CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
Galatians 3:10. As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse.—This the Scripture itself declares. It utters an anathema against all who fail to fulfil every single ordinance contained in the book of the law (Deuteronomy 27:26).
Galatians 3:13. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse.—Bought us off from our bondage and from the curse under which all lie who trust to the law. The ransom price He paid was His own precious blood (1 Peter 1:18-19). Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.—Christ’s bearing the particular curse of hanging on the tree is a sample of the general curse which He representatively bore. Not that the Jews put to death malefactors by hanging, but after having put them to death otherwise, in order to brand them with peculiar ignominy, they hung the bodies on a tree, and such malefactors were accursed by the law. The Jews in contempt called Him the hanged one. Hung between heaven and earth as though unworthy of either.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Galatians 3:10-14
The Conflict between the Law and Faith.
I. The law condemns the least violation of its enactments.—“Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things … in the law to do them” (Galatians 3:10). The law is a unity; to violate a part is to violate the whole. It is like a perfect bell, every stroke resounds through every atom of the metal. If the bell is fractured in the least degree, the dissonance is evident in every part. Law is so all-pervasive and so perfect that to break one law is to be guilty of all. It is intolerant of all imperfection, and makes no provision to prevent or repair imperfection except by a rigid obedience to every statute. If obedience could be perfect from this moment onwards, the past disobedience would not be condoned; we should be still liable to its penalties, still be under the curse. To pledge ourselves to unsinning obedience is to pledge ourselves to the impossible. All our efforts to obey law—to conform our life to the law of righteousness, the purity and beauty of which we perceive even while in a state of lawless unnature—are futile. It is like running alongside a parallel pathway into which we are perpetually trying to turn ourselves, but all in vain. We cannot escape the condemnation of the disobedient.
II. The law cannot justify man.—“But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith” (Galatians 3:11). The law reveals our sin and our utter helplessness to rid ourselves of its misery. The law forces out the disease that is spreading under the skin. Such is its task. But healing it does not bring. “The law,” says Luther, “is that which lays down what man is to do; the gospel reveals whence man is to obtain help. When I place myself in the hands of the physician, one branch of art says where the disease lies, another what course to take to get quit of it. So here. The law discovers our disease, the gospel supplies the remedy.” We become aware in critical moments that our evil desires are more powerful than the prohibition of law, and are in truth first stirred up thoroughly by the prohibition. And this disposition of our heart is the decisive point for the question, Whether then the holy law, the holy, just, and good commandment makes us holy, just, and good men? The answer to this is, and remains a most decided, No.
III. The law ignores faith.—“The law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them” (Galatians 3:12). Its dictum is do, not believe; it takes no account of faith. To grant righteousness to faith is to deny it to legal works. The two ways have different starting-points, as they lead to opposite goals. From faith one marches through God’s righteousness to blessing; from works, through self-righteousness, to the curse. In short, the legalist tries to make God believe in him. Abraham and Paul are content to believe in God. Paul puts the calm, grand image of Father Abraham before us for our pattern, in contrast with the narrow, painful, bitter spirit of Jewish legalism, inwardly self-condemned.
IV. The law, the great barrier to man’s justification, is done away in Christ.—“Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law” (Galatians 3:13). Christ brought us out of the curse of the law by Himself voluntarily undergoing its penalty and submitting to the utmost indignity it imposed—hanging on a tree. It was this crowning scandal that shocked the Jewish pride and made the cross an offence to them. Once crucified, the name of Jesus would surely perish from the lips of men; no Jew would hereafter dare to profess faith in Him. This was God’s method of rescue; and all the terrors and penalties of law disappear, being absorbed in the cross of Christ. His redemption was offered to the Jew first. But not to the Jew alone, nor as a Jew. The time of release had come for all men. Abraham’s blessing, long withheld, was now to be imparted, as it had been promised, to all the tribes of the earth. In the removal of the legal curse, God comes near to men as in the ancient days. In Christ Jesus crucified, risen, reigning, a new world comes into being, which restores and surpasses the promise of the old.
