Galatians 3

Galatians 3:14

Gal. 3:14. “That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” The Spirit from time to time was promised of old by the prophets, as the great privilege of the happy gospel days which they foretold; but the promise was made to the seed or children of Israel and Abraham. See Isaiah 44:2; Isaiah 44:3, “Thus saith the Lord that made thee, and formed thee from the womb, which will help thee; Fear not, O Jacob, my servant; and thou, Jesurun, whom I have chosen. For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring.” Now the prophet puts the Spirit and the blessing together, as the Apostle does, in this verse. Again, in that great promise of the Spirit, Joe 2:28, and Isaiah 59:20; Isaiah 59:21. So, from time to time, the great promises of the Spirit, in other places in the prophets, are to God’s people Israel or Israel’s and Abraham’s posterity. Hence, a being endowed by the Spirit is, by the Apostle, spoken of as evidently being of the sons of God. Romans 8:14, “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God;” and of Abraham, in this chapter.

Gal. 3:16

Galatians 3:16

Gal. 3:16. “Now to Abraham and his seed was the promise made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many, but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.” This Mr. Locke paraphrases thus: “God doth not say, ‘And to seeds,’ as if he spake of more seeds than one that were entitled to the promise on different accounts, but only of one sort of men, who upon one sole account, were that seed of Abraham which was alone meant and concerned in the promise, so that unto thy seed, designed Christ, and his mystical body, i.e. those that became members of him by faith.” And Mr. Locke adds in his notes, “By seeds, Paul here visibly means the ?? e? p?ste??, those of faith; and the ?? e? e????, those of the works of the law, spoken of above, Galatians 3:9; Galatians 3:10, as two distinct seeds or descendants claiming from Abraham. Paul’s argument to convince the Galatians that they ought not to be circumcised, or submit to the law from their having received the Spirit from him, upon their having received the gospel which he preached to them, verses 2 and 5, stands thus, The blessing promised to Abraham and to his seed, was wholly upon the account of faith, Galatians 3:7. There were not different seeds who should inherit the promise, the one by the works of the law, and the other by faith: for there was but one seed, which was Christ, verse 16, and those who should claim in and under him by faith.

Among those there was no distinction of Jew and Gentile. They, and they only who believed, were all one and the same true seed of Abraham, and heirs according to the promise, Galatians 3:28; Galatians 3:29, and therefore the promise made to the people of God of giving them the Spirit under the gospel, was performed only to those who believed in Christ: a clear evidence that it was not by putting themselves under the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ, that they were the people of God, and heirs to the promise.” Galatians 3:16. “Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.” The passage in Genesis here referred to, is doubtless that Genesis 22:17; Genesis 22:18, “That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies: and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.” For the promise made to Abraham that the Apostle is here speaking of, is, that all the families of the earth should be blessed, and this is expressly predicted of his seed, in anything that God says to Abraham, nowhere else but there; and the seed that is there spoken of, is spoken of in such a manner that it is most naturally understood not as a noun of multitude, or as containing a plurality, but only an individual, because the singular word possess, and the singular pronoun his, are used, “Thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies,” where the same seed is doubtless to be understood, as in the words immediately following, “And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” It is not usual in Scripture that a singular pronoun is thus annexed to the word “seed,” when it is a noun of multitude. Christ, the seed of Abraham, in whom all the families of the earth should be blessed, is spoken of elsewhere in the Old Testament as a single pronoun, as in Psalms 72:17, “His name shall endure for ever: His name shall be continued as long as the sun; and men shall be blessed in Him: all nations shall call Him blessed;” and the words seed, as used in the Old Testament, is sometimes understood of a particular person. Thus Eve says, on the occasion of the birth of Seth, Genesis 4:25, “And Adam knew his wife again, and she bare a son, and called his name Seth: for God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew.” So Hannah says, 1 Samuel 1:11, “And she vowed a vow, and said, O Lord of hosts, if thou wilt indeed look on the affliction of thine handmaid, and remember me, and not forget thine handmaid, but wilt give unto thine handmaid a man child, then I will give him unto the Lord all the days of his life, and there shall no razor come upon his head.” “If thou wilt give thine handmaid seed of men,” as it is in the original, meaning a man child.

