Galatians 3:19

Wherefore then? This passage and Paul’s whole line of reasoning from here onward through v. 25 have sometimes been mistakenly interpreted to mean that all the divinely revealed codes of laws in the OT ended with Calvary. Growing out of this interpretation is the view that in the pre-Christian era men were saved by the keeping of the law, and in the Christian Era by grace through faith. But such a view is contrary to the whole body of Scripture. God has had only one means of saving man, from Adam onward; that is, by faith in the sacrifice of our Lord. The good news of that salvation has been proclaimed to man in all ages (see Heb. 4:2). Paul has elsewhere emphatically repudiated the idea that he felt some might hastily and mistakenly draw from his writings, that grace and the gospel abolished law: “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid” (Rom. 3:31).

It is evident, therefore, that whatever Paul is teaching in Gal. 3:19-25 he is not teaching the doctrine of a pre-Christian era of salvation by law versus a Christian Era of salvation by grace. What he is truly teaching becomes evident when two points are kept clearly in mind. First, to all Jews and those trained in the Jewish viewpoint, as were the Galatians under the Judaizing teachers, the beginnings and the heart of God’s whole revealed religion for His chosen people were the series of events at Sinai. It was at Sinai that God most literally called them out for His own and made them His peculiar people, His holy nation. The distinctive mark of that initial experience at Sinai was the announcing to Israel of the great moral code that was ever to be the standard of their lives, plus (a) civil statutes that were an interpretation and application of the moral code to the Jewish state and (b) certain statutes that were to govern the symbolic ritual of sacrifices and offerings pointing forward to the great sacrifice of Christ. The Lord had told the Israelites at Sinai that if they would be obedient to all His laws, they would eat the good of the land and be His people forever. They mistakenly thought that they were able of themselves to give such obedience, and that therefore their hope of acceptance by God and of receiving an inheritance forever lay in their own efforts at keeping these laws.

The second point that must be remembered, if we are rightly to understand vs. 19-25, is this: Paul has just declared to the Galatians that long before Sinai, Abraham had received the inheritance simply by believing the promise of God, and he has emphatically added, in order to illustrate again the main premise of his epistle, that salvation is by faith alone, that nothing that happened “four hundred and thirty years after” Abraham could change the terms by which he was assured of the inheritance. Paul’s reasoning is summed up in the words: “For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise” (v. 18).

Now, to all those steeped in the Jewish viewpoint, this reasoning of Paul would seem to make pointless and meaningless the awesome drama of Sinai — the great codes of law, and the declaration of God that if they would obey these laws they would eat the good of the land. In other words, Paul’s readers would immediately ask, “Wherefore then serveth the law?”

Added. Gr. prostithemi, literally, “to place alongside,” “to append.” And why was the law “added” if the Abrahamic covenant was adequate to salvation? The answer is: “Because of transgressions.” The difference between the times before Sinai and those afterward was not a difference as regards the existence of great laws from God, but as regards the explicit revelation of them — at Sinai there was a concrete presentation of the moral law in two tables of stone and of other laws in “the book of the law.” But in the centuries before Sinai God’s patriarchs possessed, in some marked measure, the moral law written in their hearts, and were thus conscious of God’s high moral standards (see Gen. 17:9; 18:19; 26:5). They also possessed, in embryo, the laws of sacrificial ritual. During the long, dark bondage in Egypt, where they dwelt amid the blackest paganism and the most depraved immorality, they well-nigh lost their understanding or awareness of God’s moral standards, and of even the most rudimentary ideas of sacrifices. And when men come to such a state, they are insensitive to sin, for it is by “the law” that we have the knowledge of sin. As Paul declares elsewhere, “I had not known sin, but by the law” (Rom. 7:7).

When God took Israel out of the darkness and defilement of Egypt, His first contact with them was in terms of a presentation of the moral laws that are the standard of His government, and of the ceremonial statutes designed to provide Israel with a pattern of ritual service that would make the promised sacrifice of our Lord most clear to them. The law “was added because of transgressions” (Gal. 3:19), “that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful” (Rom. 7:13). It was only by having God’s moral law brought into sharp objective focus that the Israelites, sadly adapted as they were to the gross viewpoint of the Egyptians, could be made conscious that they were sinners, and thus needed salvation. And it was because the ceremonial statutes were presented in clear detail that the Israelites were enabled to see the way God had devised to save them from their sins. Compare on Eph. 2:15.

Till the seed should come. That is, till Christ should come (see on vs. 16, 24).

To whom the promise was made. Or, “with respect to whom the promise was made.”

Ordained by angels. The Exodus record is silent concerning the presence of angels at Sinai. According to Deut. 33:2 there were “ten thousands of saints [literally, “holy ones”]” present at the giving of the law. In the LXX the last clause of that verse reads, “On his right hand [were his] angels with him” (cf. Ps. 68:17). Stephen (Acts 7:53) and Paul (Heb. 2:2) both speak of angels as participating in the giving of the Mosaic code (cf. PP 364).

Mediator. Or, “arbitrator,” “middleman,” one who intervenes between two parties to reconcile divergent views or interests, or who brings them together in a compact. In v. 20 Paul makes clear his purpose in mentioning the mediate, or indirect, way in which the ceremonial law was given. Being given through a mediator, Moses (see Ex. 20:19; 21:1), the ceremonial and civil laws came from God indirectly. The covenant and its promises, however, were given to Abraham directly, without the assistance of a human mediator.