The Law and the Promise | Galatians 3:15-25
Brian Hedges | October 15, 2017
Someone once asked the short story writer and novelist Flannery O’Connor if she could explain one of her stories in a sentences. She was a little frustrated with the question, and she essentially said, “A story is a way of saying something that can’t be said any other way.” You have to have the story. “I can’t explain it in a sentence; you have to have the whole story, otherwise I wouldn’t have written this story.”
I think it’s very important for us to understand that the Bible is a story; the Bible is telling a story. It’s telling the story of God’s redemption of the world and how God is working out that redemption through very concrete, specific, historical events and persons, and we need the whole story as believers.
To give you a slightly different illustration, many people have noticed that there’s been a significant change in the way television shows have been written. If you go back 20 years ago, most TV shows were somewhat episodic, so you could just turn on a show, you could pretty much pick up at any point in the show, and each episode was somewhat self-contained.
That’s not the way most TV shows are written now. Most TV shows now have multiple episode as well as multiple season arcs, character arcs and plots that develop over a lengthy period of time. So you couldn’t, for example, just drop into, say, season three or four of the show 24 and really understand everything that’s going on if you don’t have all the backstory of Jack Bauer and what happened to him in season one.
In the same way, we find it difficult to read and understand the Bible when we don’t know the story of the Bible. So right here off the bat, first application point, read your Bibles, folks, and don’t just read Psalms and Proverbs for your devotions. We need to be reading Old Testament and New, we need to be reading the histories, we need to be reading the narratives; we need to be reading regularly, intentionally, consistently, over and over and over again if we’re going to really understand the story. We miss something when we’re studying a passage, as we’re going to study this morning, if we don’t know the story, because Paul is building an argument for the gospel on the basis of the story.
In fact, what we’re going to see in Galatians chapter three is that Paul teases out three themes that have to do with the story of redemption. Those themes are the themes of promise, law, and faith, and he’s centering those themes around three very important figures in the history of salvation. Those figures are Abraham, Moses, and Christ.
So turn with me to Galatians chapter three. We’re going to be reading verses 15 through 25 as we continue to try to unpack and understand and apply Paul’s basic argument for the gospel, the gospel of justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Here are the words of Paul, Galatians chapter three, beginning in verse 15.
“To give a human example, brothers: even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified. Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, ‘And to offsprings,’ referring to many, but referring to one, ‘And to your offspring,’ who is Christ. This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise. Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one. Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian…”
This is God’s word.
The apostle Paul, as we have seen in this letter to the Galatians, is fighting for the gospel; he’s on a rescue mission. He is trying to preserve his beloved Galatian converts in their faith in Jesus Christ and to keep them from going to the law and relying upon their works of the law for their salvation.
He is arguing now for his understanding of the gospel. He has appealed to their experience in Galatians three, verses one through five. He says, “Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?” And of course, they received the Spirit when they heard the gospel with faith, and so he says, “You can’t now be perfected by the flesh; you can’t be perfected by the law. You need to continue on in faith.”
Then he turned to Scripture, as we saw last week, and he has argued that the law and the gospel are fundamentally different in their operating principles. The law has to do with doing, doing works; the gospel has to do with believing. In fact, the law brings a curse. All who are under the works of the law, all who rely on the works of the law, are under a curse; they are condemned because they can’t fulfill the law, they can’t obey the law. Christ, however, has redeemed us from that curse; he’s redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, and therefore, through faith in Christ and all that he’s done for us in his redemptive work, the blessings of Abraham have come down to us, and Paul is continuing with that argument in this passage, in Galatians three, verses 15 through 25.
Now, he is focusing on three key themes in Scripture. Those themes are promise, law, and faith, and the interrelationship of those themes. And as I said a moment ago, these have to do with Abraham, Moses, and Christ. So this is the outline; three points:
I. The Promise (Abraham)
II. The Law (Moses)
III. Faith (Christ)
This will take us right down through this passage.
