474 - 2 PROMISES, PROMISESMarch 18 1979
Henry F. Kulp
Galatians 3: 13 - 18 Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. Brethren, I speak after the manner of men; Though it be but a man's covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man disannulleth, or addeth thereto. Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect. For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise.
The last two weeks we have been studying the curse of the Law. Those who are under the law, endeavoring to keep the law, can only be cursed by the law. The law cannot give life, the law cannot do anything good for the human race because of the sinfulness, the weakness of man, his old sin nature.
Romans 8: 3 For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:
1/ Therefore the Galatians made a terrible mistake, the worst of all mistakes. Leaving grace with it’s blessing to live under the law and its curse.
2/ Verse 13 Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:
Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law. This first part of that verse is so important. In the Greek it should be, Christ and only Christ, then we have the words, hath redeemed us. Hath redeemed in the Greek is ACTIVE VOICE. The subject of the sentence produces redemption. Only Christ can do this, man can do nothing to redeem himself or to redeem others.
Psalm 49: 7, 8 None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him: (For the redemption of their soul is precious, and it ceaseth for ever:)
Here we have a Scripture under the law that is very important. God says, none of them can by any means redeem his brother, or give to God a ransom for him. For the redemption of their soul is precious. It is costly, and it ceaseth forever. Ceaseth in the Hebrew means to stop a thing. Or leave it alone. God is saying, don’t meddle with redemption, man cannot redeem himself, he can’t redeem anyone else.
3/ The word, redeem, means, to purchase or to buy from the slave market. Christ has purchased us from the slave market, and what is the slave market here? It is the law. And CHRIST HATH ONCE FOR ALL REDEEMED US OUT FROM THE CURSE OF THE LAW.
4/ Then the Greek says, not being made a curse for us, but having become a curse for us. Every violation of the Mosaic Law that we have committed, Christ bore it in His own body on the cross. He is our substitute, He took our curse. ON THE TREE literally should read ON THE WOOD, and this, if course, refers to the cross. This is a prophetic utterance.
5/ Colossians 2: 14 Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;
Let us look at the cross and the curse of the cross. Here we will notice, this verse does not say that Christ was nailed to the cross, but it says that He himself nailed something to the cross. They nailed Him to the cross of course, but He also nailed something to the cross, so that when the Lord Jesus Christ was taken down from the cross and the way of salvation was finished, He left something nailed to the cross, and that was everything that was written against us. That was the whole law, for the law is against us.
It is said this is in reference to a custom from the Romans. With the Romans debt was a crime if it was not paid when due. If a man incurred a debt and he was finally unable to pay it, the Roman law permitted the man to whom he owed the debt to take him and his family to be salves. That is, they were to be slaves in his household, and they were not to be free any more. If a man was in debt, and it looked like this family was to be taken and his family to be made slaves, he was in great mental anguish, but say finally, he was able to pay the debt and pay it on time, this would be a happy time for him and his family. So he took the cancelled debt—that piece of paper that recorded his debt that was now cancelled and he would nail it over his door. So all the neighbors could see that his family were free from that debt. That is what Jesus Christ did. He nailed your cancelled debt to the cross. So that means the cross is of great value to us. Not the law, but the cross that cancelled out the curse of the law.
6/ Verse 14 That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
Let us look very carefully at this verse. You see the word, promise, here. Then in the next verse you see the word, covenant. Here in Galatians God makes a distinction between promise and covenant. Notice, verse 16 Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. Verse 17 And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect.
The covenant that was confirmed would not disannul, or annul the promise. Then in verse 18 For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise.
He makes a distinction between the inheritance of the law, and the inheritance of the promise. The two cannot be mixed. They are again like oil and water.
7/ Let us go back to Genesis to see what we mean.
Genesis 12: 1 - 3 Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
Here is the promise. Abraham believed God and it was counted for him for righteousness. That is where God justified him. Verse 18 For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise.
In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram. You see, there is a difference. The promise and the covenant are not the same, and the people get mixed up in this. I have been up around Holland, Michigan where people say they are the children of the covenant, and I wonder how they got into the covenant when they are not Jews. God made a covenant with Abraham saying, Unto thy seed have I given the land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the River Euphrates, and then He went on to confirm that covenant, the sign of the covenant was circumcision.
Genesis 17: 7 - 14 And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God. And God said unto Abraham, Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore, thou, and thy seed after thee in their generations. This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised. And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you. And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed. He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised: and my covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant.
The law had not been given, but the Lord made a covenant with the Jews. They are the seed of Abraham by the covenant and the promise takes us in, the Gentiles, for the promise was given to Abraham a Gentile.
Genesis 12: 1 - 3 Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
This is not a covenant, it is a promise. The covenant, of course, as we showed you was made later. The covenant with land, doesn’t mean America. It doesn’t mean Great Britain, as Herbert Armstrong tells us. We are not children of the covenant. We are children of the promise.
