Why Then The Law – Galatians
Why Then the Law?
Together Church | Pastor Stephen Dellinger
November 1, 2026 | Series: Galatians | Galatians 3:19–27
INTRODUCTION
Church, today we are continuing through the book of Galatians. We are in week six of this series, and Pastor Brandon finished last week at Galatians 3:18.
Before we move forward, I want to remind us of the theme we have returned to week after week. There is one true gospel, and that gospel is this:
This is the gospel of grace…
Faith in Christ + NOTHING = Justification
Justification means being declared righteous before God. Think of a courtroom: the question is whether we stand guilty or righteous before a holy God. All of us have sinned. Sin is not merely making a mistake; it is rebellion against God. And we cannot make ourselves right with Him through our performance.
But through the saving work of Jesus Christ—His sinless life, His death on the cross, and His resurrection—we can be justified by faith in Him.
Now there were teachers influencing the Galatian churches who insisted that believing in Christ was necessary, but not enough. You also needed to keep the works of the Mosaic Law, particularly circumcision, to be counted among God’s people.
The false gospel of legalism says…
Faith in Christ + LAW = Justification
Paul knows that argument inside and out. As Pastor Brandon said last week, it is as if Paul is standing in the Judaizers’ huddle, anticipating what they will say and answering it from Scripture.
Look at where he left us in verse 18.
Galatians 3:18
“For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.”
God had promised Abraham that through his offspring the nations would be blessed. And Paul told us in verse 16 that the promised offspring is Christ. The Law, which came 430 years later, did not cancel that promise.
And that creates an obvious question: If the inheritance does not come through the Law, then why did God give the Law at all?
That is exactly where Paul goes next. And I want us to notice three things as we walk through Galatians 3:19–27.
- The Law was given because of transgressions. (vv. 19–20)
- The Law cannot give life or make us righteous. (vv. 21–24)
- Through faith in Christ, we become children of God. (vv. 25–27)
BODY
- The Law was given because of transgressions. (vv. 19–20)
Galatians 3:19–20
19 “Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. 20 Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one.”
Why then the Law? Paul is asking the question the Judaizers might ask. If keeping the Law cannot justify anyone, why was it given?
Paul begins: “It was added because of transgressions.” Human beings were sinning against God and against one another. The Law addressed human transgression. It identified what was sinful, instructed God’s people, and restrained evil. Scripture describes several purposes for the Law, and Paul will emphasize its particular role in God’s plan of redemption.
God did not give the Law because He was confused about how salvation should work. He did not promise salvation to Abraham and then change His mind when He gave the Law to Moses.
The Law is good. It reflects the character and holiness of the God who gave it. But we must not demand of the Law something it was never able to do.
Paul says something else important in verse 19: the Law was given until the offspring should come. That offspring is Jesus Christ. The Mosaic Law had a particular, temporary role in salvation history. Its role as guardian was never intended to continue unchanged after Christ came.
And Paul mentions that the Law was appointed through angels by an intermediary. Moses served as mediator between God and Israel in the giving of the Law. But the broader point is clear in Paul’s argument: God’s Law cannot overturn the promise God made to Abraham.
So do not hear me say the Law is evil. The Law is good. What is wrong is looking to the Law as the means of our justification.
- The Law cannot give life or make us righteous. (vv. 21–24)
Galatians 3:21–22
21 “Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. 22 But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.”
Paul asks another question: Is the Law contrary to the promises of God? Is God somehow contradicting Himself?
His answer is emphatic: Certainly not! The Law and the promise are not enemies. They have different purposes.
But then Paul makes an important statement. If any law could give life, then righteousness would come by the Law. Yet no commandment, no regulation, no amount of rule-keeping can give spiritual life or declare us righteous before God.
Consider some of the things we look to when trying to determine what is right and wrong:
- God’s righteousness and His revealed Law. We look to God’s perfect character and His commandments to understand what is good and righteous.
- The laws of the land. We recognize rules established by governing authorities, along with consequences for breaking those rules.
