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Bible Reading Notes
June 2010
Friday, June 25th – Galatians 3: 15-17
At this point in his letter, Paul begins to expound the true place of the Law in the lives of believers. He begins on a lovingly personal note, referring to his readers as his brethren, although they had been temporarily bewitched (Gal. 3:1). Faithful teachers of God’s Word should not speak the truth only, but rather should endeavor sincerely and warmly to convey the love of God along with the divine truth that sets sinners and misguided saints free.
Saturday, June 26th – Galatians 3: 15-17
The apostle begins to expound the place of the Law in the lives of all believers by employing an analogy drawn from human dealings. Even finite, fallible, and changeable men produce and respect legal documents such as deeds and testaments. In this instance, Paul especially has in mind a testament, as we can determine from v.18 where he specifically refers to an inheritance. Whereas a covenant is a legal agreement between two or more parties, with stipulated obligations for each party, a testament is a legal expression of one’s will to dispose of his estate. A testament more clearly has a promissory character, and once the testament has been probated subsequent to the death of the testator, no man, least of all the testator, can change the provisions of the testament. Paul uses this illustration as an argument from the lesser to the greater. If it is true that finite, fallible, and changeable men make and keep legal agreements, it is much more true that God, who promised salvation in His covenant of grace, would keep to the provisions of His own covenant. If men rejoice to inherit an estate through the provisions of another man’s last will and testament, much more should believers rejoice to be recipients of the inheritance from God’s saving grace.
Sunday, June 27th – Galatians 3: 15-17
It is those who make too much of the Law who pervert the Lord’s covenant, not those who exult in the saving grace of God in Christ. God, by His giving His holy Law in both its moral and ceremonial aspects, did not supersede His covenant of grace, but rather gave greater emphasis to the necessity of His grace by the convicting work the Law performed. It is by God’s gracious giving, not by our Law-keeping, that we are saved.
Monday, June 28th – Galatians 3: 15-17
If the covenants of men can be respected and relied upon, the covenant of God should have our unshakeable respect and reliance. Paul, having made this point, proceeds to advance his argument, first by his stating in v.16 some very significant features of God’s covenant of grace. We are reminded that the dealings of God with Abraham had the character, not of God’s legal demanding, but rather of the Lord’s gracious promising. Salvation is not of man’s performance but of God’s promises.
Tuesday, June 29th – Galatians 3: 16
Every time God spoke to Abraham, the divine communications took the form of promises. When the Lord called the patriarch from his native country, it was in order that Abraham would receive great and precious promises (Gen. 12:1-3). When Abraham became old and feared that he would have no son, the Lord promised him not only a natural son, but innumerable spiritual descendants, and, above all, the Lord promised Himself to Abraham as the patriarch’s supreme blessing (Gen. 15:1-6). God promised Abraham’s descendants the land of Canaan (Gen. 15:18), and promised Abraham—fifteen years after the patriarch had sinfully produced Ishmael—that he would not only have his legitimate son in Isaac, but also that the aged patriarch would be the father of a multitude of nations (Gen. 16:16-17:7). Nothing was required of Abraham except that he should believe the divine promises and accept the gracious and abundant gifts of the Lord. Even such faith in the Lord comes to believers as part of God’s gracious giving (Eph. 2:8,9). For petty legalists, this all sounds too good to be true, but to needy sinners this is all too good not to be true!
Wednesday, June 30th – Galatians 3: 16
Of all the divine promises spoken to Abraham, Paul focuses our attention upon what the Lord promised in Genesis 17:7,8. There the Lord spoke of His establishing His covenant with Abraham and his descendants. With the birth of Isaac, and from Isaac the birth of Jacob, and from Jacob the birth of the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel, we rightly conclude that God was making good His promise to Abraham. However, Paul keenly observes a supremely significant detail of the Lord’s covenant promise that was expressed in Genesis 17:7,8. While it is true that the patriarch and all of his spiritual descendants were promised an extravagantly blessed interest in the covenant of grace, Paul rightly perceives that when the Lord made His promises to Abraham in Genesis 17:7,8, He explicitly made a promise to be God to Abraham and to a singular, uniquely significant descendant of Abraham. That one seed (also promised in Gen. 3:15) was Christ. It would be Christ, the promised seed of the woman and of one of her descendants, Abraham, who would alone perfectly fulfill God’s Law for all of His people, while taking upon Himself the curse of God that was due to His people for their many violations of God’s Law. Through the perfection of Christ’s person and work, all who would look to Him for salvation by faith would be reconciled to God as their God, and God would be reconciled to them as His people. All of this results from the Law-keeping only of the singular, saving seed that is Christ. The rest of us receive it as a gift of God’s amazing grace.
