Chapter 3 part 2

Context

Throughout this chapter, the Apostle Paul has been arguing for the fact that justification comes through faith in Jesus Christ alone. He exhorted the Galatians to reflect on how it was they came to receive the Holy Spirit. Honest, clear-headed contemplation of their own conversion would show it was through faith in the crucified Christ that they have received the Spirit. It was through faith that their father Abraham was justified, and any true child of Abraham will be declared righteous by God through the same means. Anyone who presumes to have peace with God by keeping the law is under a curse. Jesus became this curse for His people by paying the price of our sins on the cross, so it is only through faith in His atoning work that anyone can come to possess the blessings of the covenant that God promised Abraham and his posterity.

Arguing for Justification by Faith Alone

1. The Conversion Argument (1-6)

2. The Faith Argument (6-14)

3. The Promise Argument (15-25)

4. The Heir Argument (26-29)

The Promise Argument (15-25)

The Covenant of Promise (15-16)

The covenant is permanent (15)

Paul uses a human example, which is to say that he uses an example that would have been familiar to his audience.

Once a man-made covenant has been ratified, there was no way for it to be annulled or altered.

The kind of covenant that Paul has in mind here is one for an inheritance (as opposed to one for business dealings).

The word for covenant (diatheke) can be translated covenant but it can also refer to a last will and testament. What Paul is referring to here in v. 15 is the declaration of what God has declared he would do. This was a legal arrangement in which one party bestows his/her estate on someone else. It’s really a grant.

And this covenant cannot be revoked.

The legal system in view?

Roman: similar to our context. Roman covenants could be annulled or changed. They could be torn up and rewritten. Only after the person died, was the covenant unalterable.

Greek: Wills could not be repealed or revoked. Once registered at the public record office, a Greek testament could never be altered. One could make the case the this is what Paul had in mind in v. 15.

Jewish: mattenat bari - a good example of this is the Prodigal Son.

Luke 15:11–12 ESV

And he said, “There was a man who had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.’ And he divided his property between them.

The younger son asked for his inheritance before his father died. He was asking for mattenat bari, an irrevocable testament that could be neither added to nor annulled.

The bottom line, in any legal system, there comes a time when a testament is settled once for all (by death or official action).

Paul’s point is that if this is true on a human level, how much more is it true when it comes to the covenant that God established with Abraham. No one can annul it or add to it.

Covenants were established or sealed in blood by a covenant ceremony.

Genesis 15:9–10 ESV

He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half.

Genesis 15:17–18 ESV

When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates,

The animals were sacrificed and God passed between them, thus validating his covenant in a legally binding way.

Paul’s point here is that the covenant that God established with Abraham is a divinely ratified one, so all the more reason to understand it to be a permanent one.

The party to the covenant (16)

Paul is referencing the fact that God repeated His promises to Abraham. And often, these promises were made to Abraham and his offspring.

Genesis 13:15 ESV

for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever.

Genesis 24:7 ESV

The Lord, the God of heaven, who took me from my father’s house and from the land of my kindred, and who spoke to me and swore to me, ‘To your offspring I will give this land,’ he will send his angel before you, and you shall take a wife for my son from there.

Paul emphasizes that offspring is singular. Paul knew full well that this term is often used in a collective sense.

Galatians 3:29 ESV

And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

He knew that the offspring would be as numerous as the stars and the sand.

But Paul wanted to make clear that God’s covenant promises ultimately referred to someone in particular. That they would be fulfilled in and realized through someone in particular.

Now to be sensitive to the original context, the promise referred first to Abraham’s son Isaac, but ultimately it referred all of God’s children, but especially to Jesus Christ.

The Promise of the Covenant (17-18)

Law & Promise (17)

Promise is a dominant theme in this chapter.

What we have seen so far is that the covenant God established with Abraham was once and for all. This covenant was established with Abraham and to Christ and to everyone who is in Him.

Now Paul moves on to clarify what he means by focusing on the promise that is in this covenant.

The law and the promise operate on different principles: faith and works.

The promise has priority over the law, and one truth that the Apostle points out is that the promise came first. It came 430 years after the promise was given.

Now the Judaizers were suggesting that because the law came after the promise, the law either superseded the promise and supplemented it in some way. This was their argument to support their claim that works were necessary to have a right relationship with God.

But what Paul does here is he presents a legal argument. The notion that because the law was the most recent, or at least the more recent, covenant from God means it must take precedence over the promise to Abraham does not fit the legal realities of covenants.

