[104] Comp. Heb. ii. 2-4; also Col. ii. 15: "(_scil._ God) having stripped off the principalities and powers"--the earlier forms of angelic mediation. The writer may refer on this latter passage to his note in the _Pulpit Commentary_, also to _The Expositor_, 1st series, x. 403-421.
The same thought is expressed, as Bishop Lightfoot aptly shows, by the figure of "the veil on Moses' face," which Paul employs with so much felicity in 2 Cor. iii. 13-18. In the external glory of the Sinaitic law-giving, as on the illuminated face of the Law-giver, there was a fading brightness, a visible lustre concealing its imperfect and transitory character. The theophanies of the Old Covenant were a magnificent veil, hiding while they revealed. Under the Law, _angels, Moses_ came between God and man. It was God who in His own grace conveyed the promise to justified Abraham (ver. 18).[105]
[105] But the title "mediator" belongs to _Christ_, given by Paul himself--the "one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim. ii. 5). (Comp. Heb. viii. 6; ix. 15; xii. 24.) Christ is so styled however under an aspect very different from that in which the word appears here. "There is one mediator," the Apostle writes in 1 Timothy, "_who gave Himself a ransom for all_," the one _atoning_ mediator. But Christ's manifestation of God was direct, as that of Moses was not. His Person does not come between men and God, like that of the Sinaitic mediator; it brings God into immediate contact with men. Moses acted for a distant God: Christ is Immanuel, _God with us_. On the _human_ side Christ is mediator (ἄνθρωπος Χριστὸς Ἰησοῦς); He acts for individual men with God. On the _Divine_ side, He is more than mediator, being God Himself.
The Law employed _a mediator_; the Promise did not (ver. 19.). With this contrast in our minds we approach ver. 20. On the other side of it (ver. 21), we find Law and Promise again in sharp antithesis. The same antithesis runs through the intervening sentence. The two clauses of ver. 20 belong to the Law and Promise respectively. "Now a mediator is not of one:" that is an axiom which holds good of _the Law_. "But God is one:" this glorious truth, the first article of Israel's creed, applies to _the Promise_. Where "a mediator" is necessary, unity is wanting,--not simply in a numerical, but in a moral sense, as matter of feeling and of aim. There are separate interests, discordant views to be consulted. This was true of Mosaism. Although in substance "holy and just and good," it was by no means purely Divine. It was not the absolute religion. Not only was it defective; it contained, in the judgement of Christ, positive elements of wrong, precepts given "for the hardness of men's hearts."[106] It largely consisted of "carnal ordinances, imposed till the time of rectification" (Heb. ix. 10). The theocratic legislation of the Pentateuch is lacking in the unity and consistency of a perfect revelation. Its disclosures of God were refracted in a manifest degree by the atmosphere through which they passed.
[106] Matt. xix. 8. Comp. Ezek. xx. 25.
"But God is one." Here again the unity is moral and essential--of character and action, rather than of number. In the Promise God spoke immediately and for Himself. There was no screen to intercept the view of faith, no go-between like Moses, with God on the mountain-top shrouded in thunder-clouds and the people terrified or wantoning far below. Of all differences between the Abrahamic and Judaic types of piety this was the chief. The man of Abraham's faith sees God in His unity. The Legalist gets his religion at second-hand, mixed with undivine elements. He believes that there is one God; but his hold upon the truth is formal. There is no unity, no simplicity of faith in his conception of God. He projects on to the Divine image confusing shadows of human imperfection.