Commentary on Galatians 3:23-29

Condensed into seven verses, our text seems to capture both the best and the worst of Pauline interpretation. The famous baptismal formula in Galatians 3:26–28 declares the end of all racial, class, and gender divisions and has inspired justice-seekers and peace-makers throughout the centuries. But the sharp contrast between “law” and “faith” in 3:23–25 has been turned into Paul’s rejection of Torah as a birthmark of Christianity and fueled Christian anti-Judaism, dogmatic conservatism, pious individualism, and self-righteous othering of many kinds.

Meanwhile, new perspectives, as well as feminist and empire-critical interpretations, have significantly transformed our understanding of Paul, offering new insights for this pivotal text and for Galatians as a whole (see also the following two reflections on Galatians 5:1, 13–25 and 6:7–16).

The law of universal incarceration (3:23–25) 

The first part of our passage is permeated by prison language. The law has held us and everything (ta panta; 3:22) captive and in jail. Terms like sygkleiō (imprison; 3:22, 23) and froureō (guard; 3:23) suggest non-voluntary confinement and detention. Twice Paul portrays the law as paidagogos, typically a slave in charge of children, whose role can vary from a well-meaning “guardian” (New International Version; New Living Translation) and “tutor” (New American Standard Bible) to “schoolmaster” (King James Version) and harsh “disciplinarian” (New Revised Standard Version). Within the prison setting of our text the negative connotation of enforced compliance and subjugation under the law/paidagogos (hypo; twice in 3:23, 25) is most plausible. Louis Martyn even uses the term “jailer.”¹

What law?

It is crucial to understand that the Greek nomos/law in Paul’s world means much more than Jewish law/Torah, which also covers customs, principles, laws of the universe, and specific laws. In Galatians at least three different connotations are intertwined: Torah, Roman law, and the law of binary opposites as metaphysical foundation of the universe. Paul’s great messianic project of bringing circumcised Jews and uncircumcised Gentiles/nations like the Galatians together in one inclusive community (3:28), without making them the same (= all circumcised), clashes with all three of them. Yet for Paul, it means the final reconciliation of Torah with God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:3, that “in you” all the Gentiles/nations of the earth shall be blessed (see also Galatians 3:1–21).

Baptism is liberation from the binary law (Galatians 3:26–28)

Louis Martyn has shown how Paul’s critique of law/nomos in its wider sense aims at the “pairs of opposites” that in ancient philosophy were thought to be the basic building blocks of the world, the stoicheia tou kosmou (4:3, 9; New Revised Standard Version: “elemental spirits”).² The baptismal formula in 3:26–28, pre-Pauline in origin, confirms this overall anti-binary thrust.

If the binaries of Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female according to Galatians 3:28 are no longer valid in Christ Jesus but must give way to baptismal Oneness (3:28), this means that the law that formerly held us and all things captive (3:22–25) was the law of hierarchical binarism. It comes in endless variations, like Greeks over barbarians, Romans over Greeks (and all other conquered nations, including the Jews), Jews over Gentiles. Yet it imprisons all (3:22) in impenetrable cages of self and other, superior and inferior, enemy or friend, winner or loser, citizen or alien. It separates human from human by barbed-wire demarcation lines of self-interest, hatred, or just indifference into deserving or undeserving, righteous or sinner, us or them.

The arrival of faith for Paul nullifies this prison-law of disciplining through polarizing (3:25) that is woven into the entire socio-cultural fabric and legislation. A new kind of justice/righteousness out of faith (ek, 3:24; New Revised Standard Version: “by”) is revealed outside the justice claims of the binary law (3:23–24). Self-definition and self-worth no longer imply the competitive downgrading of an “other.”

One in Christ or “Christian”?

If baptism into Christ (3:27) means immersion in a trans-binary Oneness, it nonetheless doesn’t erase difference. On the contrary. Paul’s entire letter is an effort to protect difference and prevent the uniformity of an all-circumcised assembly of Jesus-followers, for this would mean return into the binary prison. Paul does not say that all believers become “Christians” either, but that they become one in Christ. Distinctions thought to be incompatible and mutually exclusive (such as circumcision versus foreskin) need to stay because they are messianically transformed toward solidarity across differences.

For Paul, this trans-binary practice of in-Christness is the litmus test of the new creation. It is not the foundation of a new religion in opposition to Judaism, but precisely the new messianic way for Jews and non-Jews becoming collectively children of God (3:26) and Abraham’s children and heirs (Galatians 3:29).

Clothed with Christ (3:27)

Baptism is often described as a dying with Christ (Romans 6:3–6; see also Galatians 2:19–20) that enables new life, a new quality of being human. The established binary identity markers are left behind and figuratively “drowning” in the baptismal waters. But what does being “(re)clothed with Christ” (3:27) mean if Christ died naked on a Roman cross after being stripped by Roman soldiers and his garments being divided among his crucifiers? (See also Matthew 27:27–37.) Perhaps it is precisely this nakedness of the Messiah/Christ who, according to Matthew 25:36, received clothing from “you” that signifies the “dress code” of messianic life. Stripped of all brand names, privileges, and righteousness that make “us” better and more worthy than “them,” the self emerges from baptism as entirely other, capable of being with, for, like the other: “I live no longer as I [egō], but Christ lives in me” (2:20).

One in Christ—or Caesar? 

Tensions with Roman law are simmering directly under the surface of Paul’s text. For the law of hierarchical binaries is indispensable as law of domination. Rome rules by dividing. If Jews, Celtic Galatians, and other nations inhabiting the multiethnic Roman province of Galatia³ become one in the body of a Jewish provincial Messiah who had been executed by Roman law as a political troublemaker, this is trouble.

Non-Jewish nations no longer declaring their sole allegiance to Caesar, as they had before, but to the One God of the Jews who had ridiculed Roman law enforcement by resurrecting God’s criminal son—this is even more trouble. Not to speak about the insolence of calling themselves collectively sons/children of this God (Galatians 3:26)—an honorary designation reserved for Caesar. He alone was son of God, God, Savior, and Lord for the nations.

But for Paul, the liberating disclosure/revelation (apocalyptō, 3:23; see also 1:12) of Christ-faith means resistant and transformative trust/belief that another world under a different law is possible, where human beings no longer act as one-against-other but in solidarity with One-an(d)-Other.

Notes

1. J. Louis Martyn, ed., Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, 1st ed., Anchor Bible 33A (New York: Doubleday, 1998), 363.
2. Martyn., 403–406.
3. For a brief introduction to the context and text of Galatians, see Brigitte Kahl, “Galatians,” in Margaret Aymer, Cynthia Brigs Kittredge, and David A. Sanchez, eds., The Letters and Legacy of Paul, Fortress Commentary on the Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016), 503–525.