Sunday Sermon: The Purpose of the Law (Galatians 3:20-29)

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

New Testament book. On Thursday is our Old Testament study, and then we answer questions from listeners on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series. This is the sermon that was preached last week from our pulpit.

Here's Pastor Gabe. Please stand for Galatians chapter 3, starting in verse 21.

The Apostle Paul wrote to the churches in Galatia, Is the law then contrary to the promises of God?

Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law.

But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.

So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.

But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. For in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith.

For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither

Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is no male and female.

For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are

Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise. Let us pray.

Our Heavenly Father, as we open up Your Scriptures today, we desire to hear Your Word spoken to us.

The promises that have been given from heaven and this promised seed that was first promised to Abraham was fulfilled in the coming of Christ, who came and died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the grave, so that all who believe in Him will have everlasting life.

There was a law that had been given. It was the perfect law of God that still rests upon our hearts today.

Today, this law served a purpose and may, as we come to this text today, come to understand what that purpose was, that we don't dismiss those things, that we don't cut a part of the

Bible out thinking that it no longer pertains to us, but that we understand it rightly so that we may please

You according to what You have said and according to what You have commanded of us, so that we may be worshipers of God, sanctified and cleansed, holy in Your presence, waiting for that day when we will be with Christ forever in glory, in which that process of sanctification, of being shaped in the image of Christ, will come to an end.

I pray that we see Christ in this Word today, and we pray this in Jesus' name and all

God's people said. Amen. Thank you. You may be seated. We're picking up the section that we were studying last week in Galatians 3, verses 15 through 29, and I have to stop in the middle because it's just too much information to fit it into one sermon.

So let's do a brief recap of what it was that we looked at in verses 15 through 20.

So Paul said to the churches in Galatia to give a human example, brothers, even with a man -made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified.

So God made a covenant with Abraham and that covenant was established and it has not been changed.

There is nothing about that covenant that was somehow annulled or canceled out.

Even when the law was given, and the law came then to Moses and was given to the people of Israel, it didn't mean that that covenant no longer applied or was even added to because once you added the covenant, it becomes something different.

Once it's been ratified, it is established. And this is, of course, Paul using a human example, but yet we apply these to spiritual things.

Verse 16, now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, and to offsprings, referring to many, but referring to one, and to your offspring, who is

Christ. Christ was ultimately going to be the fulfillment of that promise.

This is what I mean, Paul says. The law, which came 430 years afterward,

Abraham was given a promise. That promise was Christ. The law wouldn't come about for another several centuries, but even though that law did come, it does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God.

So as to make the promise void, for if the inheritance comes by the law, it is no longer by promise, but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.

And that same promise has been given to us, that all who believe by faith in Christ will be saved.

Salvation has always been by grace, through faith, and not of works.

It was that way in the Old Testament. It is that way even now under the new covenant. And we considered that last week when we went back to the story in Genesis 15, the manner in which

God made this covenant with Abraham. And He made the covenant, and He put

Abraham to sleep. And then there was the symbols of God, that burning torch, the burning oven that passed between the sacrifices that Abraham had prepared.

This was God showing that He would ratify this covenant by Himself. Abraham had no part in it.

He did not do anything or play any work in order to ratify the covenant. But God was both the one who made the covenant and the intermediary who was the witness to the covenant.

Abraham was put to sleep so that he would not even have a part in establishing that covenant.

But God made that covenant by Himself with Abraham. And so He would fulfill it.

Because God is good, not because Abraham did anything good. God would be faithful to His own promise.

He unilaterally established this covenant. Verse 19,

Paul then says, why then the law? So if the covenant was made by a promise and it is not dependent upon any work that we have done over and over, over the course of Galatians, Paul has reminded the readers that it is not by works of the law that you are saved.

In fact, if anyone comes to you teaching works of the law or even faith plus works, that's a different gospel.

Christ died for nothing if you can do something in order to merit your salvation.

What would be the power in the blood of Christ in that case if it was not sufficient to pay the price for every sin?

And yet you then had to do something to try to merit your salvation. Paul says that's a false gospel.

