by David Clayton
The more we study the subject of
righteousness in Christ, the more we realize how important it is that we
correctly understand the purpose of God in giving the law, and the
place which it has in the experience of the Christian. Misunderstanding
of this has certainly led many to an experience in which Christ has been
shut away from them and Christianity has become a hard religion of
painful drudgery.
As we examine this subject once again, our
focus will be on Galatians Chapter three where the apostle Paul gives us
a different perspective on salvation in Christ. But let us begin with
Genesis 17: 7 where God says,
And I will establish my covenant
between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an
everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after
thee. (Gen 17:7)
God
made this promise to Abraham, but to whom did it apply? Did it apply to
Abraham alone? No, it applied also to his seed, and the promise was, “I
will be a God to you, and your seed after you.” Why did God make this
promise to Abraham? From time to time, God renewed this promise, but we
can find the real reason why He made it in Genesis 15:5,6.
And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and
tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So
shall thy seed be. (6) And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it
to him for righteousness. (Gen 15:5-6)
What did Abraham do in
order to become righteous? He believed God. God said, “I will make your
seed like the stars of heaven.” It was not dependent on Abraham
producing the seed, or producing the stars of heaven, all he did was
believe what God said, and it was counted to him as righteousness.
In Genesis 22:18 we find God once again promising to bless the nations in Abraham’s Seed:
And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice. (Gen 22:18)
Did Abraham have to do something in order for this promise to be
fulfilled? In Genesis chapter 22:16,17, it says that God blessed
Abraham, because he offered his son Isaac. But as we have seen, God’s
promise was originally made only because of Abraham’s faith. The
offering of his son did not change the terms of that promise, it only
revealed and reinforced Abraham’s faith. It “perfected” his faith as we
are told in James 2:22. But his faith in God was the only reason why
this promise was made to him.
Doubly certain
Notice how strong God is in making this promise. He says in Genesis 22:16,17,
…. By myself have I sworn, saith the LORD, for because thou hast done
this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: (17) That in
blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed
as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea
shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; (Gen
22:16,17)
Now, God does not tell lies, so when He says
something you can depend on it. Nevertheless, God is very strong in this
statement, He not only says He will do it, but He swears an oath. When
men want to establish something, they make an oath. Men sometimes tell
lies, but when they take an oath, you can depend on it more. Here we see
God, who never lies, makes His statement, and then He backs it up with
an oath (see Heb. 6:14-18). So we have a double certainty that the world
is to be blessed in Abraham’s seed. Let us see how Paul comments on
this in Galatians 3:15.
Brethren, I speak after the manner of
men; Though it be but a man’s covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man
disannulleth, or addeth thereto. (Gal 3:15)
Now Paul says, let
us consider the way men operate: When a man makes a will (a testament
or a covenant), and it is confirmed, if that man dies, can it be
changed? Can you add something to it? If a millionaire leaves his money
to his cat, his brothers and sisters may be very upset, but they cannot
change the will. Once it is confirmed, you cannot add to it or take away
from it.
One seed
Paul continues in verse 16:
Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And
to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.
(Gal 3:16)
Now Paul says, God confirmed something, “to Abraham
and his seed,” and then he says something striking. He emphasizes that
God did not say “ seeds ,” as though he was talking about many, he said seed ,
singular, because he was talking about one, He was referring to only
one person just like He was in Genesis 3:15, when He said that the seed
of the woman would bruise the head of the serpent.. Who is that one
seed? It is Christ. These promises were specifically intended to apply
to Christ.
Nothing added
In Galatians 3:17 Paul continues his argument. He says,
And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in
Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot
disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect. (Gal 3:17)
First God made this promise to Abraham, then four hundred and thirty
years later He gave the law. Did the law add anything to the promise?
The answer is no. Did it cancel the promise? Absolutely not. After the
law was given, the situation did not change so that now men were blessed
through both the seed and the law.
Now according to the
promise, we are to be blessed in Abraham’s seed. That is what the
promise says, “in your seed, all nations shall be blessed.” This cannot
be changed. This is the very point Paul is dealing with and he says that
the law could add nothing to the promise which was confirmed four
hundred and thirty years before.
