Sunday 6th July – The Law and the Gospel

6-07-2025, Galatians 3:15-25, pastor adrian kitson, Set Free to Live Free, The Law and the Gospel

Galatians 3:25-25

¹⁵Brothers and sisters, let me take an example from everyday life. Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case. ¹⁶The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say ‘and to seeds’, meaning many people, but ‘and to your seed’, meaning one person, who is Christ. ¹⁷What I mean is this: the law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise. ¹⁸For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on the promise; but God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise.

¹⁹Why, then, was the law given at all? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come. The law was given through angels and entrusted to a mediator. ²⁰A mediator, however, implies more than one party; but God is one.

²¹Is the law, therefore, opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not! For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. ²²But Scripture has locked up everything under the control of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe.

²³Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. ²⁴So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. ²⁵Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

Have you ever watched with great sadness someone find peace and love and joy in their life only to then return to their old life of fear and despair? I have…..

A young man at a Christian youth camp sensing that this Jesus and these young people are really good; sensing a new found moment of freedom and hope, only to leave it all behind and go back into his life of anxiety, stress, and fear as he goes it alone again without the gospel or God’s people.
A group of Christians super keen to live their lives together in faith as they meet together in their own homes and pray and sing and study the Word with great joy at the start, until there is some disagreement and no way to work through it – the group descends into competition, conflict, hurt and separation.
A couple boldly opening themselves up to some good counsel in their relationship and finding some hope for themselves who then give up on that process and find themselves right back where they started in argument and shame and blame….

Paul is seeing this kind of thing among the Galatian churches. They started out well but could easily plunge back into a prison of keeping the law as a way to get God’s blessing and life.

He has been calling them out to call them back to where they began; what they heard of this crucified and risen Saviour; the gospel plus nothing equals everything!

Paul has been using his own life experience and his experience with the Apostle’s to do this.

He has gone back to Abraham – the ‘father of faith’, to help them see that they are not just late inclusions or add-ons to God’s purpose to restore the world to a whole new creation of life and peace, but in fact, they were always included right from that first promise God gave to humanity through Abraham.

“… I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.’^“ (Genesis 12:3)

Now Paul goes a little further …

Here is how his case goes.

You cannot undo the promise of God to Abraham, just like you cannot undo the will of a person who has died.

God made his promise to Abraham and expected nothing in return from Abraham (Genesis 12, 15 and 17). It was a one-sided promise. It was all grace. God just made it – a new nation, new land, new future of blessing for all people through Abraham and all his descendants of whom even these new pagan converts; the Gentile non-Jewish people were always a part.

The promise was made to Abraham’s ‘seed’; not lots of seeds, but the One seed, the Messiah, from whom this promise would come to full fruition.

Four hundred and thirty years later, another covenant was made between the Lord and his new nation Israel through Moses at Mt Sinai.

But this was not the same kind of covenant. It was not ‘all grace’ as it was for Abraham.

It was a two-way covenant with promises of God to be their God, give them a land a name and future, and that same role to be the means through which the Lord would bless the whole world. But this covenant placed demands on the people. It placed a structure or law on how they were to live out their calling to be that blessing to the world.

As we know. Isreal failed miserably and keeping their end of the deal. But just because Israel failed, does not mean the first Abraham covenant failed. It still stands, says Paul.

If that Law of Moses was intended to be the way in which God’s new life came to the world, then it would not have been a real promise because a thing is either given as a promise or it is not.

Tim Keller puts it well:

If I give you something because of what I have promised, it is not because of your performance. If I give you something because of what you have done, it is not because of my promise.

For Paul and for any devour Jewish person of his day, God’s calling of Abraham is THE answer to the problem of human and the whole world, not only Jewish people.

This promise of this inheritance was always for all people, not just Jewish people, and now the Messiah has delivered this to all of these gentiles.

The Gentile world and all of creation was never just an ‘add-on’ to God’s love for his Jewish people. We gentiles are not let into this promised new world of many nations under God’s grace by some slackening of the rules. No. We are the beginning of this long-term promised world-wide rule of all Abraham’s descendants.

Gentiles are now caught up in the beginning of this new beginning personally delivered by the Messiah

The last reason is very practice for these new Christian under pressure to conform to Jewish laws and customs in a pagan and often hostile community.

When pagans hear and believed the gospel, they naturally ceased to worship the local gods, which included the worship of Caesar himself. This of course, was seen by their pagan community to be very anti-social and even a danger to the town or region (because we all have to appease the various gods to get a good crop and not have natural disaster or disease come our way).

Their justification for not turning up to the special festival or the temple and etc would be that they were now in some sense Jewish. And, at this time, there was this special and unique deal between Rome and Jewish people that only Jews could be pardoned from pagan worship of gods etc.

For the born and bred Jewish people in the community, this could be very annoying. How dare these pagans shelter under this special deal.

“What if the Roan get on to this and throw out the deal? We will all be open targets then!”

Or,

” You pagans better get circumcised and adopt our moral law and pay attention to some of our dietary and ceremonial habits so you look a whole lot more Jewish! This will help keep us out of trouble.

Paul speaks of Abraham to declare that ALL people, especially the Jewish people, have to submit themselves to the crucified and risen Messiah Jesus in order to belong to Abraham’s family. These pagan believers are not just ‘ad-ons’. They never were.

