GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
GALATIANS 3:15-18
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15 To give an everyday human example, brothers: When a person makes a will, no one cancels it or adds to it once it has been ratified. 16 Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his descendant. God did not say, “And to your descendants,” meaning many, but meaning only one. He said: “And to your descendant,” who is Christ. 17 This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not change a covenant previously ratified by God in Christ, as if there is no longer a promise. 18 If it were true that the inheritance comes by keeping the law, then it no longer comes by a promise. However, God gave it to Abraham by a promise.
It’s possible and even likely that the legal experts among the Judaizers were claiming that even though the law was given after the promise to Abraham, the law changed or abolished the original promise. There are other possible lines of thought (we don’t have anything written by the Judaizers themselves). They could have reasoned that the later law added to the promise was in their view necessary toward perfecting righteousness toward God. Or simply that the blessing of the promise was acquired by man through obedience to the law. But Paul makes a simple and clear objection: A last will and testament, once it is executed (put in place), cannot be changed or added to. When the law was finally given, Abraham was long since dead and in heaven (Luke 16:23). The promise however, had been given and in effect signed by God while Abraham was still alive. When did that happen? God passed through animals butchered by Abraham in the form of a smoking firepot with a blazing torch (Genesis 15:17). “On that day,” Moses proclaims, “the LORD made a covenant with Abram” (Genesis 15:18). Paul says that this was the covenant “previously ratified by God.” Some witnesses of Galatians do not have, “in Christ,” which is easy to understand, since the whole point Paul is making is that this was a promise about the one singular seed or descendant of Abraham, which is Christ.
This shows the importance of the inspired word of God; the text that we read so very carefully. First: What does it say? Second: What does it mean? We do not deviate from the first answer when the second answer makes people uncomfortable.
The law of God does not change or annul the promise God gave to Abraham. The promise was not vague, as if it might possibly have included the law, too. The promise was centered around Christ. This is why Paul makes it clear: “God did not say, ‘And to your descendants,’ meaning many, but meaning only one. He said: ‘And to your descendant,’ who is Christ.” The promise was made with Christ at its very center.
Maybe this needs a little more explanation. In English we use the word “seed” as a collective plural. We can say we are going to buy a bag of “seed,” and we can also hold a handful of “seeds.” But Paul points out that in Genesis 22, God told Abraham that through Abraham’s one Descendant (“Seed”) all nations would be blessed. That one Descendant is Jesus. We are blessed through him. Jesus is both the spiritual and physical descendant of Abraham– that is why Matthew and Luke take the time to give us Jesus’ genealogy. It was upon Jesus that God laid all of our sins, all of our iniquities. And through Jesus’ sacrifice, our sins are paid for in full.
Abraham believed this, and even though it was two thousand years before Christ took on human flesh, Abraham’s faith was already credited to him by God as righteousness. God swore that this was so: “When God made his promise to Abraham, since there was no one greater for him to swear by, he swore by himself, saying, ‘I will surely bless you and give you many descendants.’ And so after waiting patiently, Abraham received what was promised” (Hebrews 6:13-15).
What was given to Abraham as a promise is also offered and given to all mankind as a promise: Christ took our sins on himself, and no obedience to the law of Moses is going to replace that. No obedience to the law stands as a requirement for our righteousness, as Daniel confessed: “We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy” (Daniel 9:18). In verse 18, there is a resounding term that sings out the truth: “No longer!” This word can mean that a thing may once have been so, but now it is “no longer,” or it can mean that it has “never” meant that other possibility. Either way, the two ideas, by promise or by obedience, stand as mutually exclusive of one another. It cannot and can never be a mixture of the two. Either salvation is only by obedience, or it is only by faith. Since we cannot obey perfectly, but Christ obeyed in our place, then it is by faith and it is only by faith. This is the grace of God. This is our salvation by faith in Jesus alone.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – Galatians 3:15-18 The one descendant