Covenant Freedom
Again, ‘unless the Gospel be plainly discerned from the law, the true Christian doctrine cannot be kept sound and uncorrupt.’ What is the difference between them? In the promise to Abraham God said, ‘I will … I will … I will …’. But in the law of Moses God said, ‘Thou shalt … thou shalt not …’.
The promise sets forth a religion of God—God’s plan, God’s grace, God’s initiative. But the law sets forth a religion of man—man’s duty, man’s works, man’s responsibility. The promise (standing for the grace of God) had only to be believed. But the law (standing for the works of men) had to be obeyed. God’s dealings with Abraham were in the category of ‘promise’, ‘grace’ and ‘faith’. But God’s dealings with Moses were in the category of ‘law’, ‘commandments’ and ‘works’.
We cannot set Abraham and Moses, the promise and the law, against each other, accepting the one and rejecting the other, tout simple. If God is the author of both, He must have had some purpose for both. What, then, is the relation between them?
In English, part of the play on words here is lost because ‘covenant’ and ‘will’ (in the sense of a document) are two different words. But the Greek word diathēkē can be used in the New Testament in both senses, as BAGD points out. Something of this ambiguity can be kept by consistently translating it as ‘last will and testament’,
If we follow the argument in Hebrews as normative to New Testament thought, then, to Paul, the will and testament of God would have been ratified to Abraham by the blood shed at the covenant sacrifice. A death has already taken place: henceforward, not even a codicil can be added to the will. It certainly cannot be set aside by the Torah given to Moses centuries later.
The point Paul is making is that the wishes and promises which are expressed in a will are unalterable. It is true that in Roman law, as in English law today, a man could change his will, either by making a new one or by adding codicils. For this reason Paul may be referring to ancient Greek law by which a will, once executed and ratified, could not be revoked or even modified. Or he may be saying that it cannot be altered or annulled by somebody else. It certainly cannot be altered by anybody after the testator has died. Whatever the precise legal background may be, it is an a fortiori argument, that if a man’s will cannot be set aside or added to, much more are the promises of God immutable.
Paul knows as well as any other Hebrew scholar that sperma, offspring, literally, ‘seed’, can have a collective sense even when in the singular. There would have been no need to use the plural form to cover the meaning ‘descendants’. Paul is saying, in typically Jewish fashion, that there is an appropriateness in the use of the singular form here, in that the true fulfilment came only in connection with one person, Christ. Here all must agree: and some at least will agree with Paul that such ‘appropriateness’ is not without the controlling guidance of the Holy Spirit. Later, Paul himself will use sperma, ‘offspring’, in its collective sense, to cover a multitude of descendants.
God’s purpose was not just to give the land of Canaan to the Jews, but to give salvation (a spiritual inheritance) to believers who are in Christ.
Such was God’s promise. It was free and unconditional. As we might say, there were ‘no strings attached’. There were no works to do, no laws to obey, no merit to establish, no conditions to fulfil. God simply said, ‘I will give you a seed. To your seed I will give the land, and in your seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed.’ His promise was like a will, freely giving the inheritance to a future generation. And like a human will, this divine promise is unalterable. It is still in force today, for it has never been rescinded. God does not make promises in order to break them. He has never annulled or modified His will.
But the round figure has no special importance in itself, except to show the lateness of the Torah as compared with Abraham’s covenant. Whether the Mosaic covenant is later than the Abrahamic covenant by one century or four, there is no contradicting the order in which they occurred.
But God gave it to Abraham by a promise (verse 18). Notice that He ‘gave’ it. The Greek word kecharistai emphasizes both that it is a free gift (a gift of charis, ‘grace’) and that it has been given for good (the perfect tense). God has not gone back on His promise. It is as binding as a man’s will; indeed, more so. So every sinner who trusts in Christ crucified for salvation, quite apart from any merit or good works, receives the blessing of eternal life and thus inherits the promise of God made to Abraham.
