As you notice on the schedule, this is a time of Bible study. In other words, we are going to study something in the Bible.
Now, our study should be different from a time of ministry. In a time of ministry, probably the one who ministers is ministering to us, and we who are sitting there are being ministered to. But in a time of study, the very word study means that you need to do something.
Because of the shortness of time, we were not able to tell you beforehand what our study would be so that you might prepare for it. But starting from this morning, now you know what you are going to have. So I hope that it is not just that we come together for a time of explanation. I do hope, brothers and sisters, that in your spare time, if you have any, you will do some study.
What we have chosen for this time of study is a book in the New Testament. It is a book which Martin Luther called, “This is my epistle. I am wedded to it. It is my wife.” I hope you know what that epistle is. It is the Epistle to the Galatians.
So this time we would like to spend some time together making a study of that letter to the Galatians.
Of course, the letter to the Galatians is such an important book in the Bible. As a matter of fact, every book in the Bible is important, but the letter to the Galatians is very essential to the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I think it had more influence on the Reformation than even the letter to the Romans. We often think that the letter to the Romans is the backbone of the Reformation, but actually it is the letter to the Galatians.
Before we enter into the study, I would like to give you a little of the background of this letter to the Galatians.
In the first place, we call this the letter to the Galatians. It is a letter written to the Galatian believers. It is a letter written to the churches in Galatia. Now, what is Galatia? Who are these people called Galatians? What are the churches of Galatia?
If you look at the map, you will find that geographically, Galatia is an area, a spot on earth in Asia Minor.
On the east of Galatia, you have Cappadocia and Pontus. On the west of Galatia, you have Asia, a province, and Mysia. On the north, you have Bithynia. So, geographically, Galatia is situated among these places.
It is a place where Celtic people from Europe migrated into Asia and settled down in that area. These people were Gauls, and they settled down in that area called Galatia.
Later on, we know that during the Roman Empire, the Roman Empire made Galatia a province, a Roman province. Politically, the Roman province of Galatia was bigger than Galatia as a geographical name, because the Roman province of Galatia included not only Galatia as a geographic area but also some of the places in Phrygia.
So when Paul wrote a letter to the Galatians, to whom did he write? Did he write to Galatia as a geographic area, in which the Gauls were situated? Or did he write to Galatia as a Roman province? That means that in the upper part of Galatia the Gauls lived, and in the lower part Greeks and Jews lived.
Of course, there are different views as to whom Paul wrote this letter to the Galatians. I will not go into detail because this is not our purpose. But to me, it seems most probable that Paul wrote this letter to Galatia as a Roman province.
You find in Paul’s other letters, or in his writings, that Paul often mentioned, for instance, the churches of Judea, the churches of Macedonia, and the churches of Asia. We know that these are all Roman provinces. So we believe that the churches of Galatia refer to the Roman province of Galatia.
Now, if this is the case, then it is easy to understand. In the book of Acts, Paul was in so-called upper Galatia—that is, Galatia as a geographical area—only twice: in Acts 16:6 and Acts 18:23. You find that Paul did go through the country of Phrygia and Galatia, and in these two instances they were geographical areas.
But aside from these two instances, we do not have any mention of Galatia as a geographical area. The Bible does not give us any instance of any church in the upper area of Galatia.
On the contrary, we find that Paul was in the lower area of Galatia, which was actually part of Phrygia, from the very beginning when he went out with Barnabas. You remember in Acts 13 that God the Holy Spirit set apart Paul and Barnabas for the apostolic ministry.
They started from Antioch of Syria. From there they went to the island of Cyprus. They went through the whole length of Cyprus, and from there they took a boat and landed in Pisidian Antioch. From there they went into Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, and these places.
These places were in Phrygia, and they were in the lower part of the Roman province of Galatia. You remember how Paul and Barnabas were in these different places—in Derbe, Lystra, and so forth. They suffered a great deal for the Lord, and afterward they came back and established elders in these various churches.
So the churches in lower Galatia are well known to us. As a matter of fact, aside from Antioch of Syria, where Paul labored with Barnabas for a period, these churches in Lystra and Derbe were the churches of Paul’s first love.
