Galatians 3:21-26

  • David Fairchild
  • Oct 1, 2006
  • Series: Galatians

Galatians 3:21-26 “Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. 22 But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. 23 Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. 24 So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. 25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, 26 for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.” 

INTRODUCTION 

These last several weeks we have been working through the book of Galatians, and specifically in the last six weeks we have been digging in to chapter 3.  If you haven’t noticed, chapter 3 is not an easy chapter to deal with if you’re giving it a cursory overview in your own personal studies.  It is a difficult and somewhat confusing chapter until you begin to see what Paul is getting at.  I feel that last week as we talked about Genesis 15 and looked at Paul’s example of Abraham and Moses, the promise and the law, we began to see the point of his argument and his desire to deal with this doctrinal issue which is a Gospel issue.  Again, we think of arguing over doctrine as a negative.  Not when it’s the Gospel.  Since we all argue over doctrine every day in our own heads, it’s something we’re accustomed to, but most of the issues we argue over internally are not life and death issues.  This is.   

We are continuing in chapter 3 this morning and we’re going to focus primarily on one verse and perhaps two if we have the time.  I want to do this because I want to take a broader perspective on what we’ve been discussing.  I want us to back out and see not only the point that Paul is making, but also that impact on how we see everything.  If you were at SDSU last Sunday evening, I apologize since I’ll be covering some of the same issues and points as I did last Sunday night.  But I do think this is really important for us to consider as we move forward. 

What we are talking about this morning is a Gospel worldview.  This statement seems pretty broad so let me explain what I mean when I say worldview. 

What is a worldview? 

If you’ve attended Kaleo for any length of time, you know that we like trees.  It’s the main flash element on our website.  It’s the graphic we use to describe many aspects of the Gospel and theology.  And, they are simply beautiful and in many ways symbolic of life.  I grew up in Port Orchard, Washington right next to a pretty heavily wooded area off of Jackson Avenue where I spent many of my days of youth climbing in trees, resting under their shade, and playing a form of paintball but with bb guns. This isn’t the only reason we like trees.  The Bible speaks of trees quite a bit and Paul talks of trees in Romans and says, "If the root is holy, so are the branches."

This is a simple idea, but true. A tree comes up from the roots. The place where the tree gets food, the system for all its life, growth, and the strength by which it stands is buried under ground where we can't see it. The same is true of people. All of our thoughts, ideals, actions and beliefs come from a fundamental system which feeds them.  We can think of worldviews in relation to trees. A worldview is the root, the beginning point, the source from which all the rest of a person's thoughts, actions, beliefs, loves, hates and feelings grow. But not the part you can see. It's the part buried under the dirt where you can't see, but if you dig deep enough you can find them.

What drives us to act the way we act and do the things we do, to decide what is wrong and what is right, what is good and what is bad? It is the most basic ideas and beliefs we have about people and life. "Where did I come from?" "Where am I?" "Where am I going?" "What is the problem with the world?" "How do we fix it?” The ways in which we answer these questions are the roots of our thoughts and actions.

Our worldviews come from many places. Some parts are specifically taught to us and some of them we have soaked up or passively assumed from our society.  Many of us have picked up our worldview much as a dog picks up fleas.  Others of us have formulated ways for ourselves through our own experience—whether good or bad—to answer these questions. In any case, these ideas all come together to form a worldview.  A worldview is not so much an idea that we look at and analyze, like a particular philosophy, but a lens that we look through to see God, the world, and ourselves.  It is very, very difficult to see the lens on your own eye, and so it is with worldviews.  We have them, and may not even be aware of how much they color everything we think and feel. 

Our thinking about what is beautiful or ugly, moral or immoral, good or evil, prudent or inappropriate grows out of our worldview. These are the roots that hold our lives in some kind of consistent pattern and thought. Just as a tree needs roots to stand up and be healthy, we all have a worldview holding up our lifestyle.

Everyone has a worldview. Whether that worldview provides a healthy, fruitful and flourishing existence remains to be seen. If the root system of a plant is not healthy, the plant will begin to die. If the roots are healthy, the tree will grow strong and stand firm. The same is true of a person with a healthy worldview.  What makes up a healthy and good worldview?  I think what Paul is getting at in this passage is that the Gospel is what makes up a healthy worldview.  It isn’t some religious concept to be agreed upon alone, it is an all-encompassing vision of everything we believe as well as how we interpret facts.  We can see similar data, and because of our worldviews, come to entirely different conclusions on that data. 

