Foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you not to obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was openly portrayed among you as crucified? I just want to learn this from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by hearing of faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now completed in the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain, if it is indeed in vain? He therefore who supplies the Spirit to you and does miracles among you, does he do it by the works of the law, or by hearing of faith? Even as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness.” Know therefore that those who are of faith are children of Abraham. The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the Good News beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you all the nations will be blessed.” So then, those who are 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 everyone who doesn’t continue in all things that are written in the book of the law, to do them.” Now that no man is justified by the law before God is evident, for, “The righteous will live by faith.” The law is not of faith, but, “The man who does them will live by them.”
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. For it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree,” that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
Brothers, speaking of human terms, though it is only a man’s covenant, yet when it has been confirmed, no one makes it void or adds to it. Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his offspring. He doesn’t say, “To descendants”, as of many, but as of one, “To your offspring”, which is Christ. Now I say this: A covenant confirmed beforehand by God in Christ, the law, which came four hundred thirty years after, does not annul, so as to make the promise of no effect. For if the inheritance is of the law, it is no more of promise; but God has granted it to Abraham by promise.
Then why is there the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise has been made. It was ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator. Now a mediator is not between one, but God is one. Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not! For if there had been a law given which could make alive, most certainly righteousness would have been of the law. But the Scripture imprisoned all things under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, confined for the faith which should afterwards be revealed. So that the law has become our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. For you are all children of God, through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring and heirs according to promise.
Martin Luther 1535 · Public Domain On vv1–29 VERSE 1. O foolish Galatians.
VERSE 1. O foolish Galatians.
The Apostle Paul manifests his apostolic care for the Galatians. Sometimes he entreats them, then again he reproaches them, in accordance with his own advice to Timothy: "Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort."
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In the midst of his discourse on Christian righteousness Paul breaks off, and turns to address the Galatians. "O foolish Galatians," he cries. "I have brought you the true Gospel, and you received it with eagerness and gratitude. Now all of a sudden you drop the Gospel. What has got into you?"
Paul reproves the Galatians rather sharply when he calls them "fools, bewitched, and disobedient." Whether he is indignant or sorry, I cannot say. He may be both. It is the duty of a Christian pastor to reprove the people committed to his charge. Of course, his anger must not flow from malice, but from affection and a real zeal for Christ.
There is no question that Paul is disappointed. It hurts him to think that his Galatians showed so little stability. We can hear him say: "I am sorry to hear of your troubles, and disappointed in you for the disgraceful part you played." I say rather much on this point to save Paul from the charge that he railed upon the churches, contrary to the spirit of the Gospel.
A certain distance and coolness can be noted in the title with which the Apostle addresses the Galatians. He does not now address them as his brethren, as he usually does. He addresses them as Galatians in order to remind them of their national trait to be foolish.
We have here an example of bad traits that often cling to individual Christians and entire congregations. Grace does not suddenly transform a Christian into a new and perfect creature. Dregs of the old and natural corruption remain. The Spirit of God cannot at once overcome human deficiency. Sanctification takes time.
Although the Galatians had been enlightened by the Holy Spirit through the preaching of faith, something of their national trait of foolishness plus their original depravity clung to them. Let no man think that once he has received faith, he can presently be converted into a faultless creature. The leavings of old vices will stick to him, be he ever so good a Christian.
VERSE 1. Who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth?
Paul calls the Galatians foolish and bewitched. In the fifth chapter he mentions sorcery among the works of the flesh, declaring that witchcraft and sorcery are real manifestations and legitimate activities of the devil. We are all exposed to the influence of the devil, because he is the prince and god of the world in which we live.
Satan is clever. He does not only bewitch men in a crude manner, but also in a more artful fashion. He bedevils the minds of men with hideous fallacies. Not only is he able to deceive the self-assured, but even those who profess the true Christian faith. There is not one among us who is not at times seduced by Satan into false beliefs.
This accounts for the many new battles we have to wage nowadays. But the attacks of the old Serpent are not without profit to us, for they confirm our doctrine and strengthen our faith in Christ. Many a time we were wrestled down in these conflicts with Satan, but Christ has always triumphed and always will triumph. Do not think that the Galatians were the only ones to be bewitched by the devil. Let us realize that we too may be seduced by Satan.
VERSE 1. Who hath bewitched you?
In this sentence Paul excuses the Galatians, while he blames the false apostles for the apostasy of the Galatians.
As if he were saying: "I know your defection was not willful. The devil sent the false apostles to you, and they tallied you into believing that you are justified by the Law. With this our epistle we endeavor to undo the damage which the false apostles have inflicted upon you."
Like Paul, we struggle with the Word of God against the fanatical Anabaptists of our day; and our efforts are not entirely in vain. The trouble is there are many who refuse to be instructed. They will not listen to reason; they will not listen to the Scriptures, because they are bewitched by the tricky devil who can make a lie look like the truth.
Since the devil has this uncanny ability to make us believe a lie until we would swear a thousand times it were the truth, we must not be proud, but walk in fear and humility, and call upon the Lord Jesus to save us from temptation.
Although I am a doctor of divinity, and have preached Christ and fought His battles for a long time, I know from personal experience how difficult it is to hold fast to the truth. I cannot always shake off Satan. I cannot always apprehend Christ as the Scriptures portray Him. Sometimes the devil distorts Christ to my vision. But thanks be to God, who keeps us in His Word, in faith, and in prayer.
The spiritual witchery of the devil creates in the heart a wrong idea of Christ. Those who share the opinion that a person is justified by the works of the Law, are simply bewitched. Their belief goes against faith and Christ.
VERSE 1. That ye should not obey the truth.
Paul incriminates the Galatians in worse failure. "You are so bewitched that you no longer obey the truth. I fear many of you have strayed so far that you will never return to the truth."
The apostasy of the Galatians is a fine indorsement of the Law, all right. You may preach the Law ever so fervently; if the preaching of the Gospel does not accompany it, the Law will never produce true conversion and heartfelt repentance. We do not mean to say that the preaching of the Law is without value, but it only serves to bring home to us the wrath of God. The Law bows a person down. It takes the Gospel and the preaching of faith in Christ to raise and save a person.
VERSE 1. Before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth.
Paul’s increasing severity becomes apparent as he reminds the Galatians that they disobeyed the truth in defiance of the vivid description he had given them of Christ. So vividly had he described Christ to them that they could almost see and handle Him. As if Paul were to say: "No artist with all his colors could have pictured Christ to you as vividly as I have pictured Him to you by my preaching. Yet you permitted yourselves to be seduced to the extent that you disobeyed the truth of Christ."
VERSE 1. Crucifed among you.
"You have not only rejected the grace of God, you have shamefully crucified Christ among you." Paul employs the same phraseology in Heb 6:6 : "Seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame."
It should make any person afraid to hear Paul say that those who seek to be justified by the Law, not only deny Christ, but also crucify Him anew. If those who seek to be justified by the Law and its works are crucifiers of Christ, what are they, I like to know, who seek salvation by the filthy rags of their own work-righteousness?
Can there be anything more horrible than the papacy, an alliance of people who crucify Christ in themselves, in the Church, and in the hearts of the believers?
Of all the diseased and vicious doctrines of the papacy the worst is this: "If you want to serve God you must earn your own remission of sins and everlasting life, and in addition help others to obtain salvation by giving them the benefit of your extra work-holiness." Monks, friars, and all the rest of them brag that besides the ordinary requirements common to all Christians, they do the works of supererogation, i.e., the performance of more than is required. This is certainly a fiendish illusion.
No wonder Paul employs such sharp language in his effort to recall the Galatians from the doctrine of the false apostles. He says to them: "Don’t you realize what you have done? You have crucified Christ anew because you seek salvation by the Law."
True, Christ can no longer be crucified in person, but He is crucified in us when we reject grace, faith, free remission of sins and endeavor to be justified by our own works, or by the works of the Law.
The Apostle is incensed at the presumptuousness of any person who thinks he can perform the Law of God to his own salvation. He charges that person with the atrocity of crucifying anew the Son of God.
Martin Luther — Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1535), English translation by Theodore Graebner (Zondervan, 1939) — public domain (U.S. copyright not renewed). Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv1–29 1. O foolish Galatians. An expostulation is here interwoven…
1. O foolish Galatians. An expostulation is here interwoven — I should rather say, inserted — amidst his doctrinal statements. Some will wonder that he did not delay it to the close of the Epistle, but the very serious nature of the errors which he has brought forward unquestionably roused him to a burst of passion. When we hear that the Son of God, with all his benefits, is rejected, that his death is esteemed as nothing, what pious mind would not break out into indignation? He therefore declares that those who allowed themselves to be involved in so heinous a crime must have been ἀνόητοι, that is, “disordered in mind.” He accuses them not only of having suffered themselves to be deceived, but of having been carried away by some sort of magical enchantment, which is a still more serious charge. He insinuates that their fall partook more of madness than of folly.