No wonder that, if these were churches of Paul’s first love, Paul should write a letter to these people. That would be understandable. So probably, most likely, the letter to the Galatians was written to Galatia as a Roman province.
Because it was a province, you have the churches of Galatia, not the church of Galatia. In the Bible, the local church is usually related to a city, not to a province. The churches of Galatia means that in the province of Galatia there were many different local assemblies.
Paul wrote this letter probably between the years AD 57 and AD 58, from what we can gather.
In the writings of Paul, you can divide his writings into several different periods. This letter to the Galatians seems to fall into a period in which he wrote 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, and Romans. You find a similarity in these four letters.
Most likely, the letter to the Galatians was written after 2 Corinthians and before the letter to the Romans. As a matter of fact, there is a similarity between Galatians and Romans, and Romans seems to be an enlargement and development of Galatians.
So we believe that Galatians was written before the letter to the Romans. Most likely he wrote this letter on his journey between Macedonia and Achaia, while he was traveling in that area.
Now, brothers and sisters, the one thing we must know is why Paul wrote this letter.
This is one of the most personal letters of Paul. You find in this letter a great deal of feeling. He loved these churches in Galatia as his first love, and because he loved them so much, you find that he reacted very strongly when he discovered there was something in their midst that was not good.
Somehow, in the churches in Galatia, some people—probably some so-called Jewish believers—came in after Paul. They tried to teach these Galatian believers that if they wanted to be perfect, they had to be circumcised and had to keep the law of Moses.
Because of that, Paul said that they had departed from the pure gospel of Jesus Christ. They had gone off to another gospel, which was not a gospel at all.
For that reason, he wrote this letter to the churches in Galatia: to help them, to bring them back to the purity of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
But, dear brothers and sisters, this is not a negative letter. Even though it deals with something negative, yet it is very positive in nature. Why? Because it discloses to us what the gospel of Jesus Christ really is. In other words, it gives us the basics of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Now, sometimes we think that we are so advanced that we do not need the basics anymore. Among Christians, there are two different problems.
Sometimes our problem is that we do not have the basics, and yet we try to go on. In other words, we do not have a firm foundation, and yet we try to build. If we do not have a good foundation and try to build, the whole thing will collapse.
But at other times, you find that we have the foundation, but we go around the foundation and never progress or try to build up. The problem with the Hebrews, in the letter to the Hebrews, was that they laid the foundation, laid it again, and laid it again. They never went on to perfection, to maturity.
The writer of Hebrews said, “Well, after you have laid the foundation, then do not lay it again, because you cannot do it. The foundation is already there. Now let us go on to perfection,” which means, “Go on to maturity. Let us press on into Christ, into the fullness that is in Christ.”
That was the problem with the Hebrews. Now, with the Galatian believers, their problem was that they wanted very much to go on. They were very anxious to go on to perfection, so they forgot about the foundation.
Their foundation was not firm, and yet they wanted to go on into maturity. This is something they simply could not do.
In their anxiousness for perfection, they would accept anything—any easy method, any easy way, any easy technique—that could help them to perfection without much time and without much trouble. In other words, instantness.
Now, instantness is an American disease. We want everything to be instant. When I first came to this country, I found that you had lots of instant things—instant coffee and so forth. Then, to my surprise, in recent years, with the Chinese, we even have instant noodles.
Everybody wants things to be instant, wants things to be quick. With the Galatian believers, they wanted to be instant spiritual believers.
They thought that if they could get hold of a formula, if they could do something, if they could get hold of some technique and perfect that technique, then they would become instantly spiritual. They would arrive at spiritual perfection without time.
But, dear brothers and sisters, you may have instantness in other things, but when you come to spiritual things, there is no such thing as instantness.
You have to have a firm foundation, and you have to build patiently. With patience and with faith, we inherit the kingdom of God.
So in the letter to the Galatians, you find that Paul is trying to lay a firm foundation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He deals with the basis of the gospel.
This is something of the background of the letter to the Galatians, but it is not our purpose for this study, so I will let it go.
