“Wherefore then serves the law? It was added because of transgressions . . . and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator” (Gal. 3:19).
This statement in Gal. 3:19 is identical in substance with that by Stephen in his last words to the Sanhedrin, as they were about to stone him to death, when he said, “Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? And they have slain them which showed before of the coming of the Just One, of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers; who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it” (Acts 7:52, 53).
This expression by Stephen, that the law was received, “by the disposition of angels,” and the expression in Gal. 3:19, that the law “was ordained by angels,” are identical; for Stephen’s word translated “disposition,” and Paul’s word translated “ordained,” are the same Greek word precisely, with simply a variation in tense. Stephen’s word is diatagas and Paul’s word is diatageis.
Now, what law could it be which, whatever else might be included, was pre-eminently the law referred to by Stephen when, in connection with the law that they had not kept, he charged them with being murderers? What law is it, which pre-eminently is not kept by a murderer? —It is the law of God—the Ten Commandments, one of which says, “Thou shall not kill.” And when the same identical word is used in Gal. 3:19, in the same identical connection, then what law alone can be referred to as pre-eminently the law there referred to, whatever other laws may be included? To have any other than the same law in both places would be simply to do positive violence to the plain scripture in its whole connection. And since there can be no possible question as to what law is pre-eminently the one referred to by Stephen, there can likewise be no question as to what law is pre-eminently referred to in Gal. 3:19, when the same identical word is used as was used by Stephen, and in the same connection and in the same sense precisely.
What, then, is the thought expressed in the words “the disposition of angels,” “ordained by angels”? The root of the two words used by Stephen and Paul is diatasso, which signifies “to arrange, ordain, establish”; “to set in order, and draw up an army” on parade, or “in battle order.” Thus, the specific statement in the two passages is that at the giving of the law referred to in the two places, the angels were drawn up in a grand array, as a king disposes his army, or a general his troops; and that, in the presence of this grand array of the angels of God, the law in question was given by the hand of a mediator.
As was presented in a former study: Since there is but “one mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus,” Christ is unquestionably the Mediator in whose hand this law was ordained. And the scene is touched in Deut. 33:2; “The Lord came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them; he shined forth from mount Paran, and he came with ten thousands of saints: from his right hand went a fiery law for them.” From his right hand went forth this “fiery law” in the writing upon the tables of stone, and also in the work of making the tables of stone upon which the law was written by the hand of fire. For “the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables” (Ex. 32:16).