The Law and The Promise

Introduction

Galatians Recap

*Galatians were distorting the true Gospel of Christ (we learn who we are seeking to please by who we are seeking to appease). Paul is not preaching mans gospel but what has been revealed to him by God. Paul recounts how violently he persecuted the Church (don’t be robbed by your reason for freedom.) Paul tells us he has been crucified with Christ. (He now has a new identity, a transfer of old habits in his life for new ones.) Faith is never something you leave behind. Your faith is being perfected by the same faith you had the day you believed, we must return daily to the foot of the cross.

*The Gospel preached by Paul is not man’s gospel by revelation of God

*Paul tells us he has been crucified with Christ. (He has a new identity, a transfer of habits in his life.

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*Paul tells us he has been crucified with Christ. (He has a new identity, a transfer of habits in his life.

*Last week we learned that faith is never something that you leave behind. We hear with faith and are being perfected by that same faith day after day as we return to the foot of the Cross of Christ.

Christ Transcends the Law of Moses

I often compare the role of the law in history to the role typewriters have played in the development of word processing. The technology and idea of a typewriter was eventually developed into an electronic, faster, and far more complex computer that does word processing. But when typing on a computer, we realize that we are still using the old manual typewriter's technology. Further, we realize that the computer far transcends the typewriter. Everything that a typewriter wanted to be when it was a little boy (and more!) is now found in the computer. This compares to the law. Everything the law wanted to be when it was young (as revealed to Moses) is found now in Christ and in the life of the Spirit. Thus, when a Christian lives in the Spirit and under Christ, that Christian is not living contrary to the law, but is living in transcendence of the law. It is for this very reason that life lived primarily under the law is wrong.

When the computer age arrived, we put away our manual typewriters because they belonged to the former era. Paul's critique of the Judaizers is that they are typing on manual typewriters after computers are on the desk! He calls them to put the manual typewriters away. But in putting them away, we do not destroy them. We fulfill them by typing on the computers. Every maneuver on a computer is the final hope of the manual typewriter. "Now that faith/Christ has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law" but not because the law is contrary to the promises; rather, it is because the law is fulfilled in Christ and the Spirit in a manner similar to the way a typewriter is fulfilled in the technology of a computer. And I am profoundly thankful for both!

BIG IDEA: You must go to Moses to be condemned before you can come to Christ and call him friend.

1. Even when you are not faithful God is always faithful

1. The promise reminds us of Gods unchanging trustworthiness.

Galatians 3:15-18

We live in a culture today where promises seem flimsy at best, we have been promised anything and everything only to be let down and deceived.

Are you all in on the Promises of God?

The passage we read today mentions the promises of God 8 times.

v.16 “Now the promises were made to Abraham and his offspring. it does not say, And to offsprings.”

Paul gives a human comparison between a manmade covenant and the covenant God made with Abraham.

Every moment of every day is an opportunity to declare our abiding faith in God and his promises. Each day is filled with any number of tough choices that we have to make that demonstrate if we are believing God or not. Sin is, at its core, exchanging the truth of God for a lie (). This is another way of saying disbelieving God’s promises and believing a lie. Are you all in on God’s promises?

Romans 1:25

25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator,

1.

a. He is absolutely trustworthy

He is absolutely trustworthy

“God is not man, that He should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has He said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it.

“In hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began.”

The dispute in Galatian (and it is still a dispute today) was over the basic matter of how sinners come to be accepted by God as righteous. According to this passage, the question was settled a long time ago before the law even existed. But how do I know that this is the only way to be acceptable before God?

Genesis 15:7-21

When Abram asks God: “How can I know that I will gain possession” of the promised blessing (v 8), God tells him to get a cow, a goat, a ram, a dove and a pigeon. Abram knows what to do with them—he “cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other” (v 10). This seems strange to us, but in Abram’s day this was the way a covenant was “signed”. Each covenant-maker would pass between the halves of the animals. It was a (very!) graphic way of those entering a covenant saying: If I break this agreement, may I be cut up and cut off: I will deserve to die just like these animals did.

What’s astonishing in the covenant between God and Abram is that Abram never walks between the halves! “Abram fell into a deep sleep” (v 12). The only thing that passes through is “a smoking firepot with a blazing torch [which] appeared and passed between the pieces” (v 17). What is this strange fire? It’s God—“on that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram” (v 18).

The promise by God to Abram is a covenantal promise. And it is a covenant that relies in no way on Abraham and his ability or power, it was initiated by God, for God, and through God.

God’s trustworthiness is in no way contingent on you, just as it was not contingent on Abraham even if he had been awake during the whole process.

