Galatians 3:17 - Promise vs Law

"But this I am saying: a covenant having been previously ratified by God, the law having come to be four hundred and thirty years after, is not canceling unto the to be nullifying the promise.’

-Now Paul summarizes.  Recall that there were those who were insisting to these Galatian believers that the covenant promise required one to be circumcised and to observe the entirety of the Mosaic law.  Every last jot and tittle.  On this point, they were sadly mistaken.  The law was given after the exodus, more than four hundred years after God made this great promise of blessing and justification by faith to Abraham.  And since - as we have just seen - one does not ever set aside or add conditions to a covenant, especially not one which has been ratified by God Himself, there can be no way on earth (or in heaven for that matter) that what was given to Moses and to the nation of Israel at Mount Sinai as they prepared to take possession of the land of Canaan was binding on those who would lay hold of the promise and blessing of Abraham.  There is no universe in which the law would ever supercede or cancel out or otherwise nullify this promise God made to Abraham the believer, the man of faith, the father of the faith-ful.  The promise of being made completely right with God, in His eyes, by faith alone still stands intact.  It came first, and it still does.  It is still fully in force, for anyone who would believe - like Abraham.

Galatians 3:16 - No limits.

"...in order that He should give to you according to the riches of the glory of Him power to be strengthened through the Spirit of Him unto the inner man..."

-Power.  Limitless, life-changing, mind-blowing inexhaustible Power.  The same Power which placed a billion trillion stars throughout the universe and which sustains them still today, each blazing giant giving off power equivalent to a million atom bombs every second of every day since the beginning of time, this same Power is available to me every second of every day.  Power to love.  Power to serve.  Power to give.  Power to forgive.  Just a tiny morsel of this hyper-nuclear stuff is more than enough to set off a miracle - to heal, to move mountains, to tear down walls and rebuild a broken heart, to change a life or the world forever.  These are the greater works which Christ Himself promised (John 14.12).  This is the Power which raised Jesus from the dead. This is the very same Power which is at work in the lives of those who believe in Him.  This is the Power which Paul is entreating the Father to be detonating in the lives of these believers.  No limits.

-The extent of God's ability to answer Paul's prayer and empower these believers (and us!) is tied to the riches of His glory.  Here again, limitless.  Unfathomable, and breathtakingly great.  It will never, ever run out.  But this answer will also conform to God's glorious riches.  When the Power goes off (i.e. is exploding) in and through my life, there will be no other explanation other than that God did it.  The results themselves will take your breath away, and will show off how truly great and indescribably good God really is.  No limits.

-Two keys then to unlock this supernatural display of God's power in my inner being, as Paul puts it, in and through my life.  The first we have seen, and that is prayer.  Like Paul, on our knees, dependent, more than just a little dab'll do ya.  How much more?  Simply more.  Always more, until we are praying without ceasing (!Thessalonians 5.17).  Prayer is the fundamental currency with which we conduct the business of Heaven, energized by faith, deposited in the divine "bank" of Almighty God and His Word, trustworthy beyond measure.  Suffice it to say that you and I and all God's people most likely fall way short in leveraging this first key.  As it turns out, the second key is the Spirit, Who actually helps us with the first key (cf Romans 8.26).  He is the Promised Helper, the One Who Jesus so eagerly wanted to send in His place and into the heart of each and every person who trusts in Him.  He is called the Spirit of Power.  And each and every time He shows up and goes off we see the miraculously inexplicable, things which are humanly impossible but which are entirely possible with God (Mark 10.27).  And to the extent that my life does not fit well into the garb of greater works, it is highly probable that I need to closely consider whether I might not be able to benefit from a bit more knee-bowing and Spirit-empowering, more of the Spirit in my life.  Or rather He gets more of me... No limits.

"The world has yet to see what God will do with a man fully consecrated to Him..." -Henry Varley to D.L. Moody

Galatians 3:15 - Promises on steroids?

"Brothers, according to man I am saying.  Yet [even] a covenant of man having been ratified, no one is rejecting or adding to."

-A covenant.  A covenant.  I don’t think that means what we think it means.  In fact we have a very dim idea of what it means.  The dictionary defines it simply as 'an agreement’.  And yet moderns have rather little reluctance to modify or otherwise abrogate "an agreement".  Our word is no longer our bond.  Anymore, you can’t take it to the bank, or to the store, or anyplace else, much less to a neighbor.

