Freedom’s Promise (Galatians 3:15-22)
It was a battle, a wrestling match, a test of wills. Every day, at exactly the same time, Margaret would go to the bathroom cabinet, open it, and take out a huge bottle of castor oil. Then she would head to the kitchen to get a tablespoon. At the sound of the drawer opening and the silverware rattling, Patches, her Yorkshire terrier, would run and hide—sometimes under the bed, at other times in the bathtub or behind Margaret’s recliner. Patches knew what was coming.
Someone had convinced Margaret that her beloved dog would have strong teeth, a beautiful coat, and a long life if she gave him a spoonful of castor oil every day. So, as an act of love every 24 hours, she cornered Patches, pinned him down, pried open his mouth, and—as he whimpered, squirmed, and fought her with all his strength—poured a tablespoon of castor oil down his little doggie throat. Neither Patches nor Margaret enjoyed their daily wrestling match.
Then one day, in the middle of their battle royal, with one sideways kick, Patches sent the dreaded bottle of castor oil flying across the kitchen floor. It was a momentary victory for the canine, as Margaret let him go so she could run to the pantry and grab a towel to clean up the mess.
When Margaret got back, she was utterly shocked. There was Patches licking up the spilled castor oil with a look of satisfaction only a dog can make. Margaret began to laugh uncontrollably. In one moment, it all made sense. Patches liked castor oil. He just hated being pinned down and having it poured down his throat. (Kevin G. Harney, Seismic Shifts, Zondervan, 2005, p. 23-24; www.PreachingToday.com)
Isn’t that the way it usually is? We want what’s best for ourselves and others. We just don’t like having it poured down our throats.
And yet, that’s the way many good people live. In an effort to help themselves and others, they force down a bunch of rules, because they’ve heard somewhere that it’s good for people.
Now, most of the time the rules ARE good for all of us. The Bible makes it very clear that obeying God’s law makes life go smoother (Proverbs 3:5-6). And not only that, God’s ordinances “are sweeter than honey,” according to Psalm 19:10. The principles in God’s Word are not only good for us, they are tasty; they are enjoyable, especially when we are able to live them out.
The question is: How can we learn to apply God’s Word without all the struggle? How can we learn to obey the Lord and enjoy it? How can we learn to be all that God wants us to be without feeling like its being forced upon us?
Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Galatians 3, Galatians 3, where the Bible shows us how.
Galatians 3:15 Brothers, let me take an example from everyday life. Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case. (NIV)
I.e., in the case of God’s promises. God’s promises cannot be annulled or amended. Once He makes a promise, it stands forever.
Galatians 3:16-18 The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,” a meaning one person, who is Christ. What I mean is this: The law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise. For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on a promise; but God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise. (NIV)
Our inheritance in Christ comes through a promise, not through a law. And therein lays the secret to living the life God wants us to live without all the struggle.
If we want to enjoy life as God intended it, then we must LIVE BY PROMISE, not by law. We must obey not in order to BE blessed, but in the realization that God has ALREADY blessed us. We must live our lives, not trying to earn God’s favor, but with the sure and certain knowledge that He already favors us unconditionally.
You see, God blesses the believer without conditions. There is absolutely nothing we need to do to earn his favor. So If we’re going to enjoy life, then we must simply depend on God’s unconditional promise.
That’s what Abraham did. In Genesis 15, God promised Abraham many descendants and a lot of land. But Abraham wanted a sure sign that God would keep His promise, so God gave Him one. He entered into a blood covenant with Abraham, the strongest kind of covenant there is.
Now, in Abraham’s day, when two people wanted to confirm an agreement they had made, they shed the blood of an animal. I.e., they would take a heifer, a goat, or a ram and cut it right down the middle. Then they would set the two halves of the animal opposite each other with a space in the middle. And there, they would walk together between the animal halves. In essence, they were saying to each other, “May the same thing happen to me if I fail to keep my part of the agreement.”
Well, God instructed Abraham to prepare a heifer, a goat AND a ram – not just one animal, but three. You see, God wanted Abraham to know that His promise was absolutely certain. The only problem is Abraham fell into a deep sleep.
