Session 13

November 29, 2020 (First Sunday in Advent)

Unit 1: The Ten Commandments

Jesus and the Law

Jesus came to fulfill the law, not abolish it.

The Word

Galatians 3:19-25; 4:4-7

Session Outcome

To understand what it means that Jesus fulfilled the law.

Discover:

Illustrated Bible Life describes the many usages of the word “law” in the Bible, and provides verse-by-verse commentary on the Scripture passage.

Last Week:

We gained a deeper understanding of what it means to cultivate an attitude of contentment.

This Week:

We will gain a deeper understating of the ways in which Jesus came to fulfill the law.

Listen:

How the Bible defines “law” is the focus of this week’s Illustrated Bible Life podcast on FoundryLeader.com.

Discover:

One of the problems of understanding biblical views of the law is that sometimes the biblical writers sound very positive about it and sometimes they sound a much more negative note. To understand what they meant, we must understand the context. Careful attention to the biblical understanding of law will help protect us from both legalism and lawlessness. Learn more about this significant concept in this week’s Illustrated Bible Life article, “Law in the New Testament.”

Engage the Word

Why Did God Give the Law?
Galatians 3:19-22

Before God gave the law, people sinned in blissful ignorance of what God wanted them to do and not do. The law made clueless sinners conscious of their sinful condition.

To transgress is willfully to cross a forbidden boundary. To sin is to act in violation of God’s revealed will. God holds people responsible for sins only when they know where the boundaries are. Law revealed the boundaries of what God had considered wicked behaviors and attitudes all along. The law was not intended to solve the problem of transgressions, beyond the interim measure of the sacrificial system. Law could not “impart life” (3:21). It could only point out the need for a solution.

The law not only had this limited purpose, it had a built-in expiration date. “Until” (Galatians 3:19) refers to an interval of time between two points in time. Law was to remain in force until the coming of Christ—the promised Seed of Abraham (3:16-18).

God’s temporary purpose for the law was served when the age of fulfillment arrived—Christ’s birth, life, death, and resurrection. The potential that Christ’s life and death made possible becomes a reality as believers participate fully in the life of the new age. The end of the age of the law (Romans 5:12-14) inaugurated the age of the Spirit (Galatians 3:10-29).

Paul was unaware of any problem with the law until he found Christ its solution. He did not come to Christ as a self-conscious rebel against God. Only the revelation that the crucified Jesus was the Christ of God allowed him to see himself for who he really was—a self-righteous zealot for the law (Galatians 1:13-14). The light on the Damascus Road allowed him to understand himself as a sinner and Jesus as the only means of salvation (Galatians 2:15-17).

God gave the law to Moses through angelic mediators (Leviticus 26:46). God gave the promise of Christ to Abraham directly (Galatians 3:8, 16, 18). God’s law-based covenant with Israel was contingent on their obedience. God’s promise to Abraham was unconditional.

The Sinai covenant failed because Israel violated it—there is only one God, and He keeps His promises. Christ’s coming did not undo all God was doing earlier. But, God never intended the law to be a means of salvation—to “impart life” (Galatians 3:21). Its intent was to keep Israel safe until Christ came (3:21-25).

Before he became a Christian, Paul believed the law promised life (Romans 7:10). But he learned better (see Galatians 3:13-14; 2 Corinthians 3:6). Only the Holy Spirit gives salvation-life and empowers believers to obey God (Galatians 5:25; Romans 8:2-7).

In 3:22, Paul used “Scripture” as a synonym for law. Law was a severe jailer. But it served God’s saving purposes—to keep people in protective custody until the Savior came. Scripture identifies every human being as hopelessly enslaved to sin (see Romans 1:18—3:20). Law could not break sin’s hold on humanity. Nonetheless, the bondage sin imposed served God’s purpose: Salvation would be a free gift to all who put their faith in the faithful Jesus Christ, God’s solution for the sin problem.

The Law: To Prevent and Protect
Galatians 3:23-25

Paul used the analogy of the Greco-Roman paidag?gos to help explain what it meant to be held in custody by the law. His first readers would have understood that this role in ancient childcare was to prevent children from doing wrong and to protect them from harm until they became responsible adults.

In these verses, Paul contrasted our lives before and after we became Christians. The coming of Christ made possible the fulfillment of God’s ancient promises of the Messiah and the Spirit. But only those who come to the Christian faith and personal conversion may experience the freedom that comes when we do spontaneously from the inside-out what God wants and not just because the law says so.

Mature, Spirit-filled Christians no longer need the law as a paidag?gos. Law keeps us from self-destruction until God makes us right inside on the basis of faith in what Christ has accomplished. The Spirit enables us to fulfill the law of Christ (Galatians 6:2).

The Freedom of God’s Children
Galatians 4:4-7

Paul recounted here the story of how God in Christ invaded our fallen world to rescue enslaved humanity and make us God’s children. “But when” marks the before-after contrast. The transition was made possible because of what God did: “God sent His Son” when the time was right.

The temporary mission of the law had been accomplished. It was time to grant God’s people the freedom of the new age of the Spirit that God had promised (Jeremiah 31:31-34; Ezekiel 36:26-27). The Spirit frees stubborn human hearts to become responsive to God’s call to obedience.

God sent His eternal Son as a human being (“born of a woman”), specifically a Jew (“born under the law”). On the cross, Jesus Christ became a victim of the miscarriage of the Law (3:13). His coming and faithfulness to death, made it possible for all humanity—Jews and non-Jews—to be freed to become God’s adopted children regardless of race, socio-economic status, or gender (3:28).

God sends “the Spirit of his Son into our hearts” so we may experience subjectively and personally what Christ’s coming made objectively possible (3:6; see Romans 8:14-15). The life-giving Spirit enables believers to fulfill “the righteous requirements of the law” (see Romans 8) and to confess our status as children of God: “Abba, Father” (Galatians 4:6; Romans 8:15-16).

