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Nanosermon Script:
God is a God of order and we can trust his word to be intellectually coherent. It always makes sense. So let’s make some sense of a much mis-understood verse in Paul’s letter to the Christians in Galatia. I’m talking about chapter three and verse twenty-three:
Gal 3:23 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.
Reading this at a superficial level, you could think that God’s moral law is the schoolmaster referred to, that it brought us to Christ, and that having come to Christ in faith, we don’t need God’s moral law any more.
Sacrifices ‘pointed to Christ’
I want to suggest to you that this is not what the Apostle Paul is saying at all.
The Concise Commentary of Matthew Henry says this:
‘The law did not teach a living, saving knowledge; but, by its rites and ceremonies, especially by its sacrifices, it pointed to Christ, that they might be justified by faith. And thus it was, as the word properly signifies, a servant, to lead to Christ, as children are led to school by servants who have the care of them, that they might be more fully taught by Him the true way of justification and salvation, which is only by faith in Christ.’
If we put our thinking caps on, there is no way in which the moral and civil laws of God point to Christ. ‘Thou shalt not steal’ does not prophecy a Saviour. ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’ does not teach about our Lord. They can convict of sin, but not reveal the Redeemer.
It is only in the sacrificial law that the ultimate once-for-all and perfect sacrifice of the Son of God is hidden, waiting for its moment.
‘The law’ = ‘Ceremonial and Sacrificial’
For a Jewish believer of the first century, living under Roman occupation and Roman civil law, all he had to keep himself Jewish was the ceremonial law, which centred around circumcision, and the Temple and its sacrifices. When the Apostle writes about ‘the law’ to the Galatians, that is what he is referring to. The ceremonial and the sacrifices.
But, you see, those sacrifices were always teaching a better way, better than the blood of cattle and sheep, in short, faith in the blood shed by the Lord Jesus on that cruel cross of Calvary.
Whether you are a Jew or a Gentile, once you have put your faith in Jesus Christ and in what he did on the cross, you don’t need to go to the Temple to offer a sacrifice ever again.
Moral and Civil Law are eternal
The moral and civil law, like the physical laws of the universe, continue to the end of time, but the sacrificial law has served its purpose. Those sacrifices, carried out by their custodians, the people of Israel, for centuries, have dragged us and should drag them by the ear, like a schoolmaster, to the sacrifice of Christ.
And now, sinners are no longer justified before God the Father by a priest offering a bullock, but by faith in Christ offering himself. And that has to be good news. I hope and pray you have faith in the Lord Jesus. If not, it’s time to turn from your sin and ask him to forgive you and give you a new life right now. Let faith in Christ come into your life.
And if you already have faith in Christ, I hope that scripture in Paul’s letter to the early church in Galatia now makes better sense.
Hey, if it does, why not share this NanoSermon?
SCRIPT ENDS
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