LETTER TO THE GALATIANS
Defense of Paul's Gospel
Galatians 3:6-18
INTRODUCTION
Paul in the previous 5 verses began the defense of his gospel by showing how the Holy Spirit Himself confirmed that his gospel was true. The Spirit comes into a person's life only as a result of a person being saved by grace THROUGH FAITH. Moreover, the Christian continued to be energized by the Spirit to live the life of Christ only by living a life of faith.
Even though Paul established his credentials to be an apostle and even though he could appeal to the way the Holy Spirit worked, Paul’s opponents could claim that he simply misunderstood the OT itself. In fact, they claimed that the OT itself taught that a person had to perform certain works in addition to believing in Jesus Christ in order to be saved. According to the Judaizers, the story of Abraham proved their case. Paul, agreeing with the Judaizers that the case of Abraham is critical for this discussion, shows though that the case of Abraham actually confirms Paul’s gospel of salvation by grace through faith.
APPEAL TO ABRAHAM AND TO SCRIPTURE (3:6-18)
Appeal to Abraham, Part 1 (3:6-9)
| 6 Even so Abraham BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS RECKONED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS. 7 Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham. 8 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. 9 So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer. |
Commentary
The Judaizers appealed to the case of Abraham to prove that a person is saved by faith AND works of the Law, especially circumcision. They correctly identified Abraham as being the critical person in this debate. According to the Judaizers AND to Paul, the way Abraham is saved is the way everybody else is to be saved.
Why is Abraham this important? The most important promise in the Bible is the promise God made to Abraham (Gen. 12:1-3). Fill in the blanks to see what is the key idea in this promise.
1 Now the LORD said to Abram,
"Go forth from your country,
And from your relatives And from your father's house,
To the land which I will show you;
2 And I will make you a great nation,
And I will ____________ you,
And make your name great;
And so you shall be a _____________ing;
3 And I will _____________ those who ____________ you,
And the one who curses you I will curse.
And in you all the families of the earth will be _____________ed."
What is the key idea in the promise God made to Abraham?
This word becomes a huge concept in the Bible. It eventually comes to stand for the idea of salvation; the blessed person is the saved person. We see this when Paul claims later: “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” (Gal. 3:14). Whoever is rightly related to Abraham receives the blessing of God. The person who is a spiritual descendent of Abraham is truly saved. Moreover, the way Abraham the father was saved is the same way his true spiritual children are saved. (Paul will delve more into this later.)
The question becomes: “When did Abraham get ‘right’ with God?” In other words, when did Abraham become righteous or receive righteousness? This is important because being right with God is tantamount to being saved; only the person right with God is truly saved. According to the Judaizers, Abraham was made righteous after he was circumcised. They based this upon Gen. 17:1-27. According to this passage, God promised to make a covenant with Abraham if Abraham kept the covenant of circumcision. According to the Judaizers, this proved their point. Abraham the father had to be circumcised to be right with God; therefore, his true spiritual children had to be circumcised too.
Paul, though, points out that Abraham was actually already made right with God a full 13 years before God gave him the covenant of circumcision. This quote from Genesis is huge in this discussion: “And Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Where is this verse found in Genesis?
Abraham was saved then, was made right with God a full 13 years before God gave him the covenant of circumcision. PLUS he performed no works in order to be saved. All he did was believe what God told him! Therefore, if Abraham was saved by faith, we his spiritual children are likewise saved by faith. Period.
There is another wonderful word here in this verse: reckoned. Gary Brown, one of the top trust officers in the U.S. banking system, said that the word has behind it the idea of an evaluator or adjuster. The bank adjuster sets a value for a certain object. For example, he looks at a car and gives it the value of $24k. Is the car $24k? Not literally; however, for all practical purposes the car and $24k are one and the same because the adjuster/evaluator has the credentials and authority to set that value upon the vehicle.
Well, God is the ultimate divine adjuster/evaluator. He looks at our faith and gives it the value of righteousness. Are righteousness and faith literally one and the same? No, but in God’s system of accounting, faith has the value of righteousness. The person who exercises faith in Jesus has been declared by God to be right with Him.
