One cannot help but ask at this point: "Do you mean to say that when God gave the Law so long ago that He never intended us to keep it!?" Bingo. Paul here launches into an interpretation that breaks open all our thinking about the relationship between the Old and New Testaments. We come now to the heart of this letter. If Paul's argument could be boiled down to its central point, this would be it. Prepare to be set free. . .

For centuries the Jews looked back on God's covenant with the nation of Israel and defined their relationship with Him in terms of the Law which they were given. Indeed He told them to be careful and walk in obedience to all of His laws, and then added that they would be His people and He would be their God. He would dwell with them in the land which He had promised, and He would bring them peace. But if you don't watch closely you will miss the distinction between two things, and they will seem to you as one. There are two things present in God's word to Israel. There is a promise (you will dwell in the land, I will be your God, etc.), and there is a condition (be careful to walk in all of these things, being holy as I am holy). It seems at first glance that God said that if they do not keep His law, they will not receive the blessings promised to Abraham and to his children. But Paul stops and draws a bold line between the promise of blessings and the requirements of the Law. "What I mean is this: The law, introduced 430 years later [after the promise] does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise"(3:17). When we speak of God's covenant with Israel we usually mean God's promise together with the conditions put on His people to follow his demands. But Paul is clear here that the promise is the covenant, the Law came much later; and that we should never confuse the two because they are different from each other. Either the inheritance comes by the promise, or it comes by the Law. It must be one or the other, it cannot be both. It came to Abraham by promise. That's grace. God simply said, "I will do this for you and in you," and then He did. Ultimately, Christ is the promised "Seed" which would crush the head of the serpent and inherit the land (Gen.3:15, also Gen.12:7). There is only one problem left.

What do we do with the Law? What was it for anyway? If we couldn't keep it in the first place, and if it wasn't essential to our faith, then why did God give it? We were under the impression that we were supposed to keep it! Doesn't that sound logical? Would God have done this just to trick us? Absolutely not. But there was a deception that took place. It just wasn't He who deceived us. We misunderstood the purpose of the Law, but not because of what the Lord said or did. We have been under the deception of the Father of Lies. Paul will say it most clearly later in his letter to the Romans: "When the commandment came, Sin sprang to life and I died. . . for Sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death"(Rom.7:9,11). What was the deception? It was that he could in fact obey the commandment. Instead of seeing his need for a Savior, Sin lied to Paul and told him that God expected Paul to be good and be holy. But that was not the original purpose of the Law. So what was it?

It was supposed to be a "child conductor" to bring us to Christ. It may seem confusing, but back up and look at the whole history of redemption. God created man and woman and put them in the garden to tend it and keep it. The Tree of Life would have given them the power to do it, but they were deceived and ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil instead. They saw the gardening task ahead of them and they thought that the wisdom and discernment they could get from this tree would enable them to do it. But now they had the curse of death in them and God's purpose appeared to be thwarted (ultimately it wasn't). So God did the most gracious thing He could do for them: He banished them from the garden so that they would not eat of the Tree of Life and live for ever with the curse of sin.

But now a long process of education must begin. God wanted to take a people and teach them to trust in His promised Seed (the Christ who would come). But each time He blessed them and multiplied them they began to live "according to the flesh." Cain's offering to the Lord was the product of hard work and agriculture rather than the blood of a sacrifice. The builders of Babylon wanted to reach heaven with their edifice (a spiritual aspiration), and God would have to scatter them across the earth. Finally He took Abraham and made him into a great nation, with over a million people in it by the time of the Exodus. But knowing their hearts and their tendency to trust in their own strength, He gave them the Law of Moses. Then He said, "This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you Life and Death, blessings and curses. Now choose Life. . ." (Deut.30:19). Just like in the garden, the Lord put a task before Israel and gave them a choice between independence and dependence, works and faith, Law and Grace.

Paul declares in verse 21 that there never was a law given which could impart Life, and that righteousness never came by the Law. The Law was given as a child conductor to bring us to Christ. A child conductor's job in Paul's day was very much like the job of a school bus driver today. His only job was to get the child to his teacher. A child conductor would walk behind the child all the way to school, slapping him or her with a stick if he or she ever misbehaved or turned to go the wrong way. The child conductor was a helpful servant, but never pleasant company. So it is with the Law. Its only purpose was to show Israel that She needed a Savior, and to point the way to Him.

Christians today do not know that this was the purpose of the Law. Even John Calvin taught that the primary purpose of the Law is to teach Christians how to live. He called this "the third use of the law." But listen to Paul: "We know that the Law is good, if one uses it properly. We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels"(1 Tim.1:8-9). Once one has come to Christ, the services of the Law are needed no more. "Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the Law"(Gal.3:25). Let those words sink in. We are no longer under the supervision of the Law. Its job is finished. Do not go back to it ever again.

Preoccupation with what we feel are God's demands on us kills our spiritual lives more than any other thing. The life of Christ in you is a Life that is powerful and free. He does not live in you by rules and regulations, but by the simple overflow of his presence in you. Our task is to learn how to give up our performances for him, and to lay down all of the great spiritual things we are trying to accomplish for him. Our lives are a whirlwind of activity, and none of it is really any good. That may be hard to swallow at first, but it must be understood. God values most of our activity very little because we do it in our own strength. We have erected towers of agendas and requirements in order to reach heaven, very much like the Babylonians before us. Interestingly, our trails are always littered with physical buildings representing our constant activity for God. But work which His Spirit does not lead is of no value to Him, and Paul says that one day it will all be tested by fire to see if it really was of the Spirit or not (1 Cor.3:10-15). We must learn to think like this, realizing that God is only interested in those things which are done out of the overflow of the Spirit of Christ in us. Paul will speak more about this in Chapter Five.

Meanwhile, beginning with verse 26 of Chapter Three, Paul will come at the Law from a slightly different route. He will spend Chapter Four explaining what it means to be a son (or daughter) of God. He will also make it clear what our attitude should be to the Law and to the bondage which it brings. The sons are free. Read Galatians 3:26 through 4:31, and we will look at it in the next section.