Galatians 3:19–26

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.

Paul has already shown clearly that the earlier covenant and the later one differ in nature, that they contradict each other in their very terms, and that the later one is refused altogether as a means of righteousness or blessing. This gives natural reason an opening to conclude that God's law, as given through Moses, has something in its nature that is completely hostile to His promises. But that would mean supposing this. In name only the all-wise God is of one mind and unchanging in His purposes, while in reality He is divided against Himself. Paul rejects the thought as soon as it is stated.

Suppose man had been able to obey the law and so gain a title. Then two systems would have clashed with each other, since both would lead to the same end. Some would receive the inheritance because of promise, and others on the ground of law. So the two totally opposite roads of grace and law would be leading to the same result. That would indeed be confusion; as it is, there is none. Under law all is lost; under grace all is saved. The law and the promise are both from God, but the law's use is only negative and condemning… So the law pulls down what is evil, and the promise gives what is good and builds it up.

Paul shows again the shortcomings of the law; the law cannot produce life. Scripture uses this word "quicken" of God, of the Lord Jesus, of the Holy Spirit and of the Father. It never uses it of the law. The law cannot give life; it cannot quicken. This is the point. It can only bring us under condemnation.

Man, possessing divine life, would have been righteous in the righteousness that he had accomplished. The law promised God's blessing on the terms of man's obedience. If it could have given life at the same time, that obedience would have taken place. Righteousness would then have been reached on the ground of law, and those who had been given the promise would have enjoyed its fulfilment through their own righteousness. But the opposite happened, for after all man, whether Jew or Gentile, is a sinner by nature.

The one thing needed was to give man a new life, in which it would be as natural for him to fulfil the law as it now is natural for him to break it. That the law could not do; instead it has proved us all to be under sin, and so revealed our need of what has been brought in through Christ.

A great deal has been made of the distinction between the law for justification and the law as a rule of life. It is impossible to separate the two — in fact Scripture does not separate them… Sinai has but one voice. What folly to think of a rule of life coming from a place that only thunders out death and judgment for the least disobedience. In fact the law is "the strength of sin," and the apostle, in that wonderful seventh chapter of Romans, shows that it is as powerless to produce righteousness in a saint as in a sinner.

Had there been a law able to give life, "then righteousness would indeed be by the law" (Gal. 3:21); but before the law, yes, "before the ages of time," God had promised life for man. That promise is in Christ Jesus, and so He had to come where we were to free us from sin and death, that we might have life in Him. The law said, Do and live. The Lord Jesus, when we could do nothing, died that we might live.

Scripture is now called on as God's witness against human sin. It is also the common jailer of those He has chosen, while they are in their natural condition, and of all other men too... Scripture, then, shut up "the whole" under sin. God's truth in this way became man's prison... The bondage is universal, because sin is in the very nature of fallen man. The deliverance is special, because the faith that justifies is not a natural instinct, but the gift of God to those He has chosen.

Galatians 3:22 states the power, authority and inspiration of Scripture in unmistakable terms... Here Scripture stands in the place of the Universal Judge. But who can claim that place except God? If the Scriptures shut everyone up under sin, then it is obvious that God is their author.

The law demanded righteousness, but it gave no life. If it had given life, then keeping the law would have been possible. Righteousness would have come by the law, and the blessing would have come apart from any promise. But the law convicts of sin. It shows that man cannot get the blessing by his own efforts, and so proves that the promise was needed.

Jew and Gentile were alike sinners before God. The one broke the known commands of God; the other gave free rein to his passions and desires. All are brought in guilty... But now the promise is accomplished to all who believe. The Jew has no exclusive claims, since guilt puts him in the same prison-house as the Gentiles. Grace makes the promise good to all believers, whoever they may be; righteousness is credited on the principle of faith in Jesus Christ.

All are shut up under sin, and there is no further need to test man. God has announced in the Scriptures His conclusion about all men. All are guilty, all are under sin. Does God do this so that He may justly condemn everyone? Oh, wondrous grace! The very opposite. "So that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe." Man had failed, whether under law or not, but the promise can never fail... that depends not on man, but on God.

Law gave no hope of escape, but tended to increase the misery of confinement. Faith is the only door of escape from sin and from the Law. But it is a door thrown wide open in Christ and the redemption He has accomplished.

Under law, all are lost; under grace, all may be saved. The law cannot, and ought not to, spare sinners. The law pulls down what is evil, but the promise freely gives what is good and builds it up... So the law is not against the promises of God. Understand the true work of the law and the true result of God's promises, and you will see that they are in no way against each other. Each has its own place. But if we mix them up, then all is confusion.

