Galatians 3:19-20 - Homiletics

The use and nature of the Law.

"What then is the Law?" The apostle's reasoning seemed to make the Law a quite superfluous thing. In the eyes of the Judaists it was God's most glorious institute. It was necessary, therefore, to show its nature, office, and characteristics, and its relation to the covenant of promise. It was really inferior to the dispensation of grace on four grounds, which themselves explain its nature and use.

I. THE LAW DISCOVERS SIN . "It was superadded because of transgressions."

1 . It was not to check sin .

2 . Nor to create sin .

3 . But to discover it .

"By the Law is the knowledge of sin" ( Romans 3:20 ). This discovery would necessarily multiply transgressions ( Romans 5:20 ), just as the introduction of light into a darkened room makes manifest the things that were before unseen. "I had not known sin but by the Law" ( Romans 7:7 ). Many sins were not seen to be sins at all till the Law threw its intense light upon them. Thus the great service of the Law was to awaken conviction of sin in the heart and to make men feel their need of a Saviour. The ceremonial and the moral Law had equally this effect. The system of sacrifice had no meaning apart from the fact of sin. What a mistake, then, was that of the Judaists who imagined that the Law could give them a title to eternal life in virtue of their obedience to its commands

III. THE LAW WAS A TEMPORARY AND INTERMEDIATE DISPENSATION . "It was superadded … till the seed shall have come to whom the promise has been made." This refers to the coming of Christ who is "the Seed." The apostle puts himself back to the time of giving the Law, and looks forward from that starting-point to the future incarnation. The Law was thus a mighty parenthesis coming in between Abraham's promise and the coming of the seed, and was specially preparative and disciplinary in relation to that future event. It was destined then to pass away as a dispensation, but the moral Law, which it held in its bosom, was to abide in its full integrity. That Law still exists in Christianity, with its old power of manifesting sin and carrying conviction to sinners so as to shut them up to Christ.

III. THE LAW DID NOT COME DIRECT FROM GOD TO MAN , AS THE PROMISE CAME TO ABRAHAM , BUT THROUGH ANGELS BY A MEDIATOR , "Being ordained through angels in the hand of a mediator?' This is another point of inferiority. God gave the promise to Abraham immediately, not mediately by angels or through any intervention like that of Moses; unlike the Law, which was superadded through this double intervention.

1 . The share of angels in the giving of the Law.

2 . The share of Moses in the giving of the Law . It was "ordained … in the hand of a mediator," who was Moses. He describes his own mediation: "I stood between you and the Lord at that time" ( Deuteronomy 5:5 , Deuteronomy 5:27 ). It was Moses who bore the tables of stone from God to the people. We are not to suppose that the reference is designed to mark the inferiority of the Law to the covenant of promise, which, too, had its Mediator, Jesus Christ the Lord. He is not contrasting the Law and the gospel, but the Law and the promise of Abraham; and he asserts that, while in the one case the angels and Moses had to do with its conveyance, God in the other case gave the promise without the intervention of either man or angel.

IV. THE LAW WAS DEPENDENT UPON CONDITIONS , THE PROMISE WAS ABSOLUTE . "Now, a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one." The very idea of mediation implies two parties, who are to be brought into some relation with each other through the intervention of a third person. In the case of the Law , there were two parties—God and the Jewish people. In the case of the promise, "God is one;" he is mediatorless—no one stands between him and Abraham, as Moses stood between God and the Israelites in the giving of the Law. There is a numerical contrast between "one" and "of one."