Paul gives the illustration of a man-made covenant, that no one can add to it once it has been sealed or ratified.

Notice Paul points out that the promise was made to Abraham’s offspring which is Christ.

The saying is trustworthy, for:    if we have died with him, we will also live with him;    if we endure, we will also reign with him;    if we deny him, he also will deny us;    if we are faithless, he remains faithful — for he cannot deny himself. ()

*if we have died with him (identified with Christs death, burial and resurrection )

*If we endure we will reign (don’t walk away from Jesus to avoid suffering)

*If we deny Him, he will deny you (if you bail on Jesus, he will renounce you on the last day. I don’t even know you. You weren’t mine. You weren’t ever mine.”)

*If we are faithless, he remains faithful

(God supremely values his trustworthiness. If you blackball his trustworthiness by saying, “I’m not going to trust him anymore. I’m going to trust money. I’m going a new way. I’m done with that stuff, that old Christian stuff,” if you stay there, he’s faithful to the worth of his name, to the worth of his trustworthiness. And the way God vindicates his trustworthiness to those who will not have it is called hell.

He has the power to fulfill His promises

“so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

21” fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.”

“so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

21” fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.”

He is forever Unchanging

6 “For I the Lord do not change;

17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 18 Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

THE IMMUTABILITY OF GOD - "God is unchanging in his character, will, and covenant promises." God's immutability defines all God's other attributes: God is immutably wise, merciful, good, and gracious.

*It’s common for believers to begin their Christian walk by looking beyond themselves at “Christ...clearly...crucified” (v.1), relying on God’s promise that Christ has taken our curse and given us His blessing. But, as we go on, it becomes increasingly tempting, and easy, to look withing ourselves at our own “human effort”.

When we do this we become radically insecure - it cuts away our assurance, and moves us to despair or pride. So when we do mess up and fall into sin our default reaction is to do enough things that look Godly or religious to sooth our own conscience.

The rub with this way of thinking is the reality that there is no shadow of variation or change in God. His promises are unchanging just as He is unchanging.

Notice in vs. 17 Paul mentions that 430 years between the promise with Abraham does not mean that God all the sudden changed His mind and say’s, “hey you know that whole covenant I made with Abraham about blessing the nations through him, I decided to do it another way.”

ILLUSTRATION

Charles Spurgeon

All creatures change. Man, especially as to his body, is always undergoing revolution. Very probably there is not a single particle in my body which was in it a few years ago. This frame has been worn away by activity, its atoms have been removed by friction, fresh particles of matter have in the mean time constantly accrued to my body, and so it has been replenished; but its substance is altered.

The fabric of which this world is made is ever passing away; like a stream of water, drops are running away and others are following after, keeping the river still full, but always changing in its elements.

But God is perpetually the same. He is not composed of any substance or material, but is spirit—pure, essential, and ethereal spirit—and therefore he is immutable. He remains everlastingly the same. There are no furrows on his eternal brow. No age hath palsied him; no years have marked him with the mementos of their flight; he sees ages pass, but with him it is ever now. He is the great I AM—the Great Unchangeable.

2. The promise reminds us of our past incarceration

vs. 19-22

The Message of Galatians b. A Truth about Man

After God gave the promise to Abraham, He gave the law to Moses. Why? Simply because He had to make things worse before He could make them better. The law exposed sin, provoked sin, condemned sin. The purpose of the law was, as it were, to lift the lid off man’s respectability and disclose what he is really like underneath—sinful, rebellious, guilty, under the judgment of God, and helpless to save himself.

One of the greatest faults of the contemporary church today is to soft pedal sin and judgement.

‘What, then, was the purpose of the law?’ (v. 19). The remarkable answer is this: ‘It was added because of transgressions.’

Transgressions: sins. Literally, the word means “stepped across a line”.

We are all by nature law breakers; and to prove to us that we cannot be the solution, since we are unable to be perfect law - keepers.

Paul’s words in may very well explain his language here in

“Now the law came to increase the trespasses, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.”

The law was added not to restrain sin but so that it might be increased. By multiplying the regulations that were to govern peoples behaviors before God, it began to increase the peoples scope transgressions. The very fact that the law forbid certain things prompted people to go ahead and do them anyway.

ILLUSTRATION

If you forbid or tell a child he or she cannot do something what are the most likely going to do? Right the very thing you told them not to do.

The law is like a mirror that shows us the extent of our sin.

There are times when Paul boldly says that the function of law is to teach us the moral bankruptcy of fallen humanity. He does not mean that the law makes us sinners, but that it shows us to be sinners.

