Galatians 3 - The Law and the Promise
Tom Shrader examines Galatians 3:10-29, contrasting the curse of the law with the promise of Abraham. He explains that the law demands perfect obedience and condemns all who fail, while salvation comes through faith in Christ who redeemed us from the curse. The law serves as a tutor to lead us to Christ, revealing our need for grace rather than providing a path to righteousness.
“The law can't save anyone because the law demands perfect continuing compliance, and we know this - nobody's perfect.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Galatians
Recorded: 2012
Duration: 51 min
Themes: grace, faith, law, salvation, redemption, promise, obedience, curse, struggling with legalism, new believer, doubting salvation, perfectionist, religious background, works-based mindset, pastor, feeling condemned
Scripture: Galatians 3:10-29, Galatians 1:6, Galatians 2:11, Galatians 2:14, Galatians 2:16, Deuteronomy 27:26, Habakkuk 2:4, Leviticus, James 2:10, Romans 3:20, Romans 1:16-17, Romans 7:7, Romans 7:24, Acts 5:30, 1 Peter 2:24, Acts 13:29, Ephesians 4, James 1, James 2:2
Theological Themes: justification, righteousness, covenant, abrahamic promise, substitutionary atonement, works righteousness, sola fide, pedagogical law
Full Transcript
Open your Bibles to the Book of Galatians. If you don't have a Bible, raise your hand. They'll bring you a Bible. If you get a Bible from us, it's page 632. We're studying this book. If maybe you've just joined us, there's a study guide that's available, and the study guide is in the bookstore for sale. However, also, you can download it free on the internet. Maybe now we're halfway through it, and you're saying, I'd love to just download it. So, go ahead and do that.
Let me mention this also. I forgot this. Susan Miller is like this amazing person. Susan Miller, in the last two or three years of my life, has been really crucial. She was probably, in those days, providing more care for anybody for Susan outside the family. Susan's a very close friend. Subsequently, she's been really instrumental in my life. She's come in and just taken charge of some things that need to get done. A little bit of a grinder, a little more aggressive, and pushing me a little harder than I'd like. I really don't know. If I say that, she'll do it. So, she's cleaning my garage now.
I know, it's sad. We found the other, you know how you have cases of, this is sick. You know, I have cases of water. A case. I had 65 cases of water out there. I'm not sure. Well, the guy just kept bringing it. He just, like, every month brought more and more water, and I couldn't drink it all. I don't know what happened. Like, 15 of the jugs of whatever that is. So, here was Susan Miller's suggestion. Why don't you stop the delivery? I said, oh, I can do that.
She said, what are those? So, here is a book called Reaching God's Ears by Sam Storms. Now, this book, let me check the copyright. I don't think I ever did. The copyright on it is 1988, first printing. When I read this book, it's a book on prayer. When I read it, I loved it. Now, I'm not sure I can tell you what's in it, but I loved the book. So, I went down to the bookstore down in Tucson, Winston Maddox, and I said, Winston, I love that. Let me get five or six copies of the book. He said, the book's out of print. Then, he called me, and he said, I found some. I found five cases.
Now, the only thing I've ever done in moderation in my life is work, so I bought all five cases. I bought five cases, I put them in the garage, and Susan Miller, the other day, said, well, you have five cases in this book. What are you doing with that? I said, I don't know. I just remember it was a really good book. She said, no, no, no, it's got to go. It's going, this has to go. If you don't wear it in a year, it's got to go. I said, oh, that isn't going to happen. Well, she said, these books got to go. You don't need 250 copies of this book.
Here's what I decided to do. I brought them over here. The book retailed 12 years ago for like nine bucks. This is a great book, I think. I don't remember any of it. I know it's a big enough book that I have five cases in it. So, five bucks, however long they last over in the bookstore. It's still out of print, so I just, you know, go and grab them if you want them. You know, do your thing. I'm just making those available to you at a modest cost, trying to recoup the cost of what I have, plus interest for, I'm probably so upside down in that I don't even close, but that's fine.
The Context of Galatians
The Book of Galatians, and today, we're looking at a passage, it's a long passage. Chapter three, verse 10 through 29. So, it's chapter three, verse 10 through the end of the chapter. I want to remind you of this. Tim, last week, as he was teaching, was reminding you, we're reading this and breaking it down. When they got this letter, it's really designed to be read straight through, but we're breaking it down. We want to really make sure we understand it.
I will tell you our conversations in the preaching collective and with one another is our conversations are interesting in that we feel like we're saying very similar things week after week after week, and the reason is that's the way the letter's written. It is a huge issue, and at stake is the gospel. Remember what we looked at in week one? There was Paul's standard introduction, and in chapter one, verse six, he said, I'm amazed how quickly you deserted Him. I'm amazed how quickly you pursued a different gospel.
