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Title: The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle to the Galatians
Author: Findlay, G. G.
Language: English
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THE
EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS.
BY THE REV. PROFESSOR
G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.,
HEADINGLEY COLLEGE, LEEDS.
NEW YORK:
A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON,
51 EAST TENTH STREET, NEAR BROADWAY.
1893.
CONTENTS.
_THE PROLOGUE._
CHAPTER i. 1-10.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
THE ADDRESS 3
CHAPTER II.
THE SALUTATION 19
CHAPTER III.
THE ANATHEMA 34
_THE PERSONAL HISTORY._
CHAPTER i. 11-ii. 21.
CHAPTER IV.
PAUL'S GOSPEL REVEALED BY CHRIST 53
CHAPTER V.
PAUL'S DIVINE COMMISSION 68
CHAPTER VI.
PAUL AND THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH 83
CHAPTER VII.
PAUL AND THE FALSE BRETHREN 98
CHAPTER VIII.
PAUL AND THE THREE PILLARS 113
CHAPTER IX.
PAUL AND PETER AT ANTIOCH 129
CHAPTER X.
THE PRINCIPLES AT STAKE 146
_THE DOCTRINAL POLEMIC._
CHAPTER iii. 1-v. 12.
CHAPTER XI.
THE GALATIAN FOLLY 165
CHAPTER XII.
ABRAHAM'S BLESSING AND THE LAW'S CURSE 180
CHAPTER XIII.
THE COVENANT OF PROMISE 196
CHAPTER XIV.
THE DESIGN OF THE LAW 211
CHAPTER XV.
THE EMANCIPATED SONS OF GOD 227
CHAPTER XVI.
THE HEIR'S COMING OF AGE 242
CHAPTER XVII.
THE RETURN TO BONDAGE 257
CHAPTER XVIII.
PAUL'S ENTREATY 272
CHAPTER XIX.
THE STORY OF HAGAR 286
CHAPTER XX.
SHALL THE GALATIANS BE CIRCUMCISED? 302
CHAPTER XXI.
THE HINDERERS AND TROUBLERS 316
_THE ETHICAL APPLICATION._
CHAPTER v. 13-vi. 10.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE PERILS OF LIBERTY 333
CHAPTER XXIII.
CHRIST'S SPIRIT AND HUMAN FLESH 347
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE WORKS OF THE FLESH 361
CHAPTER XXV.
THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT 375
CHAPTER XXVI.
OUR BROTHER'S BURDEN AND OUR OWN 390
CHAPTER XXVII.
SOWING AND REAPING 405
_THE EPILOGUE._
CHAPTER vi. 11-18.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE FALSE AND THE TRUE GLORYING 421
CHAPTER XXIX.
RITUAL NOTHING: CHARACTER EVERYTHING 435
CHAPTER XXX.
THE BRAND OF JESUS 448
_THE PROLOGUE._
CHAPTER i. 1-10.
CHAPTER I.
_THE ADDRESS._
"Paul, an apostle (not from men, neither through man, but
through Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised Him from
the dead), and all the brethren which are with me, unto the
Churches of Galatia."[1]--GAL. i. 1, 2.
[1] The text used in this exposition is, with very few
exceptions, that of the Revised English Version, or its margin.
Antiquity has nothing to show more notable in its kind, or more
precious, than this letter of Paul to the Churches of Galatia. It
takes us back, in some respects nearer than any other document we
possess, to the beginnings of Christian theology and the Christian
Church. In it the spiritual consciousness of Christianity first
reveals itself in its distinctive character and its full strength,
free from the trammels of the past, realizing the advent of the new
kingdom of God that was founded in the death of Christ. It is the
voice of the Church testifying "God hath sent forth the Spirit of His
Son into our hearts." Buried for a thousand years under the weight
of the Catholic legalism, the teaching of this Epistle came to life
again in the rise of Protestantism. Martin Luther put it to his lips
as a trumpet to blow the reveillé of the Reformation. His famous
Commentary summoned enslaved Christendom to recover "the liberty
wherewith Christ hath made us free." Of all the great Reformer's
writings this was the widest in its influence and the dearest to
himself. For the spirit of Paul lived again in Luther, as in no other
since the Apostle's day. The Epistle to the Galatians is the charter
of Evangelical faith.
The historical criticism of the present century has brought this
writing once more to the front of the conflict of faith. Born in
controversy, it seems inevitably to be born for controversy. Its
interpretation forms the pivot of the most thoroughgoing recent
discussions touching the beginnings of Christian history and the
authenticity of the New Testament record. The Galatian Epistle is,
in fact, the key of New Testament Apologetics. Round it the Roman
and Corinthian Letters group themselves, forming together a solid,
impregnable quaternion, and supplying a fixed starting-point and
an indubitable test for the examination of the critical questions
belonging to the Apostolic age. Whatever else may be disputed, it
is agreed that there was an apostle Paul, who wrote these four
Epistles to certain Christian societies gathered out of heathenism,
communities numerous, widely scattered, and containing men of
advanced intelligence; and this within thirty years of the death
of Jesus Christ. Every critic must reckon with this fact. The most
sceptical criticism makes a respectful pause before our Epistle.
Hopeless of destroying its testimony, Rationalism treats it with
an even exaggerated deference; and seeks to extract evidence from
it against its companion witnesses amongst the New Testament
writings. This attempt, however misdirected, is a signal tribute
to the importance of the document, and to the force with which the
personality of the writer and the conditions of the time have
stamped themselves upon it. The deductions of the Baurian criticism
appear to us to rest on a narrow and arbitrary examination of
isolated passages; they spring from a mistaken _à priori_ view of the
historical situation. Granting however to these inferences, which
will meet us as we proceed, their utmost weight, they still leave
the testimony of Paul to the supernatural character of Christianity
substantially intact.
Of the four major Epistles, this one is superlatively characteristic
of its author. It is _Paulinissima Paulinarum_--most Pauline of
Pauline things. It is largely autobiographical; hence its peculiar
value. Reading it, we watch history in the making. We trace the
rise of the new religion in the typical man of the epoch. The
master-builder of the Apostolic Church stands before us, at the
crisis of his work. He lets us look into his heart, and learn the
secret of his power. We come to know the Apostle Paul as we know
scarcely any other of the world's great minds. We find in him a man
of the highest intellectual and spiritual powers, equally great in
passion and in action, as a thinker and a leader of men. But at every
step of our acquaintance the Apostle points us beyond himself; he
says, "It is not I: it is Christ that lives in me." If this Epistle
teaches us the greatness of Paul, it teaches us all the more the
Divine greatness of Jesus Christ, before whom that kingly intellect
and passionate heart bowed in absolute devotion.
The situation which the Epistle reveals and the personal references
in which it abounds are full of interest at every point. They furnish
quite essential data to the historian of the Early Church. We could
wish that the Apostle, telling us so much, had told us more. His
allusions, clear enough, we must suppose, to the first readers, have
lent themselves subsequently to very conflicting interpretations.
But as they stand, they are invaluable. The fragmentary narrative
of the Acts requires, especially in its earlier sections, all the
illustration that can be obtained from other sources. The conversion
of Paul, and the Council at Jerusalem, events of capital importance
for the history of Apostolic times, are thereby set in a light
certainly more complete and satisfactory than is furnished in Luke's
narrative, taken by itself. And Paul's references to the Judean
Church and its three "pillars," touch the crucial question of New
Testament criticism, namely that concerning the relation of the
Gentile Apostle to Jewish Christianity and the connection between
his theology and the teaching of Jesus. Our judgement respecting
the conflict between Peter and Paul at Antioch in particular will
determine our whole conception of the legalist controversy, and
consequently of the course of Church history during the first two
centuries. Around these cursory allusions has gathered a contest only
less momentous than that from which they sprung.
The personal and the doctrinal element are equally prominent in
this Epistle; and appear in a combination characteristic of the
writer. Paul's theology is the theology of experience. "It pleased
God," he says, "to reveal His Son in me" (ch. i. 16). His teaching
is cast in a psychological mould. It is largely a record of the
Apostle's spiritual history; it is the expression of a living,
inward process--a personal appropriation of Christ, and a growing
realization of the fulness of the Godhead in Him. The doctrine of
Paul was as far as possible removed from being the result of abstract
deduction, or any mere combination of data externally given. In his
individual consciousness, illuminated by the vision of Christ and
penetrated by the Spirit of God, he found his message for the world.
"We believe, and therefore speak. We have received the Spirit of
God, that we may know the things freely given us of God:" sentences
like these show us very clearly how the Apostle's doctrine formed
itself in his mind. His apprehension of Christ, above all of the
cross, was the focus, the creative and governing centre, of all his
thoughts concerning God and man, time and eternity. In the light of
this knowledge he read the Old Testament, he interpreted the earthly
life and teaching of Jesus. On the ground of this personal sense
of salvation he confronted Peter at Antioch; on the same ground he
appeals to the vacillating Galatians, sharers with himself in the
new life of the Spirit. Here lies the nerve of his argument in this
Epistle. The theory of the relation of the Law to the Abrahamic
promise developed in the third chapter, is the historical counterpart
of the relation of the legal to the evangelical consciousness, as he
had experienced the two states in turn within his own breast. The
spirit of Paul was a microcosm, in which the course of the world's
religious evolution was summed up, and brought to the knowledge of
itself.
The Apostle's influence over the minds of others was due in great
part to the extraordinary force with which he apprehended the facts
of his own spiritual nature. Through the depth and intensity of his
personal experience he touched the experience of his fellows, he
seized on those universal truths that are latent in the consciousness
of mankind, "by manifestation of the truth commending himself to
every man's conscience in the sight of God." But this knowledge
of the things of God was not the mere fruit of reflection and
self-searching; it was "the ministration of the Spirit." Paul did not
simply _know_ Christ; he was one with Christ, "joined to the Lord,
one spirit" with Him. He did not therefore speak out of the findings
of his own spirit; the absolute Spirit, the Spirit of truth and of
Christ, spoke in him. Truth, as he knew it, was the self-assertion of
a Divine life. And so this handful of old letters, broken and casual
in form, with their "rudeness of speech," their many obscurities,
their rabbinical logic, have stirred the thoughts of men and swayed
their lives with a power greater perhaps than belongs to any human
utterances, saving only those of the Divine Master.
The features of Paul's style show themselves here in their most
pronounced form. "The style is the man." And the whole man is in this
letter. Other Epistles bring into relief this or that quality of the
Apostle's disposition and of his manner as a writer; here all are
present. The subtlety and trenchant vigour of Pauline dialectic are
nowhere more conspicuous than in the discussion with Peter in ch. ii.
The discourse on Promise and Law in ch. iii. is a master-piece of
exposition, unsurpassed in its keenness of insight, breadth of view,
and skill of application. Such passages as ch. i. 15, 16; ii. 19, 20;
vi. 14, take us into the heart of the Apostle's teaching, and reveal
its mystical depth of intuition. Behind the masterful dialectician we
find the spiritual seer, the man of contemplation, whose fellowship
is with the eternal and unseen. And the emotional temperament of
the writer has left its impress on this Epistle not less distinctly
than his mental and spiritual gifts. The denunciations of ch. i.
6-10; ii. 4, 5; iv. 9; v. 7-12; vi. 12-14, burn with a concentrated
intensity of passion, a sublime and holy scorn against the enemies of
the cross, such as a nature like Paul's alone is capable of feeling.
Nor has the Apostle penned anything on the other hand more amiable
and touching, more winningly frank and tender in appeal, than the
entreaty of ch. iv. 11-20. His last sentence, in ch. vi. 17, is an
irresistible stroke of pathos. The ardour of his soul, his vivacity
of mind and quick sensibility, are apparent throughout. Those sudden
turns of thought and bursts of emotion that occur in all his Epistles
and so much perplex their interpreters, are especially numerous in
this. And yet we find that these interruptions are never allowed to
divert the writer from his purpose, nor to destroy the sequence of
his thought. They rather carry it forward with greater vehemence
along the chosen course, as storms will a strong and well-manned
ship. The Epistle is strictly a unity. It is written, as one might
say, at a single breath, as if under pressure and in stress of mind.
There is little of the amplitude of expression and the delight in
lingering over some favourite idea that characterize the later
Epistles. Nor is there any passage of sustained eloquence to compare
with those that are found in the Roman and Corinthian letters. The
business on which the Apostle writes is too urgent, his anxiety too
great, to allow of freedom and discursiveness of thought. Hence this
Epistle is to an unusual degree closely packed in matter, rapid in
movement, and severe in tone.
In its construction the Epistle exhibits an almost dramatic
character. It is full of action and animation. There is a gradual
unfolding of the subject, and a skilful combination of scene and
incident brought to bear on the solution of the crucial question.
The Apostle himself, the insidious Judaizers, and the wavering
Galatians,--these are the protagonists of the action; with Peter
and the Church at Jerusalem playing a secondary part, and Abraham
and Moses, Isaac and Ishmael, appearing in the distance. The first
Act conducts us rapidly from scene to scene till we behold Paul
labouring amongst the Gentiles, and the Churches of Judea listening
with approval to the reports of his success. The Council of Jerusalem
opens a new stage in the history. Now Gentile liberties are at stake;
but Titus' circumcision is successfully resisted, and Paul as the
Apostle of the Uncircumcised is acknowledged by "the pillars" as
their equal; and finally Peter, when he betrays the truth of the
Gospel at Antioch, is corrected by the Gentile Apostle. The third
chapter carries us away from the present conflict into the region
of first principles,--to the Abrahamic Covenant with its spiritual
blessing and world-wide promise, opposed by the condemning Mosaic
Law, an opposition finally resolved by the coming of Christ and the
gift of His Spirit of adoption. At this point the Apostle turns the
gathered force of his argument upon his readers, and grapples with
them front to front in the expostulation carried on from ch. iv. 8
to v. 12, in which the story of Hagar forms a telling episode. The
fifth and closing Act, extending to the middle of ch. vi., turns on
the antithesis of Flesh and Spirit, bringing home the contention to
the region of ethics, and exhibiting to the Galatians the practical
effect of their following the Pauline or the Judaistic leadership.
Paul and the Primitive Church; Judaism and Gentile-Christian
liberties; the Covenants of Promise and of Law; the circumcision or
non-circumcision of the Galatians; the dominion of Flesh or Spirit:
these are the contrasts through which the Epistle advances. Its
centre lies in the decisive question given in the _fourth_ of these
antitheses. If we were to fix it in a single point, ver. 2 of ch. v.
is the sentence we should choose:--
"Behold, I Paul say unto you,
If ye be circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing."
The above analysis may be reduced to the common threefold division,
followed in this exposition:--viz. (1) _Personal History_, ch. i.
11-ii. 21; (2) _Doctrinal Polemic_, ch. iii. 1-v. 12; (3) _Ethical
Application_, ch. v. 13-vi. 10.
The epistolary Introduction forms the _Prologue_, ch. i. 1-10; and an
_Epilogue_ is appended, by way of renewed warning and protestation,
followed by the concluding signature and benediction,--ch. vi. 11-18.
* * * * *
The Address occupies the first two verses of the Epistle.
I. On the one side is _the writer_: "Paul, an Apostle." In his
earliest Letters (to Thessalonica) the title is wanting; so also
in Philippians and Philemon. The last instance explains the other
two. To the Macedonian Churches Paul writes more in the style of
friendship than authority: "for love's sake he rather entreats." With
the Galatians it is different. He proceeds to define his apostleship
in terms that should leave no possible doubt respecting its character
and rights: "not from men," he adds, "nor through man; but through
Jesus Christ, and God the Father, that raised Him from the dead."
This reads like a contradiction of some statement made by Paul's
opposers. Had they insinuated that he _was_ "an apostle from men,"
that his office was derived, like their own, only from the mother
Church in Jerusalem? Such insinuations would very well serve their
purpose; and if they were made, Paul would be sure not to lose a
moment in meeting them.
The word _apostle_ had a certain latitude of meaning.[2] It was
already, there is reason to believe, a term of Jewish official
usage when our Lord applied it to His chosen Twelve. It signified
a _delegate_ or _envoy_, accredited by some public authority, and
charged with a special message. We can understand therefore its
application to the emissaries of particular Churches--of Jerusalem
or Antioch, for example--despatched as their messengers to other
Churches, or with a general commission to proclaim the Gospel. The
recently discovered "Teaching of the Apostles" shows that this use
of the title continued in Jewish-Christian circles to the end of the
first century, alongside of the restricted and higher use. The lower
apostleship belonged to Paul in common with Barnabas and Silas and
many others.
[2] Compare Acts xiv. 4, 14 (_Barnabas and Paul_); 1 Thess. ii. 6
(_Paul and his comrades_); Rom. xvi. 7 (_Andronicus and Junias_);
2 Cor. viii. 23 (_Titus and others_, "apostles of the churches");
2 Cor. xi. 13 ("false apostles": _Judean emissaries_); also Rev.
ii. 2; Heb. iii. 1; John xiii. 16. On the N.T. use of _apostle_,
see Lightfoot's Galatians, pp. 92-101; but especially Huxtable's
_Dissertation_ in the Pulpit Commentary (Galatians), pp.
xxiii.-l., the most satisfactory elucidation of the subject we
have met with. Prebendary Huxtable however presses his argument
too far, when he insists that St. Paul held his higher commission
entirely in abeyance until the crisis of the Judaic controversy.
In the earlier period of his ministry, the Apostle was seemingly
content to rank in public estimation with his companions in the
Gentile mission. But a time came when he was compelled to arrogate to
himself the higher dignity. His right thereto was acknowledged at
the memorable conference in Jerusalem by the leaders of the Jewish
Church. So we gather from the language of ch. ii. 7-9. But the full
exercise of his authority was reserved for the present emergency,
when all his energy and influence were required to stem the tide of
the Judaistic reaction. We can well imagine that Paul "gentle in the
midst" of his flock and "not seeking to be of weight" (1 Thess. ii.
6, 7), had hitherto said as little as need be on the subject of his
official rights. His modesty had exposed him to misrepresentations
both in Corinth and in Galatia. He will "have" these people "to
know" that his gospel is in the strictest sense Divine, and that he
received his commission, as certainly as any of the Twelve, from the
lips of Jesus Christ Himself (ver. 11).
"Not from men" excludes human derivation; "not through man," human
intervention in the conferment of Paul's office. The singular number
(_man_) replaces the plural in the latter phrase, because it stands
immediately opposed to "Jesus Christ" (a striking witness this to His
Divinity). The second clause carries the negation farther than the
first; for a call from God may be, and commonly is, imposed by human
hands. There are, says Jerome, four kinds of Christian ministers:
first, those sent neither from men nor through man, like the prophets
of old time and the Apostles; secondly, those who are from God, but
through man, as it is with their legitimate successors; thirdly,
those who are from men, but not from God, as when one is ordained
through mere human favour and flattery; the fourth class consists of
such as have their call neither from God nor man, but wholly from
themselves, as with false prophets and the false apostles of whom
Paul speaks. His vocation, the Apostle declares, was superhuman,
alike in its origin and in the channel by which it was conveyed. It
was no voice of man that summoned Saul of Tarsus from the ranks of
the enemies to those of the servants of Christ, and gave him the
message he proclaimed. Damascus and Jerusalem in turn acknowledged
the grace given unto him; Antioch had sent him forth on her behalf
to the regions beyond: but he was conscious of a call anterior to
all this, and that admitted of no earthly validation. "Am I not an
apostle?" he exclaims, "have I not seen Jesus our Lord?" (1 Cor. ix.
1). "Truly the signs of the Apostle were wrought in him," both in
the miraculous powers attending his office, and in those moral and
spiritual qualities of a minister of God in which he was inferior to
none.[3] For the exercise of his ministry he was responsible neither
to "those of repute" at Jerusalem, nor to his censurers at Corinth;
but to Christ who had bestowed it (1 Cor. iv. 3, 4).
[3] 1 Cor. xv. 10; 2 Cor. iv. 2; vi. 3-10; xi. 5, 16-xii. 13.
The call of the Apostle proceeded also from "God the Father, who
raised Jesus Christ from the dead." Christ was in this act the
mediator, declaring the Supreme will. In other places, more briefly,
he styles himself "Apostle by the will of God." His appointment
took place by a Divine intervention, in which the ordinary sequence
of events was broken through. Long after the Saviour in His bodily
presence had ascended to heaven, when in the order of nature it was
impossible that another Apostle should be elected, and when the
administration of His Church had been for several years carried on
by human hands, He appeared once more on earth for the purpose of
making this man His "minister and witness;" He appeared in the name
of "the Father, who had raised Him from the dead." This interposition
gave to Paul's ministry an exceptional character. While the mode of
his election was in one aspect humbling, and put him in the position
of "the untimely one," the "least of the Apostles," whose appearance
in that capacity was unlooked for and necessarily open to suspicion;
on the other hand, it was glorious and exalting, since it so richly
displayed the Divine mercy and the transforming power of grace.
But why does he say, _who raised Him from the dead_? Because it was
the _risen Jesus_ that he saw, and that he was conscious of seeing
in the moment of the vision. The revelation that arrested him before
Damascus, in the same moment convinced him that Jesus was risen, and
that he himself was called to be His servant. These two convictions
were inseparably linked in Paul's recollections. As surely as God
the Father had raised His Son Jesus from the dead and given Him
glory, so surely had the glorified Jesus revealed Himself to Saul
his persecutor to make him His Apostle. He was, not less truly than
Peter or John, a witness of His resurrection. The message of the
Resurrection was the burden of the Apostleship.
He adds, "and all the brethren which are with me." For it was Paul's
custom to associate with himself in these official letters his
fellow-labourers, present at the time. From this expression we gather
that he was attended just now by a considerable band of companions,
such as we find enumerated in Acts xx. 2-6, attending him on his
journey from Ephesus to Corinth during the third missionary tour.
This circumstance has some bearing on the date of the letter. Bishop
Lightfoot (in his Commentary) shows reason for believing that it was
written, not from Ephesus as commonly supposed, but at a somewhat
later time, from _Macedonia_. It is connected by numerous and close
links of internal association with the Epistle to the Romans, which
on this supposition speedily followed, and with 2 Corinthians,
immediately preceding it. And the allusion of the text, though of
no decisive weight taken by itself, goes to support this reasoning.
Upon this hypothesis, our Epistle was composed in Macedonia,
during the autumn of 57 (or possibly, 58) A.D. The emotion which
surcharges 2 Corinthians runs over into Galatians: while the theology
which labours for expression in Galatians finds ampler and calmer
development in Romans.
II. Of _the readers_, "the churches of Galatia," it is not necessary
to say much at present. The character of the Galatians, and the
condition of their Churches, will speak for themselves as we proceed.
_Galatian_ is equivalent to _Gaul_, or _Kelt_. This people was a
detached fragment of the great Western-European race, which forms the
basis of our own Irish and West-British populations, as well as of
the French nationality. They had conquered for themselves a home in
the north of Asia Minor during the Gaulish invasion that poured over
South-eastern Europe and into the Asiatic peninsula some three and
a half centuries before. Here the Gallic intruders stubbornly held
their ground; and only succumbed to the irresistible power of Rome.
Defeated by the Consul Manlius in 189 B.C., the Galatians retained
their autonomy, under the rule of native princes, until in the year
25 B.C., on the death of Amyntas, the country was made a province of
the Empire. The people maintained their distinctive character and
speech despite these changes. At the same time they readily acquired
Greek culture, and were by no means barbarians; indeed they were
noted for their intelligence. In religion they seem to have largely
imbibed the Phrygian idolatry of the earlier inhabitants.
The Roman Government had annexed to Galatia certain districts
lying to the south, in which were situated most of the cities
visited by Paul and Barnabas in their first missionary tour. This
has led some scholars to surmise that Paul's "Galatians" were
really Pisidians and Lycaonians, the people of Derbe, Lystra, and
Pisidian Antioch. But this is improbable. The inhabitants of these
regions were never called Galatians in common speech; and Luke
distinguishes "the Galatic country" quite clearly from its southern
borderlands. Besides, the Epistle contains no allusions, such as we
should expect in the case supposed, to the Apostle's earlier and
memorable associations with these cities of the South. Elsewhere he
mentions them by name (2 Tim. iii. 11); and why not here, if he were
addressing this circle of Churches?
The Acts of the Apostles relates nothing of Paul's sojourn in
Galatia, beyond the fact that he twice "passed through the Galatic
country" (Acts xvi. 6; xviii. 23), on the first occasion during the
second missionary journey, in travelling north and then westwards
from Pisidia; the second time, on his way from Antioch to Ephesus, in
the course of the third tour. Galatia lay outside the main line of
Paul's evangelistic career, as the historian of the Acts describes
it, outside the Apostle's own design, as it would appear from ch. iv.
13. In the first instance Galatia follows (in the order of the Acts),
in the second precedes Phrygia, a change which seems to indicate
some new importance accruing to this region: the further clause in
Acts xviii. 23, "strengthening all the disciples," shows that the
writer was aware that by this time a number of Christian societies
were in existence in this neighbourhood.
No _city_ is mentioned in the address, but the _country_ of Galatia
only--the single example of the kind in Paul's Epistles. The
Galatians were countryfolk rather than townsfolk. And the Church
seems to have spread over the district at large, without gathering
itself into any one centre, such as the Apostle had occupied in other
parts of his Gentile field.
Still more significant is the curtness of this designation. Paul does
not say, "To the Churches _of God_ in Galatia," or "to the saints
and faithful brethren in Christ," as in other Epistles. He is in no
mood for compliments. These Galatians are, he fears, "removing from
God who had called them" (ver. 6). He stands in doubt of them. It is
a question whether they are now, or will long continue, "Churches
of God" at all. He would gladly commend them if he could; but he
must instead begin with reproaches. And yet we shall find that, as
the Apostle proceeds, his sternness gradually relaxes. He remembers
that these "foolish Galatians" are his "children," once ardently
attached to him (ch. iv. 12-20). His heart yearns towards them; he
travails over them in birth again. Surely they will not forsake
him, and renounce the gospel of whose blessings they had enjoyed so
rich an experience (ch. iii. 3; v. 10). He calls them "brethren"
once and again; and with this kindly word, holding out the hand of
forgiveness, he concludes the letter.
CHAPTER II.
_THE SALUTATION._
"Grace to you and peace from God the Father, and our Lord Jesus
Christ, who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us
out of this present evil world, according to the will of our God
and Father: to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen."--GAL.
i. 3-5.
The greetings and benedictions of the Apostolic Letters deserve
more attention from us than they sometimes receive. We are apt to
pass over them as if they were a kind of pious formality, like the
conventional phrases of our own epistles. But to treat them in such
fashion is to do injustice to the seriousness and sincerity of Holy
Scripture. This salutation of "Grace and Peace" comes from Paul's
very heart. It breathes the essence of his gospel.
This formula appears to be of the Apostle's coining. Other writers,
we may believe, borrowed it from him. _Grace_ represents the common
Greek salutation,--_joy to you_, χαίρειν changing to the kindred
χάρις; while the more religious _peace_ of the Hebrew, so often heard
from the lips of Jesus, remains unaltered, only receiving from the
New Covenant a tenderer significance. It is as though East and West,
the old world and the new, met here and joined their voices to bless
the Church and people of Jesus Christ.
_Grace_ is the sum of all blessing bestowed by God; _peace_, in its
wide Hebraic range of meaning, the sum of all blessing experienced
by man. _Grace_ is the Father's goodwill and bounty in Christ to
His undeserving children; _peace_, the rest and reconcilement, the
recovered health and gladness of the child brought home to the
Father's house, dwelling in the light of his Father's face. _Grace_
is the fountain of redeeming love; _peace_ is the "river of life
proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb," that flows calm
and deep through each believing soul, the river whose "streams make
glad the city of God."
What could a pastor wish better for his people, or friend for the
friend he loves most, than this double blessing? Paul's letters are
perfumed with its fragrance. Open them where you will, they are
breathing out, "Grace to you and peace." Paul has hard things to
write in this Epistle, sorrowful complaints to make, grievous errors
to correct; but still with "Grace and peace" he begins, and with
"Peace and grace" he will end! And so this stern and reproachful
letter to these "foolish Galatians" is all embalmed and folded up in
grace and peace. That is the way to "be angry and sin not." So mercy
rejoices over judgement.
These two benedictions, we must remember, go together. Peace comes
through grace. The proud heart never knows peace; it will not yield
to God the glory of His grace. It scorns to be a debtor, even to Him.
The proud man stands upon his rights, upon his merits. And he will
have them; for God is just. But peace is not amongst them. No sinful
child of man deserves that. Is there wrong between your soul and God,
iniquity hidden in the heart? Till that wrong is confessed, till
you submit to the Almighty and your spirit bows at the Redeemer's
cross, what hast thou to do with peace? No peace in this world, or
in any world, for him who will not be at peace with God. "When I kept
silence," so the ancient confession runs (Ps. xxxii. 3-5), "my bones
waxed old through my moaning all the day long"--that is why many a
man is old before his time! because of this continual inward chafing,
this secret, miserable war of the heart against God. "Day and night
Thy hand was heavy upon me; my moisture was turned into the drought
of summer"--the soul withered like grass, all the freshness and pure
delight of life wasted and perishing under the steady, unrelenting
heat of the Divine displeasure. "Then I said"--I could bear it no
longer--"I said, I will confess my transgression unto the Lord; and
Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin." And then peace came to the
weary soul. The bitterness and hardness of life were gone; the heart
was young again. The man was new born, a child of God.
But while Paul gives this salutation to all his Churches, his
greeting is extended and qualified here in a peculiar manner. The
Galatians were falling away from faith in Christ to Jewish ritualism.
He does not therefore wish them "Grace and peace" in a general way,
or as objects to be sought from any quarter or by any means that
they might choose; but only "from God our Father, and our Lord Jesus
Christ, who gave Himself for our sins." Here is already a note of
warning and a tacit contradiction of much that they were tempted to
believe. It would have been a mockery for the Apostle to desire for
these fickle Galatians grace and peace on other terms. As at Corinth,
so in Galatia, he is "determined to know nothing save Jesus Christ
and Him crucified." Above the puerilities of their Jewish ritual,
above the pettiness of their wrangling factions, he directs his
readers' gaze once more to the sacrifice of Calvary and the sublime
purpose of God which it reveals.
Do _we_ not need to be recalled to the same sight? We live in a
distracted and distracting age. Even without positive unbelief, the
cross is too frequently thrust out of view by the hurry and press of
modern life. Nay, in the Church itself is it not in danger of being
practically set on one side, amidst the throng of competing interests
which solicit, and many of them justly solicit, our attention? We
visit Calvary too seldom. We do not haunt in our thoughts the sacred
spot, and linger on this theme, as the old saints did. We fail to
attain "the fellowship of Christ's sufferings;" and while the cross
is outwardly exalted, its inward meaning is perhaps but faintly
realised. "Tell us something new," they say; "that story of the
cross, that evangelical doctrine of yours we have heard it so often,
we know it all so well!" If men are saying this, if the cross of
Christ is made of none effect, its message staled by repetition, we
must be strangely at fault either in the hearing or the telling. Ah,
if we knew the cross of Christ, it would crucify us; it would possess
our being. Its supremacy can never be taken from it. That cross is
still the centre of the world's hope, the pillar of salvation. Let
the Church lose her hold of it, and she loses everything. She has no
longer any reason to exist.
I. So the Apostle's greeting invites his readers to contemplate anew
_the Divine gift bestowed upon sinful men_. It invokes blessing upon
them "from our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins."
To see this gift in its greatness, let us go a little farther back;
let us consider who the Christ is that thus "gives Himself." He is,
we are taught, the almoner of all the Divine bounties. He is not
the object alone, but the depositary and dispenser of the Father's
good pleasure to all worlds and all creatures. Creation is rooted
in "the Son of God's love" (Col. i. 15-18). Universal life has its
fountain in "the Only-begotten, which is in the bosom of the Father."
The light that dispelled the weltering gloom of chaos, the more
wondrous light that shone in the dawn of human reason, came from this
"outbeaming of the Father's glory." Countless gifts had He, "the
life of men, the Word that was from the beginning," bestowed on a
world that knew Him not. Upon the chosen race, the people whom on the
world's behalf he formed for Himself, He showered His blessings. He
had given them promise and law, prophet and priest and king, gifts of
faith and hope, holy obedience and brave patience and deep wisdom and
prophetic fire and heavenly rapture; and His gifts to them have come
through them to us, "partakers with them of the root and fatness of
the olive tree."
But now, to crown all, _He gave Himself_! "The Word became flesh."
The Son of God planted Himself into the stock of human life, made
Himself over to mankind; He became the Son of man. So in the fulness
of time came the fulness of blessing. Earlier bestowments were
instalments and prophecies of this; later gifts are its outcome and
its application. What could He have done more than this? What could
the Infinite God do more, even for the most worthy, than He has done
for us in "sending His Son, the Only-begotten, that we might live
through Him!" Giving us Him, surely He will give us grace and peace.
And if our Lord Jesus Christ "gave Himself," is not that sufficient?
What could Jewish ritual and circumcision add to this "fulness of the
Godhead?" Why hunt after the shadows, when one has the substance?
Such were the questions which the Apostle has to ask his Judaizing
readers. And what, pray, do _we_ want with modern Ritualism, and
its scenic apparatus, and its priestly offices? Are these things
designed to eke out the insufficiency of Christ? Will they recommend
Him better than His own gospel and the pure influence of His Spirit
avail to do in these latter days? Or has modern thought, to be sure,
and the progress of the 19th century carried us beyond Jesus Christ,
and created spiritual wants for which He has no supply? Paul at least
had no anticipation of this failure. All the need of hungry human
hearts and searching minds and sorrowing spirits, to the world's
latest ages, the God of Paul, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is
able to supply in Him. "We are complete in Him,"--if we but knew our
completeness. The most advanced thinkers of the age will still find
Jesus Christ in advance of them. Those who draw the most largely from
His fulness, leave its depths unsounded. There are resources stored
for the times to come in the revelation of Christ, which our age is
too slight, too hasty of thought, to comprehend. We are straitened in
ourselves; never in Him.
From this supreme gift we can argue down to the humblest necessities,
the commonest trials of our daily lot. It adapts itself to the small
anxieties of a struggling household, equally with the largest demands
of our exacting age. "Thou hast given us Thy Son," says some one,
"and wilt Thou not give us bread?" We have a generous Lord. His
only complaint is that we do not ask enough. "Ye are My friends,"
He says: "I have given My life for you. Ask what ye will, and it
shall be done unto you." Giving us Himself, He has given us all
things. Abraham and Moses, David and Isaiah, "Paul and Apollos and
Cephas--yea the world itself, life and death, things present and to
come--all are ours; and we are Christ's and Christ is God's" (1 Cor.
iii. 22, 23). Such is the chain of blessing that hangs on this single
gift.
Great as the gift is, it is not greater than our need. Wanting a
Divine Son of man, human life remains a baffled aspiration, a pathway
leading to no goal. Lacking Him, the race is incomplete, a body
without its head, a flock that has no master. By the coming of Christ
in the flesh human life finds its ideal realized; its haunting dream
of a Divine helper and leader in the midst of men, of a spiritual
and immortal perfection brought within its reach, has attained
fulfilment. "God hath raised up a horn of salvation for us in the
house of His servant David; as He spake by the mouth of His holy
prophets, which have been since the world began." Jacob's vision has
come true. There is the golden ladder, with its foot resting on the
cold, stony earth, and its top on heaven's starry platform, with its
angels ascending and descending through the darkness; and you may
climb its steps, high as you will! So humanity receives its crown of
life. Heaven and earth are linked, God and man reunited in the person
of Jesus Christ.
But Paul will not suffer us to linger at Bethlehem. He hastens on
to Calvary. The Atonement, not the Incarnation, is in his view the
centre of Christianity. To the cross of Jesus, rather than to His
cradle, he attaches our salvation. "Jesus Christ gave Himself"--what
for, and in what way? What was the errand that brought Him here,
in such a guise, and at such a time? Was it to meet our _need_, to
fulfil our human aspirations, to crown the moral edifice, to lead
the race onward to the goal of its development? Yes--ultimately, and
in the final issue, for "as many as receive Him"; it was to "present
every man perfect in Christ." But that was not the primary object of
His coming, of such a coming. Happy for us indeed, and for Him, if it
could have been so. To come to a world waiting for Him, hearkening
for the cry, "Behold thy God, O Israel," would have been a pleasant
and a fitting thing. But to find Himself rejected by His own, to be
spit upon, to hear the multitude shout, "Away with Him!" was this
the welcome that He looked for? Yea surely, nothing else but this.
For He gave Himself _for our sins_. He came to a world steeped in
wickedness, seething with rebellion against God, hating Him because
it hated the Father that sent Him, sure to say as soon as it saw Him,
"We will not have this man to reign over us." Not therefore by way
of incarnation and revelation alone, as it might have been for an
innocent race; but by way of _sacrifice_, as a victim on the altar of
expiation, "a lamb led to the slaughter," He gave Himself up for us
all. "To deliver us from an evil world," says the Apostle; to mend
a faulty and imperfect world, something less and other would have
sufficed.
Extreme diseases call for extreme remedies. The case with which
our good Physician had to deal was a desperate one. The world was
sick at heart; its moral nature rotting to the core. Human life was
shattered to its foundation. If it was to be saved, if the race was
to escape perdition, the fabric must be reconstructed upon another
basis, on the ground of a new righteousness, outside ourselves and
yet akin to us, near enough to take hold of us and grow into us,
which should draw to itself the broken elements of human life, and
as a vital organic force refashion them, "creating" men "anew in
Christ Jesus"--a righteousness availing before God, and in its depth
and width sufficient to bear a world's weight. Such a new foundation
Jesus Christ has laid in His death. "He laid down His life for us,"
the Shepherd for the sheep, the Friend for His perishing friends,
the Physician for sufferers who had no other remedy. It had come to
this,--either He must die, or we must die for ever. Such was the
sentence of the All-wise Judge; on that judgement the Redeemer acted.
"His judgements are a great deep"; and in this sentence there are
depths of mystery into which we tremble to look, "secret things that
belong unto the Lord our God." But so it was. There was no way but
this, no moral possibility of saving the world, and yet saving Him
the accursed death.
If there had been, would not the Almighty Father have found it out?
would He not have "taken away the cup" from those white, quivering
lips? No; He must _die_. He must consent to be "made sin, made a
curse" for us. He must humble His stainless innocence, humble His
glorious Godhead down to the dust of death. He must die, at the hands
of the men He created and loved, with the horror of the world's sin
fastened on Him; die under a blackened heaven, under the averting of
the Father's face. And He did it. He said, "Father, Thy will be done.
Smite the Shepherd; but let the sheep escape." So He "gave Himself
for our sins."
Ah, it was no easy march, no holiday pageant, the coming of the Son
of God into this world of ours. He "came to _save sinners_." Not to
help good men--this were a grateful task; but to redeem bad men--the
hardest work in God's universe. It tasked the strength and the
devotion of the Son of God. Witness Gethsemane. And it will cost His
Church something, more haply than we dream of now, if the work of
the Redeemer is to be made effectual, and "the travail of His soul
satisfied."
In pity and in sorrow was that gift bestowed; in deep humility and
sorrow must it be accepted. It is a very humbling thing to "receive
the atonement," to be made righteous on such terms as these. A man
who has done well, can with satisfaction accept the help given him
to do better. But to know that one has done very ill, to stand in
the sight of God and truth condemned, marked with the disgrace that
the crucifixion of the Son of God has branded on our human nature,
with every stain of sin in ourselves revealed in the light of His
sacrifice, is a sore abasement. When one has been compelled to cry
out, "Lord, save; or I perish!" he has not much left to plume himself
upon. There was Saul himself, a perfect moralist, "blameless in the
righteousness of the law." Yet he must confess, "How to perform that
which is good I find not. In me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no
good thing. Wretch that I am, who shall deliver me?" Was not this
mortifying to the proud young Pharisee, the man of strict conscience
and high-souled moral endeavour? It was like death. And whoever has
with sincerity made the same attempt to attain in the strength of his
will to a true virtue, has tasted of this bitterness.
This however is what many cannot understand. The proud heart says,
"No; I will not stoop to that. I have my faults, my defects and
errors, not a few. But as for what you call _sin_, as for guilt and
inborn depravity, I am not going to tax myself with anything of the
kind. Leave me a little self-respect." So with the whole herd of
the self-complacent, half-religious Laodiceans. Once a week they
confess themselves "miserable sinners," but their sins against God
never yet cost them one half hour of misery. And Paul's "gospel is
hid to them." If they read this Epistle, they cannot tell what it
is all about; why Paul makes so much ado, why these thunderings
of judgement, these cries of indignation, these beseechings and
protestings and redoubled arguments,--all because a parcel of
foolish Galatians wanted to play at being Jews! They are inclined
to think with Festus, that this good Paul was a little beside
himself. Alas! to such men, content with the world's good opinion
and their own, the death of Christ is made of none effect. Its moral
grandeur, its infinite pathos, is lost upon them. They pay it a
conventional respect, but as for _believing_ in it, as for making
it their own, and dying with Christ to live in Him--they have no
idea what it means. That, they will tell you, is "mysticism," and
they are practical men of the world. They have never gone out of
themselves, never discovered their moral insufficiency. These are
they of whom Jesus said, "The publicans and the harlots go into the
kingdom of God before you." It is our human independence, our moral
self-conceit, that robs us of the Divine bounty. How should God give
His righteousness to men so well furnished with their own? "Blessed"
then "are the poor in spirit"; blessed are the broken in heart--poor
enough, broken enough, bankrupt enough to stoop to a Saviour "who
gave Himself for our sins."
II. Sinful men have made an _evil world_. The world, as Paul knew
it, was evil indeed. "The existing evil age," he says, the world as
it then was, in contrast with the glory of the perfected Messianic
kingdom.
This was a leading distinction of the rabbinical schools; and
the writers of the New Testament adopt it, with the necessary
modification, that "the coming age," in their view, commences with
the _Parousia_, the full advent of the Messiah King.[4] The period
that intervenes since His first appearing is transitional, belonging
to both eras. It is the conclusion of "this world,"[5] to which it
appertains in its outward and material relations;[6] but under the
perishing form of the present there lies hidden for the Christian
believer the seed of immortality, "the earnest" of his future
and complete inheritance.[7] Hence the different and seemingly
contradictory ways in which Scripture speaks of the world that now is.
[4] 2 Thess. i. 5-7; 2 Tim. iv. 18; Heb. x. 12, 13; 1 Pet. v. 10.
[5] 1 Cor. x. 11; Heb. ix. 26.
[6] 1 Cor. vii. 31; 1 John ii. 17.
[7] Rom. viii. 18; Eph. i. 13, 14.
To Paul at this time the world wore its darkest aspect. There is a
touching emphasis in the order of this clause. "The present world,
_evil as it is_:" the words are a sigh for deliverance. The Epistles
to Corinth show us how the world just now was using the Apostle.
The wonder is that one man could bear so much. "We are made as the
filth of the world," he says, "the offscouring of all things."[8] So
the world treated its greatest living benefactor. And as for his
Master--"the princes of this world crucified the Lord of glory."
Yes, it was a bad old world, that in which Paul and the Galatians
lived--false, licentious, cruel. And that "evil world" still exists.
[8] 1 Cor. iv. 9-13; xv. 30, 32; 2 Cor. vi. 4, 10; xi. 16, 33.
True, the world, as we know it, is vastly better than that of Paul's
day. Not in vain have Apostles taught, and martyrs bled, and the
Church of Christ witnessed and toiled through so many ages. "Other
men have laboured; we enter into their labours." An English home
of to-day is the flower of the centuries. To those cradled in its
pure affections, endowed with health and honourable work and refined
tastes, the world must be, and was meant to be, in many aspects a
bright and pleasant world. Surely the most sorrowful have known days
in which the sky was all sunshine and the very air alive with joy,
when the world looked as when it came forth fresh from its Creator's
hand, "and behold, it was very good." There is nothing in the Bible,
nothing in the spirit of true religion to damp the pure joy of such
days as these. But there are "the days of darkness;" and they are
many. The Serpent has crept into our Paradise. Death breathes on it
his fatal blast.
And when we look outside the sheltered circles of home-life and
Christian brotherhood, what a sea of misery spreads around us. How
limited and partial is the influence of religion. What a mass of
unbelief and godlessness surges up to the doors of our sanctuaries.
What appalling depths of iniquity exist in modern society, under the
brilliant surface of our material civilization. And however far the
dominance of sin in human society may be broken--as, please God, it
shall be broken, still evil is likely to remain in many tempting
and perilous forms until the world is burnt to ashes in the fires
of the Last Judgement. Is it not an evil world, where every morning
newspaper serves up to us its miserable tale of disaster and of
crime, where the Almighty's name is "all the day blasphemed," and
every night drunkenness holds its horrid revels and the daughters
of shame walk the city streets, where great Christian empires tax
the poor man's bread and make his life bitter to maintain their huge
standing armies and their cruel engines of war, and where, in this
happy England and its cities teeming with wealth, there are thousands
of patient, honest working women, whose life under the fierce stress
of competition is a veritable slavery, a squalid, dreary struggle
just to keep hunger from the door? Ay, it is a world so evil that no
good and right-thinking man who knows it, would care to live in it
for a single day, but for the hope of helping to make it better.
Now it was the purpose of Jesus Christ, that for those who believe
in Him this world's evil should be brought absolutely to an end. He
promises a full deliverance from all that tempts and afflicts us
here. With sin, the root of evil, removed, its bitter fruits at last
will disappear. We shall rise to the life immortal. We shall attain
our perfect consummation and bliss both in body and soul. Kept from
the evil of the world while they remain in it, enabled by His grace
to witness and contend against it, Christ's servants shall then be
lifted clean out for it of ever. "Father, I will," prayed Jesus,
"that they also whom Thou hast given Me, may be with Me where I am."
To that final salvation, accomplished in the redemption of our body
and the setting up of Christ's heavenly kingdom, the Apostle's words
look forward: "that He might deliver us _out of_ this present evil
world." This was the splendid hope which Paul offered to the dying
and despairing world of his day. The Galatians were persuaded of it
and embraced it; he entreats them not to let it go.
The self-sacrifice of Christ, and the deliverance it brings, are
both, the Apostle concludes, "according to the will of God, even our
Father." The wisdom and might of the Eternal are pledged to the work
of human redemption. The cross of Jesus Christ is the manifesto of
Infinite Love. Let him therefore who rejects it, know against Whom he
is contending. Let him who perverts and falsifies it, know with what
he is trifling. He who receives and obeys it, may rest assured that
all things are working for his good. For all things are in the hands
of our God and Father; "to Whom," let us say with Paul, "be glory for
ever. Amen."
CHAPTER III.
_THE ANATHEMA._
"I marvel that ye are so quickly removing from him that called
you in the grace of Christ unto a different gospel; which is
not another _gospel_: only there are some that trouble you, and
would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel
from heaven, should preach unto you any gospel other than that
which we preached unto you, let him be anathema. As we have said
before, so say I now again, If any man preacheth unto you any
gospel other than that which ye received, let him be anathema.
For am I now persuading men, or God? or am I seeking to please
men? if I were still pleasing men, I should not be a servant of
Christ."--GAL. i. 6-10.
After the Salutation in Paul's Epistles comes the Thanksgiving.
Ἐυχαριστῶ or Εὐλογητός--these are the words we expect first to meet.
Even in writing to Corinth, where there was so much to censure and
deplore, he begins, "I give thanks to my God always for you." This
letter deviates from the Apostle's devout and happy usage. Not "I
give thanks," but "I marvel;" not blessing, but _anathema_ is coming
from his lips: a surprise that jars all the more upon one's ears,
because it follows on the sublime doxology of the preceding verse.
"I marvel to see you so quickly falling away to another gospel....
But if any one preach unto you any gospel other than that ye
received--ay, though it were ourselves, or an angel from heaven--I
have said once, and I say again, LET HIM BE ANATHEMA."
These words were well calculated to startle the Galatians out of
their levity. They are like a lightning-flash which shows one to be
standing on the edge of a precipice. We see at once the infinite
seriousness of the Judaic controversy, the profound gulf that lies
between Paul and his opposers. He is for open war. He is in haste
to fling his gage of defiance against these enemies of the cross.
With all his tact and management, his readiness to consult the
susceptibilities and accommodate the scruples of sincere consciences,
the Apostle can find no room for conciliation here. He knows the
sort of men he has to deal with. He perceives that the whole truth
of the Gospel is at stake. Not circumstantials, but essentials; not
his personal authority, but the honour of Christ, the doctrine of the
cross, is involved in this defection. He must speak plainly; he must
act strongly, and at once; or the cause of the Gospel is lost. "If
I continued any longer to please men," he says, "I should not be a
servant of Christ." To stand on terms with such opponents, to palter
with this "other gospel," would be treason against Him. There is but
one tribunal at which this quarrel can be decided. To Him "who had
called" the Galatian believers "in Christ's grace," who by the same
grace had called the Apostle to His service and given him the message
he had preached to them--to _God_ he appeals. In His name, and by the
authority conferred upon him and for which he must give account, he
pronounces these troublers "anathema." They are enemies of Christ, by
their treachery excluded from His kingdom.
However unwelcome, however severe the course the Apostle takes,
he has no alternative. "For now," he cries, "is it _men_ that I
persuade, or _God_?" He must do his duty, let who will condemn.
Paul was ready to go all lengths in pleasing men in consistence
with loyalty to Christ, where he could do it "for their good, unto
edification." But if their approval clashed with God's, then it
became "a very small thing:"[9] he did not heed it one jot. Such is
the temper of mind which the Epistles to Corinth disclose in Paul
at this juncture. In the same spirit he indites these trenchant and
displeasing words.
[9] 1 Cor. iv. 3, 4; 2 Cor. v. 9-12; xii. 19.
With a heavy heart Paul has taken up his pen. If we judge rightly
of the date of this letter, he had just passed through the darkest
hour of his experience, when not his life alone, but the fate of his
Gentile mission hung in the balance. His expulsion from Ephesus,
coming at the same time as the Corinthian revolt, and followed by a
prostrating attack of sickness, had shaken his soul to its depths.
Never had his heart been so torn with anxiety, never had he felt
himself so beaten down and discomfited, as on that melancholy journey
from Ephesus to Macedonia.[10] "Out of anguish of heart and with
many tears" and after-relentings (2 Cor. ii. 4; vii. 8) he wrote
his First letter to Corinth. And this Epistle is even more severe.
There runs through it a peculiar mental tension, an exaltation of
feeling such as prolonged and deep suffering leaves behind in a
nature like Paul's. "The marks of Jesus" (ch. vi. 17) are visible,
impressed on his spirit no less than on his body. The Apostle's
heart is full to overflowing. Its warm glow is felt under the calmer
course of narrative and argument: while at the beginning and end of
the Epistle it breaks forth in language of burning indignation and
melting pathos. Before advancing a single step, before entering on
any sort of explanation or discussion, his grief at the fickleness of
his Galatian children and his anger against their seducers must find
expression.
[10] 2 Cor. i. 8-10; ii. 12, 13; iv. 8-11; vii. 5-7.
These sentences demand, before we proceed further, a few words of
exegetical definition. For the reference of "so quickly" it is
needless to go beyond the verb it qualifies. The Apostle cannot
surely mean, "_so soon_ falling away (after your conversion)." For
the Galatian Churches had been founded five, if not seven, years
before this time; and the backsliding of recent converts is less, and
not more, surprising than of established believers. What astonishes
Paul is the _suddenness_ of this movement, the facility with which
the Galatians yielded to the Judaizing "persuasion," the rapid spread
of this new leaven. As to the double "other" (ἕτερον, _different_,
R.V.--ἄλλο) of vv. 6 and 7, and the connection of the idiomatic
"only" (εἰ μή, _except_),--we regard the second _other_ as an abrupt
correction of the first; while the _only_ clause, extending to the
end of ver. 7, mediates between the two, qualifying the statement
"There is no other gospel," by showing in what sense the writer at
first had spoken of "another." "Ye are falling away," says he, "to
another sort of gospel--which is not another, except that there
are certain that trouble you and would fain pervert the gospel of
Christ." The word _gospel_ is therefore in the first instance applied
ironically. Paul yields the sacred title up to his opponents, only
to snatch it out of their false hands. "_Another_ gospel! there
is only one; although there are men that falsify it, and seek to
foist something else upon you in its name." Seven times in this
context (vv. 6-11) does the Apostle reiterate, in noun or verb, this
precious word, as though he could not let it go. A strange sort
of "good news" for the Galatians, that they must be circumcised
forsooth, and observe the Jewish Kalendar! (ch. v. 2, 3; vi. 12; iv.
9, 10.)
I. In Paul's view, there is but one gospel for mankind. _The gospel
of Jesus Christ bears a fixed, inviolable character._
On this position the whole teaching of Paul rests,--and with it, may
we not add, Christianity itself? However variously we may formulate
the essentials of a Christian man's faith, we are generally agreed
that there are such essentials, and that they are found in Paul's
gospel to the Gentiles. With him the good tidings about Christ
constituted a very definite and, as we should say, _dogmatic_ body of
truth. In whatever degree his gospel has been confused and overlaid
by later teachings, to his own mind its terms were perfectly clear,
and its authority incontestable. With all its breadth, there is
nothing nebulous, nothing limp or hesitating about the theology of
Paul. In its main doctrines it is fixed and hard as adamant; and at
the challenge of this Judaistic perversion it rings out an instant
and peremptory denial. It was the ark of God on which the Jewish
troublers laid their unholy hands. "Christ's grace" is lodged in
it. God's call to mankind was conveyed by these "good tidings." The
Churches which the Apostle had planted were "God's husbandry, God's
building;" and woe to the man who tampered with the work, or sought
to lay another foundation than that which had been laid (1 Cor.
iii. 5-11). To distort or mutilate "the word of the truth of the
gospel," to make it mean now one thing and now another, to disturb
the faith of half-instructed Christians by captious reasonings and
self-interested perversions, was a capital offence, a sin against
God and a crime against humanity. Paul possesses in his gospel truth
of unspeakable value to mankind, the supreme revelation of God's
mercy to the world. And he is prepared to launch his anathema against
every wilful impugner, no matter what his pretensions, or the quarter
from which he comes.
"Well," it may be said, "this is sheer religious intolerance. Paul is
doing what every dogmatist, every ecclesiastical bigot has done in
his turn. His beliefs are, to be sure, _the_ truth; and accordingly
he unchurches and anathematizes those who cannot agree with him.
With all his nobility of mind, there is in Paul a leaven of Jewish
rancour. He falls short of the sweet reasonableness of Jesus." So
some will say, and in saying claim to represent the mild and tolerant
spirit of our age. But is there not in every age an intolerance that
is just and necessary? There is a logical intolerance of sophistry
and trifling. There is a moral intolerance of impurity and deceit.
And there is a religious intolerance, which includes both these and
adds to them a holy jealousy for the honour of God and the spiritual
welfare of mankind. It is mournful indeed to think how many crimes
have been perpetrated under the cloak of pious zeal. _Tantum Religio
potuit suadere malorum._ The corruption of Christianity by human
pride and cruelty has furnished copious illustrations of the terrible
line of Lucretius. But the perversion of this noblest instinct of
the soul does not take away either its reasonableness or its use.
The quality of a passion is one thing; the mode of its expression is
another. The hottest fires of bigotry are cold when compared with the
scorching intolerance of Christ's denunciations of the Pharisees.
The anathemas of Jesus and of Paul are very different from those of
arrogant pontiffs, or of narrow sectaries, inflamed with the idolatry
of their own opinions. After all, the zeal of the rudest fanatic in
religion has more in it of manly worth and moral capability than
the languors of a blasé scepticism, that sits watching with amused
contempt the strife of creeds and the search of human hearts after
the Living God. There is an idle, listless, cowardly tolerance, as
there is an intolerance that is noble and just.
The _one gospel_ has had many interpreters. Their voices, it must
be confessed, sound strangely discordant. While the teachings of
Christianity excite so intensely a multitude of different minds, of
every variety of temper and capacity, contradiction will inevitably
arise. Nothing is easier than to scoff at "the Babel of religious
opinions." Christian truth is necessarily refracted and discoloured
in passing through disordered natures and defective minds. And, alas,
that Church which claims to hold the truth without possibility of
error or variation, has perverted Christ's gospel most of all.
But notwithstanding all differences, there exists a large and an
increasing measure of agreement amongst the great body of earnest
Christians. Slowly, yet surely, one debate after another comes to
its settlement. The noise and publicity with which discussion on
matters of faith is carried on in an age of religious freedom, and
when liberty of thought has outrun mental discipline, should not
lead us to exaggerate the extent of our disagreements. In the midst
of human controversy and error, the Spirit of truth is carrying on
His work. He is the supreme witness of Jesus Christ. And He abides
with us for ever. The newly awakened historical conscience of our
times is visibly making for unity. The Church is going back to the
New Testament. And the more thoroughly she does this, the more
directly and truthfully she addresses herself to the original record
and comes face to face with Christ and His Apostles there, so much
the more shall we realize the oneness and certainty of "the faith
once delivered to the saints." Beneath the many superstructures,
faulty and changing in their form, we reach the one "foundation of
the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief
corner-stone." There we touch solid rock. "The unity of the faith"
lies in "the knowledge of the Son of God." Of Him we shall learn most
from those who knew Him best. Let us transport ourselves into the
fellowship of His first disciples; and listen to His gospel as it
came fresh from the lips of Peter and John and Paul, and the Divine
Master Himself. Let us bid the voices of the centuries be silent,
that we may _hear Him_.
For the Galatian readers, as for Paul, there could be but _one
gospel_. By his voice the call of God had reached their hearts, (ver.
6; ch. v. 8). The witness of the Spirit of God and of Christ in the
supernatural gifts they had received, and in the manifold fruit of
a regenerate life (ch. iii. 2-5; v. 22, 23), was evidence to them
that the Apostle's message was "the true gospel of the grace of God."
This they had gratefully acknowledged at the time of his first visit
(ch. iv. 15). The proclamation of the crucified and risen Christ had
brought to them unspeakable blessing. Through it they received the
knowledge of God; they were made consciously sons of God, heirs of
life eternal (ch. iii. 26; iv. 6-9; vi. 8). To entertain any other
gospel, after this experience and all these professions, was an act
of apostasy. "Ye are deserting (like runaway soldiers), _turning
renegades_ from God:" such is the language in which Paul taxes
his readers. In listening to the persuasion of the Judaists, they
were "disobeying the truth" (ch. v. 7, 8). They were disloyal to
conscience; they were trifling with the most sacred convictions of
their lives, and with the testimony of the Spirit of God. They were
forgetting the cross of Christ, and making His death of none effect.
Surely they must have been "bewitched" to act thus; some deadly spell
was upon them, which had laid memory and conscience both to sleep
(ch. ii. 21-iii. 3).
The nature and the contents of the two "gospels" current in Galatia
will be made clear in the further course of the Epistle. They were
the gospels of Grace and of Law respectively; of Salvation by Faith,
and by Works; of life in the Spirit, and in the Flesh; of the Cross
and the Resurrection on the one hand, and of Circumcision and the
Kalendar and "Clean meats" on the other; the gospels of inwardness,
and of externalism--of Christ, and of self. The conflict between
these two was the great struggle of Paul's life. His success was,
historically speaking, the salvation of Christianity.
But this contention did not end with his victory. The Judaistic
perversion appealed to tendencies too persistent in our nature to
be crushed at one blow. The gospel of externalism is dear to the
human heart. It may take the form of culture and moralities; or of
"services" and sacraments and churchly order; or of orthodoxy and
philanthropy. These and such things make themselves our idols; and
trust in them takes the place of Faith in the living Christ. It is
not enough that the eyes of our heart should once have seen the
Lord, that we should in other days have experienced "the renewing of
the Holy Ghost." It is possible to forget, possible to "remove from
Him that called us in the grace of Christ." With little change in
the form of our religious life, its inward reality of joy in God,
of conscious sonship, of fellowship in the Spirit, may be utterly
departed. The gospel of formalism will spring up and flourish on the
most evangelical soil, and in the most strictly Pauline Churches.
Let it be banned and barred out never so completely, it knows how to
find entrance, under the simplest modes of worship and the soundest
doctrine. The serried defence of Articles and Confessions constructed
against it will not prevent its entrance, and may even prove its
cover and intrenchment. Nothing avails, as the Apostle says, but a
constant "new creation." The life of God in human souls is sustained
by the energy of His Spirit, perpetually renewed, ever proceeding
from the Father and the Son. "The life that I live in the flesh, I
live by the Faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself
for me." This is the true orthodoxy. The vitality of his personal
faith in Christ kept Paul safe from error, faithful in will and
intellect to the _one gospel_.
II. We have still to consider the import of _the judgement pronounced
by Paul upon those who pervert the gospel of Christ_. "Let him be
anathema. Even should it be ourselves, or an angel from heaven, _let
him be anathema_."
These are tremendous words. Commentators have been shocked at the
Apostle's damning his opponents after this fashion, and have sought
to lighten the weight of this awful sentence. It has been sometimes
toned down into an act of excommunication or ecclesiastical
censure. But this explanation will not hold. Paul could not think
of subjecting "an angel" to a penalty like that. He pronounced
excommunication against disorderly members of the Thessalonian
Church; and in 1 Cor. v. 1-8 he gives directions for the carrying
out of a similar decree, attended with severe bodily affliction
supernaturally adjudged, against a sinner whose presence grossly
stained the purity of the Church. But this sentence goes beyond
either of those. It contemplates the exclusion of the offenders from
the Covenant of grace, their loss of final salvation.
Thrice besides has Paul used this ominous word. The cry "Jesus is
anathema," in 1 Cor. xii. 3, reveals with a lurid effect the frenzied
malignity towards Christ of which the spirit of evil is sometimes
capable. In a very different connection the word appears in Rom. ix.
3; where Paul "could wish himself anathema from Christ," if that were
possible, for his brethren's sake; he could find it in his heart
to be cut off for ever from that love of God in Christ of which
he has just spoken in terms of unbounded joy and confidence (Rom.
viii. 31-39), and banished from the heavenly kingdom, if through his
exclusion his Jewish kindred might be saved. Self-sacrifice can go no
further. No heavier loss than this could be conceived for any human
being. Nearest to our passage is the imprecation at the end of 1
Corinthians: "If any man love not the Lord, let him be anathema,"--a
judgement proclaimed against cold and false hearts, knowing His love,
bearing His name, but with no true love to Him.
This Greek word in its Biblical use has grown out of the _chérem_ of
the Old Testament, the _ban_ declared against that which was cut off
from the Divine mercies and exposed to the full sweep of judgement.
Thus in Deut. xiii. 12-18, the city whose people should "go and
serve other gods," is declared _chérem (anathema)_, an "accursed,"
or "devoted thing" (R.V.), on which ensues its destruction by sword
and fire, leaving it to remain "a ruin-heap for ever." Similarly in
Joshua vi., vii., the spoil of Jericho is _anathema_, Achan's theft
is therefore _anathema_, and Israel is made by it _anathema_ until
"the accursed thing is destroyed" from among the people. Such were
the recollections associated with this word in the Mosaic law, which
it would inevitably carry with it to the minds of those against whom
it was now directed. And there is nothing in later Jewish usage to
mitigate its force.
Now the Apostle is not writing like a man in a passion, who flings
out his words as missiles, eager only to wound and confound his
opponents. He repeats the sentence. He quotes it as one that he
had already affirmed in the hearing of his readers. The passage
bears the marks of well-weighed thought and judicial solemnity. In
pronouncing this judgement on "the troublers," Paul acts under the
sense of Apostolic responsibility. We must place the sentence in
the same line as that of Peter against Ananias and Sapphira, and
of Paul himself against Elymas the Cypriot sorcerer, and against
the incestuous Corinthian. In each case there is a supernatural
insight and authorization, "the authority which the Lord gave" and
which is wielded by His inspired Apostle. The exercise of this
judicial function was one of "the signs of the Apostle." This was
the proof of "Christ speaking in him" which Paul was so loth to give
at Corinth,[11] but which at this crisis of his ministry he was
compelled to display. And if he "reckons to be bold against" his
adversaries in Galatia, he knows well the ground on which he stands.
[11] 2 Cor. x. 1-11; xiii. 1-10; 1 Cor. iv. 18-21.
His anathema struck at men who were the worst enemies of Christ. "We
can do nothing against the truth," he says; "but for the truth" he
was ready to do and dare everything,--to "come with a rod," as he
tells the proud Corinthians. There was no authority, however lofty,
that he was not warranted to use on Christ's behalf, no measure,
however severe, from which he would shrink, if it were required
in defence of the truth of the Gospel. "He possesses weapons, not
fleshly, but mighty through God"; and he is prepared to bring them
all into play rather than see the gospel perverted or overthrown.
Paul will hurl his anathema at the prince of the archangels, should
He come "preaching another gospel," tempting his children from their
allegiance to Christ. This bolt was not shot a moment too soon.
Launched against the legalist conspiracy, and followed up by the
arguments of this and the Roman Epistle, it saved the Church from
being overpowered by reactionary Judaism. The Apostle's judgement
has marked the gospel of the cross for all time as God's inviolable
truth, guarded by lightnings.
The sentences of judgement pronounced by the Apostles present a
striking contrast to those that have fulminated from the Chair of
their self-styled successors. In the Canons of the Council of Trent,
for example, we have counted one hundred and thirty-five anathemas.
A large proportion of these are concerned with the rights of the
priesthood; others with complicated and secondary points of doctrine;
some are directed virtually against the teaching of Paul himself.
Here is one specimen: "If any one shall say that justifying faith
is nothing else but a trust in the Divine mercy, remitting sins
for Christ's sake, or that it is this trust alone by which we are
justified: let him be anathema."[12] Again, "If any one shall say
that the Canon of the Mass contains errors, and therefore should be
abrogated: let him be anathema."[13] In the closing session, the
final act of the presiding Cardinal was to pronounce, "Anathema to
all heretics;" to which the assembled prelates shouted in response,
"Anathema, anathema." With this imprecation on their lips the Fathers
of the Church concluded their pious labours. It was the Reformation,
it was "the liberty of the sons of God" that Rome anathematized.
Paul's censure holds good against all the Conciliar Canons and Papal
Bulls that contravene it. But twice has he pronounced this awful
word; once against any that "love not the Lord," a second time
upon those who wilfully pervert His gospel. The Papal anathemas
sound like the maledictions of an angry priesthood, jealous for its
prerogatives; here we have the holy severity of an inspired Apostle,
concerned only for the truth, and for his Master's honour. There
speaks the conscious "lord over God's heritage," wearing the triple
crown, wielding the powers of Interdict and Inquisition, whose
word sets armies in motion and makes kings tremble on their seats.
Here a feeble, solitary man, "his bodily presence weak, his speech
contemptible," hunted from place to place, scourged and stoned,
shut up for years in prison, who could not, except for love's sake,
command the meanest service. How conspicuous in the one case, how
wanting in the other, is the might of the Spirit and the dignity of
the inspired word, the transcendence of moral authority.
[12] Session vi., Can. xii.
[13] Session xxii., Can. vi.
It is _the moral conduct_ of those he judges that determines in
each case the sentence passed by the Apostle. For a man knowing
Jesus Christ, as we presume the members of the Corinthian Church did
know Him, not to love Him, argues a bad heart. Must not we count
_ourselves_ accursed, if with our knowledge of Christ we had no love
for Him? Such a man is already virtually _anathema_. He is severed
as a branch from its vine, ready to be gathered for the burning
(John xv. 6). And these Galatian disturbers were something worse
than mere mistaken enthusiasts for their native Jewish rites. Their
policy was dishonourable (ch. iv. 17). They made the gospel of Christ
subservient to factious designs. They sought to win credit with
their fellow-countrymen and to escape the reproach of the cross by
imposing circumcision on the Gentiles (ch. ii. 4; vi. 12, 13). They
prostituted religion to selfish and party purposes. They sacrificed
truth to popularity, the glory of Christ and the cross to their
own. They were of those whom the Apostle describes as "walking in
craftiness and handling the word of God deceitfully," who "traffic"
in the gospel, peddling with it as with petty wares, cheapening and
adulterating it like dishonest hucksters to make their own market by
it (2 Cor. ii. 17; iv. 2). Did not Paul do well to smite them with
the rod of his mouth? Justly has he marked with the brand of this
fiery anathema the false minister, "who serves not the Lord Christ,
but his own belly."
But does this declaration preclude in such a case the possibility of
repentance? We trow not. It declares the doom which is due to any,
be he man or angel, who should do what these "troublers" are doing.
It is a general sentence, and has for the individuals concerned
the effect of a warning, like the announcement made concerning the
Traitor at the Last Supper. However unlikely repentance might be in
either instance, there is nothing to forbid it. So when Peter said to
Simon Magus, "Thy money perish with thee!" he nevertheless continued,
"Repent, therefore, of this thy wickedness, and pray the Lord, if
perhaps the thought of thy heart shall be forgiven thee" (Acts viii.
20-22). To his worst opponents, on any sign of contrition, Paul, we
may be sure, would have gladly said the same.
_THE PERSONAL HISTORY._
CHAPTER i. 11-ii. 21.
CHAPTER IV.
_PAUL'S GOSPEL REVEALED BY CHRIST._
"For I make known to you, brethren, as touching the gospel which
was preached by me, that it is not after man. For neither did
I receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but _it came to
me_ through revelation of Jesus Christ. For ye have heard of
my manner of life in time past in the Jews' religion, how that
beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and made havock
of it: and I advanced in the Jews' religion beyond many of mine
own age among my countrymen, being more exceedingly zealous for
the traditions of my fathers."--GAL. i. 11-14.
Here the Epistle begins in its main purport. What has gone before is
so much exordium. The sharp, stern sentences of vv. 6-10 are like the
roll of artillery that ushers in the battle. The mists rise from the
field. We see the combatants arrayed on either side. In due order and
with cool self-command the Apostle proceeds to marshal and deploy
his forces. His truthful narrative corrects the misrepresentations
of his opponents, and repels their attack upon himself. His
powerful dialectic wrests from their hands and turns against them
their weapons of Scriptural proof. He wins the citadel of their
position, by establishing the claim of the men of faith to be the
sons of Abraham. On the ruins of confuted legalism he builds up an
impregnable fortress for Christian liberty, an immortal vindication
of the gospel of the grace of God.
The cause of Gentile freedom at this crisis was bound up with the
person of the Apostle Paul. His Gospel and his Apostleship must stand
or fall together. The former was assailed through the latter. He was
himself just now "the pillar and stay of the truth." If his character
had been successfully attacked and his influence destroyed, nothing,
humanly speaking, could have saved Gentile Christendom at this
decisive moment from falling under the assaults of Judaism. When he
begins his crucial appeal with the words, "Behold, _I Paul_ say unto
you" (ch. v. 2), we feel that the issue depends upon the weight which
his readers may attach to his personal affirmation. He pits his own
truthfulness, his knowledge of Christ, his spiritual discernment and
authority, and the respect due to himself from the Galatians, against
the pretensions of the new teachers. The comparison is not indeed
so open and express as that made in 2 Corinthians; none the less it
tacitly runs through this Epistle. Paul is compelled to put himself
in the forefront of his argument. In the eyes of his children in the
faith, he is bound to vindicate his Apostolic character, defamed by
Jewish malice and untruth.
The first two chapters of this Epistle are therefore Paul's _Apologia
pro vita sua_. With certain chapters in 2 Corinthians, and scattered
passages in other letters, they form the Apostle's autobiography, one
of the most perfect self-portraitures that literature contains. They
reveal to us the man more effectively than any ostensible description
could have done. They furnish an indispensable supplement to the
external and cursory delineations given in the Acts of the Apostles.
While Luke skilfully presents the outward framework of Paul's life
and the events of his public career, it is to the Epistles that we
turn--to none more frequently than this--for the necessary subjective
data, for all that belongs to his inner character, his motives and
principles. This Epistle brings into bold relief the Apostle's moral
physiognomy. Above all, it throws a clear and penetrating light on
the event which determined his career--the greatest event in the
history of Christianity after the Day of Pentecost--Paul's conversion
to faith in the Lord Jesus.
This was at once the turning-point in the Apostle's life, and the
birth-hour of his gospel. If the Galatians were to understand his
teaching, they must understand this occurrence; they must know why he
became a Christian, how he had received the message which he brought
to them. They would, he felt sure, enter more sympathetically into
his doctrine, if they were better acquainted with the way in which
he had arrived at it. They would see how well-justified was the
authority, how needful the severity with which he writes. Accordingly
he begins with a brief relation of the circumstances of his call
to the service of Christ, and his career from the days of his
Judaistic zeal, when he made havoc of the faith, till the well-known
occasion on which he became its champion against Peter himself, the
chief of the Twelve (ch. i. 11-ii. 21.) His object in this recital
appears to be threefold: to refute the misrepresentations of the
Circumcisionists; to vindicate his independent authority as an
Apostle of Christ; and further, to unfold the nature and terms of his
gospel, so as to pave the way for the theological argument which is
to follow, and which forms the body of the Epistle.
I. _Paul's gospel was supernaturally conveyed to him, by a personal
intervention of Jesus Christ._ This assertion is the Apostle's
starting-point. "My gospel is not after man. I received it as Jesus
Christ revealed it to me."
That the initial revelation was made to him by Christ in person, was
a fact of incalculable importance for Paul. This had made him an
Apostle, in the august sense in which he claims the title (ver. 1).
This accounts for the vehemence with which he defends his doctrine,
and for the awful sentence which he has passed upon its impugners.
The Divine authorship of the gospel he preached made it impossible
for him to temporize with its perverters, or to be influenced by
human favour or disfavour in its administration. Had his teaching
been "according to man," he might have consented to a compromise;
he might reasonably have tried to humour and accommodate Jewish
prejudices. But the case is far otherwise. "I am not at liberty
to please men," he says, "for my gospel comes directly from Jesus
Christ" (vv. 10, 11). So he "gives" his readers "to know," as if by
way of formal notification.[14]
[14] Comp. Rom. ix. 22; 1 Cor. xii. 3; xv. 1; 2 Cor. viii. 1.
The gospel of Paul was inviolable, then, because of its superhuman
character. And this character was impressed upon it by its superhuman
origin: "not according to man, for neither _from man_ did I receive
it, nor was I taught it, but by a revelation of Jesus Christ." The
Apostle's knowledge of Christianity did not come through the ordinary
channel of tradition and indoctrination; Jesus Christ had, by a
miraculous interposition, taught him the truth about Himself. He
says, "Neither did _I_," with an emphasis that points tacitly to the
elder Apostles, whom he mentions a few sentences later (ver. 17). To
this comparison his adversaries forced him, making use of it as they
freely did to his disparagement.[15] But it comes in by implication
rather than direct assertion. Only by putting violence upon himself,
and with strong expressions of his unworthiness, can Paul be brought
to set his official claims in competition with those of the Twelve.
Notwithstanding, it is perfectly clear that he puts his ministry on
a level with theirs. He is no Apostle at second-hand, no disciple of
Peter's or dependant of the "pillars" at Jerusalem. "Neither did I,"
he declares, "any more than they, take my instructions from other
lips than those of Jesus our Lord."
[15] See ch. ii. 6-14; 1 Cor. i. 12; iii. 22; iv. 9; ix. 1-5; xv.
8-10.
But what of this "revelation of Jesus Christ," on which Paul lays
so much stress? Does he mean a revelation made _by_ Christ, or
_about_ Christ? Taken by itself, the expression, in Greek as in
English, bears either interpretation. In favour of the second
construction--viz. that Paul speaks of a revelation by which Christ
was made known to him--the language of ver. 16 is adduced: "It
pleased God to reveal His Son in me." Paul's general usage points in
the same direction. With him Christ is the _object_ of manifestation,
preaching, and the like. 2 Cor. xii. 1 is probably an instance to the
contrary: "I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord."[16]
But it should be observed that wherever this genitive is objective
(a revelation revealing Christ), _God_ appears in the context, just
as in ver. 16 below, to Whom the authorship of the revelation is
ascribed. In this instance, _the gospel_ is the object revealed;
and _Jesus Christ_, in contrast with man, is claimed for its Author.
So at the outset (ver. 1) Christ, in His Divine character, was the
_Agent_ by whom Paul, as veritably as the Twelve, had received his
Apostleship. We therefore assent to the ordinary view, reading this
passage in the light of the vision of Jesus thrice related in the
Acts.[17] We understand Paul to say that no _mere man_ imparted to
him the gospel he preached, but _Jesus Christ revealed it_.
[16] This genitive is, however, open to the other construction,
which is unquestionable in 1 Cor. i. 7; 2 Thess. i. 7; also 1
Pet. i. 7, 13. Rev. i. 1 furnishes a prominent example of the
_subjective_ genitive.
[17] Acts ix. 1-19; xxii. 5-16; xxvi. 12-18.
On the Damascus road the Apostle Paul found his mission. The vision
of the glorified Jesus made him a Christian, and an Apostle. The act
was a _revelation_--that is, in New Testament phrase, a supernatural,
an immediately Divine communication of truth. And it was a revelation
not conveyed in the first instance, as were the ordinary prophetic
inspirations, through the Spirit; "Jesus Christ," in His Divine-human
person, made Himself known to His persecutor. Paul had "seen that
Just One and heard a voice from His mouth."
The appearance of Jesus to Saul of Tarsus was in itself a gospel,
an earnest of the good tidings he was to convey to the world. "Why
persecutest thou Me?" that Divine voice said, in tones of reproach,
yet of infinite pity. The sight of Jesus the Lord, meeting Saul's
eyes, revealed His grace and truth to the persecutor's heart. He
was brought in a moment to the obedience of faith; he said, "Lord,
what wilt Thou have me to do?" He "confessed with his mouth the Lord
Jesus"; he "believed in his heart that God had raised Him from the
dead." It was true, after all, that "God had made" the crucified
Nazarene "both Lord and Christ;" for this was He!
The cross, which had been Saul's stumbling-block, deeply affronting
his Jewish pride, from this moment was transformed. The glory of the
exalted Redeemer cast back its light upon the tree of shame. The
curse of the Law visibly resting upon Him, the rejection of men,
marked Him out as God's chosen sacrifice for sin. This explanation at
once presented itself to an instructed and keenly theological mind
like Saul's, so soon as it was evident that Jesus was not accursed,
as he had supposed, but approved by God. So Paul's gospel was given
him at a stroke. Jesus Christ dying for our sins, Jesus Christ living
to save and to rule--behold "the good news"! The Apostle had it on no
less authority than that of the risen Saviour. From Him he received
it to publish wide as the world.
Thus Saul of Tarsus was born again. And with the Christian man, the
Christian thinker, the theologian, was born in him. The Pauline
doctrine has its root in Paul's conversion. It was a single, organic
growth, the seed of which was this "revelation of Jesus Christ."
Its creative impulse was given in the experience of the memorable
hour, when "God who said, Light shall shine out of darkness, in the
face of Jesus Christ shined" into Saul's heart. As the light of
this revelation penetrated his spirit, he recognised, step by step,
the fact of the resurrection, the import of the crucifixion, the
Divinity of Jesus, His human mediatorship, the virtue of faith, the
office of the Holy Spirit, the futility of Jewish ritual and works
of law, and all the essential principles of his theology. Given the
genius of Saul and his religious training, and the Pauline system of
doctrine was, one might almost say, _a necessary deduction_ from the
fact of the appearance to him of the glorified Jesus. If that form
of celestial splendour was Jesus, then He was risen indeed; then He
was the Christ; He was, as He affirmed, the Son of God. If He was
Lord and Christ, and yet died by the Father's will on the cross of
shame, then His death could only be a propitiation, accepted by God,
for the sins of men, whose efficacy had no limit, and whose merit
left no room for legal works of righteousness. If this Jesus was
the Christ, then the assumptions of Saul's Judaism, which had led
him into blasphemous hatred and outrage towards Him, were radically
false; he will purge himself from the "old leaven," that his life may
become "a new lump." From that moment a world of life and thought
began for the future Apostle, the opposite in all respects of that
in which hitherto he had moved. "The old things," he cries, "passed
away; lo, they have become new" (2 Cor. v. 17). Paul's conversion was
as complete as it was sudden.
