Archived Daily Manna | Rejoice Fellowship | A mission to release people to rejoice in the world.

Message: Going through Galatians with a fine-toothed comb, as we are, does not allow us to sweep difficult verses under the rug . . . and today’s verses are full of difficulty! We dealt with the first problem — the law being delivered “because of transgressions” — in our last lesson. The problems we face today are, first, that Paul depicts “angels” administering the Law, which disagrees with Exodus’ depiction of God dealing directly with Moses, who then delivered the Law to the Hebrews. Second, and even more puzzling, we see an impossible range of use of “mediator” in the Bible, which confusion is compounded by the apparent meaning Galatians 3:20: God cannot have a mediator, because He is one. The Angels angelic host Paul’s assertion that the law was delivered by angels is nowhere to be found in Exodus, which depicts only direct interaction between Moses and Yahweh. God specifically stated His identity: I AM. Which can only mean that it is God speaking, not an angel, which is a being created by God. The only reference in our Bible to any sort of companions in God’s company, on Mt. Sinai, is Deuteronomy 33:2, which is, unfortunately, virtually untranslatable. In the version of Scripture Paul might have used, however — the Greek Septuagint — this “host” (or whatever the word means) mentioned in Deut. 33:2 is, in fact, identified as “angels”. Paul also might be referring to Scripture which has since been lost; he does not identify his source. There is a strong Jewish tradition that God acted through or with angels in delivering the law on Mt. Sinai, and since we trust Paul’s scholarship, we might trust that this tradition was rooted in Scripture outside our modern Bible. This idea is strengthened by Stephen, who also stated that an angel spoke with Moses.on Mt. Sinai (Acts 7:38) and a similar statement in Hebrews 2:2. Fortunately, although this mention of angels is interesting, it is peripheral. When Paul talks about the “mediator”, he must be talking about Moses. The Mediator Dictionary.com defines mediate thus: “to act between parties to effect an agreement, compromise, reconciliation, etc.” A mediator stands between two parties to some legal or personal interaction, not representing either one of them exclusively, but acting as a go-between to facilitate a successful resolution. This would appear to be an apt description of Moses. So the law was given to the Hebrews using a mediator, Moses; but God dealt with Abraham directly. Therefore, Paul teaches us, the promise God made directly to Abraham had greater status (in some respects) than the law. But verse 20 is perplexing. Some verses (like 1 Timothy 2:5, also written by Paul) say Christ is our mediator, others (in Galatians) that Moses was the mediator of the Law, and now, Paul tells us that a mediator implies two persons who need mediation, but “God is one.” It is enough to make a poor country boy’s head explode! Mosaic of Jesus Christ, from Ravenna, Italy Well, we are not alone if we are confused. J.B. Lightfoot, in his classic The Epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1957), stated that there were 250 to 300 different interpretations of this verse! I will simply pick one good one and be done with it: The significance of verse 20 is that Abraham’s dealing with God was one-on-one, just as we were enabled to have a direct, one-on-one relationship with God by virtue of Christ and the Holy Spirit. We do not need to deal with multiple persons to petition God or to be instructed or sanctified by Him. Instead of a mediated relationship involving ourselves and at least two other persons (e.g. Moses and God), our relationship involves only God. With the coming of Christ, there is no longer a mediator situated between us and God; because of Christ’s sacrifice, we are acceptable in God’s sight, and He will deal directly with us no matter how badly we have sinned in the past. When Paul later speaks of Christ as a “mediator,” then, we are to conceive one God as acting in two persons: first He cleans us from sin, and then He accepts us. I think of Him like my mom at Thanksgiving. She wasn’t about to let someone into the dining room with dirt on their face or clothes. So she would first clean up her dirty children, and only then would she allow us into her dining room. So although Paul’s various discussions of “a mediator” can seem puzzling or even contradictory, his meaning in the context of Galatians 3 is clear. Why would the Galatians want a secondhand relationship with God, by following the Law of Moses, when they have already been given a direct spiritual relationship with God through the Holy Spirit?