The Law Illumines the Promise of God and Makes It Indispensable
The function of the law was not to bestow salvation, however, but to convince men of their need of it.
All he needs to do here, in order to clear himself of false charges and also to show the consistency of God, is to demonstrate the place of the Torah in God’s plan of salvation.
‘Why then the law? It was added as a supplement because of sins—valid until the “posterity” arrived to whom the promise had been made in the will. Yes, it was negotiated through angels; yes, it was done through a middleman; but the very presence of a middleman implies more than one party, and our creed is that “God is one”. Does that mean that the law is directly opposed to the promises? An impossible thought. If the kind of law had been given which could give “life”, then it would have been true that right standing with God came from law. But the Scripture (i.e. the Torah) groups everything under the general heading of “sin”, so that the promise, attendant on faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe.’
Paul may mean ‘to restrain fallen human nature’. In that sense the law would have a temporary moral value, but it would be in a sense negative. Until Christ had come, humanity had neither the moral incentive nor the moral pattern that alone would make freedom from law something different from libertinism. The NEB, however, takes a stronger approach by paraphrasing ‘to make wrongdoing a legal offence’, which may well be correct. It would link with Paul’s words in verse 22, ‘consigned all things to sin’, and his own moral experience depicted in Romans 7:7–25. Indeed, 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.
It was ordained by angels. The later Jewish belief in the angelic mediation of the law of Moses, perhaps based on Exodus 23:20, is shown in Stephen’s speech (see Acts 7:53). Here Paul, like Stephen, is following strict Jewish orthodoxy. Like the author of the letter to the Hebrews, he will admit the claim before showing how such claims for the superiority of the law are transcended in Christ.
Through an intermediary (NIV, ‘a mediator’, is better). Paul is likewise prepared to accept this claim on behalf of Moses: this too was strict orthodoxy.
Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions. He elaborates this in his Epistle to the Romans: ‘through the law comes knowledge of sin’ (3:20); ‘where there is no law there is no transgression’ (4:15); and ‘if it had not been for the law, I should not have known sin’ (7:7). So the law’s main work was to expose sin
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. It is true that there is, in Christian thought, ‘one mediator between God and men’ (1 Tim. 2:5). But Christ is God as well as man, and so, in Christ, God is still dealing directly with humanity. In the theos heis estin, God is one, Paul is appealing to Israel’s age-old credal proclamation; no Jew would dare to dispute this for a moment.
He says that the law ‘was promulgated through angels, and there was an intermediary’ (verse 19b, NEB). The activity of angels in connection with the giving of the law is mentioned in Deuteronomy 33:2; Psalm 68:17; Acts 7:53 and Hebrews 2:2. The ‘intermediary’ is doubtless Moses. So when God gave the law He spoke through angels and through Moses. There were two intermediaries—in Lightfoot’s expression, ‘a double interposition, a twofold mediation, between the giver and the recipient’. But when God spoke the gospel to Abraham He did it direct, and that is probably the meaning of the phrase God is one (verse 20). We
We can sum it up in the words of Bishop Stephen Neill, ‘the promise came to Abraham first-hand from God; and the law comes to the people third-hand—God—the angels—Moses the mediator—the people’.
Question 2. ‘Is the law then against the promises of God?
He has proved that the law cannot annul the promise of God. But is law even in opposition to, or against the promises? Paul’s brief dismissal of the idea with the words mē genoito, certainly not, ‘may it never be so’, shows that such a thought to him comes near blasphemy, for it would imply an inner conflict within the mind of God.
Promise is from God; law is equally from God. It remains only to relate them in one coherent system. Clearly the purpose of the law was not to make alive, not to give that eschatological ‘life’ which is one of the many biblical words for ‘salvation’. If the Torah had been able to do that, then there might indeed have been some opposition between law and promise. But as it is, the function of the Torah was to bring to humanity a clearer knowledge of the character and demands of God which would, in its turn, bring a deeper consciousness of sin.