Notice that Paul claims that God preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, “All the _________________ shall be blessed in you.” How in the world did Paul ever get the idea of the gospel of faith from that one statement? Simple. If God had said, “All the Jews shall be blessed in you,” He might have been referring to the Law since the Jews had the Law. HOWEVER, God would not be referring to the Law and circumcision with the statement that all the nations (non-Jews) would be blessed in Abraham because the nations didn’t have the Law; only the Jews did. If God was going to save all the nations, that is all people, He was going to have to save them by a means available to everybody. The Law was not available; faith was though. God is not the God simply of the Jews but of the entire world. He devised a plan of salvation so that all who wanted to be saved could be saved.
APPEAL TO THE SCRIPTURE, THE LAW (3:10-14)
Introduction
But what about the Law of Moses (a topic Paul will address at length starting in v. 19)? Don’t the Law of Moses and the rest of Scripture teach that a person is saved by keeping the Law? Many conservative Christians today mistakenly claim that the OT saints were saved by the Law, while the NT saints are saved by grace. Paul actually quotes the OT to show that this is not so.
| 10 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. 11 Now that no one is justified by the Law before God is evident; for, "THE RIGHTEOUS MAN SHALL LIVE BY FAITH." 12 However, the Law is not of faith; on the contrary, "HE WHO PRACTICES THEM SHALL LIVE BY THEM." 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 "- 14 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. |
Commentary
First, Paul appeals to the Law of Moses itself, the very Law his opponents were using against him, to prove that salvation/righteousness does not come by keeping the Law: “For as many as are of the works of the Law are under a ________________; for it is written, "____________ IS EVERYONE WHO DOES NOT ABIDE BY ALL THINGS WRITTEN IN THE BOOK OF THE LAW, TO PERFORM THEM.”
But how does this verse (quoting Deuteronomy 27:26) teach us that righteousness does not come by keeping the Law? Simply by stating that if you intend on being saved by keeping the Law, then you must keep ALL the Law ALL the time in order to be saved, in order not to be cursed. Well, NO ONE with the exception of Jesus has been able to keep ALL the Law ALL the time; therefore, not only is everybody NOT saved by keeping the Law, everybody actually who tries to be saved by keeping the Law is under the curse of the Law because everybody has broken the Law.
Second, Paul goes to the Book of the Prophets (in this case Habakkuk 2:4) to show how a person is saved: “Now that no one is justified by the Law before God is evident; for, ‘THE ________________ MAN SHALL LIVE BY ______________.” Moses basically informed us that the Law puts us under a curse (the exact opposite of receiving the blessing of Abraham, being saved); Habakkuk informs us that righteousness/salvation is not only obtained by faith but is also LIVED OUT BY FAITH!
What then was the purpose of Christ dying on the cross? It was so that He could become cursed of God. Little did the Jewish religious leaders realize the mistake they were making when they chose to have Jesus crucified rather than stoned. On the basis of Deut. 21:23 they felt like they could prove Jesus was not from God if He was crucified because the person who hung on a cross/tree was under God’s curse (this would not have been the case if they had stoned Him instead). “Surely,” they thought and claimed, “somebody cursed by God was not from God.” They didn’t realize, though, that God sent Jesus so that He could be cursed, that the cross actually became the scene of a great divine transaction in which God placed our curse upon Christ and placed Christ’s blessing (He is the Blessed One) upon us. Moreover, it was on the cross that God placed our sin upon Jesus and Jesus’ righteousness upon us. Our faith in Christ makes this transaction real in our lives. Our faith in Christ appropriates the transaction: by my faith in Christ the crucified One, my sin was placed upon Him and His righteousness upon me; by my faith in Jesus who hung on the cross, my curse from the Law was placed upon Jesus and His blessing (the One promised to Him and Abraham) comes to me. Paul speaks about this great divine transaction in 2 Corinthians 5:21. According to 2 Cor. 5:21 what did Jesus become on the cross and what did we become by Jesus dying on the cross?
Notice something very interesting here. In v. 14, Paul not only claims that we received the blessing promised to Abraham and to Jesus but also that “we would receive the promise of the ______________ through faith.” Paul here links the promise to Abraham (and to Jesus) with the gift of this Person. He also links this Person to faith. Faith saves us; faith energizes this Person to enter our hearts for salvation; AND faith continues to energize this Person to produce the life of God in us. Here Paul telegraphs in advance the last part of this letter: living the life of faith actually means living in the Spirit of God.
