Full Transcript

Welcome to Share the Word podcast. One thing that I would like you to keep in mind as you start listening to today’s podcast is that no one will ever earn their way into heaven, and no one will ever keep the laws and rules well enough to be justified in God’s eyes. Keep listening. Oh, oh, oh, I’m sorry. I’m supposed to be doing a podcast here. Galatians chapter 3.

Can you tell me what song I was just humming, by the way? Came from an original show back in 1964 that ran through 1972 when I was a kid. Anyone know? Anyone? Bueller? Bewitched.

I remember watching that show as a kid. If we’re honest, and on Share the Word we’re always honest, I realized I watched that show because I had an adolescent crush on the main character named Samantha, who was played by Elizabeth Montgomery. Remember how she could just twitch her nose and make things happen? Man, I thought she was very cool and very cute when I was 12 years old. But alas, our relationship was not to be. What does this have to do with Galatians chapter 3?

Well, very little actually, except that show is what flashed back in my mind when I opened my Bible to that chapter and began to read. Its opening line is, O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? Speaking of when we were kids, did your parents, like mine, go over and over and over the same warnings and explanations about why certain things were dangerous and wrong and why you should always, always, always stay away from them? I hope you had parents who cared enough to do that. Now you listen to me, Paul. If someone starts telling you this or that, or offering you this or that, or asking you to go here or there, you stay away from them.

You understand me? Sound familiar? But at the time, it probably seemed so repetitious and, you know, so unnecessary. I know, Mom. I know, Dad. I get it.

I get it. Notwithstanding all the warnings I bet you still also heard from your parents more than once, What in the world were you thinking? I can’t believe you did that, when you foolishly did something they had warned you against many times. Good parents try to drill important things into their children’s thinking so they don’t have to learn life’s lessons the hard way, by experience, the consequences of dumb decisions. It doesn’t always take, but they try. Good parents hope and pray that their children will remember and heed their counsel when those situations come up.

In chapter 3, the apostle Paul continues making the case about justification by faith just like that, like a father explaining and re-explaining to his children what’s right and what’s wrong and why it’s important to stay away from the things that are wrong and the people who are teaching you the things that are wrong. Paul saw the new believers who came to faith in Christ, as I said, like his own kids. And they were, in a sense, in a spiritual sense. So he was extremely protective of them, concerned to keep them growing strong in their faith and on the right track. That’s why this prolonged upbraiding of the Galatians goes on into chapter 3, I have to believe, which to us might seem pretty repetitive and over the top. That start to chapter 3 would make any teenager’s eyes roll, wouldn’t it?

Oh, foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? They were no doubt thinking at this point, hearing the letter read at their church gathering, Okay, okay, we get your point already. You hate those little Judaizer guys who came from Jerusalem and who were up here, and you’re more than a little disappointed that we accepted their ideas. But Paul is far from through with his topic. He reminds them in this section that when he was with them personally, he had taught them about Jesus’ finished work on the cross for our sins, that he had clearly explained that truth time and again. He asked them, for example, Remember, when you received the Holy Spirit, was it by believing into Jesus by faith or by keeping Old Testament laws, which the Judaizers insist you do?

Well, they knew the answers to that. He then makes a second point that, and this is very important, even in Old Testament times, when the law of Moses was in effect for the Jewish nation, even then, no one was made right with God by trying to religiously keep all those laws. He uses the Old Testament Jewish hero Abraham as an example. Abraham actually lived before the law of Moses was even given, yet Paul quotes from Genesis when he says, that’s the first book in the Bible, Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him as righteousness. Believed God. Remember, believe in the language Paul was writing in is the verb form of faith.

It was Abraham’s demonstrable faith which approved him in God’s eyes, and that’s the way it always is, Paul is arguing. No matter what race of people or when you live, if you have faith in the way God’s salvation is provided to you, then you are a true son or daughter of Abraham, he told them, meaning you’re as connected to God as that Old Testament hero himself, the father of the Jewish nation. In verse 9 he writes, So all those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham the believer. Abraham the believer. It’s kind of cool to me to think that Abraham, who lived more than 4,000 years ago, was a believer just like me, a person justified by his faith in God’s promises. There’s never been another way to be right in God’s eyes other than that, on the basis of God’s grace by believing in his promises.

In the Galatians’ case, in our case too, the promise is that whoever puts their faith in Jesus, the Savior God has provided us, will be saved. Trust what God says about that. Believe into Jesus. And these Galatians had done that after Paul was there and Barnabas was there a year or so earlier preaching the gospel to them, and they had received the Holy Spirit, which is proof that their faith was real. So Paul is now saying, Why in the world then did you buy into the Judaizers’ false message that you needed more than that, that you could somehow become more approved by God by trying to add rule keeping, by imagining that your supposed meritorious acts were somehow needed to supplement what Jesus has done for us?

