Let me take you back to your earliest days in school, after the novelty of it had worn off. As you stared out the window at the playground and sunshine outside, it seemed like your school was a cruel prison and your teacher was the prison guard!
However, looking back you perhaps can now see that the teacher was good for you, the discipline of study was for later and greater enjoyment. That in second grade, if the teacher had let you go out and play all day instead of studying it would have actually been bad for you!
Similarly, in our passage today, Paul says the law (e.g. Ten Commandments) was a tutor, a strict teacher, to bring us to Christ! And he chronicles for us the stages through which every believer passes: we were under the law, then justified by faith, and so now children of God. |
