Galatians 3:15-20 Brothers, let me take an example from everyday life. Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case. The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,” meaning one person, who is Christ. What I mean is this: The law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise. For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on a promise; but God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise. What, then, was the purpose of the law? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come. The law was put into effect through angels by a mediator. A mediator, however, does not represent just one party; but God is one.
The law was given to the children of Israel 430 years after the promise to Abraham. This law was given not only to guide them in their daily lives, but also to set them apart from a dark world that the ungodly tribes in Canaan illustrated clearly in their daily lives, in their customs, and in their mores. God showed his distain for the ways of the wicked: When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD, and because of these detestable practices the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you. (Deuteronomy 18:9-12) The law reflected the likeness of God: what is godlike and what is not godlike. Under the auspices of the law, they were children of light, knowledgeable about the only true God, the unseen God of heaven and Earth. Their God could not be imaged in wood or stone: He was the God of unimaginable greatness, without beginning or ending. This task of revealing this true God through their obedience to the law was a difficult one for the Israelites. They often failed to obey the law, bringing on themselves the horrible judgments of God because of their waywardness and inclination toward sin. Because they were but humans, caught in their own sinful nature, God gave them a plan to delay his judgment on their sins. This plan substituted the death of animals for their death; for sin, as with cancer, must be eradicated, disposed of completely from the living. The two cannot coexist, sin leads to death. Therefore, the sacrificing of animals for sin deflected the judgment of God for a while, to another day. And that day, according to the promise, would be when Jesus, the seed of Abraham, would hang on the cross as a sacrifice for the sins of all humanity.
This Seed fulfills the promise that God made to Abraham, of blessing all humanity through him, In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice. (Genesis 22:18) By Abraham's seed alone comes the forgiveness of sin to all who wish to place their faith in Christ's redemptive works. His works replace the necessity of attempting to display the light of all the universe through works of the law and their limited ability to deal with the sins of man. We no longer have to follow the law and its rightness, for it has been replaced by the righteousness of Christ in us. The law could only be a directional signal for us: to direct us to what is right or what is wrong, what is pleasing to God and what is not pleasing to God. But Jesus Christ and his works fulfill the law, completely satisfy the law's requirements. His acts of righteousness or total fulfillment of the law become our acts of righteousness when we accept his works by faith. As Jesus said, Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. (Matthew 5:17) We no longer live our lives of righteousness, but we live his life of righteousness in us. We no longer look at our failures in the mirror of the law; instead, we look at who He is and his victories and glorious power in us. We point to him rather than to our self-righteousness. We know because of the Word that when we put our faith in him, God sees him rather than us. He alone, through the work of the Holy Spirit in us, presents our lives to the heavenly Father as guiltless. The law could not do this, for the law could only indicate our position of goodness or wrongness. The law has no intrinsic life in it, but Jesus is the life and light of the world, the creator of all that is. He creates life, and through his life, we are known as NEW CREATURES, BORN AGAIN BY THE BLOOD OF JESUS CHRIST. Paul understood the mighty work of Christ when he told the church, Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life — in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor for nothing. (Philippians 2:14-16)
The promise to Abraham was God's covenant with him. God was the mediator, fulfilling both sides of the covenant. Abraham was in a deep sleep when God walked between the two halves of the sacrificed animal. In those days: an animal was split in two and separated. Then the parties making the covenant would walk between the two halves of a slain animal. While doing this, they would be making solemn promises to each other. In this ceremony, they sealed their promises to each other by the blood of the slain animal. This was serious business. If either side broke the covenant, they were exposed to dire consequences, even death. In this situation, Abraham was not there to state his part of the covenant, to express his promises to God. No, he was asleep. Only God walked between those two bloody halves of the carcass. He alone gave his promises to Abraham without Abraham's reciprocating promises. We who are alive in Christ are alive because of God's promises to us, not because of our promises to God. When the law was given, the people said, "We will do it." But they could not keep this promise: they failed miserably, again and again. The law could not change the nature of humans, could not touch the hearts of men and women. As surely as Abraham was dead in sleep so are we dead in sin. Before the flood, The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. (Genesis 6:5) After the flood, God saw that this was not a solution: his action did not solve the problem of man's sinful nature. Because of his love, God did not want us to continue in this fallen state, so He gave us his son, Jesus, to fulfill all the promises He had made to us that we MIGHT LIVE and never die. Death was our inheritance, But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions — it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4-7)
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