Galatians 3:19 Commentary and Bible Study

Paul has left this question hanging while he laid the foundation: the impossibility of God changing his mind about justification; the law could therefore have nothing to do with justification. So why was it given? ‘It was added because of transgressions, until the seed should come to whom the promise was made.’ Although the purposes of God are multi-faceted and need careful consideration, this phrase sums up as briefly as possible the reason for the giving of the law. However, as Calvin comments here, Paul does not deal in this passage with all the purposes of the law, but only those which bear on his argument. It is therefore wrong to refuse to see any further purpose in the law than that mentioned here. What he focuses on is the law’s primary purpose in making men and women aware of their sin.To understand what Paul says here, we need to see that his answer takes into account a timescale greater than that of any single lifespan. To make sense of the divine purpose he views the nation of Israel (and mankind also) as if it were a single individual who was given the promise in the time of Abraham, remained unbelieving and was therefore placed under the law in the time of Moses, and then finally came to faith and believed in Christ after the incarnation. In this way he not only explains the place of the law, but also shows how Christ fulfilled the Abrahamic promise given so long before. Paul is not considering the case of those Israelites who like Abraham believed the promise; he is thinking more of unbelieving Israelites and what God was doing to bring them to faith.But if the promise and the law are so opposed to each other, how could all Israel be placed under the Abrahamic covenant, and then all be placed under the law 430 years later? The simple answer is that they were not: individual Israelites were under one covenant or the other, but never under both at the same time. Although all Israel was included in the covenant made with Abraham and his seed, not all in that covenant had faith like Abraham. The rest only enjoyed the external benefits of the covenant, and were not truly under the promise at all, for without faith they remained in the covenant of works under which they were born; they were justified by works and not by faith. The Abrahamic promises were of two sorts: some were earthly and temporal, and others were spiritual and eternal, just as some of Abraham’s descendants were children of the flesh, while others were children of the promise. Some Jews were Jews outwardly and were circumcised only in the flesh, but others were Jews inwardly and were circumcised in their hearts. Everything depended on whether or not they exercised faith. The nation as a whole was given the external blessings: the promised land, the promises of physical offspring, the promise that God would fight for them, and provide rain in due season and harvests. They were outwardly provided for, but none of these promises gave them a hope of heaven, or forgiveness of sin, for the gift of eternal life could only be received by faith, and they had no true faith; these remained under the law, not the Abrahamic covenant. But the elect, who had faith like Abraham, received the promise of justification and eternal life in Christ; these were under the Abrahamic covenant, not the law. Similarly, although all Israel was given the law on Sinai, those who had faith like Abraham were never placed under it as the means of justification, but only as a rule of life.The covenant given on Sinai was a legal covenant that restated the original terms of the covenant of works given to Adam in Eden because it was still in force. All human beings are born under this covenant and remain under it until they come to Christ, the promised seed. It was highly appropriate that the nation of Israel was given the law, because they in particular were in danger of seeing themselves as God’s favourites on account of their external privileges through the typical side of the Abrahamic covenant. They were therefore reminded that if they lacked Abraham’s faith they were no better off than the Gentiles and like them remained under the condemnation of the law.