Brethren, (I speak according to man,) even man's confirmed covenant no one sets aside, or adds other dispositions to.
Paul turns from argument to illustration. He asks the Galatians to think about how everyday business works. His point is simple: if people keep a settled agreement, God's promise to Abraham cannot be rewritten by the law.
Paul says, "To give a human example." He borrows a picture everyone already knows. One writer spells it out:
Suppose two people make a covenant, and each one seals it. It is then fully ratified and complete — signed, sealed and delivered, as we say in legal terms. Nobody has the right to change it. Nobody can take away some of the provisions; or add new provisions. The covenant is settled and confirmed. No one may alter it. This is a common practice in daily life which we all understand and agree to.
The Greek word here can mean "covenant" or "testament" — a will. Commentators differ. One holds that "covenant" is the right sense in this verse:
On the question of "covenant" or "testament": "covenant" is always right, except in Hebrews 9:16-17… Some have even made Galatians 3:15-16 "testament," but I judge this to be entirely wrong.
Others find the picture of a will more helpful. They also note that the usual legal sense of "covenant" does not fit what God did with Abraham:
Suppose a man makes a will and leaves certain legacies with no conditions at all. No one would let the executor add conditions later… We usually give the word covenant a legal sense. But God made no legal covenant with Abraham. He made absolute, unconditional promises, which God Himself covenanted to perform.
Such agreements were sealed in the open, in front of witnesses:
This is a covenant between a man and his neighbour, or between one nation and another. Both sides weigh the terms and agree to them. An oath, or some token, then ratifies it in front of witnesses. Galatians 3:15 refers to such a covenant: once a man's covenant is confirmed, no one can annul it or add to it.
If human dealings are this binding, the conclusion about God follows:
In verse 15 Paul draws an illustration from man's everyday business affairs. No one may annul a contract confirmed by signatures — signed, sealed and delivered — or add to it. When one's word is in this way pledged, law binds him to it, allowing no retractions or additions… If humans allow no changes in their contracts, how much less God!
The verse rules out two things: cancelling and adding. So was the law an addition to the promise?
But was the law meant as a revision of the original testament — an appendix, so to speak? Not at all. As verse 15 says, it can be neither annulled nor added to. Dishonest men have an old trick for getting a document they dislike thrown out. They slip into it an addition that so contradicts its main provisions that the whole thing collapses. Men do not allow this. And we must not think God's covenant of promise is less sacred than human documents.
Why can no condition be added later? The answer lies in what the promise itself is:
He appeals here to the moral sense of man. Take a mere man who has made a covenant with no conditions, pledging himself to this or that. And above all, the apostle adds, if that covenant were confirmed, no one could annul it — and no one could add a condition to it… The covenant was of promise, and it was both made and confirmed. It was an absolute promise, not a conditional one. No condition, therefore, could be added without destroying its very nature… The apostle dismisses both thoughts, the annulling and the adding. Adding is, in fact, the same as annulling. Law added would bring in a contradictory principle.
This is not a dry point of law. It reaches anyone who trusts Christ:
But God's covenant looked to Christ, Abraham's special Seed. In Him all the promises of God are yes and amen, to the glory of God through those who believe. So, receiving Christ by faith, we receive all the promises as absolutely and unconditionally as they were made to Abraham… The blessing depends, then, not on what man can do, but on the faithfulness of God. Will He who has promised take back His promise? No; that is impossible.
- Sealed — A confirmed human agreement is signed, sealed and delivered. No one may take a clause out or slip a new one in.
- Greater — People hold their own contracts sacred. God's promise is not less binding than a human document.
- Unconditional — God's promise to Abraham was absolute. Add a condition and you destroy what it is.
- Unamended — The law did not cancel the promise. It was not an appendix to it either.
- Ours — The covenant looked to Christ, Abraham's Seed. Receive Him by faith, and the promises are yours as freely as they were Abraham's.
But to Abraham were the promises addressed, and to his seed he does not say, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed; which is Christ.
The apostle's whole case against putting Gentile believers under law turns on a single word. He goes back to what God promised Abraham, and rests everything on one detail: God said "seed," not "seeds."
The verse points back to two moments in Abraham's life:
In Galatians 3:16 the apostle is speaking of Genesis 12 and 22, only here he means one special seed. God made the promise to Abraham alone, and confirmed it to his seed in chapter 22. The promises of a very numerous seed are separate. Also, Abraham is not joined with his seed in this promise. It should be read, "To Abraham were the promises made, and to his seed."
Where the ESV says "offspring," older translations say "seed," and the writers quoted here use that older word. At first the argument looks strained. In ordinary speech "seed" can cover a whole family line:
To an eye without God's light, the meaning the apostle gives these words here seems forced and arbitrary. That is true of many other sayings of the Spirit. For "seed" is a collective noun, and Scripture keeps using it in the singular to mean a multitude.
The answer lies in which promise the apostle is quoting. God ties a countless seed to one blessing, and says nothing about numbers in another:
He is speaking not of the merely Jewish promises, but of the ones that secured blessing for the Gentiles. These were made to Abram in Genesis 12, and to his seed in Genesis 22, after Abraham had offered Isaac up in figure and received him back from the dead in figure. The Jewish blessing — the land, power over enemies, and so on — is given to a seed said to be as many as the stars and the sand. But not a word about a multiplied seed appears where all the nations of the earth are to be blessed. The apostle argues here from that silence: no one is named there but Isaac, the one seed of Abraham, and a picture of the Lord sacrificed and risen.
That setting shapes the meaning of the promise:
The Seed risen from the dead has clearly broken the link with life or relationship on earth. He is in an entirely new condition, and in it He can bless the Gentile as freely as the Jew. This is what Christ is doing now, as this letter proves, entirely apart from law or circumcision.
Another writer says why Christ Himself had to go through death:
Christ Himself, as man, might have had the promises. Yet He could not take up anything together with us except through death and resurrection. He could not be linked with man in the old Adam.
Some were urging the Galatians to attach themselves to Abraham by circumcision. Naming Christ as the Seed pulls the ground out from under that:
So the blessing was in Abraham only because, as to human descent, Christ came from Abraham… But the real power lay not in Abraham, but in Christ. And the very circumcision that would tie them outwardly to Abraham would in fact cut them off from Christ.
That leaves a question about Abraham's later descendants:
Isaac, Jacob and Judah were Abraham's seed. But they were only links in the chain, because the promise did not reach its fulfilment in them. It found its only fulfilment in Christ.
So much hangs on the form of one word. One writer draws a conclusion about how God wrote Scripture:
Just look at the use made of the singular instead of the plural… If we brought up points like this, people would call it interpretation at its most fanciful. Yet this is the method of the Spirit of God, and by it He shows that Christ was in His mind from the beginning.
If everything sits in one Person, no one shares it except through Him:
We are Abraham's seed as a result of being Christ's. "If you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise" (Gal. 3:29). Being the seed of Abraham is a far lower privilege than the ones shown elsewhere — in the letter to the Ephesians, for example — as marking out the church.
- One word. The whole argument turns on "seed" being singular. God worded the promise to point at a Person, not a nation.
- One Person. That Person is Christ. Isaac, Jacob and Judah were links in the chain; the promise came to rest only in Him.
- One ground. God confirmed the promise after Abraham received Isaac back from death in figure. It stands on resurrection, not on law or family line.
- One reach. The countless seed got the land and victory over enemies. Blessing for all nations hangs on the single Seed, who blesses Gentile as freely as Jew.
- One way in. Believers are Abraham's seed because they belong to Christ. Reaching for Abraham through circumcision cuts you off from the One who holds the blessing.