Some think that Paul refers to the temper of the nation, that, being sprung from barbarians, it was more difficult to train them; but I rather think that he refers to the subject itself. It looks like something supernatural, that, after enjoying the gospel in such clearness, they should be affected by the delusions of Satan. He does not merely say that they were “bewitched” and “disordered in mind,” because they did not obey the truth; but because, after having received instruction so clear, so full, so tender, and so powerful, they immediately fell away. Erasmus has chosen to interpret the words, “that ye should not believe the truth.” I am not quite prepared to set aside that rendering, but would prefer the word obey, because Paul does not charge them with having, from the outset, rejected the gospel, but with not having persevered in obedience.
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Before whose eyes. This is intended, as I have already hinted, to express an aggravation; for, the better opportunities they had of knowing Christ, the more heinous was the criminality of forsaking him. Such, he tells them, was the clearness of his doctrine, that it was not naked doctrine, but the express, living image of Christ. They had known Christ in such a manner, that they might be almost said to have seen him.
Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth. Augustine’s interpretation of the word προεγράφη, (“hath been set forth,”) is harsh, and inconsistent with Paul’s design. He makes it to signify that Christ was to be thrust out from possession. Others propose a different phrase, (proscriptus,) which, if used in the sense of “openly proclaimed,” would not be inapplicable. The Greeks, accordingly, borrow from this verb the word προγράμματα, to denote boards on which property intended to be sold was published, so as to be exposed to the view of all. But the participle, painted, is less ambiguous, and, in my own opinion, is exceedingly appropriate. To shew how energetic his preaching was, Paul first compares it to a picture, which exhibited to them, in a lively manner, the image of Christ.
But, not satisfied with this comparison, he adds, Christ hath been crucified among you, intimating that the actual sight of Christ’s death could not have affected them more powerfully than his own preaching. The view given by some, that the Galatians had “crucified to themselves (Hebrews 6:6) the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame;” that they had withdrawn from the purity of the gospel; or, at least, had lent their ear, and given their confidence, to impostors who crucified him, — appears to me overstrained. The meaning therefore is, that Paul’s doctrine had instructed them concerning Christ in such a manner as if he had been exhibited to them in a picture, nay, “crucified among them.” Such a representation could not have been made by any eloquence, or by “enticing words of man’s wisdom,” (1 Corinthians 2:4,) had it not been accompanied by that power of the Spirit, of which Paul has treated largely in both the Epistles to the Corinthians.
Let those who would discharge aright the ministry of the gospel learn, not merely to speak and declaim, but to penetrate into the consciences of men, to make them see Christ crucified, and feel the shedding of his blood. When the Church has painters such as these, she no longer needs the dead images of wood and stone, she no longer requires pictures; both of which, unquestionably, were first admitted to Christian temples when the pastors had become dumb and been converted into mere idols, or when they uttered a few words from the pulpit in such a cold and careless manner, that the power and efficacy of the ministry were utterly extinguished.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 26, 27, 28 The third reason or argument taken of those gifts…
The third reason or argument taken of those gifts of the holy Ghost, wherewith they were endued from heaven after they had heard and believed the Gospel by Paul’s ministry: which seeing they were so evident to all men’s eyes, that they were as it were lively images, wherein they might behold the truth of the doctrine of the Gospel, no less than if they had beheld with their eyes Christ himself crucified, in whose only death they ought to have their trust, he marvelleth how it could be that they could be so bewitched by the false apostles.
Christ was laid before you, so notably and so plainly, that you had his lively image as it were represented before your eyes, as if he had been crucified before you.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–29 1 O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that…
1 O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?
Ver. 1. O foolish Galatians] Those that are sick of a lethargy must have double the quantity of medicine given them that other men have in other diseases. These Galatians were in a spiritual lethargy, and are therefore thus sharply rebuked, that they might be sound in the faith.
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Who hath bewitched you] Or, bemisted you, and dazzled your eyes, Tit 1:13. The word properly signifies to overlook, as they call it, or to kill with the eyes, by casting out venomous beams, as the basilisk and as witches are said to do. εβασκανε αρα το φαεσι καινειν. (Plin. vii. 2.)
Hath been evidently set forth] As a remedy, by looking whereon ye might have been cured or kept from that bewitching by the eye, like as the stung Israelites were healed by looking on the brazen serpent.
Crucified among you] In the evidence of the doctrine of Christ crucified, and in the administration of the Lord’s Supper, that lively picture of Christ on the cross. The Greek word προεγραφη signifieth to paint forth a thing, Rom 15:4, by a theological painting, not artificial, as the Papists would have it to warrant crucifixes.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1–29 O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you? The apostle…
O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you? The apostle beginneth the further pursuit of the argument he was upon, with a smart reprehension of them, as men of no understanding, and bewitched. The word translated
bewitched, signifies vitiating the eyes, or spoiling the sight, so as that men cannot discern an obvious object in a due position. The meaning is: Who hath seduced you, who hath so corrupted your understanding that your actions are as unaccountable as the effects of witchcraft?
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That ye should not obey the truth: the word translated obey, signifies also to believe: in general it signifies to be persuaded; which may refer either to an assent to the truth, or obedience to the precepts of the gospel.
Before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you; whenas Christ hath been plainly preached before you, and his death, with the blessed end and effects of it, hath been so made known amongst you, as if you had seen him crucified. Or else Christ may be said to be crucified amongst them, because it was in their time, so as they could not but hear of it, and there was no more reason for them to doubt of the truth of the thing, than if he had been crucified in their country.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 19, 21, 23, 26, 27, 28, 29 Observe here, 1. The object of the apostle’s sharp…
Observe here, 1. The object of the apostle’s sharp reprehension, the churches of Galatia.
Observe, 2. The ground of their reprehension, their defection from the truth into a very great error, namely, their holding of circumcision, and the observation of the ceremonial law, as necessary to salvation; which was a making of the cross of Christ of no effect, and a virtual denial of his being come in the flesh.
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From hence we learn, that the best and purest of particular churches may err, and have erred fundamentally and dangerously: For what consists such a church of, but persons all fallible? Head and members, being all sinful, are as unable to secure themselves from error, as from vice. Indeed the church of Rome talks big, and boasts of a false gift, that of infallibility; but could never yet agree where it is lodged, whether in the Pope, or in a general council; however, they are sure they have it. Well, if so, the more wicked and wretchedly inexcusably are they, in not improving their talent of infallibility for the best service of the Christian church, namely, by writing one infallible comment upon the whole Bible. What a serviceable performance would it have been in them, to pin the Pope in his chair, and hold down his hands to write, as Aaron and Hur held up Moses’s hands to pray, till all the Amalekite errors and heresies, so much complained of, were routed and ruined! Woe unto them that let such an excellent gift lie idle amongst them, and unemployed by them.
Observe, 3. The high and heinous aggravation of this fault in the Galatians, before whose eyes Jesus Christ had been evidently set forth, crucified among them; that is, Christ, and their freedom by him from the bondage of the ceremonial law, had been preached to them: and his death and sufferings, with the great end and design of them, as plainly laid before them, as if Christ himself had been crucified in the midst of them.
Observe, lastly, the brand of infamy which our apostle sets upon the Judaizing doctors, heretical and false teachers; he calls them spiritual sorcerers, and their doctrines spiritual witchcraft: O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you?
Because, 1. As sorcerers, by deluding the senses, make persons apprehend they see what they see not; so heretics, by casting a mist of seeming reason before the understanding, do delude it, and make the deluded person believe that to be truth, which indeed is not.
2. As sorcerers, in what they do, are assisted beyond the reach of their own ability and skill, by the help of Satan; so heretical spirits are often, by Satan’s concurrence with them, more than ordinarily assisted by him, in drawing multitudes after them: O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you? The original word seems borrowed from the practice of witches and sorcerers, who being assisted by the devil, use to cast mists before the eyes of the people, to dazzle and delude them.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1, 6, 19 The apostle is here dealing with those who, having…
The apostle is here dealing with those who, having embraced the faith of Christ, still continued to seek for justification by the works of the law; that is, who depended upon their own obedience to the moral precepts as their righteousness before God, and, wherein that was defective, had recourse to the legal sacrifices and purifications to make it up. These he first sharply reproves, and then endeavours, by the evidence of truth, to convince them. This is the right method, when we reprove any for a fault or an error, to convince them that it is an error, that it is a fault.
He reproves them, and the reproof is very close and warm: he calls them foolish Galatians, Gal 3:1. Though as Christians they were Wisdom's children, yet as corrupt Christians they were foolish children. Yea, he asks, Who hath bewitched you? whereby he represents them as enchanted by the arts and snares of their seducing teachers, and so far deluded as to act very unlike themselves. That wherein their folly and infatuation appeared was that they did not obey the truth; that is, they did not adhere to the gospel way of justification, wherein they had been taught, and which they had professed to embrace. Note, It is not enough to know the truth, and to say we believe it, but we must obey it too; we must heartily submit to it, and stedfastly abide by it. Note, also, Those are spiritually bewitched who, when the truth as it is in Jesus is plainly set before them, will not thus obey it. Several things proved and aggravated the folly of these Christians.
