****
The general idea of Galatians 3, in my opinion, is this:
What time is it? Prior to Christ, the
Law had an old function but this was only to prepare for Christ. Now that Christ has come, the old function is
completed and in the past. The
Galatians, however, are treating the old function as still in play, as if
Christ had not come. This is hence
tantamount to a denial that Christ has come and brought the kingdom, fulfilling
God’s promises to bring blessing through his people to all nations – a denial
of the gospel. The old function was
necessary and needed prior to Christ but that time is past!
In other words, this does not say that the Law is bad or that
its rules were overburdensome or bad or that the Law did not reveal God’s will
or that there is no function left to the Law in governing Christian conduct or
that Christians should not have rules to follow – no first century Jew, least
of all Paul, would agree with any of that (Paul over and over endorses many
rules and even says that both Christ and believers do fulfill the Law, which in its current function he calls the “law
of Christ”), though these are “lessons” Christians often get from taking
Galatians out of context. Nor is this
about legalism or earning salvation – it is about whether we live in
acknowledgment of Christ and his work or instead live as if it has not yet
happened, as if the kingdom had not been begun by Christ on earth and the
promises of God fulfilled in him. For
the Judaizers this meant ignoring that Christ had come to make a single people
out of Gentiles and Jews in fulfillment of the promise to Abraham, requiring
that the people be confined to Jews only.
Again, this was not about rules but about ethnicity and about one’s
place in salvation history – the Judaizers were placing themselves and the
Galatians in the wrong act of the play, so to speak.
For us today this might involve denying the power of God and
the presence of the kingdom in our lives or denying that we too have been
granted the Spirit of God in accordance with his promises. We act as if we have not been redeemed or as
if we do not have the resources of God in our daily lives. We act as if the kingdom has not begun in
Christ and in us and hence put it into the future and do not take responsibility
for our part in it. Or, like the
Judaizers, we deny that Christ came to make a single family of all the families
of the earth, and require that everyone look like, act like, or talk like us.
Paul in Galatians wants the Galatians to understand what
time it is and not to live as if it was a previous time. The Spirit of God is a gift of the kingdom
and associated with Christ’s time, made available by his crucifixion, and not
the previous time, something Paul emphasizes in 3:1-14. If it is the eschatological gift of the age
to come, then it is not associated with being a Jew (“works of the law”), which
would instead associate it with the previous epoch. The promise to Abraham was blessing for all
nations as those nations, not as Jews – a promise of a single family made of
Jews and all other nations. Since this
promise has been and has begun to be fulfilled by Jesus in his crucifixion,
being a Jew and doing the works of the law cannot be tied necessarily to the
reception of the Spirit. Instead, it is
trust and faithfulness to God that marks one out as a member of God’s people,
not one’s ethnicity since the family is to be from every ethnicity on
earth.
Paul contrasts in this passage those who are “out of faith”
and those who are “out of works of the law”.
These phrases get translated in English various ways – “rely on the
works of the law”, “take their identity from works of the law”, etc. are
various alternatives in the translations of “out of works of the law”. These are fine as long as “rely on” is not
taken to mean “rely on for salvation” or “rely on to earn salvation” since that
would be an over-interpretation and does not actually fit the context, where –
if we want to speak of “relying on” at all – it is a matter of people relying on
works of the law to display their identity as God’s people (in other words,
relying on their ethnicity to show that they are members of God’s people). For Paul, who are the ones who are “out of
works of the law”? Israel,
of course – they are the ones to whom God gave the works of the law. However, by putting its faith in Christ,
ethnic Israel
is able to become part of those who are “out of faith” – whose identity is
determined by faith, not by ethnicity.
This begins to make sense of verses 10-14, then, since the
idea here is not an individualistic focus but one on Israel
as an ethnic group. In 3:10, we find that Israel
is under a curse – the curse of the law, the exile which the Old Testament and
Second Temple Jewish writings all declare to have ended geographically but not
spiritually or in regards to the full restoration of God’s blessings and the
ingathering of the Gentiles which was to come from this. Israel
has not been restored or come out from God’s wrath for its failure to abide by
its covenant as enshrined in the Law. In
other words, if Israel
fails to abide by the Law, it is cursed; Israel
has in fact failed in that regard (as Joshua-II Kings repeat over and over);
hence, as the Old Testament affirms, Israel
has been cursed. The quote from Habakkuk
comes in the context of Israel’s
unrighteousness and subsequent exile and the future need for a new identity
based on faith. So coming out from the
curse will involve a new era of faith-based identity.
