Galatians | 3:23-4:7

May 19

About this series:

Paul’s letter to the churches in Galatia is a heartfelt defence of the gospel of God's grace; a fervent appeal to keep the gospel front-and-centre and to not allow anything to detract from it.

In this letter Paul sounds exasperated at some points - for example, “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel - which is really no gospel at all” (1:6) and, “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?” (3:1), which The Message renders as, “You crazy Galatians! Did someone put a spell on you? Have you taken leave of your senses? Something crazy has happened, for it’s obvious that you no longer have the crucified Jesus in clear focus in your lives.”

Paul’s frustration and anger stem from a passionate concern that the churches he planted return to a full confidence that it is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone that a person is justified by God and is included in God’s family. Nothing else is required. The message he preached to the Galatians, and which they had believed, is not so much a departure from their Jewish heritage, as the fulfilment of it. Thus, in this letter we have a window into life in early Christianity and especially some of the challenges the churches faced from false teachers as the church grew from its Jewish roots.

So in this series we’re going to get a big view of what the life, death and resurrection of Jesus has achieved for mankind. And some very practical help on how we can stay true to Jesus, trusting him alone to put us in a right relationship with God, to keep us in that right relationship and to qualify us for membership among God’s people. ‘The central message of Galatians is that the freeness of God’s grace and love is not only the gateway but also the pathway of the Christian life’ (Dane Ortlund).

About this talk:

Paul continues his argument that those who are justified (made right with God and included in the covenant people of God) are those who, like Abraham, believe God, not those who are part of ethnic Israel or those who obey the law; and that God’s plan all along was to send a ‘seed’ who would bring these blessings to us.

So he now uses another image to describe life before faith in Jesus. In v 22 he imagined the Jewish nation being locked up by the Scriptures’ assessment of sinfulness, and powerless to break free. Now, v 23, he sees Israel as having been, “held in custody under the law.” There are different views about how Paul intends us to view this custody. In favour of it being a positive custody (a “protective custody,” David Gezik), the law can be seen as:

Protecting Israel by revealing God’s heart to them.
Protecting Israel by showing the best way to live at that time, summed up in the Ten Commandments - ie. in accordance with God’s declared will.
Protecting Israel by helping them to stay distinct from the sinful nations around them.
In addition to the above points, the law made it clear that a new means of fulfilling the promise to Abraham was urgently needed.

In that way, the law has been a guardian, caring for and training the immature person in preparation for the ‘maturity’ for which they were always intended - to be “justified by faith.”

However, the primary point of seeing the law as a guardian appears to be in emphasising its temporary nature (not its positive influence), in place only until the age of maturity is reached. And, as in the case of a young adult, there comes a point when the guardian is no longer needed - they have done their job. So it is now with the law. This was precisely the Judaizers’ mistake, seeing the law as permanent in God’s purposes. That this is Paul’s primary point here is made clear by vs 24-25: “until Christ came” and “we are no longer under a guardian.”

In vs 26-29 we have a number of statements which together declare the equality of all who are now in the kingdom of God, all of whom have been declared righteous on the basis of faith. So “you are all children of God through faith,” “all of you who were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ,” all who “belong to Christ...are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” His famous sentence, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” is a completely revolutionary idea in a world where these three divisions were primary cultural markers of status. He’s not saying there is no longer people who are Jews and people who are Gentiles, people who are slaves and people who are free, people who are males and people who are females, but that each person, regardless of biological, social or racial differences are equally God’s children, equally inheritors of the promise to Abraham, equally on the basis of faith.

In 4:1 Paul builds on the imagery used so far, likening the nation of Israel to a child who, though heir to the whole estate, is not yet master of any of it - in effect, that child is “no different from a slave” until the time set by his father when he will inherit it all. Despite being heirs of the promise to Abraham, Israel could not inherit it until the time set by the Father - the sending of his Son - had come. This slavery, Paul says, was to “the elemental spiritual forces” (ESV: “elementary principles”) - enslaved outside Christ either to demonic forces or to the basic principles of the world’s way of thinking.

Then comes one of the New Testament’s great “But”s - “But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son” - cf. Mark 1:15; Romans 5:6. He was, crucially, “born of a woman” and “born under the law:

“Born of a woman”: The promise to Abraham (and we also recall Genesis 3:15) was to his seed and so it must refer to a human being - ie. “born of a woman.” This also serves to emphasise the full humanity of Jesus.
“Born under the law”: Jesus was born as a Jew, subject in his humanity to the law. Yet in contrast to the disobedience of all who came before him, Jesus perfectly pleased his Father in fully obeying God’s law and can therefore impart his righteousness to us. On the cross he took the curse of the law upon himself and can thus liberate all who were under the law and imprisoned by its guilty verdict.

Paul here states two outcomes of God sending his Son, v 5: to redeem and to adopt - ‘not just to rescue from slavery, but to make slaves into sons’ (John Stott). Here we encounter two of the many New Testament terms describing the victory, in our lives, of Jesus’ death and resurrection; others include reconciliation, forgiveness, regeneration, freedom. To redeem is to purchase out of slavery; to adopt is to take into one’s family someone who was not a natural son, but now has all the rights of a natural son.

And there is a double sending - not only have those who believe have been redeemed and adopted by the sending of the Son, they are now indwelt by the sending of the same Spirit as was in the Son - “God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts.” He sent His Son that we might have the status of sonship, and he sent His Spirit that we might have an experience of it’ (John Stott) - cf. Romans 8:15-16. And unlike those who, under the Mosaic covenant, would never inherit all the covenantal blessings implicit in the promise to Abraham, we, through the Father’s sending of his Son and his Spirit, are heirs of it all!