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1. Jesus Christ had been evidently set forth as crucified among them; that is, they had had the doctrine of the cross preached to them, and the sacrament of the Lord's supper administered among them, in both which Christ crucified had been set before them. Now, it was the greatest madness that could be for those who had acquaintance with such sacred mysteries, and admittance to such great solemnities, not to obey the truth which was thus published to them, and signed and sealed in that ordinance. Note, The consideration of the honours and privileges we have been admitted to as Christians should shame us out of the folly of apostasy and backsliding.
2. He appeals to the experiences they had had of the working of the Spirit upon their souls (Gal 3:2); he puts them in mind that, upon their becoming Christians, they had received the Spirit, that many of them at least had been made partakers not only of the sanctifying influences, but of the miraculous gifts, of the Holy Spirit, which were eminent proofs of the truth of the Christian religion and the several doctrines of it, and especially of this, that justification is by Christ only, and not by the works of the law, which was one of the peculiar and fundamental principles of it. To convince them of the folly of their departing from this doctrine, he desires to know how they came by these gifts and graces: Was it by the works of the law, that is, the preaching of the necessity of these in order to justification? This they could not say, for that doctrine had not then been preached to them, nor had they, as Gentiles, any pretence to justification in that way. Or was it by the hearing of faith, that is, the preaching of the doctrine of faith in Christ as the only way of justification? This, if they would say the truth, they were obliged to own, and therefore must be very unreasonable if they should reject a doctrine of the good effects of which they had had such experience. Note, (1.) It is usually by the ministry of the gospel that the Spirit is communicated to persons. And, (2.) Those are very unwise who suffer themselves to be turned away from the ministry and doctrine which have been blessed to their spiritual advantage.
3. He calls upon them to consider their past and present conduct, and thence to judge whether they were not acting very weakly and unreasonably (Gal 3:3, Gal 3:4): he tells them that they had begun in the Spirit, but now were seeking to be made perfect by the flesh; they had embraced the doctrine of the gospel, by means of which they had received the Spirit, and wherein only the true way of justification is revealed. And thus they had begun well; but now they were turning to the law, and expected to be advanced to higher degrees of perfection by adding the observance of it to faith in Christ, in order to their justification, which could end in nothing but their shame and disappointment: for this, instead of being an improvement upon the gospel, was really a perversion of it; and, while they sought to be justified in this way, they were so far from being more perfect Christians that they were more in danger of becoming no Christians at all; hereby they were pulling down with one hand what they had built with the other, and undoing what they had hitherto done in Christianity. Yea, he further puts them in mind that they had not only embraced the Christian doctrine, but suffered for it too; and therefore their folly would be the more aggravated, if now they should desert it: for in this case all that they had suffered would be in vain - it would appear that they had been foolish in suffering for what they now deserted, and their sufferings would be altogether in vain, and of no advantage to them. Note, (1.) It is the folly of apostates that they lose the benefit of all they have done in religion, or suffered for it. And, (2.) It is very sad for any to live in an age of services and sufferings, of sabbaths, sermons, and sacraments, in vain; in this case former righteousness shall not be mentioned.
4. He puts them in mind that they had had ministers among them (and particularly himself) who came with a divine seal and commission; for they had ministered the Spirit to them, and wrought miracles among them: and he appeals to them whether they did it by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith, whether the doctrine that was preached by them, and confirmed by the miraculous gifts and operations of the Spirit, was that of justification by the works of the law or by the faith of Christ; they very well knew that it was not the former, but the latter; and therefore must needs be inexcusable in forsaking a doctrine which had been so signally owned and attested, and exchanging it for one that had received no such attestations.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–29 O foolish Galatians,.... Referring not to any national character,…
O foolish Galatians,.... Referring not to any national character, as some have thought, by which they were distinguished from others for their rudeness in knowledge, their ignorance and folly, as the Cretians for their lying, &c. nor to their former state in unregeneracy, it being common to all men, to God's elect themselves, before conversion, to be foolish in a moral and spiritual sense; but to their present stupidity about the article of justification, it being an instance of most egregious folly to leave Christ for Moses, the Gospel for the law, and the doctrine of free justification by the righteousness of Christ, which brings so much solid peace and comfort with it, for the doctrine of justification, by the works of the law, which naturally leads to bondage. Now this was said, not rashly, nor in anger, or on purpose to reproach and provoke, and so not at all contrary to Mat 5:22 but in like manner as Christ said to his disciples, "O fools, and slow of heart to believe", &c. Luk 24:25. So the apostle here, as pitying the Galatians, grieved for them, and as one surprised and astonished that ever people of such light, that had had the Gospel so clearly preached to them, should ever give into such a notion.
Who hath bewitched you? some false teacher or another had, or it cannot be conceived how their heads should ever have been turned this way; which must be understood, not in a literal and proper sense, as Simon Magus bewitched the people of Samaria with his sorceries, but in a figurative and improper one; that as sorcerers and enchanters cast a mist before people's eyes, or, by some evil arts or juggling tricks, deceive their sight, and make objects seem to appear which do not, or in a different form than they really do, so these deceitful workers, who had transformed themselves into the apostles of Christ, as Satan sometimes transforms himself into an angel of light, had set this doctrine in a false light before them, thereby to corrupt their minds from the simplicity that is in Christ. Though the apostle reproves the Galatians for their folly and weakness in giving in so easily to such deceptions, yet he imputes the chief fault unto, and lays the greatest blame on the false teachers; whom he represents as sorcerers and enchanters, and their doctrine, particularly that of justification by works, as witchcraft; it being pleasing to men, a gratifying of carnal reason, and operating as a charm upon the pride of human nature. What Samuel said to Saul, Sa1 15:22 may be applied to the present case, "to obey" the truth "is better than sacrifice", than all the rituals of the ceremonial law: "and to hearken" to the Gospel of Christ, "than the fat of rams", or any of the legal institutions; "for rebellion" against, and opposition to any of the doctrines of the Gospel, and especially to this of justification by the righteousness of Christ, "is as the sin of witchcraft". The Greek word, signifies "to envy", and hence, "to bewitch"; because the mischief, by witchcrafts, generally proceeds from envy; and so the Syriac version, which the Arabic follows, renders it, , "who hath envied you", which suggests this sense, that the false apostles envying their light and knowledge in the Gospel, their faith, peace, comfort, and happiness, had endeavoured to introduce another doctrine among them, subversive of all this.
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That ye should not obey the truth. This clause is left out in the Alexandrian copy, and in some others, and in the Syriac version. By "the truth" is meant, either the whole Gospel, often so called, in opposition to the law, and the types and shadows of it; and because it is contained in the Scriptures of truth, and comes from the God of truth; the substance of it is Christ, who is the truth, and is what the Spirit of truth leads into; or else particularly the doctrine of justification by the righteousness of Christ, which is the truth the apostle is establishing, and these Galatians seemed to be going off from, through the artful insinuations of the false teachers. Formerly these people had not only heard this truth, but embraced it: they received the love of it, were strongly affected to it, and firmly believed but now they began to hesitate and doubt about it; they were not so fully persuaded of it as heretofore; they seemed ready to let it go, at least did not hold it fast, and the profession of it, without wavering as before; they were fallen from some degree of the steadfastness of their faith in, and of the obedience of it to this truth, which is what was the design of the false apostles, and is here charged upon the Galatians. The aggravations of which follow in this, and in some subsequent verses,
before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth; meaning in the ministry of the Gospel, in the clear preaching of it by the apostle; Jesus Christ was the sum and substance of his ministry, in which he was set forth and described, and, as it were, painted to the life by him; the glories and excellencies of his divine person, the nature of his office, as Mediator, the suitableness of him as a Saviour, the fulness of his grace, the efficacy of his blood, sacrifice, and righteousness, were so fully, and in such a lively manner expressed, that it was as if Christ was personally and visibly present with them; yea, he was so described in his sufferings and death, as hanging, bleeding, dying on the accursed tree, that he seemed to be as it were, as the apostle adds,
crucified among you: for this cannot be understood literally, for he was crucified without the gates of Jerusalem; nor does it respect the sin of the Galatians in departing from the Gospel, as if that was a crucifying of him again, and a putting him to open shame; nor their sufferings for the sake of Christ, as if he, in that sense, was crucified in them, and with them: but it intends the clear Gospel revelation of a crucified Christ, in the preaching of him by the apostle, which was such that no picture, no image, no crucifix would come up to, and which, where such preaching is, are altogether vain and needless; and the clear view these saints had, by faith, in the glass of the Gospel of Christ, and him crucified, which so realized the object, as if it was present and before the natural eye. Now this was an aggravation of their weakness and folly, that after such clear preaching, and clear sight, they had of the Gospel, and of Christ in it, that they should in the least degree depart from it.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1–29 O thoughtless Galatians - He breaks in upon them…
O thoughtless Galatians - He breaks in upon them with a beautiful abruptness. Who hath bewitched you - Thus to contradict both your own reason and experience. Before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been as evidently set forth - By our preaching, as if he had been crucified among you.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 The apostle inquires how they could be so foolish…
CHAPTER III.