Thursday, July 1st – Galatians 3: 16
Paul reduces the promises of God in this verse from their application to a believing multitude from every tribe, tongue, and nation of the world in all ages of time. The apostle focuses upon two characters, each of whom is seminal in the gracious and saving purposes of God. The Lord’s promises were spoken to Abraham, who was the father of faith and of the faithful, as well as the natural father of the Jewish people and nation to whom the oracles and laws of God were given. The Lord’s promises also were spoken to Abraham’s seed, Christ, the object of faith and the end of the Law for His people because He perfectly fulfilled the Law for them. When Abraham believed God and was thereby justified, he believed God’s promise not only or even especially that he would have a son and many descendants, but supremely that from him would come the seed who would be infinitely greater than the father from whom He would in His humanity descend (Mt. 1:1). Accordingly, Jesus declared that Abraham saw His day and rejoiced (Jn. 8:56), as all who look to the saving promises and provision of God should do.
Friday, July 2nd – Galatians 3: 15-17
In v.17, Paul states clearly and significantly the conclusion of the argument he was building in vv.15,16. The Lord unilaterally and unconditionally promised salvation to Abraham and his seed (Christ) as well as to all who like Abraham looked by faith to Christ for salvation. All of this was a gift of God’s grace to be received by Abraham and his spiritual descendants through faith. Centuries after God made these promises, the Law of God was declared through Moses. The Lord’s declaration of His promises and of His Law were separated by centuries of time with the divine intention of making clear to believers that they should not confuse grace and Law, still less that they should ever think that Law took priority over grace. It is not only those things that God has joined together that we should not tear apart, it is also those things that our Lord has kept distinct that we must never confuse.
Saturday, July 3rd – Galatians 3: 17, 18
Salvation issues from God’s gracious promises, not from man’s obedience to God’s Law. Any assertion otherwise is erroneous, absurd, and cruel. Sinners were violators of divine Law even before and certainly after the Law was declared through Moses (Rom. 5:12-14). Not one of them could ever have saved himself through his own keeping of the Law. Because of this, God graciously promised to sinners a Savior of His giving as the only way of salvation for them. It is erroneous and absurd for men to think and teach that these gracious divine promises were made void by the giving of God’s Law. Man’s need remained unchanged, and God’s gracious covenant stood unaltered by the giving of the Law. It is also perversely cruel for men to assert that Law overturned grace, for such assertions deprive sinners of any hope of salvation and obscure the glory of God’s grace.
Sunday, July 4th – Galatians 3: 18
The costliness of God’s gracious promises and provision of salvation is alluded to by Paul’s use of the term, inheritance. One comes into his inheritance after the death of the testator. The abundant and glorious lives of believers issue from the death of the Son of God. The atoning death of Christ is the heart and bedrock of redemption. The promises of God mentioned in v.16 were that Abraham and his spiritual descendants would have life through Christ’s death. The promises of God to Christ, the singular seed of Abraham, were that He would redeem His people from death by His laying down His life for them. If such promises were based upon believers keeping the Law, they would be no promises at all, since no sinner is willing or able to keep God’s Law. The Lord did not give Abraham a potential blessing based upon his performance, but rather a free, full, and certain promise of eternal life through the death of His beloved Son.
Monday, July 5th – Galatians 3: 18
The reference in this verse to inheritance casts a controlling light on the character of the promises of God mentioned in v.16 and of the covenant mentioned in v.15. While the covenant of grace is a binding commitment cast in the form of a legal contract between two or more parties, its essential character is that of a specific type of contract, namely, a testament. Legal contracts stipulate rights and responsibilities of the parties and have nothing to do with death. Testaments are the legally protected instruments of a single party wherein the testator disposes of his estate, and the disposal takes place after the testator’s death. All that the beneficiary named in a testator’s last will and testament does is to receive his inheritance. He does not work for it. Therefore, the legalistic assertions of the Judaizers who were bewitching the Galatians were based on ignorance of the essential character of God’s covenant of grace.
