by Angus Harley

This article responds to critiques of the NCT hermeneutical reading of Galatians 4.

All critiques will be in italics with inverted commas.

‘Jesus came ‘under the Law’ (Gal.4:4). So, to be ‘under the Law’ is not a state of bondage. It is merely to come under its term to keep the Mosaic Law perfectly.’

This view conveys the theology called ‘Christ’s active obedience’, in which he is said to have come to keep the Mosaic Law perfectly. The other side of the coin is called ‘passive obedience’: Jesus suffered on the cross to take away our sin. In modern times, some have questioned how water-tight this distinction is. Nonetheless, the same general theology is appealed to by most.

It is not enough to assert dogma, however, as exegesis must prevail. Outside of this questionable reading of Galatians 4:4, Jesus is never positively associated with the Mosaic Law in Galatians. More to the point, when he is directly associated with it, it is negative image of the Law that is conveyed:

10 For as many as are of the works of the Law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, to perform them.” 11 Now that no one is justified by the Law before God is evident; for, “The righteous man shall live by faith.” 12 However, the Law is not of faith; on the contrary, “He who practices them shall live by them.” 13 Christ 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”— 14 in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. (Gal.3:10-14)

It is to turn this passage on its head to say that Jesus came to keep the Law of Moses perfectly. His relationship to the Law of Moses is evident: he came to redeem the heirs of Abraham from its curse by becoming a curse on the tree for them. Having redeemed them by bearing the Law’s curse, the blessing of Abraham comes upon them, for both Jew and Gentile of the faith receive the Spirit.

The above verses are but another way of saying that Jesus came “under the Law”. He came to bear its bondage and curse, so that he might bring the freedom of sonship to Jews and Gentiles of faith.

Galatians 4:1-7 bears witness to exactly the same teaching:

1 Now I say, as long as the heir is a child, he does not differ at all from a slave although he is owner of everything, 2 but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by the father. 3 So also we, while we were children, were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world. 4 But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, 5 so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. 6 Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 7 Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.

Why did Jesus come “under the Law”? To “redeem those who were under the Law”, who were as slaves in bondage to the Law. Because he redeemed them from under the Law, they received the Spirit as demonstrating their inheritance, so that they now call God their ‘Father’. That is, the Son from above, from outside of this world, came into this world to bear the curse of the Law on the cross, so that those who were of this world (the Abrahamic heirs only) might receive the Spirit of sonship from above.

Jesus had to bear that curse, be ‘struck’ by it, to set free the heirs of Abraham. The Law of Moses was given precisely to expose transgressions. Paul says so in 3:19. Its ‘natural’ role did not suddenly change because Jesus was “under the Law”. Now, we know that Jesus did not, nor could not sin, so the Law could not expose sin in him; nonetheless, we are told that:

“He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf” (2 Cor.5:21); “For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh” (Rom.8:3).

With this in mind, the reason why Jesus is said to be “born of a woman” is not a simple testament to his incarnation; for there is in this an allusion to Genesis 3:15 and the fact that the Seed of the woman will be struck by the serpent. This was necessary because the “elemental things of the world” included the commandments of the Law.[1] By coming as a man, Jesus was not dealing with the mere Law as an enslaving power over Jews, therefore, but the Law as belonging to the elementals that enslaved and kept all the heirs of Abraham throughout the world under the control of sin. It required a Son from above, outside of the fallen human race, outside of the Law, outside of the realm of the elementals, to come as a human, under the Law, to deal with the bondage of sin and the elementals. Just as Jesus said, the strong man had to be bound by a stronger man (Mark 3:27), Satan and his allies attacked and subdued by another on their own turf. In breaking the power of the elementals of the world revealed in the Law, Jesus broke the whole regime of the elemental things.

Now we are in a position to appreciate the negative nature of all of Paul’s “under” phrases in Galatians: 

“under a curse” (3:13); “under sin” (3:22); “under the Law” (3:23); “under a [paidagogos]” (3:25); “under guardians and managers” (4:2); “under the elemental things” (4:3); “under the Law” (4:4); “under the Law” (4:5); “under the Law” (4:21); “under the Law” (5:18).

 None of these phrases are positives, or neutral in orientation; all convey that the heirs of Abraham were held in bondage to sin, especially as through the Law of Moses.

‘You’re not taking into account that Paul, in Galatians, says that to be “under the Law” means to keep the entire set of commandments.’

This argument puts the proverbial cart before the horse. Paul’s logic does not start with a ‘natural order’ of keeping the commandments of the Law, and then move on to those who didn’t keep that Law, and who therefore incurred a curse. How do we know this? For the following reasons:

  • he writes that the Law is not independent of the Old Covenant and Sinai; so it is Covenant-Law, Mosaic Covenant-Law, to be precise;
  • to obey the Mosaic Law perfectly would be to uphold the Old Covenant alone;
  • Jesus came to execute the New Covenant, the Abrahamic Covenant, and the promise to Abraham;
  • it was because of the broken nature of the Old Covenant that Jesus came to bear its curse for the sake of Abraham’s heirs;
  • it is completely contradictory to say that Jesus kept the Old Covenant and, at the same time, executed the New Covenant;
  • Jesus was the Mediator of a New Covenant; Moses was the mediator of the Old Covenant and its Law, so we don’t need another, de facto, Moses or Old Covenant mediator.

