Law Keeper asked:“Why are there so very few people that seem to understand Galatians 3: 19? It’s not a difficult verse to understand yet there are so many different explanations being offered for it. What is your take on it?”

Galatians 3:19 in the NASB reads, “19 Why the Law then? It was added because of transgressions, having been ordained through angels by the agency of a mediator, until the seed would come to whom the promise had been made.”

Christian response,

The Law etched in stone and written upon parchment as given solely to the Children of Israel was demonstrative of God’s holiness and His perfection and the Law declared mankind’s need for an Intercessor (the Seed of Promise – Jesus Christ) because the Law did not provide atonement for sin but only defined same (Romans 3:20). “ordained through angels” suggests that the faithful angelic creation was part of the giving of the Law as they are “messengers” for God. The Law of Moses and the Commandments, though repetitive of the Natural Moral Law written upon our heart by our Creator at conception, were given the Children of Israel as they were set-apart by God for His eschatological purposes and the Children of Israel were to be Holy as God is Holy (Leviticus 19:2; Leviticus 20:7; Leviticus 20:26; Leviticus 21:8; 1 Peter 1:16).

When Messiah appeared in Time through the womb of a virgin woman (the seed of the woman, Gen. 3:15), Messiah bypassed the sin-nature passed genomically through Adam-Joseph’s seed and Jesus lived a perfect life and fulfilled the Law with absolute perfection thereby making Himself the ONLY acceptable sacrifice for sin seeing that the blood of animals could never provide lasting regenerative atonement (Hebrews 4 and Hebrews 10). Jesus fulfilled the Law of Moses and instituted a New Covenant that is based upon the Law of the Spirit as God’s will is written upon our heart and infused within our minds in the Covenant of Grace (Hebrews 10:16) as the Law of Moses has faded away.

It is written,

4 Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. 5 Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, 6 who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.7 Now if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, 8 will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory? 9 For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory. 10 Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all, because of the glory that surpasses it. 11 For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory. 2 Corinthians 3:4-11