Summary:

The “liberty” Paul says to “stand fast” in is the one that makes us “free” from the law (5:1). We need to be free from this “ministration of condemnation” (IICor.3:9) because it demands 100% obedience 100% of the time (Gal.3:10). You couldn’t give that before you were saved, so the law condemned you, and you asked God to save you by grace.

But you still can’t keep it, so the law still condemns you. Not to hell, but to feeling condemned, so “stand fast” in grace instead (Gal.5:1). “Fast” means immovable (Acts 27:41). The Galatians moved (Gal.1:6), and got “entangled” in the law (5:1), the way the Jews were trapped by the Red Sea (Ex.14:2,3). They probably felt hopeless, and you will too if you put yourself under the law, since you still can’t keep it.

Paul calls the law “the yoke of bondage” (Gal.5:1) because telling men “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not” is how you treat slaves, and slaves feel hopeless because they are trapped. You are “free from the law” (Rom.8:2), so stand in grace!

Paul interjects the subject of circumcision in this discussion of the law (Gal.5:2) because it was the first thing a Gentile had to do to be saved under the law (Ex.12:48). But the Galatians got saved under grace, so Paul said if they got circumcised “Christ shall profit you nothing.” It can’t take away the profit we already have, i.e., salvation (ICor.10:33). But the law can rob you of the additional profit Christ can give you.

Doing the first thing the law tells you to do obligates you to do all the things the law says to do (Gal.5:3), and you can’t, so you’re cursed (3:10). The law can’t curse you to a loss of salvation, but to a loss of “blessedness” (cf.4:15), i.e., thankfulness (Mark 6:41 cf. John 6:11). And thankfulness is the basis for all we do. We don’t do good works to get saved, but to show God we’re thankful He saved us. Thankfulness leads to a happy life—the additional profit Christ can give!

No man is justified by the law in the sight of God (Gal.3:11), so the ones whom Paul says “are” justified by it (5:4) are justified in their own eyes. That means they were “fallen from grace.” People use that verse to say we’re saved by grace, but you can sin too much and lose the salvation you got by grace. But the Galatians were religious, not sinful like the Corinthians. Paul didn’t tell them they fell from grace. He told that to the Galatians because falling from grace in the context means not standing in grace (5:1). Grace justifies you 100% from “all” things (Acts 13:39). If you think you’re justified by the law, and you only keep the law 90% of the time, you’re only 90% justified. To get from 100% justification to 90% justification, you have to fall.

Now, to get 100% righteousness in your conduct, you’ll have to “wait” for it (Gal.5:5). That’s our “hope” of righteousness, and “hope” means trust (Ps.71:5), confidence (Job 4:6) and expectation (Pr.10:28). We wait for this hope “through the Spirit” (Gal.5:5) the same way Paul says we wait for it in Romans 8:23 through the Spirit. There the Spirit helps us when we “groan” in pain (Rom.8:23) by reminding us through the Book He wrote that we are children of God (8:15) and will someday be 100% healthy. And when we grieve the Spirit, He helps by reminding us that someday we’ll be 100% righteous in our conduct as well as in Christ.

“Avail” (Gal.5:6) means to profit (Mark 8:36), so when Paul says circumcision can’t “avail” us, it’s another way of saying again that it can’t “profit” us (cf.Gal.5:2). There’s also no profit in “uncircumcision” (5:6), i.e., no profit in just avoiding circumcision and the law. There were “spiritual” Galatians who did avoid it (6:2), but that’s not what made them spiritual! “Faith which worketh by love” did (5:6). What’s that? Well, faith is believing God (Rom.10:17), and if you believe what God says, you’re going to do good works in any dispensation. But faith that works by law helps your brother because God says you must (Deut.15:7,8). Faith that works by love helps a brother because you love him!

A video of this sermon is available on YouTube: Stand Fast In Your Liberty (Galatians 5:1-6)

Summary:

Paul told the Galatians if they wanted to be under the law, they must not have heard the part he’s about to describe (v. 21). God promised Abram a son, but his wife was barren (Gen.11:30), so when God said he’d have a “seed” (12:3) he knew God planned to miraculously give him one. But he impatiently had a son by his servant (Gen.16:1-4cf.Gal.4:22).

