6/20 - Galatians 3

Well, turns out that my internet wasn't down the other day...the modem just wasn't hooked up. My technical prowess continues to impress. Then yesterday my hard drive on our desktop PC crashed so yesterday morning was spent dealing with that fiasco but thanks be to God we didn't lose any data. There's one thing I've learned from the Bible and applied to my computer skills: Jesus saves and so should I.

Galatians 3 is a great chapter to read concerning the covenant of grace vs. the Law. It can be summed up in verses 13 & 14:

"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us...He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit."

Basically our righteousness, the thing that will determine our post-earth destination, is no longer based on our adherence to the Law but through our faith in Jesus Christ. I used to have trouble with this on many levels: how can God change His mind like this? How can something He proclaimed and seemed pretty serious about now be null and void? Why would God give us a Law He knew we couldn't keep?

A brief aside: I don't think there's any problem questioning the Bible. I think the more questions we ask the more we'll come to know about God because, since the Bible is true, our questions should lead us to truth. I think we ought to test God at His word. Now I know the Bible says "Do not test the Lord your God" in multiple places (Deuteronomy 6:16, Luke 4:12) but I'm not talking about that kind of testing. In the Deuteronomy verse, it references the Israelites who 'tested' God by not trusting Him to provide for them. In Luke, Jesus was explaining to Satan that He couldn't test God by throwing himself off a mountain and 'testing' God by expecting Him to perform a miracle just for the sake of doing it. The testing I'm talking about is more along the lines of Romans 12:2, where you test the Word by putting your trust in it, forsaking the world to follow God, transforming your mind, taking action on the Word in order to experience the fruit of God's word dwelling in you.

...where was I?....oh, the questions. God did give us a law that we couldn't keep. Being a holy God, He had to demand holiness. If God is to be able to judge us in the end, He must be a perfect and righteous judge or else His judgements would be tainted. Imagine that your on trial for embezzling money and your judge turns out to be Bernie Madoff, who quickly throws you in jail. Doesn't seem very just right? A truly righteous judgement requires a truly righteous judge. If God weren't perfect it would open the room for a lot of questions & debate - is a god who we can debate with worthy of worship? Probably not. The point here is that God, being holy, made a law that required holiness. Paul points out that this Law, tough as it was, pointed out to us our need for a Saviour. It showed us what sin was and just how serious God was about us not doing it.

"Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor" (v. 24-25).

So God didn't change His mind because although the Law can't save us, it still serves a purpose. This chapter along with Romans 7 & 8 are great for understanding this principle. I could go on and on but probably still couldn't do it justice.