Promise Keeper
© 02.18.24 By David Eric Williams
And this I say, that the law, which was four hundred and thirty years later, cannot annul the covenant that was confirmed before by God in Christ, that it should make the promise of no effect. For if the inheritance is of the law, it is no longer of promise; but God gave it to Abraham by promise (Galatians 3:17-18 NKJV).
We have arrived at a turning point in Paul's letter as he draws attention to the reason for his example of the well-known practice of making a will. It doesn't matter if the family has lots of stuff going on between the time of the writing of the will and it's execution. For Paul, the Torah that came 430 years after the making of the covenant promise is peripheral. Now, many commentators will suggest Paul is simply using a well-known biblical number associated with the Exodus to describe the timing of the Torah. On the other hand, it is more likely Paul sees the 430 years as the span of time from Abraham receiving the promise to the giving of the law at Sinai. In that scenario the children of Israel were in Egypt for a couple hundred years and it was a couple hundred years before that when Abraham received the covenant promise. However, this is not the place to argue biblical chronology. Our concern is with Paul's understanding of the relationship between the covenant promise and the Torah.
The Judaizers would agree the formal giving of the law came after the covenant promise to Abraham but they believed God's law predated Abraham in a fashion. This was a matter of tradition on one hand and an acknowledgment that humanity was not without "law" altogether from the time of Adam to the time of Moses. Paul doesn't even deal with that. As far as he's concerned, it is not relevant to the argument. He would agree there was a moral code previous to the Abrahamic covenant and up until the days of the giving of the law at Sinai. Nevertheless, he is focused on the events surrounding the establishment of Israel as a nation. His argument is that the birth of the nation Israel did not nullify - or even alter - the covenant with Abraham.
It is not just a covenant with Abraham, remember. It is a covenant confirmed before by God in Christ. The covenant remained rock solid and unalterable. The death, resurrection, ascension and enthronement of Jesus the Christ – along with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit – brought the promises to fruition. The "great parenthesis" of the Mosaic dispensation did not change that.
You see, to suggest there is something other than faith in Jesus allowing us to participate in the covenant is to say God breaks his promises. The inheritance was promised to Christ, the Seed, the faithful one. And all those who place faith in Jesus the Christ are participants in that promise as well. To add stipulations after the covenant has been ratified is dishonest. That is not possible. Of course not! Even if everyone else is a liar, God is true. As the Scriptures say about him, "You will be proved right in what you say, and you will win your case in court" (Romans 3:4 NLT).
We will continue our look at the letter to the church in Galatia in a couple weeks.
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