← Catholic Bible Study
Catholic Bible Study
Galatians: Chapter 3:19-29
00:30:08
Dr. Michael Barber and Dr. James Prothro, professors of Sacred Scripture at the Augustine Institute Graduate School, study St. Paul's pivotal Letter to the Galatians.
Loading summary
Transcript35 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hello, I'm Michael Barber and this is my dear friend Jim Prothero. We're both professors here at the Augustine Institute Graduate School. We also have a passion for studying St. Paul. Dr. Prothero's completed a new book on Paul that will be available very soon. It'll be a wonderful introduction to Paul's letters. He also has in depth study of Paul's use of the terminology of justification. It's a very important book. It gets cited by scholars all the time. And I've written some on Paul myself. And so, so we're really grateful to be with you here today to talk about Paul's letter to the Galatians. And we're going to pick up in this Bible study. In chapter three, verse 19, Paul says, why then the law, it was added because of transgressions until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made. And it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one. Now Dr. Prother, we've been looking here at the way Paul is addressing the concerns of those who believe they need to be circumcised in order to receive the grace of salvation, in order to receive the grace of Christ, to be fully united to Christ. And so you have these Gentiles, these non Christian believers in Galatians, Asia who are being led into observances of the Torah, of the, the law of Moses, especially circumcision. And so Paul is addressing here a question that many people would have raised. Well, okay Paul, then why did God give us the law in the first place, right? I mean, why, why did God give us the law? And let's unpack some of his answer here. What is Paul saying?
- [01:58]
B
Well, if I could even back up a tiny bit, just maybe one way to frame this. If you ever had a conversation with somebody who also believes that the Bible is like the word of God, but they read it completely differently than you do. Paul is engaging in something kind of like that here, right? So you've got Christians in Galatia who have come in, they've received the Holy Spirit, they've received life in Jesus Christ and righteousness by believing the gospel that Paul preached and by living in Christ. But people are coming around and say, well hey look, this is book in the Bible, that's God's word, just like that gospel is. And it says you have to be circumcised and if you're not, you're going to be cut out of the people. What gives and they're going, oh man, I didn't know about that verse. Oh, okay, let me do that too. And you can meet people today who read the Bible a little differently than you do and maybe don't have the benefit of the tradition with us. And so they'll kind of pick a verse out of here and pick a verse out of here and pick a verse out of here. And then they say, I'll see this. I'm living according to the word of God. And you go, man, that seems kind of wrong. One of the things that Paul tries to do with the people in Galatia in this letter is to show them how to read their Bible a little bit better, right? And to sort of think through what's going on. Not to leave everything flat as well. God says this and he says this and he says this and he says this and he says this. Do them all. Ta da. But to sort of texture it. So instead of being a flat plateau, it's more of a mountain range. So we looked last time at chapter the.
- [03:39]
A
We're in Colorado, so mountain ranges are kind of big around here.
- [03:43]
B
We've looked at chapter two where Paul says, no, even Peter and I don't agree with this. All the Jewish apostles don't think that you gotta get circumcised. We believed in Jesus. We were already circumcised. We believed in Jesus so that we could be justified. So obviously you're reading this wrong. Chapter three, he says, okay, look, Abraham in Genesis, the very first book of the Bible, is counted God's friend and justified, right? Was made right with God by believing God's promise and following God. And then on the other side of the Mosaic law, right, Leviticus and Deuteronomy, basically a bit of Exodus, the prophet Habakkuk says, the righteous will live by faith. So you've got, on either side of the books of the law, you've got these two things. So the law can't actually contradict that. Then in verses 15 to 18, we looked at just last time, he says, look, God gave this promise to Abraham that was about faith to make us right with God, right? Not just faith like head knowledge, but our life of faith and living in God. And that was 400 years before God ever gave the law right for Israel to live under. So the later law, 400 years later, can't just come in and knock out, right? Can't come in and knock out what God had said the first time to Abraham. So now he's got to come in verse 19 to say like, well, on the one hand, if it's about faith with Abraham and it's about faith with us and Jesus, then why did God give the law in the first place, right? Somebody else might say, like, well, look, if God said X and he said Z, what's up with Y, huh? Why do you even say why? And so that's what he's trying to draw them into by asking this question,