Now we want to study this letter to the Galatians. But our study this time is not a verse-by-verse study, nor is it a systematic study of the whole matter. If we wanted to do a verse-by-verse or systematic study, we would have to keep you over Labor Day. We would have to keep you longer.
We do not have the time for that in this conference. So our study will be concentrated on three points. These are the basics of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
If we can lay hold of these basics, and also see their opposites, then we can have a clear understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ which we believe. Then we will have a ground for future building.
So we will concentrate ourselves, through all these three sessions, on these three different points:
Just bear in mind that these are the three points that we will study this time.
It is too late for this morning, but for tomorrow, try to find out in the letter to the Galatians every place where the word faith and the word works are mentioned.
Read every verse where these two words occur. If possible, write them down in your notebook or on a separate paper. Not only that, but try to go through these verses that have these two words and try to find out what they mean in these verses.
That is the assignment for tomorrow. No assignment for this morning, because it is too late.
Now let us open the letter to the Galatians.
First of all, what we will do is this: we would like to do it in such a way that probably in the future, when you are studying a book, a certain topic, or a certain subject, you will know how to approach that subject.
So we do it in such a way as to try to help you for the future. First of all, we would like to go through the letter to the Galatians and pick out every verse where the word grace is mentioned. Let us do it this morning.
Galatians 1:3:
Grace to you and peace from God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Where does grace come from? Grace comes from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
The second place is Galatians 1:6:
I marvel that ye are so quickly removing from Him that called you in the grace of Christ unto a different gospel.
The grace of Christ: we are called in the grace of Christ, or we are called by His grace. Now, Galatians 1:15:
But when it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me, even from my mother’s womb, and called me through His grace.
We are called by the grace of God. We are called into the grace of Christ. God initiates the whole thing. We do not initiate any grace. It is God who calls us by His grace.
Galatians 2:9:
And when they perceived the grace that was given unto me, James and Cephas and John, they who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship; that we should go unto the Gentiles, and they unto the circumcision.
Paul went to Jerusalem, and there you find James, Cephas, and John, the pillars of the church in Jerusalem. They recognised the grace given to Paul.
Now, grace is something that can be recognised. If there is grace in you, people should be able to recognise it. How? They should be able to recognise grace either in the form of your manner of life—your life should express the grace of Christ—or it may be expressed in the form of service.
So here you find these men in Jerusalem recognising the grace of God upon Paul.
Galatians 2:21:
I do not make void the grace of God: for if righteousness is through the law, then Christ died for nought.
We say that grace is given to us by God, and yet there is the possibility of our setting aside the grace of God. You can put it aside.
If you think that you will go back to law, you can put the grace of God aside, and that is a possibility. So keep this in mind.
Galatians 3:18:
For if the inheritance is of the law, it is no more of promise: but God hath granted it to Abraham by promise.
How is the promise of God concerning inheritance given to Abraham? It is given on the principle of grace. We receive the promise of God, the inheritance of God, the promise of the Holy Spirit, and the promise of eternal life on the basis of grace.
Galatians 5:4:
Ye are severed from Christ, ye who would be justified by the law; ye are fallen away from grace.
There is a possibility not only of setting aside the grace of God. In other words, the grace of God is there with you, but you set it aside. You do not use the grace of God properly.
But there is also the possibility of falling from Christ. You fall out of grace when you try to justify yourself by law.
Finally, Galatians 6:18:
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brethren. Amen.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. It means that if the grace of God is with your spirit, then your spirit is discerning. Then the Spirit of God is able to work through your spirit the work that He has in mind.
Altogether, you find that the word grace appears eight times in the letter to the Galatians. The letter to the Galatians begins with grace, and it concludes with grace. It is from grace to grace. It is all of grace.
So, brothers and sisters, do bear this in mind: the letter to the Galatians tells us that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the gospel of grace.
Now, what is grace?
First of all, try to find out that word in the letter to the Galatians and try to see the thought. I did not arrange the thoughts for you, because you had not read these verses before. Now, after you have read these verses, you try to arrange the thoughts in these verses.