The apostle inquires how they could be so foolish as to
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renounce the Gospel of Christ and turn back to the law, after
having heard, received, and suffered so much for the Gospel,
1-5.
Asserts the doctrine of justification by faith, on the example
of Abraham, 6-9.
Shows that all who are under the law are under the curse, from
which Christ alone redeems us; and the promise made to Abraham
comes to the Gentiles who believe, 10-14.
For the covenant is not by the works of the law, but by promise,
15-18.
The law was given to show the sinfulness of sin, and to act as a
schoolmaster till Christ should come, 19-25.
It is by faith only that any become children of God, 26.
And under the Gospel, all those distinctions which subsisted
under the law are done away; and genuine believers, whether
Jews or Gentiles, bond or free, are one in Christ Jesus, and
accounted the genuine children of Abraham, 27-29.
NOTES ON CHAP. III.
Verse 1. O foolish Galatians] O infatuated people; you make as little use of reason as those who have none; you have acted in this business as those do who are fascinated-they are led blindly and unresistingly on to their own destruction.
That ye should not obey the truth] This clause is wanting in ABD*FG, some others, the Syriac, Erpenian, Coptic, Sahidic, Itala, Vulgate MS., and in the most important of the Greek and Latin fathers. Of the clause Professor White says, Certissime delenda, "It should certainly be expunged."
There are several various readings on this verse, from which it appears that the verse in the best ancient MSS. and versions was read thus: O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you? Before whose eyes Jesus Christ crucified hath been plainly set forth.
Among you?] εν υμιν is wanting in ABC, several others, the Syriac, Erpenian, Coptic, Sahidic, AEthiopic, Armenian, Vulgate MS., one copy of the Itala, and in several of the fathers. The words appear to disturb the sense, and have obliged commentators to have recourse to a sort of technical meaning; viz. "The doctrine of the Gospel had been so fully preached among these people that it might be said Jesus Christ had been crucified among them; so fully had his sufferings been detailed, and the design of them pointed out."
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 5, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 27 Gal 3:1. St Paul having, by many arguments, proved…
Gal 3:1. St Paul having, by many arguments, proved himself to be a real apostle, and showed that his knowledge of the gospel was given him by immediate revelation from the Lord Jesus, proceeds in this and the following chapter to treat of the doctrines in dispute between him and the false teachers, and especially of that of justification, which these Jewish teachers affirmed could not be obtained by the Gentiles unless they were circumcised, and observed the ceremonies of the law of Moses; but which Paul insisted, was simply and only by faith in Christ. And to impress the Galatians the more strongly with a sense of the danger of the doctrine which his opposers taught, he here charges them with want of understanding or consideration, for listening to it, saying: O foolish Galatians — Or thoughtless, as the word ανοητοι may be properly rendered; for it not only signifies persons void of understanding, but also persons who, though they have understanding, do not form right judgments of things, through want of consideration. “The apostle, by calling the Galatians foolish, doth not contradict our Saviour’s doctrine, (Mat 5:22,) because he doth it not, εικη, rashly, without cause, saith Theophylact, nor out of anger and ill-will to them, but from an ardent desire to make them sensible of their folly.” — Whitby. Who hath bewitched, or deceived, you — For the word βασκανειν is often used for deceiving another with false appearances, after the manner of jugglers; that ye should not obey — Should not continue to obey, that is, to be persuaded of, and influenced by; the truth — That has been so fully declared and proved to you; before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth — By our preaching; as if he had been crucified among you — As if he had said, Who hath so deluded you, as to prevail with you thus to contradict both your own reason and experience? For ye have been as fully and clearly informed of the nature and design of Christ’s sufferings, as if they had been endured by him in your very sight; and you have witnessed their efficacy in procuring for you reconciliation with God, peace of conscience, and the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1–29 O foolish Galatians - That is, foolish for having…
O foolish Galatians - That is, foolish for having yielded to the influence of the false teachers, and for having embraced doctrines that tended to subvert the gospel of the Redeemer. The original word used here (ἀνόητοι anoētoi) denotes void of understanding; and they had shown it in a remarkable manner in rejecting the doctrine of the apostles, and in embracing the errors into which they had fallen. It will be remembered that this is an expression similar to what was applied to them by others; see the introduction, Section I. Thus, Callimachus in his hymns calls them “a foolish people,” and Hillary, himself a Gaul, calls them Gallos indociles, expressions remarkably in accordance with that used here by Paul. It is implied that they were without stability of character. The particular thing to which Paul refers here is that they were so easily led astray by the arguments of the false teachers.
Who hath bewitched you - The word used here (ἐβάσκανεν ebaskanen) properly means, to prate about anyone; and then to mislead by pretences, as if by magic arts; to fascinate; to influence by a charm. The idea here is, that they had not been led by reason and by sober judgment, but that there must have been some charm or fascination to have taken them away in this manner from what they had embraced as true, and what they had the fullest evidence was true. Paul had sufficient confidence in them to believe that they had not embraced their present views under the unbiassed influence of judgment and reason, but that there must have been some fascination or charm by which it was done. It was in fact accomplished by the arts and the plausible pretences of those who came from among the Jews.
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That ye should not obey the truth - The truth of the gospel. That you should yield your minds to falsehood and error. It should be observed, however, that this phrase is lacking in many manuscripts. It is omitted in the Syriac version; and many of the most important Greek and Latin Fathers omit it. Mill thinks it should be omitted; and Griesbach has omitted it. It is not essential to the passage in order to the sense; and it conveys no truth which is not elsewhere taught fully. It is apparently added to show what was the effect of their being bewitched or enchanted.
Before whose eyes - In whose very presence. That is, it has been done so clearly that you may be said to have seen it.
Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth - By the preaching of the gospel. He has been so fully and plainly preached that you may be said to have seen him. The effect of his being preached in the manner in which it has been done, ought to have been as great as if you had seen him crucified before your eyes. The word rendered “hath been evidently set forth” (προεγράφῃ proegraphē), means properly to write before; and then to announce beforehand in writing; or to announce by posting up on a tablet. The meaning here is, probably, that Christ has been announced among them crucified, as if the doctrine was set forth in a public written tablet - Robinson’s Lexicon. There was the utmost clearness and distinctness of view, so that they need not make any mistake in regard to him. The Syriac renders it, “Christ has been crucified before your eyes as if he had been represented by painting.” According to this, the idea is, that it was as plain as if there had been a representation of him by a picture. This has been done chiefly by preaching. I see no reason, however, to doubt that Paul means also to include the celebration of the Lord’s supper, in which the Lord Jesus is so clearly exhibited as a crucified Saviour.
Crucified among you - That is, represented among you as crucified. The words “among you,” however, are lacking in many manuscripts and obscure the sense. If they are to be retained, the meaning is, that the representations of the Lord Jesus as crucified had been as clear and impressive among them as if they had seen him with their own eyes, The argument is, that they had so clear a representation of the Lord Jesus, and of the design of his death, that it was strange that they had so soon been perverted from the belief of it. Had they seen the Saviour crucified; had they stood by the cross and witnessed his agony in death on account of sin, how could they doubt what was the design of his dying, and how could they be seduced from faith in his death, or be led to embrace any other method of justification? How could they now do it, when, although they had not seen him die, they had the fullest knowledge of the object for which he gave his precious life? The doctrine taught in this verse is that a faithful exhibition of the sufferings and death of the Saviour ought to exert an influence over our minds and hearts as if we had seen him die; and that they to whom such an exhibition has been made should avoid being led astray by the blandishments of false doctrines and by the arts of man. If we had seen the Saviour expire, we could never have forgotten the scene! Let us endeavor to cherish a remembrance of his sufferings and death as if we had seen him die.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 6, 10, 15, 22, 24, 27, 28 Before whose eyes Jesus Christ....crucified among you.[1] The common…
Before whose eyes Jesus Christ....crucified among you.[1] The common exposition is, that St. Paul had before described and set before them Christ crucified. Others, that it had been clearly foretold by the prophets that Christ was crucified for them. (Witham)
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[BIBLIOGRAPHY]
Præscriptus, Greek: proegraphe; not proscriptus, as in some readings of the Latin text: and in vobis is better understood to be joined with præscriptus than with crucifixus.
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George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
John Nelson Darby 1862 · Public Domain On v1 Galatians Chapter 3
Galatians Chapter 3
What a loss, dreadful and irreparable, to lose such a Christ, as we, under grace, have known Him; such a righteousness; such a love; the Son of God our portion, our life; the Son of God devoted for us, and to us! It is indeed this which awakens the strong feelings of the apostle: “O foolish Galatians,” he continues, “who hath bewitched you?” Christ had been portrayed as crucified before their eyes. Thus their folly appeared still more surprising, in thinking of what they had received, of what in fact they were enjoying under the gospel, and of their sufferings for the sake of that gospel. Had they received the Spirit through works done on the principle of law, or through a testimony received by faith? Having begun by the power of the Spirit, would they carry the thing on to perfection by the wretched flesh? They had suffered for the gospel, for the pure gospel, unadulterated with Judaism and the law: was it then all in vain? Again, he who ministered to them the Spirit, and worked miracles among them, was it through works on the principle of law, or in connection with a testimony received by faith? Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. It was the principle established by God in the case of the father of the faithful. Therefore they who placed themselves by grace on the principle of faith,-they were the “children of Abraham.” And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles through faith, preached this gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In thee shall all nations be blessed.”