8/ Let us go back to Galatians 3: 8 a Scripture that we touched upon, but did not consider very carefully because we wanted to do it at this time. Let’s see what this Scripture does not say.
And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed.
1/ It does not say that the Scriptures foretold God would justify the Gentiles through faith. The word is, foreseeing, not foretelling.
2/ It does not say that God told Abraham He would justify the Gentiles through faith, not one word about that.
3/ It does not say that the Scriptures foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles through Christ. This would have been true, but it is not the point here.
4/ Finally, it does not say, like thee, shall all the nations be blessed, for if it did there would be no problem to solve.
9/ But the very first promise made to Abraham was that God would bless all nations through him. This is in Genesis 12: 1 - 3, and the Apostle quotes this promise in an argument that God justifies the Gentiles by faith.
Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
How does this work out? Abraham is the great example of faith in the Pauline Epistles. So the original promise made to Abraham holds out blessing to the world through Abraham himself. How then was Abraham proved to be a blessing to all nations? There is only one answer, as God’s great example of faith. If there was anything that stands out in the record of Abraham’s life, it is the fact that he believed in God.
Genesis 15: 6 And he believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness.
10/ In Scripture he is constantly held up as the great example of faith, but, nowhere more than in the Pauline epistles Romans 4: 1 - 3 where he says, what did Abraham find out pertaining to the flesh? That a man is justified by faith, not by works.
What shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found?For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God. For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.
11/ Romans 4: 18 - 21 Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be. And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb: He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform.
Who against hope believed in hope, not weak in faith, staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strong in faith, fully persuaded that what He promised. He was able also to perform. So we are full-grown sons of Abraham when we appropriate faith.
12/ So Paul is saying to the Jews, don’t you recognize your father, Abraham, was justified without the law, by faith.
13/ Let’s look at Abraham for a moment. What a man to choose as an example of faith.
John 8: 39 They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham.
Here where they said, Abraham is our father, all right, look at him—he was saved by faith, not by works of the law.
14/ When Betty and I were over in Egypt on our trip around the world, we had a guide who was an Arab, He was a follower of Mohammed and he took us to a mosque. Took us down in the basement, while a service was going on upstairs. Betty and I at this point had a chance to testify to him, and Betty gave him her Scofield Bible at this point, and I said to him, You know, you claim Abraham is your father, and he said, Oh yes, Abraham is our father. I said, Do you know that Abraham was saved without human works, and your religion is filled with works. Abraham was saved by faith. And I will never forget the expression on his face when I brought this out to him. We had a wonderful chance in the heathen mosque to preach the Gospel of salvation by faith plus nothing, and Abraham was our starting point.
15/ Now let us see another point that is very important in our study. God never expected the Jew to keep the law. That may be astounding to you but it is very true. Because the law could never be kept by Jew or Gentile. All the law would do was curse Jew or Gentile. God knew when He gave the law, that the nation Israel could not keep it, that all it would do was curse them.
Galatians 3: 18 For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise.
Why was the law given, then? Now we have to see another important point. The first was the difference between promise and covenant. This time between sin and transgression. To understand this verse we must see what a transgression is.
16/ Romans 5: 14 Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after similitude of Adam’s transgression,
A transgression is being told to do a thing and then not do it. From Adam to Moses they had no law, therefore, they could have no transgression, because God did not tell them what they had to do and what they were not to do. They did things that were wrong and that is sin, but sin is different from transgression. From Adam to Moses they sinned and they died. Genesis 5 is a proof of that, but not one man transgressed, that is only one man, Adam. Adam was told what not to do and he did it, and that was a transgression. He told him not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and he did it and that was transgression.
17/ But when God gave the law through Moses, then transgression begins. That’s the difference between sin and transgression,
18/ A little fellow just able to walk around the house, toddles into the dining room where mother has put a dish of cookies on the table. This little fellow sees them and he climbs up unto the chair and sits on the table and eats the cookies and he is having a good time. His mother comes in, and he wants her to see what he is doing, so he holds one up and laughs, and he lets his mother see what a wonderful thing he has found. He doesn’t think he is doing anything wrong, he wants to share it with his mother, for his mother never told him not to do that. But now the mother tells him it is wrong, when he sees anything on the table, he is not to climb up and take it. From that point on, if he does it that is transgression. That is the difference between sin and transgression. From Adam to Moses there is no transgression.
Galatians 3: 19 Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator.
So the law was given to show the world transgression. That man cannot do what he wants to do. It is impossible for him to do what God tells him to do. He needs to be saved by faith and kept by faith.
AMEN
Ref: 03/18/1979 / 474-2 PROMISES, PROMISES / 10/18/2020
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