I. The Promise (Abraham)
So, first of all, the promise. The promise has to do with Abraham; specifically, it has to do with God’s covenant with Abraham. This another word that gets used by Paul here in this passage as he uses the analogy or the example, a human example, as he calls it, of a man-made covenant. There are several things about this covenant or this promise to Abraham that we need to understand.
(1) First of all, the nature of this covenant; the nature of this covenant. Several things I want you to see about the nature of this covenant: the first thing is that it is a gracious covenant. Look at verse 18. Verse 18 says that “God gave it to Abraham by a promise,” and that verb “gave” is a verb that carries the idea of a grace gift. In fact, the NIV makes it explicit: “For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on the promise, but God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise.”
This is important to understand, right at the outset, that that covenant with Abraham, the promises that God made to Abraham were promises of grace. Paul is tying the gospel into this gracious Abrahamic covenant. The very character of this covenant was a gracious covenant. A covenant, of course, is a promise; a very serious promise, a promise that is contractually binding. That’s what we mean by a covenant. So this covenant is gracious.
Secondly, this covenant is unchangeable. It is unchangeable; look at verse 15, “No one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified,” then in verse 17 Paul says, “This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterwards, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void.”
Paul is concerned about how the law and the promise relate to one another, and his basic argument here is that the law does not in any way make the promise void. The law does not annul the promise; the promise stands. The promise stands.
In fact, in Genesis chapter 17, three times this covenant to Abraham is called an everlasting covenant. So this covenant is unchangeable, it is gracious, and then, thirdly, it is unilateral. Unilateral.
Now what does that mean? Unilateral means one-sided, whereas bilateral would mean two-sided. Just like a unicycle is a cycle with only one wheel, and bicycle is one with two wheels, right? So a unilateral covenant is a one-sided covenant, while a bilateral covenant is a two-sided covenant. This is why we could say that the Abrahamic covenant was unilateral; it was one-sided. In Genesis 15 there’s a very interesting story about Abraham. God had made a promise to Abraham already in Genesis chapter 12, but he comes and ratifies this promise in Genesis 15.
Abraham doesn’t understand how God is going to fulfill his promise. “Abraham, I’m going to give you a son, a descendant, I’m going to make your descendants like the stars of the heaven. Look up in the sky, count the stars; that’s what your descendants are going to be like. I’m going to give you land, I’m going to bless you; in fact, I’m going to bless all the nations of the earth through you.” This is the promise, and Abraham doesn’t know how this is going to be fulfilled, because he doesn’t have any children.
So God comes and, really, it’s a wonderful moment of condescension to Abraham’s understanding. His name is Abram at this point. Abram is a Chaldean, and the Chaldeans, when they would form a very serious contract, they would form what was called a blood covenant. God comes to Abraham and he forms a blood covenant with him.
This is what he does: he comes down and he tells him to take a heifer, a female goat, a ram, a turtledove, and a pigeon and to divide these animals. I mean, in many ways it’s a gruesome scene. He cuts the animals in half. In a Chaldean covenant, the parties of the covenant, who are making these promises to one another, they would divide the animals in half and together they would walk through the pieces of the animal so as to say, “If I don’t fulfill my side of the covenant, may what happened to these animals happen to me.” It’s real serious.
So God says, “Abram, take the animals, divide them,” and then something really interesting happens. God puts Abram to sleep. He goes to sleep; this deep darkness falls, and Abram goes to sleep. And then, in Genesis 15, verses 17 and 18, “When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking firepot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’”
Now what in the world is going on here? This is what’s going on: God puts Abram to sleep, and God alone passes through the pieces of the animal. God alone makes the covenant. It’s unilateral; it’s not bilateral. It’s solitary. God is taking upon himself the oath, the promise, and all of the requirements and demands of fulfilling this covenant. So the fire and the smoke represent God’s presence.