Hagar’s son was born “after the flesh” (v.23), after “the will of the flesh” (cf.Jo.1:13).It was God’s will Abraham wait for Sarah’s son, but it was the will of his flesh to father Ishmael. This is an “allegory” (4:24), an illustration. They’re used for kids, but the Galatians were acting like “children” (4:19).

Hagar represented “mount Sinai” (v.25), i.e., the “covenant” of the law (Deut.33:2) that God gave Israel when He gave them 613 commandments, and said He’d give them eternal life if they could keep them all perfectly! They couldn’t, so it “gendereth to bondage” (v.24), i.e., it sired (cf.Job 21:10) slaves who had to be told “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not.”

Hagar “answereth to” Jerusalem (Gal.4:25), i.e., she looked like Jerusalem (cf.Pr.27:19). That is, you could see Jerusalem in her story. Abraham and Sarah told her “thou shalt” etc. “All her children” were also slaves (4:25) because the child of a slave is a slave, and the people of Jerusalem were enslaved from Day One. They became God’s people the day Moses gave them the law (Deut.27:1,9), and the people they became were bondslaves. And all her children were slaves because the son of a slave is a slave.

But Sarah represented the Jerusalem in heaven (Gal.4:26 cf. Heb.12:22) that will be on the earth (Rev.21:2) as opposed to the Jerusalem “which now is.” Her kids are “free” because the children of free women are free. Her kids are saved Jews under the law, but Paul reveals she is the mother of “all” Gentile believers too, just as Abraham is our father (Rom.

4:16). We are “free” from the bondage of sin (Jo.8:33,34).

Paul says Hagar had a husband (Gal.4:27) because she is said to be Abraham’s “wife” (Gen.16:3). She represented Jerusalem under the law, whose husband was God (Jer.2:2). He married her with wedding vows (Deut.26:17,18). Sarah did not have a husband, because she represents Jerusalem above, who won’t have a husband until Revelation 20:7; 21:9,10.

That explains why Galatians 4:27 says Sarah had more kids than Hagar. There have never been more Jews than Arabs, but in New Jerusalem, there’ll be more saved Jews than there ever were Arabs. Paul was quoting Isaiah 54:1, and as a prophet, Isaiah was predicting Sarah would have more kids in God’s eternal kingdom (54:1-13). In that kingdom, saved Jews will continue to have kids (Isa.9:7) and complete God’s plan to populate heaven and earth, a plan Adam interrupted.

There’s no need to join legalizers to be in the majority now.

Paul mentions this to comfort the Galatians. They were in the minority compared to unsaved Jews, but someday they’ll be the majority, and us with them! We’re Abraham’s legitimate seed (Gal.4:28). God promised Abraham a legit son by a miraculous birth, and our spiritual birth is just as miraculous, and just as apart from “the will of the flesh” (Jo.1:13).

But along with the blessing of being Abraham’s legitimate children like Isaac was, we inherit a problem he had. Abraham’s unsaved son persecuted his saved son (Gal.4:29), because God said he couldn’t have part of Isaac’s inheritance (Gal.4:30). Unbelievers still persecute believers (II Thes. 2:14,15) because they don’t get any part of our inheritance. Mocking (Gen.21:9) is about all the persecution we get, but all who live godly in Christ will receive it (IITim.3:12).

Paul closes this passage by assuring the Galatians that those unsaved Jews will be cast out (4:30), then assures them that they won’t be part of those who are cast out (v.31). Us either!

A video of this sermon is available on YouTube: Listening to the Law – Galatians 4:21-31

Summary:

We know “infirmity” (4:13) can mean any kind of affliction, for the Lord healed all kinds of things (Lu.5:15). We think Paul’s infirmity was an eye disease, for the only way he’d call Galatians a “large” epistle (Gal.6:11) is if he had to use large letters to write it. Paul calls his infirmity a temptation (4:14) because tempt can mean test (Rev.3:10). Infirmities test to see if we’ll receive them as Paul did (IICor.12:8-10).

