Galatians 3:10-12

Galatians 3:10-12. Negative proof of Galatians 3:9, by showing the impossibility of justification by law, because we cannot keep the law, and the violation of the law subjects us to its curse (comp. Romans 3:9-20; Romans 7:7-25). No man lives up even to his own imperfect standard of goodness, much less to the perfect rule of the revealed will of the holy God.

Galatians 3:10 confirms Galatians 3:9 by the opposite. As many as are of law-works, are controlled by the principle of law, and shape their character by works, are under curse, i.e., subject to curse (comp. ‘under sin,' Romans 3:9).

For it is written, etc. A free quotation from Deuteronomy 27:26 (Sept.), the closing sentence of the curses from Mount Ebal, and a summary of the whole.

Galatians 3:11-12 contain the following syllogism: The just lives by faith; the law is not of faith: consequently no man is justified by the law.

Galatians 3:11. Now that in (the) law no man is justified in the sight of God, is evident ‘ In' is elemental and instrumental, ‘in and by,' or ‘under' the law, in the sphere and domain of the law. ‘In the sight,' in the judgment of God; man standing as a culprit before His tribunal. For the righteous shall live by faith. From Zechariah 2:4, according to the Septuagint. Comp. note to Romans 1:17. The passage refers originally to the preservation of the righteous Israelite amidst the ruin of the Chaldæan invasion. The stress lays oh ‘faith,' as the power which gives life. ‘By faith' must not be joined with ‘righteous,' but with ‘shall live'; this is required by the original Hebrew (‘the righteous shall live by his faith,' or ‘his fidelity'), by the rendering of the Septuagint (‘the righteous shall live by my faith,' or according to another reading: ‘ my righteous shall live by faith'), and by the contrast between ‘live by faith,' and ‘to live in them,' i.e., in the commandments (Galatians 3:12). The Old Testament, then, already declares faith to be the fountain of spiritual life and salvation, or rather the organ by which we apprehend and appropriate the saving grace of God in Christ to our individual use and benefit.

Galatians 3:12. The law is not of [springs not from] faith, but [declares], ‘ He who hath done them' [i.e., the statutes and judgments, previously mentioned in the Old Testament passage,] ‘ shall live in them.' Quotation from Leviticus 18:5. The life-element of the law is not faith, but work. Doing is the essential thing in law. Faith receives the gift of God, the law requires us to give, to perform all its enactments.