In fact, Edmund Clowney points out that this same terminology is used to describe the darkness and the fire when the Lord comes on Mount Sinai in the book of Exodus. Same terminology that you have here in Genesis 15. So God alone is passing through the pieces of the animal; God alone is saying, “If I don’t fulfill the covenant and all the terms of it, Abram, if I don’t fulfill it may what happened to the animals happen to me.” God takes this curse upon himself, he takes this oath upon himself as he fulfills this ritual in a unilateral way.
Now, that’s really important for us to understand in Paul’s whole argument. The very nature of this covenant was gracious, it was unchangeable, and it was unilateral.
(2) Now, here’s the second thing to note, quickly: the recipients of this covenant; you see it in verse 16. Paul says, “Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, ‘And to offsprings,’ referring to many, but referring to one, ‘And to your offspring,’ who is Christ.”
So Paul is making an interesting point here out of the singular noun “offspring.” Now, Paul of course knows that this is a collective noun and that it can indeed refer to many people, not just one. In fact, he uses this same way in just this way in verse 29. So Paul is not misusing grammar here. It’s not that Paul doesn’t understand the way grammar works; Paul is making a very important christological point.
In fact, he’s following the same principles of interpretation that Jesus gave his disciples on the road to Emmaus. He is showing how everything in the law, the prophets, the Old Testament Scriptures, point to Christ, and he’s saying that Jesus is the offspring. Jesus is the descendant. He is the seed, or the son, of Abraham. He’s the one in whom all of these promises are fulfilled. So Jesus is the recipient. Abraham first of all, and then Abraham’s greater son, Jesus.
(3) And then the third thing to note here about the covenant is the priority of this covenant. Look again at verse 17: “This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void.”
So here’s the main point that Paul is making: the promise is not cancelled by the law. The Abrahamic covenant stands. It stands! It’s an unchangeable, gracious covenant. God made it, he made it alone, he fulfills it alone, and his promise stands. The law in no way compromises or annuls or nullifies the promise. The inheritance could never come by the law; it could never come by the promise.
Verse 18, “For if the inheritance comes by the law it no longer comes by promise, but God gave it to Abraham by a promise. Therefore the promise stands.” The same basic point is made in a slightly different way in verse 21, “Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life then righteousness would indeed be by the law.” But Paul’s whole point is that righteousness is not by the law. It’s not by the law. So this is not the purpose for which the law was given anyway.
That raises a very serious question: why then the law? Verse 19, “Why then the law?” And that leads us to point two.
II. The Law (Moses)
We see the promise, this covenant God made with Abraham, and its gracious, unconditional, unchangeable character. If that’s how the promise is fulfilled, if God fulfils it, then what’s the purpose of the law? And what is the law in the first place? So point number two, what is this law?
The law is the Mosaic covenant. Okay, we’re talking about the different covenants, the different ways that God built his relationships with people. He had made this covenant with Abraham, but then, when God came to Israel on Mount Sinai four centuries later and gave the law to the people of Israel, there was another covenant made, what we call the Mosaic covenant or the Sinai covenant. The law of God.
So this is specifically the law that Paul has in mind here. Now, you might understandably hear that and think, “Well, does this really even have any relevance, then, to us? If this has to do with the people of Israel, then what does this have to do with us?”
Well, I think it does have some relevance to us, because, as Douglas Moo points out, Paul views the Jewish experience with the Mosaic law as paradigmatic for the experience of all people with law. Israel stands in redemptive history as a kind of test case, and its relationship with the law is ipso facto, applicable to the relationship of all people with that law which God has revealed to them.
Now we know, from Romans chapter two, that the law is written on the hearts even of Gentiles. We all have some understanding of God’s law. It’s just hardwired into us. But Israel shows us in full and living color what people do with law and how the law functions in their lives. So, this does have relevance for us, because Paul is showing us not only the place of the law in the story, he’s showing us how the law functions in anyone’s life if they are under the law or if they rely on the law.
So what then is the purpose of the law? That’s the second and the main question here. Look at verses 19 and 20. “Why then the law? It was added of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one.”