- The failures of others. We observe the sins and mistakes of other people and the consequences they experience. We learn what happens when people make destructive choices.
- Our own experiences and conscience. We remember the consequences of our past decisions. We experience conviction, guilt, or even fear of what might happen if we continue down a particular path.
Now, these things can help us recognize right and wrong. Some are more reliable than others, of course. God’s standard is perfect; human laws, experiences, and consciences are not.
But listen to me, church: NONE of these things can give you spiritual life or right standing before a perfect God.
You can know God’s commandments. You can understand the consequences of sin. You can learn from the mistakes of others. You can even recognize your own guilt before God. But none of those things can make you righteous before God.
Knowing what is right is not the same as being made righteous. And that’s Paul’s point. If there was a Law that could give life, righteousness would come through the Law. Only Jesus Christ can give us the life and righteousness we need.
Verse 22 says Scripture has confined everything under sin. This is more than just a statement about Israel under Moses. Jew and Gentile alike are under sin. Scripture gives humanity no escape route through our own righteousness. The promise must be received by faith in Jesus Christ.
Let me ask you something. We have talked about this for weeks, but have we really allowed it to unsettle us? To see how truly short we fall of God’s standards?
Jesus said the greatest commandments are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. On these commands hang all the Law and the Prophets.
I am not asking you to divide yourself up into four different pieces. I am asking: Have you loved God with your whole person—with everything you are—perfectly?
I can think of times when God has empowered me to love someone well. I am grateful for those moments. But I cannot claim to have kept His commandments perfectly. And neither can you.
When I look honestly into God’s Word, it exposes my sin. And if I try to use my obedience as the basis for my righteousness before Him, I fall short.
That does not mean obedience is useless. God’s commands are good. For example: obeying them often protects us and others from destructive consequences.
But avoiding a consequence is not the same thing as receiving eternal life. The Law can identify sin; it cannot erase our guilt.
Remember the curse Paul discussed earlier in verse 10: “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” The Law does not give a person the option of keeping a few favorite commands and using those good deeds to cancel out the rest.
Only Christ has lived in perfect obedience. And in Galatians 3:13, Paul tells us that Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law by becoming a curse for us. Our hope is not a better performance. Our hope is a Savior.
Now Paul develops the Law’s purpose further in Galatians 3:23-24.
Galatians 3:23–24
23 “Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. 24 So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.”
First, when Paul says “before faith came,” he does not mean no one had faith before Jesus. Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. Paul himself already told us that! So it cannot be this.
He is speaking about a moment in history: the coming of Jesus Christ and the revelation of the promised salvation in Him. Before that, Israel lived under the guardianship of the Mosaic Law, specifically.
Paul uses the word guardian. In the ancient world, a guardian—a paidagōgos (pronounced: pie-dah-go-goes)—supervised and disciplined a child who was not yet of age. The guardian exercised authority and watched their conduct for correction, but that arrangement was a temporary one. It was not the child’s final status and it was not meant to be.
In the same way, the Mosaic Law served its God-given purpose until Christ came. It could identify sin and supervise God’s covenant people, but it could not give the promised righteousness. It could not bring sonship that only comes through Christ.
And, church, here is the danger for the Galatians: Christ has come, but the Judaizers want them to go back to the guardian as though the guardian could make them right with God. As if the guardian could MAKE them sons.
We are going to come back to what that looks like in our lives. But first I want to give you an illustration.
ILLUSTRATION — THE LONG JUMP / ROPE
I have a rope here. I want you to picture an Olympic long jump. One of my favorite ideas is that every Olympic event should include one completely ordinary person, just so we can see how extraordinary the athletes actually are. And—maybe—get a good laugh at the same time…
You watch a hundred-meter sprint and somebody loses by a fraction of a second. You think, “Man, that was close”! Then you put me in the next lane and suddenly the whole competition makes sense. They are at the finish line, all while I am still trying to get moving.
The men’s Olympic long-jump record is 8.90 meters—about 29 feet, 2½ inches. Bob Beamon jumped that distance in 1968. Just imagine that distance across this stage.
