Sermon Tone Analysis

The Law and the Promise

Argument: But surely, someone might argue, even if this were so, the later law would have annulled any such earlier ‘arrangements’ with Abraham.

Here is Paul, the ecclesiastical lawyer, at his best.

He swoops like a hawk at his possible or real opponent.

R. Alan Cole, Galatians: An Introduction and Commentary, vol.

9, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1989), 145.

If you live your life on the basis of spiritual pep pills that give an immediate emotional charge and specific practical guidance, then you will have a hard time with the next 30 minutes.

But if you live your life on the basis of an ever-deepening understanding of the ways of God in Scripture, you will relish Paul’s theology in these verses and seek to enlarge and (if necessary) correct the theological foundation of your life.

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?

15 To give a human example, brothers: even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified.

Questions:

Meaning: A last will and testament cannot be altered once it is set.

Saved by faith alone was set and continues to stand.

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.

16 Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring.

It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ.

Questions: why add this? how does it relate?

Meaning: the promise of saved by faith alone was made to Adam and Christ?

See: Genesis 13:15 “for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever.”

Gen 17:8 “And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.””

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.

ESV SB - Paul knows that the singular can be used as a collective singular that has a plural sense.

But it also can have a singular meaning, and here Paul, knowing that only in Christ would the promised blessings come to the Gentiles, sees that the most true and ultimate fulfillment of these OT promises come to one “offspring,” namely, Christ.

17 This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void.

Meaning: law came later.

it doesn’t change God’s initial promise of saved by faith alone

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.

Keller - 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.

God: If I break this agreement, may I be cut up and cut off: I will deserve to die just like these animals did.

18 For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.

Meaning: salvation comes from the promise of saved by faith alone, not the law

See: Gal 2:21 “I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.”

Paul is saying similar thing in this verse.

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.

Transition: Paul’s argument is made.

Now he responds to possible arguments.

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.

Paraphrase:

‘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.’

Question 1: What’s the point of the law then?

19 Why then the law?

It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary.

Question: what does he mean by transgressions?

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