Blessed or Cursed?
Galatians 3:6-14
Introduction
When the Philippian jailer asked what he must do to be saved, Paul concisely answered, “believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved” (Acts 16:31). Salvation is appropriated by faith; and that faith is personal, internal, and spiritual, having nothing to do with ceremonies, rituals, observances, good works, or externals of any sort.
Faith has always been the God-required respo9nse that brings salvation. After having reprimanded Peter in front of the church and showing the Galatian believers from their own experience that they were justified by faith and not by works of the law, Paul now defends that doctrine from Scripture.
The Judaizers doubtlessly quoted many passages from the Old Testament in support of their legalistic claims. And because their interpretations of those passages were based on long-accepted and revered rabbinical tradition, many believing Jews in Galatia and elsewhere found the claims persuasive.
In Galatians 3:6-14, Paul exposes those misinterpretations, showing that the Judaizers were heretical in their doctrine because they were mistaken in their understanding of Scripture. He first shows them what true biblical faith does and then shows them what works cannot do. So let’s take a look at that tonight and see what we can glean from the Word of God.
I. Positive Proof from the Old Testament (vv. 6-9)
• Paul’s positive proof that the Old Testament teaches salvation by faith rather than works revolves around Abraham, father of the Hebrew people and supreme patriarch of Judaism.
• The Judaizers doubtlessly used Abraham as certain proof that circumcision was necessary to please God and become acceptable to Him.
o In Gen. 12: 2-3 we hear the exact words of God to Abraham, “And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great;’ and so you shall be a blessing’ and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
o It was later in Gen. 17:10, that Abraham and his descendants were commanded to be circumcised as a sign of god’s covenant and a constant illustration of the need for spiritual cleansing from sin.
• Putting those two accounts together, the Judaizers argues, “Isn’t it obvious that if the rest of the world, that is, Gentiles, are to share in the promised blessings to Abraham, they must first take on the sign that marks God’s people, the Jews?
o “But that doesn’t follow,” Paul replied in effect.
o Quoting Gen. 15:6, he asked “Don’t you know that even so Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness?”
o They had forgotten that it was Abraham’s faith in God that made him righteous, not the circumcision to follow.
• The Judaizers, like most other Jews of that day, had completely reversed the relationship of circumcision and salvation.
o Circumcision was only a mark, not the means of salvation.
• Since the Fall, proud mankind has been naturally inclined to trust in himself, including his ability to please God by his own character and efforts.
o By counting on ceremonial nationalism, legalistic Jews imagined they were in the spiritual as well as racial heritage of Abraham, whereas they were really in the spiritual heritage of Cain, who, in rejecting God’s way, not only followed his own way but also Satan’s.
• It should be noted also that Abraham is not only the pattern for justification by faith but for obedient living by that faith as well.
o By faith Abraham followed God to an unknown land and by faith he was willing to give back to God the son who alone could be the means of fulfilling the divine promise.
• To reemphasis the absolute importance of what Paul is trying to say, he adds, “Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham.”
o Personifying God’s Word, the apostle goes on to say, “the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham – which is an exposition of Genesis 12:3: ‘All the nations shall be blessed in you.’”
• Those who are saved are saved because of their faith, and those who are lost are lost because of their unbelief.
II. Negative Proof from the Old Testament (vv. 10-12)
• The Judaizers also strongly advocated the necessity of keeping the Mosaic Law in order to be saved.
• But here again, simply the sequence of Old Testament events should have shown them the foolishness of that belief.
• Abraham not only was declared righteous about 14 years before he was commanded to be circumcised, but more than 500 years before God revealed His law to Moses at Sinai.
• Just as the Judaizers and their Galatian victims should have known that justification is by faith and not circumcision, they should also have known it is not by the Law.
• In his defense before King Agrippa in Caesarea, Paul states the scriptural foundation of all his preaching and teaching, “Having obtained help from God, I stand to this day testifying both to small and great, stating nothing but what the Prophets and Moses said was going to take place; that the Christ was to suffer, and that by reason of His resurrection from the dead He should be the fist to proclaim light both to the Jewish people and to the Gentiles” (Acts 26:22-23).