The fallacy behind the objection to my view is that to keep the Law perfectly equates to being “under the Law”. If, instead, we start with the bondage of the Law as an enslaving power, then this bondage is expressed through its commandments, and, to be more precise, the inability of the heirs in their flesh to keep them perfectly (see 2 Cor.3). Paul’s challenge to the Galatians concerning keeping the Law perfectly is not a statement designed to depict the Law as ‘doable’, as if it were kind of neutral in nature. The Law was specifically constructed to expose sin and the flesh. Jesus came, therefore, to deal with the curse that lay upon Abraham’s heirs that were under the Old Covenant and its Law. He had to remove this Old Covenant impediment before he could bring sonship to those same heirs.             

It is truly perplexing that most theologians make so much about Jesus’ supposed perfect obedience to the Law of Moses, and yet make no connection between it and what the Law of Moses actually states about the Law’s own expectations. Even a cursory reading of the Pentateuch and the Mosaic Law reveals that the Law already had its own mediator, Moses, as Paul implied in 3:19. Why do these theologians make Jesus a new, de facto, mediator of the Old Covenant and its Law? And, just as bewildering is that the Law itself was about this world and its flesh (2 Cor.3). All its punishments were related to life in this world; and all its blessings, too. Its ‘righteousness’, to be pointed, was of this world, and was, therefore, entirely fleshly. It’s potential ‘eternality’ was not, therefore, tied to what we would call ‘heavenly and spiritual righteousness and eternal life’. For, the Law of the Old Covenant and its ‘life’, if anyone were ever to, hypothetically, achieve it, would produce merely everlasting life according to the nature set down in the Law of Moses itself. All that Jesus would have achieved, in that hypothetical situation, would have been everlasting life in the land of Israel, for the sake of the Jews only! It is precisely this contrast between earthly, fleshly righteousness via the Law and a heavenly righteousness through the Son’s obedience that Paul has as a background to Galatians 4:4, and it is this contrast that Galatians 4:21ff. explicitly draws out.

Nor is this ‘splitting hairs’. The Law’s form of commandments was one that led only to bondage and enslavement. Yet, Paul will later go on to tell us about a different form of ‘law’ and its commandments that do not comport with bondage and enslavement (5:14; 6:2), and that have nothing to do with the Mosaic Law and its Covenant, for the other law is from above and belongs to the New Covenant.

Finally, the above objection to my view sadly relegates Jesus to being merely ‘a Jew’, albeit a special one. He was not! His relationship to the Law was not one of keeping its commandments like any other Jew. He was the Son from above coming into the domain of the elemental things, into the world as a man, to be a condemned One in order to break the power of the Law and its commandments that enslaved. He did not, therefore, ‘have to’ follow through on the Law in a completely fleshly manner as if he were just ‘Joe Blo the Jew’. But he did have to go to the cross to break the power of the elementals as expressed in the Law of Moses.

‘You really need to counterbalance your own view by relating the positive side of the Abraham’s heirs, the positive nature of the Old Covenant and its Law, and Jesus’ positive relationship to the Law as a Jew.’

This criticism depends entirely on a positive view of the Old Covenant and its Law, and does not properly take into account Paul’s own argument here in Galatians. It is, very sadly, all too typical for commentators to exegete Paul’s words noting the negativity assigned to the Law of Moses, to then counteract this model with a throwaway comment concerning the Law’s gracious nature in the Old Covenant setting. 

When all is said and done, Galatians is positively the last epistle by Paul that promotes Jewish exclusivity and favor. Galatians 4:21-31 is far too pronounced, bold, and exhaustive to deny this fact. 

Paul’s teaching about the Abrahamic heirs demonstrates my point. Rather than focusing on Jews, Paul takes us to the pre-Mosaic Abrahamic Covenant. Paul describes Abraham’s seed not as fleshly, but as spiritual sons who have placed their faith in the Son from above. Abraham’s seed and heirs are, therefore, children of faith, not of the flesh. 

It is beyond comprehension that this teaching, which is emphatically stamped on Galatians 4:21-31, is brushed aside by Dispensationalists, who invariably take resort to reciting endlessly the empty comment that ‘Jews who believed were Jews of the flesh.’  It goes without saying that all of Abraham’s heirs had a fleshly side to them. They are saved in spite of that fleshly link, however, not because of it; they are, indeed, saved from the flesh to be sons of God born from above. Paul had already stated that fact at the end of Galatians 3 when he said there was “neither Jew nor Greek” in Christ Jesus.

Abraham’s heirs of faith, both Jews and Gentiles, are Paul’s focus, therefore, throughout the epistle. It is they, not the Jews of the flesh, that Paul is referring to in Galatians 3 and its references to the Abrahamic Covenant and to the Mosaic Law. It was the Abrahamic heirs of faith that the promise related to that was given to Abraham and the Son. It was the same Abrahamic heirs who were considered to be “under the Law”. This is not referring to the Jewish nation as such. And, as said before, it was not the Gentile heirs specifically, but the Jewish ones. Paul can take this approach because he is looking at redemptive history from the perspective of the risen Christ in heaven. It is of the heirs considered generically that it is said they were under the Law. As argued before, if the Jewish heirs by the Law were exposed in their sin, then it followed that the Gentile heirs were in the same condition of being controlled by sin.  Now, as the Law belongs to the “elemental things of the world”, when Jesus died on the cross to take break the curse of the Law, he was breaking the power of the elementals of the world that the Law was representative of.

1Angus Harley, “Hermeneutics and Galatians 4, Part 1, All Things New Covenant, January 20, 2024, https://allthingsnewcovenant.com/2024/01/20/hermeneutics-and-galatians-4-part-1/; “Hermeneutics and Galatians 4, Part 2, All Things New Covenant, January 21, 2024, https://allthingsnewcovenant.com/2024/01/21/hermeneutics-and-galatians-4-part-2/.