The Galatians didn’t reject Paul for his infirmity (Gal.4:14), even though his eyes were probably gooey, and the Greeks despised “weak” bodies (IICor.10:10). Their willingness to give Paul their eyes (Gal.4:15) gives more proof he had eye trouble. When he didn’t scold them, it proves organ trans-plants and blood transfusions are okay, for eyes have blood.

Paul calls that joyful spirit of giving a “blessedness” (v.15) because the Lord said it is “more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). God is the most joyful person in all creation because He is the biggest giver. He gives us life, and eternal life by grace when we believe. That made the Galatians want to be givers like God. Grace always does!

But we know the law robbed them of that blessedness, for Paul had to tell them to pay their pastors (6:6). They went from wanting to repay Paul with their eyes for teaching them how to be saved, to not wanting to pay teachers anything for teaching them the Bible. Grace makes us want to be givers like God after we learn all He’s given us, but if you think you’re under the law, you’re going to wonder why God isn’t giving you the health and wealth He gave the Jews under the law. That made the Galatians not want to give to others.

The Galatians didn’t like being called out about their legalism, so they considered Paul their enemy (Gal.4:16). But they thought of the legalizers as friends, so Paul explained why they affected the Galatians in verse 17. That word means to desire. They desired the Galatians, “but not well,” i.e., not for a good purpose. They did it to make themselves look like successful leaders (cf. 6:12,13). They excluded them, knowing it would make them want to be part of their group even more. They did it to make the Galatians desire them. There’s nothing wrong with being zealous (Gal.4:18) in good things, things like good works (Tit.2:13), praying for others (Col.4:12,13) and giving (IICor.9:2). If you’re not a giving Christian, you’re acting like a child, so Paul calls them “children” (Gal.4:19). But they were his children, because he led them to Christ (cf.ICor.4:15).

But if he fathered them, why does he say he “travailed” in birth for them? That’s the mother’s part! It is because Paul played both parts in their conversion, having to labor to bring them to Christ. He feared having to go through the labor of teaching them the basics of salvation by grace again now that they believed the legalizers who said they had to keep the law to be saved (Acts 15:1,5). If you believe that, Christ will never be formed in you, which was God’s goal in giving birth to you (Rom.8:29). But that only comes from growing in grace, and they were growing in the law instead.

Christ came to earth in “the form of a servant” (Phil.2:5,7), and if He is formed in you, you’ll act like a servant too. We know the Galatians weren’t, because Paul had to tell them to bear one another’s burdens (Gal.6:2). They were so far gone in legalism, Paul knew it would take so much work to bring them back to grace that he wished he could be there to do it in person (Gal.4:20). If he was there, he says he would change the tone of his “voice” from the kind and patient tone he used to lead them to Christ and make them God’s children, to something more stern and fatherly now that they were God’s children, but were misbehaving. Not because he doubted their salvation, for he calls these Gentiles “brethren” 11 times in this epistle. He “stood in doubt” of their understanding of salvation, and that was affecting their joy, and their ability to share salvation.

A video of this sermon is available on YouTube: The Apostle Paul’s Infirmity – Galatians 4:13-20

Summary:

The Galatians “knew not God” (v.8) back when they were heathen unbelievers (cf. Jer.10:25). Back then, they “did service” to idols instead of to God (cf.Ps.97:7), idols “which by nature are no gods” (v.8). By nature, they can’t see, hear, or smell like God can (Ps.115:4-6).

When they “did service” to those idols, that made them servants to those idols, and Paul has just finished telling them that they are no longer servants (v.7). So he went on to wonder why they’d want to be in bondage again (v.9).

But right after saying they knew God, Paul remembered they didn’t know God as well as they should have. They were like the Corinthians, whom Paul said didn’t have the knowledge of God (ICor.15:34) because they’d stopped believing in the resurrection (v.12). The Galatians didn’t have the knowledge of God that said they shouldn’t leave grace for the law.

So Paul adds that they were rather “known of God” because they trusted in Him (cf. Nahum 1:7). God knew them in the sense that they belonged to Him (IITim.2:19). He knew them in the way Cain “knew” his wife and she conceived. That is, God knew them in an intimate way that made Him one with them, and made them His very own.

