The Law and the Promise
15Brothers, let me take an example from everyday life. Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case. 16The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say "and to seeds," meaning many people, but "and to your seed," meaning one person, who is Christ. 17What I mean is this: The law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise. 18For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on a promise; but God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise.
19What, then, was the purpose of the law? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come. The law was put into effect through angels by a mediator. 20A mediator, however, does not represent just one party; but God is one.
21Is the law, therefore, opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not! For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. 22But the Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe.
Dig Deeper
Over five years ago, my wife and I learned that we were going to have our second son. We were quite elated and went about the business of preparing all the things that need to be readied when your family is about to add another child. We went in for a routine ultrasound check a few months later only to find that there was a problem. Certain features of my wife's health were not functioning properly. The original plan of carrying the baby for nine months and then giving birth was not going to work due to these health problems. So, she had to lay in bed at an incline with her feet physically higher than her head without ever getting out of bed for nearly four months. These were temporary, but necessary conditions that were provided in order for her to achieve what was the originally expected outcome, a healthy baby boy. Once she got through that time and gave birth to our son, she was able to get up out of the bed and no longer needed the other restrictions on her health that were previously necessary. The health restrictions were good when they were needed, and were vital in order to achieve the birth of our son, but once he was here, it would have been unnecessary and restrictive for her to continue with them.
This is much the same point as Paul will make in the coming passage. The law, according to Paul, was not part of the original promise made to Abraham, and certainly was not part of God's ideal plan for man. It was man's sin, not God's original plan, that necessitated the law. The law was needed as a sort of quarantine for Israel in order to keep them separated from the world just enough to bring about the birth of the Messiah. It was the Messiah who was the great promise made to Abraham, not the law. Once the Messiah had come and the promise fulfilled, however, the law was no longer necessary. It had served its purpose, which was necessary and helpful, but now it was time for it to go.
Paul begins this section by pointing out that once a covenant has been established it cannot be changed. This is something that all Jews, especially the Judaizers would agree to. Once that has been agreed upon, Paul is going to show how the promises of the covenant were given to Abraham and were not tied directly to the law. We often tend to forget that the law was given over four centuries after the covenant was made with Abraham (Paul says 430 years, which was the time given in the O.T. for the length of the stay in Egypt, and was a sort of symbolic number for the time between the covenant and the law). If a covenant cannot be changed, then what Paul wants to get at is God's original intent with his covenant. To do this, he makes the point that the ultimate fulfillment of the promise given to Abraham was a single descendant which was, of course, the Messiah, Jesus Christ.
We would do well in understanding this passage to realize that when Paul speaks of 'seed', he is referring, in essence, to the concept of 'family'. In Ephesians 1, Paul says that it was God's plan from the beginning (He predestined) to have a single family of people that have entered into the life of Christ. His point here is similar. The promise to Abraham was made to him and his seed (singular), meaning the Messiah. As shown in Ephesians 1 and many other places in Paul's writings (1 Cor. 12 for instance), the Messiah represents God's people. Thus, when Paul refers to the singular seed, he means the single family that has entered into the Messiah, the family that God has always intended. This was God's will, to have one family not two families of Jews and Gentiles. His point is that God always wanted one family, in the Messiah, and that if the law was permanent and Israel had been left in quarantine, then it would have forever created two families.
That's the problem with confusing the law with the covenant. The law was a necessary but temporary aspect added later to the covenant but was not part of the original covenant itself. Paul is clear in verse 22 that the entire human race has been infected with sin and is under God's judgment. God called Abraham so that through his family, the cure for sin might be found. The problem is that Abraham's descendants were sinful themselves, so the people through whom the solution would come were part of the problem. They could never be the cure in and of themselves. They were the doctors, but because they had the disease themselves, they needed to be put into quarantine until the medicine they were carrying could be produced. In that scenario, the law was the quarantine, meant as a temporary measure to keep them separated for a time from the full brunt of sinful nations until the cure, the Messiah could come forth.
The law was temporary until the single family of God's people that he had always intended and promised would come through the Messiah. This is the purpose of the law, says Paul. It was given by angels (according to popular Jewish belief in his day) and Moses, a mediator. Moses, though, could not be the mediator through whom God established his single family; God is one and He desires a single family, not many families.
This brings up the obvious question which Paul himself asks, Is the law, therefore opposed to the promises of God? No, but it was temporary. The law served its purpose and it was good, but the law could not grant righteousness. The problem was never with the law, it was with the condition of Abraham's family, just as the health restrictions for my wife were because her health was poor. The bed restrictions came as a result of her condition, which came first and caused the restrictions. The sinfulness of Abraham's family came before the law and was a pre-condition of the law. The promise given to Abraham that all nations of the world would be blessed through he and his descendants could only be fulfilled in Jesus Christ and nothing else. All those who would have faith in the life of Christ and enter into it become heirs of that promise. This is something that the law simply cannot accomplish.
Devotional Thought
Paul was obviously deeply committed to the concept of God's one family. Are you as deeply committed to that concept? Is strengthening and increasing God's family your driving force? If it's not, then what do you need to change in your thinking so that it is?
No comments:
Post a Comment