20. Having admitted the mediatorial work of Moses, Paul seems to be here claiming that this is a weakness, rather than a strength, of the law. His thought seems to be that, in his promise, God has dealt directly with Abraham and so with all mankind.

God’s promises are fulfilled in Jesus Christ

“ 18 As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been Yes and No. 19 For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. 20 For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. 21 And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, 22 and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.

Intermediary: A person who acts as a link between people in order to try to bring about an agreement or reconciliation ; and a go between.

v22 The whole world is a prisoner to sin. Literally Paul is saying in Greek that “Scripture imprisoned all the world to sin”

This is not a function of Scripture that we tend to focus on! Paul is probably remembering his own experience just prior to conversion.

() “What shall we say then, that the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin......v9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.

Paul realized that he was not simply a sinner, but a prisoner of sin, helpless to free or cure himself. This is the purpose of the law. It shows us that we don not merely “fall short” of God’s will, requiring some extra effort on our part to do better, but that we are completely under sin’s power, requiring a rescue.

The Message of Galatians Question 2. ‘Is the Law Then against the Promises of God?’ (Verses 21, 22)

Verse 22: The scripture consigned all things to sin, for the Old Testament plainly declares the universality of human sin, e.g. ‘there is none that does good, no, not one’ (Ps. 14:3). And Scripture holds every sinner in prison for his sins, in order that what was promised to faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

The law does it’s work: when it leads us toward recognizing our need for salvation-by-grace.

John Scott -

The Message of Galatians b. A Truth about Man

Not until the law has bruised and smitten us will we admit our need of the gospel to bind up our wounds. Not until the law has arrested and imprisoned us will we pine for Christ to set us free. Not until the law has condemned and killed us will we call upon Christ for justification and life. Not until the law has driven us to despair of ourselves will we ever believe in Jesus. Not until the law has humbled us even to hell will we turn to the gospel to raise us to heaven.

b. Jesus brings superior promises through a New Covenant

Jesus brings a superior promise through a New Covenant

6 But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. 7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.

8 For he finds fault with them when he says:“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,

(*Jesus mediates a covenant of inner transformation, willing obedience, and intimate relationship with God through the forgiveness of sins.)

vs. 19 “Until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made.”

ILLUSTRATION

One of the great things about being a new parent when Christmas comes around is picking out the perfect gift that will make his or her eyes pop out of their head. You spend time scheming and working toward the big day. You place the package underneath the tree and wait for the big day.

He rips open the gift like a little boy would … and, actually got out this toy and began to play with it. You have a feeling of such victory. You go on about the day of Celebration and come back to the scene of the great joy not long afterward and you find your little one sitting in the box. You are certainly thinking at this point you could have just wrapped them an empty box and saved the money.

If you're one of God's children, you have been given the most awesome gift that could ever be given. It's gorgeous from every perspective. It's a gift of such grandeur that it's hard to wrap human vocabulary around it and explain it. It's beautiful from every vista …. It's the gift that every human being needs. It's a gift that in all of your work and all of your effort and all of your achievement you couldn't have ever earned; you could have never deserved; you could have never achieved. It is absolutely without question the gift of gifts. It's the gift of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, [but] I am deeply persuaded in the face of this gift, there are many Christians who are content to play with the box.

Jesus brings a superior Promise through a NEW COVENANT

For those who believe the promise and accept the gift.

3. The promise remind us of what we do not have in the Law.

vs. 24-29

Paul uses two metaphors to show us the way that the law works in a Christians life.

PURPOSE OF THE LAW

First, the law is a prison vs. 23

Galatians for You Pointing to the Promise

“Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed” (v 23). The Greek words for “held prisoners” and “locked up” mean to be protected by military guards.

a) a sense of bondage

b) an impersonal relationship with the divine, motivated by a desire for rewards and a fear of punishment.

c) anxiety about one’s sanding with God.

The Laws true purpose is instructive. It points beyond itself, just as the tutor seeks to prepare the children for lives as adults, as free people.

a) a life time of confinement, but of freedom.

b) not an impersonal, but a personal relationship with God

c) not immaturity, but maturity of character.

The O.T. demands that people “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might, and that we must be “people who have my law in your hearts.” () So if we are really listening to it continually emphasizing that we need righteousness, a power, a love for God that is beyond ourselves and beyond the law.