This intimate relation of doctrine and experience gives to
Paul's teaching a peculiar warmth and freshness, a vividness of
human reality which it everywhere retains, despite its lofty
intellectualism and the scholastic form in which it is largely
cast. It is theology alive, trembling with emotion, speaking words
like flames, forming dogmas hard as rock, that when you touch them
are yet glowing with the heat of those central depths of the human
spirit from which they were cast up. The collision of the two great
Apostles at Antioch shows how the strength of Paul's teaching lay
in his inward realization of the truth. There was _life_ behind his
doctrine. He was, and for the time the Jewish Apostle was not, acting
and speaking out of the reality of spiritual conviction, of truth
personally verified. Of the Apostle Paul above all divines the saying
is true, _Pectus facit theologum_. And this personal knowledge of
Christ, "the master light of all his seeing," began when on the way
to Damascus his eyes beheld Jesus our Lord. His farewell charge to
the Church through Timothy (2 Tim. i. 9-12), while referring to the
general manifestation of Christ to the world, does so in language
coloured by the recollection of the peculiar revelation made at the
beginning to himself: "God," he says, "called us with a holy calling,
according to His purpose and grace, which hath now been manifested by
the appearing[18] of our Saviour Christ Jesus, who abolished death
and brought life and immortality to light[19] through the gospel,
whereunto _I_ was appointed a preacher and apostle. For which cause
I also suffer these things. But I am not ashamed: for I _know_ Him
in whom I have believed." This manifestation of the celestial Christ
shed its brightness along all his path.
[18] Ἐπιφανεία, a supernatural appearance, such as that of the
Second Advent.
[19] Φωτίζω, comp. 2 Cor. iv. 6.
II. His assertion of the Divine origin of his doctrine Paul
sustains by referring to _the previous course of his life_. There
was certainly nothing in that to account for his preaching Christ
crucified. "For you have heard," he continues, "of my manner of life
aforetime, when I followed Judaism."
Here ends the chain of _fors_ reaching from ver. 10 to 13--a
succession of explanations linking Paul's denunciation of the
Christian Judaizers to the fact that he had himself been a violent
anti-Christian Judaist. The seeming contradiction is in reality a
consistent sequence. Only one who had imbibed the spirit of legalism
as Saul of Tarsus had done, could justly appreciate the hostility of
its principles to the new faith, and the sinister motives actuating
the men who pretended to reconcile them. Paul knew Judaism by
heart. He understood the sort of men who opposed him in the Gentile
Churches. And if his anathema appear needlessly severe, we must
remember that no one was so well able to judge of the necessities of
the case as the man who pronounced it.
"You have heard"--from whom? In the first instance, probably,
from Paul himself. But on this matter, we may be pretty sure, his
opponents would have something to say. They did not scruple to assert
that he "still preached circumcision"[20] and played the Jew even now
when it suited him, charging him with insincerity. Or they might say,
"Paul is a renegade. Once the most ardent of zealots for Judaism, he
has passed to the opposite extreme. He is a man you cannot trust.
Apostates are proverbially bitter against their old faith." In these
and in other ways Paul's Pharisaic career was doubtless thrown in his
teeth.
[20] Ch. v. 11; comp. 1 Cor. ix. 20; Acts xvi. 3; xxi. 20-26;
xxiii. 6.
The Apostle sorrowfully confesses "that above measure he persecuted
the Church of God and laid it waste." His friend Luke makes the same
admission in similar language.[21] There is no attempt to conceal
or palliate this painful fact, that the famous Apostle of the
Gentiles had been a persecutor, the deadliest enemy of the Church
in its infant days. He was the very type of a determined, pitiless
oppressor, the forerunner of the Jewish fanatics who afterwards
sought his life, and of the cruel bigots of the Inquisition and the
Star-chamber in later times. His restless energy, his indifference
to the feelings of humanity in this work of destruction, were due to
religious zeal. "I thought," he says, "I ought to do many things
contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth." In him, as in so many
others, the saying of Christ was fulfilled: "The time cometh, when
whoso killeth you will think that he is offering a sacrifice to
God." These Nazarenes were heretics, traitors to Israel, enemies of
God. Their leader had been crucified, branded with the extremest
mark of Divine displeasure. His followers must perish. Their success
meant the ruin of Mosaism. God willed their destruction. Such were
Saul's thoughts, until he heard the protesting voice of Jesus as he
approached Damascus to ravage His little flock. No wonder that he
suffered remorse to the end of his days.
[21] Acts vii. 58; viii. 1-3; ix. 1.
Saul's persecution of the Church was the natural result of his
earlier training, of the course to which in his youth he committed
himself. The Galatians had heard also "how proficient he was in
Judaism, beyond many of his kindred and age; that he was surpassed
by none in zeal for their ancestral traditions." His birth (Phil.
iii. 4, 5), education (Acts xxii. 3), temperament, circumstances,
all combined to make him a zealot of the first water, the pink and
pattern of Jewish orthodoxy, the rising hope of the Pharisaic party,
and an instrument admirably fitted to crush the hated and dangerous
sect of the Nazarenes. These facts go to prove, not that Paul is a
traitor to his own people, still less that he is a Pharisee at heart,
preaching Gentile liberty from interested motives; but that it must
have been some extraordinary occurrence, quite out of the common run
of human influences and probabilities, that set him on his present
course. What could have turned this furious Jewish persecutor all at
once into the champion of the cross? What indeed but the revelation
of Christ which he received at the Damascus gate? His previous
career up to that hour had been such as to make it impossible that
he should have received his gospel through human means. The chasm
between his Christian and pre-Christian life had only been bridged by
a supernatural interposition of the mercy of Christ.
Our modern critics, however, think that they know Paul better than
he knew himself. They hold that the problem raised by this passage
is capable of a natural solution. Psychological analysis, we are
told, sets the matter in a different light. Saul of Tarsus had
a tender conscience. Underneath his fevered and ambitious zeal,
there lay in the young persecutor's heart a profound misgiving, a
mortifying sense of his failure, and the failure of his people, to
attain the righteousness of the Law. The seventh chapter of his
Epistle to the Romans is a leaf taken out of the inner history of
this period of the Apostle's life. Through what a stern discipline
the Tarsian youth had passed in these legal years! How his haughty
spirit chafed and tortured itself under the growing consciousness
of its moral impotence! The Law had been truly his παιδαγωγός (ch.
iii. 24), a severe tutor, preparing him unconsciously "for Christ."
In this state of mind such scenes as the martyrdom of Stephen could
not but powerfully affect Saul, in spite of himself. The bearing of
the persecuted Nazarenes, the words of peace and forgiveness that
they uttered under their sufferings, stirred questionings in his
breast not always to be silenced. Self-distrust and remorse were
secretly undermining the rigour of his Judaic faith. They acted like
a "goad" (Acts xxvi. 14), against which he "kicked in vain." He rode
to Damascus--a long and lonely journey--in a state of increasing
disquiet and mental conflict. The heat and exhaustion of the desert
march, acting on a nervous temperament naturally excitable and
overwrought, hastened the crisis. Saul fell from his horse in an
access of fever, or catalepsy. His brain was on fire. The convictions
that haunted him suddenly took form and voice in the apparition of
the glorified Jesus, whom Stephen in his dying moments had addressed.
From that figure seemed to proceed the reproachful cry which the
persecutor's conscience had in vain been striving to make him hear.
A flash of lightning, or, if you like, a sunstroke, is readily
imagined to fire this train of circumstances,--and the explanation
is complete! When, besides, M. Renan is good enough to tell us that
he has himself "experienced an attack of this kind at Byblos," and
"with other principles would certainly have taken the hallucinations
he then had for visions,"[22] what more can we desire? Nay, does not
Paul himself admit, in ver. 16 of this chapter, that his conversion
was essentially a spiritual and subjective event?
[22] _Les Apôtres_, p. 180, note 1.
Such is the diagnosis of Paul's conversion offered us by rationalism;
and it is not wanting in boldness nor in skill. But the corner-stone
on which it rests, the hinge of the whole theory, is imaginary and in
fatal contradiction with the facts of the case. Paul himself _knows
nothing_ of the remorse imputed to him previously to the vision of
Jesus. The historian of the Acts knows nothing of it. In a nature so
upright and conscientious as that of Saul, this misgiving would at
least have induced him to desist from persecution. From first to last
his testimony is, "I did it _ignorantly_, in unbelief." It was this
ignorance, this absence of any sense of wrong in the violence he
used against the followers of Jesus, that, in his view, accounted for
his "obtaining mercy" (1 Tim. i. 13). If impressions of an opposite
kind were previously struggling in his mind, with such force that on
a mere nervous shock they were ready to precipitate themselves in the
shape of an over-mastering hallucination, changing instantly and for
ever the current of his life, how comes it that the Apostle has told
us nothing about them? That he should have _forgotten_ impressions
so poignant and so powerful, is inconceivable. And if he has of set
purpose ignored, nay, virtually denied this all-important fact, what
becomes of his sincerity?
The Apostle was manifestly innocent of any such predisposition
to Christian faith as the above theory imputes to him. True, he
was conscious in those Judaistic days of his failure to attain
righteousness, of the disharmony existing between "the law of his
reason" and that which wrought "in his members." His conviction
of sin supplied the moral precondition necessary in every case to
saving faith in Christ. But this negative condition does not help
us in the least to explain the vision of the glorified Jesus. By no
psychological process whatever could the experience of Rom. vii.
7-24 be made to project itself in such an apparition. With all his
mysticism and emotional susceptibility, Paul's mind was essentially
sane and critical. To call him _epileptic_ is a calumny. No man so
diseased could have gone through the Apostle's labours, or written
these Epistles. His discussion of the subject of supernatural gifts,
in 1 Cor. xii. and xiv., is a model of shrewdness and good sense.
He had experience of trances and ecstatic visions; and he knew,
perhaps as well as M. Renan, how to distinguish them from objective
realities.[23] The manner in which he speaks of this appearance
allows of no reasonable doubt as to the Apostle's full persuasion
that "in sober certainty of waking sense" he had seen Jesus our Lord.
[23] 1 Cor. xiv. 18; 2 Cor. xii. 1-6; Acts xvi. 9; xviii. 8, 9;
xxii. 17, 18.
It was this sensible and outward revelation that led to the inward
revelation of the Redeemer to his soul, of which Paul goes on to
speak in ver. 16. Without the latter the former would have been
purposeless and useless. The objective vision could only have
revealed a "Christ after the flesh," had it not been the means
of opening Saul's closed heart to the influence of the Spirit of
Christ. It was the means to this, and in the given circumstances the
indispensable means.
To a history that "knows no miracles," the Apostle Paul must remain
an enigma. His faith in the crucified Jesus is equally baffling to
naturalism with that of the first disciples, who had laid Him in
the grave. When the Apostle argues that his antecedent relations
to Christianity were such as to preclude his conversion having
come about by natural human means, we are bound to admit both the
sincerity and the conclusiveness of his appeal.
CHAPTER V.
_PAUL'S DIVINE COMMISSION._
"But when it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me,
_even_ from my mother's womb, and called me through His grace,
to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the
Gentiles; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood:
neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles
before me: but I went away into Arabia; and again I returned
unto Damascus."--GAL. i. 15-17.
_It pleased God to reveal His Son in me_: this is after all the
essential matter in Paul's conversion, as in that of every Christian.
The outward manifestation of Jesus Christ served in his case to
bring about this result, and was necessary to qualify him for his
extraordinary vocation. But of itself the supernatural vision had no
redeeming virtue, and gave Saul of Tarsus no message of salvation
for the world. Its glory blinded and prostrated the persecutor; his
heart might notwithstanding have remained rebellious and unchanged.
"I am Jesus," said the heavenly Form,--"Go, and it shall be told thee
what thou shalt do";--that was all! And that was not salvation. "Even
though one rose from the dead," still it is possible not to believe.
And faith is possible in its highest degree, and is exercised to-day
by multitudes, with no celestial light to illumine, no audible voice
from beyond the grave to awaken. The sixteenth verse gives us the
inward counterpart of that exterior revelation in which Paul's
knowledge of Christ had its beginning,--but only its beginning.
The Apostle does not surely mean by "in me," _in my case, through me
(to others)_. This gives a sense true in itself, and expressed by
Paul elsewhere (ver. 24; 1 Tim. i. 16), but unsuitable to the word
"reveal," and out of place at this point of the narrative. In the
next clause--"that I might preach Him among the Gentiles"--we learn
what was to be the issue of this revelation for the world. But in
the first place it was a Divine certainty _within the breast of Paul
himself_. His Gentile Apostleship rested upon the most assured basis
of inward conviction, upon a spiritual apprehension of the Redeemer's
person. He says, laying emphasis on the last two words, "to reveal
His Son _within me_." So Chrysostom: Why did he not say _to me_,
but _in me_? Showing that not by words alone he learned the things
concerning faith; but that he was also filled with the abundance of
the Spirit, the revelation shining through his very soul; and that he
had Christ speaking in himself.
I. _The substance of Paul's gospel was, therefore, given him by the
unveiling of the Redeemer to his heart._
The "revelation" of ver. 16 takes up and completes that of ver. 12.
The dazzling appearance of Christ before his eyes and the summons of
His voice addressed to Saul's bodily ears formed the special mode in
which it pleased God to "call him by His grace." But "whom He called,
He also justified." In this further act of grace salvation is first
personally realised, and the gospel becomes the man's individual
possession. This experience ensued upon the acceptance of the fact
that the crucified Jesus was the Christ. But this was by no means
all. As the revelation penetrated further into the Apostle's soul,
he began to apprehend its deeper significance. He knew already that
the Nazarene had claimed to be the Son of God, and on that ground
had been sentenced to death by the Sanhedrim. His resurrection,
now a demonstrated fact, showed that this awful claim, instead of
being condemned, was acknowledged by God Himself. The celestial
majesty in which He appeared, the sublime authority with which He
spoke, witnessed to His Divinity. To Paul equally with the first
Apostles, He "was declared Son of God in power, by the resurrection
of the dead." But this persuasion was borne in upon him in his after
reflections, and could not be adequately realised in the first shock
of his great discovery. The language of this verse throws no sort
of suspicion on the reality of the vision before Damascus. Quite
the opposite. The inward presupposes the outward. Understanding
follows sight. The subjective illumination, the inward conviction of
Christ's Divinity, in Paul's case as in that of the first disciples,
was brought about by the appearance of the risen, Divine Jesus.
That appearance furnishes in both instances the explanation of the
astounding change that took place in the men. The heart full of
blasphemy against His name has learnt to own Him as "the Son of
God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." Through the bodily eyes
of Saul of Tarsus the revelation of Jesus Christ had entered and
transformed his spirit.
Of this interior revelation _the Holy Spirit_, according to the
Apostle's doctrine, had been the organ. The Lord on first meeting
the gathered Apostles after His resurrection "breathed upon them,
saying, Receive ye the Holy Ghost" (John xx. 22). This influence was
in truth "the power of His resurrection"; it was the inspiring breath
of the new life of humanity issuing from the open grave of Christ.
The baptism of Pentecost, with its "mighty rushing wind," was but
the fuller effusion of the power whose earnest the Church received
in that gentle breathing of peace on the day of the resurrection.
By His Spirit Christ made Himself a dwelling in the hearts of His
disciples, raised at last to a true apprehension of His nature.
All this was recapitulated in the experience of Paul. In his case
the common experience was the more sharply defined because of the
suddenness of his conversion, and the startling effect with which
this new consciousness projected itself upon the background of his
earlier Pharisaic life. Paul had his Resurrection-vision on the road
to Damascus. He received his Pentecostal baptism in the days that
followed.
It is not necessary to fix the precise occasion of the second
revelation, or to connect it specifically with the visit of Ananias
to Saul in Damascus, much less with his later "ecstasy" in the
temple (Acts ix. 10-19; xxii. 12-21). When Ananias, sent by Christ,
brought him the assurance of forgiveness from the injured Church,
and bade him "recover his sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost,"
this message greatly comforted his heart, and pointed out to him
more clearly the way of salvation along which he was groping. But
it is the office of the Spirit of God to reveal the Son of God; so
Paul teaches everywhere in his Epistles, taught first by his own
experience. Not from Ananias, nor from any man had he received this
knowledge; _God_ revealed His Son in the soul of the Apostle--"sent
forth the Spirit of His Son into his heart" (ch. iv. 6). The language
of 2 Cor. iii. 12-iv. 6 is the best commentary on this verse. A veil
rested on the heart of Saul the Pharisee. He read the Old Covenant
only in the condemning letter. Not yet did he know "the Lord" who
is "the spirit." This veil was done away in Christ. "The glory of
the Lord" that burst upon him in his Damascus journey, rent it once
and for ever from his eyes. God, the Light-giver, had "shined in
his heart, in the face of Jesus Christ." Such was the further scope
of the revelation which effected Paul's conversion. As he writes
afterwards to Ephesus, "the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father
of glory, had given him a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the
knowledge of Christ; eyes of the heart enlightened to know the hope
of His calling, and His exceeding power to usward, according to that
He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at
His own right hand" (Eph. i. 17-21). In these words we hear an echo
of the thoughts that passed through the Apostle's mind when first "it
pleased God in him to reveal His Son."
II. _In the light of this inner revelation Paul received his Gentile
mission._
He speedily perceived that this was the purpose with which the
revelation was made: "that I should preach Him among the Gentiles."
The three accounts of his conversion furnished by the Acts witness to
the same effect. Whether we should suppose that the Lord Jesus gave
Saul this commission directly, at His first appearance, as seems to
be implied in Acts xxvi., or infer from the more detailed narrative
of chapters ix. and xxii., that the announcement was sent by Ananias
and afterwards more urgently repeated in the vision at the Temple, in
either case the fact remains the same; from the beginning Paul knew
that he was appointed to be Christ's witness to the Gentiles. This
destination was included in the Divine call which brought him to
faith in Jesus. His Judaic prejudices were swept away. He was ready
to embrace the universalism of the Gospel. With his fine logical
instinct, sharpened by hatred, he had while yet a Pharisee discerned
more clearly than many Jewish Christians the bearing of the doctrine
of the cross upon the legal system. He saw that the struggle was one
of life and death. The vehemence with which he flung himself into the
contest was due to this perception. But it followed from this, that,
once convinced of the Messiahship of Jesus, Paul's faith at a bound
overleaped all Jewish barriers. "Judaism--or the religion of the
Crucified," was the alternative with which his stern logic pursued
the Nazarenes. Judaism _and_ Christianity--this was a compromise
intolerable to his nature. Before Saul's conversion he had left that
halting-place behind; he apprehended already, in some sense, the
truth up to which the elder Apostles had to be educated, that "in
Christ Jesus there is neither Greek nor Jew." He passed at a step
from the one camp to the other. In this there was consistency. The
enlightened, conscientious persecutor, who had debated with Stephen
and helped to stone him, was sure, if he became a Christian, to
become a Christian of Stephen's school. When he entered the Church,
Paul left the Synagogue. He was ripe for his world-wide commission.
There was no surprise, no unpreparedness in his mind when the
charge was given him, "Go; for I will send thee far hence among the
Gentiles."
In the Apostle's view, his personal salvation and that of the race
were objects united from the first. Not as a privileged Jew, but as
a sinful man, the Divine grace had found him out. The righteousness
of God was revealed to him on terms which brought it within the
reach of every human being. The Son of God whom he now beheld was a
personage vastly greater than his national Messiah, the "Christ after
the flesh" of his Jewish dreams, and His gospel was correspondingly
loftier and larger in its scope. "God was in Christ, reconciling,"
not a nation, but "_a world_ unto Himself." The "grace" conferred
on him was given that he might "preach among the Gentiles Christ's
unsearchable riches, and make all men see the mystery" of the counsel
of redeeming love (Eph. iii. 1-11). It was the world's redemption of
which Paul partook; and it was his business to let the world know it.
He had fathomed the depths of sin and self-despair; he had tasted the
uttermost of pardoning grace. God and the world met in his single
soul, and were reconciled. He felt from the first what he expresses
in his latest Epistles, that "the grace of God which appeared" to
him, was "for the salvation of all men" (Tit. ii. 11). "Faithful is
the saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came
into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief" (1 Tim. i. 15).
The same revelation that made Paul a Christian, made him the Apostle
of mankind.
III. _For this vocation the Apostle had been destined by God from the
beginning._ "It pleased God to do this," he says, "who had marked me
out from my mother's womb, and called me by His grace."
While "Saul was yet breathing out threatening and slaughter" against
the disciples of Jesus, how different a future was being prepared
for him! How little can we forecast the issue of our own plans,
or of those we form for others. His Hebrew birth, his rabbinical
proficiency, the thoroughness with which he had mastered the tenets
of Legalism, had fitted him like no other to be the bearer of the
Gospel to the Gentiles. This Epistle proves the fact. Only a graduate
of the best Jewish schools could have written it. Paul's master,
Gamaliel, if he had read the letter, must perforce have been proud
of his scholar; he would have feared more than ever that those who
opposed the Nazarene might "haply be found fighting against God." The
Apostle foils the Judaists with their own weapons. He knows every
inch of the ground on which the battle is waged. At the same time, he
was a born Hellenist and a citizen of the Empire, native "of no mean
city." Tarsus, his birthplace, was the capital of an important Roman
province, and a centre of Greek culture and refinement. In spite of
the Hebraic conservatism of Saul's family, the genial atmosphere
of such a town could not but affect the early development of so
sensitive a nature. He had sufficient tincture of Greek letters and
conversance with Roman law to make him a true cosmopolitan, qualified
to be "all things to all men." He presents an admirable example of
that versatility and suppleness of genius which have distinguished
for so many ages the sons of Jacob, and enable them to find a home
and a market for their talents in every quarter of the world. Paul
was "a chosen vessel, to bear the name of Jesus before Gentiles and
kings, and the sons of Israel."
But his mission was concealed till the appointed hour. Thinking
of his personal election, he reminds himself of the words spoken
to Jeremiah touching his prophetic call. "Before I formed thee in
the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest out of the womb I
sanctified thee. I appointed thee a prophet unto the nations" (Jer.
i. 5). Or like the Servant of the Lord in Isaiah he might say, "The
Lord hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath
He made mention of my name. And He hath made my mouth like a sharp
sword, in the shadow of His hand hath He hid me; and He hath made me
a polished shaft, in His quiver hath He kept me close" (Isa. xlix. 1,
2). This belief in a fore-ordaining Providence, preparing in secret
its chosen instruments, so deeply rooted in the Old Testament faith,
was not wanting to Paul. His career is a signal illustration of its
truth. He applies it, in his doctrine of Election, to the history of
every child of grace. "Whom He foreknew, He did predestinate. Whom
He did predestinate, He called." Once more we see how the Apostle's
theology was moulded by his experience.
The manner in which Saul of Tarsus had been prepared all his life
long for the service of Christ, magnified to his eyes the sovereign
grace of God. "He called me _through His grace_." The call came at
precisely the fit time; it came at a time and in a manner calculated
to display the Divine compassion in the highest possible degree. This
lesson Paul could never forget. To the last he dwells upon it with
deep emotion. "In me," he writes to Timothy, "Jesus Christ first
showed forth all His longsuffering. I was a blasphemer, a persecutor,
insolent and injurious; but I obtained mercy" (1 Tim. i. 13-16).
He was so dealt with from the beginning, he had been called to the
knowledge of Christ under such circumstances that he felt he had
a right to say, above other men, "By the grace of God I am what I
am." The predestination under which his life was conducted "from his
mother's womb," had for its chief purpose, to exhibit God's mercy
to mankind, "that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding
riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus" (Eph. ii.
7). To this purpose, so soon as he discerned it, he humbly yielded
himself. The Son of God, whose followers he had hunted to death, whom
in his madness he would have crucified afresh, had appeared to him
to save and to forgive. The _grace_ of it, the infinite kindness and
compassion such an act revealed in the Divine nature, excited new
wonder in the Apostle's soul till his latest hour. Henceforth he was
the bondman of grace, the celebrant of grace. His life was one act of
thanksgiving "to the praise of the glory of His grace!"
IV. From Jesus Christ in person Paul had received his knowledge of
the Gospel, without human intervention. In the revelation of Christ
to his soul he possessed the substance of the truth he was afterwards
to teach; and with the revelation there came the commission to
proclaim it to all men. His gospel-message was in its essence
complete; the Apostleship was already his. Such are the assertions
the Apostle makes in reply to his gainsayers. And he goes on to
show that _the course he took after his conversion sustains these
lofty claims_: "When God had been pleased to reveal His Son in me,
immediately (right from the first) I took no counsel with flesh and
blood. I avoided repairing to Jerusalem, to the elder Apostles; I
went away into Arabia, and back again to Damascus. It was three years
before I set foot in Jerusalem."
If that were so, how could Paul have received his doctrine or his
commission from the Church of Jerusalem, as his traducers alleged?
He acted from the outset under the sense of a unique Divine call,
that allowed of no human validation or supplement. Had the case been
otherwise, had Paul come to his knowledge of Christ by ordinary
channels, his first impulse would have been to go up to the mother
city to report himself there, and to gain further instruction. Above
all, if he intended to be a minister of Christ, it would have been
proper to secure the approval of the Twelve, and to be accredited
from Jerusalem. This was the course which "flesh and blood" dictated,
which Saul's new friends at Damascus probably urged upon him. It
was insinuated that he had actually proceeded in this way, and put
himself under the direction of Peter and the Judean Church. But he
says, "I did nothing of the sort. I kept clear of Jerusalem for
three years; and then I only went there to make private acquaintance
with Peter, and stayed in the city but a fortnight." Although Paul
did not for many years make public claim to rank with the Twelve,
from the commencement he acted in conscious independence of them.
He calls them "Apostles _before me_," by this phrase assuming the
matter in dispute. He tacitly asserts his equality in official status
with the Apostles of Jesus, assigning to the others precedence only
in point of time. And he speaks of this equality in terms implying
that it was already present to his mind at this former period. Under
this conviction he held aloof from human guidance and approbation.
Instead of "going up to Jerusalem," the centre of publicity, the
head-quarters of the rising Church, Paul "went off into Arabia."
There were, no doubt, other reasons for this step. Why did he choose
_Arabia_ for his sojourn? and what, pray, was he doing there? The
Apostle leaves us to our own conjectures. _Solitude_, we imagine,
was his principal object. His Arabian retreat reminds us of the
Arabian exile of Moses, of the wilderness discipline of John the
Baptist, and the "forty days" of Jesus in the wilderness. In each
of these instances, the desert retirement followed upon a great
inward crisis, and was preparatory to the entrance of the Lord's
servant on his mission to the world. Elijah, at a later period of his
course, sought the wilderness under motives not dissimilar. After
such a convulsion as Paul had passed through, with a whole world of
new ideas and emotions pouring in upon him, he felt that he must be
alone; he must get away from the voices of men. There are such times
in the history of every earnest soul. In the silence of the Arabian
desert, wandering amid the grandest scenes of ancient revelation,
and communing in stillness with God and with his own heart, the
young Apostle will think out the questions that press upon him; he
will be able to take a calmer survey of the new world into which he
has been ushered, and will learn to see clearly and walk steadily
in the heavenly light that at first bewildered him. So "the Spirit
immediately driveth him out into the wilderness." In Arabia one
confers, not with flesh and blood, but with the mountains and with
God. From Arabia Saul returned in possession of himself, and of his
gospel.
The Acts of the Apostles omits this Arabian episode (Acts ix. 19-25).
But for what Paul tells us here, we should have gathered that he
began at once after his baptism to preach Christ in Damascus, his
preaching after no long time[24] exciting Jewish enmity to such
a pitch that his life was imperilled, and the Christian brethren
compelled him to seek safety by flight to Jerusalem. The reader of
Luke is certainly surprised to find a period of three years,[25]
with a prolonged residence in Arabia, interpolated between Paul's
conversion and his reception in Jerusalem. Luke's silence, we judge,
is _intentional_. The Arabian retreat formed no part of the Apostle's
public life, and had no place in the narrative of the Acts. Paul only
mentions it here in the briefest terms, and because the reference was
necessary to put his relations to the first Apostles in their proper
light. For the time the converted Saul had dropped out of sight; and
the historian of the Acts respects his privacy.
[24]ἡμέραι ἱκαναί, _a considerable time_. The expression is
indefinite.
[25] Ver. 18: that is, parts of "three years," according to
ancient reckoning--say from 36 to 38 A.D., possibly less than two
in actual duration.
The place of the Arabian journey seems to us to lie between vv.
21 and 22 of Acts ix. That passage gives a twofold description of
Paul's preaching in Damascus, in its earlier and later stages, with a
double note of time (vv. 19 and 23). Saul's first testimony, taking
place "straightway," was, one would presume, a mere declaration of
faith in Jesus: "In the synagogues he proclaimed Jesus, (saying)
that He is the Son of God" (R.V.), language in striking harmony
with that of the Apostle in the text (vv. 12, 16). Naturally this
recantation caused extreme astonishment in Damascus, where Saul's
reputation was well-known both to Jews and Christians, and his
arrival was expected in the character of Jewish inquisitor-in-chief.
Ver. 22 presents a different situation. Paul is now preaching in
his established and characteristic style; as we read it, we might
fancy we hear him debating in the synagogues of Pisidian Antioch or
Corinth or Thessalonica: "He was confounding the Jews, _proving_ that
this is the Christ." Neither Saul himself nor his Jewish hearers in
the first days after his conversion would be in the mood for the
sustained argumentation and Scriptural dialectic thus described.
The explanation of the change lies behind the opening words of the
verse: "But Saul increased in strength"--a growth due not only to
the prolonged opposition he had to encounter, but still more, as
we conjecture from this hint of the Apostle, to the period of rest
and reflection which he enjoyed in his Arabian seclusion. The two
marks of time given us in vv. 19 and 23 of Luke's narrative, may be
fairly distinguished from each other--"certain days," and "sufficient
days" (or "a considerable time")--as denoting a briefer and a longer
season respectively: the former so short that the excitement caused
by Saul's declaration of his new faith had not yet subsided when he
withdrew from the city into the desert--in which case Luke's note
of time does not really conflict with Paul's "immediately"; the
latter affording a lapse of time sufficient for Saul to develope
his argument for the Messiahship of Jesus, and to provoke the Jews,
worsted in logic, to resort to other weapons. From Luke's point of
view the sojourn in Arabia, however extended, was simply an incident,
of no public importance, in Paul's early ministry in Damascus.
The disappearance of Saul during this interval helps however, as we
think, to explain a subsequent statement in Luke's narrative that is
certainly perplexing (Acts ix. 26, 27). When Saul, after his escape
from Damascus, "was come to Jerusalem," and "essayed to join himself
to the disciples," they, we are told, "were all afraid of him, not
believing that he was a disciple!" For while the Church at Jerusalem
had doubtless heard at the time of Saul's marvellous conversion three
years before, his long retirement and avoidance of Jerusalem threw an
air of mystery and suspicion about his proceedings, and revived the
fears of the Judean brethren; and his reappearance created a panic.
In consequence of his sudden departure from Damascus, it is likely
that no public report had as yet reached Judæa of Saul's return to
that city and his renewed ministry there. Barnabas now came forward
to act as sponsor for the suspected convert. What induced him to do
this--whether it was that his largeness of heart enabled him to read
Saul's character better than others, or whether he had some earlier
private acquaintance with the Tarsian--we cannot tell. The account
that Barnabas was able to give of his friend's conversion and of his
bold confession in Damascus, won for Paul the place in the confidence
of Peter and the leaders of the Church at Jerusalem which he never
afterwards lost.
The two narratives--the history of Luke and the letter of
Paul--relate the same series of events, but from almost opposite
standpoints. Luke dwells upon _Paul's connection with the Church at
Jerusalem and its Apostles_. Paul is maintaining _his independence of
them_. There is no contradiction; but there is just such discrepancy
as will arise where two honest and competent witnesses are relating
identical facts in a different connection.
CHAPTER VI.
_PAUL AND THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH._
"Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas,
and tarried with him fifteen days. But other of the apostles
saw I none, but only James the Lord's brother. Now touching
the things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie
not. Then I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia And I
was still unknown by face unto the churches of Judæa which were
in Christ: but they only heard say, He that once persecuted us
now preacheth the faith of which he once made havock; and they
glorified God in me."--GAL. i. 18-24.
For the first two years of his Christian life, Paul held no
intercourse whatever with the Church at Jerusalem and its chiefs. His
relation with them was commenced by the visit he paid to Peter in the
third year after his conversion. And that relation was more precisely
determined and made public when, after successfully prosecuting for
fourteen years his mission to the heathen, the Apostle again went up
to Jerusalem to defend the liberty of the Gentile Church (ch. ii.
1-10).
A clear understanding of this course of events was essential to the
vindication of Paul's position in the eyes of the Galatians. The
"troublers" told them that Paul's doctrine was not that of the mother
Church; that his knowledge of the gospel and authority to preach it
came from the elder Apostles, with whom since his attack upon Peter
at Antioch he was at open variance. They themselves had come down
from Judæa on purpose to set his pretensions in their true light,
and to teach the Gentiles the way of the Lord more perfectly.
Modern rationalism has espoused the cause of these "deceitful
workers" (2 Cor. xi. 13-15). It endeavours to rehabilitate the
Judaistic party. The "critical" school maintain that the opposition
of the Circumcisionists to the Apostle Paul was perfectly legitimate.
They hold that the "pseud-apostles" of Corinth, the "certain from
James," the "troublers" and "false brethren privily brought in" of
this Epistle, did in truth represent, as they claimed to do, the
principles of the Jewish Christian Church; and that there was a
radical divergence between the Pauline and Petrine gospels, of which
the two Apostles were fully aware from the time of their encounter
at Antioch. However Paul may have wished to disguise the fact to
himself, the teaching of the Twelve was identical, we are told,
with that "other gospel" on which he pronounces his anathema; the
original Church of Jesus never emancipated itself from the trammels
of legalism; the Apostle Paul, and not his Master, was in reality
the author of evangelical doctrine, the founder of the catholic
Church. The conflict between Peter and Paul at Antioch, related in
this Epistle, supplies, in the view of Baur and his followers, the
key to the history of the Early Church. The Ebionite assumption of a
personal rivalry between the two Apostles and an intrinsic opposition
in their doctrine, hitherto regarded as the invention of a desperate
and decaying heretical sect, these ingenious critics have adopted for
the basis of their "scientific" reconstruction of the New Testament.
Paul's Judaizing hinderers and troublers are to be canonized; and
the pseudo-Clementine writings, forsooth, must take the place of the
discredited Acts of the Apostles. Verily "the whirligig of time hath
its revenges." To empanel Paul on his accusers' side, and to make
this Epistle above all convict him of heterodoxy, is an attempt which
dazzles by its very daring.
Let us endeavour to form a clear conception of the facts touching
Paul's connection with the first Apostles and his attitude and
feeling towards the Jewish Church, as they are in evidence in the
first two chapters of this Epistle.
I. On the one hand, it is clear that the Gentile Apostle's relations
to Peter and the Twelve were those of _personal independence and
official equality_.
This is the aspect of the case on which Paul lays stress. His
sceptical critics argue that under his assertion of independence
there is concealed an opposition of principle, a "radical
divergence." The sense of independence is unmistakable. It is on
that side that the Apostle seeks to guard himself. With this aim
he styles himself at the outset "an Apostle not from men, nor by
man"--neither man-made nor man-sent. Such apostles there were; and
in this character, we imagine, the Galatian Judaistic teachers, like
those of Corinth,[26] professed to appear, as the emissaries of the
Church in Jerusalem and the authorised exponents of the teaching of
the "pillars" there. Paul is an Apostle at first-hand, taking his
commission directly from Jesus Christ. In that quality he pronounces
his benediction and his anathema. To support this assumption he
has shown how impossible it was in point of time and circumstances
that he should have been beholden for his gospel to the Jerusalem
Church and the elder Apostles. So far as regarded the manner of his
conversion and the events of the first decisive years in which his
Christian principles and vocation took their shape, his position had
been altogether detached and singular; the Jewish Apostles could in
no way claim him for their son in the gospel.
[26] 2 Cor. xi. 13; iii. 1-3. See the remarks on the word
_Apostle_ in Chapter I. p. 12.
But at last, "after three years," Saul "did go up to Jerusalem." What
was it for? To report himself to the authorities of the Church and
place himself under their direction? To seek Peter's instruction,
in order to obtain a more assured knowledge of the gospel he had
embraced? Nothing of the kind. Not even "_to question_ Cephas,"
as some render ἱστορῆσαι, following an older classical usage--"to
gain information" from him; but "I went up _to make acquaintance
with_ Cephas." Saul went to Jerusalem carrying in his heart the
consciousness of his high vocation, seeking, as an equal with an
equal, to make personal acquaintance with the leader of the Twelve.
_Cephas_ (as he was called at Jerusalem) must have been at this time
to Paul a profoundly interesting personality. He was the one man
above all others whom the Apostle felt he must get to know, with whom
it was necessary for him to have a thorough understanding.
How momentous was this meeting! How much we could wish to know what
passed between these two in the conversations of the fortnight
they spent together. One can imagine the delight with which Peter
would relate to his listener the scenes of the life of Jesus; how
the two men would weep together at the recital of the Passion, the
betrayal, trial and denial, the agony of the Garden, the horror of
the cross; with what mingled awe and triumph he would describe the
events of the Resurrection and the Forty Days, the Ascension, and the
baptism of fire. In Paul's account of the appearances of the risen
Christ (1 Cor. xv. 4-8), written many years afterwards, there are
statements most naturally explained as a recollection of what he had
heard privately from Peter, and possibly also from James, at this
conference. For it is in his gospel message and doctrine, and his
Apostolic commission, not in regard to the details of the biography
of Jesus, that Paul claims to be independent of tradition. And with
what deep emotion would Peter receive in turn from Paul's lips the
account of his meeting with Jesus, of the three dark days that
followed, of the message sent through Ananias, and the revelations
made and purposes formed during the Arabian exile. Between two such
men, met at such a time, there would surely be an entire frankness
of communication and a brotherly exchange of convictions and of
plans. In that case Paul could not fail to inform the elder Apostle
of the extent of the commission he had received from their common
Master; although he does not appear to have made any public and
formal assertion of his Apostolic dignity for a considerable time
afterwards. The supposition of a private cognizance on Peter's part
of Paul's true status makes the open recognition which took place
fourteen years later easy to understand (ch. ii. 6-10).
"But other of the Apostles," Paul goes on to say, "saw I none, but
only James the brother of the Lord." James, _no Apostle_ surely;
neither in the higher sense, for he cannot be reasonably identified
with "James the son of Alphæus;" nor in the lower, for he was, as
far as we can learn, stationary at Jerusalem. But he stood so near
the Apostles, and was in every way so important a person, that if
Paul had omitted the name of James in this connection, he would have
seemed to pass over a material fact. The reference to James in 1
Cor. xv. 7--a hint deeply interesting in itself, and lending so much
dignity to the position of James--suggests that Paul had been at this
time in confidential intercourse with James as well as Peter, each
relating to the other how he had "seen the Lord."
So cardinal are the facts just stated (vv. 15-19), as bearing on
Paul's apostleship, and so contrary to the representations made by
the Judaizers, that he pauses to call God to witness his veracity:
"Now in what I am writing to you, lo, before God, I lie not." The
Apostle never makes this appeal lightly; but only in support of some
averment in which his personal honour and his strongest feelings are
involved.[27] It was alleged, with some show of proof, that Paul was
an underling of the authorities of the Church at Jerusalem, and that
all he knew of the gospel had been learned from the Twelve. From ver.
11 onwards he has been making a circumstantial contradiction of these
assertions. He protests that up to the time when he commenced his
Gentile mission, he had been under no man's tutelage or tuition in
respect to his knowledge of the gospel. He can say no more to prove
his case. Either his opposers or himself are uttering falsehood. The
Galatians know, or ought to know, how incapable he is of such deceit.
Solemnly therefore he avouches, closing the matter so far, as if
drawing himself up to his utmost height: "Behold, before God, I do
not lie!"
[27] See Rom. ix. 1; 2 Cor. i. 17, 18, 23; 1 Thess. ii. 5.
But now we are confronted with the narrative of the Acts (chap.
ix. 26-30), which renders a very different account of this passage
in the Apostle's life. (To vv. 26, 27 of Luke's narrative we have
already alluded in the concluding paragraphs of Chapter V). We are
told there that Barnabas introduced Saul "to the Apostles"; here,
that he saw none of them but Cephas, and only James besides. The
_number_ of the Apostolate present in Jerusalem at the time is a
particular that does not engage Luke's mind; while it is of the
essence of Paul's affirmation. What the Acts relates is that Saul,
through Barnabas' intervention, was now received by the Apostolic
fellowship as a Christian brother, and as one who "had seen the
Lord." The object which Saul had in coming to Jerusalem, and the fact
that just then Cephas was the only one of the Twelve to be found
in the city, along with James--these are matters which only come
into view from the private and personal standpoint to which Paul
admits us. For the rest, there is certainly no contradiction when
we read in the one report that Paul "went up to make acquaintance
with Cephas," and in the other, that he "was with them going in and
out at Jerusalem, preaching boldly in the name of the Lord;" that
"he spake and disputed against the Hellenists," moving their anger
so violently that his life was again in danger, and he had to be
carried down to Cæsarea and shipped off to Tarsus. Saul was not the
man to hide his head in Jerusalem. We can understand how greatly his
spirit was stirred by his arrival there, and by the recollection of
his last passage through the city gates. In these very synagogues of
the Hellenists he had himself confronted Stephen; outside those walls
he had assisted to stone the martyr. Paul's address delivered many
years later to the Jewish mob that attempted his life in Jerusalem,
shows how deeply these remembrances troubled his soul (Acts xxii.
17-22). And they would not suffer him now to be silent. He hoped
that his testimony to Christ, delivered in the spot where he had
been so notorious as a persecutor, would produce a softening effect
on his old companions. It was sure to affect them powerfully, one
way or the other. As the event proved, it did not take many words
from Saul's lips to awaken against him the same fury that hurried
Stephen to his death. A fortnight was time quite sufficient, under
the circumstances, to make Jerusalem, as we say, too hot to hold
Saul. Nor can we wonder, knowing his love for his kindred, that there
needed a special command from heaven (Acts xxii. 21), joined to the
friendly compulsion of the Church, to induce him to yield ground
and quit the city. But he had accomplished something; he had "made
acquaintance with Cephas."
This brief visit to the Holy City was a second crisis in Paul's
career. He was now thrust forth upon his mission to the heathen. It
was evident that he was not to look for success among his Jewish
brethren. He lost no opportunity of appealing to them; but it
was commonly with the same result as at Damascus and Jerusalem.
Throughout life he carried with him this "great sorrow and unceasing
pain of heart," that to his "kinsmen according to the flesh," for
whose salvation he could consent to forfeit his own, his gospel
was hid. In their eyes he was a traitor to Israel, and must count
upon their enmity. Everything conspired to point in one direction:
"Depart," the Divine voice had said, "for I will send thee far hence
unto the Gentiles." And Paul obeyed. "I went," he relates here, "into
the regions of Syria and Cilicia" (ver. 21).
To Tarsus, the Cilician capital, Saul voyaged from Judæa. So we
learn from Acts ix. 30. His native place had the first claim on the
Apostle after Jerusalem, and afforded the best starting-point for
his independent mission. Syria, however, precedes Cilicia in the
text; it was the leading province of these two, in which Paul was
occupied during the fourteen years ensuing, and became the seat of
distinguished Churches. In Antioch, the Syrian capital, Christianity
was already planted (Acts xi. 19--21). The close connection of
the Churches of these provinces, and their predominantly Gentile
character, are both evident from the letter addressed to them
subsequently by the Council of Jerusalem (Acts xv. 23, 24). Acts xv.
41 shows that a number of Christian societies owning Paul's authority
were found at a later time in this region. And there was a highroad
direct from Syro-Cilicia to Galatia, which Paul traversed in his
second visit to the latter country (Acts xviii. 22, 23); so that the
Galatians would doubtless be aware of the existence of these older
Gentile Churches, and of their relation to Paul. He has no need to
dwell on this first chapter of his missionary history. After but a
fortnight's visit to Jerusalem, Paul went into these Gentile regions,
and there for twice seven years--with what success was known to
all--"preached the faith of which once he made havoc."
This period was divided into two parts. For five or six years the
Apostle laboured alone; afterwards in conjunction with Barnabas,
who invited his help at Antioch (Acts xi. 25, 26). Barnabas was
Paul's senior, and had for some time held the leading position in
the Church of Antioch; and Paul was personally indebted to this
generous man (p. 82). He accepted the position of helper to Barnabas
without any compromise of his higher authority, as yet held in
reserve. He accompanied Barnabas to Jerusalem in 44 (or 45) A.D.,
with the contribution made by the Syrian Church for the relief of the
famine-stricken Judean brethren--a visit which Paul seems here to
forget.[28] But the Church at Jerusalem was at that time undergoing a
severe persecution; its leaders were either in prison or in flight.
The two delegates can have done little more than convey the moneys
entrusted to them, and that with the utmost secrecy. Possibly Paul on
this occasion never set foot inside the city. In any case, the event
had no bearing on the Apostle's present contention.
[28] Acts xi. 27-30. It is significant that this ministration was
sent "to the Elders."
Between this journey and the really important visit to Jerusalem
introduced in chap. ii. 1, Barnabas and Paul undertook, at the
prompting of the Holy Spirit expressed through the Church of
Antioch (Acts xiii. 1-4), the missionary expedition described in
Acts xiii., xiv. Under the trials of this journey the ascendancy
of the younger evangelist became patent to all. Paul was marked
out in the eyes of the Gentiles as their born leader, the Apostle
of heathen Christianity. He appears to have taken the chief part
in the discussion with the Judaists respecting circumcision, which
immediately ensued at Antioch; and was put at the head of the
deputation sent up to Jerusalem concerning this question. This was a
turning-point in the Apostle's history. It brought about the public
recognition of his leadership in the Church. The seal of man was now
to be set upon the secret election of God.
During this long period, the Apostle tells us, he "remained unknown
by face to the Churches of Judæa." Absent for so many years
from the metropolis, after a fortnight's flying visit, spent in
private intercourse with Peter and James, and in controversy in the
Hellenistic synagogues where few Christians of the city would be
likely to follow him,[29] Paul was a stranger to the bulk of the
Judean disciples. But they watched his course, notwithstanding,
with lively interest and with devout thanksgiving to God (vv. 22,
23). Throughout this first period of his ministry the Apostle acted
in complete independence of the Jewish Church, making no report to
its chiefs, nor seeking any direction from them. Accordingly, when
afterwards he did go up to Jerusalem and laid before the authorities
there his gospel to the heathen, they had nothing to add to it; they
did not take upon themselves to give him any advice or injunction,
beyond the wish that he and Barnabas should "remember the poor," as
he was already forward to do (ch. ii. 1-10). Indeed the three famous
Pillars of the Jewish Church at this time openly acknowledged Paul's
equality with Peter in the Apostleship, and resigned to his direction
the Gentile province. Finally at Antioch, the head-quarters of
Gentile Christianity, when Peter compromised the truth of the gospel
by yielding to Judaistic pressure, Paul had not hesitated publicly
to reprove him (ch. ii. 11-21). He had been compelled in this way to
carry the vindication of his gospel to the furthest lengths; and he
had done this successfully. It is only when we reach the end of the
second chapter that we discover how much the Apostle meant when he
said, "My gospel is not according to man."
[29] For the ministry alluded to in Acts xxvi. 20 there were
other, later opportunities, especially in the journey described
in Acts xv. 3; see also Acts xxi. 15, 16.
If there was any man to whom as a Christian teacher he was bound to
defer, any one who might be regarded as his official superior, it was
the Apostle Peter. Yet against this very Cephas he had dared openly
to measure himself. Had he been a disciple of the Jewish Apostle, a
servant of the Jerusalem Church, how would this have been possible?
Had he not possessed an authority derived immediately from Christ,
how could he have stood out alone, against the prerogative of Peter,
against the personal friendship and local influence of Barnabas,
against the example of all his Jewish brethren? Nay, he was prepared
to rebuke all the Apostles, and anathematize all the angels, rather
than see Christ's gospel set at nought. For it was in his view "the
gospel of the glory of the blessed God, _committed to my trust_!" (1
Tim. i. 11).
II. But while Paul stoutly maintains his independence, he does this
in such a way as to show that there was no hostility or personal
rivalry between himself and the first Apostles. His relations to the
Jewish Church were all the while those of _friendly acquaintance and
brotherly recognition_.
That Nazarene sect which he had of old time persecuted, was "the
Church of God" (ver. 13). To the end of his life this thought gave
a poignancy to the Apostle's recollection of his early days. To
"the Churches of Judæa"[30] he attaches the epithet _in Christ_,
a phrase of peculiar depth of meaning with Paul, which he could
never have conferred as matter of formal courtesy, nor by way of
mere distinction between the Church and the Synagogue. From Paul's
lips this title is a guarantee of orthodoxy. It satisfies us that
the "other gospel" of the Circumcisionists was very far from being
the gospel of the Jewish Christian Church at large. Paul is careful
to record the sympathy which the Judean brethren cherished for his
missionary work in its earliest stages, although their knowledge of
him was comparatively distant: "Only they continued to hear that
our old persecutor is preaching the faith which once he sought
to destroy. And in me they glorified God." Nor does he drop the
smallest hint to show that the disposition of the Churches in the
mother country toward himself, or his judgement respecting them, had
undergone any change up to the time of his writing this Epistle.
[30] Ver. 22. It is arbitrary in Meyer to exclude from this
category the Church of Jerusalem.
He speaks of the elder Apostles in terms of unfeigned respect. In
his reference in ch. ii. 11-21 to the error of Peter, there is great
plainness of speech, but no bitterness. When the Apostle says that
he "went up to Jerusalem to see Peter," and describes James as "the
Lord's brother," and when he refers to both of them, along with
John, as "those accounted to be pillars," can he mean anything but
honour to these honoured men? To read into these expressions a covert
jealousy and to suppose them written by way of disparagement, seems
to us a strangely jaundiced and small-minded sort of criticism. The
Apostle testifies that Peter held a Divine trust in the Gospel,
and that God had "wrought for Peter" to this effect, as for
himself. By claiming the testimony of the Pillars at Jerusalem to
his vocation, he shows his profound respect for theirs. When the
unfortunate difference arose between Peter and himself at Antioch,
Paul is careful to show that the Jewish Apostle on that occasion was
influenced by the circumstances of the moment, and nevertheless
remained true in his real convictions to the common gospel.
In view of these facts, it is impossible to believe, as the
_Tendency_ critics would have us do, that Paul when he wrote this
letter was at feud with the Jewish Church. In that case, while he
taxes Peter with "dissimulation" (ch. ii. 11-13), he is himself
the real dissembler, and has carried his dissimulation to amazing
lengths. If he is in this Epistle contending against the Primitive
Church and its leaders, he has concealed his sentiments toward
them with an art so crafty as to overreach itself. He has taught
his readers to reverence those whom on this hypothesis he was most
concerned to discredit. The terms under which he refers to Cephas
and the Judean Churches would be just so many testimonies against
himself, if their doctrine was the "other gospel" of the Galatian
troublers, and if Paul and the Twelve were rivals for the suffrages
of the Gentile Christians.
The one word which wears a colour of detraction is the parenthesis
in ver. 6 of ch. ii.: "whatever aforetime[31] they (those of repute)
were, makes no difference to me. God accepts no man's person." But
this is no more than Paul has already said in ch. i. 16, 17. At the
first, after receiving his gospel from the Lord in person, he felt it
to be out of place for him to "confer with flesh and blood." So now,
even in the presence of the first Apostles, the earthly companions
of his Master, he cannot abate his pretensions, nor forget that his
ministry stands on a level as exalted as theirs. This language is
in precise accord with that of 1 Cor. xv. 10. The suggestion that
the repeated οἱ δοκοῦντες conveys a sneer against the leaders at
Jerusalem, as "seeming" to be more than they were, is an insult to
Paul that recoils upon the critics who utter it. The phrase denotes
"those of repute," "reputed to be pillars," the acknowledged heads of
the mother Church. Their position was recognised on all hands; Paul
assumes it, and argues upon it. He desires to magnify, not to minify,
the importance of these illustrious men. They were pillars of his own
cause. It is a maladroit interpretation that would have Paul cry down
James and the Twelve. By so much as he impaired their worth, he must
assuredly have impaired his own. If their status was mere _seeming_,
of what value was their endorsement of his? But for a preconceived
opinion, no one, we may safely affirm, reading this Epistle would
have gathered that Peter's "gospel of the circumcision" was the
"other gospel" of Galatia, or that the "certain from James" of ch.
ii. 12 represented the views and the policy of the first Apostles.
The assumption that Peter's dissimulation at Antioch expressed the
settled doctrine of the Jewish Apostolic Church, is unhistorical.
The Judaizers _abused_ the authority of Peter and James when they
pleaded it in favour of their agitation. So we are told expressly in
Acts xv.; and a candid interpretation of this letter bears out the
statements of Luke. In James and Peter, Paul and John, there were
indeed "diversities of gifts and operations," but they had received
the same Spirit; they served the same Lord. They held alike the one
and only gospel of the grace of God.
[31] We follow Lightfoot in reading the ποτὲ as in ch. i. 23, and
everywhere else in Paul, as a particle of _time_.
CHAPTER VII.
_PAUL AND THE FALSE BRETHREN._
"Then after the space of fourteen years I went up again to
Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus also with me. And I went
up by revelation; and I laid before them the gospel which I
preach among the Gentiles, but privately before them who were
of repute, [_asking them_ whether I am running, or had run, in
vain: but not even Titus who was with me, being a Greek, was
compelled to be circumcised. But _it was_[32]] because of the
false brethren privily brought in, who came in privily to spy
out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might
bring us into bondage: to whom we gave place in the way of
subjection, no, not for an hour; that the truth of the gospel
might continue with you."--GAL. ii. 1-5.
[32] The writer is compelled in this instance to depart from
the rendering of the English Version, for reasons given in the
sequel. See also a paper on _Paul and Titus at Jerusalem_, in
THE EXPOSITOR, 3rd series, vol. vi., pp. 435-442. The last three
words within the brackets agree with the R.V. _margin_.
"Fourteen years" had elapsed since Paul left Jerusalem for Tarsus,
and commenced his Gentile mission.[33] During this long period--a
full half of his missionary course--the Apostle was lost to the sight
of the Judean Churches. For nearly half this time, until Barnabas
brought him to Antioch, we have no further trace of his movements.
But these years of obscure labour had, we may be sure, no small
influence in shaping the Apostle's subsequent career. It was a kind
of Apostolic apprenticeship. Then his evangelistic plans were laid;
his powers were practised; his methods of teaching and administration
formed and tested. This first, unnoted period of Paul's missionary
life held, we imagine, much the same relation to his public ministry
that the time of the Arabian retreat did to his spiritual development.
[33] These fourteen years probably amounted to something less in
our reckoning,--say, from 38 to 51 A.D. Some six years elapsed
before Paul was summoned to Antioch.
We are apt to think of the Apostle Paul only as we see him in the
full tide of his activity, carrying "from Jerusalem round about unto
Illyricum" the standard of the cross and planting it in one after
another of the great cities of the Empire, "always triumphing in
every place;" or issuing those mighty Epistles whose voice shakes
the world. We forget the earlier term of preparation, these years of
silence and patience, of unrecorded toil in a comparatively narrow
and humble sphere, which had after all their part in making Paul
the man he was. If Christ Himself would not "clutch" at His Divine
prerogatives (Phil. ii. 5-11), nor win them by self-assertion and
before the time, how much more did it become His servant to rise to
his great office by slow degrees. Paul served first as a private
missionary pioneer in his native land, then as a junior colleague and
assistant to Barnabas, until the summons came to take a higher place,
when "the signs of an Apostle" had been fully "wrought in him." Not
in a day, nor by the effect of a single revelation did he become the
fully armed and all-accomplished Apostle of the Gentiles whom we meet
in this Epistle. "After the space of fourteen years" it was time for
him to stand forth the approved witness and minister of Jesus Christ,
whom Peter and John publicly embraced as their equal.
Paul claims here the initiative in the momentous visit to Jerusalem
undertaken by himself and Barnabas, of which he is going to speak.
In Acts xv. 2 he is similarly placed at the head of the deputation
sent from Antioch about the question of circumcision. The account
of the preceding missionary tour in Acts xiii., xiv., shows how
the headship of the Gentile Church had come to devolve on Paul. In
Luke's narrative they are "Barnabas and Saul" who set out; "Paul
and Barnabas" who return.[34] Under the trials and hazards of this
adventure--at Paphos, Pisidian Antioch, Lystra--Paul's native
ascendancy and his higher vocation irresistibly declared themselves.
Age and rank yielded to the fire of inspiration, to the gifts of
speech, the splendid powers of leadership which the difficulties
of this expedition revealed in Paul. Barnabas returned to Antioch
with the thought in his heart, "He must increase; I must decrease."
And Barnabas was too generous a man not to yield cheerfully to his
companion the precedence for which God thus marked him out. Yet the
"sharp contention" in which the two men parted soon after this time
(Acts xv. 36-40), was, we may conjecture, due in some degree to a
lingering soreness in the mind of Barnabas on this account.
[34] Acts xiii. 2, 7, 13, 43, 45, 46, 50; xiv. 12, 14; xv. 2, 12.
The Apostle expresses himself with modesty, but in such a way as
to show that _he_ was regarded in this juncture as the champion of
the Gentile cause. The "revelation" that prompted the visit came to
him. The "taking up of Titus" was his distinct act (ver. 1). Unless
Paul has deceived himself, he was quite the leading figure in the
Council; it was his doctrine and his Apostleship that exercised the
minds of the chiefs at Jerusalem, when the delegates from Antioch
appeared before them. Whatever Peter and James may have known or
surmised previously concerning Paul's vocation, it was only now that
it became a public question for the Church. But as matters stood, it
was a vital question. The status of uncircumcised Christians, and the
Apostolic rank of Paul, constituted the twofold problem placed before
the chiefs of the Jewish Church. At the same time, the Apostle, while
fixing our attention mainly on his own position, gives to Barnabas
his meed of honour; for he says, "I went up with Barnabas,"--"_we_
never yielded for an hour to the false brethren,"--"the Pillars
gave _to me and Barnabas_ the right hand of fellowship, that we
might go to the Gentiles." But it is evident that the elder Gentile
missionary stood in the background. By the action that he takes Paul
unmistakably declares, "I am the Apostle of the Gentiles;"[35] and
that claim is admitted by the consenting voice of both branches of
the Church. The Apostle stepped to the front at this solemn crisis,
not for his own rank or office' sake, but at the call of God, in
defence of the truth of the gospel and the spiritual freedom of
mankind.
[35] Comp. Rom. xi. 13; xv. 16, 17.
This meeting at Jerusalem took place in 51, or it may be, 52 A.D.
We make no doubt that it is the same with the Council of Acts xv.
The identification has been controverted by several able scholars,
but without success. The two accounts are different, but in no sense
contradictory. In fact, as Dr. Pfleiderer acknowledges,[36] they
"admirably supplement each other. The agreement as to the chief
points is in any case greater than the discrepancies in the details;
and these discrepancies can for the most part be explained by the
different standpoint of the relaters." A difficulty lies, however, in
the fact that the historian of the Acts makes this the _third_ visit
of Paul to Jerusalem subsequently to his conversion; whereas, from
the Apostle's statement, it appears to have been the _second_. This
discrepancy has already come up for discussion in the last Chapter
(p. 92). Two further observations may be added on this point. In the
first place, Paul does not say that he had never been to Jerusalem
since the visit of ch. i. 18; he does say, that on this occasion he
"went up again," and that meanwhile he "remained unknown by face" to
the Christians of Judæa (ch. i. 22)--a fact quite compatible, as we
have shown, with what is related in Acts xi. 29, 30. And further, the
request addressed at this conference to the Gentile missionaries,
that they should "remember the poor," and the reference made by the
Apostle to his previous zeal in the same business (vv. 9, 10), are in
agreement with the earlier visit of charity mentioned by Luke.
[36] _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 103. This testimony is the more
valuable as coming from the ablest living exponent of the Baurian
theory.
I. The emphasis of ver. 1 rests upon its last clause,--_taking along
with me also Titus_. Not "Titus as well as Barnabas"--this cannot be
the meaning of the "also"--for Barnabas was Paul's colleague, deputed
equally with himself by the Church of Antioch; nor "Titus as well as
others"--there were other members of the deputation (Acts xv. 2), but
Paul makes no reference to them. The _also_ (καὶ) calls attention to
the fact of Paul's taking _Titus_, in view of the sequel; as though
he said, "I not only went up to Jerusalem at this particular time,
under Divine direction, but I took along with me Titus besides."
The prefixed _with_ (συν-) of the Greek participle refers to Paul
himself: compare ver. 3, "Titus who was with me." As for the "certain
others" referred to in Acts xv. 2, they were most likely Jews; or if
any of them were Gentiles, still it was Titus whom Paul had chosen
for his companion; and his case stood out from the rest in such a way
that it became the decisive one, the _test-case_ for the matter in
dispute.
The mention of _Titus'_ name in this connection was calculated to
raise a lively interest in the minds of the Apostle's readers. He is
introduced as known to the Galatians; indeed by this time his name
was familiar in the Pauline Churches, as that of a fellow-traveller
and trusted helper of the Apostle. He was with Paul in the latter
part of the third missionary tour--so we learn from the Corinthian
letters--and therefore probably in the earlier part of the same
journey, when the Apostle paid his second visit to Galatia. He
belonged to the heathen mission, and was Paul's "true child after a
common faith" (Tit. i. 4), an uncircumcised man, of Gentile birth
equally with the Galatians. And now they read of his "going up to
Jerusalem with Paul," to the mother-city of believers, where are
the pillars of the Church--the Jewish teachers would say--the true
Apostles of Jesus, where His doctrine is preached in its purity, and
where every Christian is circumcised and keeps the Law. Titus, the
unclean Gentile, at Jerusalem! How could he be admitted or tolerated
there, in the fellowship of the first disciples of the Lord?
This question Paul's readers, after what they had heard from the
Circumcisionists, would be sure to ask. He will answer it directly.
But the Apostle goes on to say, that he "went up in accordance
with a revelation." For this was one of those supreme moments
in his life when he looked for and received the direct guidance
of heaven. It was a most critical step to carry this question of
Gentile circumcision up to Jerusalem, and to take Titus with him
there, into the enemies' stronghold. Moreover, on the settlement of
this matter Paul knew that his Apostolic status depended, so far as
human recognition was concerned. It would be seen whether the Jewish
Church would acknowledge the converts of the Gentile mission as
brethren in Christ; and whether the first Apostles would receive him,
"the untimely one," as a colleague of their own. Never had he more
urgently needed or more implicitly relied upon Divine direction than
at this hour.
"And I put before them (the Church at Jerusalem) the gospel which I
preach among the Gentiles--but privately to those of repute: am I
running (said I), or have I run, in vain?" The latter clause we read
_interrogatively_, along with such excellent grammatical interpreters
as Meyer, Wieseler, and Hofmann. Paul had not come to Jerusalem _in
order to solve any doubt in his own mind_; but he wished the Church
of Jerusalem _to declare its mind_ respecting the character of his
ministry. He was not "running as uncertainly;" nor in view of the
"revelation" just given him could he have any fear for the result of
his appeal. But it was in every way necessary that the appeal should
be made.
The interjected words, "but privately," etc., indicate that there
were _two_ meetings during the conference, such as those which seem
to be distinguished in Acts xv. 4 and 6; and that the Apostle's
statement and the question arising out of it were addressed more
pointedly to "those of repute." By this term we understand, here and
in ver. 6, "the apostles and elders" (Acts xv.), headed by Peter and
James, amongst whom "those reputed to be pillars" are distinguished
in ver. 9. Paul dwells upon the phrase οἱ δοκοῦντες, because, to
be sure, it was so often on the lips of the Judaizers, who were in
the habit of speaking with an imposing air, and by way of contrast
with Paul, of "the authorities" (at Jerusalem)--as the designation
might appropriately be rendered. These very men whom the Legalists
were exalting at Paul's expense, the venerated chiefs of the mother
Church, had on this occasion, Paul is going to say, given their
approval to his doctrine; they declined to impose circumcision on
Gentile believers. The Twelve were not stationary at Jerusalem, and
therefore could not form a fixed court of reference there; hence a
greater importance accrued to the Elders of the city Church, with the
revered James at their head, the brother of the Lord.
The Apostle, in bringing Titus, had brought up the subject-matter of
the controversy. The "gospel of the uncircumcision" stood before the
Jewish authorities, an accomplished fact. Titus was there, by the
side of Paul, a sample--and a noble specimen, we can well believe--of
the Gentile Christendom which the Jewish Church must either
acknowledge or repudiate. How will they treat him? Will they admit
this foreign protege of Paul to their communion? Or will they require
him first to be circumcised? The question at issue could not take a
form more crucial for the prejudices of the mother Church. It was one
thing to acknowledge uncircumcised fellow-believers in the abstract,
away yonder at Antioch or Iconium, or even at Cæsarea; and another
thing to see Titus standing amongst them in his heathen uncleanness,
on the sacred soil of Jerusalem, under the shadow of the Temple, and
to hear Paul claiming for him--for this "dog" of a Gentile--equally
with himself the rights of Christian brotherhood! The demand was most
offensive to the pride of Judaism, as no one knew better than Paul;
and we cannot wonder that a revelation was required to justify the
Apostle in making it. The case of _Trophimus_, whose presence with
the Apostle at Jerusalem many years afterwards proved so nearly fatal
(Acts xxi. 27-30), shows how exasperating to the legalist party his
action in this instance must have been. Had not Peter and the better
spirits of the Church in Jerusalem laid to heart the lesson of the
vision of Joppa, that "no man must be called common or unclean," and
had not the wisdom of the Holy Spirit eminently guided this first
Council of the Church,[37] Paul's challenge would have received a
negative answer; and Jewish and Gentile Christianity must have been
driven asunder.
[37] Acts xv. 28: "It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us."
This was in the Early Church no mere pious official form.
The answer, the triumphant answer, to Paul's appeal comes in the next
verse: "Nay, not even[38] Titus who was with me, being a Greek, was
compelled to be circumcised." Titus _was not circumcised_, in point
of fact--how can we doubt this in view of the language of ver. 5:
"Not even for an hour did we yield in subjection?" And he "was _not
compelled_ to be circumcised"--a mode of putting the denial which
implies that in refusing his circumcision urgent solicitation had
to be withstood, solicitation addressed to Titus himself, as well as
to the leaders of his party. The kind of pressure brought to bear in
the case and the quarter from which it proceeded, the Galatians would
understand from their own experience (ch. vi. 12; comp. ii. 14).
[38] For this use of ἀλλ' οὐδὲ compare Acts xix. 2 (here also
after a question); 1 Cor. iii. 2; iv. 3. We observe a similar
instance of the phrase in Æschylus, _Persæ_, l. 792. Ἀλλ' opposes
itself to the expectation of the Judaistic "compellers," present
to the mind of Paul and his readers.
The attempt made to bring about Titus' circumcision signally failed.
Its failure was the practical reply to the question which Paul tells
us (ver. 2) he had put to the authorities in Jerusalem; or, according
to the more common rendering of ver. 2_b_, it was the answer to the
apprehension under which he addressed himself to them. On the former
of these views of the connection, which we decidedly prefer, the
authorities are clear of any share in the "compulsion" of Titus.
When the Apostle gives the statement that his Gentile companion
"was not compelled to be circumcised" as the reply to his appeal to
"those of repute," it is as much as to say: "The chiefs at Jerusalem
did not require Titus' circumcision. They repudiated the attempt
of certain parties to force this rite upon him." This testimony
precisely accords with the terms of the rescript of the Council, and
with the speeches of Peter and James, given in Acts xv. But it was
a great point gained to have the liberality of the Jewish Christian
leaders put to the proof in this way, to have the generous sentiments
of speech and letter made good in this example of uncircumcised
Christianity brought to their doors.
To the authorities at Jerusalem the question put by the delegates
from Antioch on the one side, and by the Circumcisionists on the
other, was perfectly clear. If they insist on Titus' circumcision,
they disown Paul and the Gentile mission: if they accept Paul's
gospel, they must leave Titus alone. Paul and Barnabas stated the
case in a manner that left no room for doubt or compromise. Their
action was marked, as ver. 5 declares, with the utmost decision. And
the response of the Jewish leaders was equally frank and definite. We
have no business, says James (Acts xv. 19), "to trouble those from
the Gentiles that turn to God." Their judgement is virtually affirmed
in ver. 3, in reference to Titus, in whose person the Galatians could
not fail to see that their own case had been settled by anticipation.
"Those of repute" disowned the Circumcisionists; the demand that
the yoke of circumcision should be imposed on the Gentiles had no
sanction from them. If the Judaizers claimed their sanction, the
claim was false.
Here the Apostle pauses, as his Gentile readers must have paused
and drawn a long breath of relief or of astonishment at what he has
just alleged. If Titus was not compelled to be circumcised, even at
Jerusalem, who, they might ask, was going to compel _them_?--The full
stop should therefore be placed at the end of ver. 3, not ver. 2. Vv.
1-3 form a paragraph complete in itself. Its last sentence resolves
the decisive question raised in this visit of Paul's to Jerusalem,
when he "took with him also Titus."
II. The opening words of ver. 4 have all the appearance of commencing
a new sentence. This sentence, concluded in ver. 5, is grammatically
incomplete; but that is no reason for throwing it upon the previous
sentence, to the confusion of both. There is a transition of thought,
marked by the introductory _But_,[39] from the issue of Paul's second
critical visit to Jerusalem (vv. 1-3) to _the cause which made it
necessary_. This was the action of "false brethren," to whom the
Apostle made a determined and successful resistance (vv. 4, 5). The
opening "But" does not refer to ver. 3 in particular, rather to the
entire foregoing paragraph. The ellipsis (after "But") is suitably
supplied in the marginal rendering of the Revisers, where we take
_it was_ to mean, not "Because of the false brethren _Titus was not_
(or _was not compelled to be_) _circumcised_," but "Because of the
false brethren _this meeting came about_, or, _I took the course
aforesaid_."
[39] This particle is a serious obstacle in the way of the
ordinary punctuation, which attaches the following clause to ver.
3. The δὲ is similar to that of ver. 6 (ἀπὸ δὲ τ. δοκούντων); not
of κατ' ἰδίαν δὲ in ver. 2, nor of θανάτον δὲ σταύρου (Phil. ii.
8), which are parenthetical qualifications. And to say, "Because
of the false brethren Titus was not compelled to be circumcised,"
is simply an inconsequence. Would he have been compelled to be
circumcised if they had _not_ required it? This is the assumption
implied by the above construction.
To know what Paul means by "false brethren," we must turn to ch.
i. 6-9, iii. 1, iv. 17, v. 7-12, vi. 12-14, in this Epistle; and
again to 2 Cor. ii. 17-iii. 1, iv. 2, xi. 3, 4, 12-22, 26; Rom.
xvi. 17, 18; Phil. iii. 2. They were men bearing the name of Christ
and professing faith in Him, but Pharisees at heart, self-seeking,
rancorous, unscrupulous men, bent on exploiting the Pauline Churches
for their own advantage, and regarding Gentile converts to Christ as
so many possible recruits for the ranks of the Circumcision.
But where, and how, were these traitors "privily brought in?"
Brought in, we answer, to the field of the Gentile mission; and
doubtless by local Jewish sympathisers, who introduced them
without the concurrence of the officers of the Church. They "came
in privily"--slipped in by stealth--"to spy out our liberty which
we have in Christ Jesus." Now it was at Antioch and in the pagan
Churches that this liberty existed in its normal exercise--the
liberty for which our Epistle contends, the enjoyment of Christian
privileges independently of Jewish law--in which Paul and his brother
missionaries had identified themselves with their Gentile followers.
The "false brethren" were Jewish spies in the Gentile Christian
camp. We do not see how the Galatians could have read the Apostle's
words otherwise; nor how it could have occurred to them that he was
referring to the way in which these men had been originally "brought
into" the Jewish Church. That concerned neither him nor them. But
_their getting into the Gentile fold_ was the serious thing. They
are the "certain who came down from Judæa, and taught the (Gentile)
brethren, saying, Except ye be circumcised after the custom of Moses,
ye cannot be saved;" and whom their own Church afterwards repudiated
(Acts xv. 24). With Antioch for the centre of their operations, these
mischief-makers disturbed the whole field of Paul and Barnabas'
labours in Syria and Cilicia (Acts xv. 23; comp. Gal. i. 21). For
the Galatian readers, the terms of this sentence, coming after the
anathema of ch. i. 6-9, threw a startling light on the character
of the Judean emissaries busy in their midst. This description of
the former "troublers" strikes at the Judaic opposition in Galatia.
It is as if the Apostle said: "These false brethren, smuggled in
amongst us, to filch away our liberties in Christ, wolves in sheep's
clothing--I know them well; I have encountered them before this. I
never yielded to their demands a single inch. I carried the struggle
with them to Jerusalem. There, in the citadel of Judaism, and before
the assembled chiefs of the Judean Church, I vindicated once and for
all, under the person of Titus, your imperilled Christian rights."
But as the Apostle dilates on the conduct of these Jewish intriguers,
the precursors of such an army of troublers, his heart takes fire; in
the rush of his emotion he is carried away from the original purport
of his sentence, and breaks it off with a burst of indignation: "To
whom," he cries, "not even for an hour did we yield by subjection,
that the truth of the gospel might abide with you." A breakdown
like this--an _anacoluthon_, as the grammarians call it--is nothing
strange in Paul's style. Despite the shipwrecked grammar, the sense
comes off safely enough. The clause, "we did not yield," etc.,
describes in a negative form, and with heightened effect, the course
the Apostle had pursued from the first in dealing with the false
brethren. In this unyielding spirit he had acted, without a moment's
wavering, from the hour when, guided by the Holy Spirit, he set
out for Jerusalem with the uncircumcised Titus by his side, until
he heard his Gentile gospel vindicated by the lips of Peter and
James, and received from them the clasp of fellowship as Christ's
acknowledged Apostle to the heathen.
It was therefore the action of Jewish interlopers, men of the same
stamp as those infesting the Galatian Churches, which occasioned
Paul's second, public visit to Jerusalem, and his consultation with
the heads of the Judean Church. This decisive course he was himself
inspired to take; while at the same time it was taken on behalf
and under the direction of the Church of Antioch, the metropolis
of Gentile Christianity. He had gone up with Barnabas and "certain
others"--including the Greek Titus chosen by himself--the company
forming a representative deputation, of which Paul was the leader and
spokesman. This measure was the boldest and the only effectual means
of combatting the Judaistic propaganda. It drew from the authorities
at Jerusalem the admission that "Circumcision is nothing," and that
Gentile Christians are free from the ritual law. This was a victory
gained over Jewish prejudice of immense significance for the future
of Christianity. The ground was already cut from under the feet of
the Judaic teachers in Galatia, and of all who should at any time
seek to impose external rites as things essential to salvation in
Christ. To all his readers Paul can now say, so far as his part is
concerned: _The truth of the gospel abides with you_.
CHAPTER VIII.
_PAUL AND THE THREE PILLARS._
"But from those who were reputed to be somewhat (what they
once were, it maketh no matter to me: God accepteth not man's
person)--they, I say, who were of repute imparted nothing to
me: but contrariwise, when they saw that I had been intrusted
with the gospel of the uncircumcision, even as Peter with _the
gospel_ of the circumcision (for he that wrought for Peter
unto the apostleship of the circumcision wrought for me also
unto the Gentiles); and when they perceived the grace that was
given unto me, James and Cephas and John, they who were reputed
to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of
fellowship, that we should go unto the Gentiles, and they unto
the circumcision; only _they would_ that we should remember the
poor; which very thing I was also zealous to do."--GAL. ii. 6-10.
We have dealt by anticipation, in Chapter VI., with several of the
topics raised in this section of the Epistle--touching particularly
the import of the phrase "those of repute," and the tone of
disparagement in which these dignitaries appear to be spoken of in
ver. 6. But there still remains in these verses matter in its weight
and difficulty more than sufficient to occupy another Chapter.
The grammatical connection of the first paragraph, like that of vv.
2, 3, is involved and disputable. We construe its clauses in the
following way:--(1) Ver. 6 begins with a _But_, contrasting "those of
repute" with the "false brethren" dealt with in the last sentence.
It contains another _anacoluthon_ (or incoherence of language), due
to the surge of feeling remarked in ver. 4, which still disturbs
the Apostle's grammar. He begins: "But from those reputed to be
something"--as though he intended to say, "I received on my part
nothing, no addition or qualification to my gospel." But he has no
sooner mentioned "those of repute" than he is reminded of the studied
attempt that was made to set up their authority in opposition to
his own, and accordingly throws in this protest: "what they were
aforetime,[40] makes no difference to me: man's person God doth not
accept." But in saying this, Paul has laid down one of his favourite
axioms, a principle that filled a large place in his thoughts;[41]
and its enunciation deflects the course of the main sentence, so that
it is resumed in an altered form: "For to me those of repute imparted
nothing." Here the _me_ receives a greater emphasis; and _for_ takes
the place of _but_. The fact that the first Apostles had nothing to
impart to Paul, signally illustrates the Divine impartiality, which
often makes the last and least in human eyes equal to the first.
[40] For this rendering of ποτὲ comp. ch. i. 13, 23; and see
Lightfoot, or Beet, _in loc._.
[41] Comp. Rom. ii. 11; 1 Cor. i. 27-31; xv. 9, 10; Eph. vi. 9;
Col. iii. 25.
(2) Vv. 7-9 state the _positive_, as ver. 6 the _negative_ side of
the relation between Paul and the elder Apostles, still keeping
in view the principle laid down in the former verse. "Nay, on the
contrary, when they saw that I have in charge the gospel of the
uncircumcision, as Peter that of the circumcision (ver. 7)--and when
they perceived the grace that had been given me, James and Cephas and
John, those renowned pillars of the Church, gave the right hand of
fellowship to myself and Barnabas, agreeing that we should go to the
Gentiles, while they laboured amongst the Jews" (ver. 9).
(3) Ver. 8 comes in as a parenthesis, explaining how the authorities
at Jerusalem came to see that this trust belonged to Paul. "For,"
he says, "He that in Peter's case displayed His power in making
him (above all others) Apostle of the Circumcision, did as much
for me in regard to the Gentiles." It is not human ordination, but
Divine inspiration that makes a minister of Jesus Christ. The noble
Apostles of Jesus had the wisdom to see this. It had pleased God to
bestow this grace on their old Tarsian persecutor; and they frankly
acknowledged the fact.
Thus Paul sets forth, in the first place, _the completeness of
his Apostolic qualifications_, put to proof at the crisis of the
circumcision controversy; and in the second place, _the judgement
formed respecting him and his office by the first Apostles and
companions of the Lord_.
I. "To me those of repute added nothing." Paul had spent but a
fortnight in the Christian circle of Jerusalem, fourteen years ago.
Of its chiefs he had met at that time only Peter and James, and them
in the capacity of a visitor, not as a disciple or a candidate for
office. He had never sought the opportunity, nor felt the need, of
receiving instruction from the elder Apostles during all the years in
which he had preached Christ amongst the heathen. It was not likely
he would do so now. When he came into conference and debate with them
at the Council, he showed himself their equal, neither in knowledge
nor authority "a whit behind the very chiefest." And they were
conscious of the same fact.
On the essentials of the gospel Paul found himself in agreement with
the Twelve. This is implied in the language of ver. 6. When one
writes, "A adds nothing to B," one assumes that B has already what
belongs to A, and not something different. Paul asserts in the most
positive terms he can command, that his intercourse with the holders
of the primitive Christian tradition left him as a minister of Christ
exactly where he was before. "On me," he says, "they conferred
nothing"--rather, perhaps, "_addressed no communication_ to me." The
word used appears to deny their having made any motion of the kind.