Now Paul right here says four things about the law. He says, first, it was added because of transgressions. I’m going to come back to that in just a moment.
He says secondly it was added until the offspring should come. This is telling us that the law was temporary. It was temporary! It had a temporary, provisional nature. Unlike the Abrahamic covenant, which is everlasting, this covenant is not everlasting. It’s temporary. It was given for a certain period of time for a certain purpose.
He says, thirdly, that it was put in place through angels, because in Paul’s day the common understanding of Jewish people was that the law was given through the mediation of angels, that angels were somehow the mediators through which the law was given, or the means, the instruments, the ones who helped convey the law to Moses, who was then the mediator between God and Israel.
You can see this in the language of Stephen, in Acts chapter seven, verse 53, when he says, “You who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it…” You see it again in Hebrews chapter two.
And then Paul says that it was given by angels through or by an intermediary. “Put in place through angels by an intermediary,” and then verse 20: “Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one.”
Now this verse has been called the most obscure verse in Galatians, if not in the New Testament. There are, according to commentator J.B. Lightfoot, over 200 possible interpretations of this verse, and we’re going to go through them one by one. No, I’m just kidding. Just kidding.
I don’t know exactly what it means, and nobody does. This is what I think is probably the most persuasive explanation to me, so it’s what I’m going with this morning. I think the point here, “Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one,” I think the point here is in the contrast. Whereas the covenant with Abraham was unilateral, with no mediator; God just came! God just came and he walked through the pieces.
That’s not what it was like with Israel. The children of Israel are down on the mountain, Moses is up on the mountain; the children of Israel are saying, “Don’t let God speak to us, lest we die!” God gives the law to Moses, Moses gives it to the people; there’s a mediator there. The children of Israel are then given requirements. “These are the things that you have to do in order to receive the blessings that come with the law, and if you don’t do these things you’re going to receive the curses of the law,” because this covenant is not unilateral, it’s bilateral.
This covenant is a law covenant. This covenant is a covenant that puts requirements on people. It’s not unconditional; it’s conditional. There are lots of “ifs” and “thens.” “If you do this, then you will receive this.” I think that’s the point that Paul’s making. This covenant had an intermediary, and that implies more than one. More than one person’s involved here. I think that’s what Paul means.
But the main question, I think, is very clear, Paul’s answer to the purpose of the law. What is the purpose of the law? He says, “It was added because of transgressions.”
What does that mean? “It was added because of transgressions.” It means that the law has something to do with sin. It has something to do with sin. And in fact, I think if we just look at what Paul says in the book of Romans it becomes pretty clear what the law has to do with sin. Notice three things, quickly.
(1) Number one, the law exposes sin. The law exposes sin. Romans three, verse 20, “For by the works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes the knowledge of sin.”
The law exposes sin! It gives us a knowledge of sin. It shows us what sin is. Paul in Romans seven says, “What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’” The law puts definition on sin; the law turns sin into a transgression, a trespass. It’s not that there was no sin before the law, but the law defined it, codified it, revealed it, showed it up for what it was.
(2) Secondly, the law increases sin. Romans five, verse 20: “Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” Romans seven, verse eight, “But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandments, produced in me all kinds of covetousness, for apart from the law sin lies dead.”
So Paul’s point here seems to be that the law somehow arouses sin. It stirs up sin; it stimulates sin, it provokes sin. The law actually makes us want to sin more!
I mean, have you ever walked by wet pavement, and it says, “Do not touch.” What do you just want to do so badly? You just want to put your handprint in it, right? Or you tell your kids, “You are not to watch TV before four p.m.” Now maybe they weren’t even interested in TV before then, but as soon as you say, “You’re not to watch TV before four p.m.,” that’s all they want to do, right? Or if I told you today, “I want everybody today to fast from chocolate.” Guess what you’re going to be thinking about all afternoon? Chocolate! Because you’re not supposed to eat it, so you’re going to want to eat it.
