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Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Galatians 3:21

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[Is] the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.

21. Having thus sharply contrasted the two covenants, the Apostle anticipates an objection ‘You say that God is One. He is the Author both of the law and of the promises. How then can there be the opposition between them which your argument would imply?’ To this the answer is decisive. The difference is such as to display a marked contrast, not such as to involve antagonism. Otherwise God might seem in giving the law to have retracted the promises. Away with such a supposition.

for if there had been a law given by the law ] Life had been forfeited by sin; life must be recovered by righteousness. The promise assured life to the believer through righteousness imputed; the law offered life as the reward of a perfect obedience. Had the conditions of the law been less strict, or had man been able to fulfil them, then righteousness (and life) had come to men from the law. Hence there is no antagonism between the two covenants. ‘To give life’ was the end of both. The law failed to do this; the promise succeeded. Man could not obey perfectly: he could believe, and so obtain life.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

Is the law then against the promises of God? – Is the Law of Moses to be regarded as opposed to the promises made to Abraham? Does this follow from any view which can be taken of the subject? The object of the apostle in asking this question is, evidently, to take an opportunity to deny in the most positive manner that there can be any such clashing or contradiction. He shows, therefore, what was the design of the Law, and declares that the object was to further the plan contemplated in the promise made to Abraham. It was an auxiliary to that. It was as good as a law could be; and it was designed to prepare the way for the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham.

God forbid – It cannot be. It is impossible. I do not hold such an opinion. Such a sentiment by no means follows from what has been advanced; compare the note at Rom 3:4.

For if there had been a law given which could have given life – The Law of Moses is as good as a law can be. It is pure, and truly, and good. It is not the design to insinuate anything against the Law in itself, or to say that as a law it is defective. But law could not give life. It is not its nature; and man cannot be justified by obedience to it. No man has ever yielded perfect compliance with it and no man, therefore, can be justified by it, compare the notes at Gal 2:16; Gal 3:10, note.

Verily righteousness should have been by the law – Or justification would have been secured by the Law. The Law of Moses was as well adapted to this as a law could be. No better law could have been originated for this purpose, and if people were to attempt to justify themselves before God by their own works, the Law of Moses would be as favorable for such an undertaking as any law which could be revealed. It is as reasonable, and equal, and pure. Its demands are as just, and its terms as favorable as could be any of the terms of mere law. And such a law has been given in part in order to show that justification by the Law is out of the question. If people could not be justified by a law so pure, and equal, and just; so reasonable in all its requirements and so perfect, how could they expect to be justified by conformity to any inferior or less perfect rule of life? The fact, therefore, that no one can be justified by the pure law revealed on Mount Sinai, forever settles the question about the possibility of being justified by law.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Gal 3:21

Is the law, then, against the promises of God?

The harmony between the law and the gospel

I. The gospel gift of righteousness is not made of none effect by the law. Abraham was justified by faith.

1. Which is Gods old covenant.

2. Resting on Gods own promises.

3. And still endures.

II. The law is not made of none effect by the gospel gift of righteousness. The law is–

1. For conviction.

2. Discovers need for righteousness.

3. Leads to righteousness by leading to Christ. (Canon Vernon Hutton.)

If the law had been for the same end as the gospel, for man ruined and sinful to obtain life and salvation by it as well as the gospel, then they might have been supposed to contradict one another; but since they are given for different purposes, they are but different revelations of God which are happily subordinate one to another, and their different ends and designs are both obtained. (I. Watts, D. D.)

The harmony of revelation

There is a mighty growth in the discovery of Gods nature and will, but never a point at which we are brought to a pause by a manifest contradiction of one part with another. In reading the Bible we always look on the same landscape, the only difference being that as we take in more of its statements, more and more of the mist is rolled away from the horizon, so that the eye can behold a wider sweep of its beauty. There is a vast difference between the New Testament and the Old, but it is the difference between two parts of one whole. It is no new landscape which opens on our gaze, as the town and the forest come out from the shadow, and fill up the blanks in the glorious panorama; it is no new planet which comes travelling in its majesty, as the crescent deepens into the circle, and the line of faint light gives place to the rich globe of silver; and it is no fresh religion which is made known as the brief notices given to patriarchs expand into the institutions of the law, under the teachings of prophecy, till at length in the days of Christ and His apostles they burst into magnificence, and fill a world with redemption. It is throughout the same system, and revelation has been only the gradual development of this system–the drawing up of another fold of the veil from the landscape, the adding of another stripe of light to the crescent; so that the fathers of our race, and ourselves, look on the same arrangements for human deliverance, though to them there was nothing but cloudy expanse, with here and there a prominent landmark, whilst to us, though the horizon loses itself in the far-off eternity, every object of personal interest is exhibited in beauty and distinctness. (H. Melvill, B. D.)

The importance of the law

Law, as law, can do nothing but enjoin the right, and then, justify on perfect obedience, or condemn on proved violation. A sinful man, hearing the law and nothing else, or hearing it more distinctly, and with more corroborating consciousness, than the provision for relief is perceived in its intention or experienced in fact, can only despair and die. Strength withers with the extinction of hope; effort is vain when performance is impossible (see Rom 8:3-4). The law was weak because corruption was strong; and corruption strong because the sense of guilt could not be removed. In proportion, in fact, to its anxiety to realize the ideal of virtue, and its spiritual insight into the inefficacy of ritual observances, humanity, while under the law, was disheartened and bewildered, and was thus made to long for deliverance and life. Sometimes it felt goaded and exasperated, and became desperate and reckless from the feeling of its helplessness (Rom 7:5). The gospel brings hope to the despairing and life to the dead, by its ample arrangements for both pardon and strength; by its atoning sacrifice and sanctifying spirit. Obedience becomes possible because it may be of another sort, and is to be presented for a different object. It is acceptable to God as the result of what He has done, not as a ground of what He is to do. The impulses and instincts of the Divine nature of which the saved are partakers, make duty a necessity, labour a delight, obedience a spontaneous service, conformity to the law a privilege and a joy. (T. Blarney, D. D.)

The law useful

No doubt the Jaw restrains us; but all chains are not fetters, nor are all walls the gloomy precincts of a gaol. It is a blessed chain by which the ship, now buried in the trough, and now rising on the top of the sea, rides at anchor, and outlives the storm. The condemned would give worlds to break his chain, but the sailor trembles lest his should snap; and when the grey morning breaks on the wild lee shore, all strewn with wrecks and corpses, he blesses God for the good iron that stood the strain. The pale captive eyes his high prison wall, to curse the man who built it, and envies the little bird that, perched upon its summit, sings merrily, and flies away on wings of freedom; but were you travelling some Alpine pass, where the narrow road, cut out of the face of the rock, hung over a frightful gorge, it is with other eyes you would look on the wall that restrains your restive steed from backing into the gulf below. Such are the restraints Gods law imposes–no other. It is a fence from evil–nothing else. I challenge the world to put its finger on any one of these Ten Commandments which is not meant and calculated to keep us from harming ourselves or hurting others. (Dr. Guthrie.)

Contrasts

Up to this point the apostle has contrasted the promise made to Abraham, the fulfilment of which was in the gospel, with the law of Moses in these particulars:–

1. The promise was made first four hundred and thirty years before the giving of the law on Sinai, and that which is given afterwards cannot weaken the older covenant.

2. The covenant of promise was one of blessing to mankind, the law regarded transgressions.

3. The promise is absolute and without limitation of time; the blessing will be for ever, the law is given until the coming of the Messiah.

4. The promise was made by God Himself, without the intervention of others. The law was ordained by the ministry of angels.

5. The promise was made without any mediator, the law was given to the people by the hands of Moses. The law here spoken of by the apostle is the ceremonial law; not that of the Decalogue; not the moral law, which was reimposed, but not for the first time given at Sinai. (W. Denton, M. A.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 21. Is the law then against the promises of God?] Is it possible that the intervention of the law, in reference to one part of the Abrahamic seed, should annul the promise made to the other? It is impossible.

For if there had been a law, &c.] If any law or rule of life could have been found out that would have given life-saved sinners from death, and made them truly happy, then righteousness– justification, should have been by that law.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: though it be thus, yet there is no such opposition between the law and the promises, as that either of them make the other useless. Far be it from me (saith the apostle) to assert any such thing! They are not contrary to one another but subservient to one another.

For if there had been a law given which could have given life; for if there had been a law which could, by our perfect performance of it, have given us a righteousness, wherein we might have stood righteous before God, then righteousness should have been by the law; then men might have hoped to have been justified and accepted of God by me for such obedience; then indeed the law had been against the promises, they holding forth another righteousness, viz. the righteousness of God from faith to faith.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

21. “Is the law(which involves a mediator) against the promises of God (which arewithout a mediator, and rest on God alone and immediately)?God forbid.”

lifeThe law, as anexternally prescribed rule, can never internally impart spirituallife to men naturally dead in sin, and change the disposition. If thelaw had been a law capable of giving life, “verily (invery reality, and not in the mere fancy of legalists) righteousnesswould have been by the law (for where life is, there righteousness,its condition, must also be).” But the law does notpretend to give life, and therefore not righteousness; sothere is no opposition between the law and the promise. Righteousnesscan only come through the promise to Abraham, and through itsfulfilment in the Gospel of grace.

