Prayer and Preaching, p. 260
Reading: Galatians 3:15-22 (J. B. Phillips)
15 Let me give you an everyday illustration, my brothers. Once a contract has been properly drawn up and signed, it is honoured by both parties, and can neither be disregarded nor modified by a third party.
16-18 Now a promise was made to Abraham and to his seed. (Note in passing that the scripture says not "and to seeds" but uses the singular 'and to your seed', meaning Christ.) I say then that the Law, which came into existence four hundred and thirty years later, cannot render null and void the original "contract" which God had made, and thus rob the promise of its value. For if the receiving of the promised blessing were now made to depend on the Law, that would amount to a cancellation of the original "contract" which God made with Abraham as a promise.
19-20 Where then lies the point of the Law? It was an addition made to underline the existence and extent of sin until the arrival of the "seed" to whom the promise referred. The Law was inaugurated in the presence of angels and by the hand of a human intermediary. The very fact that there was an intermediary is enough to show that this was not the fulfilling of the promise. For the promise of God needs neither angelic witness nor human intermediary but depends on him alone.
21-22 Is the Law then to be looked upon as a contradiction of the promise? Certainly not, for if there could have been a law which gave men spiritual life then law would have produced righteousness (which would have been, of course, in full harmony with the purpose of the promise). But, as things are, the scripture has all men "imprisoned", because they are found guilty by the Law, that to men in such condition the Promise might come to release all who believe in Jesus Christ.
This is the Word of the Lord, R.
Homily:
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
It's just a tossed off comment, but it illumines everything about the way a humbled Saul (turned Apostle Paul) had learned to hear anew the sacred writings of his people. He says: "Note singular seed, not plural, meaning Christ." The promise that has the priority over anything that came later with the Law was made to Abraham and to Abraham's SEED. Not seed as in all the descendants of Abraham, and in particular the Jewish people. Rather, Seed as in a singular descendant of Abraham: our Lord, Jesus Christ. Now, grammarians will argue with Paul about the way language works and that collective singular nouns are a thing, but Paul's whole horizon has been filled with the Man crucified and yet alive forevermore, ruling all things and coming agin in glory as the judge of the living and the dead, and in light of HIM and His singularity, grammar be damned.
All this in the context of Paul pointing to a well understood social construct to help us get the unalterable nature of the promise. After you shake hands, you can't start monkeying with the terms. You can't take a signed contract and scribble in some provisos or conditions and think that's okay and binding. Not how things are done with us, and we're a bunch of sinners who lie to each other constantly. But even we get the binding nature of a contract.
So how much more, a fortiori, when God makes a promise and that has no conditions, how much more can you bank on it? You can bank on it 110%, Paul is saying. There are no conditions in the original Abrahamic covenant or contract. It's just: "This is what I'm going to do for you, in you, that is, in Your Seed, that is in Jesus, all the families of the earth will be blessed."
But then the Law? I mean, Israel didn't dream up the law. It's something God gave. The same God who signed, sealed and delivered the unilateral promise to Abraham and his Seed. Paul's big aha was this: you don't fit Abraham into Moses. That's not how the story goes. You have to fit whatever God was up to with Moses and Sinai into the bigger picture of what God is up to with Abraham and His Seed who blesses all the families of the earth. The law has a jurisdiction, to be sure, but its writ ceases at the boundary of the Seed shows. Yes, it shows in uncompromising clarity "the existence and extent of sin" and that above all when the Seed, Jesus, grabs hold of it and starts helping us hear what it really demands in all its rigor. He won't let you get away with outward restraint of the hand from murder, when murder is still raging in your heart and given voice on your lips. And so with all the commandments. This is, of course, the great task of the Sermon on the Mount. When you're done with it, if you really listened, you can only say: Lord, have mercy on me, the sinner. And that Mercy is the Seed who unites the demands of the Law with the blessing promised by fulfilling the law in His own flesh and doing so for you, to bring you blessing.
Paul, had to deal with the Galatians and their flirtation with new teachers who wanted to make Moses an ongoing lawgiver for everyone. The Apostle argues that this is to misunderstand Moses and in fact to sell out everything Moses himself taught us about Abraham and faith and how God counts us righteous.
God made Abraham the promise that in his Seed, which, remember, is Christ, all the families of the earth will be blessed. And there was no one between God and Abraham when that promise was made, unlike Sinai with angels giving and Moses receiving and passing on to the people. The One God, the God who is One, He makes the promise and delivers on the promise, which mysteriously He is not only the Promiser, but the Promised One. He is the blessing-bringing Seed of Abraham releasing from condemnation those who, hearing the law, knowing themselves imprisoned with all of mankind in doing exactly what God has told us not to do and not doing exactly what He has told us to do, and especially when we're trying super hard. To men locked up in their own sinfulness and blindness and unable to find a way out by their own moral efforts and struggles, comes blessed release in a Promise for all who believe in Jesus.
Law: you do this.
Promise: I will do this for you.
Law: love and love perfectly, not with some piece of you, but the whole of you, from the inside out, through and through.
Promise: I have loved you with a perfect love, that springs from the heart of God before time began, and that appears in time with the Seed of Abraham. And this perfect love, the only real righteousness in this world, is my gift to you; believe it! It's yours!
So Abraham, long before the law, was saved simply by believing a promise, impossible though it seemed. It was a promise that reached fulfillment through his Seed, through Jesus. You, long after the law's perfect fulfillment in Christ, are saved by believing a promise, that Jesus is Abraham's Seed; that His obedience to the Law is alone without flaw; that He even became a curse to free you from the cursed condition of not having kept the law in its wholeness; and all this God promises to simply credited to you as you believe it, as you are baptized into Christ and put on Christ, and so become Abraham's heir in Him.
Luther was right: the proper distinction between Law and Gospel really is a bright light. Not that it shines UPON the Scriptures to illuminate them, but that it shines FROM the Scriptures to illuminate our lives. And it's the light that Paul was shining in today's reading to help you and me hear and understand: the Scriptures are all about Jesus, who is Abraham's Seed, and in whom God made a unilateral promise to bless you, to give salvation to the one who believes in Him, quite apart from any works of the law. Grant us, O Holy Spirit, such faith, such joy!
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Hymn: 567 "Not What These Hands Have Done"
Prayers:
Missionaries Krista Young, Pr. Shaun and Beth Daugherty and Mr. Carl and Karen Cecil for protection and to prosper their service; Ezariah, Amy, Paula, Roger, Ruth, Allan and Jan, Nirmala, and Ana for healing, peace and comfort.
Thanks to Tim Frank, guest musician today.
