Galatians for Beginners. This is lesson number seven and title of this
lesson is, How Law and Faith Work Together. Actually, part 1. We won't be able
to do all of this section in one lesson, but we'll start it tonight. We're in
Galatians chapter three, if you want to follow along in your Bibles. So far
Paul has explained that the blessings of salvation are obtained through a system
of faith, not through a system of law. It is our association by faith with Christ
that enables us to share in His blessings. I'll give you a human example
of how this works: it's like marrying someone who is wealthy. You share in the
wealth by marriage, not by merit. That's the essence of the gospel. You
share in the blessings that Christ has, by faith, not by merit. And with Jesus
there's no prenup. No prenup. And baptism is a person's wedding ceremony, where he
or she is united to Christ. I mean, the example really works. You
marry into, you marry somebody who's wealthy, you love each other, everything
is wonderful. That's the one and it's a true love. It's not about the
money and all that kind of stuff, but you don't become - you don't marry
into that money until the wedding day. Until you sign the contract and you do
the "I Do's", you're not married. Same thing, baptism is a person's wedding
ceremony. Where that person is united to Christ and comes into all of the
blessings. All right, so last week we started discussing some of the blessings
that are obtained by faith and how to keep these blessings. Paul has
mentioned two so far. The blessing of righteousness,
this meaning right standing with God. That's a blessing. And the blessing of
the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. These two blessings are obtained, he says, by
faith, not by works of law and tradition as the Judaizers were teaching. Remember,
the Judaizers, these are the ones, these are the teachers causing the problem.
Paul also mentions that we maintain these, we obtain these blessings and we
maintain these blessings in the very same way that we obtained them. And
that's by faith. I obtain the blessings by faith, but I hang on to them by faith
as well. For example, I continue to be righteous before God because I continue
to believe in Jesus, not because I managed to get everything right after I
become a Christian. So in citing these two blessings, Paul speaks equally to both
Jews and Gentiles who could both relate to these things in exactly the same way.
Now in chapter three, verse 6 he mentions another blessing received by faith that
his Jewish readers would identify more with than his gentile readers, and that
is, the promise of Abraham. This is a third blessing received exclusively
through faith in Christ. You see how the Jews would kind of understand, whoa ,wait
a minute, the blessings of Abraham. We get the Gentiles not so much unless
they were familiar with the Jewish religion, but the Jews, this was news,
not news to them, but this was familiar to them. So in verses six to 29,
chapter three, Paul not only explains that the promise of Abraham comes
through faith in Christ, but that this promise also comes to the Gentiles in
the same way. Before getting into the text, let's first review what exactly was
the promise of Abraham that Paul is referring to. The promise - now
that the promise was made to Abraham and said that he would receive, what
would he receive? Well the promise to Abraham was that he would receive
protection from God, from his enemies. He would receive a great nation descended
from him, there would be a land that would belong to him and
his descendants, and he would have blessings for himself and all
the nations would be blessed through him. That was the promise to
Abraham. Now with time, these promises were summarized by the Jews as being the
assurance that they were God's special children and that their land would
always be theirs and always be protected by God. Now I want you to hang on to that
idea, because that false notion that they had, drove them to do a lot of
things. They thought that the promise to Abraham meant that they, as his
descendants, were going to be the special people all the time and that they will
always have their land. To this day, to this day, they think that. So Paul is
going to explain in this passage, however, that the true essence of the promise was
that Abraham and his descendants were being blessed and preserved so that
through them Jesus would ultimately come, and when He did, all of the spiritual
blessings promised, would be given to Jesus. He was going to be the recipient
of the blessings. once Christ had obtained all of the blessings, then
everyone could have access to them, through a system of faith. This was God's
plan in distributing the spiritual blessings of heaven as promised to
Abraham. Now in verse six and seven, we read the
following, he says, "Even so, Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him
as righteousness, therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith, who are
sons of Abraham." So Paul begins by demonstrating that the faith system has
always been the principle by which God operated. I hear people sometimes say,
well, in the Old Testament, people were saved by the law, and then
the New Testament we're saved by faith. No. Absolutely not. People received blessings,
salvation, always through a system of faith, always. Old Testament - that's how
God has dealt with man always. Even with Abraham, God imparted righteousness. Why?