-Covenants were promises on steroids.  They were solemn oaths, inaugurated and ratified by death, a rather violent sacrifice and shedding of blood, the victim literally being cut into two and the covenanters passing between the two halves (this picture is plausibly where English gets the phrase, to cut a deal).  Nevertheless, a covenant, once ratified, was both irrevocable and unalterable.  Even when made under false pretenses, both parties were under obligation to respect the covenant (cf Joshua 9.22-23, 2Samuel 21.1).  Indeed, there were curses for breaking a covenant, as well as blessings for keeping it (thus we see the covenant between God and His people, the blessing for keeping the law and the curse for breaking it - Deuteronomy 11.26-28).  To Paul’s point tho, even on a strictly human level, modifying or altering a covenant was a no-no, inconceivable.  And so the implication then is that at a much higher level, there is not even the slightest chance of God ever breaking or otherwise altering any one of His promises.  And you can take that to the bank...

Galatians 3:14 - Heavenly Alley Oops

"...in order that unto the nations the blessing of Abraham should come in Christ Jesus, in order that the promise of the Spirit we should receive through the faith."

-The direct fulfillment of Genesis 22.18, this - “All the nations will be blessed IN YOUR SEED”.  THE Seed is Jesus Messiah, the Son of God and the Coming One, prophesied Descendant of Abraham the believer, the man of faith.  And thus ALL those believing with the faith of Abraham become his descendants, his spiritual sons and daughters, and he becomes the father of many nations.  In fact, he will be the spiritual father of all the nations, since there will be believers from every nation under heaven gathered around the throne of heaven.

-What is the blessing of Abraham exactly?  No doubt it is forgiveness, and a forever restored relationship with my heavenly Father, but wait, there’s more!  Paul specifically says here that those who are of the faith of Abraham will receive ‘the promise of the Spirit’.  This is the One to Whom Jesus Himself refered when He told the disciples that it would better for Him to He leave them, because then the Father would send the Helper, the One Who would be more than with them, He would be IN them (John 16.7, 14.26, 14.17), to help them follow Jesus in the same (or similar) faith-steps of Abraham.  Not merely external makeovers, a whitewashed mix of creeds and meetings and insipid orthodoxy, of flagging obedience and flailing self-effort.  May it never be!  No, we’re talking about changed hearts and lives, other-worldly, transformed from the inside out, glimpses of glory in mere jars of clay.  Greater works and miracles and the supernatural (John 14.12).  Limitless power to forgive and forbear and to love until death.  Inexpressible joy and surpassing peace and enduring gratitude even and especially in the midst of brokenness and hardship and persecution.  Talk about an alley oop - far more spectacular than any assist you'll see in the NBA.  This is the indwelling Holy Spirit, the promised blessing poured out upon every person who follows in the steps of Abraham, the man of faith.  Each and every follower does indeed possess the Spirit, at the ready to set any one of us up for a heavenly Sportscenter Top 10 - the question is, am I possessed by Him?  Am I in step with Him?

Galatians 3:13 - The Unlikeliest Tree Of All

"Christ redeemed us out of the curse of the law, having become on our behalf a curse, that it is having been written: 'Cursed [is] every the [one] hanging upon a tree...'"

-The verse Paul quotes here is a somewhat loose form of Deuteronomy 21.23.  In that passage it refers specifically to those who had been executed by hanging (i.e. from a tree) - anyone who had committed capital crimes worthy of death was most certainly under the curse of God, and to allow the dead bodies of those cursed ones to remain hanging in public would defile the land.  Thus the Israelites were being instructed to bury the bodies on the same day they were hanged.  It is a rather obscure text, to be sure, and yet somehow Paul is inspired by the Lord to see a prefiguring of the Messiah in that text.

