START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Galatians 3:23-29
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OBSERVE:
The Apostle Paul begins to make some applications of the doctrine of justification by faith to the church at Galatia. He briefly addresses the tension of law and grace, and then makes a startling claim that has broad socio-economic and racial implications.
We are mistaken if we draw the conclusion that the Apostle Paul was anti-law. He tells the Roman church that the law is a kind of mirror that reveals our sinful nature because it reveals the holy standard of God’s nature:
What then should we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin (Romans 7:7).
In today’s lectionary passage from Galatians, Paul elaborates on the purposes of the law. The law was a guard and a disciplinarian prior to the coming of Christ. It is faith in Christ that justifies, not the law.
This suggests that the purpose of the law was not only to convict but also to prepare the believer for faith. The word that the NRSV translates as disciplinarian is the Greek word paidagogos. This word is the root of our English word pedagogue — one who is a strict teacher or trainer.
This is not necessarily a negative connotation — the pedagogue raises the bar of expectations for a student or an athlete by demanding the best from them. The dilemma is that the law raises the bar of expectations but cannot fulfill those expectations.
The advent of faith accomplishes what the law could not do:
But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.
In the verses prior to our passage, Paul has explained that the righteousness of Christ has fulfilled the demands of the law through his death and resurrection:
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us…. (Galatians 3:13).
This echoes the famous declaration from 2 Corinthians 5:21:
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
The righteous, sinless one becomes a curse, and becomes sin by fulfilling the just requirements of the law on our behalf. This is the work accomplished by Christ on the cross. And this righteousness is accessed by us through faith.
In our baptism, then, we are represented as having been identified with Christ by faith:
As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
This is part of that new life that Christ now invites us to live with him as we are crucified with Christ and raised to life with Christ — and as a result Christ lives his righteous life in us when we live by faith (cf. Galatians 2:20). Baptism is a sign of death to sin and resurrection with Christ.
And then, in an unexpected application of the effect of this new life that is the result of faith in Christ, Paul makes a few very radical statements about the effect of such new life in social and cultural terms:
There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
It is so easy for readers in the 21st century to miss just how radical this statement is.
- Jews in Paul’s time considered Greeks and Gentiles to be cursed, and ineligible for covenant with God; and many Greeks regarded non-Greeks as barbarians. And yet, these two groups are now one in Christ Jesus!
- Slaves were regarded as living tools who could be used as their owner pleased, and could even be killed by their masters without consequences. Yet slave and free are one in Christ Jesus!
- Women were subjugated to the authority of men, and regarded as useful for breeding purposes and pleasure, but with little status in the Jewish or the Roman world of the day. Yet male and female are one in Christ Jesus!
Clearly, this was a radically counter-cultural statement for Paul’s time, presaging the end of class distinctions in the church to be sure, but also looking ahead to the permanent end of slavery and to women’s equality in countries influenced by Christianity in the future.
And finally, Paul repeats a theme that appears also in Romans 4:13-17, that those who follow the example of the faith of Abraham are his true heirs, rather than those who share his DNA:
And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.
APPLY:
The great doctrines of the Christian faith, derived from Scripture, are not simply dogmas that appear in our creeds — these great doctrines have very practical applications in our lives.
We can be grateful for the law that acted as a strict pedagogue and harsh disciplinarian in our lives — the law helped us realize that we can never be “good enough” by obeying the law. While the law is holy and just and good (Romans 7:12), when we look into the mirror of the law we see just how unholy and unjust and evil we really are in comparison.
As John Wesley would say, the law ‘drives us to Christ.’ Christ fulfills the law on our behalf , and gives us grace in the form of his own righteousness. This grace we receive by faith.
And here are some of the results of this faith:
- We become children of God through faith (verse 26).
- We are united as one in Christ — Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, male and female, black and white, first world and third world — our unity in Christ transcends socio-economic-racial-national differences.
- We become the true heirs of the promises to Abraham because our faith emulates his faith.
So, perhaps we should begin acting like the children of God, the one body in Christ, and the heirs of Abraham!
RESPOND:
The story is told that when the evangelist Billy Graham preached an historic crusade in Montgomery, Alabama, he insisted that the mass choir be integrated. The local newspaper editor was appalled, and wrote an editorial that declared “Billy Graham has set the church in Alabama back one hundred years.”
Billy Graham’s response was wonderful . He said, “If that’s the case, I failed in my mission. I intended to set it back two thousand years!”
If we truly believe, as I do, that the Scriptures are the revealed Word of God, then we need to go back before we can go forward.
Do we see churches today where sinners are transformed into saints, filled with holy love for God and neighbor? Where there are no distinctions between races and socio-economic classes? Where people are truly being equipped to become disciples and to make disciples? Where there is real, substantive ministry to the poor and the homeless that offers dignity, and doesn’t depend upon the government?
I would love to be a member of that church!
Lord, I believe that you have given guidance to your church through your holy Word. But I confess, our application of your Word has been selective at best, and corrupt at worst. As we place our faith in you, break down the barriers of division and make us one in Christ. Amen.
PHOTOS: "Galatians 3.28" by Baptist Union of Great Britain is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.
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