By Pastor Keith M. Seiber
Galatians 3:10–11 (KJV)
For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them. But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith.
Picture Israel gathered between two mountains. Gerizim was the mountain of blessing. Ebal was the mountain of cursing. The Levites were to speak with a loud voice, and after each curse the people were to answer, “Amen.” The final curse reached beyond the particular sins already named. “Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them. And all the people shall say, Amen” (Deuteronomy 27:26).
What happens to a people who say Amen to a law they will go on to break?
Paul brings that question into the churches of Galatia. Teachers were pressing Gentile believers to receive circumcision and take on the obligations of the Mosaic law (Galatians 5:2–4; 6:12–13). To someone who already believed in Jesus, circumcision might have sounded like one more step of obedience. Paul asks what that step would mean if they took it to establish their righteousness before God. A man who puts himself under the law on those terms becomes “a debtor to do the whole law” (Galatians 5:3). Once you appeal to the law for your standing, you have to hear the whole of what it says.
The law requires all it commands
The people Paul describes as “of the works of the law” are under a curse. That may surprise us. We expect a curse upon people who openly despise God’s commands. Paul directs his warning to people who are counting on their obedience. The expression ex ergōn nomou (ἐξ ἔργων νόμου), “of the works of the law,” points in context to where they are looking for their standing. Compare Paul’s description just a few lines earlier of those “which are of faith” (Galatians 3:7, 9). He is asking where a man looks for the verdict he needs.
Circumcision was the immediate issue in Galatia, and it mattered deeply to the people making the argument. But Paul answers their demand by quoting a passage that reaches the whole law. The decisive words are “every one,” “all things,” and “continueth.” The law names every person liable to the curse, every command that falls within its demand, and the need to continue in obedience. The Greek verb behind “continueth,” emmenō (ἐμμένω), means to remain in or abide by something. A season of obedience leaves the question of the rest of your life unanswered. And a record of many acts of obedience leaves every actual transgression on the record.
Think about what happens when we defend ourselves by listing the good we have done. We tell the truth about the neighbor we helped or the responsibility we carried. But we have quietly changed the question. We have moved from whether we are guilty to whether we can name something good. Paul leaves the first question on the table. What answer will a sinner give when God judges the very sin the sinner would prefer to talk around?
Israel’s history gives that question weight. The blessings and curses of Deuteronomy 28 were covenant terms given to Israel. In exile, Daniel read Israel’s calamity in light of those terms and confessed that “the curse is poured upon us” because “we have sinned against him” (Daniel 9:11). Daniel includes himself in the confession. Israel’s Scriptures had already told him how to understand what had happened, and his prayer was an acknowledgment that God had been righteous in His dealings with them.
Paul does not place Gentiles under Israel’s national covenant by citing Moses. In Romans 3:19–23, he shows how the law speaks to those under it and how the whole world stands guilty before God. His conclusion encompasses Jew and Gentile. The law gives “the knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20). It brings our guilt into the open so that we will see why we need the righteousness God provides through Christ.
Why Paul turns to Habakkuk
In Galatians 3:11, Paul says that nobody is justified by the law “in the sight of God.” That last phrase tells us whose verdict matters. A man may be respected in his community, trusted by his family, and admired at church. Each of those judgments has a place. Justification concerns whether God declares that man righteous before Him. God knows the full record, including what our neighbors never had occasion to see.
To show how the just live, Paul takes us to Habakkuk 2:4.
Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith.
Habakkuk had watched violence and injustice in Judah. He cried to God over a society in which the law was slacked and judgment went forth wrong. God answered that He would raise up the Chaldeans. That raised a further question for the prophet. How could the holy God use a nation whose wickedness was so plain? Habakkuk brought his question before the Lord and waited for His answer (Habakkuk 1:2–17; 2:1).
God told him that the vision had an appointed time (Habakkuk 2:3). Habakkuk would have to take God at His word while the situation gave him every earthly reason to be afraid. In verse 4, the lifted-up soul and the righteous man stand before the same unsettled future. The proud man rests on what he thinks he can secure. The just man lives by faith in the God Who has spoken.
