Recently, on ASK THE BIBLICAL THEOLOGIANS (ABT), a Facebook group where we discuss a number of topics about the Bible and other belief systems, one of the members asked me to explain Galatians 3:10 and this is how he put it:
“Gal 3:10 Those who depend on obeying the Law live under a curse. For the scripture says, “Whoever does not always obey everything that is written in the book of the Law is under God’s curse! Isaiah White Theologian explain this”
RESPONSE: Dear Mwalimu KS, I would like to thank you for this request (more of a question). Am sure there is nothing new am going to tell you since you have been on this forum for a while now and you know me and my version of preaching. I want to assure you that I have not shifted goal posts and neither have I switched masters. I still serve the same Lord and do draw from the same source which is the word of God THE BIBLE and the Bible alone.
Fighting in defense of the gospel has led some to believe that I have a mission to attack or even abuse some cults, but the truth of the matter is that the nature of my work (EUNGELLION APOLOGIA – GOSPEL APOLOGETICS) is a difficult one for it deals exclusively with two variables which are: BLACK and WHITE. Preaching the Gospel is about saying GOOD to expose the BAD or sometimes using the bad as a teaching aid to demonstrate the missing good.
Many people have come to my inbox and some church officials have invited me to their offices asking me to use a different approach to communicate this truth but I have to confess: I have failed to find another way of communicating this truth without compromising the TRUTH OF THE GOSPEL as some have.
It is absolutely impossible to preach the Gospel as it is and maintain it in its rightful nature if you are to be politically correct. For instance, you ask me to explain Galatians 3:10 which says:
For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, and do them.”
For you to understand this properly, you need to put the text back into its context and then make a proper meaning of it.
Before you get to verse 10 of Galatians 3, you need to look at the first verse of the same chapter that says: “O FOOLISH GALATIANS! WHO HAS BEWITCHED YOU, BEFORE WHOSE EYES JESUS CHRIST WAS PUBLICLY PORTRAYED AS CRUCIFIED?” Apostle Paul here was not being abusive and neither was he insulting any individual or group but rather, he was being DESCRIPTIVE. He described the Galatians as fools. But why?
Before we get to the WHY QUESTION we need to look at the WHO QUESTION. Am not going to answer the WHO QUESTION by telling you who the Galatians were. We all know these were churches in Pisidia (Acts 16:6) comprised of diaspora Jews and Gentiles. The essence of the Epistle of Galatians is that Paul has to defend his teachings against fellow Jews who insisted that believing Jesus means upholding the Judaism cultic traditions under the Torah and other ritualistic religious practices thereof.
Essentially, Paul taught that once you believed the Gospel and had your faith put and fixed in and on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, your salvation was sealed and that was all a person needed for their eternal destiny to be decided. The Jews on the other hand still insisted that the Law had something to do with how one was saved and that the Galatians (Gentiles and Jews) needed to obey the Law and perform other rituals as an element of their relationship with God that had an impact on how they were saved.
Such is the very sin of modern cultic religions like Catholicism, Pentecostalism, Seventh-day Adventists, and the entire Protestantism. They teach their followers that the way of their salvation is Jesus plus something. It is Jesus plus belonging to us, it is Jesus but… They tell their followers that they are saved by grace through faith that works (whatever this means). They tell them salvation is not by works but the saved shall be judged to enter heaven by what they do and don’t do (works).
By proof texting scripture, they tell their followers that faith without works is dead. They teach that salvation is not a finished mission but one in phases. They say that the cross was for JUSTIFICATION, the Holy Spirit is here for our continual SANCTIFICATION, and eventually, we will attain perfectionism for our GLORIFICATION when the lord comes back the second time.
They keep people in permanent suspense, doubt and fear. They keep people in efforts and everyday toil to clean their houses as they prepare to qualify for salvation. An average religious man in every cult is never sure of whether he/she will inherit eternal life. In these cults, there is no insurance and therefore there is no assurance. This is what was happening in the churches of Galatia.
Paul addressed, the Galatians as FOOLS. But wait a minute: who is a fool? I will tell you who a fool is. A fool is someone who knows something doesn’t work that way and goes ahead to operate it that very way he knows it doesn’t work. For Paul to describe the Galatian churches as FOOLISH, he was referencing Psalm 14:1 and Psalm 53:1 that say:
The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, doing abominable iniquity; there is none that does good.
The fools the book of Psalms describes, are they that know God exists and go ahead and say: there is no God assuming that by saying there is no God, then there will eventually be no God. That is who a fool is. He, by the light, witnesses there are maggots in the fruit and reasons that if he switched off the light and his eyes can’t see the maggots anymore, then that means the worms are no longer in the fruit.