Gal. 3:17-18

Galatians 3:17-18

Gal. 3:17, 18. “And this I say, that the covenant that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect; for if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise, but God gave it to Abraham by promise.” Mr. Locke paraphrases it thus, “This therefore I say, that the law, which was not till four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul the covenant that was long before made and ratified to Christ by God, so as to set aside the promise. For if the right to the inheritance be from the works of the law, it is plain it is not founded in the promise to Abraham, as certainly it is. For the inheritance was a donation and free gift of God settled on Abraham and his seed by promise.”

Gal. 3:19-20

Galatians 3:19-20

Gal. 3:19, 20. “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.” The apostle’s design in mentioning the law’s being ordained in the hand of a mediator, is to show the contrary of what the Jews and judaizing teachers supposed concerning that transaction of mount Sinai, between God and the people. When the law was ordained, they supposed it to be a merely legal transaction, that God acted therein merely as a sovereign righteous lawgiver in that affair, prescribing to the people legal terms of life and death; this is implied in their doctrine of justification by the works of the law. The apostle in what he here mentions of the transaction’s being by a mediator, would show the contrary, viz. that it was not a mere legal transaction, but a transaction of grace; for a mere legal transaction of God with men does not admit of any mediator, but a transaction of grace does. Indeed, in a mere legal transaction, a middle person may be improved to act in the name of God, and appear for God to them, but such a middle person does not answer the notion of a mediator, as the apostle would signify.

A mediator acts for both parties: he not only appears for God to man, and to act for God, but he also appears for man to God, and acts for man; for a mediator is not of one, he is not a middle person to act only for one of the parties. But God is one, i.e.

God is but one of the parties transacting. If he acts as a middle person only on one side, he does not act as mediator; but a mediator appears for both parties, he acts for each to the other. A legal transaction would have admitted of a middle person to act for one side, viz. for God to man, but not for man to God, to intercede and plead for him. So was Moses. Moses was the mediator here spoken of, as is confirmed by Deuteronomy 5:5. God condescended, because the people could not bear the terrors of the law, to admit Moses as a mediator for them to stand before him, and hear and bear those terrors for them, as well as to act as his messenger to them.

This shows plainly that it was a transaction of grace, wherein God was willing to admit a method to screen and save the poor fearful people, to screen them from the dreadful things apprehended, as well as from the terrible apprehension they had by hearing the dreadful voice, and seeing the raging fire. Therefore this is an evidence of what the apostle is arguing for, viz. that God in this transaction was not disannulling the transaction of grace, or that gracious covenant that had before been established with Abraham; he was now only building on that foundation that was then laid, and not setting it aside by this transaction that seemed to have an appearance of a legal transaction.

This inference is made very much after the same manner with many others from transactions and passages of the Old Testament in the epistle to the Hebrews, and here and there in other epistles. And this reasoning is not so far fetched, and the arguments so much out of sight, as some may imagine. The words might be paraphrased thus: “In that transaction of mount Sinai, when the law was given, a mediator was made use of, and the notion of a mediator is, one that appears and pleads for both parties, one with the other. This mediator therefore that was admitted, did not only transact for God, who in the transaction was but one party, but also appeared and pleaded for the other party also with God, which shows that it was not a merely authoritative and legal, but a gracious, transaction.” The 20th verse comes in as a kind of parenthesis, or a short exegetical digression, just to explain the meaning of the word mediator, which the apostle had used, because the argument he intended his readers should conceive from it, depended on their understanding what a mediator was; and therefore he was willing to let them know that, by a mediator, he did not only mean a middle person to act for God towards the people, but also one to act and plead for the people towards God. The apostle’s words therefore may be otherwise paraphrased thus: “The law was ordained by angels in the hands of a mediator, i.e. in the hands of a middle person who appeared and pleaded for each party with the other, and not merely for God, who was but one party.”

Gal. 4:21-23