Paul calls the law “weak” because it was weak “through the flesh” (Rom.8:3). It was strong enough to save us if we could keep it continually (Rom.2:5-7), but we can’t, so it is weak through our flesh.

Paul called the law “beggarly” for the same reason. God promised to make the Jews wealthy in the kingdom if they could keep it continually (Deut.28:1,2,11,13). But they couldn’t, so they ended up slaves in Babylon, begging the Babylonians for their next meal. We see this pictured in Acts 3, where the lame man begging at the door of the temple, too weak to enter it, was a type of Israel under the law, begging at the door of the kingdom, too weak to enter the kingdom.

And this was the law the Galatians had put themselves under, even though God had already saved them by the power of the gospel (Rom.1:16) and enriched them with glory (Rom. 9:23,24).

The “days” they were observing (Gal.4:10) were the law’s sabbath days and feast days and “fasting” days (Jer.36:6). The “months” (v.10) were the months of the new moon (Ps. 81:3,4), and the “times” (v.10) were the times of uncleanness that women observed (Lev.15:25), and men as well. The “years” they were observing were years like the tithing year that came around every 3 years (Deut.26:12). After hearing about all that, Paul was “afraid” that all he’d heard was true, and he had labored to teach them grace in vain (Gal.4:11).

In telling them: “be as I am” (Gal.4:12), Paul meant that he wanted them to be like him and not like Peter and Barnabas. Peter was eating with Gentiles until some men from James arrived and then stopped eating with them. This caused even Barnabas to go back to observing the law’s separation law, just as Peter had done (Gal.2:9-13). Paul wanted the Gala-tians to be like him and resist the peer pressure the legalizers were giving them, just as he had resisted it (Gal.2:14).

When Paul said, “for I am as you are” (Gal.3:12), that’s a figure of speech that meant, “I’m on your side!” (cf. II Chron. 18:3). He said that because he knew it sounded like he was not on their side, that instead, he was so upset they’d left grace that he was mad at them. So he added, “ye have not injured me at all” (Gal.4:12). That is, “you haven’t hurt my feelings!” Paul didn’t take it personally when the churches he established let him down (II Cor.2:5). Other spiritual leaders often did, because it made them look like they weren’t good spiritual leaders (II Cor.13:7), but not Paul!

A video of this sermon is available on YouTube: Faithful Service to the Wrong God – Galatians 4:8-12

Summary:

Paul begins by comparing being an “heir of God” (Gal.3:29; 4:7) to being an heir of men (4:1). A man’s boy was already “lord” of his lands and servants, but he wasn’t ready to be in charge of his lands and servants. He needed to be under “tutors and governors” (4:2) to teach him how to be an adult so he knew how to be in charge of them. That continued “until the time appointed of the father” (v.2). After that, he was ready to be about his father’s business, as the Lord was at age 12 (Lu.2:42,49). Modern Jews call this a bar mitzvah.

As heirs of God, we were “in bondage” or servitude (cf.Ezra 9:9) under the “elements of the world.” The word element means the simplest form of something, as when Sherlock said, “Elementary, my dear Watson.” In elementary school, I learned that in chemistry, elements are the simplest form of matter that are the building blocks of all other forms of mat-ter. For example, water (H2O) is made up of two atoms of the element hydrogen and one atom of the element oxygen.

The elements in our text refer to the law. When the law says, “thou shalt not kill” etc., those are simple rules that are the building blocks “of the world” (4:3). Paul could tell the Galatian Gentiles “we” were under it, for if a Gentile wanted to be saved in time past, he had to learn what the law said about being saved. God put all mankind under the law to teach us we couldn’t be saved by keeping even the simplest of rules.

But “when the fulness of the time was come” (4:4), i.e., when the years were fulfilled that Daniel said must pass before Messiah could come (Dan.9:25), He came. That’s when “the time appointed of the Father” to stop treating the Jews as His children came. It was time to make them His sons and make them the lords of all He owned in the earth in the kingdom. But they wouldn’t have it, so God introduced the mystery.

