Galatians 3 — The Blessing of Christ

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This message is from Galatians chapter 3 and is entitled "The Blessing of Christ."

Galatians 3 · chapter mention

It was given to Ecclesia churches on Sunday, March 16, 2025.

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I've said a few times at this point that Galatians is a little more confrontational

than some of Paul's other letters.

Paul is being almost painfully honest with these people that he loves so much,

and that's really the best lens to understand his tone throughout this letter.

He loves them so much that he's unwilling to pull any punches when it comes to saving them

from their old idols, their old self-righteousness, and their old worldview.

It's actually the perfect example of speaking the truth in love,

because he does give them the raw, unfiltered truth,

but he loves them so much that love can't help but come through in his message.

So we're going to look at a slightly larger portion today with all of chapter 3,

but it's all part of one conversation in which Paul goes right for the jugular

of the Jews' self-righteous tendency and addresses their heroes, their culture,

and even their ethnic identity.

And he does all of this in love with the desire that they will abandon everything

that they've made an idol out of and instead receive Christ alone.

So let's begin by reading the first section out loud,

and then we'll break it down as we go.

This is beginning with verse 1.

"O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?

It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.

Let me ask you only this.

Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?

Are you so foolish?

Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?

Did you suffer so many things in vain if indeed it was in vain?

Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and work miracles among you do so by works of the law

or by hearing with faith, just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness?

Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham,

and the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith,

preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying,

'In you shall all the nations be blessed.'

So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith."

So Paul is getting at what should now be a very familiar point.

A good life doesn't look like someone who worked their way to righteousness.

It looks like someone who lived with faith in God to provide righteousness.

So verse 1 through 3 is Paul bringing up the things that they saw with their own eyes.

He's using their own eyewitness.

The crucifixion wasn't that long ago to them.

It was a fresh image of what Jesus had done on their behalf.

It was a visceral image of what it cost the Messiah to pay the price for their sin.

And furthermore, they had experienced receiving the Spirit of God through faith.

They had the law for 1500 years, and yet it was Jesus who sent the Spirit.

Then he brings up a name that should be very familiar to anyone who spent time in Sunday

school growing up or who learned Hokie Christian songs about this man having many sons.

So let's just praise the Lord.

Abraham was not only the father of the Jewish nation.

He was remembered as a righteous man who stood apart from the peoples around him.

He was a Jews Jew, a representation of the perfect man who was chosen by God and lived

a righteous life, and God blessed him.

But that wasn't quite right.

They had built up Abraham into a hero of the faith and intentionally forgotten about his lack

of perfect faithfulness.

Like that time that he was afraid of Pharaoh, and so he let Pharaoh take his wife as his own

for a while.

Or that time that he didn't want to wait for God's timing to have a child.

And so he had one with his wife's servant, Hagar.

Abraham wasn't blessed because he was perfectly faithful.

He was blessed because he had faith that God was faithful.

So Paul's issue here isn't with Abraham.

It's with the way they've painted Abraham as this perfect follower of the law.

Paul is redefining Abraham.

Okay?

Not as a perfect faithful follower of the law, but as a man of faith.

He's painting a new picture of what it looks like to live as a follower of God, and it's not

perfect works.

It's a perfect reliance on the faithful Son of God.

If you're a true Jew, you are now and have always been reliant on faith for salvation.

You never worked yourself into the good graces of God.

And this has always been the case even for Abraham, he says.

In verse six, he said it was Abraham's faith that God would provide that God credited to

him as righteousness.

So even Father Abraham with many sons was trusting and hoping and waiting on the finished work of Jesus.

I think that we too have been given examples of human perfection that have probably missed the

mark.

Role models that haven't lived up to expectations.

Leaders who we had high expectations of who didn't live up to those expectations.

Friends that seemed trustworthy, but have broken that trust.

Parents that have put on a good show in public but have been hypocrites in private.

So if you're like me, you have a parade of faces that comes up when I say things like that,

maybe even your own.

Maybe you're the person who has let you down the most.

I want to invite us to do what Paul is inviting the Galatians to do here, and to turn your eyes

upon Jesus.

We can hold people to standards.

We can have expectations of them.

That's a really good thing for us and them actually.

But don't let your faith rise and fall on their performance.

Instead, remember that they, just like you, find their hope in the perfect performance of Jesus.

Who scripture says is both the author and the perfecter of our faith.

So now that Paul has gone after their hero, he says, "What's next?

Ah, the law.

The problem is not the law."

Scripture says the law of God is perfect and that we should love it.

The problem wasn't the law, it was self-righteousness.

It was the belief that their perfect adherence to the law would save them.

In the same way, Paul reframed their hero as a man of faith instead of a perfect, rule follower.

