Galatians 3:21-26 “The cage of the law, the grace of Christ”

Summary

So we have been in Galatians now for a little over 3 months. The purpose of this study is not to bog your life down with terms that don’t make sense.  It is not to make your faith heavy and cumbersome. It is rather to liberate you and to get you on solid ground. I want you to understand the weight of the gospel, not so that you are crushed by it but that you are set free by it.  So imagine that we are constructing a skyscraper.

Building a skyscraper

The Empire State Building was the first building to have more than 100 floors. It has 6,500 windows and 73 elevators, and there are 1,860 steps from street level to the 102nd floor. It has a total floor area of 2,768,591 sq ft (257,211 m²); the base of the Empire State Building is about 2 acres (8,094 m²). The building houses 1,000 businesses and has its own zip code, 10118. As of 2007, approximately 21,000 employees work in the building each day, making the Empire State Building the second-largest single office complex in America, after the Pentagon. The building was completed in one year and 45 days. The building has 70 mi (113 km) of pipe, 2,500,000 ft (760,000 m) of electrical wire,^[45] and about 9,000 faucets.

What does all of this rest on? Not on the ground. It rests on a foundation, a deep foundation. 62,000 cubic yards of concrete. Which is 251,100,000 pounds or 125,550 tons of concrete. Foundations are what skyscrapers are built on and theological or Biblical foundations are what great lives and great churches are built on.  So that is the connection. I want your foundation to be strong so that events that happen in your life do not shake your faith. Paul prays that, “we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.”

(Ephesians 4:14 ESV)

So that is where we are going. Foundations are important. Gospel fuel is important. Knowing our own salvation is important. That is why God gave us the Bible. So that we can know God and know ourselves.

Bypass all this theology?

Some of you may tire of this. You may want to run and not walk. You may be thinking, “I am tired of all this talk of grace. I want to know what I am supposed to do now that I am saved.” Well we as a church do not want to be sprinters. We want to be marathon runners. We want to be like the tortoise and not the hare.

Why? Because 2012 may be hard for you.

2012 may be hard

2012 may not be easy for you. But it will be good for you, if you put your whole life in God’s hand and say, “I am yours. Make me as you want me.” That is the prayer, make me as you want me.  It may be a year of breaking, tearing, hardened soil being turned over by God’s great life giving tractor.  This may be a year of preparing the soil of your heart to produce fruit, perhaps for really the first time: Fruit in your relationships, fruit in your witness to outsiders, fruit in your character.  Let God do all that He needs to do.

But where will that fruit come from? Any fool can do a couple good deeds or read his Bible for a month. Our aim is not a firework Christianity but a sustained, enduring, gospel fueled pursuit of God that cannot be undone or destroyed no matter what comes our way.

The deeper our knowledge, the greater the fuel

And that is why we want to learn of our salvation. That is why spend weeks or months digging deeper and deeper into the meaning of our salvation, what it is and what God calls us to do after we are saved. Paul says that his desire is that we would know the immeasurable greatness of his power toward those who believe, according to the working of His great might.  So the power to live the Christian life comes from God. It comes from his great reservoir of strength.  We draw from a well that does not run dry. We struggle with “His energy” that so powerfully works within us.

So imagine these Sundays as fueling up. Getting gospel fuel in you that will not burn up. But will endure to the end.

Clarification of terms

Before we jump deeper into Paul’s mind, I thought we could spend a few minutes talking about terms. Specifically, what is the law? I talk allot about the law. What exactly is that? My wife thought it would be good to explain and I think that’s a good idea. So here it goes.

The law is basically the commands given to Moses at Mt. Sinai. It includes the ten commandments, as well as all the other laws, like if your oxen gores a man to death and that ox has been known to act up before. Then the owner of that ox should be put to death. It also includes laws related to what you can and cannot eat, how to treat children who disobey their parents, etc.

Law as a guide

This law was given to the Israelite people after they were taken out of Egypt. It was the guide by which they were to live by as God’s own people, or God’s own family.  The covenant with the Israelites was already established.  God had already chosen them as his chosen people. So the law was not the means by which the Jews were brought to God. It was the standard they were to live by as God’s people.

What happened during the course of many years and many generations are two things. One is that people simply forgot the law and no longer lived by it. The other was that the Israelites used the law as a spiritual prop to get them to God. Allegiance to the law began to compete with God, Himself, Who was the Giver of the law.

