The Purpose of the Law (No Other Gospel #14)
One thing you have to keep in mind when reading this passage is that when Paul uses the phrase “the law” here he is speaking specifically of the law of Moses, as we read in Exodus-Deuteronomy which was given to the Israelites through Moses at Mt. Sinai. As Paul shows elsewhere, even the Gentiles had a law, a knowledge of God's requirements and what is right and wrong, and much of what he says here could be applied to that, but fundamentally he is talking about the law of Moses, because the Judaizers believed that salvation could come, had to come through the law of Moses. As Paul has already shown, that doesn't work--so, the question obviously arose, “wherefore then serveth the law?”
Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator. Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one. Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law. But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. (Galatians 3:19-25)
Before we get into this passage, there are a few things we should note. One is the phrase in verse 19 that the law was ordained by angels. This is just sort of interesting because while angels aren't mentioned in connection with giving the law in Exodus, several other places in the Old and New Testament where this fact is mentioned. Verse 19 also speaks of the law coming through a mediator or a go-between. Most people believe this refers to Moses since he was the one who acted as a spokesman for God to the people of Israel and an intercessor for Israel before God during the giving of the law. However, every other time this word “mediator” is used in the New Testament, it refers to Jesus, so Albert Barnes argues that it means Jesus here and that Paul is saying that both the law and the gospel were given by Jesus and therefore cannot be in competition.
And then, following on that, we have verse 20: “Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one.” According to A. T. Robertson, people have made over 400 different interpretations for this verse and I'll be honest that I don't understand what it means. But I think even if we sort of ignore this verse, we can get a general sense of what this passage is saying.
We have to keep in mind the contrast Paul established earlier in Galatian, between Abraham and Moses. Abraham was given a promise which he received by faith. Moses had a law. That contrast between the promise and the law is very important to this passage. Remember that both the promise and the law were given by God. It's not as if one is of God and one of man. Both are from God. So is there a conflict between them? Are they in competition? That's the question in verse 21: “Is the law then against the promises of God?”
No. But Paul's reason for saying no is rather interesting: “For if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.” Imagine we have two products here which are both floor waxes; both exist to clean and polish your floor. Obviously, there is going to be competition between them. People aren't going to use two separate products which do the same thing. But what if one was floor wax and the other was hair gel? In that case, there wouldn't be any competition between them, because they exist to do two totally separate things. That's what Paul is saying about the law and the promise. The promise, through faith, brings salvation. If the law brought salvation too, if the law could have given life and righteousness, then there would have been competition, friction between the law and the promise--but the law and the promise don't do the same thing; they don't serve the same purpose.
In fact, the law is part of the promise. Remember that in the passage leading up to this, Paul was emphasizing the chronology--that the promise was given first, and then the law hundreds of years later. Now he repeats that idea by saying that the law “was added.” Strong defines this word as “ to place additionally, i.e. lay beside, annex, repeat:--add, again, give more, increase, lay unto, proceed further, speak to any more.” (#4369) The law and the promise don't compete and the law doesn't nullify the promise. Rather, the law was added on top of the promise. We talked before about how once a contract has been made, you can't just change it--but you can add other provisions that help it. If you promise to pay someone a set sum of money, you can't just alter the contract to change the amount of money you pay--but you can set of provision for how the money will be paid--whether by cash or card or check. The law exists to help fulfill the plan of the promise.
It was added, Paul says, because of transgressions. This has two ideas. (1) Laws exist to prevent anarchy; a law creates and protects order. And the Mosaic law created and protected the nation of Israel. Even with the law, Israel nearly collapsed and became assimilated into its neighbors. Without the law, it almost certainly would have done so. The law could not solve the problem of sin but it could at least curtail it somewhat. And by so doing, it protected the nation of Israel through thousands of years, creating a community that could preserve the knowledge of the true God and pave the way for the coming of the Messiah. Notice that Paul says in verse 19 that it was “till the seed should come to whom the promise was made.” And as we saw earlier, the “seed” or descendant he mentions is Jesus, the seed of Abraham. The law existed to protect the Jewish community and the Messianic line until Jesus came. That is the first part of it. (2) The other part is this. The law defines what is right or wrong. If we didn't have the law, we wouldn't know what was wrong and what wasn't. It would be like a dark room without lights. It might be full of unseen traps and dangers but you wouldn't know until someone turned on the light, showing what was there. Or, it would be like a forest full of both poisonous and healthy plants--you wouldn't know which you could eat and which you couldn't until you learned a little botany. By giving the revelation of his law in black-and-white, God showed us very clearly what was right. And in so doing, it shows us our sins. Barnes says that the law “shows men their duty. It reminds them of their guilt. It teaches them how far they have wandered from God. It reveals to them the penalty of disobedience. It shows them that justification by the law is impossible, and that there must be some other way by which men must be saved.” (Commentary, Galatians 3:19)
To understand fully what Paul is saying here, we have to take a few steps back and look at the big picture. God gave the law to Moses at Mt. Sinai, but even though that was an important point, it wasn't truly the beginning of the law. Take the Ten Commandments; most of them can be found implicitly or explicitly in Genesis, long before the event at Sinai. And there's a reason for this. On one hand, the law was given and took on form at a specific point of time. But in another sense, the law has always existed.