Many Christians claim that when they first became aware of their need for God, they went through a time of immaturity in which they became extremely religious. They diligently sought to mend their ways and do religious things. They made tearful “surrenders” to God at church services. They “gave their lives to jesus” and “asked Him into their hearts”. But most of the time they were only promising or resolving to be very good and very religious, hoping that this would lead to the favor and blessing of God. At this stage they tended to have allot of emotional ups and downs(like moody children), feeling good when they made a spiritual commitment and distant when they failed to keep a promise to God. They felt a great deal of anxiety.

ILLUSTRATION

Is it the design of child raising that when a child grows to maturity he or she then casts off all the values of the parent or guardian and lives a totally different way?

No, if all goes well, the adult child is no longer coerced into obedience as before, but now has internalized the basic values, and lives in a similar manner because he or she wants to.

So Paul is not saying that we just trash the law and no longer have any relationship with it, but that we no longer view it as a system of salvation. It no longer forces obedience through coercion and fear.

Second, the law is a guardian. (guard) vs.24

Guardian: a person who looks after or is legally responsible for someone who is unable to manage their own affairs, a protector.

v.23 The Greek words for “held prisoners” and “locked up” mean to be protected by military guards.

v24 became our guardian The padagogue was a slave who was employed by the father to take his boy to school and bring him home again. He often also was permitted to whip the boy if he did not learn his lessons well. The law whipped us to Christ and taught us that we could not be saved except by Christ. The law acts as a pedagogue by teaching us our obligations to God, by showing us our sinfulness, by sweeping away all our excuses.

ILLUSTRATION

The law takes away our Excuses

Did you ever know a boy or a girl without excuses? I never did.

We all make excuses readily enough. We say to the law we have not done exactly as we should, but then think of our poor human nature! The law then says, “This is what God commands, and if you do not obey, you will have to be cast away from His presence.”

A man will say, “Well, I know I got drunk last night, but that is merely gratifying an instinct of human nature.” Suppose that this drunk when he gets sober falls into the hands of a thief who robs him blind and beats him to a pulp. The Police catch up with the man who committed the robbery. What if the thief claims it was human nature that made him commit the brutal robbery? Would the drunk man not say well get human nature to lock him up and throw away the key.

The man does not recognize soft speech about human nature when anyone does wrong to him, and he knows in his own soul that there is not valid defense in such a plea when he does wrong to God.

Second, the law is a tutor. (supervisor)

In the homes of Paul’s day, the tutor or guardian was usually a slave who supervised the children on the parents’ behalf. We will see this metaphor again in chapter 4.

In both cases, the guard and the tutor remove our freedom. In both cases, the relationship with the “law” is not intimate or personal; it is based on rewards and punishments.

Paul describes all non-gospel-based religion as being characterized by:

1) A sense of bondage

We have a New Relationship

2) and impersonal relationship with the divine, motivated by a desire for rewards and a fear of punishment.

3) anxiety about one’s standing with God.

24 Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith. NAMSB

1) a life not of confinement, but of freedom

2) not impersonal, but personal relationship with God.

3) not immaturity, but maturity of character

1) New Relationship with God the Father: “For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.”

In his letter to the Ephesians Paul speaks about how God ‘In love … predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will’ (). God has purposed to make sinners his sons! When we come to faith in Christ that purpose is brought to fruition. We are not only justified, we are also adopted into God’s family and have the privilege of being God’s children.

“For all who are led by the Spirit to God are sons of God.”

The spirit leads us to saving faith and our inheritance.”

The heart of the Christian life is 3:26: “You are all sons of God”. We already are sons. It is not something we are aiming at; it is not a future attainment. It is something that we have already, in our present state.

Sonship is not universally given. We are not “children of God” in some general way, but virtue of having been created by Him. All human beings are His offspring because all humans have been made in His image. Sonship comes through faith in Christ. It is through faith that God adopts us.

2) New Relationship with Christ: it is Christ who is the object of our faith. (v.26), and that faith brings us into the closest connection with him.

Many Christians claim that when they first became aware of their need for God, they went through a time of immaturity in which they became extremely religious. They diligently sought to mend their ways and do religious things. They made tearful “surrenders” to God at church services. They “gave their lives to jesus” and “asked Him into their hearts”. But most of the time they were only promising or resolving to be very good and very religious, hoping that this would lead to the favor and blessing of God. At this stage they tended to have allot of emotional ups and downs(like moody children), feeling good when they made a spiritual commitment and distant when they failed to keep a promise to God. They felt a great deal of anxiety.

v.27 Baptized into Christ In baptism you professed to be dead to the world, and you were therefore buried into the name of Jesus. The meaning of the burial, if it had any right meaning to you, was that you professed yourself to be dead to everything but Christ and from here on out your life is to be in Him.

