Galatians 3:20 Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one. There is more than one sense in which unity may be understood. It may mean "one and no more," i.e., numerical unity; or, one and the same to all and always; or, union of many in a collective unit. We may say, there is one king, meaning that there are not two or more; or, there is one king, meaning that all have the same king, that he is the same to all his subjects; and we may say, the kingdom is one, meaning that it is not divided, that it is a collective unit in the monarchy. It is therefore important to observe in what sense St. Paul uses the word εἶς when in any passage he speaks of unity, and especially when he refers to the unity of God. Now it is plainly his habit to use the word in senses other than numerical. The following are instances: 1 Corinthians 3:8; 1 Corinthians 6:16; 1 Corinthians 10:17; 1 Corinthians 12:13; 2 Corinthians 11:2; Galatians 3:28; Ephesians 1:10; Ephesians 2:14, 15; Philippians 1:27. And so, when St. Paul speaks of God being one, it is certainly not usually, if it is ever, in the numerical sense. The very word θεός, as he understands it, excludes the idea of polytheism; and against polytheism, as implying many actual gods, he is nowhere concerned to argue... Brought up in Judaism, he had imbibed, as it were with his mother's milk, the idea of one God only. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one God," had been the central principle of his religion from the first, and expressed a self-evident truth which to his mind was unassailable. But he had been taught also to regard the One God as, in a peculiar sense, the God of Israel only; the whole Gentile world being to the mind of the Jew outside the circle of special Divine favour. Yet, as his mind became enlarged through familiarity with Gentile thought and literature, and through his own musings and his observation of the world, we may believe that he had long been perplexed by the limitation which his creed seemed to imply of the love of the universal Father. His mind craved a conception of God, as not only supreme, but as one in His own nature, one and the same to all, comprehending all alike in the embrace of His own essential unity. Further, it appears from his language in more than one passage, that he had been perplexed not only by the seeming partition between Jew and Gentile, but also by the discords and anomalies Apparent at present in creation generally. The general "puzzle of this painful earth" had set him musing. Such comprehensive language (as that in Romans 8:19-22) cannot surely be interpreted as referring to humanity alone. It seems to mean that everywhere throughout known sentient creation there is now pain and evil, discordant with the idea of unity in God. But among all the apparent discords of creation those within himself came home to him especially, because personally felt. He was conscious of a "law of God" within him, demanding his entire allegiance; but he was conscious also of another "law in his members" — a "law of sin and death" — warring against the law of his mind — such as to have wrung from him once the almost despairing cry, "O wretched man that I am," etc. Such inward experience clashed with his conceived ideal of "One God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we unto Him." And further, it is evident (as is especially seen in his Epistle to the Ephesians) that even beyond this mundane sphere of things his thoughts extended. His religious faith — confirmed doubtless by his observation of the mystery of spiritual evil among men — told him also of "spiritual things of wickednesses in the heavenly places," of a "prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience;" and such dissonance in the heavenly places themselves was inconsistent with his grand ideal. For God was to his mind the one absolute existence, the one eternal Being, "of whom are all things:" "the Father (πατήρ) of whom every family (πατριά) in heaven and on earth is named;" and not only the Father, but also present in all creation still And the God of his conscience being to him Love and Righteousness as well as Power and Life, he craved in all creation a reflection of the whole Divine perfection — such as, in the present state of things, he did not find. Such grand conceptions we conceive to have had possession of St. Paul's mind — after his conversion certainly, as is evident from his writings, and probably long before. To a mind thus prepared, the revelation of God in Christ was as a sudden burst of light. It did not, indeed, show him the original source or purpose of existing evil... But the new light from heaven showed him Reconciliation, and discords resolved, in the fulness of time, into eternal harmony In this passage the apostle has been arguing against the notion that the Mosaic law had either fulfilled or abrogated the promise made to Abraham; and the thought that suggests the verse before us is, that in the giving of the law Moses had intervened as a mediator. In reference to this fact he says: "Now a mediator is not of one; but God is one." Viewed in the light of St. Paul's dominant conception, with all that it involves, of the unity of God, the following interpretation at once suggests itself to the mind: "A mediator is not of one" (i.e., "of that which is one" — whether singly or collectively — mediation has no place where there is unity); "but God is one" (in the sense, with all that follows from it, ever present to St. Paul's mind when he says εἶς ὁ Θεός): therefore (the conclusion follows, though not expressed) the law, with its intervening mediator, did not manifest God's unity, and the consequent unity of all in Him. (J. Barmby, B. D.)That nothing should disturb our deep and settled repose in immutable love and faithfulness of God. That the most rigid enactments of law can never affect the promises of Divine grace, while the grace revealed in the promises mellows and modifies the rigour of law. That both the law and the promise shut us up to one only ground of dependence and hope of eternal life. That Christianity, with its personal Saviour and remedial scheme of mercy, is the only revelation suited to the moral and undeniable necessities of man's fallen nature. That the belief and reception of the Christian revelation is the one simple condition of endless life and blessedness. Such we deem to be the true exegesis of this confessedly difficult text, and such the profound truths involved in its interpretation. There are no various readings to perplex us; there is no necessity for taking a single word out of its ordinary and accepted meaning; there is no pretext for twisting or wresting the apostle's language, nor for interfering with the chain of his argument. His aim is to bring out the superiority of the gospel to the law: and this he does by showing that whatever methods God may adopt in the government of our world, nothing can interfere with His promise of grace, since that promise is founded on the immutability of His own nature, no less than on the depth and the exuberance of His own love. God is one, immutably and for ever the same; so that the promise which was given four hundred years before the law remains the same after the law — as rich in grace, and as pregnant with life. In this promise, or rather in Him to whom the promise refers, we can confide with calm and joyous repose, "persuaded that neither life nor death, neither angels, nor principalities, etc." (R. Ferguson, LL. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one. |
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