chapter 3

chapter 3

chapter 3

AN APPEAL TO THE GALATIANS’ EXPERIENCE OF FAITH

3:1–5

     1     O foolish Galatians, who did bewitch you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was openly set forth crucified? 

     2     This only would I learn from you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? 

     3     Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now perfected in the flesh? 

     4     Did ye suffer so many things in vain? if it be indeed in vain. 

     5     He therefore that supplieth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? 

1 For the first time since 1:11, Paul addresses his readers by name. He refers to them now, not as brethren, but as Galatians, placing them, so to speak, at a formal distance in order to summon them to their responsibility. The tone of his words is passionate. All that had been said in the foregoing about the excellence of Christ is apparently on the point of being denied by the Galatians. One would think they had been charmed or bewitched. Naturally the apostle does not mean this in the literal sense. But he puts the thing thus forcefully in order to show them the measure of their spiritual folly, and to startle them into reflection. With what clarity and power the preaching of the gospel had been brought them! And in that preaching the reliance upon their own works of the law had been laid bare in all its hopelessness (cf. 2:20 ff.). The use of the participle crucified tells of something that has been accomplished and is now settled, and the reference in this connection is not so much to the fact as to the fruit of Christ’s being crucified. The word translated openly set forth is not to be taken as a plastic representation of the suffering and death of Christ, but rather—the Greek word indicates it—as a public announcement, a proclamation, in which the validity of a particular fact or a particular condition is proclaimed. True, the phrase before whose eyes tells of the graphic quality, the visibility of the content in the preaching, but this, presumably, points less to the portraiture of Christ’s suffering than to the lucidity and unmistakability of the preaching. 

2 In a flourish of moving rhetoric, the apostle says that there is only one thing which he would still like to learn from them. For the rest he does not want to hear anything from them in their folly. The answer to this one last question is in principle determinative of the issue between them and him. Their own witness must convince them of their error. To that end Paul reminds them of the time of their conversion and of their receiving of the gift of the Spirit. We are to think of those special operations of the Spirit by which in the early period of the Christian church the acceptance of the gospel was sometimes accompanied and confirmed (verse 5; cf. also Acts 8:14–17, 10:44–46, and 19:6). The apostle refers his readers to this, because the receiving of the gift of the Spirit is surely the most unmistakable evidence of God’s favor and the plainest guarantee of eternal redemption. This being so, from what source and along which way had these gifts come to them: by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? If they could answer that, they could also figure out whether or not they were now on the right path. For the expression the works of the law, see the Exposition of 2:16. Opposed to it is the expression the hearing of faith, the hearing of the gospel, that is, the believing appropriation of the redemption wrought by Christ—the hearing, most especially, of the gospel of the cross (verse 1). 

3 Nothing further is said about the answer which Paul expects to the question asked in verse 2. That is not necessary. It is self-evident. From that point, then, the apostle chides his readers for their foolishness. He further characterizes this folly by way of asking a question. The question contains a double contrast in chiastic form: beginning in the Spirit, ending in the flesh. The first term refers to the time when the Galatians came to the faith. Then they had made a new beginning through or in (the sphere, the communion of) the Spirit. Now they were busy seeking the completion of that beginning, and seeking it in the flesh. By flesh in this connection is meant the human nature in itself, the human without the divine. The word is not opposed at this point to the Spirit in the same way as in 5:16 ff. (as the principle of sin distinguished from the saving power of the Spirit), but as the self-oriented human nature in distinction from the strength and power of God. Paul brings the law and the flesh into relationship with each other here because the law has its bearing upon all sorts of physical conditions and activities: upon circumcision, for instance, to which the churches of Galatia were succumbing again (cf. 6:13). That was the tragic end of the glorious beginning. They were engaged in falling back from the divine power of the Spirit into the impotence of man. Not without irony Paul denominates this progress with an inclusive term: Are ye now perfected, he asks, perhaps because the heretical teachers used this word, as though the thing they were recommending were the loftiest manifestation of the life unto God. 

4 According to the , the apostle brings up yet another argument. It is an argument borrowed from what the churches had suffered as Christians and by virtue of their loyalty to the gospel. Paul asks whether they had previously experienced all these things in vain—inasmuch as they now deny the faith. Had this been their intent all along, they would not have had to subject themselves to oppression and persecution (cf. 1:10, 5:11). The words in vain are, however, overtaken and called back: if it be indeed in vain. Some commentators think that by this means the apostle wants to soften somewhat the effect of what he has said. A cast of doubt would then be thrown over the question of whether the Galatians had suffered in vain: “if at least—as I hope not—it was in vain.” However, a different interpretation seems more acceptable to us, according to which 4b represents an intensification rather than a mitigation of 4a. According to this view, Paul is really saying: “if indeed in vain is strong enough to suggest what it is.” The point is not merely that they are losing the fruit of the suffering which they once bore: they—who were tried and appointed to suffer as Christians—must fear that their denial of this suffering will be reckoned to them as guilt, and the blessing be converted into curse. The past must do more than put them into a different frame of thought. It will also, if they persist in their present deflection, constitute them as guilty. 

5 Once more the question asked in verse 2 is repeated. The readers must not try to shy away from answering it. They must make a commitment on this, and conduct themselves accordingly. This time the question is put in the third, not in the second person, in order to drive the seriousness of it home the more forcefully. For He that supplieth to you the Spirit … is God, even though His name is not mentioned. Hence that thing which they once received as a gift has become a determinative norm for the truth of the gospel. And that is why the responsibility under which the Galatians are placed is so great and serious. 

THIS EXPERIENCE IN HARMONY WITH SCRIPTURE

3:6–9

     6     Even as Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness. 

     7     Know therefore that they that are of faith, the same are sons of Abraham. 

     8     And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all the nations be blessed. 

     9     So then they that are of faith are blessed with the faithful Abraham. 

Paul is now going to demonstrate that not only the experience of the Galatians, but that the Scriptures also, most especially what these have to say about Abraham, confirm the answer he expected from his readers in what he has said before. Very probably his opponents, too, had in their efforts made an appeal to Abraham. From the fact that Paul in the next following verses gives a definition of “children of Abraham,” we may, perhaps, infer that the opponents had tried to show on the basis of Scripture that it was necessary to be a child of Abraham in order to share in the salvation of the Lord. And, as they construed it, that meant circumcision, and the observation of the law.

6 By his phrase even as Abraham, the apostle wants to contend that what the Galatians might have known on the basis of their experience (verses 1–5) is in accord with what the Scriptures have to say about Abraham. This was not a matter merely of agreement. The appeal to Abraham was an appeal to an exceptionally authoritative example Abraham, after all, was the father of Israel. He stood at the beginning of the history of redemption, in so far as it affected Israel. With him God had made the Covenant. And of him Scripture, the divine norm for faith and life, says that God reckoned his faith unto him for righteousness. By this faith is meant the spiritual disposition with which Abraham responded to the promise given him by God. The apostle sets this faith in the foreground as the real, governing principle of Abraham’s life. The rabbis, too, have devoted attention to Abraham’s faith, and interpreted it as the moving force in his life. However, they have again and again spun it into the texture of their nomistic conceptions. So the faith got to be an accomplishment on Abraham’s part which gave him the right to reward. In Gen. 15 this faith is described as Abraham’s readiness to surrender unreservedly to the word of the Lord, regardless of how incredible it seemed. Paul interprets it in opposition to works, that is to say, as an unreserved, exclusive trust in the grace of God, accompanied by a renouncement of all pretensions borrowed from the works of the law. Unquestionably, the concept of faith is more specialized in this connection than it is in Gen. 15, where the opposition, faith versus works, does not come into view. All the same, the center of gravity in both places is the trust in God’s work, without consideration of what is attainable by human strength, and possible to it. In Gen. 15 the reckon unto refers to the free and favorable dispensation of God by which He accounted Abraham’s faith to him for righteousness. In the later Jewish theology this accounting is represented as a credit entry in heaven for a humanly merited earning. Paul conceives of the idea in a radically different way, as is evident also from Rom. 4:3 ff. There he illuminates the difference between to reckon as of grace and to reckon as of debt, and then goes on to show that Gen. 15 has nothing to do with the last kind of reckoning. Hence the meaning here too must be to reckon as of grace: a divine judgment, therefore, which depends, not upon human merit, but upon God’s favorable dispensation. The righteousness here designated is not an ethical property, but a divinely conferred quality, by reason of which he is free of guilt and punishment. Negatively it means: being placed outside the state of guilt; and positively: to be in harmony with the divine standard of judgment. Such justification has not at all an arbitrary character. The big assumption underlying it is that God accomplished the punishment which His righteousness demands in Christ on the cross, and that by being included in Christ the believer can arrive at acquittal. 

