17) Galatians 3:19-26
Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one. Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. 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 3:19-26, ESV Bible)
The majority of traditional church thought holds that the Torah remained in effect only until the coming of Messiah and was cancelled at his death. For Messianic believers, this is troubling because it seems to contradict the words of our Master, who says that we are not to think that he came to abolish the Torah. Moreover, it contradicts numerous passages of Scripture which speak of the Torah as eternal and enduring, and it seems to suggest a contradiction in the character of God himself.
From where did this concept arise? Yeshua did not teach it. I believe that one place from which it arose is Galatians 3:19, where Paul says, "The Torah was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made." Now that the promised seed (i.e., the Messiah) has come, the Torah must no longer be "added"; instead, it is subtracted from the equation.
Moreover, if you have been around the church, you have probably heard the teaching that "the law was only a guardian until faith in Messiah came, but now that Messiah is here, we are no longer under it, therefore, the Torah has been done away with."
Is that what Paul meant? If he meant that the Messiah has cancelled the Torah, then Paul disqualified himself as a teacher and an apostle because his conclusion is blasphemous and contradicts the clear teaching of our Master. That cannot be what Paul meant. Our task is to try to get a better handle on what he meant.
Recap and Review of Galatians 3:18
In the previous discussion, we concluded with Galatians 3:18: "For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise." The inheritance is the good news proclaimed to Abraham as a promise that all nations would be blessed in his seed and that he would become the father of many nations. This blessing came to the nations through Abraham's seed--his singular seed--the Messiah. So to paraphrase what Paul said in Galatians 3:18: "If the blessing that God promised we would receive in Abraham's seed comes only to those who are legally Jewish, then it is no longer a promise about all nations." Here is a second attempt at a meaningful paraphrase of Galatians 3:18:
For if salvation comes only to those who come under the full obligation of the Torah by converting to be Jewish, it no longer comes by promise to all nations; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.
Why then the Law?
Paul has demonstrated that one need not be Jewish to receive the blessing in Messiah, but this begs the question: Why should anyone be Jewish? Paul asks it this way: "Why then the Torah?" What's the point of being Jewish, of being circumcised and under the Torah? If salvation is available to those who are not under the law, then what is the point of anyone ever being under the law? Why have the Torah at all?
Paul did not really have Jewish people like himself, the Hebrew descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in mind. His mind was on the God-fearing Gentiles in Galatia and all over the world. He was asking, "If salvation comes by a promise and not by converting and coming under the law, then what is the point of anyone ever converting to come under the law?" That was his question. Paul spread the answer to this question over the rest of the third chapter of Galatians.
Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one. (Galatians 3:19-20)
Paul taught that the Torah "was added because of transgressions." To what was it added? He referred back to the promise of all nations being blessed in the seed of Abraham. God made a promise to Abraham that all nations will be blessed in his seed, sometime in the future. To this promise, he added the Torah. Why? Paul explained: "because of transgressions." God added the Torah to condemn sin, to identify sin, to define sin, and to reveal the righteous standard until the coming of the Messiah. Paul presented something similar in Romans 5:20, where he wrote, "The law came in to increase the trespass," i.e., to define sin.
Paul said angels put the Torah in place by an intermediary, which is Moses. The martyr Stephen made a similar statement in Acts 7:53 where he spoke of "the law as delivered by angels." The angel of the LORD delivered the Torah into the hands of Moses, the intermediary, who delivered it to the nation of Israel, Abraham's children. God added the Torah to the promise that he had already made to Abraham to define, forbid, and convict sin-until the "seed" should come to whom the promise had been made: that all nations would be blessed in him.
Allow me to paraphrase the gist of what Paul wrote in Galatians 3:17-20:
If salvation comes by being Jewish (under the law), then it is no longer a promise that all nations will be blessed in Abraham. But the promise that God made to Abraham was for all nations. If so, what was the purpose of the Torah? He added the Torah to the promise to define sin. He delivered it by angels through the hand of Moses, the intermediary, until the Messiah comes, the promised seed through whom God promised to bless all nations. And Moses, as the intermediary, delivered it from the one God to Israel.
