"It's the Law!" (No Other Gospel #12)

Before we get into the subject of this passage, I just want to point out something interesting. The Galatian churches were primarily Gentile. Most of the people that Paul is writing to had been raised in Paganism of some kind or another. Probably most of them were completely ignorant of the true God before Paul preached to them. And yet, in writing to them, Paul throws out all kinds of Old Testament references, almost casually. You cannot fully understand the argument of Galatians without understanding the Old Testament, and Paul apparently expected these Gentile Galatians to have that kind of understanding. This proves that the study of the Old Testament was very important in the early church, even in Gentile churches. Since they didn't have the New Testament yet, the Old Testament was all they had to read and study. And it is from the Old Testament that the ideas of this passage are drawn.

For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them. But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith. And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. (Galatians 3:10-14)

At the heart of Galatians, there is the idea of contrast. Do you remember the statement of Jesus that no man can serve two masters? You cannot put loyalty in two separate things. And, by the same token, you cannot believe in two separate gospels or follow two separate paths of salvation. There were two competing Gospels in the Galatian churches. One was the gospel preached by the Judaizers, which was fundamentally a gospel of law--they said that it was through obeying the Jewish law or by being a member of the Jewish covenant that someone was saved. The other gospel was the gospel of Paul and the other apostles, the one true gospel, which taught that salvation came through faith. In Galatians 3, Paul clearly paints the contrast between these two views, emphasizing the fact the true gospel is of faith not of law.

So we have these two separate ideas of salvation, one by the law and one by faith. Paul had just shown that there is a blessing that comes on those who seek God through faith, just as Abraham had faith in God and was blessed by God with a blessing that flows out to all those who live by faith.

But the law is very different from faith. When God gave the Law to Moses, he instructed the children of Israel to go through a special ceremony to take place in the valley between Mt. Ebal and Mt. Gerizim. There the Levites were to read out a number of curses and blessings (See Joshua 8:34) to the people and the people confirmed them by saying Amen. In Deuteronomy 27 we read the curses which were to be offered, curses that would fall on those who broke God's law in one way or another. Deuteronomy 27:26 sums up the matter: “Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them. And all the people shall say, Amen.” That is the verse Paul references here. We know there were also blessings involved, but we don't know exactly what they were, but most commentators think they were just the reverse of the cursing. So it would “Blessed is he that confirmith all the words of this law to do them.” This has a parallel in Leviticus, in which God tells the children of Israel not to follow the customs of Egypt or the Canaanites, but instead, to follow His law. “Ye shall therefore keep my statutes, and my judgments: which if a man do, he shall live in them: I am the LORD.” (Leviticus 18:5) Here we have a blessing, the blessing of life, placed on those who obey the law.

All this talk about blessing and curses seems rather foreign to us since, in our world, curses are only used to add emphasis to conversation and blessings are only used when someone sneezes. So we need to get to this whole point a different way.

Everything that is deliberately and consciously made is made for a reason. It may be a trivial reason--it may be a serious reason; it may be to pass time or to save a life, but it exists for a reason; it exists to serve a purpose. A law is something deliberately crafted or created. It doesn't happen by accident. And so, as with everything else that is deliberately made, you can ask the question: “Why?” Why was this made? What purpose does it serve? What is the purpose of a law?

The purpose of a law is to dictate people's actions. A law is made to be followed. I know the old joke is that “Laws are made to be broken” and there is also a very real sense in which that is true--at least, laws are made to be breakable. If there was something that nobody could do and nobody wanted to do and nobody tried to do, then nobody would make a law about it.

We can think of it like a boundary line or even a fence. So long as you are on one side of it, you're all right. And on the other side of it, you're not all right. It places a boundary between what is permitted and what is forbidden; what you should do and what you shouldn't.

And depending on where you stand in relation to the law, you have either a blessing or a curse. Paul talks about that here. Verse 12 gives the blessing “The man that doeth them (that is, that follows God's laws) shall live in them.” There is a blessing to those who live according to the law. They are good citizens and are protected and esteemed. But there is also a curse: verse 10: “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.” If you break the law, you are subject to the curse.

