Galatians 3:15–20

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Law is excluded from this covenant of promise. It has absolutely no place there. The apostle's proof is this: God made and confirmed it four hundred and thirty years before the covenant at Sinai. Even a man's covenant, once made and confirmed, cannot be reopened to insert new conditions. How simply impossible, then, to add the law as a condition to the covenant of grace!

If a man offers a reward and attaches a condition to it, that is fair. But suppose you said to someone: I intend to leave you my house and garden, with no condition attached. Then, a year or two later, you said to him: You must pay me a thousand pounds for the house and garden. He might answer: What do you mean? Do you take back your promise? You gave me the property with no conditions, and now you ask me for payment! God's promise to Abraham was absolute, and it must always remain untouched.

God took care that, between the promise given to Abraham and Isaac and the law, there should pass a period of more than four centuries. Had He given the law a short time after, they might have said it was all one and the same thing. But how could anyone think that, seeing that four hundred and thirty years passed between? The promise has its own special object, and the law has its design too; and we are not to mix the two things together.

The promise to Abraham came long before Israel went into Egypt. The law came after they came out. So according to this passage, their stay in Egypt must have been much less than four hundred years.

God had bound Himself to Abraham by promise 430 years before the law, having placed, so to speak, the blessing of the Gentiles in him. This promise was confirmed to his seed, and to only one; he does not say to the seeds, but "to the Seed," and it is Christ who is this Seed. A Jew would not deny this last point. The law came long after. It could not annul the promise God had already made and solemnly confirmed, so as to make it of no effect.

Dishonest men have an old trick. They get a document they dislike thrown out by adding to it something that contradicts its main terms, so the whole thing falls apart. This is not allowed among men, and we must not think of God's covenant of promise as less sacred than human documents. The law, which was not given until 430 years afterwards, has not annulled it. And nothing has been added to it to change its blessed simplicity. It was never meant to do either of these things.

The law does not clash with the promise. Each has its own object: the law is a ministry of death and condemnation, the promise one of blessing by faith. Mixing the two is what does the harm. This is exactly what people are prone to, and what Scripture always clearly sets aside.

Moses was the servant of God through whom the law came. Yet he falls back, not on the law covenant — everything was lost on that basis — but on the unconditional covenant God made much earlier with Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. By an instinct given to him by God, Moses in his plea left law for grace. On that ground his plea succeeded.

If a man gets something because of what he has given or done for it, he does not have it by promise. He has what he earned. It is like a person doing so much work for so much pay. Of course, if a master gives his servant a present, the man is thankful for it. But when the pay only matches the work done, it is a debt, not a gift. The law is the principle of what is owed, if such a thing could be found among men. But all that man earned was a curse, because man was a sinner.

If the inheritance comes on one principle, says the apostle, then it does not come on the other. God gave it to Abraham and his seed by promise, and He cannot go back from that. And since we are in Christ, who is Abraham's seed, we are "heirs according to promise" (v. 29).

"The inheritance" means, I think, all that was included in the promises… The link with what goes before seems to be this. First, the law brings no blessing to those who stand on that ground; it brings a curse. Second, we inherit the blessing by promise, not by law. Christ receives that promise as the risen seed, the Second Adam. So it is open to the Gentile just as much as to the Jew, if he believes. For death and resurrection end every distinction and privilege of the flesh.

He does not stop here to show that righteousness by law is impossible for man. He insists instead that such a way of being justified, and of gaining the blessing by it, does not fit the plain terms of God's earlier covenant… But God gave the inheritance (kecharistai, "has freely given"), he says, when He promised it. Faith has what it believes, because it rests on the word of One who is almighty and cannot lie. So the very terms of law shut out the idea that we gain anything from God by law.

Here we have a covenant of gift, and the only party to it was God. He stooped to enter it, so that man might know how solemn and unchangeable His promise is… The law was conditional. Making the golden calf forfeited it, and that happened even before its conditions were declared. The law was also temporary. But the inheritance came by promise, and so it was secure. Why? Because it rested on God alone, who is one.

When God has something to give to man that can never fail, He loves to appear in grace and give it, or say it, Himself… With the law, two came in between: the angels and Moses the mediator. What a contrast with the simplicity of grace! In the law, man had to give. In the promise, man had only to receive.

Galatians says no more about the heir, and it mentions the inheritance only once (chapter 3:18). Yet these words seem to open the door of the Father's house and let us look in, and catch a glimpse of the glory that waits for us there… The time for the glory has not come yet. But we are heirs already, and in Christ we have already obtained an inheritance.

