Paul and Moses

Galatians 3-4 is constructed with a fairly neat chiasm:

A. Abraham, Spirit, faith, 3:1-14

B. The Law is not mediator of one, 3:15-22

C. We were under tutors, 3:23-26

D. Baptism, 3:27-29

C’. Under stoicheia, 4:1-11

B’. Personal appeal, 4:12-20

A’. Abraham’s two sons, one by the Spirit, 4:21-31

The B sections don’t seem to fit. But they do:

Paul’s main point in 3:15-22, as NT Wright has argued ( Climax of the Covenant ), is that Yahweh’s program of forming a single seed, a single family, in Abraham, is not overturned by the law, even though the law introduces divisions between Jew and Gentile. The law is a tutor, a guardian, until the time the promise can be fulfilled. It does not annul the promise.

Some verbal links connect the B to the B’, the most striking of which is the word “angel.” The law was delivered through angels (3:19), and the gospel comes through Paul, whom the Galatians treat as an “angel, as Christ Jesus” (4:14). The law delivered through angels is contrasted with the gospel brought through Paul. Paul is implying that his ministry among the Galatians is achieving what the law could not do, but what the promise always promised – namely, the formation of the “one,” the single humanity united as Abraham’s seed. The law is delivered through angels; the gospel, and the Spirit, comes through “angelic” Paul.

Paul’s emphasis on the “flesh” in B’ is also significant. The word does not appear in the B section, but the association of the law with the flesh is clear elsewhere in Galatians (cf. 3:1-5). Paul comes in the weakness of flesh, not with boasting in flesh, which is the habit of Judaizers (6:13). The fact that Paul is a mediator of the Spirit who forms the “one” even while in the weakness of the flesh counts as evidence against the Law as the mediator of the Spirit or of the one. If the Galatians recognized the weak-fleshed Paul as a mediator of the Spirit, then it is a complete reversal for them to turn back to strong-fleshed Judaizers. If they received the Spirit and become the “one” through weak Paul, they ought not turn to the Law again.