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

Is the law then against the promises of God?…. If the law was added because of transgressions, and curses for them, and if the inheritance is not of it, but by promise, were it, it would not be by promise, then, says an objector, it is against the promises: these are contrary to one another, and God, in giving the one and the other, must contradict himself: to which it is replied,

God forbid; a way of speaking the apostle uses, when he would express his abhorrence and detestation of anything, as here; for though the law and promises are distinct things, and have their separate uses, yet they are not contradictory to each other; the law has its use, and so have the promises; the promises do not set aside the law as useless on all accounts, nor does the law disannul the promises, but is subservient to them:

for if there had been a law which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law; but the law cannot give life, spiritual life to a dead sinner; God only can do this, Father, Son, and Spirit; so far is the law from giving it efficiently, that it is not so much as the means of it; it is not made use of this way; God makes use of the law to kill, but not to make alive; he makes use of the law to strike dead all a man’s hopes of happiness, by the deeds of it; but it is the Gospel he uses to quicken and comfort; that is the Spirit that giveth life. The law requires as much of a dead sinner, as it did of Adam in innocence, but gives him no life, activity, and strength to perform; could it quicken him, and enable him to do all its demands perfectly, then there would be righteousness, and so justification by it, as by the promise; whence it appears that there is no contrariety in the law to the promises: the reason why there is no righteousness is, because it cannot give life, spiritual life and strength; and if so, then not eternal life; which is the free gift of God, and not the merit of men’s works: this is directly contrary to a notion of the Jews, who cry up the law as a life giving law; say they n,

“great is the law, , “for it giveth life to them that do it”, in this world, and in the world to come:”

and elsewhere o,

“the law is a tree of life to all that study in it,

, “to give unto them life” in this world, and “to give unto them life” in the world to come.”

n Pirke Abot, c. 6. sect. 6. o Zohar in Gen. fol. 70. 3. & in Num. fol. 62. 1.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

Against the promises ( ). A pertinent question again. Far from it ( ).

Which could make alive ( ). First aorist active infinitive of , late compound (, alive, , to make) verb for which see 1Co 15:22. Spiritual life, he means, here and hereafter.

Verily (). “Really” (cf. Mark 11:32; Luke 24:34). Condition and conclusion ( ) of second class, determined as unfulfilled. He had already said that Christ died to no purpose in that case (2:21).

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

Against the promises [ ] . Does it follow from the difference between the law and the promises that they are in antagonism? Paul supposes this objection on the part of a Jewish Christian.

God forbid [ ] . See on Rom 3:4. This could only be true in case the law gave life, for life must come either through the promises or through the law. If the law is against the promises, and makes them invalid, it follows that life must come through the law, and therefore righteousness, without which there is no life, would verily [] , just as the Judaisers claim, be through the law.

By the law. Tisch., Rev. T., Weiss, retain ejk nomou from, resulting from the law. WH. read ejn nomw in the law. The meaning is substantially the same with either reading : in the one case proceeding from, in the other residing in the law.

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

1) “Is the law then against the promises of God?” (ho oun nomos kato ton epangellion (tou theou). “Is the law therefore against the promises of God?” The answer is “no.” It was used to indict, to bring guilt to sinners and point to the need of the object of the promise, the coming of the Redeemer, Mat 5:17; Rom 3:19-21; Rom 7:10; Rom 7:12.

2) “God forbid,” (me genoito) “May it not be, become,” or be considered as such. There was no conflict between the promise through Abraham and the law of Moses. Their purposes while different were not in conflict. The ‘law with it’s ‘specifics pointed in types and shadows to the need of the coming Sacrificial one.

3) “For if there had been a law given which could have given life,” (ei gar edothe nomos he dunamenos zoopoiesai) “For if a law was given (existed) being able to make alive,” to impart a possible condition, contrary to fact. The fact is that no such law was given, Gal 2:16; Gal 2:21. Life was forfeited by sin, restored by the righteousness of Christ imputed to believers, 2Co 5:21,

4) “Verily righteousness should have been by the law,” (ontos ek nomon an en he dikaiosune) “Really (actually) righteousness would have been (existed) by law,” by media of law, not by grace. The only life given by law was in the restricted sense that one who already had physical life was given length of days in relation to his keeping or breaking the law in capital punishment decrees that brought death under the law. For each of the ten commandments had a death penalty attached to the open breaking of it. Those who kept the law lived by it; Those who broke it died by it. These deeds of the law concerned physical life and capital punishment, death, not the means by which pardon for sin or eternal life was received or retained, Isa 45:22; Act 10:43; Rom 11:6; Eze 18:4-22; Gen 9:6; Eze 20:10-11. When life is offered by law keeping it is physical life extension. When death is threatened for sin under the law it is physical death by the law’s order of capital punishment.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

21. Is the law then against the promises of God? The certainty and steadiness of the divine purpose being admitted, we are bound equally to conclude that its results are not contrary to each other. Still there was a difficulty to be resolved, arising from the apparent contradiction between the Law and the covenant of grace. This is, perhaps, an exclamation. Dreading no farther contradiction, now that the point is settled, Paul concludes, that the former arguments have placed it beyond a doubt, and exclaims: “Who will now dare to imagine a disagreement between the law and the promises?” And yet this does not prevent Paul from proceeding to remove the difficulties that might still arise.

Before answering the question, he expresses, in his usual manner, a high disdain of such folly; thus intimating the strong abhorrence with which pious men must regard whatever brings reproach on the Divine character. But another instance of high address, which claims our notice, is found in this turn of expression. He charges his adversaries with the offense of making God contradict himself. For from him the Law and the promises have evidently proceeded: whoever then alleges any contradiction between them blasphemes against God: but they do contradict each other, if the Law justifies. Thus does Paul most dexterously retort upon his adversaries the charge which they falsely and calumniously brought against him.

For if there had been a law given. The reply is (what is called) indirect, and does not plainly assert an agreement between the law and the promises, but contains all that is necessary to remove the contradiction. At first sight, you would say that this sentence departs from the context, and has nothing to do with the solution of the question; but this is not the case. The law would be opposed to the promises, if it had the power of justifying; for there would be two opposite methods of justifying a man, two separate roads towards the attainment of righteousness. But Paul refuses to the law such a power; so that the contradiction is removed. I would admit, says he, that righteousness is obtained by the law, if salvation were found in it. But what?

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES

Gal. 3:22. The Scripture hath concluded all under sin.The written letter was needed so as permanently to convict man of disobedience to Gods command. He is shut up under condemnation as in a prison.

Gal. 3:24. The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ.As a tutor, checking our sinful propensities, making the consciousness of the sinful principle more vivid, and showing the need of forgiveness and freedom from the bondage of sin.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Gal. 3:21-25

The True Use of the Law

I. Was not intended to bestow spiritual life.If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law (Gal. 3:21). The law was not against the promises. It was a divine method in dealing with man, and one divine method never conflicts with another. It was intended to mediate between the promise and its fulfilment. It is not the enemy but the minister of grace. It did not profess to bestow spiritual life; but in its sacrifices and oblations pointed to the coming Christ who is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth (Rom. 10:4).

II. Was to reveal the universal domination of sin.The Scripture hath concluded all under sin (Gal. 3:22). The Bible from the beginning and throughout its course, in its unvarying teaching, makes the world one vast prison-house, with the law for gaoler, and mankind held fast in chains of sin, condemned, and waiting for the punishment of death. Its perpetual refrain is, All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Its impeachment covers the whole realm of human life, thought, and desire. Every human life, says Martensen, that has not yet become a partaker of redemption is a life under the law, in opposition to the life under grace. The law hovers over his life as an unfulfilled requirement; and, in the depth of his own being, remains as an indismissible but unsatisfied and unexpiated claim on him, which characterises such a human existence as sinful and guilt-laden.

III. Was to teach the absolute necessity of faith in order to escape its condemnation.But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed (Gal. 3:23). The law was all the while standing guard over its subjects, watching and checking every attempt to escape, but intending to hand them over in due time to the charge of faith. The law posts its ordinances, like so many sentinels, round the prisoners cell. The cordon is complete. He tries again and again to break out; the iron circle will not yield. But deliverance will yet be his. The day of faith approaches. It dawned long ago in Abrahams promise. Even now its light shines into his dungeon, and he hears the word of Jesus, Thy sins are forgiven thee; go in peace. Law, the stern gaoler, has after all been a good friend if it has reserved him for this. It prevents the sinner escaping to a futile and illusive freedom (Findlay).

IV. Was to act as a moral tutor to train us to the maturity and higher freedom of a personal faith in Christ.Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, etc. (Gal. 3:24-25). The schoolmaster, or pedagogue, among the Greeks meant a faithful servant entrusted with the care of the boy from childhood, to keep him from evil, physical and moral, and accompany him to his amusements and studies. If then the law is a pedagogue, says Chrysostom, it is not hostile to grace, but its fellow-worker; but should it continue to hold us fast when grace has come, then it would be hostile. Judaism was an education for Christianity. It trained the childhood of the race. It humbled and distressed the soul with the consciousness of sin. It revealed the utter inadequacy of all its provisions to justify. It brought the despairing soul to Christ, and showed that the true way to righteousness was by personal faith in Him.