Let me use Galatians 3:10 to prove to you how foolish the Galatians were and modern legalistic religions are. The verse says:
“For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, and do them.”
In this verse, there is a statement made by Paul that is quickly defended by a quotation. The statement is: “For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse”. This translation is poor, for in the Greek, is OSOI GAR EK ERGON NOMOU EISIN HUPON KATARAN, which can be translated as “for many who are products of works of Law are under a curse”. The statement of Paul is simple to understand. If, in your relationship with God, you do whatever you do or don’t do whatever you don’t do because of the law or what the law says, then you are a product of the works of law and therefore you are cursed already.
But how is this possible? Apostle Paul quickly paraphrases Deuteronomy 27:26 (Cursed be he who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them. And all the people shall say, `Amen.‘) and Deuteronomy 31:24-26 (When Moses had finished writing the words of this law in a book, to the very end, Moses commanded the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant of the LORD, Take this book of the law, and put it by the side of the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, that it may be there for a witness against you.).
If we are to understand Paul in Galatians 3:10, we must be keen on his paraphrased quotes from the book Deuteronomy. It is common information that the ten laws of Exodus 20 were written on the tablets and later in the book of Deuteronomy. Moses wrote these laws (ten) and the penal code (thousands) in the book. It is this book that Apostle Paul talks about. In this book were laws of enforcement that brought nothing but a curse. And that curse was DEATH (being killed).
John 8 demonstrates this properly when the Pharisees quote Moses to kill a sinner: “Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such.” (John 8:5). These Pharisees were quoting from the book of Deuteronomy and specifically, from Leviticus 20:10: “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death.”
I want you to note that if we work with the assumption that the ten laws were given by God, the seventh law about adultery does not say the adulterous should be killed. The law to stone these sinners was one added upon it by Moses for reasons he gives in Deuteronomy 31:24-26. But how does this justify Paul’s argument that to operate within the law one is already cursed? Here is how;
No one, including the best Pharisee, did not need a sacrifice, for all were guilty of violating at least one of the laws. So whoever relates with God in the context of the law is cursed. Why? Because the law cannot be obeyed by pre-law sinners. Human beings are not post-law sinners. We did not sin after the law. We were sinners before the law. This is what Paul says in the same chapter in verse 17: What I mean is this: The law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise.
To attempt to solve the sin problem through obedience to the law is being FOOLISH. And a fool is: someone who knows something doesn’t work that way and goes ahead to operate it that very way he knows it doesn’t work. The curse of the law is DEATH, and if you entertain the law in your relationship with God for salvation matters, you open the doors of the curse. It is this curse that Apostle Paul says he saved us from in verse 13 of the same chapter:
Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: (Galatians 3:13)
We cannot avoid the curse of the law by obeying the law, after all, we have seen that none of us can obey the law for two biblical reasons:
- We are not Post-Law Sinners but Pre-Law sinners. This is to say, our obedience to the law does not correct anything in our falleneness from the standard righteousness of God. The status quo is maintained. Therefore one is a fool to assume that their obedience and making some laws signs of their identity (Ezekiel 20:12, 20) plays an advantage on their side in the sight of the righteous Lord. The second biblical reason is:
- The law is not violated in action before it violated in thought. This we are taught by Jesus himself in Mathew 5: 27-28: “You have heard that it was said, `You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” By this alone, we all know, those of us who dismiss the law in salvation matters and those who keep it in perspective, that none of us is not guilty at this level. And this is why if the law is part of the salvation plan or process, then we are under the curse. And obeying the law in action but breaking it in thought is foolishness and hypocrisy.
Otherwise the Law is good for other business like social order. The law negates evil and implies good. If we, socially, are law abiding citizens we avoid a lot of evil and danger in our communities. Have you ever imagined yourself in a community where there is no stealing? Where you do not have to lock your house with fellow people in mind as a threat, but where you lock for other reasons. This is why we have the law, the military, the police, the courts and the prisons.
It is good for our temporal life here on planet earth. It is a desperate measure that applies exclusively in a war-zone like planet called Earth. So while you are here where there is HIV, thou shalt not commit adultery is very important. However, if you think what helps with HIV helps you with DEATH then you are a FOOL and under a permanent CURSE. For many corpses are HIV negative.
God bless you, I invoke, TRUTH, REASON and FAITH
Am Pr. I.T.WHITE
The Gospel Hawker
iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24) 