Look At Jesus Christ
LOOK AT JESUS CHRIST
GALATIANS 3:10-14
Are you still trying to keep the law as a way of putting yourself right with God?
A third, clinching argument is introduced as a final repudiation of the claim that the gospel of grace is deficient and needs the “extra” observance of the law. Again from Scripture, Paul proceeds to show that legalistic religion, so far from being a required extra, lies under the judgment of God himself. The only exception to this verdict of condemnation would be if a man could be found who perfectly kept the law. But this possibility is excluded by the facts of sinful human nature and society, and endorses the solemn verdict of Deuteronomy 27:26 (quoted in 3:10). A later part of this letter (5:2-4; 6:13) will add in a further consideration, that anyone who embarks on the road to God by lawkeeping and ritual observance is on a slippery slope which (like unregenerate human nature) leads only and inevitably downwards and away from God.
So right relationship with God can never be achieved by legalism which is virtually self-trust. So much is “evident” (3:11) negatively. Positively, the same conclusion is reached from Habakkuk 2:4 (quoted in 3:11) which declares that we receive acceptance with God and a righteousness “from God” (Philippians 3:9) on the exercise of faith. Not that faith in itself saves; rather faith is the human attitude of being receptive that takes what God in his grace holds out. And the end product is “life,” ie fellowship with God, made possible by our being accepted by him.
The law, in its original intention by God, served the same purpose, namely, to lead people to life (3:12, quoting Leviticus 18:15). The breakdown in this plan does not lie with the law (see Romans 7:10,12,14,16), but with fallen human nature which is not amenable to the law’s discipline and finds, in its perversity, obedience to be impossible. The result is clear: “the written code kills” (2 Corinthians 3:6), and puts human nature under the curse of a broken law.
Here is a knot which only God must untie, as Luther remarked. And the divine way of unraveling the tangle is classically set out in 3:13 (see also 2 Corinthians 5:21). The curse which rightfully belongs to a guilty race was voluntarily assumed by One who, although he stood outside it and was therefore blameless, chose to identify himself with our human misery and need—even to the point of being abandoned by God on the cross. Jesus Christ died a sinner’s death; he became a sinner by substitution, and so exhausted the claim of a broken law for those who, in faith-union with him, enter into the blessing that Abraham enjoyed in anticipation: favor with God (3:14).