Lessons.

1. Law is the revealer of sin.

2. Law demands universal righteousness.

3. Law is a training for faith.

GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES

Gal. 3:21-22. The Law not contrary to the Divine Promise.

1. It is the way of some to make one Scripture contradict another, yet their bold allegations will be found always false, and truth to be ever most consonant and never contrary to itself.
2. So exact and full is the righteousness required in order to life, and so far short do all mankind come of it, that no works of our own, done in obedience to the law, can amount to that righteousness.
3. Though all men by nature be under sin, it is a matter of no small difficulty to convince any man of it. The work of the law, accusing, convincing, or condemning the sinner, is compared to the work of a judge detaining a malefactor in prison which is not effectuated but with force and violence.
4. The law by its threatenings prepares and necessitates the soul to embrace salvation by faith in the Christ revealed in the promise.Fergusson.

Gal. 3:22. The Great Prison; or, All concluded under Sin.

1. Satan does indeed draw and drive men into sinthis is the accursed work of his restless, sabbathless life; and when he has got them there he binds them fast, and will not let them flee from his toils. He builds a high wall of sin all round them so that they shall not look over it into the goodly land beyond, and here he shuts them up together, sinner with sinner, a never-ending ghastly multitude, that they may encourage and pamper each other in wickedness, and that no example, no voice of holiness, may ever reach and startle them. But God never drove, never drew, any man into sin. He is calling us to come out from the deadly land, from the loathsome, plague-breathing dungeon. So when the Scripture concludes, or shuts all men up together under sin, it is not by driving them into sin, but for the sake of calling them out of it.
2. With all the light of the Scriptures shining around us, with the law of God ever sounding in our ears, and the life of Christ set continually before us, how prone are we to forget our sinfulness, to turn away from the thought of it, to fancy we are as good as we need be, and that, though we might certainly be better, yet it does not matter much! How apt are we still to forget that we are concluded under sin, to forget that we are shut up in a prison! Although the souls of so many millions are lying around us, bloated with the poison of sin, how tardily do we acknowledge that the poison by which they perished must also be deadly to us!
3. Suppose you were to be carried before an earthly court of justice, and that one sweeping accusation were to be brought against you; suppose you were found guilty, and the excuse you set up were the complete proof of your guilt,what would follow? The judge would straightway pass sentence upon you, and you would be condemned to suffer punishment according to the measure of your offence. And must we not expect that the course of things should be the very same when you are carried before a heavenly court of justice?
4. When a mans eyes are opened to see the prison in which he is shut up, to see and feel the chains that are fast bound round his soul and have eaten into it; when he has learnt to see and know that the pleasures, whatever they may be, of sin are only, like the flesh-pots of Egypt, intoxicating drugs, given to him to deprive him of all sense of his captivity,then will he long for a deliverer, rejoice on hearing of his approach, hail him when he comes in view, and follow him whithersoever he may lead. As unbelief is the one great universal sin, in which all mankind are concluded, as it is only from having let slip our faith in God that we have yielded our hearts to the temptations of the world and given ourselves up to its idolatries, so it is only through faith that we can be brought back to Godthat we can receive the promise given to those who believe.J. C. Hare.

Gal. 3:23. Shut up unto the faith. The Reasonableness of Faith.The mode of conception is military. The law is made to act the part of a sentry, guarding every avenue but one, and that one leads those, who are compelled to take it, to the faith of the gospel. Out of the leading varieties of taste and sentiment which obtain in the present age we may collect something which may be turned into an instrument of conviction for reclaiming men from their delusions and shutting them up to the faith.

I. There is the school of natural religion.It is founded on the competency of the human mind to know God by the exercise of its own faculties, to clothe Him in the attributes of its own demonstration, to serve Him by a worship and a law of its own discovery, and to assign to Him a mode of procedure in the administration of this vast universe upon the strength and plausibility of its own theories. They recognise the judicial government of God over moral and accountable creatures. They hold there is a law. One step more, and they are fairly shut up to the faith. That law has been violated.

II. There is the school of classical morality.It differs from the former school in one leading particular. It does not carry in its speculations so distinct and positive a reference to the Supreme Being. Our duties to God are viewed as a species of moral accomplishment, the effect of which is to exalt and embellish the individual. We ask them to look at man as he is, and compare him with man as they would have him to be. If they find that he falls miserably short of their ideal standard of excellence, what is this but making a principle of their own the instrument of shutting them up unto the faith of the gospel, or at least shutting them up unto one of the most peculiar of its doctrines, the depravity of our nature, or the dismal ravage which the power of sin has made upon the moral constitution of the species? This depravity the gospel proposes to do away.

III. There is the school of fine feeling and poetical sentiment.It differs from the school of morality in thisthe one makes virtue its idol because of its rectitude, the other makes virtue its idol because of its beauty, and the process of reasoning by which they are shut up unto the faith is the same in both. However much we may love perfection and aspire after it, yet there is some want, some disease, in the constitution of man which prevents his attainment of it, that there is a feebleness of principle about him, that the energy of his practice does not correspond to the fair promises of his fancy, and however much he may delight in an ideal scene of virtue and moral excellence, there is some lurking malignity in his constitution which, without the operation of that mighty power revealed to us in the gospel, makes it vain to wish and hopeless to aspire after it.Dr. Thomas Chalmers.

Gal. 3:24-25. The Law our Schoolmaster.There was a time when God put His world under a schoolmaster; then it would have been preposterous to apply faith. There is a time when a larger spirit has come, and then it would be going back to use law.

I. The uses of restraint in the hearts education.

1. The first use of law is to restrain from open violence. It is necessary for those who feel the inclination to evil, and so long as the inclination remains so far must a man be under law. Imagine a governor amidst a population of convicts trusting to high principle. Imagine a parent having no fixed hours, no law in his household, no punishment for evil. There is a morbid feeling against punishment; but it is Gods method.

2. The second use of restraint is to show the inward force of evil.A steam-engine at work in a manufactory is so quiet and gentle that a child might put it back. But interpose a bar of iron many inches thick, and it cuts through as if it were so much leather. Introduce a human limbit whirls round, and the form of man is in one moment a bleeding, mangled, shapeless mass. It is restraint that manifests this unsuspected power. In the same way law discovers the strength of evil in our hearts.

3. The third use is to form habits of obedience.In that profession which is Specially one of obediencethe military professionyou cannot mistake the imparted type of character. Immediate, prompt obedience, no questioning why? Hence comes their decision of character. Hence, too, their happiness. Would you have your child happy, decided, manly? Teach him to obey. It is an error to teach a child to act on reason, or to expect reasons why a command is given. Better it is that he should obey a mistaken order than be taught to see that it is mistaken. A parent must be master in his own house.

4. The fourth use is to form habits of faith.As Judaism was a system calculated to nurture habits of obedience, so was it one which nourished the temper of faith. All education begins with faith. The child does not know the use of the alphabet, but he trusts. The boy beginning mathematics takes on trust what he sees no use in. The child has to take parental wisdom for granted. Happy the child that goes on believing that nothing is wiser, better, greater, than his father! Blessed spirit of confiding trust which is to be transferred to God.

II. The time when restraint may be laid aside.

1. When self-command is obtained. Some of us surely there are who have got beyond childish meanness: we could not be mean; restraint is no longer needed; we are beyond the schoolmaster. Some of us there are who have no inclination to intemperance; childish excess in eating and drinking exists no longer. Some of us there are who no longer love indolence. We have advanced beyond it. The law may be taken away, for we are free from law. True Christian liberty is thisself-command, to have been brought to Christ, to do right and love right, without a law of compulsion to school into doing it.

2. When the state of justification by faith has been attained.There are two states of justificationby the law and by faith. Justification by the law implies a scrupulous and accurate performance of minute acts of obedience in every particular; justification by faith is acceptance with God, not because a man is perfect, but because he does all in a trusting, large, generous spirit, actuated by a desire to please God. In Christianity there are few or no definite lawsall men are left to themselves.

3. Restraint must be laid aside when the time of faith has come, whether faith itself have come or not.It is so in academical education. We may have attained the full intellectual comprehension of the gospel, but religious goodness has not kept pace with it, and the man wakes to conviction that the gospel is a name and the powers of the world to come are not in him. You cannot put him to school again. Fear will not produce goodness. Forms will not give reverence. System will not confer freedom. Therefore the work of childhood and youth must be done while we are young, when the education is not too late.F. W. Robertson.

Gal. 3:24. The Law preparing for Christ.

I. The law led men to Christ by foreshadowing Him.This was true of the ceremonial part of it. The ceremonies meant more than the general duty of offering to God praise and sacrifice, since this might have been secured by much simpler rites. What was the meaning of the solemn and touching observance of the Jewish day of atonement? We know that what passed in that old earthly sanctuary was from first to last a shadow of the majestic self-oblation of the true High Priest of Christendom, Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. Each ceremony was felt to have some meaning beyond the time then present, and so it fostered an expectant habit of mind; and as the ages passed these expectations thus created converged more and more towards a coming Messiah, and in a subordinate but real way the ceremonial law did its part in leading the nation to the school of Christ.