This is the great truth behind how we interpret our own salvation and why we have so many insecurities and hang-ups regarding our faith.  We are fearful that if we don’t keep up appearances we’ll be rejected.  Why?  Because we’ve believed that to be accepted we have to show we are righteous.  I have heard from some of you that you are having a difficulty reconciling the motivation for doing any good deeds if the threat of losing your salvation is not there.  We know the answer to that question is that if when the fear of losing your salvation is gone the motivation for you to obey is gone, then the only motivation for you to obey was fear and not love. 

Now, what we’re trying to do this morning is answer a question.  We want to show the significance of this question culturally, emotionally, socially, and theologically, and then look how Paul answers this question.  

What is the question?  Let’s turn to verse 21 of chapter 2. 

STUDY 

Verse 21a “Is the law then contrary to the promises of God?” 

What Paul is really asking here is this: is the law opposed to grace? 

You see if I give you something based upon a promise, all you have to do is believe that promise in order to receive it.  If you don’t believe, you won’t get it.  But if I tell you that I’ll give you something after you come over and cut my lawn and clean my garage, then it’s a law since there is something that you have to do to get it.  Paul taught us last week that promise and law are two completely different ways of receiving something.  You can only receive something by promise or by law, but not by both.   

So then, is the law then contrary to the promises of God?  And is it possible to have both law and grace in your life in various ways: psychologically, emotionally, theologically, and socially?  These two concepts, law and grace, are intrinsically different, but does this make them intrinsically opposed to one another?  Can they be together or do they nullify each other? 

What Paul is talking about here is at the heart of the Christian faith, there seems to be an apparent contradiction.  You need to sense the force of this.  If you don’t feel the tension, to some degree, you’ll never sense the glorious release that the Christian faith brings.   

An apparent contradiction 

We have to admit that there appears to be an apparent contradiction between these concepts.  If you read any literature on the Christian faith, you soon find interesting comments about what the Bible teaches.  One particular work on Paul attempting to get at the mind of the apostle, says that, “no commentator can explain Galatians.”  Now, obviously I don’t agree with him since this is what we’ve been doing for the last 4 months.  This author is saying that what we’re trying to do for all these hours of study and teaching to draw out the meaning of the apostle is impossible.  The reason he says this is because he believes that, “it does not, on any basis, make rational sense.”  “However,” he says, “we can search for some psychological truth that might lie behind Paul’s incomprehensible words.”  That is pretty amazing that someone would have the guts to say that what Paul is saying makes absolutely no sense.  Then he goes on to tell us that we can only make some psychological sense out of it.  He’s not simply saying that he doesn’t agree, but that it doesn’t make any sense.   

Now, when you first hear that you might think that is a pretty bold statement to make from a non-Christian thinker trying to give us a perspective on Paul.  When you and I read the Quran, the Book of Mormon, the Baghavad Ghita, or other sacred writings, we may not agree with them, but I wouldn’t say that they don’t make any sense at all.  We can understand what they’re trying to teach us and it seems intelligible, though we simply don’t accept their claims.  In other words, the overarching stories seem to at least make some sense which is why so many people can teach these writings and believe in their claims.  I wouldn’t claim they make no sense at all and are not rational on any level like this author claims about Christianity.   

As you hear this comment about Paul, it seems so arrogant to make such a claim.  But let’s stand back for a moment and think about this.  The truth is that this author is sensitive about something that is in Galatians, it is in the Gospels, it’s in Christianity, and the fact is that the other religions don’t have this.  They are not apparently contradictory.  They’re not trying to do what the Gospel is doing.  So, what’s the Gospel doing?  Well, what this author sees is a very important point about the Gospel.  Why he says that he doesn’t just disagree with Galatians but that it can’t be understood because it’s contradictory and ridiculous, it’s impossible and frustrating, is because the Gospel insists on putting two things together that no other religion attempts to put together.  The Gospel brings something together that human thought insists are impossible to reconcile.   