Paul is reframing the law, not as their savior or blessing,

but rather as a curse, as an impossible requirement to actually succeed at living perfectly under.

Let's read from verse 10.

"Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteous shall live by faith.

But the law is not of faith, rather the one who does them shall live by them."

Do you see it?

It's a performance requirement built into the law.

So therefore, life cannot come from it.

Verse 13 says, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming the curse for us, for it is written.

Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree."

So that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles,

so that we might receive the promised spirit through faith.

To give a human example, brothers, even with a man-made covenant,

no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified.

Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring.

It does not say, "And to offsprings," referring to many, but referring to one,

"And to your offspring, who is Christ."

So living under the law is a bad arrangement for imperfect people like us, right?

It's living under an impossible standard, and we're all stuck there, but God doesn't leave us there.

He actually took the weight of this impossible curse and took it on himself.

That reference to the curse being hanged on a tree is quoting Deuteronomy 21, 22, through 23,

which states that anyone who is hanged on a tree is under God's curse.

Therefore, when Jesus is hanged on the tree, the cross, he is under God's curse, taking God's curse

for us, fulfilling that.

Paul is showing us how Jesus took the curse in our place.

So just like with their hero Abraham, Paul is reframing the law.

He's not redefining it.

It wasn't once a blessing and now it's a curse.

It wasn't once their salvation and now it's a curse.

It was always a curse.

It was always impossible.

They needed always a different source of salvation, and even Abraham understood that.

And this is important because this helps us understand that many of the promises made to the Jews

were not actually for the ethnic group of the Jewish people.

Ultimately, they were made about Jesus.

Jesus was the one who was going to fulfill all of these promises.

Let's continue with verse 17.

This is what I mean.

The law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God

so as to make the promise void.

For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise,

but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.

Why then the law?

It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had

been made and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary.

Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one.

So this intermediary he's talking about is Abraham and the angels.

The law was given to Moses, not to Abraham, but it wasn't a new deal.

The promise that was given to Abraham never came through Moses and the law,

it came through the promise of the coming Christ.

It was a kind of stopgap measure, a mediated and inferior agreement

to the original deal with Abraham.

We have the deal to Abraham was unique.

Remember, God said the agreement relied on his faithfulness

and he would carry it through to completion.

So we compare that deal to the deal with Moses.

I'm using the word deal, but it's word covenant that's used in Scripture.

Compare that to the deal or the covenant made with Moses,

which was instead of completely unconditional and relying only on God's faithfulness,

it was conditional.

The law was conditional on Israel's faithfulness to God.

The deal was you stay faithful, you get blessed and you stay in the land.

You become unfaithful to me and you get exiled from the land.

The promise made to Abraham depended solely on God's faithfulness, not human performance.

So with the coming of Jesus, we really have the fulfillment of the promise

made to Abraham through Christ.

And we have the covenant made through Moses replaced entirely.

It's no longer a performance-based deal.

The Jews get a new covenant that also includes the Gentiles.

So now, because the mosaic covenant is replaced, does that mean the law itself is bad?

No. Listen to what Paul says, verse 21 here.

"Is the law then contrary to the promises of God?

Certainly not, for if a law had been given that could give life,

then righteousness would indeed be by the law.

But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin,

so that the promise made by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe."

Now, before faith came, we were held captive under the law,

imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.

So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came,

in order that we might be justified by faith.

So Paul helped his audience to see that the law they idolized was never designed to save them.

It always pointed ahead to Christ, and that while the law served as a kind of guardian

and was a good thing, it was secondary to the original deal with Abraham,

which was the promise of Jesus.

This is kind of complex, and so perhaps a parable is in order.

Parables are an earthly story with a heavenly reality,

and were the primary way that rabbis taught and still teach today.

And so I'm actually going to try my hand at one,

though I know it won't be as good as one of the parables from Jesus,

which even rabbis today recognize as the very best parables that exist,

which I think is kind of interesting and funny.

Here's mine.

Two men chose to dive into a fast-rushing river for a swim,

and quickly began to drown.

Up on the bank of the river, another man saw them drowning and began running alongside them,

yelling, "Listen to my instructions, and I will save you."

The men spluttered in response but nodded their heads,

so the man on the bank began instructing the men to swim to the right over and over.

He said, "Take another stroke to the right," as he ran ahead and stepped out a little ways into the water.

One man heard the instructions and obeyed them.

When he reached the place where the man on the bank stood with his arm outstretched,

the drowning man reached out and took his hand and was pulled to shore.

The second man also heard the instructions and obeyed,

but when he reached the place where the man on the bank stood with his arm outstretched,

he refused to take the man's hand and be pulled to safety.

As he rushed past and out of reach, he cried out, "You said the instructions would save me."

It was never the instructions that were going to save the men.