The Lord had to be “made of a woman” (Gal.4:4) because

He had to be kin to us to redeem us (Lev.25:47-49) out of the bondage of sin Adam sold himself into—and us with him, since the children of slaves are slaves too. When we believe, Christ redeems our souls (Gal.3:13), but our bodies will be redeemed at the Rapture (cf.Rom.8:23). That’s why Paul said he was still “sold under sin” (Rom.7:14). So Christ had to be made a man to redeem men, and made under the law to redeem them that were under the law (Gal.4:4).

He did all that so that we could “receive the adoption of sons” (4:5), the bar mitzvah-type sonship we’re talking about. We received it (Rom.8:15) when we got saved, but Jews in the kingdom dispensation won’t be sons till they appoint the Lord their Head in the kingdom (Hos.1:10,11). That’s when God will put His Spirit in their hearts (Ezek.36: 27). But He’s done that for us now (Gal.4:6cf.IICor.1:21,22).

The name “Abba” (4:6) is associated with saying, “not my will, but Thine be done” (Mark14:36; Lu.22:42). When God puts His Spirit in kingdom Jews, they’ll be able to say that, just as the Lord could, because the Spirit will “cause” them to do His will (Ezek.36:27). Paul could say we have received that Spirit because the Spirit does that “in us” when He fulfills the righteousness of the law “in us” (Rom. 8:3,4).

What do we inherit as God’s heirs? Well, we are only His heirs because we are the spiritual seed of Abraham (Gal.3: 29). That means we inherit the eternal life that he inherited, but also “the world” (Rom.4:13-16; ICor.3:21,22). We’re not going to live in the world like kingdom Jews will, but we will “judge the world” because “we shall judge angels” in heaven (I Cor. 6:2,3), and heaven is over the earth (Isa.55:9).

So when Paul says we are no longer servants, we are sons (4:7), that means we went from owning nothing to owning everything. A slave owns nothing,for his master owns all that he has, but a son is “lord of all.” What a rags to riches story is ours in Christ!

A video of the sermon is available on YouTube: Heirs of God – Galatians 4:1-7

Summary:

“Faith” (v.23) is just believing what God says, and men have always had faith (Heb.11:4). So when Paul talks about a time “before faith came” (v.23), he must be talking about a different kind of faith—and he is! He’s talking about “the faith” that he mentions again at the end of verse 23. That’s a reference to the body of truth revealed to Paul, the one he told the Corinthians to “stand fast” in (I Cor.16:13).

Before that body of truth came, we were kept under the law, “shut up unto” the faith, meaning we had no contact with it, as we see in how that phrase is used in II Samuel 20:3. That’s because the body of truth revealed to Paul was a mystery.

But why would a Jew like Paul say to Gentiles like the Gala-tians that “we” were under the law? It’s because if a Gentile wanted to be saved under the law, he had to go see a Jew, who would teach him how the law said he could be saved by getting circumcised, and keeping the law’s offerings, sabbaths, and feasts, etc. So Jews and Gentiles were under the law, shut up to the faith “afterward” revealed to Paul.

This wasn’t to deprive us of that faith. We just weren’t ready for it. When God heard the Jews say they would keep all the things in the law (Ex.24:3), it showed they thought they could keep it well enough to be saved. They had to be taught they couldn’t, so God sent them to school for 1500 years.

You see, “the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith” (Gal.3:24). A schoolmaster was a teacher, but also a disciplinarian who spanked a student if he was bad, as all teachers used to do. The law was a schoolmaster because it taught God’s rules, but spanked the Jews with things like bad crops and bad health, etc. And you’d think that after 1500 years of being spanked for being bad, they would have learned the lesson that they couldn’t be saved by being good!

But they didn’t. And men still need to learn this lesson. So Paul says we should use the law to teach them. That’s the lawful “use” of the law (ITim.1:8,9). It wasn’t given to righteous (saved) men, it was given to unsaved men to teach them they need righteousness. But after you use the law to teach a sinner that lesson, the law should “perish with the using” (Col.2:20,22), for after we are “justified by faith,” we are no longer under the schoolmaster of the law (Gal. 3:24,25).