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The epistle is necessarily elementary, for the Galatians were forsaking the foundation, and the apostle insists on that. The great principles of the epistle are, connected with the known presence of the Spirit, promise according to grace in contrast with and before law, Christ the accomplishment of the promise, the law coming in by the bye meanwhile. The Gentiles were thus heirs in Christ, true and sole Heir of promise, and the Jews acquiring the position of sons.
We have then the principle on which Abraham stood before God, and the declaration that it was in him the Gentiles should be blessed. Thus they who are on the principle of faith are blessed with Abraham the believer; while the law pronounced an express curse on those who did not keep it in every point. This use of Deu 27:1-26 has been considered elsewhere. I would call to mind only that (the twelve tribes having been divided into two companies of silt each, the one to announce the blessing and the other the curse) the curses alone are recited, the blessings entirely omitted-a striking circumstance, used by the apostle to shew the true character of the law. At the same time the scripture plainly set forth that it was not the works of the law that justified; for it said, “The just shall live on the principle of faith.” Now the law was not on the principle of faith, but he who has done these things shall live by them. But was not this authority of the law to be maintained, as being that of God? Assuredly. But Christ had borne its curse (having redeemed and thus delivered those who-subject before to the sentence of the law-had now believed in Him), in order that the blessing of Abraham might reach the Gentiles through Him, so that all believers, both Jew and Gentile, should receive the Spirit who had been promised.
Christ had exhausted for the believer-who before was subject to the law and guilty of having broken it-all the curse that it pronounced on the guilty: and the law which distinguished Israel had lost its power over the Jew who believed in Jesus, through the very act that bore the most striking testimony to its authority. The barrier therefore no longer existed, and the former promise of blessing could flow freely (according to the terms in which it was made to Abraham) upon the Gentiles through the channel of Christ, who had put away the curse that the law brought upon the Jews; and both Jew and Gentile, believing in Him, could receive the Holy Ghost, the subject of God’s promises, in the time of blessing.
Having thus touched on this point, the apostle now treats, not the effect of the law upon the conscience, but the mutual relationship that existed between the law and the promise. Now the promise had been given first, and not only given, but it had been confirmed; and, had it been but a human covenant solemnly confirmed, it could neither be added to nor annulled. But God had engaged Himself to Abraham by promise 430 years before the law, having deposited, so to say, the blessing of the Gentiles in his person (Gen 12:1-20). This promise was confirmed to his see [4] (Isaac: Gen 22:1-24), and to only one; he does not say to the seeds, but “to the Seed,” and it is Christ who is this Seed. A Jew would not deny this last point. Now the law, coming so long after, could not annul the promise that was made before and solemnly confirmed by God, so as to render it of no effect. For if the inheritance were on the principle of law, it was no more on that of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise. “Wherefore then the law?” since the unchangeable promise was already given, and the inheritance must come to the object of that promise, the law having no power to change it in any way. It is because there is another question between the soul and God, or, if you will, between God and man, namely, that of righteousness. Grace, which chooses to bestow blessing, and which promises it beforehand, is not the only source of blessing for us. The question of righteousness must be settled with God, the question of sin and of the guilt of man.
Now the promise which was unconditional and made to Christ, did not raise the question of righteousness. It was necessary that it should be raised, and in the first place by requiring righteousness from man, who was responsible to produce it and to walk in it before God. Man ought to have been righteous before God. But sin had already come in, and it was in reality to make sin manifest that the law was brought in. Sin was indeed present, the will of man was in rebellion against God; but the law drew out the strength of that evil will, and it manifested its thorough contempt of God by overleaping the barrier which the prohibition of God raised between it and its desires.
The law was added that there might be transgressions, not (as we have seen already, when meditating on the Romans, where this same subject is treated) that there might be sin, but that there might be transgressions, through which the consciences of men might be reached, and the sentence of death and condemnation made to be sensibly felt in their light and careless hearts. The law was therefore introduced between the promise and its fulfilment, in order that the real moral condition of man should be made manifest. Now the circumstances under which it was given rendered it very obvious that the law was in no wise the means of the fulfilment of the promise, but that on the contrary it placed man upon an altogether different ground, which made him know himself, and at the same time made him understand the impossibility of his standing before God on the ground of his own responsibility. God had made an unconditional promise to the seed of Abraham. He will infallibly perform it, for He is God. But in the communication of the law there is nothing immediate and direct from God simply. It is ordained by the hand of angels. It is not God who, in speaking, engages Himself simply by His own word to the person in whose favour the promise is to be fulfilled. The angels of glory, who had no part in the promises (for it was angels who shone in the glory of Sinai; see Psa 68:1-35) invested, by the will of God, the proclamation of the law, with the splendour of their dignity. But the God of the angels and of Israel stood apart, hidden in His sanctuary of clouds and fire and thick darkness. He was encompassed with glory; He made Himself terrible in His magnificence; but He did not display Himself. He had given the promise in person; a mediator brought the law. And the existence of a mediator necessarily supposes two parties. But God was one; and it was the foundation of the whole Jewish religion. There was therefore another on whom the stedfastness of the covenant made at Sinai depended. And in fact Moses went up and down, and carried the words of Jehovah to Israel, and the answer of Israel who engaged themselves to perform that which Jehovah imposed on them as a condition of the enjoyment of the effect of His promise.
“If ye will indeed obey my voice,” said Jehovah. “All that Jehovah hath spoken we will do,” replied Israel intermediately through Moses. What were the consequences? The apostle, with touching tenderness, as it appears to me, does not answer this question-does not deduce the necessary consequences of his argument. His object was to shew the difference between the promise and the law, without needlessly wounding the heart of a people whom he loved. On the contrary, he endeavours at once to prevent any offence that might arise from what he had said; further developing at the same time his thesis. Was the law against the promises of God? By no means. If a law had been given that was to impart life, then righteousness (for that is our subject in this passage) should have been by the law. Man, possessing divine life, would have been righteous in the righteousness that he had accomplished. The law promised the blessing of God on the terms of man’s obedience: if it could have given life at the same time, this obedience would have taken place, righteousness would have been accomplished on the ground of law; they to whom the promise had been made would have enjoyed its fulfilment by virtue of their own righteousness. But it was the contrary which happened, for after all man, whether Jew or Gentile, is a sinner by nature; without law, he is the slave of his unbridled passions; under law, he shews their strength by breaking the law. The scripture has shut up all under sin, in order that this promise, by faith in Jesus Christ, should be accomplished in favour of those who believe.
Now before faith came (that is, Christian faith, as the principle of relationship with God, before the existence of the positive objects of faith in the Person, the work, and the glory of Christ as man, had become the means of establishing the faith of the gospel), the Jews were kept under the law, shut up with a view to the enjoyment of this privilege which was to come. Thus the law had been to the Jews as a child’s conductor up to Christ, in order that they might be justified on the principle of faith. Meanwhile they were not without restraint; they were kept apart from the nations, not less guilty than they, but kept separate for a justification, the necessity of which was made more evident by the law which they did not fulfil, but which demanded righteousness from man; thus shewing that God required this righteousness. But when once faith had come, those until then subject to the law were no longer under the tutelage of this law, which only bound them until faith was come. For this faith, placing man immediately in the presence of God, and making the believer a son of the Father of glory, left no more place for the guidance of the tutor employed during the nonage of one who was now set free and in direct relationship with the Father.
The believer then is a son in immediate connection with his Father, with God (God Himself being manifested). He is a son, because all who have been baptised to have part in the privileges that are in Christ have put on Christ. They are not before God as Jews or Gentiles, bond or free, male or female; they are before God according to their position in Christ, all one thing in Him, Christ being for all the common and only measure of their relationship with God. But this Christ was, as we have seen, the one Seed of Abraham: and if the Gentiles were in Christ, they entered consequently into this privileged position; they were, in Christ, the seed of Abraham, and heirs according to the promise made to that seed.
