Galatians chapter three, verse
23. But before faith came, we were
kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards
be revealed. Wherefore, the law was our schoolmaster
to bring us unto Christ that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith has come,
we are no longer under a schoolmaster, for ye are all the children of
God by faith in Christ Jesus. Amen. May the Lord bless this
reading to us. Paul's mention here of faith is referring, I think, to the
coming of the Lord Jesus, the coming of the Messiah. And when
he speaks in this verse 23, but before faith came, I think that
we should consider that as the person of Christ, the object
of a believer's faith, the one in whom our faith is vested and
directed. So he's speaking here about the
time of the coming of Christ. And our faith looks to Christ,
and our faith trusts in Christ. So that faith's coming is a reference
to Christ's coming. and his accomplishments on the
cross. And if this is the right way
to think about this, then it's interesting, I think, to realise
that the apostles saw the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ as being
a great watershed in history and That I think is significant. It's not always easy to understand
that we're going through a momentous time. It's always much easier
to understand something significant upon reflection or in retrospect,
looking back on it. But to actually understand, as
Paul did, that the coming of Christ was so significant, I
think is interesting. He saw that not only the children
of Israel, not only the Jews, but the world was come to the
end of one era and the beginning of another. He knew that Christ
was the Messiah and he understood that the Messiah having come,
nothing would ever be the same again. Now, when we look back
over time, as I say, it's pretty obvious that this in fact happened. For example, we measure our calendar
today B.C. and A.D. So we look to the time
of the coming of Christ as the very basis of our understanding
of time and the measurement of years. We know about Jerusalem's
destruction by the Romans. We know about the end of the
Jewish nation and the Jewish state and, to a large extent,
the Jewish religion. We understand the changes that
took place following the death of the Lord Jesus, as the apostles
went out preaching, carrying the gospel to the Gentile nations,
or as we've been thinking in the studies that we're doing
in Isaiah, the isles. Because again, this was a recognised
prophetic time. And the apostle Paul grasped
this. He saw that the gospel was going
to spread throughout the earth. And for millennia, the Jews had
held themselves aloof and separate from other nations. They considered
themselves God's chosen people, endowed with a religion that
was exclusive to them, enjoying a unique position as possessors
of the revelation of God. They had, after all, as Paul
says to the Romans, they had committed to them the oracles
of God. No other nation could say that.
No other nation on the face of the earth could say that they
possessed the oracles of God. That is the law of Moses, the
writing of the prophets. the ceremonial law, the pictures
and types of sacrifice and the tabernacle and all of the other
ways in which God revealed himself. The prophecies of the Messiah
were largely unique to the Jews. The prophecies concerning the
future gospel church and the spread of the Gospel amongst
the Gentiles. I'm not suggesting that only
Jews understood the Gospel in the Old Testament age, but it
was the Jewish nation that largely maintained the testimony down
through the centuries. They had all the books of the
Old Testament. So make no mistake, the children
of Israel and the Jewish people were a blessed people. And yet
it seems clear that Paul realised that all this had come to an
end. Now no doubt there was an element
of special revelation in that, but nevertheless he understood
in the moment that by the coming of Christ everything had changed. These Judaizers who were trying
to bring the Galatians under the law of Moses were yearning
back to a time that was now gone, or at least it was in the passing. That dispensation had run its
course and now it was at an end. And now that the Messiah had
come, now that the gospel was being preached and faith in Christ
was the church's message to the world and the call to which men
and women were being summoned, the role that the law had previously
served for the Jews was ended. and the new revelation of faith
had begun. Now this is not to say that there
had not been faith before, nor indeed that in the future the
law was now altogether redundant. There was faith in the Old Testament
and a people of faith, as we've been thinking about in Isaiah,
who looked forward to the coming of Christ and who trusted in
Christ for salvation. And so too, there continues a
judging and a convicting and a condemning work for the law. But there had been a change.
The gospel now being preached, faith now revealed and believed
in by the Gentiles with a new vigor and a new expansiveness
had brought about an alteration. And this is what Paul is stressing. The message of justification
by the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ that he had declared
to the Galatians was not to convert men and women into Jews or make
them proselytes of Abraham or Moses. It was to transform them,
heart and life, into new creatures by bringing them into union with
God through the Lord Jesus Christ. And I think that this description
of the role that the law used to play is interesting. Paul says, it was a schoolmaster. And I think the sense is that
it was a disciplinarian. It imposed order and restraint,
largely by fear. And it ruled strictly and it
regulated behaviour by punishment and the threat of punishment. It's maybe useful for us to notice
in this verse 24 where he says about the law being the schoolmaster.