The law does that. There’s something in us that the law provokes that we want to disobey; we want to break the rules. I mean, this is the profound problem with sin. There’s something in us that is so twisted, that is so distorted, that is so off-center, that when we see what is good and what is evil we want the evil, not the good. The law increases sin.
(3) And then thirdly, the law condemns sin. Romans 4:19, “For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, there is no transgression.” Again, the point is not that without the law there’s no sin, but the law makes the sin a transgression; it codifies it, and then punishes it, condemns it. Romans seven, verses nine through 11, “I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.”
Let me give you one more illustration. I moved to Indiana in 2003 and lived in Indiana for six years before I realized that there was such a thing in Indiana called a “use tax.” A use tax. A use tax is a tax that you pay on items that are purchased out of state for which you did not pay sales tax. So anything that you buy online that you didn’t pay sales tax for, according to Indiana state law, you’re supposed to pay the use tax. This isn’t a problem for most people. It was a big problem for me, because I like books, I buy lots of books, and I at that time was buying most of them through Amazon.com, precisely because they didn’t charge me tax! And I had six years’ worth of books, so hundreds upon hundreds of dollars worth of purchases, that I now owed money for.
So I’m online, 2009, doing my taxes, and I come to this question about a use tax, and all of a sudden the commandment and sin came alive, and I died, because I suddenly realized that I owe all this money. I didn’t know it before, because I didn’t know what the law was. But as soon as I understood the law, all of a sudden, “Oh! I have a problem!” So I had to pay all these back taxes.
Well, that’s sort of what Paul has in mind here. He says, “I was alive without the law at one time, but then when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. It condemned me; it slew me; it killed me. I suddenly understood the depth of my problem. So this is the purpose of the law. The purpose of the law is actually to show up sin for what it is.
Paul further confirms this with a couple of pictures. He gives us two pictures of the law here in Galatians three. He pictures the law as a prison warden in verses 22 and 23. He says, “But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. Now before the faith came we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.” The law is a warden in a prison. It keeps us locked up in this condemned status.
And then secondly, the law is a guardian; a guardian, in verses 24 and 25. “So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith, but now that faith has come we are no longer under a guardian.”
Now, the old King James translated this “a schoolmaster.” That’s probably not right. When we think of a schoolmaster we think of someone who’s teaching school, and so the idea, especially among a lot of the Puritans, is that the law was something like an instructor. So the law was there to instruct.
That’s not really the meaning of this word that Paul uses for “guardian.” The guardian wasn’t so much an instructor as the guardian was a governor for children. The guardian would be a servant who would have the responsibility for caring for and disciplining the young children in a household. The governor would be sure that they got back and forth in public places back to their homes in an efficient, safe way; the governor would be sure that they did their chores, the governor, the guardian, would be sure that they were disciplined, and they had a reputation for sometimes being very harsh with the discipline, because they’re trying to instill discipline in these young children. That’s the idea here. And again, it stresses the temporary, provisional nature of the law, and also the harshness of the law.
Now, Paul’s point with all of this discussion about the law is simply this: the law is temporary, and the law cannot bring the inheritance. The law cannot do what only the promise can do. The law cannot justify, it cannot save. It has an important function, an important place, in the history of salvation, and the law has an important function in our lives today. The law shows us our problem. It shows us our sin. But the law cannot redeem us from our sin. Only the gospel can do that.
Just like diagnosis must precede cure, but diagnosis is separate from cure. It’s essential; a doctor has to clearly diagnose. An oncologist has to show you there’s cancer here, but the diagnosis alone is not enough. There still has to be a cure. The cure is something different than the diagnosis. Well, the law has this diagnostic function.
Listen to Martin Luther. “The principal point of the law is to make men not better, but worse. That is to say, it showeth unto them their sin, that by the knowledge thereof they may be humbled, terrified, bruised, and broken, and by this means may be driven to seek grace and so to come to that blessed Seed, Christ.”