What had happened is Paul had gone to these churches, and they'd come to repentance in Christ, churches established, and then the Judaizers came in behind them, and here's what they said. Paul didn't get it right. Paul had half the gospel. Paul was teaching that I'm saved by grace through faith, and it was utterly, completely a work of God. However, as the message spreads to the Gentiles, the Judaizers were saying you need to become Jews to be real Christians.
The Gospel at Stake
So, Paul takes this on, and it's intentional. I'm going to say it's the only time, I don't know this is true, but I think it's the only time that in His introduction, verse four, He just puts the gospel right in there. Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sin, that He might deliver us out of this present age according to the will of God and our Father. At stake is this gospel. At stake is what does it mean to be, using Paul's word, delivered, or words we'll see today, justified, redeemed. What's the condition?
Let's make sure we get this, because it was true since Genesis three. It is that God and man have been separated, that when we talk about God, we talk about man, we understand there's a barrier between us, and the barrier between us is sin, that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. You're going to hear that same thing over and over and over again today. The question becomes, how can a sinful man and a holy God be reconciled? There's essentially two answers to that. Paul's dealing with them, and for sure, we deal with them today. One is some version of man reaching to God.
It would be something that may include Jesus, even death on the cross, but it has with it some human effort. As we look at words today, it'll be the idea of the law, keeping the rules, primarily God's moral law. It deals with law, behavior, rules.
The second way, biblical Christianity, is a holy God reaching down to sinful man, and salvation is supplied by grace. So one is about what you do, the other is about what God did. And that's the whole essence of this book. That's the issue, that's the battle.
The Importance of This Issue
And it's important to the churches at Galatia, so much so that, remember chapter two, verse 11? When Peter came to Antioch, Paul opposed him to his face, told him, verse 14, he did it publicly, straightforward. Why? Because this is a gigantic issue.
Are there many gospels? When the Judaizers coming along, are they just tweaking the gospel, or is it still the gospel, but they just add this to it? And Paul's going on, saying no. That's what we saw in chapter one, verse six. It's a different gospel.
Here's the gospel. Jesus died in your place. Put your faith and trust in Him, and you shall be saved, redeemed, have eternal life. You'll be spiritually alive. Right now, you're spiritually dead.
Justified by Faith, Not Works
So remember, a couple weeks ago, we looked at chapter two, verse 16, where Paul says this negatively: a man is not justified. So let's remind each other of the term. Justified means declared righteous in the sight of God, to be vindicated of any charges of sin. It's the opposite of condemned.
So a man does not come into right relationship with God, vindicated of his sin. Make sure we got the problem. Here's the problem: our sin is a barrier between us and God. I cannot be justified. Man is not justified by the works of the law. In fact, he's justified by faith in Christ, believing in Jesus.
Now we're justified by faith in Christ. That phrase "in Christ" becomes very important. We studied, I'm awful at times and dates, but we studied not long ago the book of Ephesians. In our study in the book of Ephesians, we saw, I think in the first verses, verses four through 13, we saw that phrase "in Christ" eight times.
I think that phrase is in the book of Ephesians about 26 times, it's about 16 times in this book, 35, 36 times in the book of Romans, and that's just quickly today me doing a brief count. So there's just three of the letters Paul wrote, and he comes back to this idea of "in Christ, in Christ, in Christ."
What Does "In Christ" Mean?
What does that mean? That means I come to this point where I put my faith and trust in Christ, and now I'm His, I'm in Him, I'm resting in Him. I'm not resting in my works before God. I'm not coming to God and say, "Look what I've done." I'm coming before God and saying, "Look what Jesus has done," and I'm trusting Him.
And then he goes on, he says it again, it's not by works of the law, since by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. So there's the point, he can't be more clear, and what we just did with His verse is what we're going to do the rest of the day in the passage we have before us.
So he says that in a general sense, in verse 16, a man is not justified by works of the law. In a personal sense, he said we were justified because we believed in Christ. In a universal sense, here's what he's saying: there's no way for this to possibly take place.
Key Terms and Concepts
So a couple of things, just to make sure we got terms right. As he's talking about the law, he's writing to the Jews, he's talking about God's moral law for our discussion here. It's works of the law, it's somehow us trying to make ourselves acceptable before a holy God.
Another word that we're going to encounter today, in the passage before us, is he's going to talk about Christ redeemed us, chapter three, verse 13. Redeemed is a word that is commonly used of somebody buying a slave's freedom. And so here's what he's saying: Christ redeemed us, He bought us out of bondage, in this case, the bondage of slavery. Jesus came not to be served, but to serve, we understand that part, but the rest of that verse is what? To give His life a ransom for many, to buy many of them back, to buy His people back, pay the price for our sin.
