The Book of Galatians #11
Galatians 3:15-22
We’ve made our way to Galatians 3:15, and as we begin I'd like to read this entire passage to you so that you have it set in your mind as we begin. It is a somewhat difficult passage to understand, and I want to take it rather slowly and make sure we get it.
Verse 15-22
I told you it was difficult. But I promise if you listen closely and stay with it, you'll understand. How can I be so sure? God is the one Who made that promise. I’m afraid most of the time we just say, “I can’t understand it” and go on to something easier. But God’s promise is the meat is for us. He can unfold it to you if you really want to know.
Now, as we come to the book of Galatians, remember, Paul is defending the truth of salvation by faith. That is his message. So far, he has talked about his own salvation and experience with the church, and his call and apostleship. In chapter 3:1-5 he has talked about their experience as well.
Then he begins presenting the evidence for salvation by grace through faith in 3:6. He will continue to chapter 4:7. He just gives one Old Testament verse after another to support the argument.
That was extremely important because the Old Testament was the basis for the argument of his opposition.
So Paul takes the Old Testament, which they claim to believe and study and use to support their view of works, and he turns it around to show them that the Old Testament, in fact, teaches salvation by grace through faith.
So, for the first two chapters, Paul defends his apostleship. The next section, chapters 3-4, are devoted to defending the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Then, we’ll see in chapters 5-6 he’ll talk about the liberty of the Christian life.
The section we are in tonight actually builds upon what we’ve seen the last couple of weeks. First of all, Scripture presents justification by faith positively with examples like Abraham.
Negatively, it doesn’t need works to make it work. And one after the other he bombards them with Scripture. From Genesis to Habbakuk, he presents Old Testament proof for justification by faith. In fact, if I counted correctly, he used at least five different passages from the Old Testament to make his point.
And he’s not finished. He has presented, from verses 6-14, that Abraham was justified by faith. There is no doubt about that. He has amassed all this various Scripture, and taken his listeners back to back to the history of Abraham to show that Abraham was justified by faith. The reason he was saved, the reason God accepted him, the reason he entered into a right relationship with God, was simply and only because he believed, not because of something he did. It was because of his faith.
Now here comes the obvious argument:
"OK, Paul, you say that Abraham was justified by faith, and the people who came after Abraham were justified by faith alone. That's fine. But when the law finally came, 645 years after Abraham, it brought with it a brand new approach to God.”
Paul is anticipating they are going to say, "We buy the fact that Abraham was justified by faith, but that was only because the law hadn't come yet. Once the law came, that changed everything."
Therefore, from the time of the law on, God would justify by faith plus works. The Jew would say, "Why else would God give the law?" That's an obvious question and I'm sure it's an obvious argument.
So here comes Paul, the theological hawk, swooping down on his opponent. And beginning in verse 15, he answers the question that he himself anticipates.
To do so, he goes back in history to Moses. He went back to Abraham the first time, and now he goes back to Moses. Here, he shows that God, in dealing with Abraham and in dealing with Moses, had two entirely different things in mind.
It's a tremendous passage, if you ever get a hold on this, it will help you understand the purpose of law and the purpose of the promise. A lot of people never understand it. Many believer people were saved one way in the Old Testament under the law and another through Jesus in the New. That’s not Scriptural.
And understanding the difference goes all the way back to Moses and Abraham. To Abraham, God gave a promise. There were no conditions attached. He said, "Your seed will be as the sand of the sea. In you will all nations be blessed." He made the statement that from Abraham's loins would come the seed that would bless all men. There wasn't anything for Abraham to do but just listen to the promise.
But when He came to Moses, he didn't just give Moses a promise. He gave Moses a law.
Let me show you the difference in another way. To Abraham, God said, "I will. I will. I will." To Moses, He said, "Thou shalt. Thou shalt. Thou shalt, or else." There is quite a difference.
The promise set forth a relationship with God; the law set forth a religion of man. The promise talked about God's plan, God's grace, God's initiative, God's sovereignty, God's blessing, God's promise.
The law talked about man's duty, man's works, man's responsibility, man's behavior, man's obedience.
The promise, which stood for grace, had only to be believed; the law, which stood for works, had to be obeyed. They were two different things.
And that’s his argument. Two simple points:
1. The superiority of the promise of faith, and
2. The inferiority of the demands of the law.
Let’s look at them.
1. The Superiority of the Promise of Faith
verses 15-18
Paul presents four reasons for the superiority of faith over law:
First of all, its confirmation.
Faith is superior to the law because of its confirmation; it is irrevocable.
Notice how he begins in verse 15. "Brethren"
Paul is mellowing. The last time he called them by anything was in verse 1 when he said, “You blockheads”.
Paul says, "Let me give you a simple illustration. To begin with, you people make agreements. Now if that agreement is ratified, or confirmed, then nobody can change that agreement. That's true in the human realm." That's verse 15. "
The word 'covenant' here, carries the idea of an agreement. Other places it is more of a will of testament, but here it seems it’ just an agreement between two people.
And the point is, once that agreement is entered in to it becomes binding. So, he says, "When men make an agreement, or a covenant, and confirm that thing, or ratify that thing, then it becomes a binding thing. No one annuls it or adds to it."
By the way, back in Genesis 15 that’s what God did with Abraham. God made a covenant, an agreement, and bound Himself to it by having it ratified, or confirmed.