The legalizers were telling the Galatians they had to keep the law to be saved, but Paul told them they were “children of God by faith in Christ” (3:26). God made us His children by baptizing us into the Body of Christ (v.27 cf. I Cor.12:13). When that happened, we “put on Christ” (v.27). The legalizers were telling the Galatians they had to “put on righteous-ness” as Job did (Job 29:14) by doing righteous things (12-17). Paul says if you received “the gift of righteousness” (Rom.5:17), you’ve put on Christ, God’s righteousness (ICor.1:30; II Cor.5:21). Even under the law, saved Jews knew God clothed them with righteousness (Isa. 61:10).

The legalizers were telling the Galatians they had to become Jews to be saved, for that’s what the law said (Ex.12:48). But Paul says there’s neither “Jew nor Greek” in Christ (Gal. 3:28). Under the law, Gentiles were servants to Jews Lev. 25:45,46) and always will be, even in the kingdom of heaven on earth (Isa. 14:1,2;61:5) when men will be back under the law. But there’s “neither bond nor free” in Christ (Gal.3:28). Under the law, women couldn’t be priests (Deut. 21:5), and priests brought God and men together with sacrifices. But there is “neither male nor female” in Christ, so even women can be “ambassadors for Christ” (IICor.5:20) who can bring God and men together by offering them Christ’s sacrifice.

Christ was Abraham’s seed (Mt.1:1), so if you’re in Christ, you are too (Gal.3:29)—his spiritual seed, the one God promised eternal life to (Gen.13:15 cf. Rom.4:13-16). Study Romans 4:13-16 to find out more about how that works!

Summary:

The law was “added” (v.19cf.Deut.5:17) to the covenant God made with Abraham that promised him and his seed eternal life in exchange for their faith. But Paul just said you can’t add to a covenant (3:15), so God didn’t add the law to the terms of salvation in the covenant. He added it “because of transgressions” (v.19) i.e., to make their transgressions worse (Rom.5:20;7:13), to make them see their need for God to save them, “till the seed came to whom the promises were made”—i.e., till Christ came to save them (Gal.3:16).

The law was “ordained” (3:19), a word which means to establish, as it does in Habakkuk 1:12. God established the law (Ps.78:4,5) “by angels” (Gal.3:23), a reference to Deuteronomy 33:2. In so doing, God was abiding by the law He gave Israel. The law demanded two or three witnesses to “establish” a matter (Deut.19:15), so to establish something as monumentally and eternally important as the law, God used thousands of witnesses, as Moses said (Deut.33:2).

The word “mediator” comes from the word median, which means middle. A mediator is one who stands in the middle of two parties who are in disagreement to try to settle the problem. The first problem the Jews had with God was their fear of Him (Ex.20:13-19,21). Moses settled that by standing between them, as he later said when describing Exodus 20 (Deut.5:5), and speaking God’s law to them without all the scary lightning and thunder. God understood their fear, and said they “spoke well” in asking for a mediator (Deut. 5:24), and chose Moses to mediate the problem of their fear, for he was “meek” (Num.12:3), the very opposite of scary!

God said the Jews also spoke well when they said they’d do all that He said in His law always (Deut.5:27-29). But he knew they couldn’t, so He longed that they might have a heart to do it. But for that problem they’d need another mediator, so God promised them another one in response to their request for a mediator that day (Deut.18:15-19). That’s a promise of Christ, who was meek like Moses (Mt.11:25,28-30). Moses was a type of Christ in many ways.

A “yoke” (Mt.11:29,30) is a piece of wood that stands be-tween oxen to get them pulling in the same direction, on the same team, as it were—like a mediator! The Lord’s yoke was “easy” and “light” because His yoke was just to believe on Him. Men needed a light yoke because the yoke of the law of Moses was hard and heavy (Acts 15:10), because men couldn’t do it. But anybody and everybody can believe!

Moses did two things that pictured how Christ made His yoke light and easy. He knew the Jews couldn’t keep the law like they said they would, so he sacrificed animals and put half on God’s altar, and half on the Jews (Ex.24:3-8). That pictures how the Lord’s blood satisfied God’s righteousness and atoned for our sins. Moses also prayed for his people, as the Lord does for us (Rom.8:34).

