430 years

As I mentioned in the last post ("2,500 years"), most people in the history of mankind have never even heard of "God's laws" that He gave to Israel. If God had intended for His laws to be the staples that held mankind together in salvation and right living, don't you think perhaps He'd have done a little better of a job of making His commandments known to all of mankind? But as I also said in the last post... that was never the point of the law!

The law did have a point and a purpose - a very legitimate and necessary purpose. I mentioned last time that Rom 5:12 says that sin entered the world through one man (Adam) and sin spread to everyone. The next verse contains a key to the purpose of the Law. "For until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law" (Rom 5:13). In other words, sin was in the world but it had not been charged to man's account (imputed to him). The law entered, not to help man live right or as something for man to follow as a way to inherit eternal life. The law was "weak and unprofitable" because it could not do that! (Heb 7:18-19). Rather the law's purpose was to charge the world with the sin that they already had, but had not yet been charged with.

A dozen paragraphs earlier, Paul had begun to make this point: "Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God" (Rom 3:19). In short, the law's purpose was to charge the world with sin. It made all of humanity guilty. As Paul also said in Gal 3:19, "What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made..."

And so what's this about a "Seed?" It all has to do with a promise God made to Abraham (when he was still known as Abram), four hundred and thirty years before the law. An inheritance was promised to Abraham:

Then He brought him outside and said, "Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them." And He said to him," So shall your descendants (Hebrew word Zera`, meaning 'seed') be."

Paul illuminates: Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, "And to seeds," as of many, but as of one, "And to your Seed," who is Christ (Gal 3:16).

Paul continues, "And this I say, that the law, which was four hundred and thirty years later, cannot annul the covenant that was confirmed before by God in Christ [the promise to Abraham], that it should make the promise of no effect. For if the inheritance is of the law, it is no longer of promise; but God gave it to Abraham by promise (Gal 3:17-18).

In other words, "Here's what it's all about. Life with God is not about Law, it's about living according to the promise of God." The law charged everyone with guilt, but God's promise was an inheritance and a life that was lived by faith, not law.

But the Scripture has confined all under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed. Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. (Gal 3:22-25)

Abraham's response to God's promise in Gen 15:5 is what those who are of the faith also live by: Gen 15:6 - "Abram believed the LORD, and He credited it to him as righteousness."

Abraham is known as "the father of all those who believe" (Rom 4:11) because the blessedness of life and righteousness that is imputed (accounted, credited) to man apart from works came through him. He received the promise long before the law came, and that promise supersedes the law! We have absolutely no need for "law" in order to have a full-on relationship with God. In fact, "the law is not of faith" (Gal 3:12). We had to "die to the law" in order to "live unto God" (Gal 2:19). "The life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith" (Gal 2:20) just as Abraham did.