7 The conclusion which Paul draws in this verse from Gen. 15 is presented to his readers as something plain and irrefutable, and as one which they must now once and for all make their own. This conclusion concerns the question, Who are children of Abraham? It may be that the Judaizers had also operated with this question. After all, the promise was to Abraham’s seed (Gen. 17:7). Paul points out that this descent from Abraham is not determined by physical descent, nor by circumcision, but by spiritual kinship with Abraham. What matters is the inner oneness. They that are of faith: the people who believe, the believers—they are kin to Abraham (cf. 2:12). Faith is therefore the criterion for being sons of Abraham. The statement is emphatic: the same are the sons of Abraham. In this verse Paul maintains to the full the unity of the old and new covenants. The promise made to Abraham still holds. The method by which it is obtained is faith. The fact that natural descent and being incorporated into Abraham’s seed by circumcision also has its significance does not come into consideration; elsewhere it is expressly acknowledged, also by Paul (Rom. 9:4; cf. Acts 2:39). But not by this is the true covenant-community determined, and the Galatians must come to acknowledge that. 

8 Paul goes a step further. He says that kinship with Abraham, and the blessing connected with it, depends on faith, that therefore the Gentiles can share in it, and—this is the further step—that this can not only be indirectly inferred from the Scripture, but is expressly stated in it. The scripture is personified at this point. Really God Himself is being designated, for His word to Abraham is cited, and His foresight determined this utterance. It is Scripture, however, which, so to speak, preserves this word of God alive and makes it available. The apostle is alluding to the blessing of God pronounced upon Abraham in Gen. 12:3. When this pronouncement came to Abraham the blessing itself was still quite entirely a future matter. And the way in which it would be realised, namely, the way of justification by faith, was not yet visible. Still, it all lay contained in the word of God addressed to Abraham, as is now (Paul means to say) evident. Nor was this accidental. It was the divine foreknowledge that accomplished this. 

Paul finds these things designated in the words: in thee shall all the nations be blessed. Plainly the sharing of all the nations in Abraham’s blessing cannot be based upon biological relationship with him. Hence the apostle sees the evidence in these words of the fact that the Gentiles will be saved in the way of faith. One can ask; of course, to what extent this meaning was also in the mind of the writer and the first reader of the Book of Genesis. But the main thing remains what the Scripture, as the Word of God, intended. And this becomes evident in the fulfillment of God’s revelation and promise as pointed out by Paul. 

The promise made to Abraham is here qualified as being the gospel. The citation itself is a combination of Gen. 12:3 (cf. Gen. 28:14) and Gen. 18:18 (cf. 22:18 and 26:4). The blessing in question here does not affect material welfare only but also the whole curse which lies upon the human race. In Abraham this curse will be lifted from all mankind. 

9 This verse recapitulates that the Scripture of Gen. 12:3 permits no other conclusion than the one formulated in verse 8a. How else could the Gentiles be blessed together with Abraham save in the communion of faith? Of works of the law, in the sense in which the heretical teachers spoke of them, there was nothing at all in Abraham. For him too, the promise preceded the circumcision (cf. Rom. 4:9, 10). Not as a circumcised Abraham, or as an Abraham loyal to the law, did he receive the promise—the promise also for the nations. In that there lies a clear indication of the way in which the nations, too, share in the blessing. 

THE LAW CANNOT SUPPLY THE PROMISED SALVATION

3:10–14

     10     For as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse: for it is written, Cursed is everyone who continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law, to do them. 

     11     Now that no man is justified by the law before God, is evident: for, The righteous shall live by faith; 

     12     and the law is not of faith; but, He that doeth them shall live in them. 

     13     Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: 

     14     that upon the Gentiles might come the blessing of Abraham in Christ Jesus; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. 

10–12 In these verses the apostle confirms (for) what has gone before by an argument e contrario. First he has pointed out from Scripture that righteousness is by way of faith. Now he proceeds to show, again by an appeal to Scripture, that righteousness cannot be by way of the law. To that end he establishes the point that all who seek their justification out of the works of the law in reality lie under the curse, quite the opposite of Abraham’s blessing. 

In substantiation of this Paul cites Deut. 27:26. In that passage all those who do not fulfill the demands of the law in all respects are placed under the curse. Further, the fact that Scripture recognizes no way to be justified by the works of the law becomes apparent also from the saying of Habakkuk 2:4: The righteous shall live by faith. The law, on the contrary, does not speak of faith, of believing, but of doing. Hence, those are going counter to Scripture who expect justification from the works of the law. Such is the argument in verses 10–12. The reference to Deut. 27:26 in verse 10 is not motivated further. The assumption is that there is someone who “continueth in all things that are written in the book of the law.” It has been remarked that the original sense of Deut. 27:26 does not proceed from this assumption, that it does not aim to bring all people under the curse, but wishes rather to summon men to a meticulously careful obedience to the law. Such certainly is the case. But this is not to deny, of course, that this formulation (who continueth not in all things …) taken strictly, that is to say, according to the absolute norm—such as, for instance, Jesus lays down in Matt. 5:21–48—knocks the bottom out of every hope of being saved on the basis of the works of the law. As for the difference of intention between the use of this passage here and in Deut. 27, we ought not to forget that the whole development of Jewish legalism lies between Deut. 27 and Gal. 3. In that development the basis of salvation was shifted more and more from divine grace to human merit. If in the sphere of grace, therefore, Deut. 27:26 can have a positive significance, namely, to bind the reverencing of the law of God upon the hearts of His graciously favored covenant-people, in the sphere of merit Deut. 27:26 can mean only the curse. It is out of that last sphere of meaning that Paul is arguing, his eye, the whole while, of course, being on his opponents. The very thing that had been for Israel, so long as it lived out of grace, an impetus to living a life of grateful obedience to God, meant for those who looked to human merit for the fulfillment of expectation the end of all hope—this according to the absolute norm, by which God judges. 

And as for the reference to Habakkuk 2:4 in verse 11, that passage is one of the few Old Testament examples in which faith is presented as the one thing necessary for redemption. In Habakkuk 2:4 this faith is not set in contrast to the works of the law, however, but over against the arrogance and self-confidence of the wicked. Positively seen, though, the faith intended in Hab. 2 and Gal. 3 is essentially the same. It is a resting in God without regard to human care and effort. In the quotation, the word the righteous is not used in a specific juridical sense. The question is not how a man shall become righteous, but how the righteous (the pious) shall live, in the full and deep sense of an unafraid and unthreatened life—hence, in relationship also to the divine punishment. 

In verse 12, finally, we find the reference to Lev. 18:5. It gives us the condition which the law lays down for life, namely, to keep the commandments, and so demonstrates the incompatibility of the way unto life indicated in Hab. 2:4 and that demanded by the law. As in verse 10, so here the utterances concerning the law are understood against the background of the later Jewish redemption and merit system. The Judaizers in the churches of Galatia used the utterances concerning the law in the same context of meaning. That there is also a life in the law lived out of the grace of God’s covenant (Psalm 119) is, of course, not denied by this. Hence there is no conflict between Hab. 2 and Lev. 18 either, so long as the root of life is sought in the grace of God and thus in faith. If, however, one wants to live out of the works of the law, it is the utterances of the law itself that prove the impossibility of it. 