The three persons of the Godhead are one (cf.Jo.10:30), so they don’t need a mediator to settle any disputes (Gal.3:20). After giving the Jews the law in Deuteronomy 5, God told them “God is one” (3:21cf.Deut.6:4), implying that if they kept His law they could be one with God. God knew they couldn’t, so before even giving the law He made Abraham one with Himself by making him righteous by faith (Gen.15: 5, 6). We know God gave him His righteousness, as he does us (IICor.5:21), for Paul uses him as an example in speaking of how we were given righteousness by faith in Romans 4.

That means the law wasn’t “against” God’s promise to give Abraham salvation by faith (Gal.3:21). Adam proved men can’t even keep one law, let alone the 613 commandments in the law, so God can’t save us by laws. He gave it to conclude us under sin (Gal.3:22). He saves us “by the faith of Christ” (3:22), i.e., by the Christ who faithfully kept the law we couldn’t keep, and died a sacrificial death on our behalf.

A video of the sermon is available on YouTube:  Even God Uses Mediators – Galatians 3:19-22

Summary:

The word “covenant” (3:15) is the Bible word for a contract. When Paul said he was speaking “after the manner of men,” that means he was comparing the covenant God made with Abraham that he’d been talking about (3:7-14) with the contracts men make with each other. Paul makes comparisons like that because of the infirmity of our flesh (cf.Rom.6:19), our infirmity being that we need comparisons like that to better understand Bible truth. Preachers call them sermon illustrations, and they are not only Biblical, they’re Pauline!

Paul begins the comparison by reminding us that contracts have to be confirmed. This is done among men either verbally, with a promise to keep your word, or with a written contract that is confirmed when both parties sign it. Paul reminds us that once a covenant is confirmed, no man can disannul it. Disannulling a contract means to make it null and void, and that’s something you can’t do unless both parties agree to it. And you can’t add to a contract either!

So let’s talk about what the Abrahamic covenant was, and how it was confirmed. On God’s part, He promised to make Abraham’s seed a great nation (Gen.12:2,3) and give them “all the land” of Israel (13:15,16). But for Abraham and the seed of his great nation to possess the land forever, they would have to live forever, so God was promising them that too—all in exchange for nothing but Abraham’s faith in God’s promise to give those things to him and his seed.

Abraham confirmed the covenant when he believed. But how did God confirm it on His part? He swore an oath that He would keep His promise, because He knew that that’s what men expected from each other (Heb.6:13-17). And to get to Paul’s point here in Galatians 3, once both parties confirmed the covenant, it couldn’t be disannulled. That wouldn’t happen, for God wouldn’t break His word, and Abraham would never relinquish eternal life, of course.

But to get to Paul’s other point in this passage, once the covenant was confirmed, God couldn’t add the law to it either. He would never tell Abraham’s seed, “Now you have to keep the law to be saved in addition to just believing Me.”

Next, in verse 17, Paul has to clarify who Abraham’s seed is, for the legalizers thought God promised them eternal life just for being his physical seed. Paul addresses that error by pointing out that Abraham’s ultimate seed was the Lord Jesus Christ. God raised Him from the dead and gave Him eternal life so He could live in the land forever (v.17cf.Acts 2:29-32). That’s a legitimate argument, since “seed” can be singular or plural, like “deer” and “moose” (cf.Deut.22:9).

But the legalists would argue that Genesis 17:7,8 proves God made those promises to the “generations” of Abraham’s seed—and He did! But not his physical generations, his spiritual generations, his believing seed, like the seed that will serve Christ in the kingdom. Psalm 22:28-30 says God will count that seed “for a generation,” and since Christ was a son of Abraham, that’s also the seed Paul is saying God made the covenant with. They are the righteous seed that will live forever in the land in the kingdom (Ps.37:28,29).

This is the same point the Lord had to make to the Pharisees (Jo.8:33-40). Later in Galatians 3, Paul will explain how Gentiles like the Galatians who have Abraham’s faith are also included in God’s promise of eternal life (Gal.3:29).

Galatians 3:17 also tells us it was “God in Christ” who confirmed the covenant with Abraham, i.e., God the Son. If God added the law to that contract, it would nullify it (Rom 4:13,14). And if He nullified the Abrahamic Covenant, that would have made Him a covenant-breaker. And that makes Him a sinner (cf. Rom.1:29). It makes Him a sinner equal with the antichrist, who will confirm the Abrahamic Covenant with Israel, probably by swearing an oath to uphold it (Gen.12:3), and then break it (Dan.9:27).