You know, when you think of it, isn’t it actually kind of insulting to Jesus for any of us to imagine that anything we can do could improve upon or add to what he has done for us, whether through keeping religious laws or observing sacraments or anything else? As I said in one of our podcast lessons describing the scene at the cross where Jesus died, he didn’t call out after he had suffered there for our sins, I’ve done my part. Now it’s time for you to do yours. He called out, It is finished. So Paul is saying it’s foolish for any of us to imagine we can or we need to try and add anything to what Jesus did for us. Just marvel at his love and grace and believe into him, what he accomplished for us, no matter what anybody else tells you to the contrary.

In verse 10 and following, Paul continues making a closely reasoned argument that trusting in Christ to save us versus trusting in our ability to keep God’s laws well enough to save ourselves, that these are completely opposing concepts, mutually exclusive ideas. They both can’t possibly be true at the same time. He writes there, All who rely on the works of the law to save them are under a curse, as it is written, Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the law. He’s quoting here from Deuteronomy chapter 27 in the Old Testament law of God itself. He goes on, Clearly no one who relies on the law is justified before God because the righteous will live by faith. Remember, Paul was a strict Pharisee before his conversion.

He personally knew there was no life in trying to meticulously keep all the rules all the time. James, the leader of the church at Jerusalem at that time and quite a pious Jewish believer, agreed that trying to make ourselves acceptable to God by living righteously according to the law was impossible. He wrote in his general epistle, actually where we’re going next, Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at one point is guilty of breaking it all. That’s interesting because unlike the apostle Paul, James did his best to strictly keep the Old Testament laws and customs himself. Not only because he was reared that way, but because that was the expectation in the culture in Jerusalem where he still stayed. But even James knew that doing his best to be religious like that would not save him or anyone else because no one keeps God’s laws perfectly.

It’s actually because no one keeps God’s laws perfectly that Jesus came. Paul adds that the curse that is on mankind is because we are sinners and are all lawbreakers. But Christ took that curse on himself when he died on the cross and was punished there for our sins. He says at verse 13, Christ has redeemed us from that curse. Redeemed, that’s a good word. It’s a word picture, actually.

The term is used in the Bible frequently. It was used secularly in biblical times in reference to the slave market when someone was purchased out of slavery. When he says that Christ has redeemed us, he is picturing what happens when we put our faith in Jesus as Savior. The price he paid at Calvary, his own blood, is applied to our account, and he purchases us back from sin and death and judgment, which are the curse that he’s talking about here. Christ redeems us and rescues us from all of that. I hope Paul is dissuading any of you listening, if you’ve been led to believe that you can make yourself acceptable to God by obeying laws or some religious rules, just by doing your best to live an upright life, whatever.

No one earns salvation that way. No one earns salvation anyway. Again, if we could, as Paul wrote earlier, then Christ died needlessly. Here’s a tidbit of knowledge to tuck away in case you’re ever in a Jeopardy contest someday. Did you know that the Jewish religion counts 613 laws from the Old Testament? 248 of them were do this commandments, and 365 were don’t do that commandments, the thou shalls and the thou shall nots, we should say according to the King James terminology.

And you probably thought there were just 10 commandments, right? No, 613. So here’s what I want you to visualize. Visualize this. Imagine a chain dropping down from God in heaven to you. You’re connected to God by this chain, a chain with a total of 613 links, one link for every law written in the Old Testament.

Paul’s point and James’ point too is that if you expect that chain to haul you up safely to heaven one day, you better not have ever broken one link. Just one broken link breaks the chain between you and God. Trusting in your own righteousness to save you is like trusting in your ability to never even break one link of the chain. Do you really want to trust that? Forget the 613. Let’s just consider the big 10 for a few moments.

Even if the chain from God to you has only 10 really big links that drop down from heaven to us, thou shalt not bear false witness is one of them. That means lie. Have you ever been dishonest? Have you ever shaded the truth? Ever exaggerated to make your case seem stronger? Ever misled someone to cover up something?

Hmm. Another one says, thou shalt not covet. So have you ever really wanted something badly that someone else had that was better than what you had? Another one says, Honor your father and your mother. Have you ever, even once, done something, said something disrespectful or dishonoring to your mother or father? If we are honest, and remember, that’s what we got to be because that’s one of the commandments too about being honest, I think we all have to admit that trusting in our own righteousness to connect us with God is hanging on to a chain with a bunch of broken links.

The links between us and God have been broken time and time again. That’s exactly what Paul wants the Galatians to realize. We cannot earn God’s favor and save ourselves by trying to keep all the laws of God. That’s why we need Jesus. That’s why we need a Savior. You’re with me so far, right?

So this brings up a couple logical questions. For one, if keeping or carefully attempting to keep all of God’s laws cannot save anybody, what was the point of the law? Good question. Paul actually anticipated that question that some of the Galatians would ask that. The Judaizers, no doubt, when they came to their towns, brought along impressive-looking scrolls of the Old Testament law from Leviticus and Deuteronomy and so on to show the Galatians all these rules and regulations. Then they spread their false teaching.

