Now we are free (Ga. 3:23–29)
“Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed... But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.” (Galatians 3:23,25,26)
How do you go with confined spaces? Claustrophobia, according to a few websites that are definitely accredited health sites, is one of the most popular fears with anywhere between 2 and 10% of American people claiming they have it. Not the most useful stat, is it...
Anyway, the point is that it is very common for people to dislike being in confined spaces, and some of us even experience panic attacks and severe anxiety in that situation.
When we are confined, something else is forcing us to stay where we are. We have no choice but to stand still and wait for the situation to change.
A confined space doesn’t have to be an elevator or some tight, dark space somewhere. Think of when you have had to stay in isolation from being a close contact or even having the virus yourself. It a funny way, it feels even worse to be required to stay at home when you feel absolutely fine. It’s frustrating to be restricted when you feel like it’s not necessary. I’m someone that quite enjoys being at home, but when you’re forced to be there it’s not quite the same.
This is what God’s law does with us. As Christian people, we feel a weight of expectation on our shoulders. That weight can come from a few different sources:
God himself. The Ten Commandments are God’s way of telling us what he expects of his people. He expects certain things of us when it comes to how we relate with him (having no other gods, being careful with his name, reserving a day in our week to rest in his presence). He also instructs us with our relationships with each other (being respectful of other people’s stuff, being honest with each other, valuing our parents etc.).
Other people. As a Christian community, we have expectations of each other: that we show love and respect to each other, that we come to worship on a regular basis, that we contribute when we have a shared lunch or other event, to lend a hand to someone in need etc. Our expectations for each other are often an extension of God’s expectations, but sometimes we expect more from each other than we should. God is perfect and right to demand things from us, but we’re merely human after all.
Ourselves. Sometimes the pressure we put on ourselves is the most intense of all. We often expect more from ourselves than others do, and maybe even God at times. We aren’t always realistic with ourselves and we can be ashamed of falling short of our own expectations. On the other hand, we can expect very little from ourselves, cutting ourselves too much slack and letting ourselves off with excuses. We justify our shortcomings at times.
Out of these three, only God’s expectations of us are concrete and objective. The pressure that comes from human beings (ourselves and others) can be temperamental and subjective. We can’t always be sure that human expectations are justifiable or worth fussing about.
Many of us have fought with the expectations of our government, for example. We usually have much more freedom in this country than others, but when the pandemic came along we suddenly had a bunch of expectations from our government in order to keep each other safe and healthy as best we could. We had to place an enormous amount of trust in those in positions of authority, while keeping in mind that these are human beings that can be wrong at times.
This is the struggle we live with as Christian people, particularly when the expectations of human authority might be different to those from our divine authority.
The law, which is about God’s expectations of us, is something which consistently fail to meet. If you look through the Ten Commandments on any given day, you’ll find that you’ve failed to keep at least one of them. We strive to do the best we can, but we will fall short.
“For all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory.” (Romans 3:23)
Why does God do this to us? How can he give us these expectations knowing that we’ll miss the mark? Does he set us up to fail?
Well, in a sense, he does set us up to fail. But this isn’t because he gets a laugh out of it or wants us to feel terrible about ourselves. He does it to help us realise our desperate need for his mercy and grace. God’s law is his gift to us. Without it, we’d live each day in complete ignorance and entirely unaware of how far short we fall.
Life without God’s law would be like driving without a speedometer or writing a document without a word count—you have a rough idea of how you’re travelling, but only by how you perceive things yourself. You don’t have an objective guide to keep you on the right track.
This is precisely how the world lives. Even something so essential and simple to us as gender is put into question because of that lack of objective guide. That’s how lost we are without God’s law to help us. That’s the gift we have, even if it does force us to take a good, hard look at ourselves at times.
God’s law has three uses, or three functions. Most of us know the First Use quite well, which is as a mirror. When we are confronted by God’s law, we see a reflection of ourselves and how well or poorly we’ve done (usually the latter). It shows us how we’re really going—that objective guide. The problem is, whenever we look at this mirror, we are disappointed with what we see.
The Second Use is as a fence. The law sets boundaries for us to live within. We are entirely free to live how we want as Christian people, but within certain parameters for the benefit of each other and ourselves. But when the fence is all we can see, we can feel confined or trapped, even. This is what Paul is talking about when he says we are confined or even imprisoned. We thank God for his guidance, but we also know that we regularly find ourselves outside of the paddock and need to be let back in.
Finally, the Third Use of the law is as a signpost. God’s law shows us how we should try to live. He gives us a standard to aim for. We pray for his Holy Spirit to help us to live up to his expectations. This Third Use is motivational and aspirational. In strategic thinking, a vision is something which we aspire to but can never actually achieve. For a church, a vision statement might be: “Sharing God’s love and hope with the world.” Sounds great, and good to aim for, but you can never fully complete that task. That’s the Third Use.
The mirror, the fence, and the signpost. God’s law is a gift to us, but if this is all we have, we will always be left with a sense of guilt and disappointment. The weight of God’s expectation is too much.
“But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptised into Christ have put on Christ.” (Galatians 3:25–27)
The law, God’s first gift, was given in anticipation of the second gift: faith in Christ. The whole Old Testament anticipates the coming of the Messiah, God’s only Son. And much of Jesus’ ministry anticipated the coming of the Holy Spirit, who gives us faith.
This faith is what saves us from the condemnation of the law, from the weight of God’s expectation. Faith is like a garment that we put on: when we wear a costume, we take on the part of that character in the play. The garment that we wear is the righteousness of Christ. By faith in Jesus, we “put on Christ”.
Now, when we look in the mirror of the law, we don’t see our failures and shortcomings, but we see Jesus, who is perfect in every way. We see a holy person of God, a saint of his church, because of that faith in Christ.
When did you “put on Christ”? When were you dressed with the garment of his righteousness? How can you be sure that you have the faith that saves you?
Again, it’s not something subjective. It’s not a moment when we felt something or decided to have faith. It’s something much more concrete and objective than that, something we can rely on. Minds can be changed, and decisions can be reversed. History cannot.
In your baptism, you can be sure that you wear the garment of Jesus’ righteousness. In your baptism, you know you have the faith that saves.
Last week was Trinity Sunday. Just as the whole Trinity needs all three persons to function— God cannot be fully himself if one was missing—so it is with God’s law and gospel.
We need the law to know what God expects of us and to show us our faults. But we equally need the gospel: the forgiveness of sins and the promise of eternal life through faith in Christ, gifted to us in the Spirit.
Without the gospel, we’d be left in our guilt and shame, stuck in prison with no escape. But without the law, we’d have no awareness of who we really are and our need for God’s mercy and grace.
We thank God for giving us his law to show us who we are, but we thank him even more for his gospel: his message of saving grace through his Son, whom we have put on in our baptism.