We did not do that this morning. I just commented a little on this verse and a little on that verse. But if you want to really study, after you put down all these verses where grace is mentioned, try to familiarise yourself with the thought in each verse. Then the next thing to do is to try to place the thoughts in order.
After you have placed all the thoughts in order, then you see a better picture of grace. After you have done that, the second thing you can do is get some help from a dictionary.
If you are lazy, then use a concordance. If you are diligent, then do not use the concordance, but go through the whole letter and find the word. Actually, the letter to the Galatians is so short that you can easily do that, and I suggest that you do. I hope you did not bring your concordance with you.
After you have finished with the concordance, probably the next thing you can do is get some help from a dictionary—either a Bible dictionary, a Bible encyclopedia, or a word dictionary. Look up the word grace, and try to find out the meaning of the word in Greek, in the original.
The Greek word translated grace is charis—C-H-A-R-I-S. If you look up the word charis, you will find that the original meaning of the word grace is very rich, very rich.
When we think of the word grace, what comes to your mind? I think what comes to your mind is something that is given to you freely. Now, that is grace. It is true. In the original, the word grace does carry that meaning, but this is not the first meaning of the word grace.
If you look up the word grace, you will find that the first meaning includes a threefold meaning. The first meaning of grace is something intrinsically beautiful and attractive, something that will cause within you a feeling of joy, satisfaction, and delight.
For instance, here is a picture. Before that picture is freely given to you—now, it is not given to you, do not take it—here is a picture which, in itself, has a beauty and an attractiveness. When you look at it, it causes within you a feeling of joy, delight, and satisfaction. Now, that is grace.
So grace, first of all, is in a person. Grace, first of all, is in the person of our Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus is full of grace. The Lord Jesus is grace itself.
There is such beauty, such attractiveness, in our Lord Jesus that when you look at Him, it gives you such delight, such joy, such satisfaction. In other words, this is the foundation of grace.
There can be no grace freely given to you if grace is not there. If I do not have that picture, how can I give it freely to you? I have to have that picture first.
So here you find that, in the first place, grace is inherent in Christ Jesus. He is grace. He is full of grace. He is so gracious, so loving, so kind, so attractive, so good. He is grace. That is our Lord Jesus.
Then the second meaning is this: because there is such graciousness in that Person, He has such a willing disposition that He wants to give freely and universally to everyone.
Out of the graciousness of His heart, He gives generously, graciously, liberally, freely, universally to all. That is the second meaning of grace. The emphasis of this second meaning is, first, freely; second, universally.
If it is the grace of God in Christ Jesus, then it has to be freely given. You cannot buy it. It is not something to be earned. It is not even something to be borrowed. It is not something given to you first and then paid for later, on installment.
We are so clever today. Everything is on installment. If you want anything, buy it by installment. But how many people fall into that trap? God never gives His grace by installment—have it first and pay later.
Grace, if it is grace—and it is—is given freely to us. No cost to us. It cost God everything. It cost God His only begotten Son, but it costs us nothing.
And it is given universally. It is not given because you are better than anybody else. It is not given because you belong to a certain group. It is given universally to everyone who desires it.
Now, the third meaning: out of the graciousness of the Person, He gives graciously to us. Then, when we receive it, the grace of God so touches our heart that we return with thanks.
The word thanks in the New Testament, you will find in some places, is related to the word charis. In other words, after we have received the grace of God, it touches us so deeply that we begin to thank God.
That is why, before we eat, we say, “Let us say grace.” Have you ever thought why we say, “Let us say grace”? Let us say thanks. Let us thank the Lord for it, because He has given so graciously, liberally, and freely to us. So let us thank Him. Let us say grace.
If the grace of God does not touch your heart and draw from you thankfulness, then you waste the grace of God.
Not only in the sense of giving thanks, but because His grace is now within us, it transforms us and makes us gracious. Dear brothers and sisters, if we say we have received the grace of God and we are not gracious to other people, we do not know what grace is.
You remember that wicked servant. He owed his master how much? Ten thousand talents. He could not repay it. The lord had mercy on him and forgave all his debts. But when he went out, he saw another fellow servant, got hold of his throat, and said, “Pay me what thou owest.” And it was only a little amount.