II. By creating in mans conscience a sense of want which Christ alone could relieve.This was the work of the moral law, of every moral precept in the books of Moses, but especially of those most sacred and authoritative precepts which we know as the ten commandments. So far from furnishing man with a real righteousness, so far from making him such as he should be, correspondent to the true ideal of his nature, the law only inflicted on every conscience that was not fatally benumbed a depressing and overwhelming conviction that righteousness, at least in the way of legal obedience, was a thing impossible. And this conviction of itself prepared men for a righteousness which should be not the product of human efforts, but a gift from heavena righteousness to be attained by the adhesion of faith to the perfect moral Being, Jesus Christ, so that the believers life becomes incorporate with His.

III. By putting men under a discipline which trained them for Christ.What is the divine plan for training, whether men or nations? Is it not thisto begin with rule and to end with principle, to begin with law and to end with faith, to begin with Moses and to end with Christ? God began with rule. He gave the Mosaic law, and the moral parts of that law being also laws of Gods own essential nature could not possibly be abrogated; but as rules of life the ten commandments were only a preparation for something beyond them. In the Christian revelation God says, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. When you have done this, and He on His part has by His Spirit infused into you His divine life so that you are one with Him, you will not depend any longer mainly upon rules of conduct. Justification by faith is so far from being moral anarchy that it is the absorption of rule into the higher life of principle. In the experience of the soul faith corresponds to the empire of principle in the growth of individual character and in the development of national life, while the law answers to that elementary stage in which outward rules are not yet absorbed into principle.H. P. Liddon.

The Law a Schoolmaster.

I. The Jewish religion brought men to Christ by the light, the constraining force, of prophecy.First a human deliverance of some kind, then a personal Saviour, is announced. He was exactly what prophecy had foretold. He Himself appealed to prophecy as warranting His claims.

II. By that ceremonial law which formed so important a part of it.The Jewish ceremonial pointed to Christ and His redemptive work from first to last. The epistle to the Hebrews was written to show thisthat the ceremonial law was far from being a final and complete rule of life and worship, did but prefigure blessings that were to follow it, that it was a tutor to lead men to the school of Christ.

III. By creating a sense of moral need that Christ alone could satisfy.The moral lawGods essential, indestructible moral nature in its relation to human life, thrown for practical purposes into the form of commandmentsis essentially, necessarily beyond criticism; but when given to sinful man it does, but without grace, discover a want which it cannot satisfy. It enhanced the acting sense of unpardoned sin before a holy God. It convinced man of his moral weakness, as well as of his guilt, of his inability without the strengthening grace of Christ ever to obey it.

Lessons.

1. We see a test of all religious privileges or gifts: Do they or do they not lead souls to Christ?

2. Observe the religious use of all lawto teach man to know his weakness and to throw himself on a higher power for pardon and strength.

3. We see the exceeding preciousness of Christs gospelthe matchless value of that faith which lives in the heart of the Church of God.H. P. Liddon.

The Progress of Revelation.

I. The law was our schoolmaster as giving precepts in which principles were involved but not expressly taught.

II. As teaching inadequate and not perfect dutiesa part instead of the whole, which was to develop into the whole. Examplesthe institution of the Temple worship; the observance of the Sabbath; the third commandment.

Lessons.

1. Revelation is education.

2. Revelation is progressive.

3. The training of the character in Gods revelation has always preceded the illumination of the intellect.F. W. Robertson.

Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell

TEXT 3:21, 22

(21) Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could make alive, verily righteousness would have been of the law. (22) But the scripture shut up all things under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.

PARAPHRASE 3:21, 22

21 Is not the law, then, which subjects men to the curse for their sins, contrary to the promises of God, wherein he declares that he will justify them by faith? By no means. The law, by subjecting men to the curse, without giving them the least hope of mercy, obliges them to flee to the promises for justification. For if there had been a law given, which was able to make sinners alive, either from the spiritual death under which they were lying, or from the temporal death to which they were condemned for their sins, certainly justification would have been obtained by that law.
22 But, so far is this from being the case, that the scripture hath shut up together all, as condemned to death on account of sin (that is, hath declared that they are so shut up) that the promise of justification made known by the gospel of Jesus Christ might be given to them who believe.

COMMENT 3:21

Is the law then against the promises of God

NoGod can not act in a contrary way.

The law is not a competitor nor in opposition.

if there had been a law given which could make alive

If it could give life, it would be a rival to the gospel.

Some divide the law into a ceremonial part and a moral part.

Still, the Word says there is no law ablenot one.

COMMENT 3:22

but the Scripture shut up all things under sin

All the prophets declared men were sinners.

The O.T. prophets did not foretell alone, but preached against sin.

In the N.T. John the Baptist preached vigorously about sin to the Jews.

The Jews considered themselves righteous and the Gentiles sinners.

Jesus parable of the good Samaritan rather reversed the picture as did the story of the Publican.

The law prescribed means of taking care of sins.

Men were locked in sin until such a time as they could be released, according to Paul.

There is a graphic picture of men in sin in Rom. 3:19-20.

For God hath shut up all unto disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all. Rom. 11:32

the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe

All were prisoners of hope.

Thus the law was not against the Gospel, but helped men to see the blessedness of the Gospel.

STUDY QUESTIONS 3:21, 22

367.

Is God acting contrary to himself in giving the law?

368.

Is the law in competition to the promise?

369.

If the law could give life, would it be a rival to the promise?

370.

Is the law divided by Paul into Moral law and Ceremonial law?

371.

What is meant by the scriptures shut up?

372.

Tell what is included in all things.

373.

How long were things locked up?

374.

What could do the releasing?

375.

Why did men need to be shut up in order to be prisoners of hope?

Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series

(21) The promises.Here, as in Gal. 3:16, the plural, because the promise to Abraham was several times repeated, and afterwards ratified to his descendants.

For if . . .The argument which follows begins with a concession. Though the Law was no substitute for the promise, it yet directly led up to it.

Given life.This is practically equivalent to justified, or made righteous. He who is justified has lifeboth true spiritual life in the present and eternal life in the future. That the Law could not justify had been shown in Gal. 3:11 and in Rom. 3:20.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

(21-24) If the Law was thus inferior to the promise, does it therefore follow that it is contrary to it? By no means. The Law could not indeed give life; it could not justify, or place in a state of righteousness. Its real result was rather to place all men in a state of sin. But by so doing it prepared the way for the fulfilment of the promise in all who put faith in Christ. The Law was a close and strict, yet salutary, discipline to make us fit for faith in Christ.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

21. Law against the promises They are very diverse; but do they oppose each other as foes, to collide with and destroy each other?

God forbid By no means. They both aim at the same results holiness and life. And if men would accord with law, they would by law attain to holiness and life. But though the law is all right, the men are not; and the blessed result is to be attained by Christ, grace, and promise. The latter is substitute to gain the same end that the former attempts, but fails to gain.

Given life Eternal, blessed life, by perfect law-keeping, such as angels possess.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

‘Is the Law then against the promises of God? God forbid. For if there had been a Law given which could make alive, truly righteousness would have been of the Law.’

Is the Law then in opposition to the promises of God? Not at all. No one will pay more reverence to the Law than Paul. There is no fault with it. It reveals sin. It is holy (Rom 7:7-12). Indeed had it been possible to give a Law that could give life, that is how righteousness would have been provided for us. But the trouble is that we are too sinful (Rom 7:14). All that the Law can do is mediate death to us, for, try as we might, we cannot keep the Law. Its final act, then, is to reveal to us our sinfulness and condemn us. It is not, however, the Law that is at fault, but us. Thus it fails as an instrument of salvation, not because of its weakness, but because of our weakness.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Gal 3:21. Which could have given life, Which could have put into a state of life. The word signifies, to make alive: St. Paul considers all men here as in a mortal state; and to be put out of that mortal state into a state of life, he calls being made alive. He says the law could not do this, because, it could not confer righteousness. By the law, means, by works, or obedience to that law, which tended towards righteousness as well as the promise, but was not able to reach to, or confirm it. See Rom 8:3.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

Gal 3:21 . ; ] , the reference of which is differently explained according to the different interpretations of Gal 3:20 , draws an inference, not from the definition of the object of the law in Gal 3:19 (Castalio, Luther, Gomarus, Pareus, Estius, Bengel, and others, including Lcke, Olshausen, de Wette, Wieseler, Hofmann, Stlting), but from Gal 3:20 , which is not arbitrarily to be set aside, or to be treated merely as an appendage of Gal 3:19 . [163] The law, namely, which was given through a mediator, and therefore essentially otherwise than the promise, might thereby appear to introduce on the part of God another way of granting the Messianic salvation than the promises, and consequently to be opposed to the latter. See the fuller statement at Gal 3:20 .

] See Gal 3:8 ; Gal 3:16 . The is the usual contra, in opposition, to . Matthias incorrectly explains it: “Is it included under the idea of the promises?” Since the simple and not, possibly, (see Lobeck, Phryn . p. 272) is to be supplied, the expression would be wholly without the sanction of usage. Moreover, looking to the specific difference in the ideas of the two things, Paul could not have asked such a question at all.

. . .] ground assigned for the , and therefore proof that it would be incorrect to conclude from Gal 3:20 that the law was opposed to the promises. For if it had been opposed to the promises, the law must have been in a position to procure life; [164] and if this were so, then would righteousness actually be from the law , [165] which, according to the Scriptures, cannot be the case (Gal 3:22 ).