Based on his faith. He was not inventing something new. Paul, here. Paul was not
inventing like a new doctrine. The gospel was not inventing a new system, it was
merely fulfilling the system which had always been in place, but had not yet
been fulfilled. Big difference. So sons of Abraham were all of those who arrived at
righteousness in the same way that Abraham arrived at righteousness. And how
was that? Through a system of faith. That's how you became a son of Abraham.
A thing that the Jews missed, that Paul talks about in Romans 9:10 and 11.
Verses eight and nine, "The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith,
preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, "All the nations will be blessed
in you." So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer." So
the heart of the gospel message, the good news, is not that Jesus is Lord, I mean
that's a good thing, but that's not the good news. The good news is that
through Jesus the Lord, salvation is offered to man
based on faith. Otherwise man could not obtain it. That's the good news. Paul says
that God knew that this universal message would one day be preached and
began by preaching it to Abraham, long before there was a distinction between
Jew and Gentile. That's his point. Salvation by faith, obtaining
righteousness by faith, this existed long before there was a difference between
Jews and Gentiles. So as the first one to hear and believe the message, this is how
Abraham would, himself, be blessed with righteousness. This is how Abraham would
be the spiritual father of all those who would respond the same way. How? By faith.
Abraham's descendants were not just cultural Jews, they would be the people
who would be justified by faith. Ultimately, all nations would be blessed
because the Lord would obtain salvation and would offer it to everyone through
faith, just like He offered it to Abraham through faith. So Paul, he
brushes aside the Judaizers and their argument of the necessity of
becoming a Jew first, by saying that only through his gospel could one truly
become a son of Abraham, a real Jew. I mean, the counter argument that he
makes is brilliant. These Judaizers are saying, you need to become a Jew first if
you want to be a Christian. If you want to be acceptable to God. And if
you're going to be a Jew first, you've got to be circumcised. And Paul comes
back to them and says, the real Jews are the ones who believe God. They're the
true sons of Abraham. There's your answer.
Now Paul, continuing, confronts, or rather, contrasts the system of salvation by law
keeping. Verse 10, he says, "For as many as are of the works of the Law are under a
curse; for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all
things written in the book of the law, to perform them." So what is he doing here?
Basically in this, he's comparing. He said, this is the system of faith, this is how
it works: faith unto righteousness, this is how Abraham became righteous. This is
how you become a son of Abraham, through righteousness. Now he switches
gears. He says, okay let's take a look at the law, let's see what it does. And
so he says, the law was given for what purpose? To reveal sin and to condemn
sinners. So anybody trying to justify themselves through law keeping had to
perform perfectly, there was no grace. Any failure led to condemnation. There's no
grace in law, none whatsoever. You know that. If you get caught - you're
in a 30 zone and you forget where you are, and you zip
through at 50 miles an hour, there's no grace. But officer, I was going
to be late for my doctor's appointment. What does the sign say, sir? 30 miles
an hour. How fast were you going, sir? 52. Case closed. There's no grace in law.
