GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
GALATIANS 3:21-22
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21 So then, is the law against the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness certainly would be possible from the law. 22 But the Scripture imprisoned all things under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ would be given to those who believe.
Paul uses a figure of speech to show just how impossible it is that righteousness could somehow be gained from obeying the law. This figure of speech is a contrary-to-fact condition, which shows that both sides of the condition are untrue: “If this part (that is impossible) could happen, then the conclusion could happen, too.” It is the same structure as this sentence: “If there were air and good soil on the moon, then apple trees would be possible there.” We can go a step further with Paul’s grammar. Since he uses the imperfect form of the verb “to be” (“would be,” ἦν), the condition is true at the present time, no matter when the sentence is read: “This is, and always is, impossible.”
Paul says: “If a law– any law– had ever been by God that was able to give eternal life, then certainly there would have been no reason for the promise in the first place, since righteousness would be possible through the law.” A natural question, therefore, is, “Does the law serve any purpose at all?” Of course it does. The law humbles us and crushes our opinions of ourselves. But the law doesn’t produce faith or life, it only produces fear and an awareness of guilt.
The law that Paul is talking about is the law of the Old Testament, the law of Moses. The religious scholarship of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries went down a blind alley trying to say that there never was a giving of the law on Mount Sinai, and that most of all of the books of Moses were written after the Babylonian exile. In my commentary on the book of Numbers (being published later this summer) I demonstrate that the forms of the piel verbs and related stems in the Pentateuch (that is, in Moses) show that it is almost impossible for those books to have been written during or after the time of Samuel and David, let alone after the exile (Volume I, pages 13-18). The books we ascribe to Moses, including Psalm 90, come from the time of Moses, the mind of Moses, and the pen of Moses, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
The law of Moses does its true work when it prepares a person to yearn and seek for grace. Without the law, we are unaware of the depth of our sin, and we fail to see our wickedness in the light of God’s word. When I have been crushed by the law, admitting that there is sin in my very flesh, that there are sins in every aspect of my life, and that I am utterly miserable and damned, then the law has done its excellent work in me. Now the soil of my life has been exposed and analyzed by God himself. I am shown to be no more productive or fertile than the grey dust on the moon. There is nothing worthwhile or wholesome in me at all.
Here is a tidbit worth sharing from America’s exploration of the moon. The moon along with other planets and moons in our solar system has a special soil called regolith. Unlike the soil of the earth, this regolith has no organic material at all: no seeds, no roots, not bacteria, no nutrients for plants. It is barren. That is what man is like apart from Christ. Everything, absolutely everything, is locked up under the curse of sin on account of sin. This is the work of the Scriptures. The holy Scriptures place everything that pertains to man– everyone’s thoughts, everyone’s words, everyone’s heritage, everyone’s actions, everyone’s entire lives—all of it (Greek “the all,” ta panta, τὰ πάντα) is locked and imprisoned under sin. No human differences (Romans 3:22) make any difference under the shackles of sin. Somebody might try to argue that the law only goes back to Moses. That’s true of the law of Moses, but the Scriptures record the condemnation of Adam under the law of God, which goes back to the Garden, the very law given for worship after Adam was brought to life, before Eve was taken from his rib (Genesis 2:17).
So the promise is not about the law, and the law does not lead to the promise. The law shows our sins and exposes our lives to be as barren as the surface of the moon. But the gospel transforms, the gospel brings us to life. The gospel forgives what the law can only expose and condemn. The gospel is life, life by faith in Jesus, for everyone who believes.
This passage therefore stands alongside John 14:6, where Jesus says, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” There is no path into heaven through the law. There is no path into heaven apart from the gospel of Jesus Christ crucified for our sins. Therefore there is no way, no path, that leads to eternal life through any one or any thing other than Christ. The Son of God, crucified and risen again, is the object of all our faith. He is life.
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 3:21-22 As barren as the moon