9th March, 2010

BRUCE C. WEARNE

Read Galatians 3: 15-18

The Galatians had fallen in with a view that assumed God's promise needed validation. They accepted the presumption that Torah was God's way of ratifying the Promise given to Abraham. Another way of putting it would be: the Law was given by God to justify His promise to Abraham. Thus the Galatians assumed that they retained their standing before God by abiding by the Law given to Moses. That was how they could become the inheritors of the promise to Abraham. For them, the Law of Moses spelled out the necessary conditions by which Abraham's heirs according to the flesh could, by their own works, be justified as the spiritual heirs of the Promise. And so for Gentiles to become joint-heirs they had to become united with the Jews by being subjected to the Law.

So what is Paul's response? He unravels their confusion by effectively showing them that they simply didn't know what they were talking about.

The Galatians had adopted a view that made little sense. How was anyone to understand such an incoherent view? If they are to now make sense of themselves as the spiritual heirs of Abraham, then what was promised to Abraham needs to make sense in terms of the human task of making promises and leaving wills.

Consider, Paul says, God's promise to Abraham as a will. How does a will work? Well, wills need to be ratified before an inheritance is distributed. When was God's Promise to Abraham ratified? Paul does not have to go into details here. The answer is assumed. God Himself stands by His word and does not need to give another Promise to prove He is trustworthy. It is not the Law which ratifies the Promise because the Promise is as good as ratified by the faith of the one who receives it. God Himself stands with the recipient of His Promise to ensure that the Promise comes about in the believer's life: "Fear not Abram, I am your shield and great reward!...And Abram believed and it was counted as right standing" (Genesis 15: 1,6)

But the Galatians were assuming that the Promise stands un-ratified without the Law. Not so, says Paul. That would mean that it comes within the Law's brief to nullify the Promise. The Promise needed no subsequent ratification.

Paul's reference to Abraham (verse 16), rather than Abram, would seem to confirm the view that the "new man", as ancestor of faith, was called to look forward in hope to the fulfillment of God's promises and thus He was on the path of being re-made as "father of many (yet to be embraced) families, tribes, nations." The "old man", had emphasised a faith by which descendents looked back to the "great ancestor". But the "new man", the one called by God to walk before Him and be perfect (Genesis 17: 1), was the one disciplined, by a circumcision requirement when it was given, to look forward in hope to the coming of Jesus Christ.

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