CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
Galatians 3:19. Wherefore then serveth the law?—As it is of no avail for justification, is it either useless or contrary to the covenant of God? It was added because of transgressions.—To bring out into clearer view the transgressions of the law; to make men more fully conscious of their sins, by being perceived as transgressions of the law, and so make them long for the promised Saviour. It was ordained by angels in the hand of a Mediator.—As instrumental enactors of the law. In the giving of the law the angels were representatives of God; Moses, as mediator, represented the people.
Galatians 3:20. Now a Mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one.—The very idea of mediation supposes two persons at least, between whom the mediation is carried on. The law then is of the nature of a contract between two parties—God on the one hand, and the Jewish people on the other. It is only valid so long as both parties fulfil the terms of the contract. It is therefore contingent and not absolute. Unlike the law, the promise is absolute and unconditional. It depends on the sole decree of God. There are not two contracting parties. There is nothing of the nature of a stipulation. The Giver is everything, the recipient nothing (Lightfoot).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Galatians 3:19-20
The Inferiority of the Law.
I. It did not justify but condemn the sinner by revealing his sin.—“It was added because of transgressions” (Galatians 3:19). Law has no remedial efficacy. It reveals and emphasises the fact of sin. It has no terror while it is obeyed. When it is violated then it thunders, and with pitiless severity terrifies the conscience and inflicts unsparing punishment. There is no strain of mercy in its voice, or in the inflexibility of its methods. It surrenders the condemned to an anguish from which it offers no means of escape. It is said that, after the murder of Darnley, some of the wretches who were concerned in it were found wandering about the streets of Edinburgh crying penitently and lamentably for vengeance on those who had caused them to shed innocent blood.
II. It was temporary in its operation.—“Till the seed should come to whom the promise was made” (Galatians 3:19). The work of the law was preparatory and educative. Centuries rolled away and the promised Seed was long in coming, and it seemed as if the world must remain for ever under the tutelage of the law. All the time the law was doing its work. God was long in fulfilling His promise because man was so slow to learn. When Christ, the promised Seed, appeared, the law was superseded. Its work was done. The preparatory gave place to the permanent; the reign of law was displaced by the reign of grace. The claims of the law were discharged once for all.
III. Its revelation was through intermediaries.—“It was ordained by angels in the hand of a Mediator” (Galatians 3:19). In the Jewish estimation the administration of the law by angels enhanced its splendour, and the pomp and ceremony with which Moses made known the will and character of Jehovah added to the impressiveness and superiority of the law. In the Christian view these very methods were evidences of defect and inferiority. The revelations of God by the law were veiled and intermediate; the revelation by grace is direct and immediate. Under the law God was a distant and obscured personality, and the people unfit to enter His sacred presence; by the gospel God is brought near to man, and permitted to bask in the radiance of His revealed glory, without the intervention of a human mediator. The law, with its elaborate ceremonial and multiplied exactions, is a barrier between the soul and God.
IV. It was contingent, not absolute, in its primal terms.—“Now a Mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one” (Galatians 3:20). Where a mediator is necessary unity is wanting—not simply in a numerical but in a moral sense, as matter of feeling and of aim. There are separate interests, discordant views, to be consulted. This was true of Mosaism. It was not the absolute religion. The theocratic legislation of the Pentateuch is lacking in the unity and consistency of a perfect revelation. Its disclosures of God were refracted in a manifest degree by the atmosphere through which they passed. In the promise God spoke immediately and for Himself. The man of Abraham’s faith sees God in His unity. The legalist gets his religion at second-hand, mixed with undivine elements. He projects on the divine image confusing shadows of human imperfection (Findlay).
Lessons.—
1. The law is powerless to remove the sin it exposes.
2. The law had the defect of all preparatory dispensations.
3. The law imposes conditions it does not help to fulfil.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Galatians 3:19-20. The Law is for Transgressors.
I. We are taught to examine and search our hearts by the law of God.—
1. When any sin is forbidden in any commandment of the law, under it all sins of the same kind are forbidden, all causes of them and all occasions.
2. A commandment negative includes the affirmative, and binds us not only to abstain from evil, but also to do the contrary good.
