God Has Not Changed His Mind
GOD HAS NOT CHANGED HIS MIND
GALATIANS 3:15-18
Paul says there has only ever been one way, that of promise.
The apostle’s argument is brought to a triumphant conclusion in 3:14. Jesus Christ, by God’s appointment, has taken the place of sinners and, having borne their sentence of condemnation, has secured the promise of their acquittal in the new age, which the early church knew to have begun already (2 Corinthians 5:17). What was the great sign that the age of messianic blessing had arrived? See Acts 2:16ff.,33; 3:25-26; 5:31-32. The unanimous answer was the work of the Holy Spirit in the church, so fulfilling Ezekiel 36:26-27.
At this stage Paul faces another objection. To be sure (it was argued by his opponents) God gave Abraham a promise which included his “offspring” (3:16), but we know that this refers to the Jewish people exclusively by the historical fact that God some centuries later than Abraham’s time made a covenant by law with them; so (in a way) the Mosaic law supersedes the Abrahamic promise.
Paul’s stout “No” to this line of discussion resounds in our paragraph. We may pick out his various counter replies:
The allusion to Abraham’s “offspring” turns on the fact that the word is singular in number (in Genesis 12:7), and so must be taken in a collective sense (3:16). It is not a gathering of people (ie the Jews) who are in view, but the Messiah and his people, seen as a single entity (as in 1 Corinthians 12:12). What is being contradicted here is both the Jewish claim to be the true “sons of Abraham” and the view that Christ has innumerable “churches” that do not communicate with one another and cannot eat together.
The giving of the law at a later period does not invalidate the earlier promise made to Abraham (3:17), no more than a codicil added to a human will destroys the terms of the original testament once it has been ratified and sworn to (3:15). On a higher plane, God’s unconditional pledge to Abraham cannot be disturbed or canceled by any later and temporary plan, ie the law. That covenant stands and cannot be invalidated, and it is God’s promise to Abraham which the Gentile Christians have inherited, so bypassing the law’s requirements.
3:18 contains a hint of something Paul will elaborate at greater length in other places. Law and promise are not opposed to each other, but if it is claimed that the law makes the promise obsolete or that the promise has been canceled, then the element of God’s grace in both dispensations has been denied and the gospel has been subverted (clearly in Romans 9:6).