The Hebrew word rendered “faith” is ʾĕmûnâ (אֱמוּנָה). It can describe steadiness or faithfulness. In Exodus 17:12, it describes the steadiness of Moses’ hands. In Habakkuk, the surrounding verses show what that steadiness looks like in a person. God speaks, the fulfillment is still ahead, and the righteous man stakes his life on the reliability of God’s word. By the end of the book, Habakkuk can contemplate empty fields and empty stalls and still say, “Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation” (Habakkuk 3:18).
Does Paul make Habakkuk say more than the prophet intended? Habakkuk is speaking about living by faith through a coming judgment. Paul is applying the same declaration to the question of how a sinner stands righteous before God. Read his argument from the beginning of Galatians 3. Abraham believed God, and “it was accounted to him for righteousness” (verse 6). The Galatians had received the Spirit through “the hearing of faith” (verse 2). Habakkuk supplies the words that express the principle running through both examples. Righteousness and life are bound up with taking God at His word.
There is a reason Paul starts with Abraham. The man the teachers would naturally appeal to as the father of the circumcised was counted righteous in Genesis 15. He received circumcision in Genesis 17. Paul asks in Romans 4:10 when righteousness was reckoned to him, then answers that it was while he was still uncircumcised. Abraham’s later obedience mattered. It came after God had already counted him righteous through faith. The chronology answers the Galatians’ question about whether a Gentile needs to be circumcised in order to be received by God. Abraham himself received that verdict before he bore the mark.
Paul then puts another passage alongside Habakkuk. He draws from Leviticus 18:5 in Galatians 3:12. “And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them.” Moses was instructing Israel in how to live under the covenant. Paul draws attention to the doing required by that covenant. Set that requirement alongside Deuteronomy 27:26 and you can see the problem. Once you have broken the law, the law’s promise to the doer offers you no ground to demand acquittal. Habakkuk’s words direct the sinner to depend upon God, and Paul shows where God has supplied the righteousness the sinner needs.
The altar on the mountain of cursing
At this point a careful reader might ask what became of the Israelites who believed God while living under the law. Did they have to earn what Abraham received through faith? Habakkuk himself gives us the answer. He lived centuries after Sinai and still said that the just shall live by faith. David also lived under the Mosaic covenant. Paul brings him forward in Romans 4:6–8 as a witness to the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness without works. David knew what it meant to need forgiveness. His hope was in the God Who forgives. The giving of the law changed Israel’s covenant responsibilities. Abraham, David, and Habakkuk all had to depend on the Lord for the righteousness they needed.
Go back to Ebal for a moment. In the chapter that gives us the final curse, Moses tells Israel to build an altar on that very mountain. The stones were to be whole, with no iron tool lifted upon them. Israel was to offer burnt offerings and peace offerings, eat there, and rejoice before the LORD (Deuteronomy 27:4–8). Joshua carried out those instructions in Joshua 8:30–35.
The mountain appointed for the curse was also the mountain where God told Israel to offer sacrifice and rejoice before Him. The people heard the covenant sanctions in the same ceremony in which they approached God as He had appointed. Hold those details together. God’s holiness explains the gravity of the curse. His mercy explains why there is an altar at all.
Paul quotes the final curse from Ebal, and Galatians 3:13 tells us what Christ did about it.
Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.
Here Paul quotes another passage from Deuteronomy. In Deuteronomy 21:22–23, the body of an executed man hung on a tree was to be taken down and buried that day. His exposure marked him as accursed. Paul takes up that language to explain the shameful death of the sinless Son of God. Notice the words “for us.” They explain how the curse comes to fall upon One Who never transgressed. Jesus took the place of those who had. Our guilt explains why the sentence was due. His willing sacrifice explains how guilty people can go free.
The altar at Ebal helps us see how seriously God takes both sin and sacrifice. Paul establishes the meaning of Calvary by saying what Christ actually did for us. Hebrews 10:1–14 fills out the distinction between the sacrifices Israel repeatedly offered and Christ’s offering of Himself. The blood of bulls and goats could never take away sins. Jesus offered “one sacrifice for sins for ever” (Hebrews 10:12). His death dealt with the guilt that a lifetime of sacrifices could never remove.