This second question is different from the first in that it seems to be addressed not to Paul by the Judaizers, but to the Judaizers by Paul. He is accusing them of doing just this, of making the law contradict the gospel, the promises of God. Their teaching was: ‘keep the law and you will gain life.’ And they thought they were being practical! Paul denies it. Their position was purely hypothetical: if a law had been given which could make alive, then righteousness would indeed be by the law (verse 21). But no such law has been given. Turning from hypothesis to reality, the fact is that nobody has ever kept the law of God. Instead, we sinners break it every day. Therefore, the law cannot justify us.
How, then, is it possible to create a harmony between the law and the promise? Only by seeing that men inherit the promise because they cannot keep the law, and that their inability to keep the law makes the promise all the more desirable, indeed indispensable.
But here Paul’s meaning is probably only ‘all people’, referring to sin’s universality, rather than ‘all things’ referring to its cosmic aspect.
But to Paul the purpose of classifying us all as ‘sinners’, and bringing us to see the justice of this classification, is solely so that we may be eligible for salvation. The righteous have no claim on Christ; it was to save sinners that he came (Matt. 9:12–13). Seen from this angle, even the condemnatory function of the law is all of grace; and this is what Paul has already insisted in the second half of verse 22. He will now expand his meaning in verses 23–26.
This could be expressed in the words of a well-known hymn: ‘God is working His purpose out as year succeeds to year.’ Some people seem to think of the Bible as a trackless jungle, full of contradictions, a tangled undergrowth of unrelated ideas. In fact, it is quite the opposite, for one of the chief glories of the Bible is its coherence. The whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation tells the story of God’s sovereign purpose of grace, His master-plan of salvation through Christ.
Here the apostle Paul, with a breadth of vision which leaves us far behind, brings together Abraham, Moses and Jesus Christ. In eight short verses he spans about 2,000 years. He surveys practically the whole Old Testament landscape. He presents it like a mountain range, whose highest peaks are Abraham and Moses, and whose Everest is Jesus Christ. He shows how God’s promise to Abraham was confirmed by Moses and fulfilled in Christ. He teaches the unity of the Bible, especially the Old and New Testaments.
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.
And the law must still be allowed to do its God-given duty today. One of the great faults of the contemporary church is the tendency to soft-pedal sin and judgment. Like false prophets we ‘heal the wound of God’s people lightly’ (Je. 6:14; 8:11). This is how Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it: ‘It is only when one submits to the law that one can speak of grace … I don’t think it is Christian to want to get to the New Testament too soon and too directly.’ We must never bypass the law and come straight to the gospel. To do so is to contradict the plan of God in biblical history.
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.
Galatians 3:15–18
I. The Permanence of the Promise (vv. 15, 16).
A. The human illustration (v. 15).
B. The historic application (v. 16).
II. The Priority of the Promise (v. 17).
III. The Preclusion of the Promise (v. 18).
The Purpose of the Law
Galatians 3:19–22
I. What Is the Law?
A. The law was not a part of the original covenant made with Abraham; it “was added.”
B. The law was a temporary arrangement—valid only “till the seed should come.”
C. The law “was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator.”
II. Is the Law Against the Promises of God?
A. The purpose of the law was not to give life.
B. The purpose of the law was to restrict the promise of salvation to those who believe.
IV. THE PERSON—vv. 15–18
1. Covenant—v. 15. God will always keep His Word.
2. Christ—v. 16. Promise to Abraham and Christ.
3. Confirmation—v. 17. This promise would come true.
4. Conversion—v. 18. Salvation not gained by works.
V. THE PARDON—vv. 19–22
1. Sin—v. 19. The Ten Commandments given later.
2. Saviour—v. 20. Christ is our “middle man.”
3. Scripture—vv. 21–22. All men are sinners.