- [05:29]
A
the why, which is why? It begins with why. It's amazing. Amazing. And so what he's saying here is that the law was added because of transgressions. And I think in particular, he's talking about the prescriptions that the Galatians are most concerned about keeping. And one thing that, you know, we point out in our book on Paul that I wrote with Brian Petrie and John Kincaid, is that it's really interesting that God gives Abraham the gift of circumcision in Genesis chapter 17, which this is crazy, comes after Genesis 16, right? So in Genesis 16, what happens is Abraham starts thinking, well, look, God promised me this offspring, and it hasn't happened to me yet. So, you know, maybe God helps those who helps themselves, right? So Abraham takes a hand. He takes his wife's handmaid, and he has relations with her, Hagar. And then it seems at that point, the promise has been fulfilled. Abraham is going to have offspring. But in Genesis 17, God makes it clear, no, it's going to be through another son, and it'll be through your son, Isaac, that your descendants will be named. And God's going to, in Genesis 17, promise to give Abraham a son through his wife Sarah, which would be a miracle. And so at that point, God then gives Abraham the gift of circumcision. And it seems to me, at least. I don't know what you make of this reading, but it seems to me at least that you could see circumcision as sort of a sign of God telling Abraham, you know, you need to trust that part of your body that you didn't really trust to me. You need to trust that part of your body to me. Because what God says is you're going to be circumcised. And then basically nine months or, well, a year later, you're going to have a son named Isaac. So it takes great faith for this old man, elderly Abraham, to undergo circumcision. He has to recover in three months so that he can conceive and have a child in. In. In fulfillment of God's promise. And so circumcision, it seems to me, seems to be. And Maybe you think I'm crazy, but circumcision itself seems to me to be a response to Abraham, not just trusting in God, but trusting in his own work, something that he can do, having this relationship with Hagar and having a son. So really, circumcision even to begin with is. Is a kind of act of faith for Abraham. Anyway. I don't know if you want to comment on that or you want to. Don't. You don't want to touch that with Paul.
- [08:18]
B
But yeah, no, I think that's. That's good. And that's one way to read the sort of way that circumcision comes in in the Old Testament. One thing too, I think, is that. So Paul is going to make a pair of points here, right? So first is why the law? Well, it was given because of transgressions.
- [08:38]
A
Right.
- [08:39]
B
And in verse 31 here in Galatians 3, he's going to say the law wasn't meant to give life. So if it's not meant to give Life. But yeah, 321. 321, yeah. If it's not meant to give life. Right. You receive that by your relationship with God in Christ. And through faith, what is the law supposed to do? Well, it's supposed to reign these things in. And another thing that it does as well, Paul says in Romans 7, 13, Paul says the law shows sin to be manifestly sin.
- [09:13]
A
Right. Let's read this passage here so we can see it. It's in 3, 21. 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. That's the ESV here. Lots of ways to translate that. But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. This is the point that you're making, that somehow the law, scripture imprisoned everything under sin. Now, there's lots of ways to interpret that. You can imagine that we're kind of confined by sin or we're kind of protected from sin. There are lots of ways to read that. How do you interpret that line?
- [10:02]
B
Yeah. So the way that Paul explains it in Romans 7, I think is really key, is sort of to sit alongside this. So Paul says in Romans 7, he's addressing kind of the same question a little bit differently about why the law and what's the problem? Because it's God's law and it's God's word. So it's not bad. Paul says, no, it's not bad. But he says, here's the thing that happens. I have. Even after baptism, right? And certainly before that, the inclination to sin. The fancy word for that in the catechism is called concupiscence. Your sort of desire that pulls you toward what's not.
- [10:44]
A
You can go in any room of the house except the room at the end of the hall on the right side. Now, all of a sudden, that's the room that you want to go in.