3. Every commandment must be understood with a curse annexed to it, though the curse be not expressed.
4. We must especially examine ourselves by the first and last commandments. The first forbids the first motions of our hearts against God, and the last forbids the first motions of our hearts against our neighbour.
II. The law of God to be reverenced.—
1. Because it was ordained or delivered by angels.
2. We are to fear to break the least commandment, because the angels observe the keepers and breakers of it, and are ready to witness against them that offend.
3. If thou offend and break the law, repent with speed, for that is the desired joy of angels.
4. If thou sin and repent not, look for shame and confusion before God and His angels.
III. God, the Author and Source of law, is one.—
1. He is unchangeable.
2. His unchangeableness the foundation of our comfort.
3. We should be unchangeable in faith, hope, love, good counsels, honest promises, and in the maintenance of true religion.—Perkins.
Galatians 3:19. The Use of the Law.
I. It is a standard to measure our defects.
II. It is a sword to pierce our conscience.
III. It is a seal to certify that we are in the way of grace.—Tholuck.
No Trust in Legal Prescriptions.—St. Paul, with the sledge-hammer force of his direct and impassioned dialectics, shattered all possibility of trusting in legal prescriptions, and demonstrated that the law was no longer obligatory on Gentiles. He had shown that the distinction between clean and unclean meats was to the enlightened conscience a matter of indifference, that circumcision was nothing better than a physical mutilation, that ceremonialism was a yoke with which the free, converted Gentile had nothing to do, that we are saved by faith and not by works, that the law was a dispensation of wrath and menace introduced for the sake of transgressions, that so far from being, as all the Rabbis asserted, the one thing on account of which the universe had been created, the Mosaic code only possessed a transitory, subordinate, and intermediate character, coming in, as it were in a secondary way, between the promise to Abraham and the fulfilment of that promise in the gospel of Christ.—Dean Farrar.
The Use of the Law under the Gospel.
I. The law never was intended to supersede the gospel as a means of life.
II. The most perfect edition of the gospel, so far from having abolished the least tittle of the moral law, has established it.
III. The use of the law.—
1. To constitute probation.
2. The law is our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.
3. The law serves to give beauty and symmetry to the hidden man of the heart.
4. To vindicate the conduct of our Judge in dooming the impenitent to eternal death.
Lessons.—
1. Since the law as a covenant has been superseded by a covenant better adapted to our guilty and helpless circumstances, let us make a proper use of the mercy, acquaint ourselves with its demands, and abound in the holiness it enjoins.
2. Mark those who set aside the law, shun their company, and pray for their repentance.—Iota.
Galatians 3:20. The Unity of God and His Purpose regarding Man.—
1. The covenant with Adam in his innocency was immediate, no mediator intervening to make them one; there was no disagreement betwixt them because of sin.
2. No man can attain heaven, or reap any advantage, except he be perfectly holy. God made no covenant of works with men on Mount Sinai, nor could they have reaped benefit from such a covenant as they were a sinful people, standing in need of a midsman betwixt God and them.
3. The Lord in all His dispensations is always one, and like to Himself without shadow of turning. If any plead a right to heaven by the merit of their works, God will abate nothing of what He did once prescribe and require of man in the covenant of works.—Fergusson.
An Effectual Mediator.—Edward III., after defeating Philip of France at Creçy, laid siege to Calais, which, after an obstinate resistance of a year, was taken. He offered to spare the lives of the inhabitants on condition that six of their principal citizens should be delivered up to him, with halters round their necks, to be immediately executed. When these terms were announced the rulers of the town came together, and the question was proposed, “Who will offer himself as an atonement for the city? Who will imitate Christ who gave Himself for the salvation of men?” The number was soon made up. On reaching the English camp they were received by the soldiers of Edward with every mark of commiseration. They appeared before the king. “Are these the principal inhabitants of Calais?” he inquired sternly. “Of France, my lord,” they replied. “Lead them to execution.” At this moment the queen arrived. She was informed of the punishment about to be inflicted on the six victims. She hastened to the king and pleaded for their pardon. At first he sternly refused, but her earnestness conquered, and the king yielded. When we submit our hearts as captives to the Father, and feel that we are condemned and lost, we have an effectual Mediator who stays the hand of justice.