The person who teaches it is accursed. Do not listen to anyone who says it is by faith and works.

And to make the case that it has always been by grace through faith that we are saved, he even goes back to the original covenant that was made between God and Abraham.

So then he presupposes the question, if salvation is by faith and we've been given a law, what's the point of the law then?

If the law doesn't save us, why do we have it? That's the question that Paul answers in verses 19 and 20.

And we started to answer that question last week as it pertained to the permanence of the promise.

But we didn't finish answering that question as it applied to the purpose of the law.

So verse 19, why then the law? Paul says it was added because of transgressions.

Now when we read that it was added because of transgressions, this does not mean that the covenant was added to.

Remember, we're not talking about the law being added to the covenant, but rather it came alongside the covenant.

Why? Because of transgressions. There was a reason for the law.

It was added because of transgressions so that you might see the promise.

So you might consider that the covenant, the promise, and the law are two sides of the same coin.

Like you think of a coin, you pick up a quarter and you've got the head of George Washington on one side and you turn it over and you've got the image of the eagle on the other side.

Well if you look at one side, it makes you want to turn the coin over and see what is printed on the other side.

There's the eagle. If you were looking at the eagle, you want to turn it over and you see what's printed on the front side of the coin.

So there's an image on one side, we would assume there would be an image on the other side. The gospel, or the promise, and the law work the same way.

The law makes us want to anticipate the promise. The promise makes us want to know the law.

The law makes us want grace. Grace makes us want the law. As an example of that, consider

David. In Psalm 119, Lord, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day.

Why did David pray that? Did David pray that because the law was his salvation? No. God was his salvation.

And because of the grace of God that had been given to David, he loved

God's law. He didn't love the law because it was his salvation.

He loved the law because he had been saved and it was the perfect revelation of the holiness of God.

And so how do I keep myself from transgression? We find that in the law.

Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions until the offspring should come to whom the promise has been made and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary.

The law of Moses, given to the people of God, added because of transgressions.

And as I mentioned last week, this has two possible understandings. Added because of transgressions could be to prevent a person from transgression or it could be to reveal transgression.

And as I said last week, it applies both ways. The law works to prevent transgression, to prevent sin as a guardian, which is the example that Paul is going to go into next, and the law also reveals transgression.

In this particular case, and as we looked at it last week, verses 19 or 20, we considered it as it revealed transgression.

We look into the law and we see our sin because we realize that we have disobeyed the law.

Paul says in Romans 7, I didn't know what it was like to covet until I saw in the law, you shall not covet.

And then I knew I was a covetor, but I was not aware of this sinful desire that was in me until God's perfect law said to me, this is sin.

And suddenly I became aware of, I've done that and therefore I know I have transgressed the law of God.

So in this way, the law added because of transgression revealed the sin that was within us so that we would desire the promise.

We become aware of our need for a savior, and through this revealing of sin because of the law, we now know that we need someone to pay the penalty for this transgression we've committed against God.

And the one who has paid that penalty for us is Christ. The gospel of Jesus Christ is good news.

That's in fact what the word gospel means. It means, literally translated, good news.

But you cannot know the news is good until you know the bad news first.

And what is the bad news? All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

And God's wrath is burning against all the unrighteousness of men. As Paul says in Romans 2,

Peter says in 2 Peter 3, God's wrath is being stored up for the day of judgment on which he will pour out fire on the earth.

And we hear about this and we realize that would include me because I have disobeyed

God and I am among the wicked that would be consumed in the holy fire of God on that day of judgment.

I would not be able to stand before God on that day.

Even the apostle John understood this in Revelation when he was looking at the judgments of God being poured out and it caused him to say, who can stand against the judgment of God?

And the only way that we can be saved from God's wrath is by faith in Jesus Christ.

You understand we call Christ Savior and we say that we have been saved.

Saved from what? If we're going to call him Savior, what has he saved us from?

Our sins? Sure. Yes. All have sinned and fallen short of God's glory.

He saved us from death. Yes. Romans 6, 23, the wages of sin is death.

