ANOTHER difficulty is now gone into and settled by the apostle. If law, instead of helping man to attain to righteousness, only brings out transgression, is it against the promises of God? “Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid. For if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by law” (ver. 21). Life was set before those who were under the law, as ver. 12 shows; but it must be attained to by human righteousness. But the law was weak through the flesh. Flesh is so utterly antagonistic to God that it will not walk in His ways. Its whole course is marked by self-will and sin. Hence the law could not give life. It could only condemn and slay law-breakers. Therefore righteousness is not on the principle of law for any. “But the scripture hath concluded (or shut up) all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe” (ver. 22). Jew and Gentile were alike sinners before God, the one breaking the known commands of God; the other giving loose rein to his passions and lusts, All are brought in guilty, the matter being gone into fully in Rom. 1-3 But now the promise is accomplished to all who believe. The Jew has no exclusive claims certainly, being in the same prison-house as the Gentiles, as it were, through guilt. Grace makes the promise good to all believers, whoever they may be; righteousness is imputed on the principle of faith in Jesus Christ.
Now before Christ came to accomplish this great work on behalf of man that all who believe in Him risen and glorified might be justified, believers, especially among the Jews were kept shut up in the school-house of the law. “But before faith came, we were kept under law, shut up unto the faith which should afterward be revealed” (ver. 23). They were waiting really until God brought in His better thing. Meanwhile they were kept under restraint and in separation from the heathen around them by the possession of the law. “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster” (vers. 24, 25). All this should appeal powerfully to the Galatians. Those who believed before their day had been under the hand of the legal pedagogue; Christianity having come they had been set free. And were Gentiles going after that which even Jews had left as suited only to an infantine condition? What utter misunderstanding of the mind of God! What serious surrender of the surpassingly excellent place that belongs to the Christian!
“For ye are all children (sons) of God by faith in Christ Jesus” (ver. 26). What an immensely superior place and relationship to that of an infant under law! Notice again in this place, the apostle's use of the pronouns: “We were kept under the law,” “the law was our schoolmaster.” He refers to himself and to his fellow Jewish saints, and does not include the brethren of the uncircumcision to whom he was writing. But when he speaks of privilege and blessing, these are as much for the believing Greek as for the Jew, hence he says “Ye.” We are called to have part with Christ, to enter into His relationship with the Father, the power of which is made good in our souls by the Holy Ghost.
Baptism is here brought in, being a sign of our having part thus with the dead and risen Christ. “For as many of you as have been baptized unto Christ have put on Christ” (ver. 27). It is not implied that some had not been baptized. No such idea must be inferred from this passage. In early days, when love was fresh and warm, and the commands of the Lord were more exactly obeyed, those who were used of God in the gospel of His Son baptized forthwith those who believed, or saw to the matter, that it was done by other approved men. J. N. D.'s reading may be preferred in this place, “for ye, as many as have been baptized unto Christ, etc.” The apostle means the whole body of those to whom he was writing. He shows them by the well-known ordinance of baptism, that they had part with Christ, as a rebuke to their hankering after a bygone state of things—the bondage of law.
In Christ all fleshly distinctions disappear. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (ver. 28). All these differences pertain, to the old creation. All are brought into equal blessing and privilege in the risen Christ. It is a question of our place and portion in Him. Let us be careful to confine the passage thus. Ere this, it has been used to set aside or slight the relationships of life; and it has been brought forward as justifying the woman in taking the man's place in the services of God. But this is to utterly pervert the plain words of the apostle. All the relationships of life are sanctioned by God in Christianity as previously, and are all regulated in the Epistles of the New Testament. And it must not be forgotten that the woman's place was ordered and settled before the fall, and has not been touched by it, save that bitterness and sorrow have come in, as solemn results.
Here, however, we are considering, not our relative places on earth, but our position now before God in Christ. We have His place, through grace. “And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, heirs according to the promise” (ver. 29). The apostle has been reasoning earlier that Christ is the true seed of Abraham. Here He brings us into the same place. We share it. All that is true of Him, as the risen and accepted Man is true of every one that believes. He has given us His standing and portion, and we are to inherit all things with Him in the coming day. Let us not lose sight of it, nor look to the things behind, as the Galatians to their hurt and sorrow.