13 Now Christ’s work of redemption is suddenly brought to the fore as the one possibility of salvation. For the question might arise how then the blessing promised to Abraham, and in him to all nations, can be obtained if the law brings curse upon all who do not fulfill it. For, surely, even faith itself cannot lift the curse of the law. That is why the name of Christ is set in the foreground so emphatically now. In this name lies the secret of the whole redemption, that of the Jews as well as that of the Gentiles, both of whom the apostle comprises in his us (cf. verse 14). Paul calls this redemption a being purchased free from the curse of the law. The thought of the price that had to be paid for it must not be pushed too far into the background (cf. 1 Cor. 6:20, 7:23, and Rev. 5:9). We must think of this passage in relation to what is said in other places of Scripture about ransoming (Matt. 20:28 and 1 Tim. 2:6) and redeeming (“purchasing free”: Titus 2:14). A more particular thought is attached to this redeeming than simply that of the emancipation of a prisoner. At issue here is satisfaction of violated justice, as is evident from the phrase: from the curse of the law. Behind the imagery employed, there very probably lies the old practice, circumscribed by the Jewish legal code, according to which ransom money could be paid for a forfeited life (cf. Ex. 21:30). According to this line of thought those who were under the curse were to be regarded not merely as prisoners but as persons appointed to die (cf. Deut. 27:15 ff. and 30:15, 19). It is from this sentence of death that Christ has redeemed them by Himself “becoming a curse” for them—that is to say, a cursed one. This refers to the way in which He gave Himself to death. What we have here, in other words, as is evident also from the phrase “for us,” is the thought of substitution. The curse, to which Christ yielded Himself victim, is not an independently operative principle, but the personal judgment of God, in which He had Christ undergo the sentence instead of the condemned ones (cf. Rom. 8:3 and 2 Cor. 5:21). How Christ ransomed his own in this way is not more specifically set forth. The thought is that God in His grace made the punishment accomplished in Christ valid for His own, and so brought reconciliation through Christ’s death. Such a redemption (ransoming, redeeming) has not, therefore, the character of a transaction, a nice balance of the active and passive, but is a mystery of salvation in which is manifested the integrity of God’s justice and His grace, and the deep bonds of unity between Christ and His own. 

That Christ indeed became a curse Paul infers from the Scripture of Deut. 21:23. It has rightly been observed that the reference to hanging here is not to death on the cross, something unknown to ancient Israel. The reference is rather to the hanging of executed persons on the tree of shame. Such a hanged dead person was then called “God’s accursed.” It is this that the apostle is applying to Christ. After His death, too, Christ hung on the cross as a condemned and executed criminal. Thus He bore the same shame as every executed criminal, and was publicly exhibited as an accursed of God. From all this it should be apparent how little justice modern theological thought does to Paul’s presentation of these matters, when, for example, it talks of a God who does not deal with people on “a basis of legalism” and of a Christ who has set people free from the “fiction” of a curse of God. The reference to Deut. 21 is intended precisely to point out the reality of the curse and, in connection with it, to set forth Christ’s redemption as a satisfaction of the justice of God. 

14 In this verse, the apostle returns to the point of departure of his argument: the gift of the Holy Spirit, accruing also to the Gentiles, as a product of the blessing given to Abraham. All this has become possible in Christ, through His self-surrender. In two final clauses Paul sums this up as the conclusion of what has gone before. The second “that” is to be regarded as coordinate with the first. The second clause in another way says the same thing as the first clause. “The promise of the Spirit” is metonymy for the promised Spirit (cf. Luke 24:49, Acts 1:4; 26:6, and Heb. 9:15). The gift of the Spirit is now designated as the content of the promise to Abraham. It is the guarantee or pledge of the perfected redemption which Abraham was promised. And all through faith, that is, by way of a believing appropriation of the preaching (cf. verse 2), and quite without merit of works. At bottom faith, too, is fruit of the work of the Spirit (cf. Eph. 2:1, 5, 8 and Col. 2:13). At the same time this faith is the means by which, and the way in which, God grants the gifts of the Spirit to the redeemed by Christ. 

THE LAW AND THE PROMISE

3:15–22

     15     Brethren, I speak after the manner of men: Though it be but a man’s covenant, yet when it hath been confirmed, no one maketh it void, or addeth thereto. 

     16     Now to Abraham were the promises spoken, and to his seed. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. 

     17     Now this I say: A covenant confirmed beforehand by God, the law, which came four hundred and thirty years after, doth not disannul, so as to make the promise of none effect. 

     18     For if the inheritance is of the law, it is no more of promise: but God hath granted it to Abraham by promise. 

     19     What then is the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise hath been made; and it was ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator. 

     20     Now a mediator is not a mediator of one; but God is one. 

     21     Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could make alive, verily righteousness would have been of the law. 

     22     But the scripture shut up all things under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. 

The apostle proceeds now to look at the matter from yet another point of view, namely, from that of the history of salvation. The main content of these verses is that God first gave his promise to Abraham and that only much later was the law given out on Sinai. Hence no one may make the fulfillment of the promise dependent upon the keeping of the law. That would be to do violence to the unconditional character of the promise, and would be like modifying covenants, something which even among people is regarded as unauthorized and impossible. This raises the question of what the purpose of the law is and what its relation to the promise. 

15 The vocative, brethren, loosens the tenseness of the tone somewhat: reproach and reprimand give way to an appeal for cordial acquiescence, something to which, indeed, the preceding verses have already formed a transition. The words I speak after the manner of men are not intended in malem partem (cf. 1:11) but in a general sense: I borrow a figure from human relationships. If in those relationships a settlement agreed upon, a covenant made, or a testament put in force cannot be modified, the same holds a fortiori for what has been guaranteed to man by God. 

The word that is translated covenant in our version originally meant an arrangement, a settlement drawn up and legally in force. At least that is what it meant in general linguistic practice. Later it came to mean a last disposition of the will, a testament. It can be taken in this last sense here also—for human arrangements are being referred to. The word confirmed is in the Greek also derived from legal terminology. It designates a legal sanction. Paul says of such a human settlement that when once it has become legal, no man maketh it void, or addeth thereto. Paul wants to establish this point with a view to the significance of the law in relation to the fulfillment of the promise. The law, he says in effect, is not a later addition to the promise, by means of which the latter is robbed of its effect or subjected to new conditions. Such a thing would not be possible or warranted even among people. 

16 The first part of verse 16 constitutes the basis for the application of the figure used in verse 15. It makes the general particular, that is to say, the attention is shifted from a covenant in general to a covenant made by God, and more specifically, to His promises made to Abraham. The word promises supplants what is called covenant in verses 15 and 17. The word is appropriate because the content of God’s covenant with Abraham consists of promises of salvation (cf. Eph. 2:12). Before the apostle goes on to shed light on the binding character of these promises, he first, by way of parenthesis, makes very clear who were the recipients of these promises, so as to remove all doubt about that, and so to define more specifically the inviolability of the promises. He takes this means to show that, in accordance with verse 7, the promises right from the start were intended for and directed to those who are in Christ or of Him (verses 28 and 29). Thus the apostle indicates the ground on which the inviolable and unconditional character of the promise rests; and at the same time he thus makes it clear again over against his opponents that the sphere within which God’s promise to Abraham is influential does not coincide with that of the fleshly Israel. Concerning this last, Paul appeals to the singular of: and to thy seed. From this he infers that God, when He gave His promise to Abraham and His seed did not intend all of his descendants, but the descendant, the seed, who is Christ, and in Him—as appears from the later verse 29—all who are included in Him, namely, the believers. Now it is true that many regard this appeal to the singular noun as rather remarkable. For the word translated seed in our version has a collective significance, also in the Hebrew and the Greek (cf. Rom. 4:13, 18 and Gal. 3:29), and it might be supposed, therefore, that this ground alone hardly suffices to prove that but one descendant or one portion of the seed of Abraham was intended. Moreover, it is held that the word translated seeds cannot in either the Hebrew or the Greek be used to refer to descendants. Many are consequently inclined to regard this whole argument about the singular noun to be simply a piece of “rabbinical invention,” which does not rest on tenable ground. 