Even more than this, Christ has saved us from God's wrath, his wrath that is going to be poured out on unbelieving, wicked, sinful, rebellious men, which is

Paul had already established earlier in Galatians chapter three. This is everyone who relies upon their own works instead of the work of Christ.

Paul said in Galatians 3 .10, for all who rely on works of the law are under a curse.

For as it is written, and we go back to Deuteronomy, cursed be everyone who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the law and do them.

And that's us. That's every person. Everyone has transgressed the law. And because God is so holy and so good, he will not allow his creatures, which he has made to think of themselves as being as good as or higher than God.

And that's what we think of ourselves whenever we try to do righteousness on our own, instead of relying on the righteousness of God.

We are blaspheming God with every breath that we take. We say to God, I can do this fine without you.

Look at me. Look at how righteous I can be. Why do I need

God? And it is through the law that we come to realize that we have sinned and the

Holy Spirit will open our eyes and our ears to understand what is being said in the law of God so that we come to understand the transgression and our need for a savior.

Two sides of the same coin. On one side, we see the law, we turn it over, and we see the resolution to the law, which is the gospel.

Or we hear the gospel, and through the gospel of Christ, we understand what the law is and we desire the law because it is good and righteous and holy.

Paul says so in Romans 7 and 1 Timothy 1. There is nothing wrong with the law.

And that's what Paul comes into next in verse 21, where he says, is the law then coming contrary to the promises of God?

If we're saved by the promise, we're not saved by the law, and if the coming of the law did not nullify the promise as it was first given, then is the law bad?

Is the law contrary to the promises of God? And look at how

Paul answers this. Galatians 3 .21, certainly not. That's really kind of tame, all things considered, regarding his answer.

In the Greek, it is mygenoito, for those of you who know Greek. That is the strongest phrase of opposition that Paul can possibly give.

In English, we might translate it this way, no, no, a thousand times, no.

That would be Paul's response. There is a certain brand of theology that's out there today.

It's often termed new covenant theology, not to be confused with covenant theology.

But new covenant theology would teach that we are under a new covenant, so you could disregard even what is written in the

Old Testament as being unnecessary for us who are under the new covenant.

One of the foremost proponents of this kind of thinking and this kind of teaching is

Andy Stanley. Andy Stanley has gone this way of this phrase that has now been stuck with him over the last few years, that you must unhitch yourself from the

Old Testament. And I've been very vocally opposed to the way that Stanley will say things like, even the

Ten Commandments do not apply to you. He's even said that. There was a sermon of his that I watched in which he said, the

Ten Commandments do not apply to you. And he has this little TV screen with him up on the stage that'll kind of put up his talking points as he's preaching.

And he said, I wanted to put up here on this screen, the Ten Commandments no longer apply to you, but I knew that somebody would take a screenshot of that and it would follow me around for the rest of my pastoral teaching career.

So he said, I'm not going to put it up on the screen, but he nevertheless said it vocally, the Ten Commandments don't apply to you.

And he even lamented over the fact that we have Ten Commandments monuments in front of our courthouses.

We have one here in Junction City, I don't know if you've ever noticed it, but it's out there. I stop and look at it every time

I go to pay my water bill. I stop and look at that monument, I'm like,

I love this. I love that the Ten Commandments are right here in front of our city building. And you almost miss it as you walk by.

I'm okay with certain people in Junction City not knowing that it's there, so nobody's raising a stink about it.

But Stanley says we shouldn't have Ten Commandments monuments. He says we should raise, this cracked me up.

He said we should instead be making monuments of Jesus preaching the Sermon on the Mount. Now, it's okay if you don't get that joke, but for myself who has studied theology and knowing that Andy Stanley has advanced theology degrees, it was incredibly ironic that he said that.

I cracked up laughing when I heard him say it. Because Jesus provides what is perhaps the best expositional sermon in the entire

Bible on the Ten Commandments in the Sermon on the Mount. He preaches the

Ten Commandments. And he shows that the Ten Commandments were not just some external thing out there that you had to obey and thus ticking all these things off of a list, you could therefore transfer yourself from earth to heaven by obeying all of these commandments.

Jesus said, no, on the contrary, you have heard it said, thou shalt not commit adultery.

