The law was given by God through Moses. The Israelites were commanded to obey it. (They said that they would, but didn’t.) There were severe penalties for disobeying the law. Adultery and some other kinds of sexual immorality, things that used to be illegal in Ohio and had some relatively small penalty but aren’t even illegal anymore, were punishable by death. The law is severe. But if the law can’t save us (and it can’t), what good is the law. Why did God give the law? The apostle Paul is going to explain the purpose of the law to us.

¹⁰For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, because it is written: Cursed is everyone who does not continue doing everything written in the book of the law. ¹¹Now it is clear that no one is justified before God by the law, because the righteous will live by faith. ¹²But the law is not based on faith; instead, the one who does these things will live by them. ¹³Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, because it is written: Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree. ¹⁴The purpose was that the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, so that we could receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

¹⁵Brothers, I’m using a human illustration. No one sets aside even a human covenant that has been ratified, or makes additions to it. ¹⁶Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say “and to seeds,” as though referring to many, but and to your seed, referring to one, who is Christ. ¹⁷And I say this: the law, which came 430 years later, does not revoke a covenant that was previously ratified by God, so as to cancel the promise. ¹⁸For if the inheritance is from the law, it is no longer from the promise; but God granted it to Abraham through the promise.

¹⁹Why the law then? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise was made would come. The law was ordered through angels by means of a mediator. ²⁰Now a mediator is not for just one person, but God is one. ²¹Is the law therefore contrary to God’s promises? Absolutely not! For if a law had been given that was able to give life, then righteousness would certainly be by the law. ²²But the Scripture has imprisoned everything under sin’s power, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. ²³Before this faith came, we were confined under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith was revealed. ²⁴The law, then, was our guardian until Christ, so that we could be justified by faith. ²⁵But since that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, ²⁶for you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. (Galatians~3:10-26)

The apostle Paul has been telling the Galatian churches that they will not be saved from hell by keeping the Law of Moses. And he is telling us that same thing, too (and really, that we will not be saved by obeying any set of rules or performing any rituals no matter where they came from or how they were arrived at, or by “being good” or doing good deeds). If you can’t be saved by keeping the law that God gave and said, “If you do these things you will live,” how can you be saved by keeping any other set of rules? If we can be saved by keeping rules, then when Jesus died for our sins, he died for nothing. It was a total waste that the Son of God let them beat him beyond recognition and torture him to death on the cross to save us. But the truth is that that’s the only way that we can be saved. There’s no other way; there’s no other way!

In last weeks passage the apostle Paul asked the Galatians who had hypnotized them. Why on earth would they give up God’s free gift of eternal life and choose a way that can’t save anyone from hell? Was it pride—being able to say they did it themselves? Was it fear—fear that God would not save them if they didn’t work for it so that they would deserve it? Was it Satan’s deception? It was probably all of those things.

And what about you? Are you afraid that God won’t save you if you don’t deserve it? You don’t deserve it and you won’t deserve it. If you think you can make yourself righteous in God’s eyes, that’s Satan’s deception. Only God can make you righteous. It’s the righteousness that comes through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and is by faith. It’s the gift of God. The Galatians had clearly understood that Jesus died for their sins. They should have known that they were switching to a way that had never saved anyone. In last week’s passage, Paul used Abraham as an example of faith.

The Lord had told Abraham that he would be the father of nations and that all nations on earth would be blessed through his descendent (that’s Jesus, by the way). When he lamented to the Lord that he had no children, the Lord told him that he would have a son, Isaac, and that his (the Lord’s) promise would be fulfilled through him. Abraham believed the Lord and it was credited to him as righteousness. In fact he believed it to the point that, when the Lord told him to, he was ready to sacrifice that son, Isaac, that son that the Lord had told him his descendent would come through as a burnt offering. He believed it to the point that he was convinced that the Lord would even raise Isaac from the dead, if necessary. But Abraham was not counted as righteous because of his obedience in taking Isaac to be sacrificed, but by the fact that he believed the Lord when the Lord told him that he would have that son long before Isaac was born. That is what was credited to him as righteousness.