We must notice here a very common mistake. People often misquote this scripture, as though it said that the law is our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ (Gal. 3:23-25). Bear in mind that the word "we" refers to the Jews, and "ye" applies just as plainly to the Gentiles, who had never been under the law... Now, to change all this and apply it to us, the Gentiles, is to deny that faith has come. In effect it denies that Christ has come. It goes back to the schoolmaster, as if Christ still had to come and deliver us from him.

Faith here means Christian faith: the principle of relationship with God. Before it came, the positive objects of faith — the Person, the work, and the glory of Christ as man — had not yet become the means of establishing the faith of the gospel. Until then the Jews were kept under the law, shut in with a view to enjoying this privilege that was still to come.

If all are shut up in hopelessness under sin, the law itself takes the place of a jailer. Men look to it for deliverance, but it acts as the very strength of sin, to make them aware how completely sin ruled them... His spirit is and must be the spirit of bondage. He is "a prisoner of hope," craving liberty, yet not knowing how to get it... The law kept even the saints who were under it, as it were, in jail. Look at Hezekiah. He was in bondage under fear of death, shut up in prison, waiting for the faith that would later be revealed.

"But before the coming of that faith we were being constantly guarded under law."... It is true that the law turned their sin into transgression and showed how bad they were. But the law did more than this. It guarded them from the idolatry that was all around them. There was one nation in the world (even though that nation had failed so terribly) that still held the truth and the knowledge of the One true God... The law was not the means of justifying them, for they did not keep it; but they were shut in under the obligation to keep it.

Scripture had confined all under sin. Then the Law, which held authority over Israel, shut them in even more firmly to faith. Faith was the only way of escape from their bondage to sin and to the Law. Law gave no hope of escape, but tended to increase the misery of confinement. Faith is the only door out of sin and out of the Law. But it is a door thrown wide open in Christ and His accomplished redemption.

Under the law, before Christ came, the choicest saint alive was treated as a child under age. So the schoolmaster kept him, convicted of sin and shut up to the faith that the coming of Christ would reveal. Now faith has come, because Christ, the Object of faith, is revealed. We come out of that guardianship and take our place as sons in the Father's house.

Wealthy families in Greece and Rome often put a man in charge of boys from about age six until about sixteen. This man would have complete charge of the boy, and would be responsible for his manners and for his morals. He would have the authority to punish him when necessary. He would take him to school, though he would not generally teach him. This man was very often a slave... You will understand this man was really more of a guardian than a teacher... This is just what the law was to Israel. It was given to train them, to show them their own wickedness, and to punish them.

"To bring us" has no business here. The meaning is that the law was a schoolmaster dealing with these Jews, until Christ came... This is not about bringing people to Christ now. The effect of the law is instead to minister death and condemnation, as Scripture tells us plainly elsewhere. God may let people come under sentence of death in this way, and afterwards bring them out of it by Christ. But no one can say that a power that kills is itself the means of bringing people to Christ.

Upon this the statement is often made that the law is like a whip to bring us to accept Christ. But that is not the meaning. The law was the schoolmaster for the Jews until Christ came — the schoolmaster up to the time of Christ.

The law was a schoolmaster to the Jews, not to the Gentiles. Paul said "we" in Gal. 3:24, in contrast to "you" in Gal. 3:26. It was their schoolmaster until Christ came, but any led to Christ were no longer under that schoolmaster.

There were two lessons to learn. First, we cannot keep the law. Second, the system of sacrifice pointed on to the sinner's only hope: Christ and His finished work. Thus the law is a tutor, a schoolmaster, till Christ appears on the scene.

It could curse. It could kill. It could not give life. So righteousness could not come by it. Nor could it condemn sin in the flesh. Yet even now it is good, we learn, if a man uses it lawfully. It was made not for the righteous, but for the lawless and the disobedient... And no one whom God had put under the law could have got free from its curse, if the Lord Jesus Christ had not become a curse for them.

The schoolmaster is not the Father. He is the one the child is put under, to be cared for until the child is ready to deal directly with the Father's mind. Under law, it was like saying to a child under age, "Do this, and do that," without giving reasons. But those brought to be Abraham's seed by being put in Christ are all "sons of God, through faith."

When we grow up, we usually respect and value our schoolmasters more than we ever did before. We do not want to get rid of them — that would be lawlessness — nor to stay under their authority — that would be the Galatian error, and against Christ.