Six Key Points from the Passage
Now, in the passage, here's what I want to make sure that we get. I want to share with you one, two, three, four, five, six verses here, that make these points, make comments on them, and then as we work our way through the passage, I'm convinced that if we go too deep into a lot of the background, we're going to lose the majority of you. And I think if you want to go that deep, that's what the study guide's for. I'm not saying this will not be a complete study, it will, but there's lots of ways to spend lots of time in these verses, but I want to make sure we get the big picture.
So in verse 10, he says, "Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all the things written in the book or in the law." So I'm cursed, it's divine judgment. Verse 11, no one is justified by the law. Wow, what is this? I mean, we're 10 minutes into this, and that has to be the fourth or fifth time I've said it already. No one's justified. No one's declared righteous before God based in the law.
The righteous man, verse 11, will live by faith. Now, I'm not sure, he's quoting from back at 2:4. I'm not sure we'll come back and make this point. For sure, we'll make it heavy when we get to chapter five, but what he's saying is, it's not just that I'm justified by faith, it's that I live by faith.
Living by Faith Daily
It's not that I preach the gospel to me to come into the kingdom of God, but I have to preach the gospel to myself every day, because every day, I still sin. Every day, and when I sin, what I'm essentially saying is, "God, I don't believe You, I don't trust You. At this very moment, whatever," and then you fill in the blank. Whatever that is, is more important than You.
And so often, it's driven by fear. Fear of man, fear of what people think, a fear of God's lack of provision, whatever it is. And so what I have to do
Faith Versus Fear
I was talking to somebody yesterday, and they were talking about fear that comes over them. They said, "What I have to do is stop. I have to go, wait a minute, is there any reason for me to be afraid of what God is doing? No. I live by faith." Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the certainty of things not seen.
Now, when we talk about hope, we use that word differently than the scripture does. Obviously, University of Iowa football is huge to me. Yesterday, this is a good thing—Coach Ferentz hired his son to be the offensive line coach. That tells me he's going to be there a while. But he's going to be the offensive line coach. We have a new linebacker coach, a new defensive coordinator. Still need to hire an offensive coordinator.
I just went through next year's schedule for the first time. The schedule couldn't be easier. I said, "I have such high hopes." It's like being a Cubs fan. Why would you put yourself through this? My favorite T-shirt—I was out at the Cubs park one day. I wish I owned this. It was a long-sleeve T-shirt, and it had the Cubs logo. It was just white with just the logo. This girl walked by me and said, "What a cool shirt," and I looked back. On the back, it said, "Any team can have a bad century." What a great T-shirt that is.
So why am I already looking at this Iowa football stuff? I would say, "I hope they have a good year." Here's how that word's used: maybe they will, maybe they won't. I hope, but it's certainly a long way from certain. Maybe. When the Bible talks about hope, it talks about something in the future that's as certain to take place as the things that already happened in the past. Because it's based on God's promises, it's not based on something that may happen or may not happen.
Living by Faith Day to Day
When we talk about this idea of living by faith, it's day to day. Right now, you may feel so lonely, so isolated, so beat up, so guilty. Maybe last night was a big night, and you did something that you considered almost unforgivable, and yet God says you're forgiven. Then—this is how screwed up we are, or maybe it's just me—this is how screwed up you are.
Here's the tendency. Here, now I sin. Bam, whatever it is, there's the event. I got one side of me that says, "Well, I'm forgiven, and it's done." I got the other side that says, "Oh, but how could I ever let God down," and now I wallow in that guilt. The balance of the two is that somehow I know I'm forgiven. It doesn't produce in me a cavalier attitude; it produces in me genuine remorse, and repentance, and sorrow before God. But it's not a debilitating sorrow. It's a sorrow that says, "No, God's forgiven me, and He'll use me, and I confess this, forgetting what lies behind." Isn't that Paul's terminology? "I press forward for what lies ahead, and for the very purpose for which God saved me."
Christ's Redemption and the Purpose of the Law
Verse 13: "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law." So the law produces death, cursed judgment. God, through Christ, redeems us, which raises, in verse 19, the obvious question: then why did He give us the law? Especially in the chronology here, because he's going to say you had Abraham's promises, now comes along the law. The Judaizers are saying, "Why did He give us this law if salvation's over there?" So what's the purpose of the law? By the way, this becomes hugely, practically important.
Verse 24: "Well, the law's the tutor," and the tutor—how cool is this—leads us to Christ, so that we can be justified by faith. Verse 26: "For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus." And verse 27: "You're all baptized," so he uses the word "all" there. What he's doing now is addressing a real issue that they have: Jew and Gentile separation, segregation in the midst of that. Then verse 29, which will lead us right into next week's discussion: "And if you belong to Christ, then you're Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise"—the promise to Abraham.