The first verse in today’s passage, verse 10, says, “For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, because it is written: Cursed is everyone who does not continue doing everything written in the book of the law.” “The book of the law” is the first five books of the Bible. The quote that Paul gives is from Deuteronomy 27:26. Moses told the Israelites that when they had crossed the Jordan and entered the land that the Lord was giving them, half the tribes were to stand on Mount Gerizim and the other half of the tribes were to stand on Mount Ebal. The tribes on Mount Gerizim were to bless the people and the tribes on Mount Ebal were to deliver the curses. The curses were for Israel if they were disobedient. And all the people were to say, Amen. There were curses for various disobediences. The last disobedience listed was this: “‘Cursed is anyone who does not put the words of this law into practice.’ And all the people will say, ‘Amen!’” (Deut.~27:26)

²⁰The Lord will send against you curses, confusion, and rebuke in everything you do until you are destroyed and quickly perish, because of the wickedness of your actions in abandoning Me. ²¹The Lord will make pestilence cling to you until He has exterminated you from the land you are entering to possess. ²²The Lord will afflict you with wasting disease, fever, inflammation, burning heat, drought, blight, and mildew; these will pursue you until you perish. ²³The sky above you will be bronze, and the earth beneath you iron. ²⁴The Lord will turn the rain of your land into falling dust; it will descend on you from the sky until you are destroyed. ²⁵The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will march out against them from one direction but flee from them in seven directions. You will be an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. ²⁶Your corpses will be food for all the birds of the sky and the wild animals of the land, and no one will scare them away.

²⁷ “The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt, tumors, a festering rash, and scabies, from which you cannot be cured. ²⁸The Lord will afflict you with madness, blindness, and mental confusion, ²⁹so that at noon you will grope as a blind man gropes in the dark. You will not be successful in anything you do. You will only be oppressed and robbed continually, and no one will help you. ³⁰You will become engaged to a woman, but another man will rape her. You will build a house but not live in it. You will plant a vineyard but not enjoy its fruit. ³¹Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will not eat any of it. Your donkey will be taken away from you and not returned to you. Your flock will be given to your enemies, and no one will help you. ³²Your sons and daughters will be given to another people, while your eyes grow weary looking for them every day. But you will be powerless to do anything. ³³A people you don’t know will eat your soil’s produce and everything you have labored for. You will only be oppressed and crushed continually. ³⁴You will be driven mad by what you see. ³⁵The Lord will afflict you on your knees and thighs with painful and incurable boils from the sole of your foot to the top of your head. (Deuteronomy 28:15-35)

And that’s just the first 21 verses. It gets worse. There are 33 more verses. Some of them I wouldn’t even want to read in front of anyone. (But you can read all of them—Deuteronomy 28:15-65. Read them and see.) But as bad as these curses may sound, God’s eternal judgment is worse.

Cursed is every one who does not continue doing everything written in the book of the law. “...continue – doing – everything...” Have you done it? Have you done everything right and righteous every day of your life? Will you continue to do so? It’s a rare day when we do everything right even for one whole day—at least it is for me. There are big sins and small sins—at least in our estimation. But all are sin before God. Do you complain? That’s something I personally have a hard time overcoming. Is that a big sin or a small sin?

The Israelites complained in the desert to Moses that there was no food or water—or that they didn’t like the food, or that they were better off when they were slaves in Egypt. The Lord put many of them to death. At one point he said he was going to wipe them all out—2,000,000 or so of them. You can complain to someone else about this situation or that—and that’s OK if the person you are complaining can do something about it. When you complain to someone who can do nothing about whatever it is that you are complaining about, your complaining is really against the Lord. You are complaining against the Lord because he is sovereign over all your circumstances and he is the one who can do something. When you complain to your neighbor, who can do nothing, you are really saying that God is mistreating you. You must bring your request to the one who can do something about them. (I’m saying these things about myself. Pray for me.)