But once faith — that is, Christ and the system of faith — had come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. What existed only for the time of waiting lost its whole reason for being once the One it pointed to had come. The schoolmaster had been useful for keeping them safe until the appointed time. But once the awaited One arrived, there was no motive left to keep him — he belonged to the time of waiting.

Faith came, in this sense, when the Son of God appeared. God's truth always had a justifying power, but that was because both law and prophets spoke of Him who was to come. The service of the guardian expires with the arrival of the true speaker of the words of God.

This is literally "child conductor," pedagogue: originally a slave who took his master's children to school. The law was a schoolmaster to the Jews (not to the Gentiles: Paul said we, Gal. 3:24; in contrast to you in Gal. 3:26) until Christ came; but any led to Christ were no longer under that schoolmaster.

Instead of being under a slave, with strict and humiliating discipline, there is now the place of a child before his Father. Through faith in Jesus the Christian stands in direct relationship to God.

In the Greek, the word for "sons" means a son who is of full age. This is the important part of the argument. You are no longer children, so you are no longer under a child trainer. Now you all are full-grown sons. You are no longer subject to the severe and humiliating discipline of the child trainer, who was very likely a slave himself. Now you are a son, now you are mature, now you are free.

Here are precious deeds of faith! It dismisses the schoolmaster. It brings the soul to God as to a father. Then it clothes the believer with the value of Christ in God's sight and acceptance... We are brought out from under the law — the schoolmaster — and with him, tutors and governors are gone. We are "sons" at home in the Father's house.

The Galatians had never been devoted followers of Judaism, so they had no excuse for trying to mix the two principles. Once a believer has known the liberty of the gospel, it is a terribly serious backward step to try to mix that liberty with the principles of law. We know all too well what happens today. The Gentiles, to whom God never gave the law, have brought it into many systems that boast the name of Christianity.

That liberty does not mean license. A young man freed from his schoolmaster's authority is still bound by honour and good manners, and it is the same here. "Liberty" has its boundary in "Christ." When we grow up we usually respect our old schoolmasters more than we ever did before. We do not wish to destroy them — nor to stay under them.

Faith in Christ Jesus has brought us into the favoured place of "sons of God." The word in verse 26 is "sons," not "children." The saints under the law were like children still in infancy: under age, and so under the guardian. The believer today is like a child who has come of age. He leaves guardianship behind and takes his place as a son in his father's house.

The word here in the Greek is "sons," not "children," which gives a beautiful distinctness to the line of thought. In chapter 4:2-3 the word child implies immaturity and learning under subjection, like a servant. Son, however, means a distinct position of freedom and dignity. A son no longer needs legal restraints and prohibitions. He can be trusted with responsibility apart from rules and regulations.

Notice the striking change from verse 26. It is no longer "we," but "you." Now he is addressing the Galatians. They had of course been Gentile sinners, and yet they enjoyed the nearness of sons of God. Faith in Christ Jesus, he implies, brings you into this high relationship, without the law stepping in. The law, after all, deals with slaves, or at least treats those under it as if they were slaves. They were all sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus — Gentiles as well as Jews.

No natural distinction. Brothers and sisters alike are "priests to God and His Father" (Revelation 1:6); brothers and sisters alike are sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.

"In Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith" (Galatians 3:26). "And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father" (Galatians 4:6). This is the divine order. We are born of the Spirit through faith in Christ Jesus, and so become sons. Then God sends the Spirit as the Spirit of sonship to dwell in our hearts. So the Spirit's indwelling does not happen at the same moment as becoming sons; it follows from it.

Paul has led the believing Jew out of legal bondage into the righteous liberty of faith. Now he shows all believers, circumcised or not, the true glory of their divine title and relationship. Here we see plainly what faith does: it unites the believer to the One he believes in, and identifies him with that ever blessed Person in whose name he stands. Sonship is natural to the only begotten of the Father, and to no one else. But believers are, in the Spirit's estimate, where their faith is. They are distinctly "in Christ." The Galatians lost sight of this, and so lay open to the persuasions of those who pressed the law on them.

Notice how the Lord's words completely destroy the false idea, held by so many, of the "universal Fatherhood of God"… Jesus said, "If God were your Father…" It was a denial. The devil was their father. The Fatherhood of God is limited to those who believe, as Galatians 3:26 states.

Many in our day have faith in Christ Jesus, yet are afraid to believe that they are sons of God, and that they remain so. Such unbelief grieves the Holy Spirit. While it lasts He can only reprove it, instead of giving them the joyful liberty that belongs to such a relationship.