Reading: Galatians 3-4, Psalm 6

Paul continues his letter to the Galatians by carefully defining why the gospel, the good news of repentance unto life in the name of Jesus, is not dependent on doing the right things. In the letters to the Corinthians he carefully defined that the gospel is not for the purpose of doing whatever you want. But the Galatians have the opposite problem. They are being instructed that they must do a whole bunch of ritual practices. Note that this is not an argument against acting our of good character. In fact, Paul will go out of his way in tomorrow’s reading to delineate between good acts and bad ones. What he is addressing here is ritualistic obedience in order to gain the favor of God, which Paul says is worse than useless.

To illustrate this, Paul recapitulates the entire story of God’s covenant relationship with the people of Israel. He goes back to Abraham and Moses, the two big figures in the earliest stories of the Israelite people. He makes a comparison. The law given through Moses as intermediary contains a whole bunch of rituals, symbols, and practices for separating the common from the holy. If you remember the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, they are long studies in keeping this distinction clear. Paul compares this with the two sons of Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael. With them, the only distinction is the favor of God placed on them. No actions. No ritual. No observance of activity. Just divine favor. Paul says that since the promise to Abraham precedes the law of Moses, it is not submitted or changed by it. The promise to bless all the families of the earth is not limited to the need to distinguish between the common and the holy. Then he brings in Jesus as the heir of Abraham who fulfilled this promise.

What then, was the purpose of the law of Moses? Paul deals with that too. The law brought awareness of sin. It made the people of Israel aware of their need for something greater than the law. C.S. Lewis once observed that when we desire something, it is pretty good evidence that such a thing exists. For instance, the desire to fly is pretty good evidence that flying is a thing. This of course does not mean we are able to fly by our own effort. We need something greater than ourselves for that. This is the purpose of the law as well. It reveals that there is such a thing as righteousness, and gives form to that which we desire. A second reason for the law Paul gives using the metaphor of a child under the charge of a nurse or teacher. The child is under the authority of the teacher in order to learn, but when they come of age they are no longer under their authority. Of course, coming of age implies that they have learned the appropriate lessons, which is why the freedom from the law is not freedom from moral actions, many of which are described in the law. It is freedom from the ritual practices that force the people of God to make distinctions that are no longer important, because the lesson they were to teach is complete.

Of course, no one has actually learned all those lessons to their completion. No human was capable of it, so God did it for us. The incarnation and life of Jesus is the completion of the purpose of the law. This is Paul’s good news. Human beings, unable to attain to the knowledge of good and bad on our own, have been given one whom we can put on, as Paul says it, such that the distinctions no longer need by made. There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. There is no need to observe those things that created distinction, because there is one who has attained to the full measure of freedom. We need but submit to and follow him, and we are all adopted into the family of God. The divisions that come from humans attempting to define our own good and bad standards can fade away.