Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Law as Custodian
Galatians 3:23-25
23 But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, confined for the faith which should afterwards be revealed. · WEB
The image is a household servant who escorts a child to school, and what ends at Christ's coming is the escort rather than the schooling.
Two pictures run together here. Before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, confined — a guard image, continuing verse 22's imprisonment. Then the second and more precise one: the law has become our tutor to bring us to Christ.
The Greek is paidagogos G3807, a word that occurs three times in the New Testament, two of them here 1 Corinthians 4:15. He was not the teacher. He was the household slave who took a boy to his lessons, kept him from trouble on the road, and had authority over him until he came of age. The office was custodial and temporary by design, and nobody thought it disparaged the boy's education.
That is what makes verse 25 readable without contradiction. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. What is withdrawn is the escort, not the destination and not the instruction. A boy who has arrived does not need someone walking him to the door.
The purpose clause in verse 24 says where the escorting led: that we might be justified by faith. The law's custodial work was aimed at faith from the start, which is why the letter can insist both that the law does not justify and that it is not against the promises Galatians 3:21.
And what the law required does not evaporate with the custodian's discharge. Two chapters later the same letter says the whole law is fulfilled in one command, and quotes it Galatians 5:14 Leviticus 19:18. The change is in the relation, not in the standard.
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