The Greek verb is the same that was employed in ch. i. 16, a rare and
delicate compound.[42] Its meaning varies, like that of our _confer_,
_communicate_, as it is applied in a more or less active sense. In
the former place Paul had said that he "did not confer with flesh and
blood"; now he adds, that flesh and blood did not confer anything
upon him. Formerly he did not bring his commission to lay it before
men; now they had nothing to bring on their part to lay before him.
The same word affirms the Apostle's independence at both epochs,
shown in the first instance by his reserve toward the dignitaries at
Jerusalem, and in the second by their reserve toward him. Conscious
of his Divine call, he sought no patronage from the elder Apostles
then; and they, recognising that call, offered him no such patronage
now. Paul's gospel for the Gentiles was complete, and sufficient
unto itself. His ministry showed no defect in quality or competence.
There was nothing about it that laid it open to correction, even on
the part of those wisest and highest in dignity amongst the personal
followers of Jesus.
[42] We cannot explain προσανέθεντο here by the ἀναθέμην of
ver. 2, as though Paul wished to say, "I imparted to them my
gospel; they imparted to me nothing _further_." Forπρος- implies
_direction_, rather than _addition_. See Meyer on this verb in
ch. i. 16.
So Paul declares; and we can readily believe him. Nay, we are tempted
to think that it was rather the Pillars who might need to learn
from him, than he from them. In doctrine, Paul holds the primacy in
the band of the Apostles. While all were inspired by the Spirit of
Christ, the Gentile Apostle was in many ways a more richly furnished
man than any of the rest. The Paulinism of Peter's First Epistle
goes to show that the debt was on the other side. Their earlier
privileges and priceless store of recollections of "all that Jesus
did and taught," were matched on Paul's side by a penetrating logic,
a breadth and force of intellect applied to the facts of revelation,
and a burning intensity of spirit, which in their combination were
unique. The Pauline teaching, as it appears in the New Testament,
bears in the highest degree the marks of original genius, the stamp
of a mind whose inspiration is its own.
Modern criticism even exaggerates Paul's originality. It leaves
the other Apostles little more than a negative part to play in the
development of Christian truth. In some of its representations, the
figure of Paul appears to overshadow even that of the Divine Master.
It was Paul's creative genius, it is said, his daring idealism, that
deified the human Jesus, and transformed the scandal of the cross
into the glory of an atonement reconciling the world to God. Such
theories Paul himself would have regarded with horror. "I received
_of the Lord_ that which I delivered unto you:" such is his uniform
testimony. If he owed so little as a minister of Christ to his
brother Apostles, he felt with the most sincere humility that he
owed everything to Christ. The agreement of Paul's teaching with
that of the other New Testament writers, and especially with that of
Jesus in the Gospels, proves that, however distinct and individual
his conception of the common gospel, none the less there was a
common gospel of Christ, and he did not speak of his own mind. The
attempts made to get rid of this agreement by postdating the New
Testament documents, and by explaining away the larger utterances of
Jesus found in the Gospels as due to Paulinist interpolation, are
unavailing. They postulate a craftiness of ingenuity on the part of
the writers of the incriminated books, and an ignorance in those who
first received them, alike inconceivable. Paul did not build up the
splendid and imperishable fabric of his theology on some speculation
of his own. Its foundation lies in the person and the teaching of
Jesus Christ, and was common to Paul with James and Cephas and
John. "Whether I or they," he testifies, "so we preach, and so ye
believed" (1 Cor. xv. 11). Paul satisfied himself at this conference
that he and the Twelve taught the same gospel. Not in its primary
data, but in their logical development and application, lies the
specifically _Pauline_ in Paulinism. The harmony between Paul and the
other Apostolic leaders has the peculiar value which belongs to the
agreement of minds of different orders, working independently.
The Judaizers, however, persistently asserted Paul's dependence on
the elder Apostles. "The authority of the Primitive Church, the
Apostolic tradition of Jerusalem"--this was the fulcrum of their
argument. Where could Paul, they asked, have derived his knowledge
of Christ, but from this fountain-head? And the power that made
him, could unmake him. Those who commissioned him had the right to
overrule him, or even to revoke his commission. Was it not known
that he had from time to time resorted to Jerusalem; that he had
once publicly submitted his teaching to the examination of the heads
of the Church there? The words of ver. 6 contradict these malicious
insinuations. Hence the positiveness of the Apostle's self-assertion.
In the Corinthian Epistles his claim to independence is made in
gentler style, and with expressions of humility that might have
been misunderstood here. But the position Paul takes up is the
same in either case: "I am an Apostle. I have seen Jesus our Lord.
You--Corinthians, Galatians--are my work in the Lord." That Peter
and the rest were in the old days so near to the Master, "makes no
difference" to Paul. They are what they are--their high standing is
universally acknowledged, and Paul has no need or wish to question
it; but, by the grace of God, _he_ also is what he is (1 Cor. xv.
10). Their Apostleship does not exclude or derogate from his.
The self-depreciation, the keen sense of inferiority in outward
respects, so evident in Paul's allusions to this subject elsewhere,
is after all not wanting here. For when he says, "God regards
not _man's person_," it is evident that in respect of visible
qualifications Paul felt that he had few pretensions to make.
Appearances were against him. And those who "glory in appearance"
were against him too (2 Cor. v. 12). Such men could not appreciate
the might of the Spirit that wrought in Paul, nor the sovereignty of
Divine election. They "reckoned" of the Apostle "as though he walked
according to flesh" (2 Cor. x. 2). It seemed to them obvious, as
a matter of course, that he was far below the Twelve. With men of
worldly wisdom the Apostle did not expect that his arguments would
prevail. His appeal was to "the spiritual, who judge all things."
So we come back to the declaration of the Apostle in ch. i. 11:
"I give you to know, brethren, that my gospel is not according to
man." Man had no hand either in laying its foundation or putting
on the headstone. Paul's predecessors in Apostolic office did not
impart the gospel to him at the outset; nor at a later time had they
attempted to make any addition to the doctrine he had taught far and
wide amongst the heathen. His Apostleship was from first to last a
supernatural gift of grace.
II. Instead, therefore, of assuming to be his superiors, or offering
to bestow something of their own on Paul, _the three renowned pillars
of the faith at Jerusalem acknowledged him as a brother Apostle_.
"They saw that I am intrusted with the gospel of the uncircumcision."
The form of the verb implies a trust given in the past and taking
effect in the present, a settled fact. Once for all, this charge had
devolved on Paul. He is "appointed herald and apostle" of "Christ
Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all,--teacher of the Gentiles
in faith and truth" (1 Tim. ii. 6, 7). That office Paul still holds.
He is the leader of Christian evangelism. Every new movement in
heathen missionary enterprise looks to his teaching for guidance and
inspiration.
The conference at Jerusalem in itself furnished conclusive evidence
of Paul's Apostolic commission. The circumcision controversy was a
test not only for Gentile Christianity, but at the same time for its
Apostle and champion. Paul brought to this discussion a knowledge and
insight, a force of character, a conscious authority and unction of
the Holy Spirit, that powerfully impressed the three great men who
listened to him. The triumvirate at Jerusalem well knew that Paul
had not received his marvellous gifts through their hands. Nor was
there anything lacking to him which they felt themselves called upon
to supply. They could only say, "This is the Lord's doing; and it
is marvellous in our eyes." Knowing, as Peter at least, we presume,
had done for many years,[43] the history of Paul's conversion, and
seeing as they now did the conspicuous Apostolic signs attending
his ministry, James and Cephas and John could only come to one
conclusion. The gospel of the uncircumcision, they were convinced,
was committed to Paul, and his place in the Church was side by side
with Peter. Peter must have felt as once before on a like occasion:
"If God gave unto him a gift equal to that He gave to me, who am
I, that I should be able to hinder God?" (Acts xi. 17). It was not
for them because of their elder rank and dignity to debate with God
in this matter, and to withhold their recognition from His "chosen
vessel."
[43] Ch. i. 18. See Chapter V., p. 87.
John had not forgotten his Master's reproof for banning the man
that "followeth not with us" (Luke ix. 49; Mark ix. 38). They
"recognised," Paul says, "the grace that had been given me;" and by
that he means, to be sure, the undeserved favour that raised him
to his Apostolic office.[44] This recognition was given to _Paul_.
Barnabas shared the "fellowship." His hand was clasped by the three
chiefs at Jerusalem, not less warmly than that of his younger
comrade. But it is in the singular number that Paul speaks of "the
grace that was given _me_," and of the "trust in the gospel" and the
"working of God _unto Apostleship_."
[44] See Rom. i. 5; 1 Cor. xv. 10; Eph. iii. 2, 7, 8; 1 Tim. i.
13.
Why then does not Paul say outright, "they acknowledged me an
Apostle, the equal of Peter?" Some are bold enough to say--_Holsten_
in particular--"Because this is just what the Jerusalem chiefs never
did, and never could have done."[45] We will only reply, that if
this were the case, the passage is a continued _suggestio falsi_.
No one could write the words of vv. 7-9, without intending his
readers to believe that such a recognition took place. Paul avoids
the point-blank assertion, with a delicacy that any man of tolerable
modesty will understand. Even the appearance of "glorying" was
hateful to him (2 Cor. x. 17; xi. 1; xii. 1-5, 11).
[45] _Zum Evangelien d. Paulus und d. Petrus_, p. 273. Holsten is
the keenest and most logical of all the Baurian succession.
The Church at Jerusalem, as we gather from vv. 7, 8, observed in
Paul "signs of the Apostle" resembling those borne by Peter. His
Gentile commission ran parallel with Peter's Jewish commission. The
labours of the two men were followed by the same kind of success,
and marked by similar displays of miraculous power. The like seal of
God was stamped on both. This correspondence runs through the Acts
of the Apostles. Compare, for example, Paul's sermon at Antioch in
Pisidia with that of Peter on the Day of Pentecost; the healing of
the Lystran cripple and the punishment of Elymas, with the case of
the lame man at the Temple gate and the encounter of Peter and Simon
Magus. The conjunction of the names of Peter and Paul was familiar
to the Apostolic Church. The parallelism between the course of these
great Apostles was no invention of second-century orthodoxy, set up
in the interests of a "reconciling hypothesis;" it attracted public
attention as early as 51 A.D., while they were still in their mid
career. If this idea so strongly possessed the minds of the Jewish
Christian leaders and influenced their action at the Council of
Jerusalem, we need not be surprised that it should dominate Luke's
narrative to the extent that it does. The allusions to Peter in 1
Corinthians[46] afford further proof that in the lifetime of the two
Apostles it was a common thing to link their names together.
[46] Ch. i. 12; iii. 22; ix. 5.
But had not Peter also a share in the Gentile mission? Does not the
division of labour made at this conference appear to shut out the
senior Apostle from a field to which he had the prior claim? "Ye
know," said Peter at the Council, "how that a good while ago God
made choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the
word of the gospel, and believe" (Acts xv. 7). To Peter was assigned
the double honour of "opening the door of faith" both to Jew and
Gentile. This experience made him the readier to understand Paul's
position, and gave him the greater weight in the settlement of the
question at issue. And not Peter alone, but Philip the evangelist
and other Jewish Christians had carried the gospel across the line
of Judaic prejudice, before Paul appeared on the scene. Barnabas and
Silas were both emissaries of Jerusalem. So that the mother Church,
if she could not claim Paul as her son, had nevertheless a large
stake in the heathen mission. But when Paul came to the front, when
his miraculous call, his incomparable gifts and wonderful success
had made themselves known, it was evident to every discerning mind
that he was the man chosen by God to direct this great work. Peter
had _opened_ the door of faith to the heathen, and had bravely kept
it open; but it was for Paul to lead the Gentile nations through the
open door, and to make a home for them within the fold of Christ. The
men who had laboured in this field hitherto were Paul's forerunners.
And Peter does not hesitate to acknowledge the younger Apostle's
special fitness for this wider province of their common work; and
with the concurrence of James and John he yields the charge of it to
him.
Let us observe that it is two different _provinces_, not different
gospels, that are in view. When the Apostle speaks of "the gospel
of the uncircumcision" as committed to himself, and that "of the
circumcision" to Peter, he never dreams of any one supposing, as some
of his modern critics persist in doing, that he meant two different
_doctrines_. How can that be possible, when he has declared those
_anathema_ who preach any other gospel? He has laid his gospel before
the heads of the Jerusalem Church. Nothing has occurred there,
nothing is hinted here, to suggest the existence of a "radical
divergence." If James and the body of the Judean Church really
sympathised with the Circumcisionists, with those whom the Apostle
calls "false brethren," how could he with any sincerity have come to
an agreement with them, knowing that this tremendous gulf was lying
all the while between the Pillars and himself? Zeller argues that the
transaction was simply a pledge of "reciprocal toleration, a merely
external concordat between Paul and the original Apostles."[47] The
clasp of brotherly friendship was a sorry farce, if that were all
it meant--if Paul and the Three just consented for the time to slur
over irreconcilable differences; while Paul in turn has glossed over
the affair for us in these artful verses! Baur, with characteristic
_finesse_, says on the same point: "The κοινωνία was always a
division; it could only be brought into effect by one party going
εἰς τὰ ἔθνη, the other εἰς τὴν περιτομήν. As the Jewish Apostles
could allege nothing against the principles on which Paul founded
his evangelical mission, they were obliged to recognise them in a
certain manner; but their recognition was a mere outward one. They
left him to work on these principles still further in the cause of
the gospel among the Gentiles; but for themselves they did not desire
to know anything more about them."[48] So that, according to the
Tübingen critics, we witness in ver. 9 not a union, but a divorce!
The Jewish Apostles recognise Paul as a brother, only in order to get
rid of him. Can misinterpretation be more unjust than this? Paul does
not say, "They gave us the right hand of fellowship _on condition
that_," but, "_in order that_ we should go this way, they that." As
much as to say: The two parties came together and entered into a
closer union, so that with the best mutual understanding each might
go its own way and pursue its proper work in harmony with the other.
For Paul it would have been a sacrilege to speak of the diplomatic
compromise which Baur and Zeller describe as "giving the right hand
of fellowship."
[47] _The Acts of the Apostles critically investigated_, vol.
ii., pp. 28, 30: Eng. Trans.
[48] _Paulus_, vol. i., p. 130: Eng. Trans.
Never did the Church more deeply realise than at her first Council
the truth, that "there is one body and one Spirit; one Lord, one
faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all,
and through all, and in all" (Eph. iv. 4-6). Paul still seems to
feel his hand in the warm grasp of Peter and of John when he writes
to the Ephesians of "the foundation of the Apostles and prophets,
with Christ Jesus Himself for chief corner-stone; in whom the whole
building fitly framed together, groweth unto an holy temple in the
Lord" (ch. ii. 20, 21). Alas for the criticism that is obliged to see
in words like these the invention of second-century churchmanship,
putting into the mouth of Paul catholic sentiments of which in
reality he knew nothing! Such writers know nothing of the power of
that fellowship of the Spirit which reigned in the glorious company
of the Apostles.
"Only they would have us remember the poor"--a circumstance mentioned
partly by way of reminder to the Galatians touching the collection
for Jerusalem, which Paul had already set on foot amongst them
(1 Cor. xvi. 1). The request was prompted by the affectionate
confidence with which the Jewish chiefs embraced Paul and Barnabas.
It awakened an eager response in the Apostle's breast. His love to
his Jewish kindred made him welcome the suggestion. Moreover every
deed of charity rendered by the wealthier Gentile Churches to "the
poor saints in Jerusalem," was another tie helping to bind the two
communities to each other. Of such liberality Antioch, under the
direction of the Gentile missionaries, had already set the example
(Acts xi. 29, 30).
* * * * *
_James_, _Peter_, _John_, and _Paul_--it was a memorable day when
these four men met face to face. What a mighty quaternion! Amongst
them they have virtually made the New Testament and the Christian
Church. They represent the four sides of the one foundation of the
City of God. Of the Evangelists, Matthew holds affinity with James;
Mark with Peter; and Luke with Paul. James clings to the past and
embodies the transition from Mosaism to Christianity. Peter is the
man of the present, quick in thought and action, eager, buoyant,
susceptible. Paul holds the future in his grasp, and schools the
unborn nations. John gathers present, past, and future into one,
lifting us into the region of eternal life and love.
With Peter and James Paul had met before, and was to meet again. But
so far as we can learn, this was the only occasion on which his path
crossed that of _John_. Nor is this Apostle mentioned again in Paul's
letters. In the Acts he appears but once or twice, standing silent in
Peter's shadow. A holy reserve surrounds John's person in the earlier
Apostolic history. His hour was not yet come. But his name ranked in
public estimation amongst the three foremost of the Jewish Church;
and he exercised, doubtless, a powerful, though quiet, conciliatory
influence in the settlement of the Gentile question. The personality
of Paul excited, we may be sure, the profoundest interest in such a
mind as that of John. He absorbed, and yet in a sense transcended,
the Pauline theology. The Apocalypse, although the most Judaic book
of the New Testament, is penetrated with the influence of Paulinism.
The detection in it of a covert attack on the Gentile Apostle is
simply one of the mare's nests of a super-subtle and suspicious
criticism. John was to be the heir of Paul's labours at Ephesus and
in Asia Minor. And John's long life, touching the verge of the second
century, his catholic position, his serene and lofty spirit, blending
in itself and resolving into a higher unity the tendencies of James
and Peter and Paul, give us the best assurance that in the Apostolic
age there was indeed "One, holy, catholic, Apostolic Church."
Paul's fellowship with Peter and with James was cordial and endeared.
But to hold the hand of John, "the disciple whom Jesus loved," was
a yet higher satisfaction. That clasp symbolized a union between
men most opposite in temperament and training, and brought to the
knowledge of Christ in very different ways, but whose communion in
Him was deep as the life eternal. Paul and John are the two master
minds of the New Testament. Of all men that ever lived, these two
best understood Jesus Christ.
CHAPTER IX.
_PAUL AND PETER AT ANTIOCH._
"But when Cephas came to Antioch, I resisted him to the face,
because he stood condemned. For before that certain came from
James, he did eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he
drew back and separated himself, fearing them that were of the
circumcision. And the rest of the Jews dissembled likewise with
him; insomuch that even Barnabas was carried away with their
dissimulation. But when I saw that they walked not uprightly
according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Cephas before
_them_ all, If thou, being a Jew, livest as do the Gentiles,
and not as do the Jews, how compellest thou the Gentiles to
live as do the Jews? We being Jews by nature, and not sinners
of the Gentiles, yet knowing that a man is not justified by
works of law, but only through faith in Jesus Christ, even we
believed on Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith
in Christ, and not by the works of the law: because by the
works of the law shall no flesh be justified. But if, while we
sought to be justified in Christ, we ourselves also were found
sinners, is Christ a minister of sin? God forbid. For if I
build up again those things which I destroyed, I prove myself a
transgressor."--GAL. ii. 11-18.
The conference at Jerusalem issued in the formal recognition by the
Primitive Church of Gentile Christianity, and of Paul's plenary
Apostleship. And it brought Paul into brotherly relations with the
three great leaders of Jewish Christianity. But this fellowship
was not to continue undisturbed. The same cause was still at work
which had compelled the Apostle to go up to Jerusalem, taking Titus
with him. The leaven of Pharisaic legalism remained in the Church.
Indeed, as time went on and the national fanaticism grew more
violent, this spirit of intolerance became increasingly bitter and
active. The address of James to Paul on the occasion of his last
visit to the Holy City, shows that the Church of Jerusalem was at
this time in a state of the most sensitive jealousy in regard to the
Law, and that the legalistic prejudices always existing in it had
gained a strength with which it was difficult to cope (Acts xxi.
17-25).
But for the present the Judaizing faction had received a check. It
does not appear that the party ever again insisted on circumcision as
a thing essential to salvation for the Gentiles. The utterances of
Peter and James at the Council, and the circular addressed therefrom
to the Gentile Churches, rendered this impossible. The Legalists made
a change of front; and adopted a subtler and seemingly more moderate
policy. _They now preached circumcision as the prerogative of the Jew
within the Church, and as a counsel of perfection for the Gentile
believer in Christ_ (ch. iii. 3). To quote the rescript of Acts xv.
against this altered form of the circumcisionist doctrine, would have
been wide of the mark.
It is against this newer type of Judaistic teaching that our Epistle
is directed.[49] Circumcision, its advocates argued, was a Divine
ordinance that must have its benefit. God has given to Israel an
indefeasible pre-eminence in His kingdom.[50] Law-keeping children
of Abraham enter the new Covenant on a higher footing than "sinners
of the Gentiles:" they are still the elect race, the holy nation. If
the Gentiles wish to share with them, they must add to their faith
circumcision, they must complete their imperfect righteousness by
legal sanctity. So they might hope to enter on the full heritage of
the sons of Abraham; they would be brought into communion with the
first Apostles and the Brother of the Lord; they would be admitted to
the inner circle of the kingdom of God. The new Legalists sought, in
fact, to superimpose Jewish on Gentile Christianity. They no longer
refused all share in Christ to the uncircumcised; they offered them
a larger share. So we construe the teaching which Paul had to combat
in the second stage of his conflict with Judaism, to which his four
major Epistles belong. And the signal for this renewed struggle was
given by the collision with Peter at Antioch.
[49] Rom. ii. 25-iii. 1.
[50] Rom. i. 16; ii. 9, 10; ix. 4, 5; xi. 1, 2.
This encounter did not, we think, take place on the return of Paul
and Barnabas from the Council. The compact of Jerusalem secured to
the Church a few years of rest from the Judaistic agitation. The
Thessalonian Epistles, written in 52 or 53 A.D., go to show, not
only that the Churches of Macedonia were free from the legalist
contention, but that it did not at this period occupy the Apostle's
mind. Judas Barsabbas and Silas--not Peter--accompanied the Gentile
missionaries in returning to Antioch; and Luke gives, in Acts xv., a
tolerably full account of the circumstances which transpired there in
the interval before the second missionary tour, without the slightest
hint of any visit made at this time by the Apostle Peter. We can
scarcely believe that the circumcision party had already recovered,
and increased its influence, to the degree that it must have done
when "even Barnabas was carried away"; still less that Peter on
the very morrow of the settlement at Jerusalem and of his fraternal
communion there with Paul would show himself so far estranged.
When, therefore, did "Cephas come down to Antioch?" The Galatians
evidently knew. The Judaizers had given their account of the matter,
to Paul's disadvantage. Perhaps he had referred to it himself on his
last visit to Galatia, when we know he spoke explicitly and strongly
against the Circumcisionists (ch. i. 9). Just before his arrival
in Galatia on this occasion he had "spent some time" at Antioch
(Acts xviii. 22, 23), in the interval between the second and third
missionary journeys. Luke simply mentions the fact, without giving
any details. This is the likeliest opportunity for the meeting of
the two Apostles in the Gentile capital. M. Sabatier,[51] in the
following sentences, appears to us to put the course of events in
its true light:--"Evidently the Apostle had quitted Jerusalem and
undertaken his second missionary journey full of satisfaction at the
victory he had gained, and free from anxiety for the future. The
decisive moment of the crisis therefore necessarily falls between
the Thessalonian and Galatian Epistles. What had happened in the
meantime? _The violent discussion with Peter at Antioch_ (Gal.
ii. 11-21), and all that this account reveals to us,--the arrival
of the emissaries from James in the pagan-Christian circle, the
counter-mission organized by the Judaizers to rectify the work of
Paul. A new situation suddenly presents itself to the eyes of the
Apostle on his return from his second missionary journey. He is
compelled to throw himself into the struggle, and in doing so to
formulate in all its rigour his principle of the abolishment of the
Law."
[51] In his _L'apôtre Paul: esquisse d'une histoire de sa
pensée_, an admirable work, to which the writer is under great
obligation.
The "troublers" in this instance were "certain from James." Like the
"false brethren"[52] who appeared at Antioch three years before, they
came from the mother Church, over which James presided. The Judaizing
teachers at Corinth had their "commendatory letters" (2 Cor. iii.
1), derived assuredly from the same quarter. In all likelihood,
their confederates in Galatia brought similar credentials. We have
already seen that the authority of the Primitive Church was the chief
weapon used by Paul's adversaries. These letters of commendation
were part of the machinery of the anti-Pauline agitation. How the
Judaizers obtained these credentials, and in what precise relation
they stood to James, we can only conjecture. Had the Apostle held
James responsible for their action, he would not have spared him any
more than he has done Peter. James held a quasi-pastoral relation to
Christian Jews of the Dispersion. And as he addressed his Epistle
to them, so he would be likely on occasion to send delegates to
visit them. Perhaps the Circumcisionists found opportunity to
pass themselves off in this character; or they may have abused
a commission really given them, by interfering with Gentile
communities. That the Judaistic emissaries in some way or other
adopted false colours, is plainly intimated in 2 Cor. xi. 13. James,
living always at Jerusalem, being moreover a man of simple character,
could have little suspected the crafty plot which was carried forward
under his name.
[52] See Chapter VII. pp. 109, 110.
These agents addressed themselves in the first instance to _the
Jews_, as their commission from Jerusalem probably entitled them
to do. They plead for the maintenance of the sacred customs. They
insist that the Mosaic rites carry with them an indelible sanctity;
that their observance constitutes a Church within the Church. If
this separation is once established, and the Jewish believers in
Christ can be induced to hold themselves aloof and to maintain the
"advantage of circumcision," the rest will be easy. The way will then
be open to "compel the Gentiles to Judaize." For unless they do this,
they must be content to remain on a lower level, in a comparatively
menial position, resembling that of uncircumcised proselytes in
the Synagogue. The circular of the Jerusalem Council may have been
interpreted by the Judaists in this sense, as though it laid down
the terms, not of full communion between Jew and Gentile believers,
but only of a permissive, secondary recognition. At Antioch the new
campaign of the Legalists was opened, and apparently with signal
success. In Galatia and Corinth we see it in full progress.
The withdrawal of Peter and the other Jews at Antioch from the table
of the Gentiles virtually "compelled" the latter "to Judaize." Not
that the Jewish Apostle had this intention in his mind. He was made
the tool of designing men. By "separating himself" he virtually said
to every uncircumcised brother, "Stand by thyself, I am holier than
thou." Legal conformity on the part of the Gentiles was made the
condition of their communion with Jewish Christians--a demand simply
fatal to Christianity. It re-established the principle of salvation
by works in a more invidious form. To supplement the righteousness
of faith by that of law, meant to _supplant_ it. To admit that
the Israelite by virtue of his legal observances stood in a higher
position than "sinners of the Gentiles," was to stultify the doctrine
of the cross, to make Christ's death a gratuitous sacrifice. Peter's
error, pushed to its logical consequences, involved the overthrow of
the Gospel. This the Gentile Apostle saw at a glance. The situation
was one of imminent danger. Paul needed all his wisdom, and all his
courage and promptitude to meet it.
It had been Peter's previous rule, since the vision of Joppa, to lay
aside Jewish scruples of diet and to live in free intercourse with
Gentile brethren. He "was wont to eat with the Gentiles. Though a
born Jew, he lived in Gentile fashion"--words unmistakably describing
Peter's general habit in such circumstances. This Gentile conformity
of Peter was a fact of no small moment for the Galatian readers. It
contravenes the assertion of a radical divergence between Petrine and
Pauline Christianity, whether made by Ebionites or Baurians.
The Jewish Apostle's present conduct was an act of "dissimulation."
He was belying his known convictions, publicly expressed and acted
on for years. Paul's challenge assumes that his fellow-Apostle is
acting insincerely. And this assumption is explained by the account
furnished in the Acts of the Apostles respecting Peter's earlier
relations with Gentile Christianity (ch. x. 1-xi. 18; xv. 6-11). The
strength of Paul's case lay in the conscience of Peter himself. The
conflict at Antioch, so often appealed to in proof of the rooted
opposition between the two Apostles, in reality gives evidence to the
contrary effect. Here the maxim strictly applies, _Exceptio probat
regulam_.
Peter's lapse is quite intelligible. No man who figures in the New
Testament is better known to us. Honest, impulsive, ready of speech,
full of contagious enthusiasm, brave as a lion, firm as a rock
against open enemies, he possessed in a high degree the qualities
which mark out a leader of men. He was of the stuff of which Christ
makes His missionary heroes. But there was a strain of weakness in
Peter's nature. He was _pliable_. He was too much at the mercy of
surroundings. His denial of Jesus set this native fault in a light
terribly vivid and humiliating. It was an act of "dissimulation." In
his soul there was a fervent love to Christ. His zeal had brought
him to the place of danger. But for the moment he was alone. Public
opinion was all against him. A panic fear seized his brave heart. He
forgot himself; he denied the Master whom he loved more than life.
His courage had failed; never his faith. "Turned back again" from his
coward flight, Peter had indeed "strengthened his brethren" (Luke
xxii. 31, 32). He proved a tower of strength to the infant Church,
worthy of his cognomen of the _rock_. For more than twenty years he
had stood unshaken. No name was so honoured in the Church as Peter's.
For Paul to be compared to him was the highest possible distinction.
And yet, after all this lapse of time, and in the midst of so
glorious a career, the old, miserable weakness betrays him once more.
How admonitory is the lesson! The sore long since healed over, the
infirmity of nature out of which we seemed to have been completely
trained, may yet break out again, to our shame and undoing. Had Peter
for a moment forgotten the sorrowful warning of Gethsemane? Be it
ours to "watch and pray, lest we enter into temptation."
We have reason to believe that, if Peter rashly erred, he freely
acknowledged his error, and honoured his reprover. Both the Epistles
that bear his name, in different ways, testify to the high value
which their author set upon the teaching of "our beloved brother
Paul." Tradition places the two men at Rome side by side in their
last days; as though even in their death these glorious Apostles
should not be divided, despite the attempts of faction and mistrust
to separate them.
Few incidents exhibit more strongly than this the grievous
consequences that may ensue from a seemingly trivial moral error.
It looked a little thing that Peter should prefer to take his meals
away from Gentile company. And yet, as Paul tells him, his withdrawal
was a virtual rejection of the Gospel, and imperilled the most
vital interests of Christianity. By this act the Jewish Apostle
gave a handle to the adversaries of the Church which they have
used for generations and for ages afterwards. The dispute which it
occassioned could never be forgotten. In the second century it still
drew down on Paul the bitter reproaches of the Judaizing faction.
And in our own day the rationalistic critics have been able to turn
it to marvellous account. It supplies the corner-stone of their
"scientific reconstruction" of Biblical theology. The entire theory
of Baur is evolved out of Peter's blunder. Let it be granted that
Peter in yielding to the "certain from James" followed his genuine
convictions and the tradition of Jewish Christianity, and we see at
once how deep a gulf lay between Paul and the Primitive Church. All
that Paul argues in the subsequent discussion only tends, in this
case, to make the breach more visible. This false step of Peter is
the thing that chiefly lends a colour to the theory in question, with
all the far-reaching consequences touching the origin and import of
Christianity, which it involves. So long "the evil that men do lives
after them"!
Paul's rebuke of his brother Apostle extends to the conclusion of the
chapter. Some interpreters cut it short at the end of ver. 14; others
at ver. 16; others again at ver. 18. But the address is consecutive
and germane to the occasion throughout. Paul does not, to be sure,
give a verbatim report, but the substance of what he said, and in a
form suited to his readers. The narrative is an admirable prelude
to the argument of chap. iii. It forms the transition from the
historical to the polemical part of the Epistle, from the Apostle's
personal to his doctrinal apology. The condensed form of the speech
makes its interpretation difficult and much contested. We shall in
the remainder of this Chapter trace the general course of Paul's
reproof, proposing in the following Chapter to deal more fully with
its doctrinal contents.
I. In the first place, _Paul taxes the Jewish Apostle with
insincerity and unfaithfulness toward the gospel_. "I saw," he says,
"that they were not holding a straight course, according to the truth
of the gospel."
It is a _moral_, not a doctrinal aberration, that Paul lays at the
door of Cephas and Barnabas. They did not hold a different creed
from himself; they were disloyal to the common creed. They swerved
from the path of rectitude in which they had walked hitherto. They
had regard no longer to "the truth of the gospel"--the supreme
consideration of the servant of Christ--but to the favour of men, to
the public opinion of Jerusalem. "What will be said of us _there_?"
they whispered to each other, "if these messengers of James report
that we are discarding the sacred customs, and making no difference
between Jew and Gentile? We shall alienate our Judean brethren. We
shall bring a scandal on the Christian cause in the eyes of Judaism."
This withdrawal of the Jews from the common fellowship at Antioch
was a public matter. It was an injury to the whole Gentile-Christian
community. If the reproof was to be salutary, it must be equally
public and explicit. The offence was notorious. Every one deplored
it, except those who shared it, or profited by it. Cephas "stood
condemned." And yet his influence and the reverence felt toward
him were so great, that no one dared to put this condemnation into
words. His sanction was of itself enough to give to this sudden
recrudescence of Jewish bigotry the force of authoritative usage.
"The truth of the gospel" was again in jeopardy. Once more Paul's
intervention foiled the attempts of the Judaizers and saved Gentile
liberties. And this time he stood quite alone. Even the faithful
Barnabas deserted him. But what mattered that, if Christ and truth
were on his side? _Amicus Cephas, amicus Barnabas; sed magis amicus
Veritas._ Solitary amid the circle of opposing or dissembling Jews,
Paul "withstood" the chief of the Apostles of Jesus "to the face." He
rebuked him "before them all."
II. Peter's conduct is reproved by Paul _in the light of their common
knowledge of salvation in Christ_.
Paul is not content with pointing out the inconsistency of his
brother Apostle. He must probe the matter to the bottom. He will
bring Peter's delinquency to the touchstone of the Gospel, in its
fundamental principles. So he passes in ver. 15 from the outward to
the inward, from the circumstances of Peter's conduct to the inner
world of spiritual consciousness, in which his offence finds its
deeper condemnation. "You and I," he goes on to say, "not Gentile
sinners, but men of Jewish birth--yet for all that, knowing that
there is no justification for man in works of law, only[53] through
faith in Christ--we too put our faith in Christ, in order to be
justified by faith in Him, not by works of law; for as Scripture
taught us, in that way no flesh will be justified."
[53] ἐὰν μὴ has the same partially exceptive force as εἰ μὴ in
ch. i. 7, 19. Comp. Rom. xiv. 14; also Luke iv. 26, 27.
Paul makes no doubt that the Jewish Apostle's experience of salvation
corresponded with his own. Doubtless, in their previous intercourse,
and especially when he first "made acquaintance with Cephas" (ch. i.
18) in Jerusalem, the hearts of the two men had been opened to each
other; and they had found that, although brought to the knowledge of
the truth in different ways, yet in the essence of the matter--in
respect of the personal conviction of sin, in the yielding up of
self-righteousness and native pride, in the abandonment of every prop
and trust but Jesus Christ--their history had run the same course,
and face answered to face. Yes, Paul knew that he had an ally in the
heart of his friend. He was not fighting as one that beateth the
air, not making a rhetorical flourish, or a parade of some favourite
doctrine of his own; he appealed from Peter dissembling to Peter
faithful and consistent. Peter's dissimulation was a return to
the Judaic ground of legal righteousness. By refusing to eat with
uncircumcised men, he affirmed implicitly that, though believers in
Christ, they were still to him "common and unclean," that the Mosaic
rites imparted a higher sanctity than the righteousness of faith. Now
the principles of evangelical and legal righteousness, of salvation
by faith and by law-works, are diametrically opposed. It is logically
impossible to maintain both. Peter had long ago accepted the former
doctrine. He had sought salvation, just like any Gentile sinner, on
the common ground of human guilt, and with a faith that renounced
every consideration of Jewish privilege and legal performance.
By what right can any Hebrew believer in Christ, after this, set
himself above his Gentile brother, or presume to be by virtue of his
circumcision and ritual law-keeping a holier man? Such we take to be
the import of Paul's challenge in vv. 15, 16.
III. Paul is met at this point by the stock objection to the doctrine
of salvation by faith--an objection brought forward in the dispute
at Antioch not, we should imagine, by Peter himself, but by the
Judaistic advocates. _To renounce legal righteousness was in effect_,
they urged, _to promote sin--nay, to make Christ Himself a minister
of sin_ (ver. 17).
Paul retorts the charge on those who make it. _They promote sin_,
he declares, _who set up legal righteousness again_ (ver. 18). The
objection is stated and met in the form of question and answer, as
in Rom. iii. 5. We have in this sharp thrust and parry an example
of the sort of fence which Paul must often have carried on in his
discussions with Jewish opponents on these questions.
We must not overlook the close verbal connection of these verses with
the two last. The phrase "seeking to be justified in Christ" carries
us back to the time when the two Apostles, self-condemned sinners,
severally sought and found a new ground of righteousness in Him. Now
when Peter and Paul did this, they were "themselves also found[54]
to be sinners,"--an experience how abasing to their Jewish pride!
They made the great discovery that stripped them of legal merit, and
brought them down in their own esteem to the level of common sinners.
Peter's confession may stand for both, when he said, abashed by the
glory of Christ, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." Now
this style of penitence, this profound self-abasement in the presence
of Jesus Christ, revolted the Jewish moralist. To Pharisaic sentiment
it was contemptible. If justification by faith requires this, if
it brings the Jew to so abject a posture and makes no difference
between lawless and law-keeping, between pious children of Abraham
and heathen outcasts--if this be the doctrine of Christ, all moral
distinctions are confounded, and Christ is "a minister of sin!" This
teaching robs the Jew of the righteousness he before possessed; it
takes from him the benefit and honour that God bestowed upon his
race! So, we doubt not, many a Jew was heard angrily exclaiming
against the Pauline doctrine, both at Antioch and elsewhere. This
conclusion was, in the view of the Legalist, a _reductio ad absurdum_
of Paulinism.
[54] For this emphatic _found_, describing a process of moral
conviction and inward discovery, comp. Rom. vii. 10, 18, 21; the
whole passage strikingly illustrates the reminiscence of our text.
The Apostle repels this inference with the indignant μὴ γένοιτο, _Far
be it!_ His reply is indicated by the very form in which he puts the
question: "If we were _found_ sinners" (Christ did not _make_ us
such). "The complaint was this," as Calvin finely says: "Has Christ
therefore come to take away from us the righteousness of the Law,
to make us polluted who were holy? Nay, Paul says;--he repels the
blasphemy with detestation. For Christ did not introduce sin, but
revealed it. He did not rob them of righteousness, but of the false
show thereof."[55] The reproach of the Judaizers was in reality the
same that is urged against evangelical doctrine still--that it is
_immoral_, placing the virtuous and vicious in the common category of
"sinners."
[55] _Commentarii_, _in loc._
Ver. 18 throws back the charge of promoting sin upon the Legalist.
It is the counterpart, not of ver. 19, but rather of ver. 17. The
"transgressor" is the sinner in a heightened and more specific
sense, one who breaks known and admitted law.[56] This word bears,
in Paul's vocabulary, a precise and strongly marked signification
which is not satisfied by the common interpretation. It is not that
Peter in setting up the Law which he had in principle overthrown,
_puts himself in the wrong_; nor that Peter in re-establishing
the Law, _contradicts the purpose of the Law itself_ (Chrysostom,
Lightfoot, Beet). This is to anticipate the next verse. In Paul's
view and according to the experience common to Peter with himself,
law and transgression are concomitant, every man "under law" is _ipso
facto_ a transgressor. He who sets up the first, constitutes himself
the second. And this is what Peter is now doing; although Paul
courteously veils the fact by putting it hypothetically, in the first
person.[57] After dissolving, so far as in him lay, the validity of
legal righteousness and breaking down the edifice of justification by
works, Peter is now building it up again, and thereby constructing a
prison-house for himself. _Returning to legal allegiance, he returns
to legal condemnation_;[58] with his own hands he puts on his neck
the burden of the Law's curse, which through faith in Christ he had
cast off. By this act of timid conformity he seeks to commend himself
to Jewish opinion; but it only serves, in the light of the Gospel,
to "prove him a transgressor," to "commend"[59] him in that unhappy
character. This is Paul's retort to the imputation of the Judaist. It
carries the war into the enemies' camp. "No," says Paul, "_Christ_ is
no patron of sin, in bidding men renounce legal righteousness. But
those promote sin--in themselves first of all--who after knowing His
righteousness, turn back again to legalism."
[56] See Grimm's _Lexicon_, or Trench's _N. T. Synonyms_, on this
word. Comp. ch. iii. 19; Rom. ii. 23-27; iv. 15; v. 14.
[57] The _I_ of this sentence is quite indefinite. On the other
hand ver. 19, with its emphatic ἐγώ γάρ, brings us into a new
vein of thought.
[58] Comp. ch. iii. 10-12, 19; Rom. iii. 20; iv. 15.
[59] This verb has, as Schott suggests, a tinge of irony.
IV. The conviction of Peter is now complete. From the sad bondage to
which the Jewish Apostle, by his compliance with the Judaizers, was
preparing to submit himself, _the Apostle turns to his own joyous
sense of deliverance_ (vv. 19-21). Those who resort to legalism, he
has said, ensure their own condemnation. It is, on the other hand,
by an entire surrender to Christ, by realizing the import of His
death, that we learn to "live unto God." So Paul had proved it. At
this moment he is conscious of a union with the crucified and living
Saviour, which lifts him above the curse of the law, above the
power of sin. To revert to the Judaistic state, to dream any more
of earning righteousness by legal conformity, is a thing for him
inconceivable. It would be to make void the cross of Christ!
And it was the Law itself that first impelled Paul along this
path. "Through law" he "died to law." The Law drove him from itself
to seek salvation in Jesus Christ. Its accusations allowed him no
shelter, left him no secure spot on which to build the edifice of
his self-righteousness. It said to him unceasingly, Thou art a
transgressor.[60] He who seeks justification by its means contradicts
the Law, while he frustrates the grace of God.
[60] Rom. vii. 7-viii. 1.
CHAPTER X.
_THE PRINCIPLES AT STAKE._
"For I through law died unto law, that I might live unto God. I
have been crucified with Christ; and _it is_ no longer I _that_
live, but Christ liveth in me: and that _life_ which I now live
in the flesh I live in faith, _the faith_ which is in the Son
of God, who loved me, and gave Himself up for me. I do not make
void the grace of God: for if righteousness is through law, then
Christ died for nought"--GAL. ii. 19-21.
Paul's personal apology is ended. He has proved his Apostolic
independence, and made good his declaration, "My Gospel is not
according to man." If he owed his commission to any man, it was to
Peter; so his traducers persistently alleged. He has shown that,
first _without_ Peter, then _in equality with_ Peter, and finally
_in spite of_ Peter, he had received and maintained it. Similarly in
regard to James and the Jerusalem Church. Without their mediation
Paul commenced his work; when that work was challenged, they could
only approve it; and when afterwards men professing to act in their
name disturbed his work, the Apostle had repelled them. He acted all
along under the consciousness of a trust in the gospel committed to
him directly by Jesus Christ, and an authority in its administration
second to none upon earth. And events had justified this confidence.
Paul is compelled to say all this about himself. The vindication of
his ministry is forced from him by the calumnies of false brethren.
From the time of the conference at Jerusalem, and still more since he
withstood Peter at Antioch, he had been a mark for the hatred of the
Judaizing faction. He was the chief obstacle to their success. Twice
he had foiled them, when they counted upon victory. They had now set
on foot a systematic agitation against him, with its head-quarters
at Jerusalem, carried on under some pretext of sanction from the
authorities of the Church there. At Corinth and in Galatia the
legalist emissaries had appeared simultaneously; they pursued in the
main the same policy, adapting it to the character and disposition of
the two Churches, and appealing with no little success to the Jewish
predilections common even amongst Gentile believers in Christ.
In this controversy Paul and the gospel he preached were bound
together. "I am set," he says, "for the defence of the gospel" (Ph.
i. 16). He was the champion of the cross, the impersonation of the
principle of salvation by faith. It is "the gospel of Christ," the
"truth of the gospel," he reiterates, that is at stake. If he wards
off blows falling upon him, it is because they are aimed through
him at the truth for which he lives--nay, at Christ who lives in
him. In his self-assertion there is no note of pride or personal
anxiety. Never was there a man more completely lost in the greatness
of a great cause, nor who felt himself in comparison with it more
worthless. But that cause has lifted Paul with it to imperishable
glory. Of all names named on earth, none stands nearer than his to
that which is "above every name."
While Paul in ch. i. and ii. is busy with his own vindication, he
is meantime behind the personal defence preparing the doctrinal
argument. His address to Peter is an incisive outline of the gospel
of grace. The three closing verses--the Χριστῷ συνεσταύρωμαιᾔ in
particular--are the heart of Paul's theology--_summa ac medulla
Christianismi_ (Bengel). Such a testimony was the Apostle's best
defence before his audience at Antioch; it was the surest means of
touching the heart of Peter and convincing him of his error. And its
recital was admirably calculated to enlighten the Galatians as to the
true bearing of this dispute which had been so much misrepresented.
From ver. 15 onwards, Paul has been all the while addressing, under
the person of Peter, the conscience of his readers,[61] and paving
the way for the assault that he makes upon them with so much vigour
in the first verses of ch. iii. Read in the light of the foregoing
narrative, this passage is a compendium of the Pauline Gospel,
invested with the peculiar interest that belongs to a confession of
personal faith, made at a signal crisis in the author's life. Let us
examine this momentous declaration.
[61] Hofmann is so far right when he makes the Apostle turn to
the Galatians in ch. ii. 15, and draws at this point the line
between the historical and doctrinal sections of the Epistle.
I. At the foundation of Paul's theology lies his conception of _the
grace of God_.
GRACE is the Apostle's watchword. The word occurs twice as often in
his Epistles as it does in the rest of the New Testament. Outside
the Pauline Luke and Hebrews, and 1 Peter with its large infusion of
Paulinism, it is exceedingly rare.[62] In this word the character,
spirit, and aim of the revelation of Christ, as Paul understood
it, are summed up. "The grace of God" is the touchstone to which
Peter's dissimulation is finally brought. _Christ_ is the embodiment
of Divine grace--above all, in His death. So that it is one and the
same thing to "bring to nought the grace of God," and "the death of
Christ." Hence God's grace is called "the grace of Christ,"--"of our
Lord Jesus Christ." From Romans to Titus and Philemon, "grace reigns"
in every Epistle. No one can counterfeit this mark of Paul, or speak
of grace in his style and accent.
[62] What is said of χάρις, applies also to its derivatives,
χαρίζομαι, κ.τ.λ.
God's grace is not His love alone; it is _redeeming love_--love
poured out upon the undeserving, love coming to seek and save
the lost, "bringing salvation to all men" (Rom. v. 1-8; Tit. ii.
11). Grace decreed redemption, made the sacrifice, proclaims the
reconciliation, provides and bestows the new sonship of the Spirit,
and schools its children into all the habits of godliness and virtue
that beseem their regenerate life, which it brings finally to its
consummation in the life eternal.[63]
[63] Eph. i. 5-9; 2 Tim. i. 9; Rom. iii. 24; Heb. ii. 9; 2 Cor.
v. 20-vi. 1; Gal. iv. 5; Tit. iii. 5-7; ii. 11-14; Rom. v. 21.
Grace in God is therefore the antithesis of _sin in man_,
counterworking and finally triumphing over it. Grace belongs to
the last Adam as eminently as sin to the first. The later thoughts
of the Apostle on this theme are expressed in Tit. iii. 4-7, a
passage singularly rich in its description of the working of Divine
grace on human nature. "We were senseless," he says, "disobedient,
wandering in error, in bondage to lusts and pleasures of many kinds,
living in envy and malice, hateful, hating each other. But when the
kindness and love to man of our Saviour God shone forth,"--then
all was changed: "not by works wrought in our own righteousness,
but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of
regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, that, justified by His
grace, we might be made heirs in hope of life eternal." The vision of
the grace of God drives stubbornness, lust, and hatred from the soul.
It brings about, for man and for society, the _palingenesia_, the new
birth of Creation, rolling back the tide of evil and restoring the
golden age of peace and innocence; and crowns the joy of a renovated
earth with the glories of a recovered heaven.
Being the antagonist of sin, grace comes of necessity into contrast
with _the law_. Law is intrinsically the opposer of sin; sin is
"lawlessness," with Paul as much as with John.[64] But law was
powerless to cope with sin: it was "weak through the flesh." Instead
of crushing sin, the interposition of law served to inflame and
stimulate it, to bring into play its latent energy, reducing the man
most loyally disposed to moral despair. "By the law therefore is the
knowledge of sin; it worketh out wrath." Inevitably, it makes men
transgressors; it brings upon them an inward condemnation, a crushing
sense of the Divine anger and hostility.[65] That is all that law
can do by itself. "Holy and just and good," notwithstanding, to our
perverse nature it becomes _death_ (Rom. vii. 13; 1 Cor. xv. 56).
It is actually "the strength of sin," lending itself to extend and
confirm its power. We find in it a "law of sin and death." So that
to be "under law" and "under grace" are two opposite and mutually
exclusive states. In the latter condition only is sin "no longer our
lord" (Rom. vi. 14). Peter and the Jews of Antioch therefore, in
building up the legal principle again, were in truth "abolishing the
grace of God." If the Galatians follow their example, Paul warns them
that they will "fall from grace." Accepting circumcision, they become
"debtors to perform the whole law,"--and that means transgression and
the curse (ch. v. 1-4; iii. 10-12; ii. 16-18).
[64] Rom. vii. 12, 14; 2 Thess. ii. 4-8; comp. 1 John iii. 4.
[65] Rom. iii. 20; iv. 15; v. 20; vii. 5, 24; Gal. ii. 16; iii.
10, 11, 19.
While sin is the reply which man's nature makes to the demands of
law, _faith_ is the response elicited by grace; it is the door of
the heart opening to grace.[66] Grace and Faith go hand in hand, as
Law and Transgression. Limiting the domain of faith, Peter virtually
denied the sovereignty of grace. He belied his confession made at
the Council of Jerusalem: "By _the grace_ of the Lord Jesus we
_trust_ to be saved, even as the Gentiles" (Acts xv. 11). With Law
are joined such terms as Works, Debt, Reward, Glorying, proper to
a "righteousness of one's own."[67] With Grace we associate Gift,
Promise, Predestination, Call, Election, Adoption, Inheritance,
belonging to the dialect of "the righteousness which is of God by
faith."[68] Grace operates in the region of "the Spirit," making for
freedom; but law, however spiritual in origin, has come to seek its
accomplishment in the sphere of the flesh, where it "gendereth to
bondage" (ch. iv. 23-v. 5; 2 Cor. iii. 6, 17).
[66] Rom. iii. 24, 25; Eph. ii. 8; etc.
[67] Rom. iv. 1-4; xi. 6; Gal. ii. 16; iii. 12.
[68] Rom. iv. 16; viii. 28-39; xi. 5; Eph. i. 4-6; Tit. iii. 7;
Acts xx. 32; Gal. iii. 18: δι' ἐπαγγελίας κεχάρισται ὁ Θεός.
Grace appears, however, in another class of passages in Paul's
Epistles, of which ch. i. 15, ii. 9 are examples. To the Divine
grace Paul ascribes _his personal salvation and Apostolic call_. The
revelation which made him a Christian and an Apostle, was above all
things a manifestation of grace. Wearing this aspect, "the glory of
God" appeared to him "in the face of Jesus Christ." The splendour
that blinded and overwhelmed Saul on his way to Damascus, was "the
glory of His grace." The voice of Jesus that fell on the persecutor's
ear spoke in the accents of grace. No scourge of the Law, no thunders
of Sinai, could have smitten down the proud Pharisee, and beaten
or scorched out of him his strong self-will, like the complaint of
Jesus. All the circumstances tended to stamp upon his soul, fused
into penitence in that hour, the ineffaceable impression of "the
grace of God and of our Saviour Jesus Christ." Such confessions
as those of 1 Cor. xv. 8-10, and Eph. ii. 7, iii. 7, 8, show how
constantly this remembrance was present with the Apostle Paul and
suffused his views of revelation, giving to his ministry its peculiar
tenderness of humility and ardour of gratitude. This sentiment of
boundless obligation to the grace of God, with its pervasive effect
upon the Pauline doctrine, is strikingly expressed in the doxology of
1 Tim. i. 11-17,--words which it is almost a sacrilege to put into
the mouth of a _falsarius_: "According to the gospel of the glory of
the blessed God, wherewith _I_ was intrusted, ... who was aforetime
a blasphemer and persecutor.... But the grace of our Lord abounded
even more exceedingly. Faithful is the saying, worthy to be received
of all, 'Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners'--of whom
_I_ am chief.... In me as chief Christ Jesus showed forth all His
long-suffering.... Now to the King of the ages be honour and glory
for ever. Amen." Who, reading the Apostle's story, does not echo that
_Amen_? No wonder that Paul became the Apostle of _grace_; even as
John, "the disciple whom Jesus loved," must perforce be the Apostle
of _love_. First to him was God's grace revealed in its largest
affluence, that through him it might be known to all men and to all
ages.
II. Side by side with the grace of God, we find in ver. 21 _the death
of Christ_. He sets aside the former, the Apostle argues, who by
admitting legal righteousness nullifies the latter.
While grace embodies Paul's fundamental conception of the Divine
character, the death of Christ is the fundamental fact in which that
character manifests itself. So the cross becomes the centre of Paul's
theology. But it was, in the first place, the basis of his personal
life. "Faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for
me," is the foundation of "the life he now lives in the flesh."
Here lay the stumbling-block of Judaism. Theocratic pride, Pharisaic
tradition, could not, as we say, _get over_ it. A crucified Messiah!
How revolting the bare idea. But when, as in Paul's case, Judaistic
pride did surmount this huge scandal and in spite of the offence of
the cross arrive at faith in Jesus, it was at the cost of a severe
fall. It was broken in pieces,--destroyed once and for ever. With
the elder Apostles the change had been more gradual; they were never
steeped in Judaism as Saul was. For him to accept the faith of
Jesus was a revolution the most complete and drastic possible. As a
Judaist, the preaching of the cross was an outrage on his faith and
his Messianic hopes; now it was that which most of all subdued and
entranced him. Its power was extreme, whether to attract or repel.
The more he had loathed and mocked at it before, the more he is bound
henceforth to exalt the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. A proof of
the Divine anger against the Nazarene he had once deemed it; now he
sees in it the token of God's grace in Him to the whole world.
For Paul therefore the death of Christ imported the end of Judaism.
"I died to law," he writes,--"I am crucified with Christ." Once
understanding what this death meant, and realising his own relation
to it, on every account it was impossible to go back to Legalism. The
cross barred all return. The law that put Him, the sinless One, to
death, could give no life to sinful men. The Judaism that pronounced
His doom, doomed itself. Who would make peace with it over the
Saviour's blood? From the moment that Paul knew the truth about the
death of Jesus, he had done with Judaism for ever. Henceforth he knew
nothing--cherished no belief or sentiment, acknowledged no maxim,
no tradition, which did not conform itself to His death. The world
to which he had belonged _died_, self-slain, when it slew Him. From
Christ's grave a new world was rising, for which alone Paul lived.
But why should the grace of God take expression in a fact so
appalling as Christ's death? What has _death_ to do with grace?
It is the legal penalty of sin. The conjunction of sin and death
pervades the teaching of Scripture, and is a principle fixed in the
conscience of mankind. Death, as man knows it, is the inevitable
consequence and the universal witness of his transgression. He
"carries about in his mortality the testimony that God is angry with
the wicked every day" (Augustine). The death of Jesus Christ cannot
be taken out of this category. He died a sinner's death. He bore the
penalty of guilt. The prophetic antecedents of Calvary, the train of
circumstances connected with it, His own explanations in chief--are
all in keeping with this purpose. With amazement we behold the
Sinless "made sin," the Just dying for the unjust. He was "born of
a woman, born under law": under law He lived--and _died_. Grace is
no law-breaker. God must above all things be "just Himself," if He
is to justify others (Rom. iii. 26). The death of Jesus declares
it. That sublime sacrifice is, as one might say, the _resultant_
of grace and law. Grace "gives Him up for us all;" it meets the
law's claims in Him, even to the extreme penalty, that from us the
penalty may be lifted off. He puts Himself under law, in order "to
_buy out_ those under law" (ch. iv. 4, 5). In virtue of the death of
Christ, therefore, men are dealt with on an extra-legal footing, on
terms of grace; not because law is ignored or has broken down; but
because it is satisfied beforehand. God has "set forth Christ Jesus
a propitiation"; and in view of that accomplished fact, He proceeds
"in the present time" to "justify him who is of faith in Jesus"
(Rom. iii. 22-26). Legalism is at an end, for the Law has spent
itself on our Redeemer. For those that are in Him "there is now no
condemnation." This is to anticipate the fuller teaching of ch. iii.;
but the vicarious sacrifice is already implied when Paul says, "He
gave Himself up for me--gave Himself for our sins" (ch. i. 4).
The _resurrection of Christ_ is, in Paul's thought, the other side of
His death. They constitute one event, the obverse and reverse of the
same reality. For Paul, as for the first Apostles, the resurrection
of Jesus gave to His death an aspect wholly different from that it
previously wore. But the transformation wrought in their minds during
the "forty days," in his case came about in a single moment, and
began from a different starting-point. Instead of being the merited
punishment of a blasphemer and false Messiah, the death of Calvary
became the glorious self-sacrifice of the Son of God. The dying
and rising of Jesus were blended in the Apostle's mind; he always
sees the one in the light of the other. The faith that saves, as he
formulates it, is at once a faith that Christ died for our sins, and
that God raised Him from the dead on the third day.[69] Whichever
of the two one may first apprehend, it brings the other along with
it. The resurrection is not an express topic of this Epistle.
Nevertheless it meets us in its first sentence, where we discern
that Paul's knowledge of the gospel and his call to proclaim it,
rested upon this fact. In the passage before us the resurrection is
manifestly assumed. If the Apostle is "crucified with Christ,"--and
yet "Christ _lives_ in him," it is not simply the teaching, or the
mission of Jesus that lives over again in Paul; the _life_ of the
risen Saviour has itself entered into his soul.
[69] 1 Cor. xv. 3, 4, 11; Rom. iv. 24, 25; x. 9; 1 Thess. iv. 14.
III. This brings us to the thought of _the union of the believer with
Christ in death and life_, which is expressed in terms of peculiar
emphasis and distinctness in ver. 20. "With Christ I have been
crucified; and _I_ live no longer; it is Christ that lives in me. My
earthly life is governed by faith in Him who loved me and died for
me." Christ and Paul are one. When Christ died, Paul's former self
died with Him. Now it is the Spirit of Christ in heaven that lives
within Paul's body here on earth.
This union is first of all _a communion with the dying Saviour_.
Paul does not think of the sacrifice of Calvary as something merely
accomplished _for_ him, outside himself, by a legal arrangement
in which one person takes the place of another and, as it were,
_personates_ him. The nexus between Christ and Paul is deeper than
this. Christ is the centre and soul of the race, holding towards it
a spiritual primacy of which Adam's natural headship was a type,
mediating between men and God in all the relations which mankind
holds to God.[70] The death of Jesus was more than substitutionary;
it was representative. He had every right to act for us. He was the
"One" who alone could "die for all;" in Him "all died" (2 Cor. v. 14,
15). He carried us with Him to the cross; His death was in effect the
death of those who sins He bore. There was no legal fiction here; no
federal compact extemporised for the occasion. "The second Man from
heaven," if second in order of time, was first and fundamental in the
spiritual order, the organic Head of mankind, "the root," as well as
"the offspring" of humanity.[71] The judgement that fell upon the
race was a summons to Him who held in His hands its interests and
destinies. Paul's faith apprehends and endorses what Christ has done
on his behalf,--"who loved me," he cries, "and gave Himself up _for
me_." When the Apostle says, "I _have been_ crucified with Christ,"
he goes back in thought to the scene of Calvary; there, potentially,
all that was done of which he now realises in himself the issue. His
present salvation is, so to speak, a _rehearsal_ of the Saviour's
death, a "likeness" (Rom. vi. 5) of the supreme act of atonement,
which took place once for all when Christ died for our sins.
[70] Rom. v. 14; 1 Cor. xv. 22, 45-48; 1 Tim. ii. 5.
[71] 1 Cor. xv. 45-49; comp. Col. i. 15-17; John i. 4, 9, 15, 16.
_Faith_ is the link between the past, objective sacrifice, and the
present, subjective apprehension of it, by which its virtue becomes
our own. Without such faith, Christ would have "died in vain." His
death must then have been a great sacrifice thrown away. Wilful
unbelief repudiates what the Redeemer has done, provisionally, on
our behalf. This repudiation, as individuals, we are perfectly free
to make. "The objective reconciliation effected in Christ's death
can after all benefit actually, in their own personal consciousness,
only those who know and acknowledge it, and feel themselves in their
solidarity with Christ to be so much one with Him as to be able
to appropriate inwardly His death and celestial life, and to live
over again His life and death; those only, in a word, who truly
_believe_ in Christ. Thus the idea of substitution in Paul receives
its complement and realisation in the mysticism of his conception
of faith. While Christ objectively represents the whole race, that
relation becomes a subjective reality only in the case of those
who connect themselves with Him in faith in such a way as to fuse
together with Him into _one_ spirit and _one_ body, as to find in
Him their Head, their soul, their life and self, and He in them His
body, His members and His temple. Thereby the idea of 'one for all'
receives the stricter meaning of 'all in and with one.'"[72]
[72] Pfleiderer, _Hibbert Lectures_, pp. 65, 6. Dr. Pfleiderer's
delicate and sympathetic interpretation of Paul's teaching (in
these _Lectures_, and still more in his _Paulinism_) has made
all students of the Apostle his debtors, however much they may
quarrel with his historical criticism.
Partaking the death of Christ, Paul has come to share in _His risen
life_. On the cross he owned his Saviour--owned His wounds, His
shame, His agony of death, and felt himself therein shamed, wounded,
slain to death. Thus joined to his Redeemer, as by the nails that
fastened Him to the tree, Paul is carried with Him down into the
grave--into the grave, and out again! Christ is risen from the dead:
so therefore is Paul. He "died to sin once," and now "liveth to God;
death lords it over Him no more:" this Paul reckons equally true for
himself (Rom. vi. 3-11). The _Ego_, the "old man" that Paul once was,
lies buried in the grave of Jesus.
Jesus Christ alone, "the Lord of the Spirit" has risen from that
sepulchre,--has risen in the spirit of Paul. "If any one should
come to Paul's doors and ask, Who lives here? he would answer, Not
Saul of Tarsus, but Jesus Christ lives in this body of mine." In
this appropriation of the death and rising of the Lord Jesus, this
interpenetration of the spirit of Paul and that of Christ, there are
three stages corresponding to the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of
Eastertide. "Christ died for our sins; He was buried; He rose again
the third day:" so, by consequence, "I am crucified with Christ; no
longer do I live; Christ liveth in me."
This mystic union of the soul and its Saviour bears fruit in
the activities of outward life. Faith is no mere abstract and
contemplative affection; but a working energy, dominating and
directing all our human faculties. It makes even the flesh its
instrument, which defied the law of God, and betrayed the man to
the bondage of sin and death. There is a note of triumph in the
words,--"the life I now live _in the flesh_, I live in faith!" The
impossible has been accomplished. "The body of death" is possessed by
the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (Rom. vi. 12; vii. 23-viii. 1).
The flesh--the despair of the law--has become the sanctified vessel
of grace.
Paul's entire theology of Redemption is contained in this mystery of
union with Christ. The office of _the Holy Spirit_, whose communion
holds together the glorified Lord and His members upon earth, is
implied in the teaching of ver. 20. This is manifest, when in ch.
iii. 2-5 we find the believer's union with Christ described as
"receiving the Spirit, beginning in the Spirit;" and when a little
later "the promise of the Spirit" embraces the essential blessings
of the new life.[73] The doctrine of _the Church_ is also here. For
those in whom Christ dwells have therein a common life, which knows
no "Jew and Greek; all are one man" in Him.[74] _Justification_ and
_sanctification_ alike are here; the former being the realisation
of our share in Christ's propitiation for sin, the latter our
participation in His risen life, spent "to God." Finally, _the
resurrection to eternal life_ and _the heavenly glory_ of the saints
spring from their present fellowship with the Redeemer. "The Spirit
that raised Jesus from the dead, dwelling in us, shall raise our
mortal body" to share with the perfected spirit His celestial life.
The resurrection of Christ is the earnest of that which all His
members will attain,--nay, the material creation is to participate
in the glory of the sons of God, made like to Him, the "firstborn of
many brethren" (Rom. viii. 11, 16-23, 29, 30; Phil. iii. 20, 21).
[73] Ch. iii. 14; iv. 6, 7; v. 5; 1 Cor., vi. 17, 19; Rom. viii.
9-16.
[74] Ch. iii. 28; Col. iii. 11; Rom. xv. 5-7.
* * * * *
In all these vital truths Paul's gospel was traversed by the
Legalism countenanced by Peter at Antioch. _The Judaistic doctrine
struck_ directly, if not avowedly, _at the cross_, whose reproach
its promoters sought to escape. This charge is the climax of the
Apostle's contention against Peter, and the starting-point of his
expostulation with the Galatians in the following chapter. "If
righteousness could be obtained by way of law, then Christ died
for nought!" What could one say worse of any doctrine or policy,
than that it led to this? And if works of law actually justify men,
and circumcision is allowed to make a difference between Jew and
Greek before God, the principle of legalism is admitted, and the
intolerable consequence ensues which Paul denounces. What did Christ
die for, if men are able to redeem themselves after this fashion? How
can any one dare to build up in face of the cross his paltry edifice
of self-wrought goodness, and say by doing so that the expiation
of Calvary was superfluous and that Jesus Christ might have spared
Himself all that trouble!
And so, on the one hand, Legalism _impugns the grace of God_. It
puts human relations to God on the footing of a debtor and creditor
account; it claims for man a ground for boasting in himself (Rom. iv.
1-4), and takes from God the glory of His grace. In its devotion to
statute and ordinance, it misses the soul of obedience--the love of
God, only to be awakened by the knowledge of His love to us (ch. v.
14; 1 John iv. 7-11). It sacrifices the Father in God to the King. It
forgets that trust is the first duty of a rational creature toward
his Maker, that the law of faith lies at the basis of all law for man.
On the other hand, and by the same necessity, Legalism is _fatal to
the spiritual life in man_. Whilst it clouds the Divine character,
it dwarfs and petrifies the human. What becomes of the sublime
mystery of the life hid with Christ in God, if its existence is made
contingent on circumcision and ritual performance? To men who put
"meat and drink" on a level with "righteousness and peace and joy
in the Holy Ghost," or in their intercourse with fellow-Christians
set points of ceremony above justice, mercy, and faith, the very
idea of a spiritual kingdom of God is wanting. The religion of Jesus
and of Paul regenerates the heart, and from that centre regulates
and hallows the whole ongoing of life. Legalism guards the mouth,
the hands, the senses, and imagines that through these it can drill
the man into the Divine order. The latter theory makes religion a
mechanical system; the former conceives it as an inward, organic
life.
_THE DOCTRINAL POLEMIC._
CHAP. iii. 1-v. 12.
CHAPTER XI.
_THE GALATIAN FOLLY._
"O foolish Galatians, who did bewitch you, before whose eyes
Jesus Christ was openly set forth crucified? This only would I
learn from you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law,
or by the hearing of faith? Are ye so foolish? having begun in
the Spirit, are ye now perfected in the flesh? Did ye suffer
so many things in vain? if it be indeed in vain. He therefore
that supplieth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among
you, _doeth he it_ by the works of the law, or by the hearing of
faith?"--GAL. iii. 1-5.
At the beginning of ch. iii. falls the most marked division of this
Epistle. So far, since the exordium, its course has been strictly
narrative. The Apostle has been "giving" his readers "to know" many
things concerning himself and his relations to the Judean Church of
which they had been ignorant or misinformed. Now this preliminary
task is over. From explanation and defence he passes suddenly to the
attack. He turns sharply round upon the Galatians, and begins to ply
them with expostulation and argument. It is for their sake that Paul
has been telling this story of his past career. In the light of the
narration just concluded, they will be able to see their folly and to
understand how much they have been deceived.
Here also the indignation so powerfully expressed in the
Introduction, breaks forth again, directed this time, however,
against the Galatians themselves and breathing grief more than anger.
And just as after that former outburst the letter settled down into
the sober flow of narrative, so from these words of reproach Paul
passes on to the measured course of argument which he pursues through
the next two chapters. In ch. iv. 8-20, and again in ch. v. 1-12,
doctrine gives way to appeal and warning. But these paragraphs still
belong to the polemical division of the Epistle, extending from this
point to the middle of ch. v. This section forms the central and
principal part of the letter, and is complete in itself. Its last
words, in ch. v. 6-12, will bring us round to the position from which
we are now setting out.
This chapter stands, nevertheless, in close connection of thought
with the foregoing. The Apostle's doctrine is grounded in historical
fact and personal experience. The theological argument has behind
it the weight of his proved Apostleship. The Judaistic dispute at
Antioch, in particular, bears immediately on the subject-matter of
the third chapter. Peter's vacillation had its counterpart in the
defection of the Galatians. The reproof and refutation which the
elder Apostle brought upon himself, Paul's readers must have felt,
touched them very nearly. In the crafty intriguers who made mischief
at Antioch, they could see the image of the Judaists who had come
into their midst. Above all, it was _the cross_ which Cephas had
dishonoured, whose efficacy he had virtually denied. His act of
dissimulation, pushed to its issue, nullified the death of Christ.
This is the gravamen of Paul's impeachment. And it is the foundation
of all his complaints against the Galatians. Round this centre the
conflict is waged. By its tendency to enhance or diminish the glory
of the Saviour's cross, Paul judges of the truth of every teaching,
the worth of every policy. Angel or Apostle, it matters not--whoever
disparages the cross of Jesus Christ finds in Paul an unflinching
enemy. The thought of Christ "dying in vain" rouses in him the strong
emotion under which he indites the first verses of this chapter.
What greater folly, what stranger bewitchment can there be, than for
one who has seen "Jesus Christ crucified" to turn away to some other
spectacle, to seek elsewhere a more potent and diviner charm! "O
senseless Galatians!"
I. Here then was the beginning of their folly. _The Galatians forgot
their Saviour's cross._
This was the first step in their backsliding. Had their eyes
continued to be fixed on Calvary, the Legalists would have argued and
cajoled in vain. Let the cross of Christ once lose its spell for us,
let its influence fail to hold and rule the soul, and we are at the
mercy of every wind of doctrine. We are like sailors in a dark night
on a perilous coast, who have lost sight of the lighthouse beacon.
Our Christianity will go to pieces. If Christ crucified should cease
to be its sovereign attraction, from that moment the Church is doomed.
This forgetfulness of the cross on the part of the Galatians is
the more astonishing to Paul, because at first they had so vividly
realised its power, and the scene of Calvary, as Paul depicted
it,[75] had taken hold of their nature with extraordinary force. He
was conscious at the time--so his words seem to intimate--that it
was given him, amongst this susceptible people, to draw the picture
with unwonted effect. The gaze of his hearers was rivetted upon the
sight. It was as if the Lord Jesus hung there before their eyes.
They beheld the Divine sufferer. They heard His cries of distress
and of triumph. They felt the load which crushed Him. Nor was it
their sympathies alone and their reverence, to which the spectacle
appealed. It stirred their conscience to its depths. It awakened
feelings of inward humiliation and contrition, of horror at the curse
of sin, of anguish under the bitterness and blackness of its death.
"It was _you_," Paul would say--"you and I, for whom He died. _Our_
sins laid on Him that ignominy, those agonies of body and of spirit.
He died the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God." They
looked, they listened, till their hearts were broken, till all their
sins cried out against them; and in a passion of repentance they cast
themselves before the Crucified, and took Him for their Christ and
King. From the foot of the cross they rose new men, with heaven's
light upon their brow, with the cry _Abba, Father_ rising from their
lips, with the Spirit of God and of Jesus Christ, the consciousness
of a Divine sonship, filling their breast.
[75] The verb προεγράφη (_openly set forth_) probably means
_painted up_ rather than _placarded_. This more vivid meaning
belongs to γράφω, and there is no sufficient reason why it should
not attach to προ-γράφω. It is entirely in place here. "Jesus
Christ crucified" is not an announcement to be made, but an
object to be delineated.
Has all this passed away? Have the Galatians forgotten the shame,
the glory of that hour--the tears of penitence, the cries of joy and
gratitude which the vision of the cross drew from their souls, the
new creation it had wrought within them, the ardour of spirit and
high resolve with which they pledged themselves to Christ's service?
Was the influence of that transforming experience to prove no more
enduring than the morning cloud and early dew? Foolish Galatians!
Had they not the wit to see that the teaching of the Legalists ran
counter to all they had then experienced, that it "made the death
of Christ of none effect," which had so mighty and saving an effect
upon themselves? Were they "so senseless," so bereft of reason
and recollection? The Apostle is amazed. He cannot understand how
impressions so powerful should prove so transient, and that truths
thus clearly perceived and realised should come to be forgotten. Some
fatal spell has been cast over them. They are "bewitched" to act as
they are doing. A deadly fascination, like that of the "evil eye,"
has paralyzed their minds.
The ancient belief alluded to in the word the Apostle uses here,[76]
is not altogether a superstition. The malignity that darts out in the
glance of the "evil eye" is a presage of mischief. Not without reason
does it cause a shudder. It is the sign of a demonic jealousy and
hate. "Satan has entered into" the soul which emits it, as once into
Judas. Behind the spite of the Jewish false brethren Paul recognised
a preternatural malice and cunning, like that with which "the Serpent
beguiled Eve."[77] To this darker source of the fascination his
question, "Who hath bewitched you?" appears to point.
[76] On βασκαίνω see the note in Lightfoot's Commentary _in
loc._; also Grimm's N. T. Lexicon. "The Scripture calleth envy
an 'evil eye;' ... so there still seemeth to be acknowledged in
the act of envy an ejaculation or irradiation of the eye. Envy
hath in it something of witchcraft.... It is the proper attribute
of the Devil, who is called 'The envious man, that soweth tares
among the wheat by night.'"--(Lord Bacon: _Essay_ ix.)
[77] Comp. 2 Cor. xi. 1-4, a passage closely parallel to this
context, containing what is expressed here and in Gal. i. 6, 7;
iv. 11, 17, 18.
II. Losing sight of the cross of Christ, the Galatians were
furthermore _rejecting the Holy Spirit of God_.
This heavy reproach the Apostles urges upon his readers through
the rest of the paragraph, pausing only for a moment in ver. 4 to
recall their earlier sufferings for Christ's sake in further witness
against them. "I have but one question to put to you," he says--"You
received the Spirit: how did that come about? Was it through what
you _did_ according to law? or what you _heard_ in faith? You know
well that this great blessing was given to your _faith_. Can you
expect to retain this gift of God on other terms than those on which
you received it? Have you begun with the Spirit to be brought to
perfection by the flesh? (ver. 3).... Nay, God still bestows on you
His Spirit, with gifts of miraculous energy; and I ask again, whether
these displays attend on the practice of law-works, or upon faith's
hearing?" (ver. 5).
The Apostle wished the Galatians to test the competing doctrines
by their effects. The Spirit of God had put His seal on the
Apostle's teaching, and on the faith of his hearers. Did any such
manifestation accompany the preaching of the Legalist? That is all
he wants to know. His cause must stand or fall by "the demonstration
of the Spirit." By "signs and wonders," and diverse gifts of the
Holy Spirit, God was wont to "bear witness with" the ministers and
witnesses of Jesus Christ (Heb. ii. 3, 4; 1 Cor. xii. 4-11): was
this testimony on the side of Paul, or the Circumcisionists? Did it
sustain the gospel of the grace of God, or the "other gospel" of
Legalism?
"He, the Spirit of truth, shall testify of Me," Christ had said; and
so John, at the end of the Apostolic age: "It is the Spirit that
beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth." When the Galatians
accepted the message of the cross proclaimed by Paul's lips, "the
Holy Spirit fell" on them, as on the Jewish Church at the Pentecost,
and the Gentile believers in the house of Cornelius (Acts x. 44);
"the love of God was poured out in their hearts through the Holy
Ghost that was given them" (Rom v. 5). As a mighty, rushing wind
this supernatural influence swept through their souls. Like fire
from heaven it kindled in their spirit, consuming their lusts and
vanities, and fusing their nature into a new, holy passion of love to
Christ and to God the Father. It broke from their lips in ecstatic
cries, unknown to human speech; or moved them to unutterable groans
and pangs of intercession (Rom. viii. 26).
There were men in the Galatian Churches on whom the baptism of
the Spirit conferred besides miraculous _charismata_, superhuman
powers of insight and of healing. These gifts God continued to
"minister amongst" them (_God_ is unquestionably the agent in ver.
5). Paul asks them to observe on what conditions, and to whom,
these extraordinary gifts are distributed. For the "receiving of
the Spirit" was an infallible sign of true Christian faith. This
was the very proof which in the first instance had convinced Peter
and the Judean Church that it was God's will to save the Gentiles,
independently of the Mosaic law (Acts xi. 15-18).
Receiving the Spirit, the Galatian believers knew that they were
the sons of God. "God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into their
hearts, crying, _Abba, Father_" (ch. iv. 6, 7). When Paul speaks
of "receiving the Spirit," it is this that he thinks of most of
all. The miraculous phenomena attending His visitations were facts
of vast importance; and their occurrence is one of the historical
certainties of the Apostolic age. They were "signs," conspicuous,
impressive, indispensable at the time--monuments set up for all
time. But they were in their nature variable and temporary. There
are powers greater and more enduring than these. The things that
"abide" are "faith, hope, love;" love chiefest of the three. Hence
when the Apostle in a later chapter enumerates the qualities that go
to make up "the fruit of the Spirit," he says nothing of _tongues_
or _prophecies_, or _gifts of healing_; he begins with _love_.
Wonder-working powers had their times and seasons, their peculiar
organs; but every believer in Christ--whether Jew or Greek, primitive
or mediæval or modern Christian, the heir of sixty generations of
faith or the latest convert from heathenism--joins in the testimony,
"The love of God is shed abroad in our heart by the Holy Ghost given
unto us." This mark of God's indwelling Spirit the Galatians had
possessed. They were "sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus" (ch.
iii. 26). And with the filial title they had received the filial
nature. They were "taught of God to love one another." Being sons of
God in Christ, they were also "heirs" (ch. iv. 7; Rom viii. 17). They
possessed the earnest of the heavenly inheritance (Eph. i. 14), the
pledge of their bodily redemption (Rom. viii. 10-23), and of eternal
life in the fellowship of Christ. In their initial experience of "the
salvation which is in Jesus Christ" they had the foretaste of its
"eternal glory," of the "grace" belonging to "them that love our Lord
Jesus Christ," which is "in incorruption."[78]
[78] 2 Tim. ii. 10; Eph. vi. 24 (ἀφθαρσία is _incorruption_
everywhere else in Paul: why not here?)
No legal condition was laid down at this beginning of their Christian
life; no "work" of any kind interposed between the belief of the
heart and the conscious reception of the new life in Christ. Even
their baptism, significant and memorable as it was, had not been
required as in itself a precondition of salvation. Sometimes after
baptism, but often--as in the case of Cornelius' household--before
the rite was administered, "the Holy Ghost fell" on believing souls
(Acts x. 44-48; xi. 15, 16). They "confessed with their mouth the
Lord Jesus;" they "believed in their hearts that God had raised Him
from the dead,"--and they were saved. Baptism is, as Paul's teaching
elsewhere shows,[79] the expression, not the medium--the symbol, and
not the cause, of the new birth which it might precede or follow.
The Catholic doctrine of the _opus operatum_ in the sacraments is
radically anti-Pauline; it is Judaism over again. The process by
which the Galatians became Christians was essentially spiritual. They
had begun _in the Spirit_.
[79] Ch. iii. 26, 27; Rom. vi. 2-4; Col. ii. 11-13; Tit. iii. 5.
