Salvation By Grace

Galatians 3: 15 – 29
15 To give a human example, brothers: even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified.
16 Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ.
17 This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void.
18 For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.
19 Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was i put in place through angels by an intermediary.
20 Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one.
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.
22 But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
23 Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.
24 So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.
25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, 26 for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.
27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
29 And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

From ESV study notes:

• Gal. 3:16 God spoke promises to Abraham on several occasions, but probably Gen. 13:15 and 17:8 are particularly in view.
  • Gen 13:15 – “for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever.
  • Gen 17:8 – 8 And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.”
    • And to your offspring.
      • Paul knows that the singular (Hb. zera‘) can be used as a collective singular that has a plural sense (he interprets it in a plural sense in Rom. 4:18).
      • But it also can have a singular meaning, and here Paul, knowing that only in Christ would the promised blessings come to the Gentiles, sees that the most true and ultimate fulfillment of these OT promises comes to one “offspring,” namely, Christ.
      • Paul’s willingness to make an argument using a singular noun in distinction from its plural form (which occurs in other OT verses) indicates a high level of confidence in the trustworthiness of the small details of the OT text.

• The ultimate fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham was spiritual, it was a spiritual inheritance
• The scripture did not say and to your ‘seeds’ it says and to your ‘seed’ meaning one person who is Christ so that the promise looked forward to the arrival of Jesus
• But people keep asking Paul “what about the law” Gal 3:19
• From ESV study notes:
  • Why then the law? The question then arises: If the law has no impact on God’s plan rooted in his promise, why was the law ever given?
  • Because of transgressions might mean
    • (1) “to provide a sacrificial system to deal temporarily with transgressions,”
    • (2) “to teach people more clearly what God requires and thereby to restrain transgressions,”
    • (3) “to show that transgressions violated an explicit written law,” or
    • (4) “to reveal people’s sinfulness and need for a savior” (cf. Rom. 3:20: “through the law comes knowledge of sin”).
  • All four senses are theologically true, but the last is probably uppermost in Paul’s mind.
  • put in place through angels by an intermediary. Deuteronomy 33:2 talks about God coming from Sinai, where he gave the law, “from the ten thousands of holy ones,” so the angels were present with God on that occasion (cf. Acts 7:53; Heb. 2:2).
  • Moses was God’s “intermediary” in the gift of the law to Israel (Lev. 26:46; John 1:17).
  • The Mosaic law was part of a temporary covenant never intended to last forever.
  • Now that Jesus has come as the true offspring of Abraham, the Mosaic law is no longer in force.
  • Therefore, circumcision is no longer required, since it is part of the Mosaic covenant.
• The law was added because of transgressions
• The law exposes us as we really are
  • We may give ourselves high rankings in the way in which we live our lives, we may have set up in our own thinking that which represents acceptable behavior and as long as our only reference is to ourselves and to our own code of ethics we can make our way relatively peacefully through life
  • But whenever we come and expose ourselves to the law of God, it takes the lid off and shows us what we are really like down inside
  • it shows that we are sinful
  • it reveals that we are rebellious, pronounces us guilty, says we are under judgement, tells us we are helpless, tells us we cannot do a thing to make ourselves right with God
  • and saw the law is proclaimed so that the promise may be understood in all of its beauty
  • we are lost and in need of His divine intervention
• The place of pronouncing God’s judgement on sin is a necessary place, it is an unpopular thing in our culture because people want to come to church to feel good about themselves they want to come to church and have a happy time even if it kills them
• Puritan quote: “You cannot sow with the thread of the gospel before you have pierced with the needle of the law.”
• The law cannot give life, because we cannot keep it.  If we could keep the law then we would be declared righteous in God’s sight.
  • But we break the law and what the law has done is to put us in jail so to speak.
  • The whole world is a prisoner of sin and it has put us in jail so that the promise may be the key to our release.
    • The promise that God gave to Abraham that the just shall live by faith.
      • Judaizers were teaching that the law annuls the promise made to Abraham, but Paul says that its true purpose was to show that the promise was vital
• It is our inability to keep the law which shows us the desireable, indispensable nature of God’s promise
• When we realize we are in trouble, then the person throwing the rope becomes real important.
  • Until we realize we are in trouble, you can dangle ropes from now until kingdom come and I won’t do anything; but once I realize I am drowning, then I will grasp and hold for dear life.
    • The purpose of the law is to show us that we are drowning and the promise is that we might take hold
      • The principal point of the law is to make men not better but worse, But by the knowledge of their sin they may be humbled, terrified, bruised, and broken … and by this means they may be driven by Grace so to come to Christ. — Martin Luther.
• 18th century revival in North America
  • Jonathan Edwards, Whitfield
  • unashamefully declaring to men and women that they were under God’s condemnation and when the spirit of God brought that home to their hearts and convicted them of their sin, their lossness, and the reality of an eternity without  God and then they cried
  • But men and women will not cry today under preaching that is preoccupied with self-image, self-worth, and self-love

This entry was posted on March 15, 2009 at 4:04 pm and is filed under Law, Self-Audit, Sin, Total Depravity . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.