Finally, when the master heard it, he called him back and said, “I forgave you all this, and you do not do it for your fellow brother.”
Dear brothers and sisters, how can we receive the grace of God, and yet our life is not transformed, not influenced, not changed by the grace of God, so that we too may be gracious?
We too may have the beauty of Christ in us. We too may be attractive, drawing people not to us but to the Lord who loves us so much. Of course, that is what grace ought to produce in our lives.
In the original Greek, all these three meanings are included in the word grace. What a word!
What is the grace of God? The grace of God is not a thing. The grace of God is a Person.
We often think of the grace of God as things. Suppose today you find that you are a person burdened with your sin. You come to the Lord and say, “Lord, what I need is forgiveness.” You think of grace as forgiveness. How true: forgiveness is grace.
Or when you discover that your life is so poor and so empty, you go to the Lord and say, “Lord, I need a full life, a good life, an eternal life.” God gives you eternal life, and eternal life is grace.
Or suppose you do not know where your food will come from tonight. You go to the Lord and pray, “Lord, give me this day my daily bread.” God supplies you with a meal for tonight, and you say, “This is grace.” It is grace.
Or if you are sick and ask the Lord to heal you, and He answers you, healing is grace. In other words, so far as we are concerned, we often think of grace as this thing, that thing, and many other things.
But, dear brothers and sisters, no. Grace is a Person. Grace is our Lord Jesus. The grace of God is nothing less than the Lord Jesus Himself.
When God gave grace to us, He gave His Son to us. In His Son are all things, all these things. So we need to remember that grace is in the Person of our Lord Jesus. If we have the Lord Jesus, we have the grace of God.
In the letter to the Galatians, you find three things concerning the Lord Jesus as grace to us.
First, it pleased God to reveal His Son in me. Grace is Christ revealed in me.
Second:
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.
—Galatians 2:20
Grace is Christ living in me.
Third, Paul said:
My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you.
—Galatians 4:19
Grace is Christ formed in us.
Now, brothers and sisters, as we experience the grace of God, we experience it beginning with Christ revealed in us. It goes on to Christ living in us, and it ends with Christ formed in us.
I will not go into detail because that will be another message. But anyway, roughly and very quickly, this is what you find concerning grace.
Now let us go over to the matter of law. The opposite of grace is law. In the letter to the Galatians, you find Paul contrasting grace with law.
So if you want to know more fully what grace really is, you have to know what law is. Just like when you paint a picture, if you want to bring out something in bold relief, you have to use a background. In the letter to the Galatians, the law serves as a kind of background to bring out the meaning of grace.
Again, first go through the letter to the Galatians and try to find every place where the word law is mentioned. I will not go through it with you because that would take our whole time. The word law in Galatians is used, I think, forty-one times. Now you try to count and correct me if I am wrong.
I will not analyse every use of the word law in the letter to the Galatians, but I would like to go on and try to present law as we find it in the whole New Testament and see its relationship with grace.
First of all, what is law? If you go to a dictionary, the Greek word is nomos—N-O-M-O-S. You will find that the use of the word law in the New Testament is manifold. It can be used in many different ways, but this morning we do not need to get into all these ways. I would just mention two.
The word law, first of all, tells us that God, being holy and righteous, has a just demand upon us who are His.
Law is something assigned, something put upon you by One who has the right to demand it of your life. God, being holy and righteous, has made a demand upon those who belong to Him that they should be holy and righteous.
That demand comes in the form of law—principally, the Ten Commandments. The whole Mosaic law is somehow contained in the Ten Commandments.
The Ten Commandments are divided into two tables. The first table contains four laws that regulate man’s relationship with God. What is holiness as to our relationship with God? That we should have only one God, that we should not worship anything else, that we should not take His name in vain, and that we should keep the Sabbath.
Then you find the second table contains six laws, and these relate to our relationships with one another: “Honour thy father and thy mother,” and then the rest of the commandments.
So, in other words, the law expresses God’s demand of holiness and righteousness. That is the first meaning of law.