And so they must continue. To begin in the Spirit, and then look
for perfection to the flesh, to suppose that the work of faith and
love was to be consummated by Pharisaic ordinances, that Moses could
lead them higher than Christ, and circumcision effect for them what
the power of the Holy Ghost failed to do--this was the height of
unreason. "Are you so senseless?" the Apostle asks.
He dwells on this absurdity, pressing home his expostulation with
an emphasis that shows he is touching the centre of the controversy
between himself and the Judaizers. They admitted, as we have shown in
Chapter IX., that Gentiles might _enter_ the kingdom of God through
faith and by the baptism of the Spirit. This was settled at the
Council of Jerusalem. Without a formal acceptance of this evangelical
principle, we do not see how the Legalists could again have found
entrance into Gentile Christian Churches, much less have carried
Peter and Barnabas and the liberal Jews of Antioch with them, as they
did. They no longer attempted to deny salvation to the uncircumcised;
but they claimed for the circumcised a more complete salvation, and
a higher status in the Church. "Yes, Paul has laid the foundation,"
they would say; "now we have come to perfect his work, to give
you the more advanced instruction, derived from the fountain-head
of Christian knowledge, from the first Apostles in Jerusalem. _If
you would be perfect, keep the commandments_; be circumcised, like
Christ and His disciples, and observe the law of Moses. If you be
circumcised, Christ will profit you much more than hitherto; and you
will inherit all the blessings promised in Him to the children of
Abraham."
Such was the style of "persuasion" employed by the Judaizers. It was
well calculated to deceive Jewish believers, even those best affected
to their Gentile brethren. It appeared to maintain the prescriptive
rights of Judaism and to satisfy legitimate national pride, without
excluding the Gentiles from the fold of Christ. Nor is it difficult
to understand the spell which the circumcisionist doctrine exerted
over susceptible Gentile minds, after some years of Christian
training, of familiarity with the Old Testament and the early history
of Israel. Who is there that does not feel the charm of ancient
memories and illustrious names? Many a noble mind is at this present
time "bewitched," many a gifted and pious spirit is "carried away"
by influences precisely similar. _Apostolical succession, patristic
usage, catholic tradition, the authority of the Church_--what words
of power are these! How wilful and arbitrary it appears to rely upon
any present experience of the grace of God, upon one's own reading
of the gospel of Christ, in contradiction to claims advanced under
the patronage of so many revered and time-honoured names. The man,
or the community, must be deeply conscious of having "received the
Spirit," that can feel the force of attractions of this nature, and
yet withstand them. It requires a clear view of the cross of Jesus
Christ, an absolute faith in the supremacy of spiritual principles
to enable one to resist the fascinations of ceremonialism and
tradition. They offer us a more "ornate worship," a more "refined"
type of piety, "consecrated by antiquity;" they invite us to enter
a selecter circle, and to place ourselves on a higher level than
that of the vulgar religionism of faith and feeling. It is the
Galatian "persuasion" over again. Ceremony, antiquity, ecclesiastical
authority are after all poor substitutes for faith and love. If they
come between us and the living Christ, if they limit and dishonour
the work of His Spirit, we have a right to say, and we will say with
the Apostle Paul, _Away with them!_
The men of tradition are well content that we should "begin in the
Spirit," provided they may have the finishing of our faith. To prey
upon the Pauline Churches is their ancient and natural habit. An
evangelical beginning is too often followed by a ritualistic ending.
And Paul is ever begetting spiritual children, to see himself robbed
of them by these bewitching Judaizers. "O foolish Galatians," he
seems still to be saying, What is it that charms you so much in all
this ritual and externalism? Does it bring you nearer to the cross
of Christ? Does it give you more of His Spirit? Is it a spiritual
satisfaction that you find in these works of Church law, these
priestly ordinances and performances? How can the sons of God return
to such childish rudiments? Why should a religion which began so
spiritually seek its perfection by means so formal and mechanical?
The conflict which this Epistle signalised is one that has never
ceased. Its elements belong to human nature. It is the contest
between the religion of the Spirit and that of the letter, between
the spontaneity of personal faith and the rights of usage and
prescription. The history of the Church is largely the record of
this incessant struggle. In every Christian community, in every
earnest and devout spirit, it is repeated in some new phase. When
the Fathers of the Church in the second and third centuries began
to write about "the new law" and to identify the Christian ministry
with the Aaronic priesthood, it was evident that Legalism was
regaining its ascendancy. Already the foundations were laid of the
Catholic Church-system, which culminated in the Papacy of Rome. What
Paul's opponents sought to do by means of circumcision and Jewish
prerogatives, that the Catholic legalists have done, on a larger
scale, through the claims of the priesthood and the sacramental
offices. The spiritual functions of the private Christian, one
after another, were usurped or carelessly abandoned. Step by step
the hierarchy interposed itself between Christ and His people's
souls, till its mediation became the sole channel and organ of
the Holy Spirit's influence. So it has come to pass, by a strange
irony of history, that under the forms of Pauline doctrine and in
the name of the Apostle of the Gentiles joined with that of Peter,
catholic Christendom, delivered by him from the Jewish yoke, has
been entangled in a bondage in some respects even heavier and more
repressive. If tradition and prescription are to regulate our
Christian belief, they lead us infallibly to _Rome_, as they would
have lead the Galatians to perishing Jerusalem.
III. Paul said he had but one question to ask his readers, that
which we have already discussed. And yet he does put to them, by way
of parenthesis, another (ver. 4), suggested by what he has already
called to mind, touching the beginning of their Christian course:
"Have ye suffered so many things in vain?" Their folly was the
greater in that _it threatened to deprive them of the fruit of their
past sufferings in the cause of Christ_.
The Apostle does not say this without a touch of softened feeling.
Remembering the trials these Galatians had formerly endured, the
sacrifices they had made in accepting the gospel, he cannot bear to
think of their apostasy. Hope breaks through his fear, grief passes
into tenderness as he adds, "If it be indeed in vain." The link of
reminiscence connecting vv. 3 and 4 is the same as that we find in 1
Thess. i. 6: "Ye received the word in much affliction, with joy of
the Holy Ghost."[80]
[80] Comp. 2 Thess. i. 4-6; Ph. i. 28-30; Rom. viii. 17; 2 Tim.
i. 8.
We need not seek for any peculiar cause of these sufferings; nor
wonder that the Apostle does not mention them elsewhere. Every
infant Church had its baptism of persecution. No one could come out
of heathen society and espouse the cause of Jesus, without making
himself a mark for ridicule and violence, without the rupture of
family and public ties, and many painful sacrifices. The hatred of
Paul's fellow-countrymen towards him was an additional cause of
persecution to the Churches he had founded. They were followers of
the crucified Nazarene, of the apostate Saul. And they had to suffer
for it. With the joy of their new life in Christ, there had come
sharp pangs of loss and grief, heart-wounds deep and lasting. This
slight allusion sufficiently reminds the Apostle's readers of what
they had passed through at the time of their conversion.
And now were they going to surrender the faith won by such a
struggle? Would they let themselves be cheated of blessings which
had cost them so dear? "_So many things_," he asks, "did you
suffer in vain?" He will not believe it. He cannot think that this
brave beginning will have so mean an ending. If "God counts them
worthy of His kingdom for which they suffered," let them not deem
themselves unworthy. Surely they have not escaped from the tyranny of
heathenism, in order to yield up their liberties to Jewish intrigue,
to the cozenage of false brethren who seek to exalt themselves at
their expense (ch. ii. 4; iv. 17; vi. 12, 13). Will flattery beguile
from them the treasure to which persecution had made them cling the
more closely?
Too often, alas, the Galatian defection is repeated. The generous
devotion of youth is followed by the lethargy and formalism of a
prosperous age; and the man who at twenty-five was a pattern of godly
zeal, at fifty is a finished worldling. The Christ whom he adored,
the cross at which he bowed in those early days--he seldom thinks of
them now. "I remember thee, _the kindness of thy youth_, the love
of thine espousals; how thou wentest after Me _in the wilderness_."
Success has spoiled him. The world's glamour has bewitched him. He
bids fair to "end in the flesh."
In a broader sense, the Apostle's question addresses itself to
Churches and communities untrue to the spiritual principles that
gave them birth. The faith of the primitive Church, that endured
three centuries of persecution, yielded its purity to Imperial
blandishments. Our fathers, Puritan and Scottish, staked their lives
for the crown-rights of Jesus Christ and the freedom of faith.
Through generations they endured social and civil ostracism in the
cause of religious liberty. And now that the battle is won, there
are those amongst their children who scarcely care to know what the
struggle was about. Out of indolence of mind or vanity of scepticism,
they abandon at the bidding of priest or sophist the spiritual
heritage bequeathed to them. Did _they_ then suffer so many things
in vain? Was it an illusion that sustained those heroic souls, and
enabled them to "stop the mouths of lions and subdue kingdoms"? Was
it for nought that so many of Christ's witnesses in these realms
since the Reformation days have suffered the loss of all things
rather than yield by subjection to a usurping and worldly priesthood?
And can we, reaping the fruit of their faith and courage, afford in
these altered times to dispense with the principles whose maintenance
cost our forefathers so dear a price?
"O foolish Galatians," Paul in that case might well say to us again!
CHAPTER XII.
_ABRAHAM'S BLESSING AND THE LAW'S CURSE._
"Even as Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him
for righteousness. Know therefore that they which be of faith,
the same are sons of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing
that God justifieth the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel
beforehand unto Abraham, _saying_, In thee shall all the nations
be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with the
faithful Abraham. For as many as are of the works of the law
are under a curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one which
continueth not in all things that are written in the book of
the law, to do them. Now that no man is justified in the law
in the sight of God, is evident: for, The righteous shall live
by faith; and the law is not of faith; but, He that doeth them
shall live in them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the
law, having become a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is
every one that hangeth on a tree: that upon the Gentiles might
come the blessing of Abraham in Christ Jesus; that we might
receive the promise of the Spirit through faith."--GAL. iii.
6-14.
Faith then, we have learnt, not works of law, was the condition on
which the Galatians received the Spirit of Christ. By this gate
they entered the Church of God, and had come into possession of the
spiritual blessings common to all Christian believers, and of those
extraordinary gifts of grace which marked the Apostolic days.
In this mode of salvation, the Apostle goes on to show, there was
after all nothing new. The righteousness of faith is more ancient
than legalism. It is as old as _Abraham_. His religion rested on this
ground. "The promise of the Spirit," held by him in trust for the
world, was given to his faith. "You received the Spirit, God works
in you His marvellous powers, by the hearing of faith--_even as
Abraham believed God_, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness."
In the hoary patriarchal days as now, in the time of promise as
of fulfilment, faith is the root of religion; grace invites,
righteousness waits upon the hearing of faith. So Paul declares in
vv. 6-9, and re-affirms with emphasis in ver. 14. The intervening
sentences set forth by contrast _the curse_ that hangs over the man
who seeks salvation by way of law and personal merit.
Thus the two standing types of religion, the two ways by which men
seek salvation, are put in contrast with each other--faith with
its blessing, law with its curse. The former is the path on which
the Galatians had entered, under the guidance of Paul; the latter,
that to which the Judaic teachers were leading them. So far the two
principles stand only in antagonism. The antinomy will be resolved in
the latter part of the chapter.
But why does Paul make so much of the faith of _Abraham_? Not only
because it furnished him with a telling illustration, or because the
words of Gen. xv. 6 supplied a decisive proof-text for his doctrine:
he could not well have chosen any other ground. Abraham's case was
the _instantia probans_ in this debate. "We are Abraham's seed:"[81]
this was the proud consciousness that swelled every Jewish breast.
"Abraham's bosom" was the Israelite's heaven: even in Hades his
guilty sons could claim pity from "Father Abraham" (Luke xvi. 19-31).
In the use of this title was concentrated all the theocratic pride
and national bigotry of the Jewish race. To the example of Abraham
the Judaistic teacher would not fail to appeal. He would tell the
Galatians how the patriarch was called, like themselves, out of the
heathen world to the knowledge of the true God; how he was separated
from his Gentile kindred, and received the mark of circumcision to be
worn thenceforth by all who followed in his steps, and who sought the
fulfilment of the promise granted to Abraham and his seed.
[81] Matt. iii. 9; John viii. 33-59.
The Apostle holds, as strongly as any Judaist, that the promise
belongs to the children of Abraham. _But what makes a son of
Abraham?_ "Birth, true Jewish blood, of course," replied the
Judaist. The Gentile, in his view, could only come into a share of
the heritage by receiving circumcision, the mark of legal adoption
and incorporation. Paul answers this question by raising another.
What was it that brought Abraham his blessing? To what did he owe
his righteousness? It was _faith_: so Scripture declares--"Abraham
believed God." Righteousness, covenant, promise, blessing--all turned
upon this. And _the true sons of Abraham are those who are like
him_: "Know then that the men of faith, these are Abraham's sons."
This declaration is a blow, launched with studied effect full in the
face of Jewish privilege. Only a Pharisee, only a Rabbi, knew how
to wound in this fashion. Like the words of Stephen's defence, such
sentences as these stung Judaic pride to the quick. No wonder that
his fellow-countrymen, in their fierce fanaticism of race, pursued
Paul with burning hate and set a mark upon his life.
But the identity of Abraham's blessing with that enjoyed by Gentile
Christians is not left to rest on mere inference and analogy of
principle. Another quotation clinches the argument: "In thee," God
promised to the patriarch, "shall be blessed"--not the natural seed,
not the circumcised alone--but "all the nations (Gentiles)"![82]
And "the Scripture" said this, "foreseeing" what is now taking
place, namely, "that God justifieth the Gentiles by faith." So that
in giving this promise to Abraham it gave him his "gospel before
the time (προευηγγελίσατο)." Good news indeed it was to the noble
patriarch, that all the nations--of whom as a wide traveller he
knew so much, and over whose condition he doubtless grieved--were
finally to be blessed with the light of faith and the knowledge of
the true God; and thus blessed through himself. In this prospect he
"rejoiced to see Christ's day;" nay the Saviour tells us, like Moses
and Elijah, "he saw it and was glad." Up to this point in Abraham's
history, as Paul's readers would observe, there was no mention of
circumcision or legal requirement (ver. 17; Rom. iv. 9-13). It was
on purely evangelical principles, by a declaration of God's grace
listened to in thankful faith, that he had received the promise which
linked him to the universal Church and entitled every true believer
to call him father. "So that the men of faith are blessed, along with
faithful Abraham."
[82] Gen. xii. 3: the first promise to Abraham. In this text the
Hebrew and the Greek (LXX) say, _All the tribes (families) of the
earth_. The synonymous ἔθνη, with its special Jewish connotation,
suited Paul's purpose better; and it is used in the repetition of
the promise in Gen. xviii. 18.
I. What then, we ask, was _the nature of Abraham's blessing_? In its
essence, it was _righteousness_. The "blessing" of vv. 9 and 14 is
synonymous with the "justification" of vv. 6 and 8, embracing with it
all its fruits and consequences. No higher benediction could come to
any man than that God should "count him righteous."
Paul and the Legalists agreed in designating righteousness before
God man's chief good. But they and he intended different things by
it. Nay, Paul's conception of righteousness, it is said, differed
radically from that of the Old Testament, and even of his companion
writers in the New Testament. Confessedly, his doctrine presents
this idea under a peculiar aspect. But there is a spiritual
identity, a common basis of truth, in all the Biblical teaching
on this vital subject. Abraham's righteousness was the state of
a man who trustfully accepts God's word of grace, and is thereby
set right with God, and put in the way of being and doing right
thenceforward. In virtue of his faith, God regarded and dealt with
Abraham as a righteous man. Righteousness of character springs out
of righteousness of standing. God makes a man righteous by counting
him so! This is the Divine paradox of Justification by Faith. When
the Hebrew author says, "God counted it to him for righteousness,"
he does not mean _in lieu of righteousness_, as though faith were
a substitute for a righteousness not forthcoming and now rendered
superfluous; but _so as to amount to righteousness, with a view to
righteousness_. This "reckoning" is the sovereign act of the Creator,
who gives what He demands, "who maketh alive the dead, and calleth
the things that are not as though they were" (Rom. iv. 17-22). He
sees the fruit in the germ.
There is nothing arbitrary, or merely forensic in this imputation.
Faith is, for such a being as man, the spring of all righteousness
before God, the one act of the soul which is primarily and supremely
right. What is more just than that the creature should trust
his Creator, the child his Father? Here is the root of all right
understanding and right relations between men and God--that which
gives God, so to speak, a moral hold upon us. And by this trust of
the heart, yielding itself in the "obedience of faith" to its Lord
and Redeemer, it comes into communion with all those energies and
purposes in Him which make for righteousness. Hence from first to
last, alike in the earlier and later stages of revelation, man's
righteousness is "not his own;" it is "the righteousness that is of
God, based upon faith" (Phil. iii. 9). Faith unites us to the source
of righteousness, from which unbelief severs us. So that Paul's
teaching leads us to the fountain-head, while other Biblical teachers
for the most part guide us along the course of the same Divine
righteousness for man. His doctrine is required by theirs; their
doctrine is implied, and indeed more than once expressly stated, in
his.[83]
[83] Rom. viii. 4; 1 Cor. vi. 9; Eph. v. 9; Tit. ii. 12-14; etc.
The Old Testament deals with the materials of character, with the
qualities and behaviour constituting a righteous man, more than
with the cause or process that makes him righteous. All the more
significant therefore are such pronouncements as that of Gen. xv.
6, and the saying of Hab. ii. 4, Paul's other leading quotation
on this subject. This second reference, taken from the times of
Israel's declension, a thousand years and more after Abraham, gives
proof of the vitality of the righteousness of faith. The haughty,
sensual Chaldean is master of the earth. Kingdom after kingdom he has
trampled down. Judah lies at his mercy, and has no mercy to expect.
But the prophet looks beyond the storm and ruin of the time. "Art
Thou not from everlasting, my God, my Holy One? We shall not die"
(Hab. i. 12). The faith of Abraham lives in his breast. The people
in whom that faith is cannot die. While empires fall, and races are
swept away in the flood of conquest, "The just shall live by his
faith."[84] If faith is seen here at a different point from that
given before, it is still the same faith of Abraham, the grasp of the
soul upon the Divine word--_there_ first evoked, _here_ steadfastly
maintained, there and here the one ground of righteousness, and
therefore of life, for man or for people. Habakkuk and the "remnant"
of his day were "blessed with faithful Abraham;" how blessed,
his splendid prophecy shows. Righteousness is of faith; life of
righteousness: this is the doctrine of Paul, witnessed to by law and
prophets.
[84] _Of faith_ qualifies _live_ in the Hebrew of the prophet,
and in the LXX, also in the quotation of Heb. x. 38. The
presumption is that it does so in Rom. i. 17, and Gal. iii. 11.
We can see no sufficient reason in these passages to the contrary.
Into what a life of blessing the righteousness of faith introduced
"faithful Abraham," these Galatian students of the Old Testament very
well knew. Twice[85] is he designated "the friend of God." The Arabs
still call him _el khalil_,--_the friend_. His image has impressed
itself with singular force on the Oriental mind. He is the noblest
figure of the Old Testament, surpassing Isaac in force, Jacob in
purity, and both in dignity of character. The man to whom God said,
"Fear not, Abraham: I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward;"
and again, "I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be thou perfect:"
on how lofty a platform of spiritual eminence was he set! The scene
of Gen. xviii. throws into striking relief the greatness of Abraham,
the greatness of our human nature in him; when the Lord says, "Shall
I hide from Abraham the thing that I do?" and allows him to make
his bold intercession for the guilty cities of the Plain. Even the
trial to which the patriarch was subjected in the sacrifice of Isaac,
was a singular honour, done to one whose faith was "counted worthy
to endure" this unexampled strain. His religion exhibits an heroic
strength and firmness, but at the same time a large-hearted, genial
humanity, an elevation and serenity of mind, to which the temper of
those who boasted themselves his children was utterly opposed. Father
of the Jewish race, Abraham was no Jew. He stands before us in the
morning light of revelation a simple, noble, archaic type of _man_,
true "father of many nations." And his faith was the secret of the
greatness which has commanded for him the reverence of four thousand
years. His trust in God made him worthy to receive so immense a trust
for the future of mankind.
[85] 2 Chron. xx. 7; Isai. xli. 8; comp. Jas. ii. 23.
With Abraham's faith, the Gentiles inherit his blessing. They were
not simply blessed _in_ him, through his faith which received
and handed down the blessing,--but blessed _with_ him. Their
righteousness rests on the same principle as his. Religion reverts
to its earlier purer type. Just as in the Epistle to the Hebrews
Melchizedek's priesthood is adduced as belonging to a more Christlike
order, antecedent to and underlying the Aaronic; so we find here,
beneath the cumbrous structure of legalism, the evidence of a
primitive religious life, cast in a larger mould, with a happier
style of experience, a piety broader, freer, at once more spiritual
and more human. Reading the story of Abraham, we witness the bright
dawn of faith, its spring-time of promise and of hope. These
morning hours passed away; and the sacred history shuts us in to the
hard school of Mosaism, with its isolation, its mechanical routine
and ritual drapery, its yoke of legal exaction ever growing more
burdensome. Of all this the Church of Christ was to know nothing. It
was called to enter into the labours of the legal centuries, without
the need of sharing their burdens. In the "Father of the faithful"
and the "Friend of God" Gentile believers were to see their exemplar,
to find the warrant for that sufficiency and freedom of faith of
which the natural children of Abraham unjustly strove to rob them.
II. But if the Galatians are resolved to be under the Law, they must
understand what this means. _The legal state_, Paul declares, instead
of the blessing of Abraham, _brings with it a curse_: "As many as are
of law-works, are under a curse."
This the Apostle, in other words, had told Peter at Antioch. He
maintained that whoever sets up the law as a ground of salvation,
"makes himself a transgressor" (ch. ii. 18); he brings upon himself
the misery of having violated law. This is no doubtful contingency.
The law in explicit terms pronounces its curse against every man who,
binding himself to keep it, yet breaks it in any particular.
The Scripture which Paul quotes to this effect, forms the conclusion
of the commination uttered by the people of Israel, according to
the directions of Moses, from Mount Ebal, on their entrance into
Canaan: "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things
written in the book of the law to do them."[86] How terribly had
that imprecation been fulfilled! They had in truth pledged themselves
to the impossible. The Law had not been kept--could not be kept on
merely legal principles, by man or nation. The confessions of the Old
Testament, already cited in ch. ii. 16, were proof of this. That no
one had "continued in all things written in the law to do them," goes
without saying. If Gentile Christians adopt the law of Moses, they
must be prepared to render an obedience complete and unfaltering in
every detail (ch. v. 3)--or have this curse hanging perpetually above
their heads. They will bring on themselves the very condemnation
which was lying so heavily upon the conscience of Israel after the
flesh.
[86] Deut. xxvii. 26; Jos. viii. 32-35. _All things_, given by
the LXX in the former passage, is wanting in the Hebrew. But the
phrase is true to the spirit of this text, and is read in the
parallel Deut. xxviii. 15.
This sequence of law and transgression belonged to Paul's deepest
convictions. "The law," he says, "worketh out wrath" (Rom. iv. 14,
15). This is an axiom of Paulinism. Human nature being what it is,
law means transgression; and the law being what it is, transgression
means Divine anger and the curse (see p. 143). The law is just;
the penalty is necessary. The conscience of the ancient people
of God compelled them to pronounce the imprecation dictated by
Moses. The same thing occurs every day, and under the most varied
moral conditions. Every man who knows what is right and will not
do it, _execrates_ himself. The consciousness of transgression
is a clinging, inward curse, a witness of ill-desert, foreboding
punishment. The law of conscience, like that of Ebal and Gerizim,
admits of no exceptions, no intermission. In the majesty of its
unbending sternness it can only be satisfied by our _continuing in
all things_ that it prescribes. Every instance of failure, attended
with whatever excuse or condonation, leaves upon us its mark of
self-reproach. And this inward condemnation, this consciousness of
guilt latent in the human breast, is not self-condemnation alone,
not a merely subjective state; but it proceeds from God's present
judgement on the man. It is the shadow of His just displeasure.
What Paul here proves from Scripture, bitter experience had taught
him. As the law unfolded itself to his youthful conscience, he
approved it as "holy and just and good." He was pledged and
resolved to observe it in every point. He must despise himself if
he acted otherwise. He strove to be--in the sight of men indeed he
was--"touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless."
If ever a man carried out to the letter the legal requirements,
and fulfilled the moralist's ideal, it was Saul of Tarsus. Yet his
failure was complete, desperate! While men accounted him a paragon of
virtue, he loathed himself; he knew that before God his righteousness
was worthless. The "law of sin in his members" defied "the law of
his reason," and made its power the more sensible the more it was
repressed. The curse thundered by the six tribes from Ebal resounded
in his ears. And there was no escape. The grasp of the law was
relentless, because it was just, like the grasp of death. Against
all that was holiest in it the evil in himself stood up in stark,
immitigable opposition. "O wretched man that I am," groans the proud
Pharisee, "who shall deliver me!" From this curse Christ had redeemed
him. And he would not, if he could help it, have the Galatians expose
themselves to it again. On legal principles, there is no safety but
in absolute, flawless obedience, such as no man ever has rendered,
or ever will. Let them trust the experience of centuries of Jewish
bondage.
Verses 11, 12 support the assertion that the Law issues in
condemnation, by a further, negative proof. The argument is a
syllogism, both whose premises are drawn from the Old Testament. It
may be formally stated thus. _Major premise_ (evangelical maxim):
"The just man lives of faith"[87] (ver. 11). _Minor_: The man of law
does not live of faith (for he lives by doing: legal maxim, ver.
12).[88] _Ergo_: The man of law is not just before God (ver. 11).
While therefore the Scripture by its afore-cited commination closes
the door of life against righteousness of works, that door is opened
to the men of faith. The two principles are logical contradictories.
To grant righteousness to faith is to deny it to legal works.
This assumption furnishes our minor premise in ver. 12. The legal
axiom is, "He that doeth them shall live in them:" that is to say,
_The law gives life for doing_--not therefore _for believing_; we
get no sort of legal credit for that. The two ways have different
starting-points, as they lead to opposite goals. From faith one
marches, through God's righteousness, to blessing; from works,
through self-righteousness, to the curse.
[87] Hab. ii. 4. For the construction, see _note_ on p. 186.
[88] Lev. xviii. 5.
The two paths now lie before us--the Pauline and the legal method of
salvation, the Abrahamic and the Mosaic scheme of religion. According
to the latter, one begins by keeping so many rules--ethical,
ceremonial, or what not; and after doing this, one expects to be
counted righteous by God. According to the former, the man begins by
an act of self-surrendering trust in God's word of grace, and God
already reckons him just on that account, without his pretending to
anything in the way of merit for himself. In short, the Legalist
_tries to make God believe in him_: Abraham and Paul are content _to
believe in God_. They do not set themselves over against God, with
a righteousness of their own which He is bound to recognise; they
commit themselves to God, that He may work out His righteousness in
them. Along this path lies blessing--peace of heart, fellowship with
God, moral strength, _life_ in its fulness, depth, and permanence.
From this source Paul derives all that was noblest in the Church of
the Old Covenant. And he puts the calm, grand image of Father Abraham
before us for our pattern, in contrast with the narrow, painful,
bitter spirit of Jewish legalism, inwardly self-condemned.
III. But how pass from this curse to that blessing? How escape from
the nemesis of the broken law into the freedom of Abraham's faith?
To this question ver. 13 makes answer: "Christ bought us out of the
curse of the law, having become a curse for us." _Christ's redemption
changes the curse into a blessing._
We entered this Epistle under the shadow of the cross. It has been
all along the centre of the writer's thought. He has found in it the
solution of the terrible problem forced upon him by the law. Law had
led him to Christ's cross; laid him in Christ's grave; and there left
him, to rise with Christ a new, free man, living henceforth to God
(ch. ii. 19-21). So we understand the purpose and the issue of the
death of Jesus Christ; now we must look more narrowly at the fact
itself.
"Christ became a curse!" Verily the Apostle was not "seeking to
please or persuade men." This expression throws the scandal of the
cross into the strongest relief. Far from veiling it or apologizing
for it, Paul accentuates this offence. His experience taught him
that Jewish pride must be compelled to reckon with it. No, he would
not have "the offence of the cross abolished" (ch. v. 11).
And did not Christ _become a curse_? Could the fact be denied by
any Jew? His death was that of the most abandoned criminals. By
the combined verdict of Jew and Gentile, of civil and religious
authority, endorsed by the voice of the populace, He was pronounced
a malefactor and blasphemer. But this was not all. The hatred and
injustice of men are hard to bear; yet many a sensitive man has borne
them in a worthy cause without shrinking. It was a darker dread, an
infliction far more crushing, that compelled the cry, "My God, why
hast Thou forsaken Me!" Against the maledictions of men Jesus might
surely at the worst have counted on the Father's good pleasure.
But even that failed Him. There fell upon His soul the death of
death, the very curse of sin--_abandonment by God!_ Men "did esteem
Him"--and for the moment He esteemed Himself--"smitten of God." He
hung there abhorred of men, forsaken of His God; earth all hate,
heaven all blackness to His view. Are the Apostle's words too strong?
Delivering up His Son to pass through this baptism, God did in truth
_make Him a curse_ for us. By His "determinate counsel" the Almighty
set Jesus Christ in the place of condemned sinners, and allowed the
curse of this wicked world to claim Him for its victim.
The death that befell Him was chosen as if for the purpose of
declaring Him accursed. The Jewish people have thus stigmatized
Him. They made the Roman magistrate and the heathen soldiery their
instrument in _gibbeting_ their Messiah. "Shall I crucify your King?"
said Pilate. "Yes," they answered, "crucify Him!" Their rulers
thought to lay on the hated Nazarene an everlasting curse. Was it not
written, "A curse of God is every one that hangeth on a tree?"[89]
This saying attached in the Jewish mind a peculiar loathing to the
person of the dead thus exposed. Once _crucified_, the name of Jesus
would surely perish from the lips of men; no Jew would hereafter
dare to profess faith in Him. His cause could never surmount this
ignominy. In later times the bitterest epithet that Jewish scorn
could fling against our Saviour (God forgive them!), was just this
word of Deuteronomy, _hattalúy--the hangéd one_.
[89] The Hebrew of Deut. xxi. 23 reads "a curse _of God_;" the
LXX, "cursed _by God_" (κεκαταρημένος however, not ἐπικατάρατος
as in Paul's phrase). The Apostle omits the two last words,
not inadvertently, as Meyer supposes, for he must have had a
painfully vivid remembrance of the wording of the original,
but out of a reverence that made it impossible to speak of the
Redeemer as "accursed _by God_."
This sentence of execration, with its shame freshly smarting, Paul
has seized and twined into a crown of glory. "Hanged on a tree,
crushed with reproach--_accursed_, you say, He was, my Lord, my
Saviour! It is true. But the curse He bore was _ours_. His death,
unmerited by Him, was our ransom-price, endured to buy us out of
our curse of sin and death." This is the doctrine of _the vicarious
sacrifice_. In speaking of "ransom" and "redemption," using the terms
of the market, Christ and His Apostles are applying human language
to things in their essence unutterable, things which we define in
their effects rather than in themselves. "We know, we prophesy, in
part." We know that we were condemned by God's holy law; that Christ,
Himself sinless, came under the law's curse, and taking the place of
sinners, "became sin for us;" and that His interposition has brought
us out of condemnation into blessing and peace. How can we conceive
the matter otherwise than as it is put in His own words: He "gave
Himself a ransom--The Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep?"
He suffers in our room and stead; He bears inflictions incurred by
our sins, and due to ourselves; He does this at the Divine Will, and
under the Divine Law: what is this but to "buy us out," to pay the
price which frees us from the prison-house of death?
* * * * *
"Christ redeemed _us_," says the Apostle, thinking questionless of
himself and his Jewish kindred, on whom the law weighed so heavily.
His redemption was offered "to the Jew first." But not to the Jew
alone, nor as a Jew. The time of release had come for all men.
"Abraham's blessing" long withheld, was now to be imparted, as it had
been promised, to "all the tribes of the earth." In the removal of
the legal curse, God comes near to men as in the ancient days. His
love is shed abroad; His spirit of sonship dwells in human hearts.
In Christ Jesus crucified, risen, reigning--a new world comes into
being, which restores and surpasses the promise of the old.
CHAPTER XIII.
_THE COVENANT OF PROMISE._
"Brethren, I speak after the manner of men: Though it be but a
man's testament, yet when it hath been confirmed, no one maketh
it void, or addeth thereto. Now to Abraham were the promises
spoken, and to his seed. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many,
but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. Now this I say;
A testament confirmed beforehand by God, the law, which came
four hundred and thirty years after, doth not disannul, so as to
make the promise of none effect. For if the inheritance is of
the law, it is no more of promise: but God hath granted it to
Abraham by promise."--GAL. iii. 15-18.
Gentile Christians, Paul has shown, are already sons of Abraham.
Their faith proves their descent from the father of the faithful. The
redemption of Christ has expiated the law's curse, and brought to its
fulfilment the primeval promise. It has conferred on Jew and Gentile
alike the gift of the Holy Spirit, sealing the Divine inheritance.
"Abraham's blessing" has "come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus."
What can Judaism do for them more? Except, in sooth, to bring them
under its inevitable curse.
But here the Judaist might interpose: "Granting so much as this,
allowing that God covenanted with Abraham on terms of faith, and
that believing Gentiles are entitled to his blessing, did not God
make _a second covenant with Moses_, promising further blessings
upon terms of law? If the one covenant remains valid, why not the
other? From the school of Abraham the Gentiles must pass on to the
school of Moses." This inference might appear to follow, by parity of
reasoning, from what the Apostle has just advanced. And it accords
with the position which the legalistic opposition had now taken
up. The people of the circumcision, they argued, retained within
the Church of Christ their peculiar calling; and Gentiles, if they
would be perfect Christians, must accept the covenant-token and the
unchangeable ordinances of Israel. Faith is but the first step in
the new life; the discipline of the law will bring it to completion.
Release from the curse of the law, they might contend, leaves its
obligations still binding, its ordinances unrepealed. Christ "came
not to destroy, but to fulfil."
So we are brought to the question of _the relation of law and
promise_, which is the theoretical, as that of Gentile to Jewish
Christianity is the practical problem of the Epistle. The remainder
of the chapter is occupied with its discussion. This section is
the special contribution of the Epistle to Christian theology--a
contribution weighty enough of itself to give to it a foremost
place amongst the documents of Revelation. Paul has written nothing
more masterly. The breadth and subtlety of his reason, his grasp
of the spiritual realities underlying the facts of history, are
conspicuously manifest in these paragraphs, despite the extreme
difficulty and obscurity of certain sentences.
This part of the Epistle is in fact a piece of inspired _historical
criticism_; it is a magnificent reconstruction of the course of
sacred history. It is Paul's theory of doctrinal development,
condensing into a few pregnant sentences the _rationale_ of Judaism,
explaining the method of God's dealings with mankind from Abraham
down to Christ, and fitting the legal system into its place in this
order with an exactness and consistency that supply an effectual
verification of the hypothesis. To such a height has the Apostle been
raised, so completely is he emancipated from the fetters of Jewish
thought, that the whole Mosaic economy becomes to his mind no more
than an interlude, a passing stage in the march of Revelation.
This passage finds its counterpart in Romans xi. Here the past,
there the future fortunes of Israel are set forth. Together the two
chapters form a Jewish theodicy, a vindication of God's treatment
of the chosen people from first to last. Rom. v. 12-21 and 1 Cor.
xv. 20-57 supply a wider exposition, on the same principles, of the
fortunes of mankind at large. The human mind has conceived nothing
more splendid and yet sober, more humbling and exalting, than the
view of man's history and destiny thus sketched out.
* * * * *
The Apostle seeks to establish, in the first place, _the fixedness
of the Abrahamic covenant_. This is the main purport of the passage.
At the same time, in ver. 16, he brings into view _the Object of the
covenant_, the person designated by it--_Christ_, its proper Heir.
This consideration, though stated here parenthetically, lies at the
basis of the settlement made with Abraham; its importance is made
manifest by the after course of Paul's exposition.
At this point, where the discussion opens out into its larger
proportions, we observe that the sharp tone of personal feeling with
which the chapter commenced has disappeared. In ver. 15 the writer
drops into a conciliatory key. He seems to forget the wounded Apostle
in the theologian and instructor in Christ. "Brethren," he says,
"I speak in human fashion--I put this matter in a way that every
one will understand." He lifts himself above the Galatian quarrel,
and from the height of his argument addresses himself to the common
intelligence of mankind.
But is it _covenant_, or _testament_, that the Apostle intends
here? "I speak after the manner of men," he continues; "if the case
were that of a man's διαθήκη, once ratified, no one would set it
aside, or add to it." The presumption is that the word is employed
in its accepted, every-day significance. And that unquestionably
was "testament." It would never occur to an ordinary Greek reader
to interpret the expression otherwise. Philo and Josephus, the
representatives of contemporary Hellenistic usage, read this term,
in the Old Testament, with the connotation of διαθήκη in current
Greek.[90] The context of this passage is in harmony with their
usage. The "covenant" of ver. 15 corresponds to "the blessing of
Abraham," and "the promise of the Spirit" in the two preceding
verses. Again in ver. 17, "promise" and "covenant" are synonymous.
Now a "covenant of promise" amounts to a "testament." It is the
_prospective_ nature of the covenant, the bond which it creates
between Abraham and the Gentiles, which the Apostle has been
insisting on ever since ver. 6. It belongs "to Abraham and to his
seed"; it comes by way of "gift" and "grace" (vv. 18, 22); it invests
those taking part in it with "sonship" and rights of "inheritance"
(vv. 18, 26, 29, etc.) These ideas cluster round the thought of
_a testament_; they are not inherent in _covenant_, strictly
considered. Even in the Old Testament this latter designation fails
to convey all that belongs to the Divine engagements there recorded.
In a covenant the two parties are conceived as equals in point of
law, binding themselves by a compact that bears on each alike. Here
it is not so. The disposition of affairs is made by God, who in the
sovereignty of His grace "hath granted it to Abraham." It was surely
a reverent sense of this difference which dictated to the men of
the Septuagint the use of διαθήκη rather than συνθήκη, the ordinary
term for _covenant_ or _compact_, in their rendering of the Hebrew
_berith_.
[90] See the able and convincing elucidation of διαθήκη in
Cremer's _Biblico-Theological Lexicon of N.T. Greek_.
This aspect of the covenants now becomes their commanding feature.
Our Lord's employment of this word at the Last Supper gave it the
affecting reference to His death which it has conveyed ever since
to the Christian mind.[91] The Latin translators were guided by a
true instinct when in the Scriptures of the New Covenant they wrote
_testamentum_ everywhere, not _fœdus_ or _pactum_, for this word. The
testament is a covenant--and something more. The testator designates
his heir, and binds himself to grant to him at the predetermined time
(ch. iv. 2) the specified boon, which it remains for the beneficiary
simply to accept. Such a Divine _testament_ has come down from
Abraham to his Gentile sons.
[91] See Heb. ix. 16-18, where so much ingenuity has been
expended to turn _testament_ into _covenant_.
"_Sweet is the memory of His name,
Who blessed us in His will._"
I. Now when a man has made a testament, and it has been
ratified--"proved," as we should say--_it stands good for ever_.
No one has afterwards any power to set it aside, or to attach
to it a new codicil, modifying its previous terms. There it
stands--a document complete and unchangeable (ver. 15).
Such a testament God gave "to Abraham and his seed." It was
"ratified" (or "confirmed") by the final attestation made to
the patriarch after the supreme trial of his faith in the
sacrifice of Isaac: "By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord,
that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying multiply
thy seed as the stars of heaven; ... and in thy seed shall all
the nations of the earth be blessed."[92] In human testaments
the ratification takes place through another; but God "having
no greater," yet "to show to the heirs of the promise the
immutability of His counsel" confirmed it by His own oath.
Nothing was wanting to mark the Abrahamic covenant with an
indelible character, and to show that it expressed an unalterable
purpose in the mind of God.
[92] Gen. xxii. 16-18; Heb. vi. 17.
With such Divine asseveration "were the promises spoken to Abraham,
and _his seed_." This last word diverts the Apostle's thoughts for a
moment, and he gives a side-glance at the person thus designated in
the terms of the promise. Then he returns to his former statement,
urging it home against the Legalists: "Now this is what I mean:
a testament previously ratified by God, the Law which dates four
hundred and thirty years later cannot annul, so as to abrogate the
Promise" (ver. 17). The bearing of Paul's argument is now perfectly
clear. He is using the promise to Abraham to overthrow the supremacy
of the Mosaic law. The Promise was, he says, the prior settlement.
No subsequent transaction could invalidate it or disqualify those
entitled under it to receive the inheritance. That testament lies at
the foundation of the sacred history. The Jew least of all could deny
this. How could such an instrument be set aside? Or what right has
any one to limit it by stipulations of a later date?
When a man amongst ourselves bequeaths his property, and his will
is publicly attested, its directions are scrupulously observed; to
tamper with them is a crime. Shall we have less respect to this
Divine settlement, this venerable charter of human salvation? You
say, The Law of Moses has its rights: it must be taken into account
as well as the Promise to Abraham. True; but it has no power to
cancel or restrict the Promise, older by four centuries and a half.
The later must be adjusted to the earlier dispensation, the Law
interpreted by the Promise. God has not made _two_ testaments--the
one solemnly committed to the faith and hope of mankind, only to
be retracted and substituted by something of a different stamp. He
could not thus stultify Himself. And we must not apply the Mosaic
enactments, addressed to a single people, in such a way as to
neutralise the original provisions made for the race at large. Our
human instincts of good faith, our reverence for public compacts and
established rights, forbid our allowing the Law of Moses to trench
upon the inheritance assured to mankind in the Covenant of Abraham.
This contradiction necessarily arises if the Law is put on a level
with the Promise. To read the Law as a continuation of the older
instrument is virtually to efface the latter, to "make the promise
of none effect." The two institutes proceed on opposite principles.
"If the inheritance is of law, it is no longer of promise" (ver.
18). Law prescribes certain things to be done, and guarantees a
corresponding reward--so much pay for so much work. That, in its
proper place, is an excellent principle. But the promise stands
on another footing: "God hath _bestowed_ it on Abraham _by way of
grace_" (κεχάρισται, ver. 18). It holds out a blessing conferred by
the Promiser's good will, to be conveyed at the right time without
demanding anything more from the recipient than faith, which is just
the will to receive. So God dealt with Abraham, centuries before any
one had dreamed of the Mosaic system of law. God appeared to Abraham
in His sovereign grace; Abraham met that grace with faith. So the
Covenant was formed. And so it abides, clear of all legal conditions
and claims of human merit, an "everlasting covenant" (Gen. xvii. 7;
Heb. xiii. 20).
Its permanence is emphasized by the _tense_ of the verb relating to
it. The Greek _perfect_ describes settled facts, actions or events
that carry with them finality. Accordingly we read in vv. 15 and 17
of "a ratified covenant"--one that _stands_ ratified. In ver. 18,
"God hath granted it to Abraham"--a grace never to be recalled. Again
(ver. 19), "the seed to whom the promise hath been made"--once for
all. A perfect participle is used of the Law in ver. 17 (γεγονώς),
for it is a fact of abiding significance that it was so much later
than the Promise; and in ver. 24, "the Law hath been our tutor,"--its
work in that respect is an enduring benefit. Otherwise, the verbs
relating to Mosaism in this context are past in tense, describing
what is now matter of history, a course of events that has come
and gone. Meanwhile the Promise remains, an immovable certainty, a
settlement never to be disturbed. The emphatic position of ὁ Θεός
(ver. 18), at the very end of the paragraph, serves to heighten this
effect. "It is _God_ that hath bestowed this grace on Abraham."
There is a challenge in the word, as though Paul asked, "Who shall
make it void?"[93]
[93] Comp. Rom. viii. 33, 34; Acts xi. 17; 2 Cor. i. 21, for a
similar emphasis.
Paul's chronology in ver. 17 has been called in question. We are not
much concerned to defend it. Whether Abraham preceded Moses by four
hundred and thirty years, as the Septuagint and the Samaritan text
of Exod. xii. 40, 41 affirm, and as Paul's contemporaries commonly
supposed; or whether, as it stands in the Hebrew text of Exodus, this
was the length of time covered by the sojourn in Egypt, so that the
entire period would be about half as long again, is a problem that
Old Testament historians must settle for themselves; it need not
trouble the reader of Paul. The shorter period is amply sufficient
for his purpose. If any one had said, "No, Paul; you are mistaken. It
was six hundred and thirty, not four hundred and thirty years from
Abraham to Moses;" he would have accepted the correction with the
greatest goodwill. He might have replied, "So much the better for my
argument."[94] It is possible to "strain out" the "gnats" of Biblical
criticism, and yet to swallow huge "camels" of improbability.
[94] We gain nothing, and we may lose much, in "trying to settle
questions of Old Testament historical criticism by casual
allusions in the New Testament." (See Mr. Beet's sensible
observations, in his Commentary _ad loc._)
II. Ver. 16 remains for our consideration. In proving the
steadfastness of the covenant with Abraham, the Apostle at the same
time directs our attention to _the Person designated by it_, to whom
its fulfilment was guaranteed. "To Abraham were the promises spoken,
and to his seed--'to thy seed,' which is Christ."
This identification the Judaist would not question. He made no
doubt that the Messiah was the legatee of the testament, "the seed
to whom it hath been promised." Whatever partial and germinant
fulfilments the Promise had received, it is on Christ in chief that
the inheritance of Israel devolves. In its true and full intent, this
promise, like all predictions of the triumph of God's kingdom, was
understood to be waiting for His advent.
The fact that this Promise looked to Christ, lends additional force
to the Apostle's assertion of its indelibility. The words "unto
Christ," which were inserted in the text of ver. 17 at an early
time, are a correct gloss. The covenant did not lie between God and
Abraham alone. It embraced Abraham's descendants in their unity,
culminating in Christ. It looked down the stream of time to the last
ages. Abraham was its starting-point; Christ its goal. "To thee--and
to thy seed:" these words span the gulf of two thousand years, and
overarch the Mosaic dispensation. So that the covenant vouchsafed to
Abraham placed him, even at that distance of time, in close personal
relationship with the Saviour of mankind. No wonder that it was so
evangelical in its terms, and brought the patriarch an experience of
religion which anticipated the privileges of Christian faith. God's
covenant with Abraham, being in effect His covenant with mankind in
Christ, stands both first and last. The Mosaic economy holds a second
and subsidiary place in the scheme of Revelation.
The reason the Apostle gives for reading _Christ_ into the promise
is certainly peculiar. He has been taxed with false exegesis, with
"rabbinical hair-splitting" and the like. Here, it is said, is a fine
example of the art, familiar to theologians, of torturing out of
a word a predetermined sense, foreign to its original meaning. "He
doth not say, and to _seeds_, as referring to many; but as referring
to one, and to thy _seed_, which is Christ." Paul appears to infer
from the fact that the word "seed" is grammatically singular, and
not plural, that it designates a single individual, who can be
no other than Christ. On the surface this does, admittedly, look
like a verbal quibble. The word "seed," in Hebrew and Greek as in
English, is not used, and could not in ordinary speech be used in
the plural to denote a number of descendants. It is a collective
singular. The plural applies only to _different kinds_ of seed.
The Apostle, we may presume, was quite as well aware of this as
his critics. It does not need philological research or grammatical
acumen to establish a distinction obvious to common sense. This piece
of word-play is in reality the vehicle of an historical argument,
as unimpeachable as it is important. Abraham was taught, by a
series of lessons,[95] to refer the promise to _the single line_
of Isaac. Paul elsewhere lays great stress on this consideration;
he brings Isaac into close analogy with Christ; for he was the
child of faith, and represented in his birth a spiritual principle
and the communication of a supernatural life.[96] The true seed of
Abraham was in the first instance _one_, not many. In the primary
realisation of the Promise, typical of its final accomplishment,
it received a _singular_ interpretation; it concentrated itself on
the one, spiritual offspring, putting aside the many, natural and
heterogeneous (Hagarite or Keturite) descendants. And this sifting
principle, this law of election which singles out from the varieties
of nature the Divine type, comes into play all along the line of
descent, as in the case of Jacob, and of David. It finds its supreme
expression in the person of Christ. The Abrahamic testament devolved
under a law of spiritual selection. By its very nature it pointed
ultimately to Jesus Christ. When Paul writes "Not to seeds, as of
many," he virtually says that the word of inspiration was singular
in _sense_ as well as in form; in the mind of the Promiser, and in
the interpretation given to it by events, it bore an individual
reference, and was never intended to apply to Abraham's descendants
at large, to the many and miscellaneous "children according to flesh."
[95] Gen. xii. 2, 3; xv. 2-6; xvii. 4-8, 15-21; xxii. 16-18.
[96] Ch. iv. 21-31; Rom. iv. 17-22; comp. Heb. xi. 11, 12.
Paul's interpretation of the Promise has abundant analogies. All
great principles of human history tend to embody themselves in
some "chosen seed." They find at last their true heir, the _one
man_ destined to be their fulfilment. Moses, David, Paul; Socrates
and Alexander; Shakespere, Newton, are examples of this. The work
that such men do belongs to themselves. Had any promise assured
the world of the gifts to be bestowed through them, in each case
one might have said beforehand, It will have to be, "Not as of
many, but as of one." It is not multitudes, but men that rule the
world. "By _one man_ sin entered into the world: we shall reign in
life through _the one_ Jesus Christ." From the first words of hope
given to the repentant pair banished from Eden, down to the latest
predictions of the Coming One, the Promise became at every stage
more determinate and individualising. The finger of prophecy pointed
with increasing distinctness, now from this side, now from that, to
the veiled form of the Chosen of God--"the seed of the woman," the
"seed of Abraham," the "star out of Jacob," the "Son of David," the
"King Messiah," the suffering "Servant of the Lord," the "smitten
Shepherd," the "Son of man, coming in the clouds of heaven." In His
person all the lines of promise and preparation meet; the scattered
rays of Divine light are brought to a focus. And the desire of all
nations, groping, half-articulate, unites with the inspired foresight
of the seers of Israel to find its goal in Jesus Christ. There was
but _One_ who could meet the manifold conditions created by the
world's previous history, and furnish the key to the mysteries and
contradictions which had gathered round the path of Revelation.
Notwithstanding, the Promise had and has a _generic_ application,
attending its personal accomplishment. "Salvation is of the Jews."
Christ belongs "to the Jew first." Israel was raised up and
consecrated to be the trustee of the Promise given to the world
through Abraham. The vocation of this gifted race, the secret of its
indestructible vitality, lies in its relationship to Jesus Christ.
They are "His own," though they "received Him not." Apart from Him,
Israel is nothing to the world--nothing but a witness against itself.
Premising its essential fulfilment in Christ, Paul still reserves for
his own people their peculiar share in the Testament of Abraham--not
a place of exclusive privilege, but of richer honour and larger
influence. "Hath God cast away His people?" he asks: "Nay indeed. For
I also am an Israelite, of _the seed of Abraham_." So that, after
all, it is something to be of Abraham's children by nature. Despite
his hostility to Judaism, the Apostle claims for the Jewish race a
special office in the dispensation of the Gospel, in the working out
of God's ultimate designs for mankind.[97] Would they only accept
their Messiah, how exalted a rank amongst the nations awaits them!
The title "seed of Abraham" with Paul, like the "Servant of Jehovah"
in Isaiah, has a double significance. The sufferings of the elect
people made them in their national character a pathetic type of the
great Sufferer and Servant of the Lord, His supreme Elect. In Jesus
Christ the collective destiny of Israel is attained; its prophetic
ideal, the spiritual conception of its calling, is realised,--"the
seed to whom it hath been promised."
[97] Rom. xi.
* * * * *
Paul is not alone in his insistence on the relation of Christ to
Abraham. It is announced in the first sentence of the New Testament:
"the book of the generation of Jesus Christ, _son of Abraham_, son
of David." And it is set forth with singular beauty in the Gospel of
the Infancy. Mary's song and Zacharias' prophecy recall the freedom
and simplicity of an inspiration long silenced, as they tell how "the
Lord hath visited and redeemed His people; He hath shown mercy to our
fathers, in remembrance of His holy covenant, the oath which He sware
_unto Abraham our father_." And again, "He hath helped Israel His
servant in remembrance of His mercy, as He spake to our fathers, _to
Abraham and to his seed_ for ever."[98] These pious and tender souls
who watched over the cradle of our Lord and stood in the dawning of
His new day, instinctively cast their thoughts back to the Covenant
of Abraham. In it they found matter for their songs and a warrant
for their hopes, such as no ritual ordinances could furnish. Their
utterances breathe a spontaneity of faith, a vernal freshness of
joy and hope to which the Jewish people for ages had been strangers.
The dull constraint and stiffness, the harsh fanaticism of the
Hebrew nature, have fallen from them. They have put on the beautiful
garments of Zion, her ancient robes of praise. For the time of the
Promise draws near. Abraham's Seed is now to be born; and Abraham's
faith revives to meet Him. It breaks forth anew out of the dry and
long-barren soil of Judaism; it is raised up to a richer and an
enduring life. Paul's doctrine of Grace does but translate into logic
the poetry of Mary's and Zacharias' anthems. The Testament of Abraham
supplies their common theme.
[98] Luke i. 54, 55, 68-73.
CHAPTER XIV.
_THE DESIGN OF THE LAW._
"What then is the law? It was added because of transgressions,
till the seed should come to whom the promise hath been made;
_and it was_ ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator.
Now a mediator is not _a mediator_ of one; but God is one.
Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for
if there had been a law given which could make alive, verily
righteousness would have been of the law. Howbeit the Scripture
hath shut up all things under sin, that the promise by faith in
Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. But before
faith came, we were kept in ward under the law, shut up unto
the faith which should afterwards be revealed. So that the law
hath been our tutor _to bring us_ unto Christ, that we might be
justified by faith."--GAL. iii. 19-24.
_What then is the law?_ So the Jew might well exclaim. Paul has been
doing nothing but disparage it.--"You say that the Law of Moses
brings no righteousness or blessing, but only a curse; that the
covenant made with Abraham ignores it, and does not admit of being
in any way qualified by its provisions. What then do you make of it?
Is it not God's voice that we hear in its commands? Have the sons
of Abraham ever since Moses' day been wandering from the true path
of faith?" Such inferences might be drawn, not unnaturally, from
the Apostle's denunciation of Legalism. They were actually drawn by
Marcion in the second century, in his extreme hostility to Judaism
and the Old Testament.
This question must indeed have early forced itself upon Paul's mind.
How could the doctrine of Salvation by Faith and the supremacy of the
Abrahamic Covenant be reconciled with the Divine commission of Moses?
How, on the other hand, could the displacement of the Law by the
Gospel be justified, if the former too was authorised and inspired
by God? Can the same God have given to men these two contrasted
revelations of Himself? The answer, contained in the passage before
us, is that the two revelations had different ends in view. They are
complementary, not competing institutes. Of the two, the Covenant of
Promise has the prior right; it points immediately to Christ. The
Legal economy is ancillary thereto; it never professed to accomplish
the work of grace, as the Judaists would have it do. Its office
was external, but nevertheless accessory to that of the Promise.
It guarded and schooled the infant heirs of Abraham's Testament,
until the time of its falling due, when they should be prepared in
the manhood of faith to enter on their inheritance. "The law hath
been our tutor for Christ, with the intent we should be justified by
faith" (ver. 24).
This aspect of the Law, under which, instead of being an obstacle
to the life of faith, it is seen to subserve it, has been suggested
already. "For I," the Apostle said, "_through law_ died to law" (ch.
ii. 19). The Law first impelled him to Christ. It constrained him
to look beyond itself. Its discipline was a preparation for faith.
Paul reverses the relation in which faith and Law were set by the
Judaists. They brought in the Law to perfect the unfinished work
of faith (ver. 3): he made it preliminary and propædeutic. What
they gave out for more advanced doctrine, he treats as the "weak
rudiments," belonging to the infancy of the sons of God (ch. iv.
1-11). Up to this point, however, the Mosaic law has been considered
chiefly in a negative way, as a foil to the Covenant of grace.
The Apostle has now to treat of its nature more positively and
explicitly, first indeed _in contrast with the promise_ (vv. 19, 20);
and secondly, _in its co-operation with the promise_ (vv. 22-24).
Ver. 21 is the transition from the first to the second of these
conceptions.
I. "For the sake of the transgressions (committed against it)[99]
the law was added." The Promise, let us remember, was complete in
itself. Its testament of grace was sealed and delivered ages before
the Mosaic legislation, which could not therefore retract or modify
it. The Law was "superadded," as something over and above, attached
to the former revelation for a subsidiary purpose lying outside the
proper scope of the Promise. What then was this purpose?
[99] Τῶν παραβάσεων: the definite article can scarcely mean less
than this.
1. _For the sake of transgressions._ In other words, the object of
the law of Moses was _to develope sin_. This is not the whole of the
Apostle's answer; but it is the key to his explanation. This design
of the Mosaic revelation determined its form and character. Here is
the standpoint from which we are to estimate its working, and its
relation to the kingdom of grace. The saying of Rom. v. 20 is Paul's
commentary upon this sentence: "The law came in by the way, in order
that the trespass (of Adam) might multiply." The same necessity is
expressed in the paradox of 1 Cor. xv. 56: "The strength of sin is
the law."
This enigma, as a psychological question, is resolved by the Apostle
in Rom. vii. 13-24. The law acts as a spur and provocative, rousing
the power of sin to conscious activity. However good in itself,
coming into contact with man's evil flesh, its promulgation is
followed inevitably by transgression. Its commands are so many
occasions for sin to come into action, to exhibit and confirm its
power. So that the Law practically assumes the same relation to sin
as that in which the Promise stands to righteousness and life. In its
union with the Law our sinful nature perpetually "brings forth fruit
unto death." And this mournful result God certainly contemplated when
He gave the Law of Moses.
But are we compelled to put so harsh a sense on the Apostle's words?
May we not say that the Law was imposed in order to _restrain_
sin, to keep it within bounds? Some excellent interpreters read
the verse in this way. It is quite true that, in respect of public
morals and the outward manifestations of evil, the Jewish law
acted beneficially, as a bridle upon the sinful passions. But
this is beside the mark. The Apostle is thinking only of inward
righteousness, that which avails before God. The wording of the
clause altogether excludes the milder interpretation. _For the sake
of_ (χάριν, Latin _gratia_) signifies _promotion_, not _prevention_.
And the word _transgression_, by its Pauline and Jewish usage,
compels us to this view.[100] Transgression presupposes law. It
is the specific form which sin takes under law--the re-action of
sin against law. What was before a latent tendency, a bias of
disposition, now starts to light as a flagrant, guilty fact. By
bringing about repeated transgressions the Law reveals the true
nature of sin, so that it "becomes exceeding sinful." It does not
make matters worse; but it shows how bad they really are. It
aggravates the disease, in order to bring it to a crisis. And this is
a necessary step towards the cure.
[100] Comp. the reference to this word in Chapter IX., p. 143.
2. The Law of Moses was therefore _a provisional
dispensation_,--"added until the seed should come to whom the promise
hath been made." Its object was to make itself superfluous. It "is
not made for a righteous man; but for the lawless and unruly" (1
Tim. i. 9). Like the discipline and drill of a strictly governed
boyhood, it was calculated to produce a certain effect on the moral
nature, after the attainment of which it was no longer needed and its
continuance would be injurious. The essential part of this effect
lay, however, not so much in the outward regularity it imposed, as
in the inner repugnancy excited by it, the consciousness of sin
unsubdued and defiant. By its operation on the conscience the Law
taught man his need of redemption. It thus prepared the platform
for the work of Grace. The Promise had been given. The coming of
the Covenant-heir was assured. But its fulfilment was far off. "The
Lord is not slack concerning His promise,"--and yet it was two
thousand years before "Abraham's seed" came to birth. The degeneracy
of the patriarch's children in the third and fourth generation
showed how little the earlier heirs of the Promise were capable of
receiving it. A thousand years later, when the Covenant was renewed
with David, the ancient predictions seemed at last nearing their
fulfilment. But no; the times were still unripe; the human conscience
but half-disciplined. The bright dawn of the Davidic monarchy
was overclouded. The legal yoke is made more burdensome; sore
chastisements fall on the chosen people, marked out for suffering
as well as honour. Prophecy has many lessons yet to inculcate. The
world's education for Christ has another millennium to run.
Nor when He came, did "the Son of man find faith in the earth"! The
people of the Law had no sooner seen than they hated "Him to whom the
law and the prophets gave witness." Yet, strangely enough, the very
manner of their rejection showed how complete was the preparation for
His coming. Two features, rarely united, marked the ethical condition
of the Jewish people at this time--an intense moral consciousness,
and a deep moral perversion; reverence for the Divine law,
combined with an alienation from its spirit. The chapter of Paul's
autobiography to which we have so often referred (Rom. vii. 7-24) is
typical of the better mind of Judaism. It is the _ne plus ultra_ of
self-condemnation. The consciousness of sin in mankind has ripened.
3. And further, the Law of Moses revealed God's will _in a veiled
and accommodated fashion_, while the Promise and the Gospel are its
direct emanations. This is the inference which we draw from vv. 19,
20.
We are well aware of the extreme difficulty of this passage. Ver. 20
has received, it is computed, some four hundred and thirty distinct
interpretations. Of all the "hard things our beloved brother Paul"
has written, this is the very hardest. The words which make up the
sentence are simple and familiar; and yet in their combination most
enigmatic. And it stands in the midst of a paragraph among the most
interesting and important that the Apostle ever wrote.
Let us look first at the latter clause of ver. 19: "ordained
through angels, in the hand (_i.e._ by means) of a mediator." These
circumstances, as the orthodox Jew supposed, _enhanced_ the glory
of the Law. The pomp and formality under which Mosaism was ushered
in, the presence of the angelic host to whose agency the terrific
manifestations attending the Law-giving were referred, impressed
the popular mind with a sense of the incomparable sacredness of the
Sinaitic revelation. It was this assumption which gave its force
to the climax of Stephen's speech, of which we hear an echo in
these words of Paul: "who received the law at the disposition of
angels--and have not kept it!"[101] The simplicity and informality of
the Divine communion with Abraham, and again of Christ's appearance
in the world and His intercourse with men, afford a striking contrast
to all this.
[101] Acts vii. 53: comp. διαταγὰς ἀγγέλων and διαταγεὶς δι'
ἀγγέλων. Stephen's last words may well have lingered in the ear
of Saul. From the lips of Stephen, they were something of an
_argumentum ad hominem_.
More is hinted than is expressly said in Scripture of the part taken
by the angels in the Law-giving. Deut. xxxiii. 2[102] and Ps. lxviii.
17 give the most definite indications of the ancient faith of Israel
on this point. But "the Angel of the Lord" is a familiar figure of
Old Testament revelation. In Hebrew thought impressive physical
phenomena were commonly associated with the presence of spiritual
agents.[103] The language of Heb. i. 7 and ii. 2 endorses this
belief, which in no way conflicts with natural science, and is in
keeping with the Christian faith.
[102] A doubtful citation at the best: the reading of the LXX is
more to the point than the Hebrew text.
[103] See the quotations from Jewish writers to this effect given
by Meyer or Lightfoot.
But while such intermediacy, from the Jewish standpoint, increased
the splendour and authority of the Law, believers in Christ had
learned to look at the matter otherwise.[104] A revelation
"administered _through angels_," spoke to them of a God distant and
obscured, of a people unfit for access to His presence. This is
plainly intimated in the added clause, "by means of _a mediator_,"--a
title commonly given to Moses, and recalling the entreaty of Exod.
xx. 19; Deut. v. 22-28: "The people said, Speak thou with us, and we
will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die." These are the
words of sinful men, receiving a law given, as the Apostle has just
declared, on purpose to convict them of their sins. The form of the
Mosaic revelation tended therefore in reality not to exalt the Law,
but to exhibit its difference from the Promise and the distance at
which it placed men from God.
[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.
GOD IS ONE: this great article of faith was the foundation of
Israel's life. It forms the first sentence of the Shemá, the "Hear, O
Israel" (Deut. vi. 4-9), which every pious Jew repeats twice a day,
and which in literal obedience to the Law-giver's words he fixes
above his house-door, and binds upon his arm and brow at the time of
prayer. Three times besides has the Apostle quoted this sentence.
The first of these passages, Rom. iii. 29, 30,[107] may help us to
understand its application here. In that place he employs it as a
weapon against Jewish exclusiveness. If there is but "_one_ God,"
he argues, there can be only _one_ way of justification, for Jew
and Gentile alike. The inference drawn here is even more bold and
singular. There is "one God," who appeared in His proper character in
the Covenant with Abraham. If the Law of Moses gives us a conception
of His nature in any wise different from this, it is because other
and lower elements found a place in it. Through the whole course
of revelation there is _one God_--manifest to Abraham, veiled in
Mosaism, revealed again in His perfect image in "the face of Jesus
Christ."
[107] Comp. 1 Cor. viii. 6; 1 Tim. ii. 5; also Mark xii. 29, 30;
Jas. ii. 19.
II. So far the Apostle has pursued the contrast between the systems
of Law and Grace. When finally he has referred the latter rather
than the former to the "one God," we naturally ask, "Is the Law then
_against_ the promises of God?" (ver. 21). Was the Legal dispensation
a mere reaction, a retrogression from the Promise? This would be
to push Paul's argument to an antinomian extreme. He hastens to
protest.--"The law against the promises? Away with the thought."
Not on the Apostle's premises, but on those of his opponents, did
this consequence ensue. It is _they_ who set the two at variance, by
trying to make law do the work of grace. "For if a law had been given
that could bring men to life, righteousness would verily in that
case have been of law" (ver. 21). That righteousness, and therefore
life, is not of law, the Apostle has abundantly shown (ch. ii. 16;
iii. 10-13). Had the Law provided some efficient means of its own for
winning righteousness, there would then indeed have been a conflict
between the two principles. As matters stand, there is none. Law
and Promise move on different planes. Their functions are distinct.
Yet there is a connection between them. The design of the Law is to
mediate between the Promise and its fulfilment. "The trespass" must
be "multiplied," the knowledge of sin deepened, before Grace can
do its office. The fever of sin has to come to its crisis, before
the remedy can take effect. Law is therefore not the enemy, but
the minister of Grace. It was charged with a purpose lying beyond
itself. "Christ is the end of the law, for righteousness" (Rom. x. 4).
1. For, in the first place, _the law cuts men off from all other hope
of salvation_.
On the Judaistic hypothesis, "righteousness would have been of law."
But quite on the contrary, "the Scripture shuts up everything under
sin, that the promise might be given in the way of faith in Jesus
Christ, to them that believe" (ver. 22). Condemnation inevitable,
universal, was pronounced by the Divine word under the Law, not in
order that men might remain crushed beneath its weight, but that,
abandoning vain hopes of self-justification, they might find in
Christ their true deliverer.
The Apostle is referring here to the general purport of "the
Scripture." His assertion embraces the whole teaching of the Old
Testament concerning human sinfulness, embodied, for example, in the
chain of citations drawn out in Rom. iii. 10-18. Wherever the man
looking for legal justification turned, the Scripture met him with
some new command which drove him back upon the sense of his moral
helplessness. It fenced him in with prohibitions; it showered on
him threatenings and reproaches; it besieged him in ever narrowing
circles. And if he felt less the pressure of its outward burdens, all
the more was he tormented by inward disharmony and self-accusation.
Now the judgement of Scripture is not uttered against this class of
men or that, against this type of sin or that. Its impeachment sweeps
the entire area of human life, sounding the depths of the heart,
searching every avenue of thought and desire. It makes of the world
one vast prison-house, with the Law for gaoler, and mankind held fast
in chains of sin, waiting for death. In this position the Apostle
had found himself (Rom. vii. 24-viii. 2); and in his own heart he
saw a mirror of the world. "Every mouth was stopped, and all the
world brought in guilty before God" (Rom. iii. 19). This condition
he graphically describes in terms of his former experience, in ver.
23: "Before faith came, under law we were kept in ward, being shut
up unto the faith that was to be revealed." The Law was all the
while standing guard over its subjects, watching and checking every
attempt to escape,[108] but intending to hand them over in due time
to the charge of Faith. The Law posts its ordinances, like so many
sentinels, round the prisoner's cell. The cordon is complete. He
tries again and again to break out; the iron circle will not yield.
But deliverance will yet be his. The day of Faith approaches. It
dawned long ago in Abraham's Promise. Even now its light shines into
his dungeon, and he hears the word of Jesus, "Thy sins are forgiven
thee; go in peace." Law, the stern gaoler, has after all been a good
friend, if it has reserved him for this. It prevents the sinner
escaping to a futile and illusive freedom.
[108] Hence the _present_ participle, συγκλειόμενοι (Revised
reading of ver. 23), in combination with the _imperfect_ of the
foregoing verb, ἐφρονρουμεθα.
In this dramatic fashion Paul shows how the Mosaic law by its ethical
discipline prepared men for a life which by itself it was incapable
of giving. Where Law has done its work well, it produces, as in the
Apostle's earlier experience, a profound sense of personal demerit, a
tenderness of conscience, a contrition of heart which makes one ready
thankfully to receive "the righteousness which is of God by faith."
In every age and condition of life a like effect is wrought upon
men who honestly strive to live up to an exacting moral standard.
They confess their failure. They lose self-conceit. They grow "poor
in spirit," willing to accept "the abundance of _the gift_ of
righteousness" in Jesus Christ.
_Faith_ is trebly honoured here. It is the condition of the gift,
the characteristic of its recipient (vv. 22, 24), and the end for
which he was put under the charge of Law (ver. 23). "To them that
believe" is "given," as it was in foretaste to Abraham (ver. 6), a
righteousness unearned, and bestowed on Christ's account (ch. iii.
13; Rom. v. 17, 18); which brings with it the indwelling of the Holy
Spirit, reserved in its conscious possession for Abraham's children
in the faith of Christ (ch. iii. 14; iv. 4). These blessings form
the commencement of that true life, whose root is a spiritual union
with Christ, and which reaches on to eternity (ch. ii. 20; Rom. v.
21; vi. 23). Of such life the Law could impart nothing; but it taught
men their need of it, and disposed them to accept it. This was the
purpose of its institution. It was the forerunner, not the finisher,
of Faith.
2. Paul makes use of a second figure to describe the office of
the Law; under which he gives his final answer to the question of
ver. 19. The metaphor of the gaoler is exchanged for that of _the
tutor_. "The law hath been our παιδαγωγὸς for Christ." This Greek
word (_boy-leader_) has no English equivalent; we have not the thing
it represents. The "pedagogue" was a sort of nursery governor,--a
confidential servant in the Greek household, commonly a slave, who
had charge of the boy from his infancy, and was responsible for his
oversight. In his food, his clothes, his home-lessons, his play, his
walks--at every point the pedagogue was required to wait upon his
young charge, and to control his movements. Amongst other offices,
his tutor might have to conduct the boy to school; and it has been
supposed that Paul is thinking of this duty, as though he meant, "The
Law has been our pedagogue, to take us to Christ, our true teacher."
But he adds, "That we might be justified of faith." The "tutor" of
ver. 24 is parallel to the "guard" of the last verse; he represents a
distinctly disciplinary influence.
This figure implies not like the last the imprisoned condition of the
subject--but _his childish, undeveloped state_. This is an advance
of thought. The Law was something more than a system of restraint
and condemnation. It contained an element of progress. Under the
tutelage of his pedagogue the boy is growing up to manhood. At the
end of its term the Law will hand over its charge mature in capacity
and equal to the responsibilities of faith. "If then the Law is a
παιδαγωγός, it is not hostile to Grace, but its fellow-worker; but
should it continue to hold us fast when Grace has come, then it would
be hostile" (Chrysostom).
Although the highest function, that of "giving life," is denied to
the Law, a worthy part is still assigned to it by the Apostle. It
was "a tutor to lead men to Christ." Judaism was an education for
Christianity. It prepared the world for the Redeemer's coming. It
drilled and moralised the religious youth of the human race. It
broke up the fallow-ground of nature, and cleared a space in the
weed-covered soil to receive the seed of the kingdom. Its moral
regimen deepened the conviction of sin, while it multiplied its
overt acts. Its ceremonial impressed on sensuous natures the idea
of the Divine holiness; and its sacrificial rites gave definiteness
and vividness to men's conceptions of the necessity of atonement,
failing indeed to remove sin, but awakening the need and sustaining
the hope of its removal (Heb. x. 1-18).
* * * * *
The Law of Moses has formed in the Jewish nation a type of humanity
like no other in the world. "They dwell alone," said Balaam, "and
shall not be reckoned amongst the nations." Disciplined for ages
under their harsh "pedagogue," this wonderful people acquired a
strength of moral fibre and a spiritual sensibility that prepared
them to be the religious leaders of mankind. Israel has given us
David and Isaiah, Paul and John. Christ above all was "born under
law--of David's seed according to flesh." The influence of Jewish
minds at this present time on the world's higher thought, whether
for good or evil, is incalculable; and it penetrates everywhere.
The Christian Church may with increased emphasis repeat Paul's
anticipation, "What will the receiving of them be, but life from the
dead!" They have a great service still to do for the Lord and for His
Christ. It was well for them and for us that they have "borne the
yoke in their youth."
CHAPTER XV.
_THE EMANCIPATED SONS OF GOD._
"But now that faith is come, we are no longer under a tutor.
For ye are all sons of God, through faith in Christ Jesus. For
as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ.
There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond
nor free, there can be no male and female: for ye all are one
_man_ in Christ Jesus. And if ye are Christ's, then are ye
Abraham's seed, heirs according to promise."--GAL. iii. 25-29.
"Faith has come!" At this announcement Law the tutor yields up his
charge; Law the gaoler sets his prisoner at liberty. The age of
servitude has passed. In truth it endured long enough. The iron of
its bondage had entered into the soul. But at last Faith is come;
and with it comes a new world. The clock of time cannot be put back.
The soul of man will never return to the old tutelage, nor submit
again to a religion of rabbinism and sacerdotalism. "We are no longer
under a pedagogue;" we have ceased to be children in the nursery,
schoolboys at our tasks--"ye are all sons of God." In such terms the
newborn, free spirit of Christianity speaks in Paul. He had tasted
the bitterness of the Judaic yoke; no man more deeply. He had felt
the weight of its impossible exactions, its fatal condemnation. This
sentence is a shout of deliverance. "Wretch that I am," he had cried,
"who shall deliver me?--I give thanks to God through Jesus Christ
our Lord; ... for the law of the Spirit of life in Him hath freed me
from the law of sin and death" (Rom. vii. 24-viii. 2).
Faith is the true emancipator of the human mind. It comes to take its
place as mistress of the soul, queen in the realm of the heart; to
be henceforth its spring of life, the norm and guiding principle of
its activity. "The life that I live in the flesh," Paul testifies,
"I live in faith." The Mosaic law--a system of external, repressive
ordinances--is no longer to be the basis of religion. Law itself,
and for its proper purposes, Faith honours and magnifies (Rom. iii.
31). It is in the interests of Law that the Apostle insists on
the abolishment of its Judaic form. Faith is an essentially just
principle, the rightful, original ground of human fellowship with
God. In the age of Abraham, and even under the Mosaic régime, in the
religion of the Prophets and Psalmists, faith was the quickening
element, the well-spring of piety and hope and moral vigour. Now
it is brought to light. It assumes its sovereignty, and claims its
inheritance. Faith is come--for Christ is come, its "author and
finisher."
The efficacy of faith lies in _its object_. "Works" assume an
intrinsic merit in the doer; faith has its virtue in Him it trusts.
It is the soul's recumbency on Christ. "Through faith in Christ
Jesus," Paul goes on to say, "ye are all sons of God." Christ
evokes the faith which shakes off legal bondage, leaving the age
of formalism and ritual behind, and beginning for the world an era
of spiritual freedom. "_In_ Christ Jesus" faith has its being; He
constitutes for the soul a new atmosphere and habitat, in which faith
awakens to full existence, bursts the confining shell of legalism,
recognises itself and its destiny, and unfolds into the glorious
consciousness of its Divine sonship.
We prefer, with Ellicott and Meyer, to attach the complement "in
Christ Jesus"[109] to "faith" (so in A.V.), rather than to the
predicate, "Ye are sons"--the construction endorsed by the _Revised_
comma after "faith." The former connection, more obvious in itself,
seems to us to fall in with the Apostle's line of thought. And it is
sustained by the language of ver. 27. _Faith in Christ_, _baptism
into Christ_, and _putting on Christ_ are connected and correspondent
expressions. The first is the spiritual principle, the ground or
element of the new life; the second, its visible attestation; and the
third indicates the character and habit proper thereto.
[109] The phrase _faith in Christ Jesus_ is a link between this
Epistle and those of the third and fourth groups. Comp. Col.
i. 4; Eph. i. 15; 1 Tim. iii. 13; 2 Tim. i. 13; iii. 15. More
frequently in this connection our "in" represents εἰς (_into_),
not ἐν as here.
I. It is _faith in Christ_ then which _constitutes us sons of God_.
This principle is the foundation-stone of the Christian life.
In the Old Testament the sonship of believers lay in shadow. Jehovah
was "the King, the Lord of Hosts," the "Shepherd of Israel." They
are "His people, the sheep of His pasture"--"My servant Jacob," He
says, "Israel whom I have chosen." If He is named _Father_, it is
of the collective Israel, not the individual; otherwise the title
occurs only in figure and apostrophe. The promise of this blessedness
had never been explicitly given under the Covenant of Moses. The
assurance quoted in 2 Cor. vi. 18 is pieced together from scattered
hints of prophecy. Old-Testament faith hardly dared to dream of such
a privilege as this. It is not ascribed even to Abraham. Only to the
kingly "Son of David" is it said, "I will be a Father unto him; and
he shall be to me for a son" (2 Sam. vii. 14).
But "beloved, now are we children of God" (1 John iii. 2). The filial
consciousness is the distinction of the Church of Jesus Christ. The
Apostolic writings are full of it. The unspeakable dignity of this
relationship, the boundless hopes which it inspires, have left their
fresh impress on the pages of the New Testament. The writers are
men who have made a vast discovery. They have sailed out into a new
ocean. They have come upon an infinite treasure. "Thou art no longer
a slave, but a son!" What exultation filled the soul of Paul and of
John as they penned such words! "The Spirit of glory and of God"
rested upon them.
The Apostle is virtually repeating here what he said in vv. 2-5
touching the "receiving of the Spirit," which is, he declared, the
distinctive mark of the Christian state, and raises its possessor
_ipso facto_ above the religion of externalism. The antithesis of
_flesh and spirit_ now becomes that of _sonship and pupilage_. Christ
Himself, in the words of Luke xi. 13, marked out the gift of "the
Holy Spirit" as the bond between the "heavenly Father" and His human
children. Accordingly Paul writes immediately, in ch. iv. 6, 7, of
"God sending forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts" to show
that we "are sons," where we find again the thought which follows
here in ver. 27, viz. that _union with Christ_ imparts this exalted
status. This is after all the central conception of the Christian
life. Paul has already stated it as the sum of his own experience:
"Christ lives in me" (ch. ii. 20). "I have put on Christ" is the same
thing in other words. In ch. ii. 20 he contemplates the union as an
inner, vitalising force; here it is viewed as matter of status and
condition. The believer is _invested with Christ_. He enters into the
filial estate and endowments, since he is _in Christ Jesus_. "For
if Christ is Son of God, and thou hast put on Him, having the Son
in thyself and being made like to Him, thou wast brought into one
kindred and one form of being with Him" (Chrysostom).
This was true of "so many as were baptized into Christ"--an
expression employed not in order to limit the assertion, but
to extend it coincidently with the "all" of ver. 26. There
was no difference in this respect between the circumcised and
uncircumcised. Every baptized Galatian was a son of God. Baptism
manifestly presupposes faith. To imagine that the _opus operatum_,
the mechanical performance of the rite apart from faith present or
anticipated in the subject, "clothes us with Christ," is to hark
back to Judaism. It is to substitute baptism for circumcision--a
difference merely of form, so long as the doctrine of ritual
regeneration remains the same. This passage is as clear a proof as
could well be desired, that in the Pauline vocabulary "baptized"
is synonymous with "believing." The baptism of these Galatians
solemnised their spiritual union with Christ. It was the public
acceptance, in trust and submission, of God's covenant of grace--for
their children haply, as well as for themselves.
