Message: In Galatians 3 Paul was really coming down hard on the church in his continued argument about the purity of the gospel. He called them “foolish” and asked them who blinded their eyes as he explained again that the law had a place and a purpose before Jesus came to fulfill it. He further explained something that I hadn’t really thought much about. The promise of God had been given to Abraham 450 years before the law existed so trying to receive the promise by observing the law after Jesus fulfilled it was pointless. Paul explained here that the law was intended to be a “guardian” to the people until Jesus came. It was the temporary plan to hold them accountable and aware of sin until the promised Messiah came. In a past devotional I used abstinence before marriage as an example of this. We understand that abstinence is an important season of life that we are supposed to honor as we wait for the promise of marriage. Once we are married we don’t continue in abstinence because that wouldn’t make any sense. Just as abstinence is intended to act as a “guardian” to protect us before we are married, the law was intended to do this for the Jews before the coming of the Messiah. Unfortunately, many Jews struggled with this and influenced the church to add parts of it to the gospel. It would be like someone telling us to continue (or strive for) abstinence during marriage. This would hinder our marriage relationship and stop the process of growing families. It was not what was intended for the promise. This may seem like an old problem since we didn’t grow up wit the law, but instead we as Christians have added on plenty of the other things that were taught to us. We have adapted to our own “law” of things that were on the “do not” list in order to be a Christian. We have to examine our adherence to some of these things and decide whether these are personal convictions that we have developed, or whether we have somehow attached these things to the gospel and pushed them on other believers.
