Part 2 of 3. Taught by Dave Bish, Sept Team Days 2008, to the South West massive.
If you want to get into 24, don’t start with Season 6. You don’t start reading a book at the final chapter. Yet we often approach the bible like this – we often think it only contains 27 books, the ones at the end. Is this is what Paul is preaching to the Galatians? Did he ignore the Old Testament? In this section, Paul makes an 1800 year climb to get to the top, in his argument for justification by faith.
- 3:1-14
Paul argues for justification by faith in three ways:
1. The experience of the Galatians, v1-5: are you trying to change the system? They began in the Spirit not by obeying the law but by trusting the message; so why would they then revert back to obeying the law? You’ve gone through hardship for the message of justification by faith; is it now in vain by you returning to obeying the law?
2. The life of Abraham, v6-9: how was Abraham justified before God? By faith, v6 – and it was credited to him as righteousness. And he was the daddy of the Jews. Check out v8: God proclaimed the gospel in advance to Abraham, and Abraham believed it! So Abraham trusted in the gospel, and it was credited to him as righteousness. Note: Gentiles/nations same word in Greek: ethnos (peoples). What a gospel summary!
3. The teachings of the law, v10-12: If you want to go by the law, then here’s where the law says. If you choose to make yourself righteous before God by obeying the law, then that’s the yardstick you’ll be judged by; but because you won’t be able to keep it, you’ll end up cursed. And even if you could, the law (and prophets) says that we are justified by faith!
But Paul is writing to remind them about the cross (v1). How does the death of Jesus make justification possible? He comes to it in v13. People are being cursed (v10) rather than being blessed (v8); so we need somehow to get from curse to blessing; that’s why Jesus came (v13-14). He became a curse for us to redeem us from that curse. It redeems the Jews first, and then extends out to all peoples. Yet v14 seems to take an unusual turn at the end. “So that by faith…” we may be justified? Rather, that we may receive the Spirit. Those two go together: we are justified and receive the Spirit; we receive the Spirit justified.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses have a vision of the new creation without God. There is still a separation between man and God. But in Christianity we get to be with God! Man and God walking together in the new creation like in Eden. By getting the Spirit, God comes and lives with us. Astonishing, that we would so quickly desert this gospel! In deserting this gospel we walk away from God. It is a gospel that is relational and personal.
Paul wants them to remember these things. He is a 66 book man. He wants to preach the gospel of the cross, which means preaching the whole storyline of Scripture. All Scripture is Christian Scripture; it is all about the cross. In teaching it all, we show the fullness of the message. We can argue from Abraham, from the law, from the prophets that justification is through the cross. The death of Jesus is about averting the curse, and it produces faith. It should inspire awe within the Galatians and stir their hearts. It is not a minimal, tiny gospel, but the grand theme of all the Scriptures. (It’s a good thing to study the development of the gospel story throughout the whole of Scripture!) We study the Scriptures to enjoy and glory in the wonder of the gospel.
But an unanswered question rears its head: why the law? If it was all done through faith from Abraham, what was its purpose? Was it merely there to confuse the Galatians?!
- 3:15-24
An illustration in v15.
When you enter into a promise relationship, once you’re in you can’t change the terms of it. Even in our day and age of broken promises, it isn’t too hard to imagine that in some circumstances there are promises that are made that have to stand.
God made promises: Blessings for the peoples, v8; The promise of the Spirit v14; two ways of saying the same thing.
Who was the promise made to? Abraham and his seed; in other words, Abraham and Christ (explained by the argument over grammar in the middle of v16; seed singular and not plural).
So God has made promises, that can’t be modified, to Abraham and Christ. So, the law can’t change it, v17-18. So the point of the law was not to change the promise, or to change the way people get right to God (what the promise was about). Inheritance didn’t come by the law, but by the promise.
So: why then the law? v19-24.
Firstly, we’re told, it was added because of transgressions. This could mean: it is there to reveal sin; it is there to preserve Israel from their sin; it could be to gives us types and shadows to point to the way God makes atonement, or the tabernacle, or final rest. Possibly a combination of each.
