Galatians 3:24

Galatians 3:24. So then the law has been our tutor unto Christ. This sentence expresses in a few words the true philosophy of the law in its relation to Christ ‘Tutor,' literally pædagogue (leader of boys), one intrusted with the moral supervision and instruction of minors. In Greek and Roman families of rank the office of tutor was intrusted to a reliable slave who had to watch the children of his master in their plays, to keep them from excess and folly, to lead them to school, or instruct them himself in the elementary branches, and thus to train them for the freedom of youth and manhood. This pædagogic mission attaches not only to the law of Moses, but we may say to all laws, also to the moral law of nature written in the conscience of man. The discipline of law and authority is still the school of moral freedom, and reaches its proper end in self-government which is true freedom. The Greek fathers called philosophy the pædagogue of the Gentiles, which prepared them theoretically for Christianity, as the Mosaic law prepared the Jews practically.

The ‘schoolmaster' of the E. V. expresses only one element in the office of the law. Luther's version: Zuchtmeister, is better, because more comprehensive. It is still wider of the mark and inconsistent with the imagery of the context to make Christ the schoolmaster (‘the tutor to conduct us to the school of Christ'). On the contrary the whole work of preparatory training belongs to the pædagogue, and Christ represents here the result of the educational process, i.e., the state of evangelical freedom and independent, self-governing manhood. Comp. Ephesians 4:13.