There's no grace in law. Verses 11 and 12, "Now that no one is
justified by the Law before God is evident; for, "The righteous man shall live
by faith." However, the Law is not of faith; on the contrary, "He who practices them
shall live by them." So Paul argues that scripture, itself, meaning the law and the
prophets, scripture itself teaches that righteousness comes through the faith
system, not the law keeping system. The gospel he preached did not violate Jewish
theology, that's his point. I'm not a false teacher, he's saying. I'm not
contradicting what the scriptures say. I'm not contradicting what Moses said or
what the prophets said, because all of them testified to the idea that faith,
that salvation, righteousness, blessings, they come through the faith
system, not through the law system. Verse 13, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of
the law, having become a curse for us - for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who
hangs on a tree." Now he's really talking to the Jews. See one of the obstacles to
the Jewish mindset was that the Savior was crucified. The way He died. His death
and especially the manner of it, did not fit the image of a glorious Savior that
they expected and also it seemed to violate the scripture concerning someone
who was executed. That was a real problem for a very sincere Jew. It was like, whoa, how
does this work. Because in Deuteronomy, and we're going to just flip over there,
we're going to read where this is written in Deuteronomy. This is part of
the law. This is the stumbling block that the Jews had, because they knew that in
the law it said the following, "If a man has committed a sin worthy of death and
he is put to death and you hang him on a tree, his corpse shall not hang all night
on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on the same day (for he who is hanged
is accursed of God), so that you do not defile your land which the Lord your God
gives you an inheritance." It's not the idea that it's a wooden tree, it's the
idea, if a man is executed, he's hung. What does that mean, well, he's a criminal,
he's a sinner, and he's been put to death. Capital punishment. He's like a bad guy.
And so the Lord that the Christians were raising up, how did He die? He died on a
tree, a cross, but he died as a what? As a criminal. He was condemned. He was
executed by the law of the land. So the Jews were having a hard time
with this, even the very sincere Jews. It's like, hey I want to believe, but
how do I get around this scripture? How does this work? So Paul explains
Christ's death is the price needed to be paid in order to release men from the
curse of the law. So let's digress a little bit more. What is the curse of the
law? Well, the curse of the law was that everyone's sins were revealed by the law
and thus all were condemned to death. That's the curse. Even with this
knowledge men were helpless to stop sinning or remove the punishment that
hung over them. That's the curse. The law didn't give you the power to stop or to
provide any way to appeal to God for mercy or forgiveness, that's the curse.
The law revealed your sins and then the law revealed what was going to happen to
you because of your sins, but it didn't give you the power to overcome your sins.
And it made no provision for grace to forgive your sins, that was the weakness
of the law. So Jesus comes along and he annuls the curse in three ways: one, he
lives a perfect life and thus fulfills all the requirements of the law once and
for all, and for all time, and for all men; two, he offers this life to pay the price
of death, the moral debt owed by all men on account of their sins, according to
the demands of the law; and three, he promises to give the spirit to all men
in order to give them the power to overcome sin and to overcome death.
The curse is eliminated. Paul explains Christ's death as the
curse that he bore. He doesn't say His death wasn't a curse, it's just that it's
a curse that he bore not for himself, but for us. Yes, He was crucified
on a tree. Yes, he was executed. Yes, it looked like he was a criminal.
But don't you realize, the curse wasn't on Him, the curse was on us.
And he took our curse on Himself. It was a shameful thing indeed to die on a
tree, as the scripture said, but Paul says that it was our shame and our deserved
curse that He innocently bore for us. Paul doesn't contradict the scripture, he
doesn't do like a lot of modern theologians and interpreters do,
they don't like that Scripture and they say, well, it doesn't really mean that.
The latest thing, the big gay rights
and we have gay theologians and the only way they explain away -
if the Bible says, if a man lies with another man, as he lies
with a woman, that's homosexuality, it's an abomination. Then you'll have
some apologists come along and say well, it doesn't really mean that.
Really? Or, whoever wrote that wasn't inspired. Really? Paul doesn't do that
here. He doesn't say, oh, it doesn't really mean that. No, he says, it really means
what it says, cursed is the man who is hung on a tree. The only difference is
that Jesus was bearing our curse, not His curse. Ah, the light comes on. This
is the idea of atonement. So as I say, he doesn't contradict the scripture, he
explains it in relationship to Christ's work on the cross in order to help the
Jews see the cross as a shameful thing, indeed, but it was our shame that He
bore, not His own. And as I say, that's the whole idea of atonement - vicarious
atonement. Someone else pays the price for what we did. Alright, verse 14, he says,
"In order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the
Gentiles, so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith."