• The ancient rabbis were so absolutely convinced that salvation could only be earned through keeping the law that they tried to prove god has somehow revealed His law even to the patriarchs and other saints who lived before Moses and that those people found favor with Him because they kept His law.
• They basically didn’t like what the Scripture was saying, so they went about trying to reconstruct history to suit their ideals.
• The same is true still today; if people don’t like what the Scripture has to say about this or that, they just write a new translation or just bypass that section of scripture like it never existed.
• But Paul turns the tables on them here again.
• He says, “Don’t you realize, that as many as are the works of the Law are under a curse?”
• That question would have utterly perplexed the Judaizers, who would have responded strongly, “We know no such thing. How can you speak such foolishness?”
• Paul ask them in effect, have you forgotten the Deuteronomy the last book of the law, where it reads, “for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, to perform them’” (Deut. 27:26).
• The apostle’s emphasis in the reply was on the requirement to abide by all things.
• In other words, the fact that those who trust in the works of the law are obligated to keep all things in the law, without exception, places them inevitably under a curse, because no one had the ability to abide by everything the divine and perfect law of God demands.
• The legalistic Jews had a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge.
• Paul reminds his readers again of more teaching concerning God’s way of justification by quoting Habakkuk 2:4: “Now that no one is justified by the Law before God is evident; for, ‘The righteousness man shall live by faith.’”
• Pointing up that same truth in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus destroyed the very foundation of Legalistic Judaism.
• Because God’s standard is perfection, Jesus himself said, “You are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48).
• Jesus made it clear that God’s standard of perfection is inner virtue and perfection, not simply outward respectable behavior.
• We cannot be perfect in our outward behavior, but we can be perfect inwardly by having the Holy Spirit within us.
• Whether consulting the texts in Deuteronomy, Habakkuk, or Leviticus, the message is the same: perfections allows no exceptions, no failure of the smallest sort.
• To break the law in one place is to break it all.
• No wonder the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write, “by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight,” (Romans 3:20).
• A ship that is moored to a dock by a chain is only as secure as the weakest link in that chain. If a severe storm comes and causes even one link to break, the entire ship breaks away. So it is for those who try to come to God by their own perfection. They will be lost and forever wrecked.
III. Positive Hope in Jesus Christ (vv. 13-14)
• Turning again to the positive, Paul reminds the Jewish believers in Galatia of the fact that Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having been a curse for us.
• The curse of the law was the punishment demanded because no man could keep from violating its demands, but Christ took that curse upon Himself as a substitute for sinners and became a curse for us in His crucifixion, for it says in Duet 21:23, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.”
o In ancient Judaism a criminal who was executed would be tied to a post or a tree near the gate of the city, where his body would hang until sunset as a visible representation of rejection by God.
o Jesus did not become a curse because He was crucified by was crucified because He was cursed in taking the full sin of the world upon Himself.
• That truth must have been extremely hard for most Jews to accept, because they could not imagine the Messiah being cursed by God and having to hang on a tree.
o But for those who trust in Him the two words in v. 13, “for us” become the two most beautiful words in all of the Scripture.
• Jesus sacrifice was total and for all men, in order that in Christ Jesus the blessings of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
o All of this blessing is through faith.
o Justifying faith involves self-renunciation, putting away all confidence in one’s own merit and works.
o Justifying faith also involves reliance on and submission to the Lord.
o Justifying faith does not have to be strong faith; it only has to be true faith.
• When a person receives Christ as Lord and Savior, he receives the promised blessing and the promised Spirit, which Paul describes in Ephesians as being, “blessed…with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (Eph. 1:3).
Closing
We are redeemed in order to display God’s majesty before all the world. The very purpose of the church is to “stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy: and to praise “the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord forever.” It is my prayer as we close that we would never lean on our own strength and understanding, but that we would totally depend on the grace of the Lord in our lives.