- [10:54]
B
And so he says, when the law comes in, right, it makes me aware of sin. And that's a good thing for the law to do, to tell me not to do it. But what happens is that sin working within me makes me go, ooh, I want to do that. I had a friend who was in the police academy, and he was telling me about his driving test. So they had to make through this course and not hit any of these cones in under a minute. And I asked him about it. I said, well, that sounds crazy. Drive fast and everything like that. Is it intense? And he said, you got to understand, Jim. He said, a minute is plenty long enough to do the course. The reason people fail is that when you focus on the cones that you're not supposed to hit, you veer and you hit him, or you veer the other way and you hit the other one. He said, if you just look where you're supposed to go, then it's really easy to do the course. He said, I finished it in, like, 40 seconds, but everybody else was failing. And that's what his instructor told him was why, when the law comes in and says, don't covet your neighbor's wife. Paul says, I don't know. My heart started going, oh, yeah, my neighbor's wife, she. Ah, no, stop. So sin does that. That's not the law doing that. Sin does that. And the other thing that happens, though, is that God has purposed it so that the law would actually condemn sin. Because it's written there, don't do this. And so when you've done it, then you go, oh, oops. Not just, maybe I had a stray throat, but like, I broke a rule, I broke God's law. And so in that way, scripture sort of puts everything right. It locks it up, it imprisons it, as he says in verse 22, under sin, right? So that it's sitting under condemnation and then ready, right, for the people to be delivered from that curse and that condemnation through Jesus.
- [12:47]
A
All right, so Paul is going to go on Then to explain in verse 23. Now, before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. And as we've just seen, Paul explains that righteousness could not come by the law. And the law can tell you what you shall not do, but the law cannot cause you to do the right to do the right thing. And of course, elsewhere in his letters, he makes it very clear that it's the giving of the Spirit that empowers us to walk in the way of faith.
- [13:28]
B
Right, yeah. This is a case in which knowledge isn't power.
- [13:31]
A
That's right.
- [13:32]
B
Because the law can give you knowledge about what's right or wrong, but it can't actually give your heart the power to choose Right. Right. And carry it out.
- [13:40]
A
This goes back to Augustine's famous analysis where he says that the law was given in a sense, so grace we would seek. Right. The law is given and it reminds us, it highlights for us our sinfulness. But then the grace was given. Augustine would go on to say, so the law we would keep. Right. God gives us his grace so that we can become like Christ and we can become faithful. Right. So now before faith came, Paul says we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then the law was our guardian or our pedagogue or something like that, until Christ came in order that we might be justified by faith. Now that language there of guardianship is important to sort of tease out. And one of the, one of the things that happened in the ancient world was that if you were in a well to do family, you would have a servant, a kind of pedagogue who would be entrusted with teaching the children proper manners, protecting the children and that. And that servant would really be over the children, even though the servant was not a free person. Right. Nonetheless, the children were bound to obey that servant that was put over them. And Paul is identifying the law in the Old Testament with that sort of figure. Right?
- [15:09]
B
Yeah. And you can see here, right. The law was our guardian until. So there's a purpose for this. Now Paul's thinking about the nation of Israel. He's not telling Christians that they don't have to read the Old Testament law anymore. He's gonna quote it Adam in chapter five. But he's talking about the law that came 400 years after Abraham and sort of was over Israel to keep them, to keep them separate from other nations, to keep them from paganism at least, even if it didn't actually work all the time to keep them in line and tell them what was right so that they could self correct. But it's something that was over them in this particular kind of guardiany way unto the coming of Christ. And what some of the people are doing by implication in Galatia is they're saying, oh yeah, well, the Messiah's here. But I still, right, I still want to be under the guardian. One of the things a guardian would do in the ancient world is the guardian wasn't the primary teacher. They actually would take the kid to school, make sure they got there right. And when the kid got to school, who's in charge? The actual teacher. Same way that the law is supposed to be over Israel to get them to Christ. And then once Christ shows up, Christ is the main teacher, right? And his law comes to help us interpret the old law. I can remember being a kid, my mom tells this story, but I remember slightly the feeling, right? You always. Memory is weird that way, right? People tell you you did something and then you're like, oh, I gotta remember that, right? My mom tells a story about when I was in, I think, kindergarten and we all had to line up single file to go to lunch. And we weren't supposed to talk or get out of line. Okay, now that's all fine, right? And there we are in nice hot Florida, when I was in kindergarten is where I lived. And my mom showed up to take me to lunch and I didn't move. And she came up to me and she said, come on, Jim, it's time to go, it's time to go to lunch. No, you're coming to lunch with me. I was like, mom, stop it. No, no, I'm like crying and bursting on the inside because mom is trying to get me to break a rule. And what my mom to tell me is that, hey, I'm the reason the rule is here so that I can come get you out of the line. Come with me because I'm the one who has the higher sort of authority here. So get out of line and come to lunch with me.
