The Word of Promise and the Family of God

One of the many reasons Paul’s letter to the Galatians is so endlessly intriguing is the way in which the apostle skillfully takes an incendiary bomb to what the Judaizers were proposing and proclaiming. All of their so-called “doctrines” are sufficiently detonated by Paul’s clear teaching of “the truth of the gospel” (Gal. 2:5, 14), and, to be sure, he hasn’t even come close to running out of explosives. After all, as an apostle of Jesus Christ, he was called to preach nothing but the message of Jesus Christ. Paul wasn’t about to recoil or shy away from that calling simply because some fuddy-duddy Judaizers were getting flustered by what he was saying. If they weren’t already flummoxed, nothing could’ve prepared them for the depth charge Paul had primed and was ready to drop. 

After decisively establishing that it is by faith alone that the ungodly are justified (Gal. 2:16), Paul proceeded to send heads spinning by tying this gospel of free justification to none other than the patriarch of Israel himself, Father Abraham. Paul’s coup de grâce is Scripture’s definitive testimony that Abraham was “counted” as righteous upon his belief in God’s Word of promise (Gal. 3:6; cf. Gen. 15:6). 

As if all of that weren’t controversial enough, Paul steps on even more toes with what he says next: “Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed.’ So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith” (Gal. 3:7–9).

We are not as rattled as we should be by what Paul has just intimated. Suffice it to say, not a few minds were blown and not a few enemies were made by his suggestion that Abraham’s family had nothing to do with his bloodline. According to the apostle from Tarsus, the essence of what it means to be a son or daughter of Abraham, an inheritor of the Abrahamic promise, was irrevocably tethered to faith. Left out were any notions of pedigree or performance; nothing was said about one’s ancestry or adherence to the law. The only determining factor for participation in the family of Abraham is receiving and believing the Word of Promise by faith. “The gift was pure promise,” comments R. C. H. Lenski, “and faith, faith alone was to receive it as a possession” (175). This is true even for Gentile sinners (Gal. 3:14).

God’s law isn’t an amendment to his promise nor is it an indication that his mind has somehow changed on how to deal with sinners and screw-ups.

These groundbreaking assertions aren’t left to hang in the air, though. Paul promptly expounds on them by taking the Galatians and the Judaizers back to Scripture:

“To give a human example, brothers: even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified. Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, ‘And to offsprings,’ referring to many, but referring to one ‘And to your offspring,’ who is Christ. This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise” (Gal. 3:15–18).

Paul draws on the convention of something as commonplace as a “last will and testament,” which he avers is irrefutably binding even when made among men. Once enacted after a person is deceased, no such will or covenant that arranges for the distribution of the deceased’s assets is subject to amendment or annulment. Change would be next to impossible. As unthinkable as it is that human wills would be altered once they’re ratified, so it is with God’s will. The will God discloses to Abraham is similarly ineradicable. God’s words to Israel’s patriarch were words of promise, given with no conditions and no strings attached. There are no “terms and conditions,” otherwise the promise would cease to be promise and would devolve into a law (Gal. 3:18). 

The language of the promise is “I will” not “Thou shalt” (Gen. 12:1–3; 15:5–6; 17:4–8). Abraham wasn’t required to do something in order to make the promise come true. God gave the promise unilaterally and only asked the former Chaldean to believe. This, of course, was the way the promise was passed down to all of Abraham’s offspring as well. Paul does two significant things in verses 16 and 17 that are worth noting. First, he identifies the ultimate promise given to Abraham as none other than Christ himself. Paul uses the same term for “offspring” five times in a mere three verses (Gal. 3:16, 19, 29). But each instance carries a specific meaning, sometimes referring to Abraham’s “seed” or children, as you might expect, and other times referring to the true and better offspring of Abraham, Jesus Christ, by whom and through whom all the nations are ultimately blessed (Gen. 13:15; 17:8; 22:18). Much like God’s covenant with King David (2 Sam. 7:12–14), the Seed to come corresponds to both a fleshly descendant and the heavenly Deliverer himself. It is Jesus, after all, who fulfills and embodies, who is the Yes and Amen “for all the promises of God” (2 Cor. 1:20).

Secondly, Paul identifies the fundamental error of the Judaizers as nothing less than an atrocious attempt to change God’s will. By insisting that a sinner’s right standing with God was a matter of faith plus works they were effectively voiding the promise entirely (Gal. 3:17). Their resolve to add the requirement of law keeping to what God had unilaterally promised was, in no small way, deflating the promise and sucking all of the power out of the gospel. God’s promise to Abraham was given to the patriarch well before the law; by approximately four centuries (Gal. 3:17). But even then, when the law was established on the slopes of Mount Sinai, God wasn’t altering or annulling what he had previously promised. The Ten Commandments are not God’s way of saying, in the vein of a certain dark lord of the Sith, “I’m altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.” God’s law isn’t an amendment to his promise nor is it an indication that his mind has somehow changed on how to deal with sinners and screw-ups. 