He kind of brings back the idea of the Gentiles here, once the curse had been
removed, everybody now could be blessed. The Jews had access to righteousness,
because the law that condemned them had been fulfilled. The Gentiles had access
to righteousness because the law that had limited them, was now removed. So both
Jew and Gentile had access to all the blessings, including the blessing of the
Holy Spirit, how? Through the faith system. A system that both of them could equally
access. Verse 15, "Brethren, I speak in terms of human relations: even though it
is only a man's covenant, yet when it has been ratified, no one sets it aside or
adds conditions to it." After establishing the idea that salvation,
through a system of faith, has always been God's way of dealing with man, Paul
begins a new thought, in verse 15. He explains a principle of law familiar to
both Jews and Gentiles. He says that when a covenant, a covenant is a testament, a
will, okay? He says, when a covenant is made and ratified, you can't undo it, you
can't change it. Once you make the will and everybody signed, you can't
change that. You can't do this with man-made laws, let alone God's laws. His
point is, boy if you can't undo a man's testament, that two men make or family make,
imagine if you try to undo God's Testament. In verse 16 he continues
and he says, "Now the promises were spoken to
Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, "And to seeds," as referring to many, but rather
to one, "and to your seed," that is, Christ."
In this verse Paul makes his point. The promise, the covenant, was made by God
with Abraham. This covenant was established. The essence of the promise
was that the seed of Abraham would receive the promised blessings, Genesis 22:18.
In this passage, here, Paul explains that the seed
of Abraham was Jesus, not the Jews. The Jews were under the impression that they
were the seed. They were the inheritors of the promises. They were God's people
and God was guaranteeing that their land would always be their land, forever.
But they misunderstood, as Paul explains, Genesis doesn't say "seeds" - plural. It
says "seed" - one. Not many, not many are going to get it, one inherits. So the essence
of the promise was that the seed of Abraham would receive the promised
blessings and he explains, as I said, that the seed of Abraham is Jesus Christ. The
blessings were not intended for the Jews alone, as a special nation, but rather for
Jesus Christ who would come out of this nation. The role of the Jews was to
provide a cultural stage. I call it a stage. A cultural, social,
historical stage, upon which Jesus would enter. As I've said before, He had
to be something. God was going to become man. What was he going to be? A Hittite?
A Canaanite? a Jebusite? What was He going to be? God says, He's not
going to be one of the existing nations. I will create a nation
just for Him. So He picks one guy, Abraham. And out of Abraham and his descendants,
he creates this nation, with their laws, and their culture, and their worship;
that God has prepared for them. Their land, temple, everything is there.
When God comes as man, what does He do? He puts on the cloak of Judaism, that's who
He is, a Jew. A special nation made just for Him. The terrible thing is the
special nation made just for Him, ends up rejecting Him. That's the terribleness of
the sin. So in verse 17 he says, "What I am saying is this: the Law, which came four hundred and thirty years later,"
after Abraham, "does not invalidate a covenant previously
ratified by God." In other words, when Moses comes along and brings the law, and
all of that, that doesn't eliminate the covenant that God made with Abraham.
It doesn't take that away, which may have been one of the arguments of
the Judaizers. See what I'm saying? Four centuries after Abraham, Moses led the
people out of Egypt and God gave Moses the law, it says here, which came 430
years later, does not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by God.
"so as to nullify the promise." The Ten Commandments, and the temple worship, and
all of that, that does not nullify the promise that God made to Abraham. Christ
was still to be the recipient of the blessings. And the faith system, the
manner in which all would have access to them, the law did not change this. Verse
18, "For if the inheritance is based on law, it is no longer based on a promise;
but God has granted it to Abraham by means of a promise." The blessings
were promised and received by faith, but if this system is changed and now they
are obtained by law keeping, two things are going to happen: one, you have
added and changed God's original covenant with Abraham. You're not allowed
to do that. The original covenant is: the blessings are promised to the seed and
they are obtained through faith. You can't change that to now the blessings
come through the law. You can't do that, he says. And they are no longer gifts
based on a promise, now they're going to be earned. You're going to earn them.
Verse 19, "Why the law then?" A normal question. Why do we go
through all of this, the law, the sacrificial system, the priesthood, the
temple. Why - a quadrillion sheep have been killed - beef, come on. Why the law?