I'm going to do my best. We're going to work our way through this. You get the point. I'm going to say it again, and again, and again. The point is this: your works, or the law, do not save you—they condemn you. You are justified or declared righteous before God based on your faith in Christ, not in anything you can do.
The Struggle to Understand Grace
That's always the battle. The last three weeks, God has put me in some amazing situations, and I've spent an enormous amount of time with primarily men who do not attend Redemption Church. Not that that's what saves you—it doesn't—but who would carry Bibles and go to church. Yet if you push them, I don't think they get this concept.
The way you understand this is why I say this—I don't mean it in a judgmental way, I'm not being judgmental at all. The reason I would say that is when I present grace to them, then they want to talk about, "But can you lose your salvation?" So I've had a whole lot of conversations lately around this idea. The jargon we would use is "once saved, always saved." If you're a Christian today, can you lose that?
They have all of these gymnastic conversations. I would say, "Boys, here's the problem to me. The reason you even grapple with that is because you don't understand how you got into the relationship with Christ to begin with. Because if you understood how you got into the relationship with Christ, you wouldn't be worried about getting out of it. Because it's a one-way ticket that He bought, He paid for, He gave to you, He guarantees it."
So it's just a matter now of you're in the family of God. You are united with Him. It's inseparable. The vitality of that union can be challenged. It's like—I think of it in a human sense. Think of those of you who are husband
The Nature of Our Union with Christ
In marriage, you have a union that's designed to be permanent, but sometimes, can we be honest, sometimes it's a little more energizing than others. Sometimes it just feels a little more intense than others. Sometimes you feel so close to one another, and then there's other times you're going, really? Get your hand off me. It's just the way it is, and it seems to me it's almost impossible to just operate on this one level.
Well, the same thing comes to Christ. I'm in a union with Him that's unbreakable. Sometimes it's so rich. Sometimes I can just get lost, literally. I did a ton of reading for today, which, by the way, doesn't guarantee anything other than tired eyes. It doesn't guarantee that I got one thing to say. I did a ton of reading, and there were moments where, I'm not kidding, I was just swept away this week for periods of half an hour, hour, two, literally where I would just lose track of time. There's other moments where I just read this and go, really? This must be the exception.
The Curse of the Law
So here's what we want to do. We want to get in, we want to understand our relationship, and here's how we go. Verse 10: "For as many are as under the works of the law." So I just want what I deserve. God, you don't bother me. I won't bother you. Give me what I deserve. That's the law. It's a curse. "Cursed is everyone who does not abide in all the things the law says."
So here's what He's saying. He's quoting from Deuteronomy 27:26. And here's what we read: that if, in fact, you want to say, God, my relationship with you is going to be based on my terms, doing my thing, and it'll be compliance with your law, what Paul is saying, what you read in Deuteronomy 27:26, is you're cursed. It's divine judgment, because that's absolutely possible. The law can't save anyone. Why? Because the law demands perfect continuing compliance.
The Problem with Grading on a Curve
And we know this. I could do it with somebody who doesn't even know Bible. All I can say is finish the sentence. Here you go: Nobody's perfect. What's that mean? Well, we all sin. The point that the scripture is making is, we as humans want to grade that on a curve.
When I was in high school, I mean, the priests and the nuns were just savage. And so here were the rules: 93 to 100, A. 85 to 93, B. I don't know where it went after that. 78 maybe to 85, C. 70 to 78, D. And then anything else, they just took you out back and beat you. So those were the rules. If I had in high school, which this never happens, theoretical, if I had in high school an average that was 92.99999, they would say, is that 93? No, it's a B.
I got to college. I remember one of the first tests I ever got, I thought, gee, that wasn't good. And I got my test back and it said 63, C. Really? This is interesting. I'm going to like this. How does that happen? Well, here we what? Grade on a curve. I like that. The only thing better than grading on a curve is when they brought in the honor system, which I didn't have any, which really made school simple. Those were the two great discoveries I had in college.
God's Standards Don't Change
Now, I come to God, it's like these tests. We're going to have these tests. We're going to have these tests. We're going to have these tests. So what do you do? We started going, what do we discover? Nobody can pass it. So whatever we thought was fair when we established it, we go, eh, I don't think so. We don't want to have 23-year-old freshmen in high school. So what do they do? They lower their standards. That's what they're going to do all the time. Well, it's what you do. It's what I do.
So we come to the law and we say, really? Is God serious? He's serious. That's why it's cursed under the law. That's why your works will never be acceptable to a holy God, because you're coming and going, God, look at this. I got to tell you, I got it. I'll stipulate for purposes of discussion that I'm not perfect, but look at this bucket of good things that I did. And He's saying, no, no, no. If you break, and this is according to what James writes, if you break a law, you break the law.