] just as in the whole context: the Mosaic law , although without the article, as in ii. 21, iii. 11, 18; Winer, p. 117 [E. T. 152].

. .] The article marks off the definite quality which, in the words , is conceived by the lawgiver as belonging to the law (Winer, p. 127 [E. T. 167]; Khner, ad Xen. Mem . ii. 7, 13): as that which is able to give life; and this is the point of this conditional sentence.

] “Hoc verbo praesupponitur mors peccatori intentata,” Bengel. The , however, which the law is not able to furnish, is not the being alive morally (Winer, Rckert, Matthies, Olshausen, Ewald, Wieseler, Hauck, Hofmann, Buhl, and others, following older expositors), but, in harmony with the context, the everlasting Messianic life (see Kuffer, de bibl . notione , p. 75), as is evident from Gal 3:18 ( ) and from Gal 3:22 . Comp. also 2Co 3:6 . The moral quickening is presupposed in this . The law, in itself good and holy, could not subdue the dominion of the principle of sin in man (Rom 8:3 ), but rather necessarily served to promote this dominion (see on Gal 3:19 ), and was therefore unable to bring about the eternal life which was dependent on obedience to the law (Gal 3:12 ): given unto life, it was found unto death, Rom 7:10 . Paul never uses of the moral quickening, nor either (Eph 2:5 ; Col 2:13 ). The is the eternal life which is manifested at the Parousia (Col 3:3 f.), and therefore in reality the (Gal 3:18 ; Gal 3:29 ). Comp. , Gal 3:12 , to which our . glances back.

] then in reality (not merely in Jewish imagination) the law would be that, from which the existence of righteousness would proceed , namely, by its enabling men to offer complete obedience. The argument proceeds ab effectu ( ) ad causam ( ), for, without being righteous before God, man cannot attain eternal life: not as Rckert, Wieseler, Hofmann, and others, in accordance with their view of ., are compelled to assume, a causa (the new moral life whereby the law is fulfilled) ad effectum (the which would be acquired by the fulfilment of the law). The relation between and is aptly indicated by Oecumenius: , and by Bengel: “Justitia est vitae fundamentum .”

[163] Also in 1Co 6:15 , (in opposition to Stlting’s appeal to the passage) introduces a possible (mischievous) inference from what immediately precedes , to be at once repelled with horror by .

[164] This consequence depends upon the dilemma: Life may be procured either through the promises or through the law. If, therefore, the law stands in opposition to the promises, so that the latter shall no longer be valid, the law must be able to procure life. This dilemma is correct, because no third possibility is given in the divine plan of salvation.

[165] Even if be not genuine, this interpretation is not altered (Buttmann, neut. Gr . p. 194, 6); and we cannot explain (with Hofmann): “If there was given, etc., then was ,” etc. This imperfect ( erat ) would be illogical; Paul would have written or .

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

DISCOURSE: 2068
THE TRUE USE OF THE LAW

Gal 3:21-26. Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law. But the Scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might he given to them that believe. But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But, after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.

THE true nature and intent of the moral law is by no means generally understood: and, if the question put by the Apostle into the mouth of an objector, Wherefore then serveth the law? were addressed to the great mass even of considerate Christians, very few among them would know what answer to return to it. Hence it is that such opposition is everywhere made to the free offers of the Gospel. We have continually the very same contest to maintain against the generality of Christians, as the Apostle had against the Jews. The Apostle preached, that the Messiah, the Seed in whom all the nations of the earth were to be blessed, was come: and that all were now to be justified by faith in him, precisely as Abraham had been two thousand years before. The Jews maintained, that this could not be the true way of salvation; for that God had given a law to Moses; and that law was of perpetual obligation; and, if we were now to be justified by faith alone, the law would be made void, and had in reality been given to no purpose. To this the Apostle answers, that the law, which was given to the Jews alone, could not invalidate the promise which had many ages before been given to Abraham and all his believing seed, whether among the circumcised Jews, or the uncircumcised Gentiles; and that there was no such opposition between the two as the Jews imagined; the law being in fact designed to introduce the Gospel with more effect, and to endear it to all, when it should come to be more fully revealed. This was the state of the question between the Apostle and his opponents; to whom a complete answer is given in the words before us. The question simply was, Is there any real opposition between the law as given to Moses, and the promises as given to Abraham? No; says the Apostle: there is a subserviency of the one to the other; and both the one and the other proclaim to us, in fact, the same salvationsalvation by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and by faith alone.
To make this clear to the comprehension of all, I will distinctly mark what he says respecting,

The use of the law

The law, when originally given to Adam in Paradise, was ordained to life [Note: Rom 7:10.], and would, if perfectly fulfilled by him, have given him a title to eternal life: but, having been once broken, it is no longer capable of giving a title to life, and is only a ministration of condemnation and death [Note: 2Co 3:7; 2Co 3:9.]. Had it been possible to have given a law which should have rendered the salvation of fallen man consistent with the Divine attributes, God would never have given his only-begotten Son to take our nature and die for us: the publication of a new law would have been so obvious and so easy, that he would undoubtedly have preferred that [Note: ver. 21.]. But no such law could be given: for, if it required the same as the original law did, namely perfect and perpetual obedience, it was impossible that that should ever be rendered to it by fallen man [Note: Rom 8:3.]: and, if it required less, it would dispense with obligations, which of necessity exist between the creature and the Creator, and would, in fact, give a license to sin: which it is impossible for a holy God to do. The law then, as given to Moses, was not intended for any such purpose as this: it was intended,

To prepare men for the Gospel

[The Gospel is a revelation of mercy through the incarnation and sufferings of the Son of God: and that mercy is freely offered to all who will believe in Christ. Previously to the coming of Christ, this mystery was but very imperfectly understood: but the law as published on Mount Sinai was well calculated to prepare the minds of men for the fuller manifestation of it. For it made known to men the true extent of their duty: it shewed that we were bound to love God with all our heart, and all our mind, and all our soul, and all our strength: and to love our neighbour in all respects as ourselves. Nothing less than this was to be paid by us from the earliest moment of our existence to our latest breath, Revealing this, it further shewed to men the inconceivable depth of their guilt. By this standard are we to be tried every moment: yet in no one moment of our lives have we acted up to it, either towards God or man. On the contrary, we have been at an infinite distance from it, having been altogether engrossed by self, and caring nothing either for God or man, any farther than the interests of self might he promoted by them. Thus, not to speak of any particular actions, the whole state and habit of our minds, every day, every hour, every moment, has been as contrary to the law as darkness to light, and hell to heaven. Hence the law proceeds still further to shew men their infinite desert of wrath and condemnation. For every single deviation from this perfect standard, the wrath of God is denounced against us; agreeably to that sentence of the law, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them. Consider then our duty as ramified in all its extent, and in one single day our sins against it are more numerous than the stars of heaven, or the sands upon the sea-shore; and of course, a proportionable weight of wrath and condemnation is entailed upon us.

Such is the light which the law reflects on our state before God: and does it not endear to us the offer of a free and full salvation? Doubtless it does: and for this end it was given, that we might the more thankfully accept the promises made to us in Christ Jesus our Lord.]

To shut men up to the Gospel

[Men naturally go to the law, having no idea of obtaining salvation in any other way than by obedience to its commands. Hence the sinner, when once awakened to a concern about his soul, and sensible that he has not obeyed the law in its full extent, hopes to make a composition, as it were, and to he accepted on paying a part for the whole. But the law thunders in his ears, Thou must obey me in all things. He then hopes, that the law will accept his repentance for past transgressions, and sincere obedience for the time to come. But the law replies, I know nothing of repentance, or of sincere obedience: thou must pay me my lull demands, and continue obedient in all things from first to last: I have stated the extent of your duty; and I have said, Do this, and thou shalt live. These are the only terms on which I can offer thee any thing: if thou canst not bring perfect obedience with thee, it is in vain to come to me: thou must seek a remedy elsewhere: for I can afford thee none. Thus the law, being inflexible in its demands, and inexorable in its denunciations, compels the sinner to look out for some other way of escape from the wrath to come, and shuts him up to that which is revealed in the Gospel: it declares to him, that, as long as he continues to found his hopes on the law, he is, and must be, under its curse: and, just as at the first promulgation of the law, the people, trembling with apprehensions of immediate death, entreated that God would give them a mediator, through whom they might venture to approach him; so now the terrors of Mount Sinai constrain men to look for mercy solely through the mediation and intercession of the Lord Jesus [Note: Deu 5:23-28.]. In this view the law was to be a schoolmaster to us, to bring us to Christ: it was by instruction to inform us, and by discipline to constrain us; that so the promises made to us in the Gospel might become available for their destined end.]

The law thus viewed, opens to us in all its grandeur,

II.

