Galatians 3:19-22

THE LAW WAS A TEMPORARY ENACTMENT ORDAINED TO DEAL WITH THE OFFENCES WHICH IT DENOUNCES UNTIL THE COMING OF THE PROMISED SEED. THE GOD FROM WHOM IT PROCEEDED WAS THE GOD OF ABRAHAM, BUT HE PROMULGATED IT THROUGH ANGELS AND AN APPOINTED MEDIATOR TO ALL THE CHILDREN OF ABRAHAM AFTER THE FLESH, NOT TO THE ONE CHOSEN SEED. DID IT THEN CONTRAVENE HIS PROMISES? NAY VERILY. IF INDEED IT HAD BEEN CAPABLE OF QUICKENING LIFE, IT WOULD HAVE PROVIDED NEW MEANS OF JUSTIFICATION: BUT WHAT IT REALLY DID WAS TO CONVICT ALL ALIKE OF SIN, THAT THE PROMISE MIGHT BE GIVEN TO THOSE WHO BELIEVE ON FAITH IN CHRIST. Τί οὖν ὁ νόμος. What function then had the Law, if it had absolutely no effect on God's previous covenant with Abraham? τῶν παραβάσεων χάριν. Our versions render this because of transgressions, ignoring the Greek article. But there could obviously be no transgressions until the Law existed, however grievous the moral degradation. The real meaning is that it was added with a view to the offences which it specifies, thereby pronouncing them to be from that time forward transgressions of the Law. Its design is gathered in short from its contents. The prohibitions of the Ten Commandments reveal their own purpose: they were enacted in order to repress the worship of false gods, idolatry, blasphemy, Sabbath breaking, disobedience to parents, murder, adultery, theft, false witness, covetousness. These sins prevailed before the Law, but by pronouncing them to be definite transgressions it called in the fear of God's wrath to reinforce the weakness of the moral sense and educate man's conscience. The same aspect of the Law is forcibly presented in 1 Timothy 1:9. Law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and unruly.… Attention is in both concentrated on the moral Law to the exclusion of the sacrificial and ceremonial. ἄχρις οὗ. The alternative reading ἄχρις ἄν does not affect the sense. It is assumed on the strength of previous argument that the dispensation of the Law came to an end with the coming of Christ. By the gift of an indwelling spirit He emancipated His faithful disciples from allegiance to an outward Law. ἐπήγγελται : He (i.e., God) hath promised (cf. Romans 4:21; Hebrews 12:26). ἐπαγγέλλεσθαι never has a passive sense in the N.T. διαταγεὶς διʼ ἀγγέλων. The N.T. refers three times to the interposition of angels in the promulgation of the Law: God's intercourse with Moses through the angel of His presence was evidently a common topic in Jewish schools of theology. In Acts 7:53 the fact is recorded by way of enhancing the authority of the Law; in Hebrews 2:2 it is contrasted with God's revelation in His Son: here it is contrasted with God's more familiar intercourse with Abraham. He drew nigh to God, and was called the friend of God : but at Sinai the people stood far off, and the Law was made known through the double intervention of angels and of a human mediator. ἐν χειρὶ μεσίτου. The term μεσίτης was applied with the utmost latitude to any intermediate between two parties, whether it was the one great Mediator between God and man or any of the subordinate servants of God through whom He makes known His will to men or exercises His authority. The phrase ἐν χειρί defines its meaning here, for it implies that Moses was put in charge of the promulgation of the Law (cf. Numbers 4:28; Numbers 4:37 in LXX), and was God's appointed agent for the purpose. This interposition of a mediator between God and the people was a marked feature of distinction between the Sinaitic and the patriarchal dispensation.