Our Faith Is Not Based On The Law That Can't Save - Galatians 3:19-22

I want you to imagine a man locked in a prison cell. The bars are strong, cold, and unyielding.

Every day he pushes against them, hoping they might somehow open. If he tries hard enough, he cleans them, polishes them, takes care of them, even measures them so he knows everything about them.

But no matter how well he knows those bars, they cannot set him free.

Their purpose is not to liberate him, but to confine him. That is what the law does.

It is holy, it is just, and it is good. But it was never given as a ladder by which sinners could climb into heaven.

It was given to reveal sin, to expose our guilt, and to shut us up under its verdict.

The law can diagnose the disease, but it cannot provide the cure.

It can pronounce the sentence, but it cannot grant the pardon. It can show us our need for life, but it cannot impart life itself.

Paul says in Galatians 3 that if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law.

But Scripture has imprisoned all under sin. Why? So that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

The prison of the law is meant to drive us to the only one who holds the key. The law closes every other door so that Christ alone becomes our hope.

It imprisons not to destroy us, but to lead us to the

Savior who alone can set captives free. When we last took a look at Galatians chapter 3,

I was pastoring at Roanoke Baptist Church here in town, the town in which I live, Roanoke Rapids.

I am no longer pastoring there. I am now currently a church member at Calvary Baptist Church once again, which

I have some sermons on the website from there where I've been able to preach there before. And I'm under the leadership of Pastor Andy Sloan there.

And so we're going to continue our series of God -centered preaching as we are preaching through the book of Galatians here.

And we're going to continue this in this format until such time God brings my next assignment to me.

And when he does, we will continue God -centered preaching there when that occurs.

Now last time we looked at Galatians chapter 3, verses 15 through 18, and discussed the fact that our faith is based on the unchanging promise of God.

And now in verses 19 through 22, we are going to see that our faith is not based on the law that can't save.

The law is good, but it is inferior because the law can't do what the promise can do.

And we're going to look at this in four different sections here beginning in verse, or rather in the first phrase of verse 19.

It says, why the law then? It was added because of trespasses.

Number one, the first thing we need to notice here is that the purpose of the law, the purpose of the law, why do we have it?

Well, Paul here would, you see this all throughout the book of Romans and even in here in his writings, he would very often anticipate certain questions and objections that would come from his teaching and he would answer them.

And so he's saying here rhetorically, why the law? Well, in order to understand why he's asking this question, we need to very briefly go back to what came before it.

He was telling us about the promise by faith. He talked about how the promises spoke to Abraham and to his seed, and he brought the fact that he wasn't saying into seeds plural, but to seed that is

Christ. So he identifies who the seed is. So keep that in mind when we deal with verses 19 through 22, specifically in verse 19, when it says until the seed would come to the promise has been made.

This is the same context as verses 15 through 18. There has been no division here.

Chapter and verse divisions are a modern thing. They are wonderful to help us know and find our place quickly and to make reference to certain passages and texts and verses in quick fashion so we can summarize and make, you know, statements and things like that.

However, we still interpret scripture normally for the literal truth contained in it.

We do not interpret it literally. We do not interpret it in verses on an island by themselves.

We interpret it normally, meaning according to the literature. That's what literally actually means.

Literally doesn't mean like a lot of people think it does in our day and age. It just simply means according to the literature, which means we use the same level of interpretation and understanding for the scriptures that we would for any other piece of work.

With obvious distinction being we're dealing with inspired, inerrant scripture.

And so one of the things that we do is we utilize context. We utilize the normal plain reading.

What is the author conveying and how is he communicating to his audience? So if he starts a thought back in verse 15 through 18, he didn't just suddenly shift here unless the text would indicate that.

And so if he's talking about the seed being Christ in back there in verse 16, the same seed that is referenced here in verse 19 is

Jesus Christ as well. But he's going to ask that rhetorical question. Why the law? What's the point?

Well, he answers it. He answers this anticipated question. Now notice it says because of transgressions, well, or transgressions or trespasses.

And this word here just simply means to step over the boundary. Whatever the boundary is that's been outlined, whatever it has been determined or defined for us, this person or this action and behavior is a stepping over the boundary.

It is a transgression. It is a trespass. If you think about this in terms where if you go to certain private properties and certain locations will have signs that will say something to the effect of no trespassing.

Well, what they mean is don't cross this boundary. Don't cross the boundary onto my property.

And so this is what say the law defines where those boundaries are. It defines the length and the width and the depth and where you can go, where you can't go, what you can do, what you shouldn't do, so on and so forth.