But law in the Scripture has another use. It means a principle or rule. It means something that happens often, all the time. It happens again and again.
For instance, in the physical world, God put in the physical world the law of gravitation. No matter where you go, no matter what state you live in, if you drop something, it goes downward. That is the law of gravitation. It is a principle, a rule that God has given the universe.
In the moral world, you find that there is law too, there are principles too. When you enter into that area, you find, for instance, in Romans 8, the law of sin and death.
Here we are in Adam. If we live in the flesh, then the law of sin and death operates. But if we live in Christ, if we live by the Holy Spirit, then the law of the Spirit of life operates.
So here you find law used in a very different way. It means a principle, a rule, something that always happens and cannot be changed. The only way to change it is to get out of the field of operation of that law.
Basically, you find that the word law in the New Testament is used in these two different ways.
Now we would like to do a little analysis of the law in the New Testament.
John 1:17 says:
For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
The law was given through Moses. Of course, the law was given by God, but it was given by God through Moses.
Before the law was given through Moses at Mount Sinai, was there any law? Yes and no. Before the law was given by Moses, there was no law as such as the Ten Commandments. There was no written law defining our relationship with God and our relationship with one another.
But law as a principle was always there. That is the reason why Romans 5:13-14 says:
For until the law sin was in the world; but sin is not imputed when there is no law.
Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam’s transgression, who is a figure of Him that was to come.
You see, the law was given through Moses. In one sense, there was no law. Yet from Adam to Moses, death reigned. Now why?
Sin was in the world, but sin was not put to account. Not because before the law was given there was no sin. We know that Adam sinned, and after Adam, from Adam to Moses, people sinned. The wages of sin is death, and from Adam until the time of Moses, people died.
Yet there was no law given. Just like before you discovered the law of gravitation, the law was there. It always worked, but you did not discover it. When Newton sat under a tree, an apple fell upon his nose, and then he began to think and discovered the law of gravitation.
The law of gravitation was there since the time of Adam. Morally speaking, the law of sin and death ruled the universe from the time of Adam until the time of Moses. That is why people died.
But the difference is this: before the law was given, sin was not put to account. In other words, there was no charge, no summons.
If there is no posted fifty-five-mile speed limit, and you drive seventy miles, there may be no ticket. But that does not mean that if you drive recklessly, you will not get into an accident. Not because there is no speed limit are you able to go at any speed and be safe. Not at all.
But if there is a law that says fifty-five miles, and you go sixty or sixty-five miles, then you will see that you will not only be more prone to accidents, but when the police stop you, there will be a charge. That is the difference.
Why then the law? Before the law was given, sin was in the world, and the wages of sin is death. Why then the law? Why should there be the law? Why should there be the commandment?
Now you come to Galatians 3:19:
What then is the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise hath been made; and it was ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator.
Paul asks the same question: “Why then the law?” It was added for the sake of transgressions. The law is to bring in the knowledge of transgressions.
Romans 7:7-9 says:
What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Howbeit, I had not known sin, except through the law: for I had not known coveting, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.
But sin, finding occasion, wrought in me through the commandment all manner of coveting: for apart from the law sin is dead.
And I was alive apart from the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.
In other words, why the law? The law was added for the sake of transgressions. That is to say, the law was given to awaken our conscience.
Before the law was given, our conscience was asleep. We might do something bad, and yet we did not know it. We felt quite all right about it—not because it was right, but because we did not feel that it was wrong. In other words, our conscience was asleep. We did not know it was wrong because nobody told us.
But once the law was given, then our conscience was awakened. It made sin known.
By the law, we get the knowledge of sin. We do not know that something is sin, but when the law is given, it awakens our conscience because we know that it is against the law. We know that this is sin. So the law is added for transgressions, to make us realise that we have sinned.
Is the law given for us to keep? It seems like it. But actually, the law is given for us to see grace, because no one can keep the law.
The law is given not so that anyone may keep the law before God. No, we break it. In breaking it, our conscience is awakened.
So the next thing is, why the law? It not only awakens our conscience, but the law shuts us up.