I think this is important for us in a couple of different ways. It’s important for us evangelistically, because when we’re sharing the gospel with people, no one is going to want a gospel of forgiveness until they understand that they’re sinners. Sometimes that’s the missing piece.
That doesn’t mean that in the first conversation with someone we should necessarily say, “You’re going to go to hell if you don’t repent.” Maybe we should. It’s not wrong to do that. You could do that in a loving way and in a way that is piercing to the heart. It doesn’t necessarily mean you have to do that every time in the first conversation, but sooner or later; nobody’s going to come to Jesus until they need Jesus! What shows us our need for Jesus is the law.
So this is something that needs further fleshing out, of course; this is something we need to think about. What does it look like, in an evangelistic context, to help someone come to an understanding of their need for Christ? I think a fairly simple way is simply to ask a person if they actually feel like they’re living up to their own standards. Most people don’t. If they do, they’re probably pretty deluded.
But most people don’t, and it’s only when people begin to understand that they don’t live up to their own standards, they don’t live up to society’s standards, they don’t live up to moral standards, they certainly don’t live up to the law of God; only then do they begin to understand what their need is. So this is important evangelistically.
Secondly (this is also evangelism, but it’s kind of a subset of it), this is important in parenting. It’s important in parenting. Your kids, parents, need to understand the difference between right and wrong, and the law is what shows them between right and wrong. Now, it’s crucial that we teach our children that they cannot be justified by the law, but they also need to understand that they need salvation, and they’re not going to understand that until they see that they’re sinners. And the only way they’re going to see that they’re sinners is if there are clear lines, there’s black and there’s white, there’s right and there’s wrong, there are moral absolutes, and when they begin to violate these moral absolutes, then they begin to understand they’re sinners. We have to give our children both the law and the gospel. So the law has a function, but its function is to show us our need, not to save us.
III. Faith (Christ)
So then, thirdly, finally, we come to verses 23 through 25, and now Paul’s dealing with the theme of faith and how that relates to Christ. Two things to notice here.
(1) First of all, the coming of faith. The coming of faith. This is interesting, because the way Paul words this I think is interesting. He says three times that faith comes, alright? So verse 23: “Now before faith came we were held captive under the law.” Second half of the verse, “Imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.” Then look at verse 25: “But now that faith has come we are no longer under a guardian.”
What does he mean by that, the coming of faith? What does he mean, “Until faith comes”? He doesn’t mean that there was no faith in the Old Testament, because he’s already established that “Abraham believed God [that’s faith] and it was counted to him as righteousness,” verse six, quoting Genesis 15. He’s already established that. So he doesn’t mean that there’s no faith in the Old Testament.
When he’s talking about faith coming, I think we get insight into this in verse 24, “So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.” So you put those two things together, Christ coming and faith coming; I think what he means here is new covenant faith. He means faith that is focused on Christ in his person and in his work, in all that’s been revealed in the gospel, by what Christ has done in his crucifixion, his resurrection, and his ascension. It’s faith that is centered on that. I think that’s what he means by the coming of faith.
So again, there’s a historical argument here. There’s a story; the story of promise and law and faith. There’s a movement in redemptive history, from Abraham to Moses to Christ, and that movement is implicit to everything Paul’s saying here.
(2) So the coming of faith, and then, second thing, the centrality of faith. Again, look at verse 24, “So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.” I mean, this is the point of Galatians, right? “So that we might be justified by faith.”
If you want to do a neat little Bible study on Galatians, just go through the whole book and underline or circle every time you come across the word “faith” or “believing” and just see how central it is to Paul’s whole argument. “We receive the Spirit by hearing with faith.” “It is those who are of faith who are the sons of Abraham.” “We are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.” “In Christ Jesus we are the sons of God through faith.” “It is through the Spirit and by faith that we wait for the hope of righteousness.”
