The Purpose Of The Law
THE PURPOSE OF THE LAW
GALATIANS 3:19-22
The law shows us we are failures and so prepares us to accept God’s offer in Christ.
This discussion over the promise and the law is bound to raise an obvious query: Why then was the law given (3:19). If, as Paul says, the promise stands and all that God purposed for Abraham and his descendants has been fulfilled in the church, why was the law given? And if you agree that God gave it, did he make a mistake in so doing?
Paul’s theological discussion so far has apparently driven him to the point of denying any value to the honored law, and the Judaizers who are lurking in the shadows are ready to pounce on him for the kill. Now is their chance to discredit him to the Galatians as a false teacher!
But Paul is ready with an answer. Three reasons for the law’s importance are supplied, and they are all intended to show that it had a place in the divine scheme, but that now its day is over.
First, the law came to give the definition of legal offense to human wrongdoing (3:19). The law sets up a landmark between right and wrong in God’s eyes: when a person deliberately passes beyond the marker, he transgresses, ie he is shown to be an offender against God’s law, and so his action takes on the character of sin. Read in Romans 7:7ff. how Paul takes this description of the law’s function a step further.
Secondly, the historical circumstances of the giving of the law to Israel proved its inferiority. Various intermediaries were needed as the law was given from God via Moses via the angels to the people (3:19b-20; see also Acts 7:38,53; Hebrews 2:2, based on Deuteronomy 33:2), whereas the promise to Abraham was directly from God himself.
Thirdly, the success of the law as an agent of justification is impaired by human nature which is sinful in itself (as Martin Luther expressed it: “turned in upon itself” and turned away from obedience to God’s will) and so impotent. Law would be enough to save, if only human beings could keep it. But that’s precisely the trouble (Romans 8:2-4; 2 Corinthians 3:6-11). No wonder then that “Scripture (probably Deuteronomy 27:26, mentioned in 3:10) has declared the whole world to be prisoners in subjection to sin” (3:22, NEB). Law, in these circumstances, is like a railway ticket to a soldier in a prisoner-of-war camp. He would use it if he could. The help we need must come from outside—from God.