In the case of the infant, the household to which it belongs, the
religious community which receives it to be nursed in its bosom,
stand sponsors for its faith. On them will rest the blame of broken
vows and responsibility disowned, if their baptized children are left
to lapse into ignorance of Christ's claims upon them. The Church
which practises infant baptism assumes a very serious obligation. If
it takes no sufficient care to have the rite made good, if children
pass through its laver to remain unmarked and unshepherded, it is
sinning against Christ. Such administration makes His ordinance an
object of superstition, or of contempt.
The baptism of the Galatians signalised their entrance "into
Christ," the union of their souls with the dying, risen Lord. They
were "baptized," as Paul phrases it elsewhere, "into His death,"
to "walk" henceforth with Him "in newness of life." By its very
form--the normal and most expressive form of primitive baptism,
the descent into and rising from the symbolic waters--it pictured
the soul's death with Christ, its burial and its resurrection in
Him, its separation from the life of sin and entrance upon the new
career of a regenerated child of God (Rom. vi. 3-14). This power
attended the ordinance "through faith in the operation of God who
raised Christ from the dead" (Col. ii. 11-13). Baptism had proved
to them "the laver of regeneration" in virtue of "the renewing of
the Holy Spirit," under those spiritual conditions of accepted
mercy and "justification by grace through faith,"[110] without
which it is a mere law-work, as useless as any other. It was the
outward and visible sign of the inward transaction which made the
Galatian believers sons of God and heirs of life eternal. It was
therefore a "putting on of Christ," a veritable assumption of the
Christian character, the filial relationship to God. Every such
baptism announced to heaven and earth the passage of another soul
from servitude to freedom, from death unto life, the birth of a
brother into the family of God. From this day the new convert was a
member incorporate of the Body of Christ, affianced to his Lord, not
alone in the secret vows of his heart, but pledged to Him before his
fellow-men. He had _put on Christ_--to be worn in his daily life,
while He dwelt in the shrine of his spirit. And men would see Christ
in him, as they see the robe upon its wearer, the armour glittering
on the soldier's breast.
[110] Rom. vi. 1, 2; Tit. iii. 4-7 ("not of _works_ ... that we
had done)."
By receiving Christ, inwardly accepted in faith, visibly assumed in
baptism, we are made sons of God. _He_ makes us free of the house
of God, where He rules as Son, and where no slave may longer stay.
Those who called themselves "Abraham's seed" and yet were "slaves
of sin," must be driven from the place in God's household which
they dishonoured, and must forfeit their abused prerogatives. They
were not Abraham's children, for they were utterly unlike him; the
Devil surely was their father, whom by their lusts they featured. So
Christ declared to the unbelieving Jews (John viii. 31-44). And so
the Apostle identifies the children of Abraham with the sons of God,
by faith united to "the Son." Alike in the historical sonship toward
Abraham and the supernatural sonship toward God, Christ is the ground
of filiation. Our sonship is grafted upon His. He is "the vine," we
"branches" in Him. He is _the_ seed of Abraham, _the_ Son of God; we,
sons of God and Abraham's seed--"if we are Christ's." Through Him we
derive from God; through Him all that is best in the life of humanity
comes down to us. Christ is the central stock, the spiritual root of
the human race. His manifestation reveals God to man, and man also
to himself. In Jesus Christ we regain the Divine image, stamped upon
us in Him at our creation (Col. i. 15, 16; iii. 10, 11), the filial
likeness to God which constitutes man's proper nature. Its attainment
is the essential blessing, the promise which descended from Abraham
along the succession of faith.
Now this dignity belongs universally to Christian faith. "Ye are
_all_," the Apostle says, "sons of God through faith in Him." Sonship
is a human, not a Jewish distinction. The discipline Israel had
endured, it endured for the world. The Gentiles have no need to pass
through it again. Abraham's blessing, when it came, was to embrace
"all the families of the earth." The new life in Christ in which
it is realised, is as large in scope as it is complete in nature.
"Faith in Christ Jesus" is a condition that opens the door to every
human being,--"Jew or Greek, bond or free, male or female." If then
baptized, believing Gentiles are sons of God, they stand already
on a level higher than any to which Mosaism raised its professors.
"Putting on Christ," they are robed in a righteousness brighter and
purer than that of the most blameless legalist. What can Judaism do
for them more? How could they wish to cover their glorious dress with
its faded, worn-out garments? To add circumcision to their faith
would be not to rise, but to sink from the state of sons to that of
serfs.
II. On this first principle of the new life there rests a second.
The sons of God are brethren to each other. Christianity is the
perfection of society, as well as of the individual. _The faith of
Christ restores the broken unity of mankind._ "In Christ Jesus there
is no Jew or Greek; there is no bondman or freeman; there is no male
and female. You are all one in Him."
The Galatian believer at his baptism had entered a communion which
gave him for the first time the sense of a common humanity. In
Jesus Christ he found a bond of union with his fellows, an identity
of interest and aim so commanding that in its presence secular
differences appeared as nothing. From the height to which his Divine
adoption raised him these things were invisible. Distinctions of
race, of rank, even that of sex, which bulk so largely in our outward
life and are sustained by all the force of pride and habit, are
forgotten here. These dividing lines and party-walls have no power to
sunder us from Christ, nor therefore from each other in Christ. The
tide of Divine love and joy which through the gate of faith poured
into the souls of these Gentiles of "many nations," submerged all
barriers. They are one in the brotherhood of the eternal life. When
one says "I am a child of God," one no longer thinks, "I am a Greek
or Jew, rich or poor, noble or ignoble--man or woman." A son of
God!--that sublime consciousness fills his being.
Paul, to be sure, does not mean that these differences have ceased
to exist. He fully recognises them; and indeed insists strongly on
the proprieties of sex, and on the duties of civil station. He values
his own Jewish birth and Roman citizenship. But "in Christ Jesus"
he "counts them refuse" (Phil. iii. 4-8). Our relations to God, our
heritage in Abraham's Testament, depend on our faith in Christ Jesus
and our possession of His Spirit. Neither birth nor office affects
this relationship in the least degree. "As many as are led by the
Spirit of God, they are the sons of God" (Rom. viii. 14). This is the
Divine criterion of churchmanship, applied to prince or beggar, to
archbishop or sexton, with perfect impartiality. "God is no respecter
of persons."
This rule of the Apostle's was a new principle in religion, pregnant
with immense consequences. The Stoic cosmopolitan philosophy made a
considerable approach to it, teaching as it did the worth of the
moral person and the independence of virtue upon outward conditions.
Buddhism previously, and Mohammedanism subsequently, each in its own
way, addressed themselves to man as man, declaring all believers
equal and abolishing the privileges of race and caste. To their
recognition of human brotherhood the marvellous victories won by
these two creeds are largely due. These religious systems, with all
their errors, were a signal advance upon Paganism with its "gods
many and lords many," its local and national deities, whose worship
belittled the idea of God and turned religion into an engine of
hostility instead of a bond of union amongst men.
Greek culture, moreover, and Roman government, as it has often been
observed, had greatly tended to unify mankind. They diffused a
common atmosphere of thought and established one imperial law round
the circuit of the Mediterranean shores. But these conquests of
secular civilization, the victories of arms and arts, were achieved
at the expense of religion. Polytheism is essentially barbarian.
It flourishes in division and in ignorance. To bring together its
innumerable gods and creeds was to bring them all into contempt. The
_one law_, the _one learning_ now prevailing in the world, created
a void in the conscience of mankind, only to be filled by the _one
faith_. Without a centre of spiritual unity, history shows that
no other union will endure. But for Christianity, the Græco-Roman
civilization would have perished, trampled out by the feet of Goths
and Huns.
The Jewish faith failed to meet the world's demand for a universal
religion. It could never have saved European society. Nor was it
designed for such a purpose. True, its Jehovah was "the God of the
whole earth." The teaching of the Old Testament, as Paul easily
showed, had a universal import and brought all men within the
scope of its promises. But in its actual shape and its positive
institutions it was still tribal and exclusive. Mosaism planted
round the family of Abraham a fence of ordinances, framed of set
purpose to make them a separate people and preserve them from heathen
contamination. This system, at first maintained with difficulty, in
course of time gained control of the Israelitish nature, and its
exclusiveness was aggravated by every device of Pharisaic ingenuity.
Without an entire transformation, without in fact ceasing to be
Judaism, the Jewish religion was doomed to isolation. Under the Roman
Empire, in consequence of the ubiquitous dispersion of the Jews, it
spread far and wide. It attracted numerous and influential converts.
But these proselytes never were, and never could have been generally
amalgamated with the sacred people. They remained in the outer court,
worshipping the God of Israel "afar off" (Eph. ii. 11-22; iii. 4-6).
This particularism of the Mosaic system was, to Paul's mind, a proof
of its temporary character. The abiding faith, the faith of "Abraham
and his seed," must be broad as humanity. It could know nothing of
Jew and Gentile, of master and slave, nor even of man and woman; it
knows only _the soul and God_. The gospel of Christ allied itself
thus with the nascent instinct of humanity, the fellow-feeling of
the race. It adopted the sentiment of the Roman poet, himself an
enfranchised slave, who wrote: _Homo sum, et humani a me nil alienum
puto_. In our religion human kinship at last receives adequate
expression. The Son of man lays the foundation of a world-wide
fraternity. The one Father claims all men for His sons in Christ.
A new, tenderer, holier humanity is formed around His cross. Men
of the most distant climes and races, coming across their ancient
battle-fields, clasp each other's hands and say, "Beloved, if God so
loved us, we ought also to love one another."
The practice of the Church has fallen far below the doctrine of
Christ and His Apostles. In this respect Mohammedans and Buddhists
might teach Christian congregations a lesson of fraternity. The
arrangements of our public worship seem often designed expressly to
emphasize social distinctions, and to remind the poor man of his
inequality. Our native _hauteur_ and conventionality are nowhere
more painfully conspicuous than in the house of God. English
Christianity is seamed through and through with caste-feeling. This
lies at the root of our sectarian jealousies. It is largely due
to this cause that the social ideal of Jesus Christ has been so
deplorably ignored, and that a frank brotherly fellowship amongst
the Churches is at present impossible. Sacerdotalism first destroyed
the Christian brotherhood by absorbing in the official ministry
the functions of the individual believer. And the Protestant
Reformation has but partially re-established these prerogatives. Its
action has been so far too exclusively negative and _protéstant_,
too little constructive and creative. It has allowed itself to be
secularised and identified with existing national limitations and
social distinctions. How greatly has the authority of our faith and
the influence of the Church suffered from this error. The filial
consciousness should produce _the fraternal consciousness_. With the
former we may have a number of private Christians; with the latter
only can we have a Church.
"Ye are all," says the Apostle, "one (man) in Christ Jesus."
The numeral is masculine, not neuter--_one person_ (no abstract
unity),[111] as though possessing one mind and will, and that "the
mind that was in Christ." Just so far as individual men are "in
Christ" and He becomes the soul of their life, do they realise
this unity. The Christ within them recognises the Christ without,
as "face answereth to face in a glass." In this recognition social
disparity vanishes. We think of it no more than we shall do before
the judgement-seat of Christ. What matters it whether my brother
wears velvet or fustian, if Christ be in him? The humbleness of
his birth or occupation, the uncouthness of his speech, cannot
separate him, nor can the absence of these peculiarities separate
his neighbour, from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Why
should these differences make them strangers to each other in the
Church? If both are _in Christ_, why are they not _one in Christ_? A
tide of patriotic emotion, a scene of pity or terror--a shipwreck, an
earthquake--levels all classes and makes us feel and act as one man.
Our faith in Christ should do no less. Or do we love God less than
we fear death? Is our country more to us than Jesus Christ? In rare
moments of exaltation we rise, it may be, to the height at which Paul
sets our life. But until we can habitually and by settled principle
in our Church-relations "know no man after the flesh," we come short
of the purpose of Jesus Christ (comp. John xvii. 20-23).
[111] Comp. Eph. ii. 15; iv. 13; but _neuter_ in ii. 14.
The unity Paul desiderates would effectually counteract the Judaistic
agitation. The force of the latter lay in antipathy. Paul's opponents
contended that there must be "Jew and Greek." They fenced off the
Jewish preserve from uncircumcised intruders. Gentile nonconformists
must adopt their ritual; or they will remain a lower caste, outside
the privileged circle of the covenant-heirs of Abraham. Compelled
under this pressure to accept the Mosaic law, it was anticipated
that they would add to the glory of Judaism and help to maintain its
institutions unimpaired. But the Apostle has cut the ground from
under their feet. It is _faith_, he affirms, which makes men sons of
God. And faith is equally possible to Jew or Gentile. Then Judaism is
doomed. No system of caste, no principle of social exclusion has, on
this assumption, any foothold in the Church. Spiritual life, nearness
and likeness to the common Saviour--in a word _character_, is the
standard of worth in His kingdom. And the range of that kingdom is
made wide as humanity; its charity, deep as the love of God.
* * * * *
And "if you--whether Jews or Greeks--are Christ's, then are you
Abraham's seed, heirs in terms of the Promise." So the Apostle brings
to a close this part of his argument, and links it to what he has
said before touching the fatherhood of Abraham. Since ver. 18 we
have lost sight of the patriarch; but he has not been forgotten.
From that verse Paul has been conducting us onward through the legal
centuries which parted Abraham from Christ. He has shown how the law
of Moses interposed between promise and fulfilment, schooling the
Jewish race and mankind in them for its accomplishment. Now the long
discipline is over. The hour of release has struck. Faith resumes her
ancient sway, in a larger realm. In Christ a new, universal humanity
comes into existence, formed of men who by faith are grafted into
Him. Partakers of Christ, Gentiles also are of the seed of Abraham;
the wild scions of nature share "the root and fatness of the good
olive-tree." All things are theirs; for they are Christ's (1 Cor.
iii. 21-23).
Christ never stands alone. "In the midst of the Church--firstborn of
many brethren" He presents Himself, standing "in the presence of God
for us." He has secured for mankind and keeps in trust its glorious
heritage. In Him we hold in fee the ages past and to come. The sons
of God are heirs of the universe.
CHAPTER XVI.
_THE HEIR'S COMING OF AGE._
"But I say that so long as the heir is a child, he differeth
nothing from a bondservant, though he is lord of all; but is
under guardians and stewards until the term appointed of the
father. So we also, when we were children, were held in bondage
under the rudiments of the world: but when the fulness of the
time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under
the law, that He might redeem them which were under the law,
that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are
sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts,
crying, Abba Father. So that thou art no longer a bondservant,
but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God."--GAL. iv.
1-7.
The main thesis of the Epistle is now established. Gentile
Christians, Paul has shown, are in the true Abrahamic succession of
faith. And this devolution of the Promise discloses the real intent
of the Mosaic law, as an intermediate and disciplinary system. Christ
was the heir of Abraham's testament; He was therefore the end of
Moses' law. And those who are Christ's inherit the blessings of the
Promise, while they escape the curse and condemnation of the Law. The
remainder of the Apostle's polemic, down to ch. v. 12, is devoted to
the illustration and enforcement of this position.
In this, as in the previous chapter, the pre-Christian state is
assigned to the Jew, who was the chief subject of Divine teaching
in the former dispensation; it is set forth under the first person
(ver. 3), in the language of recollection. Describing the opposite
condition of sonship, the Apostle reverts from the first to the
second person, identifying his readers with himself (comp. ch. iii.
25, 26). True, the Gentiles had been in bondage (vv. 7, 8). This
goes without saying. Paul's object is to show that _Judaism_ is a
bondage. Upon this he insists with all the emphasis he can command.
Moreover, the legal system contained worldly, unspiritual elements,
crude and childish conceptions of truth, marking it, in comparison
with Christianity, as an inferior religion. Let the Galatians be
convinced of this, and they will understand what Paul is going to say
directly; they will perceive that Judaic conformity is for them a
backsliding in the direction of their former heathenism (vv. 8-10).
But the force of this latter warning is discounted and its effect
weakened when he is supposed, as by some interpreters, to include
_Gentile_ along with Jewish "rudiments" already in ver. 3. His
readers could not have suspected this. The "So we also" and the "held
in bondage" of this verse carry them back to ch. iii. 23. By calling
the Mosaic ceremonies "rudiments of _the world_" he gives Jewish
susceptibilities just such a shock as prepares for the declaration of
ver. 9, which puts them on a level with heathen rites.
The difference between Judaism and Christianity, historically
unfolded in ch. iii., is here restated in graphic summary. We see,
first, _the heir of God in his minority_; and again, _the same heir
in possession of his estate_.
I. One can fancy the Jew replying to Paul's previous argument in
some such style as this. "You pour contempt," he would say, "on the
religion of your fathers. You make them out to have been no better
than slaves. Abraham's inheritance, you pretend, under the Mosaic
dispensation lay dormant, and is revived in order to be taken from
his children and conferred on aliens." No, Paul would answer: I admit
that the saints of Israel were sons of God; I glory in the fact--"who
are Israelites, whose is _the adoption of sons_ and the glory and the
covenants and the law-giving and the promises, whose are the fathers"
(Rom. ix. 4, 5). _But they were sons in their minority._ "And I
say that as long as the heir is (legally) an infant, he differs in
nothing from a slave, though (by title) lord of all."
The man of the Old Covenant was a child of God _in posse_, not
_in esse_, in right but not in fact. The "infant" is his father's
trueborn son. In time he will be full owner. Meanwhile he is as
subject as any slave on the estate. There is nothing he can command
for his own. He is treated and provided for as a bondman might be;
put "under stewards" who manage his property, "and guardians" in
charge of his person, "until the day fore-appointed of the father."
This situation does not exclude, it implies fatherly affection and
care on the one side, and heirship on the other. But it forbids
the recognition of the heir, his investment with filial rights. It
precludes the access to the father and acquaintance with him, which
the boy will gain in after years. He sees him at a distance and
through others, under the aspect of authority rather than of love. In
this position he does not yet possess the spirit of a son. Such was
in truth the condition of Hebrew saints--heirs of God, but knowing it
not.
This illustration raises in ver. 2 an interesting legal question,
touching the latitude given by Roman or other current law to the
father in dealing with his heirs. Paul's language is good evidence
for the existence of the power he refers to. In Roman and in Jewish
law the date of civil majority was fixed. Local usage may have been
more elastic. But the case supposed, we observe, is not that of a
_dead_ father, into whose place the son steps at the proper age.
A grant is made by a father _still living_, who keeps his son in
pupilage till he sees fit to put him in possession of the promised
estate. There is nothing to show that paternal discretion was limited
in these circumstances, any more than it is in English law. The
father might fix eighteen, or twenty-one, or thirty years as the age
at which he would give his son a settlement, just as he thought best.
This analogy, like that of the "testament" in ch. iii., is not
complete at all points; nor could any human figure of these Divine
things be made so. The essential particulars involved in it are
first, _the childishness of the infant heir_; secondly, _the
subordinate position in which he is placed for the time_; and
thirdly, _the right of the father to determine the expiry of his
infancy_.
1. "When we were children," says the Apostle. This implies, not a
merely formal and legal bar, but an intrinsic disqualification. To
treat the child as a man is preposterous. The responsibilities of
property are beyond his strength and his understanding. Such powers
in his hands could only be instruments of mischief, to himself most
of all. In the Divine order, calling is suited to capacity, privilege
to age. The coming of Christ was timed to the hour. The world of the
Old Testament, at its wisest and highest, was unripe for His gospel.
The revelation made to Paul could not have been received by Moses,
or David, or Isaiah. His doctrine was only possible after and in
consequence of theirs. There was a training of faculty, a deepening
of conscience, a patient course of instruction and chastening to
be carried out, before the heirs of the promise were fit for their
heritage. Looking back to his own youthful days, the Apostle sees in
them a reflex of the discipline which the people of God had required.
The views he then held of Divine truth appear to him low and
childish, in comparison with the manly freedom of spirit, the breadth
of knowledge, the fulness of joy which he has attained as a son of
God through Christ.
2. But what is meant by the "stewards and guardians" of this Jewish
period of infancy? Ver. 3 tells us this, in language, however,
somewhat obscure: "We were held in bondage under _the rudiments_ (or
_elements_) _of the world_"--a phrase synonymous with the foregoing
"under law" (ch. iii. 23). The "guard" and "tutor" of the previous
section re-appears, with these "rudiments of the world" in his
hand. They form the system under which the young heir was schooled,
up to the time of his majority. They belonged to "the world"[112]
inasmuch as they were, in comparison with Christianity, unspiritual
in their nature, uninformed by "the Spirit of God's Son" (ver. 6).
The language of Heb. ix. 1, 10 explains this phrase: "The first
covenant had a _worldly_ sanctuary," with "ordinances of flesh,
imposed till the time of rectification." The sensuous factor that
entered into the Jewish revelation formed the point of contact with
Paganism which Paul brings into view in the next paragraph. Yet rude
and earthly as the Mosaic system was in some of its features, it was
Divinely ordained and served an essential purpose in the progress of
revelation. It shielded the Church's infancy. It acted the part of a
prudent steward, a watchful guardian. The heritage of Abraham came
into possession of his heirs enriched by their long minority. Mosaism
therefore, while spiritually inferior to the Covenant of grace in
Christ, has rendered invaluable service to it (comp. ver. 24: Chapter
XIV., p. 225).
[112] Surely _the world of men_, not the cosmical elements; comp.
Col. ii. 8, 20 (where _rudiments of the world_ is parallel to
_tradition of men_); also Gal. vi. 14; Heb. ix. 1. 1 Cor. iii.
1-3 supplies an interesting parallel: those who are _babes in
Christ_, are so far carnal and walk _according to man_, animated
by _the spirit of this world_ (1 Cor. ii. 12).
3. _The will of the Father_ determined the period of this
guardianship. However it may be in human law, this right of
fore-ordination resides in the Divine Fatherhood. In His unerring
foresight He fixed the hour when His sons should step into their
filial place. All such "times and seasons," Christ declared, "the
Father hath appointed on His own authority" (Acts i. 7). He imposed
the law of Moses, and annulled it, when He would. He kept the Jewish
people, for their own and the world's benefit, tied to the legal
"rudiments," held in the leading-strings of Judaism. It was His to
say when this subjection should cease, when the Church might receive
the Spirit of His Son. If this decree appeared to be arbitrary, if
it was strange that the Jewish fathers--men so noble in faith and
character--were kept in bondage and fear, we must remind ourselves
that "so it seemed good in the Father's sight." Hebrew pride found
this hard to brook. To think that God had denied this privilege in
time past to His chosen people, to bestow it all at once and by mere
grace on Gentile sinners, making them at "the eleventh hour" equal to
those who had borne for so long the burden and heat of the day! that
the children of Abraham had been, as Paul maintains, for centuries
treated as _slaves_, and now these heathen aliens are made _sons_
just as much as they! But this was God's plan; and it must be right.
"Who art thou, O man, that repliest against God?"
II. However, the nonage of the Church has passed. God's sons are now
to be owned for such. _It is Christ's mission to constitute men sons
of God_ (vv. 4, 5).
His advent was the turning-point of human affairs, "the fulness of
time." Paul's glance in these verses takes in a vast horizon. He
views Christ in His relation both to God and to humanity, both to
law and redemption. The appearance of "the Son of God, woman-born,"
completes the previous course of time; it is the goal of antecedent
revelation, unfolding "the mystery kept secret through times
eternal," but now "made known to all the nations" (Rom. xvi. 25,
26). Promise and Law both looked forward to this hour. Sin had been
"passed by" in prospect of it, receiving hitherto a partial and
provisional forgiveness. The aspirations excited, the needs created
by earlier religion demanded their satisfaction. The symbolism of
type and ceremony, with their rude picture-writing, waited for their
Interpreter. The prophetic soul of "the wide world, dreaming of
things to come," watched for this day. They that looked for Israel's
redemption, the Simeons and Annas of the time, the authentic heirs
of the promise, knew by sure tokens that it was near. Their aged
eyes in the sight of the infant Jesus descried its rising. The set
time had come, to which all times looked since Adam's fall and the
first promise. At the moment when Israel seemed farthest from help
and hope, the "horn of salvation was raised up in the house of
David,"--_God sent forth His Son_.
1. _The sending of the Son_ brought the world's servitude to an
end. "Henceforth," said Jesus, "I call you not servants" (John xv.
15). Till now "servant of God" had been the highest title men could
wear. The heathen were enslaved to false gods (ver. 8). And Israel,
knowing the true God, knew Him at a distance, serving too often in
the spirit of the elder son of the parable, who said, "Lo these many
years do I _slave_ for thee" (Luke xv. 29). None could with free
soul lift his eyes to heaven and say, "Abba, Father." Men had great
thoughts about God, high speculations. They had learnt imperishable
truths concerning His unity, His holiness, His majesty as Creator and
Lawgiver. They named Him the "Lord," the "Almighty," the "I AM." But
His _Fatherhood_ as Christ revealed it, they had scarcely guessed.
They thought of Him as humble bondmen of a revered and august master,
as sheep might of a good shepherd. The idea of a personal _sonship_
towards the Holy One of Israel was inconceivable, till Christ brought
it with Him into the world, till _God sent forth His Son_.
He sent Him as "His Son." To speak of Christ, with the mystical
Germans, as the _ideal Urmensch_--the ideal Son of man, the foretype
of humanity--is to express a great truth. Mankind was created in
Christ, who is "the image of God, firstborn of all creation." But
this is not what Paul is saying here. The doubly compounded Greek
verb at the head of this sentence (repeated with like emphasis in
ver. 6) signifies "sent forth from" Himself: He came in the character
of _God's_ Son, bringing His sonship with Him. He was the Son of God
before He was sent out. He did not become so in virtue of His mission
to mankind. His relations with men, in Paul's conception, rested
upon His pre-existing relationship to God. "The Word" who "became
flesh, was with God, was God in the beginning." "He called God His
own Father, making Himself equal with God" (John v. 18): so the Jews
had gathered from His own declarations. Paul admitted the claim when
"God revealed His Son" to him, and affirms it here unequivocally.
"The Son of God," arriving "in the fulness of time," enters human
life. Like any other son of man, He is _born of a woman, born under
law_. Here is the _kenosis_, the emptying of Divinity, of which the
Apostle speaks in Phil. ii. 5-8. The phrase "born of woman," does not
refer specifically to the _virgin-birth_; this term describes human
origin on the side of its weakness and dependence (Job xiv. 1; Matt.
xi. 11). Paul is thinking not of the difference, but of the identity
of Christ's birth and our own. We are carried back to Bethlehem.
We see Jesus a babe lying in His mother's arms--_God's Son a human
infant_, drawing His life from a weak woman![113]
[113] Comp. Rom. i. 3, 4; ix. 5; 2 Cor. xiii. 4; Eph. iv. 9, 10;
Ph. ii. 6-8; Col. i. 15, 18; ii. 9; 1 Tim. iii. 16.
Nor is "born under law" a distinction intended to limit the previous
term, as though it meant a _born Jew_, and not a mere woman's son.
This expression, to the mind of the reader of ch. iii., conveys the
idea of _subjection_, of humiliation rather than eminence. "Though
He was (God's) Son," Christ must needs "learn His obedience" (Heb.
v. 8). The Jewish people experienced above all others the power of
the law to chasten and humble. Their law was to them more sensibly,
what the moral law is in varying degree to the world everywhere, an
instrument of condemnation. God's Son was now put under its power. As
a man He was "under law;" as a Jew He came under its most stringent
application. He declined none of the burdens of His birth. He
submitted not only to the general moral demands of the Divine law for
men, but to all the duties and proprieties incident to His position
as a man, even to those ritual ordinances which His coming was to
abolish. He set a perfect example of loyalty. "Thus it becometh us,"
He said, "to fulfil all righteousness."
The Son of God who was to end the legal bondage, was sent into it
Himself. He wore the legal yoke that He might break it. He took "the
form of a servant," to win our enfranchisement. "God sent forth His
Son, human, law-bound--that He might _redeem those under law_."
Redemption was Christ's errand. We have learned already how "He
redeemed us from the curse of the law," by the sacrifice of the
cross (ch. iii. 13). This was the primary object of His mission: to
ransom men from the guilt of past sin. Now we discern its further
purpose--the positive and constructive side of the Divine counsel.
Justification is the preface to _adoption_. The man "under law" is
not only cursed by his failure to keep it; he lives in a servile
state, debarred from filial rights. Christ "bought us out" of this
condition. While the expiation rendered in His death clears off the
entail of human guilt, His incarnate life and spiritual union with
believing men sustain that action, making the redemption complete and
permanent. As enemies, "we were reconciled to God by the death of
His Son;" now "reconciled, we shall be saved by His life" (Rom. v.
10). Salvation is not through the death of Christ alone. The Babe of
Bethlehem, the crowned Lord of glory is our Redeemer, as well as the
Man of Calvary. The cross is indeed the centre of His redemption; but
it has a vast circumference. All that Christ is, all that He has done
and is doing as the Incarnate Son, the God-man, helps to make men
sons of God. The purpose of His mission is therefore stated a second
time and made complete in the words of ver. 5 _b_: "that we might
_receive the adoption of sons_." The sonship carries everything else
with it--"if children, then heirs" (ver. 7). There is no room for any
supplementary office of Jewish ritual. That is left behind with our
babyhood.
2. So much for the ground of sonship. Its proof lay in the _sending
forth of the Spirit of the Son_.
The mission of the Son and that of the Spirit are spoken of in vv.
3-6 in parallel terms: "God _sent forth_ His Son--_sent forth_ the
Spirit of His Son," the former into the world of men, the latter
"into" their individual "hearts." The second act matches the first,
and crowns it. Pentecost is the sequel of the Incarnation (John ii.
21; 1 Cor. vi. 19, 20). And Pentecost is repeated in the heart of
every child of God. The Apostle addresses himself to his readers'
experience ("because _ye_ are sons") as in ch. iii. 3-6, and on
the same point. They had "received the Spirit:" this marked them
indubitably as heirs of Abraham (ch. iii. 14)--and what is more, sons
of God. Had not the mystic cry, _Abba, Father_, sounded in their
hearts? The filial consciousness was born within them, supernaturally
inspired. When they believed in Christ, when they saw in Him the
Son of God, their Redeemer, they were stirred with a new, ecstatic
impulse; a Divine glow of love and joy kindled in their breasts; a
voice not their own spoke to their spirit--their soul leaped forth
upon their lips, crying to God, "Father, Father!" They were children
of God, and knew it. "The Spirit Himself bore them witness" (Rom.
viii. 15).
This sentiment was not due to their own reflection, not the mere
opening of a buried spring of feeling in their nature. _God sent it_
into their hearts. The outward miracles which attended the first
bestowment of this gift, showed from what source it came (ch. iii.
5). Nor did Christ personally impart the assurance. He had gone, that
the Paraclete might come. Here was another Witness, sent by a second
mission from the Father (John xvi. 7). His advent is signalised in
clear distinction from that of the Son. He comes in the joint name of
Father and of Son. Jesus called Him "the Spirit of the Father;"[114]
the Apostle, "the Spirit of God's Son."
[114] Matt. x. 20; Luke xi. 13; John xiv. 16; Acts i. 4, 5.
To us He is "the Spirit of adoption," replacing the former "spirit of
bondage unto fear." For by His indwelling we are "joined to the Lord"
and made "one spirit" with Him, so that Christ lives in us (ch. ii.
20). And since Christ is above all things the Son, His Spirit is a
spirit of sonship; those who receive Him are sons of God. Our sonship
is through the Holy Spirit derived from His. Till Christ's redemption
was effected, such adoption was in the nature of things impossible.
This filial cry of Gentile hearts attested the entrance of a Divine
life into the world. The Spirit of God's Son had become the new
spirit of mankind.
_Abba_, the Syrian vocative for _father_, was a word familiar to the
lips of Jesus. The instance of its use recorded in Mark xiv. 36, was
but one of many such. No one had hitherto approached God as He did.
His utterance of this word, expressing the attitude of His life of
prayer and breathing the whole spirit of His religion, profoundly
affected His disciples. So that the _Abba_ of Jesus became a
watchword of His Church, being the proper name of the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ. Gentile believers pronounced it, conscious
that in doing so they were joined in spirit to the Lord who said, "My
Father, and your Father!" Greek-speaking Christians supplemented it
by their own equivalent, as we by the English _Father_. This precious
vocable is carried down the ages and round the whole world in the
mother-tongue of Jesus, a memorial of the hour when through Him men
learned to call God Father.
"Because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit," with this cry. The
witness of sonship follows on the adoption, and seals it. The child
is born, then cries; the cry is the evidence of life. But this is
not the first office of the Holy Spirit to the regenerate soul. Many
a silent impulse has He given, frequent and long continued may have
been His visitations, before His presence reveals itself audibly.
From the first the new life of grace is implanted by His influence.
"That which is _born of the Spirit_, is spirit." "He dwelleth with
you, and _is in you_,"[115] said Jesus to His disciples, before the
Pentecostal effusion. Important and decisive as the witness of the
Holy Spirit to our sonship is, we must not limit His operation to
this event. Deeply has He wrought already on the soul in which His
work reaches this issue; and when it is reached, He has still much
to bestow, much to accomplish in us. All truth, all holiness, all
comfort are His; and into these He leads the children of God. Living
by the Spirit, in Him we proceed to walk (ch. v. 25).
[115] John xiv. 17; the _present_ (ἐστίν) is the preferable
reading. See Westcott _ad loc._
The interchange of person in the subject of vv. 5-8 is very
noticeable. This agitated style betrays high-strung emotion. Writing
first, in ver. 3, in the language of Jewish experience, in ver. 6
Paul turns upon his readers and claims them for witnesses to the same
adoption which Jewish believers in Christ (ver. 5) had received.
Instantly he falls back into the first person; it is his own joyous
consciousness that breaks forth in the filial cry of ver. 6_b_. In
the more calm concluding sentence the second person is resumed; and
now in the individualising singular, as though he would lay hold of
his readers one by one, and bid them look each into his own heart to
find the proof of sonship, as he writes: "So that thou art no longer
a slave, but a son; and if a son, also an heir through God."
_An heir through God_--this is the true reading, and is greatly to
the point. It carries to a climax the emphatic repetition of "God"
observed in vv. 4 and 6. "_God_ sent His Son" into the world; "_God_
sent" in turn "His Son's Spirit into your hearts." God then, and
no other, has bestowed your inheritance. It is yours by His fiat.
Who dares challenge it?[116] Words how suitable to reassure Gentile
Christians, browbeaten by arrogant Judaism! Our reply is the same
to those who at this day deny our Christian and churchly standing,
because we reject their sacerdotal claims.
[116] Comp. Rom. viii. 31-35; Acts xi. 17.
What this inheritance includes in its final attainment, "doth not
yet appear." Enough to know that "now are we children of God." The
redemption of the body, the deliverance of nature from its sentence
of dissolution, the abolishment of death--these are amongst
its certainties. Its supreme joy lies in the promise of being
with Christ, to witness and share His glory.[117] "Heirs of God,
joint-heirs with Christ"--a destiny like this overwhelms thought and
makes hope a rapture. God's sons may be content to wait and see how
their heritage will turn out. Only let us be sure that we are His
sons. Doctrinal orthodoxy, ritual observance, moral propriety do
not impart, and do not supersede "the earnest of the Spirit in our
hearts." The religion of Jesus the Son of God is the religion of the
filial consciousness.
[117] John xii. 26; xvii. 24; Rev. iii. 21; Phil. i. 23; Col.
iii. 4; 1 Pet. v. 1.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE RETURN TO BONDAGE.
"Howbeit at that time, not knowing God, ye were in bondage to
them which by nature are no gods: but now that ye have come to
know God, or rather to be known of God, how turn ye back again
to the weak and beggarly rudiments, whereunto ye desire to be in
bondage over again? Ye observe days, and months, and seasons,
and years. I am afraid of you, lest by any means I have bestowed
labour upon you in vain"--GAL. iv. 8-11.
"Sons of God, whom He made His heirs in Christ, how are you turning
back to legal bondage!" Such is the appeal with which the Apostle
follows up his argument. "Foolish Galatians," we seem to hear him say
again, "who has bewitched you into this?" They forget the call of
the Divine grace; they turn away from the sight of Christ crucified;
nay, they are renouncing their adoption into the family of God.
Paul knew something of the fickleness of human nature; but he was
not prepared for this. How can men who have tasted liberty prefer
slavery, or fullgrown sons desire to return to the "rudiments" of
childhood? After knowing God as He is in Christ, is it possible that
these Galatians have begun to dote on ceremonial, to make a religion
of "times and seasons;" that they are becoming devotees of Jewish
ritual? What can be more frivolous, more irrational than this? On
such people Paul's labours seem to be thrown away. "You make me
fear," he says, "that I have toiled for you in vain."
In this expostulation two principles emerge with especial prominence.
I. First, that _knowledge of God, bringing spiritual freedom, lays
upon us higher responsibilities_. "Then indeed," he says, "not
knowing God, you were in bondage to false gods. Your heathen life was
in a sense excusable. But now something very different is expected
from you, since you have come to know God."
We are reminded of the Apostle's memorable words spoken at Athens:
"The times of ignorance God overlooked" (Acts xvii. 30). "Ye say, We
see," said Jesus; "your sin remaineth" (John ix. 41). Increased light
brings stricter judgement. If this was true of men who had merely
heard the message of Christ, how much more of those who had proved
its saving power. Ritualism was well enough for Pagans, or even for
Jews before Christ's coming and the outpouring of His Spirit--but
for Christians! For those into whose hearts God had breathed the
Spirit of His Son, who had learned to "worship God in the Spirit and
to have no confidence in the flesh"--for Paul's Galatians to yield
to the legalist "persuasion" was a fatal relapse. In principle, and
in its probable issue, this course was a reverting toward their old
heathenism.
The Apostle again recalls them, as he does so often his children in
Christ, to the time of their conversion. They had been, he reminds
them, idolaters; ignorant of the true God, they were "enslaved to
things that by nature are no gods." Two definitions Paul has given
of idolatry: "There is no idol in the world;" and again, "The things
which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not
to God" (1 Cor. viii. 4; x. 20). Half lies, half devilry: such was
the popular heathenism of the day. "Gods many and lords many" the
Galatian Pagans worshipped--a strange Pantheon. There were their old,
weird Celtic deities, before whom our British forefathers trembled.
On this ancestral faith had been superimposed the frantic rites of
the Phrygian Mother, Cybele, with her mutilated priests; and the more
genial and humanistic cultus of the Greek Olympian gods. But they
were gone, the whole "damnéd crew," as Milton calls them; for those
whose eyes had seen the glory in the face of Jesus Christ, their
spell was broken; heaven was swept clear and earth pure of their
foul presence. The old gods are dead. No renaissance of humanism, no
witchcraft of poetry can re-animate them. To us after these eighteen
centuries, as to the Galatian believers, "there is one God the
Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus
Christ, through whom are all things, and we through Him." A man who
knew the Old Testament, to say nothing of the teaching of Christ,
could never sacrifice to Jupiter and Mercurius any more, nor shout
"Great is Diana of the Ephesians." They were painted idols, _shams_;
he had seen through them. They might frighten children in the dark;
but the sun was up. Christianity destroyed Paganism as light kills
darkness. Paul did not fear that his readers would slide back into
actual heathenism. That was intellectually impossible. There are
warnings in his Epistles against the spirit of idolatry, and against
conformity with its customs; but none against return to its beliefs.
The old heathen life was indeed a _slavery_, full of fear and
degradation. The religious Pagan could never be sure that he had
propitiated his gods sufficiently, or given to all their due. They
were jealous and revengeful, envious of human prosperity, capable
of infinite wrongdoing. In the worship of many of them acts were
enjoined revolting to the conscience. And this is true of Polytheism
all over the world. It is the most shameful bondage ever endured by
the soul of man.
But Paul's readers had "come to know God." They had touched the great
Reality. The phantoms had vanished; the Living One stood before them.
His glory shone into their hearts "in the face of Jesus Christ."
This, whenever it takes place, is for any man the crisis of his
life--when he _comes to know God_, when _the God-consciousness_ is
born in him. Like the dawn of self-consciousness, it may be gradual.
There are those, the happy few, who were "born again" so soon as they
were born to thought and choice; they cannot remember a time when
they did not love God, when they were not sensible of being "known
of Him." But with others, as with Paul, the revelation is made at an
instant, coming like a lightning-flash at midnight. But unlike the
lightning it remained. Let the manifestation of God come how or when
it may, it is decisive. The man into whose soul the Almighty has
spoken His _I AM_, can never be the same afterwards. He may forget;
he may deny it: but he has _known God_; he has seen the light of
life. If he returns to darkness, his darkness is blacker and guiltier
than before. On his brow there rests in all its sadness "Sorrow's
crown of sorrow, remembering happier things."
Offences venial, excusable hitherto, from this time assume a graver
hue. Things that in a lower stage of life were innocent, and even
possessed religious value, may now be unlawful, and the practice of
them a declension, the first step in apostasy. What is delightful in
a child, becomes folly in a grown man. The knowledge of God in Christ
has raised us in the things of the spirit to man's estate, and it
requires that we should "put away childish things," and amongst them
ritual display and sacerdotal officiations, Pagan, Jewish, or Romish.
These things form no part of the knowledge of God, or of the "true
worship of the Father."
The Jewish "rudiments" were designed for men who had not known God as
Christ declares Him, who had never seen the Saviour's cross. Jewish
saints could not worship God in the Spirit of adoption. They remained
under the spirit of servitude and fear. Their conceptions were so
far "weak and poor" that they supposed the Divine favour to depend
on such matters as the "washing of cups and pots," and the precise
number of feet that one walked on the Sabbath. These ideas belonged
to a childish stage of the religious life. Pharisaism had developed
to the utmost this lower element of the Mosaic system, at the expense
of everything that was spiritual in it. Men who had been brought up
in Judaism might indeed, after conversion to Christ, retain their old
customs as matters of social usage or pious habit, without regarding
them as vital to religion. With Gentiles it was otherwise. Adopting
Jewish rites _de novo_, they must do so on grounds of distinct
religious necessity. For this very reason the duty of circumcision
was pressed upon them. It was a means, they were told, essential
to their spiritual perfection, to the attainment of full Christian
privileges. But to know God by the witness of the Holy Spirit of
Christ, as the Galatians had done, was an experience sufficient to
show that this "persuasion" was false. It did not "come of Him that
called them." It introduced them to a path the opposite of that they
had entered at their conversion, a way that led downwards and not
upwards, from the spiritual to the sensuous, from the salvation of
faith to that of self-wrought work of law.
"Known God," Paul says,--"or rather _were known of God_." He hastens
to correct himself. He will not let an expression pass that seems to
ascribe anything simply to human acquisition. "Ye have not chosen
Me," said Jesus; "I have chosen you." So the Apostle John: "Not that
we loved God, but that He loved us." This is true through the entire
range of the Christian life. "We apprehend that for which we were
apprehended by Christ Jesus." Our love, our knowledge--what are they
but the sense of the Divine love and knowledge in us? Religion is a
bestowment, not an achievement. It is "God working in us to will and
work for the sake of His good pleasure." In this light the gospel
presented itself at first to the Galatians. The preaching of the
Apostle, the vision of the cross of Christ, made them sensible of
God's living presence. They felt the gaze of an Infinite purity and
compassion, of an All-wise, All-pitiful Father, fixed upon them. He
was calling them, slaves of idolatry and sin, "into the fellowship
of His Son Jesus Christ." The illuminating glance of God pierced to
their inmost being. In that light God and the soul met, and knew each
other.
And now, after this profound, transforming revelation, this sublime
communion with God, will they turn back to a life of puerile
formalities, of slavish dependence and fear? Is the strength of their
devotion to be spent, its fragrance exhaled in the drudgery of legal
service? Surely they know God better than to think that He requires
this. And He who knew them, as they have proved, and knows what was
right and needful for them, has imposed no such burden. He granted
them the rich gifts of His grace--the Divine sonship, the heavenly
heirship--on terms of mere faith in Christ, and without legal
stipulation of any kind. Is it not enough that God knows them, and
counts them for His children!
So knowing, and so known, let them be content. Let them seek only
to keep themselves in the love of God, and in the comfort of His
Spirit. Raised to this high level, they must not decline to a lower.
Their heathen "rudiments" were excusable before; but now even Jewish
"rudiments" are things to be left behind.
II. It further appears that the Apostle saw _an element existing in
Judaism common to it with the ethnic religions_. For he says that his
readers, formerly "enslaved to idols," are "now _turning back_ to the
weak and beggarly rudiments, to which they would fain be in bondage
_over again_."
"The rudiments" of ver. 9 cannot, without exegetical violence,
be detached from "the rudiments of the world" of ver. 3. And
these latter plainly signify the Judaic rites (see Chapter XVI.).
The Judaistic practices of the Galatians were, Paul declares, a
_backsliding toward their old idolatries_. We can only escape this
construction of the passage at the cost of making the Apostle's
remonstrance inconsequent and pointless. The argument of the letter
hitherto has been directed with concentrated purpose against Judaic
conformity. To suppose that just at this point, in making its
application, he turns aside without notice or explanation to an
entirely different matter, is to stultify his reasoning. The only
ground for referring the "days and seasons" of ver. 10 to any other
than a Jewish origin, lies in the apprehension that such reference
disparages the Christian Sabbath.
But how, we ask, was it possible for Paul to use language which
identifies the revered law of God with rites of heathenism, which he
accounted a "fellowship with demons"? Bishop Lightfoot has answered
this question in words we cannot do better than quote: "The Apostle
regards the higher element in heathen religion as corresponding,
however imperfectly, to the lower in the Mosaic law. For we may
consider both the one and the other as made up of two component
parts, the _spiritual_ and the _ritualistic_. Now viewed in their
_spiritual_ aspect, there is no comparison between the one and the
other. In this respect the heathen religions, so far as they added
anything of their own to that sense of dependence on God which is
innate in man and which they could not entirely crush, were wholly
bad. On the contrary, in the Mosaic law the spiritual element was
most truly divine. But this does not enter into our reckoning
here. For Christianity has appropriated all that was spiritual in
its predecessor.... The _ritualistic_ element alone remains to be
considered, and here is the meeting-point of Judaism and Heathenism.
In Judaism this was as much lower than its spiritual element, as
in Heathenism it was higher. Hence the two systems approach within
such a distance that they can, under certain limitations, be classed
together. They have at least so much in common that a lapse into
Judaism can be regarded as a relapse into the position of unconverted
Heathenism. Judaism was a system of bondage like Heathenism.
Heathenism had been a disciplinary training like Judaism" (Commentary
_in loc._).
This line of explanation may perhaps be carried a step further.
Judaism was rudimentary throughout. A religion so largely ritualistic
could not but be spiritually and morally defective. In its partial
apprehension of the Divine attributes, its limitation of God's grace
to a single people, its dim perception of immortality, there were
great deficiencies in the Jewish creed. Its ethical code, moreover,
was faulty; it contained "precepts given for the hardness of men's
hearts"--touching, for example, the laws of marriage, and the right
of revenge. There was not a little in Judaism, especially in its
Pharisaic form, that belonged to a half-awakened conscience, to a
rude and sensuous religious faculty. Christ came to "fulfil the
law;" but in that fulfilment He did not shrink from correcting
it. He emended the letter of its teaching, that its true spirit
might be elicited. For an enlightened Christian who had learned of
Jesus the "royal law, the law of liberty," to conform to Judaism
was unmistakably to "turn back." Moreover, it was just the weakest
and least spiritual part of the system of Moses that the legalist
teachers inculcated on Gentile Christians; while their own lives fell
short of its moral requirements (ch. vi. 12).
Mosaism had been in the days of its inspiration and creative vigour
the great opponent of idolatry. It was the Lord's witness throughout
long centuries of heathen darkness and oppression, and by its
testimony has rendered splendid service to God and man. But from the
standpoint of Christianity a certain degree of resemblance begins
to be seen underlying this antagonism. The faith of the Israelitish
people combatted idolatry with weapons too much like its own. A
worldly and servile element remained in it. To one who has advanced
in front, positions at an earlier stage of his progress lying apart
and paths widely divergent now assume the same general direction. To
resort either to Jewish or heathen rites, meant _to turn back from
Christ_. It was to adopt principles of religion obsolete and unfit
for those who had known God through Him. What in its time and for its
purpose was excellent, nay indispensable, in doctrine and in worship,
in time also had "decayed and waxed old." To tie the living spirit of
Christianity to dead forms is to tie it to corruption.
"Weak and beggarly rudiments"--it is a hard sentence; and yet what
else were Jewish ceremonies and rules of diet, in comparison with
"righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost"? What was
circumcision, now that there was no longer "Jew and Greek?" What
was there in Saturday more than in any other day of the week, if it
ceased to be a sign between the Lord of the Sabbath and His people?
These things were, as Paul saw them, the cast-clothes of religion.
For Gentile Christians the history of the Jewish ordinances had
much instruction; but their observance was no whit more binding
than that of heathen ceremonies. Even in the ancient times God
valued them only as they were the expression of a devout, believing
spirit. "Your new moons and your appointed feasts," He had said
to an ungodly generation, "My soul hateth" (Isa. i. 14). And was
He likely to accept them now, when they were enforced by ambition
and party-spirit, at the expense of His Church's peace; when their
observance turned men's thoughts away from faith in His Son, and in
the power of His life-giving Spirit? There is nothing too severe,
too scornful for Paul to say of these venerable rites of Israel, now
that they stand in the way of a living faith and trammel the freedom
of the sons of God. He tosses them aside as the swaddling-bands of
the Church's infancy--childish fetters, too weak to hold the limbs
of grown men. "He brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had
made; for the children of Israel did burn incense to it; and he
called it _Nehushtan--a piece of brass_" (2 Kings xviii. 4). Brave
Hezekiah! Paul does the same with the whole ceremonial of Moses.
"Beggarly rudiments," he says. What divine refreshment there is in
a blast of wholesome scorn! It was their traditions, their ritual
that the Judaists worshipped, not the Holy One of Israel. "They
would compass sea and land to make one proselyte," and then "make
him twofold more the child of hell than themselves." This was the
only result that the success of the Judaistic agitation could have
achieved.
In thus decrying Jewish ordinances, the Apostle by implication
allows a certain value to the rites of Paganism. The Galatians were
formerly in bondage to "them that are no gods." Now, he says, they
are turning _again_ to the like servitude by conforming to Mosaic
legalism. They wish to come _again_ under subjection to "the weak and
poor rudiments." In Galatian heathenism Paul appears to recognise
"rudiments" of truth and a certain preparation for Christianity.
While Judaic rites amounted to no more than rudiments of a spiritual
faith, there were influences at work in Paganism that come under the
same category. Paul believed that "God had not left Himself without
witness to any." He never treated heathen creeds with indiscriminate
contempt, as though they were utterly corrupt and worthless. Witness
his address to the "religious" Athenians, and to the wild people
of Lycaonia (Acts xiv. 15-17; xvii. 22-31). He finds his text in
"certain of your own (heathen) poets." He appeals to the sense
of a Divine presence "not far from any one of us;" and declares
that though God was "unknown" to the nations, they were under His
guidance and were "feeling after Him." To this extent Paul admits
a _Preparatio evangelica_ in the Gentile world; he would have been
prepared, with Clement of Alexandria and Origen, and with modern
students of comparative religion, to trace in the poets and wise men
of Greece, in the lawgivers of Rome, in the mystics of the East,
presentiments of Christianity, ideas and aspirations that pointed to
it as their fulfilment. The human race was not left in total darkness
beyond the range of the light shining on Zion's hill. The old Pagans,
"suckled in a creed outworn," were not altogether God-forsaken. They
too, amid darkness like the shadow of death, had "glimpses that might
make them less forlorn." And so have the heathen still. We must not
suppose either that revealed religion was perfect from the beginning;
or that the natural religions were altogether without fragments and
rudiments of saving truth.
"Days you are scrupulously keeping, and months, and seasons, and
years,"--the weekly sabbath, the new moon, the annual festivals,
the sacred seventh year, the round of the Jewish Kalendar. On these
matters the Galatians had, as it seems, already fallen in with the
directions of the Jewish teachers. The word by which the Apostle
describes their practice, παρατηρεῖσθε, denotes, besides the fact,
the manner and spirit of the observance--an _assiduous, anxious
attention_, such as the spirit of legal exaction dictated. These
prescriptions the Galatians would the more readily adopt, because
in their heathen life they were accustomed to stated celebrations.
The Pagan Kalendar was crowded with days sacred to gods and divine
heroes. This resemblance justified Paul all the more in taxing them
with relapsing towards heathenism.
The Church of later centuries, both in its Eastern and Western
branch, went far in the same direction. It made the keeping of
holy days a prominent and obligatory part of Christianity; it has
multiplied them superstitiously and beyond all reason. Amongst the
rest it incorporated heathen festivals, too little changed by their
consecration.
Paul's remonstrance condemns in principle the enforcement of sacred
seasons as things essential to salvation, in the sense in which the
Jewish Sabbath was the bond of the ancient Covenant. We may not place
even the Lord's Day upon this footing. Far different from this is the
unforced and grateful celebration of the First Day of the week, which
sprang up in the Apostolic Church, and is assumed by the Apostles
Paul and John (1 Cor. xvi. 2; Rev. i. 10). The rule of the seventh
day's rest has so much intrinsic fitness, and has brought with it so
many benefits, that after it had been enforced by strict law in the
Jewish Church for so long, its maintenance could now be left, without
express re-enactment, as a matter of freedom to the good sense and
right feeling of Christian believers, "sons of the resurrection."
Its legislative sanction rests on grounds of public propriety and
national well-being, which need not to be asserted here. Wherever the
"Lord of the Sabbath" rules, His Day will be gladly kept for His sake.
The Apostle in protecting Gentile liberties is no enemy to order in
worship and outward life. No one can justly quote his authority in
opposition to such appointments as a Christian community may make,
for reasons of expediency and decorum, in the regulation of its
affairs. But he teaches that the essence of Christianity does not lie
in things of this kind, not in questions of meat and drink, nor of
time and place. To put these details, however important in their own
order, on a level with righteousness, mercy, and faith, is to bring
a snare upon the conscience; it is to introduce once more into the
Church the leaven of justification by works of law.
* * * * *
"Weak and poor" the best forms of piety become, without inward
knowledge of God. Liturgies, creeds and confessions, church music
and architecture, Sundays, fasts, festivals, are beautiful things
when they are the transcript of a living faith. When that is gone,
their charm, their spiritual worth is gone. They no longer belong to
_religion_; they have ceased to be a bond between the souls of men
and God. "According to our faith"--our actual, not professional or
"confessional" faith--"it shall be done unto us": such is the rule of
Christ. To cling to formularies which have lost their meaning and to
which the Spirit of truth gives no present witness, is a demoralising
bondage.
But this is not the only, nor the commonest way in which the sons of
God are tempted to return to bondage. "Whosoever _committeth sin_,"
Christ said, "is the servant of sin." And the Apostle will have to
warn his readers that by their abuse of liberty, by their readiness
to make it "an occasion to the flesh," they were likely to forfeit
it. "They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh" (ch. v. 24).
This warning must be balanced against the other. Our liberty from
outward constraint should be still more a liberty from the dominion
of self, from pride and desire and anger; or it is not the liberty
of God's children. Inward servitude is after all the vilest and worst.
* * * * *
"You make me afraid," at last the Apostle is compelled to say, "that
I have laboured in vain." His enemies had caused him no such fear.
While his children in the faith were true to him, he was afraid of
nothing. "Now we live," he says in one of his Epistles, "if ye stand
fast in the Lord!" But if they should fall away? He trembles for
his own work, for these wayward children who had already caused him
so many pangs. It is in a tone of the deepest solicitude that he
continues his expostulation in the following paragraph.
CHAPTER XVIII.
_PAUL'S ENTREATY._
"I beseech you, brethren, be as I _am_, for I _am_ as ye _are_.
Ye did me no wrong: but ye know that because of an infirmity of
the flesh I preached the gospel unto you the first time: and
that which was a temptation to you in my flesh ye despised not,
nor rejected; but ye received me as an angel of God, _even_ as
Christ Jesus. Where then is that gratulation of yourselves? for
I bear you witness, that, if possible, ye would have plucked out
your eyes and given them to me. So then am I become your enemy,
because I tell you the truth? They zealously seek you in no good
way; nay, they desire to shut you out, that ye may seek them.
But it is good to be zealously sought in a good matter at all
times, and not only when I am present with you,--my children, of
whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you.[118]
Yea, I could wish to be present with you now, and to change my
voice; for I am perplexed about you."--GAL. iv. 12-20.
[118] For the rendering of this clause, see the exposition which
follows.
The reproof of the last paragraph ended in a sigh. To see Christ's
freemen relapsing into bondage, and exchanging their Divine
birthright for childish toys of ceremonial, what can be more
saddening and disappointing than this? Their own experience of
salvation, the Apostle's prayers and toils on their behalf, are, to
all appearance, wasted on these foolish Galatians. One resource is
still left him. He has refuted and anathematized the "other gospel."
He has done what explanation and argument can do to set himself right
with his readers, and to destroy the web of sophistry in which their
minds had been entangled. He will now try to win them by a gentler
persuasion. If reason and authority fail, "for love's sake he will
rather beseech" them.
He had reminded them of their former idolatry; and this calls up
to the Apostle's mind the circumstances of his first ministry in
Galatia. He sees himself once more a stranger amongst this strange
people, a traveller fallen sick and dependent on their hospitality,
preaching a gospel with nothing to recommend it in the appearance
of its advocate, and which the sickness delaying his journey had
compelled him, contrary to his intention, to proclaim amongst them.
Yet with what ready and generous hospitality they had received the
infirm Apostle! Had he been an angel from heaven--nay, the Lord
Jesus Himself, they could scarcely have shown him more attention
than they did. His physical weakness, which would have moved the
contempt of others, called forth their sympathies. However severely
he may be compelled to censure them, however much their feelings
toward him have changed, he will never forget the kindness he then
received. Surely they cannot think him their enemy, or allow him to
be supplanted by the unworthy rivals who are seeking their regard. So
Paul pleads with his old friends, and seeks to win for his arguments
a way to their hearts through the affection for himself which he fain
hopes is still lingering there.
_Hoc prudentis est pastoris_, Calvin aptly says. But there is more in
this entreaty than a calculated prudence. It is a cry of the heart.
Paul's soul is in the pangs of travail (ver. 19). We have seen the
sternness of his face relax while he pursues his mighty argument. As
he surveys the working of God's counsel in past ages, the promise
given to Abraham for all nations, the intervening legal discipline,
the coming of Christ in the fulness of time, the bursting of the
ancient bonds, the sending forth of the Spirit of adoption--and
all this for the sake of these Galatian Gentiles, and then thinks
how they are after all declining from grace and renouncing their
Divine inheritance, the Apostle's heart aches with grief. Foolish,
fickle as they have proved, they are his children. He will "travail
over them in birth a second time," if "Christ may yet be formed in
them." Perhaps he has written too harshly. He half repents of his
severity.[119] Fain would he "change his voice." If he could only
"be with them," and see them face to face, haply his tears, his
entreaties, would win them back. A rush of tender emotion wells up
in Paul's soul. All his relentings are stirred. He is no longer the
master in Christ rebuking unfaithful disciples; he is the mother
weeping over her misguided sons.
[119] Comp. 2 Cor. ii. 4; vii. 8.
* * * * *
There are considerable difficulties in the exegesis of this passage.
We note them in succession as they arise:--(1) In ver. 12 we prefer,
with Meyer and Lightfoot, to read, "Be as I, for I _became_ (rather
than _am_) as you--brethren, I beseech you." The verses preceding and
following both suggest the past tense in the ellipsis. Paul's memory
is busy. He appeals to the "auld lang syne." He reminds the Galatians
of what he "had been amongst them for their sake,"[120] how he then
behaved in regard to the matters in dispute. He assumed no airs of
Jewish superiority. He did not separate himself from his Gentile
brethren by any practice in which they could not join. He "became
as they," placing himself by their side on the ground of a common
Christian faith. He asks for reciprocity, for "a recompense in like
kind" (2 Cor. vi. 13). Are they going to set themselves above their
Apostle, to take their stand on that very ground of Mosaic privilege
which he had abandoned for their sake? He implores them not to do
this thing. The beseechment, in the proper order of the words, comes
in at the close of the sentence, with a pathetic emphasis. He makes
himself a suppliant. "I beg you," he says, "by our old affection, by
our brotherhood in Christ, not to desert me thus."
[120] Comp. 1 Thess. i. 5; ii. 7, 8.
(2) Suddenly Paul turns to another point, according to his wont in
this emotional mood: "There is nothing in which you have wronged me."
Is he contradicting some allegation which had helped to estrange the
Galatians? Had some one been saying that Paul was affronted by their
conduct, and was actuated by personal resentment? In that case we
should have looked for a specific explanation and rebutment of the
charge. Rather he is anticipating the thought that would naturally
arise in the minds of his readers at this point. "Paul is asking us,"
they would say, "to let bygones be bygones, to give up this Judaistic
attachment for his sake, and to meet him frankly on the old footing.
But supposing we try to do so, he is very angry with us, as this
letter shows; _he thinks we have treated him badly_; he will always
have a grudge against us. Things can never be again as they were
between ourselves and him."
Such feelings often arise upon the breach of an old friendship, to
prevent the offending party from accepting the proffered hand of
reconciliation. Paul's protest removes this hindrance. He replies,
"I have no sense of injury, no personal grievance against _you_. It
is impossible I should cherish ill-will towards you. You know how
handsomely you treated me when I first came amongst you. Nothing can
efface from my heart the recollection of that time. You must not
think that I hate you, because I tell you the truth" (ver. 16).
(3) "Because of an infirmity of the flesh" (physical weakness), is
the truer rendering of ver. 13; and "your temptation in my flesh" the
genuine reading of ver. 14, restored by the Revisers. Sickness had
arrested the Apostle's course during his second missionary tour, and
detained him in the Galatic country. So that he had not only "been
with" the Galatians "in weakness," as afterwards when during the same
journey he preached at Corinth (1 Cor. ii. 3); but actually "_because
of_ weakness." His infirmities gave him occasion to minister there,
when he had intended to pass them by.
Paul had no thought of evangelizing Galatia; another goal was in
view. It was patent to them--indeed he confessed as much at the
time--that if he had been able to proceed, he would not have lingered
in their country. This was certainly an unpromising introduction.
And the Apostle's state of health made it at that time a trial for
any one to listen to him. There was something in the nature of his
malady to excite contempt, even loathing for his person. "That which
tried you in my flesh, ye did not _despise_, nor _spit out_:" such
is Paul's vivid phrase. How few men would have humility enough to
refer to a circumstance of this kind; or could do so without loss of
dignity. He felt that the condition of the messenger might well have
moved this Galatian people to derision, rather than to reverence for
his message.
At the best Paul's appearance and address were none of the most
prepossessing.[121] The "ugly little Jew" M. Renan calls him,
repeating the taunts of his Corinthian contemners. His sickness
in Galatia, connected, it would appear, with some constitutional
weakness, from which he suffered greatly during his second and
third missionary tours, assumed a humiliating as well as a painful
form. Yet this "thorn in the flesh," a bitter trial assuredly to
himself,[122] had proved at once a trial and a blessing to his
unintended hearers in Galatia.
[121] 1 Cor. ii. 3; 2 Cor. iv. 7; x. 1, 10; xi. 6.
[122] Comp. 2 Cor. xii. 7-10, referring apparently to the first
outbreak of this mysterious affliction.
(4) So far from taking offence at Paul's unfortunate condition,
they welcomed him with enthusiasm. They "blessed themselves" that
he had come (ver. 15). They said one to another, "How fortunate we
are in having this good man amongst us! What a happy thing for us
that Paul's sickness obliged him to stay and give us the opportunity
of hearing his good news!" Such was their former "gratulation." The
regard they conceived for the sick Apostle was unbounded. "For I bear
you witness," he says, "that, if possible, you would have _dug out
your eyes_ and given them me!"
Is this no more than a strong hyperbole, describing the almost
extravagant devotion which the Galatians expressed to the Apostle?
Or are we to read the terms more literally? So it has been sometimes
supposed. In this expression some critics have discovered a clue
to the nature of Paul's malady. The Galatians, as they read the
sentence, wished they could have taken out their own eyes and given
them to Paul, _in place of his disabled ones_. This hypothesis,
it is argued, agrees with other circumstances of the case and gives
shape to a number of scattered intimations touching the same subject.
Infirmity of the eyes would explain the "large characters" of Paul's
handwriting (ch. vi. 11), and his habit of using an amanuensis. It
would account for his ignorance of the person of the High Priest at
his trial in Jerusalem (Acts xxiii. 2-5). The blindness that struck
him on the way to Damascus may have laid the foundation of a chronic
affection of this kind, afterwards developed and aggravated by the
hardships of his missionary life. And such an affliction would
correspond to what is said respecting the "thorn" of 2 Cor. xii. 7,
and the "temptation" of this passage. For it would be excessively
painful, and at the same time disabling and disfiguring in its
effects.
This conjecture has much to recommend it. But it finds a very
precarious support in the text. Paul does not say, "You would have
plucked out _your own_ (A.V.) eyes and given them _me_," as though
he were thinking of an exchange of eyes; but, "You would have
plucked out your _eyes_ and given them me"--as much as to say, "You
would have done anything in the world for me then,--even taken out
your eyes and given them to me."[123] In the phrase "dug out" we
may detect a touch of irony. This was the genuine Galatian style.
The Celtic temperament loves to launch itself out in vehemencies
and flourishes of this sort. These ardent Gauls had been perfectly
enraptured with Paul. They lavished upon him their most exuberant
metaphors. They said these things in all sincerity; he "bears them
record" to this. However cool they have become since, they were
gushing enough and to spare in their affection towards him then. And
now have they "so quickly" turned against him? Because he crosses
their new fancies and tells them unwelcome truths, they rush to the
opposite extreme and even think him their enemy!
[123] Comp. Matt. xviii. 9.
(5) Suddenly the Apostle turns upon his opposers (ver. 17). The
Judaizers had disturbed his happy relations with his Galatian
flock; they had made them half believe that he was their enemy.
The Galatians must choose between Paul and his traducers. Let them
scrutinise the motives of these new teachers. Let them call to mind
the claims of their father in Christ. "They are courting you," he
says,--"these present suitors for your regard--dishonourably; they
want to shut you out and have you to themselves, that you may pay
court to them." They pretend to be zealous for your interests; but it
is their own they seek (ch. vi. 12).
So far the Apostle's meaning is tolerably clear. But ver. 18 is
obscure. It may be construed in either of two ways, as _Paul_ or _the
Galatians_ are taken for the subject glanced at in the verb _to be
courted_ in its first clause: "But it is honourable to be courted
always in an honourable way, and not only when I am present with
you." Does Paul mean that he has no objection to the Galatians making
other friends in his absence? or, that he thinks they ought not to
forget him in his absence? The latter, as we think. The Apostle
complains of their inconstancy towards himself. This is a text for
friends and lovers. Where attachment is honourable, it should be
lasting. "Set me as a seal upon thine heart," says the Bride of the
Song of Songs. With the Galatians it seemed to be, "Out of sight, out
of mind." They allowed Paul to be pushed out by scheming rivals.
He was far away; they were on the spot. He told them the truth; the
Judaizers flattered them. So their foolish heads were turned. They
were positively "bewitched" by these new admirers; and preferred
their sinister and designing compliments to Paul's sterling honour
and proved fidelity.
The connection of vv. 17, 18 turns on the words _honourable_ and
_court_,[124] each of which is thrice repeated. There is a kind of
play on the verb ζηλόω. In ver. 18 it implies a true, in ver. 17 a
counterfeit affection (an affectation). Paul might have said, "It is
good one should be _loved, followed with affection, always_," but for
the sake of the verbal antithesis. In ver. 17 he taxes his opponents
with unworthily courting the favour of the Galatians; in ver. 18
he intimates his grief that he himself in his absence is no longer
courted by them.
[124] Ζηλόω, _to have zeal_ towards a person or thing, _to
affect_ (A.V.: in its older English sense of _seeking_, _paying
regard to any one_).
(6) In the next verse this grief of wounded affection, checked at
first by a certain reserve, breaks out uncontrollably: "My children,
for whom again I am in travail, till Christ be formed in you!"[125]
This outcry is a pathetic continuance of his expostulation. He cannot
bear the thought of losing these children of his heart. He stretches
out his arms to them. Tears stream from his eyes. He has been
speaking in measured, almost playful terms, in comparing himself with
his supplanters. But the possibility of their success, the thought of
the mischief going on in Galatia and of the little power he has to
prevent it, wrings his very soul. He feels a mother's pangs for his
imperilled children, as he writes these distressful words.
[125] The _full stop_ placed in the English Version at the end of
ver. 18, on this view, is out of place.
There is nothing gained by substituting "little children" (John's
phrase) for "children," everywhere else used by Paul, and attested
here by the best witnesses. The sentiment is that of 1 Thess. ii. 7,
8; 1 Cor. iv. 14-16. The Apostle is not thinking of the littleness
or feebleness of the Galatians, but simply of their relation to
himself. His sorrow is the sorrow of bereavement. "You have not many
_mothers_," he seems to say: "I have travailed over you in birth;
and now a second time you bring on me a mother's pains, which I must
endure until Christ is formed in you and His image is renewed in your
souls."
* * * * *
Paul stands before us as an injured friend, a faithful minister
of Christ robbed of his people's love. He is wounded in his
tenderest affections. For the sake of the Gentile Churches he had
given up everything in life that he prized (ver. 12; 1 Cor. ix.
21); he had exposed himself to the contempt and hatred of his
fellow-countrymen--and this is his reward, "to be loved the less, the
more abundantly he loves!" (2 Cor. xii. 15).
But if he is grieved at this defection, he is equally perplexed. He
cannot tell what to make of the Galatians, or in what tone to address
them. He has warned, denounced, argued, protested, pleaded as a
mother with her children; still he doubts whether he will prevail. If
he could only see them and meet them as in former days, laying aside
the distance, the sternness of authority which he has been forced
to assume, he might yet reach their hearts. At least he would know
how matters really stand, and in what language he ought to speak. So
his entreaty ends: "I wish I could only be present with you now, and
speak in some different voice. For I am at a loss to know how to deal
with you."
This picture of estrangement and reproach tells its own tale, when
its lines have once been clearly marked. We may dwell, however, a
little longer on some of the lessons which it teaches:--
I. In the first place, it is evident that _strong emotions and warm
affections are no guarantee for the permanence of religious life_.
The Galatians resembled the "stony ground" hearers of our Lord's
parable,--"such as hear the word, and immediately with joy receive
it; but they have no root in themselves; they believe for a time."
It was not "persecution" indeed that "offended" them; but flattery
proved equally effectual. They were of the same fervid temper as
Peter on the night of the Passion, when he said, "Though I should
die with Thee, yet will I not deny Thee in anywise,"--within a few
hours thrice denying his Master, with "oaths and curses." They
lacked seriousness and depth. They had fine susceptibilities and a
large fund of enthusiasm; they were full of eloquent protestations;
and under excitement were capable of great efforts and sacrifices.
But there was a flaw in their nature. They were creatures of
impulse--soon hot, soon cold. One cannot help liking such people--but
as for _trusting_ them, that is a different matter.
Nothing could be more delightful or promising than the appearance
these Churches presented in the early days of their conversion. They
heard the Apostle's message with rapt attention; they felt its Divine
power, so strangely contrasting with his physical feebleness. They
were amazingly wrought upon. The new life in Christ kindled all the
fervour of their passionate nature. How they triumphed in Christ!
How they blessed the day when the gospel visited their land! They
almost worshipped the Apostle. They could not do enough for him.
Their hearts bled for his sufferings. Where are all these transports
now? Paul is far away. Other teachers have come, with "another
gospel." And the cross is already forgotten! They are contemplating
circumcision; they are busy studying the Jewish ritual, making
arrangements for feast-days and "functions", eagerly discussing
points of ceremony. Their minds are poisoned with mistrust of their
own Apostle, whose heart is ready to break over their folly and
frivolity. All this for the want of a little reflection, for want of
the steadiness of purpose without which the most genial disposition
and the most ardent emotions inevitably run to waste. Their faith had
been too much a matter of feeling, too little of principle.
II. Further, we observe _how prone are those who have put themselves
in the wrong to fix the blame on others_.
The Apostle was compelled in fidelity to truth to say hard things
to his Galatian disciples. He had previously, on his last visit,
given them a solemn warning on account of their Judaic proclivities
(ch. i. 9). In this Epistle he censures them roundly. He wonders at
them; he calls them "senseless Galatians"; he tells them they are
within a step of being cut off from Christ (ch. v. 4). And now they
cry out, "Paul is our enemy. If he cared for us, how could he write
so cruelly! We were excessively fond of him once, we could not do
too much for him; but that is all over now. If we had inflicted on
him some great injury, he could scarcely treat us more roughly."
Thoughtless and excitable people commonly reason in this way.
Personalities with them take the place of argument and principle.
The severity of a holy zeal for truth is a thing they can never
understand. If you disagree with them and oppose them, they put it
down to some petty animosity. They credit you with a private grudge
against them; and straightway enroll you in the number of their
enemies, though you may be in reality their best friend. Flatter
them, humour their vanity, and you have them at your bidding. Such
men it is the hardest thing in the world honestly to serve. They will
always prefer "the kisses of an enemy" to the faithful "wounds of a
friend."
III. Men of the Galatian type are _the natural prey of self-seeking
agitators_. However sound the principles in which they were trained,
however true the friendships they have enjoyed, they must have
change. The accustomed palls upon them. Giddy Athenians, they love
nothing so much as "to hear and tell some new thing." They ostracize
Aristides, simply because they are "tired of hearing him always
called the Just." To hear "the same things," however "safe" it may
be, even from an Apostle's lips is to them intolerably "grievous."
They never think earnestly and patiently enough to find the deeper
springs, the fresh delight and satisfaction lying hidden in the great
unchanging truths. These are they who are "carried about with divers
and strange doctrines," who run after the newest thing in ritualistic
art, or sensational evangelism, or well-spiced heterodoxy. Truth
and plain dealing, apostolic holiness and godly sincerity, are
outmatched in dealing with them by the craft of worldly wisdom. A
little judicious flattery, something to please the eye and catch the
fancy--and they are persuaded to believe almost anything, or to deny
what they have most earnestly believed.
What had the Legalists to offer compared with the gifts bestowed
on these Churches through Paul? What was there that could make them
rivals to him in character or spiritual power? And yet the Galatians
flock round the Judaist teachers, and accept without inquiry their
slanders and perversions of the gospel; while the Apostle, their true
friend and father, too true to spare their faults, stands suspected,
almost deserted. He must forsooth implore them to come down from the
heights of their would-be legal superiority, and to meet him on the
common ground of grace and saving faith. The sheep will not hear
their shepherd's voice; they follow strangers, though they be thieves
and hirelings. "O foolish Galatians!"
* * * * *
Whether the Apostle's entreaty prevailed to recall them or did not,
we cannot tell. From the silence with which these Churches are passed
over in the Acts of the Apostles, and the little that is heard of
them afterwards, an unfavourable inference appears probable. The
Judaistic leaven, it is to be feared, went far to leaven the whole
lump. Paul's apprehensions were only too well-grounded. And these
hopeful converts who had once "run well," were fatally "hindered" and
fell far behind in the Christian race. Such, in all likelihood, was
the result of the departure from the truth of the gospel into which
the Galatians allowed themselves to be drawn.
Whatever was the sequel to this story, Paul's protest remains to
witness to the sincerity and tenderness of the great Apostle's
soul, and to the disastrous issues of the levity of character which
distinguished his Galatian disciples.
CHAPTER XIX.
_THE STORY OF HAGAR._
"Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the
law? For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, one by the
handmaid, and one by the freewoman. Howbeit the _son_ by the
handmaid is born after the flesh; but the _son_ by the freewoman
_is born_ through promise. Which things contain an allegory: for
these _women_ are two covenants; one from mount Sinai, bearing
children unto bondage, which is Hagar. For Sinai is a mountain
in Arabia, and answereth to the Jerusalem that now is: for she
is in bondage with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above
is free, which is our mother. For it is written,
Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not;
Break forth and cry, thou that travailest not:
For more are the children of the desolate than of her which
hath the husband.
Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise. But
as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him _that
was born_ after the Spirit, even so it is now. Howbeit what
saith the scripture? Cast out the handmaid and her son; for
the son of the handmaid shall not inherit with the son of
the freewoman. Wherefore, brethren, we are not children of a
handmaid, but of the freewoman. For freedom did Christ set us
free: stand fast therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke
of bondage."--GAL. iv. 21-v. 1.
The Apostle wished that he could "change his voice" (ver. 20).
Indeed he has changed it more than once. "Any one who looks closely
may see that there is much change and alteration of feeling in
what the Apostle has previously written" (Theodorus). Now he will
try another tone; he proceeds in fact to address his readers in a
style which we find nowhere else in his Epistles. He will tell his
"children" a story! Perhaps he may thus succeed better than by graver
argument. Their quick fancy will readily apprehend the bearing of the
illustration; it may bring home to them the force of his doctrinal
contention, and the peril of their own position, as he fears they
have not seen them yet. And so, after the pathetic appeal of the last
paragraph, and before he delivers his decisive, official protest
to the Galatians against their circumcision, he interjects this
"allegory" of the two sons of Abraham.
Paul cites the history of _the sons of Abraham_. No other example
would have served his purpose. The controversy between himself
and the Judaizers turned on the question, Who are the true heirs
of Abraham? (ch. iii. 7, 16, 29). He made faith in Christ, they
circumcision and law-keeping, the ground of sonship. So the
inheritance was claimed in a double sense. But now, if it should
appear that this antithesis existed in principle in the bosom of the
patriarchal family, if we should find that there was an elder son of
Abraham's flesh opposed to the child of promise, how powerfully will
this analogy sustain the Apostle's position. Judaism will then be
seen to be playing over again the part of Ishmael; and "the Jerusalem
that now is" takes the place of Hagar, the slave-mother. The moral
situation created by the Judaic controversy had been rehearsed in the
family life of Abraham.
"Tell me," the Apostle asks, "you that would fain be subject to the
law, do you not know what it relates concerning Abraham? He had two
sons, one of free, and the other of servile birth. Do you wish to
belong to the line of Ishmael, or Isaac?" In this way Paul resumes
the thread of his discourse dropped in ver. 7. Faith, he had told
his readers, had made them sons of God. They were, in Christ, of
Abraham's spiritual seed, heirs of his promise. God had sent His Son
to redeem them, and the Spirit of His Son to attest their adoption.
But they were not content. They were ambitious of Jewish privileges.
The Legalists persuaded them that they must be circumcised and
conform to Moses, in order to be Abraham's children in full title.
"Very well," the Apostle says, "you may become Abraham's sons in
this fashion. Only you must observe that Abraham had _two_ sons. And
the Law will make you his sons by Hagar, whose home is Sinai--not
Israelites, but _Ishmaelites_!"
Paul's Galatian allegory has greatly exercised the minds of his
critics. The word is one of ill repute in exegesis. _Allegory_
was the instrument of Rabbinical and Alexandrine Scripturists,
an infallible device for extracting the predetermined sense from
the letter of the sacred text. The "spiritualising" of Christian
interpreters has been carried, in many instances, to equal excess
of riot. For the honest meaning of the word of God anything and
everything has been substituted that lawless fancy and verbal
ingenuity could read into it. The most arbitrary and grotesque
distortions of the facts of Scripture have passed current under cover
of the clause, "which things are an allegory." But Paul's allegory,
and that of Philo and the Allegorical school, are very different
things, as widely removed as the "words of truth and soberness" from
the intoxications of a mystical idealism.
