No. 29. >> The question the Galatians ask of Paul is the one we want to ask, as well. Why then the law? What is the relationship between the law and the promise? Why does Paul speak of the law as an imprisoning jailer. >>DR. ARTHUR A. JUST, JR.: David, you're right. I mean, at this point after talking about you know how the law comes, we're wondering. Why then is there a law? What's the point of view the law. And Paul, you can see being a good catechist, a good teacher is just following along with his congregation here in writing this letter knowing that this is the question that's on the table. Why then the law? And that's what he asks in Verse 19. Why then the law? And here you have perhaps one of the most, oh, convoluted interpretations of Paul that you will see. And it's all based on one simple little word. And what Paul is doing here is telling us about the genesis of the law. Why the law comes. And he says very simply: It was added -- and here is how you translate this: It was added either on account of transgressions or in order to revoke transgressions or whatever. Let me just look at the ESV here. It says: It was added because of transgressions. A very simple translation. Now, that word is a very difficult word. And I want to suggest to you that there are four ways of understanding Verse 19 here and this particular statement. And I want to tell you what the various interpretations have been. And then I want to highlight the one that I think it is. First of all, this has been translated that the law was added in order to produce or provoke transgressions. In other words, the transgressions were there. But the law actually produced them by showing people their sin. Now, to a certain extent we can go with that. But I think that's probably not the best way to understand it. A second way of understanding it is this: That the law was added to identify humanity's sinfulness as conscious transgression. Now, those of us that learned the three uses of law, we would say that this is where the law is a mirror. That when the law comes, we recognize our transgressions. It doesn't produce them. But it shows us our sin. And I think that's very, very true. Also, I think the law could be said was added to restrain transgressions. To pose a restraint to human sin. Again, that's one of the three uses of law. The first use as a curb to keep people from sing. So here is the law. And whoa. You look at the law and say: If that's what the law means, then I'm not going to do that so I'm not going to continue to sin. It's going to provide a restraint for me from sinning. The fourth interpretation is to provide a remedy for transgressions. Now, this is very wrong. This is the opponents' understanding of the law. That yeah, the promise was there. The promise was great. But it was not enough. So God had to produce the law as a remedy for transgressions. And now the law was going to be a means of salvation. Now, there you can see that what Paul's opponents are doing with promise and law is exactly the same thing that they are doing now with the Gospel and the law. Promise and Gospel is the same. And the law is something that's added later on, 430 years later, to restrain people, to show them their sins. And the fifth one, let me give you that one now. Because of the transgressions of Israel, the golden calf. That's the historical context. That's why it was given. It wasn't given to provoke transgressions. To kind of produce them. And it wasn't given as a remedy as transgressions. It was given as we would say in it's first and second uses to provide for us a restraint of sin and to show us our sin. That's why the law was added. And it was added until a certain point. Look at Verse 19 again. Until which time the seed came to whom it was promised. So there Paul is going back and say: Yeah, the law was a parentheses: Until the Christ came. And he tells us how the law was delivered. Now, if you might remember in the first chapter: Even an angel from heaven should preach to you a Gospel contrary to which you received, let him be accursed. Well, here's that reference to angel. And as I said, this is not found in Exodus. It's not found in the Old Testament. This is an intertestamental tradition. But it's one that everybody accepted. And that is that it was put into place, that is the law, the law was established, so to speak, instituted by angels in the hand of a mediator. And that's Moses. So it's the angels who delivered the law to Moses. And instituted it. Now, that shows you. And Paul makes reference to this. And this is why for law -- for Paul the law is good. The law comes from God. It comes from angels. And it's given to Moses, the mediator. But what the teachers are saying, the opponents of Paul are saying is that because it was delivered by angels to Moses, now we as messengers of God, as angels, we are now showing that that same law given to Moses is being given to you, Galatians, as a means of salvation. Now, this is very important to make this distinction. And Paul then goes to Verse 20 here to try to help them to see that this is a difference of understanding of the law. This is one of the hardest verses to interpret in Galatians. In fact, one commentator said that there are 100 different interpretations for Verse 20. I don't think it's that hard. But he says: The mediator is not one. Okay. The mediator is not one. Namely, Moses is not one. He is a mediator. But God is one. And I think what he's saying here, Paul is, is that when you have a mediator like Moses, and angels who are also in a sense serving as mediators, that this is not expressing the oneness of God. That this is something that God must do on account of transgressions. Because the golden calf and the children of Israel needed a restraint to sin and something to show them their sin. God is one. His promise is one. And when he speaks directly to Abraham about the promise, he doesn't use angels. He doesn't use a mediator. He doesn't have somebody else. He goes directly to Abraham. And that's because Abraham and his seed, Christ, is one. And I think you can see here that the promise is singular. The laws are many. Now, that's an important point when he goes on in Verse 21. When he says: Therefore, the law is not according -- no. He says it in a question: Therefore is the law according to the promises of God? Let it not be so. See, the law and the promises do not belong together. They are different things. And he says: Why? Now, this is what I was saying earlier. This is why the law is not opposed to the promise because they are doing different things. If a law was given that was able to give life -- now I think that is a synonym for justification. Making right what has gone wrong. If there was a law that could give life -- that is make right what has gone wrong -- therefore, out of the law righteousness would be. Righteousness would be out of the law. But it's not. It's not. Because making right what has gone wrong, I think that's why you can make those as synonyms because they are in the same sentence. The mosaic law never was God's intention, God's gift, if