You might be wondering, then, as the Galatians were, What’s the purpose of the law? What’s the point? Why establish all of those demands if no one can even come close to living up to them? Paul, of course, anticipates the same line of questioning (Gal. 3:19). According to the apostle, the law wasn’t given so that God’s people could earn their way into receiving God’s promise, nor was it added so that they could have a clearly delineated checklist of duties that, once performed, would entitle them to inherit the fullness of God’s grace, blessing, and favor. Rather, as Paul says, the law was “added because of transgressions” — that is, it was given in order to reveal just how full of sin sinners are. The law is a mirror that reflects God’s holiness and reveals man’s misery. Its occupation is one that leaves us utterly exposed, stripped bare of any notion of goodness or deservedness. “The function of the law,” writes John R. W. Stott, “was not to bestow salvation, however, but to convince men of their need of it” (89). 

It is only as we uphold God’s law in its absolute fullness and God’s promise in its absolute freeness that we are able to come to a right understanding of both. 

 

Paul proceeds to anticipate another question in verse 21: “Is the law then contrary to the promises of God?” he says, “Certainly not!” By insisting that obedience to the law precedes any inheritance of the promise, the Judaizers drove a wedge between the God of the law and the God of the promise. But, as Paul attests, the law and the promise are expressed by the same God, and “God is one” (Gal. 3:20). In the tension between faith and works, the answer isn’t to sever the two, thereby forcing folks to choose between one or the other. Rather, the answer is found in upholding both. It is only as we uphold God’s law in its absolute fullness and God’s promise in its absolute freeness that we are able to come to a right understanding of both. 

The law is inflexible and unaccommodating, having no escape clause or annulment allowance in sight. It is an agent of heaven that restricts and imprisons “everything under sin” (Gal. 3:22). As its captives, we are utterly incapable of shimmying our way out of its jurisdiction. The law functions as the abiding paradigm by which we hope to be released: it is how we assume getting right with God works even though we know we can never live up to its standard (Gal. 3:23). It is our “guardian,” our “schoolmaster,” that which ensures everyone’s toeing the line (Gal. 3:24). God’s law is a constant reminder that God’s holiness is unflagging and uncompromising, forbidding even a hair’s breadth of sin in its presence. Only as the law is understood in this way has it served its purpose. When we rightly comprehend the categorical inflexibility of the law, the promise becomes absolutely necessary. 

In the din of the amplified law, the way is being cleared for no other recourse other than Christ. He is “the offspring [that] should come,” the one about whom “the promise has been made,” that is, its focus and fulfillment. Our imprisonment “under sin” is “so that” (Gal. 3:22), “in order that” (Gal. 3:24) there would be no other avenue of hope except through the one who became a curse in order to set free we who are cursed (Gal. 3:13). The testimony of the law is one of uncompromising demands, all of which shout at us, “You can’t save yourself!” You can’t make yourself right enough or clean enough to inherit God’s promises. All we can do is fall flat on our backs and cry, “I can’t do it, I give up!” which is precisely when the word of God’s gospel reassures us, “Cheer up, child, I’ve already done it all.”

The word of promise that God gave Abraham finds its fulfillment in none other than the Lord Jesus Christ, who comes declaring the gospel to us. And what is at the heart of the gospel? Namely, the announcement that the captives have been set free and the prison doors are open (Isa. 61:1; Luke 4:18–19). Jesus himself is “the faith that has come” to us. He by his death under the law frees us from the law and its curse. We are no longer slaves imprisoned by the law, we are “sons of God” who’ve been adopted into the family of Abraham. “Through faith” we have “put on Christ.” We’ve been dressed in “the garments of salvation,” clothed and covered in the robe of his righteousness (Isa. 61:10). Accordingly, as Paul says elsewhere, we are “heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:17) — that is, “heirs according to the promise.”

What makes the gospel so scandalous is that there are no barriers. No matter your race, social status, gender, political affiliation, education, or financial portfolio, by faith alone, you are in, forever.

“But now that faith has come,” Paul says, “we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Gal. 3:25–29).

The gospel of free justification in Jesus is given to the likes of you and me without any barriers, restrictions, or conditions. This is, perhaps, the point that’s most difficult for us to grasp. After all, we like barriers. We like protocols. We like knowing who belongs and who doesn’t. Who doesn’t relish in the exclusivity of knowing that we are “in” while they are “out”? If you measure up, you belong; if not, you don’t. The simple brutality of the law is inordinately appealing to the Old Adam in all of us. Consequently, part of what makes the gospel so scandalous is that there are no barriers. No matter your race, social status, gender, political affiliation, education, or financial portfolio, by faith alone, you are in, forever. All the things that we so often cling to that make us who we are just don’t matter, especially not as it concerns who is or isn’t justified in God’s sight. The gospel of “Christ crucified” obliterates all of our manufactured barriers and levels all the fences that separate us. The way to a right standing with God is unencumbered and unobstructed. “Whoever comes to me I will never cast out,” Jesus declares (John 6:37). The invitation is open to all, and no one is turned away.