With Paul the spiritual sense of Scripture is based on the
historical, is in fact the moral content and import thereof; for
he sees in history a continuous manifestation of God's will. With
the Allegorists the spiritual sense, arrived at by _à priori_ means,
replaces the historical, destroyed to make room for it. The Apostle
points out in the story of Hagar a spiritual intent, such as exists
in every scene of human life if we had eyes to see it, something
other than the literal relation of the facts, but nowise alien from
it. Here lies the difference between legitimate and illegitimate
allegory. The utmost freedom may be given to this employment of the
imagination, so long as it is true to the _moral_ of the narrative
which it applies. In principle the Pauline allegory does not differ
from the type. In the type the correspondence of the sign and thing
signified centres in a single figure or event; in such an allegory as
this it is extended to a group of figures and a series of events. But
the force of the application depends on the actuality of the original
story, which in the illicit allegory is matter of indifference.
"Which things are allegorized"--so the Apostle literally writes
in ver. 24--_made matters of allegory_. The phrase intimates, as
Bishop Lightfoot suggests, that the Hagarene episode in Genesis (ch.
xvi., xxi. 1-21) was commonly interpreted in a figurative way. The
Galatians had heard from their Jewish teachers specimens of this
popular mode of exposition. Paul will employ it too; and will give
his own reading of the famous story of Ishmael and Isaac. Philo of
Alexandria, the greatest allegorist of the day, has expounded the
same history. These eminent interpreters both make Sarah the mother
of the spiritual, Hagar of the worldly offspring; both point out
how the barren is exalted over the fruitful wife. So far, we may
imagine, Paul is moving on the accepted lines of Jewish exegesis.
But Philo knows nothing of the correspondence between Isaac and
_Christ_, which lies at the back of the Apostle's allegory. And there
is this vital difference of method between the two divines, that
whereas Paul's comparison is the illustration of a doctrine proved on
other grounds--the painting which decorates the house already built
(Luther)--with the Alexandrine idealist it forms the substance and
staple of his teaching.
Under this allegorical dress the Apostle expounds once more his
doctrine, already inculcated, of the difference between the Legal
and Christian state. The former constitutes, as he now puts the
matter, a bastard sonship like that of Ishmael, conferring only an
external and provisional tenure in the Abrahamic inheritance. It
is contrasted with the spiritual sonship of the true Israel in the
following respects:--It is a state of _nature_ as opposed to grace;
of _bondage_ as opposed to freedom; and further, it is _temporary_
and soon to be ended by the Divine decree.
I. "He who is of the maid-servant is _after the flesh_; but he that
is of the free-woman is through promise.... Just as then he that
was _after the flesh_ persecuted him that was after the Spirit, so
now" (vv. 23, 29). The Apostle sees in the different parentage of
Abraham's sons the ground of a radical divergence of character. One
was the child of nature, the other was the son of a spiritual faith.
Ishmael was in truth the fruit of unbelief; his birth was due to a
natural but impatient misreading of the promise. The patriarch's
union with Hagar was ill-assorted and ill-advised. It brought its
natural penalty by introducing an alien element into his family life.
The low-bred insolence which the serving-woman, in the prospect of
becoming a mother, showed toward the mistress to whom she owed her
preferment, gave a foretaste of the unhappy consequences. The promise
of posterity made to Abraham with a childless wife, was expressly
designed to try his faith; and he had allowed it to be overborne
by the reasonings of nature. It was no wonder that the son of the
Egyptian slave, born under such conditions, proved to be of a lower
type, and had to be finally excluded from the house.
In Ishmael's relation to his father there was nothing but the
ordinary play of human motives. "The son of the handmaid was born
after the flesh." He was a _natural_ son. But Ishmael was not on that
account cut off from the Divine mercies. Nor did his father's prayer,
"O that Ishmael might live before Thee" (Gen. xvii. 18), remain
unanswered. A great career was reserved by Divine Providence for his
race. The Arabs, the fiery sons of the desert, through him claim
descent from Abraham. They have carved their name deeply upon the
history and the faith of the world. But sensuousness and lawlessness
are everywhere the stamp of the Ishmaelite. With high gifts and some
generous qualities, such as attracted to his eldest boy the love of
Abraham, their fierce animal passion has been the curse of the sons
of Hagar. Mohammedanism is a bastard Judaism; it is the religion of
Abraham sensualised. Ishmael stands forth as the type of the carnal
man. On outward grounds of flesh and blood he seeks inheritance in
the kingdom of God; and with fleshly weapons passionately fights its
battles.
To a similar position Judaism, in the Apostle's view, had now reduced
itself. And to this footing the Galatian Churches would be brought if
they yielded to the Judaistic solicitations. To be circumcised would
be for them to be born again after the flesh, to link themselves
to Abraham in the unspiritual fashion of Hagar's son. Ishmael was
the first to be circumcised (Gen. xvii. 23-26). It was to renounce
salvation by faith and the renewing of the Holy Spirit. This course
could only have one result. The Judaic ritualism they were adopting
would bear fruit after its kind, in a worldly, sensuous life. Like
Ishmael they would claim kinship with the Church of God on fleshly
grounds; and their claim must prove as futile as did his.
The persecution of the Church by Judaism gave proof of the Ishmaelite
spirit, the carnal animus by which it was possessed. A religion
of externalism naturally becomes repressive. It knows not "the
demonstration of the Spirit"; it has "confidence in the flesh."
It relies on outward means for the propagation of its faith; and
naturally resorts to the secular arm. The Inquisition and the
Auto-da-fé are a not unfitting accompaniment of the gorgeous
ceremonial of the Mass. Ritualism and priestly autocracy go hand in
hand. "So now," says Paul, pointing to Ishmael's "persecution" of the
infant Isaac, hinted at in Gen. xxi. 8-10.
The laughter of Hagar's boy at Sarah's weaning-feast seems but a
slight offence to be visited with the punishment of expulsion; and
the incident one beneath the dignity of theological argument. But
the principle for which Paul contends is there; and it is the more
easily apprehended when exhibited on this homely scale. The family
is the germ and the mirror of society. In it are first called
into play the motives which determine the course of history, the
rise and fall of empires or churches. The gravamen of the charge
against Ishmael lies in the last word of Gen. xxi. 9, rendered in
the Authorized Version _mocking_, and by the Revisers _playing_,
after the Septuagint and the Vulgate. This word in the Hebrew is
evidently a play on the name _Isaac_, _i.e._, _laughter_, given by
Sarah to her boy with genial motherly delight (vv. 6, 7). Ishmael,
now a youth of fourteen, takes up the child's name and turns it, on
this public and festive occasion, into ridicule. Such an act was not
only an insult to the mistress of the house and the young heir at a
most untimely moment, it betrayed a jealousy and contempt on the part
of Hagar's son towards his half-brother which gravely compromised
Isaac's future. "The wild, ungovernable and pugnacious character
ascribed to his descendants began to display itself in Ishmael,
and to appear in language of provoking insolence; offended at the
comparative indifference with which he was treated, he indulged in
mockery, especially against Isaac, whose very name furnished him with
satirical sneers."[126] Ishmael's jest cost him dear. The indignation
of Sarah was reasonable; and Abraham was compelled to recognise in
her demand the voice of God (vv. 10-12). The two boys, like Esau and
Jacob in the next generation, represented opposite principles and
ways of life, whose counterworking was to run through the course of
future history. Their incompatibility was already manifest.
[126] Kalisch, _Commentary_, on Genesis xxi. 9.
The Apostle's comparison must have been mortifying in the extreme
to the Judaists. They are told in plain terms that they are in the
position of outcast Ishmael; while uncircumcised Gentiles, without
a drop of Abraham's blood in their veins, have received the
promise forfeited by their unbelief. Paul could not have put his
conclusion in a form more unwelcome to Jewish pride. But without this
radical exposure of the legalist position it was impossible for him
adequately to vindicate his gospel and defend his Gentile children in
the faith.
II. From this contrast of birth "according to flesh" and "through
promise" is deduced the opposition between _the slave-born and
free-born sons_. "For these (the slave-mother and the free-woman) are
two covenants, one indeed bearing children unto bondage--which is
Hagar" (ver. 24). The other side of the antithesis is not formally
expressed; it is obvious. Sarah the princess, Abraham's true wife,
has her counterpart in the original covenant of promise renewed in
Christ, and in "the Jerusalem above, which is our mother" (ver. 26).
Sarah is the typical mother,[127] as Abraham is the father of the
children of faith. In the _systoichia_, or tabular comparison, which
the Apostle draws up after the manner of the schools, _Hagar_ and
_the Mosaic covenant_, _Sinai_ and _the Jerusalem that now is_ stand
in one file and "answer to" each other; _Sarah_ and _the Abrahamic
covenant_, _Zion_ and _the heavenly Jerusalem_ succeed in the same
order, opposite to them. "Zion" is wanting in the second file; but
"Sinai and Zion" form a standing antithesis (Heb. xii. 18-22); the
second is implied in the first. It was to _Zion_ that the words of
Isaiah cited in ver. 27, were addressed.
[127] Comp. Heb. xi. 11, 12; 1 Pet. iii. 6.
The first clause of ver. 25 is best understood in the shorter,
marginal reading of the R. V., also preferred by Bishop Lightfoot
(τὸ γὰρ Σινᾶ ὄρος ἐστίν κ.τ.λ.). It is a parenthesis--"for mount
Sinai[128] is in Arabia"--_covenant_ running on in the mind from
ver. 24 as the continued subject of ver. 25 _b_: "and it answereth
to the present Jerusalem." This is the simplest and most consistent
construction of the passage. The interjected geographical reference
serves to support the identification of the Sinaitic covenant
with Hagar, _Arabia_ being the well-known abode of the Hagarenes.
Paul had met them in his wanderings there. Some scholars have
attempted to establish a verbal agreement between the name of the
slave-mother and that locally given to the Sinaitic range; but this
explanation is precarious, and after all unnecessary. There was a
real correspondence between place and people on the one hand, as
between place and covenant on the other. Sinai formed a visible and
imposing link between the race of Ishmael and the Mosaic law-giving.
That awful, desolate mountain, whose aspect, as we can imagine, had
vividly impressed itself on Paul's memory (ch. i. 17), spoke to him
of bondage and terror. It was a true symbol of the working of the law
of Moses, exhibited in the present condition of Judaism. And round
the base of Sinai Hagar's wild sons had found their dwelling.
[128] Paul writes "the _Sinai_ mountain" (τὸ Σινᾶ ὄρος) in tacit
opposition to the other, familiar _Mount Zion_ (Hofmann _in
loc._). In Heb. xii. 22 the same inversion appears, with the same
significance.
Jerusalem was no longer the mother of freemen. The boast, "we are
Abraham's sons; we were never in bondage" (John viii. 33), was an
unconscious irony. Her sons chafed under the Roman yoke. They were
loaded with self-inflicted legal burdens. Above all, they were,
notwithstanding their professed law-keeping, enslaved to sin, in
servitude to their pride and evil lusts. The spirit of the nation
was that of rebellious, discontented slaves. They were Ishmaelite
sons of Abraham, with none of the nobleness, the reverence, the calm
and elevated faith of their father. In the Judaism of the Apostle's
day the Sinaitic dispensation, uncontrolled by the higher patriarchal
and prophetic faith, had worked out its natural result. It "gendered
to bondage." A system of repression and routine, it had produced
men punctual in tithes of mint and anise, but without justice,
mercy, or faith; vaunting their liberty while they were "servants of
corruption." The law of Moses could not form a "new creature." It
left the Ishmael of nature unchanged at heart, a child of the flesh,
with whatever robes of outward decorum his nakedness was covered. The
Pharisee was the typical product of law apart from grace. Under the
garb of a freeman he carried the soul of a slave.
But ver. 26 sounds the note of deliverance: "The Jerusalem above
is free; and she is our mother!" Paul has escaped from the prison
of Legalism, from the confines of Sinai; he has left behind the
perishing earthly Jerusalem, and with it the bitterness and gloom of
his Pharisaic days. He is a citizen of the heavenly Zion, breathing
the air of a Divine freedom. The yoke is broken from the neck of
the Church of God; the desolation is gone from her heart. There
come to the Apostle's lips the words of the great prophet of the
Exile, depicting the deliverance of the spiritual Zion, despised and
counted barren, but now to be the mother of a numberless offspring.
In Isaiah's song, "Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not" (ch.
liv.), the laughter of the childless Sarah bursts forth again, to
be gloriously renewed in the persecuted Church of Jesus. Robbed of
all outward means, mocked and thrust out as she is by Israel after
the flesh, her rejection is a release, an emancipation. Conscious
of the Spirit of sonship and freedom, looking out on the boundless
conquests lying before her in the Gentile world, the Church of the
New Covenant glories in her tribulations. In Paul is fulfilled
the joy of prophet and psalmist, who sang in former days of gloom
concerning Israel's enlargement and world-wide victories. No legalist
could understand words like these. "The veil" was upon his heart "in
the reading of the Old Testament." But with "the Spirit of the Lord"
comes "liberty." The prophetic inspiration has returned. The voice of
rejoicing is heard again in the dwellings of Israel. "If the Son make
you free," said Jesus, "ye shall be free indeed." This Epistle proves
it.
III. "And the bondman _abideth not in the house for ever_; the Son
abideth for ever" (John viii. 35). This also the Lord had testified:
the Apostle repeats His warning in the terms of this allegory.
Sooner or later the slave-boy was bound to go. He has no proper
birthright, no permanent footing in the house. One day he exceeds his
licence, he makes himself intolerable; he must begone. "What saith
the Scripture? Cast out the maidservant and her son; for the son of
the maidservant shall not inherit with the son of the freewoman"
(ver. 30). Paul has pronounced the doom of Judaism. His words echo
those of Christ: "Behold your house is left unto you desolate" (Matt.
xxiii. 38); they are taken up again in the language of Heb. xiii. 13,
14, uttered on the eve of the fall of Jerusalem: "Let us go forth
unto Jesus without the camp, bearing His reproach. We have here no
continuing city, but we seek that which is to come." On the walls
of Jerusalem _ichabod_ was plainly written. Since it "crucified our
Lord" it was no longer the Holy City; it was "spiritually Sodom and
Egypt" (Rev. xi. 8),--_Egypt_, the country of Hagar. Condemning Him,
the Jewish nation passed sentence on itself. They were slaves who in
blind rage slew their Master when He came to free them.
The Israelitish people showed more than Ishmael's jealousy towards
the infant Church of the Spirit. No weapon of violence or calumny was
too base to be used against it. The cup of their iniquity was filling
fast. They were ripening for the judgement which Christ predicted
(1 Thess. ii. 16). Year by year they became more hardened against
spiritual truth, more malignant towards Christianity, and more
furious and fanatical in their hatred towards their civil rulers.
The cause of Judaism was hopelessly lost. In Rom. ix.-xi., written
shortly after this Epistle, Paul assumes this as a settled thing,
which he has to account for and to reconcile with Scripture. In the
demand of Sarah for the expulsion of her rival, complied with by
Abraham against his will, the Apostle reads the secret judgement of
the Almighty on the proud city which he himself so ardently loved,
but which had crucified his Lord and repented not. "Cut it down,"
Jesus cried; "why cumbereth it the ground?" (Luke xiii. 7). The
voice of Scripture speaks again: "Cast her out; she and her sons are
slaves. They have no place amongst the sons of God." Ishmael was in
the way of Isaac's safety and prosperity. And the Judaic ascendency
was no less a danger to the Church. The blow which shattered
Judaism, at once cleared the ground for the outward progress of
the gospel and arrested the legalistic reaction which hindered its
internal development. The two systems were irreconcilable. It was
Paul's merit to have first apprehended this contradiction in its
full import. The time had come to apply in all its rigour Christ's
principle of combat, "He that is not with Me, is against Me." It is
the same rule of exclusion which Paul announces: "If any man hath
not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His" (Rom. viii. 9). Out of
Christ is no salvation. When the day of judgement comes, whether for
men or nations, this is the touchstone: Have we, or have we not "the
Spirit of God's Son?" Is our character that of sons of God, or slaves
of sin? On the latter falls inevitably the sentence of expulsion, "He
will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them that
do iniquity" (Matt. xiii. 41).
This passage signalises the definite breach of Christianity with
Judaism. The elder Apostles lingered in the porch of the Temple;
the primitive Church clung to the ancient worship. Paul does not
blame them for doing so. In their case this was but the survival
of a past order, in principle acknowledged to be obsolete. But the
Church of the future, the spiritual seed of Abraham gathered out
of all nations, had no part in Legalism. The Apostle bends all his
efforts to convince his readers of this, to make them sensible of
the impassable gulf lying between them and outworn Mosaism. Again he
repeats, "We are not children of a maidservant, but of her that is
free" (ver. 31). The Church of Christ can no more hold fellowship
with Judaism than could Isaac with the spiteful, mocking Ishmael.
Paul leads the Church across the Rubicon. There is no turning back.
Ver. 1 of ch. v. is the application of the allegory. It is a
triumphant assertion of liberty, a ringing summons to its defence.
Its separation from ch. iv. is ill-judged, and runs counter to
the ancient divisions of the Epistle. "Christ set us free," Paul
declares; "and it was _for freedom_[129]--not that we might fall
under a new servitude. _Stand fast_ therefore; do not let yourselves
be made bondmen over again." Bondmen the Galatians had been before
(ch. iv. 8), bowing down to false and vile gods. Bondmen they will
be again, if they are beguiled by the Legalists to accept the yoke
of circumcision, if they take "the Jerusalem that now is" for their
mother. They have tasted the joys of freedom; they know what it is to
be sons of God, heirs of His kingdom and partakers of His Spirit; why
do they stoop from their high estate? Why should Christ's freemen put
a yoke upon their own neck? Let them only know their happiness and
security in Christ, and refuse to be cheated out of the substance of
their spiritual blessings by the illusive shadows which the Judaists
offer them. Freedom once gained is a prize never to be lost. No care,
no vigilance in its preservation can be too great. Such liberty
inspires courage and good hope in its defence. "Stand fast therefore.
Quit yourselves like men."
[129] The reading of this clause is doubtful. The ancient
witnesses disagree. Dr. Hort suggests that the Revised
reading--the best attested, but scarcely grammatical--may be
due to a primitive corruption, ΤΗ for ΕΠ (ἐλευθερίᾳ). This
emendation gives an excellent and apposite sense: _for (with a
view to) freedom Christ set us free_. The phrase ἐπ' ἐλευθερίᾳ
is found in ver. 13, and would gain additional force there, if
read as a repetition of what is affirmed here. The confusion of
letters involved is a natural one; and once made at an early time
in some standard copy, it would account for the extraordinary
confusion of reading into which the verse has fallen. If
conjectural emendation may be admitted anywhere in the N. T., it
is legitimate in this instance.
* * * * *
How the Galatians responded to the Apostle's challenge, we do not
know. But it has found an echo in many a heart since. The Lutheran
Reformation was an answer to it; so was the Scottish Covenant. The
spirit of Christian liberty is eternal. Jerusalem or Rome may strive
to imprison it. They might as well seek to bind the winds of heaven.
Its home is with God. Its seat is the throne of Christ. It lives by
the breath of His Spirit. The earthly powers mock at it, and drive it
into the wilderness. They do but assure their own ruin. It leaves the
house of the oppressor desolate. Whosoever he be--Judaist or Papist,
priest, or king, or demagogue--that makes himself lord of God's
heritage and would despoil His children of the liberties of faith,
let him beware lest of him also it be spoken, "Cast out the bondwoman
and her son."
CHAPTER XX.
_SHALL THE GALATIANS BE CIRCUMCISED_
"Behold, I Paul say unto you, that, if ye receive circumcision,
Christ will profit you nothing. Yea, I testify again to every
man that receiveth circumcision, that he is a debtor to do
the whole law. Ye are severed from Christ, ye who would be
justified by the law; ye are fallen away from grace. For we
through the Spirit by faith wait for the hope of righteousness.
For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor
uncircumcision; but faith working through love."--GAL. v. 2-6.
Shall the Galatians be circumcised, or shall they not? This is the
decisive question. The denunciation with which Paul begins his
letter, the narrative which follows, the profound argumentation, the
tender entreaty of the last two chapters, all converge toward this
crucial point. So far the Galatian Churches had been only dallying
with Judaism. They have been tempted to the verge of apostasy; but
they are not yet over the edge. Till they consent to be circumcised,
they have not finally committed themselves; their freedom is not
absolutely lost. The Apostle still hopes, despite his fears, that
they will stand fast (ver. 10; ch. iv. 11; iii. 4). The fatal step
is eagerly pressed on them by the Judaizers (ch. vi. 12, 13), whose
persuasion the Galatians had so far entertained, that they had begun
to keep the Hebrew sabbath and feast-days (ch. iv. 10). If they
yield to this further demand, the battle is lost; and this powerful
Epistle, with all the Apostle's previous labour spent upon them, has
been in vain. To sever this section from the polemical in order to
attach it to the practical part of the Epistle, as many commentators
do, is to cut the nerve of the Apostle's argument and reduce it to an
abstract theological discussion.
This momentous question is brought forward with the greater emphasis
and effect, because it has hitherto been kept out of sight. The
allusion to Titus in ch. ii. 1-5 has already indicated the supreme
importance of the matter of circumcision. But the Apostle has delayed
dealing with it formally and directly, until he is able to do so with
the weight of the foregoing chapters to support his interdict. He has
shattered the enemies' position with his artillery of logic, he has
assailed the hearts of his readers with all the force of his burning
indignation and subduing pathos. Now he gathers up his strength for
the final charge home, which must decide the battle.
I. LO, I PAUL TELL YOU! When he begins thus, we feel that the
decisive moment is at hand. Everything depends on the next few words.
Paul stands like an archer with his bow drawn at full stretch and the
arrow pointed to the mark. "Let others say what they may; this is
what _I_ tell you. If my word has any weight with you, give heed to
this:--IF YOU BE CIRCUMCISED, CHRIST WILL PROFIT YOU NOTHING."
Now his bolt is shot; we see what the Apostle has had in his mind all
this time. Language cannot be more explicit. Some of his readers will
have failed to catch the subtler points of his argument, or the finer
tones of his voice of entreaty; but every one will understand this.
The most "senseless" and volatile amongst the Galatians will surely
be sobered by the terms of this warning. There is no escaping the
dilemma. Legalism and Paulinism, the true and the false gospel, stand
front to front, reduced to their barest form, and weighed each in the
balance of its practical result. _Christ--or Circumcision_: which
shall it be?
This declaration is no less authoritative and judicially threatening
than the anathema of ch. i. That former denouncement declared
the false teachers severed from Christ. Those who yield to their
persuasion, will be also "severed from Christ." They will fall into
the same ditch as their blind leaders. The Judaizers have forfeited
their part in Christ; they are false brethren, tares among the wheat,
troublers and hinderers to the Church of God. And Gentile Christians
who choose to be led astray by them must take the consequences. If
they obey the "other gospel," Christ's gospel is theirs no longer. If
they rest their faith on circumcision, they have withdrawn it from
His cross. Adopting the Mosaic regimen, they forego the benefits of
Christ's redemption. "Christ will profit you nothing." The sentence
is negative, but no less fearful on that account. It is as though
Christ should say, "Thou hast no part with Me."
Circumcision will cost the Galatian Christians all they possess in
Jesus Christ. But is not this, some one will ask, an over-strained
assertion? Is it consistent with Paul's professions and his policy
in other instances? In ver. 6, and again in the last chapter,
he declares that "Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision
nothing"; and yet here he makes it _everything_! The Apostle's
position is this. In itself the rite is valueless. It was the
sacrament of the Old Covenant, which was brought to an end by the
death of Christ. For the new Church of the Spirit, it is a matter
of perfect indifference whether a man is circumcised or not. Paul
had therefore circumcised Timothy, whose mother was a Jewess (Acts
xvi. 1-3), though neither he nor his young disciple supposed that
it was a religious necessity. It was done as a social convenience;
"uncircumcision was nothing," and could in such a case be surrendered
without prejudice. On the other hand, he refused to submit Titus to
the same rite; for he was a pure Greek, and on him it could only have
been imposed on religious grounds and as a passport to salvation.
For this, and for no other reason, it was demanded by the Judaistic
party. In this instance it was needful to show that "circumcision
is nothing." The Galatians stood in the same position as Titus.
Circumcision, if performed on them, must have denoted, not as in
Timothy's case, the fact of Jewish birth, but _subjection to the
Mosaic law_. Regarded in this light, the question was one of life or
death for the Pauline Churches. To yield to the Judaizers would be
to surrender the principle of salvation by faith. The attempt of the
legalist party was in effect to force Christianity into the grooves
of Mosaism, to reduce the world-wide Church of the Spirit to a sect
of moribund Judaism.
With what views, with what aim were the Galatians entertaining this
Judaic "persuasion"? Was it to make them sons of God and heirs of His
kingdom? This was the object with which "God sent forth His Son;"
and the Spirit of sonship assured them that it was realised (ch.
iv. 4-7). To adopt the former means to this end was to renounce the
latter. In turning their eyes to this new bewitchment, they must be
conscious that their attention was diverted from the Redeemer's
cross and their confidence in it weakened (ch. iii. 1). To be
circumcised would be to rest their salvation formally and definitely
on works of law, in place of the grace of God. The consequences of
this Paul has shown in relating his discussion with Peter, in ch. ii.
15-21. They would "make" themselves "transgressors;" they would "make
Christ's death of none effect." In the soul's salvation Christ will
be all, or nothing. If we trust Him, we must trust Him altogether.
The Galatians had already admitted a suspicion of the power of His
grace, which if cherished and acted on in the way proposed, must
sever all communion between their souls and Him. Their circumcision
would be "the sacrament of their excision from Christ" (Huxtable).
The tense of the verb is _present_. Paul's readers may be in the act
of making this disastrous compliance. He bids them look for a moment
at the depth of the gulf on whose brink they stand. "Stop!" he cries,
"another step in that direction, and you have lost Christ."
And what will they get in exchange? They will saddle themselves with
all the obligations of the Mosaic law (ver. 3). This probably was
more than they bargained for. They wished to find a _via media_, some
compromise between the new faith and the old, which would secure to
them the benefits of Christ without His reproach, and the privileges
of Judaism without its burdens. This at least was the policy of the
Judaic teachers (ch. vi. 12, 13). But it was a false and untenable
position. "Circumcision verily profiteth, _if thou art a doer of
the law_" (Rom. ii. 25); otherwise it brings only condemnation.
He who receives the sacrament of Mosaism, by doing so pledges
himself to "keep and do" every one of its "ordinances, statutes,
and judgements"--a yoke which, honest Peter said, "Neither we nor
our fathers were able to bear" (Acts xv. 10). Let the Galatians
read the law, and consider what they are going to undertake. He
who goes with the Judaists a mile, will be compelled to go twain.
They will not find themselves at liberty to pick and choose amongst
the legal requirements. Their legalist teachers will not raise a
finger to lighten the yoke (Luke xi. 46), when it is once fastened
on their necks; nor will their own consciences acquit them of its
responsibilities. This obligation Paul, himself a master in Jewish
law, solemnly affirms: "I protest (I declare before God) to every man
that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to perform the whole law."
Now this is a proved impossibility. Whoever "sets up the law," he
had avouched to Cephas, "makes himself a transgressor" (ch. ii. 18).
Nay, it was established of set purpose to "multiply transgressions,"
to deepen and sharpen the consciousness of sin (ch. iii. 19; Rom.
iii. 20; iv. 15; v. 20). Jewish believers in Christ, placed under its
power by their birth, had thankfully found in the faith of Christ
a refuge from its accusations (ch. ii. 16; Rom. vii. 24-viii. 4).
Surely the Galatians, knowing all this, will not be so foolish as to
put themselves gratuitously under its power. To do this would be an
insult to Christ, and an act of moral suicide. This further warning
reinforces the first, and is uttered with equal solemnity. "I tell
you, Christ will profit you nothing; and again I testify, the law
will lay its full weight upon you." They will be left, without the
help of Christ, to bear this tremendous burden.
This double threatening is blended into one in ver. 4. The pregnant
force of Paul's Greek is untranslatable. Literally his words run,
"You were nullified from Christ (κατηργήθητε ἀπὸ Χριστοῦ)--brought
to nought (being severed) from Him, you that in law are seeking
justification." He puts his assertion in the past (_aorist_)
tense, stating that which ensues so soon as the principle of legal
justification is endorsed. From that moment the Galatians cease to be
Christians. In this sense they "are abolished," just as "the cross
is" virtually "abolished" if the Apostle "preaches circumcision"
(ver. 11), and "death is being abolished" under the reign of Christ
(1 Cor. xv. 26). He has said in ver. 2 that Christ will be made of
none effect to them; now he adds that they "are made of none effect"
in relation to Christ. Their Christian standing is destroyed. The
joyous experiences of their conversion, their share in Abraham's
blessing, their Divine sonship witnessed to by the Holy Spirit--all
this is nullified, cancelled at a stroke, if they are circumcised.
The detachment of their faith "from Christ" is involved in the
process of attaching it to Jewish ordinances, and brings spiritual
destruction upon them. The root of the Christian life is faith in
Him. Let that root be severed, let the branch no longer "abide in the
vine"--it is dead already.[130]
[130] Comp. John xv. 5, 6, where in ἐβλήθη, ἐξηράνθη, there is a
like _summary_ aorist.
Cut off from Christ, they "have fallen from grace." Paul has already
twice identified _Christ_ and _grace_, in ch. i. 6 and ii. 21. The
Divine mercies centre in Jesus Christ; and he who separates himself
from Him, shuts these out of his soul. The verb here used by the
Apostle (ἐξερέσατε) is commonly applied (four times _e.g._ in Acts
xxvii.) to a ship driven out of her course. Some such image seems
to be in the writer's mind in this passage. These racers made an
excellent start, but they have stumbled (ver. 7; ch. iii. 3); the
vessel set out from harbour in gallant style, but she is drifting
fast upon the rocks. This sentence "is the exact opposite of 'stand
in the grace,' Rom. v. 2" (Beet).[131]
[131] Comp. 2 Pet. iii. 17; for the figure suggested, Eph. iv.
14; 1 Tim. i. 19.
That he who "seeks justification in _law_ has fallen from _grace_,"
needs no proof after the powerful demonstration of ch. ii. 14-21.
The moralist claims quittance on the ground of his deservings. He
pleads the quality of his "works," his punctual discharge of every
stipulated duty, from circumcision onwards. "I fast twice a week,"
he tells his Divine Judge; "I tithe all my gains. I have kept all
the commandments from my youth up." What can God expect more than
this? But with these performances Grace has nothing to do. The man is
not in its order. If he invokes its aid, it is as a make-weight, a
supplement to the possible shortcomings in a virtue for the most part
competent for itself. Now the grace of God is not to be set aside
in this way; it refuses to be treated as a mere _succedaneum_ of
human virtue. Grace, like Christ, insists on being "all in all." "If
salvation is by grace, it is no longer of works;" and "if of works,
it is no more grace" (Rom. xi. 6). These two methods of justification
imply different moral tempers, an opposite set and direction of
the current of life. This question of circumcision brings the
Galatians to the parting of the ways. _Grace_ or _Law_--which of
the two roads will they follow? Both they cannot. They may become
Jewish proselytes; but they will cease to be Christians. Leaving
behind them the light and joy of the heavenly Zion, they will find
themselves wandering in the gloomy desolations of Sinai.
II. From this prospect the Apostle bids his readers turn to that
which he himself beholds, and which they erewhile shared with him.
Again he seems to say, "Be ye as I am, brethren" (ch. iv. 12); not
in outward condition alone, but still more in inward experience and
aspiration. "For _we_ by the Spirit, on the ground of faith, are
awaiting the hope of righteousness" (ver. 5).
Look on this picture, and on that. Yonder are the Galatians, all in
tumult about the legalistic proposals, debating which of the Hebrew
feasts they shall celebrate and with what rites, absorbed in the
details of Mosaic ceremony, all but persuaded to be circumcised and
to settle their scruples out of hand by a blind submission to the
Law. And here, on the other side, is Paul with the Church of the
Spirit, walking in the righteousness of faith and the communion of
the Holy Spirit, joyfully awaiting the Saviour's final coming and the
hope that is laid up in heaven. How vexed, how burdened, how narrow
and puerile is the one condition of life; how large and lofty and
secure the other. "We," says the Apostle, "are looking _forwards_ not
backwards, to Christ and not to Moses."
Every word in this sentence is full of meaning. _Faith_ carries
an emphasis similar to that it has in ch. ii. 16; iii. 22; and in
Rom. iv. 16. Paul supports by contrast what he has just said: "Your
share in the kingdom of grace is lost who seek a legal righteousness
(ver. 4); it is _by faith_ that we look for our heritage." _Hope_ is
clearly _matter of hope_, the future glory of the redeemed, described
in Rom. viii. 18-25, Phil. iii. 20, 21, in both of which places
there appears the remarkably compounded verb (ἀπ-εκ-δεχόμεθα) that
concludes this verse. It implies an intent expectancy, sure of its
object and satisfied with it. The hope is "righteousness' hope"--the
hope of the righteous--for it has in righteousness its warrant. The
saying of Psalm xvi., verified in Christ's rising from the dead,
contains its principle: "Thou wilt not leave my soul to death; nor
suffer Thine holy one to see the pit." This was the secret "hope of
Israel,"[132] that grew up in the hearts of the men of faith, whose
accomplishment is the crowning glory of the redemption of Christ. It
is the goal of faith. Righteousness is the path that leads to it. The
Galatians had been persuaded of this hope and embraced it; if they
accept the "other gospel," with its phantom of a legal righteousness,
their hope will perish.
[132] Acts xxiii. 6; xxiv. 15; xxvi. 6-8; comp. John vi. 39, 40,
44.
The Apostle is always true to the order of thought here indicated.
Faith saves from first to last. The present righteousness and future
glory of the sons of God alike have their source in faith. The act
of reliance by which the initial justification of the sinner was
attained, now becomes the habit of the soul, the channel by which
its life is fed, rooting itself ever more deeply into Christ and
absorbing more completely the virtue of His death and heavenly life.
Faith has its great ventures; it has also its seasons of endurance,
its moods of quiet expectancy, its unweariable patience. It can wait
as well as work. It rests upon the past, seeing in Christ crucified
its "author;" then it looks on to the future, and claims Christ
glorified for its "finisher." So faith prompts her sister Hope and
points her to "the glory that shall be revealed." If faith fails,
hope quickly dies. Unbelief is the mother of despair. "Of faith,"
the Apostle says, "we look out!"
A second condition, inseparable from the first, marks the hope proper
to the Christian righteousness. It is sustained "by the Spirit." The
connection of faith and hope respectively with the gift of the Holy
Spirit is marked very clearly by Paul in Eph. i. 13, 14: "Having
believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit, who is _the earnest
of our inheritance_." The Holy Spirit seals the sons of God--"sons,
then heirs" (ch. iv. 6, 7; Rom. viii. 15-17). This stamps on
Christian hope a _spiritual_ character. The conception which we form
of it, the means by which it is pursued, the temper and attitude in
which it is expected, are determined by the Holy Spirit who inspires
it. This pure and celestial hope is therefore utterly removed from
the selfish ambitions and the sensuous methods that distinguished the
Judaistic movement (ch. iv. 3, 9; vi. 12-14). "Men of worldly, low
design" like Paul's opponents in Galatia, had no right to entertain
"the hope of righteousness." These matters are spiritually discerned;
they are "the things of the Spirit, the things which God hath
prepared for them that love Him" (1 Cor. ii. 9-14).
If faith and hope are in sight, _love_ cannot be far off. In the
next verse it comes to claim its place beside the other two: "faith
working through love." And so the blessed trio is complete, _Fides,
amor, spes: summa Christianismi_ (Bengel). Faith waits, but it also
_works_;[133] and love is its working energy. Love gives faith
hands and feet; hope lends it wings. Love is the fire at its heart,
the life-blood coursing in its veins; hope the light that gleams
and dances in its eyes. Looking back to the Christ that hath been
manifested, faith kindles into a boundless love; looking onward to
the Christ that shall be revealed, it rises into an exultant hope.
[133] "_Working_ through love," not _wrought_ (R.V. _margin_).
The latter rendering of the participle is found in some of
the Fathers, and is preferred by Romanist interpreters in the
interest of their doctrine of _fides formata_. Paul's theology
and his verbal usage alike require the _middle_ sense of this
verb, adopted by modern commentators with one consent. The middle
voice implies that through love faith _gets into action_, _is
operative_, _efficacious_, _shows what it can do_. Comp., for
Pauline usage, Rom. vii. 5; 2 Cor. i. 6, iv. 12; Eph. iii. 20;
Col. i. 29; 1 Thess. ii. 13; 2 Thess. ii. 7; and see Moulton's
Winer's _N. T. Grammar_, p. 318 (note on _dynamic middle_).
These closing words are of no little theological importance. "They
bridge over the gulf which seems to separate the language of Paul and
James. Both assert a principle of practical energy, as opposed to a
barren, inactive theory" (Lightfoot). Had the faith of Paul's readers
been more practical, had they been of a diligent, enterprising
spirit, "ready for every good word and work," they would not have
felt, to the same degree, the spell of the Judaistic fascination.
Idle hands, vain and restless minds, court temptation. A manly,
energetic faith will never play at ritualism or turn religion into a
round of ceremonial, an æsthetic exhibition. Loving and self-devoting
faith in Christ is the one thing Paul covets to see in the Galatians.
This is the working power of the gospel, the force that will lift
and regenerate mankind. In comparison with this, questions of
Church-order and forms of worship are "nothing." "The body is more
than the raiment." Church organization is a means to a certain end;
and that end consists in the life of faith and love in Christian
souls. Each man is worth to Christ and to His Church just so much as
he possesses of this energy of the Spirit, just so much as he has of
love to Christ and to men in Him. Other gifts and qualities, offices
and orders of ministry, are but instruments for love to employ,
machinery for love to energize.
The Apostle wishes it to be understood that he does not condemn
circumcision on its own account, as though the opposite condition
were in itself superior. If "circumcision does not avail anything,
_neither does uncircumcision_." The Jew is no better or worse a
Christian because he is circumcised; the Gentile no worse or better,
because he is not. This difference in no way affects the man's
spiritual standing or efficiency. Let the Galatians dismiss the whole
question from their minds. "One thing is needful," to be filled with
the Spirit of love. "God's kingdom is not meat and drink;" it is not
"days and seasons and years;" it is not circumcision, nor rubrics and
vestments and priestly functions; it is "righteousness and peace and
joy in the Holy Spirit." These are the true _notes_ of the Church;
"by love," said Christ, "all men will know that you are My disciples."
In these two sentences (vv. 5 and 6) the religion of Christ is
summed up. Ver. 5 gives us its _statics_; ver. 6 its _dynamics_. It
is a condition, and an occupation; a grand outlook, and an intent
pursuit; a Divine hope for the future, and a sovereign power for the
present, with an infinite spring of energy in the love of Christ.
The active and passive elements of the Christian life need to be
justly balanced. Many of the errors of the Church have arisen from
one-sidedness in this respect. Some do nothing but sit with folded
hands till the Lord comes; others are too busy to think of His coming
at all. So waiting degenerates into indolence; and serving into
feverish hurry and anxiety, or mechanical routine. Let hope give
calmness and dignity, buoyancy and brightness to our work; let work
make our hope sober, reasonable, practical.
* * * * *
"These three abide--faith, hope, and love." They cannot change while
God is God and man is man. Forms of dogma and of worship have changed
and must change. There is a perpetual "removing of the things that
are shaken, as of things that are made;" but through all revolutions
there "remain the things which are not shaken." To these let us
rally. On these let us build. New questions thrust themselves to the
front, touching matters as little essential to the Church's life as
that of circumcision in the Apostolic age. The evil is that we make
so much of them. In the din of controversy we grow bewildered; our
eyes are blinded with its dust; our souls chafed with its fretting.
We lose the sense of proportion; we fail to see who are our true
friends, and who our foes. We need to return to the simplicity that
is in Christ. Let us "consider Him"--Christ incarnate, dying, risen,
reigning--till we are changed into the same image, till His life
has wrought itself into ours. Then these questions of dispute will
fall into their proper place. They will resolve themselves; or wait
patiently for their solution. Loyalty to Jesus Christ is the only
solvent of our controversies.
Will the Galatians be true to Christ? Or will they renounce their
righteousness in Him for a legal status, morally worthless, and
which will end in taking from them the hope of eternal life? They
have nothing to gain, they have everything to lose in submitting to
circumcision.
CHAPTER XXI.
_THE HINDERERS AND TROUBLERS._
"Ye were running well; who did hinder you that ye should not
obey the truth? This persuasion _came_ not of him that calleth
you. A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. I have confidence
to you-ward, in the Lord, that ye will be none otherwise minded:
but he that troubleth you shall bear his judgement, whosoever
he be. But I, brethren, if I still preach circumcision, why am
I still persecuted? then hath the stumblingblock of the cross
been done away. I would that they which unsettle you would even
mutilate themselves."--GAL. v. 7-12.
The Apostle's controversy with the Legalists is all but concluded.
He has pronounced on the question of circumcision. He has shown his
readers, with an emphasis and clearness that leave nothing more to be
said, how fearful is the cost at which they will accept the "other
gospel," and how heavy the yoke which it will impose upon them. A few
further observations remain to be made--of regret, of remonstrance,
blended with expressions of confidence more distinct than any the
Apostle has hitherto employed. Then with a last contemptuous thrust,
a sort of _coup de grace_ for the Circumcisionists, Paul passes to
the practical and ethical part of his letter.
This section is made up of short, disconnected sentences, shot off in
various directions; as though the writer wished to have done with the
Judaistic debate, and would discharge at a single volley the arrows
remaining in his quiver. Its prevailing tone is that of conciliation
towards the Galatians (comp. Chapter XVIII.), with increasing
severity towards the legalist teachers. "See how bitter he is against
the deceivers. For indeed at the beginning he directed his censures
against the deceived, calling them 'senseless' both once and again.
But now that he has sufficiently chastened and corrected them, for
the rest he turns against their deceivers. And we should observe his
wisdom in both these things, in that he admonishes the one party and
brings them to a better mind, being his own children and capable of
amendment; but the deceivers, who are a foreign element and incurably
diseased, he cuts off" (Chrysostom).
There lie before us therefore in this paragraph the following
considerations:--_Paul's hope concerning the Galatian Churches, his
protest on his own behalf_, and finally, _his judgement respecting
the troublers_.
I. The more hopeful strain of the letter at this point appears to
be due to the effect of his argument upon the writer's own mind. As
the breadth and grandeur of the Christian faith open out before him,
and he contrasts its spiritual glory with the ignoble aims of the
Circumcisionists, Paul cannot think that the readers will any longer
doubt which is the true gospel. Surely they will be disenchanted. His
irrefragable reasonings, his pleading entreaties and solemn warnings
are bound to call forth a response from a people so intelligent and
so affectionate. "For my part," he says, "_I am confident in the
Lord that you will be no otherwise minded_ (ver. 10), that you will
be faithful to your Divine calling, despite the hindrances thrown
in your way." They will, he is persuaded, come to see the proposals
of the Judaizers in their proper light. They will think about the
Christian life--its objects and principles--as he himself does; and
will perceive how fatal would be the step they are urged to take.
They will be true to themselves and to the Spirit of sonship they
have received. They will pursue more earnestly the hope set before
them and give themselves with renewed energy to the work of faith and
love (vv. 5, 6), and forget as soon as possible this distracting and
unprofitable controversy.
"In the Lord" Paul cherishes this confidence. "In Christ's grace"
the Galatians were called to enter the kingdom of God (ver. 8; ch.
i. 6); and He was concerned that the work begun in them should be
completed (Phil. i. 6). It may be the Apostle at this moment was
conscious of some assurance from his Master that his testimony in
this Epistle would not prove in vain. The recent[134] submission
of the Corinthians would tend to increase Paul's confidence in his
authority over the Gentile Churches.
[134] See Chapter I, pp. 15, 16, on the _date_ of the Epistle.
Another remembrance quickens the feeling of hope with which the
Apostle draws the conflict to a close. He reminds himself of the
good confession the Galatians had aforetime witnessed,[135] the zeal
with which they pursued the Christian course, until this deplorable
hindrance arose: "You were running well--_finely_. You had fixed your
eyes on the heavenly prize. Filled with an ardent faith, you were
zealously pursuing the great spiritual ends of the Christian life
(comp. vv. 5, 6). Your progress has been arrested. You have yielded
to influences which are not of God who called you, and admitted
amongst you a leaven that, if not cast out, will corrupt you utterly
(vv. 8, 9). But I trust that this result will be averted. You will
return to better thoughts. You will resume the interrupted race, and
by God's mercy will be enabled to bring it to a glorious issue" (ver.
10).
[135] Comp. ch. iii. 4: "_ye suffered so many things_."
There is kindness and true wisdom in this encouragement. The Apostle
has "told them the truth;" he has "reproved with all authority;" now
that this is done, their remains nothing in his heart but good-will
and good wishes for his Galatian children. If his chiding has wrought
the effect it was intended to produce, then these words of softened
admonition will be grateful and healing. They have "stumbled, but not
that they might fall." The Apostle holds out the hand of restoration;
his confidence animates them to hope better things for themselves. He
turns his anger away from them, and directs it altogether upon their
injurers.
II. The Judaizers had troubled the Churches of Galatia; _they had
also maligned the Apostle Paul_. From them undoubtedly the imputation
proceeded which he repudiates so warmly in ver. 11: "And I, brethren,
if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still persecuted?"
This supposition a moment's reflection would suffice to refute. The
contradiction was manifest. The persecution which everywhere followed
the Apostle marked him out in all men's eyes as the adversary of
Legalism.
There were circumstances, however, that lent a certain colour to this
calumny. The circumcision of Timothy, for instance, might be thought
to look in this direction (Acts xvi. 1-3). And Paul valued his Hebrew
birth. He loved his Jewish brethren more than his own salvation
(Rom. ix. 1-5; xi. 1). There was nothing of the revolutionary or the
iconoclast about him. Personally he preferred to conform to the
ancient usages, when doing so did not compromise the honour of Christ
(Acts xviii. 18; xxi. 17-26). It was false that he "taught the Jews
not to circumcise their children, nor to walk by the customs" (Acts
xxi. 20-26). He did teach them that these things were "of no avail
in Christ Jesus;" that they were in no sense necessary to salvation;
and that it was contrary to the will of Christ to impose them upon
Gentiles. But it was no part of his business to alter the social
customs of his people, or to bid them renounce the glories of their
past. While he insists that "there is no difference" between Jew and
Gentile in their need of the gospel and their rights in it, he still
claims for the Jew the first place in the order of its manifestation.
This was an entirely different thing from "preaching circumcision"
in the legalist sense, from heralding (κηρύσσω: ver. 11) and crying
up the Jewish ordinance, and making it a religious duty. This
difference the Circumcisionists affected not to understand. Some
of Paul's critics will not understand it even now. They argue that
the Apostle's hostility to Judaism in this Epistle discredits the
narrative of the Acts of the Apostles, inasmuch as the latter relates
several instances of Jewish conformity on his part. What pragmatical
narrowness is this! Paul's adversaries said, "He derides Judaism
amongst you Gentiles, who know nothing of his antecedents, or of his
practice in other places. But when he pleases, this liberal Paul will
be as zealous for circumcision as any of us. Indeed he boasts of his
skill in 'becoming all things to all men;' he trims his sail to every
breeze. In _Galatia_ he is all breadth and tolerance; he talks about
our 'liberty which we have in Christ Jesus;' he is ready to 'become
as you are;' no one would imagine he had ever been a Jew. In _Judea_
he makes a point of being strictly orthodox, and is indignant if any
one questions his devotion to the Law."
Paul's position was a delicate one, and open to misrepresentation.
Men of party insist on this or that external custom as the badge of
their own side; they have their party-colours and their uniform.
Men of principle adopt or lay aside such usages with a freedom
which scandalizes the partisan. What right, he says, has any one to
wear our colours, to pronounce our shibboleth, if he is not one of
ourselves? If the man will not be with us, let him be against us.
Had Paul renounced his circumcision and declared himself a Gentile
out and out, the Judaists might have understood him. Had he said,
_Circumcision is evil_, they could have endured it better; but to
preach that _Circumcision is nothing_, to reduce this all-important
rite to insignificance, vexed them beyond measure. It was in their
eyes plain proof of dishonesty. They tell the Galatians that Paul is
playing a double part, that his resistance to their circumcision is
interested and insincere.
The charge is identical with that of "man-pleasing" which the
Apostle repelled in ch. i. 10 (see Chapter III). The emphatic
"still" of that passage recurs twice in this, bearing the same
meaning as it does there. Its force is not _temporal_, as though
the Apostle were thinking of a former time when he did "preach
circumcision:" no such reference appears in the context, and these
terms are inappropriate to his pre-Christian career. The particle
points a _logical_ contrast, as _e.g._ in Rom. iii. 7; ix. 19: "If I
still (notwithstanding my professions as a Gentile apostle) preach
circumcision, why am I still (notwithstanding my so preaching)
persecuted?" Had Paul been known by the Jews to be in other places
a promoter of circumcision, they would have treated him very
differently. He could not then have been, as the Galatians knew him
everywhere to be, "in perils from his fellow-countrymen."
The rancour of the Legalists was sufficient proof of Paul's
sincerity. They were themselves guilty of the baseness with which
they taxed him. It was in order to escape the reproach of the cross
(ver. 11), to atone for their belief in the Nazarene, that they
persuaded Gentile Christians to be circumcised (ch. vi. 11, 12).
_They_ were the man-pleasers. The Judaizers knew perfectly well that
the Apostle's observance of Jewish usage was no endorsement of their
principles. The print of the Jewish scourge upon his back attested
his loyalty to Gentile Christendom (ch. vi. 17; 2 Cor. xi. 24). A
further consequence would have ensued from the duplicity imputed
to Paul, which he resents even more warmly: "Then," he says, "if I
preach circumcision, the offence of the cross is done away!" He is
charged with treason against the cross of Christ. He has betrayed the
one thing in which he glories (ch. vi. 14), to which the service of
his life was consecrated! For the doctrine of the cross was at an end
if the legal ritual were re-established and men were taught to trust
in the saving efficacy of circumcision--above all, if the Apostle of
the Gentiles had preached this doctrine! The Legalists imputed to
him the very last thing of which he was capable. This was in fact
the error into which Peter had weakly fallen at Antioch. The Jewish
Apostle had then acted as though "Christ died in vain" (ch. ii. 21).
For himself Paul indignantly denies that his conduct bore any such
construction.
But he says, "_the scandal_ of the cross"--that scandalous,
offensive cross, the stumbling-block of Jewish pride (1 Cor. i.
23). The death of Christ was not only revolting in its form to
Jewish sentiment;[136] it was a fatal event for Judaism itself. It
imported the end of the Mosaic economy. The Church at Jerusalem had
not yet fully grasped this fact; they sought, as far as possible,
to live on good terms with their non-Christian Jewish brethren, and
admitted perhaps too easily into their fellowship men who cared
more for Judaism than for Christ and His cross. For them also the
final rupture was approaching, when they had to "go forth unto Jesus
without the camp." Paul had seen from the first that the breach
was irreparable. He determined to keep his Gentile Churches free
from Judaic entanglements. In his view, Calvary was the terminus of
Mosaism.
[136] Comp. Chapter XII, pp. 193-4.
This was true _historically_. The crime of national Judaism in
slaying its Messiah was capital. Its spiritual blindness and its
moral failure had received the most signal proof. The congregation of
Israel had become a synagogue of Satan. And these were "the chosen
people," the world's _élite_, who "crucified the Lord of glory!"
_Mankind_ had done this thing. The world has "both seen and hated
both Him and the Father." Now to set up circumcision again, or any
kind of human effort or performance, as a ground of justification
before God, is to ignore this judgement; it is to make void the
sentence which the cross of Christ has passed upon all "works of
righteousness which we have done." This teaching sorely offends
moralists and ceremonialists, of whatever age or school; it is "the
offence of the cross."
And further, as matter of _Divine appointment_ the sacrifice of
Calvary put an end to Jewish ordinances. Their significance was gone.
The Epistle to the Hebrews developes this consequence at length in
other directions. For himself the Apostle views it from a single
and very definite standpoint. The Law, he says, had brought on men
a curse; it stimulated sin to its worst developments (ch. iii. 10,
19). Christ's death under this curse has expiated and removed it for
us (ch. iii. 13). His atonement met man's guilt in its culmination.
The Law had not prevented--nay, it gave occasion to the crime; it
necessitated, but could not provide expiation, which was supplied
"outside the law" (Rom. iii. 21: ὥρις νόμου). The "offence" of the
doctrine of the cross lay just here. It reconciled man with God on an
extra-legal footing. It provided a new ground of justification and
pronounced the old worthless. It fixed the mark of moral impotence
and rejection upon the system to which the Jewish nature clung
with passionate pride. To preach the cross was to declare legalism
abolished: to preach circumcision was to declare the cross and its
offence abolished.
This dilemma the Circumcisionists would fain escape. They fought
shy of Calvary. Like some later moralists, they did not see why the
cross should be always pushed to the front, and its offence forced
upon the world. Surely there was in the wide range of Christian
truth abundance of other profitable topics to discuss, without
wounding Jewish susceptibilities in this way. But this endeavour of
theirs is just what Paul is determined to frustrate. He confronts
Judaism at every turn with that dreadful cross. He insists that
it shall be realised in its horror and its shame, that men shall
feel the tremendous shock which it gives to the moral conceit, the
self-justifying spirit of human nature, which in the Jew of this
period had reached its extreme point. "If law could save, if the
world were not guilty before God," he reiterates, "why that death
of the cross? God hath set Him forth _a propitiation_." And whoso
accepts Jesus Christ must accept Him _crucified_, with all the
offence and humiliation that the fact involves.
In later days the death of Christ has been made void in other ways.
It is veiled in the steam of our incense. It is invested with the
halo of a sensuous glorification. The cross has been for many turned
into an artistic symbol, a beautiful idol, festooned with garlands,
draped in poetry, but robbed of its spiritual meaning, its power to
humble and to save. Let men see it "openly set forth," in its naked
terror and majesty, that they may know what they are and what their
sins have done.
We rely on birth and good breeding, on art and education as
instruments of moral progress. Improved social arrangements, a higher
environment, these, we think, will elevate the race. Within their
limits these forces are invaluable; they are ordained of God. But
they are only _law_ at the best. When they have done their utmost,
they leave man still unsaved--proud, selfish, unclean, miserable.
To rest human salvation on self-improvement and social reform, is
legalism over again. To civilise is not to regenerate. These methods
were tried in Mosaism, under circumstances in many respects highly
favourable. "The scandal of the cross" was the result. Education
and social discipline may produce a Pharisee, nothing higher.
Legislation and environment work from the outside. They cannot touch
the essential human heart. Nothing has ever done this like the cross
of Jesus Christ. He who "makes it of none effect," whether in the
name of Jewish tradition or of modern progress, takes away the one
practicable hope of the moral regeneration of mankind.
III. We are now in a position to estimate more precisely the
character and motives of the Judaistic party, _the hinderers and
troublers_ of this Epistle.
In the first place, it appears that they had entered the Galatian
communities from without. The fact that they are called _troublers_
(_disturbers_) of itself suggests this (ver. 10; ch. i. 7). They
came with a professed "gospel," as messengers bringing new tidings;
the Apostle compares them to himself, the first Galatian evangelist,
"or an angel from heaven" (ch. i. 8, 9). He glances at them in his
reference to "false brethren" at an earlier time "brought into (the
Gentile Church) unawares" (ch. ii. 4). These men are "courting" the
favour of Paul's Galatian disciples, endeavouring to gain them over
in his absence (ch. iv. 17, 18). They have made misleading statements
respecting his early career and relations to the Church, which he is
at pains to correct. They professed to represent the views of the
Pillars at Jerusalem, and quoted their authority against the Apostle
Paul.
From these considerations we infer that "the troublers" were
_Judaistic emissaries from Palestine_. The second Epistle to Corinth,
contemporaneous with this letter, reveals the existence of a similar
propaganda in the Greek capital at the same period. Paul had given
the Galatians warning on the subject at his last visit (ch. i. 9).
There were already, we should suppose, in the Galatian societies,
before the arrival of the Judaizers, Jewish believers in Christ
of legalistic tendencies, prepared to welcome and support the new
teachers. But it was the coming of these agitators from without that
threw the Churches of Galatia into such a ferment, and brought about
the situation disclosed in this Epistle.
The allusion made in chap. ii. 12 to "certain from James,"[137]
taken in connection with other circumstances, points, as we think,
to the outbreak of a systematic agitation against the Apostle Paul,
which was carried on during his third missionary tour, and drew from
him the great evangelical Epistles of this epoch. This anti-Pauline
movement emanated from Jerusalem and pretended to official sanction.
Set on foot at the time of the collision with Peter at Antioch, the
conflict is now in full progress. The Apostle's denunciation of his
opponents is unsparing. They "hinder" the Galatians "from obeying
truth" (ver. 7); they entice them from the path in which they had
bravely set out, and are robbing them of their heritage in Christ.
It was a false, a perverted gospel that they taught (ch. i. 7). They
cast on their hearers an envious spell which drew them away from
the cross and its salvation (ch. ii. 21; iii. 1). Not truth, but
self-interest and party-ends were the objects they pursued (ch. iv.
17; vi. 12, 13). Their "persuasion" was assuredly not of God, "who
had called" the Galatians through the Apostle's voice. If God had
sent Paul amongst them, as the Galatians had good reason to know,
clearly He had not sent these men, with their "other gospel."
[137] Compare Chapter IX, pp. 131-4. We refer this occurrence to
the interval between the second and third of Paul's missionary
journeys (Acts xviii. 22), A.D. 54.
The vitiating "leaven" at work in the spiritual life of the
Galatians, if not arrested, would soon "leaven the whole lump." The
Apostle applies to the Judaistic doctrine the same figure under which
he described the taint of immorality found in the Church of Corinth
(1 Cor. v. 6-8). So zealous and unscrupulous, so deadly in its effect
on evangelical faith and life was the spirit of Jewish legalism. The
Apostle trusts that his Galatians will after all escape from this
fatal infection, that they will leave "the troublers" alone to "bear
the judgement" which must fall upon them (ver. 10). The Lord is the
Keeper, and the Avenger of His Church. No one, "whosoever he be,"
will injure it with impunity. Let the man that makes mischief in the
Church of Jesus Christ take care what he is about. The tempted may
escape; sins of ignorance and weakness can be forgiven. But woe unto
the tempter!
Against the wilful perverters of the gospel the Apostle at the outset
delivered his anathema. For these Circumcisionists in particular he
has one further wish to express. It is a grim sort of suggestion,
to be read rather by way of sarcasm than in the strict letter of
fulfilment. The devotees of circumcision, he means to say, might
as well go a step farther. If the physical mark of Judaism, the
mere surgical act, is so salutary, why not "cut off" the member
altogether, like the emasculated priests of Cybelé? (ver. 12).[138]
This mutilation belonged to the worship of the great heathen goddess
of Asia Minor, and was associated with her debasing cultus. Moreover
it excluded its victim from a place in the congregation of Israel
(Deut. xxiii. 1).
[138] The rendering of the R.V. _margin_ is that of all the
Greek interpreters, and of Meyer, Lightfoot, Beet, and the
strict grammatical commentators amongst the moderns. The form
and usage of the verb do not allow of any other. Apart from its
unseemliness, the expression is powerfully appropriate. This
condemnation of the Old-Testament sacrament is not more severe
than the language of Isa. lxvi. 3: "He that slaughtereth an ox is
a man-slayer, he that bringeth a meal-offering--it is _swine's
blood_."
This mockery, though not to be judged by modern sentiment, in any
case went to the verge of what charity and decency permit. It
breathes a burning contempt for the Judaizing policy. It shows how
utterly circumcision had lost its sacredness for the Apostle. Its
spiritual import being gone, it was now a mere "concision" (Phil.
iii. 2), a cutting of the body--nothing more.
Such language was well calculated to disgust Gentile Christians with
the rite of circumcision. It helps to account for the implacable
hatred with which Paul was regarded by orthodox Jews. It accords with
what he intimated in ch. iv. 9, to the effect that Jewish conformity
was for the Gentiles in effect _heathenish_. Apart from its relation
to the obsolete Mosaic covenant, circumcision was in itself no holier
than the deformities inflicted by Paganism on its votaries.
The Judaizers are finally described, not merely as "troublers" and
"hinderers," but as "those that _unsettle_ you"--or more strongly
still, "_overthrow_ you." The Greek word (ἀναστατέω) occurs in Acts
xvii. 6, xxi. 38, where it is rendered, _turn upside down, stir to
sedition_. These men were carrying on a treasonable agitation. False
themselves to the gospel of Christ, they incited the Galatians to
belie their Christian professions, to betray the cause of Gentile
liberty, and to desert their own Apostle. They deserved to suffer
some degrading punishment. "Full" as they were "of subtlety and
mischief, perverting the right ways of the Lord," Paul did well to
denounce them and to turn their zeal for circumcision to derisive
scorn.
_THE ETHICAL APPLICATION._
CHAPTER v. 13-vi. 10.
CHAPTER XXII.
_THE PERILS OF LIBERTY._
"For ye, brethren, were called for freedom; only _use_ not
your freedom for an occasion to the flesh, but through love be
servants one to another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one
word, _even_ in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not
consumed one of another."--GAL. v. 13-15.
Our analysis has drawn a strong line across the middle of this
chapter. At ver. 13 the Apostle turns his mind in the ethical
direction. He has dismissed "the troublers" with contempt in ver. 12;
and until the close of the Epistle does not mention them again; he
addresses his readers on topics in which they are left out of view.
But this third, ethical section of the letter is still continuous
with its polemical and doctrinal argument.
It applies the maxim of ver. 6, "Faith works through love"; it
reminds the Galatians how they had "received the Spirit of God" (ch.
iii. 2, 3; iv. 6). The rancours and jealousies opposed to love,
the carnal mind that resists the Spirit--these are the objects
of Paul's dehortations. The moral disorders which the Apostle
seeks to correct arose largely out of the mischief caused by the
Judaizers. And his exhortations to love and good works are themselves
indirectly polemical. They vindicate Paul's gospel from the charge
of antinomianism, while they guard Christians from giving occasion
to the charge. They protect from exaggeration and abuse the liberty
already defended from legalistic encroachments. The more precious
and sacred is the freedom of Gentile believers, the more on the one
hand do those deserve punishment who would defraud them of it; and
the more earnestly must they on their part guard this treasure from
misuse and dishonour. In this sense ver. 13_a_ stands between the
sentence against the Circumcisionists in ver. 12 and the appeal to
the Galatians that follows. It repeats the proclamation of freedom
made in ver. 1, making it the ground at once of the judgement
pronounced against the foes of freedom and the admonition addressed
to its possessors. "_For you were called_ (summoned by God to enter
the kingdom of His Son) _with a view to liberty_--not to legal
bondage; nor, on the other hand, that you might run into licence
and give the reins to self-will and appetite--not _liberty for an
occasion to the flesh_."
I. Here lies _the danger of liberty_, especially when conferred on a
young, untrained nature, and in a newly emancipated community.
Freedom is a priceless boon; but it is a grave responsibility. It
has its temptations, as well as its joys and dignities. The Apostle
has spoken at length of the latter: it is the former that he has
now to urge. Keep your liberties, he seems to say; for Christ's
sake and for truth's sake hold them fast, guard them well. You are
God's regenerated sons. Never forego your high calling. God is on
your side; and those who assail you shall feel the weight of His
displeasure. Yes, "stand fast" in the liberty wherewith "Christ made
you free." But take care how you employ your freedom; "only use not
liberty for an occasion to the flesh." This significant _only_ turns
the other side of the medal, and bids us read the legend on its
reverse front. On the obverse we have found it written, "The Lord
knoweth them that are His" (2 Tim. ii. 19; comp. Gal. iv. 6, 9). This
is the side of _privilege_ and of grace, the spiritual side of the
Christian life. On the reverse it bears the motto, "Let every one
that nameth the name of the Lord depart from iniquity." This is the
second, the ethical side of our calling, the side of _duty_, to which
we have now to turn.
The man, or the nation that has won its freedom, has won but half the
battle. It has conquered external foes; it has still to prevail over
itself. And this is the harder task. Men clamour for liberty, when
they mean licence; what they seek is the liberty of the flesh, not
of the Spirit, freedom to indulge their lusts and to trample on the
rights of others, the freedom of outlaws and brigands. The natural
man defines freedom as the power to do as he likes; not the right of
self-regulation, but the absence of regulation is what he desires.
And this is just what the Spirit of God will never allow (ver. 17).
When such a man has thrown off outward constraint and the dread of
punishment, there is no inward law to take its place. It is his
greed, his passion, his pride and ambition that call for freedom; not
his conscience. And to all such libertarians our Saviour says, "He
that committeth sin is _the slave of sin_." No tyrant is so vile, so
insatiable as our own self-indulged sin. A pitiable triumph, for a
man to have secured his religious liberty only to become the thrall
of his vices!
It is possible that some men accepted the gospel under the delusion
that it afforded a shelter for sin. The sensualist, deterred from his
indulgences by fear of the Law, joined in Paul's campaign against
it, imagining that Grace would give him larger freedom. If "where
sin abounded grace did superabound," he would say in his heart, Why
not sin the more, so that grace might have a greater victory? This
is no fanciful inference. Hypocrisy has learned to wear the garb
of evangelical zeal; and teachers of the gospel have not always
guarded sufficiently against this shocking perversion. Even the man
whose heart has been truly touched and changed by Divine grace,
when the freshness of his first love to Christ has passed away and
temptation renews its assaults, is liable to this deception. He may
begin to think that sin is less perilous, since forgiveness was so
easily obtained. He may presume that as a son of God, sealed by the
Spirit of adoption, he will not be allowed to fall, even though he
stumble. He is one of "God's elect"; what "shall separate him" from
the Divine love in Christ? In this assurance he holds a talisman that
secures his safety. What need to "watch and pray lest he enter into
temptation," when the Lord is his keeper? He is God's enfranchised
son; "all things are lawful" to him; "things present" as well as
"things to come" are his in Christ. By such reasonings his liberty
is turned into an _occasion to the flesh_. And men who before they
boasted themselves sons of God were restrained by the spirit of
bondage and fear, have found in this assurance the occasion, the
"starting-point" (ἀφορμή) for a more shameless course of evil.
In the view of Legalism, this is the natural outcome of Pauline
teaching. From the first it has been charged with fostering
lawlessness. In the Lutheran Reformation Rome pointed to the
Antinomians, and moralists of our own day speak of "canting
Evangelicals," just as the Judaists alleged the existence of immoral
Paulinists, whose conduct, they declared, was the proper fruit of the
preaching of emancipation from the Law. These, they would say to the
Apostle, are your spiritual children; they do but carry your doctrine
to its legitimate issue. This reproach the gospel has always had
to bear; there have been those, alas, amongst its professors whose
behaviour has given it plausibility. Sensualists will "turn the grace
of our God into lasciviousness;" swine will trample under their feet
the pure pearls of the gospel. But they are pure and precious none
the less.
This possibility is, however, a reason for the utmost watchfulness
in those who are stewards in the administration of the gospel. They
must be careful, like Paul, to make it abundantly clear that they
"establish" and do not "make void law through faith" (Rom. iii. 31).
There is an evangelical Ethics, as well as an evangelical Dogmatics.
The ethics of the Gospel have been too little studied and applied.
Hence much of the confessed failure of evangelical Churches in
preserving and building up the converts that they win.
II. Faith in Christ gives in truth a new efficacy to the moral law.
For it works through love; and love fulfils all laws in one (vv.
13_b_, 14). Where faith has this operation, liberty is safe; not
otherwise. _Love's slaves are the true freemen._
The legalist practically takes the same view of human nature as the
sensualist. He knows nothing of "the desire of the Spirit" arrayed
against that of the flesh (ver. 17), nothing of the mastery over
the heart that belongs to the love of Christ. In his analysis the
soul consists of so many desires, each blindly seeking its own
gratification, which must be drilled into order under external
pressure, by an intelligent application of law. Modern Utilitarians
agree with the ancient Judaists in their ethical philosophy.
Fear of punishment, hope of reward, the influence of the social
environment--these are, as they hold, the factors which create
character and shape our moral being. "Pain and pleasure," they tell
us, "are the masters of human life." Without the faith that man is
the child of God, formed in His image, we are practically shut up to
this suicidal theory of morals. _Suicidal_ we say, for it robs our
spiritual being of everything distinctive in it, of all that raises
the moral above the natural; it makes duty and personality illusions.
Judaism is a proof that this scheme of life is impracticable. For the
Pharisaic system which produced such deplorable moral results, was
an experiment in external ethics. It was in fact the application of
a highly developed and elaborate traditional code of law, enforced
by the strongest outward sanctions, _without personal loyalty to
the Divine Lawgiver_. In the national conscience of the Jews this
was wanting. Their faith in God, as the Epistle of James declares,
was a "dead" faith, a bundle of abstract notions. Loyalty is true
law-keeping. And loyalty springs from the personal relationship of
the subject and the law-making power. This nexus Christian sonship
supplies, in its purest and most exalted form. When I see in the
Lawgiver my Almighty Father, when the law has become incarnate in the
person of my Saviour, my heart's King and Lord, it wears a changed
aspect. "_His commandments_ are not grievous." Duty, required by Him,
is honour and delight. No abstract law, no "stream of tendency" can
command the homage or awaken the moral energy that is inspired by
"the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Here the Apostle traverses antinomian deductions from his doctrine of
liberty. In the Epistle to the Romans (ch. vi.) he deals at length
with the theoretical objection to his teaching on this subject.
He shows there that salvation by faith, rightly understood and
experienced, renders continuance in sin impossible. For faith in
Christ is in effect the union of the soul with Christ, first in His
death, and then consequently in His risen life, wherein He lives only
"to God." Nay, Christ Himself lives in the believing man (Gal. ii.
20). Instead of our sinning "because we are not under the law, but
under grace," this is precisely the reason why we need not and must
not sin. Faith joins us to the risen Christ, whose life we share--so
Paul argues--and we should not sin any more than He. Here, from the
practical standpoint, he lays it down that _faith works by love; and
love casts out sin, for it unites all laws in itself_. Faith links us
to Christ in heaven (Romans); faith fills us with His love on earth
(Galatians). So love, marked out in ver. 6 as the energy of faith,
now serves as the guard of liberty. Neither legalist nor law-breaker
understands the meaning of faith in Christ.
At this point Paul throws in one of his bold paradoxes. He has been
contending all through the Epistle for freedom, bidding his readers
scorn the legal yoke, breathing into them his own contempt for the
pettiness of Judaistic ceremonial. But now he turns round suddenly
and bids them _be slaves_: "but let love," he says, "make you bondmen
to each other" (ver. 13). Instead of breaking bonds, he seeks to
create stronger bonds, stronger because dearer. Paul preaches
no gospel of individualism, of egotistic salvation-seeking. The
self-sacrifice of Christ becomes in turn a principle of sacrifice in
those who receive it. Paul's own ideal is, to be "conformed to His
death" (Phil. iii. 10). There is nothing anarchic or self-asserting
in his plea for freedom. He opposes the law of Pharisaic externalism
in the interests of the law of Christian love. The yoke of Judaism
must be broken, its bonds cast aside, in order to give free play to
"the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus." Faith transfers
authority from flesh to spirit, giving it a surer seat, a more
effective, and in reality more lawful command over man's nature. It
restores the normal equipoise of the soul. Now the Divine law is
written on "the tablets of the heart"; and this makes it far more
sovereign than when engraved on the stone slabs of Sinai. Love and
law for the believer in Christ are fused into one. In this union
law loses nothing of its holy severity; and love nothing of its
tenderness. United they constitute the Christian sense of _duty_,
whose sternest exactions are enforced by gratitude and devotion.
And love is ever conqueror. To it toil and endurance that mock the
achievement of other powers, are a light thing. Needing neither bribe
nor threat, love labours, waits, braves a thousand dangers, keeps the
hands busy, the eye keen and watchful, the feet running to and fro
untired through the longest day. There is no industry, no ingenuity
like that of love. Love makes the mother the slave of the babe at
her breast, and wins from the friend for his friend service that no
compulsion could exact, rendered in pure gladness and free-will. Its
power alone calls forth what is best and strongest in us all. Love is
mightier than death. In Jesus Christ, love has "laid down life for
its friends"; the fulness of life has encountered and overcome the
uttermost of death. Love esteems it bondage to be prevented, liberty
only to be allowed to serve.
Without love, freedom is an empty boon. It brings no ease, no joy
of heart. It is objectless and listless. Bereft of faith and love,
though possessing the most perfect independence, the soul drifts
along like a ship rudderless and masterless, with neither haven nor
horizon. Wordsworth, in his Ode to Duty, has finely expressed the
weariness that comes of such liberty, unguided by an inward law and a
Divine ideal:
"Me this unchartered freedom tires;
I feel the weight of chance desires:
My hopes no more must change their name;
I long for a repose that ever is the same."
But on the other hand,
"Serene will be our days and bright,
And happy will our nature be,
When love is an unerring light,
And joy its own security."
This "royal law" (Jam. ii. 8) blends with its sovereignty of power
the charm of simplicity. "The whole law," says the Apostle, "hath
been fulfilled in one word--LOVE" (ver. 14). The Master said, "I came
not to destroy the law, but to fulfil." The key to His fulfilment was
given in the declaration of the twofold command of love to God and
to our neighbour. "On these two hang all the law and the prophets."
Hence the Apostle's phrase, _hath been fulfilled_. This unification
of the moral code is accomplished. Christ's life and death have
given to this truth full expression and universal currency. Love's
fulfilment of law stands before us a positive attainment, an
incontestable fact. Paul does not speak here, as in Rom. xiii. 9, of
the comprehending, the "summing up" of all laws in one; but of the
bringing of law to its completion, its realisation and consummation
in the love of Christ. "O how I love Thy law," said the purer spirit
of the Old Testament. "Thy love is my law," says the true spirit of
the New.
It is remarkable that this supreme principle of Christian ethics
is first enunciated in the most legal part of the Old Testament.
Leviticus is the Book of the Priestly Legislation. It is chiefly
occupied with ceremonial and civil regulations. Yet in the midst
of the legal minutiæ is set this sublime and simple rule, than
which Jesus Christ could prescribe nothing more Divine: _Thou shalt
love thy neighbour as thyself_ (Levit. xix. 18). This sentence is
the conclusion of a series of directions (vv. 9-18) forbidding
unneighbourly conduct, each of them sealed with the declaration,
"I am Jehovah." This brief code of brotherly love breathes a truly
Christian spirit; it is a beautiful expression of "the law of
kindness" that is on the lips and in the heart of the child of God.
We find in the law-book of Mosaism, side by side with elaborate rules
of sacrificial ritual and the homeliest details touching the life
of a rude agricultural people, conceptions of God and of duty of
surpassing loftiness and purity, such as meet us in the religion of
no other ancient nation.
The law, therefore, opposed and cast out in the name of faith, is
brought in again under the shield of love. "If ye love Me," said
Jesus, "_keep my commandments_." Love reconciles law and faith. Law
by itself can but prohibit this and that injury to one's neighbour,
when they are likely to arise. Love excludes the doing of any injury;
it "worketh no ill to its neighbour, therefore love is the fulfilling
of the law" (Rom. xiii. 10). That which law restrains or condemns
after the fact, love renders impossible beforehand. It is not content
with the negative prevention of wrong; it "overcomes" and displaces
"evil with good."
"What law could not do," with all its multiplied enactments and
redoubled threats, faith "working by love" has accomplished at a
stroke. "The righteousness of the law is fulfilled in those who
walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit" (Rom. viii. 3, 4).
Gentile Christians have been raised to the level of a righteousness
"exceeding that of scribes and pharisees" (Matt. v. 20). The flesh
which defied law's terrors and evaded its control, is subdued by the
love of Christ. Law created the need of salvation; it defined its
conditions and the direction which it must take. But there its power
ceased. It could not change the sinful heart. It supplied no motive
adequate to secure obedience. The moralist errs in substituting duty
for love, works for faith. He would make the rule furnish the motive,
the path supply strength to walk in it. The distinction of the gospel
is that it is "_the power_ of God unto salvation," while the law is
"_weak_ through the flesh."
Paul does not therefore override the law in the interest of faith.
Quite the contrary, he establishes, he magnifies it. His theology
rests on the idea of Righteousness, which is strictly a legal
conception. But he puts the law in its proper place. He secures
for it the alliance of love. The legalist, desiring to exalt law,
in reality stultifies it. Striving to make it omnipotent, he makes
it impotent. In the Apostle's teaching, law is the rule, faith the
spring of action. Law marks the path, love gives the will and power
to follow it. Who then are the truest friends of law--Legalists or
Paulinists, moralists or evangelicals?
III. Alas, the Galatians at the present moment afford a spectacle
far different from the ideal which Paul has drawn. Instead of
"serving each other in love," they are "biting and devouring one
another." The Church is in danger of being "consumed" by their
jealousies and quarrels (ver. 15).
These Asiatic Gauls were men of a warm temperament, quick to resent
wrong and prone to imagine it. The dissensions excited by the Judaic
controversy had excited their combative temper to an unusual degree.
"Biting" describes the wounding and exasperating effect of the manner
in which their contentions were carried on; "devour" warns them of
its destructiveness. Taunts were hurled across the field of debate;
vituperation supplied the lack of argument. Differences of opinion
engendered private feuds and rankling injuries. In Corinth the spirit
of discord had taken a factious form. It arrayed men in conflicting
parties, with their distinctive watchwords and badges and sectional
platforms. In these Churches it bore fruit in personal affronts
and quarrels, in an angry, vindictive temper, which spread through
the Galatian societies and broke out in every possible form of
contention (v. 20). If this state of things continued, the Churches
of Galatia would cease to exist. Their liberty would end in complete
disintegration.
Like some other communities, the Galatian Christians were oscillating
between despotism and anarchy; they had not attained the equilibrium
of a sober, ordered liberty, the freedom of a manly self-control.
They had not sufficient respect either for their own or for each
other's rights. Some men must be bridled or they will "bite;" they
must wear the yoke or they run wild. They are incapable of being
a law unto themselves. They have not faith enough to make them
steadfast, nor love enough to be an inward guide, nor the Spirit of
God in measure sufficient to overcome the vanity and self-indulgence
of the flesh. But the Apostle still hopes to see his Galatian
disciples worthy of their calling as sons of God. He points out
to them the narrow but sure path that leads between the desert of
legalism on the one hand, and the gulf of anarchy and licence on the
other.
* * * * *
The problem of the nature and conditions of Christian liberty
occupies the Apostle's mind in different ways in all the letters of
this period. The young Churches of the Gentiles were in the gravest
peril. They had come out of Egypt to enter the Promised Land, the
heritage of the sons of God. The Judaists sought to turn them aside
into the Sinaitic wilderness of Mosaism; while their old habits
and associations powerfully tended to draw them back into heathen
immorality. Legalism and licence were the Scylla and Charybdis on
either hand, between which it needed the most firm and skilful
pilotage to steer the bark of the Church. The helm of the vessel is
in Paul's hands. And, through the grace of God, he did not fail in
his task. It is in _the love of Christ_ that the Apostle found his
guiding light. "Love," he has written, "never faileth."
Love is the handmaid of faith, and the firstborn fruit of the Spirit
of Christ (vv. 6, 22). Blending with the law, love refashions it,
changing it into its own image. Thus moulded and transfigured, law
is no longer an exterior yoke, a system of restraint and penalty; it
becomes an inner, sweet constraint. Upon the child of God it acts as
an organic and formative energy, the principle of his regenerated
being, which charges with its renovating influence all the springs of
life. Evil is met no longer by a merely outward opposition, but by
a repugnance proceeding from within. "The Spirit lusteth against the
flesh" (v. 17). The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus becomes
the law of the man's new nature. God known and loved in Christ is the
central object of his life. Within the Divine kingdom so created,
the realm of love and of the Spirit, the soul henceforth dwells; and
under that kingdom it places for itself all other souls, loved like
itself in Christ.