Paul said, "Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one" (Galatians 3:20). The words "God is one" allude to the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4) to remind the reader that, despite the fact that the Torah was given to Israel by the agency of angels and through the hands of a mediator, the revelation of the LORD that comes through the Torah is not separable from his being, but is indeed the divine word. Why the Torah? Because it is the revelation of God's singular being, his essence, until the end that the promised seed comes, his blessed Son, who "is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature" (Hebrews 1:3). In other words, Paul was simply saying, "The Torah is the revelation of God and godliness."
The Torah is Not for Eternal Life
Having explained why God gave the Torah, Paul hastened to clarify that the Torah does not contradict the Abrahamic promise of salvation through faith/faithfulness and the blessing of all nations in Messiah. He rhetorically asked, "Is the law contrary to the promises of God?" (Galatians 3:21). Then he answered his own question, "Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law." If it were possible that observing certain ceremonies and becoming Jewish could provide legal justification before God and eternal life, then salvation would indeed be by the Torah. It is not. "Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe" (Galatians 3:22).
Paul said that "Scripture (that is, the Written Torah) imprisoned everything under sin." "Imprisoned" is not the best choice of words. The Greek text means "to shut in, enclose, or confine," but not necessarily to imprison, and certainly not to incarcerate. The King James Version translates it as "The scripture hath concluded all under sin." I would put it this way: "The Torah has included everyone under sin." There is none righteous, and when Paul said "everything (or everyone) under sin," he meant both Jews and Gentiles. The revelation of God's righteous standard has identified all human beings as sinners, not just Jews.
Faithing
The Written Torah included both Jews and Gentiles under sin "so that the promise [given to Abraham] by the faithfulness of Yeshua the Messiah might be given to those who believe." The word "believe" here is just a participle form of the word "faith." The promise that came by the faithfulness of Yeshua is given to those who are "faithing."
"Faithing is not a static faith, not assent to a creed or doctrine or a one-time confession. Faithing is the active, ongoing, trusting, relational, obedient, confident exercise of faith in God's promises. To those who have such faith and live the faith of Abraham, God is pleased to deliver the promises he made to Abraham. Not by the merit of your faith, but by the merit of the faithfulness of Yeshua the Messiah.
An Unfortunate Translation
In Galatians 3:23, Paul left the universal scope of all humanity to speak in the first person plural form about Israel's unique relationship with the Torah. He said "we" to speak specifically of the Jewish people (and converts), those under the law."
Now before faith came, we [i.e., the Jewish people] were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. 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 3:23-26)
This is an unfortunate translation. Being "held captive under the law, imprisoned" sounds like a dreadful prison sentence. It seems that the Apostle Paul depicted the Torah as a cruel prison guard. It sounds like the Torah was keeping people away from faith. The English translators have depicted the Torah as something that holds people captive like prisoners and bars them from faith.
The Paidagogos
Paul drew upon a familiar illustration from the ancient Greco-Roman world of which he was a part. Well-to-do families often hired someone or assigned a household slave to serve as a warden for their children. This warden was called a paidagogos. The English word "pedagogue" (which means tutor) is derived from paidagogos, but the terms are not synonymous. The word paidagogos is actually a compound consisting of two Greek words. It could most literally be translated as "child-conductor" or "someone responsible for the conduct of a child."
This is confusing to us because in English a pedagogue is a teacher. In Paul's words, the paidagogos is not a teacher. Instead, the paidagogos was a type of caretaker entrusted with supervising and directing a child's conduct and moral behavior. He was responsible for overseeing the child's activities, particularly as the child became a teen and young adult. He ensured that the child was safe, stayed out of trouble, attended to his responsibilities, and did not fall in with the wrong crowd. The paidagogos taught the child social skills and manners. Moreover, the paidagogos was responsible for coordinating and overseeing the child's education by arranging tutors, lesson schedules, and courses of study. The paidagogos' job was "to conduct the boy or youth to and from school and to superintend his conduct ... he was not a 'teacher." In that regard, he served as a type of bodyguard, high school principal, and school guidance counselor all rolled into one, with the responsibility of ensuring the student's safety and good behavior on the way to school and back.