Now, in other literature, you see many of the same problems with how to interpret Christianity, the meaning of Christ, and the Gospel.  A popular and common thought you hear again and again is that Jesus came into this world to establish a church of love and grace where everyone is accepted just the way they are.  What Jesus was showing was that there were no exclusions to anyone since everyone was acceptable just the way they were and all you have to do is realize you’re loved and you’ll get it.  This view usually teaches that the opposite to this error is the church of the law, which teaches that God has absolute standards that must be met in order to be welcomed, and that you must adhere to these standards or you’re out and not included.  The church of the law teaches that unless you believe what is taught, and live the life that you must, you’ll never be accepted.  Instead you’ll be lost and sent to hell forever.  What the authors are getting at is that you either have to believe in the church of love or the church of law, but you most definitely can’t have both.  In their view, Jesus’ main problem was the church of law since He wasn’t about the law but love.  These are looked at as two completely different views. 


The church of love teaches that what is wrong with us is that we’re not free.  We need to find self-acceptance, which allows us to accept others just as they are to break the chains of slavery.  The church of law teaches that people aren’t good and that the reason we do bad things and are selfish is because we break the law.  

In other words, the world believes that the two kinds of religion are love and law.  Either love is absolute or law is absolute, but it can’t be both.  The way in which these two views work themselves out in our country is pretty profound.  In America these two views are at war, and they’re typically called culture wars.   

A brief history of this tension  

This is not new to the American culture; this has always been the problem.   

Up to about the 15th and 16th century, it was mutually agreed that you couldn’t have a coherent or structured society where law was respected unless everyone agreed to the same religion.  It was ridiculous to think that you could have a functioning society with many different religions in it.  Everyone had to agree on what is right, or how would you have law, make societal and judicial decisions if you were not agreed?  How would you pass laws without an agreement on what is right and wrong?  How would you trust anyone that when you agreed to do this or that they would keep their word?   

What has happened since this time is that we have rejected this idea of a single religious system, god, and a single law that rules and reigns the land.  The reason for this is due in large part to the religious wars.  In Europe in the 15th and 16th century, Protestants, Catholics, and other religions were slaughtering each other over beliefs.  Many were taking the Bible in one hand and slaying their enemy with the other as both sides claimed that the God of the Bible was on their side.  Now, the sensitive philosophers and thinkers of this time began to articulate the horror of this and the impossibility of keeping a society together if everyone was using the law to promote their side as they killed their enemies.  These wars were certainly not new, but they became pretty bad during this time.   

When the dust cleared, many said that this approach to society was not going to work.  So the thinkers decided that we should never take this approach again and now in western society, the prevailing view is that we should not attempt to have one single religion inform the culture about what is right and wrong or else we will use that law as a way of oppressing others.  The only way we’re going to have a cohesive society, in this view, is to agree that we should accept any and all views and in doing so (as the church of love) we will be tolerant with one another so that we won’t fight over such things.  So, instead of everyone agreeing so that society functions with agreed upon laws in the church of law, we should be totally accepting and not question each other’s beliefs since we can all find our own truth in the church of love.  These two views are still fighting one another to this day—Islam and western values are a great example.   

Now, we have only been given two views—the church of love and the church of law— as our options.  Since we are seeing in our day that neither is working, are we willing to see that there must be another way?  I think we’re tired of religion being used as a weapon, and I think we’re tired of not having any true truth.  Our culture is screaming out for someone to tell us what is true, right, good, and yet do so in a way that is humble, gracious, and kind.  I think our culture is ripe for a Gospel worldview.    

There is a secular attorney that is famous within the legal community by the name of Arthur Leff.  He died in the early 80’s, but before he did, he articulated something that most legal professionals and scholars don’t want to touch with a 10-foot pole.  He was sensitive to the problems we are facing in our day, some 25 years after his death.  

Arthur Leff lecture: 

I want to believe-and so do you-in a complete, transcendent, and immanent set of propositions about right and wrong, findable rules that authoritatively and unambiguously direct us how to live righteously. I also want to believe-and so do you-in no such thing, but rather that we are wholly free, not only to choose for ourselves what we ought to do, but to decide for ourselves, individually and as a species, what we ought to be. What we want, Heaven help us, is simultaneously to be perfectly ruled and perfectly free, that is, at the same time to discover the right and the good and to create it. 