God’s promise to Abraham was not annulled (invalidated) by the law. God ratified His promise, and nothing that came after the finalization of this promise would cancel it.

And if the Judaizers’ argument was pushed further, then Abraham would not have been saved. He died before the law was issued, he therefore did not obey the law and as a result died without having peace with God.

The law was not the fine print of the Abrahamic covenant.

Remember, we suggested that this covenant is like a last will and testament. It is God’s declaration of His commitment to His people. The covenant is a promise and is therefore received by faith.

Reception of the inheritance (18)

Perhaps a way to restate v. 18: since the inheritance is based on the promise of God, its reception is not contingent on obedience to the law.

So, to state this again so that we understand, the beneficiaries of the inheritance receive it on the basis of a binding legal promise. Since God promised the inheritance, it must come by way of His promise and not by our works.

There is a principle in play here that we need to be careful not to miss. God deals with His people on the basis of His promise and not on their performance. We began by the Spirit and God is perfecting us by His Spirit.

The Need for the Promise (19-20)

The provocation of the law (19)

Paul has made it clear that obeying the law will not result in justification. The natural question that arises then is what use is the law then? What is the purpose of the law?

The law reveals sin. I think this is Paul’s point in the first half of v. 19: It [the law] was added because of transgression.

The law exposes sin for what it really is. It is a violation of God’s holy standard. This is what the word transgressions is getting at.

Paul addressed the effect of the law in Rom.

Romans 7:7 ESV

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 exposes the fact that apart from God’s grace, we want to sin. It exposes our desire. And this is a good thing.

The word added means to be or become additionally considered alongside an original quantity or collection. In other words, the law came in by a side road. It feeds into the promise. As one commentator put it, “the law is the onramp to the gospel highway”. It does not provide salvation, but it points to our need for it because it reveals there is nothing in us that desires in the first place.

The parameters of the law (19-20)

Duration (19a)

Paul seems to suggest that a purpose of the law is to reveal sin (our desire for it), but given the rest of verse 19 and verse 20, it does appear this particular purpose of the law had a shelf life. In other words, this purpose was temporary that existed between the time Abraham received the promise and the fulfillment of that promise in Jesus Christ.

I think it’s correct to say that the law of God is eternal in that it possesses a perfect moral standard for His people. This is also true because the law is based upon the character of God.

But the law, I suggest, is temporary. The specific administration of the law given to Moses, with all its ceremonies, curses and sacrifices had its limits. It was in force only until, as verse 19 tells us, the offspring should come.

Now, Paul already explained what the offspring meant in v. 16. The offspring is meant to be understood singularly. And it is singular because it references a specific individual, namely God the Son. And when the Son came, the work of the law was finished. So, one limitation of the law was it duration.

Distance (19b-20)

Now there is another limitation that should be noted, and it has to do with the fact that it was put in place by an intermediary (19).

If you are unsure who the intermediary is, you’re not alone. It’s not as clear as we would prefer.

Angels are not mentioned in Ex. 19 where God gave the the law to Moses, yet Moses mentioned the angels shortly before he died. He blessed God’s people, and as he reflected on the way God had given him the law, he said:

Deuteronomy 33:2 ESV

He said, “The Lord came from Sinai and dawned from Seir upon us; he shone forth from Mount Paran; he came from the ten thousands of holy ones, with flaming fire at his right hand.

So from this we can conclude that when God gave Moses the law, hosts of angels were present.

Stephen, when he preached the gospel to the Jewish leaders went a little further and declared that the law was delivered by angels.

Acts 7:53 ESV

you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it.”

See also Heb. 2:2.

But think through this, as compared to how the promise was delivered. The law was put into effect by an intermediary. The promise had no such mediator. God gave it immediately to Abraham. The law came to God’s people indirectly: through angels to a mediator (Moses) and through the mediator to the people.

And this helps us understand v. 20. Because Moses served as the go-between between God and the people an intermediary (v. 20) implies more than one, but God is one. God spoke to the people through Moses, and Moses spoke for the people to God.

So the law’s limitations, I suggest, is shown even through means means by which it was given. There is a disadvantage here when we compare the law and the promise. Having a mediator distinguishes the law from the promise. The promise came unmediated, straight from God to Abraham. The law however, required a mediator because sinners cannot come directly into God’s presence; we stand at a distance.