I tell you, if you have even lusted after someone in your heart, you have committed adultery with them in your heart.

Jesus was showing just how you've disobeyed the Ten Commandments. Maybe you can say,

I've never cheated on my wife. Ever lusted after anyone? You've committed adultery in your heart. He goes on to say, you've heard it said you shall not murder, but I say to you, if you've even hated your brother, you've committed murder in your heart.

Have you ever called anyone names? If you've said you fool, you are guilty of the fires of hell.

Everyone has disobeyed the Ten Commandments. And why did

Jesus find it necessary to have to preach on that? Because he gets to a point in Matthew chapter 7 in the

Sermon on the Mount where he says, enter through the narrow gate. What does it mean to enter through the narrow gate?

It means that you live in upright holiness and righteousness. Right at the end of Matthew chapter 5, after he just went through this exposition of the

Ten Commandments, he says, be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. That's the narrow gate.

We must be perfect in order to enter the kingdom of God. But as I said to you a few weeks ago, the thing that God demands of us is the thing he gives to us.

He demands righteousness. He gives righteousness through his

Son. Everyone who believes in Christ receives the righteousness of God by faith.

It's that transference of righteousness. Jesus in Revelation chapter 3 saying, I will clothe you in righteousness, in white garments, so that when

God the Father looks at us, what does he see? Not someone who is the object of his wrath, but now a child of God who is the object of his mercy and his love.

Christ, or God the Father rather, shows for us the same love that he has for his own

Son because we are clothed and being made in his image. No longer in the image of sinful

Adam. We are being remade in the image of sinless

Christ. And God's righteousness is given to the believer so that we may live in righteousness for all who believe.

And like I said, those who then know the gospel desire the law. The law makes us want grace.

Grace makes us want the law. How then may I live in such a way that is pleasing unto

God? Well, the answer to that is quantified in what we call the

Ten Commandments, the Decalogue. All of the laws of God summarized there in those

Ten Commands. You'll love the Lord your God. You'll have no other gods. You will not raise up a graven image.

You will not take the Lord's name in vain. You will honor the Sabbath and keep it holy. You will, children, obey your parents and the

Lord for this is right. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal.

You shall not bear false witness. You shall not covet. Those Ten Commandments summarize the law of God for his people.

And we can even summarize those Ten Commandments even further down than that because those

Ten Commandments are separated into two tables referred to as the first table of the law and the second table of the law.

The first table of the law are those first four commands. They're vertical commands dealing with our relationship with God.

And the first table of the law can be summarized this way. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength.

The second table of the law are horizontal commands. They deal with our relationship with one another, our fellow man, our brothers and sisters.

And those six commandments can be summarized this way. Love your neighbor as yourself.

Love God, love people is not the gospel. That's the law. But it's because we know the gospel that we are saved by faith in Christ that what is awakened in us is a desire to love

God, love people. What does that look like? That's what we find in the commands of God.

And with every negative command, there is a positive. There is a positive implied.

What do I mean by that? We'll say, for example, the commandment says to us, do not murder.

That's the negative. What would be the positive implication? Love one another.

Show charity and kindness to each other. Philippians chapter two, consider others' needs ahead of your own.

Do you understand that when Paul says that, by the Holy Spirit of God that is within him, of course, as he's talking to the

Philippians. But when he says to the Philippians, do not consider yourselves more highly than you ought to think, but consider others' needs ahead of your own.

When he says that, what he's repeating is the command, do not murder, but giving the positive affirmation of it rather than the negative affirmation.

Another commandment that we have is do not covet. That's the negative. What would be the positive? Be thankful for everything that God has given you.

Be lacking in nothing, but know that he is supplied for your every need in Christ Jesus.

Paul again with the Philippians saying, I know what it's like to have plenty and I know what it's like to be in need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

You know what another way is of saying that? Paul's saying in Christ I do not covet because I am fully satisfied in my

Savior Christ. Paul even appeals to the 10 commandments directly when he gives instructions to the churches.

In Ephesians chapter six, he says, children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. And he says, this is the first commandment with a promise.

So he's even repeating it as it was given to the Israelites in Exodus chapter 20 and repeated again in Deuteronomy.