- [17:40]
A
The line is, the line is supposed to enable me to be able to find you, Right?
- [17:46]
B
Exactly, exactly. But I, but I didn't understand that. I just wanted to follow the rules, right? And Paul, the way that Paul talks about this, right? It tries to make us think about the law in those terms, right? Not law bad, but law with purpose for Christ. Right? And if we use it against the message of Christ, then we got a problem.
- [18:06]
A
Yeah, that's right. All right, so Paul goes on to say, but now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. And he goes on to say, for in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith. So here we see the idea that we are. We receive the gift of divine sonship not simply by keeping the law, not simply by being circumcised, but through faith in Christ. And what would happen in the ancient world is the children would be under the guardian until they grew up. And then once they grew up, they received all the rights of the sons, the daughters of a household so that they were no longer under the servants. And so the idea is here we have in the coming of Christ, a kind of growing up of humanity. And in fact, church fathers like Origen or Augustine would develop this idea that in Christ we have now received the fullness of faith. And in a certain way, humanity is developing like a child. And with the coming of Christ, humanity is called to the deepest maturity. And so Origen will talk about how in the Old Testament, God is speaking to his people. God is speaking to his people in, like, baby talk. He's reaching down. He's trying to come down to their level, to communicate in ways that they'll understand. But in the new covenant, what happens? God picks up his children and he elevates them and he raises them up to himself. And I think it's a beautiful image to understand what is being talked about here. And in the Second Vatican Council, in the Vatican II talks about how the law was. In the law, we have God's. In the Old Testament, we have God's divine pedagogy where God is raising us up using the same kind of imagery. Any any further thoughts?
- [20:05]
B
No, I think that's great. Now, some people might ask Dr. Barber, they might say, well, so. But it sounds like you're just talking about, like, progressive history.
- [20:15]
A
Right?
- [20:16]
B
Humanity used to be kind of dumb, but now that Jesus has come, anything that's ad. Right. We're kind of coming up, but that's not quite the point. Right. How is it. It's not just that Jesus has come in history, but how is it that we become sons in the family?
- [20:32]
A
Right. The key idea is that we find that through faithfulness. Right. And that this is something that's already modeled for us in Abraham in the Old Testament. And we could look at other Old Testament saints as well, through whom God shows us the power of grace. As Paul highlights. Hey, did you have fellows driving at a certain.
- [20:53]
B
No, no, I was also gonna. I think the. Another part of that answer, too will also come in verse 27.
- [21:00]
A
Definitely.
- [21:02]
B
How we become children of God through
- [21:04]
A
faith is for as many of you as were circumcised into Christ have put on Christ. No, that's not what he says. It's. It's not as many of you been circumcised, for as many of you as received fancy hats have put. No, it's not receiving some sort of fancy hat, right? It is for as many of you who were baseball fans. No, it's not. What is it that that draws us into Christ? Although baseball is good for the soul, it's not that for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. And so here we see the importance baptism. For Paul, it is through baptism that we receive that faithfulness, that gift of faithfulness through grace that empowers us to grow up and to become like the Son of God. There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is no male and female, for you are all in one in Christ Jesus. This is a really important point, isn't it? Especially given the context of the controversy over the Gentiles in Paul's ministry. And we see this in Acts as well, right? And if you are Christ's. I love that line. If you are Christ's. So there are two ideas here. On the one hand, if you're baptized, you've put on Christ. And that idea of putting on Christ is a way of saying you put on Christ's character. This is a common expression in ancient Greek. Ancient writers. Put on someone is actually to be like them. So in baptism, we've put on Christ's character, we become like him. And so it doesn't matter if you're a Jew or Gentile. This is shocking because of course, for Jews. Well, Paul already articulated this earlier. We are not Gentile sinners, right? He says to Peter, I think sort of tongue and teeth, tongue in cheek. If you've been baptized, it doesn't matter if you're Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, you're all one in Christ Jesus. We're brought into that one body. And if you are in that one body, you are Christ's, you belong to Christ. Elsewhere in the New Testament, that imagery will be associated with marital imagery, like in Ephesians, right? Where if you're one body, the reason, but the reason we're the body of Christ because we're the bride of Christ, right? So if you are one in Christ, you are Christ's, you belong to him, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise.
