How little is man to be accounted of! The gospel had brought in before God this double conclusion, founded on the first Adam and the last. But when men would have anything fraught with distress to His people, when through their folly confusion must ensue, contrary to all that His heart loved, then it was left to others. Or I can walk after the Spirit and say, "Oh Lord, it doesn't matter. Don't marvel when I say, 'You've got to be born again.'" For they were saying that was it was necessary to be circumcised and to keep the law of Moses in order to be righteous before God, to be saved. We shall find he does not forget this elsewhere: he reasons on it in another part of the epistle. Jesus has set us free - free from the slavery of sin, free from slavery to the law. In grace, God in the person of His Son speaks and accomplishes ALL; and thus He is glorified from first to last. "Desirous of vainglory,". He revealed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God. The apostle stands to the truth preached and received. Here it is the total judgment of flesh in its religious pretensions, and more particularly a blow to that which is an essential principle of law. "I through the law am dead to the law." Where was the harm of taking up what saints of old submitted to? Two things especially he presses upon them:--. Ye did run well." "Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one." (14) An exhortation to the duties of charity, by the profit that follows from it, because no men proved worse for themselves than they that hate one another. 2 Mark my words! But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another. Thence he advances to another point of his argument. He wouldn't bother correcting me. And I had some who were determined that they were going to convert me to their way of thinking.And I would listen to them and listen to them and listen to them; I don't really make a practice of arguing scriptures. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself ( Galatians 5:14 ). If you want to be a subject in God's kingdom, then you cannot do these things. The sense is, if you contend with each other; and the reference is, probably, to the strifes which would arise between the two parties in the churches - the Jewish and the Gentile converts. occasioned great contentions, and threatened them with divisions, The whole concept is: how do I establish a righteous standing before God? And Paul said, "Hey, wait a minute. So here it is said that God was pleased to reveal His Son in him, that he might preach the good news of Him among the heathen. For in Jesus Christ it is not of the slightest importance whether a man is circumcised or uncircumcised. And I'm washed and I'm cleansed and I go on. The new creation is a present blessing that the soul already enjoys. It was by revelation, not by summons from Jerusalem, or to acquire a title thereby. It is a grim illustration at which a polite society raises its eyebrows, but it would be intensely real to the Galatians who knew all about the priests of Cybele. He saw Peter; but "other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother." He mentions another fact, and of the greatest gravity, closing this part of his argument that when Peter subsequently came down into the Gentile quarters, he had been himself affected by the subtle spirit of Judaism, i.e., the chief of the twelve! I am crucified with Christ: consequently all that remains for me is living this new life which Christ is in me. As God has wrought for us on the cross, and delivered us from every atom of sin in Christ, so He will not allow us to mix one earthly or legal element with the revelation of His grace, which He has made ours in redemption, and proclaimed to us by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. He saith not, And to seeds, as to many; but as to one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. Thus, clearly, in the law man becomes the prominent and responsible party, not God. Is He a ventriloquist? Now, it is evident and to this I call your particular attention that the apostle here binds together his gospel with his apostolic place. (I mean by this, of course, exclusive of sin and falsehood.) If I am a man, I am responsible as such; being fallen and sinful, this will end in judgment. "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." Hereon the apostle puts before them another expostulation: "I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain." Paul had a characteristically practical mind. (c) Most often of all it means being considerate ( 1 Corinthians 4:21; 2 Corinthians 10:1; Ephesians 4:2). Uh-huh, you did that five minutes. That is, the apostle, instead of regarding his despised freedom from the law as a just reproach, glories in it. Impossible to serve two masters! Having brought in the true character of the Christian's life as flowing simply and solely from Christ, and from Christ crucified too, so here he takes up the Holy Ghost. This is the constitution of your priceless liberty. Immediately the Spirit speaks to me and says, "That was wrong." (d) Agape ( G26) , the Christian word, means unconquerable benevolence. Grace alone in such a case brings glory to God. Now, as a means of engaging them to the one and preserving them from the other of these, he here cautions them against being desirous of vain-glory, or giving way to an undue affectation of the esteem and applause of men, because this, if it were indulged, would certainly lead them to provoke one another and to envy one another. "So then," says he, "they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham." But at the same time it is plain that the apostle Paul here starts with the instructive fact, that the very thing for which some Judaizers then blamed him was the distinctive glory of that to which the Lord had called him. "Love suffereth long and is kind." The consequence is, that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God; and this he proves, not only from the promise, but from the prophets. Strong expressions of partisan hatred exerting itself for mutual injury. remove, the candlestick out of its place. Let him alone. we know too well the result from sinful man. Yet, wondrous to say, when she desires to be under grace by-and-by, all those that are now brought in by promise will be accounted as children to her. Why, that though there were "false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage," Paul did not give place by subjection even for an hour, "that the truth of the gospel might continue with them." "Now to Abraham were the promises spoken, and to his seed. Impurity, then, is that which makes a man unfit to come before God, the soiling of life with the things which separate us from him. Men that have followed after my perverse teachings. Have ye suffered so many things in vain, if it be yet in vain? "Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood.". 