The Law belongs to the old era, however, as Paul emphasizes
in 3:12. In 3:13-14
Paul says that that era is past – the new era has come through Christ. Christ brought a new exodus (note the Exodus
word “redemption” here) – a return or restoration from the curse of the
law/Israel’s exile suffered by Israel
(“us” here refers to Paul and his fellow Jewish Christians). The blessing to the nations, which was to
flow from Abraham’s descendants, had been blocked by their own sin, which
brought the curse. But now that Christ
has exhausted the curse in his own self, taking Israel’s
exile/curse onto himself on their behalf, that has opened the way now for the
blessing to come to the Gentiles as well.
In other words, the restoration of Israel, the time of faith-based
identity, and hence the gathering in of the Gentiles into a single people of
God (and the pouring out of the Spirit) has come, and this has been fulfilled
through Christ’s sacrificial death on behalf of Israel.
3:15-18 is basically about how there was meant to be a
single people made of both Jews and Gentiles, not just Jews, and that one
should not misread the purpose of the law as if it was meant forever to exclude
Gentiles and thus cancel the promise.
The earlier promise of a single people out of both takes precedence and
is fulfilled in Christ, who takes on the role of the single people (Abraham’s
seed) as their representative and king and hence all who are in him are part of
that seed, whether Jew or Gentile (3:29).
This shows that the ethnic-specific aspects of the law were never meant for
God’s whole people forever.
In 3:19-29 Paul
tells us that the law did have a legitimate function prior to Christ but that
the time for that function is over. 3:19 says that the law was added “because of
transgressions”. This cannot mean that
it was to restrain transgression since, as Paul states in Romans, there is no
transgression without the law (since transgression = sin + law). Instead, the law creates transgression, it
turns sin into law-breaking by making Israel aware of that sin as against God’s
will and turns it into explicit rebellion against God. In the words of Romans, it makes sin “utterly
sinful”. Paul picks up more on what this
means a bit further on, but maintains that this function was meant to continue
until Christ and the single people of God had come. The law came via Moses as a mediator. Verse 20 is difficult but should read
something like N.T. Wright’s translation: “He, however, is not the mediator of
the ‘one’ – but God is one!” In other
words there is only one God and hence he desires one single people – but Moses
was not the mediator of that one single people since that people was still to
come.
The law, however, is not contrary to the establishment of
that single family, despite all Paul has said so far. The bringing in of righteousness and the
establishment of God’s promises – the law could not bring these about because
of sin. Instead, the law both condemns
and incubates Israel so that, as a result of exhausting the curse laid on
Israel by the law, Christ, through his faithfulness to the covenant in doing
what Israel could not because of the sin which blocked it (3:22, in the Greek,
says “the promise by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ”, not, as in most 20th-century translations, “the promise
by faith in Jesus Christ”), brought the promise of a single family to
fulfillment, a family marked out by faith, not ethnicity. Prior to that time, as verse 23 indicates
(that is, prior to Christ, not prior to an individual’s reception of faith –
that is too individualistic of a reading here and out of context), Israel
(note the “we” here again referring to Paul and his fellow Jews) was kept
incubated or quarantined by the law. The
law made sin into transgression but also taught the people God’s will (and
actually turned sin into even more sinful transgression precisely by teaching
this) and helped to keep them separate from other nations.
But now the time of faith has arrived – the Law, which
watched over Israel
until Christ (it does not say “to lead us to Christ” – “lead us” is not in the
Greek but is read in as an individualistic, subjective reading) has reached its
goal not in marking out God’s people by ethnicity but by faith. And with faith comes the end of the old
function of the law in keeping Israel
separate to prepare for Christ. All,
Jews and Gentiles, are God’s people marked out by faith since it is now the
time of the kingdom as foretold. Christ,
the one seed, the fulfiller of all the promises, is our representative and
hence we are inheritors of those promises, the fulfillers of them – in Christ,
there is a single people of God as God intended there to be. Being Jewish or Gentile does not matter – all
are equally part of God’s family – to which, Paul also adds that gender and
social status are not determinative either.
There is one people, Abraham’s seed, marked out by faith alone – not by
denomination, not by how we decide to use the word “justification”, not by race
or ethnicity or gender or social status, not by culture or label, but by faith
pure and simple. The gospel is that
Jesus is Lord – he has brought the kingdom
of God, the new coming age, and we
should not deny that in word or action.