Footnotes for Galatians Chapter 3
4: We must read, “It is to Abraham that the promise was made, and to his seed”: not, “to Abraham and to his seed.” The promises relating to the temporal blessings of Israel were made to Abraham and to his seed, with the addition that this seed should be as the stars in multitude. But here Paul is not speaking of the promises made to the Jews, but of the blessing granted to the Gentiles. And the promise of blessing for the Gentiles was made to Abraham alone, without mentioning his seed (Gen 12:1-20), and, as the apostle says here, it was confirmed to his seed-without naming Abraham (chap. 22)-in the alone person of Isaac, the type of the Lord Jesus offered up in sacrifice and raised from the dead, as Isaac was in a figure. Thus the promise was confirmed, not in Christ, but to Christ the true seed of Abraham. It is on this fact, that the promises were confirmed to Christ, that the whole argument of the apostle depends. The importance of the typical fact, that it is after the figurative sacrifice and resurrection of Isaac that the promise was confirmed to the latter, is evident. Doubtless that which realised this figure secured thus the promise to David; but at the same time the middle wall of partition was broken down, the blessing can flow to the Gentiles-and, let us add, to the Jews also-by virtue of theexpiation made by Christ; the believer, made the righteousness of God in Him, can be sealed with the Holy Ghost who had been promised. When once the import of Gen 12:1-20; Gen 22:1-24 has been apprehended, in that which relates to the promises of blessing made to the Gentiles, one sees most clearly the foundation on which the apostle’s argument rests.
John Nelson Darby — Synopsis of the Books of the Bible: the New Testament (c. 1857–1862) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On vv1, 6, 15, 19 Paul opposes the LEGAL VIEW itself, which through the…
II
Paul opposes the LEGAL VIEW itself, which through the false teachers had found entrance among the Galatians
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Gal_3:1 to Gal_6:10
A. Remonstrance and expression of astonishment, at the contradiction into which this brings them with their own experience respecting the receiving of the Spirit
(Gal_3:1-5)
1O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched [did bewitch]1 you, that ye should not obey the truth [omit this clause]2 before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been [was]3 evidently set forth, crucified among you [set forth among you, crucified]?4 2This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law [was it by the works of the law that ye received the Spirit], 5or by the hearing of faith? 3Are ye so foolish? having begun in [with] 6the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by 4[being made7perfect with] the flesh? Have ye suffered [or experienced]8 so many things in vain? if it be yet [really] in vain. 5He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among [or miraculous powers in]9 you doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Gal_3:1. O foolish Galatians.—Direct address, because Paul now, for the first time after his historical account, turns to the readers. It is, therefore, a trustworthy intimation that a new section begins here, and that all which precedes belonged together. “Foolish:” that they had given up the better, genuine knowledge, is what Paul wishes to prove to them in the whole Epistle; this is, in fact, implied in the very opening words, Gal_1:6. His particular motive for expressing himself precisely thus here, and in general for expressing himself with especial emphasis, is that, although a new section begins here, yet, for the writer, this beginning presupposes what precedes—that is, in the first instance the proof of the full apostolicity of his preaching generally, and then particularly the just cited rebuking of Peter for conduct similar to theirs, concluding with the powerful words: “For, if righteousness come by the law, then Christ died without cause.” This very thought, so painful, that the Galatians, by their conduct, are declaring the greatest act. of God’s grace, the death of Christ, to have been in vain, may have been what impelled him to the vehement exclamation: ὦἀνόητοι Ταλάται. For here also his astonishment and his censure have primary reference to this death of Christ: “set before you, crucified.” [Jerome and others have imagined a national peculiarity to be referred to here, which is altogether inadmissible. The Galatians were sprightly, not stupid, and ἀνόητος marks not so much “dullness” as “foolishness,” want of νοῦς, improper use of it. They were not μωροί, but ἀνόητοι.—R.] Who did bewitch you?—So senseless and therefore incomprehensible is the apostasy of the Galatians, that Paul explains their being led astray as an effect of magic. For what he immediately subjoins had actually taken place among them; naturally, therefore, this apostasy—to Judaism—was least to be expected of them. For Christ’s atoning death and Judaistic legalism are at opposite poles to each other; the stronger the emphasis laid on the former, the most distant must be any thought of the latter. Comp. Gal_2:21. [Lightfoot:—“The word βασκάνειν originally referred to witchery by spells and incantations, but in actual use it denotes the blighting influence of the evil eye. It here involves two ideas: 1) The baleful effect on the recipient, and 2) the envious spirit of the agent. The false teachers envy the Galatians this liberty in Christ, have an interest in subjecting them again to bondage. This idea, however, is subordinate to the other.” See Wordsworth, who quotes authorities for both ideas. There may be allusion to the notion that the power of the sorcerer was felt whenever the eye of the recipient rested on him,10 in the expression “before whose eyes,” as if keeping their eyes on that object would have preserved them from this bewitching; but this must not be pressed.—R.]
Before whose eyes Jesus Christ was evidently set forth.—Portrayed before the eyes, of course, by means of preaching, but the expression hints at the pains which Paul took to make known to them the crucified One, and to bring Him as near as possible to them. This is done designedly, in order to contrast the more strongly with this the apostasy that had taken place, and to justify the astonishment which he expresses—Among you strengthens the statement still further: in the midst of you, by oral communication, not merely from a distance by letters. The following is the simplest explanation: “Before your eyes,” so distinctly points out the meaning; “to paint,” as that of προεγράφη, that we cannot hesitate to accept it, although the compound verb does not occur elsewhere in this sense. Wieseler: “But as γράφειν is very frequently used of painting, there is little occasion for hesitation in extending the signification to the regularly formed compound, even though there were no further warrant for it. In the New Testament there are other ἄπαξ λεγόμενα, both in form and meaning, and as to the latter in this case we have also the voice of the Greek Fathers.” To give προ a temporal reference [Meyer, Alford, and others.—R.] is less suited to the context, while the local signification corresponds with “before whose eyes.” [The safest rendering is that of the E. V. Lightfoot says of the verb: “This is the common word to describe all public notices and proclamations; hence: programme;” and this is, on the whole, preferable. Wordsworth finds here an allusion to the heathen practice of carrying amulets to guard against witchcraft, and to the Jewish custom of binding phylacteries between the eyes. “Who bewitched you, before whose eyes was written and bound up by me, as your frontlet of Faith, your spiritual Phylactery, Christ crucified; and who had, as I thought, been thus guarded by me against all the envious fascination of your spiritual enemies.” This is ingenious, but it presses unduly the allusion in the word “bewitched.”—R.]
Gal_3:2. This only would I learn of you.—The unreasonableness of the apostasy is still further, and now, indeed, for the first time, expressly exposed. Not merely has the proclamation of Christ’s death on the cross been made among them, but, through faith thereon, they have already attained to the receiving of the Holy Ghost,—and yet are you disposed to turn away from that which has already so attested itself? “Vide, quam efficaciter tractat locum ab experientia.” Luther. [“Learn” = obtain information, not used ironically in the stricter sense of “learning as a disciple,” as Luther, Bengel, and others.—R.] He refers them to the receiving of the Spirit through faith, as a proof that it is Faith which works justification. For the Spirit can only be given by God to the man whom He justifies (not whom He reprobates); the gift of the Spirit is a token of grace, not of wrath.—“Only,” for this is the main question; by this—so far as the proof is to be sustained by facts—the thing is proved.—The Spirit, generally, not merely as the principle of miraculous gifts; “for Paul reminds the collective body of his readers of their receiving of the Spirit; not till Gal_3:5 are the δυνάμεις, as a species of the Spirit’s workings, particularly cited.” Meyer.—By the hearing of faith.—“Through the preaching concerning faith,” is the right translation, although not quite congruous with the first member, which has a subjective reference. [̓Ακοή, “hearing,” has a passive sense always in the New Testament, i.e., it refers to what is heard (see Meyer, Ellicott), “the preaching.”—Πίστεως, “of faith,” evidently an objective genitive. See Lightfoot, Wordsworth, against both the above positions. Most modern expositors agree with Schmoller’s next remark on the meaning of πίστις—R.] Not = “through listening to the faith,” since πίστις is never = doctrina fidei, but is only the subjective believing. “That in the first member of the double question their own strength, and, in the second, the power of the gospel (= of preaching) is made prominent, is quite natural, as it was through human strength that the Judaizing teachers would fain achieve that which was in truth only to be bestowed by the might of the gospel.” Wieseler. That the “hearing” was accepted is understood, of course, since, from the “hearing,” the gift of the Spirit proceeded (comp. Rom_10:17); from preaching (sc. from believing) comes faith, and with it the Holy Ghost.