Galatians 3:23-24 says:
But before faith came, we were kept in ward under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.
So that the law hath been our tutor to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
The law is given as our tutor. Now, in this verse there are two different interpretations.
Some believe that the law is our teacher. You know what a tutor is: a tutor is one who tutors you, teaches you, helps you to understand something, and helps you get into more advanced knowledge, and so forth. Some understand the law as a tutor. The law is teaching us and instructing us to come to Christ.
But some other people feel that in the original, the law is not a tutor in that sense. The word translated “tutor,” or “schoolmaster,” refers to a guardian, because there is a historical background there.
At the time of Paul, in wealthy families, they usually had many slaves. In the Roman Empire there were more slaves than free people. Every family had many slaves, and these slaves did all the jobs. Some worked in the kitchen as cooks, some as maids, but some were teachers.
Because the Greeks had a higher culture than the Romans, many Greeks were slaves to the Romans, but they were teachers to their children.
The word here means a slave guardian. These were slaves who were especially in charge of the boys. Before the boys grew up, they were put under the charge of these slaves as their guardians. They were to help these boys grow up to maturity, especially in the way of morals, that they might grow up like men.
It was the duty of these slave guardians to lead the boys to school, to the schoolmaster. They did not teach the boys; the schoolmaster did. But every day they brought the boys to the schoolmaster to be taught.
So what the law did was to bring these boys to the schoolmaster. If you take that interpretation, then the schoolmaster is Christ, not the law.
So there are two different interpretations. But anyway, we find this: what does the law do? The law brings us to Christ.
Under the law, we discover that we are helpless and hopeless. We are completely finished. We can never be justified by keeping the law. No one can.
Because of that, the law shuts us up to Christ, seeing that Christ is our only hope. He is the grace of God, and that is the work of the law.
But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. Galatians 3:25 says this. Romans 6:14 says:
For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under law, but under grace.
I think this is very self-evident. After we are shut up by the law to Christ, and after we have met Christ, we are no longer under our tutor. We are no longer under law, but we are now under grace.
So, dear brothers and sisters, remember this: we are no longer under law. We are now under grace.
How are we delivered from the law? Romans 7:4 says:
Wherefore, my brethren, ye also were made dead to the law through the body of Christ; that ye should be joined to another, even to Him who was raised from the dead, that we might bring forth fruit unto God.
The law not only shuts us up and leads us to Christ. After it has led us to Christ, we are under Christ and no longer under law.
After we have come to Christ, we are completely delivered from the law. How? Because in the death of Christ, we died to the law.
We died to the law, and now we are joined to Another, who has been raised from the dead. The law at one time was our husband. We were under the law as our husband. Now our husband has died; therefore, we are free to be married to Another. Christ is now our Husband.
So, dear brothers and sisters, we are delivered from the law through death. In the death of Christ, we die to law. In the resurrection of Christ, we are joined to Christ.
But does it mean that because we are delivered from the law, and are no longer under law, we can be lawless? Not at all.
We find in 1 Corinthians 9:21 that we are not without law to God, but are under the law of Christ. In Galatians 6:2, we read:
Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.
Brothers and sisters, we are delivered from the law—that is, the Mosaic law. But now we are under the law of Christ.
The law of Christ is different from the Mosaic law because it is not in Ten Commandments or in hundreds of laws and rules. It is the law of the Spirit of life. We are under the law of Christ, and thus we live.
Dear brothers and sisters, finally, do not mix up law with grace. If you mix up law with grace, it is another gospel.
The word another is heteros, which means another of a different kind. It is no longer a gospel.
Do not mix up law and grace. Do not reverse the order either. Law comes first, and then grace. Do not receive grace and go back to law. Then we fall from grace.
So this is what you find in the letter to the Galatians concerning grace and law.
Let us pray.
Our Father, we do thank Thee for showing us that the grace of God is Christ Jesus. Oh, we do praise and thank Thee that we are no longer under law. We have died to it. We are alive now unto God in Christ.
We praise and thank Thee that we are not lawless. We are under the law of Christ, which is the law of love. Oh, how we praise and worship Thee in Thy preciousness. Amen.