There is an answer to this counter-argument, however. From the very beginning, that is, when God spoke to Abraham, a distinction was made between seed and seed. In fact, before the birth of Isaac, God had told Abraham that not in Ishmael but in Isaac should his seed be valid. This could serve, therefore, to teach Abraham how he had to regard the seed of the promise (cf. Gen. 17:19–21, 21:12). And this consideration could also give Paul occasion to explain that the concept seed is not to be taken as an indiscriminate quantity but as a unit (concentrated in the person of Christ). Objectively, therefore, the basis of Paul’s distinction between the one and the many is contained in God’s address to Abraham. And it is, what with the use that Paul makes elsewhere of this datum (cf. Rom. 9:7), very probable that this constituted the occasion for his pointing to the use of the singular, applied as it is to the person of Christ. If, consequently, we can say that Paul’s exegesis of seed has its substantial basis in the differentiation between Isaac and Ishmael, issuing in Christ—that is in the history of the covenant in the promise—still, this does not deny that, linguistically, he finds the expression of it in the singular of the noun. And it may be true that this singular, taken by itself, need not designate a single person, and that the bearing of the passages concerning it in Genesis also is not restricted to one person. But this need not keep us from seeing in the singular seed an indication of Abraham’s descendants concentrated in one definite person. For, from the vantage point of the fulfillment we take this seed to be Christ, and it is from that vantage point also that Paul is looking. The word used here can in both the Hebrew and the Greek be used to designate one definite descendant. That Paul is thinking inclusively, not exclusively, is clear enough from what follows. Just as in Genesis 21:12 the person of Isaac is designated by the word seed in distinction from that of Ishmael, though not, of course, by exclusion of Isaac’s descendants, so, according to Paul, the singular of the noun is also a designation of the one Christ in distinction from all other indiscriminate descendants of Abraham together, but not in exclusion of those who are bound with Christ by faith (cf. verses 26–29). 

17 Now this I say: so Paul comes to his real purpose. He proceeds to apply the figure of verse 15 to the covenant of God, concerning which in verse 16 he has first paused to indicate for whom the covenant was valid. The conclusion is a fortiori: the thing that holds for human agreements, namely, that they cannot be made void by addenda, holds so much more for a guarantee given by God Himself, definitively, and in full form. That raises the subject of the law again. For it is the law which the heretical minds Paul is opposing in this letter are putting into competition with the promise—at bottom, in fact, they are placing it above the promise, for they make obedience to the law the condition for obtaining the salvation granted by the promise. It is by this opposition, this contrast, that the character of Paul’s conception of the covenant and the promise, yes, and of the law also, is entirely governed and determined. Law means demand, conditions; the promise, on the contrary, means free grant, guarantee, unconditionality. Those for whom the promise is intended receive the salvation. Those who do not receive it do not belong to the seed to whom the promises were spoken (cf. verse 16, Rom. 9:6–8). Of course, this does not mean, as some have argued, that Paul thinks of the law as an independent power, antagonistic even to God, and so falls into an antinomy. For God Himself is the author of the law (verse 19). And the law has also a divinely intended purpose in the history of salvation. But what Paul is talking about is the inheritance of salvation. The law cannot contribute to that. Nor can the law, in competition with the promise, subtract from it either. True, the promise can also come in a form which carries demands with it and then the pronouncement of the law ushers in a new dispensation of the covenant of God with Abraham. But, however closely the law is bound up with the promise in the Sinaitic covenant, the fulfillment of the promise is not dependent upon a human fulfillment of the law as attendant condition. Then God’s covenant would no longer be a covenant (diathêkê), and the promises of God would be dependent upon human factors. 

The time-designation, which came four hundred and thirty years after, serves to make the unreasonableness of this conception plainer still. During all those centuries God’s promise to Abraham had been effective without benefit of the law. How could that which came centuries later deprive the word that God had given Abraham of its power? Just how Paul arrives at the exact figure of four hundred and thirty, as the period intervening between the promise and the law, is not entirely clear. For the purposes of his argument, however, less depends upon the accuracy than upon the magnitude of the figure. 

18 The fact that the law cannot change or subtract anything from the divine promise has an objective as well as a temporal reason. Promise and law, as mediatorial ways of salvation, cannot be combined. If the fulfillment of the law must add something to the achievement of salvation, then the promise as promise, that is, as unconditional grant of God’s salvation, is no longer the source and supporting reason of the promised good. This promised good is now called the inheritance in order to qualify the certainty and legitimacy of the future blessedness. 

That the hypothesis of verse 18a is unsound is stated in so many words at the conclusion of the sentence. The phrase to Abraham is strongly emphasized. Whatever views one may hold concerning the way of salvation, the fact is that God dispensed His salvation to Abraham by way of the promise. And that certainly is the establishment of the covenant and the revelation of the promise to which everything else goes back. And that is the thing that must determine all legitimate instruction as to how the inheritance is received. 

19 Now the question naturally arises, What is the significance of the law then in God’s economy of salvation? If it cannot serve to make salvation available, what end does it serve? The answer is stated thus: It was added because of transgressions. What now does the because of mean in this statement? In the Greek these words can point to cause as well as purpose. If it were the former, we should have to exegete: because the transgressions were many, the law was given—that is, to restrain them. From Rom. 4:15 and 5:20 it becomes apparent, however, that Paul means something else: the law was given, so to speak, to call forth the transgressions, and make them manifest. This is to say more than that by means of the law sin should be acknowledged as transgression in its proper and terrible character: it is to say also that by means of the law sin should come out into the open and multiply itself. The law makes guilt and evil greater (Rom. 5:20). This had to take place so that the indispensability of Christ would come to be rightly understood (cf. verse 24). Hence the sequel in this connection: till the seed should come. That seed was Christ (verse 16). It was He to whom the promise pointed and in whom it was materialized. But, up to His coming, the law had to bring sin out more and more, and, by reason of human wickedness, call it into existence. Only in that way would the necessity of Christ’s coming and work be properly understood. In contrast to what the Judaizers were teaching, therefore, the law was insufficient for salvation not only, but something which should be separated from it as far as possible. 

Paul goes on to say concerning the law that it was ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator. From this the lesser glory of the law compared with the promise becomes manifest. The law, unlike the promise, had not come directly from God to the people, but by way of angels, and even these again proclaimed it through the service of a human mediator, namely, Moses. That the angels were of service at the giving of the law is not apparent from Exodus. It may be that the later tradition, which is the one being interpreted here, even as in Acts 7:38, 53 and Hebrews 2:2, takes its point of departure from Deut. 33:2, although it is not certain that this passage refers to the giving of the law. According to some commentators, Paul speaks of angels here because he did not think of the law as a work of God but as a counter-enterprise set up by angels against the promise of God. This notion is to be rejected in consideration of Paul’s attitude towards the Old Testament in general and the giving of the law in particular (cf., e.g., Rom. 9:4, 2:18, 7:12, and 8:7). Paul is not setting up a front against the law as such, whose holiness and divine origin he roundly acknowledges. But he sees in the way in which the law was communicated a further confirmation of the fact that salvation comes not by way of the law but by that of the promises. The law is most certainly of God, but the power to keep it was not given along with it. God has man transmit the law. But He does not Himself come with the law in order to effect obedience to it. That is left to man. That is why the law cannot redeem man. 

20 It is said, by way of echoing verse 17, that there are four hundred and thirty interpretations of verse 20! In any event, the purpose of the statement is to make clear the significance of a mediator such as is mentioned in verse 19. The question is not one of the role of Moses merely, but of the significance of a mediator generally. Into this framework, and by way of contrast, the direct appearance of God is mentioned at the conclusion. Everything depends upon what the apostle means by not … of one. In the main, as we see it, we can choose between two interpretations: (1) Wherever a mediator is involved, two parties are involved: a mediator does not represent one party; (2) A mediator never represents one person merely, but comes in the name of a party of persons, a party consisting of more than one person. God, however, is one. Hence the law which was implemented by way of a mediator, does not come—at least not directly—from God, but from the many angels. 