Let’s look at verse 11: “Now it is clear that no one is justified before God by the law, because the righteous will live by faith.” “The righteous will live by faith.” To “live” means to “stay alive”. In fact it means to have eternal life with Jesus and with God the Father. It means to be saved from hell. “The righteous will live by faith.” God designed it that way from before the creation of the universe. Jesus is the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world. (Rev. 13:8 –NIV) It’s the way God planned our salvation from the beginning. There is no other way to have life and there is not other way by which we can be righteous. If the righteous can’t live by the law, the unrighteous certainly won’t live by the law either.

Let’s look at verse 12: “But the law is not based on faith; instead, the one who does these things will live by them.” Salvation through the law (of which there is none) is entirely based on your actions—what you do (...the one who does these things...). The law is not flexible. There are no extenuating circumstances. It doesn’t matter how severe the temptation was. It doesn’t matter how serious the immediate consequences might be if you keep the law (“If you don’t help me rob this bank, I’m going to kill you”—serious consequences). The law is the law. The law has nothing to do with trusting God (except maybe that he will judge you) and everything to do with your actions. The law may be beautiful. Some of the Psalmists have said so. But it is cold and hard and uncompromising.

Let’s look at verse 13: “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, because it is written: Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.” This is a quote from Deuteronomy 21:23. Deuteronomy 21:22, 23 say, “If anyone is found guilty of an offense deserving the death penalty and is executed, and you hang his body on a tree, you are not to leave his corpse on the tree overnight but are to bury him that day, for anyone hung on a tree is under God's curse. You must not defile the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.” The death penalty in Israel was executed by stoning the guilty person. This method was not arbitrary, but was established by God’s law. The man who had been executed was sometimes hung on a tree to be a public example. (And in case you want to say “Jesus wasn’t hung on a tree, he was hung on a cross,” there are other places in the New Testament where Jesus is referred to as having been hung on a tree— places where the cross is referred to as a tree.)

But the point is that Jesus redeemed us from the curse by becoming a curse for us. He chose to be cursed in our place. (Think of all the curses I read from Deuteronomy (plus all that I didn’t read). Jesus chose to rescue us from hell. The apostle Paul says that he redeemed us. That means that he paid what we owed—the punishment that we deserved (and not only that, but what we may owe in the future). He bought us back from hell.

Let’s look at verse 14: “The purpose was that the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, so that we could receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” Do you remember the Lord’s promise to Abraham when he told him to leave his family and his father’s house and go to a land that he didn’t even know where it was yet? The Lord said, “All the peoples on earth will be blessed through you. This is a promise that applies to us. We are part of “all the peoples on earth”. And the apostle Paul is going to say more about this.

Let’s look at verses 15 and 16: “Brothers, I’m using a human illustration. No one sets aside even a human covenant that has been ratified, or makes additions to it. Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say “and to seeds,” as though referring to many, but and to your seed, referring to one, who is Christ.”

No one breaks a human contract. (They must have been more honest back then than they are now.) But the point is that, if we think it’s necessary to abide by covenants (contracts) that we have made, and if we have courts of law to make sure contracts are enforced, how much more certain is it that the Creator of the universe will keep the contracts that he has made? And if you look at Genesis chapter 15, you will see that the Lord actually went through a ceremony to ratify the contract he had made with Abraham. And furthermore the contract was one-sided. There was no further requirement on Abraham’s part. (According to what I have read, the ceremony described in Genesis 15 was a standard ceremony used to seal contracts.)

Verse 16 says: “Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say “and to seeds,” as though referring to many, but and to your seed, referring to one, who is Christ.” When we say “seed”, it can be either singular or plural. When Mooma and I bought our house, it didn’t have any grass (and I’m not sure it does now, either). Anyway, I went out and bought grass seed (not grass seeds) and scattered that seed (not seeds) with a spreader. The grass grew. The point is that we can be confused about whether there’s lots of seed ore just one seed. But what we are talking about here is “descendents”. The apostle Paul says that it’s singular—just one descendent through whom all peoples on earth will be blessed. It’s Jesus Christ. He is the seed through whom all peoples will be blessed.

