I’ve Grown Accustomed To His Grace Series

The Corinthians understood grace, and abused it much as the students in Dr. Sproul’s class. They said that, since they were under grace, they could do anything they wanted. NO MORE LAW! Paul rebukes them for abandoning the commandments of God, and living as bad as or worse than the pagans.

The Galatians, on the other hand, were those who believed in works salvation. Like the older brother in the Prodigal Son Parable, they resented grace as “getting in easy” and demanded obedience to the law.

So, when Paul asks the rhetorical question of what purpose the law serves, he answers it by saying that in terms of the history of redemption, it was to be the schoolmaster to drive people to Christ.

Before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith that would afterward be revealed. Therefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith.

Now the image of the schoolmaster might be a little misleading to us today. When we think of a schoolmaster we usually think of a Teacher. But in the ancient world you had two people, you had the teacher and you had what was called the pedagog, which is the word that Paul uses here. The job of the petagog was discipline of the students.

He was the one with the long stick, like a verger, and if someone was falling asleep during church, he would get rapped upside the head by the schoolmaster. He was a disciplinarian meant not so much to teach facts, but to show us how we are to live and act and speak. Picture Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady for those who have a long memory.

So when Paul says that the law is the schoolmaster, he is saying that it is the purpose of the law to show up our shortcomings and sins. And by showing us our sin, it shows us our need for a Savior.

It is probably no accident that two of the greatest leaders of the Reformation, Luther and Calvin, were both deeply trained students in secular law before they embarked on a career of theology.

They were students of the law, and they had a keen eye for the Old Testament law and they saw what the law was trying to show them; their own inadequacy. Luther especially was driven almost to insanity by realizing how short he came from the law.

In striving for holiness, in trying to live as holy a life as a monk that he could, he saw greater and greater every day his own unholiness, and how far short of the mark he was.

As we focus on Christ, and his holiness, it only shows us more and more our unworthiness. Paul the apostle says in one of his earliest letters, in 1 Corinthians 15:9, "I am the least of the apostles." Then in Eph. 3:8, written some years later, he said, "(I am) less than the least of all saints." And finally, at the end of his life, he wrote to St. Timothy, "...Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief," Paul had a progression, while becoming more holy in sanctification of feeling less and less holy as he looked to Christ.

We like to evaluate our performance by looking at those around us. Well I'm better than that guy, or I'm not as nasty as she is.