Excerpt from a sermon

Galatians - Part 8: What Season?

MATT CHANDLER, April 8, 2012

Let’s look at this, Galatians 3, we’re going to pick it up in verse 15. Some of this is going to sound complex and muddy. I’m going to try to make it as clean and clear as possible. Galatians 3, starting in verse 15: “To give a human example, brothers: even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified. Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, ‘And to offsprings,’ referring to many, but referring to one, ‘And to your offspring,’ who is Christ. This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.”

Let me try to clear that up, and I think it’s pretty easy to clear, so let me try to explain it to you this way: God comes to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12 and says, “Through your offspring” – not through your offsprings, as in the nation of Israel – but “through your offspring” – and what we find out in this text and many other texts is: “Jesus Christ, through your offspring, you will be justified. You will be saved. You will have right standing before God. Your sins will be washed away. God’s favor and blessing will be upon your life.” And He gave all of that to Abraham by faith alone – by faith alone.

Which means Abraham, and we found this out in our study of Galatians, Abraham simply believed that promise and it was accounted to him, it was given to him as righteousness. Paul’s point in this text is that 430 years before the Law even showed up on the scene, God had granted salvation to Abraham.
His point in the text is: the law can’t save you. God does not save via behavioral modification. You doing better, you living a cleaner life, does not save you. You being more and more obedient to the Ten Commandments cannot save you because God granted salvation through faith alone, grace alone, before the law even existed. Paul’s argument is, “If you can be saved by cleaning up your act, then God’s a liar.”