Galatians 3:22 But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.
23 But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.
24 Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
25 But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.
It is no secret that we are all born as lost sinners. That became a fact when Adam decided to disobey God and plunged humanity into sin. Adam’s disobedience not only affected mankind, but it affected all of God’s creation. God did not force Adam to sin, but He knew he would sin. The finite mind of man struggles with such a truth. The argument goes something like this: ‘if God knew Adam would sin, then Adam did not have a chance.’ Others question why God put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil into the Garden of Eden. If He would not have put that tree in there, Adam would not have sinned.
The fact is that God made man in His own image. That means, in part, that man has the ability to reason. God did not make robots. We read much about AI these days.
Adam sinned and thus all of his descendants are born in sin. The hope of man is to be born again through the sacrifice of the “seed of the woman”. That Seed is Jesus Christ. Thus our text tells us that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. We talked before about the lies being told to most people by the majority of religions. As long as you try to ‘be good’ everything will be fine. Of course everybody has their own definition of what it means to be good. There will be thousands of people in hell because they ‘drank the kool-aid’ and they ignored what God was showing them in their conscience.
Notice again in verse 22 that what we need is the faith of Jesus Christ. We do not need some self-made faith. We need to abandon that and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ alone for salvation. That is why repentance is so essential to the new birth. Repentance is not turning from sin to God. Repentance is turning to God and the natural result of that is a turning from sin. God enables the repentant sinner to be able to turn from sin when he or she turns to God for salvation. The true child of God trusts in the Lord Jesus Christ alone for salvation. He or she puts no credit in their own abilities.
In verse 23 Paul continued to reveal the facts of salvation and God’s love and mercy. Every lost person is in a prison. They are bound by the sin nature and the result of that is the commission of sin. Man does not become a sinner because he sins. Man is a sinner and he sins because he has a sin nature.
Many people want to be better than they are. They hate certain sins they commit. However, they do not know what to do about it. They run to some shrink or some false teacher to try to find some help. They get nothing. They crank up the music or they get into some type of drugs to try to get some relief, but that only works for a short time.
Paul reminds the readers that we are kept under the law before faith comes. What we need is someone who will tell us about Jesus Christ. We need someone who will tell us Who Jesus Christ truly is and the blessing of turning to Him for salvation. The faith that we need is the faith of Jesus Christ. We need to stop trusting in ourselves and stop concocting some phoney plan that does not work, and we need to trust in the plan that does work and that is salvation by grace through faith.
In verse 24 we learn what the purpose of the law is. There are people who believe that in the Old Testament people were saved by works. They needed to keep the law. No one could keep the law. King David had a very close relationship with God, but David still sinned. He hurt himself and the entire nation due to his sin. He was forgiven, not because he did something, but rather because he confessed his sin to God and sought His forgiveness. God is gracious. He wants to forgive. He cannot forgive those who do not want to be forgiven. A person who wants to know God’s peace for the moment, but wants to get right back into sin again, is not looking for forgiveness. He is looking for a quick fix when the pressure builds too much for him. However, he would like to remain in his sin.
Cain did not want God’s forgiveness. He wanted God to accept his sin. He wanted to be made right while he was insisting on following a lie. The world of Noah’s time loved their wickedness. They just wanted to be left alone to indulge in their wickedness. Nobody has ever been saved by works.
The law was given to show us our need of a Saviour. We cannot keep the law. Rather than ignore the law and act as though there is no law, God wants us to cry out to Him and be forgiven and saved. The law is real and it is God’s righteous standard. Jesus Christ is there to create, in the repentant sinner, a new nature.
The law is there to bring us to Christ. When a person turns to Christ for salvation, he is justified by faith. Not his own faith, but the faith of Christ.
Verse 25 tells us that when a person is saved, that person is no longer under the schoolmaster of the law. The law is still there and it is still valid, but the law is not the driving factor for the saved person.
Romans 10:4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.
I am not writing these devotionals because I have to. I am writing them because God saved me and called me to be a pastor and His love in me motivates me to want to help others to know the truth. I do not read my Bible every day because I have to. I do so because I love the Lord and want to know Him better. The true child of God is motivated by the love of God which is in every true born again child of God.
There are so many ways a person can examine himself to see if he is truly in the faith or not. Most who think they are saved, are deceived. They have chosen to believe liars and if they read a “Bible” it is a perversion of God’s Word. Thus they cannot know the truth.
Don’t cheat yourself out of knowing the true God. He loves you and wants you to know Him. He has given us His Word. He has preserved His Word for every generation. His Word is Inspired by Him. If you stop and think about that a little bit, you will understand why all the perversions cannot be the Word of God. Humility is a key to knowing the true God. Are you truly free from the law?
Pastor Bartel