Galatians - Week 5

Galatians 3:1–9

Paul shifts his focus now, if you remember the past few weeks we’ve talked about Paul, his authority, and where he got the Gospel he preached from, now Paul is focusing on the argument of faith vs works.

He calls them foolish, what does that word mean to us? If I say something is foolish, how do you interpret that?

The word in Greek is anoetos which refers to someone who should know better but doesn’t. He isn’t calling them stupid, he is saying that they have the capacity to understand but they are missing it. Another way to view this word is senseless, all you have to do is use basic observation skills and the answer will be obvious. Is it a good idea to touch a hot stove? How do you know, have you touched a lot of hot stoves? Probably not, you can deduce that a hot stove will burn your hand without needing to experience the pain… someone who doesn’t understand that touching a hot stove will burn them is anoetos…foolish.

What Paul is saying here is that they have seen works of faith in their midst and they should have known that it was not a result of following the law.

Then he brings up father Abraham, and we will get into this a little later, but Abraham wasn’t justified by the law… because the law hadn’t even been given yet. Abraham ‘believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness’. Paul says this to dismantle the argument of the Judeizers who claimed that Gentile believers had to practice the law to be accepted by God… Paul was like Abe didn’t practice the law and he is the father of our faith.

He takes it a step further and reminds the Galatian churches that through Abraham all the nations would be blessed, meaning that God had always intended to include all who would believe into the family of God, no matter where they were born or what religion they practiced before placing their faith in Jesus for salvation.

Galatians 1:10-14

Paul reminds his audience that following the law isn’t something that you can pick and chose, you either do it or you don’t. Follow the law in its entirety or you don’t measure up. He does this to address the fact that his opponents are only incorporating some of the law and it’s practices which means they are hedging their bets. They have one foot in each camp to make sure they are covered… and that is completely anoetos! You cannot say that you have placed your faith in Jesus for salvation AND claim that you must complete the work on His behalf. He either died for your sins… all of them… or His death was not sufficient and thus there was no point in Him being crucified on our behalf.

Forgiveness cannot be earned by us, it can only be earned by perfect adherence to the law, which is impossible, thus we have no hope… apart from Jesus that is. Because He DID keep the law and when we place our faith in Jesus, we are justified before God because Jesus claims us as His own and covers our sin with his sacrifice, that is why so many of our worship songs talk about being covered by the blood… are we literally covered in blood? No, our sins are paid for by the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and our sins, which require sacrifice, have been forgiven because Jesus did what the blood of goats and bulls could never do (Hebrews 10:4), His sacrifice paid our debt in full.

So we don’t need to follow the law to be welcomed in, we trust in Jesus because He took our curse on Himself and when we place our faith in Him, we are redeemed and we receive the blessing that God promised to Abraham through faith.

Galatians 3:15-18

Paul spikes the ball here on his point, if the Judeizers claim that Gentiles must follow the law to be saved, why did the law come 430 after God referred to Abraham’s faith as being credited to him as righteousness? What he is saying here is that God made Abraham a promise based on a son, and that son (singular) was a descendant of Abraham, Jesus! How can you say that the promise of God is invalid because Gentiles don’t follow the law when Abraham, the father of the faith didn’t follow the law either?

God made a covenant with Abraham and He sealed it Himself (Geneses 15:17-18) if God made the contract based on a promise, how can anyone add or take away from it? They can’t. And a person who thinks they can or need to is anoetos!

Is it starting to make sense why Paul stats off this section with that word? So many of these points are obvious when you take the time to think them through, but the Galatians weren’t thinking clearly, that is why Paul comes in so heavy, he is trying to get them to use their brains and realize that adding the law to faith in Christ is pointless, and dangerous for new believers because you put a burden on them that they were never meant to carry.

Galatians 3:19-25

So, why the law in the first place? If we’ve spent most of the morning explaining how the law can’t save you, why did God give the law in the first place?

First of all, it was given to expose sin, if we don’t know the rules how can we know if we are following them or not? You can’t, so God showed His people what the standard was so they would understand that they aren’t keeping it perfectly.

Another reason for the law was to provide a vehicle to show their faith, by sacrificing to God as a result of their sin, they showed that they believed that God was real and they wanted to please Him.

Paul also explains that the law was meant to be a placeholder until the promised Messiah, which we know is Jesus so we know that faith in God is no longer expressed through keeping the law, it’s expressed by faith in Jesus. If the law could save us, it would have, but it couldn’t so Jesus came and died in our place, and that is where we place our trust, in His sacrifice not in our ability to follow rules.

This is why Paul will say we are free from the law and why he insists that anyone who tells you that you must follow the law to be saved is anoetos, because it is antithetical to its purpose. The purpose of the law was not to provide salvation, it was to express faith in God and God would count that faith as righteousness, but righteousness has never been something that humans could earn, it was always through faith. First, Abraham trusted God and was credited as righteous, then the law was given and provided the people of God with a way to express their faith, and then Jesus came and we are free to express our faith through Him and only Him.

All of our obedience and all of our worship are results of our faith in Jesus and they are ways for us to express our faith in Jesus outwardly, but they do not save us… and that is Paul’s point. Nothing but faith can save you. And anyone saying otherwise is … anoetos!