As we see it, there is no room for the latter interpretation. For one thing, a mediator need not always be delegated by more than one person. And, in the second place, this notion does not do justice to Paul’s acknowledgment of the divine origin of the law (cf. the Exposition of verse 19). Accordingly, we choose the first explanation. The intention then is to put the emphasis on the one-sided character of the promise. The law came through mediatorial channels. Two parties were involved in it. To achieve its purpose, the law is dependent upon human appropriation and agreement. God is the author of the law, but man is the subject of its fulfillment. Hence, in the execution and maintenance of the law, all sorts of intervening persons are required. In the giving of the promise, however, no mediator intervened. God was at work alone: for He is not only the author of the promise; He fulfills it also. So it is that this mode of implementation also makes manifest the unconditional character of the promise, and its superiority to the law. 

21 What has gone before might prompt the idea that there is a conflict between the law and the promise, that is to say, that the law might tend to make the fulfillment of the promises useless. Paul rejects this argument forthwith. The situation is actually such that the law would be the only means of justifying man, to make him guiltless before God, and grant him salvation, if only it were not dependent upon man and stopped by his obstinacy. But the law can do nothing about this obstinacy. It cannot make man alive, cannot arouse him from his impotence and grant him the ability to do what it demands. If there were such a law, no other way of salvation would have to be opened up. In short, the law aims at nothing more than what the promise grants. But it cannot get man to fulfill itself. The law is not a quickening power, as is the promise (cf. Rom. 9:9). The promise, on the contrary, is not word, merely, but also deed, power, Spirit (cf. 4:21–31). And the law is without power, because of sin (cf. Rom. 8:3). 

22 The example presented in verse 21 is contrary to fact: the law cannot give righteousness. Hence it is that Scripture, that is, the divine sanction and threat against the transgressors of the law contained in Scripture, shut up all things under sin. That is to say that Scripture has left open no avenue of escape within the pale of the law, but has brought together as in a prison-house all human life and all efforts to fight itself free. In that prison, sin by its power and curse makes it impossible to share in salvation. Thus God has made the law serviceable to His purpose: the law dams up and closes off all escapes to life. By the way of the law, therefore, the impotence of man to achieve his salvation has become manifest. 

In the way of the divine grace, however, the purpose of all this is not negative, but positive: the intent is that all will seek escape in the way of the promise. The promise, that is the guarantee of salvation, which comprises the promised good within itself. The words by faith in Jesus Christ define this promise still further. The content of the promise flows out of the faith in Christ. Faith constitutes the connection with the source out of which issues the gift of salvation. That source is Christ. All emphasis falls on that. He gives what the law cannot give. The stress here is not so much on the channel (of the faith) along which it all issues as on the source out of which it comes: namely, Christ. The concluding words: to them that believe after what precedes seem superfluous, pleonastic. This time, however, not merely the source of the salvation, but those who receive it also are pointed out. They are the believers, and there is no more specific delineation of them. It is clear: no new condition is being laid down here, no neo-nomism is being taught. Belief is opposed to works, as the principle of grace is to merit. This, therefore is the full-fledged break-through of the nomistic scheme of redemption. 

BONDAGE AND FREEDOM

3:23–29

     23     But before faith came, we were kept in ward under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. 

     24     So that the law became our tutor to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. 

     25     But now that faith is come, we are no longer under a tutor. 

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

     27     For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ. 

     28     There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female; for ye all are one man in Christ Jesus. 

     29     And if ye are Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, heirs according to promise. 

In this section the subject is no longer the difference between promise and law as means of salvation, but, quite in harmony with verse 22, the subject now becomes the bondage brought on by the law, in contrast to the redemption and freedom brought in Christ. 

23 The image of being shut up in consequence of the law (verse 22) is further sustained and developed. This bondage obtained before faith came, that is, before the salvation given in Christ was revealed as the object of faith. Instead of sin, as in verse 22, the law is now represented as the jail-keeper. In other words, a kind of modification enters into the handling of the figure of speech, but the thought remains essentially the same. That, after all, is why sin is so terrible and fatal for man: it gets its power from the law (1 Cor. 15:56, Rom. 7:13, and 4:15). Thus the apostle characterizes the state of things before the coming of Christ. In doing so, he puts himself in the position of those who in the way of the works of the law try to earn their justification before God. Paul does not here mention the fact that under the old dispensation the law also functioned differently, not in the sphere of merit, merely, but also in that of grace (Ex. 20:2, Psalm 119 passim). Concerning this positive significance of the law, Paul speaks elsewhere in this letter (cf. 5:14 and the Exposition). At the moment, however, the subject is bondage, the prison which the law brought into being before the grace in Christ had appeared. The character of this bondage, as will appear from what follows later, is both juridical and ethical. For, on the one hand, the law brought wrath and curse by reason of transgression (cf. verse 13); on the other hand, the law, by reason of its impotence, its inability to “make alive,” was also the means of making man conscious of his ethical inadequacy. Its function was, by means of commands and prescriptions, to bring him to despair, and to cause the desire to be born in him that he fulfill the will of God in freedom. Such a desire was in very fact also the purpose of this bondage. We can deduce as much from the word unto, which has not merely a temporal but also a purposive significance. The bondage under the law urged and forced man towards the faith. The apostle speaks in the first person plural, even though he is speaking not only for the Jews, but also for the more numerous Gentile readers (cf. 4:9). For the Gentiles, too, though outside the pale of the revelation to Israel, were co-subject to the law with the Jews, and were not without knowledge of it (Rom. 2:14–16). 

That upon which all this converged is described as the faith, which should afterwards be revealed. In its object, Christ, and in its operation also, this faith God had kept in readiness without revealing it. At the coming of Christ it had been literally discovered. In its negative, service-eliciting character the law was oriented to and directed towards the Christ. That was its meaning and its function. 

24 Once more the figure of the bondage returns in a somewhat modified form. The law is compared with a tutor, that is, with an attendant upon minor boys. The question in this connection is to what extent a positive significance should be attached to this implied pedagogy: in other words, how the unto Christ must be understood. Did the law (by its prescriptions for offerings, priests, purifications, and the like) consciously lead to Christ, and was it in that sense engaged in preparatory and pedogogical service, or was it so strict a master that it only did negative, preparatory work: that is, merely fostered the desire to escape from its tyranny? As we see it, the question is not whether these ceremonial regulations were also harbingers of the Christ (cf. the Epistle to the Hebrews), but whether Paul at the moment is concerned with that aspect of the matter. It seems doubtful. The tutor designated in the passage was not a teacher but a governor of boys during the period of their immaturity. Slaves were sometimes used for this purpose, men who were good for nothing else, hard and severe to their pupils. Their name, consequently, had a stigma attached to it. And the whole context points up the truth of being under the yoke (cf. verses 22, 25, and 4:1 ff.). Presumably, then, we are to understand this living under the law as under a pedagogue or tutor, not as a gradually formative education in freedom in the positive sense, but as a growing passion for freedom because of the oppressive yoke. The law makes man unsatisfied, teaches him how he will not get to the redemption of life. In this sense the law drives to Christ, in order that we should be justified in Him through faith—justified, that is, emancipated from the curse and the impotence wrought by the law. 

25–26 The statement made in verse 25 requires no further comment after what has been said in the preceding verse. From the function which verses 23 and 24 assign to the law, it follows that after Christ’s coming the law as tutor, that is as seen from the vantage point of the history of salvation, has lost its significance. In that sense it can be said elsewhere that Christ is the end of the law (Rom. 10:4). That is not to say that the law has now served its purpose in every respect. We must constantly keep the theme of the letter in mind. 

Verse 26 retains the figure of speech, and tells us of the nature of the change that has taken place. Over against the immature life of slavery under a tutor the life of sonship, with all its privileges and rights, and so the life of freedom through faith in Christ is postulated (cf. 4:1 ff). In what follows later the meaning of this sonship is further delineated (cf. 4:5 ff.). A special emphasis falls on the word (ye are) all (sons of God). By this is designated, as the following verses also make clearer, the equal worth and oneness in Christ of all sorts of people. The thrust is not quantitative (head for head) but qualitative (irrespective of descent, status, race). For the way, the means, by which to arrive at this sonship is solely and simply faith. 

