Galatians 3:19 - 4:11
There is something deeply human about the instinct to clean ourselves up before approaching something holy. To do something, perform something, earn our way in. We see it across cultures and across history, the sense that whatever is on the other side of the door requires us to be better than we currently are, and that the gap is ours to close.
What Was the Law For?
The question the Galatians’ situation raises, and that Paul answers directly in this passage, is a natural one: if we don’t need the law to be saved, why did God give it at all?
The law was a guardian. Paul uses the word deliberately, not a saviour, not a pathway to righteousness, but a guardian who holds an heir in custody until the right time. In the ancient world, a child who stood to inherit a fortune wasn’t trusted with it immediately. A guardian was appointed to manage the estate, protect the child, and keep everything in order until the heir was old enough to receive what was rightfully theirs.
That’s what the law was doing. Holding God’s people in custody, showing them their need, preparing them for the one who was coming. The law couldn’t impart life, it could only expose sin. Walk past a sign that says don’t walk on the grass and your first instinct is probably to walk on the grass. The law names what we are. It doesn’t fix it.
But it was never supposed to fix it. It was supposed to point us toward the one who could.
Now that Christ has come, the guardian’s job is done. You don’t turn 18 and ask the trustee to keep managing your money. The inheritance is yours. Going back to law-keeping as the basis of your standing before God isn’t spiritual maturity, it’s going backwards.
Already Clean
The Galatians were being told by false teachers that faith in Christ wasn’t quite enough. You also needed circumcision. You needed to keep the Jewish law. You needed to do your part to earn the standing that Christ had given you.
Paul says: you’ve already been washed. Not on the outside, not in ways that need repeating, but from the inside out. Christ has done what no ritual could, made you clean before God, once, completely, on the basis of what he did, not what you’ve done.
This lands differently depending on where you’re starting from. Some people hear it and feel relief, the weight of needing to earn God’s acceptance lifts. Others hear it and feel sceptical, it sounds too good to be true. Others hear it and feel a creeping guilt; yes, Jesus washed me, but what about last week? What about the thing I did yesterday, the line I crossed that I told myself I wouldn’t?
The temptation in those moments is to reach for the washing ritual. Read the Bible more, pray more, attend more, perform better. Not because those things are bad, but as a way of earning back ground that you feel you’ve lost.
Paul’s response is consistent: you don’t earn it back. You come back to Christ and say you blew it. He already knows. The washing doesn’t need to be repeated. The guilt doesn’t require a new sacrifice. It requires coming back to the father.
Sons and Daughters, Not Slaves
Galatians 4:7: you are no longer a slave, but a child of God. Since you are his child, God has made you an heir.
The relational shift here is significant. Slaves relate to a master through performance: do the work, earn the keep, stay useful. Children relate to a father through belonging: imperfect, sometimes wayward, but belonging. When a child gets something wrong, a good father doesn’t terminate the relationship. He’s patient. He works with them. He holds the inheritance open.
That’s the frame God gives us for approaching him. Not ritual, not a fresh round of self-washing. Prayer to a father. The Spirit sent into our hearts calls out Abba, the intimate Aramaic word for father, the word a child would use. This is the God the law was always pointing towards. This is the relationship the guardian was holding in trust.
What Jesus accomplished on the cross is the cleaning we can’t do for ourselves. The guilt, the sin, the condemnation; dealt with, carried to the cross, finished. Not managed, not deferred, not tied to a string and hoped away. Finished.
You are clothed in Christ. When God looks at you, that’s what he sees. Not the thing you did last week, not the line you crossed, not the bar you set for yourself and failed to clear. Christ.
The inheritance is yours. You don’t need to wash yourself again.
Soul Revival Church gathers across the Sutherland Shire [Kirrawee, Yarrawarrah, Miranda, Cronulla] and Ryde.