The benefit of the Gospel

Before faith came, and whilst the way of salvation through a crucified Redeemer was but darkly and partially disclosed, the law kept men in a state of bondage, like prisoners shut up, and looking forward to a future deliverance: but, when faith did come, and the Gospel was fully revealed, then it appeared what unspeakable mercy God had kept in store for the sinners of mankind: for by the Gospel,

We are liberated from the law

[The very instant we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and lay hold on the covenant of grace, we cease to be any longer under the covenant of works. The law, as a covenant, has no longer any power either to command, or to condemn: it is abrogated with respect to us; yea, it is dead: and has no more power over us, or connexion with us, than a man who is dead has with the widow whom he has left behind him. This is not only affirmed by the Apostle, but is illustrated also by this very image. If, says he, her husband is dead, the woman is loosed from the law of her husband: so we are become dead to the law and the law is become dead to us, by the body of Christ; yea, we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held [Note: Rom 7:1-6.]. And this effect is produced by the law itself; as he also tells us in the chapter preceding our text: I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God [Note: Gal 2:19.]: that is, the law so utterly condemns me, that I can have no hope from it whatever, and am forced, whether I will or not, to renounce all dependence upon it, and to live no longer as one who hopes to earn life for himself, but as one who seeks only to honour and glorify his Redeemer. Hear the account which St. Paul gives of this matter in another epistle. Speaking to those who had believed in Christ, he says, Ye are not come unto the Mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of the trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard, entreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more: but ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, and to the general assembly and Church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the just made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, which speaketh better things than the blood of Abel [Note: Heb 12:18-24.]. In a word, the moment we believe in Christ, we are no longer under a schoolmaster, or, as it is elsewhere said, we are no longer under the law, but under grace [Note: Rom 6:14.].]

We are brought into possession of all spiritual and eternal blessings

[We are justified by faith [Note: ver. 24.]; we are justified freely from all things, from which we could not be justified by the law of Moses [Note: Act 13:39.]: Our sins, whatever they may have been, are put as far from us as the east is from the west [Note: Psa 103:12.]: nor shall they ever more be remembered against us [Note: Heb 8:12; Heb 10:17.]. Nor is this all: we are brought into the very family of God, and made the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus [Note: ver. 26.]. Nor are we children only, but children of full age, who are no longer under tutors and governors, but already admitted to the most intimate communion with our God, and enjoying, as far as in this world we can enjoy, the inheritance prepared for us [Note: Gal 4:1-7.].

And here we cannot but call your attention in a more especial manner to the means by which all these blessings are secured. It is again and again said, that they become ours by faith in Christ Jesus. There is no other way: it is simply and solely by faith: there is no mixture of works: works, so far from augmenting our title to these things, or contributing to the acquisition of them, will, if wrought for this end, cut us off from all hope of ever coming to the possession of them. So inconsistent with each other are the covenants of grace and of works, that the smallest portion of works utterly excludes grace [Note: Rom 11:6.]; and the slightest imaginable dependence on them invalidates all that Christ has done and suffered for us. The instant we blend any thing with faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we make the promise of no effect, and Christ, with respect to us, has died in vain [Note: Gal 2:21; Gal 5:2-4.].]

And now, in conclusion, let us inquire,

Whence is it that there is so much occasion to insist on these truths?

[Is it that there is any difficulty in them? No; in all personal matters we find it easy enough to distinguish between a gift and a debt. We are at no loss to make this distinction, if a man, who has never done one thing for us in all his life, claim a reward at our hands. It is to little purpose that he compliments us with an appeal to our generosity: the single circumstance of his founding his hope, though in a small degree, on services which he professes to have rendered us, especially if, instead of having done us any service, he has all his days been adverse to our will and hostile to our interests, is quite sufficient to cut him off from all hope of receiving the benefits he expects. And much more may this be the case when a sinner presumes to prefer a claim of merit before his God. For what is this but the most abominable pride? Take an illustration, which will serve to place the matter in its true point of view. A prince offers pardon to his rebellious subjects, provided they will sue for it through the mediation of his son, to whom he has committed the whole government of his kingdom. Some apply in the appointed way, and are pardoned: but others say, We will not accept of pardon on the terms he offers it: if the king will levy a fine upon us, we will pay it; or, if he will appoint us a service, be it never so difficult, we will perform it: but to stoop to the method which he has prescribed, namely, that of asking pardon through the mediation of his son, is a humiliation to which we will not submit. Who does not see, that pride is the principle by which these persons are actuated; and that, if they perish as rebels, it is altogether through their own fault? Know then, that it is pride, and pride alone, that keeps any from seeing the excellency of the Gospel salvation. It is pride that makes any so averse to be saved entirely by faith without the works of the law: and, till the proud hearts of men be humbled, the Gospel will always be to them a stumbling-block, and rock of offence. But be it known to you, that, how desirous soever you may be to establish a righteousness of your own, you can never do it, but must submit to the righteousness of God [Note: Rom 10:3.].]

Why are we so earnest in enforcing them?

[If the present life only were concerned, we might be content to let you go on your own way. But on your acceptance or rejection of the Gospel salvation depends your happiness both in this world and the world to come. This accounts for St. Paul insisting so much on this doctrine in his Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians; and for his declaring so repeatedly, that, if they did any work whatever with a view to recommend them to Christ for justification, Christ himself should profit them nothing. See what he says on this subject respecting his Jewish brethren. He tells us, that the Gentiles, who had not followed after righteousness, had attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith: but that Israel, who had followed after the law of righteousness, had not attained to the law of righteousness. Wherefore? (says he:) Because they sought it not by faith, but, as it were, by the works of the law: for they stumbled at that stumbling-stone [Note: Rom 9:30-32.]. So it will be with all who will not submit to the righteousness of faith. If they would believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, they should never be ashamed: but if, through an ignorant zeal for the law, they will not embrace the Lord Jesus Christ as their only hope, they must inevitably and eternally perish. This is the reason that, in going through this epistle, we bring the matter before you in such various points of view, and with such an earnest desire to fasten a conviction of it on your minds: and we entreat all to bear in remembrance the importance of the subject, and not to give sleep to their eyes or slumber to their eye-lids, till they have embraced the Lord Jesus Christ with their whole hearts, and made him all their salvation and all their desire.]

Are the promises any more against the law, than the law is against the promises?

[The law, as has been shewn you, is subservient to the promises, and was given on purpose to make us more earnest in apprehending them, and more simple in relying on them. So the promises in return secure obedience to the law; as St. Paul has said, Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law [Note: Rom 3:31.]. To this truth the whole Scriptures bear witness. The grace of God which brings salvation, teaches us obedience [Note: Tit 2:11-12.]; and the faith that apprehends that salvation, secures it; for it works by love, and purifies the heart, and overcomes the world. The state into which we are brought by the promises, precludes a possibility of our living in any wilful sin [Note: Rom 6:1-7.]: it would be contrary to the very idea of our being servants of Christ, to render service to that which he so abhors. A spiritual man cannot endure the thought of so grievous an inconsistency [Note: Rom 6:15-16.]. On the contrary, the promises afford him encouragement to aspire after universal holiness, because, whilst they set him free from all slavish fears, they assure him of a constant supply of grace and strength proportioned to his necessities [Note: 2Co 12:9.]. Hence, apprehending and living upon the promises, he will cleanse himself from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, and perfect holiness in the fear of God [Note: 2Co 7:1.]. Let this then appear in all our lives: so shall it be seen beyond all contradiction, that, though we build not on our works, we diligently perform them; and that the doctrine we profess is in truth a doctrine according to godliness.]

Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)

(21) Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law. (22) But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. (23) But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. (24) Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. (25) But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. (26) For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. (27) For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. (28) There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. (29) And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

What a very blessed account Paul here gives of the ministry of the law, and the end of it in Christ. If men, taught of God, would consult those Scriptures, instead of carnal reasoning’s, they would discover, that the law, in its highest services, was never intended to higher usefulness in the Church, than as an hand-maid unto Christ. And I cannot enough admire the beautiful figure which the Apostle adopts, of a schoolmaster, when speaking of the law. For, in general, men of this profession, observe one firm, steady, and unshaken purpose, in their plan of discipline. A breach in their commands, is followed by punishment. And as a master, though demanding obedience, on penalty of correction: so, the law is sure to condemn all breaches, but affords no helps to obey. The universal decree which accompanies every precept, is: do this, and thou shalt live. Cursed is everyone which continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them. Reader! is not this very blessedly preaching the necessity of Christ?

I detain the Reader a moment longer to observe, that when it is said at this verse, the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ; the words to bring us unto are not in the original Scripture. Neither, indeed ought they to have been in the translation. For although the imperious demands of the law, preacheth the necessity of Christ; yet the law never bringeth to Christ. This is the work of God alone to accomplish. And the drawings of the Father, and the teachings of the Spirit, are necessary to this great end! Joh 6:44-45 and Joh 16:14 .

What a very sweet, and blessed conclusion, is made of this Chapter, in relation to the whole family. All are said to be children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. Their sonship is defined by their characters in their original constitution, when chosen in Christ and when betrothed to Christ, as well as when redeemed by Christ, and regenerated by God the Holy Ghost. And their baptism, is said to be baptized into Christ. Not outward ordinances, but inward grace. Not mere profession, but vital union. They are said to have put on Christ; not put on a name, but Christ: by the washing of regeneration, and a renewing of the Holy Ghost shed on them abundantly through Jesus Christ our Lord. Tit 3:5-6 . And, in this family alliance, all distinctions are lost, and done away. The Jew and the Greek, the bond and the free, are all one in the One glorious Head. For being proved to be Christ’s, they thereby prove themselves to be Abraham’s seed, and all equally included, in the privilege of children. Oh! the blessedness of being Christ’s, and heirs according to the promise.