That is what a law does. That is the purpose and function of a law. It creates a line of division between what is permitted and what is forbidden. It exists to be followed and to place a penalty on those who do not follow it. The two precepts laid down here: “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them” and “The man that doeth them shall live in them” are a good summary. That is what the law offers and all the law can offer--a blessing to those who follow it and curse to those who do not. This is true of any law, though specifically here we are talking of the Mosaic law.

If we keep the law, there is a blessing, and if we do not, there is a curse. But the blessing and curse involved here cover all the law. It's not: If you mostly follow the law you will be mostly blessed, and if you slightly break the law you will be slightly cursed.

If a person commits a crime, what are they? A criminal. And what happens to them? The police chase them down and arrest them; they are put on trial and punished. It doesn't matter what the exact crime is. If you brake the law, you are a criminal. You are on the wrong side of the law and are subject to arrest and punishment. The actual punishment will differ, but the general fact is the same. It doesn't matter whether the specific crime is pickpocketing or high treason, it is still a crime and one who commits a crime is a criminal. (See James 2:10)  One must completely and in every particular follow the law in order to receive the blessing and escape the curse.

So we would be fine if we could just completely follow the law. If we were just, we would be justified. But, of course, nobody is. As Paul says elsewhere, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. For that reason, all are under the curse of the law. As we saw back in chapter 2, no one can be justified by the law. And that means that the law can grant only a curse, not a blessing. And that is why all attempts to find salvation through the law are futile, why “as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse.”

We've looked at this word JUSTIFY before. It is a legal word and connected to the idea of laws and courts. That is true of the English word and the Greek word--and so far as I can tell, the Hebrew word, but I know next to nothing about Hebrew. You would think the way to justification would be through the law, since justify basically means right-before-the-law. But the Bible makes it clear that this isn't true. Paul appeals to the words of the prophet Habakkuk who ways that “the just” that is, the one who is justified, the one who is right-before-the-law “shall live” not by the law as you would expect but “by faith.”

By faith in what? In context, Habakkuk seems to means faith in God's promise. It means more than simply an intellectual assent to God's word (though it obviously includes that) but has the idea of loyalty and faithfulness, holding unto God's promise when all else falls away. That is how the just lives. That is the only way the just can live.

So this is the line of division we have to keep straight in our minds. On the one hand, we have the law. The law is a very simple system. Follow the law, and you will be blessed. Brake the law, and you will be cursed. That is what the law does and all the law does and all the law is supposed to do. That is good in its way, but it does not provide justification or forgiveness of sin. The Bible does not say “The just shall live by the law.” Instead, the way to justification and life is through faith and, specifically, by an unyielding faithful clinging to God's word, to God's promise. But what is God's promise?

To understand that, we have to think of the law again. The Bible makes it clear that all men have sinned. We have come short of the glory of God. That is where the whole problem of justification comes in.

Now, we need to put ourselves back in the mindset of Bible times for a minute. Across the board, if you brake a law, you will be punished. But in the ancient world, punishment tended to be a more harsh and brutal matter. Specifically, capital punishment was relatively common for several different kinds of crime. Moreover, often the criminal was executed publicly. Public punishment made a warning to others about crime and made a statement about the criminal, that he was on the wrong side of the law, that he was under the curse of the law. And along with this, there was another custom which is very distant to us but was very important then. (And yes, this is all a little morbid, but there is a point.) Deuteronomy 21:22-23 describes this custom: “And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree: his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day; (for he that is hanged is accursed of God;) that thy land be not defiled, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.”

When this talks about hanging, we shouldn't picture gallows as a means of execution as it was known in western civilization until recently. That was something unknown to the Jews. Rather, what is being referred to is this. In certain cases, a criminal would be executed (stoning was the most common method) and then his dead body would be hung up as a public testimony of his crime. This was something common in the ancient world, and commonly a criminal's body might be allowed to hang until it completely decomposed, but God made a point of limiting this exposure to one day. Adam Clarke comments on this phrase that “he that is hanged is accursed of God”: “[H]e has forfeited his life to the law; for it is written, Cursed is every one who continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them; and on his body, in the execution of the sentence of the law, the curse was considered as alighting; hence the necessity of removing the accursed thing out of sight." (Commentary, Deuteronomy 21:23)

We have to keep this in the context we've already talked about. We have the law and the law deals specifically in blessings and curses. One who broke the law was under the curse. There is a sense in which this is true of any law, and especially of any law that tries to be just and universal, but this is true in a greater sense of the law of Moses since that law came directly from God. The curse which comes upon lawbreakers, the curse which comes on those who do wrong, the curse which causes them to be justly executed and publicly exhibited in shame, is the curse of God. They are under the curse because they have broken the law.