Did You Know?

In the Liturgy of John Chrysostom, the Lord’s Prayer is introduced with the words: “And make us worthy, O Lord, that we may joyously and without presumption make bold to invoke Thee, the heavenly God, as Father, and to say, ‘Our Father  . . .’”

Think About It

Wesleyans follow Protestant tradition in assigning three continuing uses of the Law: (1) To bring us to an awareness of our sins. (2) To point us to Christ as the Savior. (3) To teach us how we should live ethically (John Wesley, “The Original, Nature, Property, and Use of the Law.”).

Reflect

Read through the Ten Commandments this week. Pause after each one, allowing God’s Spirit to speak to your heart and life.

George Lyons

Discussion Guide

Insight

The biblical concept of being “under the law” is a looking to the law as a means of salvation, and being subject to the law as an external control on behavior. The biblical idea of being “under grace” is a view of grace as God’s way of salvation, through Christ and as the secret inner moral power [Beacon Dictionary of Theology (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, 1983), 309].

Connect to My Experience

Children need a guardian. Whether it be a biological parent, grandparent, foster parent, relative, and so on, children need someone to provide guidance and instruction. That is, those who contribute to the child’s social, emotional, and even intellectual development.

How can thoughtful, intentional childcare encourage maturity and growth in children?

Who were the guardians in your life? What did you learn from them?

Why are guardians necessary?

What are the limits to the influence guardians have in the life of a child?

Transition:

Paul teaches us that the law served as a guardian for the people of God by protecting, guiding, and keeping them. However, the arrangement was never intended to be permanent. The coming of Christ fulfilled the law’s intention and introduced a new age, the age of the Spirit.

Connect to the Word

Invite someone to read Galatians 3:19-22, then discuss the following,

Our Protestant heritage gives us many gifts, but can also come with baggage, namely a primarily negative perception of the law.  Some view it as a merciless taskmaster that issues standards we could never hope to keep. Nothing could be further from the truth. The law was a sacred gift that enabled the people of God to understand the divine boundaries given by God for their flourishing.

In Romans 7, Paul describes the law and commandments as “holy, righteous, and good.”  How might we understand God’s law as good and designed to enable the people of God to flourish?

How does this view of the law reveal God’s heart for us in a new way?

The problem with the law comes when we expect it do something it was never designed to do, namely impart spiritual life. Rather, the law made clear our need for deliverance from sin.
Even though we recognize the limited power of the law, do people still expect it do what it was never designed to do, to bring salvation? Why or why not? 

How does this misguided expectation play itself out in the church today? (There is a danger of making our faith more about rules (dos and don’ts) rather than a relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ.)

Invite someone to read Galatians 3:23-25, then discuss the following,

As children grow and mature, they outgrow their need for a guardian/overseer. The law served as a guardian in a way, a guardian to guide the people.  But, they did not, could not, outgrow their need for it.  Only the coming the Christ, the faithful one, could end their need for the guardianship of the law.  The same truth is for us today. The law brings awareness of sin and points us to the need for Christ.

Paul seems to use the word “faith” interchangeably with “Christ.”  How does Christ perfectly embody faith or faithfulness?

How does the faithfulness of Christ deliver us from the guardianship of the law? (Jesus came to give us power over sin through faith in Him and the power of the Holy Spirit working in and through our lives.)

Christ has done what the law could not do: justify us.  The faithfulness of Christ has set us free to live in the freedom of God, guided now by the gift of the Holy Spirit. 

How do lives lived under the guardianship and control of the law differ from lives lived in the freedom of Christ? (There are no boundaries in expressing Christlikeness in our world. We are free to live and love God and others through the power of the Holy Spirit.)

Without the external control of the law, how do we know how to please God and live according to God’s desire for creation? (God’s Word and the leading of the Holy Spirit.)

Invite someone to read Galatians 4:4-7, then discuss the following,

Paul’s phrase “But when” clues us into the profound change that has taken place. We were slaves, bound beyond hope of freedom.  But when Christ came and took on our human condition fully, everything changed. Through His faithful obedience, Christ set us free from the bondage of sin and the guardianship of the law and brought us into the family of God.

Why is the incarnation (Jesus, the Son, taking on the human condition by becoming human: fully God and fully human.) so central to our salvation?

As members of the family, we experience the family privileges, including the gift of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. Our status has changed from slave to child, and thus heirs to all the promises of God.
Think together of all the ways being a slave to something differs from being adopted as a child. What parallels do you see in the life of faith? (Once a slave to sin, believers become a child of God through faith in Christ.)

Not only do we receive previously unimagined privileges with being a member of God’s family, our entire identity is transformed. 

What would it look like to fully embrace one’s identity as a child of God? 

How would this internal shift impact our external way of life?

Connect to My Life and the World

As we enter the Advent season, we celebrate once again that God in Christ become human in order to heal, forgive, and free us from bondage to sin and death. What the law was powerless to do, God did by sending Jesus in the flesh (see Romans 8).

How might this perspective on Jesus’ coming transform your experience in this Advent season?

How might it deepen our longing and anticipation, having been reminded of what His coming accomplished?

How might you reorder your life in small ways during Advent to create space for reflection, gratitude, and active waiting?

The law was a gift, but we are now the recipients of a greater gift: the Holy Spirit. As Jesus promised in the gospel of John (16:13), the Spirit guides us in all truth. We are not left as orphans, but we promised God’s presence.

How might we attune our ears to recognize the guiding, convicting, comforting voice of the Spirit?

What spiritual disciplines might strengthen this awareness/sensitivity in us?

Close in prayer by thanking God for the freedom we have in Christ.

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