1. This is a keen, severe epistle, one that is unintelligible to the
ordinary man. Because the doctrine it contains has not hitherto been
employed and enforced, it has not been understood. It is also too
long and rich to be treated briefly. But it is fully explained in the
complete commentary on this epistle to the Galatians, where those who
will may read it. The substance of it is, that here, as in the whole
epistle, Paul would earnestly constrain the Christian to distinguish
between the righteousness of faith and the righteousness of works or
of the Law. In order that we may note to some extent the main points
Paul makes in this text, we remark that he emphasizes two things. He
treats first of the doctrine that we are justified by faith alone,
and he maintains this, after giving many reasons and proofs, by
saying in effect:
2. In this connection you should note that no one, whether Jew or
gentile, is justified by works or by the Law. For the Law was given
four hundred and thirty years after the promise of a Savior had been
made to Abraham (who was to be the father of all the people of God)
and the assurance that all nations should be blessed in him. It was
given after it had been testified of Abraham that his faith was
imputed to him for righteousness. And as he was justified and
received the blessing by reason of his faith, so also his children
and descendants were justified and received the blessing through the
same faith in that seed for whose sake the blessing had been promised
to all the world. For in his dealings with the Jews and with the
whole world, God always promised his grace and the forgiveness of
sins (and that means to be blessed of God) even when there was as yet
no Law by which they might pretend to become righteous, and before
Moses was born.
3. Therefore the Law, being given to this people only after the lapse
of so long a period, could not have been given to them for
justification; otherwise it would have been given earlier. Or if it
had been necessary for righteousness, then Abraham and his children
up to that date could not have been justified at all. Indeed God
designed that the Law should be given so long after Abraham.
Undoubtedly he would have been able to give it to the fathers much
earlier if he had seen fit to do so. Apparently he desired thereby to
teach that the Law was not given to the end that God's grace and
blessing should be acquired through it, but that these come from the
pure mercy of God which was promised and bestowed so long before upon
Abraham and those who believed.
4. Therefore Paul concludes: How could the Law produce righteousness
for those who lived before Moses, since Moses was the first through
whom the Law was given; and since even before his time there were
holy people and people who were saved? Whence did they derive their
righteousness? Certainly not from the fact that they had offered
sacrifice at Jerusalem, but from the fact that they believed the Word
in which God promised to bless them through the coming seed, Christ.
Hence, those also who lived afterwards could not have been justified
by the Law; for they did not receive the grace of God in a different
way from that in which those who went before had received it. God did
not annul or revoke by the Law the promise of blessing which he had
made and freely bestowed without the Law.
5. Here some might desire to show their wisdom and say to Paul:
Although the fathers did not have the Law of Moses, they had the same
Word of God which teaches the ten commandments and which was
implanted in the human heart from the beginning of the world, whence
also it is called the law of nature or the natural law; and the same
law was afterwards given publicly to the Jewish people and
comprehended in the ten commandments. It might also be said that
Moses borrowed the ten commandments from the fathers, to which Christ
testifies in John 7, 22. For it is certain that the fathers from the
beginning taught them and urged them upon their children and
descendants. With what consistency, then, does Paul conclude that the
fathers were not justified by the Law because it was not given until
four hundred years after Abraham's time; as if the fathers before
that time had no Law?
6. To answer this question we must observe the meaning and purpose of
Paul's words; for he so speaks because of the boasting of the Jews,
who placed their dependence on the Law and claimed that it was given
to them that they might be God's people. They considered their
attempts at keeping his Law, sufficient to procure justification. Why
else did God give the Law, they said, and distinguish us from all
heathen peoples, if we were not thereby to be preeminent before God
and more pleasing to him than they who have it not? They made so much
of this boasting that they paid no respect at all to the promise of
blessing in the coming seed, given to the fathers, nor thought that
faith therein was necessary to their justification. Thus they
practically considered it as annulled and made void, excepting for a
temporal interpretation which they put upon it--that the Messiah
would come and, because of their Law and piety, give to them the
dominion of the world and other great rewards.