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Context No. 363 of 4322 · Galatians

Context · Reflection

Galatians 3:15-20: in context

15Brothers, speaking of human terms, though it is only a man’s covenant, yet when it has been confirmed, no one makes it void or adds to it. 16Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his offspring. He doesn’t say, “To descendants”, as of many, but as of one, “To your offspring”, which is Christ. 17Now I say this: A covenant confirmed beforehand by God in Christ, the law, which came four hundred thirty years after, does not annul, so as to make the promise of no effect. 18For if the inheritance is of the law, it is no more of promise; but God has granted it to Abraham by promise. 19Then why is there the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise has been made. It was ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator. 20Now a mediator is not between one, but God is one.

Paul is making an argument that can feel technical, but its point is one of the most freeing in the New Testament, and it turns on a matter of timing. He starts with something everyone understands: once a covenant, even a human one, has been properly ratified, no one can annul it or add conditions to it later. It stands as agreed. Then he applies that to God and Abraham. God made Abraham a promise, freely, as a gift received by faith, and that promise was ratified long before anything else.

Here is the timing that matters. The promise came first. The law of Moses, Paul points out, came four hundred and thirty years afterward. And a promise already ratified cannot be cancelled by something added centuries later. So the inheritance, our standing with God and everything that comes with it, was established as a gift by promise, not as a wage earned by keeping the law. If it could be earned by law, Paul says, then it would no longer be a promise at all, and God's original word to Abraham would be emptied of meaning. The law was not useless; it was added for a real but limited purpose, because of transgressions, to hold things until Christ, the promised offspring, came. But it was the later, secondary thing. Grace was there first, at the foundation.

Most of us instinctively get the order backwards. We treat our performance, our rule-keeping, as the basis of our standing with God, and his promise as something conditional on it, as if the gift depended on our grades. Paul insists it is the other way around. My acceptance rests on a promise God made freely and first, which my later successes and failures cannot annul. Have I inverted the order, building my whole relationship with God on my performance, when the foundation he laid was a promise given before I had done anything at all?

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