First, it was added. It was not an afterthought. It was not in any way a completion of what was already perfect and confirmed. It was a new and particular requirement, proposed by the Promiser according to the counsel of His wisdom, for a purpose not yet made known. And the people took it on themselves willingly. In its terms it stood apart from the covenant of promise, and against it. God brought it in at its appointed time to show Israel their true condition in the sight of Him who had chosen them as the seed of Abraham His friend.

God gave the law to Israel to bring their sinful state home to them. Sin is lawlessness, and it was filling the earth from the days of the fall. But the moment God gave the law, a clear line appeared. Anyone who stepped over that line became a definite transgressor. God could now charge a man's sin to him in a way not possible before. In Israel God meant to give definite proof of the fallen and sinful state men were in.

The law was added so that there might be transgressions. It was not added so that there might be sin, as we have already seen in Romans, where this same subject is treated. It was added so that there might be transgressions. Through them the consciences of men could be reached. Through them the sentence of death and condemnation could be really felt in their light and careless hearts.

It does not say, "the law entered so that we might get life, righteousness or sanctification by it," but quite the opposite. It was "because of transgressions," and "that the offense might abound." Where does Scripture say the law was given so that we might get life, righteousness or sanctification by it? Nowhere.

Putting man under law was a temporary measure, though a completely righteous one. In itself it rested on principles of everlasting truth: human responsibility, and a perfect rule for it. But with a sinner — and man was a sinner — this principle could only bring a curse, and it was meant to. This was not God's final or lasting way. It was there to bring man's position clearly out, by raising the question of how righteousness is found or obtained.

Transgressions, once exposed and defined in this way, had to continue until the offspring came to whom the promises were made. At His appearing He would "finish the transgression" and "put an end to sin" (Daniel 9:24) for the true children of the covenant.

Giving the law through angels and a mediator shows the contrast with the promise. The promise was direct and immediate between God and man. No angels and no created go-between came between them. With the law, mediation by creatures stands out. This is the immense superiority of the promises compared with the law. Everything showed distance between God and the people. But in the promises, God comes, speaks, and works personally and in love.

Moses received the law from God's hand and gave it into the hands of the people. He stood between God and man. To enjoy the blessing that came from the law, each of these two parties had to keep their part of the covenant. God is faithful, and He will keep His part. But even before Moses came down from Mount Sinai, the people had broken theirs. They made a golden calf.

Paul contrasts two principles: the law on one side, promise on the other. He does this to rescue the Galatians, and any other souls, from the dangerous error of mixing the two — an error unbelief is prone to make. The mediator he means is the legal one, Moses, not Christ. That office implies two parties: God demanding what is right, and sinful man completely unable to give it. It is wholly different with promise. Promise rests on the sole and unfailing faithfulness of God, Who cannot lie.

Under the law you have God and man as the two contracting parties, and you have also a mediator between the two. Moses stood in that place between God and men, and what is the result? God's part was safe and sound, but man broke down. And so it was, is, and must be; and this not from any fault in the law, but from man's guilt and evil. The law is like a bridge that may be ever so strong, but rests at one end on no foundation. There can be only one outcome.

Moses, the mediator, announced the terms of the law. Under those terms, blessing depended on obedience. The people accepted them at once, saying, "All that the Lord has spoken we will do." But the promise to the Seed, Christ, depends on God alone, Who is One. In carrying out that promise He acts wholly from Himself.

A covenant does not always assume two parties. In Galatians there is only one. A covenant means any terms on which God brings me into relationship with Himself. The argument in Galatians is: a mediator is not of one; but God is one. Angels ordained the law in the hand of a mediator, and if you have a mediator, you must have two parties. But here you have only one. So now all depends on the sovereignty of God only, and therefore it is infallible.

Grace gives the people no place whatever in the accomplishment of the blessing. God alone is the Blesser, and He will not give any of His glory to another. We are humbled to the depths, yet blessed beyond measure, because God has His true place. Nothing depends on the creature. There are no legal terms of agreement. There are no business deals in which man's ability counts. There are no angels to administer, and no mere sinful man as mediator. God has worked, and who shall stop His hand or bind Him with conditions?

In promise there is only one party, and that is God. Here nothing can fail or break down. He must accomplish it all. When God spoke to Abraham about His promises, there was no distance. He spoke to him Himself, with no one in between. God spoke to him face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. What a contrast at the giving of the law! There distance comes in at once, boundaries are set, and Moses becomes mediator.

Remember that the question here is not about Christ the Mediator, Who gave Himself a ransom for all. This is a question of promise alone, and a mediator has nothing to say to it.

Mediation, in real and true humanity, does not separate. In the person of the Son of God it brings together the parties whom the earlier mediator kept apart. God was and is in Christ. The man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, was God, or He would not have had Himself to give.