18 But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law. Trench says that Jesus showed agathosune ( G19) when he cleansed the Temple and drove out those who were making it a bazaar; but he showed chrestotes ( G5544) when he was kind to the sinning woman who anointed his feet. Peter would have been horrified at such a conclusion. One of the lawyers one day challenged Jesus as to the greatest commandment. Therefore reckon ye yourselves to be dead with Christ, but alive unto God through Him" ( Romans 6:6 , Romans 6:11 ). "Christian freedom is not licence [sic] for the simple but tremendous reason that the Christian is not the man who has become free to sin, but the man, who, by the grace of God, has become free not to sin." Acts 15:1, 5 ). Interesting to me that heresies is here mentioned as a part of the works of the flesh. But if ye bite and devour one another,. Another reason inducing to love is taken from the pernicious consequences of a contrary spirit and conduct. Paul was confident the Galatians would resist the one leading them in the wrong direction. Here he takes up, not the mischievous troublers of the Gentiles, whom he does not hesitate to call "false brethren," but the highest in office he found there. He will gain transgression thereby; nothing more, nothing better. In Romans he wrote one of the world's great theological treatises, and then, quite suddenly, in Romans 12:1-21 the theology came down to earth and issued in the most practical advice. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. he gives us this one general rule, which, if duly observed, would be the most sovereign remedy against the prevalence of corruption; and that is to walk in the Spirit (Galatians 5:16; Galatians 5:16): This I say, then, Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. I could quickly get in trouble. As far as this temper prevails among Christians, they will be ready to slight and despise those whom they look upon as inferior to them, and to be put out of humour if they are denied that respect which they think is their due from them, and they will also be apt to envy those by whom their reputation is in any danger of being lessened: and thus a foundation is laid for those quarrels and contentions which, as they are inconsistent with that love which Christians ought to maintain towards each other, so they are greatly prejudicial to the honour and interest of religion itself. It was used of the serenity which a country enjoyed under the just and beneficent government of a good emperor; and it was used of the good order of a town or village. Love is the sum of the whole law; as love to God comprises the duties of the first table, so love to our neighbour those of the second. He habitually measured things not so much by their bearing on Jews or Gentiles as by their effect on Christ's glory. He did not forget His people Israel; but He had always the glory of Christ before Him; and the moment we rise up to this blessed Seed of all blessing (the true Isaac, dead and risen really, as the son of Abraham was then in figure), the blessing of the Gentiles is secured in that one sole person, before the Jews are multiplied in their land under the new covenant, and possess the gate of their enemies. He does not even deign to fill up the sketch. The apostle turns this into an admirable piece of divine reasoning in defence of the gospel. 3. Consequently, without further preamble, and with an ominous silence as to their state (for, indeed, it could not be spoken of), he at once breaks the ground. "To Abraham were the promises made, and to his seed.". They have not yet obtained a complete victory over it; they have still flesh as well as Spirit in them, and that has its affections and lusts, which continue to give them no little disturbance, but as it does not now reign in their mortal bodies, so as that they obey it in the lusts thereof (Romans 6:12), so they are seeking the utter ruin and destruction of it, and to put it to the same shameful and ignominious, though lingering death, which our Lord Jesus underwent for our sakes. It is the liberty not to do those things which the flesh once forced me to do. Impossible to find a blast more withering to all that they were aiming at. Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai, which is in Arabia, and corresponds to the present Jerusalem; for she is a slave and so are her children. And if you do, you will not be fulfilling the desires of your flesh. You ever seen a person in love and all of the joy that they have? The whole idea of the word is a goodness which is kind. They often use drugs, potions; the potions that you'd take, you know, and it'd have their drug related experiences. In Christ alone, in His cross, let us boast, and in the new creature which is by Christ. This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. Once the spirit has come alive, now there comes this striving for the mastery of me. against such there is no law ( Galatians 5:23 ). If I sow to the flesh, I shall of the flesh reap corruption; if I sow to the Spirit, I shall reap life everlasting. He signed ordinarily, putting his subscription at the end, i.e., his own name, to verify it; but he did not write it. You weren't persuaded to be circumcised because God was speaking to your heart and convicting you of this. So, I think Paul could also have included here baptism or no baptism as far as the physical immersion in water. I cannot soil a life which God paid for with his own life. Take heed that ye be not consumed - As wild beasts contend sometimes until both are slain. another; having reference to their controversies about the law If any of them believe in the Crucified, they were God's Israel. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Had a man come down from the teaching of the twelve, albeit inspired of God to write, as we know some of them were, and all of them having a most truly apostolic place, he might have been startled by the teaching of St. Paul. In that chapter of Romans we have a man converted indeed, but without liberty, and consequently powerless. One can readily conceive men of strong prejudice and of weak faith thus hesitating, especially in presence of the apostle's strong assertion of entire liberty from the law for the Gentiles. Thus, the idea is, in their contentions they would destroy the spirituality and happiness of each other; their characters would be ruined; and the church be overthrown. Hence in this epistle it is not so much the laying bare the need of man of the sinner, as the vindication of that same grace of God for the saint, with the exhibition of the ruinous results to him who is drawn aside from the deep and broad groundwork that God has laid for souls in Christ. Thank You, Jesus, for Your forgiveness and for Your love and for Your grace to me.". And to try to explain to people the things of the Spirit to the natural man, to try and explain the things of the Spirit has got to be one of the most frustrating things in the world. Law man becomes the prominent and responsible party, not God liberty not to do those things which flesh. I mean by this, of course, exclusive of sin, free from slavery to the.... Are no longer under a schoolmaster ), the apostle turns this into admirable... 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