27 Verse 27 gives us a further motivation for verse 26 which is twofold in character. First, the ye all is explained. All have been baptized in Christ. For by the words as many of you as were baptized the whole church is meant. The expression as many seems to limit the ye all of verse 26. The intention, however, is to show that in baptism lies the evidence that all sorts of people (cf. verse 28), without any discrimination, share in the grace of Christ. Just as little as baptism discriminates between Jews and Greeks and the like, so little can the sonship be limited to that of the natural children of Abraham. And this is what is proved by the meaning of baptism (and in this respect verse 26 is a second time motivated by verse 27) that to be baptized means: to put on Christ. 

This close relationship which baptism establishes between Christ and the believers is also designated by the expression: baptized into Christ. The expression is not to be construed as mystical so much as corporative or federal. The baptized person is added to Christ as His own, is reckoned to His account, shares in His benefits. And the closeness of the relationship is confirmed by the exegetical expression: to put on Christ. Just as a garment which one puts on (or has put on: the passive translation, too, has some proponents) quite envelopes the person wearing it, and identifies his appearance and his life, so the person baptized in Christ is quite entirely taken up in Christ and in the salvation brought by Him. That still leaves the question how the apostle establishes this relationship between being baptized and putting on Christ. We are not to take this in a magical or automatic sense. Baptism, too, is not in that sense an independent moment in the economy of salvation, as though oneness with Christ should take place for the believers only at baptism. Elsewhere Paul speaks of this oneness as the fruit solely of faith, without mention of baptism (cf. 2:19 ff.). What happens at baptism is a confirmation and sealing, a visible manifestation of what is given to the church by faith. So much is true, however, that Paul wants to indicate by his objective-sacramental mode of expression, and by appealing especially to baptism for establishing the sonship of the believers, that the reality of becoming one with Christ is nowhere so clearly revealed or so firmly founded in the Christian consciousness of faith, as precisely in this baptism (cf. Rom. 6:3 ff. and Col. 2:12 ff.). 

28 Now the ye all of verse 26 and the as many of you of verse 27 are more particularly explained. In Christ there is no descent, rank, or sex. The first contrast which Paul sets up, there can be neither Jew nor Greek, is to be taken in a religious rather than a national sense. The gulf between these two was regarded as being so fixed and wide, not because the Gentile belonged to another nationality, but because he was uncircumcised and therefore was not an heir of Abraham. Now Paul says that this gulf does not exist in Christ but has been bridged in him. He is the seed of Abraham, and faith alone is necessary to share in the benefits of that seed. 

Two further sets of contrasts are added to this one, both of them referring to the tremendous separation which social inequality and the differentiation of sexes brought with them in ancient times. True, it is the religious contrast that is the bone of contention between Paul and his opponents, but the oneness of master and slave, too, and the oneness of man and woman, in Christ, illustrates how completely the bond with Christ conquers all things and establishes them, also the removal of the first opposition (cf. 6:15, 1 Cor. 12:13, Col. 3:11). This is not to maintain that the natural and social distinction is in no respect relevant any more (cf., e.g., Eph. 6:5, 1 Tim. 6:1, Titus 2:9, 1 Peter 2:18, 1 Cor. 11:3 ff., 14:34 ff., and 1 Tim. 2:11 ff.). From the point of view of redemption in Christ, however, and of the gifts of the Spirit granted by Him, there is no preference of Jew to Greek, master to slave, man to woman. This has social consequences, too, although the apostle does not enter further upon them at this point. 

The final clause speaks positively and very emphatically of the oneness of all in Christ. And it is in this way that the sense of the first clause becomes entirely clear. Only the person who knows who Christ is, what He has done and is still doing, can understand how and in what sense those oppositions are obliterated. Ye are all one: that predication stands without the addition of “body” or “temple” at this point. The point at the moment is the idea of oneness. 

29 This verse draws the conclusion and calls the attention back to the beginning of the argument where Paul called the believers the seed of Abraham (verses 7–9) to whom the promises were spoken (verse 16). Now he can postulate this with even more force, now that he has spoken of being one with, and belonging to, Christ of all believers. If so, they also belong to the seed of Abraham, and consequently are heirs according to the promise. According to the promise: that is, according to the nature of it, not by works of the law, but by the gracious and effectual word of God. Heirs, originally thought of in connection with the right to the land of Canaan given to the seed of Abraham, and now comprehensive of the history of salvation in general. With this last link in the chain, it becomes clear in what sense Christ could be called the seed of Abraham (verse 16): in a corporative sense, that is, as Head of the body and of the new covenant. Always and again this one thing is reconfirmed: that belonging to the seed of Abraham is not determined by physical descent, but by faith. Essentially, in principle, the seed of Abraham is spiritual seed. If on the one hand this represents a limitation of the concept, on the other it represents a tremendous broadening of it. It is this broadening of the concept of Abraham’s seed that is the subject in this context. 

ἀνόητος: it means unthinkable, but in the active sense also foolish, unwise (verse 3, Luke 24:25, Rom. 1:14, and other places). The reference is not so much to a lack of intelligence as to a mistaken use of it. 

προγράφειν: see besides G. Schrenk, TWNT, I, pp. 771–772, under γράφω, also G. Milligan, Here and There among the Papyri, 1923, p. 78. 

The translation is not easy to manage, inasmuch as ἀκοή as well as πίστις can be used in both an active and a passive sense. Further, ἀκοή can in the active sense designate either the organ of hearing, the capacity of hearing (Mt. 13:24, Mark 7:35, and the like) or the act of hearing itself (as, presumably in Rom. 10:17). In the passive sense, ἀκοή means tidings or news (Mt. 4:24, 14:1, and 24:6), and it so becomes the technical designation for the preaching (John 12:38, Rom. 10:16, 1 Thess. 2:13, and Heb. 4:2). Since ἀκοή occurs in this last sense most frequently, and since it is doubtful, even, whether the act of “hearing” is intended by any New Testament word, one is inclined to take ἀκοή in the passive sense here also. The difficulty then arises from its connection with τῆς πίστεως. True, πίστις occurs in the New Testament in the sense of the content of faith, the fides quae creditor (e.g., Jude 3, 20); one could therefore take the πίστεως as the object of the preaching (ἀκοή). But this meaning of πίστις is, compared with the subjective sense of fides qua creditur, extremely rare. Only, this subjective sense of πίστις fits in badly with the passive, objective sense of ἀκοῆς. We could, then, translate the word as “preaching of the gospel,” and interpret it as a preaching “which has faith as its object.” As we see it, however, this is not a convincing version. Another possibility is to take the ἀκοή in a passive sense, and the πίστις in an active one, and then to associate the ἐξ with πίστεως, not with ἀκοῆς. That would result in the version: by way of faith in what was heard, namely the preaching. That makes good sense, but runs into the difficulty that it does not correspond linguistically to ἐξ ἔργων νόμου. All these difficulties arise from taking ἀκοῆς in the passive sense. An active significance is therefore very appealing. The result would then be the hearing of faith, and one could still choose between the view which accepts the πίστεως as a subjective genitive, and that which takes it as a qualitative genitive: in other words, “the hearing of faith,” or “the faithful hearing.” The main decision, however, is that of ἀκοή as preaching (preaching of the faith) and ἀκοή as hearing (faithful or believing hearing). We choose for the second of these alternatives, partly also because it corresponds best with the first term of the contrast. If we were to take ἀκοή as meaning preaching, the first term of the contrast would presumably also have been given out differently (for example, as preaching of the law rather than as works of the law). Certainly the active sense of ἀκοή corresponds best with works of the law, irrespective of whether πίστεως is then taken as a subjective genitive, as in the translation being followed here, or as a qualitative one. The omission of the articles serves to stress the qualitative aspect. 

ἐπιτελεῖσθε. 

American Standard Version (1901) 

We may well question whether this translation of the ASV is accurate. For ἐπάθετε can also be translated did ye undergo, or experience, and be understood as applying to the operations of the Spirit mentioned in verses 2, 3, and 5. True, the first translation is the more current one. The objections to the first amount to this, however, that the whole context, also the summarizing verse 5, says nothing at all about suffering or persecution, anymore than does the sequel of the letter. All the same, τοσαῦτα points to something immediately present in the minds of the writer and the readers. There is good deal, then, that pleads for the view that this word also refers to the frequently reiterated gift of the Spirit. The verb πάσχειν can serve to designate that these gifts, quite beyond the achievement of the readers on any other basis, had fallen to them, overwhelmed them, quite apart from their own doing. Such an interpretation also suits the exposition of el εἴ γε καὶ εἰκῆ given in the text above. 