It is a clear definition of God's law and what God requires and expects of us.

So we see here we're not to overstep that boundary. We're not to overstep where we shouldn't go.

But we clearly see here that law has a purpose. The law is good. So for example, the law clearly defines

God's requirements. The law demonstrates man's total sinfulness.

The law demonstrates man's inability to please God. And the law can demonstrate man's need for grace, mercy, and a

Savior. The law can demonstrate all those things for us. Now man needs to see his sinfulness as a violation of God's law.

He needs to see it this way so that he can see his need to be saved from rightful divine judgment.

We all are sinners. We have fallen short of the glory of God.

We need to be saved. We need to become righteous so that we can enter God's kingdom because He can only accept perfect, holy righteousness in His kingdom.

We can't produce that. So we need to make that right and we are rightly under condemnation and divine wrath and divine judgment.

So we need to rectify this. Now we need to understand our sinfulness. We need to understand our need for a

Savior, our need to be made righteous, and then our starting point which turns us to repentance and belief in the promise of God.

So this law has a purpose. This law has a reason for existing. The law has a reason for being and it is to point us to the fact that we are sinners.

Now, moving on here in number two, we see some distinctions between the law and the promise.

Now we're going to pick up here again in verse 19. It says, it's added because of trespasses, but notice it says, "...having

been ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator until the seed would come to whom the promise has been made."

The promise has been made to God's people. It's made to Abraham. We see this last time in verses 15 through 18.

He says, I'm speaking in human terms. It's a man's covenant. When it's ratified, no one can set it aside.

The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed, to Christ, but it affects and we benefit from all of it.

We're going to see that in a minute. But then we see in verse 20, it says, "...now a mediator is not for one person only, whereas God is one."

Now this verse is obviously one that is clearly difficult to translate, difficult to kind of understand what's kind of being said here, but if you take it in light of what's being said in verse 19, it becomes a little bit more clear for us.

It's showing us distinctions between the covenant of law or what the law is meant to produce versus what a covenant of promise or a covenant of faith is meant to produce and how it comes about and so on and so forth.

So to illustrate this for you and the distinctions between the law and the promise,

I actually want to read from you a paragraph from John MacArthur's commentary on the book of Galatians.

Two paragraphs here actually. And I think he does a great job of explaining this for us, so there's no need to rely on my wisdom here, but rely on Mr.

MacArthur's here. Now he says, the Greek text of Galatians 3 .20, he says, as I agree, is difficult to translate and interpret.

And of course 3 .20, "...now a mediator is not for one person only, or not limited or implied as being one person only, but whereas God is one."

So he says here, you know, Paul seems to be pointing out that a mediator, literally one who stands between two parties, is needed only when more than one party is involved.

So this is obvious. We dealt with this in great detail last time. When you have two parties that are making a covenant with each other, a lot of times there's a mediator that is in between them to mediate the covenant.

You know, make sure both sides are happy, both sides are being heard, both sides are explaining what they want to see happen, so on and so forth.

And so God gave the covenant, the covenant of promise, directly to Abraham without a mediator because he was the only one involved in making the covenant.

It did not rely on Abraham for this covenant. MacArthur goes on to say that Abraham was a witness to the covenant and was a beneficiary, but he was not a party to it.

Abraham had no part in establishing or keeping the covenant. That responsibility was

God's alone. Hence, it was a promise. God was not in the

Abrahamic promise here, the Abrahamic covenant, saying, you know, if you, Abraham, do such and such, then

I'll do this. No. This was a one -party covenant with no mediator where God was saying,

I'm going to do this regardless of anything else. This is what

I'm going to do. I'm promising you I'm going to do it. And this is what's going to happen. And we see this sometimes in life where we will make promises to our children, to other people.

It's like, you know, regardless of how this turns out, this is what I'm going to do. And so we see some of this even in our lives today.

And so MacArthur goes on and says the covenant of law, which is what we're dealing with in front of us today with verses 19 through 22, dealing with the law and the purpose of the law.

This, however, not only involved mediators, which were angels and Moses.

So let's stop here for a second. It says, you know, in verse 19, why the law then it was added because of trespasses having been ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator until the seed would come to whom the promise had been made.

So we see like in Acts 7, 53, where it talks about how it was ordained by angels.

And we see this in Hebrews, whether it's chapter two, maybe verse two, there's some talk of this. So we see that when the law was given, obviously

Moses was present. Obviously God was present. But in some capacity, in some way, which we're not told very clearly in scripture, angels were involved in the giving of the law to Moses.