Gal_3:3. Having begun with the Spirit.—You have made a beginning in the Christian life through the receiving of the Holy Ghost (Gal_3:2). Where a beginning is made, the next question is about the completion. Now—remarks Paul with cutting irony, bringing homo the sense of this ἀνόητον of their conduct—such a completion there is also with you; but with the flesh! i.e., according to your and your false teachers’ fancy, this now is the true completion; yet, in truth, it is no completion, but the direct opposite of it, an annihilation of the work begun, because it is a completion with the flesh. “Flesh” is the opposite of “Spirit,” and where the “flesh” reigns, the “Spirit” must give way. “The flesh,” of course, rises again to dominion, where there is a retrogression to the legal position; for therewith the Holy Ghost, which has been obtained only through faith, is necessarily lost; and where the “Spirit” is wanting, there is the “flesh.” [Meyer:—“Spirit and flesh do not describe Christianity and Judaism themselves, but the specific vital agencies in each, the Holy Spirit, and the unspiritual, corporeally-physical human nature, leading contrary to God and to sin.” The datives are both modal, indicating the manner in which the two actions took place.—R.]’̓Επιτελεῖν signifies not merely “to end,” but “to complete,” consummare.’̓Επιτελεῖσθε may be middle; if so, then it is simplest to take it as = do ye now bring to completion (s. c. the work begun) in the flesh. But ἐπιτελεῖσθαι does not occur in the New Testament in a middle sense, though it is thus used by profane writers. Hence, others take it as passive, e. g. Meyer = you are brought to completion, sc., by the false teachers, inasmuch as they make of you people who lie under the dominion of the “flesh.” This renders the reproach still sharper. So also Luther : instead of saying, carne consummastis, he suddenly turns the address, and says: carne consummamini, which strictly signifies: Will you then let the matter be carried through with you in the flesh, and thereby be made completely righteous?—The present tense denotes that the Galatians are now engaged in this ἐπιτελεῖσθαι Comp. Gal_1:6.—Νῦν = cum magis magisque deberetis spirituales fieri relicta came. Bengel.
Gal_3:4. [Are ye so foolish?—“So very foolish are ye then?” οὔτως being emphatic.—R.] Have you experienced [or suffered] so many things in vain?—Meyer, in connection with his explanation of “being made perfect,” interprets it as referring to the many burdensome performances connected with observing the law, which they had been obliged, by their new teachers, to undergo, in order, according to their notion, to become complete Christians. Having (according to Meyer) reminded them of these by ἐπιτελ’ he then lays before them the uselessness of such things by the exclamation (not question) : “So many things,” etc.—This is evidently a strained interpretation, and it is, by no means, probable that this would have been described as a παθεῖν’ or even that any such παθεῖν is to be presumed to have taken place. It is, therefore, to be understood, either of sufferings and persecutions, that they underwent, on account of their faith, or, since nothing is otherwise known of such, παθεῖν is to be taken as vox media, with the general signification, “to experience,” here “to experience manifestations of Divine grace.” [While the use of the aorist seems conclusive against the view of Meyer, it is more difficult to decide which of the other two interpretations is to be taken. Though nothing be known of such “sufferings,” yet what more likely to occur? And if these arose from Judaizing influences, as was generally the case in Apostolic times, additional point is given to the Apostle’s language. The other view, however, seems to give a greater logical unity to the passage, since Gal_3:3; Gal_3:5 both refer to “benefits.” But was not Paul, who gloried in tribulation, likely to cite “sufferings” also as evidences of spiritual benefits? These considerations, in connection with the fact that there is no other instance in the New Testament of such a neutral meaning of πάσχειν render it more prudent to follow the ancient versions and expositors, and adopt “suffered,” instead of “experienced.”—R.]
If it be only [or really] in vain.—That is, if rather you are not in much worse case, as notorious backsliding is apt to make the man worse than he was before. This addition has special force against the interpretation of ἐπάθετε as denoting persecutions, as with this it gives a scarcely intelligible sense: for the mitigating thought, that perhaps the Galatians will yet bethink themselves, so that the παθείν will not have been in vain, can hardly be in Paul’s mind here, where he meditates only severe rebuke [?], while the explanation: “if only in vain!”=“if it do not rather turn to your loss and greater condemnation,” in its turn is not in keeping with the reference of παθεῖν to sufferings endured. For although, when sufferings have been endured for the faith, assistance rendered by God in bearing them may make the guilt of a subsequent apostasy greater, the sufferings themselves cannot well be said to increase it. [Notwithstanding the high authorities for this interpretation, which intensifies instead of softening “in vain,” it does seem more probable that Paul here leaves “a loophole of doubt.” If suffered is the thought implied, then as he recalled their sufferings, would be the very moment for a flash of doubt, or rather of hope, to enter. In this view it is better to render: “If it be really in vain,” “I would fain doubt whether it can be, that all this was in vain.”—R.]
Gal_3:5. He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit.—With this Paul returns to the decisive question of Gal_3:2, but with some variation of the thought. He no longer sets the matter back into the past, but represents (no doubt designedly) the communication of the Spirit as something still going on, on the ground of faith. They were to recognize themselves as still experiencing this gracious operation of God. Besides this, he singles out and notes particularly the miraculous powers which God communicates through the same medium. [The word “ministereth” means “to supply bountifully.” The ἐπί in the compound indicates the direction of the supply, not an enlargement of it. Δυνάμεις ἐν ὑμῖν may be rendered either, as E. V., “miracles among you,” or better, “miraculous powers in you,” i. e., the peculiar powers there brought by the Spirit, which Paul everywhere alludes to, as observable in the Christians to whom he writes (1Co_12:28). Meyer decides for the latter from the analogy of 1Co_12:6, and it suits better the line of argument, which refers throughout to their personal experience.—R.] Moreover he now designates God expressly as the Bestower of the Spirit, doubtless, in order to bring home with special emphasis the truth that God Himself declared for the preaching of faith. For the Scripture proof which follows supports this idea. God declares for this among the Galatians because He has declared for it in His word, and He must ever agree with Himself, His acts with His testimony.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. A Christian church without a “receiving the Spirit” is not conceivable. It may lose the Spirit again (comp. σαρκὶ ἐπιτελεῖσθε), but it must once have received it. Paul, therefore, because he knows that the Galatians have been converted to Christ, assumes of course that they have received the Spirit. The primary reference is undoubtedly to the Holy Ghost only as a charism from God. The immediate reference is not to definite ethical effects on the hearts of recipients, though it is true that these cannot be wanting, if the Spirit received is retained. But as the Holy Ghost here is to be apprehended primarily as a charism (comp. Gal_3:5 : ἐπιχορηγῶν), it is quite intelligible that what is given elsewhere as the condition of justification appears here as the condition of “receiving the Spirit,” namely: Faith. “Receiving the Spirit” is, it is true, not immediately identical with “being justified,” but is nevertheless an inseparable consequence. At all events no receiving of the spirit” can take place without the “being justified,” because the receiving of the Spirit is a token of Divine grace. Hence from the “receiving of the Spirit” “by the hearing of faith” it is concluded that the “being justified” comes by the same method. See also on this point the remarks on the previous section.
2. The personal experience of the operation of the preaching of the gospel is rightly (according to the example of Paul) regarded as a principal proof of the truth of the same. The proof lies more particularly in the receiving of the Holy Ghost: if I receive this through the preaching of the gospel, then this must doubtless be true, be the Divinely ordained way to salvation. Thereby does God declare Himself for this preaching; for the Holy Ghost is certainly a gift of God. A special application of the “witness of the Holy Ghost” which it might not be amiss to call the strict and original meaning of this doctrine.
3. All evangelical preaching should in its essence be nothing else than a portraying of Christ, the Crucified, before the eyes of men. It is by this that it leads them to the receiving of the Spirit.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Gal_3:1. “O foolish Galatians.”—In Starke:—It must not be supposed that this is such a phrase of contumely as “Fool,” Mat_5:22, but it is a sorrowful and earnest representation of their spiritual blindness. Christ also addresses His disciples with a similar term of rebuke. Luk_24:25.—Severe reproofs, when they flow from a zeal for the wounded honor of God, and from love to our neighbor, and a desire to save him, are not wrong. The sharp tongue of good men is many times more wholesome than the friendly tongue and flattering words of the ungodly.—As to know Christ aright is the true wisdom, so on the other hand it is the greatest folly not to know Christ aright and not to cleave fast to Him.—[Luther:—A carnal man would interpret this to be a reviling, rather than a godly reprehension. Not so. So parents, of a fatherly and motherly affection, do sharply reprove and rebuke their children, which they would not bear if another should do it. Therefore one and the self-same word in the mouth of Paul is a benefit; but in the mouth of another it is a reproach.—R.]
Würt. Summ.:—False doctrine is, as it were, an enchantment, wherewith the devil bewitches men’s hearts. For as through sorcery men’s minds are blinded, so that they think they see something, when yet they see nothing, and nevertheless it is hard to fetch them off from the notion; even so, when the devil through false doctrine engages the hearts of men, he bewitches them so that they fancy they have the truth before them, when yet it is mere error and lies. Let us therefore the more diligently take heed to ourselves, that we be not taken in and infected with doctrine; let us the more diligently cleave to God’s word, and moreover pray heartily with David, Psa_119:18; Psa_119:37.—[What spell is this that holds so many eyes, before which Jesus Christ has been set forth so plainly as the crucified One, who dies not “without cause!”—R.]
