To understand what’s going on in this passage (and much of
the book), we have to understand the Old Testament background – the basic
narrative of the people of God – that Paul, in line with other Jewish writers
of the time, would have been presupposing as he writes. As the narrative goes, Adam and Eve messed up
and sin entered the world. God then
chooses Abraham to begin his rescue operation – to defeat sin and death and create
a new humanity, a loving family, out of all the nations on earth. The means will be through Abraham’s
descendants – they will be the beginning of that family, through which others
will also join into it, and sin will be taken care of. Once Abraham’s descendants are many, God, in
order to proceed with the rescue operation, redeems them and gives them a
covenant with instructions as to how to live within that covenant (the law) so
as to bring others into the family. But
these descendants, Israel,
fail in their vocation and suffer the consequences of violation of the covenant
– the curse of the law, which is exile and suffering. The prophets foretell that return from exile,
the lifting of the curse, is coming and that this will usher in the completion
of God’s rescue operation (the age to
come/kingdom of God/restoration of all things as it gets
variously called) – Israel’s vocation will be completed, the Spirit poured out
on God’s people, sin and death defeated, and all nations will join together in
one family along with Israel. Yet, when
they return to the land geographically, they are forced to acknowledge that the
prophecies have not been completely fulfilled – they are still in spiritual
exile, not fully restored, and God’s rescue operation has not been completed. Here the Old Testament ends. Now enter Jesus, who Paul and other early
Christians saw as the one who completed Israel’s vocation – as the true king
and earthly representative of his people (the True Israel), he took their
plight and their mission upon himself, suffering and completing their curse and
exile in his own person and thus bringing about the promised restoration, thus paving
the way for the Spirit and opening the way for all nations to come into the
family as prophesied.
The point of Galatians 3:1-14, then, is all about what time
it is – it is not the time before the coming of the restoration/kingdom of God,
for Christ has changed everything and it is now the prophesied time of the
ingathering of the nations into God’s people.
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. 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” (ek pisteos) and those who are “out of
works of the law” (ex ergon nomou). 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 and who
would be living with their identity marked out by 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. The
quote from Deuteronomy is, in its original context, part of a broader set of
passages about Israel’s
disobedience and the predicted result of exile.
In other words, 3:10 gives us
the following reasoning: if Israel
fails to abide by the law, it is cursed/under exile; Israel
has in fact failed in that regard (as Leviticus and Deuteronomy predict and
Joshua-II Kings (and the prophets) repeat over and over); hence, as the Old
Testament affirms, Israel
has been cursed/under exile.
In 3:11, Paul
quotes from Habakkuk. In its original
context, this quote comes again in the context of exile. Habakkuk begins with lamenting over the
deplorable state of God’s people, to which God replies that Babylon
will come and basically destroy them (Babylon
took them into exile). Habakkuk then
laments over this and God replies that Babylon
will itself receive judgment, thus presenting a glimmer of hope. In the midst of this, we find the quote
noting that the identity of the true Israelite, the one who is right with God,
by contrast with the Babylonians, will be one founded on faith. In other words, for Paul, 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 – which says that we are Abraham’s seed). That
is, God promised Abraham a single family, the promised seed, which begins with Israel. Jesus takes on Israel’s
destiny as the true Israel/seed, so that those who have him as their
representative also take on that identity as part of the people of God. This shows that the ethnic-specific aspects
of the law were never meant for God’s whole people forever.
In other words, Christ’s roles as promised seed and as curse
breaker are really the same – he is being the true Israel, taking on both
Israel’s punishment and its mission in himself and fulfilling both so that all
nations could have a place in him – that is, in his family with himself as head
and representative so that what is true of him may be true of us. We are to follow his example, bringing people
from all nations into God’s family and not excluding or ignoring based on
irrelevant factors like culture, preferred worship style, etc. It is Christ’s faithfulness, formed now in us
as our own faithfulness to God, that provides us with our identity as part of
God’s people, not any of those other things.
And as Christ took on responsibility for his people even when he did not
himself sin, so we too can follow his example and take responsibility for the
sins of our own groups, whether racial, ethnic, religious, or any other kind of
group we may belong to. This may involve
apologizing or trying to make repairs for something we were not involved in
(e.g., the legacy of slavery and racism, crusades, past misdeeds of the US,
etc.), but it is what Jesus himself modeled for us with his own ethnic and
religious group.