And so you've got not just Moses and angels that are involved as mediators, because you got the law coming from God to the people of God with Moses being involved, the angels being involved in getting that law to Moses to bring to them.

And it says there's, but also there are mutual obligations that John MacArthur points out here on both parties,

God and Israel. God says, this is my law. This is what I expect you to do. And we see this all throughout the first five books of the

Bible where God specifically Deuteronomy talks about the blessings that come from keeping the law and the curses that would come from not keeping it.

So there was mutual obligations involved in the two parties. Therefore, there was the mediators involved there.

And so verse three, chapter three, verse 20 is pointing out here that there's a difference in what's being said here is a difference between these two things.

The promise of the law are not the same type of covenant. They're not the same type of thing going on here.

One requires a mediator or at least a mediator, if not more mediators, the other one is strictly a promise.

And so MacArthur goes on to say, he says, the stipulation of the covenant was you shall walk. And this is coming from Deuteronomy 533.

You shall walk in all the way which Lord your God has commanded you that you may live. And man's part was to obey and God's was to give life and to save.

Now we're going to deal with this more in the verses of the cub. If that was the case that man could keep the law, then yes, he could find life in it.

But we're going to see that that's not possible. He even says it here. The problem is that man could not keep his part and therefore

God could not grant salvation. Now don't misunderstand. This is not saying that there is no salvation for mankind.

It's not saying that God doesn't grant salvation. What is being said here by MacArthur in light of what

Galatians 3 19 and 20 is saying and what Paul was saying under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is that the problem with the covenant of law with a covenant with two parties, with mutual obligations, there's

God and Israel having, you know, parts in here. The issue with that versus the promise made to Abraham is that in the covenant of law man couldn't keep his part.

All have sinned and continually fall short of the glory of God. And if man can't keep his part, well then man can't,

God is not required to give man life unless he's able to keep his part.

So what we see here is that what's being said is that law is doomed from the get go.

It's not there to save. That's not its purpose. And we're going to see here in a minute, you know, it can't save.

It was not meant to save. If it could, then it would, but it doesn't. And so what we were left with is a law that some may see it as having a purpose of being something that could save, but that's not its purpose.

That's not why we have it. It was given to Israel. It was given to man to show man's sinfulness, to show in very clearly defined ways like we talked about with the man in the prison cell.

You know, he would push against the bars. He knew they were strong. He knew they were unyielding.

He would try to open them. He'd clean them and polish them and measure them. He, by every stretch of the imagination here, knew everything there was to know about these bars, and yet there was no way he was going to get out of them.

There was no way he was going to break them. There was no way he could be liberated from them. That's the same thing as the law.

Man can study God's law to the point that he has it memorized six ways from Sunday, but it's not going to change the fact that he can't keep it.

It's only there to serve as a means to point out the utter sinfulness of man.

But these distinctions that we see is that one is based in promise and one's based in whether or not both parties keep their side.

Of course, man can never keep his side when it comes to following the law.

So, we move on here. Point number three here, we're going to look at what the law can't do.

Verse 21, it says, Paul asks another anticipated objection, another rhetorical question here.

It says, is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Is it the word contrary meaning opposed or up against?

Is it that? He says, may it never be. May that very question or the very thought be unthinkable, laughable?

No, absolutely not. And notice here the hypothetical situation that's proposed now.

It says, look, if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would be indeed by the law.

So, we say here, this law that's given to Moses ordained by angels, if that was a law that had the purpose of imparting life, then yes, you would see life coming by it and it would be, and righteousness would be indeed by law.

So, we would be able to obtain righteousness before God. We would be able to obtain eternal life in and through the law if that was the case.

But it's not. He anticipates the objections. He can see these

Judaizers and they'll say, well, you know, if the promise is about your life and righteousness, then the law must be working against it.

I mean, after all the, you know, the promise, you know, it's supposed to be about life, righteousness.

Well, this law here must be working against it because all it does is point out sin. No, God's law is not working against God's promise.

Man would try to propose this hypothetical situation where somehow God's divine law would be an objection or an opposition to his promise.

That's not the case. It's part of what is being pointed out here in verse 20, when it talks about how a mediator is not for one person only.

So, if there's a one person covenant, one party that has the, that is establishing and upkeeping and has obligations under the covenant, it's a one party covenant.

There's no mediator needed because there's not another party. God is one. He's undivided.

He cannot be put against himself. So, it's not only is verse 20 pointing out distinctions between promise and the law in that the promise is a one party covenant and it's no need for a mediator, whereas the law was made between God and Israel, had two parties and therefore need mediators.