- [23:54]
B
I think it's beautiful here how Paul gives a nice, wonderful Christian, Catholic kind of both. And right, on the one hand, you've got some people saying, well, look, if you want to be part of Christ, if you want to join up with Jesus and his blessings, well, he's our Messiah, our people's Messiah for the family of Abraham. So if you want Jesus, you better get on board with the Abraham family thing. First you need to get circumcised, you need to eat some kosher foods. Right. This kind of thing. And of course, we've heard some people, and I've certainly met some people today who misunderstand the response of the New Testament to put Jesus first. And so they say, oh, see, all we have is Jesus. We don't need Abraham, we don't need the Old Testament, we don't need Israel, any of that stuff. We have Jesus. We can clip off all the Bible, except for a couple of nice prophecies, and start with Matthew. But Paul doesn't do that, or we
- [24:56]
A
don't even need the Bible. Right?
- [24:58]
B
Right. You get something like that. Right. But Paul doesn't do that. Right. He doesn't say, you don't need Abraham at all. Forget it. He says, if you're Jew or Gentile, male, female, slave free, anybody, what you need is Christ. And when you're in Christ, you find all the promises of God are. Yes, that's what he says in 2 Corinthians 1:20. All the promises of God are Yes, in him. And that means that in Christ you get Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and everybody else. Right. And you become part of that story if you weren't before. And if you were part of that story before, like Paul was, you become even more perfectly part of that story because you're part of its fulfillment. Right. And what it was always pointing toward in Jesus.
- [25:46]
A
Yeah. And I think it's really important, and Paul points out earlier that Abraham was already justified before he was circumcised. Because the key idea there is, well, Gentiles are the uncircumcised. And so God in his province, saw to it that Abraham was first justified when he was uncircumcised, to foreshadow the way that even the Gentiles can be heirs of Abraham, heirs of the promise made to Abraham. So Abraham is the father of Isaac and Jacob and Israel, but he's also, in faith, the father of all nations and all peoples who, if they embrace Christ and receive baptism, participate in the inheritance of Christ himself. This is really important idea. Right. If you are in Christ. If you are united to Christ, then you are by definition a participant, a sharer in all of the things that belong to Christ, including his identity as the seed of Abraham, his relationship to Abraham, and the same grace that was given to him, promises made to him. Now, at the end of this line, at the end of the section, Paul talks about how we are heirs according to the promise. And this idea is going to get developed further in the next chapter, where Paul is going to continue to talk about the difference between an heir who is a child and a slave. That here we have Paul explained that we're not simply. We're not simply slaves of God. We are children. And this really needs to affect the way I think we approach God and the way we understand God. And of course, what Paul is saying here to the Gentiles is really revolutionary because what he's saying to them is you're not just servants of God, you're being brought into the family of God. You are to see God not just as your master, not just as your maker, but this one God of the cosmos, who you don't have by your customs, by your traditions as Gentiles, you don't have a relationship to this God wants to be your Father in Christ Jesus. And that is going to radically affect the way we understand our spiritual life, that we don't just follow God's laws because we're slaves. And if we don't, we're going to be punished. But we recognize that these laws, laws, these commandments are all given to us out of love for us. And this God who is our Creator is inviting us to be more than just servants, but to become part of his family in Christ Jesus. This is going to be revolutionary for the Gentiles and it's revolutionary for all of us, right, to think about the One who created the cosmos not just as maker, not just as the One who owns us, so to speak, not just as our judge, but as the one who truly loves us and demonstrates that love for us by giving us his own beloved Son. This is a truth that I think we should end with today. Something that's worth meditating on, reflecting on, especially as we pray the great prayer that Jesus left us, the Our Father. And I think this would be a good place to just end with that prayer. Be perfect. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
- [29:35]
B
Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
- [29:45]
A
Amen. St. Paul, pray for us. Next time we'll come back and look at what Paul says more. More in a more detailed way, what it means to be a child of God in Christ. Until then, thank you so much for supporting us. Thank you, all of you who are members of our mission circle, who make these Bible studies possible. And until next time, may God bless you and your family.