I have sometimes encountered the word paidagogos as a loan word in rabbinic Hebrew. The paidagogos sometimes appears as a character in rabbinic parables, usually a servant whom a king appoints over the education and protection of a young prince. A few parables depict Moses as Israel's pedagogue.
Classical Greek literature contains several descriptions of the paidagogos.
In The Republic, Plato describes the paidagogos as a member of the retinue of household slaves in a typical wealthy Greek family. He characterizes paidagogoi as "men who by age and experience are qualified to serve as both leaders and custodians of children."
Consider the following conversation between Socrates and a boy (Lysis 4):
Socrates: "Do your parents let you control yourself, or will they not trust you in that either?
Boy: "Of course they do not."
Socrates: "But someone is in control of you?"
Boy: "Yes. My paidagogos here."
Socrates: "Is he a slave?"
Boy: "Why certainly, he belongs to us."
Socrates: "What a strange thing! A free man controlled by a slave. But how does this paidagogos exert his control over you?'
Boy: "By taking me to the teacher."
Likewise, Plato writes as follows in Laws:
Just as no sheep or other witless creature ought to exist without a herdsman, so children cannot live without paidagogoi, nor slaves without masters. And of all wild creatures, the child is the most intractable, for insofar as it, above all others, possesses a fount of reason that is yet uncurbed, it is a treacherous, sly and most insolent creature. Wherefore the child must be strapped up, as it were, with many bridles-first, when he leaves the care of nurse and mother, with paidagogoi to guide his childish ignorance, and after that with teachers of all sorts of subjects and lessons, treating him as becomes a freeborn child.
Xenophon writes, "When a boy ceases to be a child and begins to be a lad others release him from his paidagogos and from his teacher; he is then no longer under them, but is allowed to go his own way."
Retranslating
This understanding of the function of the paidagogos clears up Galatians 3:23, where Paul says, "Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed." The paidagogos was the child's guardian, not his jailer. When we understand that the paidagogos was responsible for protecting, supervising, and directing a child, then we have a better understanding of how the Greek text of Galatians 3:23 should be rendered into English. The Greek word which the English Standard Version translates as "held captive" has a different connotation. It can also be rendered as "protected," "kept safe," or "guarded." The word should be understood as speaking about how a pedagogue kept a child safe and out of trouble. Similarly, the Greek word which the ESV translates as "imprisoned" (the same word appears in 3:22) can be rendered as "kept in" or "enclosed" in a positive sense. The word should be understood as speaking about how a pedagogue kept a child inside for his school lessons. He did not allow the child to run off and follow his friends into trouble. He kept him shut up inside for the purpose of education and protection.
This is the background to Paul's pedagogue parable. The paidagogos represents Jewish status under the Torah, and Messiah is the teacher to whom the paidagogos brings the Jewish person. Based upon that information, we can retranslate the passage:
Now before faith came, we [the Jewish people] were [protected] under the law, [kept inside for] the coming faith [that] would be revealed. So then, the [Torah] was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified [i.e., exonerated] by faith. (Galatians 3:23-24)
Those "under the law" were protected and kept inside by the Torah, preserved for the coming of the Messiah. Remember, the term "under the law" refers specifically to legal Jewish halachic status, whether by birth or conversion. Paul says that the Jewish people were protected under the law, by means of national Jewish identity, for the coming faith that would be revealed-that is, the Messiah. The purpose of Jewishness is the revelation of Messiah.
Allow me to illustrate Paul's illustration with a parable:
To what may the Torah be compared? It can be compared to a pedagogue who escorted a child to the schoolteacher, but once the child was under the care of the school-teacher, the pedagogue relinquished his care over the child. So, too, the Torah escorted the Jewish people to the Messiah, but once the people enter the care of the Messiah, the Torah relinquishes them to him.
This retranslation of Galatians 3:23-24 makes much better sense in the context from which Paul was writing. In Paul's metaphor, the Torah is the guardian appointed to watch over and protect the people of Israel and to arrange for their education by taking them to the teacher, the Messiah. The Torah did this by creating moral boundaries which kept Israel inside the parameters of ethical monotheism until the fullness of faith in Messiah was revealed. The revelation of Torah was the only place from which the people of Israel could draw hope for salvation, relationship with God, and the expectation of eternal life.