You Gentile believers need to learn and abide by all of these laws as well. At verse 19 and following, Paul explains that, yes, the law came from God. It was, after all, the law of the land for hundreds of years during the theocracy period of Israel’s history. Every society needs laws, or else anarchy soon reigns. But those laws in the Old Testament, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and so on, were never given to nor were they ever able to impart life, he says at verse 21, meaning eternal life, connection with God. They had no power to save anyone.

What laws do is they hold up a standard and show us what’s right and wrong. In our time, as we’ve dubbed it the church age we’re living in now, the most the law of God can do for us, Paul says, is to show us how far short of God’s actual righteousness is standards of holiness that we fall. It underscores for us our need of a Savior. That’s what he means at verse 24 when he says, So the law was our guardian until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. He was describing a situation from everyday life in their culture.

That is, how often in a well-to-do household, a slave often acted as a child’s tutor and guardian until the child came of age, till he became an adult. He says the Old Testament law served that kind of purpose. It showed us our faults and led us to a mature solution, to Jesus Christ, who righteously fulfilled its requirements for us. Now that we’ve come to faith in Christ, the Old Testament law no longer has jurisdiction over us, just as a tutor’s role was finished when the child grew into adulthood. That’s the idea here. We New Testament era believers are not under the Old Testament law.

The moral aspects of that Old Testament law are important for us, like lying is wrong, adultery is wrong, stealing is wrong, and so on. But all of those important guidelines for our lives are repeated in the New Testament as instructions for Christians, and nowhere in the New Testament is it suggested that they can save us. Rather, they are just guidelines telling us what God expects from His children, because He has saved us and we are a part of His family now. Make sure you’re clear about that. Paul is not arguing that living ethically and morally is not important for Christians, that moral and ethical standards are unnecessary somehow. He’s emphasizing that they can’t save us, that trying to live as righteously as you can still won’t save you.

In this whole section, he is drilling down on only that one thing about what can save us, what actually can justify us in God’s eyes, and that is our personal faith in Jesus Christ, believing into the Savior that God provided us. Now, after he has yelled at them and beaten them up enough for failing and falling too easily for the false teachers’ nonsense, he concludes this section by saying, So in Christ, you are all children of God through faith, for all of you were baptized into Christ and have clothed yourselves with Christ. He’s playing a little bit of good cop, bad cop all by himself.

He has sternly taken them to task for going along with the Judaizers’ false teaching, but then now, like a good father, he says in essence, I know that you’re all children of God, and you’ve all been baptized by the Spirit of God, and you’re all part of the body of Christ, and I have great confidence in that. I get the same kind of feeling when I wrap up this section as I did with my kids when they were young. After I had to scold or punish them for something, when the unpleasant part was over, I’d hug them and I’d tell them how much I love them and how confident I was that they would never do such a stupid thing again. Paul’s like, I know that you’re all children of God, so let’s put all this unpleasantness behind us. Group hug, everybody. This letter is very different from, say, the Gospels or the narratives in the book of Acts that we’ve studied through, isn’t it?

Paul is intense. He was a very intelligent guy. His mind is going a hundred miles an hour as his thoughts flow and he weaves one idea into another. Even though this was written almost 2,000 years ago, I picture him pacing back and forth across the room where he was, his arms are waving, his voice is rising and falling as he talks to himself about all of this, before he took up his pen and furiously wrote this letter. Following his thinking and reasoning is sometimes challenging. I’m doing my best to help you get his big ideas.

Even if it gets a little complicated with all the concepts and illustrations he brings up, don’t ever lose sight of the biggest of the big ideas in Galatians. No one will ever earn their way into heaven. No one ever keeps the laws and the rules well enough to be justified in a holy God’s eyes. If that were possible, then Christ died needlessly. There’s more that we could mine out of these chapters, I’m sure, but our time is up for today. So let me close us out with this simple prayer.

If it’s how you feel, you may want to express something very similar to God in your own words. Father in heaven, I freely confess that I’ve broken your rules many, many times, countless times. If my hope of eternal life depended on my righteousness and my obedience, I know that I would be lost. Thank you, Jesus, for coming out of heaven to make a way for me to be right with God apart from my own performance. Thank you for taking the punishment for my failures on yourself and paying for my sin when you died on the cross. My faith is in you alone as my Savior, not in myself.

My trust is in you and your promises that whoever believes into you will be saved, forgiven, and accepted. Thank you, Jesus, for being my Savior, and empower me now to live under the Holy Spirit’s influence in ways that please you. Amen. If you’ve said that prayer with Paul and accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior for the first time, we would love to hear about it. Please take a moment and email us at info at sharetheword.org and let us know so that we may all celebrate and pray for you. As the Great Commission Project, all of us at Share the Word take sharing the gospel to heart, and we appreciate all of you coming back week after week.

Thank you for letting us know that you’re there. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.