Exposing Our Needs

The Judaizers were caught up in the incidentals of the Law. Paul looked beyond those incidentals to the essentials. The covenant of grace, the promise of God, was greater than the law.

Third, in Galatians 3:21-26, Paul declares that the Law is not contrary to the Promise.

It is at this point the Apostle Paul injects a whole new dimension to his argument.

By this time, after all these weeks of preaching, you're probably beginning to wonder why in the world was there such a thing as the Law? After all, part of the rich heritage which we have in biblical revelation is God's revelation of His will to the Jewish people through His great lawgiver Moses. Was God just wasting His energy? Not for a moment.

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It is now that we begin to get some understanding as to why God gave the Law. God is not contradicting himself.

What Paul is saying is that the law does not contradict the promise. Rather, the law cooperates with the promise in fulfilling God's purposes.

Or another way of stating it is that the law and grace, instead of being contrary to one another, actually are complementary to each other.

Dr. Warren Wiersbe, to whom I am somewhat indebted for this basic outline, makes three emphatic statements that emerge from this text.

Statement one: The Law was not given to provide life.

Certainly the law of Moses did regulate the lives of the Jewish people. But it did not, could not, and never would provide spiritual life to the people. If life and righteousness could have come through the law, then Jesus Christ would never have had to die on the cross. It was the "worship of the law" that led Israel into the self-righteous religion of works which led, ultimately, to the rejection of Jesus Christ. Paul writes, "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" (Galatians 3:21).

Statement two: The Law was given to reveal sin.

Paul writes, "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" (Galatians 3:22). Law and grace cooperate, helping the lost sinner come to Jesus Christ. The law shows the sinner his guilt. Grace shows the sinner the forgiveness which he can have in Jesus Christ.

Do you get the picture? That's exactly what the law is. It is a mirror which shows us a picture of ourselves. We look into it and we see our ourselves. Our face is dirty. But if you look into a mirror and see that your face is dirty, you don't then wash your face with the mirror, do you? The cleansing comes through the blood of Jesus Christ on the cross.