God gave him a covenant. He said, "You're going to have a child, you're going to have people like the stars of heaven, and it's going to be a fantastic blessing that will come through these people." And Abraham believed Him. There wasn't anything for Abraham to do; he just listened. It was pure promise.
Abraham asked, “How can I be sure?”
God tells him to go get all these animals and prepare them for a sacrifice. So he took a ram, a heifer and a nanny goat and cut them in half, sliced them down the middle and made a little path between. And he got two birds and he killed them and laid one on either side.
What’s going on? In Oriental custom, when two men made an agreement, they would very often take a lamb or she goat or whatever it might be from each of their flocks, split them down the middle, lay the pieces on each side, and together, they would walk between the bloody pieces. By walking between the bloody pieces, they were making a visible ratification of their covenant. This confirmed the covenant. So God is getting ready, according to Oriental custom (which Abram knew very well), to ratify His agreement.
And we are told that God came down and made His way between those animals.
Why didn’t Abram do it also? Because it wasn't an agreement between God and Abram, it was an agreement between God and God. God was binding Himself to His covenant. If you want to know whether the Abrahamic covenant was unconditional, then all you need to know is it was God's own promise to Himself. God bound Himself to the keeping of His covenant.
Therefore, Abram was saved, not by what he did but what God did. And by faith Abraham trusted God. So God bound Himself to His own covenant, and once it was legally ratified, and ratified by blood, it could never be set aside, it could never be added to.
So God made a covenant and ratified it. That's what men did too; men ratified covenants, usually by some symbol of blood or some other particular symbol, depending on the culture. Once it was ratified, nothing could be done to annul it or add to it.
So Paul begins his argument by saying the covenant was confirmed. It was ratified. That means it is set; it cannot be altered or added to. And here is his point:
"Look, even a man's covenant, when it's confirmed, cannot be annulled or added to." The implication is, if that's true in the human realm, how much more true is it when God makes a covenant and confirms it? If the covenants of men are irrevocable and inviolable, then what must be the covenant of God? So Paul's first argument is, "The law cannot come in and annul the first promise, because that was confirmed by God. No one can change that."
The second thing that speaks of the superiority of faith over the law is that it was not only confirmed, but it is
-Christ-centered.
Now remember, the anticipated argument is that Abraham was saved by faith, but once the law came along, that changed and now keeping the law is how a person is made right with God.
In verse 16, Paul’s argument is if God made a promise, not only is it unchangeable because it has been confirmed, it is unchangeable because it is rooted in the coming of Christ.
The promise made to Abraham was all about Jesus. It was eventually realized in Jesus. How can something that occurs in the middle, in this case, the law, change what was going on before and after?
Now the word Paul uses to speak of Christ is the “Seed”. Now that’s interesting because the word “seed” is often used to speak of many. When we talk about the 'seed' that came out of Abraham, God Himself said, "Your seed shall be as the sand of the sea." Why does Paul take the liberty of taking that reference and making it mean 'one and applying it to Jesus?'
There are a lot of reasons, but I think the best one is that the same Holy Spirit that wrote Genesis also wrote Galatians. The Holy Spirit knows what He meant. And Paul, knowing he is being led by the Spirit to right this letter has the right to interpret Genesis because the same Holy Spirit that authored that is guiding him in this. You know what this is? When the Holy Spirit said in Genesis the words, "In thy seed shall all be blessed," the Holy Spirit had referenced Christ. Paul, here, gives us that interpretation of that passage to show us that's what the Holy Spirit meant.
Now notice what is said in the verse: The promise was mad to Jesus Christ. In fact, the one and only heir of every promise of God is Christ. The only way Abraham or you or anybody else will ever get in on the promises of God is to be in Christ.
It is because of what Christ does that anyone else is blessed. The Bible tells us simply, in the book of Romans, "We become joint heirs with Christ. The Father gives Him all things," the Bible says. "The Father will deliver all things into His hands." He is the one who inherits the earth, right? He is the one in Revelation who has the title deed, the scroll. He is the one who possesses the earth. He is the King of the earth. We reign in Christ.
So when God said to Abraham, "Thy seed is the key to blessing," He was talking about Christ. The only way any man can be blessed is to be in Christ, to be involved in that which Christ accomplished on the Cross.
You ask, "Were Old Testament saints in Christ?" Of course they were. When Jesus died on the cross, He bore the sins of Adam and Abraham and Moses and everyone in the Old Testament. All of history goes like this: the Old Testament anticipates and moves toward the Cross and the New Testament moves from the Cross. He died for the sins of the whole world.
Could the blood of bulls and goats take away sin? Were the Old Testament saints sanctified by the blood of bulls and goats? They were sanctified by the blood of Jesus Christ that was not yet shed. But when it was shed, it covered the sins from both sides of the Cross. And it is only as a man, by faith, either anticipating the cross or responding to the cross is placed in Christ, that he will ever be blessed. That's what Paul is saying.
So he says, "The Abrahamic Covenant resolves itself in Christ. If the law, then, comes in between Abraham and Christ, it cannot annul that promise, for that promise comes all the way to Christ. The law may come and go, but the promise resolves in Christ." I hope you understand a little of that. In Him and in Him alone will all the multitudes of believing Jews and Gentiles be blessed. There is only blessing in Christ. Abraham's seed is Christ, and we are blessed with faithful Abraham as we are in Christ.
Let’s stop right there. There are two more points and we’ll look at those next time.
Let’s pray