Prior to the revelation of Messiah, it made good sense for Gentiles to join themselves to Israel by means of conversion. That was the only way to get under the protection of the paidagogos and to be preserved for Messiah.
No Longer Under a Paidagogos
Paul went on to explain, "But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian" (Galatians 3:25). Just as the paidagogos brought the student to the teacher, the Torah brought the Jewish people to the Messiah. But the paidagogos is not the teacher; neither is the Torah the means to earn salvation. When Paul said, "We are no longer under a guardian," he did not mean that the Torah is done away with or cancelled. He meant that we should not look to Torah or legal conversion to Judaism as a means of earning salvation. Salvation is (and always was) through the grace of God in Yeshua the Messiah for Jews and Gentiles both.
Does this mean that Jewishness no longer has any value? Is Jewishness "then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not!" (Galatians 3:21). It means that subsequent to Messiah, there is no salvation-related reason for Gentiles to undergo conversion and become Jewish, under the law. As he explained in Galatians 3:26, "For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith."
The Gentile believers to whom Paul was writing had already been led to the teacher of righteousness. They were already sons through faith; they had already come to the teacher. In previous generations, prior to the revelation of Yeshua, there were valid reasons for Gentiles to become Jewish and thus under the law. Doing so brought them and their children inside, protected, and preserved by the Torah along with the rest of the Jewish people until the coming faith would be revealed. Now that it has been revealed, conversion "under the law" no longer serves that purpose. The Messiah is already revealed.
A Problem with a Metaphor
The problem with any metaphor, analogy, or parable is that the symbolism can always be pushed too far. In rabbinic literature and in the parables of Yeshua, a metaphor or parable like this ordinarily makes only a single point. After the point has been made, the parable is set aside. One does not attempt to draw further applications from a rabbinic parable. For example, one should not spend time puzzling about where the good shepherd in the parable of the lost sheep left the other ninety-nine while he sought the lost one. That's not the point of the parable.
So, too, here in Galatians 3, one might push the parable further and say, "The Jewish people are no longer under a guardian. Therefore, the Jewish people no longer need to obey the commandments of Torah."
That sounds like a logical inference, but that was not the point that Paul was trying to make. Whether or not the Jewish people have a covenantal obligation to keep the whole Torah was never a question for Paul, and it is never a question in the entire New Testament. That is not what Paul was speaking about in his paidagogos parable.
He was talking about the purpose of becoming Jewish in the first place. "Why then the Torah?" he asked. He demonstrated that, for Gentiles, coming under the law once had meaning and value because it was the only way to come under the protection of the guardian that would preserve them and their posterity within the people until the revelation of Messiah. Now that Messiah has come, that particular function of Jewishness is completed already for believers.
Again: One of the roles of the Torah (of Jewishness) was to preserve the people and bring them to Messiah. If you are already a believer in Messiah, becoming Jewish is not going to accomplish that for vou. You're already there.
Paul was not saying more than that. We stray from his intention when we try to read more into it. He did not mean the Torah is obsolete, that Jewish people are no longer under the Torah, nor did he mean that Gentile believers can ignore the commandments in the Torah that apply to them. Instead, Paul was perfectly comfortable admitting that the commandments of the Torah continue to protect us, to instruct us, to guide us through life, to preserve us, and to escort us to the Messiah through whom we have eternal life.
Recap
God made promises to Abraham, saying that all nations would be blessed in his seed.
The Torah was added to define and condemn sin.
God gave the Torah to Israel through the hands of intermediaries, but it is still the essential revelation of the one God, for God is One.
The Torah does not contradict the promises that God made to Abraham.
The Written Torah includes both Jews and Gentiles in its condemnation of sin, so that the universal Abrahamic promise can be fulfilled only through the faithfulness of the Messiah.
Before the revelation of Messiah, the Torah preserved both the Jewish people and the Gentiles who joined them by conversion.
After a person becomes a believer, the Torah no longer performs that specific role of escorting him to Messiah.
Referneces
This lesson was curated from teachings from First Fruits of Zion “Holy Epistle to the Galatians.”