The Law Demands Perfect Compliance
And everything in us is contrary to that. Well, no, but it was that. It was one little thing. So then we can get into all sort of discussions that sound like semantics, but they aren't. But how many sins do I need to commit to be a sinner? And in reality, none, because I'm born that way. But all of us have sinned.
Under the law, the law is a tenacious taskmaster that demands complete compliance all of my life. Therefore, you're cursed under the law.
Living by Faith, Not Law
On the other hand, in verse 11, now He quotes from Habakkuk 2:4, "Now, no one is justified by the law before God. Why? The righteous man will live by faith." Righteousness before God demands faith. The law can't save.
Paul uses this quote from Habakkuk 2:4 in the book of Galatians, in the book of Romans, I think in the book of Colossians. I could be wrong there. And then the author of Hebrews, we don't know if that's Paul or not. People differ, but he uses it there as well.
In Romans chapter 1, you don't need to turn there. Let me just read it to you. Romans chapter 1, verse 16, Paul writes, "I'm not ashamed of the gospel for it's the power of salvation to everyone who believes, Jew, Gentile." Verse 17, Romans chapter 1, verse 17, Luther said, when he understood Romans 1:17, the doors of heaven swung open and I walked through. Here it is: "For in it," the righteousness, talking about the gospel, "in it, the righteousness of God is revealed, demonstrated from faith to faith, for it's written that the righteous man shall live by faith." Martin Luther
Martin Luther becomes a wonderful example. Luther was this monk, this Catholic monk. He was trying desperately to find some sort of absolution for his sin. The Pope declared that if you walk up a certain stairway in a church that this would remove you from the punishment of hell to come. It was believed that Jesus' blood was shed on the stair, all the stuff that goes with it.
Luther's son writes about this and writes about Luther going to climb up the staircase. He writes this: as he repeated his prayers in this staircase, the words of the prophet Habakkuk suddenly came to him. "The just shall live by faith." Thereupon, he ceased his prayers and returned to Wittenberg and took this as the chief foundation of all doctrine. Luther no longer believed that there was anything he could do to gain favor with God. And he began to live by faith in God's son.
Luther himself later said, "Before those words broke my mind, I hated God and was angry with Him. But when the spirit of God and with Him, I understood these words, I live by faith, I live by faith, I shall be born again." And that's the phrase that comes over and over again. The principle of the law is that I'll do something, live by works, and please God. The problem with the law is you can't live up to it.
Living by Faith vs. Works
Luther writes about God looking at you and me and he writes this, God speaking: "If you wish to placate Me, don't offer Me your works and merits, but believe in Jesus Christ, My only son, who was born, who suffered, who was crucified, who died for your sins. Then I will accept and pronounce you righteous." So that's the whole point that he's making here.
In verse 12, he talks about the idea, quoting from Leviticus: "He who practices them must live by them." He's talking by the law. If you say you want to live by the law, you practice the law, you're under the law, and with it comes condemnation. I'm relying on my own efforts for my salvation.
So what Paul argues here is whether you're quoting from Deuteronomy or Habakkuk or Leviticus, it's the same thing that James writes about in James 2:10: "Whoever keeps the whole law yet stumbles at one point becomes guilty of all the law." Romans 3:20: "By the deeds of the law, there's no flesh that will be justified in God's sight."
The Reality of Universal Sin
When we look at the shorter catechism, Westminster's shorter catechism, in there we find this: "No mere man since the fall is able in this life perfectly to keep the commandments of God, but doth break them in thought—this just kills you—in thought, word, and deed daily." So he said they're all there. What you think, what you do, what you say. And then all of this gets into just the errors or sins of commission. It doesn't even get into sin of omission, which are things you should do that you aren't doing.
So Paul's point over and over and over again is that your sin and therefore your works because they're just sinful works. All I'm doing now when I come to God and present my works to Him, I'm just presenting my sinful work to Him is all I'm doing. And he's saying that isn't going to work.
Man's fundamental problem is sin and it's universal. It seems to me if there's any doctrine that we find in scripture for which I look around and see overwhelming empirical data, it's the sinfulness of man, it seems to me. Brothers and sisters can't get along. Neighbors can't get along. Nations can't get along. Football teams can't get along with each other. Basketball, we just can't get along. Our sin is all around us.
I remember being with Larry one time, Larry Wright, and this guy came up and he was, I don't know, I didn't like the guy. I didn't like the way he looked. That's probably not fair. But I didn't like the way he looked. But he had a self-righteous kind of smugness about him. And I moved away and I said, "What was that?" He said, "He just told me that he hasn't sinned in three years." So my assessment was inaccurate. Now, I'm not saying, maybe he hasn't. Let me do a little Paul Harvey here. Let me give you the rest of the story. Six months later, his wife divorced him, so apparently living with perfection is very difficult.