They were going to drown without interventions, even if they obeyed those instructions perfectly.

The purpose of the instructions was to point them toward the one who would save them.

But it was always the man on the side who was to be their salvation.

The plan all along was not for them to swim their way out.

That was impossible.

It was for them to respond to the man by taking his hand.

Neither Jesus nor Paul are contradicting what Scripture says about itself.

They're not saying that the law itself is a bad thing.

The law of God is a good thing, but it was only ever designed to clearly put on display

the holiness of God and seeing that clearly exposes just how unholy we are.

And that can be uncomfortable.

Jesus makes the analogy using light.

He says how people who live in darkness hate the light because it exposes them.

And anyone who's ever finished mowing the lawn in the dark knows what this is like

when you wake up the next morning and you see your handiwork in the light of morning.

And it's embarrassing.

Or anyone who's tried to build something level and straight without the use of a level and a

square and then you use the level and square and realize that nothing you set on that table

is going to stay there for long.

Even these examples are imperfect because even with the best tools we can't perform perfectly.

Which is why we have to turn wholeheartedly to Jesus to be our perfection for us.

His standards, the law, His commandments to us are so good for us.

When we obey the commands of God, we live life the way God has intended us to.

And it's good for us and it's good for others, but it doesn't save us.

Jesus does.

So now that he's reframed Abraham as a man of faith and not of perfect law performance,

and he's reframed the law as actually a curse and not our salvation,

he's going to bring the message home and he's going to go after the last thing that they hold

valuable, their ethnic identity.

What Paul hinted at in verse 16, that the promise was no longer only tied to the Jewish bloodline,

he now flushes out a little more completely.

Starting with verse 25, he says, "But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

For in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith.

For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ, there is neither Jew nor

Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ

Jesus. And if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring heirs according to the promise."

So let me clarify before going any further, Scripture is not doing away with the existence

of these differences. Paul is simply reframing them. He's reordering their importance.

So for Jews, their salvation was completely wrapped up in their bloodline, or so they thought.

It was wrapped up in their blood relation to Abraham and the promise made to his offspring,

to the tribe of Jacob which gave them their land rights in the promised land,

into their identity as God's chosen people. And Paul is saying that it isn't your blood that

matters anymore. It's only the blood of Christ that has anything to do with your salvation.

God worked through the Jews, his chosen people for the task to bring about his good purposes

that ultimately crescendoed to Christ. And you are all heir to the same promise that Abraham was,

the same promise of Christ. And you get there by faith. You're a son of God now through faith in

and reliance on Christ. Why a son? Because who would have inherited full rights and inheritance

in that culture that Paul is writing to? The son. It's perfectly accurate to understand yourself as

a child of God, or as a son or a daughter. And we see that language used throughout Scripture,

but I just want you to understand why Paul is using son here. It's for a purpose. And it's not

because Paul is being sexist. It's actually quite the opposite. He's bringing all people who are

following Christ in on the same tier as a son receiving the inheritance of salvation. Going

through verse 28, through all those statuses, right? He says, "There is neither Jew nor Greek.

There is neither slave nor free. There is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

So just like with the other things, he's not redefining anything. He's simply reframing it

from God's perspective. He's not saying that you have to abandon your heritage, your Jewish or

German or French or African or Asian or whatever heritage you come from. He's just saying that

that can't be your primary identity any longer. And all the things about that identity, that cultural

heritage that conflict with what God says, have to go because our primary identity is as a child of

God. He's not abolishing slavery with a single statement in this passage, though Christians

should absolutely work to end slavery wherever it exists and in whatever form, because we know

that all people are made in God's image and have value as a person to him, and they should have value

as a person to us. Rather, Paul's point here is that your fundamental value and identity don't come

from your social status or circumstances, but they are found in Christ. He's also not declaring

that men and women don't exist. He's actually affirming that they do by naming them male and

female, but also that when it comes to your identity before God, you are first a child of God. There's

not greater than or less than Christians based on your sex. That's not how it works. Different roles,

yes, different values, no. So in closing, this whole argument that Paul is making in this chapter

has to do with our salvation and what it rests on. Where does our blessing come from? It doesn't

rest on the shoulders of your heroes. It rests on the shoulders of Jesus alone. He is our role model

to look to. It doesn't rest on your performance under the law either. It rests on the performance

of Christ, and it doesn't rest on any other aspect of your identity. Our salvation rests on

our identity in Christ alone, and that is exceptionally good news.

Ecclesia is a church of house churches gathering weekly in Councilbluffs, Iowa,

and in homes throughout the week. We are a Bible-centered church focused on preaching from

Scripture and making disciples of Jesus. You can learn more about our statement of faith and

contact a pastor by visiting ecclesiachurches.org.