He says, wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us
unto Christ. But if you look there, the words
to bring us are in italics. And that means that they're not
in the original text. That to bring us has been slotted
in there, hopefully to make the context a little bit more understandable. But that's fine, that's okay. The words serve a purpose if
we understand them as meaning until the time of Christ. But
we shouldn't think that the law carries us to Christ or that
the law conducts us to Christ or the law enables us to come
to Christ. This is the distinction between
the law and the gospel. The gospel brings us to salvation. More accurately still, it is
God himself by his spirit applying the gospel according to his providential
workings that brings a soul first under a sense of need and then
shows us Christ as the answer for that need. And faith having
come, or again, the object of faith having come. And the gospel
of God concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, which is salvation by
grace, the law no longer required to perform the task that it once
did for the Jewish people. And what these carnal Jews once
saw as the glory of their faith, the law of Moses, Spiritual Jews
always understood it merely to be a pointer to a better hope
and a better righteousness in the Messiah. But now that law
has been confined to its quarters. Christ has come. The services
of the schoolmaster are no longer required. And once again, I want
to just point out that when Paul says we're justified by faith,
it's best for us to remember that it's not our act of faith
that justifies us. We're justified by the blood
and the righteousness of Christ. But here's the thing that we
take thought of, we take comfort from. We experience the blessings
of our justification through believing. We deepen our appreciation
of the Lord and his work by faith. As our faith grows and strengthens,
as our understanding of the things of the Lord grow and strengthen,
so we get more blessing and benefit from that. And I hope that we
have understood in our references to the everlasting covenant that
we've been making over the past few weeks that this blessing
of salvation was won for us by the Lord Jesus Christ under the
terms of that covenant, under the terms of that agreement,
so that it is now our possession. We've been thinking about God's
faithfulness regarding our salvation for our justification and our
standing before God is not dependent on our faith. In fact, it's pretty
amazing what the Apostle Paul writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy
2, verse 13. He says, if we believe not, yet
he abideth faithful, he cannot deny himself. And I think that
is a great blessing and encouragement to the Lord's people because
there's not one of us here, there's not a true believer who does
not, from time to time, struggle with their faith, struggle with
believing, struggle with trusting the Lord. But the Lord doesn't
change his view of us because we fail to be faithful to Him. When the Lord promises to save
His people, He doesn't change His promise upon the vagaries
of our feelings or our failures or even our lack of faith. So
let me just end by making a few comments about verse 26 and then
we're done. Verse 26 says, for ye are all
the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For ye are all
the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. And I think
that here, again in the context of what the apostle is writing,
it reinforces this objective position that we are in, in God's
sight. Let me put it another way, the
unalterable status that we are as the people of God and the
church of Jesus Christ. When we trust the Lord Jesus
Christ for salvation, we learn about all of the blessings that
God has given us and we learn that we are the children of God,
we are his family. We're adopted into the family
of God and we are heirs of all the benefits and blessings of
God's promises. The Father's everlasting love
for his Son is the same everlasting love that he has for you and
me. And all the glory that belongs
to Christ belongs to us as well because we are united to him
and as children we are heirs with him. And this identification of the
Galatian believers as children of God, it must have been, well
it ought to have been, a great encouragement to them. Here were
a group of Judaizers telling them that they needed to get
themselves back under Moses' law for obedience, for righteousness,
for confirmation of their standing with God. and for a felt awareness
of his pleasure upon them. And Paul says, no, you are children,
you are fully recognised, you are full beneficiaries, you are
fully entitled to all the blessings that the father has given his
son in whom he is well pleased. The Judaizers were making the
Galatians feel as if they were inadequate, as if they were second
class Christians. And Paul tells them that they're
not only first class, but they're top of the class when all our
righteousness is derived from Christ and all our confidence
is in Him. Our faith does not make us children
of God. but our faith draws down all
the blessings of our divine adoption into the family of God, together
with all the blessings of our union with Christ. And that's
why Paul's preaching, that's why gospel preaching is so useful
to us and important for us. It is as Christ is declared and
revealed and lifted up and unfolded and unpacked and discovered and
disclosed and understood, that our faith deepens and grows and
gleans and obtains more and more of God's rich gifts to us in
His Son. Hearing about Christ is not a
chore for the people of God. It is a pleasure and it is an
encouragement and it is a comfort. Theology and doctrine is not
hard work when we see it as the key to the door of the rich treasure
house of God's mercy and grace. Now some people, some preachers
today would rather be like these Judaizers and crush their hearers
under the heavy burden of the law. Weigh them down with a continuing
sense of unworthiness and failure. Well let's forget that. That's
the devil's job and he's more accomplished at it anyway. Preaching
the Gospel is preaching what Christ has accomplished for us
and freely given to us. Christ is the ground of our acceptance,
the source of our happiness and the bringer of all eternal life,
joy and peace. Believers don't need to be told
of all the ways that we've fallen short this week. We need to be
told of all the ways Christ has delivered us from condemnation
and supplied all the grace that we need to inspire our worship
and motivate our praise. So let's hear it once again from
the lips of the Apostle Paul. Brothers and sisters, ye are
all the children of God by faith in Jesus Christ. Amen.