So of course the question
arises, why then did God give the law? But before we come to that
question, let’s take a brief look at verse 8 of Galatians 3.
And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through
faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall
all nations be blessed. (Gal 3:7-8)
Recently I was reading
this verse, and I was blessed. For years I tried to understand and to
express what the gospel is in a nutshell. All of us know it has to do
with Christ, but exactly what about Christ? Some people say it is
everything about Christ, but this verse puts it in a nutshell for me. It
says, Abraham had the gospel preached to him in this one sentence, and
what was the gospel? All the world is to be blessed, in one Person ,
that is the good news! The world is not to be blessed by what the world
does, not by hard trying. The blessing is in one person, that is the
gospel, and this was revealed and available to Abraham and to all who
understood, four hundred and thirty years before the law was given.
The law cannot change the gospel, and in the gospel salvation was
firmly established in Abraham’s Seed by an oath. So to try to obtain
salvation by the law is foolish. In fact, look at what Paul says in
verse 10.
Under the curse
For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it
is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which
are written in the book of the law to do them. (Gal 3:10)
He
says, those who seek salvation by the law, are cursed. they not only are
unable to find salvation when they seek it by the law, but they obtain a
curse as well! Now that is amazing. Here they are seeking
righteousness, they are seeking salvation, but instead, what they obtain
is a curse? Why? Because they are seeking in the wrong way. Does that
sound unreasonable? This is exactly what happened to the Jews, as Paul
explained in Romans 9:30-32.
According to the book of the law you are cursed if you do not do everything which
the law requires. If it is your plan to be saved by keeping the law,
then go ahead and try. If you are going to obtain righteousness by the
law, fine, but you must make sure that you do every single detail of
that law, because the same law says that if you do not do everything
which it requires then you are cursed. And Jesus explained, that if you
are even angry with your brother, you are already a murderer.
So when you set out to obtain righteousness by the law, make sure that
you can keep it perfectly! God is perfect, and nothing but absolute
perfection can meet His eye. James says, if you keep the whole law, but
offend in one point, you are guilty of all (James 2:10). So it doesn’t
matter that you never stole, killed or coveted your neighbour’s house,
because here on the Sabbath, you just spoke one word pertaining to your
own business, and now you are a murderer, a thief an adulterer, a liar.
All these things are piled up against you in spite of all your efforts,
because you transgressed on one tiny point.
But if you are
guilty of all, how far does that put you from God? As far as sin is from
righteousness, as far as death is from life, as far as heaven is from
hell, in actual fact, an infinite distance away! So when you set out to
obtain righteousness by the law, or God’s blessings by the law, you’re
cursed, because you put yourself away from God as far as east is from
the west, and there is no greater curse than that.
Christ bore the curse
Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse
for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:
(Gal 3:13)
What does it mean that Christ became a curse for
us? It says that the man who tries to be justified by the law is cursed
and we have seen that this curse is separation from God. Here it says
that Christ became a curse for us. This means that He was separated from
God for our sakes. Our sin was placed upon Him and the essence of that
sin is separation from God. That is what happens to the sinner and that
is what happened to Christ. Ellen White says He felt in His own soul the
awful separation that sin makes between the soul and God, and it was
this that broke the heart of The Son of God. (Steps to Christ, p.13)
Why then was the law given
Since the law cannot provide righteousness, it cannot give salvation,
and it cannot contribute to the salvation already given in Christ, then
what was its purpose? Paul knew that we would have this question because
he asks the very same question in verse 19.
Wherefore then
serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed
should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels
in the hand of a mediator. (Gal 3:19)
Do we see what he is
saying? There was a promise, and salvation is in the promise. Since
salvation is what we need and we already have it in the promise of the
seed, why did we need the law?
He answers the question by saying, it was added because of transgressions .
Let us look at that verse carefully. There is something there which
makes us know that the administration of the law was a temporary thing
and not intended by God to last forever. It says it was added, “till,”
or until . When you do something until , then you know that there comes a time when its authority comes to an end.
If the kitchen pipe gets broken off, someone might take a piece of wood
and push into the line until he can repair it properly. The piece of
wood might stop the leaking partially, but it is not satisfactory to
leave it like that. What he has done is a temporary measure, until he
can do something more perfect.