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

21 Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.

Ver. 21. Have given life ] That is, have justified a sinner. But herein lay the law’s weakness through the flesh, Rom 8:3 .

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

21 .] The Law being thus set over against the promises, being given through a mediator between two, the promises by the one God, it might seem as if there were an inconsistency between them. The nature of the contrariety must not (as De W.) be deduced from the following disproof of it: this disproof proceeds on , which is not the ground of the apparent contrariety, but its explanation. The appearance of inconsistency lay in the whole paragraph preceding the of Gal 3:17 , the , of Gal 3:18 , and the contrast between the giving of the two in Gal 3:20 . “ is not without emphasis: the promises which rest immediately on God, and were attested (? sic still in Exo 2 ) by no mediator.” Ellic. ] Notwithstanding all the above features of contrast between the Law and the promises, it is not against them, for it does not pretend to perform the same office; if it did , then there would be this rivalry, which now does not exist.

. is best expressed in English, as in E. V., a law which could for the article circumscribes the to some particular quality indicated in the defining participle which follows: see reff. Peile’s rendering, “if that which ( !) should have power to give life had been given in the form of law,” is in the highest degree ungrammatical.

takes for granted that we by nature are dead in trespasses and sins.

has the emphasis: in very truth , and not only in the fancy of some, by the law (as its ground) would have been righteousness (which is the condition of life eternal, .

If life, the result, had been given by the law, then righteousness, the condition of life, must have been by it also: reasoning from the whole to its part).

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

Gal 3:21 . In view of the continuity of divine providence the suggestion that the Law contravened or nullified the previous covenant of God with Abraham and the patriarchs is dismissed as monstrous. It was incompatible with the faithfulness of God to His pledged word, and is therefore repudiated with the customary formula . The apparent sanction given by the Law to a new method of justification ( viz. , by works) could lead to no actual result, unless it had at the same time possessed the power which it lacked of quickening spiritual life. . These words are omitted in some MSS., but the preponderance of authority is in favour of their retention. The sense is the same whether they be expressed or understood. The addition may perhaps be due to a marginal comment which found its way into the text.

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

against. Greek. kata. App-104.

God forbid. See Gal 2:17.

given life. Greek. zoopoieo. See Joh 6:63.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

21.] The Law being thus set over against the promises,-being given through a mediator between two,-the promises by the one God,-it might seem as if there were an inconsistency between them. The nature of the contrariety must not (as De W.) be deduced from the following disproof of it: this disproof proceeds on , which is not the ground of the apparent contrariety, but its explanation. The appearance of inconsistency lay in the whole paragraph preceding-the of Gal 3:17, the , of Gal 3:18,-and the contrast between the giving of the two in Gal 3:20. is not without emphasis: the promises which rest immediately on God, and were attested (? sic still in ed. 2) by no mediator. Ellic. ] Notwithstanding all the above features of contrast between the Law and the promises, it is not against them, for it does not pretend to perform the same office; if it did, then there would be this rivalry, which now does not exist.

. is best expressed in English, as in E. V., a law which could for the article circumscribes the to some particular quality indicated in the defining participle which follows: see reff. Peiles rendering, if that which ( !) should have power to give life had been given in the form of law, is in the highest degree ungrammatical.

takes for granted that we by nature are dead in trespasses and sins.

has the emphasis: in very truth, and not only in the fancy of some, by the law (as its ground) would have been righteousness (which is the condition of life eternal,- .

If life, the result, had been given by the law, then righteousness, the condition of life, must have been by it also: reasoning from the whole to its part).

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Gal 3:21. , then) This objection may be taken from the circumstance, that the law is said to have been given because of transgressions. The answer is, that the law is not against the promises, and in regard to the answer two considerations are presented: The one is, the law in itself, though it were willing, cannot give the life that has been promised, Gal 3:21; the other is, nevertheless, as a schoolmaster, it assisted the promise of life; Gal 3:22 to Gal 4:7. The first consideration is proved by this Enthymeme[29] (of the same sort as at Gal 3:18): If the law could give you life, righteousness would be by the law; but righteousness is not by the law; supply [the conclusion], therefore the law cannot give life. The major proposition is evident, for only the just shall live, Gal 3:11. The minor proposition, and at the same time the second consideration itself, is proved by Gal 3:22 : and that too by Epanodus;[30] for of these four terms, to give life, righteousness, sin, promise, the first and fourth, the second and third, have respect to each other.-, the law) It is called the law, not the law of God: but we say, the promises of God, not, the promises absolutely.- , for if) The conditional force does not fall upon was given, for the law was certainly given, but upon was able (could have).- , that was able) The article shows that the emphasis is on . The law would wish [to give life], Gal 3:12, for it says, he shall live, but it is not able.-, to give life) In this expression death is taken for granted as threatened [by the law] against the sinner, and therefore the language becomes very distinct. The law offers life conditionally, Gal 3:12; but does not confer it, because it cannot, being deprived of all power to do so by sin.-, verily) not merely in the opinion of those maintaining justification by works. The matter in hand [justification] is a serious one [the question at issue is a serious reality], although it be now beyond the power of the law.- , righteousness) For righteousness is the foundation of life. The antithesis is sin, Gal 3:22.

[29] See Append. A covert syllogism, where one or other premiss is understood. Here it is the oratorical Enthymeme, where an argument is confirmed from its contrary: If the law could, etc., which it could not, etc.-ED.

[30] See App. It is the repetition of the same words, either as to sound or sense, in an inverted order.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

Gal 3:21

Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid:-Because the promises cannot be fulfilled through the law of Moses, does the law militate against the fulfillment of the promises? By no means. Very frequently a thing that cannot accomplish an end may be helpful to place in a position that it can be reached. Take Pauls illustration. Primary schools that teach no Latin, Greek, or higher mathematics can never teach those branches, yet they are necessary to prepare for the school that can teach them. So the law could not bring righteousness, but it could discipline and educate and fit them for the school that could make them righteous and receive final forgiveness.

for if there had been a law given which could make alive, verily righteousness would have been of the law.-If law could give life, righteousness would come by that law. Because there can be no life without righteousness, sin and death are indissolubly joined together, and righteousness and life in the nature and being of God. Hence, Christ came that he might save men from their sins, that he might save them from death. So eternal life was not promised under the law of Moses, because it could no free from sin and hence could not give life. The blood of bulls and goats could never free from sin, could only roll forward the exemption until Christ came and by his blood took it away, so that there is no more remembrance of sin.

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

righteousness

(See Scofield “Rom 10:10”).

Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes

the law: Mat 5:17-20, Rom 3:31, Rom 7:7-13

God forbid: Gal 2:17, Rom 3:4, Rom 3:6

for: Gal 2:19, Gal 2:21, Rom 3:20

righteousness: Rom 3:21, Rom 3:22, Rom 9:31, Rom 10:3-6, Phi 3:6-9, Heb 11:7

Reciprocal: Deu 5:25 – this great Psa 19:8 – enlightening Isa 42:21 – he will Luk 10:26 – General Act 13:39 – from which Rom 7:13 – then Rom 8:3 – For what 1Co 6:15 – God 2Co 3:6 – for Gal 3:17 – that it Gal 3:19 – It was added Gal 5:17 – and these Phi 3:9 – which is of the 1Ti 1:8 – the law Heb 8:7 – had Heb 9:9 – that could Heb 12:14 – no man

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

Gal 3:21. ; -Is then the law against the promises of God? God forbid. The aperte collectivam vim prae se fert. Klotz-Devarius, ii. p. 717. Promises in the plural may refer to its repetition at various times and in various forms. The genitive may, as read in the light of the context, characterize the promises as God’s in a special sense-His as given by Him singly, and without any intervention. The sense proposed by Gwynne, God in contrast with any other beings, is feeble. The question anticipates a natural objection, which the previous reasoning would suggest-not the statement merely of the 20th verse (Meyer, Winer), nor merely the clause because of transgressions in the 19th verse (Estius, Bengel, De Wette); for neither of these two statements by itself leads to the objection which the apostle starts and refutes. The takes up the entire description. If the law cannot set aside the promise,-if law and promise are so opposite principles, that if the inheritance be of law, it can no longer be of promise,-if the manner in which the promise was given surpasses in true divineness that in which the law was announced, the query at once rises-a query that seems to cast discredit on the previous reasoning by reducing it to an absurdity-Is the law then against the promises of God? No. There is a wide difference, but no antagonism. The promise is not touched or altered by it, and it had its own function to discharge as a preparative institute. For , see under Gal 2:17. Nay more-

, -the order in the last clause having the authority of A, B, C; places before , and the Received Text places before , while D omits it; F, G leave out , and B has -for if there had been given a law which was able to give life, verily by the law should have been righteousness-the argument for the . For the form of the hypothetical proposition, see Jelf, 851, 3. The is the Mosaic law, and the article following confines it to the special quality-to that defined by the participle. Compare Act 4:12; Act 10:41, Rom 2:14; Winer, 20, 4. The verb is to quicken, to impart life, to bestow that which Christ speaks of as the sum or result of all His blessings, Joh 3:16, etc. Life is opposed to that death which sin has wrought within us, and is not specially a new moral life (Rckert, Winer, Matthies, Olshausen, Ewald). To give life is only here another and more subjective form of saying to bestow the inheritance, and in using the term the apostle is mentally referring to Gal 3:11-12. If the law could have given life, truly-, emphatic in position-in very truth from the law (as its origin) righteousness would have been.

