the law is as plain and intelligible as its power to convict is absolutely undeniable.
The shadow of man’s condemnation by it must darken the prospect beyond death; while yet God has not tied Himself to the legal judgment. If He had, there would be no hope for any. But the curse attached to hanging upon a tree is not of necessity an eternal one. Yet if there be no way of escape it will be that for all. He who bore it for others rose out of it by His own perfection (Hebrews 5:7), as those for whom He bore it by that vicarious work on their behalf. The Cross marked the character of that work as death in its full penal character, and therefore the forsaking of God; and that which for others might lose its deepest meaning, for the sacrificial victim had all its significance. An ass might be redeemed with a lamb; but the lamb devoted could not be redeemed (Leviticus 27:10). Is it not plain that prophetically this hanging on a tree points out the One who was indeed to be under the curse from God, and that the law waited, as it were, through all the centuries of its existence until it found finally its satisfaction in that one wonderful fulfilment, the cross of Christ? Thus alone could the blessing of Abraham come on the Gentiles; for if the Gentiles were not, in fact, under the law, (as dispensationally they were not,) yet sin must, of necessity, have the same shadow of the curse following it ever. Gentile or Jew, it could make no difference before God, and, in fact, that form which the law gave to the curse could only be the figure of a deeper thing. The blessing of Abraham could not come upon the Gentiles themselves except as that curse was removed out of the way of man by Jesus Christ, and thus alone could we receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. 4. The apostle returns now back to Abraham and the promise to him, in order to show the impotence of the law to annul it. He appeals here to the moral sense of man. If he were only a man, and had made a covenant unconditionally, pledging himself to this or that, and especially, he adds, “If this covenant were confirmed, no one could disannul it” and no one could add a condition to it. Now God had made it, as is clear, in these promises to Abraham, and confirmed them, as he tells us directly, to Christ. The covenant was of promise and it was both made and confirmed, It was an absolute promise, not a conditional one.

No condition, therefore, could be added without destroying its very nature. When God said “in thy Seed,” it was of Christ plainly that He was speaking. As we look back at the history, we see that it was after Isaac had been delivered, as Scripture says, in a figure, from that sacrificial death from which Christ was not delivered, that God gave this. It was Christ that was in His mind. Here was the Lamb whom God would provide for the burnt-offering. Here was the ram who in the truth of it saved Isaac, as we may say, -the ram caught by its horns in the thicket: Christ thus, caught, as it were, by the very power that He had to save and bless, which His love, would not allow Him, therefore, not to put in exercise.

Christ was the Seed to whom God confirmed the covenant of promise, and the law came 430 years too late to set it aside at all; but it is manifest if it were added to it, it would disannul it. The apostle dismisses both thoughts, the disannulling and the adding, the adding being, in fact, the same as disannulling. Law added would be the introduction of a contradictory principle; for if the inheritance were of the law, it would be no more of promise, whereas God gave it to Abraham by promise. 5. Naturally enough the question comes here, Why then the law? “It was added,” answers the apostle, “for the sake of transgressions.” Such is the expression; which means, not to keep transgressions in check, as the common thought seems to be, for Scripture itself has already told us that “where there is no law, there is no transgression.” Thus it could not keep transgression in check; on the contrary, it could only produce it; that is, as we have already said, it could make sin take that form. It was added, then, for that purpose; and it was added for a certain season; not being that which could confer the blessing upon man, it must be taken out of the way, in order that the blessing might come. It was added, therefore, temporarily for a certain reason; added “till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made.” There was another thing. “It was ordained by angels,” but it had nothing of the glory of the new covenant as made good by Christ. The glory at Sinai, as the psalmist says, was angelic glory (Psalms 68:17). God Himself was unrevealed; was behind, in the thick darkness.

Or if Moses saw Him, it was but the back parts: His face could not be seen. And the very reflection of glory thus in the face of Moses made men unable to behold; it, therefore, put man only in the distance, did not bring him nigh, and thus there had to be a mediator, manifestly Moses himself; but a mediator implies two parties. “A mediator is not a mediator of one,” but God was the only One who spoke in the promise to Abraham. God is One: there was no other party. All depended, therefore, in the promise, upon God Himself. But this seems to set the law against the promise of God, men might urge. Nay, he says, in the nature of the case, a law would have had to be given which could have given life, in order that righteousness might be worked out under it. Life was what man needed. The law was the ministration of death and not of life. Righteousness, therefore, could not be by the law; and the law was not against the promise of God, but, on the contrary, shut men up to that promise for all their blessing. The Scripture which speaks of it, “hath shut up all under sin that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.” 6. This shows us, therefore, clearly the limit of the law. “Before faith came,” that is, before it was God’s open and acknowledged principle of blessing, “we were kept under the law, shut up to the faith which should afterwards be revealed.” That faith was made necessary by the fact of the ruin in which the law proved us to be. God must bring in blessing through Another: faith in Another must be His principle. The law thus was our schoolmaster until Christ. It had a needed lesson to teach for a time. No schooling is for all time.

The schoolmaster’s work is to make us independent of himself, and the law’s work was to bring us into a place where it would no more be needful. Its very service was to shut us up to justification by faith alone, no other mode being possible. But if, then, this is to be so, “after that faith is come, we are no longer under the schoolmaster.” Faith being openly proclaimed God’s principle, the law’s work is done. 7. And this is shown by the fact of the new place into which God has put His people now, “sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus;” the school of law is not the proper place for us. That does not mean that we are not to profit by the lessons which the law taught, of course. We may profit by the lessons which we learn in school without being under the schoolmaster; but under the schoolmaster, no one says “Father.” The place of sons as such is manifestly somewhere else than at school. This, then, has come for us, for “as many of us as have been baptized to Christ have put on Christ.” Christ is, according to the truth announced in baptism itself, the One in whom we are, therefore, before God. It is His perfection, His beauty that is seen upon us.

Nothing else is seen, no earthly condition, no place of privilege beside. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” Manifestly, if each one of us is in Christ, Christ must be the same for each and all of us. There can be no distinction here. For distinction, we must look away from Christ; but if then we “are Christ’s,” then “are we Abraham’s seed,” in the fullest way identified with the very One in whom the blessing was to be, identified with the very Heir of blessing, and therefore heirs according to the promise, “in thy Seed:” that is Christ, in whom we are.