Law Context – Key Verses – Galatians (NIV)
Law Context – Key Verses – Galatians (NIV)
3:26 So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
I always find logical arguments about the purpose of the Law confusing. On one hand it was God’s plan to care for His people: keep them safe, clean, pure and good to each other and Him. It also was for a clean message that perfection is the expectation and failure the expectation of the expectation.
Here Paul says the Law was added due to transgression until the Seed had come. I can’t help but think the word "added" is important. It didn’t replace the promises of God or the righteousness by faith of Abraham.
It almost sounds like Paul is saying that because we needed salvation and it wasn’t going to come for a while, we needed the Law to show us at least how to try to behave until Christ came. Not only that but that may be what he’s saying here about the Law.
Moral wrongs will always be wrong. But we are now free from dietary and ceremonial laws. I don’t understand, then, why if faith was what saved since Abraham’s time, why did we need the Law? The way we are saved was always the same: the Savior’s payment and our acceptance of it in faith: before and after the event.
After the event, we are free in Christ. I guess even though we could be saved at any time by faith in Him, the event in time and space was important for the order of things.
This type of thing is the context of these verses. However, alone these verses are awesome. I just didn’t want to gloss over the context.