V. Faith ends the conflict with law by imparting to man a superior spiritual force.—“That we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (Galatians 3:14). Faith is a spiritual faculty, and its exercise is made possible by the operation of the Holy Spirit. The law of works is superseded by the higher law of the Spirit. It is in the human soul that law has its widest sweep and accomplishes its highest results. The soul can never rise higher in its experience and efforts than the law by which it is governed. The law of sin has debased and limited the soul, and only as it is united by faith to Christ and responds to the lofty calls of His law will it break away from the corruption and restraints of the law of sin and rise to the highest perfection of holiness. “In every law,” says F. W. Robertson, “there is a spirit, in every maxim a principle; and the law and the maxim are laid down for the sake of conserving the spirit and the principle which they enshrine. Man is severed from submission to the maxim because he has got allegiance to the principle. He is free from the rule and the law because he has got the spirit written in his heart.”
Lessons.—
1. It is hopeless to attain righteousness by law.
2. Faith in Christ is the only and universal way of obedience.
3. The law is disarmed by obeying it.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Galatians 3:10-12. The Inexorability of Law.
I. The law renders no help in fulfilling its requirements, but curses the incompetent (Galatians 3:10).
II. The law, though strictly observed, is powerless to justify (Galatians 3:11).
III. The law does not admit of faith; it offers life only to the doer (Galatians 3:12),
Galatians 3:11. Man is justified by Faith alone.—One day wishing to obtain an indulgence promised by the Pope to all who should ascend on their knees what is called Pilate’s Staircase, the poor Saxon monk, Luther, was humbly creeping up those steps when he thought he heard a voice of thunder crying from the bottom of his heart, as at Wittenberg and Bologna, “The just shall live by faith!” He rises in amazement, he shudders at himself, he is ashamed of seeing to what a depth superstition had plunged him. He flies from the scene of his folly. It was in these words God then said, “Let there be light, and there was light.”—D’Aubigné.
Galatians 3:12. The Difference between the Law and the Gospel.
I. The law promises life to him who performs perfect obedience, and that for his works. The gospel promises life to him who doeth nothing in the cause of his salvation, but only believes in Christ; and it promises salvation to him who believeth, yet not for his faith or for any works else, but for the merit of Christ. The law then requires doing to salvation, and the gospel believing and nothing else.
II. The law does not teach true repentance, neither is it any cause of it, but only an occasion. The gospel only prescribes repentance and the practice of it, yet only as it is a fruit of our faith and as it is the way to salvation.
III. The law requires faith in God, which is to put our affiance in Him. The gospel requires faith in Christ, the Mediator God-man; and this faith the law never knew.
IV. The promises of the gospel are not made to the work, but to the worker; and to the worker not for his work, but for Christ’s sake, according to his work.
V. The gospel considers not faith as a virtue or work, but as an instrument, or hand, to apprehend Christ. Faith does not cause or procure our salvation, but as the beggar’s hand it receives it, being wholly wrought and given of God.
VI. This distinction of the law and the gospel must be observed carefully, as the two have been often confounded. It has been erroneously stated that the law of Moses, written in tables of stone, is the law; the same law of Moses, written in the hearts of men by the Holy Ghost, is the gospel. But I say again that the law written in our hearts is still the law of Moses. This oversight in mistaking the distinction of the law and the gospel is and has been the ruin of the gospel.—Perkins.
Galatians 3:13-14. Redemption and its Issues.
I. Redemption was effected by Christ enduring the penalty of violated law (Galatians 3:13).
II. Redemption by Christ has brought blessing to all nations.—“That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ” (Galatians 3:14).
III. The spiritual results of redemption are realised only by faith.—“That we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (Galatians 3:14).
Galatians 3:13. The Curse and Sentence of the Law lies on record against sinners, it puts in its demand against our acquittance, and lays an obligation upon us unto punishment. God will not reject nor destroy His law. Unless it be answered, there is no acceptance for sinners. Christ answered the curse of the law when He was made a curse for us, and so became, as to the obedience of the law, the end of the law for righteousness to them that believe. And as to the penalty that it threatened, He bore it, removed it, and took it out of the way. So hath He made way for forgiveness through the very heart of the law; it hath not one word to speak against the pardon of those who believe.—John Owen.