Law Contrasted with Promise
Galatians 3:19
Why then serves the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made…


1. The law has no organic relation to the promise; was neither a new form of it, nor a codicil to it; did not spring out of it, but was superadded as a foreign and unallied element.

2. The law has functional connection with sin; the promise regards an inheritance.

3. The law was provisional and temporary only: the promise has no limitation of time, and is not to be superseded.

4. The law was given by a species of double intervention — the instrumentality of angels and the mediation of Moses; the promise was given directly and immediately from God's own lips, no one stepping in between its Giver and its recipient — neither angel ordaining it nor man conveying it.

5. The promise, as resting solely on God, was unconditioned, and therefore permanent and unchanging; the law, interposed between two parties, and specially contingent on a human element, was liable to suspension or abolition.

6. This law, so necessitated by sin, so transient, so connected with angelic ordinance and human handling, was an institute later also by far in its imagination.

(John Eadie, D. D.)



Parallel Verses
KJV: 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.

WEB: What then is the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the seed should come to whom the promise has been made. It was ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator.




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