An Unconditional Covenant
Galatians 3:15-18
In 1989 an earthquake flattened much of Eastern Europe. The deadly tremor killed over 30,000 people in less than four minutes. In the middle of all the confusion of the earthquake, a father rushed to his son's elementary school. When he arrived there he discovered the building was as flat as a pancake.
Standing there looking at what was left of the school, the father remembered a promise he made to his son, "No matter what, I'll always be there for you!" Tears began to fill his eyes. It looked like a hopeless situation, but he could not take his mind off his promise.
Remembering that his son's classroom was in the back right corner of the building, the father rushed there and started digging through the rubble. As he was digging, other grieving parents arrived, clutching their hearts, saying: "My son! "My daughter!" They tried to pull him off of what was left of the school saying: "It's too late!" "They're dead!" "You can't help!" "Go home!" Even a police officer and a fire-fighter told him he should go home. To everyone who tried to stop him he said, "Are you going to help me now?" They did not answer him and he continued digging for his son stone by stone.
He needed to know for himself: "Is my boy alive or is he dead?" This man dug for eight hours and then twelve and then twenty-four and then thirty-six. Finally in the thirty-eighth hour, as he pulled back a boulder, he heard his son's voice. He screamed his son's name, "ARMAND!" and a voice answered him, "Dad?" It's me Dad!" Then the boy added these priceless words, "I told the other kids not to worry. I told 'em that if you were alive, you'd save me and when you saved me, they'd be saved. You promised that, Dad. 'No matter what,' you said, 'I'll always be there for you!' And here you are Dad. You kept your promise! I knew you would come!”
For those who have lost all but hope itself, there’s nothing like the power of a promise. When our world is surrounded by the devastation of sin and we feel trapped beneath its crushing weight, we must hold on to the promise of God: “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” But in Galatia, God’s promise had been largely forgotten and replaced with a list of rules. The rules were good, but they were being used to accomplish something that only the promise could fulfill.
Our text this morning is in Galatians 3:15-18. Let’s look at these verses together. I want you to consider the power of an unconditional covenant… an unconditional promise. In honor of God and His Word, let’s stand for the reading of these carefully-worded verses.
15 Brothers, let me take an example from everyday life. Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case. 16 The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,” meaning one person, who is Christ. 17 What I mean is this: The law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise. 18 For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on a promise; but God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise.
[Prayer] Paul makes two main points from these verses. He explains for us the priority of the promise and the legitimacy of the Law. The first point is made in verses 15-16. It corrects a misunderstanding of the purpose of the Law, namely…
I. The law was not given because the promise was insufficient, but because transgressions had corrupted the heirs of promise (15-16).
The legalists in Galatia were telling people that the promise God made to Abraham needed to be augmented by the Law of Moses… that the promise needed some help. They suggested it needed the help of human efforts—or why else would God have given the Law to Moses, they asked. With no intended disrespect to father Abraham, they wanted to reassert the Law as the primary basis of fellowship with God. Thus the adage is true, “to do is easier to preach than believe.”
Therefore, Paul asserts in verse 15: “no one can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established…” Paul speaks as a rabbinical lawyer. He knows how wills and testaments, and codicils apply to the heirs of an estate. But a covenant is a promise with legal authority. A covenant is a binding agreement between two parties. The Law of Moses, which came 430 years later, did nothing to annul the ancient promise. In a judicial sense, they had no relationship to each other; each was given to accomplish a different purpose.
The legalists were using the Law, not as God intended, but as the flesh of man often misunder-stands the nature of God’s decrees. God didn’t give the Law to replace the promise with a long “to do” list. God gave the Law to show how much we needed the promise. But they took the law and reinterpreted it to the extent that the promise became null and void. The result was tragic. This legalistic perspective put the emphasis on the problem while overlooking the solution stated in the promise. For the Law relies on effort and exertion; but the promise relies on God and God alone. The flesh glories in works apart from faith; but living by the promise requires faith, and the kind of faith that keeps the promise always produces works that affirm the covenant.
Let’s look at the text again. First of all, the promise (or covenant) was made to Abraham and to his Seed (singular). This is a deal between God the Father and Abraham’s promised Seed; it’s a covenant with the heirs only secondarily. Notice in verse 16, “The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his Seed…” Paul goes on to tell us that the Seed is Jesus Christ.
Now let me state this very clearly. Here is an amazing truth that can transform the way you think about your salvation: the Abrahamic Covenant is essentially a promise between God the Father and Christ the Son. Abraham was an intermediate recipient of what is really an inter-Trinitarian promise. Look at the text: “The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his Seed.” The only way such a promise could fail is if God the Father somehow broke His promise to Christ the Son, or if Christ the Son somehow failed to accomplish the purpose for which He came to earth. Both of these are impossible. We enter this covenant by faith, but the promise to Abraham’s Seed stands forever, whether we stand in it or not.