God always promised that ALL people would be his people by FAITH not genetics or family name or ethnicity.

Paul himself, and all other Jewish believers have gone through the same total transformation of death and resurrection (Baptism) into Jesus that has changed their identity.

We are the same. All of our new hope and life and future resurrection in God’s new earth and sky is only received by hearing – by faith in what we have heard not by keeping God’s law.

… did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard?

Answer? By believing what we heard – Christ crucified and raised….

³Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?

If I give you a gift for your birthday because I have promised that I would always remember your birthday with a gift, it does not matter if you are ‘naughty or nice’ for the year. I give because I promised no matter your behaviour.

But if I give you a gift because you did something good for me, then I am not doing so because of the promise I made you but because you did something good for me. I am not promising myself to you but rewarding you for your performance toward me.

A gift-promise needs only to be believed to be received, but a law-wage must be obeyed to be received (Tim Keller, Galatians for You).

So, Galatian Christians, in the pressure to do something more that believe the gospel of Jesus to receive his life in love, you can’t add in obedience to some rules to his pure promise. Either God has made that gift-promise and delivered it to you in Abraham’s seed (Jesus), or he hasn’t.

If they (and we) add in doing or obeying or being ‘super-spiritual’ or very, very well behaved’ as the basis of God’s love for us, then we are marching right back to where we came from – a prison of self, and fear, and gods, and performing our way at the whims of the ‘universe’ or lady luck.

So the obvious question comes. Paul asks it for you.

¹⁹Why, then, was the law given at all?

It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come.

God’s purpose in giving his Law was not to show us his grace but show us our sin so we are pointed toward his grace.

That first covenant of ‘grace without obedience demanded’ was given to Abraham and still stands because Jesus the ‘seed’ of Abraham has come and paid for all sins for all people for all time, therefore calling ALL people into this covenant of grace always promised.

So, what we do with the Law – or what does the Law do with us? Now God’s Law does two things in our lives still.

It limits the damage to life and limb of injustice and evil in the world. It provides our world with some framework, some tools, some structure to curb evil and injustice having totally free reign.

On the positive side, God’s law rewards honesty and encourages civil justice and equality.

It points us to the gospel of grace: I can try to butter up and keep working hard to make it with God. Many are. Many make a lot of money and have a lot of power as they make their own life happen. But in the end, this will be found out as mere pretending. When you finally know in your bones that You cannot do enough for long enough or fully enough to keep all God’s law and you feel the dark weight of that, the gospel shines

Luther reflects on his own experience of rock-bottom:

“Those who keep the law do not fulfill it, for the greater their efforts to fulfill the law the more they transgress it”… When I was a monk I lived in strict regulations … I would frequently return to the confessional and fulfilled to the letter every penance… however, my conscience never assured me …Thus the more I attempted to help my feeble, fickle and afflicted conscience with the traditions of men, the more feeble, doubtful and distressed I felt. …” (Martin Luther’s Commentary on St Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, Michael Horton lecture 33 Saturday November 14).

Paul Says:

²² … Scripture has locked up everything under the control of sin …

We might not use that word ‘the Scripture’ that way. Maybe Paul is reflecting on his own experience as a well versed in Scripture self-satisfied Pharisee until the gracious gospel of Jesus really hit home that day near Damascus.

That Law of God shows us our sin,

“so that what was promised … might be given to those who believe” (v22b).

Paul used two pictures to help us see the way the law still works in our lives.

A military prison guard: The Law kept us locked up in earning our way by obedience, and continually failing, as Luther would often reflect on in his own experience as a monk.
A teacher: The law was put in charge over us to lead us the Messiah. Like a hired tutor for the kids in a wealthy household, the tutor teaches us the Messiah.

So, in one case, we feel condemned and know the depth of our wrong as we languish in that military prison. But on the other, we learn things. We are taught things by our teacher, and are actually led somewhere.

John Stott describes it well

The purpose of the law was to lift the lid off man’s (sic) respectability and disclose what he really is underneath – sinful, rebellious, guilty, under the judgement of God and helpless to save himself.

It is only against the inky blackness of the night sky that the starts begin to appear, and it is only against the dark background of sin and judgement that the gospel shines forth” (the Message of Galatians, p 92-93)

What shines in your darkness is the truth that your behaviour or anything else of you does not determine or keep your relationship of grace and favour with God. His grace and favour does.

If you have done good works, you will not be justified by them or if you have bad works, you will not be condemned by them” (Luther’s Commentary on Galatians, Lecture 33, Saturday Nov 14, Michael Horton)

So, when you get to your ‘rock-bottom’; when you feel yourself turning back into doing more, being more in order to try and get something from God; when you feel the weight of your own broken heart and inky blackness, this star; this ‘gospel plus nothing else’ will light your way.

“Thus, when you feel beaten, tormented, and afflicted by the law then cry out like this: “Madam Law, you are all alone and neither are you all things. There are many other and better and more important things that you: for instance, grace, faith, and the blessing. Grace, faith, and this blessing do not accuse me or afflict me; they don’t condemn me. Instead, they comfort me and urge me to trust in the Lord. They promise me victory and salvation in Christ. There is no reason at all for me to live in anguish or despair” (Luther’s Galatians commentary, Michale Horton, Lecture 24 Saturday Sep 26, Michael Horton).