Even so, Genesis 15 says, “[After dark], a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces.” God Himself was walking between the halves of the animals without Abraham, making this a unilateral agreement.
In other words, God agreed to bless Abraham without any conditions on Abraham’s part. There was nothing Abraham needed to do to receive God’s promised blessing. It was a unilateral, unconditional covenant between God and Himself to give Abraham a tremendous inheritance. All Abraham had to do was accept it by faith.
And that’s all we need to do, as well. Because of the shed blood of God’s own son, God blesses us without conditions. All we need to do is accept His promised blessings by faith. All we need to do is depend on His unconditional promise.
And when we do, we also depend on His unchanging promise, as well. God will never go back on His Word or alter it in any way. God will never set aside His promise, even if we fail to keep His law.
Look at verse 17 again: The law, introduced 430 years later – i.e., 430 years after God made His promise to Abraham – [That] law, introduced 430 years later does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise.
The law, with its conditional blessings, does not in any way cancel out or change the promise with its unconditional blessings. God will never go back on His Word!
Many years ago (1991), Sandy and I received in the mail a notice that we had won an expensive home entertainment center, an all-expense-paid-trip for two to Hawaii, or $5,000 cash. All we had to do was send a self-addressed, stamped envelope, and they would notify us which prize was ours.
Now, I shouldn’t have done it, but I did. I sent the self-addressed, stamped envelope.
A couple of weeks later, we got a nice brochure in the mail describing our “all-expense-paid-trip for two to Hawaii.” There was only one catch. For our “free” trip, all we had to do was send them enough money to pay for one round-trip air fare to Hawaii, plus $15 for processing.
So much for the “all-expense-paid-trip” to Hawaii. What they didn’t tell us was that WE would be paying the expenses. Their promised blessing had a catch, a condition added to it.
Not so with God’s promised blessings. There is no catch. There are no added conditions. God doesn’t promise us an all-expense-paid-trip to heaven and then turn around and say, “Oh, by the way, you have to do this and that before you can go.” No.
God blesses us up-front, before we do anything to earn those blessings! Ephesians 1 says, “God HAS blessed us (past tense. In other words, it is already done. God has ALREADY blessed us…) in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ” (Ephesians 1:3).
The moment we came to faith in Christ, God dumped the whole load of heavenly blessings upon us. Now, we live our lives not trying to earn those blessings, but in the joy and delight of having already received them, knowing that we could never lose them. There is no longer any pressure to perform. There is only the delight of living for Someone who accepts us and loves us unconditionally, and that will never change!
Nothing you do or say could ever make Him love you less. & Nothing you do or say could ever make Him love you more.
So if you want to enjoy life as God intended it, then live in the light of God’s unconditional love. Live by promise.
DON’T LIVE BY LAW. DON’T LIVE TRYING TO EARN GOD’S FAVOR. DON’T LIVE THINKING YOU HAVE TO “BE GOOD” IN ORDER TO BE BLESSED.
That’s the way of the Law. The law says, “Obey and be blessed; disobey and be cursed” (Deuteronomy 28). The problem is nobody could obey; therefore, nobody could be blessed.
So don’t depend on a law, which can only show us how bad we are.
Galatians 3:19 What, then, was the purpose of the law? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come.
The law was added to show us how badly we needed a Savior. Paul said in Romans 7:7, “I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, ‘Do not covet.’” The law, like a mirror, reveals the dirt, but we don’t wash our faces with it.
During grade school, John Corcoran never learned to read or write, but he caused a lot of trouble and somehow kept getting promoted to the next grade. He got to high school and mastered new skills. He says, “I started cheating by turning in other peoples’ papers; [I] dated the valedictorian and ran around with college prep kids. I couldn’t read words but I could read the system and I could read people.”
He received an athletic scholarship to Texas Western College and cheated his way through there as well, getting a degree in education, of all things. Somehow he got a job as a teacher and for the next 17 years taught in high school without being able to read or write. He says, “What I did was I created an oral and visual environment. There wasn’t the written word in there. I always had two or three teacher’s assistants in each class to do board work or read the bulletin.”
