Galatians 3:23-29
Lesson Focus
Paul reminds us that all those who turn toward Jesus are full members of the family of God, regardless of the differences in culture, language, or ethnicity.
Lesson Outcomes
Through this lesson, students should:
Understand that Israel’s law was only ever meant to be a temporary guide for Israel.
Understand that regardless of our differences, we have become one with Christ and one with each other.
Contemplate how to live in covenantal and mutual faithfulness with God through Jesus.
Catching Up on the Story
At the end of chapter two, Paul lays out his argument for the sufficiency of Jesus, the Messiah, to bring about salvation for creation. We are not made right with God through the works of the law but through the faithfulness of Messiah Jesus. The Christian gospel is not “Jesus plus” works, the law, or anything else. We have been crucified with Jesus, united in his faithfulness to us and our mutual faithfulness to him. This mutual faithfulness creates a new community characterized by the loving grace of Jesus to bless all of God’s great creation.
In chapter three, Paul begins to expand his argument in service of the sufficiency of Jesus for salvation. Paul turns the conversation toward the gift of the Holy Spirit, which he contends was given as a gift not because we’ve followed the law. It is at this point that Abraham becomes a central figure. Abraham was justified, brought into right relationship with God not through the law, which hadn’t been given yet, but through faithfulness. Abraham’s relationship with God is ratified through the covenant God made with him. A covenant is a promise of mutual faithfulness between two parties.
Right before this week’s passage begins, Paul explains the purpose of the law. God gave the law as a result of humanity’s transgressions. It functioned as a mechanism to steward and shepherd God’s people until the Messiah established God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.
The Text
For this week’s text, we’ve picked up Paul as he begins to answer a rather important question: why would God give the law if it was incapable of providing for Israel, let alone the world’s, salvation? It is an important question because, before Jesus, the law in the form of the Torah was all Israel knew. Some might believe that Paul is trying to tear down this essential element of what it means to be God’s people. That isn’t Paul’s intention. He’s not trying to give the law a bad name. Paul wants his friends in Galatia to understand the importance of the law in their history.
As we’ve done before, grasping some of the contextual meaning behind Paul’s use of certain words is crucial. For Paul, faith is a community forming relationship of mutual love and faithfulness. Paul would not have understood faith as merely mental assent or a belief in God. Faith and faithfulness always go together. God’s faithfulness to creation is demonstrated through his sacrificial living and dying. Our faith/faithfulness is shown through a response to God that looks like love for God and others. So when Paul says, “Now before faith came…” he means “before God demonstrated God’s faithfulness through Jesus…” God’s faithfulness is what enables our response.
In verse 23, Paul continues, “We were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed.” Our English translations add an unfortunate level of negativity and harshness to Paul’s words. He’s not implying that creation, especially God’s people, Israel, were so corrupt that the only responsible course of action was to put them in jail using the law as bars of imprisonment. Our modern notions of imprisonment would have been utterly foreign to Paul. The prison was not where criminals got sent for a set amount of time or the rest of their lives as a consequence of their offenses. Prison or jail was where the undesirables and criminals were kept until their sentence could be carried out. Incarceration was always meant to be temporary. By using “imprisoned and guarded,” Paul argues that the law was always intended to be temporary, too.
As he moves into verse 24, Paul mixes the metaphor just a bit, saying that the law was our “disciplinarian” until the time when Jesus came to demonstrate God’s faithfulness. The word Paul uses here for “disciplinarian” has a particular meaning. A disciplinarian was not a tutor, a teacher, or a trainer. Instead, the disciplinarian was generally a slave whose job was to safely escort children to the places they needed to go. Our modern-day equivalent might be a babysitter who watches over a kid for a short time. When the assignment is done, the babysitter is free, and the child is no longer bound to do what the sitter says (Wright, 284).
For Paul, the law functioned as a babysitter whose job it was to get Israel safely to the place and time God had appointed. To be sure, the law as babysitter had real authority in guiding and stewarding Israel. To mix metaphors again, the law was like a temporary guardrail to ensure Israel stayed on the proper path, not running into a ditch or off a cliff (though more than once, Israel blows right through that guardrail to its own ruin). Or, perhaps the law was like the bumpers used to help little kids do more than throw gutter balls while bowling. Now that Jesus is here, we no longer need a babysitter or bumpers while we bowl. We are all under the faithful and watchful care of the Messiah.
In verse 26, Paul changes from an inclusive “we” to a specific “you.” Here, Paul is talking straight to Gentile believers in Galatia. He’s not neglecting Jewish believers but highlighting the Gentiles’ inclusion as recipients of God’s faithfulness. Gentiles are now all children of God. Paul doesn’t say “children” but “sons of God.” Our English translations use “children” in order to be inclusive of all children, regardless of gender. Sons of God, however, is saying something rather more specific than generic “children.” In Paul’s world, not all children receive an inheritance (Wright, 282). Not all children are the firstborn. Not all children are sons. In being specific about the Gentile’s new identity as “sons of God,” Paul is making an earth-shattering claim: even the Gentiles are full heirs and recipients of God’s grace and inclusion. Gentiles are as much sons of God as Israel is, and this has come about through the faithfulness of Messiah Jesus.