We've all sinned. And you did this morning. And you probably are right now. If the standard is love God with all your heart, mind, and soul, have you done that for a day, for an hour, for a minute? That's all you do. He's just heaping condemnation on us.
Christ's Redemption
Verse 13: "But Christ redeemed us from the curse." And now he quotes, again, from Deuteronomy 21. He said, "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree." Jesus came, not to be served, but to serve, to give His life a ransom for many, to redeem us, to buy us back.
And that phrase of hang on a tree, the Jews would understand that. As they heard this, they knew that was the fate of a common criminal. That was punishment. Acts chapter five, verse 30: "The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging on a tree." The same idea that Peter uses in 1 Peter 2:24: "Jesus Himself bore our sins in His body and hung on a tree." Paul, in his testimony in Acts 13:29, talks about Jesus being taken down from a tree.
It's as though, especially they were speaking to the Jews, because they would say, "This is blasphemy, because along comes this Messiah, and you're saying, this is this Jesus, and He hung on a tree? That's the fate of a common criminal."
The Great Exchange
But what Jesus did in His life is perfectly keep the law. And in that moment, He encountered what Luther called a fortunate exchange. My friend Larry Wright called the great exchange. Jesus lived this perfect life. He, the exception, complied to the law. He was by nature God and sinless and maintained that throughout life.
And when He died on the cross, in the sacred transaction, this great exchange, we trade our sin and we receive His righteousness. And God declares sinful people to be holy in His sight based on what Christ did in the cross, not based on what we do. That's why Christ in the cross said, "My God..."
My God, why have you forsaken me? At that moment this transaction is taking place. All the punishment and wrath that you deserve was given to Christ at that moment. So now a holy God can declare you righteous because He doesn't look at your sinful works, but He looks at Christ's perfect life and perfect sacrifice.
So He says, here we are in verse 14, in Christ Jesus, we received this blessing of Abraham and the promise to come. It's not just we, the Jews, but it's the Jew and Gentile. It's the promise of the Holy Spirit to come. It's that idea of being in Christ.
I would come back to you again and say, there are all these people saying they want to do a Bible study. I would say, find a good Bible program. You can get them for free online and just look up that phrase "in Christ." Take from now till Memorial Day—that's 99 days from today. Take that and just look at that phrase "in Christ" and see what the scripture, primarily Paul especially, is telling us to be in Christ. What does that mean to be in Christ?
Paul tells us in Ephesians 4 that we receive every spiritual blessing in Christ. He says it here, it's the power of the Holy Spirit, that we have God—not just that we're in relationship with God, we're now indwelt by God. A few years ago, there was a song that was popular by Bette Midler and in it, the idea was our God is a distant God. He watches us from afar. He doesn't intervene in human affairs. The Bible teaches not only is He involved in human affairs, not only does He see the sparrow that falls and have the hairs on your head numbered, but also He indwells His people. That's the promise of Abraham.
The Promise Versus the Law
There's this promise and that's what we get from verses 15 through 21. There's this contrast between the law and between the promise to Abraham. The promise to Abraham is a promise that God makes. The idea is a covenant. A covenant's not like a contract. A covenant is a unilateral document here where God says, this is what I will do.
In this, Paul says, that covenant, that promise cannot be, verse 17, invalidated. It was ratified, it can't be amended. We break down in the analogy a little bit—for example, in the United States here, when we use the last will and testament, we can establish that, redo that, modify it. In Greek law, once a will was declared, it was done, finished, it couldn't be amended. It became public record. It never could be altered. That may be what he has in mind.
What he's clearly saying is God will not change His mind. The law comes along, the law condemns. God comes along with the promise to Abraham—not the land and all that, but the promise of the spirit, the promise that's fulfilled in Jesus—and He says, that's our promise. The law says, "thou shalt, thou shalt, thou shalt, thou shalt." The promise says, "I will, I will, I will, I will."
Why the Law?
Which leads us right into that discussion in verse 19: then why the law? Why even have this law to begin with? Why would He give us this law? He's made this promise. Why at all would this law come along?
Well, the law came along, he says in verse 19, it's added because of the transgressions. The law comes along not to save you, it curses you. If you say, "I want to live by my own human efforts," the law does not provide you any comfort there because you can't do it. Some of you are trying. Some of you now are just, "I'm going to do the best I can." Some of you, even as you talk about coming to Jesus—and I don't hear it all the time—"I kind of need to clean up my act first." Well, how clean do you want to get it? He's saying, unless you can get it to perfect, what you can't do because you've already failed.