is the one indispensable condition or means of life or justification, and not the result (Wieseler). To give life, the law must confer righteousness- . The law is not against the promises of God; it comes not into rivalry with them, for it has a different aim and work, being superadded on account of transgressions. If it could have justified, righteousness would have sprung from it, and the promises would have been by it annulled, or rather superseded. But no one can obey the law, and win righteousness by his obedience to it. Righteousness is found in a very different sphere-that of trust in the divine promise, Gal 3:10-13. Law and promise are so far removed from one another in character and operation, that the one comes not into collision with the other as if to counterwork it. The law, as Chrysostom says, is . Nay, as the apostle proceeds to illustrate, the law cannot be hostile to the promise, for both are portions of one divine plan carried out in infinite wisdom and harmony. For the law subserves the promise, one of its special functions being to produce such convictions of sin as shut up men to faith in the promise as the only means of salvation-the teaching of the following verse. But this verse looks back to Gal 3:18, and its declaration, as the next verse does to Gal 3:19, the connection of the law with sin.

Fuente: Commentary on the Greek Text of Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians and Phillipians

Gal 3:21. It must be constantly kept in mind that an outstanding evil that troubled the church in the first century was Judaism; the doctrine that the law of Moses was necessary to salvation. Paul is exposing ,that in the epistle to the Galatians. His argument in the few verses preceding the present one might raise the suggestion that the law was against the promises of God because it was added to those promises. He answers, God forbid, a term frequently used in the New Testament that denotes “by no means.” The law could not be regarded as a competitor of the things set forth in the promises, for it did not claim to give (spiritual) life to its followers. It was added to the promises only for the purpose of stabilizing the conduct of the people of that dispensation, so that they would be ready to receive the “life” indicated in the promises when the time of fulfillment arrived. The law given through Moses was never intended in itself or by its merits, to give to its adherents that something regarded as spiritual life. Had such a law been given, then the obedience to it would have been acknowledged by the Lord as righteousness, and it would have been continued permanently.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

Gal 3:21. If the law had the power to break sin and to impart righteousness and life, it would indeed be a rival of the promise and enter into conflict with it. But this is not the aim of the law at all; on the contrary it is intended merely to bring sin to its proper crisis and thereby to prepare the fulfilment of the promise. Paul infers from the effect of the law its proper character and relation to the promise.

Make alive implies that we are spiritually dead by nature.

Indeed, truly, in reality. But Paul maintains, in opposition to the vain conceit of the self-righteous Jews and Judaizing Christians, that the law condemns all alike.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

Another objection is here made by the apostle: The Jews might possibly say, “That the law given by Moses was against the promise of God made to Abraham.” The apostle answers, No; that the law is not contrary, but subservient to the promise: For the law was not given on Mount Sinai, to afford life and justification by obedience to it (seeing it could not by a fallen creature be ever perfectly kept) but to convince of sin, and to condemn for sin; and that men, despairing of salvation in and of themselves, might speedily betake themselves to Christ for it: for God in the scripture, hath concluded, that is, declared all men to be under sin, and under the curse due to sin; that renouncing all confidence in themselves, they should, by faith, have recourse to the only Mediator for righteousness and life, for justification and salvation.

Learn hence, that God in the publication of the law by Moses, on Mount Sinai, had none but merciful and evangelical intentions.

2. That the publication of the law by Moses, was not against the promise of God made to Abraham, but they had both the same merciful design and gracious intention. To explain the matter by a similitude or illustration, thus: “Suppose a prince should proclaim a pardon to all traitors, if they would come in and plead it, and after this should send forth an officer to attack and arraign them, to threaten and condemn them: Is the prince contrary to himself? Hath he repented of his mercy?

No, sure! but he is unwilling to lose the glory of his mercy, and most desirous to have the honour of it acknowledged; and therefore he bringeth these criminals into extremities, that when their guilt is made evident, they may acknowledge the justice of the law that would condemn them, and the great mercy of the prince in offering a pardon to them.” The case is alike between God and us; first to Abraham, and in him to us: God made a promise of mercy and blessedness, even to all that would plead an interest in it, for remission of sins, and acceptance with God: But the world grew secure; and though sin was in them, and death reigned over them, they regarded not their miserable condition; being without a law to evidence sin and death unto their consciences, they saw no necessity of pleading the promise of pardon.

Hereupon God publishes by Moses, a severe and terrible law, a law which filled the air with thunder, and the mount with fire, insomuch, that Moses, the Mediator, did exceedingly fear and quake; yet in all this, God did but pursue his first purpose of mercy, and take a course to make his gospel accounted worthy of all acceptation, that men being by this law roused from their security, and made sensible of the course and malediction they lie under, might run from Sinai unto Sion, from Moses to Christ, and by faith plead that pardon and remission which in Christ was promised, when God told Abraham, that in his seed should all the families of the earth be blessed.

Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament

Gal 3:21-22. Is the law then Which requires perfect obedience, and subjects all that in any respect violate it, to the curse, against, or contrary to, the promises of God Wherein he declares that he will justify men by faith? God forbid That we should intimate any thing of that kind! On the contrary, it was intended to be subservient to the promise, by leading those who were under it to a higher and better dispensation, by subjecting them to the curse, without giving them the least hope of mercy, to oblige them to flee to the promises for justification. For if there had been a law given which could have given life Either spiritual or eternal; if any law, considered in itself alone, could have been a sufficient mean of justification and eternal happiness, then verily righteousness Justification, and the blessings consequent thereon; would have been by the Mosaic law Which is so holy, just, and good in all its moral precepts. By this the apostle shows that the law of Moses was utterly incapable of giving the Jews life and salvation; because, considered in itself, independent of the covenant of grace, it neither promised them the pardon of sin on their repentance, nor the influences of the divine Spirit to enable them to overcome and mortify the corruption of their nature; and of consequence, neither gave them a title to, nor a meetness for, eternal life. Justification, therefore, was not to be obtained by that law. On the contrary, the Scripture Wherein that law is written; hath concluded all under sin Hath shut them up together, (so the word properly signifies,) as in a prison, under sentence of death; that is, hath declared them all to be so shut up; that the promise That is, the blessing of life and salvation, promised through faith in Jesus Christ, might be freely given to them that truly believe in him, and in the truths and promises of his gospel.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could make alive, verily righteousness would have been of the law.

Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)

21 [Is] the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.

That is quite a thought – had any law been able to give man salvation God would have moved in that direction, Christ would not have had to die. Indeed, the whole sacrificial system would have never come to pass, for a law could have been given to bring us home to Him that created us. God would not have had to kill animals for skins for Adam and Eve when they sinned.

Just a side track, the animals had to be killed to provide covering for Adam and Eve, due to their sin. Indeed, this pictures beautifully the “covering” of sin for the Old Testament saints until their sins could be removed by the Lamb of God. Also what a wonderful picture of the difference between the Old Testament saint pre-Christ and the New Testament saint post-Christ. Sins of the Old were covered until washed away at the cross, while the New Testament believer’s sins are removed immediately.

Fuente: Mr. D’s Notes on Selected New Testament Books by Stanley Derickson

3:21 {25} [Is] the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.

(25) The conclusion uttered by a manner of asking a question, and it is the same that was uttered before in Gal 3:17 , but proceeding from another principle, so that the argument is new, and is this: God is always like himself: therefore the Law was not given to abolish the promises. But it would abolish them if it gave life, for by that means it would justify, and therefore it would abolish that justification which was promised to Abraham and to his seed by faith. No, it was rather given to bring to light the guiltiness of all men, to the end that all believers fleeing to Christ, might be freely justified in him.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

Do the Law and the promises contradict each other? Never! God designed them for two different purposes. The purpose of the Law was never to provide justification. It served as a mirror to show people their sinfulness and that they are the slaves of sin. When they realize they cannot save themselves, they will be open to receiving salvation as a gift by faith.

"God always intended to save by faith, apart from law. God gave the law, but he gave it in order that it would condemn all and thus prepare negatively for redemption on the basis of faith (Gal 3:22; Gal 3:24, the purpose clauses conveying God’s intention). The law was not given to make alive (Gal 3:21)." [Note: E. P. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, p. 68.]

"It rivets upon us the conviction that we cannot be justified by anything we can do. Like the Israelites in Egypt, we are commanded to make bricks without straw, to be perfectly holy when we have none of the makings of holiness-to love God with all our hearts and the neighbor as ourselves when we are without divine charity." [Note: A. R. Vidler, Christ’s Strange Work, p. 42.]

"A law can lay down what people ought to do, but it cannot give them the power to overcome the temptations to do evil." [Note: Morris, p. 115. See also Barclay, p. 32.]

The whole Old Testament (Gal 3:22), not just the Law of Moses (Gal 3:21), showed that people are sinners and incapable of saving themselves. Paul personified Scripture to illustrate that the Word is really God working through the Word.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

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