Faith working through love is all that counts! I mean, over and over and over again in this letter Paul emphasises the importance of faith, the centrality of faith. So there is this basic contrast that runs through this letter. I’ve pointed this out before, but let me do it again; I want there to be clarity here. The law and the gospel work on different principles. The law works on the principle of doing; the gospel works on the principle of believing. You either try to save yourself by law-keeping, which is in itself a misuse of the law, or you rely upon someone else to save you. You trust in Christ, you believe in Christ. This contrast between doing or believing, between works or faith, between the law and the promise; the old covenant and the new covenant.
Let me conclude with an illustration and a hymn. As I often do, I find John Bunyan in The Pilgrim’s Progress very helpful in understanding the law and the gospel, and there’s a place in this wonderful book where Christian comes to a man’s house. The man is named “the Interpreter.” The Interpreter takes him through many different rooms in the house where he sees all kinds of interesting things; these are all object lessons. They are metaphors; they are word pictures showing us something about theology, something about Christian truth.
He comes to this one room that is described as a very large parlor that is full of dust, just full of dust. A man comes into the room with a broom, and he begins to sweep the room. But the more he sweeps the more dust just fills the room so that it’s just choking the air, right? Dust absolutely filling the room, and the room is now dirtier than it was before.
And then, a few moments later, a young woman comes into the room, and she sprinkles water in the room so that the dust settles, and then once the dust has settled and there’s some moisture in the air she is able to actually clean the room.
And Christian asks the Interpreter, “What does this mean?” The Interpreter gives the answer. He says, “The parlor is the heart of man that has never been sanctified by the sweet grace of the gospel,” and dust is original sin, this inward corruption that defiles the man. The one who comes to sweep first of all is the law, who just stirs the dust up; the law provoking sin, the law showing sin for what it is. But then the young woman who comes in afterwards, that’s the gospel, who sprinkles grace in this dusty room, sprinkles grace in the heart, so that the heart is cleansed.
Bunyan’s point is only the gospel has the power to change us.
Listen to John Newton; I’ll close with these words.
“Let us love, and sing, and wonder;
Let us praise the Savior’s name!
He has crushed the law’s loud thunder,
He has quenched Mount Sinai’s flame,
He has washed us with his blood;
He has brought us nigh to God.
“Let us wonder; grace and justice
Join and point to mercy’s store.
When through grace in Christ is our trust is,
Justice smiles and asks no more.
He has washed us with his blood;
He has secured our way to God.”
This is the gospel. Christ has hushed the law’s loud thunder, Christ has satisfied justice, Christ has cleansed us with his blood; grace comes through Christ. The law came through Moses, but grace and truth come through Jesus Christ. Let’s pray.
So Father, we want now to respond to this grace that you have given to us in the gospel, and the only appropriate response to this grace is to believe; response to grace is to trust, to believe the promises of the gospel, to trust in Christ, to rest in Christ, to rely upon Christ, to look to Christ, and then the response of glad gratitude and praise and adoration in our hearts to you. So we pray for that response in our hearts. We pray that you would help us to believe and to trust and to rest upon Christ and what he has done.
Father, I pray in particular this morning for anyone who has never trusted in Christ, someone, perhaps, who has been resting on their own achievements, who has been looking to their law-keeping, who has been desperately trying to earn favor with you; someone, perhaps, who has falsely thought that they could be saved by just living a better life, by letting their good deeds outweigh their bad. I pray this morning that the law would show them the poverty of their own righteousness and that the gospel would hold out to them the clear offer and promise of grace and the righteousness of another, the righteousness that can actually save.
And Father, I pray for all of us this morning as we come to the table. The table is the eucharist; it is the meal of grace, the meal of gratitude and of thanksgiving, and just as we have learned about your grace this morning, so now we come to thank you for the grace that you’ve shown us, to thank you for the table, which is a sign and a symbol and a seal of this grace, and I pray that even as we take the bread and the juice physically, so we would in our heart of hearts lay hold of Jesus, the bread of life, spiritually; that we would take him, that we would receive, that we would trust in him in a fresh way this morning. So draw near to us as we continue to worship at the table; we pray it in Jesus name, Amen.
Brian G. Hedges
