Chapter 3, 4.
As chapter 2, ends with the great truth of Christ living in the Christian by faith in the Son of God, in contrast with the law, so chapter 3, shows that the reception of the Spirit was not by works of law but by report of faith. How senseless then to perfect in flesh, with which law deals, what they began in Spirit! Thence he turns in verse 6 to Abraham who believed and had not the law, but the promise. In thee all the nations shall be blessed, but solely by faith. For as many persons as are by works of law are under the curse for which Deuteronomy 27, is cited. There, when the two mountains were taken by six tribes on each for blessing and curse, only Ebal has the curses, and not a word of the blessings on Gerizim! Granted, that in fact the blessings were pronounced on the appointed mountain; in effect, as God knew, it must fail; and hence the silence of this inspired book. On the principle of law there is no blessing but curse for sinful man. “The just shall live by faith,” as Habakkuk 2:44Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith. (Habakkuk 2:4) testifies when all was ruin; where in vain law held out living to him that shall have done its demands. But Christ has redeemed from out of the curse by having become a curse, as elsewhere Deuteronomy attests (21); that the blessing might come unhindered, the promise of the Spirit through faith (1-13).
Then in a deep unfolding the notion of annexing law to promise is excluded. For the promises were addressed to Abraham, and to his seed, 430 years before the law, and hence cannot be annulled by it. The promise was in grace. Law was added for the sake of transgressions till the Seed came to Whom was made the promise, which has no mediator like the law with Moses between God and man. There are two parties in law, one of them sinful; there is but one in promise, God, and therefore all is sure in the end. They are not against each other, as they must be if joined: each served its proper aim. There is no righteousness by law; but the promise by faith of Jesus Christ is given to believers. Law was but a servile child-guide; but we are all, Gentiles as well as Jews, God’s sons by faith in Christ Jesus; and Him it is, not law, we put on in baptism, in Whom there can be no distinction in the flesh; and if of Christ, we are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to promise (14-29).
In chapter 4, the apostle points out the immense change wrought for the saints through Christ’s work and the sending of the Spirit. Previously the heir, a child or infant, did not differ from a slave under the elements of the world; but now he was redeemed by the Son and became a son. And so were the Gentile believers, sons with the Spirit in their hearts crying, Abba, Father. Such is the true relationship of the Christian (1-7). For Gentile saints, after being known of God, to turn to the weak and beggarly elements (i.e., of the law) was really a return to their idolatry in principle. “Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you lest I bestowed upon you labor in vain. Be as I [am], for I [am], as ye, brethren, I beseech you: ye have not injured me at all” (8-12). He was freed from law by Christ’s death. They as Gentiles had nothing to do with law. They inflicted no wrong in saying so of Paul. Compare Romans 7:6,6But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter. (Romans 7:6) and Galatians 2:1919For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. (Galatians 2:19). How the new delusion had alienated them from him! Had he become their enemy by telling them the truth? Their zeal should not be only in his presence (13-18). They needed that he should travail again in birth to have Christ formed in them (19).
“Tell me, ye that desire to be under law, do ye not hear the law?” Then he speaks of Abraham’s two sons: one by a bondwoman, the other by a free woman, one born after the flesh, as the other by promise, allegorizing the two covenants, and answering respectively to Jerusalem in bondage, and to free Jerusalem which is above, our mother, entitled to rejoice after desolation. We then, as Isaac, are children of promise, and persecuted by him born after the flesh as of old. “Nevertheless what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son; for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman. So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free” (21-31) How convincingly the tables were turned on these retrogradists from grace to the law!