Commentary on Galatians 3:1-9, 23-29

Paul wrote Galatians to convince its recipients that they have right relationship with God (are justified) through the faithful working of Christ that comes to them through faith and not through keeping the Mosaic law as Jews keep it. This week’s reading begins the first direct argument for rejecting that observance of the law and for depending only on the work of Christ for right relationship with God. Between our readings Paul talks about the law in relation to faith and promise, and then our second reading begins in a discussion of the law’s role in God’s plan to bring justification through Christ.

The first evidence that the Galatians do not need to begin keeping the law as Jews do is their own experience of the Spirit. Paul says that this is so obvious that they must be under a magic spell not to understand it. Possessing the Spirit is the only evidence needed to guarantee they are in right relationship with God. The Spirit comes to believers at the time of their conversion and is proof that they are in right relationship with God. In Romans 8:9, Paul goes so far as to say that if a person does not have the Spirit, she is not one of Christ’s people. The early church often experienced the Spirit through speaking in tongues and other charismatic manifestations. So there was clear evidence that the Galatians had it. 

Paul asks whether they got it through hearing the message that elicited faith or from observing the Mosaic law as the other teachers are telling them they must. The answer is evident because they have not yet started observing the law in that way. As far as Paul is concerned, this should end the debate. But he knows it will not.

Paul supports his interpretation of the Spirit’s presence in them by saying they have been justified, or made righteous, in the same way that Genesis 15:6 says Abraham was: through trusting God. The people who trust God to give them that relationship are, then, the children of Abraham. This is a new identity for gentiles and a way in which Jews had distinguished themselves from gentiles. But Paul says gentiles who have faith in Christ are brought into the family of Abraham and so into the people of God. 

This is no afterthought. The original promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:3 included gentiles because it says that all the nations will be blessed through Abraham. In this initial argument for justification by faith, Jews and gentiles (in other words, all people) have this right relationship with God through faith, through trusting in what God has done for them in Christ. All stand before God on the same basis, and all are brought into the same family.

When our reading picks up in verse 23, Paul says that the law functioned as a guardian before Christ came. This guardian image is of a paidagōgos, an enslaved person who was assigned to accompany a wealthy person’s children to school and be sure they were safe and did their work. He was also a disciplinarian who was to teach the child how to behave. Paul says the law had this function of disciplining and guiding, even controlling, people until Christ came. 

Here the law is the revelation of God’s will and it imprisons because it shows what the will of God is, but does not enable a person to live as it commands. By making bad behavior explicit disobedience, the law makes the situation worse. Seeing ourselves in this desperate and helpless position prepares us to accept what Christ has done for us as the basis of our relationship with God. All people are united in having the same dilemma and having to rely on the same thing for justification.

Verses 26–29 focus on how right relationship, or justification, comes to all people in the same way, and on what this does for relationships within the church. Beginning by asserting that all who have faith—all who trust in Christ’s faithful obedience—are children of God, he names baptism as the rite that brings believers into that right relationship by being the moment at which they put on Christ. In the first century, the kind of clothes a person wore designated their social class and even their age. When believers put on Christ in baptism, they put on his identity; they become children of God because he is the child of God. 

Since Paul has already identified Christ as the descendant of Abraham (verse 16), when believers’ identities are joined to Christ’s, they also become descendants of Abraham. That, in turn, means they receive the salvation promised through Abraham. Again, since this all comes through trusting God’s work in Christ, rather than through how one keeps the law, it means we all have the same status: We are all one. 

Quoting a baptismal liturgy, Paul says that in the new existence baptism brings, the markers of status that the world recognizes do not grant privilege in the church. When he names ethnicity, social status (slave or free), and gender as things that do not count, he enumerates the three ways status was accorded. None of those count in the church; all people have the same status before God and in relation to one another because all are one in their dependence on Christ for their identity and relationship with God.

This claim that ethnic, social, and gender differences do not give status does not mean we should squelch all differences so that everyone has the same culture and same social systems. Paul is not saying that all people should be the same. Even in Galatians he allows that Jews in Christ can continue to observe the law, while gentiles in Christ cannot. Each person must shape their life of faith through who they are. Those differing ways of living the Christian life are important because they show the world that God is the God of all the world (Romans 3:27–30). 

Our oneness as God’s children is to come to expression in the diversity of who God made us. This should not point us to a tyranny of individualistic demands, but to a recognition of the many ways the will of God can be lived from different cultural locations. At the same time, it calls us to affirm that in this diversity we are one people of God.

PRAYER OF THE DAY

Lord of justification,
With great joy we receive the gift of salvation which is ours not because of our own efforts, but because of the saving work of Christ. Grant us full access to the glory of your salvation, an abundance that is more than enough for all humankind, for the sake of our redeeming Christ. Amen.

HYMNS

We walk by faith ELW 635, H82 209
Leaning on the everlasting arms ELW 774, UMH 133

CHORAL

That priceless grace, John Helgen