Tuesday, July 6th – Galatians 3: 19
Only after Paul has made clear the essentially gracious and unalterable character of the covenant of God’s grace does the apostle move to a consideration of the Law of God. Grace ever has preceded and ever will precede Law in God’s dealings with His people. Law never should be considered apart from the prevailing intention, character, and consequence of God’s saving grace.
Wednesday, July 7th – Galatians 3: 19
Paul raises the reasonable question as to why God gave His holy Law to the people to whom He had promised salvation. In answer to the question the apostle teaches that the Law did not alter or supersede grace, but rather has served to emphasize grace as the basis for our salvation. The Law came after grace not as a substitute but as an addition, given by God to accent grace. My dear Scottish friend and pastor, William Still, prior to his promotion to glory, aptly represented the Law as a gracious counsel of despair, not as a legal commandment for our keeping. The Law given to sinners exposes sin but can neither confer righteousness nor convey an inheritance. Its purpose is not to stimulate our obedience to God but to drive us to the perfect obedience and blood of Christ graciously shed for our salvation.
Thursday, July 8th – Galatians 3: 19
The good and holy character of the Law is acknowledged by the way Paul says it was delivered to God’s people. It was communicated through angels to God’s chosen mediator, Moses, who in turn delivered it to Israel. This angelic participation in the delivery of the Law is clearly noted by Moses in Deuteronomy 33:2, and is mentioned also in Hebrews 2:2. And yet, even such glorious angelic messengers and the godly Moses were inferior instruments of promulgation when compared with God who directly promised salvation to Abraham and with God’s Son, the Mediator of the substantial (as opposed to shadowy) administration of salvation. This manner of delivery serves further to emphasize the supremacy of grace over Law.
Friday, July 9th – Galatians 3: 19
The Law was at a later time and in an inferior way added to the promises that God gave to Abraham and his seed. The Law was added neither to be adored nor to be obeyed by the people of God as a means for their salvation. It was added to highlight in God’s people the consciousness of their sin and consequent need for God’s promised salvation. That salvation was not through the exodus led by Moses, but through the death of Christ, the seed of Abraham.
Saturday, July 10th – Galatians 3: 19
The Law was added to the promises of God because of transgressions. This means that the Law of God, in its moral, ceremonial, and civil facets, was given by God for a very specific reason that had to do with the sins of God’s people. According to the legalists who were drawing the Galatians away from Christ (Gal. 1:6), the Law’s purpose was to perfect God’s people as they sought to obey it. According to the genuine gospel that Paul preached, the Law was given by God not to amend or even to diminish the transgressions of His people, but rather to reveal sins and even to excite the sin nature to produce its bitter fruits in actual transgressions. The Law came to increase transgressions and to excite sin so that where sin increased, God’s people would not increase but rather cease their efforts to obey the Law and would look, instead, to the Christ who perfectly fulfilled the Law for them (Rom. 5:20,21; 7:7-13).
Sunday, July 11th – Galatians 3: 19
R.C.H. Lenski, in his Commentary on Galatians, likens the Law to a stick that hits and awakens a sleeping lion. The stick does not make the lion a beast of prey, nor can it kill or change the beast. It can only agitate and arouse the beast to show its true nature. The purpose of God in giving us His Law was not to command our obedience but to reveal our disobedience and drive us to the grace of God by which alone sinners are transformed into saints, and rebels against God are made into adopted and beloved children of God.
Monday, July 12th – Galatians 3: 19
God gave His Law to point His people to Christ, the one seed of Abraham in whom all of the promises of God would be fulfilled. Therefore, in the economy of God’s gracious redemption, the Law serves a provisional purpose in contrast with the permanence of the substance of salvation God promised and provided in and through Christ. As John, the beloved disciple, rightly apprehended through his experience of the love of God demonstrated in the death of Christ, the Law was given through Moses to point God’s people to the saving grace and truth that were realized through Jesus Christ (Jn. 1:17).