The οὖν summarizes, recapitulates, and lays what has been said once more upon the mind and conscience of the readers. This recapitulation also pleads for the view that verse 4 refers to an experience of the gifts of the Spirit. 

ἐπιχορηγῶ: to pay for the costs of a choir; hence, in general: to give. The ἐπί intensifies it: hence, abundantly supply. 

ὑμῖν can also have the meaning: among you. 

This gift is now more specifically described as the divine operation (ἐνεργῶν) of forces (δυνάμεις), be it exclusively as spiritual gifts, or also as miracles of healing, and the like. 

The idea of a norm or measure is contained in καθώς. 

Genesis 15:6, quoted here according to LXX. 

λογίζεσθαι εἰς is used in profane Greek as a commercial term meaning to appraise or assess. It is found here, as in LXX, as a translation of the Hebrew חשב plus the double objective, and means: to reckon, credit, or account. 

Compare, e.g., H. W. Heidland, TWNT, IV, p. 293, under λογίζομαι. 

οἱ ἐκ πίστεως: ἐκ “The preposition describes source, yet not source of being—they do not owe their existence to faith—but source of character and standing, existence after a certain manner,” Burton, op. cit., p. 155. 

It is true that some think the niphal of Gen. 12:3 must be used as a reflexive: to bless oneself, to call oneself blessed. This would then be intended to carry the implication that the enjoyment of unusual favor would be indicated by the proverb “As fortunate as Abraham.” This can hardly be right, however, because in Gen. 12 the issue is precisely what God will do to Abraham and all nations. The positive meaning which Paul also sees in this word has most to recommend it. 

In verse 8 the ἐν is used to designate the kinship with Abraham; in verse 9 σύν is used, but without difference of meaning. 

ὅσοι … ἐξ ἔργων νόμου εἰσίν, by analogy with οἱ ἐκ πίστεως in verse 7. ἐκ serves to characterize. For comment on the genitive νόμου, see the Exposition of 2:16. 

ὑπὸ κατάραν is used without the article, the more sharply to enhance the contrast with εὐλογία of verses 8 and 9. The ὑπό makes of the κατάρα a real power which reigns and brings devastation upon those subjected to it. The curse is the sovereign utterance of the living God, effective, charged with power. 

Partly according to LXX. The δέ of verse 11 is not adversative but connective only. 

Sometimes Hab. 2:4 is translated to mean that the righteous, in contrast to the faithless wicked, “shall live by virtue of his faith (loyalty).” And, as a matter of fact, the Hebrew word, for which πίστις is used here, does generally mean: loyalty, trustworthiness. According to the context (Hab. 2:3), it should refer here to a faithful steadfastness over against God and His word: in short, to faith. The LXX translates as follows: My faithfulness, that is, of Jahwe. Later rabbinical thought seized on this passage and made it serviceable to a doctrine of merit by construing faith as the monotheistic confession. 

δίκαιος: a person who, judging by his conduct, stands in the right relationship to God; pious. 

ὁ δὲ νόμος οὐκ ἐστιν ἐκ πίστεως: the law does not lean on faith, does not find its strength in faith as a way of redemption. For Paul, faith is not a nova lex, a new stipulation for man to fulfill, by means of which to earn privilege with God: it is precisely the letting go of every human pretension as a ground for salvation. 

In Lev. 18 also such a life out of grace in the law is spoken of. Paul is not denying this. He wishes merely to point out that the Jewish scheme of redemption cannot be combined with faith. So construed, we must not blur the clarity of Paul’s predications. He is not saying merely that the law in itself does not suffice, that divine help is necessary to fulfill it, and only then may we depend upon the works of the law (so M. J. Lagrange, Epitre aux Galates, p. 68 ff.). Rather, Paul is speaking here of the law as a life-principle. As such it stands diametrically opposed to faith. 

Some (Zahn, e.g., op. cit., p. 157) think that this can be said only of the Jews, inasmuch as these only can be supposed to live under the law (cf., however, Rom. 2:14, 15). 

This happens when we take the sense of purchased freedom in the general sense of redemption; then we regard the question of to whom the price had to be paid as irrelevant. Then we are likely to think that Christ was the Redeemer, not because by His death He set others free from a particular penalty, but because his death was the culmination of a life in which he set men free from the thought that God deals with man on a juridical “legalistic basis” (cf. Burton, op. cit., p. 168 ff.). Such is, however, an unjustifiable modernization of Paul’s thought (cf. the text of the Exposition). 

Deismann, in his Licht vom Osten,4 (1926) p. 271 ff., seeks to connect this with the so-called sacral emancipation of slaves such as used to take place in pagan temples. The practice was that when someone wished to purchase the freedom of a slave, or a slave purchased his own freedom, the sum of money involved was sometimes brought to the temple, where the priests, then, in the name of the deity, bought the slave from his master. Thus the ransoming took on a certain sacral force, although the purchase by the deity was really a fiction (cf. Buechsel, TWNT, I, p. 125 ff., under ἀγοράζω). As we see it such an association of ideas is not applicable here. No mention is made of a temple, a priest, of a God, but only of Christ who by His own death purchases the freedom of His own. And the price is a price not paid by God, but to God. Moreover, what is involved is not an emancipation from slavery or from prison but a payment for forfeited life, redemption from sentence of death (see text of Exposition). Finally, Paul’s thoughts are not moving in the sphere of the Hellenistic religions (witness the many citations of the context), but in that of the Old Testament order of law. 

See, e.g., G. Dalman, Jesus Jeschua, 1929, p. 110. 

The word γενόμενος makes for a temporal connection not merely, but for a causal one also. 

ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν: In the papyri, too, ὑπέρ is used in a substitutionary meaning (e.g., in signatures instead of an illiterate person: ἔγραψα ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ ἀγραμμάτου). 

Instead of “Cursed is every one …” both the Hebrew and LXX have “An accursed of God is …” 

This follows from the word ὁμῶς: literally, in the same way. Here it is used with adversative force: even. 

In LXX διαθήκη is regularly used as the translation of the covenant of God (berith), rather than the apparently more available word συνθήκη. In this there is already an expression of the fact that the covenant of God does not have the character of a contract between two parties, but rather that of a one-sided grant. This corresponds with the covenant-idea in the Old Testament, in which berith, even in human relations, sometimes refers to a one-party guarantee which a more favored person gives a less favored one (cf. Josh. 9:6, 15, 1 Sam. 11:1, Ezek. 17:13). And it is most peculiarly true of the divine covenantal deed that it is a one-party guarantee. It comes not from man at all, but from God alone. This does not rule out the fact, of course, that it involves religious and ethical obligation, namely that of faith and obedience (Gen. 17:9–10), and that thus the reciprocal element is taken up in the covenant. Still, such an obligation is not always named, and there is no room to speak at all of a correlation, in the sense that each determines and holds in balance the terms of the other, between the promise of God and the human appropriation of it. It is not the idea of parity, or even that of reciprocity, but that of validity which determines the essence of the covenant-idea. God’s covenant with Noah, for example, lays down no stipulations, and it has the character of a one-party guarantee. It does of course require the faith of man, but is in its fulfillment in no respect dependent on the faith, and it is validly in force for all coming generations, believing and unbelieving (cf. Gen. 9:9). And in the making of the covenant with Abraham, too, in Gen. 15, the fulfillment of the law is in symbolical form made to depend wholly upon the divine deed. Abraham is deliberately excluded—he is the astonished spectator (cf. Gen. 15:12, 17). True, in the Sinaitic covenant, the stipulations which God lays down for His people sometimes take the form of actual conditions, so that the realization of the promise is conditioned by them (cf. Lev. 26:15 ff. and Deut. 31:20), but this structural change in the covenant-revelation can be explained in connection with the wider promulgation—it is to extend to the whole nation of Israel—of the covenant, by means of which the covenant-relationship takes on a wider and more external meaning. It comprises not merely the unconditional guarantee of God to those who walk in the faith and obedience of their father Abraham: it also lays down a special bond constituted by the offer of salvation, on the one side, and by responsibility, on the other side, for those who will not appear to manifest a oneness with their spiritual ancestor. Meanwhile, of course, the fact remains that in all the different dispensations of the covenant of grace, God’s unconditional promise to Abraham constitutes its heart and kernel. Consequently, when the “new covenant” (Jer. 31:33) is announced, one thing is expressly made clear: namely, that the disposition which is indispensable for the human reception of the covenant-benefits will itself be granted as the gift of God Himself. In other words, that very thing which in the Sinaitic covenant was so plainly set down as a condition, belongs in the new covenant to the benefits promised by God in the covenant itself. The New Testament concept of διαθήκη lies quite in the line of that development, particularly as Paul thinks of it, as is evident in the next following chapter also, and in such a place as Rom. 9. That New Testament concept points to a salvation whose benefits are guaranteed by God and as a matter of fact are actually given, because in Christ and through Him the conditions of the covenant are fulfilled. 

