There are a number of people who have a conflicted relationship with God’s Law. We know it’s important to follow God’s Law, but we also acknowledge that it can be  difficult at times. We believe that if we keep God’s Law, then He will accept us. This was a problem that the church of Galatia encountered. A group of people known as Judaizers believed that salvation was based upon faith in Christ and the need to follow the Mosaic Law. The Apostle Paul explained the purpose of the Law:

Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith. (Galatians 3:24)

When the word Law is capitalized in Scripture it refers to the Mosaic Law rather than law as a principle. The Judaizers wanted the people who were coming to Christ to go back and follow the Law of Moses. What the people needed to do was to go back before Moses to the time of Abraham where the promise of justification by faith was given. The Law came hundreds of years after Abraham and did not annul the promise of salvation by grace through faith:

For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would be heir of the world was not through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith. (Romans 4:13)

The word tutor is the Greek word paidagogos from which we derive our English word pedagogue that literally means to lead or train a child. The pedagogue was employed by a family to train a boy in morals, manners, and deportment. Clement of Alexandria wrote, “The paidagogos being practical, not theoretical, his aim is thus to improve the soul, and to train him to a virtuous life. His duty is to make the good, pleasant to the boy.”

The Law was given to show our inability to please God in our own strength and reveal our need for a Savior. We are justified, not through our works, but by faith. The word justified describes the act by which we are brought into a right state of relationship to God. Paul indicated that those who have come to know Jesus and are guided by the Holy Spirit are no longer in need of a tutor:

But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. (Galatians 3:25)

John Stott summarized the process, “We cannot come to Christ to be justified until we have first been to Moses to be condemned. But once we have gone to Moses, and acknowledged our sin, guilt and condemnation, we must not stay there. We must let Moses send us to Christ.” For those of us who have believed in Jesus, the law is written in our hearts and we have the indwelling Holy Spirit. As we grow in Christ, our attitude changes from having to do God’s will to wanting to do God’s will.