But it's also serving, as we move into verse 21, to point out the fact that the law, even though it's distinct and different, is not working against the promise.

It's not in opposition to it because the law was never meant to be a source or an origin point or some means by which man obtained the end results of the promise.

The end results of the promise is righteousness and life, just like the believing

Abraham. If the law was meant to be a means by which man could obtain that, then yes, you'd have some conflicting things going on.

You'd have this promise, but then you'd have a law that's keeping you from the benefits of the promise, you see.

But he's saying, no, if it was meant to impart life, then yes, all of a sudden, I guess righteousness and life would be by law because,

I mean, that's what we're dealing with. But no, the law was never meant to save.

It was never meant to produce righteousness. Salvation and righteousness comes from the promise and the promised seed who is

Christ. Verse 19, The seed is

Christ as defined by Paul earlier in Galatians until Christ would come to make the covenant in His own blood.

The law would be necessary to point people to Christ, but now we still have God's law.

We have God's word to know what He wants us to do, to know how we can be rightly living out

His expectations, but it's not the law that saves us. It's not the law that makes us righteous.

It is certainly not the law that brings us life, which brings us to number four.

We know what the law can't do. Well, what the law does. Point number four, what the law does.

Verse 22, This word shut up means to lock up securely.

If you think about our man that we talked about at the beginning, that's in the prison cell that can't liberate himself.

He's imprisoned. He's locked up. This is what this word means.

To shut up something means to lock it up securely, to enclose it and imprison it on all sides.

This is a prison and an enclosing and a being securely locked up that is all -encompassing.

It's in totality all the way around, all four sides, all the way around us, which means there's no means of escape through our own efforts.

There's no means of getting out. It is a secure and total enclosing.

And Scripture, the law, encloses us, imprisons us under our own sin.

The law imprisons. It locks us up under sin. It's not a safety ladder.

It's not which we can climb out, climb our way out of sin. It can only diagnose the sin.

It can't cure it. The law, you take for example, you know, thou shall not steal, you shall not murder, don't bear false witness, so on and so forth.

The moral law of God, obviously the ceremonial laws involving animal sacrifices and things like these have passed a lot off the scene because they're all fulfilled in Christ.

But God's moral law never changes. All the moral things He expects of us of how to live and how to be rightly related to Him and to others.

These are expectations of how we are to live. These things that we read in Scripture about what we ought to do, what we ought not to do can only diagnose a sin.

Show us where we're missing the mark. Show us where we've overstepped the boundary. It can't cure it.

It's simply a means to point it out. It's informational, if you will.

It's not transformative. But there's still a purpose. Remember, the purpose of the law being carried out to serve its function doesn't point man to law keeping.

It points man to the promise giver. Notice, the law is inferior.

It is meant to point us to Jesus. It says here, Scripture has shut up or imprisoned everyone under their sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given, and this word here means obviously freely given.

It's not earned. It's given. It's received, but it's not earned, to those who believe.

Same thing we saw here in previous sermons, even going all the way back in earlier places in Galatians 3, where it talked about we are the blessed ones along with the believing

Abraham. If we are those that have repented of our sin, put our full faith and trust in Jesus Christ, we are saved, and we are righteous, and we are the believing ones, the blessed ones, just like the believing

Abraham. The law is inferior. It was meant to point us to Jesus, point us to the promise giver, point us to the

Savior, point us to where true righteousness dwells, not to where we can earn it, not to where we can somehow achieve it, but to point us to the very person of Jesus Christ, God himself, the place in which the person in which righteousness dwells and finds its being and finds its origin point.

And then that righteousness is credited to us. It's given to us when we find Jesus to be a perfect Savior through repentance and believing the gospel.

And so if you rightly understand the law's purpose and the functioning of the law in pointing us to a

Savior, then you can rightly understand that our faith is not based on a law that can't save, but it does not mean the law is not good.

The law is very good. Obviously, for one obvious reason, it's the divine law of God, and God is good, and God can only produce a law that is just and right and good.

But also, functionally speaking, understand that the law is good in that it carries out the actual purpose that it was given to us for, and that is to show us our sinfulness, show us that if we try to live by law, we will die by law because we cannot keep it.

It cannot produce life in us. So just like we had said last week, this just further reminds us that our faith is based on the unchanging promise of God, which is far better, and it is not based on a law or law keeping, which cannot impart life.

It is Christ who sets us free from the dungeon. It is Christ who sets us free from the prison.

The prison of the law is meant to drive us to the only one who holds the key. The law closes every other door so that Christ alone becomes our hope.

It imprisons not to destroy us, but to lead us to the Savior who alone can set captives free.