A video of the sermon is available on YouTube: God’s Contract With Abraham – Galatians 3:15-18

Summary:

Paul just finished reminding the Galatians that they’d received the gifts of the Spirit by faith without having to keep the law (v.5), gifts that proved they were saved. This happened “even as Abraham” received salvation by faith without the law (v.6) the moment he believed (Gen.15:5,6).

The legalists were citing Moses to insist they keep the law, as they did in Acts 15:1,5, so Paul cites a source legalists revered more Abraham! They would object that a Jew’s salvation could have no bearing on the salvation of Gentiles like the Galatians, so Paul adds in Galatians 3:7 that any man who shared Abraham’s faith was his child (Rom.4:9-13).

Galatians 3:8 says the Scriptures foresaw this. But books can’t foresee things, only men can (Pr.22:3). But God often identifies Himself with His Book (Ex.9:13,16 cf. Rom. 9:17). So Galatians 3:8 is saying God knew He’d justify Gentiles “through” faith without works, just as He justified Jews “by” faith plus works (Rom.3:30). God foreknew that, but He didn’t foretell it in the Scriptures because it was part of the mystery revealed to Paul (Col.1:26,27).

But to prepare for it, God preached the gospel to Abraham, saying the world would be blessed in him (v.8cf.Gen.18:18). But how? There were two answers one the Scriptures fore-told, and one they didn’t. They foretold the nations would be blessed in a son of Abraham (Ps.72:17) in Christ, the ultimate son of Abraham, in the kingdom (72:8,9,11,14,17, 18). But if the nations want Abraham’s blessing of salvation in the kingdom, they’ll have to keep the law (Isa.56:3-7). But according to the mystery, Gentiles are saved without the law, as Paul is pointing out here. The word “faithful” in Galatians 3:9 means full of faith, not full of faith and the law.

The law curses men (3:10) because they can’t keep it perfectly (James 2:10,11). Paul is quoting a verse (Deut. 27:26) where the law itself curses men if they can’t keep much more than just the ten commandments(15-26). They had to continue to keep all 613 commands in the law (Gal.3: 10) or be cursed, i.e., all your life without ever breaking one!

But God doesn’t curse men just so they walk around feeling cursed. He curses men to get them to see they need a Savior! But after the Savior saves you, the law doesn’t stop cursing you. So if you put yourself under the law, you’re going to feel cursed by the law instead of blessed with Abraham.

To prove his point, Paul quotes another verse (Ps.143:2cf. Gal.3:11), then quotes Habakkuk 2:4 to prove that even under the law men could “live” by faith alone. We know “live” means live eternally because in quoting it Paul doesn’t say, “We’re not justified by the law, we’re justified by faith.” He says, “We’re not justified by the law, we live by faith.”

“The law is not of faith” (Gal.3:12) because if you could keep it well enough to be saved, you wouldn’t need faith. But when Paul tries to prove his point by quoting Leviticus 18:5, that verse makes it sound like men could be saved by keeping the works of the law, and so do Nehemiah 9:29 and Ezekiel 20:11,13. Even the Lord sounded like He thought that too (Lu.18: 25-28) even Paul sounded that way (Rom. 2:6,7). But those verses are just saying God is fair. If any man can earn eternal life by never breaking the law, God will give him what he earned! But there are no takers to that offer.

And because there are no takers, all of us need the cross Paul mentions in Galatians 3:13. Christ redeemed us on the “tree” (cf.IPe.2:24) by being made a curse for us, by being made the thing that the law curses sin (IICor.5:21). God did that, “that the blessing of Abraham might come on us” (Gal. 3:14), i.e., the blessing of eternal life. Not through Israel or the law, as Gentiles were saved in the Old Testament, but “through Jesus Christ.” We also get the Spirit God promised Israel as well. What an unfathomable spiritual deal!

A video of the sermon is available on YouTube: The Comparison of Abraham – Galatians 3:6-14