The 10 commandments have not been nullified. It's not that they don't exist for us anymore, but rather what they give us is a guide for what it means to live in such a way that is pleasing unto our

Lord. How do we grow in holiness? How do we live as Christ lived? We find it in the law.

Jesus said in Matthew five, I did not come to abolish the law or the prophets, but to fulfill them.

If Christ loved the law, and if he fulfilled the law, and if we are believers and followers of Christ, then how much are we also obligated to keep it and fulfill it as he did?

Now he fulfilled a ceremonial law that we cannot fulfill. That was all the laws that pertain to sacrifices and whatnot.

That has been paid for by Christ. Thankfully, we no longer have to sacrifice goats and rams and turtle doves, et cetera, et cetera.

Amen. Praise the Lord. Glory. Hallelujah. As we have been going through the

Old Testament in my Old Testament study on Thursday night, one of the things that we noticed from Exodus on is just how bloody it all is.

Even when you get to Joshua and Judges and 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2

Chronicles, all the sacrifices that are offered, sometimes thousands and thousands of bulls and goats or sheep, when there's some sort of revival in the land, there are a lot of animals that die.

That's a lot of blood spilled for the forgiveness of sins, to make atonement, to make peace with God.

And one drop of Christ's blood is more powerful than all the thousands of oxen that were ever slaughtered in his name.

By the blood of Christ, our sins are forgiven. And we have peace with God, and he fulfilled all that ceremonial commandment.

That no longer applies. When we read that now in the Old Testament, it just makes us all the more thankful for what

Christ fulfilled with his death on the cross. But his death does not nullify those moral commandments that we have been given.

For Paul even says in Romans 2, the moral commandments have been written on the heart of every man.

You know, as I said to you earlier, in order to know that the gospel is good news, you have to hear the bad news first. You have to hear that you have transgressed the law, and it is only by faith in Christ that you're forgiven of your sins and you're saved.

And you, as I've said that before, you've heard me preach on that before, you might say to yourself, well, nobody ever preached the law to me.

I never heard the law before I heard the gospel. But see,

God was gracious to you in that you had the law on your heart already.

It's called your conscience. God had given you a conscience, and when you heard the gospel, the guilt that you felt was in knowing in your heart, even though you had not heard the law, you had transgressed against God.

And you needed a Savior, and you needed to believe in Christ in order to be saved. That was the grace of God that did that in your heart, even though the soil may not have been tilled by the preaching of the law so that you would understand your sinfulness and need for a

Savior. You get what I'm saying? So God so graciously has revealed

His Son to us, whether or not the person who evangelized us did it the right way, but yet it's by the grace of God that anybody's been saved anyway.

And this, by faith in Jesus Christ, the promise. And it's through faith in Christ, then, that our desire is to please our

Maker, and the law is not contrary to the promises of God, but rather reveals them all the more clearly for us.

Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Mygenoita, certainly not!

For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law.

Did you know that if you could keep the law perfectly, you would have eternal life? Where do

I get that from? Well, Jesus said so Himself. In Luke 10, there's a lawyer that comes to Jesus and says,

Good teacher, what must I do to have eternal life? And Jesus says,

What does the law say? How do you read it? And the lawyer gave the twofold summary of the law.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus replied to him,

You have answered correctly. Do this and you shall live.

If we could keep the law perfectly, we would have eternal life, but we can't.

And the law was given not so we would follow it and have eternal life, but to reveal the transgression that we have committed against God, so that we would know we need a

Savior who did keep the law perfectly and became that perfect sacrifice for us with His death on the cross.

Romans 6 .23, I've said to you already this morning, For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our

Lord. The wages of sin is death. We have sinned. We deserve death. Now, wait a second. Jesus didn't sin and He died.

So how does that apply? Well, it's because He became sin for us. 2

Corinthians 5 .21, He became sin who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God.

He kept the law perfectly and in so doing shows

His eternal life that He has with the Father. And so all of us who believe in Christ therefore receive that eternal life.

We could not keep the law. He did. He became sin for us, died for us, rose again from the grave.