And that is what we are dealing with in Galatians: those who falsely served the law as a God and failed to serve God Himself, as revealed in Christ. So Paul’s aim is to say, “no, the law doesn’t save. Jesus saves. Circumcision doesn’t save.  The grace of Jesus saves.” To worship the law would be to despise the offering of Christ and to miss the entire purpose of the law: to point us to our need for a perfect Man to come and live perfectly for us.

A refresher in Paul’s argument

Vs. 21             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.  (Galatians 3:21 ESV)

So far, Paul has been arguing that the Law of Moses is subordinate to the covenant made with Abram. They do not operate in the same category. The law is temporary and is no longer in use since Jesus came and fulfilled it for us.  So Paul is saying that the law is down here. It operates beneath the covenant, on a different level, in a different category.  So the question in verse 21 is this, “if the law is down here, is it at conflict with the promise of God? Does the law compete with the covenant?”

Are they against each other and opposed to each other?  Does the law conflict with the promise? Does the law conflict with justification by faith? Is there gospel competition within the scriptures? That’s basically the question the Galatians are dealing with. Does the Law of Moses negate or conflict with justification by faith? So here we have salvation coming as a promise of God through Christ.  Does the law conflict with that?  In other words, does the Bible contradict itself?

Two sides of the coin to salvation?

After Abraham was given the covenant, did God forget that He had made it and then implement the Mosaic covenant or the law in order to compete with the Abrahamic Covenant? Are there two sides to the coin of your salvation: One being God’s faithfulness and love through Christ and the other being our obedience?

That is the question or issue Paul is speaking to.  When the Abrahamic Covenant was made, was obedience to the law in the fine print?  Was there a hidden trap door that Abraham didn’t know about? Or are there signs up that say, “watch your step?”  Did God say, “Yes, I will make this covenant with you but careful where you step. You might step on a mine and blow this covenant to smithereens. Watch your back. This covenant is far from over. Time will tell how all of this pans out.”

Grace and law don’t comingle

Obviously this can’t be. The covenant of grace can’t be both of grace and law. As we looked at last week, the two do not and cannot exist in the same category. But the Galatian church was being told that they did. The Abrahamic Covenant is not sufficient but must be added to.  And if that is the case, then the law and the promise of being justified by faith conflict with one another.

To this Paul says, “Certainly not.” These two do not exist together and one does not negate the other. This is like playing a basketball game with baseball rules: Balls and strikes and pinch runners and flyballs and homeruns. What a mess. The two sports cannot exist within the same set of rules. They have to remain separate. So if someone makes a three pointer, you don’t say, “that was outside the strike zone and it doesn’t count.” That’s the wrong rule, the wrong game and the wrong arena. And that agitator would probably get thrown out of the game.

The covenant didn’t require perfection

Similarly, what can the law say to faith and grace? Nothing. Faith and grace exist in different categories. The law doesn’t show up at the covenant ceremony and say, “hold it, Abraham is an impure sinner and needs to change before all this can go through.” No. The law has no place in the ceremony, in the covenant.  The coffee barista does not go to the farm to tell the farmer how to milk the cow.  The farmer supplies the milk and the barista makes the iced vanilla latte, skim, no cream.  They are in different categories and must remain that way.

So Paul’s answer is, “Certainly not!”

The law was never meant to give life. It was rather meant to give death. Look at verse 22.

Vs. 22

The Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

The prison of the law

Far from saving, the law was meant to imprison people. Do you think of people as imprisoned? Imagine all people being behind bars. They are invisible bars. No one can see them but they are there. And you were there behind those bars until Christ got you out.  John Calvin says this of the law, “It shuts up all men under accusation and therefore, instead of giving, it takes away righteousness.” It does not give life. It tells you that you are dead. It does not allow you the opportunity to be guiltless. It tells you that you are a criminal. The law basically is meant to lock up criminals. So that criminals know that they are criminals.

Law meant to expose sin

The law was not meant to create sin but to expose it. So perhaps someone is covetous. This person covets other people’s cars and houses or perhaps someone else’s husband or wife. Then the law comes and says, “thou shall not covet.” Does that law coming actually create the sin or does it expose the sin

Or perhaps a man is addicted to pornography. He is not aware that there is a law that says, “If you lust after another woman, you have committed adultery in your heart.” Yet, God in his grace allows this man to hear a sermon or read a book that explains God’s commands regarding purity, the way a man should treat a woman and women in general.  What does the law do in that situation? Does it create the sin or does it expose it? Does it hide the sin or does it stir it up? It stirs it up. It exposes. It makes the dross rise to the surface and form an ugly pool of sin that could not be seen before.

