Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Galatians · About this commentary
Is the Law Against the Promises
Galatians 3:21-22
21 Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not! For if there had been a law given which could make alive, most certainly righteousness would have been of the law. · WEB
The question a hostile reader would ask is asked outright, and the answer is the strongest denial in the letter.
This is the verse that keeps the whole argument from being misread, and Paul puts it as a question because he knows how the previous paragraphs sound. Is the law then against the promises of God?
The answer is the emphatic negative he has used twice already in the letter Galatians 2:17: certainly not. Nothing in the case he has built is a case against the law. Promise and law are not competitors, and a reading of Galatians that sets them at odds has the letter contradicting its own sentence here.
The reason given is precise: if there had been a law given which could make alive, most certainly righteousness would have been of the law. The conditional is unreal — no such law was given. And the fault named is not in the law's standard but in its capacity. Law can require, and can convict, and cannot animate. Paul is describing a limitation of the instrument, not a defect in it, and he is saying that if the instrument had possessed that power God would have used it.
Verse 22 states what happened instead, and the subject is the Scripture: it imprisoned all things under sin. The verb is custodial, and it anticipates the two images of the next paragraph — kept in custody, and under a guardian.
The purpose clause is the point of the confinement: that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. The shutting up serves the giving. A prisoner who does not know he is one does not look for a door.
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