Tuesday, July 13th – Galatians 3: 19, 20
The fact that the Law was given to God’s people through the mediator, Moses, shows the subsidiary nature of the Law of God to the promise of God. The Law was given indirectly to the people of the Lord, but the promise of salvation was given by God directly to Abraham, and the provision of salvation came directly through the Son of God. The point Paul makes in v.20 is that a mediator commonly is a disinterested third party performing a function on behalf of two negotiating parties. Although Moses was a member of Israel and a sinner who himself needed salvation, in his calling and function as the giver of God’s Law, Moses played the part of a third-party mediator. However, with the promised seed, Christ, the Mediator between God and man was in His singular person both very God and fully man. Thus, Christ acted directly from His own divine authority and for His own divine glory when He laid down His life and took it up again (Jn. 10:17,18), and did so out of love and for the good of His people.
Wednesday, July 14th – Galatians 3: 21
In this verse, Paul guards his teaching on the supremacy of grace over the Law against antinomian excess. In his asserting the supremacy of grace and explaining that the Law was additional to and a subsidiary of God’s grace, the question arises as to whether the Law might be contrary to the promises of God. The apostle answers strongly that God’s Law is not contrary to God’s promises according to the way God gave both. The Lord gave His Law after He gave His promises to emphasize the sinner’s need for the divine promises, not to replace the promises with demands that the sinner save himself.
Thursday, July 15th – Galatians 3: 21
If the Law had been given by God to replace His gracious promises, then it would have been necessary for the Law to convey enabling power for the people of God to obey it personally, perfectly, and perpetually, for without such power, no man would be saved and the promises of God would have been entirely empty. The Law of God has never contained power to enable sinners to obey it. However, it was not necessary that it have such power because the Law did not replace the promises but strengthened them. It is what the divine promises provide, through Christ, that enable believers to will and to do God’s good pleasure (Phil. 2:13).
Friday, July 16th – Galatians 3: 21, 22
Paul has made clear the subsidiary place the Law has in the economy of redemption. It came after the promises and did not alter them but rather added strength to their necessity for sinful people (vv.15-18). The Law also served a provisionary purpose that has been fulfilled with the coming of Christ (vv.19,20). With vv.21,22, the apostle brings forward the greatest lack in the Law that makes it impossible for the Law to serve as a basis for the salvation of sinners. The Law lacks power to produce life. It cannot reconcile any sinner to God, the fountain of life, nor can it regenerate those who are dead in their trespasses and sins. The Law can only convict and condemn those who are dead in sin. This was its nature, its power, and its intended use by the God who gave it to drive His people away from any proud and foolish notion of their keeping the Law as a basis for their salvation. The Law is divinely designed to show a sinner his death so that he might seek life, not in the Law but in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Saturday, July 17th – Galatians 3: 22
Paul does not say that we rightly understand the Law by dwelling on the Law. Rather, we understand the Law with true precision and edifying grasp as we consider it in its context of the whole counsel of God as revealed in Scripture. The teaching of the whole Word of God locks up all things that pertain to God’s people (their thoughts, words, deeds) to sin, with the gracious intention and effect that the covenant people find by faith alone their salvation in the one thing God promised: salvation in Jesus Christ alone.
Sunday, July 18th – Galatians 3: 21, 22
The Law is not contrary to the promises of God, but is instead complementary to the divine promises. The Law describes the character of God and provides the standard of what is righteous in His sight. The Law also convicts and condemns sinners so that they stop assuming that they are right and do right. The Law, especially the ceremonial portion of the Law, also points to Christ. But the Law cannot convert or impart life to a single sinner. For this reason, Scripture contains more than the Law. It contains divine promises, prophecies, and precepts that portray the Person and work of Christ. It is the whole counsel of God that the Holy Spirit uses to bind up sinners in a blessed bondage to Christ, who is the one thing necessary and the singular focus of justifying faith.
Monday, July 19th – Galatians 3: 22
This verse literally says that Scripture has shut up all things under sin. The meaning is that all people and all things pertaining to them (thoughts, words, actions) are shown by Scripture to be sinful in God’s sight. Among the things Scripture shows to be sinful is a sinner’s attempting to justify himself by keeping God’s Law. The only ones who are truly justified in the sight of God are those who by faith receive Christ, the supreme promise of God. Scripture makes clear that salvation is the gift of God not to those who behave in accordance with the Law, but to those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Tuesday, July 20th – Galatians 3: 23-25
In vv.23-25, Paul deals with the relative functions of the Law and of faith. The apostle draws out these relative functions by means of an illustration. There was a time when the Law served a custodial function, acting as a tutor to guide children. When faith came to the children, they arrived at their maturity and were no longer in need of their tutor. In the providence of God, the Law was given to teach the covenant people who lived before the coming of Christ to look for Christ. The true and right perspective for believers to have on the Law is that it never was given by God for His people to obey, but rather it was given to teach them how deeply and unceasingly they disobey God’s holy Law, so that they by faith would be led to look for Christ crucified as the object of their faith.