Law cannot liberate from sin

That is all the law can do.  It cannot liberate that person from his addiction. Someone could create a law for themselves that they will only look at pornography one time a week or one time a month. But that does not solve the problem.  The law will expose the sin but the law will not pull them out of the sin or liberate them from it.  The law diagnoses and offers a remedy (being Christ) but the law cannot heal and set free.

The blessing of seeing sin

Have you felt the weight of imprisonment? Have you felt the hopelessness of your own situation apart from Christ? All are imprisoned to the law and standard of God. But not all know that they are. Do you? Do you know that you do not stand up well next to God? Knowing your status before God and your imprisonment to His law is not a curse. It is a gift. It is a blessing to see your own sin.  And most will never see their own imprisonment. Do you? Will you? May God give you eyes to see the prison we are all in until Christ sets us free.

Power over sin by the Spirit

And how about you? Do you have sin that you cannot be free of?  Perhaps you have tried a law to rid yourself of your sin. Based on Romans 8:3 “… God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

(Romans 8:3-4 ESV)

Notice where the power is here? Not in the flesh, not in the law. The power to overcome sin is Christ killing it in us and then us walking according to the Spirit. Our “victory” comes not in obeying a law that we have set up to deal with our sin or to keep us from sinning. But rather our victory comes from walking with Christ, doing as He does, obeying and following him.

Don’t make an idol of your sin

We do not want to make idols of our sin, where we are obsessed with not doing this and doing this.  That is not freedom from sin. That is another form of bondage to it. If you say, “I will not covet, I will not covet, I will not covet,” then what are you thinking about? Coveting. Your mind is not on Christ, it is not your sin that you are trying to destroy apart from Christ. You cannot overcome your sin apart from Christ. Keeping a law will not liberate you from the sin. It is not meant to save but to expose the sin.

New kind of faith

Vs 23-25             Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, (Galatians 3:23-25 ESV)

Now, when Paul says, before faith came, he is not saying that faith did not exist before Christ came. Clearly Abraham was justified by faith and many others had faith in God and his promise before Christ came. What he is saying is that the coming of Christ ushers in a new era of faith, where people place their trust specifically in the person and work of Jesus.  So the “coming faith revealed” is the coming of Jesus.  And until Jesus came, the law kept us imprisoned and captive.

The law, our guardian

Vs. 24, 25.

Paul calls the law “our guardian.” That is all it is. It is meant to instruct us of our sinfulness. And not that faith (in Christ) has come, there is no longer a need for it. We are justified by faith and the law has made the grace of Christ appear as sweet.

Practical applications:

1)  Don’t treat relationships based on the law.  It is easy some time to think of relationship in black and white terms. So my wife and I have a disagreement about something. Perhaps I express something to her and she doesn’t like it. So, I say, “that’s the last time I am going to express myself so honestly.” And I create a law. Or perhaps you have been treated unfairly or have been hurt by someone. So what do you tell yourself, “ I will never open up like that to anyone ever again.” Or “I will never let anyone get that close to me ever again.” You try to create a law that will keep you safe. “If I do this, then this will not happen.” So we use a law to set up boundaries for how far people can cross or how close they can get.

This does not and cannot work for very long. What does Paul say instead, “Speak the truth in love.” “Open your hearts to me as I have opened my heart to you.” When Paul says, “Love one another with brotherly affection and outdo one another in showing honor,” do you think that is possible if you have built up law between you?

And Peter says,

For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. (2 Peter 1:5-7 ESV)

Do you think this is possible while operating by a law? No these are fruit of the Spirit. They cannot be accomplished by an man-made measure. So do not treat people through the lens of the law but by the love of Christ.

Can the law make you a gentle person? Or an affectionate person? No. But Christ can. Can the law make you humble? No, but Christ can.

2)  Do not be afraid to speak of the law to unbelievers.

We have established that all people are sinners and that all people are imprisoned to sin and under condemnation by the law. If that is the case, then you must tell unbelievers that. It’s like a secure room that is guarded with laser security. There are lasers all around them and they have been running into them all over the place. What you need to do is gently blow on one and say, “look. You see this laser. God has hundreds of them and you have tripped off your entire life.”

But remember that this isn’t, “you are a sinner. Stop sinning.” This is rather, “you and I are sinners. We need a Savior. We cannot be saved any other way than through Christ.

3)  Enjoy Christ.  The overwhelming message of the New Testament is the greatness of Christ. Hebrews is about the greatness of Christ. Ephesians 1-3 is about the greatness of Christ’s work.  Many of Paul’s letters contain doxologies that praise and worship the name of Christ. Paul left everything for Him. So should we. Please pray with me.

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