God raised Him from the grave to show that He received the sacrifice of His Son. So now that by faith in Jesus, we are rescued from the wages of sin.

The wages have been paid in Christ. Though the body will still die, our spirit will be with the

Lord forever. And even a day will come when our bodies will be raised from the grave. And all of this by the power of God who fulfilled these things through His Son.

I mentioned to you that as I was studying through this section of Galatians chapter 3, I was studying from Dr.

Stephen Lawson, one of the ministers that I listened to preaching on this particular section. And one of the things that Dr.

Lawson said was that every city needs two things. Every city needs the law, right?

Every city need the law. Can you think of how chaos Junction City would be if there was no law?

Like the law is a blessing. The law is a keeper, as Paul will go on and articulate here. The law keeps us in line.

How chaotic would society be if everybody was just in anarchy? Everybody was disobeying the law.

Everybody was a law unto themselves. So this is why in Romans chapter 13,

Paul says we need to be subject to the governing authorities because every authority has been established by God.

God has given us government to keep civility. So every city needs a law. That's one thing.

Dr. Lawson goes on to say, every city needs a law and every city needs the church. Because what's going to happen is the people in that city are not going to keep the law and they need to hear the gospel.

So every city needs a law. Every city needs the church. The law has not been nullified.

The law still applies. The law is still necessary and you know that and you believe that. You don't think that the law no longer applies to believers in a new covenant today.

The law applies to absolutely everyone, but it is only those who are in Christ who can keep the law in a way that is pleasing to God.

Paul goes on to explain the purpose of the law. The scripture imprisoned everything under sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

Now before faith came, and this could be applied two ways, before faith came. Before your faith came, your personal faith, or before the

Christian faith came altogether. Christ preaching the gospel and all those who believe in him would enter into the

Christian faith. So before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.

We were imprisoned here. This is personification that Paul is using here, kind of making the law as being like a jailer or a warden of a prison.

So the law keeps us imprisoned, keeps us bound, keeps us restrained from doing worse evil than we could have been doing until the coming faith would be revealed.

Now that applied in a pre -New Testament time, and it also applies to us now.

Before we come to faith in Christ, there's still a law that exists that keeps us from falling into worse evil than we are currently in.

So then the law was our guardian until Christ came in order that we might be justified by faith.

But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. Now some of you may have a translation that instead of the word guardian, it says tutor.

And when you've heard this section preached, that may have been the way that you've heard it preached, taught to you before. That before Christ came, we were under a tutor.

Now what's a tutor? We all kind of know what a tutor is, right? When I was in college, I even worked as a tutor.

Some friends of mine and I, in order to make some cash, we were tutors. We'd have some high school students, usually somebody who was involved in extracurricular activities, they needed some assistance to keep their grades up so they could keep their eligibility, so they would hire a tutor.

And then we would help them with math, science, you know, whatever else. Maybe you've had a tutor before, maybe you've been a tutor.

That's typically what we think of regarding that word. But you've got to think of this in terms of a 1st century

Greco -Roman aspect. A tutor was actually a slave. And a slave who was hired by a rich master to take care of his son.

And each child that the master had would have their own tutor. And this tutor, or guardian, as Paul puts it here, would follow this person around.

It could be that because of the way that we consider tutor today, that the English Standard Version translators decided guardian was a more appropriate word.

Since we don't think of tutor the same way anymore. But as a guardian, or this kind of tutor in the

Greco -Roman aspect, the tutor would have been given to the master's son starting at age 6 and would have stayed with them until the age of 16.

And this guardian had all the authority and power of the master. They not only taught the child, they also punished the child, disciplined the child.

They would make sure the child got to their studies on time and would make sure that they would get back home.

That child never went anywhere without the guardian or the tutor. And then once the child reached the age of 16, this slave who worked for the master would no longer be that child's guardian, but they would have considered to have entered into adulthood at that point and would no longer be under the guardian.

But this is the comparison that Paul makes, again, as he's personifying the law, that we're under a guardian, someone who would have the authority to punish us should we disobey the master.

But now that faith has come, we're no longer under a guardian. For in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith.