-Truth is, we were all under a curse, literally in bondage to being bound to evil and brokenness and death, every last one of us, including all those who are now trusting in the death of Christ, trusting in all that He did on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins.  He paid the ransom and provided the way for us to be set free from the curse - by becoming a curse for us.  He let Himself become bound and tied and nailed to a "tree" (or that which was constructed from a felled tree), hung on a Tree of Death, where His Father laid on Him the sins of the world.  My sins.  He took on our curse.  My curse.  And paid for every last one of them, paid it all.  There, on that blessed, rugged Roman cross, that cruel instrument of torture and execution, the unlikeliest tree of all.  What a fascinating juxtaposition of symbols here, what sublime irony and wondrous love, that eternal life is to be found now not in the fruit of a living tree (the Tree of Life - cf Genesis 3.22) - but rather in the death of the eternal God upon a dead tree.  O, such infinite wisdom, amazing love...

Galatians 3:12 - Two ways of faith...?

"But the law is not out of faith, but rather, 'The [one] doing them will live in them.'"

-Yes, there are essentially two philosophies when it comes to approaching God - one is the law of works, and the other is faith.  And as has already been stated, even the law approach is a form of faith, since faith in its very essence is simply trust, and that which determines its efficacy is the object of faith.  So when Paul is refering here to the law, he is describing those folks who are placing their trust in works of the Mosaic law (including circumcision) to gain right standing with God.  THE Law, that body of some 600+ commands which was given to the Jews through Moses (and this is the way which some people were trying to persuade these Galatians who had begun to follow Christ to go).  And by faith, Paul means that trust which has as its object, Jesus Christ and His work on the Cross.  THE Faith.  And to his point, the very nature of Law-based righteousness is not only antithetical to Faith-in-Christ-based righteousness, but is also such that if you chose to trust in the way of works, you are required to live fully into that - that is the verse which Paul quotes here (Leviticus 18.5).  God says, you WILL do this (like He does in the Ten Commandments and throughout the hundreds of others).  In other words, don’t stop short or bring it in weak.  The expectation is total obedience.  You WILL live in them.  The Law itself states that if you are opting for the way of Law, of trusting in the Law, you are obligated to keep the whole darn thing, all the time.  You WILL never finish - never certain, never perfect, never saved.  Whereas the way of Faith (in Jesus) is entirely different.  I am not trusting in any of my own efforts, not a single one.  I am trusting in Another, in the work of One Who declared, "It is finished"...

Galatians 3:11 - The Faulty Default

"But that in law no one is being justified with God [is] evident; since 'the righteous out of faith will live'."

-Nobody’s perfect.  That is a universally understood truth, but if one would avoid The Curse, one is not allowed to make even one mistake (James 2.10).  And that is definitely the bad news - nobody can make it.  Nobody can keep the entire law.  Nobody can make themselves perfect.  No not one.  The most selfless loving person still falls way short of the holiness of God, comes short of His divine perfections, and that really is the most important point.  Anyone can compare themselves favorably to the poor shmuck next to them, but we are not engaged in a contest with our neighbor, trying to outdo them in good deeds.  It is not as if we are trying to escape from an angry bear and merely need to outrun the person next to us.  No, we are trying to [re]gain right standing with our Maker, to be right in His eyes.

-The truth is that the law came in in order that sin might become utterly sinful (Romans 7.13), and in doing so the curse became truly curse-ful.  And we can observe basically two fundamental approaches whereby people attempt to gain right standing with God - one is the way of works, and the other is the way of faith (which of course is the way of Abraham, and the Way made possible only through Jesus).  The former approach is entirely ineffectual, and thus is the way of the curse.  By works of law no flesh will be justified (made right or perfect) in His sight (Romans 3.20), and yet this is not only the standard approach of every major world religion, sect, cult, and worldview besides Christianity, it is also the faulty default position of humanity in general.  Even those who appear to be irreligious are generally under the assumption that they are good enough in themselves (or can be) to satisfy the minimum requirements of any religious law which might otherwise be binding on them.

-But no - if one truly aspires to gain right standing before God, the only way to do that is not by law but rather by faith.  Faith speaks to the idea of trust, and the critical question is, where (or in what) do I put my trust?  Paul is quoting Habakuk 2.4, where the righteous is contrasted with those proud and haughty people who are putting their trust in themselves, in their own abilities, in their own strength, in their own efforts.   In fact, everybody trusts in something.  Everybody has faith - it is the object of my faith which makes all the difference.  If the object of my faith is the law and in my efforts to keep the entirety of it, I will fall way short...