Now that’s exactly what the
Bible says God was doing with the law, He brought in a system, which
demanded that men should work and behave in a certain way, to be under a
certain discipline. He knew that the system could never save men, He
knew they would not keep that law perfectly, so it was not a system that
was intended to last forever. But until Christ came, there were certain
purposes it had to serve.
Of course, the moral law is good
and perfect and remains as a standard of right and wrong forever. But
the entire system of government where we are controlled by law is not
satisfactory, because law can only tell us how to behave, it cannot
enable us to behave in the way that it commands.
A way to govern Children
At the age of 10, a child still needs to be governed by her parents’
rules. When she is 19, they will have far less rules for her. What about
when she is 30? She will then be free from their rules. However, this
does not mean that her life will be disorderly. If the rules did their
job when she was a child she will have a good understanding of good and
bad when she is grown and she will walk more perfectly in harmony with
those rules than when they governed her life, even though she is now
free from those rules.
This illustrates why God gave the Jews
the law. They were spiritual children, they could not understand God’s
principles. For four hundred years they had been slaves, all they knew
was the rod and the curse. They could not think for themselves, and so
God put them under law to keep them disciplined until they could come to
the place where they could understand the gospel.
Now of
course there were individual people who understood the gospel in Israel.
All who will ever be saved must have had a basic understanding of the
gospel, for nobody was ever saved by the law, it was always the gospel.
But the fact is that most of them never found the gospel, and God was
trying to bring them to that place where they all would understand and
live by the gospel.
When Christ came, the moment had arrived
that the law had fulfilled its purpose as a system. God’s people were
now grown up and so they were ready for the real thing.
So
now, we understand what it means to be under law. It means to be
governed by rules. To be free from the law, means that it is no longer
rules that govern me. The reason for my behaviour is a changed nature –
not because rules keep me under discipline.
So Galatians 3:24,25 tells us,
Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we
might be justified by faith. (25) But after that faith is come, we are
no longer under a schoolmaster. (Gal 3:24,25)
Abraham’s Seed
Let us consider finally what verses 26-29 say.
(26) For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. (27)
For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
(28) There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free,
there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
(29) And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs
according to the promise.
Look carefully at what it says in verse 29. It says that if you belong to Christ, you are Abraham’s seed. Does it say seed or seeds ? It says, “ Seed ,” (singular). Who is the seed of Abraham? Jesus Christ is that Seed.
In verse 15, Paul, made a big point about the singular number of the word “seed.” He said God did not say “ seeds ,” God said “ seed ” so God was talking about one, not several persons. This same Paul, in this same chapter, says, “if you are Christ’s you are Abraham’s seed ” (singular). What is he saying?
By Paul’s reasoning, if God had said “seeds,” who would He have been
talking about? He would have been talking about the Jews. But He said
“seed.” He was referring to the one seed of Abraham and who is this?
This seed is Christ. If you belong to Christ, who are you? You are
Abraham’s seed, which is Christ! Obviously He is equating us to Jesus
Christ.
I know we are afraid to say it, because it sounds like
blasphemy if we don’t understand the point he is making. Of course
there is only one Christ, but what he is saying is, you have become so
closely united to Christ that you are a part of Him. As the same Paul
says in Ephesians 5:30, “we are members of His body, of His flesh and of
His bones.” He is trying to get our dull minds to understand, God has
made us a part of His son.
God’s name is love, and God is full
of grace. It is His way to do the best for the worst, this is the
nature of grace. Our God has placed us in an infinitely high place, He
has made us a part of His own son’s life, and that is who we are. We
need to believe it, so that we may live it.
So that the next
time you go to your work, it will be Christ who goes there. When you go
home to your wife or husband, it will be Christ they will greet as you
come through the door. And when Satan tries to tempt you, it will be
Christ that he is dealing with. Knowing who we are is an empowering
thing, because the reality is that we are a part of the existence of
God’s own son. If the Bible had not said it, I would never have dared
say such a thing, but when God’s word says it, I must believe it and so I
will preach it.
I pray that you will believe also.