CHAPTER XXIII.
_CHRIST'S SPIRIT AND HUMAN FLESH._
[_He showeth the battell of the flesh and the Spirit;
and the fruits of them both._ Heading in Genevan Bible.]
"But I say, Walk by the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust
of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and
the Spirit against the flesh; for these are contrary the one
to the other; that ye may not do the things that ye would. But
if ye are led by the Spirit, ye are not under the law.... And
they that are of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with the
passions and the lusts thereof. If we live by the Spirit, by the
Spirit let us also walk. Let us not be vainglorious, provoking
one another, envying one another."--GAL. v. 16-26.
Love is the guard of Christian freedom. The Holy Spirit is its guide.
These principles accomplish what the law could never do. It withheld
liberty, and yet did not give purity. The Spirit of love and of
sonship bestows both, establishing a happy, ordered freedom, the
liberty of the sons of God.
From the first of these two factors of Christian ethics the Apostle
passes in ver. 16 to the second. He conducts us from the consequence
to the cause, from the human aspect of spiritual freedom to the
Divine. Love, he has said, fulfils all laws in one. It casts out evil
from the heart; it stays the injurious hand and tongue; and makes
it impossible for liberty to give the rein to any wanton or selfish
impulse. But the law of love is no natural, automatic impulse. It is
a Divine inspiration. "Love is of God." It is the characteristic
"fruit of the Spirit" of adoption (ver. 22), implanted and nourished
from above. When I bid you "by love serve each other," the Apostle
says, I do not expect you to keep this law of yourselves, by force of
native goodness: I know how contrary it is to your Galatic nature;
"but I say, walk in the Spirit," and this will be an easy yoke;
to "fulfil the desire of the flesh" will then be for you a thing
impossible.
The word _Spirit_ (πνεύματι) is written indefinitely; but the
Galatians knew well what Spirit the Apostle meant. It is "the Spirit"
of whom he has spoken so often in this letter, the Holy Spirit of
God, who had entered their hearts when they first believed in Christ
and taught them to call God Father. He gave them their freedom: He
will teach them how to use it. The absence of the definite article in
_Pneuma_ does not destroy its personal force, but allows it at the
same time a broad, qualitative import, corresponding to that of the
opposed "desire of the flesh." The walk governed "by the Spirit" is
a _spiritual_ walk. As for the interpretation of the _dative_ case
(rendered variously _by_, or _in_, or even _for the Spirit_), that is
determined by the meaning of the noun itself. "The Spirit" is not the
path "in" which one walks; rather He supplies _the motive principle,
the directing influence_ of the new life.[139] Ver. 16 is interpreted
by vv. 18 and 25. To "walk in the Spirit" is to be "led by the
Spirit"; it is so to "live in the Spirit" that one habitually "moves"
(_marches_: ver. 25) under His direction.
[139] The construction of ch. vi. 16; Rom. iv. 12; Phil. iii. 16,
is not strictly analogous.
This conception of the indwelling Spirit of God as the actuating
power of the Christian's moral life predominates in the rest of this
chapter. We shall pursue the general line of the Apostle's teaching
on the subject in the present Chapter, leaving for future exposition
the detailed enumeration of the "fruit of the Spirit" and "works
of the flesh" contained in vv. 19-23. This antithesis of Flesh and
Spirit presents the following considerations:--(1) _the diametrical
opposition of the two forces_; (2) _the effect of the predominance of
one or the other_; (3) _the mastery over the flesh which belongs to
those who are Christ's_. In a word, Christ's Spirit is the absolute
antagonist and the sure vanquisher of our sinful human flesh.
I. "I say, Walk by the Spirit, and you will verily not fulfil
the lust of the flesh." On what ground does this bold assurance
rest? Because, the Apostle replies, _the Spirit and the flesh are
opposites_ (ver. 17). Each is bent on destroying the ascendency of
the other. Their cravings and tendencies stand opposed at every
point. Where the former rules, the latter must succumb. "For the
flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh."
The verb _lust_ in Greek, as in English, bears commonly an evil
sense; but not necessarily so, nor by derivation. It is a sad proof
of human corruption that in all languages words denoting strong
desire tend to an impure significance. Paul extends to "the desire
of the Spirit" the term which has just been used of "the lust of
the flesh," in this way sharpening the antithesis.[140] Words
appropriated to the vocabulary of the flesh and degraded by its use,
may be turned sometimes to good account and employed in the service
of the Holy Spirit, whose influence redeems our speech and purges
the uncleanness of our lips.
[140] Comp. Jas. iv. 5: "The Spirit which He made to dwell in
us, yearneth even unto jealous envy" (_R. V. margin_); also the
double use of ζηλόω in ch. iv. 17, 18 (Chapter XVIII, pp. 279,
280.).
The opposition here affirmed exists on the widest scale. All history
is a battlefield for the struggle between God's Spirit and man's
rebellious flesh. In the soul of a half-sanctified Christian, and
in Churches like those of Corinth and Galatia whose members are
"yet carnal and walk as men," the conflict is patent. The Spirit of
Christ has established His rule in the heart; but His supremacy is
challenged by the insurrection of the carnal powers. The contest thus
revived in the soul of the Christian is internecine; it is that of
the kingdoms of light and darkness, of the opposite poles of good
and evil. It is an incident in the war of human sin against the
Holy Spirit of God, which extends over all time and all human life.
Every lust, every act or thought of evil is directed, knowingly or
unknowingly, against the authority of the Holy Spirit, against the
presence and the rights of God immanent in the creature. Nor is there
any restraint upon evil, any influence counteracting it in man or
nation or race, which does not proceed from the Spirit of the Lord.
The spirit of man has never been without a Divine Paraclete. "God
hath not left Himself without witness" to any; and "it is the Spirit
that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth." The Spirit of
truth, the Holy Spirit, is the Spirit of all truth and holiness. In
the "truth as it is in Jesus" He possesses His highest instrument.
But from the beginning it was His office to be God's Advocate, to
uphold law, to convict the conscience, to inspire the hope of mercy,
to impart moral strength and freedom. We "believe in the Holy Ghost,
the Lord and Giver of life."
This war of Spirit and Flesh is first ostensibly declared in the
words of Gen. vi. 3. This passage indicates the moral reaction of
God's Spirit against the world's corruption, and the protest which
in the darkest periods of human depravity He has maintained. God had
allowed men to do despite to His good Spirit. But it cannot always
be so. A time comes when, outraged and defied, He withdraws His
influence from men and from communities; and the Flesh bears them
along to swift destruction. So it was in the world before the Flood.
So largely amongst later heathen peoples, when God "suffered all
nations to walk in their own ways." Even the Mosaic law had proved
rather a substitute than a medium for the free action of the Spirit
of God on men. "The law was spiritual," but "weak through the flesh."
It denounced the guilt which it was powerless to avert.
With the advent of Christ all this is changed. The Spirit of God is
now, for the first time, sent forth in His proper character and His
full energy. At last His victory draws near. He comes as the Spirit
of Christ and the Father, "_poured out_ upon all flesh." "A new heart
will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you. I will put
My Spirit within you" (Ezek. xxxvi. 25-27): this was the great hope
of prophecy; and it is realised. The Spirit of God's Son regenerates
the human heart, subdues the flesh, and establishes the communion
of God with men. The reign of the Spirit on earth was the immediate
purpose of the manifestation of Jesus Christ.
But what does Paul really mean by "the flesh?" It includes everything
that is not "of the Spirit." It signifies the entire potency of sin.
It is the contra-spiritual, the undivine in man. Its "works," as we
find in vv. 20, 21, are not bodily vices only, but include every
form of moral debasement and aberration. _Flesh_ in the Apostle's
vocabulary follows the term _spirit_, and deepens and enlarges its
meaning precisely as the latter does. Where _spirit_ denotes the
supersensible in man, _flesh_ is the sensible, the bodily nature
as such. When _spirit_ rises into the supernatural and superhuman,
_flesh_ becomes the natural, the human by consequence. When _spirit_
receives its highest signification, denoting the holy Effluence of
God, His personal presence in the world, _flesh_ sinks to its lowest
and represents unrenewed nature, the evil principle oppugnant and
alien to God. It is identical with _sin_. But in this profound moral
significance the term is more than a figure. Under its use _the body_
is marked out, not indeed as the cause, but as the instrument, the
vehicle of sin. Sin has incorporated itself with our organic life,
and extends its empire over the material world. When the Apostle
speaks of "the body of sin" and "of death," and bids us "mortify the
deeds of the body" and "the members which are upon the earth,"[141]
his expressions are not to be resolved into metaphors.
[141] See Rom. vi. 6, 12; vii. 4, 5, 23, 24; viii. 10-13; Col.
ii. 11-13; iii. 5.
On this definition of the terms, it is manifest that the antagonism
of the Flesh and Spirit is fundamental. They can never come to terms
with each other, nor dwell permanently in the same being. Sin must be
extirpated, or the Holy Spirit will finally depart. The struggle must
come to a definitive issue. Human character tends every day to a more
determinate form; and an hour comes in each case when the victory
of flesh or spirit is irrevocably fixed, when "the filthy" will
henceforth "be filthy still," and "the holy, holy still" (Rev. xxii.
11).
The last clause of ver. 17, "that ye may not do the things that
ye would," has been variously interpreted. The rendering of the
Authorized Version ("so that ye _cannot_") is perilously misleading.
Is it that the flesh prevents the Galatians doing the good they
would? Or is the Spirit to prevent them doing the evil they otherwise
would? Or are both these oppositions in existence at once, so that
they waver between good and evil, leading a partly spiritual, partly
carnal life, consistent neither in right nor wrong? The last is the
actual state of the case. Paul is perplexed about them (ch. iv.
20); they are in doubt about themselves. They did not "walk in the
Spirit," they were not true to their Christian principles; the flesh
was too strong for that. Nor would they break away from Christ and
follow the bent of their lower nature; the Holy Spirit held them back
from doing this. So they have two wills,--or practically none. This
state of things was designed by God,--"_in order that_ ye may not
do the things ye haply would;" it accords with the methods of His
government. Irresolution is the necessary effect of the course the
Galatians had pursued. So far they stopped short of apostasy; and
this restraint witnessed to the power of the Holy Spirit still at
work in their midst (ch. iii. 5; vi. 1). Let this Divine hand cease
to check them, and the flesh would carry them, with the full momentum
of their will, to spiritual ruin. Their condition is just now one
of suspense. They are poised in a kind of moral equilibrium, which
cannot continue long, but in which, while it lasts, the action of the
conflicting forces of Flesh and Spirit is strikingly manifest.
II. These two principles in their development lead to entirely
opposite results.
(1) _The works of the flesh_--"manifest" alas, both then and
now--_exclude from the kingdom of God_. "I tell you beforehand," the
Apostle writes, "as I have already told you: they who practise such
things will not inherit God's kingdom" (v. 21).
This warning is essential to Paul's gospel (Rom. ii. 16); it is
good news for a world where wrong so often and so insultingly
triumphs, that there is a judgement to come. Whatever may be our
own lot in the great award, we rejoice to believe that there will
be a righteous settlement of human affairs, complete and final; and
that this settlement is in the hands of Jesus Christ. In view of
His tribunal the Apostle goes about "_warning_ and teaching every
man." And this is his constant note, amongst profligate heathen, or
hypocritical Jews, or backsliding and antinomian Christians,--"The
unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God." For that kingdom
is, above all, _righteousness_. Men of fleshly minds, in the nature
of things, have no place in it. They are blind to its light, dead to
its influence, at war with its aims and principles. "If we say that
we have fellowship with Him--the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ--and
walk in darkness, _we lie_" (1 John i. 6). "Those who do such things"
forfeit by doing them the character of sons of God. His children
seek to be "perfect as their heavenly Father is perfect." They are
"blameless and harmless, imitators of God, walking in love as Christ
loved us" (Phil. ii. 15; Eph. v. 1, 2). The Spirit of God's Son is
a spirit of love and peace, of temperance and gentleness (v. 22).
If these fruits are wanting, the Spirit of Christ is not in us and
we are none of His. We are without the one thing by which He said
all men would know His disciples (John xiii. 35). When the Galatians
"bite and devour one another," they resemble Ishmael the persecutor
(ch. iv. 29), rather than the gentle Isaac, heir of the Covenant.
"If children, _then heirs_." Future destiny turns upon present
character. The Spirit of God's Son, with His fruit of love and peace,
is "the earnest of our inheritance, sealing us against the day of
redemption" (Eph. i. 14; iv. 30). By selfish tempers and fleshly
indulgences He is driven from the soul; and Losing Him, it is shut
out from the kingdom of grace on earth, and from the glory of the
redeemed. "There shall in no wise enter into it anything unclean;"
such is the excommunication written above the gate of the Heavenly
City (Rev. xxi. 27). This sentence of the Apocalypse puts a final
seal upon the teaching of Scripture. The God of revelation is the
Holy One; His Spirit is the Holy Spirit; His kingdom is the kingdom
of the saints, whose atmosphere burns like fire against all impurity.
Concerning the men of the flesh the Apostle can only say, "Whose end
is perdition" (Phil. iii. 19).
Writing to the Corinthians, Paul entreats his readers not to be
deceived upon this point (1 Cor. vi. 9, 10; Eph. v. 5). It seems so
obvious, so necessary a principle, that one wonders how it should
be mistaken, why he is compelled to reiterate it as he does in this
place. And yet this has been a common delusion. No form of religion
has escaped being touched by Antinomianism. It is the divorce of
piety from morality. It is the disposition to think that ceremonial
works on the one hand, or faith on the other, supersede the ethical
conditions of harmony with God. Foisting itself on evangelical
doctrine this error leads men to assume that salvation is the mere
pardon of sin. The sinner appears to imagine he is saved in order
to remain a sinner. He treats God's mercy as a kind of bank, on
which he may draw as often as his offences past or future may
require. He does not understand that sanctification is the sequel of
justification, that the evidence of a true pardon lies in a changed
heart that loathes sin.
(2) Of the opposite principle the Apostle states not the ultimate,
but the more immediate consequences. "Led by the Spirit, _ye are not
under the law_" (ver. 18); and "Against such things--love, peace,
goodness, and the like--_there is no law_" (ver. 23).
The declaration of ver. 18 is made with a certain abruptness.
Paul has just said, in ver. 17, that the Spirit is the appointed
antagonist _of the flesh_. And now he adds, that if we yield
ourselves to His influence we shall be no longer _under the law_.
This identification of sin and the law was established in ch. ii.
16-18; iii. 10-22. The law by itself, the Apostle showed, does
not overcome sin, but aggravates it; it shuts men up the hopeless
prisoners of their own past mis-doing. To be "under law" is to be
in the position of Ishmael, the slave-born and finally outcast son,
whose nature and temper are of the flesh (ch. iv. 21-31). After all
this we can understand his writing _law_ for _sin_ in this passage,
just as in 1 Cor. xv. 56 he calls "the law the _power_ of sin." To be
under law was, in Paul's view, to be held consciously in the grasp
of sin. This was the condition to which Legalism would reduce the
Galatians. From this calamity the Spirit of Christ would keep them
free.
The phrase "under law" reminds us once more of the imperilled
liberty of the Galatians. Their spiritual freedom and their moral
safety were assailed in common. In ver. 16 he had said, "Let the
Holy Spirit guide you, and you will vanquish sin"; and now, "By
the same guidance you will escape the oppressive yoke of the law."
Freedom from sin, freedom from the Jewish law--these two liberties
were virtually one. "Sin shall not lord it over you, because ye are
not under law, but under grace" (Rom. vi. 14). Ver. 23 explains this
double freedom. Those who possess the Spirit of Christ bear His
moral fruits. Their life fulfils the demands of the law, _without
being due to its compulsion_. Law can say nothing against them. It
did not produce this fruit; but it is bound to approve it. It has no
hold on the men of the Spirit, no charge to bring against them. Its
requirements are satisfied; its constraints and threatenings are laid
aside.
Law therefore, in its Judaistic sense and application, has been
abolished since "faith has come." No longer does it rule the soul
by fear and compulsion. This office, necessary once for the infant
heirs of the Covenant, it has no right to exercise over spiritual
men. Law cannot give life (ch. iii. 21). This is the prerogative of
the Spirit of God. Law says, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God;"
but it never inspired such love in any man's breast. If he does so
love, the law approves him, without claiming credit to itself for the
fact. If he does not love his God, law condemns him and brands him a
transgressor. But "the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts _by
the Holy Ghost_." The teaching of this paragraph on the relation of
the believer in Christ to God's law is summed up in the words of Rom.
viii. 2: "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free
from the law of sin and death." Law has become my friend, instead of
my enemy and accuser. For God's Spirit fills my soul with the love in
which its fulfilment is contained. And now eternal life is the goal
that stands in my view, in place of the death with the prospect of
which, as a man of the flesh, the law appalled me.
III. We see then that _deliverance from sin belongs_ not to the
subjects of the law, but _to the freemen of the Spirit_. This
deliverance, promised in ver. 16, is declared in ver. 24 as an
accomplished fact. "Walk by the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the
lust of the flesh.... They that are of Christ Jesus have crucified
the flesh with its passions and its lusts." The tyranny of the flesh
is ended for those who are "in Christ Jesus." His cross has slain
their sins. The entrance of His Spirit imports the death of all
carnal affections.
"They who are Christ's did crucify the flesh." This is the moral
application of Paul's mystical doctrine, central to all his theology,
of the believer's union with the Redeemer (see Chapter X, pp.
156-160). "Christ in me--I in Him:" there is Paul's secret. He was
"one spirit" with Jesus Christ--dying, risen, ascended, reigning,
returning in glory. His old self, his old world was dead and
gone--slain by Christ's cross, buried in His grave (ch. ii. 20; vi.
14). And the flesh, common to the evil world and the evil self--that
above all was crucified. The death of shame and legal penalty, the
curse of God had overtaken it in the death of Jesus Christ. Christ
has risen, the "Lord of the Spirit" (2 Cor. iii. 18), who "could not
be holden" by the death which fell on "the body of His flesh." They
who are Christ's rose with Him; while "the flesh of sin" stays in His
grave. Faith sees it there, and leaves it there. We "reckon ourselves
dead unto sin, and living unto God, in Christ Jesus." For such men,
the flesh that was once--imperious, importunate, law-defying--is no
more. It has received its death-stroke. "God, sending His own Son
in the likeness of sinful flesh and a sacrifice for sin, _condemned
sin in the flesh_" (Rom. viii. 3). Sin is smitten with the lightning
of His anger. Doom has taken hold of it. Destroyed already in
principle, it only waits for men to know this and to understand what
has been done, till it shall perish everywhere. The destruction of
the sinful flesh--more strictly of "sin in the flesh"--occurred, as
Paul understood the matter, virtually and potentially in the moment
of Christ's death. It was our human flesh that was crucified in
Him--slain on the cross because, though in Him not personally sinful,
yet in us with whom He had made Himself one, it was steeped in sin.
Our sinful flesh hung upon His cross; it has risen, cleansed and
sanctified, from His grave.
What was then accomplished in principle when "One died for all,"
is realised in point of fact when we are "baptized into His
death"--when, that is to say, faith makes His death ours and its
virtue passes into the soul. The scene of the cross is inwardly
rehearsed. The wounds which pierced the Redeemer's flesh and spirit
now pierce our consciences. It is a veritable crucifixion through
which the soul enters into communion with its risen Saviour, and
learns to live His life. Nor is its sanctification complete till it
is "conformed unto His death" (Phil. iii. 10). So with all his train
of "passions and of lusts," the "old man" is fastened and nailed down
upon the new, interior Calvary, set up in each penitent and believing
heart. The flesh may still, as in these Galatians, give mournful
evidence of life. But it has no right to exist a single hour. _De
jure_ it is dead--dead in the reckoning of faith. It may die a
lingering, protracted death, and make convulsive struggles; but die
it must in all who are of Christ Jesus.
* * * * *
Let the Galatians consider what their calling of God signified. Let
them recall the prospects which opened before them in the days of
their first faith in Christ, the love that glowed in their hearts,
the energy with which the Holy Spirit wrought upon their nature. Let
them know how truly they were called to liberty, and in good earnest
were made sons of God. They have only to continue as heretofore to be
led by the Spirit of Christ and to march forward along the path on
which they had entered, and neither Jewish law nor their own lawless
flesh will be able to bring them into bondage. "Where the Spirit of
the Lord is, there is liberty." Where He is not, there is legalism,
or licence; or, it may be, both at once.
CHAPTER XXIV.
_THE WORKS OF THE FLESH._
"Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are _these_,
fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, sorcery,
enmities, strife, jealousies, wraths, factions, divisions,
parties, envyings, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of
the which I forewarn you, even as I did forewarn you, that they
which practise such things shall not inherit the kingdom of
God."--GAL. v. 19-21.
The tree is known by its fruits: the flesh by its "works." And
these works are "manifest." The field of the world--"this present
evil world" (ch. i. 4)--exhibits them in rank abundance. Perhaps at
no time was the civilised world so depraved and godless as in the
first century of the Christian era, when Tiberius, Caligula, Nero,
Domitian, wore the imperial purple and posed as masters of the earth.
It was the cruelty and vileness of the times which culminated in
these deified monsters. By no accident was mankind cursed at this
epoch with such a race of rulers. The world that worshipped them was
worthy of them. Vice appeared in its most revolting and abandoned
forms. Wickedness was rampant and triumphant. The age of the early
Roman Empire has left a foul mark in human history and literature.
Let Tacitus and Juvenal speak for it.
Paul's enumeration of the current vices in this passage has however
a character of its own. It differs from the descriptions drawn by
the same hand in other Epistles; and this difference is due doubtless
to the character of his readers. Their temperament was sanguine;
their disposition frank and impulsive. Sins of lying and injustice,
conspicuous in other lists, are not found in this. From these vices
the Galatic nature was comparatively free. Sensual sins and sins
of passion--_unchastity_, _vindictiveness_, _intemperance_--occupy
the field. To these must be added _idolatry_, common to the Pagan
world. Gentile idolatry was allied with the practice of impurity on
the one side; and on the other, through the evil of "sorcery," with
"enmities" and "jealousies." So that these works of the flesh belong
to four distinct types of depravity; three of which come under the
head of immorality, while the fourth is the universal principle of
Pagan irreligion, being in turn both cause and effect of the moral
debasement connected with it.
I. "The works of the flesh are these--_fornication_, _uncleanness_,
_lasciviousness_." A dark beginning! Sins of impurity find a place
in every picture of Gentile morals given by the Apostle. In whatever
direction he writes--to Romans or Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians,
or Thessalonians--it is always necessary to warn against these
evils. They are equally "manifest" in heathen literature. The extent
to which they stain the pages of the Greek and Roman classics sets
a heavy discount against their value as instruments of Christian
education. Civilised society in Paul's day was steeped in sexual
corruption.
_Fornication_ was practically universal. Few were found, even among
severe moralists, to condemn it. The overthrow of the splendid
classical civilisation, due to the extinction of manly virtues in the
dominant race, may be traced largely to this cause. Brave men are
the sons of pure women. John in the Apocalypse has written on the
brow of Rome, "the great city which reigneth over the kings of the
earth," this legend: "_Babylon the great, mother of harlots_" (Rev.
xvii. 5). Whatever symbolic meaning the saying has, in its literal
sense it was terribly true. Our modern Babylons, unless they purge
themselves, may earn the same title and the same doom.
In writing to Corinth, the metropolis of Greek licentiousness, Paul
deals very solemnly and explicitly with this vice. He teaches that
this sin, above others, is committed "against the man's own body." It
is a prostitution of the physical nature which Jesus Christ wore and
still wears, which He claims for the temple of His Spirit, and will
raise from the dead to share His immortality. Impurity degrades the
body, and it affronts in an especial degree "the Holy Spirit which we
have from God." Therefore it stands first amongst these "works of the
flesh" in which it shows itself hostile and repugnant to the Spirit
of our Divine sonship. "Joined to the harlot" in "one body," the vile
offender gives himself over in compact and communion to the dominion
of the flesh, as truly as he who is "joined to the Lord" is "one
spirit with Him" (1 Cor. vi. 13-20).
On this subject it is difficult to speak faithfully and yet directly.
There are many happily in our sheltered Christian homes who scarcely
know of the existence of this heathenish vice, except as it is named
in Scripture. To them it is an evil of the past, a nameless thing of
darkness. And it is well it should be so. Knowledge of its horrors
may be suitable for seasoned social reformers, and necessary to
the publicist who must understand the worst as well as the best
of the world he has to serve; but common decency forbids its being
put within the reach of boys and innocent maidens. Newspapers and
novels which reek of the divorce-court and trade in the garbage of
human life, in "things of which it is a shame even to speak," are
no more fit for ordinary consumption than the air of the pest-house
is for breathing. They are sheer poison to the young imagination,
which should be fed on whatsoever things are honourable and pure and
lovely. But bodily self-respect must be learned in good time. Modesty
of feeling and chastity of speech must adorn our youth. "Let marriage
be honourable in the eyes of all," let the old chivalrous sentiments
of reverence and gentleness towards women be renewed in our sons, and
our country's future is safe. Perhaps in our revolt from Mariolatry
we Protestants have too much forgotten the honour paid by Jesus to
the Virgin Mother, and the sacredness which His birth has conferred
on motherhood. "Blessed," said the heavenly voice, "art thou among
women." All our sisters are blessed and dignified in her, the holy
"mother of our Lord" (Luke i. 42, 43).[142]
[142] Comp., 1 Tim. ii. 13-15: _saved through the
childbearing_--_i.e._, surely, the bearing of the Child Jesus,
_the seed of the woman_.
Wherever, and in whatever form, the offence exists which violates
this relationship, Paul's fiery interdict is ready to be launched
upon it. The anger of Jesus burned against this sin. In the wanton
look He discerns the crime of adultery, which in the Mosaic law was
punished with death by stoning. "The Lord is an avenger in all these
things"--in everything that touches the honour of the human person
and the sanctity of wedded life (1 Thess. iv. 1-8). The interests
that abet whoredom should find in the Church of Jesus Christ an
organization pledged to relentless war against them. The man known
to practise this wickedness is an enemy of Christ and of his race.
He should be shunned as we would shun a notorious liar--or a fallen
woman. Paul's rule is explicit, and binding on all Christians,
concerning "the fornicator, the drunkard, the extortioner--with such
a one no, not to eat" (1 Cor. v. 9-11). That Church little deserves
the name of a Church of Christ, which has not means of discipline
sufficient to fence its communion from the polluting presence of
"such a one."
_Uncleanness_ and _lasciviousness_ are companions of the more
specific impurity. The former is the general quality of this class
of evils, and includes whatever is contaminating in word or look, in
gesture or in dress, in thought or sentiment. "Lasciviousness" is
uncleanness open and shameless. The filthy jest, the ogling glance,
the debauched and sensual face, these tell their own tale; they speak
of a soul that has rolled in corruption till respect for virtue has
died out of it. In this direction "the works of the flesh" can go no
further. A lascivious human creature is loathsomeness itself. To see
it is like looking through a door into hell.
A leading critic of our own times has, under this word of Paul's, put
his finger upon the plague-spot in the national life of our Gallic
neighbours--_Aselgeia_, or Wantonness. There may be a certain truth
in this charge. Their disposition in several respects resembles that
of Paul's Galatians. But we can scarcely afford to reproach others
on this score. English society is none too clean. _Home_ is for our
people everywhere, thank God, the nursery of innocence. But outside
its shelter, and beyond the reach of the mother's voice, how many
perils await the weak and unwary. In the night-streets of the city
the "strange woman" spreads her net, "whose feet go down to death."
In workshops and business-offices too often coarse and vile language
goes on unchecked, and one unchaste mind will infect a whole circle.
Schools, wanting in moral discipline, may become seminaries of
impurity. There are crowded quarters in large towns, and wretched
tenements in many a country village, where the conditions of life
are such that decency is impossible; and a soil is prepared in which
sexual sin grows rankly. To cleanse these channels of social life is
indeed a task of Hercules; but the Church of Christ is loudly called
to it. Her vocation is in itself a purity crusade, a war declared
against "all filthiness of flesh and spirit."
II. Next to _lust_ in this procession of the Vices comes _idolatry_.
In Paganism they were associated by many ties. Some of the most
renowned and popular cults of the day were open purveyors of
sensuality and lent to it the sanctions of religion. Idolatry
is found here in fit company (comp. 1 Cor. x. 6-8). Peter's
First Epistle, addressed to the Galatian with other Asiatic
Churches, speaks of "the desire of the Gentiles" as consisting in
"lasciviousness, lusts, winebibbings, revellings, carousings, and
_abominable idolatries_" (ch. iv. 3).
Idolatry forms the centre of the awful picture of Gentile depravity
drawn by our Apostle in his letter to Rome (ch. i.). It is, as
he there shows, the outcome of man's native antipathy to the
knowledge of God. Willingly men "took lies in the place of truth,
and served the creature rather than the Creator." They merged God
in nature, debasing the spiritual conception of the Deity with
fleshly attributes. This blending of God with the world gave rise,
amongst the mass of mankind, to Polytheism; while in the minds of
the more reflective it assumed a Pantheistic shape. The manifold of
nature, absorbing the Divine, broke it up into "gods many and lords
many"--gods of the earth and sky and ocean, gods and goddesses of
war, of tillage, of love, of art, of statecraft and handicraft,
patrons of human vices and follies as well as of excellencies,
changing with every climate and with the varying moods and conditions
of their worshippers. No longer did it appear that God made man
in His image; now men made gods in "the likeness of the image of
corruptible man, and of winged and four-footed and creeping things."
When at last under the Roman Empire the different Pagan races blended
their customs and faiths, and "the Orontes flowed into the Tiber,"
there came about a perfect chaos of religions. Gods Greek and Roman,
Phrygian, Syrian, Egyptian jostled each other in the great cities--a
_colluvies deorum_ more bewildering even than the _colluvies
gentium_,--each cultus striving to outdo the rest in extravagance and
licence. The system of classic Paganism was reduced to impotence. The
false gods destroyed each other. The mixture of heathen religions,
none of them pure, produced complete demoralisation.
The Jewish monotheism remained, the one rock of human faith in the
midst of this dissolution of the old nature-creeds. Its conception
of the Godhead was not so much metaphysical as ethical. "Hear O
Israel," says every Jew to his fellows, "the Lord our God is one
Lord." But that "one Lord" was also "_the Holy One_ of Israel."
Let his holiness be sullied, let the thought of the Divine ethical
transcendence suffer eclipse, and He sinks back again into the
manifold of nature. Till God was manifest in the flesh through the
sinless Christ, it was impossible to conceive of a perfect purity
allied to the natural. To the mind of the Israelite, God's holiness
was one with the _aloneness_ in which he held Himself sublimely aloof
from all material forms, one with the pure spirituality of His being.
"There is none holy save the Lord; neither is there any rock like our
God:" such was his lofty creed. On this ground prophecy carried on
its inspired struggle against the tremendous forces of naturalism.
When at length the victory of spiritual religion was gained in
Israel, unbelief assumed another form; the knowledge of the Divine
unity hardened into a sterile and fanatic legalism, into the idolatry
of dogma and tradition; and Scribe and Pharisee took the place of
Prophet and of Psalmist.
The idolatry and immorality of the Gentile world had a common root.
God's anger, the Apostle declared, blazed forth equally against both
(Rom. i. 18). The monstrous forms of uncleanness then prevalent were
a fitting punishment, an inevitable consequence of heathen impiety.
They marked the lowest level to which human nature can fall in
its apostasy from God. Self-respect in man is ultimately based on
reverence for the Divine. Disowning his Maker, he degrades himself.
Bent on evil, he must banish from his soul that warning, protesting
image of the Supreme Holiness in which he was created.
"He tempts his reason to deny
God whom his passions dare defy."
"They did not like to retain God in their knowledge." "They loved
darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." These
are terrible accusations. But the history of natural religion
confirms their truth.
_Sorcery_ is the attendant of idolatry. A low, naturalistic
conception of the Divine lends itself to immoral purposes. Men try
to operate upon it by material causes, and to make it a partner in
evil. Such is the origin of magic. Natural objects deemed to possess
supernatural attributes, as the stars and the flight of birds, have
divine omens ascribed to them. Drugs of occult power, and things
grotesque or curious made mysterious by the fancy, are credited with
influence over the Nature-gods. From the use of drugs in incantations
and exorcisms the word _pharmakeia_, here denoting _sorcery_, took
its meaning. The science of chemistry has destroyed a world of magic
connected with the virtues of herbs. These superstitions formed a
chief branch of sorcery and witchcraft, and have flourished under
many forms of idolatry. And the magical arts were common instruments
of malice. The sorcerer's charms were in requisition, as in the case
of Balaam, to curse one's enemies, to weave some spell that should
involve them in destruction. Accordingly _sorcery_ finds its place
there between _idolatry_ and _enmities_.
III. On this latter head the Apostle enlarges with edifying
amplitude. _Enmities_, _strife_, _jealousies_, _ragings_, _factions_,
_divisions_, _parties_, _envyings_--what a list! Eight out of fifteen
of "the works of the flesh manifest" to Paul in writing to Galatia
belong to this one category. The Celt all over the world is known
for a hot-tempered fellow. He has high capabilities; he is generous,
enthusiastic, and impressionable. Meanness and treachery are foreign
to his nature. But he is _irritable_. And it is in a vain and
irritable disposition that these vices are engendered. Strife and
division have been proverbial in the history of the Gallic nations.
Their jealous temper has too often neutralised their engaging
qualities; and their quickness and cleverness have for this reason
availed them but little in competition with more phlegmatic races. In
Highland clans, in Irish septs, in French wars and Revolutions the
same moral features reappear which are found in this delineation of
Galatic life. This persistence of character in the races of mankind
is one of the most impressive facts of history.
"Enmities" are private hatreds or family feuds, which break out
openly in "strife." This is seen in Church affairs, when men take
opposite sides not so much from any decided difference of judgement,
as from personal dislike and the disposition to thwart an opponent.
"Jealousies" and "wraths" (or "rages") are passions attending enmity
and strife. There is _jealousy_ where one's antagonist is a rival,
whose success is felt as a wrong to oneself. This may be a silent
passion, repressed by pride but consuming the mind inwardly. _Rage_
is the open eruption of anger which, when powerless to inflict
injury, will find vent in furious language and menacing gestures.
There are natures in which these tempests of rage take a perfectly
demonic form. The face grows livid, the limbs move convulsively, the
nervous organism is seized by a storm of frenzy; and until it has
passed, the man is literally beside himself. Such exhibitions are
truly appalling. They are "works of the flesh" in which, yielding to
its own ungoverned impulse, it gives itself up to be possessed by
Satan and is "set on fire of hell."
_Factions_, _divisions_, _parties_ are words synonymous. "Divisions"
is the more neutral term, and represents the state into which
a community is thrown by the working of the spirit of strife.
"Factions" imply more of self-interest and policy in those concerned;
"parties" are due rather to self-will and opinionativeness. The
Greek word employed in this last instance, as in 1 Cor. xi. 19, has
become our _heresies_. It does not imply of necessity any doctrinal
difference as the ground of the party distinctions in question. At
the same time, this expression is an advance on those foregoing,
pointing to such divisions as have grown, or threaten to grow into
"distinct and organized parties" (Lightfoot).
_Envyings_ (or _grudges_) complete this bitter series. This
term might have found a place beside "enmities" and "strife."
Standing where it does, it seems to denote the rankling anger, the
persistent ill-will caused by party-feuds. The Galatian quarrels
left behind them grudges and resentments which became inveterate.
These "envyings," the fruit of old contentions, were in turn the
seed of new strife. Settled rancour is the last and worst form of
contentiousness. It is so much more culpable than "jealousy" or
"rage," as it has not the excuse of personal conflict; and it does
not subside, as the fiercest outburst of passion may, leaving room
for forgiveness. It nurses its revenge, waiting, like Shylock, for
the time when it shall "feed fat its ancient grudge."
"Where jealousy and faction are, there," says James, "is confusion
and every vile deed." This was the state of things to which the
Galatian societies were tending. The Judaizers had sown the seeds
of discord, and it had fallen on congenial soil. Paul has already
invoked Christ's law of love to exorcise this spirit of destruction
(vv. 13-15). He tells the Galatians that their vainglorious and
provoking attitude towards each other and their envious disposition
are entirely contrary to the life in the Spirit which they professed
to lead (vv. 25, 26), and fatal to the existence of the Church. These
were the "passions of the flesh" which most of all they needed to
crucify.
IV. Finally, we come to sins of intemperance--_drunkenness,
revellings, and the like_.
These are the vices of a barbarous people. Our Teutonic and Celtic
forefathers were alike prone to this kind of excess. Peter warns
the Galatians against "wine-bibbings, revellings, carousings." The
passion for strong drink, along with "lasciviousness" and "lusts"
on the one hand, and "abominable idolatries" on the other, had in
Asia Minor swelled into a "cataclysm of riot," overwhelming the
Gentile world (1 Pet. iv. 3, 4). The Greeks were a comparatively
sober people. The Romans were more notorious for gluttony than for
hard drinking. The practice of seeking pleasure in intoxication is
a remnant of savagery, which exists to a shameful extent in our own
country. It appears to have been prevalent with the Galatians, whose
ancestors a few generations back were northern barbarians.
A strong and raw animal nature is in itself a temptation to this
vice. For men exposed to cold and hardship, the intoxicating cup
has a potent fascination. The flesh, buffeted by the fatigues of a
rough day's work, finds a strange zest in its treacherous delights.
The man "drinks and forgets his poverty, and remembers his misery no
more." For the hour, while the spell is upon him, he is a king; he
lives under another sun; the world's wealth is his. He wakes up to
find himself a sot! With racked head and unstrung frame he returns to
the toil and squalor of his life, adding new wretchedness to that
he had striven to forget. Anon he says, "I will seek it yet again!"
When the craving has once mastered him, its indulgence becomes his
only pleasure. Such men deserve our deepest pity. They need for their
salvation all the safeguards that Christian sympathy and wisdom can
throw around them.
There are others "given to much wine," for whom one feels less
compassion. Their convivial indulgences are a part of their general
habits of luxury and sensuality, an open, flagrant triumph of the
flesh over the Spirit. These sinners require stern rebuke and
warning. They must understand that "those who practise such things
shall not inherit the kingdom of God," that "he who soweth to his own
flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption." Of these and their like
it was that Jesus said, "Woe unto you that laugh now; for ye shall
mourn and weep."
Our British Churches at the present time are more alive to this
than perhaps to any other social evil. They are setting themselves
sternly against drunkenness, and none too soon. Of all the works
of the flesh this has been, if not the most potent, certainly the
most conspicuous in the havoc it has wrought amongst us. Its ruinous
effects are "manifest" in every prison and asylum, and in the private
history of innumerable families in every station of life. Who is
there that has not lost a kinsman, a friend, or at least a neighbour
or acquaintance, whose life was wrecked by this accursed passion?
Much has been done, and is doing, to check its ravages. But more
remains to be accomplished before civil law and public opinion shall
furnish all the protection against this evil necessary for a people
so tempted by climate and by constitution as our own.
With _fornication_ at the beginning and _drunkenness_ at the end,
Paul's description of "the works of the flesh" is, alas! far indeed
from being out of date. The dread procession of the Vices marches
on before our eyes. Races and temperaments vary; science has
transformed the visible aspect of life; but the ruling appetites of
human nature are unchanged, its primitive vices are with us to-day.
The complicated problems of modern life, the gigantic evils which
confront our social reformers, are simply the primeval corruptions of
mankind in a new guise--the old lust and greed and hate. Under his
veneer of manners, the civilized European, untouched by the grace of
the Holy Spirit of God, is still apt to be found a selfish, cunning,
unchaste, revengeful, superstitious creature, distinguished from his
barbarian progenitor chiefly by his better dress and more cultivated
brain, and his inferior agility. Witness the great Napoleon, a very
"god of this world," but in all that gives worth to character no
better than a savage!
With Europe turned into one vast camp and its nations groaning
audibly under the weight of their armaments, with hordes of degraded
women infesting the streets of its cities, with discontent and social
hatred smouldering throughout its industrial populations, we have
small reason to boast of the triumphs of modern civilisation. Better
circumstances do not make better men. James' old question has for our
day a terrible pertinence: "Whence come wars and fightings among you?
Come they not hence, even of your pleasures that war in your members?
Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and covet, and cannot obtain. Ye ask
and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may spend it on your
pleasures."
CHAPTER XXV.
_THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT._
"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering,
kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such
there is no law."--GAL. v. 22, 23.
"The tree is known by its fruits." Such was the criterion of
religious profession laid down by the Founder of Christianity.
This test His religion applies in the first instance to itself. It
proclaims a final judgement for all men; it submits itself to the
present judgement of all men--a judgement resting in each case on the
same ground, namely that of _fruit_, of moral issue and effects. For
character is the true _summum bonum_; it is the thing which in our
secret hearts and in our better moments we all admire and covet. The
creed which produces the best and purest character, in the greatest
abundance and under the most varied conditions, is that which the
world will believe.
These verses contain the ideal of character furnished by the gospel
of Christ. Here is the religion of Jesus put in practice. These are
the sentiments and habits, the views of duty, the temper of mind,
which faith in Jesus Christ tends to form. Paul's conception of the
ideal human life at once "commends itself to every man's conscience."
And he owed it to the gospel of Christ. His ethics are the fruit of
his dogmatic faith. What other system of belief has produced a like
result, or has formed in men's minds ideas of duty so reasonable
and gracious, so just, so balanced and perfect, and above all so
practicable, as those inculcated in the Apostle's teaching?
"Men do not gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles." Thoughts
of this kind, lives of this kind, are not the product of imposture or
delusion. The "works" of systems of error are "manifest" in the moral
wrecks they leave behind them, strewing the track of history. But the
virtues here enumerated are the fruits which the Spirit of Christ
has brought forth, and brings forth at this day more abundantly than
ever. As a theory of morals, a representation of what is best in
conduct, Christian teaching has held for 1800 years an unrivalled
place. Christ and His Apostles are still the masters of morality.
Few have been bold enough to offer any improvements on the ethics
of Jesus; and smaller still has been the acceptance which their
proposals have obtained. The new idea of virtue which Christianity
has given to the world, the energy it has imparted to the moral will,
the immense and beneficial revolutions it has brought about in human
society, supply a powerful argument for its divinity. Making every
deduction for unfaithful Christians, who dishonour "the worthy name"
they bear, still "the fruit of the Spirit" gathered in these eighteen
centuries is a glorious witness to the virtue of the tree of life
from which it grew.
This picture of the Christian life takes its place side by side
with others found in Paul's Epistles. It recalls the figure of
Charity in 1 Cor. xiii., acknowledged by moralists of every school
to be a master-piece of characterization. It stands in line also
with the oft-quoted enumeration of Phil. iv. 8: "Whatsoever things
are true, whatsoever things are reverend, whatsoever things are
just, whatsoever things are chaste, whatsoever things are lovely,
whatsoever things are kindly spoken, if there be any virtue, and if
there be any praise, think on these things." These representations do
not pretend to theoretical completeness. It would be easy to specify
important virtues not mentioned in the Apostle's categories. His
descriptions have a practical aim, and press on the attention of his
readers the special forms and qualities of virtue demanded from them,
under the given circumstances, by their faith in Christ.
It is interesting to compare the Apostle's definitions with Plato's
celebrated scheme of the four cardinal virtues. They are _wisdom_,
_courage_, _temperance_, with _righteousness_ as the union and
co-ordination of the other three. The difference between the cast of
the Platonic and Pauline ethics is most instructive. In the Apostle's
catalogue the first two of the philosophical virtues are wanting;
unless "courage" be included, as it properly may, under the name of
"virtue" in the Philippian list. With the Greek thinker, _wisdom_
is the fundamental excellence of the soul. Knowledge is in his view
the supreme desideratum, the guarantee for moral health and social
well-being. The philosopher is the perfect man, the proper ruler of
the commonwealth. Intellectual culture brings in its train ethical
improvement. For "no man is knowingly vicious:" such was the dictum
of Socrates, the father of Philosophy. In the ethics of the gospel,
_love_ becomes the chief of virtues, parent of the rest.
_Love_ and _humility_ are the two features whose predominance
distinguishes the Christian from the purest classical conceptions
of moral worth. The ethics of Naturalism know love as a passion, a
sensuous instinct (ἔρως); or again, as the personal affection which
binds friend to friend through common interest or resemblance of
taste and disposition (φιλία). Love in its highest sense (ἀγάπη)
Christianity has re-discovered, finding in it a universal law for the
reason and spirit. It assigns to this principle a like place to that
which gravitation holds in the material universe, as the attraction
which binds each man to his Maker and to his fellows. Its obligations
neutralise self-interest and create a spiritual solidarity of
mankind, centring in Christ, the God-man. Pre-Christian philosophy
exalted the intellect, but left the heart cold and vacant, and the
deeper springs of will untouched. It was reserved for Jesus Christ to
teach men how to love, and in love to find the law of freedom.
If love was wanting in natural ethics, _humility_ was positively
excluded. The pride of philosophy regarded it as a vice rather than
a virtue. "Lowliness" is ranked with "pettiness" and "repining"
and "despondency" as the product of "littleness of soul." On the
contrary, the man of lofty soul is held up to admiration, who is
"worthy of great things and deems himself so,"--who is "not given to
wonder, for nothing seems great to him,"--who is "ashamed to receive
benefits," and "has the appearance indeed of being supercilious"
(Aristotle). How far removed is this model from our Example who has
said, "Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart." The classical
idea of virtue is based on the greatness of man; the Christian, on
the goodness of God. Before the Divine glory in Jesus Christ the
soul of the believer bows in adoration. It is humbled at the throne
of grace, chastened into self-forgetting. It gazes on this Image of
love and holiness, till it repeats itself within the heart.
* * * * *
Nine virtues are woven together in this golden chain of the Holy
Spirit's fruit. They fall into three groups of three, four, and two
respectively--according as they refer primarily to God, _love_,
_joy_, _peace_; to one's fellow-men, _longsuffering_, _kindness_,
_goodness_, _faith_; and to oneself, _meekness_, _temperance_. But
the successive qualities are so closely linked and pass into one
another with so little distance, that it is undesirable to emphasize
the analysis; and while bearing the above distinctions in mind, we
shall seek to give to each of the nine graces its separate place in
the catalogue.
1. _The fruit of the Spirit is love._ That fitliest first. Love is
the Alpha and Omega of the Apostle's thoughts concerning the new
life in Christ. This queen of graces is already enthroned within
this chapter. In ver. 6 Love came forward to be the minister of
Faith; in ver. 14 it reappeared as the ruling principle of Divine
law. These two offices of love are united here, where it becomes
the prime fruit of the Holy Spirit of God, to whom the heart is
opened by the act of faith, and who enables us to keep God's law.
Love is "the fulfilling of the law;" for it is the essence of the
gospel; it is the spirit of sonship; without this Divine affection,
no profession of faith, no practice of good works has any value in
the sight of God or intrinsic moral worth. Though I have all other
gifts and merits--wanting this, "I am nothing" (1 Cor. xiii. 1-3).
The cold heart is dead. Whatever appears to be Christian that has not
the love of Christ, is an unreality--a matter of orthodox opinion
or mechanical performance--dead as the body without the spirit. In
all true goodness there is an element of love. Here then is the
fountain-head of Christian virtue, the "well of water springing up
into eternal life" which Christ opens in the believing soul, from
which flow so many bounteous streams of mercy and good fruits.
This love is, in the first instance and above all, _love to God_. It
springs from the knowledge of His love to man. "God is love," and
"love is of God" (1 John iv. 7, 8). All love flows from one fountain,
from the One Father. And the Father's love is revealed in the Son.
Love has the cross for its measure and standard. "He sent the
Only-begotten into the world, that we might live through Him. Herein
is love: hereby know we love" (1 John iii. 16; iv. 9, 10). The man
who knows this love, whose heart responds to the manifestation of God
in Christ, is "born of God." His soul is ready to become the abode
of all pure affections, his life the exhibition of all Christ-like
virtues. For the love of the Father is revealed to him; and the love
of a son is enkindled in his soul by the Spirit of the Son.
In Paul's teaching, love forms the antithesis to _knowledge_. By
this opposition the wisdom of God is distinguished from "the wisdom
of this world and of its princes, which come to nought" (1 Cor. i.
23; ii. 8; viii. 1, 3). Not that love despises knowledge, or seeks
to dispense with it. It requires knowledge beforehand in order to
discern its object, and afterwards to understand its work. So the
Apostle prays for the Philippians "that their love may abound yet
more and more in knowledge and all discernment" (ch. i. 9, 10). It
is not _love without knowledge_, heat without light, the warmth of
an ignorant, untempered zeal that the Apostle desiderates. But he
deplores the existence of _knowledge without love_, a clear head with
a cold heart, an intellect whose growth has left the affections
starved and stunted, with enlightened apprehensions of truth that
awaken no corresponding emotions. Hence comes the pride of reason,
the "knowledge that puffeth up." Love alone knows the art of building
up.
Loveless knowledge is not wisdom. For wisdom is lowly in her own
eyes, mild and gracious. What the man of cold intellect sees, he
sees clearly; he reasons on it well. But his data are defective. He
discerns but the half, the poorer half of life. There is a whole
heaven of facts of which he takes no account. He has an acute and
sensitive perception of phenomena coming within the range of his five
senses, and of everything that logic can elicit from such phenomena.
But he "cannot see afar off." Above all, "he that loveth not,
_knoweth not God_." He leaves out the Supreme Factor in human life;
and all his calculations are vitiated. "Hath not _God_ made foolish
the wisdom of the world?"
If knowledge then is the enlightened eye, love is the throbbing,
living heart of Christian goodness.
2. _The fruit of the Spirit is joy._ Joy dwells in the house of Love;
nor elsewhere will she tarry.
Love is the mistress both of joy and sorrow. Wronged, frustrated,
hers is the bitterest of griefs. Love makes us capable of pain and
shame; but equally of triumph and delight. Therefore the Lover of
mankind was the "Man of sorrows," whose love bared its breast to the
arrows of scorn and hate; and yet "for the joy that was set before
Him, He endured the cross, despising the shame." There was no sorrow
like that of Christ rejected and crucified; no joy like the joy of
Christ risen and reigning. This joy, the delight of love satisfied
in those it loves, is that whose fulfilment He has promised to His
disciples (John xv. 8-11).
Such joy the selfish heart never knows. Life's choicest blessings,
heaven's highest favours fail to bring it happiness. Sensuous
gratification, and even intellectual pleasure by itself wants the
true note of gladness. There is nothing that thrills the whole
nature, that stirs the pulses of life and sets them dancing, like
the touch of a pure love. It is the pearl of great price, for which
"if a man would give all the substance of his house, he would be
utterly contemned." But of all the joys love gives to life, that is
the deepest which is ours when "the love of God is shed abroad in
our heart." Then the full tide of blessedness pours into the human
spirit. Then we know of what happiness our nature was made capable,
when we know the love that God hath toward us.
This joy in the Lord quickens and elevates, while it cleanses,
all other emotions. It raises the whole temperature of the heart.
It gives a new glow to life. It lends a warmer and a purer tone
to our natural affections. It sheds a diviner meaning, a brighter
aspect over the common face of earth and sky. It throws a radiance
of hope upon the toils and weariness of mortality. It "glories in
tribulation." It triumphs in death. He who "lives in the Spirit"
cannot be a dull, or peevish, or melancholy man. One with Christ his
heavenly Lord, he begins already to taste His joy,--a joy which none
taketh away and which many sorrows cannot quench.
Joy is the beaming countenance, the elastic step, the singing voice
of Christian goodness.
3. But joy is a thing of seasons. It has its ebb and flow, and would
not be itself if it were constant. It is crossed, varied, shadowed
unceasingly. On earth sorrow ever follows in its track, as night
chases day. No one knew this better than Paul. "Sorrowful," he says
of himself (2 Cor. vi. 10), "yet always rejoicing:" a continual
alternation, sorrow threatening every moment to extinguish, but
serving to enhance his joy. Joy leans upon her graver sister _Peace_.
There is nothing fitful or febrile in the quality of Peace. It is a
settled quiet of the heart, a deep, brooding mystery that "passeth
all understanding," the stillness of eternity entering the spirit,
the _Sabbath of God_ (Heb. iv. 9). It is theirs who are "justified
by faith" (Rom. v. 1, 2). It is the bequest of Jesus Christ (John
xiv. 27). He "made peace for us through the blood of His cross." He
has reconciled us with the eternal law, with the Will that rules all
things without effort or disturbance. We pass from the region of
misrule and mad rebellion into the kingdom of the Son of God's love,
with its ordered freedom, its clear and tranquil light, its "central
peace, subsisting at the heart of endless agitation."
After the war of the passions, after the tempests of doubt and fear,
Christ has spoken, "Peace, be still!" A great calm spreads over the
troubled waters; wind and wave lie down hushed at His feet. The
demonic powers that lashed the soul into tumult, vanish before His
holy presence. The Spirit of Jesus takes possession of mind and heart
and will. And His fruit is peace--always peace. This one virtue takes
the place of the manifold forms of contention which make life a chaos
and a misery. While He rules, "the peace of God guards the heart and
thoughts" and holds them safe from inward mutiny or outward assault;
and the dissolute, turbulent train of the works of the flesh find the
gates of the soul barred against them.
Peace is the calm, unruffled brow, the poised and even temper which
Christian goodness wears.
4. The heart at peace with God has patience with men. "Charity
_suffereth long_." She is not provoked by opposition; nor soured
by injustice; no, nor crushed by men's contempt. She can afford to
wait; for truth and love will conquer in the end. She knows in whose
hand her cause is, and remembers how long _He_ has suffered the
unbelief and rebellion of an insensate world; she "considers Him that
endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself." Mercy and
longsuffering are qualities that we share with God Himself, in which
God was, and is, "manifest in the flesh." In this ripe fruit of the
Spirit there are joined "the love of God, and the patience of Christ"
(2 Thess. iii. 5).
Longsuffering is the patient magnanimity of Christian goodness, the
broad shoulders on which it "beareth all things" (1 Cor. xiii. 7).
5. "Charity suffereth long and _is kind_."
_Gentleness_ (or _kindness_, as the word is more frequently and
better rendered,) resembles "longsuffering" in finding its chief
objects in the evil and unthankful. But while the latter is passive
and self-contained, kindness is an active, busy virtue. She is
moreover of a humble and tender spirit, stooping to the lowest need,
thinking nothing too small in which she may help, ready to give back
blessing for cursing, benefit for harm and wrong.
Kindness is the thoughtful insight, the delicate tact, the gentle
ministering hand of Charity.
6. Linked with _kindness_ comes _goodness_, which is its other self,
differing from it only as twin sisters may, each fairer for the
beauty of the other. Goodness is perhaps more affluent, more catholic
in its bounty; kindness more delicate and discriminating. The former
looks to the benefit conferred, seeking to make it as large and full
as possible; the latter has respect to the recipients, and studies
to suit their necessity. While kindness makes its opportunities, and
seeks out the most needy and miserable, goodness throws its doors
open to all comers. Goodness is the more masculine and large-hearted
form of charity; and if it errs, errs through blundering and
want of tact. Kindness is the more feminine; and may err through
exclusiveness and narrowness of view. United, they are perfect.
Goodness is the honest, generous face, the open hand of Charity.
7. This procession of the Virtues has conducted us, in the order of
Divine grace, from the thought of a loving, forgiving God, the Object
of our _love_, our _joy_ and _peace_, to that of an evil-doing,
unhappy world, with its need of _longsuffering_ and _kindness_;
and we now come to the inner, sacred circle of brethren beloved in
Christ, where, with goodness, _faith_--that is, _trustfulness_,
_confidence_--is called into exercise.
The Authorised rendering "faith" seems to us in this instance
preferable to the "faithfulness" of the Revisers. "Possibly," says
Bishop Lightfoot:, "πίστις may here signify 'trustfulness, reliance,'
in one's dealings with others; comp. 1 Cor. xiii. 7:" we should
prefer to say "probably," or even "unmistakably," to this. The use of
_pistis_ in any other sense is rare and doubtful in Paul's Epistles.
It is true that "God" or "Christ" is elsewhere implied as the object
of faith; but where the word stands, as it does here, in a series of
qualities belonging to human relationships, it finds, in agreement
with its current meaning, another application. As a link between
_goodness_ and _meekness_, _trustfulness,_ and nothing else, appears
to be in place. The parallel expression of 1 Cor. xiii., of which
chapter we find so many echoes in the text, we take to be decisive:
"Charity _believeth_ all things."
The faith that unites man to God, in turn joins man to his
fellows. Faith in the Divine Fatherhood becomes trust in the
human brotherhood. In this generous attribute the Galatians were
sadly deficient. "Honour all men," wrote Peter to them; "love the
brotherhood" (1 Pet. ii. 17). Their factiousness and jealousies were
the exact opposite of this fruit of the Spirit. Little was there
to be found in them of the love that "envieth and vaunteth not,"
which "imputeth not evil, nor rejoiceth in unrighteousness," which
"beareth, believeth, hopeth, endureth all things." They needed more
faith in _man_, as well as in God.
The true heart knows how to _trust_. He who doubts every one is even
more deceived than the man who blindly confides in every one. There
is no more miserable vice than cynicism; no man more ill-conditioned
than he who counts all the world knaves or fools except himself.
This poison of mistrust, this biting acid of scepticism is a fruit
of irreligion. It is one of the surest signs of social and national
decay.
The Christian man knows not only how to stand alone and to "bear all
things," but also how to lean on others, strengthening himself by
their strength and supporting them in weakness. He delights to "think
others better" than himself; and here "meekness" is one with "faith."
His own goodness gives him an eye for everything that is best in
those around him.
Trustfulness is the warm, firm clasp of friendship, the generous and
loyal homage which goodness ever pays to goodness.
8. _Meekness_, as we have seen, is the other side of _faith_. It
is not tameness and want of spirit, as those who "judge after the
flesh" are apt to think. Nor is meekness the mere quietness of a
retiring disposition. "The man Moses was very meek, above all the
men which were upon the face of the earth." It comports with the
highest courage and activity; and is a qualification for public
leadership. Jesus Christ stands before us as the perfect pattern of
meekness. "I intreat you," pleads the Apostle with the self-asserting
Corinthians, "by the meekness and gentleness of Christ!" Meekness
is self-repression in view of the claims and needs of others; it is
the "charity" which "seeketh not her own, looketh not to her own
things, but to the things of others." For her, self is of no account
in comparison with Christ and His kingdom, and the honour of His
brethren.
Meekness is the content and quiet mien, the willing self-effacement
that is the mark of Christlike goodness.
9. Finally _temperance_, or _self-control_,--third of Plato's
cardinal virtues.
By this last link the chain of the virtues, at its higher end
attached to the throne of the Divine love and mercy, is fastened
firmly down into the actualities of daily habit and bodily regimen.
_Temperance_, to change the figure, closes the array of the graces,
holding the post of the rear-guard which checks all straggling and
protects the march from surprise and treacherous overthrow.
If _meekness_ is the virtue of the whole man as he stands before his
God and in the midst of his fellows, _temperance_ is that of his
body, the tenement and instrument of the regenerate spirit. It is the
antithesis of "drunkenness and revellings," which closed the list
of "works of the flesh," just as the preceding graces, from "peace"
to "meekness," are opposed to the multiplied forms of "enmity" and
"strife." Amongst ourselves very commonly the same limited contrast
is implied. But to make "temperance" signify only or chiefly the
avoidance of strong drink is miserably to narrow its significance.
It covers the whole range of moral discipline, and concerns every
sense and passion of our nature. Temperance is a practised mastery
of self. It holds the reins of the chariot of life. It is the steady
and prompt control of the outlooking sensibilities and appetencies,
and inwardly moving desires. The tongue, the hand and foot, the
eye, the temper, the tastes and affections, all require in turn to
feel its curb. He is a temperate man, in the Apostle's meaning, who
_holds himself well in hand_, who meets temptation as a disciplined
army meets the shock of battle, by skill and alertness and tempered
courage baffling the forces that outnumber it.
This also is a "fruit of the Spirit"--though we may count it the
lowest and least, yet as indispensable to our salvation as the love
of God itself. For the lack of this safeguard how many a saint has
stumbled into folly and shame! It is no small thing for the Holy
Spirit to accomplish in us, no mean prize for which we strive in
seeking the crown of a perfect self-control. This mastery over the
flesh is in truth the rightful prerogative of the human spirit, the
dignity from which it fell through sin, and which the gift of the
Spirit of Christ restores.
And this virtue in a Christian man is exercised for the behoof of
others, as well as for his own. "I keep my body under," cries the
Apostle, "I make it my slave and not my master; lest, having preached
to others, I myself should be a castaway"--that is self-regard, mere
common prudence; but again, "It is good not to eat flesh, nor drink
wine, nor to do anything whereby a brother is made to stumble or made
weak" (1 Cor. ix. 27; Rom. xiv. 21).
Temperance is the guarded step, the sober, measured walk in which
Christian goodness keeps the way of life, and makes straight paths
for stumbling and straying feet.
CHAPTER XXVI.
_OUR BROTHER'S BURDEN AND OUR OWN._
"Brethren, even if a man be overtaken in any trespass, ye which
are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of meekness;
looking to thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one
another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. For if a
man thinketh himself to be something, when he is nothing, he
deceiveth himself. But let each man prove his own work, and then
shall he have his glorying in regard of himself alone, and not
of his neighbour. For each man shall bear his own burden."--GAL.
vi. 1-5.
The division of the chapters at this point is almost as unfortunate
as that between chaps. iv. and v. The introductory "Brethren" is not
a form of transition to a new topic; it calls in the brotherly love
of the Galatians to put an end to the bickerings and recriminations
which the Apostle has censured in the preceding verses. How unseemly
for _brethren_ to be "vainglorious" towards each other, to be
"provoking and envying one another!" If they are spiritual men, they
should look more considerately on the faults of their neighbours,
more seriously on their own responsibilities.
The Galatic temperament, as we have seen, was prone to the
mischievous vanity which the Apostle here reproves. Those who had,
or fancied they had, some superiority over others in talent or in
character, prided themselves upon it. Even spiritual gifts were made
matter of ostentation; and display on the part of the more gifted
excited the jealousy of inferior brethren. The same disposition
which manifests itself in arrogance on the one side, on the other
takes the form of discontent and envy. The heart-burnings and the
social tension which this state of things creates, make every chance
collision a danger; and the slightest wound is inflamed into a
rankling sore. The stumbling brother is pushed on into a fall; and
the fallen man, who might have been helped to his feet, is left to
lie there, the object of unpitying reproach. Indeed, the lapse of
his neighbour is to the vainglorious man a cause of satisfaction
rather than of sorrow. The other's weakness serves for a foil to
his strength. Instead of stooping down to "restore such a one," he
holds stiffly aloof in the eminence of conscious virtue; and bears
himself more proudly in the lustre added to his piety by his fellow's
disgrace. "God, I thank Thee," he seems to say, "that I am not as
other men,--nor even as this wretched backslider!" The compellation
"Brethren" is itself a rebuke to such heartless pride.
There are two reflections which should instantly correct the spirit
of vain-glory. The Apostle appeals in the first place to _brotherly
love_, to the claims that an erring fellow-Christian has upon our
sympathy, to the meekness and forbearance which the Spirit of
grace inspires, in fine to Christ's law which makes compassion our
duty. At the same time he points out to us _our own infirmity_ and
exposure to temptation. He reminds us of the weight of our individual
responsibility and the final account awaiting us. A proper sense at
once of the rights of others and of our own obligations will make
this shallow vanity impossible.
This double-edged exhortation takes shape in two leading sentences,
sharply clashing with each other in the style of paradox in which the
Apostle loves to contrast the opposite sides of truth: "Bear ye one
another's burdens" (ver. 2); and yet "Every man shall bear his own
burden" (ver. 5).
I. What then are the considerations that commend _the burdens of
others_ for our bearing?
The burden the Apostle has in view is that of _a brother's trespass_:
"Brethren, if a man be overtaken in some trespass."
Here the question arises as to whether Paul means _overtaken by the
temptation_, or _by the discovery of his sin_--surprised _into_
committing, or _in_ committing the trespass. Winer, Lightfoot,
and some other interpreters, read the words in the latter sense:
"_surprised_, _detected_ in the act of committing any sin, so that
his guilt is placed beyond a doubt" (Lightfoot). We are persuaded,
notwithstanding, that the common view of the text is the correct
one. The manner of the offender's detection has little to do with
the way in which he should be treated; but the circumstances of his
fall have everything to do with it. The suddenness, the surprise of
his temptation is both a reason for more lenient judgment, and a
ground for hope of his restoration. The preposition "in" (έν), it
is urged, stands in the way of this interpretation. We might have
expected to read "(surprised) _by_," or perhaps "_into_ (any sin)."
But the word is "trespass," not "sin." It points not to the cause of
the man's fall, but to _the condition in which it has placed him_.
The Greek preposition (according to a well known idiom of verbs of
_motion_)[143] indicates the result of the unexpected assault to
which the man has been subject. A gust of temptation has caught him
unawares; and we now see him lying overthrown and prostrate, involved
"in some trespass."
[143] For this pregnant force of έν see the grammarians:
Moulton's _Winer_, pp. 514, 5; _A. Buttmann_, pp. 328, 9. (Eng.
Ver.).
The Apostle is supposing an instance--possibly an actual case--in
which the sin committed was due to weakness and surprise, rather
than deliberate intention; like that of Eve, when "the woman being
beguiled fell into transgression."[144] Such a fall deserves
commiseration. The attack was unlooked for; the man was off his
guard. The Gallic nature is heedless and impulsive. Men of this
temperament should make allowance for each other. An offence
committed in a rash moment, under provocation, must not be visited
with implacable severity, nor magnified until it become a fatal
barrier between the evil-doer and society. And Paul says expressly,
"If _a man_ be overtaken"--a delicate reminder of our human infirmity
and common danger (comp. 1 Cor. x. 13). Let us remember that it is a
man who has erred, of like passions with ourselves; and his trespass
will excite pity for him, and apprehension for ourselves.
[144] 1 Tim. ii. 14: the expression is parallel in point of
grammar, as well as sense; γέγονεν έν παραβάσει.
Such an effect the occurrence should have upon "the spiritual," on
the men of love and peace, who "walk in the Spirit." The Apostle's
appeal is qualified by this definition. Vain and self-seeking men,
the irritable, the resentful, are otherwise affected by a neighbour's
trespass. They will be angry with him, lavish in virtuous scorn;
but it is not in them to "restore such a one." They are more likely
to aggravate than heal the wound, to push the weak man down when he
tries to rise, than to help him to his feet. The work of restoration
needs a knowledge of the human heart, a self-restraint and patient
skill, quite beyond their capability.
The _restoration_ here signified, denotes not only, or not so much,
the man's inward, spiritual renewal, as his recovery for the Church,
the mending of the rent caused by his removal. In 1 Cor. i. 10; 2
Cor. xiii. 11; 1 Thess. iii. 10, where, as in other places, the
English verb "perfect" enters into the rendering of παταρτίζω, it
gives the idea of re-adjustment, the right fitting of part to part,
member to member, in some larger whole. Writing to the Corinthian
Church at this time respecting a flagrant trespass committed there,
for which the transgressor was now penitent, the Apostle bids its
members "confirm their love" to him (2 Cor. ii. 5-11). So here "the
spiritual" amongst the Galatians are urged to make it their business
to _set right_ the lapsed brother, to bring him back as soon and
safely as might be to the fold of Christ.
Of all the fruits of the Spirit, _meekness_ is most required
for this office of restoration, the meekness of Christ the Good
Shepherd--of Paul who was "gentle as a nurse" amongst his children,
and even against the worst offenders preferred to "come in love and
a spirit of meekness," rather than "with a rod" (1 Thess. ii. 7; 1
Cor. iv. 21). To reprove without pride or acrimony, to stoop to the
fallen without the air of condescension, requires the "spirit of
meekness" in a singular degree. Such a bearing lends peculiar grace
to compassion. This "gentleness of Christ" is one of the finest
and rarest marks of the spiritual man. The moroseness sometimes
associated with religious zeal, the disposition to judge hardly the
failings of weaker men is anything but according to Christ. It is
written of Him, "A bruised reed shall He not break, and the smoking
flax shall He not quench" (Isa. xlii. 3; Matt xii. 20).
Meekness becomes sinful men dealing with fellow-sinners. "Considering
_thyself_," says the Apostle, "lest thou also be tempted." It is a
noticeable thing that men morally weak in any given direction are
apt to be the severest judges of those who err in the same respect,
just as people who have risen out of poverty are often the harshest
towards the poor. They wish to forget their own past, and hate to
be reminded of a condition from which they have suffered. Or is the
judge, in sentencing a kindred offender, seeking to reinforce his
own conscience and to give a warning to himself? One is inclined
sometimes to think so. But reflection on our own infirmities should
counteract, instead of fostering censoriousness. Every man knows
enough of himself to make him chary of denouncing others. "Look to
_thyself_," cries the Apostle. "Thou hast considered thy brother's
faults. Now turn thine eye inward, and contemplate thine own. Hast
thou never aforetime committed the offence with which he stands
charged; or haply yielded to the like temptation in a less degree? Or
if not even that, it may be thou art guilty of sins of another kind,
though hidden from human sight, in the eyes of God no less heinous."
"Judge not," said the Judge of all the earth, "lest ye be judged.
With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you" (Matt. vii.
1-5).
This exhortation begins in general terms; but in the latter clause
of ver. 1 it passes into the individualising singular--"looking to
_thyself_, lest even _thou_ be tempted." The disaster befalling
one reveals the common peril; it is a signal for every member of
the Church to take heed to himself. The scrutiny which it calls
for belongs to each man's private conscience. And the faithfulness
and integrity required in those who approach the wrongdoer with a
view to his recovery, must be chastened by personal solicitude. The
fall of a Christian brother should be in any case the occasion of
heart-searching, and profound humiliation. Feelings of indifference
towards him, much more of contempt, will prove the prelude of a worse
overthrow for ourselves.
The burden of a brother's trespass is the most painful that can
devolve upon a Christian man. But this is not the only burden we
bring upon each other. There are burdens of anxiety and sorrow, of
personal infirmity, of family difficulty, of business embarrassment,
infinite varieties and complications of trial in which the resources
of brotherly sympathy are taxed. The injunction of the Apostle has
an unlimited range. That which burdens my friend and brother cannot
be otherwise than a solicitude to me. Whatever it be that cripples
him and hinders his running the race set before him, I am bound,
according to the best of my judgement and ability, to assist him to
overcome it. If I leave him to stagger on alone, to sink under his
load when my shoulder might have eased it for him, the reproach will
be mine.
This is no work of supererogation, no matter of mere liking and
choice. I am not at liberty to refuse to share the burdens of the
brotherhood. "Bear ye one another's burdens," Paul says, "and so
fulfil _the law of Christ_." This law the Apostle has already cited
and enforced against the contentions and jealousies rife in Galatia
(ch. v. 14, 15). But it has a further application. Christ's law of
love not only says, "Thou shalt not bite and devour; thou shalt not
provoke and envy thy brother;" but also, "Thou shalt help and comfort
him, and regard his burden as thine own."
This law makes of the Church one body, with a solidarity of interests
and obligations. It finds employment and discipline for the energy of
Christian freedom, in yoking it to the service of the over-burdened.
It reveals the dignity and privilege of moral strength, which consist
not in the enjoyment of its own superiority, but in its power to bear
"the infirmities of the weak." This was the glory of Christ, who
"pleased not Himself" (Rom. xv. 1-4). The Giver of the law is its
great Example. "Being in the form of God," He "took the form of a
servant," that in love He might serve mankind; He "became obedient,
unto the death of the cross" (Phil. ii. 1-8). Justly is the inference
drawn, "We also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren" (1
John iii. 16). There is no limit to the service which the redeemed
brotherhood of Christ may expect from its members.
Only this law must not be abused by the indolent and the
overreaching, by the men who are ready to throw their burdens
on others and make every generous neighbour the victim of their
dishonesty. It is the need not the demand of our brother which
claims our help. We are bound to take care that it is his necessity
to which we minister, not his imposture or his slothfulness. The
warning that "each man shall bear his own burden" is addressed to
those who _receive_, as well as to those who render aid in the common
burden-bearing of the Church.
II. The adjustment of social and individual duty is often far from
easy, and requires the nicest discernment and moral tact. Both
are brought into view in this paragraph, in its latter as well as
in its former section. But in vv. 1, 2 the need of others, in vv.
3-5 our personal responsibility forms the leading consideration. We
see on the one hand, that a true self-regard teaches us to identify
ourselves with the moral interests of others: while, on the other
hand, a false regard to others is excluded (ver. 4) which disturbs
the judgement to be formed respecting ourselves. The thought of _his
own burden_ to be borne by each man now comes to the front of the
exhortation.
Ver. 3 stands between the two counterpoised estimates. It is another
shaft directed against Galatian vain-glory, and pointed with Paul's
keenest irony. "For if a man thinketh he is something, being nothing
he deceiveth himself."
This truth is very evident. But what is its bearing on the matter
in hand? The maxim is advanced to support the foregoing admonition.
It was their self-conceit that led some of the Apostle's readers
to treat with contempt the brother who had trespassed; he tells
them that this opinion of theirs is a _delusion_, a kind of mental
hallucination (φρεναπατᾷ ἑαυτόν). It betrays a melancholy ignorance.
The "spiritual" man who "thinks himself to be something," says to
you, "I am quite above these weak brethren, as you see. Their habits
of life, their temptations are not mine. Their sympathy would be
useless to me. And I shall not burden myself with their feebleness,
nor vex myself with their ignorance and rudeness." If any man
separates himself from the Christian commonalty and breaks the ties
of religious fellowship on grounds of this sort, and yet imagines
he is following Christ, he "deceives himself." Others will see how
little his affected eminence is worth. Some will humour his vanity;
many will ridicule or pity it; few will be deceived by it.
The fact of a man's "thinking himself to be something" goes far to
prove that he "is nothing." "Woe unto them that are wise in their
own eyes, and prudent in their own sight." Real knowledge is humble;
it knows its nothingness. Socrates, when the oracle pronounced him
the wisest man in Greece, at last discovered that the response was
right, inasmuch as he alone was aware that he knew nothing, while
other men were confident of their knowledge. And a greater than
Socrates, our All-wise, All-holy Saviour, says to us, "Learn of Me,
for I am meek and lowly in heart." It is in humility and dependence,
in self-forgetting that true wisdom begins. Who are we, although
the most refined or highest in place, that we should despise plain,
uncultured members of the Church, those who bear life's heavier
burdens and amongst whom our Saviour spent His days on earth, and
treat them as unfit for our company, unworthy of fellowship with us
in Christ?
They are themselves the greatest losers who neglect to fulfil
Christ's law. Such men might learn from their humbler brethren,
accustomed to the trials and temptations of a working life and a
rough world, how to bear more worthily their own burdens. How foolish
of "the eye to say to the hand" or "foot, I have no need of thee!"
"God hath chosen the poor of this world rich in faith." There are
truths of which they are our best teachers--priceless lessons of the
power of Divine grace and the deep things of Christian experience.
This isolation robs the poorer members of the Church in their turn
of the manifold help due to them from communion with those more
happily circumstanced. How many of the evils around us would be
ameliorated, how many of our difficulties would vanish, if we could
bring about a truer Christian fraternisation, if caste-feeling in
our English Church-life were once destroyed, if men would lay aside
their stiffness and social _hauteur_, and cease to think that they
"are something" on grounds of worldly distinction and wealth which in
Christ are absolutely nothing.
The vain conceit of their superiority indulged in by some of his
readers, the Apostle further corrects by reminding the self-deceivers
of _their own responsibility_. The irony of ver. 3 passes into a
sterner tone of warning in vv. 4 and 5. "Let each man try his own
work," he cries. "Judge yourselves, instead of judging one another.
Mind your own duty, rather than your neighbours' faults. Do not think
of your worth or talents in comparison with theirs; but see to it
that your _work_ is right." The question for each of us is not, What
do others fail to do? but, What am I myself really doing? What will
my life's work amount to, when measured by that which God expects
from me?
This question shuts each man up within his own conscience. It
anticipates the final judgement-day. "Every one of us must give
account of _himself_ to God" (Rom. xiv. 12). Reference to the conduct
of others is here out of place. The petty comparisons which feed our
vanity and our class-prejudices are of no avail at the bar of God.
I may be able for every fault of my own to find some one else more
faulty. But this makes _me_ no whit better. It is the intrinsic,
not the comparative worth of character and daily work of which God
takes account. If we study our brother's work, it should be with a
view to enable him to do it better, or to learn to improve our own
by his example; not in order to find excuses for ourselves in his
shortcomings.
"And then"--if our work abide the test--"we shall have our glorying
in ourselves alone, not in regard to our neighbour." Not his flaws
and failures, but my own honest work will be the ground of my
satisfaction. This was Paul's "glorying" in face of the slanders
by which he was incessantly pursued. It lay in the testimony of
his conscience. He lived under the severest self-scrutiny. He knew
himself as the man only can who "knows the fear of the Lord," who
places himself every day before the dread tribunal of Christ Jesus.
He is "made manifest unto God;" and in the light of that searching
Presence he can affirm that he "knows nothing against himself."[145]
But this boast makes him humble. "_By the grace of God_" he is
enabled to "have his conversation in the world in holiness and
sincerity coming of God." If he had seemed to claim any credit for
himself, he at once corrects the thought: "Yet not I," he says, "but
God's grace that was with me. I have my glorying in Christ Jesus in
the things pertaining to God, in that which Christ hath wrought in
me" (1 Cor. xv. 10; Rom. xv. 16-19).
[145] 1 Cor. iv. 1-5; 2 Cor. i. 12; v. 10-12.
So that this boast of the Apostle, in which he invites the
vainglorious Galatians to secure a share, resolves itself after all
into his one boast, "in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" (ver.
14). If his work on trial should prove to be gold, "abiding" amongst
the world's imperishable treasures and fixed foundations of truth
(1 Cor. iii. 10-15), Christ only was to be praised for this. Paul's
glorying is the opposite of the Legalist's, who presumes on his
"works" as his own achievements, commending him for righteous before
God. "Justified by works," such a man hath "whereof to glory, but
not toward God" (Rom. iv. 2). His boasting redounds to himself.
Whatever glory belongs to the work of the Christian must be referred
to God. Such work furnishes no ground for magnifying the man at the
expense of his fellows. If we praise the stream, it is to commend
the fountain. If we admire the lives of the saints and celebrate the
deeds of the heroes of faith, it is _ad majorem Dei gloriam_--"that
in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ" (1 Pet. iv.
11).
"For each will bear his own load." Here is the ultimate reason
for the self-examination to which the Apostle has been urging his
readers, in order to restrain their vanity. The emphatic repetition
of the words _each man_ in vv. 4 and 5 brings out impressively the
personal character of the account to be rendered. At the same time,
the deeper sense of our own burdens thus awakened will help to stir
in us sympathy for the loads under which our fellows labour. So that
this warning indirectly furthers the appeal for sympathy with which
the chapter began.
Faithful scrutiny of our work may give us reasons for satisfaction
and gratitude towards God. But it will yield matter of another kind.
It will call to remembrance old sins and follies, lost opportunities,
wasted powers, with their burden of regret and humiliation. It will
set before us the array of our obligations, the manifold tasks
committed to us by our heavenly Master, compelling us to say, "Who
is sufficient for these things?" And beside the reproofs of the past
and the stern demands of the present, there sounds in the soul's
ear the message of the future, the summons to our final reckoning.
Each of us has his own life-load, made up of this triple burden.
A thousand varying circumstances and individual experiences go to
constitute the ever-growing load which we bear with us from youth
to age, like the wayfarer his bundle, like the soldier his knapsack
and accoutrements--the individual lot, the peculiar untransferable
vocation and responsibility fastened by the hand of God upon our
shoulders. This burden we shall have to carry up to Christ's
judgement-seat. He is our Master; He alone can give us our discharge.