Take one specific commandment from the law. Leviticus 19:18 says: “Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.” That one phrase from this verse has passed down to us from the words of Jesus, but it was given to Moses thousands of years before the incarnation. So can we point to this date as the definitive point at which it became a law to love our neighbors? No, because 1 John 3:11 says: “For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.” Here in the NT, we have this commandment repeated in different words, but notice where John says his readers heard this message. “From the beginning.” There is some disagreement about what that phrase means, but to me, this seems to be a reference to the opening words of Genesis: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” This is borne out by the fact that immediately afterward, John begins talking about the breaking of this commandment in the second generation of mankind, with Cain and Abel. In other words, from the very moment of creation, this law was in place, even though it wouldn't be given a black-and-white formulation until Moses. So can we point to this moment, the moment of creation, as the moment where this law came into being? No, because 1 John 4:8 says: “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.” This law was always existent because it is founded on the nature of God and God never changes. God always has been and always will be a God of love and therefore the commandment to love one another, to love our neighbor always has been and always will be a law, at any time or any circumstance, because it is an expression of the nature of God.
Hatred against others always has been, always will be, and always would have been wrong. It was wrong for Cain, even though Cain had no access to the law of Moses. It is wrong for some savage in the jungles of South America who have never heard of Moses. Because God is the source and definition of our existence, things like hatred that go against His nature are, by definition, wrong.
The law (which God gave to Moses) did not create right and wrong. Right and wrong had already existed. What the law did was reveal them. “What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.” (Romans 7:7) It was the word of the law that showed to Paul the sin of covetousness. It had already been a sin; it would have always been a sin even if there were no Ten Commandments, but the law revealed to Paul that it was a sin. Adam Clarke compares it that moment when bright light pours through a window showing specks of dust floating in the air. Those specks were already there, but the light reveals them when they would have been invisible otherwise. The law shows what sin is and what righteousness is, even though both existed before.
“Because the law worketh wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression.” (Romans 4:15) Evil exists without the law, but only the law revels it. Only when we know the law can we know that we are breaking the law. And for that reason, the law brings wrath and punishment, for it reveals the sin and wrong-doing of man. That is why throughout Romans, Paul emphasizes the role of the law. The Gentiles did not have a revelation of God's law like the Jews had, but God had given them some measure of revelation which they rejected and corrupted and so were guilty before God. The law was given to the Jews, but the Jews had broken that law (as the Law itself recorded). Putting those two things together we have the conclusion Paul reaches in Romans 3:19-20: “Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.”
Right and wrong had always existed, but the law of God revealed it. That is why salvation cannot come by the law, because the law exists, not to create righteousness, but to reveal it. And because man was sinful, the law could only reveal and condemn that sin. A magnifying glass will show you whether there are or are not fingerprints on a surface. A magnifying glass will not clean the fingerprints off it. The law of Moses, even in its details of ritual or practical politics, was aimed primarily at this and could only function as this--as a revelation of God's standard of right and wrong and a rebuke against the wrong.
The law, the scripture makes it very clear what God's standard is. And it also makes it clear that all mankind has fallen short of it. And so the conclusion is verse 22: that “the scripture imprisoned everything and everyone under sin” as the NET Bible translates it. Paul pictures the law as a jailer, locking away the prisoners who had been condemned by the law. A jailer does not make people criminals. A jailer only enforces the judgment which they themselves have earned. Under the law, we were held as prisoners.
But there was a reason for this. God didn't give His law merely to reveal sin. There was a greater purpose for it. There was a reason why the law was added to the promise. Because it is only when we realize our sinfulness that we can look for salvation. So far from the law replacing faith, the law provides the foundation for faith. If we didn't know that we had sinned, we wouldn't know that we needed salvation. If we didn't have the law, we wouldn't know that we need faith. That is what the law does. It was given to reveal man's sinfulness to that he could receive the promise, the promise of salvation through the faith of Christ.
To make this point, Paul makes use of an interesting word picture, which would have been much clearer and more obvious to his readers than it is to us. He says the law was our Paidagogos. The KJV translates that “schoolmaster” and if you look at other translations, you'll find a fairly wide range of different translations because the Paidagogos, though a common figure in Greek and Roman culture, doesn't have an exact equivalent in our modern culture. The Paidagogos was a man, usually a slave, who supervised the boys of wealthy families. (The name literally means “boy-leader.”) Even though this word has come into English as Pedagogue, which means a teacher, the Paidagogos wasn't exactly a teacher, at least not in the context of a school. He was expected to train a boy in morals and watch over his conduct, but his primary purpose wasn't that of an educator.
The Paidagogos was a guardian. According to Thayer, a boy wasn't even allowed to step out of the house without the accompaniment of his Paidagogos, who was to keep an eye on him and keep him out of trouble, whether of his own causing or someone else's. But his function specifically was to convey him to school where an actual teacher would teach him. He wasn't the instructor, at least in education--he just made sure the boy could safely get to the instructor.
Just like that, the law did not and could not teach us the way of salvation. But it protected us and showed us the way to our true teacher, Christ, who alone could teach us the way of salvation. There was no competition or conflict between the law and the gospel because what the law did was pave the way for the gospel and point us to Christ. But once we have found Christ, we no longer need the law--not in that sense. Of course, the law is still our guide for how to live, as Paul himself shows elsewhere. As a revelation of God's law, it still shows us how we ought to live. But the full Mosaic economy has no fulfilled its purpose, which was to prepare the way of the Lord. That was the purpose of the law and once you understand that, it clearly shows the truth of Paul's proposition, which is that the gospel is not of the law (which was only the preparation for the gospel) but of faith.
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