Finally he left teaching and became a real estate developer. Later in life he learned to read and write and became an advocate for better educational systems. (Charisse Yu, Retired Teacher Reveals He Was Illiterate Until Age 48, www.10News. com, posted 2-11-08; www.PreachingToday.com)
Those who live by the law are a lot like John Corcoran. They know they fall far short of the standard, so they “fake it in order to make it.” They learn to “read the system,” and they pretend to be something they know they are not. The sad thing is many of them live their entire lives trying to persuade themselves, others and God that they are good people, when deep down inside they know it isn’t true. The law has revealed their sin, and they don’t know what to do with it, so they pretend there is no sin in order to be accepted.
It’s a terrible way to live, but the good news is we don’t have to live that way! God loves us and has blessed us unconditionally. So we can freely admit our sins without fear of losing His blessing and acceptance.
Live by promise. Don’t live by law. Don’t depend on a law which can only show us how bad we are. And don’t depend on a law which did not come directly from God Himself.
Galatians 3:19 The law was put into effect through angels by a mediator. (NIV)
God gave the law to angels, who gave it to Moses, who gave it to the people. The Law did not come directly from God Himself. It came through mediators.
Esther Schmidt, of Coldwater, Ohio, talks about the time when her daughter-in-law noticed that her two-year-old daughter was ignoring her food. She said to her daughter, “Keri, why aren’t you eating?”
Keri replied, “I can’t eat; God told me not to.”
Her mother chided: “God wouldn’t tell you not to eat your supper.”
Keri looked up at the ceiling; then conceded, “Well, maybe it was Moses.” (Esther F. Schmidt, Coldwater, OH; “Lite Fare,” Christian Reader)
Somehow, the law coming through a stammering, stuttering prophet like Moses doesn’t carry the weight it would as if it came directly from God Himself. And besides, the presence of a mediator presupposes two parties.
Galatians 3:20 A mediator, however, does not represent just one party; but God is one. (NIV)
The law required a commitment on both sides to make it work – a commitment from God and a commitment from people. Well, we know that God never fails to keep His part of the deal, but what about us? If we’re honest, we know that we have already failed to keep our part of the deal; we know that we have already broken the law. Therefore, the law cannot make us good, not because the law is not good,
but because WE are not good.
So don’t depend on a law which only shows us how bad we are. Don’t depend on a law which came through a mediator. And certainly don’t depend on a law which is woefully inadequate.
Galatians 3:21 Is the law, therefore, opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not! For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. (NIV)
The law said, “Obey and live; disobey and die.” Well, since we have all disobeyed, we are all going to die. The law is therefore unable to give us life!
Galatians 3:22 But the Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe. (NIV)
The law puts us all on death row. It puts us all in prison, so that we might be driven to the promise of life in Christ.
When King David committed adultery with Bathsheba and murdered her husband to cover up his sin, the law condemned him to die. There were no sacrifices to cover willful sin under the law. There was only the death penalty. What could David do?
The only thing he could do was throw himself on the mercy and promise of God. The only thing he could do was depend on God’s promise when he had broken God’s law, and that’s what he did! He relied on God’s promise and found life.
You see, God gave us the law – not to give us a better life, but to point the way to the promise of life in Christ. Don’t depend on a law, which cannot do much except condemn us. Instead, depend on Christ, who alone can give us the life we truly want to live.
As a believer, depending on the law is like depending on a typewriter when you have a computer on your desk. Now, the computer uses the same basic keyboard as a typewriter, but the computer’s technology far transcends that of the typewriter. It can do so much more! You see, everything that the typewriter wanted to be when it grew up is now found in the computer (and more)!
So it is with the law. Everything the law wanted to be when it was young is now found in Christ. Christ fulfills the law and transcends it.
When the computer age arrived, we put away our manual typewriters, because we had something so much better! In the same way, we put away the law when Christ came, but in so doing we did not destroy the law. On the contrary, we fulfilled the law and more, because Christ could do so much more than the law could even think about doing. (Scot McKnight, The NIV Application Commentary: Galatians, Zondervan 1995, p. 184; www.PreachingToday.com)
Do you want to really enjoy life as God intended it? Then depend on Christ; don’t depend on a law. Live by promise, not by law. Don’t live your life trying to earn God’s blessings. Instead, live your life in gratitude for His blessings already given. It really is a better way to live.
