When the Law’s Job Was to Point to Christ

Play This Verse Study

Narration uses an AI-generated voice.

0:00 0:00

Scripture • World English Bible

Galatians 3:19–25

WEB

¹⁹Then why is there the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise has been made. It was ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator.

²⁰Now a mediator is not between one, but God is one.

²¹Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not! For if there had been a law given which could make alive, most certainly righteousness would have been of the law.

²²But the Scripture imprisoned all things under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

²³But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, confined for the faith which should afterwards be revealed.

²⁴So that the law has become our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith.

²⁵But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.

World English Bible (WEB) • Public Domain

Reflection

Paul’s short argument here is pastorally sharp: the law had a purpose, but it wasn’t to produce life. It exposed sin and kept people aware of their need until the promised Redeemer arrived. Think of the law like a spotlight: it doesn’t repair the building, it only reveals where the structure is rotten so the repair work can begin.

That’s why Paul insists the law was temporary. Its role was custodial, guiding and restraining until faith appeared in the person and work of Christ. Once faith has come, the guardian’s job is finished. The good news is not that the law was meaningless; it served to make clear our condition and our dependence on God’s promise.

There’s an important pastoral balance here for men who want to live faithfully. Don’t flip the gospel into another performance system. The law’s job was to show us our inability to save ourselves so we would turn to Christ. But don’t hear freedom as a license to ignore God’s moral will. True freedom comes from knowing you are accepted in Christ, which changes your motives and empowers obedience out of gratitude rather than duty-driven fear.

Paul also cuts across a mistake that still traps men today: treating mediation or religious routine as a substitute for a living relationship with God. The point is that the promises of God were not invalidated by the law; the law pointed forward to how those promises would be fulfilled in Christ. We’re not left to fend for ourselves; the promise arrives, and with it faith that unites us to Christ and secures our right standing before God.

Practically, that means two things for daily life. First, receive the assurance of adoption by faith—your standing before God rests on Christ’s work, not a ledger of accomplishments. Second, use your freedom to serve: you’re free from slavery to earn status so you can invest sacrificially in others. The Spirit changes motives and produces fruit; the law never could produce that inner transformation.

Let the law do its honest work in you: expose what’s wrong so you can confess and turn to Christ. Then live in the liberty that follows, serving others and walking by the Spirit rather than trying to manufacture righteousness by willpower alone.

Putting Faith Into Action

List three ways you instinctively try to earn God’s approval (work, reputation, moral effort). Pray a short confession releasing each item and write one gospel truth sentence to repeat daily (for example: “Christ’s work, not my performance, secures me”). Tell a trusted brother and ask him to check in weekly for four weeks.
Choose one command or conviction from Scripture that currently exposes sin in your life. Instead of resolving merely by willpower, name the sin to God, ask the Spirit to show how Christ meets that need, and set one concrete countermeasure (remove a trigger, change a routine, or invite accountability) to practice for 30 days.
Use your freedom to serve: identify one person in your household, workplace, or church to bless this week with time, practical help, or a sacrificial gift. Do it without seeking credit and report back to an accountability partner about what you learned.

Prayer

Father, thank you that your law showed me my need and that Christ has answered it. Help me to rest in what Jesus has done, not my striving. Give me courage to lay down performance-based righteousness and use my freedom to love others. Amen.

Memory Verse

Galatians 3:24 — So that the law has become our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. (WEB)

“So that the law has become our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith.”

Keep Going Continue to Part 13 Clothed in Christ: Identity, Unity, and Promise Galatians · Galatians 3:26–29 Read the next devotional →

Bible Context

Read all of Galatians 3

Galatians 3

World English Bible • WEB

¹Foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you not to obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was openly portrayed among you as crucified?

²I just want to learn this from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by hearing of faith?

³Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now completed in the flesh?

⁴Did you suffer so many things in vain, if it is indeed in vain?

⁵He therefore who supplies the Spirit to you and does miracles among you, does he do it by the works of the law, or by hearing of faith?

⁶Even so, Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness.”

⁷Know therefore that those who are of faith are children of Abraham.

⁸The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the Good News beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you all the nations will be blessed.”

⁹So then, those who are of faith are blessed with the faithful Abraham.

¹⁰For as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse. For it is written, “Cursed is everyone who doesn’t continue in all things that are written in the book of the law, to do them.”

¹¹Now that no man is justified by the law before God is evident, for, “The righteous will live by faith.”

¹²The law is not of faith, but, “The man who does them will live by them.”

¹³Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. For it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree,”

¹⁴that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

¹⁵Brothers, speaking of human terms, though it is only a man’s covenant, yet when it has been confirmed, no one makes it void or adds to it.

¹⁶Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his offspring. He doesn’t say, “To descendants”, as of many, but as of one, “To your offspring”, which is Christ.

¹⁷Now I say this: A covenant confirmed beforehand by God in Christ, the law, which came four hundred thirty years after, does not annul, so as to make the promise of no effect.

¹⁸For if the inheritance is of the law, it is no more of promise; but God has granted it to Abraham by promise.