We're no longer under the guardian. There's not like a middleman between our Father and us, but rather we now are in relationship with the

Father. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

We are as much sons of God now as Christ is the

Son of God. We have been adopted into His family through who is referred to as our elder brother in Romans 8 -29.

Through faith in Christ, we have all become sons and daughters of God. And so,

Paul says, there's now no distinction. There's nothing that separates us one from another.

In God, we are all received by the same love under the same grace. Recipients of the same promise will enter into the same kingdom.

We all have the same reward. There is no one who receives more favor than another.

So we get to this point in verse 28 where Paul says, there is neither Jew nor Greek.

Now, the reason why he starts with those two in particular is because the Jews thought they were better than Greeks since they had been given the law in the first place.

The Greeks thought that they were better than the Jews because the Jews had transgressed the law, but the Greeks didn't even have the law to transgress it.

And now we've been given faith, so look, I'm better than you are. So there was this separation between Jews and Greeks.

But as we read in Romans 3 -22, there is no distinction for all have sinned,

Jew or Greek. But in Christ, there's no distinction between the two.

There's no favoritism being placed on one or the other. God is not loving one less than the other.

There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is not slave nor free, another class separation that existed in the

Roman Empire. Slaves had less rights than free people did. But in the kingdom of God, everyone's going to receive the same reward, whether you are slave or free.

There is no male and female, another class distinction that existed in the Roman Empire.

Men had more authority than women did. A man's testimony in court was admissible, a woman's was not.

There were certain jobs, tasks, government authority given to men that women could not have.

But in the kingdom of God, both men and women receive that reward equally. Beware the way people use this verse, by the way, for there are some in our trans -loving culture today who are wanting to take this verse where it says there is no male and female, say, see, sexual distinctions don't matter to God.

It's not what's being said. As long as we live in these bodies, there are still going to be certain responsibilities for men, certain responsibilities for women.

Just to give you an example of that, go to Titus 2, and you see the instructions that are given for men and women of the church respectively.

So as long as we live in these bodies, there are going to be different gifts, different callings for different people.

But ultimately, the reward is the same for everybody. Peter even said in 1 Peter 3,

Husbands, love your wives, for they are fellow heirs of the kingdom of God with you.

So don't look down on your wife. But men and women receive the kingdom of God together.

There is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. We're all one.

We're one body, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, one Spirit who lives in all.

One Lord in Christ who has saved us and whom we serve. And if you are

Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise.

Go with me over to 1 Peter 3. I mentioned that, so we'll go back to that passage and we'll end with this text.

1 Peter 3. Now I'm going to read this as it is, and then

I'm going to give you a spiritual application to this. 1 Peter 3, starting in verse 1. Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives.

When they see you respectful and pure conduct, do not let your adorning be external, the braiding of hair, the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing that you wear, but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious.

For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves by submitting to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed

Abraham, calling him Lord, and you are her children if you do good, and do not fear anything that is frightening.

So we have even daughters that receive a promise that was given to Abraham and to Sarah in this example that Peter gives in 1

Peter 3. So that's the straight reading of that text. Let me give you a spiritual application of it now.

How does this apply to every single one of us? Because we are all, who are in Christ Jesus, the bride of Christ.

And as wives are instructed here to show their goodness not by what they look like on the outside, but who they are on the inside and professing good works and are obedient to God, so we who are the bride of Christ must follow in the same way.

Let not our righteousness be something that we wear on the outside, like I'm wearing my

Christian T -shirt today so you know I'm a Christian, but let it be the imperishable beauty of the

Holy Spirit that is within our hearts that causes us to live in obedience to the commands of God.

And we want to be worthy sons and daughters of God. Before we came to faith, we were worthless.

According to Romans 3, 10 through 12, all had become worthless because we had sinned against God.

But now in Christ we have been made worthy and we are worthy sons and daughters.

So let us desire to be worthy sons and daughters of God, living in obedience, not in rebellion, but as our

Lord Christ did, as He lived in righteousness, and if we have received His righteousness, let us live in righteousness.

Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas.

For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org.

On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, inviting you to join us again this week. Grow your faith, when we understand the text.