His lips must pronounce the final "Well done"--or, "Thou wicked and
slothful servant!"
In this sentence the Apostle employs a different word from that used
in ver. 2. There he was thinking of the weight, the _burdensomeness_
of our brother's troubles, which we haply may lighten for him,
and which is so far common property. But the second word, φορτίον
(applied for instance to _a ship's lading_), indicates _that which
is proper to each_ in the burdens of life. There are duties that
we have no power to devolve, cares and griefs that we must bear in
secret, problems that we must work out severally and for ourselves.
To consider them aright, to weigh well the sum of our duty will dash
our self-complacency; it will surely make us serious and humble.
Let us wake up from dreams of self-pleasing to an earnest, manly
apprehension of life's demands--"while," like the Apostle, "we look
not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not
seen and eternal" (2 Cor. iv. 18).
* * * * *
After all, it is the men who have the highest standard for themselves
that as a rule are most considerate in their estimate of others. The
holiest are the most pitiful. They know best how to enter into the
struggles of a weaker brother. They can appreciate his unsuccessful
resistance to temptation; they can discern where and how he has
failed, and how much of genuine sorrow there is in his remorse. From
the fulness of their own experience they can interpret a possibility
of better things in what excites contempt in those who judge by
appearance and by conventional rules. He who has learned faithfully
to "consider himself" and meekly to "bear his own burden," is most
fit to do the work of Christ, and to shepherd His tempted and
straying sheep. Strict with ourselves, we shall grow wise and gentle
in our care for others.
In the Christian conscience the sense of personal and that of social
responsibility serve each to stimulate and guard the other. Duty and
sympathy, love and law are fused into one. For Christ is all in all;
and these two hemispheres of life unite in Him.
CHAPTER XXVII.
_SOWING AND REAPING._
"But let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him
that teacheth in all good things. Be not deceived; God is not
mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
For he that soweth unto his own flesh shall of the flesh reap
corruption; but he that soweth unto the Spirit shall of the
Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not be weary in well-doing:
for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. So then, as
we have opportunity, let us work that which is good toward all
men, and especially toward them that are of the household of the
faith"--GAL. vi. 6-10.
_Each shall bear his own burden_ (ver. 5)--_but let there be
communion of disciple with teacher in all that is good_. The latter
sentence is clearly intended to balance the former. The transition
turns upon the same antithesis between social and individual
responsibility that occupied us in the foregoing Chapter. But it is
now presented on another side. In the previous passage it concerned
the conduct of "the spiritual" toward erring brethren whom they were
tempted to despise; here, their behaviour toward teachers whom they
were disposed to neglect. There it is inferiors, here superiors that
are in view. The Galatian "vain-glory" manifested itself alike in
provocation toward the former, and in envy toward the latter (ch. v.
26). In both ways it bred disaffection, and threatened to break up
the Church's unity. The two effects are perfectly consistent. Those
who are harsh in their dealings with the weak, are commonly rude
and insubordinate toward their betters, where they dare to be so.
Self-conceit and self-sufficiency engender in the one direction a
cold contempt, in the other a jealous independence. The former error
is corrected by a due sense of our own infirmities; the latter by the
consideration of our responsibility to God. We are compelled to feel
for the burdens of others when we realise the weight of our own. We
learn to respect the claims of those placed over us, when we remember
what we owe to God through them. Personal responsibility is the last
word of the former paragraph; social responsibility is the first word
of this. Such is the contrast marked by the transitional _But_.
From this point of view ver. 6 gains a very comprehensive sense. "All
good things" cannot surely be limited to the "carnal things" of 1
Cor. ix. 11. As Meyer and Beet amongst recent commentators clearly
show, the context gives to this phrase a larger scope. At the same
time, there is no necessity to exclude the thought of temporal good.
The Apostle designedly makes his appeal as wide as possible. The
reasoning of the corresponding passage in the Corinthian letter is a
deduction from the general principle laid down here.
But it is _spiritual fellowship_ that the Apostle chiefly
desiderates. The true minister of Christ counts this vastly more
sacred, and has this interest far more at heart than his own
temporalities. He labours for the unity of the Church; he strives
to secure the mutual sympathy and co-operation of all orders and
ranks-- teachers and taught, officers and private members--"in every
good word and work." He must have the heart of his people with him
in his work, or his joy will be faint and his success scant indeed.
Christian teaching is designed to awaken this sympathetic response.
And it will take expression in the rendering of whatever kind of help
the gifts and means of the hearer and the needs of the occasion call
for. Paul requires every member of the Body of Christ to make her
wants and toils his own. We have no right to leave the burdens of
the Church's work to her leaders, to expect her battles to be fought
and won by the officers alone. This neglect has been the parent of
innumerable mischiefs. Indolence in the laity fosters sacerdotalism
in the clergy. But when, on the contrary, an active, sympathetic
union is maintained between "him that is taught" and "him that
teacheth," that other matter of the temporal support of the Christian
ministry, to which this text is so often exclusively referred,
comes in as a necessary detail, to be generously and prudently
arranged, but which will not be felt on either side as a burden or
a difficulty. Everything depends on the fellowship of spirit, on
the strength of the bond of love that knits together the members of
the Body of Christ. Here, in Galatia, that bond had been grievously
weakened. In a Church so disturbed, the fellowship of teachers and
taught was inevitably strained.
Such communion the Apostle craves from his children in the faith with
an intense yearning. This is the one fruit of God's grace in them
which he covets to reap for himself, and feels he has a right to
expect. "Be ye as I am," he cries--"do not desert me, my children,
for whom I travail in birth. Let me not have to toil for you in vain"
(ch. iv. 12-19). So again, writing to the Corinthians: "It was _I_
that begat you in Christ Jesus; I beseech you then, be followers of
me. Let me remind you of my ways in the Lord.... O ye Corinthians,
to you our mouth is open, our heart enlarged. Pay me back in kind
(you are my children), and be ye too enlarged" (1 Cor. iv. 14-17;
2 Cor. vi. 11-13). He "thanks God" for the Philippians "on every
remembrance of them," and "makes his supplication" for them "with
joy, because of their fellowship in regard to the gospel from the
first day until now" (Phil. i. 3-7). Such is the fellowship which
Paul wished to see restored in the Galatian Churches.
In ver. 10 he extends his appeal to embrace in it all the kindly
offices of life. For the love inspired by the Church, the service
rendered to her, should quicken all our human sympathies and
make us readier to meet every claim of pity or affection. While
our sympathies, like those of a loving family, will be concerned
"especially" with "the household of faith," and within that circle
more especially with our pastors and teachers in Christ, they have
no limit but that of "opportunity;" they should "work that which is
good toward all men." True zeal for the Church widens instead of
narrowing, our charities. Household affection is the nursery, not the
rival, of love to our fatherland and to humanity.
Now the Apostle is extremely urgent in this matter of communion
between teachers and taught. It concerns the very life of the
Christian community. The welfare of the Church and the progress of
the kingdom of God depend on the degree to which its individual
members accept their responsibility in its affairs. Ill-will towards
Christian teachers is paralyzing in its effects on the Church's
life. Greatly are _they_ to blame, if their conduct gives rise to
discontent. Only less severe is the condemnation of those in lower
place who harbour in themselves and foster in the minds of others
sentiments of disloyalty. To cherish this mistrust, to withhold
our sympathy from him who serves us in spiritual things, this, the
Apostle declares, is not merely a wrong done to the man, it is
an affront to God Himself. If it be God's Word that His servant
teaches, then God expects some fitting return to be made for the
gift He has bestowed. Of that return the pecuniary contribution, the
meed of "carnal things" with which so many seem to think their debt
discharged, is often the least and easiest part. How far have men a
right to be hearers--profited and believing hearers--in the Christian
congregation, and yet decline the duties of Church fellowship? They
eat the Church's bread, but will not do her work. They expect like
children to be fed and nursed and waited on; they think that if they
_pay_ their minister tolerably well, they have "communicated with"
him quite sufficiently. This apathy has much the same effect as the
Galatian bickerings and jealousies. It robs the Church of the help
of the children whom she has nourished and brought up. Those who act
thus are trying in reality to "mock God." They expect _Him_ to sow
his bounties upon them, but will not let Him reap. They refuse Him
the return that He most requires for His choicest benefits.
Now, the Apostle says, God is not to be defrauded in this way. Men
may wrong each other; they may grieve and affront His ministers.
But no man is clever enough to cheat God. It is not Him, it is
_themselves_ they will prove to have deceived. Vain and selfish men
who take the best that God and man can do for them as though it were
a tribute to their greatness, envious and restless men who break the
Church's fellowship of peace, will reap at last even as they sow.
The mischief and the loss may fall on others now; but in its full
ripeness it will come in the end upon themselves. The final reckoning
awaits us in another world. And as we act by God and by His Church
now, in our day, so He will act hereafter by us in His day.
Thus the Apostle, in vv. 6 and 7, places this matter in the searching
light of eternity. He brings to bear upon it one of the great
spiritual maxims characteristic of his teaching. Paul's unique
influence as a religious teacher lies in his mastery of principles
of this kind, in the keenness of insight and the incomparable vigour
with which he applies eternal truths to commonplace occurrences. The
paltriness and vulgarity of these local broils and disaffections lend
to his warning a more severe impressiveness. With what a startling
and sobering force, one thinks, the rebuke of these verses must have
fallen on the ears of the wrangling Galatians! How unspeakably mean
their quarrels appear in the light of the solemn issues opening out
before them! It was _God_ whom their folly had presumed to mock.
It was the harvest of eternal life of which their factiousness
threatened to defraud them.
* * * * *
The principle on which this warning rests is stated in terms that
give it universal application: _Whatsoever a man soweth, that
shall he also reap_. This is in fact the postulate of all moral
responsibility. It asserts the continuity of personal existence,
the connection of cause and effect in human character. It makes man
the master of his own destiny. It declares that his future doom
hangs upon his present choice, and is in truth its evolution and
consummation. The twofold lot of "corruption" or "life eternal" is
in every case no more, and no less, than the proper harvest of the
kind of sowing practised here and now. The use made of our seed-time
determines exactly, and with a moral certainty greater even than
that which rules in the natural field, what kind of fruitage our
immortality will render.
This great axiom deserves to be looked at in its broadest aspect. It
involves the following considerations:--
I. _Our present life is the seed-time of an eternal harvest._
Each recurring year presents a mirror of human existence. The analogy
is a commonplace of the world's poetry. The spring is in every land a
picture of youth--its morning freshness and innocence, its laughing
sunshine, its opening blossoms, its bright and buoyant energy; and,
alas, oftentimes its cold winds and nipping frosts and early, sudden
blight! Summer images a vigorous manhood, with all the powers in
action and the pulses of life beating at full swing; when the dreams
of youth are worked out in sober, waking earnest; when manly strength
is tested and matured under the heat of mid-day toil, and character
is disciplined, and success or failure in life's battle must be
determined. Then follows mellow autumn, season of shortening days and
slackening steps and gathering snows; season too of ripe experience,
of chastened thought and feeling, of widened influence and clustering
honours. And the story ends in the silence and winter of the grave!
_Ends?_ Nay, that is a new beginning! This whole round of earthly
vicissitude is but a single spring-time. It is the mere childhood of
man's existence, the threshold of the vast house of life.
The oldest and wisest man amongst us is only a little child in the
reckoning of eternity. The Apostle Paul counted himself no more. "We
know in part," he says; "we prophesy in part--talking, reasoning
like children. We shall become _men_, seeing face to face, knowing
as we are known" (1 Cor. xiii. 8, 11, 12). Do we not ourselves feel
this in our higher moods? There is an instinct of immortality, a
forecasting of some ampler existence, "a stirring of blind life"
within the soul; there are visionary gleams of an unearthly Paradise
haunting at times the busiest and most unimaginative men. We are
intelligences in the germ, lying folded up in the chrysalis stage
of our existence. Eyes, wings are still to come. "It doth not yet
appear what we shall be," no more than he who had seen but the
seed-sowing of early spring and the bare wintry furrows, could
imagine what the golden, waving harvest would be like. There is
a glorious, everlasting kingdom of heaven, a world which in its
duration, its range of action and experience, its style of equipment
and occupation, will be worthy of the elect children of God. Worship,
music, the purest passages of human affection and of moral elevation,
may give us some foretaste of its joys. But what it will be really
like, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard; nor heart of man conceived."
Think of that, struggling heart, worn with labour, broken by sorrow,
cramped and thwarted by the pressure of an unkindly world. "The
earnest expectancy of the creation" waits for your revealing (Rom.
viii. 19). You will have your enfranchisement; your soul will take
wing at last. Only have faith in God, and in righteousness; only "be
not weary in well-doing." Those crippled powers will get their full
play. Those baffled purposes and frustrated affections will unfold
and blossom into a completeness undreamed of now, in the sunshine
of heaven, in "the liberty of the glory of the sons of God." Why
look for your harvest here! It is _March_, not August yet. "_In due
season_ we shall reap, if we faint not." See to it that you "sow
to the Spirit," that your life be of the true seed of the kingdom;
and for the rest, have no care nor fear. What should we think of the
farmer who in winter, when his fields were frost-bound, should go
about wringing his hands and crying that his labour was all lost! Are
we wiser in our despondent moods? However dreary and unpromising,
however poor and paltry in its outward seeming the earthly seed-time,
your life's work will have its resurrection. Heaven lies hidden in
those daily acts of humble, difficult duty, even as the giant oak
with its centuries of growth and all its summer glory sleeps in the
acorn-cup. No eye may see it now; but "the Day will declare it!"
II. In the second place, _the quality of the future harvest depends
entirely on the present sowing_.
In _quantity_, as we have seen, in outward state and circumstance,
there is a complete contrast. The harvest surpasses the seed from
which it sprang, by thirty, sixty or a hundred-fold. But in _quality_
we find a strict agreement. In degree they may differ infinitely;
in kind they are one. The harvest multiplies the effect of the
sower's labour; but it multiplies exactly that effect, and nothing
else. This law runs through all life. If we could not count upon it,
labour would be purposeless and useless; we should have to yield
ourselves passively to nature's caprice. The farmer sows wheat in his
cornfield, the gardener plants and trains his fig-tree; and he gets
wheat, or figs, for his reward--nothing else. Or is he a "sluggard"
that "will not plow by reason of the cold?" Does he let weeds and
thistledown have the run of his garden-plot? Then it yields him a
plentiful harvest of thistles and of weeds! What could he expect?
"Men do not gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles." From
the highest to the lowest order of living things, each grows and
fructifies "after its kind." This is the rule of nature, the law
which constituted _Nature_ at the beginning. The good tree brings
forth good fruit; and the good seed makes the good tree.
All this has its moral counterpart. The law of reproduction in
kind holds equally true of the relation of this life to the next.
Eternity for us will be the multiplied, consummated outcome of the
good or evil of the present life. Hell is just sin ripe--rotten ripe.
Heaven is the fruitage of righteousness. There will be two kinds
of reaping, the Apostle tells us, because there are two different
kinds of sowing. "He that soweth to his flesh, shall of the flesh
reap corruption:" there is nothing arbitrary or surprising in that.
"Corruption"--the moral decay and dissolution of the man's being--is
the natural retributive effect of his carnality. And "he that soweth
to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." Here,
too, the sequence is inevitable. Like breeds its like. Life springs
of life; and death eternal is the culmination of the soul's present
death to God and goodness. The future glory of the saints is at
once a Divine reward, and a necessary development of their present
faithfulness. And eternal life lies germinally contained in faith's
earliest beginning, when it is but as "a grain of mustard seed." We
may expect in our final state the outcome of our present conduct, as
certainly as the farmer who puts wheat into his furrows in November
will count on getting wheat out of them again next August.
Under this law of the harvest we are living at this moment, and
sowing every day the seed of an immortality of honour or of shame.
Life is the seed-plot of eternity; and _youth is above all the
seed-time of life_. What are our children doing with these precious,
vernal years? What is going into their minds? What ideas, what
desires are rooting themselves in these young souls? If it be pure
thoughts and true affections, love to God, self-denial, patience
and humility, courage to do what is right--if these be the things
that are sown in their hearts, there will be for them, and for us, a
glorious harvest of wisdom and love and honour in the years to come,
and in the day of eternity. But if sloth and deceit be there, and
unholy thoughts, vanity and envy and self-indulgence, theirs will be
a bitter harvesting. Men talk of "sowing their wild oats," as though
that were an end of it; as though a wild and prodigal youth might
none the less be followed by a sober manhood and an honoured old
age. But it is not so. If wild oats have been sown, there will be
wild oats to reap, as certainly as autumn follows spring. For every
time the youth deceives parent or teacher, let him know that he will
be deceived by the Father of lies a hundred times. For every impure
thought or dishonourable word, shame will come upon him sixty-fold.
If his mind be filled with trash and refuse, then trash and refuse
are all it will be able to produce. If the good seed be not timely
sown in his heart, thorns and nettles will sow themselves there fast
enough; and his soul will become like the sluggard's garden, rank
with base weeds and poison-plants, a place where all vile things will
have their resort,--"rejected and nigh unto a curse."
Who is "he that soweth to his own flesh?" It is, in a word, the
_selfish_ man. He makes his personal interest, and as a rule his
bodily pleasure, directly or ultimately, the object of life. The
sense of responsibility to God, the thought of life as a stewardship
of which one must give account, have no place in his mind. He is a
"lover of pleasure rather than a lover of God." His desires, unfixed
on God, steadily tend downwards. Idolatry of self becomes slavery to
the flesh. Every act of selfish pleasure-seeking, untouched by nobler
aims, weakens and worsens the soul's life. The selfish man gravitates
downward into the sensual man; the sensual man downward into the
bottomless pit.
This is the "minding of the flesh" which "is death" (Rom. viii.
5-8, 13). For it is "enmity against God" and defiance of His law.
It overthrows the course of nature, the balance of our human
constitution; it brings disease into the frame of our being. The
flesh, unsubdued and uncleansed by the virtue of the Spirit, breeds
"corruption." Its predominance is the sure presage of death. The
process of decay begins already, this side the grave; and it is
often made visible by appalling signs. The bloated face, the sensual
leer, the restless, vicious eye, the sullen brow tell us what is
going on within. The man's soul is rotting in his body. Lust and
greed are eating out of him the capacity for good. And if he passes
on to the eternal harvest as he is, if that fatal corruption is not
arrested, what doom can possibly await such a man but that of which
our merciful Saviour spoke so plainly that we might tremble and
escape--"the worm that dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched!"
III. And finally, _God Himself is the Lord of the moral harvest_. The
rule of retribution, the nexus that binds together our sowing and our
reaping, is not something automatic and that comes about of itself;
it is directed by the will of God, who "worketh all in all."
Even in the natural harvest we look upwards to Him. The order and
regularity of nature, the fair procession of the seasons waiting
on the silent and majestic march of the heavens, have in all ages
directed thinking and grateful men to the Supreme Giver, to the
creative Mind and sustaining Will that sits above the worlds. As
Paul reminded the untutored Lycaonians, "He hath not left Himself
without witness, in that He gave us rains from heaven and fruitful
seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness." It is "God" that
"gives the increase" of the husbandman's toil, of the merchant's
forethought, of the artist's genius and skill. We do not sing our
harvest songs, with our Pagan forefathers, to sun and rain and west
wind, to mother Earth and the mystic powers of Nature. In these
poetic idolatries were yet blended higher thoughts and a sense of
Divine beneficence. But "to us there is one God, the Father, of whom
are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through
whom are all things, and we through Him." In the harvest of the
earth man is a worker together with God. The farmer does his part,
fulfilling the conditions God has laid down in nature; "he putteth
in the wheat in rows, and the barley in its appointed place; for
his God doth instruct him aright, and doth teach him." He tills the
ground, he sows the seed--and there he leaves it _to God_. "He sleeps
and rises night and day; and the seed springs and grows up, he knows
not how." And the wisest man of science cannot tell him how. "God
giveth it a body, as it hath pleased Him." But _how_--that is His own
secret, which He seems likely to keep. All life in its growth, as
in its inception, is a mystery, hid with Christ in God. Every seed
sown in field or garden is a deposit committed to the faithfulness of
God; which He honours by raising it up again, thirty, sixty, or a
hundred-fold, in the increase of the harvest.
In the moral world this Divine co-operation is the more immediate,
as the field of action lies nearer, if one may so say, to the nature
of God Himself. The earthly harvest may, and does often fail. Storms
waste it; blights canker it; drought withers, or fire consumes it.
Industry and skill, spent in years of patient labour, are doomed
not unfrequently to see their reward snatched from them. The very
abundance of other lands deprives our produce of its value. The
natural creation "was made subject to vanity." Its frustration and
disappointment are over-ruled for higher ends. But in the spiritual
sphere there are no casualties, no room for accident or failure. Here
life comes directly into contact with the Living God, its fountain;
and its laws partake of His absoluteness.
Each act of faith, of worship, of duty and integrity, is a compact
between the soul and God. We "_commit our souls_ in well-doing unto a
faithful Creator" (1 Pet. iv. 19). By every such volition the heart
is yielding itself to the direction of the Divine Spirit. It "sows
unto the Spirit," whenever in thought or deed His prompting is obeyed
and His will made the law of life. And as in the soil, by the Divine
chemistry of nature, the tiny germ is nursed and fostered out of
sight, till it lifts itself from the sod a lovely flower, a perfect
fruit, so in the order of grace it will prove that from the smallest
seeds of goodness in human hearts, from the feeblest beginnings of
the life of faith, from the lowliest acts of love and service, God in
due season will raise up a glorious harvest for which heaven itself
will be the richer.
_THE EPILOGUE._
CHAPTER VI. 11-18.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
_THE FALSE AND THE TRUE GLORYING._
"See with how large letters I write unto you with mine own hand.
As many as desire to make a fair show in the flesh, they compel
you to be circumcised; only that they may not be persecuted for
the cross of Christ. For not even they who receive circumcision
do themselves keep the law; but they desire to have you
circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh. But far be it
from me to glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
through which the world hath been crucified unto me, and I unto
the world."--GAL. vi. 11-14.
The rendering of ver. 11 in the Authorised Version is clearly
erroneous (_see how large a letter_). Wickliff, guided by the Latin
Vulgate--_with what maner lettris_--escaped this error. It is a
_plural_ term the Apostle uses, which occasionally in Greek writers
denotes an epistle (as in Acts xxviii. 21), but nowhere else in Paul.
Moreover the noun is in the _dative_ (instrumental) case, and cannot
be made the object of the verb.
Paul draws attention at this point to his penmanship, to the size
of the letters he is using and their autographic form. "See," he
says, "I write this in large characters, and under my own hand." But
does this remark apply to _the whole Epistle_, or to _its concluding
paragraph_ from this verse onwards? To the latter only, as we think.
The word "look" is a kind of _nota bene_. It marks something new,
designed by its form and appearance in the manuscript to arrest the
eye. It was Paul's practice to write through an amanuensis, adding
with his own hand a few final words of greeting or blessing, by
way of authentication.[146] Here this usage is varied. The Apostle
wishes to give these closing sentences the utmost possible emphasis
and solemnity. He would print them on the very heart and soul of his
readers. This intention explains the language of ver. 11; and it
is borne out by the contents of the verses that follow. They are a
postscript, or _Epilogue_, to the Epistle, rehearsing with incisive
brevity the burden of all that it was in the Apostle's heart to say
to these troubled and shaken Galatians.
[146] See 2 Thess. iii. 17, 18; 1 Cor. xvi. 21-23. In ver. 22 of
the latter passage we can trace a similar autographic message, on
a smaller scale. Comp. also Philemon 19.
The past tense of the verb (literally, _I have written_: ἔγραψα) is
in accordance with Greek epistolary idiom. The writer associates
himself with his readers. When the letter comes to them, Paul _has
written_ what they now peruse. On the assumption that the whole
Epistle is autographic it is hard to see what object the large
characters would serve, or why they should be referred to just at
this point.
Ver. 11 is in fact a sensational heading. The last paragraph of the
Epistle is penned in larger type and in the Apostle's characteristic
hand, in order to fasten the attention of these impressionable
Galatians upon his final deliverance. This device Paul employs but
once. It is a kind of practice easily vulgarised and that loses
its force by repetition, as in the case of "loud" printing and
declamatory speech.
In this emphatic finalé the interest of the Epistle, so powerfully
sustained and carried through so many stages, is raised to a yet
higher pitch. Its pregnant sentences give us--_first_, another
and still severer denunciation of "the troublers" (vv. 12, 13);
_secondly_, a renewed protestation of the Apostle's devotion to the
cross of Christ (vv. 14, 15); _thirdly_, a repetition in animated
style of the practical doctrine of Christianity, and a blessing
pronounced upon those who are faithful to it (vv. 15, 16). A pathetic
reference to the writer's personal sufferings, followed by the
customary benediction, brings the letter to a close. The first two
topics of the Epilogue stand in immediate contrast with each other.
I. _The glorying of the Apostle's adversaries._ "They would have you
circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh" (ver. 12).
This is the climax of his reproach against them. It gives us the
key to their character. The boast measures the man. The aim of the
Legalists was to get so many Gentiles circumcised, to win proselytes
through Christianity to Judaism. Every Christian brother persuaded
to submit himself to this rite was another trophy for them. His
circumcision, apart from any moral or spiritual considerations
involved in the matter, was of itself enough to fill these
proselytizers with joy. They counted up their "cases;" they rivalled
each other in the competition for Jewish favour on this ground. To
"glory in your flesh--to be able to point to your bodily condition as
the proof of their influence and their devotion to the Law--this,"
Paul says, "is the object for which they ply you with so many
flatteries and sophistries."
Their aim was intrinsically low and unworthy. They "want to make a
fair show (to present a good face) in the flesh." _Flesh_ in this
place (ver. 12) recalls the contrast between _Flesh_ and _Spirit_
expounded in the last chapter. Paul does not mean that the Judaizers
wish to "make a good appearance _in outward respects, in human
opinion_:" this would be little more than tautology. The expression
stamps the Circumcisionists as "carnal" men. They are "not in the
Spirit," but "in the flesh;" and "after the flesh" they walk. It is
on worldly principles that they seek to commend themselves, and to
unspiritual men. What the Apostle says of himself in Phil. iii. 3,
4, illustrates by contrast his estimate of the Judaizers of Galatia:
"We are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God, and glory
in Christ Jesus, and _have no confidence in the flesh_." He explains
"having confidence in the flesh" by enumerating his own advantages
and distinctions as a Jew, the circumstances which commended him
in the eyes of his fellow-countrymen--"which were gain to me,"
he says, "but I counted them loss for Christ" (ver. 7). In that
realm of fleshly motive and estimate which Paul had abandoned, his
opponents still remained. They had exchanged Christian fidelity for
worldly favour. And their religion took the colour of their moral
disposition. To _make a fair show_, an imposing, plausible appearance
in ceremonial and legal observance, was the mark they set themselves.
And they sought to draw the Church with them in this direction, and
to impress upon it their own ritualistic type of piety.
This was a worldly, and in their case a _cowardly_ policy. "They
constrain you to be circumcised, only that for the cross of Christ
they may not suffer persecution" (ver. 12). This they were determined
by all means to avoid. Christ had sent His servants forth "as sheep
in the midst of wolves." The man that would serve Him, He said, must
"follow Him, taking up his cross." But the Judaists thought they
knew better than this. They had a plan by which they could be the
friends of Jesus Christ, and yet keep on good terms with the world
that crucified Him. They would make their faith in Jesus a means for
winning over proselytes to Judaism. If they succeeded in this design,
their apostasy might be condoned. The circumcised Gentiles would
propitiate the anger of their Israelite kindred, and would incline
them to look more favourably upon the new doctrine. These men, Paul
says to the Galatians, are sacrificing you to their cowardice.
They rob you of your liberties in Christ in order to make a shield
for themselves against the enmity of their kinsmen. They pretend
great zeal on your behalf; they are eager to introduce you into the
blessings of the heirs of Abraham: the truth is, they are victims of
a miserable fear of persecution.
The cross of Christ, as the Apostle has repeatedly declared (comp.
Chapters XII and XXI), carried with it in Jewish eyes a flagrant
reproach; and its acceptance placed a gulf between the Christian and
the orthodox Jew. The depth of that gulf became increasingly apparent
the more widely the gospel spread, and the more radically its
principles came to be applied. To Paul it was now sorrowfully evident
that the Jewish nation had rejected Christianity. They would not hear
the Apostles of Jesus any more than the Master. For the preaching of
the cross they had only loathing and contempt. Judaism recognised in
the Church of the Crucified its most dangerous enemy, and was opening
the fire of persecution against it all along the line. In this state
of affairs, for the party of men to compromise and make private terms
for themselves with the enemies of Christ was treachery. They were
surrendering, as this Epistle shows, all that was most vital to
Christianity. They gave up the honour of the gospel, the rights of
faith, the salvation of the world, rather than face the persecution
in store for those "who will live godly in Christ Jesus."
Not that they cared so much for the law in itself. Their glorying
was _insincere_, as well as selfish: "For neither do the circumcised
themselves keep the law.--These men who profess such enthusiasm for
the law of Moses and insist so zealously on your submission to it,
dishonour it by their own behaviour." The Apostle is denouncing the
same party throughout. Some interpreters make the first clause of
ver. 13 a parenthesis, supposing that "the circumcised" (participle
present: _those being circumcised_) are _Gentile perverts_ now being
gained over to Judaism, while the foregoing and following sentences
relate to the Jewish teachers. But the context does not intimate,
nor indeed allow such a change of subject. It is "the circumcised"
of ver. 13 _a_ who in ver. 13 _b_ wish to see the Galatians
circumcised, "in order to boast over their flesh,"--the same who,
in ver. 12, "desire to make a fair show in the flesh" and to escape
Jewish persecution. Reading this in the light of the previous
chapters, there seems to us no manner of doubt as to the persons thus
designated. They are the Circumcisionists, Jewish Christians who
sought to persuade the Pauline Gentile Churches to adopt circumcision
and to receive their own legalistic perversion of the gospel of
Christ. The present tense of the Greek participle, used as it is
here with the definite article,[147] has the power of becoming a
_substantive_, dropping its reference to time; for the act denoted
passes into an abiding characteristic, so that the expression
acquires the form of a title. "The circumcised" are _the men of the
circumcision_, those known to the Galatians in this character.
[147] ὁι περιτεμνόμενοι (_Revised Text_). On this idiom, see
Winer's _Grammar_, p. 444; A. Buttmann's _N. T. Grammar_, p. 296.
In ch. i. 23, and in ii. 2 (τ. δοκοῦσι), we have had instances of
this usage.
The phrase is susceptible, however, of a wider application. When
Paul writes thus, he is thinking of others besides the handful of
troublers in Galatia. In Rom. ii. 17-29 he levels this identical
charge of hypocritical law-breaking against the Jewish people at
large: "Thou who gloriest in the law," he exclaims, "through thy
transgression of the law dishonourest thou God?" This shocking
inconsistency, notorious in contemporary Judaism, was to be observed
in the conduct of the legalist zealots in Galatia. They broke
themselves the very law which they tried to force on others. Their
pretended jealousy for the ordinances of Moses was itself their
condemnation. It was not the glory of the law they were concerned
about, but their own.
The policy of the Judaizers was dishonourable both in spirit and in
aim. They were false to Christ in whom they professed to believe;
and to the law which they pretended to keep. They were facing both
ways, studying the safest, not the truest course, anxious in truth
to be friends at once with the world and Christ. Their conduct has
found many imitators, in men who "make godliness a way of gain,"
whose religious course is dictated by considerations of worldly
self-interest. A little persecution, or social pressure, is enough to
"turn them out of the way." They cast off their Church obligations as
they change their clothes, to suit the fashion. Business patronage,
professional advancement, a tempting family alliance, the _entrée_
into some select and envied circle--such are the things for which
creeds are bartered, for which men put their souls and the souls
of their children knowingly in peril. _Will it pay?_--this is the
question which comes in with a decisive weight in their estimate of
matters of religious profession and the things pertaining to God. But
"what shall it profit?" is the question of Christ.
Nor are they less culpable who bring these motives into play, and put
this kind of pressure on the weak and dependent. There are forms of
social and pecuniary influence, bribes and threats quietly applied
and well understood, which are hardly to be distinguished morally
from persecution. Let wealthy and dominant Churches see to it that
they be clear of these offences, that they make themselves the
protectors, not the oppressors of spiritual liberty. The adherents
that a Church secures by its worldly prestige do not in truth belong
to the "kingdom that is not of this world." Such successes are no
triumphs of the cross. Christ repudiates them. The glorying that
attends proselytism of this kind is, like that of Paul's Judaistic
adversaries, a "glorying in the flesh."
II. "But as for me," cries the Apostle, "far be it to glory, save
in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" (ver. 14). Paul knows but
one ground of exultation, one object of pride and confidence--_his
Saviour's cross_.
Before he had received his gospel and seen the cross in the light
of revelation, like other Jews he regarded it with horror. Its
existence covered the cause of Jesus with ignominy. It marked Him
out as the object of Divine abhorrence. To the Judaistic Christian
the cross was still an embarrassment. He was secretly ashamed of a
crucified Messiah, anxious by some means to excuse the scandal and
make amends for it in the face of Jewish public opinion. But now this
disgraceful cross in the Apostle's eyes is the most glorious thing
in the universe. Its message is the good news of God to all mankind.
It is the centre of faith and religion, of all that man knows of God
or can receive from Him. Let it be removed, and the entire structure
of revelation falls to pieces, like an arch without its keystone.
The shame of the cross was turned into honour and majesty. Its
foolishness and weakness proved to be the wisdom and the power of
God. Out of the gloom in which Calvary was shrouded there now shone
forth the clearest light of holiness and love.
Paul gloried in the cross of Christ because it manifested to him _the
character of God_. The Divine love and righteousness, the entire
range of those moral excellences which in their sovereign perfection
belong to the holiness of God, were there displayed with a vividness
and splendour hitherto inconceivable. "God so loved the world," and
yet so honoured the law of right, that "He spared not His own Son,
but delivered Him up for us all." How stupendous is this sacrifice,
which baffles the mind and overwhelms the heart! Nowhere in the
works of creation, nor in any other dispensation of justice or mercy
touching human affairs, is there a spectacle that appeals to us with
an effect to be compared with that of the Sufferer of Calvary.
Let me look, let me think again. Who is He that bleeds on that tree
of shame? Why does the Holy One of God submit to these indignities?
Why those cruel wounds, those heart-breaking cries that speak of
a soul pierced by sorrows deeper than all that bodily anguish can
inflict? Has the Almighty indeed forsaken Him? Has the Evil One
sealed his triumph in the blood of the Son of God? Is it God's mercy
to the world, or is it not rather Satan's hate and man's utter
wickedness that stand here revealed? The issue shows with whom
victory lay in the dread conflict fought out in the Redeemer's soul
and flesh. "_God_ was in Christ"--living, dying, rising. And what was
He doing in Christ?--"reconciling the world unto Himself."
Now we know what the Maker of the worlds is like. "He that hath
seen Me," said Jesus on Passion Eve, "hath seen the Father. From
henceforth ye know Him, and have seen Him." What the world knew
before of the Divine character and intentions towards man was but
"poor, weak rudiments." Now the believer has come to _Peniel_; like
Jacob, he has "seen the face of God." He has touched the centre of
things. He has found the secret of love.
Moreover, the Apostle gloried in the cross because it was _the
salvation of men_. His love for men made him boast of it, no less
than his zeal for God. The gospel burning in his heart and on his
lips, was "God's power unto salvation, both to Jew and Greek." He
says this not by way of speculation or theological inference, but
as the testimony of his constant experience. It was bringing men by
thousands from darkness into light, raising them from the slough
of hideous vices and guilty despair, taming the fiercest passions,
breaking the strongest chains of evil, driving out of human hearts
the demons of lust and hate. This message, wherever it went, was
_saving_ men, as nothing had done before, as nothing else has done
since. What lover of his kind would not rejoice in this?
We are members of a weak and suffering race, groaning each in his own
fashion under "the law of sin and death," crying out ever and anon
with Paul, "O wretched man that I am!" If the misery of our bondage
was acute its darkness extreme, how great is the joy with which we
hail our Redeemer! It is the gladness of an immense relief, the joy
of salvation. And our triumph is redoubled when we perceive that His
grace brings us not deliverance for ourselves alone, but commissions
us to impart it to our fellow-men. "Thanks be to God," cries the
Apostle, "who always leadeth us in triumph, and maketh known the
savour of His knowledge by us in every place" (2 Cor. ii. 14).
The essence of the gospel revealed to Paul, as we have observed
more than once, lay in its conception of the office of the cross of
Christ. Not the Incarnation--the basis of the manifestation of the
Father in the Son; not the sinless life and superhuman teaching of
Jesus, which have moulded the spiritual ideal of faith and supplied
its contents; not the Resurrection and Ascension of the Redeemer,
crowning the Divine edifice with the glory of life eternal; but _the
sacrifice of the cross_ is the focus of the Christian revelation.
This gives to the gospel its _saving_ virtue. Round this centre
all other acts and offices of the Saviour revolve, and from it
receive their healing grace. From the hour of the Fall of man the
manifestations of the Divine grace to him ever looked forward to
Calvary; and to Calvary the testimony of that grace has looked
backward ever since. "By this sign" the Church has conquered; the
innumerable benefits with which her teaching has enriched mankind
must all be laid in tribute at the foot of the cross.
The atonement of Jesus Christ demands from us a faith like Paul's,
a faith of _exultation_, a boundless enthusiasm of gratitude and
confidence. If it is worth believing in at all, it is worth believing
in heroically. Let us so boast of it, so exhibit in our lives its
power, so spend ourselves in serving it, that we may justly claim
from all men homage toward the Crucified. Let us lift up the cross of
Christ till its glory shines world-wide, till, as He said, it "draws
all men unto Him." If we triumph in the cross, we shall triumph by
it. It will carry the Church to victory.
And the cross of Jesus Christ is the salvation of men, just because
it is the revelation of God. It is "life eternal," said Jesus to the
Father, "_to know Thee_." The gospel does not save by mere pathos,
but by knowledge--by bringing about a right understanding between man
and his Maker, a reconciliation. It brings God and man together in
the light of truth. In this revelation we see _Him_, the Judge and
the Father, the Lord of the conscience and the Lover of His children;
and we see _ourselves_--what our sins mean, what they have done. God
is face to face with the world. Holiness and sin meet in the shock
of Calvary, and flash into light, each illuminated by contrast with
the other. And the view of what God is in Christ--how He judges, how
He pities us--once fairly seen, breaks the heart, kills the love of
sin. "The glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ," sitting on that
thorn-crowned brow, clothing that bleeding Form rent with the anguish
of Mercy's conflict with Righteousness on our behalf--it is this
which "shines in our hearts" as in Paul's, and cleanses the soul by
its pity and its terror. But this is no dramatic scene, it is Divine,
eternal fact. "We have beheld and do testify that the Father sent the
Son to be the Saviour of the world. We _know_ and have believed the
love that God hath to us" (1 John iv. 14, 16).
Such is the relation to God which the cross has established for the
Apostle. In what position does it place him toward _the world_? To
it, he tells us, he has bidden farewell. Paul and the world are dead
to each other. The cross stands between them. In ch. ii. 20 he had
said, "_I_ am crucified with Christ;" in ch. v. 24, that his "_flesh_
with its passions and lusts" had undergone this fate; and now he
writes, "Through the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ _the world_ is
crucified to me, and I to the world."
Literally, _a world_--a whole world was crucified for Paul when his
Lord died upon the cross. The world that slew Him put an end to
itself, so far as he is concerned. He can never believe in it, never
take pride in it, nor do homage to it any more. It is stripped of
its glory, robbed of its power to charm or govern him. The death of
shame that old "evil world" inflicted upon Jesus has, in Paul's eyes,
reverted to itself; while for the Saviour it is changed into a life
of heavenly glory and dominion. The Apostle's life is withdrawn from
it, to be "hid with Christ in God."
This "crucifixion" is therefore mutual. The Apostle also "is
crucified to the world." Saul the Pharisee was a reputable, religious
man of the world, recognised by it, alive to it, taking his place in
its affairs. But that "old man" has been "crucified with Christ." The
present Paul is in the world's regard another person altogether--"the
filth of the world, the offscouring of all things," no better than
his crucified Master and worthy to share His punishment. He is
dead--"crucified" to it. Faith in Jesus Christ placed a gulf, wide
as that which parts the dead and living, between the Church of the
Apostles and men around them. The cross parted two worlds wholly
different. He who would go back into that other world, the world of
godless self-pleasing and fleshly idolatry, must step over the cross
of Christ to do it.
"_To me_," testifies Paul, "the world is crucified." And the Church
of Christ has still to witness this confession. We read in it a
prophecy. Evil must die. The world that crucified the Son of God, has
written its own doom. With its Satanic Prince it "has been judged"
(John xii. 31; xvi. 11). Morally, it is dead already. The sentence
has passed the Judge's lips. The weakest child of God may safely defy
it, and scorn its boasting. Its visible force is still immense; its
subjects multitudinous; its empire to appearance hardly shaken. It
towers like Goliath confronting "the armies of the living God." But
the foundation of its strength is gone. Decay saps its frame. Despair
creeps over its heart. The consciousness of its impotence and misery
grows upon it.
Worldliness has lost its old serenity irrecoverably. The cross
incessantly disturbs it, and haunts its very dreams. Antichristian
thought at the present time is one wide fever of discontent. It is
sinking into the vortex of pessimism. Its mockery is louder and more
brilliant than ever; but there is something strangely convulsive in
it all; it is the laughter of despair, the dance of death.
Christ the Son of God _has_ come down from the cross, as they
challenged Him. But coming down, He has fastened there in His place
the world that taunted Him. Struggle as it may, it cannot unloose
itself from its condemnation, from the fact that it has killed its
Prince of Life. The cross of Jesus Christ must save--or destroy. The
world must be reconciled to God, or it will perish. On the foundation
laid of God in Zion men will either build or break themselves for
ever. The world that hated Christ and the Father, the world that Paul
cast from him as a dead thing, cannot endure. It "passeth away, and
the lust thereof."
CHAPTER XXIX.
_RITUAL NOTHING: CHARACTER EVERYTHING._
"For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a
new creation. And as many as shall walk by this rule, peace _be_
upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God."--GAL. vi. 15,
16.
Verse 14 comprehends the whole theology of the Epistle, and ver. 15
brings to a head its practical and ethical teaching. This apophthegm
is one of the landmarks of religious history. It ranks in importance
with Christ's great saying: "God is a Spirit; and they that worship
Him, must worship in spirit and truth" (John iv. 21-24). These
sentences of Jesus and of Paul taken together mark the dividing line
between the Old and the New Economy. They declare the nature of the
absolute religion, from the Divine and human side respectively.
God's pure spiritual being is affirmed by Jesus Christ to be
henceforth the norm of religious worship. The exclusive sacredness
of Jerusalem, or of Gerizim, had therefore passed away. On the
other hand, and regarding religion from its psychological side, as
matter of experience and attainment, it is set forth by our Apostle
as an inward life, a spiritual condition, dependent on no outward
form or performance whatsoever. Paul's principle is a consequence
of that declared by his Master. If "God is a Spirit," to be known
and approached as such, ceremonial at once loses its predominance;
it sinks into the accidental, the merely provisional and perishing
element of religion. Faith is no longer bound to material conditions;
it passes inward to its proper seat in the spirit of man. And the
dictum that "Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision nothing"
(comp. ch. v. 6; 1 Cor. vii. 19), becomes a watchword of Christian
theology.
This Pauline axiom is advanced to justify the confession of the
Apostle made in ver. 14; it supports the protest of vv. 12-14 against
the devotees of circumcision, who professed faith in Christ but
were ashamed of His cross. "That Judaic rite in which you glory,"
he says, "is nothing. Ritual qualifications and disqualifications
are abolished. Life in the Spirit, the new creation that begins
with faith in Christ crucified--that is everything." The boasts of
the Judaizers were therefore folly: they rested on "nothing." The
Apostle's glorying alone was valid: the new world of "the kingdom of
God," with its "righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost,"
was there to justify it.
I. _For neither is circumcision anything._--Judaism is abolished at
a stroke! With it circumcision was _everything_. "The circumcision"
and "the people of God" were in Israelitish phrase terms synonymous.
"Uncircumcision" embraced all that was heathenish, outcast and
unclean.
The Mosaic polity made the status of its subjects, their relation to
the Divine covenant, to depend on this initiatory rite. "Circumcised
the eighth day," the child came under the rule and guardianship of
the sacred Law. In virtue of this mark stamped upon his body, he was
_ipso facto_ a member of the congregation of the Lord, bound to all
its duties, so far as his age permitted, and partner in all its
privileges. The constitution of Mosaism--its ordinances of worship,
its ethical discipline, its methods of administration, and the type
of character which it formed in the Jewish nation--rested on this
fundamental sacrament, and took their complexion therefrom.
The Judaists necessarily therefore made it their first object
to enforce circumcision. If they secured this, they could carry
everything; and the complete Judaizing of Gentile Christianity was
only a question of time. This foundation laid, the entire system of
legal obligation could be reared upon it (ch. v. 3). To resist the
imposition of this yoke was for the Pauline Churches a matter of life
and death. They could not afford to "yield by subjection--no, not for
an hour." The Apostle stands forth as the champion of their freedom,
and casts all Jewish pretensions to the winds when he says, "Neither
is _circumcision_ anything."
This absolute way of putting the matter must have provoked the
orthodox Jew to the last degree. The privileges and ancestral glories
of his birth, the truth of God in His covenants and revelations to
the fathers, were to his mind wrapped up in this ordinance, and
belonged of right to "the Circumcision." To say that circumcision is
nothing seemed to him as good as saying that the Law and the Prophets
were nothing, that Israel had no pre-eminence over the Gentiles, no
right to claim "the God of Abraham" as her God. Hence the bitterness
with which the Apostle was persecuted by his fellow-countrymen, and
the credence given, even by orthodox Jewish Christians, to the charge
that he "taught to the Jews apostasy from Moses" (Acts xxi. 21). In
truth Paul did nothing of the kind, as James of Jerusalem very well
knew. But a sentence like this, torn from its context, and repeated
amongst Jewish communities, naturally gave rise to such imputations.
In his subsequent Epistle to the Romans the Apostle is at pains to
correct erroneous inferences drawn from this and similar sayings of
his concerning the Law. He shows that circumcision, in its historical
import, was of the highest value. "What is the advantage of the Jew?
What the benefit of circumcision? Much every way," he acknowledges.
"Chiefly in that to them were entrusted the oracles of God" (Rom.
iii. 1, 2). And again: "Who are Israelites; whose is the adoption,
and the glory, and the covenants, and the lawgiving, and the service
of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers,--and of whom is
the Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God blessed
for ever" (Rom. ix. 4, 5). Eloquently has Paul vindicated himself
from the reproach of indifference to the ancient faith. Never did
he love his Jewish kindred more fervently, nor entertain a stronger
confidence in their Divine calling, than at the moment when in that
Epistle he pronounced the reprobation that ensued on their rejecting
the gospel of Christ. He repeats in the fullest terms the claim which
Jesus Himself was careful to assert, in declaring the extinction of
Judaism as a local and tribal religion, that "Salvation is of the
Jews" (John iv. 21-24). In the Divine order of history it is still
"to the Jew first." But natural relationship to the stock of Abraham
has in itself no spiritual virtue; "circumcision of the flesh"
is worthless, except as the symbol of a cleansed and consecrated
heart. The possession of this outward token of God's covenant
with Israel, and the hereditary blessings it conferred, brought
with them a higher responsibility, involving heavier punishment
in case of unfaithfulness (Rom. ii. 17-iii. 8). This teaching is
pertinent to the case of children of Christian families, to those
formally attached to the Church by their baptism in infancy and by
attendance on her public rites. These things certainly have "much
advantage every way." And yet in themselves, without a corresponding
inner regeneration, without a true death unto sin and life unto
righteousness, these also are nothing. The limiting phrase "in Christ
Jesus" is no doubt a copyist's addition to the text, supplied from
ch. v. 6; but the qualification is in the Apostle's mind, and is
virtually given by the context. No ceremony is of the essence of
Christianity. No outward rite by itself makes a Christian. We are
"joined to the Lord" in "one Spirit." This is the vital tie.
_Nor is uncircumcision anything._ This is the counter-balancing
assertion, and it makes still clearer the bearing of the former
saying. Paul is not contending against Judaism in any anti-Judaic
spirit. He is not for setting up Gentile in the place of Jewish
customs in the Church; he excludes both impartially. Neither, he
declares, have any place "in Christ Jesus," and amongst the things
that accompany salvation. Paul has no desire to humiliate the Jewish
section of the Church; but only to protect the Gentiles from its
aggressions. He lays his hand on both parties and by this evenly
balanced declaration restrains each of them from encroaching on
the other. "Was any one called circumcised"? he writes to Corinth:
"let him not renounce his circumcision. Hath any one been called in
uncircumcision? Let him not be circumcised." The two states alike
are "nothing" from the Christian standpoint. The essential thing is
"keeping the commandments of God" (1 Cor. vii. 18, 19).
Christian Gentiles retained in some instances, doubtless, their
former antipathy to Jewish practices. And while many of the Galatians
were inclined to Legalism, others cherished an extreme repugnance
to its usages. The pretensions of the Legalists were calculated to
excite in the minds of enlightened Gentile believers a feeling of
contempt, which led them to retort on Jewish pride with language of
ridicule. Anti-Judaists would be found arguing that circumcision
was a degradation, the brand of a servile condition; and that its
possessor must not presume to rank with the free sons of God. In
their opinion, _uncircumcision_ was to be preferred and had "much
advantage every way." Amongst Paul's immediate followers there may
have been some who, like Marcion in the second century, would fain
be more Pauline than the Apostle himself, and replied to Jewish
intolerance with an anti-legal intolerance of their own. To this
party it was needful to say, "Neither is uncircumcision anything."
The pagan in his turn has nothing for which to boast over the man of
Israel. This is the caution which the Apostle urges on his Gentile
readers so earnestly in Rom. xi. 13-24. He reminds them that they
owe an immense debt of gratitude to the ancient people of God. Wild
branches grafted into the stock of Abraham, they were "partaking
of the root and fatness" of the old "olive-tree." If the "natural
branches" had been "broken off through unbelief," much more might
they. It became them "not to be high-minded but to fear." So Paul
seeks to protect Israel after the flesh, in its rejection and
sorrowful exile from the fold of Christ, against Gentile insolence.
Alas! that his protection has been so little availing. The Christian
persecutions of the Jews are a dark blot on the Church's record.
The enemies of bigotry and narrowness too oft imbibe the same spirit.
When others treat us with contempt, we are apt to pay them back
in their own coin. They unchurch us, because we cannot pronounce
their shibboleths; they refuse to see in our communion the signs of
Christ's indwelling. It requires our best charity in that case to
appreciate their excellencies and the fruit of the Spirit manifest in
them. "I am of Cephas," say they; and we answer with the challenge
"I of Paul." Sectarianism is denounced in a sectarian spirit. The
enemies of form and ceremony make a religion of their Anti-ritualism.
Church controversies are proverbially bitter; the love which
"hopeth and believeth all things," under their influence suffers a
sad eclipse. On both sides let us be on our guard. The spirit of
partisanship is not confined to the assertors of Church prerogative.
An obstinate and uncharitable pride has been known to spring up in
the breasts of the defenders of liberty, in those who deem themselves
the exponents of pure spiritual religion. "Thus I trample on the
pride of Plato," said the Cynic, as he trod on the philosopher's
sumptuous carpets; and Plato justly retorted, "You do it with greater
pride."
The Apostle would fain lift his readers above the level of this
legalist contention. He bids them dismiss their profitless debates
respecting the import of circumcision, the observance of Jewish
feasts and sabbaths. These debates were a mischief in themselves,
destroying the Church's peace and distracting men's minds from the
spiritual aims of the Gospel; they were fatal to the dignity and
elevation of the Christian life. When men allow themselves to be
absorbed by questions of this kind, and become Circumcisionist or
Uncircumcisionist partisans, eager Ritualists or Anti-ritualists,
they lose the sense of proportion in matters of faith and the poise
of a conscientious and charitable judgement. These controversies
pre-eminently "minister questions" to no profit but to the subverting
of the hearers, instead of furthering "the dispensation of God,
which is in faith" (1 Tim. i. 4). They disturb the City of God with
intestine strife, while the enemy thunders at the gates. Could we
only let such disputes alone, and leave them to perish by inanition!
So Paul would have the Galatians do; he tells them that the great
Mosaic rite is no longer worth defending or attacking. The best thing
is to forget it.
II. What then has the Apostle to put in the place of ritual, as
the matter of cardinal importance and chief study in the Church of
Christ? He presents to view _a new creation_.
It is something _new_ that he desiderates. Mosaism was effete.
The questions arising out of it were dying, or dead. The old
method of revelation which dealt with Jew and Gentile as different
religious species, and conserved Divine truth by a process of
exclusion and prohibition, had served its purpose. "The middle wall
of partition was broken down." The age of faith and freedom had
come, the dispensation of grace and of the Spirit. The Legalists
minimised, they practically ignored the significance of Calvary.
Race-distinctions and caste-privileges were out of keeping with such
a religion as Christianity. The new creed set up a new order of life,
which left behind it the discussions of rabbinism and the formularies
of the legal schools as survivals of bygone centuries.
The novelty of the religion of the gospel was most conspicuous in
_the new type of character_ that it created. The faith of the cross
claims to have produced not a new style of ritual, a new system of
government, but new men. By this product it must be judged. _The
Christian_ is the "new creature" which it begets.
Whatever Christianity has accomplished in the outer world--the
various forms of worship and social life in which it is embodied, the
changed order of thought and of civilisation which it is building
up--is the result of its influence over the hearts of individual
men. Christ, above all other teachers, addressed Himself directly
to the heart, whence proceed the issues of life. There His gospel
establishes its seat. The Christian is the man with a "new heart."
The prophets of the Old Testament looked forward to this as the
essential blessing of religion, promised for the Messianic times
(Heb. viii. 8-13). Through them the Holy Spirit uttered His protest
against the mechanical legalism to which the religion of the temple
and the priesthood was already tending. But this witness had fallen
on deaf ears; and when Christ proclaimed, "It is the Spirit that
quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing," when He said, "The things
that defile a man come out of his heart," He preached revolutionary
doctrine. It is the same principle that the Apostle vindicates. The
religion of Christ has to do in the first place with the individual
man, and in man with his heart.
What then, we further ask, is the character of this hidden man of
the heart, "created anew in Christ Jesus"? Our Epistle has given
us the answer. In him "faith working by love" takes the place of
circumcision and uncircumcision--that is, of Jewish and Gentile
ceremonies and moralities, powerless alike to save (ch. v. 6).
Love comes forward to guarantee the "fulfilling of the law,"
whose fulfilment legal sanctions failed to secure (ch. v. 14). And
the Spirit of Christ assumes His sovereignty in this work of new
creation, calling into being His array of inward graces to supersede
the works of the condemned flesh that no longer rules in the nature
of God's redeemed sons (ch. v. 16-24).
The Legalists, notwithstanding their idolatry of the law, did not
_keep_ it. So the Apostle has said, without fear of contradiction
(ver. 13). But the men of the Spirit, actuated by a power above law,
in point of fact do keep it, and "law's righteousness is fulfilled"
in them (Rom. viii. 3, 4). This was a new thing in the earth. Never
had the law of God been so fulfilled, in its essentials, as it was by
the Church of the Crucified. Here were men who truly "loved God with
all their soul and strength, and their neighbour as themselves." From
Love the highest down to Temperance the humblest, all "the fruit of
the Spirit" in its clustered perfection flourished in their lives.
Jewish discipline and Pagan culture were both put to shame by this
"new creation" of moral virtue. These graces were produced not in
select instances of individuals favoured by nature, in souls disposed
to goodness, or after generations of Christian discipline; but in
multitudes of men of every grade of life--Jews and Greeks, slaves and
freemen, wise and unwise--in those who had been steeped in infamous
vices, but were now "washed, sanctified, justified in the name of the
Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God."
Such regenerated men were the credentials of Paul's gospel. As he
looked on his Corinthian converts, drawn out of the very sink of
heathen corruption, he could say, "The seal of my apostleship are
ye in the Lord." The like answer Christianity has still to give to
its questioners. If it ever ceases to render this answer, its day
is over; and all the strength of its historical and philosophical
evidences will not avail it. The Gospel is "God's power unto
salvation"--or it is nothing!
Such is Paul's _canon_, as he calls it in ver. 16--the rule which
applies to the faith and practice of every Christian man, to the
pretensions of all theological and ecclesiastical systems. The true
Christianity, the true churchmanship, is that which turns bad men
into good, which transforms the slaves of sin into sons of God. A
true faith is a _saving_ faith. The "new creation" is the sign of the
Creator's presence. It is God "who quickeneth the dead" (Rom. iv. 17).
When the Apostle exalts character at the expense of ceremonial, he
does this in a spirit the very opposite of religious indifference.
His maxim is far removed from that expressed in the famous couplet of
Pope:
"For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;
His can't be wrong whose life is in the right."
The gospel of Christ is above all things a _mode of faith_. The "new
creature" is a son of God, seeking to be like God. His conception of
the Divine character and of his own relationship thereto governs his
whole life. His "life is in the right," because his heart is right
with God. All attempts to divorce morality from religion, to build up
society on a secular and non-religious basis, are indeed foredoomed
to failure. The experience of mankind is against them. As a nation's
religion has been, so its morals. The ethical standard in its rise
or fall, if at some interval of time, yet invariably, follows the
advance or decline of spiritual faith. For practical purposes, and
for society at large, religion supplies the mainspring of ethics.
Creed is in the long run the determinant of character. The question
with the Apostle is not in the least whether religion is vital to
morals; but whether this or that formality is vital to religion.
* * * * *
One cannot help wondering how Paul would have applied his canon to
the Church questions of our own day. Would he perchance have said,
"Episcopacy is nothing, and Presbyterianism is nothing;--but keeping
the commandments of God"? Or might he have interposed in another
direction, to testify that "Church Establishments are nothing, and
Disestablishment is nothing; charity is the one thing needful?"
Nay, can we even be bold enough to imagine the Apostle declaring,
"Neither Baptism availeth anything, nor the Lord's Supper availeth
anything,--apart from the faith that works by love"? His rule at any
rate conveys an admonition to us when we magnify questions of Church
ordinance and push them to the front, at the cost of the weightier
matters of our common faith. Are there not multitudes of Romanists
on the one hand who have, as we believe, perverted sacraments, and
Quakers on the other hand who have no sacraments, but who have,
notwithstanding, a penitent, humble, loving faith in Jesus Christ?
And their faith saves them: who will doubt it? Although faith must
ordinarily suffer, and does in our judgement manifestly suffer,
when deprived of these appointed and most precious means of its
expression and nourishment. But what authority have we to forbid to
such believers a place in the Body of Christ, in the brotherhood of
redeemed souls, and to refuse them the right hand of fellowship,
"who have received the Holy Ghost as well as we"? "It is the Spirit
that beareth witness:" who is he that gainsayeth? Grace is more than
the means of grace.
* * * * *
"And as many as shall walk by this rule, peace be on them and mercy,
and upon the Israel of God." Here is an Apostolic benediction for
every loyal Church. The "walk" that the Apostle approves is the
measured, even pace, the steady _march_[148] of the redeemed host
of Israel. On all who are thus minded, who are prepared to make
spiritual perfection the goal of their endeavours for themselves and
for the Church, Paul invokes God's peace and mercy.
[148] Στοιχήσουσιν; comp. ch. v. 25.
Peace is followed by the _mercy_ which guards and restores it. Mercy
heals backslidings and multiplies pardons. She loves to bind up a
broken heart, or a rent and distracted Church. Like the pillar of
fire and cloud in the wilderness, this twofold blessing rests day
and night upon the tents of Israel. Through all their pilgrimage it
attends the children of Abraham, who follow in the steps of their
father's faith.
With this tender supplication Paul brings his warnings and
dissuasives to an end. For the betrayers of the cross he has stern
indignation and alarms of judgement. Towards his children in the
faith nothing but peace and mercy remains in his heart. As an evening
calm shuts in a tempestuous day, so this blessing concludes the
Epistle so full of strife and agitation. We catch in it once more the
chime of the old benediction, which through all storm and peril ever
rings in ears attuned to its note: _Peace shall be upon Israel_ (Ps.
cxxv. 5).
CHAPTER XXX.
_THE BRAND OF JESUS._
"From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear branded on my
body the marks of Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be
with your spirit, brethren. Amen."--GAL. vi. 17, 18.
The Apostle's pen lingers over the last words of this Epistle. His
historical self-defence, his theological argument, his practical
admonitions, with the blended strain of expostulation and entreaty
that runs through the whole--now rising into an awful severity, now
sinking into mother-like tenderness--have reached their conclusion.
The stream of deep and fervent thought pouring itself out in these
pages has spent its force. This prince of the Apostles in word and
doctrine has left the Church no more powerful or characteristic
utterance of his mind. And Paul has marked the special urgency of his
purpose by his closing message contained in the last six verses, an
Epistle within the Epistle, penned in large, bold strokes from his
own hand, in which his very soul transcribes itself before our eyes.
It only remains for him to append his signature. We should expect him
to do this in some striking and special way. His first sentence (ch.
i. 1-10) revealed the profound excitement of spirit under which he is
labouring; not otherwise does he conclude. Ver. 17 sharply contrasts
with the words of peace that hushed our thoughts at the close of the
last paragraph. Perhaps the peace he wishes these troubled Churches
reminds him of his own troubles. Or is it that in breathing his
devout wishes for "the Israel of God," he cannot but think of those
who were "of Israel," but no sons of peace, in whose hearts was
hatred and mischief toward himself? Some such thought stirs anew the
grief with which he has been shaken; and a pathetic cry breaks from
him like the sough of the departing tempest.
Yet the words have the sound of triumph more than of sorrow. Paul
stands a conscious victor, though wounded and with scars upon him
that he will carry to his grave. Whether this letter will serve its
immediate purpose, whether the defection in Galatia will be stayed
by it, or not, the cause of the cross is sure of its triumph; his
contention against its enemies has not been in vain. The force of
inspiration that uplifted him in writing the Epistle, the sense of
insight and authority that pervades it, are themselves an earnest of
victory. The vindication of his authority in Corinth, which, as we
read the order of events, had very recently occurred, gave token that
his hold on the obedience of the Gentile Churches was not likely to
be destroyed, and that in the conflict with legalism the gospel of
liberty was certain to prevail. His courage rises with the danger. He
writes as though he could already say, "I have fought the good fight.
Thanks be to God, which always leadeth us in triumph" (2 Tim. iv. 7;
2 Cor. ii. 14).
The warning of ver. 17 has the ring of _Apostolic dignity_. "From
henceforth let no man give me trouble!" Paul speaks of himself as
a sacred person. God's mark is upon him. Let men beware how they
meddle with him. "He that toucheth you," the Lord said to His people
after the sorrows of the Exile, "toucheth the apple of Mine eye"
(Zech. ii. 8). The Apostle seems to have had a similar feeling
respecting himself. He announces that whosoever from this time lays
an injurious hand upon him does so at his peril. _Henceforth_--for
the struggle with Legalism was the crisis of Paul's ministry. It
called forth all his powers, natural and supernatural, into exercise.
It led him to his largest thoughts respecting God and man, sin and
salvation; and brought him his heaviest sorrows. The conclusion of
this letter signalises the culmination of the Judaistic controversy,
and the full establishment of Paul's influence and doctrinal
authority. The attempt of Judaism to strangle the infant Church is
foiled. In return it has received at Paul's hands its death-blow. The
position won in this Epistle will never be lost; the doctrine of the
cross, as the Apostle taught it, cannot be overthrown. Looking back
from this point to "prove his own work," he can in all humility claim
this "glorying in regard to himself" (ver. 4). He stands attested in
the light of God's approval as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. He
has done the cause of truth an imperishable service. He takes his
place henceforth in the front rank amongst the spiritual leaders of
mankind. Who now will bring reproach against him, or do dishonour to
the cross which he bears? Against that man God's displeasure will go
forth. Some such thoughts were surely present to the Apostle's mind
in writing these final words. They cannot but occur to us in reading
them. Well done, we say, thou faithful servant of the Lord! Ill must
it be for him who henceforth shall trouble thee.
"Troubles" indeed, and to spare, Paul had encountered. He has just
passed through the darkest experience of his life. The language
of the Second Epistle to Corinth is a striking commentary upon
this verse. "We are pressed on every side," he writes, "perplexed,
pursued, smitten down" (ch. iv. 8, 9). His troubles came not only
from his exhausting labours and hazardous journeys; he was everywhere
pursued by the fierce and deadly hatred of his fellow-countrymen.
Even within the Church there were men who made it their business to
harass him and destroy his work. No place was safe for him--not even
the bosom of the Church. On land or water, in the throngs of the city
or the solitudes of the desert, his life was in hourly jeopardy (1
Cor. xv. 30; 2 Cor. xi. 26).
Beside all this, "the care of the Churches" weighed on his mind
heavily. There was "no rest" either for his flesh or spirit (2 Cor.
ii. 13; vii. 5). Recently Corinth, then Galatia was in a ferment of
agitation. His doctrine was attacked, his authority undermined by
the Judaic emissaries, now in this quarter, now in that. The tumult
at Ephesus, so graphically described by Luke, happening at the same
time as the broils in the Corinthian Church and working on a frame
already overstrung, had thrown him into a prostration of body and
mind so great that he says, "We despaired even of life. We had the
answer of death in ourselves" (2 Cor. i. 8, 9). The expectation that
he would die before the Lord's return had now, for the first time it
appears, definitely forced itself on the Apostle, and cast over him a
new shadow, causing deep ponderings and searchings of heart (2 Cor.
v. 1-10). The culmination of the legalistic conflict was attended
with an inner crisis that left its ineffaceable impression on the
Apostle's soul.
But he has risen from his sick bed. He has been "comforted by the
coming of Titus" with better news from Corinth (2 Cor. vii. 6-16).
He has written these two letters--the Second to the Corinthians,
and this to the Galatians. And he feels that the worst is past. "He
who delivered him out of so great a death, will yet deliver" (2
Cor. i. 10). So confident is he in the authority which Christ gave
and enabled him to exercise in utter weakness, so signally is he
now stamped as God's Apostle by his sufferings and achievements,
that he can dare any one from this time forth to oppose him. The
anathema of this Epistle might well make his opponents tremble. Its
remorseless logic left their sophistries no place of refuge. Its
passionate entreaties broke down suspicion and sullenness. Let the
Circumcisionists beware how they slander him. Let fickle Galatians
cease to trouble him with their quarrels and caprices. So well
assured is he for his part of the rectitude of his course and of the
Divine approval and protection, that he feels bound to warn them that
it will be the worse for those who at such a time lay upon him fresh
and needless burdens.
One catches in this sentence too _an undertone of entreaty_, a
confession of weariness. Paul is tired of strife. "Woe is me," he
might say, "that I sojourn in Meshech, that I dwell among the tents
of Kedar! My soul hath long had her dwelling with him that hateth
peace." "Enmities, ragings, factions, divisions"--with what a
painful emphasis he dwells in the last chapter on these many forms
of discord. He has known them all. For months he has been battling
with the hydra-headed brood. He longs for an interval of rest. He
seems to say, "I pray you, let me be at peace. Do not vex me any
more with your quarrels. I have suffered enough." The present tense
of the Greek imperative verb (παρεχέτω) brings it to bear on the
course of things then going on: as much as to say, "Let these weapons
be dropped, these wars and fightings cease." For his own sake the
Apostle begs the Galatians to desist from the follies that caused
him so much trouble, and to suffer him to share with them God's
benediction of peace.
But what an argument is this with which Paul enforces his plea,--"for
I bear the brand of Jesus in my body!"
"The _stigmata_ of Jesus"--what does he mean? It is "in my
body"--some marks branded or punctured on the Apostle's person,
distinguishing him from other men, conspicuous and humiliating,
inflicted on him as Christ's servant, and which so much resembled
the inflictions laid on the Redeemer's body that they are called
"the marks of Jesus." No one can say precisely what these brands
consisted in. But we know enough of the previous sufferings of the
Apostle to be satisfied that he carried on his person many painful
marks of violence and injury. His perils endured by land and sea, his
imprisonments, his "labour and travail, hunger and thirst, cold and
nakedness," his three shipwrecks, the "night and day spent in the
deep," were sufficient to break down the strength of the stoutest
frame; they had given him the look of a worn and haggard man. Add
to these the stoning at Lystra, when he was dragged out for dead.
"Thrice" also had he been beaten with the Roman rods; "five times"
with the thirty-nine stripes of the Jewish scourge (2 Cor. xi. 23-27).
Is it to these last afflictions, cruel and shameful they were in
the extreme, that the Apostle specially refers as constituting
"the brand _of Jesus_"? For Jesus was _scourged_. The allusion of 1
Pet. ii. 24--"by whose _stripes_ (literally, _bruise_ or _weal_) ye
were healed"--shows how vividly this circumstance was remembered,
and how strongly it affected Christian minds. With this indignity
upon Him--His body lashed with the torturing whip, scored with livid
bruises--our Blessed Lord was exposed on the cross. So He was branded
as a malefactor, even before His crucifixion. And the same brand Paul
had received, not once but many times, for his Master's sake. As the
strokes of the scourge fell on the Apostle's shuddering flesh, he had
been consoled by thinking how near he was brought to his Saviour's
passion: "The servant," He had said, "shall be as his Lord." Possibly
some recent infliction of the kind, more savage than the rest, had
helped to bring on the malady which proved so nearly fatal to him.
In some way he had been marked with fresh and manifest tokens of
bodily suffering in the cause of Christ. About this time he writes of
himself as "always bearing about in his body the dying of the Lord
Jesus" (2 Cor. iv. 10); for the corpse-like state of the Apostle,
with the signs of maltreatment visible in his frame, pathetically
imaged the suffering Redeemer whom he preached. Could the Galatians
have seen him as he wrote, in physical distress, labouring under the
burden of renewed and aggravated troubles, their hearts must have
been touched with pity. It would have grieved them to think that they
had increased his afflictions, and were "persecuting him whom the
Lord had smitten."
His scars were badges of dishonour to worldly eyes. But to Paul
himself these tokens were very precious. "Now I rejoice in my
sufferings for you," he writes from his Roman prison at a later
time: "and am filling up what is lacking of the afflictions of Christ
in my flesh" (Col. i. 24). The Lord had not suffered everything
Himself. He honoured His servants by leaving behind a measure of His
afflictions for each to endure in the Church's behalf. The Apostle
was companion of his Master's disgrace. In him the words of Jesus
were signally fulfilled: "They have hated Me; they will also hate
you." He was following, closely as he might, in the way that led to
Calvary. All men may know that Paul is Christ's servant; for he wears
His livery, the world's contempt. Of Jesus they said, "Away with Him,
crucify Him;" and of Paul, "Away with such a fellow from the earth:
for it is not fit that he should live" (Acts xxii. 22). "Enough for
the disciple to be as his Master:" what could he wish more?
His condition inspired reverence in all who loved and honoured Jesus
Christ. Paul's Christian brethren were moved by feelings of the
tenderest respect by the sight of his wasted and crippled form. "His
bodily presence is weak (2 Cor. x. 10): he looks like a corpse!"
said his despisers. But under that physical feebleness there lay an
immense fund of moral vigour. How should he not be weak, after so
many years of wearying toil and relentless persecution and torturing
pain? Out of this very weakness came a new and unmatched strength; he
"glories in his infirmities," for there rests upon him the strength
of Christ (2 Cor. xii. 9).
Under the expression "_stigmata_ of Jesus" there is couched a
reference to the practice of marking criminals and runaway slaves
with a brand burnt into the flesh, which is perpetuated in our
English use of the Greek words _stigma_ and _stigmatize_. A man
so marked was called _stigmatias_, _i.e._, a branded scoundrel;
and such the Apostle felt himself to be in the eyes of men of the
world. Captain Lysias of Jerusalem took him for an Egyptian leader
of banditti. Honourable men, when they knew him better, learned
to respect him; but such was the reputation that his battered
appearance, and the report of his enemies, at first sight gained for
him.
The term _stigmata_ had also another and different signification. It
applied to a well-known custom of religious devotees to _puncture_,
or tattoo, upon themselves the name of their God, or other sign
expressive of their devotion (Isa. xiiv. 5; Rev. iii. 12). This
signification may be very naturally combined with the former in the
employment of the figure. Paul's _stigmata_, resembling those of
Jesus and being of the same order, were signs at once of reproach and
of consecration. The prints of the world's insolence were witnesses
of his devotion to Christ. He loves to call himself "the slave of
Christ Jesus." The scourge has written on his back his Master's name.
Those dumb wounds proclaim him the bondman of the Crucified. At the
lowest point of personal and official humiliation, when affronts
were heaped upon him, he felt that he was raised in the might of the
Spirit to the loftiest dignity, even as "Christ was crucified through
weakness, yet liveth through the power of God" (2 Cor. xiii. 4.)
The words _I bear_--not united, as in our own idiom, but standing the
pronoun at the head and the verb at the foot of the sentence--have
each of them a special emphasis. _I_--in contrast with his opponents,
man-pleasers, shunning Christ's reproach; and _bear_ he says
exultantly--"this is my burden, these are the marks I carry,"
like the standard-bearer of an army who proudly wears his scars
(Chrysostom). In the profound and sacred joy which the Apostle's
tribulations brought him, we cannot but feel even at this distance
that we possess a share. They belong to that richest treasure of the
past, the sum of
"Sorrow which is not sorrow, but delight
To hear of, for the glory that redounds
Therefrom to human kind and what we are."
The _stigmatization_ of Paul, his puncturing with the wounds of
Jesus, has been revived in later times in a manner far remote
from anything that he imagined or would have desired. _Francis of
Assisi_ in the year 1224 A.D. received in a trance the wound-prints
of the Saviour on his body; and from that time to his death, it
is reported, the saint had the physical appearance of one who had
suffered crucifixion. Other instances, to the number of eighty, have
been recorded in the Roman Catholic Church of the reproduction, in
more or less complete form, of the five wounds of Jesus and the
agonies of the cross; chiefly in the case of nuns. The last was that
of Louise Lateau, who died in Belgium in the year 1883. That such
phenomena have occurred, there is no sufficient reason to doubt. It
is difficult to assign any limits to the power of the human mind over
the body in the way of sympathetic imitation. Since St. Francis' day
many Romanist divines have read the Apostle's language in this sense;
but the interpretation has followed rather than given rise to this
fulfilment. In whatever light these manifestations may be regarded,
they are a striking witness to the power of the cross over human
nature. Protracted meditation on the sufferings of our Lord, aided
by a lively imagination and a susceptible physique, has actually
produced a rehearsal of the bodily pangs and the wound-marks of
Calvary.
This mode of knowing Christ's sufferings "after the flesh," morbid
and monstrous as we deem it to be, is the result of an aspiration
which however misdirected by Catholic asceticism, is yet the highest
that belongs to the Christian life. Surely we also desire, with Paul,
to be "made conformable to the death of Christ." On our hearts His
wounds must be impressed. Along the pathway of our life His cross
has to be borne. To all His disciples, with the sons of Zebedee, He
says, "Ye shall indeed drink of My cup; and with the baptism that I
am baptized withal shall ye be baptized." But "it is the Spirit that
quickeneth," said Jesus; "the flesh profiteth nothing." The pains
endured by the body for His sake are only of value when, as in Paul's
case, they are the result and the witness of an inward communion of
the Spirit, a union of the will and the intelligence with Christ.
The cup that He would have us drink with Him, is one of sorrow for
the sins of men. His baptism is that of pity for the misery of our
fellows, of yearning over souls that perish. It will not come upon
us without costing many a pang. If we receive it there will be ease
to surrender, gain and credit to renounce, self to be constantly
sacrificed. We need not go out of our way to find our cross; we have
only not to be blind to it, not to evade it when Christ sets it
before us. It may be part of the cross that it comes in a common,
unheroic form; the service required is obscure; it consists of a
multitude of little, vexing, drudging sacrifices in place of the
grand and impressive sacrifice, which we should be proud to make. To
be martyred by inches, out of sight--this to many is the cruellest
martyrdom of all. But it may be Christ's way, the fittest, the only
perfect way for us, of putting His brand upon us and conforming us to
His death.
Yes, conformity of spirit to the cross is _the mark of Jesus_. "If
we suffer with Him"--so the Apostolic Churches used to sing--"we
shall also be glorified together." In our recoil from the artificial
penances and mortifications of former ages, we are disposed in
these days to banish the idea of mortification altogether from
our Christian life. Do we not study our personal comfort in an
un-Christlike fashion? Are there not many in these days, bearing the
name of Christ, who without shame and without reproof lay out their
plans for winning the utmost of selfish prosperity, and put Christian
objects in the second place? How vain for them to cry "Lord, Lord!"
to the Christ who "pleased not Himself!" They profess at the Lord's
Table to "show His death;" but to show that death in their lives,
to "know" with Paul "the fellowship of His sufferings," is the last
thing that enters into their minds. How the scars of the brave
Apostle put to shame the self-indulgence, the heartless luxury, the
easy friendship with the world, of fashionable Christians! "Be ye
followers of me," he cries, "as I also of Christ." He who shuns that
path cannot, Jesus said, be My disciple.
So the blessed Apostle has put his mark to this Epistle. To the
Colossians from his prison he writes, "Remember my bonds." And to
the Galatians, "Look on my wounds." These are his credentials; these
are the armorial bearings of the Apostle Paul. He places the seal of
Jesus, the sign-manual of _the wounded hand_ upon the letter written
in His name.
THE BENEDICTION.
One benediction the Apostle has already uttered, in ver. 16. But that
was a general wish, embracing all who should walk according to the
spiritual rule of Christ's kingdom. On his readers specifically he
still has his blessing to pronounce. He does it in language differing
in this instance very little from that he is accustomed to employ.
"The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ" is the distinctive blessing of
the New Covenant. It is to the Christian the supreme good of life,
including or carrying with it every other spiritual gift. _Grace_ is
Christ's property. It descended with the Incarnate Saviour into the
world, coming down from God out of heaven. His life displayed it;
His death bestowed it on mankind. Raised to His heavenly throne, He
has become on the Father's behalf the dispenser of its fulness to
all who will receive it. There exalted, thence bestowing on men "the
abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness," He is known and
worshipped as _our Lord Jesus Christ_.
What this grace of God in Christ designs, what it accomplishes in
believing hearts, what are the things that contradict it and make it
void, this Epistle has largely taught us. Of its pure, life-giving
stream the Galatians already had richly tasted. From "Christ's grace"
they were now tempted to "remove" (ch. i. 6). But the Apostle hopes
and prays that it may abide with them.
"With your spirit," he says; for this is the place of its visitation,
the throne of its power. The spirit of man, breathed upon by the Holy
Spirit of God, receives Christ's grace and becomes the subject and
the witness of its regenerating virtue. This benediction contains
therefore in brief all that is set forth in the familiar three fold
formula--"the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God,
and the communion of the Holy Ghost."
After all his fears for his wayward flock, all his chidings and
reproofs, forgiveness and confidence are the last thoughts in Paul's
heart: "Brethren" is the last word that drops from the Apostle's
pen,--followed only by the confirmation of his devout _Amen_.
* * * * *
To his readers also the writer of this book takes leave to address
the Apostle Paul's fraternal benediction: THE GRACE OF OUR LORD JESUS
CHRIST BE WITH YOUR SPIRIT, BRETHREN. AMEN.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals.
Variations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been
retained except in obvious cases of typographical error.
The cover for the eBook version of this book was created by the
transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
Page 130: The transcriber has inserted an anchor for footnote number
49 "Rom. ii. 25-iii. 1".
Page 210: The transcriber has changed "Gen. xxii. 8 16--1" to "Gen.
xxii. 16-18".
Page 251: (As enemies, "we were reconciled to God by the death of His
Son;") Missing opening double quote was added by the transcriber.
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