you want to use it that way, God's grace for making right what has gone wrong. That is not what it's about. The law as we're going to see was an imprisoning jailer. It was something that kind of kept people from sinning and going away from the covenant. A way of keeping them kind of on the track. Here is kind of third use of the law in a way. But it was never the means by which God intended to save people. And so in Verse 22 he says: But the Scriptures -- and this is an important statement. But the Scripture I should say it singular. But the Scripture in prison shut up everything, all things, all things, under the power of not law but sin. Now that's a little change here. And notice the power of. Sin is a cosmic power, too. Just like the law is. Now, why did the Scriptures shut up all things under the power of sin? And this is interesting. In order that the promise would be given by the faith of Jesus Christ to those who were believing. What the law does is it shows us our sin. And when -- and here I think the Scripture is in a sense simply a synonym for the law. The Scripture, which contains the law, shows us our sin and shuts us up in a jail. So that through the law, we see our sin and in seeing our sin, we see that we are incapable of making ourselves right with God. And that is done so that we can see that it's all about -- look at the language here -- in order that the promise would be given first by Christ's faithfulness. And here he says Christ Jesus' faithfulness unto death. Even death on a cross. To those who believe in Christ's death. Now, there are the two alternatives. Law is sin. And here he says it's shut up, imprisoned. Or Christ's faith and our faith in Christ. Which is the way of salvation? Now, note that language of should get up in prison. Should get up in prison. Because now in 23, 24 and 25, he's going to explain what he means by that. And I think this is one of the most really kind of beautifully crafted sections of Paul's epistle. And we're going to make a little break here. Not all the translations do this. But we're going to make a little break after 25. Because I think going into 26 I think we have a whole new section. Now, listen to the language here. Listen to how he's now talking about the era of the law, which is the Old Testament. Even though he doesn't use that language here. But he's going to contrast it to the era of faith. He says: Now, before faith came -- before the era of faith, Christ's faith and our faith in Christ -- we were imprisoned. You know, we were held captive under the power of the law. That's the life Paul lived as a Pharisee before the cross. That's his nomistic life in which he lived according to the mosaic Sinaitic covenant. That's what happened before Christ came. And he says very clearly: Imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. Now, look at that. Imprisoned until the faith that was about to come would be Apocalyptically revealed. Now there faith is invasively revealed. Just like Christ is invasively revealed in the incarnation. Here it's faith. And I think that the language here of faith is simply a metaphor for Jesus. When faith comes, that means Jesus comes. When he comes, everything changes. The whole cosmos changes. The way in which we look at reality changes. And of course that finds it's culmination in the cross as Paul has already said. Where Christ is cursed because he is under the power of the law there. And the law kills him. Now, look at Verse 24. You have first the result clause and then a purpose clause. So Verse 23: Before faith came we were enslaved, held captive under the power of the law. Imprisoned until the faith that was about to be revealed, Apocalyptically revealed came. So that, with the result that, the law has become our imprisoning jailer. And here it's until Christ came. Now, that's the point of the law. And the pedagogus, the pedagogue, pedagogy, the word for education, that's the word that's being used here. And interestingly in the ancient world, a pedagogue, you know, you say I'm a Father and I have sons and I gave them over to a pedagogue, he's basically like a jailer so them. They are considered slaves. Paul is going to say that later on. You know, they are not a son. They are a slave. Until it comes time for the inheritance. And that's what a pedagogue does. He kind of -- he makes their life almost as if they are in jail. And that's what the law did. It put us in jail until Christ came. It was an imprisoning jailer. So that, in order that, we might be declared righteous by faith. Christ's faith and our faith? Christ. Because that's the era of faith. So there you can see the law is not a friend. The law is a power that enslaves us, puts us in jail. And we're freed when Christ, the one who is the faithful one and who we now believe in declares us righteous, justifies us if you want to make that statement or declares what was wrong now right. And then Verse 25, this is a conclusion. But again, it uses that same kind of sense of the coming of faith. But now that faith has come. I think that's the way. Yeah. But now that faith has come, we are no long under the power of -- and look at that hupah, same word, under the power of the enslaving jailer, the imprisoning jailer. That is the law. Because now we're in the era of faith, that is now that the Gospel has come because Christ has come, that which we believe, now that that has come, we are in a position now to see that the law is not enslaving us because we have been freed in Christ. Now, I think you can see that this is a very complicated argument. And yet at the same time it's very, very simple. Is it Christ? Or is it the law? Is salvation through Christ alone? Or is salvation through Christ and works of the law? If works of the law imprison us, then why? Why would we want to be back in prison? Now, this is going to be a key point to Paul's argument in the future. He is saying to the Galatians: Before you came to faith, when you were unbelievers, you were imprisoned under the power of sin. Why would you want to replace the enslavement of sin with another enslavement? To be enslaved under the law? That's the way it was for me before Christ came, before I was converted to Christ at Damascus. Why would you go back to that? I preach to you the freedom of the Gospel says Paul to the Galatians. I have set you free in Christ. Christ has freed you by his becoming a curse on behalf of you. So why would you want to go back to your former lifestyle? Why would you like to become what is the equivalent of a pagan? It's a different jail. But it's still a jail. Now, this is going to be the powerful argument that's going to be building from this point on. And I think you can see that Paul makes it very clear that with the coming of faith, with the coming of Christ, this now era of faith, we're now no longer living under the power of the law. And really we're no longer living under the power of sin. Because through Christ who took our sin upon himself and was killed by the law, cursed by the law on the cross, we now live as members of Christ in the era of faith.