Galatians 3:21 Commentary

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Galatians 3:21

Comments

We must not misunderstand Paul’s question here. It has a very precise place in his argument at this point. He is not asking whether the promise and the law are incompatible as means of justification. He has already answered that point repeatedly in previous verses: ‘As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse’ (verse 10); ‘No man is justified by the law in the sight of God’ (verse 11); ‘The law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them’ (verse 12). The law and faith justify in entirely different ways and cannot be reconciled with each other so that a man who seeks to be justified by faith cannot also be justified by works – he is dead to the law; nor can a man who seeks to be justified by the law be justified by faith – he has excluded himself from the promise of God. In that sense, promise and law are utterly opposed to each other. What he is asking is, Did they work against each other in the plan of God, making it a flawed and self-contradictory plan? Did the law coming after the promise undermine and make void the promise that came before it? Did it render the promise useless? The answer to that is a resounding, ‘God forbid’, or literally, ‘May it not be’. It could only have done this, he argues, if it was able to offer righteousness, which he has already shown it could not. The law brings a curse not righteousness, which is a pre-requisite of life for fallen men and women. The promise and the law served entirely different purposes, and there is room for both of them in the plan of God without them coming into conflict with each other. God never gave the law to give life or to justify; he gave it to bring Israel under conviction.When Paul emphatically denies that the law is against the promise, he is not contradicting himself or back-tracking on all that he has said before. He is not saying that the promise and the law can be harmonised. Those who try to reconcile the Abrahamic covenant and the covenant on Sinai as if they were both gracious covenants engage in a serious misreading of the Bible. The fact that there were typical gracious elements in the ceremonial law does not mean that the law as a whole was gracious when Paul so clearly says that it was works-based.

Application

God forbid that he should put in place a scheme of salvation that was unnecessary, and which was so wasteful: sacrificing the life of his only begotten Son for what could be achieved without his coming. The Father did put his Son through such agony and shame when in fact we could obtain righteousness by obedience to the law. God does not do for us what we are perfectly able to do for ourselves. If he did, a cynic would object that God was claiming credit for an act that could be equalled by mere human effort. Nor would God’s people be able to thank him sincerely, for they would know that they could have obtained righteousness without him, and their praise would at best be half-hearted. Instead he waits until we are helpless and there is nothing that we can do to save ourselves before he steps in to deliver us.

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Galatians 3:21 Commentary and Bible Study