To make all this clearer, we can look at a story from the Old Testament, which is found in Numbers 25. Everyone remembers the story of Balaam, the man with the talking donkey. But this is what happened afterward. Balak, king of Moab, wanted to get rid of Israel and when getting them cursed by Balaam didn't work out so well, he brought about trouble by causing the men of Israel to enter into relationships with the women of Moab and Midian and to participate in acts of Idolatry to the Moabite god of Baal-Peor. This seemingly involved both idolatry and immorality, two things that usually went together in ancient near-eastern religions.

Numbers 25:3 tells what the consequence of this was: “The anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel.” They had sinned; they had done something wrong; they were traitors to God, perjurers of their covenant, and had joined in common idolatry and immorality. Because of their sin, God sent a plague among them in which many were killed. Because the “heads” or leaders of the people were responsible--they were supposed to lead the people but they had led them into sin--God commanded that they be executed and hung up publicly. This is the very thing we have been talked about. These men had broken the law and so were bearing the curse of the law.

And here is the bizarre picture we have to see. This is a time of judgment and leaders are being executed for their sin and the people are weeping for their sin and its punishment--and right into the middle of this scene, one of the princes of Israel, a man named Zimri, brought a woman of Midian into the camp and into his tent. He was publicly and blatantly committing a sin in open defiance of God's judgment and the repentance of the rest of Israel.

Moses had already commissioned the judges of Israel to execute those who had been involved in this matter, and so Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron, took his javelin and slew both Zimri and the woman he had brought. And when Phinehas did that, when he executed God's judgment on this sinner, the plague of God's judgment was stopped. In Numbers 25:11 and following we have God's commendation of Phinehas for this act. God says that Phinehas had “turned my wrath away from the children of Israel.” The people of Israel had sinned, bringing on themselves a curse. But when judgment was executed on the sinners, the curse was completed and the wrath of God was satisfied.

Numbers 25:13 concludes God's praise of Phinehas, saying that he and his descendants would continue as priests of God “because he was zealous for his God, and made an atonement for the children of Israel.”

The Hebrew word translated “atonement” literally means “to cover... figuratively... to placate... appease.” (Strong, #03722) Phinehas placated or appeased the wrath of God by executing judgment on those who had broken God's law. The curse was fulfilled and so God was satisfied. So long as there was sin in the camp, Israel was on the wrong side of God's law and therefore under the wrath and the curse of God. But when the sin was dealt with and the sinner executed, there was atonement and God and Israel could be reconciled. The word Atonement in English literally means at-one-ment. Atonement deals with the problem so that God and man may be brought back together. Another word which means basically the same thing is Propitiation--the appeasing of wrath and bringing of reconciliation.

So this is what we have to grasp. With a law, you are on the right side or the wrong. And if you are on the wrong side, you are under a curse, under the wrath of God. When that curse, that wrath is executed then that is Atonement or Propitiation. The guilty are punished and the law is upheld. Which is good for the law but not so good for the lawbreakers.

All of which brings us to 1 John 4:10: “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” The curse of God against those who broke the law was expressed when they were hung on a tree as an executed criminal. But Jesus, who alone perfectly kept the law, was hung on a tree as an executed criminal and so bore the curse of the law for our sake. In this case, Atonement came, not through the execution of the guilty, but of the innocent for the sake of the guilty so that the guilty might go free. The only man who was free from the curse of the law was made a curse for us that he might redeem us from the curse of the law. This is the Atonement. However you understand the details of what happened with the death of Christ, the bottom line is that Jesus died to provide salvation for us.

We said that the just live by faith, and this is what the just live by having faith in. The law can only give a curse to those who break it. But Christ has redeemed us from that curse by bearing the curse himself, so that we--Gentiles as well as Jews--might have instead the promise of the Spirit which comes, not through the law, but through faith. Just like Abraham had faith in God and that brought on him a blessing, so we can have a blessing instead of a curse, but only if we seek it through faith in Christ's atoning sacrifice and not through the works of the law; for the gospel is of faith and not of the law.