Galatians 3:19 - Exposition

Wherefore then serveth the Law? ( τί οὖν ὁ νόμος ;); what then (or, why then ) is the Law ? The apostle is wont thus to introduce the statement of some objection or some question relative to the point in hand which requires consideration (cf. Romans 3:1 ; Romans 4:1 ). He wishes now to show that, while the Law was a Divine ordinance, it was yet not intended to supersede the previously ratified covenant, but rather to prepare for its being completely carried out. It was added because of transgressions ( τῶν παραβάσεων χάριν προσετέθη ); on account of transgressions it was superadded. As χάριν denotes that so-and-so is done in consideration of this or that; this latter may be either some antecedent fact furnishing ground for subsequent action, as in 1 John 3:12 ; Ephesians 3:1 ; Luke 7:47 , or some prospective result, which the action signified in the verb is intended to forward, as Jude 1:16 . Here it intimates that the Law was given from a regard to men's sinful actions, with an implied contrast with the covenant of Christ's gospel, which was concerned with men's justification and benediction. The province of the Law is to expose sins, rebuke them, pronounce God's curse upon them, coerce and restrain them by the discipline of a system of outward rites and ceremonies. The office of the Law, as dealing with sinners as continuing sinful, while unable to make them new creatures, is indicated by St. Paul in 1 Timothy 1:9 , where, after saying, "The Law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and unruly, for the ungodly and sinners," he proceeds to add a catalogue of offenders chargeable with the grossest form of criminality; which furnishes a most apt illustration of the word παραβάσεις ("transgressions'') which he here uses, and which marks sins in their most wilful and most condemnable character. What was spiritually the outcome of the Law's action upon men's sinful nature, in making their "sin exceeding sinful," the apostle has vividly portrayed in the seventh chapter of the Romans. This last point, however, is probably not even glanced at here; and it is only by straining the sense of χάριν , that some commentators, notably Meyer, find the apostle to be here stating that the Law was added for the behoof of transgressions, as it were in their interest, to increase and intensify them, as in Romans 5:20 , that the trespass might abound. This, however, is not naturally found in the present passage. All that the apostle here states is that the Law merely dealt with sins, having no function in relation to life and righteousness. The article before παραβάσεων indicates the whole class of objects referred to, as e.g. in τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ( Hebrews 9:27 ). This" superadded" ( προσετίθη ) is not inconsistent with the οὐδ ἐπιδιατάσσεται , "nor addeth thereto," of Romans 5:15 ; inasmuch as it points to a Divine ordinance, which steed, so to speak, in a different plane from the covenant of grace, and in no way interfered with it. Till the seed should come ( ἄχρις οὗ ἔλθῃ τὸ σπέρμα ). The form of expression indicates the purpose of him who arranged it all, that the Law should last only so long, and was to come to an end when the seed came. To whom the promise was made ( ᾧ ἐπήγγελται ); to whom the promise hath been made. The perfect tense of the verb, as in the case of κεχάρισται , in Romans 5:18 , points to the still continuing validity of the promise. The "seed" is "Christ;" the historical Christ, indeed, but still viewed collectively as summing up in himself all who should be united to him. And it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator ( διαταγεὶς δι ̓ ἀγγέλων ἐν χειρὶ μεσίτου ); being ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator. The verb "ordain" ( διατάσσειν ), being most commonly used for "command," "order," as Luke 8:55 ; lCo Luke 7:17 , is introduced in preference to δοθείς (comp. Luke 7:20 and John 1:17 ; John 7:19 ), as making more prominent the notion of imperative action on the part of the Divine Lawgiver. The whole passage is tinctured with the feeling that the giving of the Law, as contrasted with the dispensation of the Messiah, was marked by distance, sternness, alienation. This is the meaning of the mention of "angels" as the medium of communication on the side of Heaven, and of "a mediator" as the selected medium of reception on the side of Israel (compare the contrast between the two dispensations in Hebrews 12:18-24 ). This representation of the Law as given through angels is unmistakably made again in the Epistle to the Hebrews, in the words, "The word spoken through angels" ( Hebrews 2:2 ), where also it is placed in the same contrast with the gospel as spoken by the Lord Jesus, which here is plainly implied , if indeed it is not expressly alluded to, in the enigmatic words, "but God is one," in the next verse. This view of the Law as communicated through the medium of angels is distinctly re[erred to by St. Stephen as the accepted belief of the Jewish theologians before whom he spoke: "Ye who received the Law as the ordinances of angels" ( Acts 7:53 ), where the phrase, διαταγὰς ἀγγέλων , forms a remarkable parallel to the words, διαταγεὶς δι ̓ ἀγγέλων , now before us. The same view is put forth by Josephus ('Ant.,' Luke 15:5 , Luke 15:3 ), "We having learned the most excellent of our doctrines and the most holy part of our Law through angels from God." Such, then, was incontestably the current belief of the Jewish people, both Christian and non-Christian. The Hebrew theologians directed a great deal of attention upon the doctrine of angels, of which the "boundless genealogies" spoken of by St. Paul ( 1 Timothy 1:4 ; comp. Colossians 2:18 ) was certainly one diseased branch. We may without improbability suppose that their exegetical sagacity, not unaided by the Spirit of God promised by him to his people upon their restoration from Captivity, detected the particular fact here indicated in Deuteronomy 33:2 ; Psalms 68:17 ; Exodus 19:16 , Exodus 19:19 . The countless hosts of his "saints" who attended upon the Lord on that occasion were not surely mere spectators; and to their intervention acting out the volitions of God might be most reasonably ascribed all the physical sights and sounds which gave to the giving of the Law its sensible awfulness. "They raised the fire and smoke; they shook and rent the rock; they framed the sound of the trumpet; they effected the articulate voices which conveyed the words of the Law to the ears of the people, and therein proclaimed and published the Law; whereby it became ' the word spoken by angels'" (Owen, 'Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews,' Exodus 2:2 ). In the hand of a mediator ( ἐν χειρὶ μεσίτου ); by the hand of a mediator. ἐν χειρί , in or by the hand, is unquestionably a Hebraism, being in the Septuagint the ordinary literal rendering of the Hebrew beyad ; see e.g. Numbers 4:37 , Numbers 4:45 ; which passages likewise show us whom the apostle means to designate as the mediator; in reference to which comp. also Deuteronomy 5:5 , "I stood between ( ἀνάμεσον ) the Lord and you at that time [ i.e. at the giving of the Law], to show you the word of the Lord." So Philo speaks of Hoses as acting like a μεσίτης καὶ διαλλάκτης , "mediator and reconciler." Schottgen ('Hor. Hebr.') gives numerous examples from the rabbinical books of this application of the term "mediator "to Moses. This conception of Moses as a mediator seems implied also in the words, "Mediator of a better covenant" and "Mediator of a new covenant," which we have in Hebrews 8:6 and Hebrews 12:24 , with reference to Christ. Evidently the mention of a mediator in the present passage is intended to point to the relations between the Lord and Israel as being those of distance and estrangement. If it be objected that the same inference would be deducible from the description of Christ as "Mediator between God and men," in 1 Timothy 2:5 , we have it to say, in answer, that Christ, being in his nature both God and man, not only mediates between God and men, having made atonement or reconciliation by his cross, but in his own being unites God and man, abolishing actually that state of mutual alienation which the mediation of Moses by figure implied but could not in reality do away. We, too, were enemies to God before we were reconciled by the death of his Son ( Romans 5:10 ); but now, being reconciled, we are at one with God in Christ: Christ's life in our nature both guaranteeing and effectuating our continued state of reconciliation with the Father as well as our own spiritual and eternal life.