APPEAL TO ABRAHAM, PART 2 (3:15-18)
Paul here is following an arrangement of introducing one topic (Abraham), introducing a second topic (testimony of Scripture), and then returning to the first topic (Abraham). The arrangement is a, b, a (or Abraham, Scripture, Abraham). As both Paul and the Judaizers affirm, Abraham is critically important in this discussion.
| 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. 16 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. 17 What I am saying is this: the Law, which came four hundred and thirty years later, does not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to nullify the promise. 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. |
Commentary
The Judaizers can claim that, based on Genesis, a person is rightly related to Abraham AND the promise of the blessing if he is circumcised. On the other hand, what is the basis for Paul’s claim that a person is rightly related to Abraham and the promised blessing if he believes in Jesus? According to the Genesis account (which both the Judaizers and Paul point to), God not only promised to bless Abraham, He also promised to bless Abraham’s seed. The interpretation of the word “seed” is huge in Paul’s thought. According to the Jews AND Judaizers, the word translated “seed” is plural, that is, the physical descendants of Abraham. In other words, many Jews claimed that all of Abraham's physical descendants would be saved.
According to Paul, the word translated “seed” can also be singular. For example, you can say, “A bag of seed” which refers to many seeds, or you can say, “Go plant the seed of corn” which can refer to a single seed. According to Paul, Genesis properly understood can include the plural meaning, as referring to the Jewish people, but it definitely refers to the singular meaning which points to Jesus.
So which meaning is right? Paul’s. Why? Because of His resurrection Jesus’ claim to be the source of God’s blessing is true; His resurrection affirms this. When Jesus 8x claims that certain people are blessed because of their relationship with Him (Matt. 5:3-10), He is pointing to Himself as the fountain of Abraham’s blessing. When Jesus claims that Abraham rejoiced to see His day and saw it—and was glad, He is pointing to Himself as the seed promised to Abraham (John 8:56). There seems to be a plural aspect to the promise given to Abraham (referring to the Jewish people); however, there is primarily a singular aspect to this word, referring to Abraham’s greatest Son, Jesus.
Here Paul argues 3 points.
If this is true of human contacts, how much more should this be true of divine contacts? Once made, they are not to be broken.
In probably one of the most dramatic events in the entire OT, after God says that Abram was made right with God by means of his faith (Gen. 15:6), He instructs Abram (Abraham) to take some animals and cut them in half to form a type of aisle through which He might pass. When it grew dark, God appeared to Abram as a smoking oven and passed down the aisle stating the terms of the covenant. He was actually “cutting” the covenant with Abram as seen in the "cutting" of the animals. Why would God pass down the aisle of slaughtered animals as He stated the covenant? He was indicating that if He broke that covenant, that is if He changed the covenant, then the same fate which fell upon these slaughtered animals would fall upon Himself. He had made Abram right by means of Abram’s faith and right he would remain. Salvation would come only through faith—never works!
Paul is assuming that we realize that the Law and the promise to Abraham are polar opposites, especially if both are meant as ways of people being saved. You can NOT combine them. Once you add Law to the promise, you destroy the promise. Since God gave us salvation by means of His promise to Abraham, the Law can have no place at all in providing for a person’s salvation.
Too often we don't realize how simply injecting just a little bit of something into a liquid will radically change that liquid. To demonstrate that something small can contiminate an entire container of liquid, sometimes in class I will act like I spit into a 44 oz. drink somebody has brought to class. Although the contained is 99.9999% full of the original drink, just that 0.0001% of spittle changes the entire dynamics of the drink. In the same way, adding just a little bit of works changes the entire dynamic of faith. It changes it to such an extent that for all practical purposes it is no longer faith.
Adding any work to salvation really is like stepping out onto a slippery slope. If you've never done that, you need to in order to appreciate what Paul is teaching here. I accidentally stepped onto a black ski run. Once I started that run, there was no turning back or stopping until I crashed at the bottom (which fortunately did not happen because of the amount of intense prayer I offered up to God during that run). The best way to prevent crashing on a black ski run is never to get on it in the first place; the same holds true with adding any works to getting saved AND living the Christian life.