But, faith having come, we are no longer under a tutor;
Paul has just called the law a guardian — older translations say "schoolmaster" — who watched over Israel until Christ came. Now he draws the conclusion: the guardian was only ever meant to serve until a fixed date, and that date has arrived.
The word "faith" here is not first about your believing. It points to something that arrived in history, and the arrival ended an era.
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.
One writer fixes the moment, and explains how God's truth justified people before it came:
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.
The picture behind the verse is a household job, not a classroom. And notice who was under him — Paul writes "we," meaning his own people.
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.
The change is not that the rules got easier. The relationship itself is new.
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.
The next verse supplies the reason. Everything turns on one word:
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.
Sending the guardian away is only one item on a longer list of what faith does.
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 wanted a law God had never given them. One writer says the same mistake is widespread today.
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.
But dismissing the guardian is not the same as dismissing all restraint:
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 came. Not your believing first of all, but Christ Himself and the whole order that rests on Him. What belonged to the time of waiting ended when the awaited One arrived.
- The guardian's job ended. He was a household slave who walked children to school: useful, strict, temporary. That role belonged to Israel, never to the other nations.
- Sons replaced children. The believer is no longer a child under humiliating discipline. He is a full-grown son, in direct relationship to the Father.
- Faith clothes as well as frees. Faith dismisses the guardian. It brings the soul to God as Father and clothes the believer with the value of Christ.
- Freedom, not license. Going back under law is a backward step. But freedom has a boundary, and the boundary is Christ.
for ye are all God's sons by faith in Christ Jesus.
Paul has just called the law a guardian that kept God's people under control until Christ came. Now he tells the Galatian believers what they already are, and every word counts: "sons," "all," "through faith," "in Christ Jesus."
Paul's word marks a change of position in the family:
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.
A son, unlike a child, is old enough to be trusted:
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.
Up to this point Paul has been saying "we." At verse 26 the pronoun changes:
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.
The word "all" also settles whether "sons" leaves women out:
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.
Galatians 4:6 adds what comes next, and the order matters:
"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.
The last phrase of the verse tells us where faith puts a person:
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.
One writer sets this verse beside the Lord's words to the religious leaders who claimed God as their Father:
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.
The verse states a fact, not a goal. Yet many believers hesitate to own it:
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.
- Sons. The word is "sons," not "children." A son has come of age, out from under the guardian, with freedom and dignity in his father's house.
- All. Paul switches from "we" to "you." Gentiles as much as Jews, brothers and sisters alike, hold the same title.
- Faith. Sonship comes through faith, without the law; the Spirit of the Son is then sent because you are already a son.
- In Christ. Sonship belongs by nature to Christ alone, God's only Son. Believers hold it because faith puts them in Him, and God counts them where their faith is.
- Certainty. God's Fatherhood is not universal; it rests on faith in Christ. Those who believe are meant to enjoy the relationship, not doubt it.
For ye, as many as have been baptised unto Christ, have put on Christ.
Paul has just said that believers are sons of God through faith, and this verse gives the ground for it: baptism, and a garment. Two questions follow: what is it to be baptized into Christ, and how far does putting on Christ reach — to outward profession, or to inward reality?
The verse begins with "for." It points back to what faith has already done: it dismissed the law as guardian and brought the believer home.
Here are precious deeds of faith! It dismisses the schoolmaster; it brings the soul to God as to a father, and then it clothes the believer with the value of Christ in God's sight and acceptance... We are brought from under the law — the schoolmaster, and, with him, guardians and trustees are gone; we are "sons" at home in the Father's house, and have the rights and the mind of the First-born Himself put on us.
"Put on" is clothing language. The believer wears Christ, and that garment covers everything else from view.
Christ is, according to the truth announced in baptism itself, the One in whom we are, therefore, before God. It is His perfection, His beauty that is seen upon us. Nothing else is seen, no earthly condition, no place of privilege beside.
Scripture also uses "put on" as a daily command, not only as a settled fact.
Scripture urges us in practice not only to cast off the works of darkness but to put on the armor of light, and, more widely still, to put on the Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 13:12, 14); while in principle Galatians 3:27 says all who are baptized have put on Christ.
You cannot wear two robes. Baptism to Christ ruled out the other garments a person might have put on.
If we had been circumcised, we would have put on Judaism. That would have committed us to keeping the law for justification. If we had taken John the Baptist's baptism, we would have put on the robe of professed repentance. That would have committed us to believing in the One who was to come after him. As it is, if we were baptized into Christ, we have put on Christ. We have committed ourselves to living out the life of Christ in practice — what the next chapter calls "the fruit of the Spirit."
Commentators differ here. Some hold that baptism goes no further than outward profession. In their view it pictures death with Christ, not the giving of life.
It is a sign of death with Christ, as Romans 6 and Colossians 2 make plain. It is not a sign of life-giving, and still less of the gift of the indwelling Spirit of God... Water baptism does not go beyond profession, as in Galatians 3:27 and elsewhere, though we are responsible to be true. No one is true except the person who believes and has Christ as his life.
Others read the wording the other way. They argue that the act itself does something.
Baptism, here, is said to be a putting on of Christ. Again, it does not say that baptism is a public confession of faith, or an act of obedience, or a picture of something already true (though of course it may involve all these). But surely it matters that the inspired writer states, as clearly as words can, that the act of baptism itself brings something about?
If baptism marked the end of the old ground, going back to law contradicts what you confessed.
Baptism is in itself a sign of burial... When I am baptized I acknowledge that the death of Christ has ended the first creation for me. By this I in figure put off the old garment and "put on Christ." This does not mean receiving Christ into the heart... If I have done this, and then go back to law as a rule of life, I announce loudly that I was wrong ever to be baptized into Christ.
Every believer wears the same garment. The old differences lose their standing.
Every true believer is clothed with Christ. When God looks at me, He sees me in Christ, clothed with Christ... And this is true of every believer, Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female. We all have put on Christ... It is not an old creation, but a new creation. In the old creation there were all these differences, but this is something entirely new.
- Freed — Faith has dismissed the schoolmaster; the believer stands as a son at home, not a pupil under guardians.
- Clothed — To put on Christ is to wear Him: God sees His perfection and beauty on us, and nothing else.
- Exchanged — Baptism into Christ put off one robe and put on another; circumcision would have meant wearing Judaism.
- Disputed — How far does baptism reach? Some say no further than profession, picturing death with Christ; others say the act itself does something.
- United — One garment for all: Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female have no standing in the new creation.