You have now put off legal robes and are now dressed in the garments of grace.

ILLUSTRATION

Is it the design of child raising that when a child grows to maturity he or she then casts off all the values of the parent or guardian and lives a totally different way?

We have New Clothes

No, if all goes well, the adult child is no longer coerced into obedience as before, but now has internalized the basic values, and lives in a similar manner because he or she wants to.

So Paul is not saying that we just trash the law and no longer have any relationship with it, but that we no longer view it as a system of salvation. It no longer forces obedience through coercion and fear.

Clothed in Christ

It so unites us to him that in a mysterious but real way we actually come to be ‘in’ him (v. 28). In the language of verse 27, we ‘clothe ourselves’ with Christ (more literally, ‘put on’ Christ)—an act and reality symbolized in Christian baptism.

The law ceases its office of pedagogue when it comes to be written on our hearts. School children have their lessons written on the black board or on a tablet where men and women have it written in their minds. . When the child becomes a man, his father and mother do not write down little rules for him, as they did when he was a child. He is trusted. He is trusted; and honored.

How does faith in Christ mean we are treated as God’s sons? Verse 27: through faith (the public sign of which is being “baptized into Christ”), Paul tells these believers they “have clothed yourselves with Christ”. This clothing image is a favorite metaphor of Paul’s.

We do not say of a sin, “I am afraid to do that because I would be lost if I did.”

1) Our primary identity: Our clothing tells people who we are. Nearly every kind of clothing is actually a uniform showing that we are identified with others of the same gender, social class or national group. But to say that Christ is our clothing is to say that our ultimate identity is found in Christ.

We do not say to a virtue, “ I must do that, or else I will not longer be a child of God”

2) The closeness of our relationships to Christ: Your clothes are kept closer to you than any other possession. You rely on them for shelter every moment. They go with you everywhere. So to say that Christ is our clothing is to call us to moment-by-moment dependence and awareness of Christ. We spiritually practice His presence.

No, we love to do it. We want to do it. The more of holiness, the better. The law that once was on the stony table of our heart, and there was broken, is now written on the fleshly tablets of a renewed heart.

3) The imitation of Christ: To practice the presence of Christ means we must continually think and act as if we were directly before the face of God. We exhibit his virtues and actions.

4) Our Acceptability to God: Clothing is worn as an adornment. It covers our nakedness; and God has been providing clothes which covers our shame since the fall. (,) to say that Christ is our clothing is to say that in God’s sight, we are loved because of Jesus’ work and salvation. When God looks at us, He sees us as His sons because he sees His Son. The Lord Jesus has given us His righteousness, His perfection, to wear.

is a comprehensive metaphor for a whole new life. It means to think of Christ constantly, to have His Spirit and His character infused and permeate everything you think, say, and do.

v. 28 The moment a man is born unto God, he enters that inner circle and becomes a member of a new family. Within that sacred circle of electing love, all bonds of nationality are done away with forever. There is no French, German, Russian, black or white. We are all one in Christ Jesus.

Christ Our Mediator

For a mediator to work, there must be a willingness on both sides to leave the matter in his hands. There must be a difference that they cannot remove, a difference that they wish to have removed, and a difference that they are willing to leave in his hands.

Are you ready to hand it over to Christ?

CLOSING

The Message of Galatians Conclusion

Having no knowledge of forgiveness, we are still, as it were, in custody, like prisoners in gaol or children under tutors. It is sad to be in prison and in the nursery when we could be grown up and free. But if we are ‘in Christ’, we have been set free. Our religion is characterized by ‘promise’ rather than by ‘law’. We know ourselves related to God, and to all God’s other children in space, time and eternity.

We cannot come to Christ to be justified until we have first been to Moses to be condemned. But once we have gone to Moses, and acknowledged our sin, guilt and condemnation, we must not stay there. We must let Moses send us to Christ.

Having no knowledge of forgiveness, we are still, in custody, like prisoners or children under tutors. It is sad to be in prison and in the nursery when we could be grown up and free.

But if we are ‘in Christ’, we have been set free. Our religion is characterized by ‘promise’ rather than by ‘law’. We know ourselves related to God, and to all God’s other children in space, time and eternity. We cannot come to Christ to be justified until we have first been to Moses to be condemned.

We cannot come to Christ to be justified until we have first been to Moses to be condemned.

But once we have gone to Moses, and acknowledged our sin, guilt and condemnation, we must not stay there. We must let Moses send us to Christ.

Are you ready to hand it all over to Christ. In Christ you have new clothes waiting for you unlike anything you have ever worn.

Revelation 7:9–10 ESV

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”