Chapter 3 part 3

Illustrating the inability of the law to justify (23-25)

The law is like a prison warden (23)

The law is the prison warden and the prison is sin and people who are not in Christ are the inmates.

Another way to think about this is that the law is the prison cell and people are the inmates.

As unpleasant as imprisonment is, there is something good here. The fact that the law imprisons everything under sin is good.

The law reveals our bleak outlook. We are condemned because of our sin, and the law makes that clear.

By exposing the wickedness of humanity, the truth that divine intervention is the only answer is clarified.

The law makes clear that every avenue of self-justification is a dead end.

The law strikes our conscience, and by God’s grace, leads some to redemption and liberation.

So, the law refuses to let us go until we are able to see that we need the redemption of Christ. In other words, until we respond to the gospel by faith.

The law is like a pedagogue (24-25)

pedagogue: a teacher, schoolmaster, but in Paul’s context, it would have most likely been a slaves that was appointed to be a child’s caretaker and chaperone.

The idea here is one of supervision. Discipline would have been part of the pedagogue’s responsibility. This person would have provided protection and punishment. He would have served as a moral tutor, teaching what was right and wrong.

It’s important to understand that the role of the law is not to teach us how to become better to the extent that we can become acceptable to God. The law showed what was right and wrong. It showed the standard to which everyone must live. And when people fail to reach and maintain this standard, the law issues discipline.

Perhaps we could understand, from this illustration a sense of preparation of God’s people for the justification of God that comes through faith (end of verse 24).

But notice verse 25: but now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

The object of saving faith has come. Jesus has come. And now that He has come, the time for the law was over and the era of faith had begun.

Illustration takeaways

The law had a purpose in keeping people safe until Christ came.

The law reveals sin by showing that our misdeeds are violations of God’s law.

Through its imprisonment of us, the law shows us our need for God’s grace and thus drives us to Christ.

Heirs (26-29)

Sons of God (26)

notice the connection between verses 25 and 26: What’s the reason that the law of Moses no longer serves as a prison guard or pedagogue? Because you are all sons of God through faith.

all underscores the fact that Jews and gentiles alike have been admitted into God’s family through Christ.

So, if we break down verse 26 into 3 phrases:

in Christ: speaks to the union God’s children enjoy with Christ

you are all sons of God: the sons are part of God’s family because of the promised seed. This probably is picking up on the idea already presented that the true children of Abraham are really the children of God. But in light of the the immediate context of the pedagogue analogy, now that the children of God have been set free through faith, we have entered full adult sonship. We no longer need a babysitter.

through faith: people are sons of God, not by natural descent or human effort but through faith alone.

John 1:12 ESV

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,

Baptized into Christ (27)

It’s important to keep the context clear in our minds here. Paul’s concern in this chapter, and really, in this epistle was to argue for justification by faith alone. Certainly we can reasonably assumed that he is not all of the sudden suggesting that the act of baptism is essential to justification.

What does baptism represent in the NT? A radical personal commitment to Christ.

Keep in mind that Paul brings up the subject of baptism in the course of his effort to define who the people of God are. Gal. 3:27 does not provide us with the full pauline theology of baptism. I would suggest however that for Paul, baptism is an outward sign not only of the personal to Christ in faith but also of the new community that belongs to Christ by virtue of grace alone.

Paul is looking to the change God accomplishes in His justification of His people. To use Paul’s language from Eph., God’s people have put off the old and put on the new, and ultimately the new is Jesus.

I think it is reasonable to conclude that during their time spent in planting the Galatian churches, Paul and Barabas and the elders of theses churches baptized the believers (see Acts 14:21-23).

It’s clear in Pauline theology the association that baptism has with the death, burial and resurrection of Christ.

Paul describes those who had been baptized into Christ as having put on Christ. Baptism symbolized this spiritual truth. Putting off the former self and putting on the new… this is what happens in our justification. Baptism declares this transformation.

Tearing down the walls of division (28

Keep in mind the message of the Judaizers: you must become Jewish to be truly saved.

Paul mentions the very tings that can divide us the most: race, rank and sex. This was true in the ancient world as well.

It does seem clear however, that during the days of Paul and this letter, what rose to the top as a point of division was ethnicity. The distinction between Jews and Gentiles was significant in most peoples’ minds.

But regardless which 3 of the points of division that Paul mentions, the bottom line is that Paul is connecting the fact the people are justified by faith to the unity of God’s people.

But let’s get our footing by seeing where v. 28 enters into the flow of Paul’s argument.

Some have argued that the neither Jew/Greek, slave/free, male/female formula was itself from the baptismal liturgy of the day. Pal used similar language in 1 Cor. 12:12-13 & Col. 3:11, both of which are connected to baptism.

What Paul had already regarding the meaning of baptism, that is proclaimed the spiritual transformation of putting off the new and putting on Christ serves as a basis for the distinctions people have made between people meaningless.

The kinds of roles these distinctions may have played are no longer the same in the baptized community. All of the people in these categories are heirs.

In our very identity-concerned (obsessed) society, Paul words are helpful. People are either in Christ or not. You might be a guy, girl, black, brown, and a combination of the myriad of titles and descriptions that people claim, but when it comes to our Creator’s perspective, people are either in Christ or separate from Him.

And this is the fundamental point of the unity of the body of Christ as the 2nd half of v. 28 makes clear.

Embracing our identity (29)

One commentator suggested 3 lenses to look at our identity

In relation to God we are either sons or daughters of God

In relation to humanity we are brothers and sister

In relation to history we belong to the one family of God that began in time and will keep for all eternity.

Paul makes clear, those who are in Christ, belong to Christ. And if we belong to Christ, we are the offspring of Abraham (v. 6, 16)