He says, "It was added because of transgressions, having been ordained
through angels by the agency of a mediator, until the seed would come to whom the
promise had been made." So Paul answers the natural question that might be posed
to him at this juncture, then why was the law given to the Jews? And he explains
that God gave it through the Angels by a mediator. The mediator was Moses. And He
gave the law for several reasons: first of all, because of transgressions, meaning,
He gave it so the law could reveal sin; show men that they're sinners. To reveal
transgressions, to reveal sin, also to mitigate against evil. Why did
Moses say to people, well, if you give her a decree of divorce, if you divorce your wife,
give her a divorce decree. Well, why did he make that
rule? He made that rule because men were simply abandoning their
wives. They were simply throwing them away. And once these women were put
out, they had nothing. They had no legal status. They couldn't be married, nothing.
They were homeless, destitute. So Moses adds something to the law
and says, if you're going to divorce your wife, you have to give her a certificate
of divorce. This, at least, gives her some legal status. She can then be married to
another person. She can't be taken back by that husband. So he
wasn't solving the problem of adultery, he was simply trying to mitigate the
impact of adultery on that society, using the law. I just give that one example, but
that's another reason for the law. People drive their cars too fast, so we have to
post up - would we need to have speed signs everywhere if everybody
drove kind of slowly? Well, no. Why do we have speed signs? Because without speed
signs, we go as fast as we can go. Without stop signs, we'd just barrel through
those four-way things, we'd take a look, real quick, and zip on through.
It doesn't make us better drivers, these laws mitigate the evil. And also,
the law was given to reveal the condemnation because of transgression.
That's why it was given. This is what's going to happen to you, because you break
God's law. Another reason, two, another reason why the law was given, to
prepare for Jesus, the seed. The law revealed God's way of dealing with sin.
How? Through atonement. What did the sacrificial system teach, if it taught
anything? Well, it taught the system of atonement. An innocent, innocent is really
not the word, there's no such thing as guilty or innocent when it comes to an
animal, but a life, it's a living thing, a life was substituted for another
individual. So through atonement and the sacrificial system the Jews were taught
how God dealt with sin. And they also learned that atonement requires death.
In verse 20 he says, "Now a mediator is not for one party only; whereas God is
only one." In other words, the law didn't replace the promise, it didn't change the
promise in any way, and the way it was given demonstrates this: the promise was
given directly by God to Abraham, one on one, as a covenant is done. The law was
given to the people from the mediator, Moses, who received it from God amid
thousands of angels. The law was not an addition to, or a limitation of the
promise, but a divinely appointed, temporary measure, whose purpose was
served when Jesus came. The law was temporary, that's his point. Verse 21 and
22, finish up here, he says, "Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? May
it never be! For if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then
righteousness would indeed have been based on law. But the scripture has shut
up everyone under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might
be given to those who believe." Even though the law doesn't change the
original promise to Abraham, and it doesn't cancel that promise, Paul is
quick to add that it doesn't contradict the promise and it doesn't work against
the promise. It works with the promise. Paul merely points out what it was not
meant to do, and that was to make men righteous. The law was never given to
make men righteous. Why? Because the law cannot make you want to be good, it can
make you try to be good in order to avoid punishment,
but it can't make you want to be good. Only the grace of God makes you want to
be good. So the law was brought in to prepare men to understand their own
sinfulness and how God was going to deal with that sinfulness through
Christ, and then offer righteousness through a system of faith, as originally
promised through Abraham. You had the promised Abraham, you had the law given,
to prepare people until the seed arrived, and then the promise to Abraham would be
fulfilled through the seed, through Jesus Christ. Let me just do this first,
the promise, then the law to prepare men for the promise, then the fulfillment
which is Christ. All right, gonna stop there. Again, the section is too long
to do in one shot. Next time we're going to see Paul explain how both of these
systems, law and faith, how they work together to bring us to Christ and to
salvation. We're going to stop right there for this time. Thank you very much.