That is also how God can justify the believer while remaining perfectly just. Romans 3:24–26 ties justification to the redemption that is in Christ Jesus and to faith in His blood. God has dealt with sin in the death of His Son. If you wonder whether He can receive you after what you have done, look at what He did with the very guilt you fear to bring to Him. At Calvary, Jesus bore the judgment of sinners. The sufficiency of His sacrifice is the ground on which you can come to God.
How the blessing reaches us
Follow Paul’s argument all the way to Galatians 3:14. Christ bore the curse so that the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Jesus Christ and so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. That takes us back to verse 8, where Paul recalls what God said to Abraham, “In thee shall all nations be blessed.” The Gospel going to the Gentiles is part of the purpose Paul sees in the promise from the beginning.
Paul anticipates the question about the law’s place in that promise. The law came later and could not disannul the promise God had already confirmed (Galatians 3:17–18). Why, then, did God give it? Paul says it was “added because of transgressions” and gives it a defined place until the coming of the promised Seed, Christ (Galatians 3:16, 19). He also says that if a law could have given life, righteousness would have been by the law (verse 21). God’s commands are righteous. Giving life to sinners requires what God supplied in His Son.
| Passage | What Paul establishes |
| Galatians 3:6–9 | Abraham believed God and was counted righteous. God promised blessing to the nations. |
| Galatians 3:10–12 | The law requires continuing obedience. The just live by faith. |
| Galatians 3:13 | Christ redeems from the law’s curse by bearing it for us. |
| Galatians 3:14 | In Christ the blessing reaches the Gentiles, and believers receive the Spirit through faith. |
How can faith receive what all those works could never earn? Think about what Abraham actually did in Genesis 15. God made a promise Abraham could never bring to pass by his own strength. Abraham believed the LORD. The worth of his faith lay in the God Who made the promise. In the same way, the sinner who comes to Christ rests in a work Christ has already accomplished. Even a trembling believer has the same Saviour as the believer who has walked with the Lord for fifty years. The question is whether Jesus can save the sinner who comes to Him. The answer rests on His death and resurrection.
Someone will ask whether this makes obedience optional. Look at what Paul expects of those who receive the Spirit. He tells them to serve one another by love (Galatians 5:13), to walk in the Spirit (5:16), and to bear one another’s burdens (6:2). These are duties for people Christ has already redeemed. In Ephesians 2:8–10, Paul puts them in their proper order. We are saved by grace through faith and created in Christ Jesus unto good works. When a Christian confesses a sin, makes restitution, or serves someone who cannot repay him, he is doing what his Lord calls him to do. The righteousness that gives him access to God still rests on Jesus Christ.
That order matters when your conscience troubles you. Suppose you spoke harshly to your child and are ashamed to face him. The Gospel gives you reason to own what you did, ask forgiveness, and seek the Lord’s help to change. You can tell the whole truth about your sin because your hope before God rests in Christ. The good you do tomorrow has its place as obedience. Jesus has already paid the price of your redemption.
Who will carry the Gospel?
The blessing in Galatians 3:14 is meant to reach people beyond those who have already heard. Paul asks in Romans 10:14, “how shall they hear without a preacher?” A man cannot believe a Gospel he has never heard. Someone must tell him that Christ died for our sins and rose again (1 Corinthians 15:3–4). Someone must tell him that the promise of salvation extends to him. “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Romans 10:13).
The church at Antioch prayed, fasted, and sent Barnabas and Saul (Acts 13:1–3). Their example gives us something concrete to do with Galatians 3. Pray for people by name. Teach your children what it means that Jesus died for sinners. Speak to the neighbor whose life you know well enough to listen to him and whose soul you love enough to speak to him. Give so that faithful missionaries can preach Christ where you cannot go. When our church asks us to pray about a Faith Promise commitment, the question belongs right here. What will I give toward getting the Gospel to people who still need to hear it?
And if you have spent years hoping your record will carry you home, bring that hope into the light of Galatians 3. Your baptism, church attendance, and acts of kindness cannot answer for one sin. Jesus Christ gave Himself for sinners and rose from the dead. Turn from your sin and trust Him. Call upon the Lord Who promises to save.
Israel said Amen when God’s law spoke at Ebal. We ought to say Amen to the truth about our guilt. Then hear what God has spoken about His Son. Christ bore the curse for us. The just shall live by faith.
Recent Comments