Now, I understand, again, I try to put myself in the place of those of you who are hearing this for the first time. Either hearing it, just literally hearing it, or maybe God's opening your ears and you're going, "Wow. Okay, because it feels really heavy. If that's true, I feel really desperate." And you feel that way because you are.
The Law Reveals Our Hopelessness
That's why He gave you the law. He gave you the law to present in you a sense of hopelessness. In a sense, the law makes you sin even more in the sense that you now recognize what a sinful person you are. Romans chapter 7, verse 7, "If it hadn't been for the law," Paul wrote, "I would not have known sin."
Luther writes this: "Therefore, the true function and the chief and proper use of the law is to reveal to man"—this is what, the rest of this quote is why Luther didn't get invited to a lot of places—"to reveal to man his sin, blindness, misery, wickedness, ignorance, hate, contempt for God, death, hell, judgment, and well-deserved wrath of God."
So all the law does is stir up in us all this desire to break it. I have a friend, he comes to Priority Living, and he comes to the first service here on Sunday. He had a really serious shoulder operation about a month ago. So he's walking around in a sling, but he found the first day that everybody that came by would just kind of want to touch. So he put—and when I saw it, first time I saw it, that's odd—he put a big piece of white tape on there. On it were the words, "do not touch." I said to him, "Has that helped?" He said, "No, it's intensified the number of people who come up and say, 'Is there something wrong?'"
Wet paint? That is, by the way, Martin Lloyd-Jones' argument against sex education. He's saying all you're doing when you tell a kid not to do it is making a kid want to do it because they don't trust you, believe in you, and all the stuff that goes with it. Well, that's what the law does. The law comes along and all it does is reveal to me what a sinner I am.
Here you go, Romans chapter 7, verse 24: "Wretched man that I am, who will set me free from this body of death?" I'm this wretched man, what can deliver me? Christ, the gospel.
promise that was made to Abraham. The law, verse 24, is the tutor. Now some of your translations, I think it's the King James, maybe some others, translate tutor as teacher or schoolmaster. That's not a good translation. The tutor was one who was a slave of either the Greek or the Roman who would take care of the family, who would take care of the child and get them to school but not train them. It was the caretaker, the custodian.
The Law as Our Tutor
What's the appropriate use of the law? Look at verse 24. The law became our tutor for this reason, to lead us to Christ, that we will be justified by faith. But now that faith has come along, we're no longer under the tutor. I'm not under the law anymore. The law comes along and says, here's the bad news. You're cursed, you're separated from God. There's nothing you can do. You can't make it right.
Third time now. All you're doing is presenting your sinful works to God and saying somehow declare them righteous. You can't. But they point us to Christ, the perfect sacrifice, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
The Beauty of God's Love
Isn't that great? Isn't that wonderful? That's why we come back to this over and over again and I think there's a sense in which you go, I don't know that I can hear that too much. I need to be reminded of that every day. I need to bask in the beauty, the joy, the love of that. The idea that God loves you.
Maybe you need to hear that today. God loves you. How do I know? Well, He moved. God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten son. Whoever believes in Him, is in Christ, shall not perish. Now, if I'm under the law, I'm cursed, I perish.
No Partiality in Christ
And this isn't just, verse 26, to the Jews, it's all of us who are sons of God through Christ. All were baptized. So then, there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave or free man, male or female, for all are one in Christ Jesus. If I believe in Christ, I am His. There's no more of the distinction. As God judges and looks at people in Christ, He is impartial, He shows no partiality and then He says to us, you do likewise.
He's not saying there's no more distinction, for example, between male and female. Because God comes along in His word and said, here's the role of a man, here's the role of a woman. But we screw that up. So along comes some guy who's looking for some hammer, and he goes and just browbeats her, browbeats her, browbeats her, browbeats her.
Here's another perversion of that. I'll have guys say this to me, I can't work for a woman. Why is that? Well, the Bible says wives submit to your husband. Are you working for your wife? This is not men are better than women. That's not what He's saying. He's saying, in the husband-wife relationship, there's a loving relationship where I am to love my wife as Christ loved the church and she's to submit to me as she would submit to the Lord. It doesn't say that in the marketplace.
Shattering Barriers
So He comes along and He says this, and these are huge barriers that He's shattering. These Jews would have nothing to do with the Gentiles. And the Greeks weren't all that hot about it either. It's what Socrates prayed. I pray and thank God that I was born a human being, not a beast. Next, I was born a man, not a woman. And thirdly, a Greek, not a barbarian.
So here's what He's saying. He's praying to God saying, as I look at men, women, Jew, they're all to me, listen, I show no partiality. You come white, black, rich, poor, male, female, American, French, I'm stretching this as far as I could stretch it. I'm getting it all the way out there to the end.
