Your Chains Are Broken (St. Paul's Edition)
God's Law condemns you. His Gospel does something else entirely.
[This the edited-down version of my sermon for this coming Sunday, the Second Sunday after Pentecost, June 22, 2025. This is the version from which I will preach at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church on Sunday.]
Galatians 3:23-4:7
The categories of Law and Gospel are well known to most Lutheran Christians. We say that, in God’s Word, these are the two ways God speaks to us.
God’s Law is no good at making us right for life with God. The Law shows us that we have no hope of being right with God–of being righteous–based on our own goodness or good deeds. Romans 3:22 says: “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The righteousness that allows human beings the privilege of calling the God of the universe, “our God, our Lord, or our Father,” isn’t something we can earn by our effort. Or even by our efforts assisted by God. If you doubt that, consider that God’s Law is summarized by the Ten Commandments and one reading of them tells us that if our eternal life depends on obeying these commands, we’re in trouble.
Our only hope for righteousness is the Gospel, the good news. This is the other Word God speaks to us. We find the Gospel through the Bible, including the Old Testament where those who believed in God anticipated the coming of the Savior Jesus, Who would crush the head of evil and the evil one underfoot. (Genesis 3:15)
A Lutheran theologian of the last century described the Gospel like this: “The Gospel is the forgiveness of sins, nothing else. It is not a theory about the possibility of forgiveness, not a [mere] religious message... The Gospel of Jesus Christ is something quite different. [It tells us, ‘Your sins are forgiven you.’ (Luke 7:48)] That is His Gospel.” [Hermann Sasse]
The Gospel is that Jesus, God the Son, has done for us what we could never do for ourselves. He perfectly obeyed God’s Law for human beings and then, on the cross, bore the condemnation and death for our sin that we deserve so that our separation from God is ended eternally! Then He rose to open eternity to all who believe. Forgiveness, reconciliation, and all the other benefits of the Gospel happen to us when the Holy Spirit, through the Gospel Word about Jesus, gives us faith in Jesus.
The Gospel declares to you today that Jesus has already died and risen to make you righteous. Faith is the gift of God that allows you to share in Jesus’ victory and say, “Jesus is my Lord!” (1 Corinthians 12:3)
So if we can’t be made righteous in the eyes of God by our performance of God’s Law, what purpose does the Law serve? The apostle Paul talks about that question and about he power of the Gospel in today’s second lesson, Galatians 3:23-4:7.
He starts our lesson with a one-verse history of the human race before the coming of faith: “Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.” Before anyone knew it was possible to believe in the God Who reveals Himself to us in the crucified and risen Jesus, the whole human race was held in check by God’s law. This was true even of people who had never heard of God’s law, which the Bible says, is written on every human heart [Romans 2:15]. C.S. Lewis explains how this is so in Mere Christianity. Some cultures may say that you should only have one wife and others say you can have many, Lewis notes. But the moral code of no culture says that you can have your neighbor’s wife. And while different cultures may have different ideas of what constitutes murder, no culture says that murder is OK.
Paul says that before the Gospel comes to people, God’s Law is our guardian. That word, in the original Greek, is paidagogos, or pedagogue, a word that means leader of a child. In the first-century Roman world, a pedagogue was a household slave whose job it was to oversee the upbringing of wealthy men’s children. The pedagogue was there to keep the heirs safe and out of trouble, to preserve and prepare them for adulthood and their inheritance.
That is like the function of God’s Law in the lives of those who don’t yet have faith in Jesus. The Law describes the righteousness that makes a person fit for life with God. With the righteous, there is no idolatry, murder, lying, adultery, sexual promiscuity, false witness, gossiping, or covetousness. A righteous life is one of absolute selflessness and love for God and love for others. The Law presents a way of life that is both God’s will for every human being and the minimum and non-negotiable standard for entry into heaven, every bit of which is impossible for us sinners to live by.
I hope this makes you a bit uncomfortable. Because while God’s Law may be a good teacher, our pedagogue about what’s right and wrong, and may sometimes constrain us from being totally selfish, it’s clear that NONE OF US MEASURES UP TO THE STANDARDS FOR ENTRY INTO GOD”S KINGDOM.
The good news is that once the gift of faith in Jesus has come to us, we no longer need the pedagogy of the Law. By faith in Christ, the Savior Who perfectly obeyed God’s Law and offered His sinless life as a sacrifice for us sinners, we live in the kingdom of God. No matter that we are sinners. No matter our imperfections.
Following Jesus then, isn’t about adding another good deed to your to-do list. Following Jesus is about believing in Him. Period. “This is the work of God,” Jesus says in John 6:29, “that you believe in him whom he has sent.”
Paul says in Galatians 3:26-29: “...in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” When this happens, Paul goes on to say, God sends “the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father.’ So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.”
These words show us that through Jesus, everything has changed for you and me! Faith in Jesus entitles us to know God as our Father. That’s why Jesus teaches us to pray, “Our Father, Who art in heaven…” When we’re able to approach God in this way, the Holy Spirit is telling us that we no longer live under the Law, but are heirs who have an eternal inheritance in God’s Kingdom! We are living under the Gospel!
God’s Law will still call the person saved by God’s grace in Christ to seek to live in accordance with the will of God. That law will keep calling us to love God and love neighbor, be kind to those hated by others, keep sexual intimacy within the bounds of marriage between a man and woman, refrain from covetousness and stealing, and so on. We will be called to daily take up our crosses and follow Jesus (Luke 9:23). But the Gospel completely changes our motivation for seeking to do God’s will on earth as it’s done in heaven, though. We won’t do good stuff in a futile effort to be saved. We will do the good God sets before us to do because, in Christ, we are already saved.
Dear friends, Christ has died and risen for you so that you CAN turn to Jesus daily and embrace the forgiveness you don’t deserve and the faith in Him that the Holy Spirit has given to you in Baptism, in the Word preached, taught, read, and heard, and in Holy Communion and that saves you for all eternity! Turn to Jesus, knowing that He has already done everything necessary to make you right with God, to make you righteous because you are clothed in Christ’s righteousness.
Even if you struggle with faith and only want to believe that the Gospel promise from Jesus is true (and Jesus’ promises are ALWAYS true) or even if your faith in Jesus is the size of a mustard seed, you can be sure that your desire for Jesus or your little faith is saving faith in Jesus. By the power of the Holy Spirit, Who gives you faith in Jesus, You belong to Him forever. You can trust that in Jesus, you have everlasting life with Him and that nothing and nobody can take it away. That’s what the Gospel Word of Jesus says to and gives to you today. Amen