Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

The Law cannot interfere with the original promise

¹⁵ Let me give you an everyday illustration, my brothers. Once a contract has been properly drawn up and signed, it is honoured by both parties, and can neither be disregarded nor modified by a third party.

^16-18 Now a promise was made to Abraham and to his seed. (Note in passing that the scripture says not “and to seeds” but uses the singular ‘and to your seed’, meaning Christ.) I say then that the Law, which came into existence four hundred and thirty years later, cannot render null and void the original “contract” which God had made, and thus rob the promise of its value. For if the receiving of the promised blessing were now made to depend on the Law, that would amount to a cancellation of the original “contract” which God made with Abraham as a promise.

^19-20 Where then lies the point of the Law? It was an addition made to underline the existence and extent of sin until the arrival of the “seed” to whom the promise referred. The Law was inaugurated in the presence of angels and by the hand of a human intermediary. The very fact that there was an intermediary is enough to show that this was not the fulfilling of the promise. For the promise of God needs neither angelic witness nor human intermediary but depends on him alone.

^21-22 Is the Law then to be looked upon as a contradiction of the promise? Certainly not, for if there could have been a law which gave men spiritual life then law would have produced righteousness (which would have been, of course, in full harmony with the purpose of the promise). But, as things are, the scripture has all men “imprisoned”, because they are found guilty by the Law, that to men in such condition might come to release all who believe in Jesus Christ.