Wednesday, July 21st – Galatians 3: 23
Paul speaks of a critical time before literally the faith came. What the apostle means by this reference to the coming of the faith may be gathered from what he has previously said in vv.16,17,19. From those verses, we learn that the Law, coming 430 years after Abraham believed God’s promises and was thereby justified, served a purpose in relation to the transgressions of God’s people until Christ, the seed of Abraham, came. Therefore, when Paul speaks of the coming of the faith, he means the coming of Christ, the object of saving faith. Before the coming of Christ, Abraham and all of his spiritual descendants had subjective or personal faith. But their faith was based on the promises and was informed and nurtured through the ceremonial law (that foreshadowed Christ’s atoning work) and the moral law (that portrayed the holy character and righteous actions of Christ to come). Once Christ came, and forever thereafter, believers have faith in a Savior no longer promised but provided, and there is no longer a need for the Law to point and prod people to a promised Redeemer.
Thursday, July 22nd – Galatians 3: 22, 23
In these verses, Paul writes of both the Law and the whole Word of God having confined the people of God. The Scripture in general and the Law in particular kept all of God’s people, from the time of Moses to the coming of Christ, in custody, guarding them from the conceit that they were not transgressors and keeping them focused on the promised seed to come. The Scripture locked God’s people in the prison of conviction and the Law guarded them from escape to anything other than Christ, who was the promised key of their liberation from conviction of sin.
Friday, July 23rd – Galatians 3: 24, 25
All of Scripture, and the Law in particular, shut God’s people up to no other hope but Christ. In vv.24,25, Paul adds that the Law was not only a prison guard but also an instructing guide to children As a pedagogue, the Law served the people of God until they arrived at their maturity. From v.19, as well as from vv.24,25, we learn that the maturity of the covenant people arrived with the coming of Christ. The Law’s purpose was not to train the people of God to obey it, but rather to teach the people to embrace Christ and to correct them when they fixed their hope on anything other than Christ. When Christ came, all of the promises of God were fulfilled in Him, and thus, when the people of God possessed the substance of salvation by faith, they were freed from the tutoring of the Law. This does not mean that Christians are free to sin (Rom. 5:2-6:2), but it does mean that the one who possesses Christ by faith possesses justification in Him and a new life with a new heart that inclines him to love the Lord and to obey His Law as a fruit, not as the root, of that love.
Saturday, July 24th – Galatians 3: 25-27
The Law never was a means of salvation for God’s people, but there was a period prior to the coming of Christ when the Law served as an instrument to point people to the Savior. Now that the Savior has come, the Law no longer serves that purpose. Since the time of Christ’s coming, the people of God have been freed from their tutor. In vv.26, Paul gives us the first of two reasons why Christians are not under the Law as a tutor. Both reasons have to do with who believers have become in Christ. The first reason Paul gives informs us that all who have faith in the person and work of Christ are children of God (Jn. 1:12,13). As children of God, we are not in the bondage of conviction of sin, guilt, and corruption. We are adopted, beloved members of the Father’s household and family, with the Spirit of God bearing witness with our regenerated spirits that we are not criminals but children (Rom. 8:15,16; Gal. 4:6). Nor are we regarded by the Father as sinful children, but rather as those who are perfectly just in His sight. The second reason Paul declares in v.27. We have been baptized in Christ, and therefore have put off our sinful defilement and have donned Christ’s person and work. Accordingly, we are accepted by God in His beloved Son, who perfectly fulfilled God’s holy Law and whose perfect human righteousness is imputed to us. The Law does not clean us but the blood of the Savior does, so that we who are in Christ are forever regarded by God as those who have never violated His Law.
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6:30 PM
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Christian Education
7:00 PM
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