[STAGE: Display the measured rope or a visible portion of it. Point out the start and the record mark. Do not attempt a full running jump. Maybe have someone else try—responsibly]
Suppose I tell you that you have to jump from here all the way to the other end to win. You run, you leap, you land—and you fall short.
So what do you do? You try harder. You adjust your technique. You practice. You try again. Maybe you improve a little. But you still have not reached the standard.
Church, when we misunderstand the purpose of God’s Law, we begin trying to use it for something it was never intended to accomplish. And that desire to justify ourselves shows up in different ways.
- Measuring my acceptance before God by my performance.
I constantly examine my obedience, my good works, and my visible actions to determine whether I’ve finally done enough to be acceptable to God. I’m trying to jump far enough to meet the standard.
- Looking for loopholes in God’s commands.
Instead of submitting to what God has said, I begin looking for ways around it. How close can I get to sin without actually sinning? How much can I excuse? Can I find a technicality that allows me to feel justified? I’m trying to change the rules of the jump.
In another story, a lawyer asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Luke tells us that he was seeking to justify himself. He wanted to draw the line somewhere he could defend.
- Comparing my righteousness to someone else’s.
I may not be perfectly obedient, but at least I’m doing better than that person! At least I haven’t committed their sins. At least I’m trying harder. At least my jump is farther than theirs. Sound familiar?
Jesus once told a story about a Pharisee and a tax collector. The Pharisee stood before God listing his righteous works and thanking God that he was not like other sinners. But the tax collector cried out for mercy. Jesus said the tax collector went home justified.
I’m measuring my righteousness by someone else’s failures rather than God’s perfect standard.
- Lowering God’s standard to something I can achieve in my own power.
This one is particularly deceptive. I know I cannot meet God’s standard, so I begin convincing myself that perhaps He doesn’t actually require everything He says. I redefine His commands. I minimize my sin. I lower the hurdle because I cannot bear the thought that I haven’t reached it.
[STAGE: Invite those holding the rope to go back and sit with everyone else]
And once I’ve made the standard manageable, I convince myself that I’ve become righteous. Church, notice what’s happening in every one of these examples. I’m still looking to my own works to establish my righteousness before God.
But that is not the gospel. And unlike an athletic record, God’s righteousness is not merely a difficult goal we might reach with enough training. All of us have already sinned. We are guilty and we cannot undo our guilt by improving our next attempt.
I understand that impulse. And I need to be honest with you: sometimes I have looked at God’s commands and searched for the edge, not because I wanted to honor Him, but because I wanted to feel justified about how I was living. I wanted to treat freedom in Christ as something to please myself, and then looked to the law for loopholes like some sort of lawyer.
Whether we are trying to achieve enough or excuse enough, the danger can be the same: placing confidence in ourselves instead of Christ.
And that kind of self-justification is a trap. It promises freedom but cannot save us. It cannot give us life. It cannot give us righteousness.
Now here is what makes the gospel so incredible. Christ does not lower God’s standard and pretend our sin never happened. He fulfills righteousness, bears the curse our sin deserves, and makes sinners right with God through faith in Him.
As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:21, the One who knew no sin became sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.
Jesus Christ did what we could never do. And justification comes through faith in Him, not through our ability to make the jump.
- Through faith in Christ, we become children of God. (vv. 25–27)
Galatians 3:25–27
25 “But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, 26 for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. 27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”
Church, Christ has come. That changes everything about the guardian’s role. The period of the Mosaic Law’s supervision reached its fulfillment in Him.
And verse 26 does not merely tell us that we have escaped a set of rules. It tells us something far more wonderful: In Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith.
Notice Paul’s words: in Christ and through faith. We are not made children of God because we performed well enough. We are welcomed into His family because we belong to Jesus Christ.
And sons here is the language of inheritance. Every believer—men and women alike—receives the full standing and inheritance of a child of God in Christ. This is what the Law could never give us. That was not it’s purpose!