κεκυρωμένην 

Similarly the word זרע in Gen. 4:25 and 1 Sam. 1:11 does not refer to a collective unit but to an individual descendant. For the use of the plural of זוע to designate “descendants” one can appeal only to a post-Biblical period (cf. Gesenius-Buhl, Hebraeisches und Aramaeisches Handwoerterbuch, under the word in question. 

σπέρματα in the sense of “descendants” is used not only in the classical literature but also in the LXX (Dan. 11:31, 4 Macc. 18:1), whereas σπέρμα in the sense of a “single descendant” occurs, among other places, in Gen. 4:25, 21:13, 1 Sam. 1:11, 2 Sam. 7:12, and 1 Chron. 17:11. 

The διαθήκην is used without the article. The emphasis is on the qualitative character of the covenant, its divine dispensation. The covenant is not a proposition or offer. Hence, although it is the object of the verb, the word stands first in the clause. The perfect participle προκεκυρωμένην as well as the emphatic ὑπὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ serve to emphasize the absoluteness and inevitability of this διαθήκη. 

Compare the exposition of verse 10. 

The number 430 is also mentioned in Ex. 12:40. According to the Hebrew text of Ex. 12 these 430 years comprise the period Israel was in Egypt. On that basis, the period between the promise to Abraham and the giving of the law should be reckoned a longer period. At other places the period of Israel’s oppression in Egypt is designated as four hundred years (Gen. 15:13 and Acts 7:6). The LXX transmits Ex. 12:40 in such a way that the time in which Israel was in Egypt and in Canaan came to 435 years. There is, however, no equivalent for the words καὶ ἐν γῇ Χανάαν in the Hebrew text. It is therefore impossible for us to determine whether and in what sense Paul takes his figure from one or another of these data. 

εἰ γάρ: the argument is purely hypothetical. 

The νόμου and ἐπαγγελίας are not accompanied by the article. The concern is with the qualitative aspect both in the law and in the promise. 

ἐκ is used here to designate the cause, the reason for existence. 

In the Greek text these words stand at the emphatic beginning of the clause. 

χαρίζομαι without the object is a technical term from the law of inheritance: make a grant, deed something by will. 

διʼ ἐπαγγελίας: the subject now is the means by which, the way along which, God caused His gift to come to Abraham. It is only the divine act of believing by which man can come into possession of the divine inheritance. 

The τί inquires not so much as to the nature of the law as to its purpose. 

χάριν plus the genitive. 

Compare for this meaning of χάριν, e.g., Luke 7:47 and 1 John 3:12. 

νόμος δὲ παρεισῆλθεν ἵνα πλεονάσῃ τὸ παράπτωμα. 

ᾧ ἐπήγγελται: to whom the promise was come. This limits not only the fulfillment, but also the recipient of the promise, to Christ (and His own). Elsewhere, e.g., in Heb. 4:1, 10:26–39, and Acts 2:39, the circle to whom the promise is directed is wider in scope. This does not make for contradiction. For the giving of the law takes place in the wider circle, without immediately introducing a differentiation into that circle. But the promise proves not to be intended for each and all; it goes into fulfillment only in Christ and in His own. It is this smaller circle to which Paul is limiting the covenant-group and the recipients of the promise. He is here speaking of the covenant, the promise, and the recipients of the promise in the narrower sense of the word. 

We need not take the ἐν χειρί in the literal sense. It can, and it probably does, mean: through the service of. 

διατάσσειν, translated to ordain in our version, is a technical term for the carrying out of laws and ordinances. 

ἑνὸς οὐκ ἔστιν. 

κατά with the genitive means against, in conflict with. 

The form is plural: the promises made on various occasions. 

μὴ γένοιτο: Far be it! 

νόμος: without the article, meaning a law, whichever it be, but from God, naturally. 

This interpretation of the make alive is more acceptable than the one which makes this word refer solely to the final end of the law—eternal life. According to the latter view the first and second clauses would mean about the same thing, and the second clause would simply be announcing a fact, without explaining it. According to our interpretation, however, the first clause explains why it is that the law cannot effect justification. And this agrees with what Paul says elsewhere in much the same sense (cf. Rom. 8:2, 2 Cor. 3:6, 17). 

In the writings of Paul, the ἡ γραφή usually refers to a specific passage of Scripture. Hence some wish to interpret this as a reference to Deut. 27:26 (cf. verse 10). Still, this time the expression, precisely because it does not refer to a specific passage, has a larger significance in this context. The meaning of shut up all things can be taken, however, as referring to such a passage as Deut. 27:26. 

τὰ πάντα has in view the people who transgress the law—in their whole way of life, that is, and despite all their efforts to escape. 

συγκλείω is a technical term for locking up, keeping in detention (however, compare also Luke 5:6). 

In other words, sin is the jail-keeper. 

Hence the words ἐκ πίστεως. 

The πίστιν is therefore to be taken as fides qua creditor but always in connection with the object of faith. 

Besides the συγκλείω of verse 22, φρουρέω is now also used. It has the force of to guard, not merely with an eye to protection (1 Peter 1:15) but also to escape (2 Cor. 11:32). Here it is apparently used to designate a sort of pre-arrest, which has a temporary though probably a lengthy (cf. the imperfect tense) character. 

εἰς 

τὴν μέλλουσαν points not merely to the future in an exclusively temporal sense, but also to something intended for revelation and held in readiness over against that time. 

The ἀποκαλυφθῆναι puts the emphasis on the undiscovered character of this before the revelation; φανερόω puts it on the revelation after the concealment. 

For references in this sense to classic texts, see Oepke, op. cit., p. 67. 

διὰ τῆς πίστεως: see the Exposition of verse 14. 

The words ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ can be thought of in connection with πίστεως, or be regarded as an independent adverbial element. Most interpreters choose for the former view because the combination of πίστις (πιστεύω) with ἐν can rarely be accepted with certainty in the New Testament. If we regard the in Christ Jesus as an appositive to the whole (so the translation being followed), then we are dealing here with the formulation so frequent in Paul’s writings, by which the oneness of Christ and His own is indicated (cf., e.g., E. P. Groenewald, ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΑ Gemeenschap by Paulus, Diss., Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam, 1932, p. 166 ff.). 

To put on Christ becomes the equivalent of λαμβάνειν πνεῦμα υἱοθεσίας (Rom. 8:14–17) and of “putting on the new man” (Col. 3:10, Eph. 4:24) upon whom is transferred what Christ has received (cf. Groenewald, op. cit., p. 173). 

οὐκ ἔνι (an intensified ἐν) equals οὐκ ἔνεστι. 

P46 א* A have only ἐστε Χριστοῦ: presumably in connection with verse 29. 

Hence γάρ. 

The words εἰ δέ serve not to introduce sheer hypothesis, but serve to suggest the certainty of what follows: siquidem. 

There is no essential difference between Χριστοῦ and ἐν Χριοτῷ It suggests still more clearly that the believers are the possession of Christ, are reckoned to His account. 

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