Practical Application in the Church
But what does that mean to us? Because here's what was going on in the early church. This is kind of cool. In James chapter one, James is writing and says, you guys are all screwed up in the church because of the way you treat each other. And he says, chapter two, verse two, if a man comes in your assembly with gold rings and fine clothes, and a poor man comes in in dirty clothes, you pay special attention to the one who's wearing the fine clothes. You say, sit here in the good place. To the poor man, you say, stand over there. And you've made a distinction among yourselves, but you're beginning to judge motives. If you show partiality, you're committing a sin.
So what would happen, like I'm invited to this dinner, and I'm not sure I want to go, but I think I'm going to go. But I said, this is what I've learned to ask. What do you have to wear? Well, evening attire. Well, if it's black tie, I'm going to have to rent one. I won't go. Well, in that day, they would rent rings, because it was a sign of prosperity. So this person comes in in fine clothes and rings. Now, their church was not like ours. It would be basically a hall, and there might be a bench or two, and they're going to this guy, strictly based on what he's wearing, and say, you sit up here in front. You're a poor guy, you sit over there.
And James is saying, the same point Paul's making, the same point God's making is, you're making distinction that I don't make.
Modern Applications of Partiality
So we make those distinctions all the time, I get it. This person has money, that person doesn't, we value that person. That person's black, that's different. When you look back, it's Black History Month. When you look back at the way that the United States of America treated the black men and women, it's an embarrassment. There's no way to justify it. I hear all sorts of explanations. There's no way to justify it. I can't make it right, and I've got to go forward from here.
So what would be then? The immigrants, especially the undocumented workers. Now, let me just help you out. You don't need to email me. I've got this figured out, I understand.
Living Without Distinctions
What does illegal mean? But I have to ask you, that's the government's responsibility. Your responsibility—let me ask you this question: What does it mean to love your neighbor?
This immigration thing is so screwed up, and the Republicans, the Democrats, and the government screwed it up for their own self-benefit, and now they don't want to unscramble it, and we just live with the tension in the middle of it. It's like everything else they deal with. They just can't, they don't have the fortitude. That's what He's saying here. Why are you making these distinctions? You can't make those distinctions.
And then He just closes it out. He says, listen, for if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, and you are heirs. If you're in Christ, then also you are of Christ, and you are His. So you are of Christ, and you are His.
Our Place in Eternity
John Stott says we find our place in eternity. First and foremost, it's related to God and His sons, and in our societies, it relates to one another in the world that we see all around us.
So here you go in a nutshell. And by the way, we'll pick up that idea—it becomes where we go next week. What does it mean to be adopted? And that imagery is really rich. We get a sense of it in our culture, but we really see it in that Greek and Roman culture.
The Law Cannot Save Us
But here's the big point. The big point is this: that the law will never save us, that we're separated from God, and there's nothing we can do on our own to remedy that situation. That anything that you bring is sinful works before a holy God.
So if you're here today, and you're saying, "God, here's the deal. You don't bother me, I don't bother You. All I want is what I deserve. I'm an American, pull myself up by the bootstraps, rugged individualism." This culture really feeds into that. And I'm all down with that, too. I'm a free market kind of capitalist sort of a dude. But that doesn't help when I go to God.
When I go to God and say, "Well, I'll pull myself up by bootstraps," He's going to go, "You ain't got no bootstraps, son. I just want what I deserve." Okay, wage of sin is death, separation. You already got what you deserve.
God's Grace and Gift
Now here's what I'd love to give you. Not something you have to earn, but something I'll give you. Not something you do, something I'll do. It's eternal life.
And from a practical perspective, now I have what I want in life. Now I have—Jesus said that He had come that I might have life and have it abundantly, that I find joy in Him. It's not that I'll have every material thing I ever wanted, but it does mean I will have everything I ever need and I have Him.
Living by Faith
So as I face all of these things in my life, I now live—see how that connects now. I now live by faith. I'll go, "Gee, it just seems like—" and I'll go, "Yeah, I know. It feels like You're far away, but buddy, I'm not." Here You go. That's why what I know trumps what I feel.
What does it mean to be a son of God or child of the King? Next week we look at exactly that. Neil's going to come lead you in your time here now, our time of communion over in the Conference Center. Either Brian or Matt will come and close the time there and time of worship through song here.
Let's pray. Father, thank You for the amazing truth that You love us and save us not based on who we are, not based on our heritage, not based on anything we've done, but upon Christ and what He's done. God, help us live by faith and enter into a right relationship with You by faith. God, we love You, and even then it's because You first loved us, and we worship You and praise You in Christ's name.