Then verse 27 says that those who were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. The basis of sonship is explicit in verse 26: through faith in Jesus Christ. We need His Spirit to indwell us.You have put on Christ. He is your identity. And if you belong to Him, your relationship with God is not based upon your ability to establish your own righteousness.
This is why Paul could say in Galatians 2:20 that the life he now lives, he lives by faith in the Son of God, who loved him and gave Himself for him. He is not considering how close he can get to the law and still be considered justified. He is not depending on the law for justification at all—He is solely dependent upon faith in Jesus Christ!
We do not begin the Christian life by faith and then graduate to self-reliance. The Spirit who brought us to life is the One who enables us to walk in obedience. God’s commands still matter, but obedience is not the price we pay to become His children. It is the response of those who belong to Him.
CONCLUSION
So let me return to the question we started with: Why then the Law?
The Law was given because of transgressions. It served a good purpose in God’s plan. It identified and restrained sin and guarded Israel until Christ came. But it could never give life or justify a sinner.
And now Christ has come. The One promised to Abraham has come. He has borne the curse, died for our sins, and risen from the dead. Through faith in Him, people who could never earn righteousness are welcomed as children of God.
That is the gospel. And that is why we cannot improve upon it by adding our own works.
Faith in Christ + NOTHING = Justification
Now, I am not telling you to ignore God’s commands. I am not saying sin is harmless. Sin is destructive; it damages our relationship with others and dishonors the God we love. Sin has incredibly destructive consequences in our lives!
But when the Word of God exposes sin in your life, what do you do with what you see?
God has made me aware of legalism in my own life. I know both Jerry, and most recently Brandon, have talked about how this sermon series has exposed legalism for them. The same has happened for me too. I was struggling with things and I was acting like my acceptance before God was based on improved performance, or finding loopholes like a lawyer. But it’s not—I am a son of God and through faith in Jesus Christ I have the power to walk as one.
The gospel gives us freedom to be honest. We can repent. We can confess our sin to God and to trusted brothers and sisters. We can ask for prayer and seek restoration. Press into your small groups. Press into real life relationships with others who are spiritually mature. Because our hope already rests in Jesus Christ and in His work. Not because these actions will justify us.
When we obey, we are not trying to jump far enough to purchase God’s acceptance. We obey because He has brought us into His family and because His Spirit is at work in us.
INVITATION
I want to speak to two groups of people today.
First, perhaps you have never placed your trust in Jesus Christ.
But what are you depending upon to make you right before God?
Is it the family you grew up in? Your religious activity? The things you have done—or the things you have avoided doing? Using the long jump analogy: are you hoping you can jump sixteen feet, and God will consider that close enough?
That is not faith in Jesus Christ. Saving faith is not merely knowing facts about Jesus or agreeing that He is God. As it says in the book of James—even the demons believe and shudder. It is entrusting yourself to Him and Him alone.
The good news is that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, yet God sent His Son. Jesus lived without sin, died in the place of sinners, and rose again. Everyone who believes in Him receives the promise of life.
If you have never trusted Jesus Christ, place your faith in Him today. You cannot save yourself. But Jesus Christ can save you.
[INVITATION: Give a clear opportunity to respond; ask people to bow with you and pray. Invite them to fill out a connect card and place it in one of the boxes. We want to celebrate with them! We want them to follow the Lord in baptism!]
And now, Christian, I want to speak to you. You have trusted Christ, but perhaps you have started living as though your relationship with God depends on your performance. Maybe you keep trying to move the line so you can tell yourself your sin is not that serious. Or maybe you keep trying harder and harder, convinced that one more successful attempt will finally make you acceptable. You have become obsessed with commands as a means of justification.
Do not return to self-justification. Do not depend on the law for life. Christ is sufficient. When you sin, do not excuse it, and do not hide it as though you must (or even can) make yourself acceptable before you can come to Him. Do it because, through faith in Jesus Christ, you are His child. Today, men, reach out to a godly brother-in-Christ. Women, reach out to a godly sister-in-Christ. Act according to faith that Jesus Christ has made you a son of God.
[PRAY AND DISMISS]