Paul goes on to narrow the focus just a bit, specifying that those who were baptized are now fully included in the community of faith, regardless of ethnic origin. It’s not just the act of baptism that’s important. Baptism is more than just a public declaration of a commitment to following Jesus. In Galatians, Paul uses the image of putting new clothes on to represent what’s happening in baptism. As we have come to expect, the richness of the original language is lost in translation. It’s not just that new clothes have been put on; it’s the quality and nature of those new clothes that are important. In baptism, the Galatian Gentiles have now been wrapped up in the quality of Jesus’ faithfulness, bringing them fully into the family of God and enabling them to live in newness of life and covenant faithfulness with other believers and with God through Jesus.
So as to remove any ambiguity in the minds of his friends (and the Jewish believers preaching a false gospel) in Galatia, Paul makes a daring assertion: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (verse 28). Is Paul saying that the qualities of each group that mark them as different than others are now erased? Is Paul hoping to form one monolithic culture where we’re all the same? No!
Part of what makes Christianity unique is the great diversity of those who follow Jesus. Christianity has never required people of various cultures and ethnicities to abandon what makes them unique so that they might conform to some ideal Christian form. In no uncertain terms, Paul is asserting that the qualities that make us different from each other can no longer be used to exclude whole people groups. Historically, and as a whole, humanity has always organized itself by culture, language, and the like. Regretfully, differences in culture and language have been used to claim superiority over those who are not like us. For Paul, this will not do. The faithfulness of God through Messiah Jesus has radically changed the world, not erasing the difference between unique individuals and cultures, but bringing all into this new community creating relationship marked by God’s faithfulness. We have been and are being invited into mutual faithfulness with God and with others.
So that there is no question as to what Paul means, he closes the chapter asserting that those baptized all “belong to Christ” and, as a consequence, are full heirs according to God’s promise to Abraham.
So What?
Let’s bring everything together. First, salvation comes through the community creating relationship of faithfulness between God and us through Jesus. As followers of Jesus, regardless of who we are, we are in a relationship of mutual faithfulness. Therefore, because of this new relationship, we no longer need the law to babysit us. The law’s time has ended. Its job of stewarding Israel is complete. We are no longer subject to its direction. Now, we all are “sons of God,” the rightful heirs to what God has to give.
In our baptism, we have had the nature and character of the ever-faithful Messiah Jesus draped over us, transforming us into the likeness of Jesus. The transformation that comes through baptism is available to all people, of all times, in all places as a gift of God. As we are being transformed, the differences of language and culture that mark our existence are not erased or expelled; they are brought under the lordship of Jesus of Nazareth. In the fullest, relational sense of the word, we are justified and brought into right relationship with God and others.
Consequently, our mutually faithful relationship with God transforms us into Abraham’s heirs. God made promises to Abraham of care and protection, and salvation so that Abraham’s heirs might become a blessing to the whole world, and these promises are now applied to us. Nothing else is required of us.
In no uncertain terms, Paul declares that Jesus’ faithfulness is enough for our salvation. The Jesus way, which Jesus summarized in the command to love God with all we have and to love our neighbor as ourselves, is what is required.
What might Paul say to us if he were with us today? He would probably say, filter all that you say and do, all of your rules for living, and your moral codes through Jesus’ command to love. In this way, you will find yourself living in faithful response to Jesus’ faithfulness toward us.
Discussion Questions
Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.
To catch yourself up on Paul’s argument, read Galatians 3:1-22. If needed, refresh your knowledge of God’s promises to Abraham beginning in Genesis 12. What promises does God make to Abraham? How is Abraham brought into right relationship with God (justified)?
What might a covenant as a promise of mutual faithfulness between two parties look like?
What might Paul mean by “Now before faith came…?”
Paul uses some language regarding Israel’s law that we might interpret as being bleak, “imprisoned and guarded under the law,” and “the law was our disciplinarian.” What might Paul mean by using those terms?
How might your reading of verses 23-25 change if God intended the law to be a temporary chaperone/babysitter?
Our English translation (the NRSV) translates verse 26 as “for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.” Paul’s original phrase is not “children of God” but “sons of God.” Remember that only sons, generally firstborn sons, were eligible to receive an inheritance from their fathers. What might we miss by translating “sons of God” as “children of God?”
In verse 27, Paul mentions baptism. Why does he mention baptism, and what does he mean by “have clothed yourselves with Christ?”
Verse 28 would have been a startling assertion for Paul’s readers. What might be Paul’s intention with his assertion? If there are no longer “Jews or Greeks,” what does that mean for us as we consider other cultures?
What might Paul mean by “for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (verse 28)?
Paul closes the chapter by referring to us as Abraham’s offspring and heirs according to the promise. Why does Paul reference Abraham here? How are we Abraham’s offspring? What does it mean to be “heirs according to the promise?”
Works Cited
Richard N. Longenecker, Galatians, Volume 41 of Word Biblical Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2015).
N.T. Wright, Galatians, Commentaries for Christian Formation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2021).
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