Let’s look at verses 17 and 18: “And I say this: the law, which came 430 years later, does not revoke a covenant that was previously ratified by God, so as to cancel the promise. For if the inheritance is from the law, it is no longer from the promise; but God granted it to Abraham through the promise.”

The law came after the Lord’s covenant with Abraham. The law is also a covenant. But like most contracts today, it’s two-sided: “If you do this, I will do that.” “If you keep the law, you will have life.” “If you keep the law, you will be prosperous and have blessings.” “If you don’t keep the law, you will not have life and you will have curses,” (and I’ve read some of them—they’re bad, bad, bad). The law is conditional. The promise is unconditional. It was made before the law and it is still in effect! We have salvation through Jesus Christ because of the promise!

What’s the purpose of the law if it’s been superseded by the promise? It’s to show that we violate God’s standards—to show that we are sinners and that we absolutely need the promise. We need God’s grace that he has provided through Jesus. (And I have to point out that the promise that the apostle Paul is taking about is the promise that God would provide a Savior. But, in order to be saved, you have to believe the promise just as Abraham believed God’s promise and it was credited to him as righteousness.)

And notice that the law was ordered through angels by means of a mediator. The mediator was Moses. When the Lord came down to Mount Sinai, he came with ten thousand holy angels (Deut. 33:2). There was fire and smoke and earthquakes and thunder and lightening. Moses went up on the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments, but the people were terrified. They backed off and asked Moses to not let the Lord speak to them or they would die. Under the law, you can’t go near the Lord. You need a mediator. But now we have Jesus Christ. Now, we can boldly approach the throne of grace. The writer of Hebrews says so: “Therefore since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens—Jesus the Son of God—let us hold fast to the confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tested in every way as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let us approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us at the proper time.” (Heb.~4:14-16)

Let’s look at verse 20. Verse 20 says, “Now a mediator is not for just one person, but God is one.” A mediator is not just for one person. He mediates between two people. He has to be neutral. He tries to settle whatever the dispute is and get the two parties involved to agree. He tries to promote a compromise. A mediator is for two people. But we don’t need a mediator. We have something much better. We have Jesus. He is not our mediator. He is our intercessor. He is not neutral. He is on our side. He says, “I died for their sins.” The apostle Paul says, “God is one.” God is one. Jesus said, “The Father and I are one.” (John 10:30) Jesus is not the mediator between us and God. He is God. Paul’s point is that there really is no mediator between us and God. We can go directly to God. (If you don’t understand these things, I’m not sure I do either. But we can definitely approach the throne of grace boldly.)

Let’s look at verses 21 and 22: “Is the law therefore contrary to God’s promises? Absolutely not! For if a law had been given that was able to give life, then righteousness would certainly be by the law. But the Scripture has imprisoned everything under sin’s power, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.”

The law does not cancel God’s promise. The purpose of the law is to push us toward God’s promise—to drive us to Jesus for mercy, for freedom. God’s intention was to save us by grace through faith right from the beginning. Jesus Christ is the Lamb who was slain before the creation of the world (Rev. 13:8). And things are working out just as God has planned them. Verse 23 says, “Before this faith came, we were confined under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith was revealed.” We are prisoners of sin until we come to Jesus and he sets us free.

According to what I’ve read, in the Roman Empire a guardian was a servant, a slave that had responsibility for a child until puberty. He was not free, but was being trained for freedom. He was under the authority of the guardian until the time when his freedom would come.

Let’s look at verse 26. Verse 26 says, “...for you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.” The apostle Paul is speaking to believers—to those of us who are no longer under the law, but under grace. Paul used the analogy of being under the authority of a guardian as opposed to being free. But it’s worse than that. Under the law we are prisoners. But, if you have accepted God’s promise and his salvation, it’s completely different. You are a son of God. God is your Father. If you have not accepted God’s promise and his salvation, if you have not accepted Jesus Christ, you still belong to the devil. There is no in-between. Jesus told those who were rejecting him, “You are of your father the Devil, and you want to carry out your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and has not stood in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks from his own nature, because he is a liar and the father of liars. (John~8:44) So if you haven’t done so, choose life!