Putting it that way makes clear that if we are looking for an evaluation, we must actually be looking for an evaluator: some machine for the generation of judgments on states of affairs. If the evaluation is to be beyond question, then the evaluator and its evaluative processes must be similarly insulated. If it is to fulfill its role, the evaluator must be the unjudged judge, the unruled legislator, the premise maker who rests on no premises, the uncreated creator of values. . . . We are never going to get anywhere (assuming for the moment that there is somewhere to get) in ethical or legal theory unless we finally face the fact that, in the Psalmist's words, there is no one like unto the Lord. . . . The so-called death of God turns out not to have been just His funeral; it also seems to have effected the total elimination of any coherent, or even more-than-momentarily convincing, ethical or legal system dependent upon finally authoritative, extrasystematic premises. 

All I can say is this: it looks as if we are all we have. Given what we know about ourselves, and each other, this is an extraordinarily unappetizing prospect; looking around the world, it appears that if all men are brothers, the ruling model is Cain and Abel. Neither reason, nor love, nor even terror, seems to have worked to make us "good," and worse than that, there is no reason why anything should. Only if ethics were something unspeakable by us could law be unnatural, and therefore unchallengeable. As things stand now, everything is up for grabs. 

Nevertheless:


Napalming babies is bad. 
Starving the poor is wicked. 
Buying and selling each other is depraved. 
Those who stood up and died resisting Hitler, Stalin, Amin, and Pol Pot-and General Custer too-have earned salvation. 
Those who acquiesced deserve to be damned. 
There is in the world such a thing as evil. 
[All together now:] Sez who? 
God help us. 

What he is saying is that if we are left with everything being right in our own eyes, we can not ever judge or make judgments upon one another since law then becomes our own creation and interpretation and each individual model is equally valid, which means no model is ultimately valid.   

If we do what’s right in our own eyes, our society will crumble.  Yet when we take the law and use it as a weapon, society crumbles.  3500 years ago, the people who knew the God of the Bible already knew this wasn’t going to work.   

If you think that law is the dog and love is the tail, or that love is the dog and love is the tail, you’ll have a disaster.  If you say basically it’s law and give love some lip service, then law is absolute and love is an accessory or vise versa, and you’ll end up twisted and disjointed.   

Thousands of years ago, God dared to reveal Himself as being both without the compromise or denigration of the other.  From the very beginning of God revealing Himself to mankind, law and promise, and love and grace, were to never be separated.  God desires that He is seen as both at the very same time and therefore we are never ever to choose between one of those two things when we think of God.  They have to be equal, they have to remain together, and they must be reconciled.  We must never say we have to go one way or the other. 

Where do we see this?  Thousands of years ago, Moses said to God, “show me your glory.”  God said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you.”   God passed before Moses proclaiming His name.  Showing His glory, having His goodness pass before him, and proclaiming His name are all the same.    

Exodus 33:17-20 “And the LORD said to Moses, ‘This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.’  18  Moses said, ‘Please show me your glory.’  19  And he said, ‘I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name “The LORD.” And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.  20  But,’ he said, ‘you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.’” 

Exodus 34:5-7 “The LORD descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD.  6  The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,  7  keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.’”  

We can’t overlook this.  This is God showing His glory, all His goodness.   

First, God says that He is merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children for generations.   

This only makes sense with the Gospel so that we can see and love a God of love and fury, perfect holiness as a Father, justice and mercy, righteousness and grace.  We can only reconcile law and grace, love and mercy, by looking at God’s character. 

Every one of us goes one way or the other, but God says that you won’t really see His glory unless you see both of these together.   

God desires that neither be lost for the other.  He showed all His goodness and it included justice and mercy.   

God is essentially saying that He is a forgiving God that will not forgive.  What?  He’s both.  He’s forgiving, but every sin has to be punished.  Every sin must be dealt with.   

Paul teaches us that in the Gospel, and only in the Gospel, do those things come together.  Only in the Gospel do these things come together intellectually, emotionally, socially, and practically.  And, in the Gospel will be the only remedy and hope for our culture.   

No other religion tries to reconcile this.  In no other philosophy or worldview can these two things be brought together. 

First, law and love come together theologically because of the substitutionary atonement on the cross.   

Galatians 3:13 “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us--for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’—” 

2 Corinthians 5:21 “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 

1 Peter 3:18 “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit” 

Mark 10:45  “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” 

Law never was so much law, and love was never so much love as at the moment that Christ died upon the cross.  At the cross and only at the cross do both justice and love find their reconciliation, so that God is both the just and justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. 

Romans 3:25-27 “whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.  26  It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.  27  Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith.” 
 
 
 
 

“Love God and do what you want.” -Augustine

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