Next, we’re told specifically, it was added until Jesus, the Seed, came. It is put in place for a temporary period, because of sin. It has a reason (sin) and a time-scale.
Next, we’re told, it was added through angels by a mediator. How it was put in place: God writes it, gives it to angels*, who give it to an intermediary Moses, who gave it to the people. The promise, however, was written by God and given to the people. There is a difference in the way they were given. The value of something can be shown through the means by which it was delivered. He used a postman, the angel, to deliver the law, but he chose to deliver the promise personally himself. It is much more valuable!
Next, v21: the law was absolutely not contradictory to the promises. If God wanted to make people righteous through the law, of course he could have done! But that was not the purpose of the law. But it was a prison, that locked up and guarded. Could mean: it catches you up in sinning inescapably without the power to change or escape; but also, could mean more positively, it is more about preservation; it hedged them in, a boundary around them to stop them merging into the nations. Probably more the latter: see v22. In some senses the law is necessary for the promise to come to those who believe. It was necessary for Jesus to come, for a Jew, as a Jew. Locked up imprisoned, Jesus was able to release! But also it gave distinctiveness to Abraham’s line until he came.
Next: v23 it had a temporary purpose until Christ came, and fulfills its purpose and is finished then.
- 3:26-4:7
We reach the top! Now downhill all the way v26 onwards. All of you can now be sons of God. God’s promise to the peoples is realised through Jesus. But how can we suddenly have such status/identity as sons of God? How come it is all of us – wasn’t the promise made to one Seed?
See v26-29. The promise was just for Jesus – and all who are in him. So if you are in Christ, then the promise is for you as well. He is our clothing – we wear Jesus, clothed in his righteousness, so much so that when God looks at us he sees Jesus. So we are then Abraham’s offspring as well, and we become heirs of the promise. Just like Jacob dressed like his brother and received the promise, we (rightly and not deceptively) are dressed like Jesus and receive the promise.
There is more in the next 7 verses; a slave comes into inheritance. We have received the Spirit, and are no longer a slave, but a son who calls God Father, and an heir of the promise. Not only does God see Jesus when he looks at us, but when he turns his ear, he hears the Spirit calling out “Abba Father”. We look like his Son, and sound like his Son, and so we are! All the blessings promised to him are ours.
Similar in Romans 6: yet by the Spirit we cry out Abba Father; here the Spirit does the talking. Caught up in the Trinitarian God!
It’s people who have this that Paul writes to: he is astonished! This is the relationship they have with God, yet they would prefer to be slaves. Like the character Red in The Shawshank Redemption, who can’t handle being free and wants to go back to being a prisoner. Yet we are free!
7 quotes from Christians through the ages on what it means to be sons of God:
“Spiritual adoption is the excellency and apex of God’s salvation.” Joel Beeke
“Adoption is the highest privilege that the gospel offers.” J.I. Packer
“At earthly preferments men will stand amazed; but seldom shall you find a man that is racished with joy in this, that he is the child of God.” William Perkins
“If we did but know what this privilege of adoption is, all the riches of all the kingdoms in the world would be but as filthy dung to us.” Jeremiah Burroughs
“All things are ours by virtue of our adoptino because we are Christ’s and Christ is God’s. There is a world of riches in this, to be sons of God. And what a prerogative is this: that we have boldness to appear before God, to call him Father, to open our necessities, to fetch all things needful, to have the ear of the King of heaven and earth, to be favourites in the court of heaven.” Richard Sibbes
“From being a child of the devil to becoming a child of God, from being a child of wrath to becoming the object of favour, from being a child of condemnation to becoming an heir of all the promises and a possessor of all blessings, and to be exalted from the greatest misery to the highest felicity – this is something which exceeds all comprehension and all adoration.” William Brakel
“We have enough in us to move God to correct us, but nothing to move him to adopt us. Therefore exalt free grace, being the work of angels here; bless him with your praises who hath blessed you in making you his sons and daughters.” Thomas Watson
* cf Hebs 1:1-2:4. Jesus is greater than the angels! When the angels delivered the law and people disobeyed it, they died; how much more should we fear for disobeying what Jesus delivers!