The author of Hebrews, in Hebrews 6:16-20, puts it like this:
16 Men swear by someone greater than themselves, and the oath confirms what is said and puts an end to all argument. 17 Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised [to Abraham], he confirmed it with an oath. 18 God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged. 19 We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, 20 where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.
Look at this picture of assurance and be encouraged! The Bible says there is a chain, like an anchor chain that keeps us firm and secure in God’s promises. God the Father is holding one end of that chain, and the other end is held by… not Abraham, not you or me, but by Jesus Christ. Your salvation is as secure as the love that exists between the Father and the Son! Now, that’s assurance. Therefore, the law was not given because the promise was insufficient, but because transgressions had corrupted the heirs of promise. This is Paul’s first point in verses 15-16. And now he strengthens his claim with the next point in verses 17-18. He says…
“What I mean is this: The law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise. 18 For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on a promise; but God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise.” Paul’s point is this:
II. In a relationship with God, promise always supersedes law (17-18).
Can you imagine the terror that little Armand felt with his classmates during that earthquake in 1989? What if his father had given him a list of rules to follow if he ever had an emergency and felt trapped or scared? Would those rules have imparted hope to Armand and his classmates?
No, it was the promise of a father to his son that sustained them in the crisis. Rules tell people “If you do this, then this will be the result.” But a promise says, “I will do this regardless of what happens.” A law is a bilateral agreement that governs the behavior of a group of people; but a promise is a unilateral (and most often unconditional) agreement made by one party to another.
Some Christians think a passage like this has no application for Christians living today. In light of this passage, I want to ask you a question. At the end of your life, how would you know with assurance that you would go to heaven, if your destiny depended solely on your merits? What a horrible thought!
Yet even as we listen to these words this morning, there are countless thousands of men and women all over the world who are on their death beds right now (in hospitals, rest homes, hospice centers, bedrooms) in this precise state of fear and dread. They don’t know if they’ve balanced the ledger of their account before God. In fact, they’re quite sure they haven’t. They may have heard the Law, but they didn’t understand the claims of the promise… and they are wracked with immobilizing fear right now. Like the words from Old Man River, thousands of men and women are “tired of living, but they’re scared of dying…” They need to hear the truth that sets us free. This passage is so practical for us. It’s as practical as release from the fear of death and life with God. Nothing is more important than that.
The promise was given by God to deliver His people from this bondage. It delivers us from a slavish fear of death. It sets us free from a works-righteousness way of earning God’s favor. The promise says, “Jesus paid it all; all to Him I owe.” The promise sings with Augustus Toplady, “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling. Naked fly to Thee for dress, helpless come to Thee for rest; Filthy, vile, and lost am I—wash me Savior lest I die.”
We have this hope as an anchor for our souls! In a relationship with God, promise always supercedes law.
Note that Abraham did not make a covenant with God; God made a covenant with Abraham! God didn’t lay down any conditions for Abraham to meet. In fact, when the covenant was ratified Abraham was asleep! It was a covenant of grace: God made promises to Abraham; Abraham did not make any promises to God. It was all of grace that it might be all of God.
I want you to know that God has not left us to be stranded without hope in the “rubble of sin”. He knows exactly where we are… and He’s still seeking and saving the lost, redeeming our lives from the pit of sin and depravity. In Jesus Christ, you know the Father’s love and you have it. His promise sustains you when you feel trapped during the dark night of the soul; and when you encourage your fellow refugees of the fall, you give them hope as well. How we need the promises of God!
When I was a teenager, my grandfather would use me to help him with clerical matters: he would dictate letters for me to type, he would have me write out checks and send them to different people to disperse his money, and he would even have me write out certain legal documents related to his last will and testament. I remember on one than one occasion adding codicils to his will. I didn’t understand it, but I was following orders. He would tell me what to write and then check to make sure it was exactly as he wanted it. Then it would be attached to his will.
Since my grandfather was a widower for the last several years of his life, he had sole discretion over everything he owned and had the right to dispense with it as he chose. As long as he was alive, he could make amendments or changes to his will as he saw fit… and I was there to assist him. But when he died, everything in his will became final. At death, the transaction window is permanently closed. My grandfather was the only one who could have made changes and when he died that option was ended. The heirs of the estate could not alter the terms, they didn’t have that power until they assumed ownership of the goods to do with them as they pleased.
And so it is for those who will inherit the promises God made to Jesus through Abraham. No one, not even Moses himself, can alter any of the terms of the covenant made to Abraham. The only party who could alter the terms are the members of the Godhead; and they say it stands as written forever. You can’t lose your inheritance in Christ, you can’t do anything to earn it, and you can’t do anything to change the terms for which it was given. So, rejoice in glorious hope.
(c) Charles Kevin Grant
2003