“Jesus Christ evidently set forth before your eyes, crucified.”—Starke:—By this way of speaking is indicated the clearness of the evangelical doctrine of the cross of Christ. In the Old Testament Christ was portrayed to the Jews under many images and types, as in the type of the high priest, of the paschal lamb, etc.; but in the New Testament, He was, through the preaching of the gospel, without any shadows such as these, clearly placed before men’s eyes, inasmuch as His suffering, shame, satisfaction on the cross, were most clearly published and proclaimed. That was, as it were, the programme which the Apostles placarded in all places whither they came.—Spener:—The best church-paintings are plain instructions concerning Divine truth; thereby can a matter be brought as plainly, and more plainly into the hearts of the hearers, than by the skilfullest painter of them all, yea, those things also which no painter can set forth. Actual paintings in the church are to be by no means utterly rejected, they have their use as memorials; but the other painting of doctrine must be joined therewith, and Christ must be portrayed in the heart, else outward paintings, if men are to learn only by gazing upon them, are a lifeless affair.—[Calvin:—Paul intimates that the actual sight of Christ’s death could not have affected them more powerfully than his preaching. Such a representation could not have been made by any eloquence, or by enticing words of man’s wisdom. When the Church has painters such as this, she no longer needs the dead images of wood and stone, she no longer requires pictures. Such things come, when pastors become dumb.—R.]
Gal_3:2. “Was it by the works of the law that ye received the Spirit?”—Hedinger:—A definite, keenly importunate question, with an “either—or,” from which there is no escape, appealing to actual experiences, in which no debate is possible,—well fitted to dispel the sorcery (Gal_3:1) of the false teaching.—A hint as to the right way of convincing and freeing misguided souls out of such enchantment.—Law quickens not, but enjoins, commands, threatens and terrifies, it is true, yet without life. Bondage, constraint; good appearances enough, hypocrisy enough; carefully contrived clockwork, but mute wheels, without soul. Of such are many, that are praised as Christians. Hourglasses are they, that punctually show the time, but where is there Spirit, Heaven, marks of grace? On that hangs all.—Spener:—The only means of receiving the Holy Ghost, is the preaching of the gospel, as being a word of the Spirit. Where this is heard, and its energy not resisted, the Holy Ghost comes into the soul, not only to work, but also to dwell therein.—Starke:—Whatever doctrine the Holy Ghost brings to man, assuring him of Divine grace, and impelling him to all good, that is the true saving doctrine.
Gal_3:3. It is not enough to have begun well, the matter must also be carried through. The beginning and the continuing of our salvation must be after one way, and we must not desire to be perfected otherwise than we have begun, else is it folly to us.—Spener:—That is a doctrine to be abhorred, which to be sure ascribes the beginning of salvation to faith and so to the Spirit, but afterwards feigns that the rest must be accomplished and completed with works.
Gal_3:5. Starke:—It is God alone who gives the Holy Ghost. The Apostles also imparted it through their preaching and imposition of hands, but they were only instruments of God. Now-a-days teachers and preachers impart the Holy Ghost, so far as they preach the Word, which in itself has power, and has the Holy Ghost with it.—It is a truly Divine property of the gospel that God aforetime accompanied it with the most excellent miracles. No one who passed over to Judaism, received from God the power of working miracles, but those did who turned from Judaism to Christianity.—Hast thou, O man, the Holy Ghost and His energy in too small measure? Seek the cause in thyself, in that thou usest not the stated means aright.—Spener:—Where the Holy Ghost is, there He works, although not always outward miracles, yet in the conversion and renewal of men themselves, which is a greater miracle than to make the sick well.
On Gal_3:1-5. To portray Jesus Christ before men’s eyes as the Crucified is the soul of all preaching of the gospel: 1. This it must do, because in the cross of Christ alone salvation is found, and it must do it unweariedly and explicitly, with all earnestness, all fidelity, and all zeal. 2. But more it cannot do; the inscribing on the heart it must leave to God; although indeed it must ever admonish of the necessity of this, and exhort men to prove whether this has taken place (must warn against dead faith).—Jesus Christ has been portrayed before your eyes as the Crucified; is He also portrayed in your hearts?—Whoever seeks his salvation elsewhere than in Christ, the Crucified, 1) lacks understanding, for he leaves the living spring, which God Himself has opened for us, and hews out for himself broken cisterns; 2) is entangled in an enchantment, bewitched by the deceiving spirit of self-righteousness.—Who hath bewitched you? A question which must be sounded forth in many a congregation; for 1) Christ, the Crucified, is portrayed before their eyes, and yet 2) there is such an utter neglect to seek salvation in Him.—How is the Holy Ghost obtained? 1. Not from works of the law, this follows from the nature of the law, but 2. through faith in the gospel—simply because it is the good news of Christ, the Crucified.
Faith in Jesus Christ the true way to salvation; for through it alone is the Holy Spirit received, not through the works of the law.—How have you received the Spirit? A question to strengthen and warn those who are in danger of embracing the righteousness of works.—Faith in Christ Jesus, 1) it is true in itself, not yet a proof that a man has received the Spirit, for there is also a dead faith; 2) but yet the only way to receive Him.—The preaching of faith the way to the receiving of the Spirit. Therewith is condemned all fanaticism with which, indeed, a righteousness of works of some kind or other is commonly joined.—It is God who bestows the Spirit, but only through the preaching of faith.—The Holy Ghost is the true heavenly gift.—Where God gives the Spirit, He also gives power (Spirit and power always conjoined).—To begin in the Spirit, to end in the flesh, is the most preposterous folly, and yet how frequent.—Hast thou begun in the Spirit? Continue in like manner, and end in the Spirit!
[Christ only, Christ plainly, Christ crucified! the Gospel we preach.—That which is “so foolish” is yet so natural.—Take heed that what God blessed to your spiritual profit, be not despised by you. What means He has honored with His Spirit, do not dishonor by your treatment of them.—Is it indeed in vain? All past sufferings for the Gospel’s sake? Aye, and worse than in vain. These have no power to save. Christ’s sufferings alone can save.—Our works do not earn God’s , works.—The Gospel, “the hearing of faith,” still has the “witness of the Spirit,” is still the δύναμις; of God, by which He works δυνάμεις—R.]
Footnotes:
[1]Gal_3:1.—[As a rule the English simple past tease is the better rendering of the Greek aorist.—R.]
[2]Gal_3:1.—Τῆ ἀληθ. μὴ πείθεσθαι is to be omitted with Lachmann and Tischendorf. A gloss from Gal_5:7. [Omitted in א. A. B. and others; by Meyer, Alford, Ellicott, Wordsworth, Lightfoot.—R.]
[3]Gal_3:1.—̓Εν ὑμῖν is probably to be retained, on account of its difficulty, with D. E. F. L. K., although it is wanting in א. A. B. C. and omitted by Lachmann. [The uncial authority for it is not much stronger than for the clause above, but its omission is so much more readily accounted for than its insertion, that it is retained by Meyer, Ellicott, Wordsworth. Alford rejects it, Lightfoot is doubtful.—R.]
[4]Gal_3:1.—[The E. V. by putting “among you” after “crucified,” destroys not only the emphasis which belongs to the latter, but also the proper connection of the former phrase.—R.]
[5]Gal_3:2.—[The order of the Greek, given above, is to be preserved, as rendering the contrast more striking.—R.]
[6]Gal_3:3.—[The E. V. renders the datives in this clause differently. Πνεύματι ... σαρκί, not “in the Spirit” and “by the flesh,” but “with the Spirit,” “with the flesh.”—R.]
[7]Gal_3:3.—[̓Επιτελεῖσθε, passive, not middle, “being made complete,” not “completing yourselves.”—R.]
[8]Gal_3:4.—[The meaning of ἐπάθετε is open to discussion. Schmoller renders “erfahren.” See Exeg. Notes.—R. J
[9]Gal_3:5.—[Δυνάμεις ἐν ὑμῖν; the two interpretations of this phrase are indicated above. See Exeg. Notes.—R.]
[10] [Coleridge paints this in his wierd lines:
“So deeply had she drunken in
That look, those shrunken, serpent eyes,
That all her features were resigned
To this sole image in her mind.” Lady Christdbel.—R.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2–29 "Was it by the works of the law that…
"Was it by the works of the law that ye received the Spirit (manifested by outward miracles, Gal 3:5; Mar 16:17; Heb 2:4; and by spiritual graces, Gal 3:14; Gal 4:5-6; Eph 1:13), or by the hearing of faith?" The "only" implies, "I desire, omitting other arguments, to rest the question on this alone"; I who was your teacher, desire now to "learn" this one thing from you. The epithet "Holy" is not prefixed to "Spirit" because that epithet is a joyous one, whereas this Epistle is stern and reproving [BENGEL].
hearing of faith--Faith consists not in working, but in receiving (Rom 10:16-17).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1–29 BIBLICAL ESTABLISHMENT OF FAITH-JUSTIFICATION THROUGH CHRIST, Gal_3:1 to Gal_4:31.
PART SECOND.
BIBLICAL ESTABLISHMENT OF FAITH-JUSTIFICATION THROUGH CHRIST, Gal_3:1 to Gal_4:31.
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1. Introductory expostulation against their apostasy from faith to works, Gal_3:1-4.
1. O foolish Galatians—A bold apostrophe; especially bold as being to be read to their congregations.
Foolish—Defective, either in the possession or the use of the spiritual faculty; unintuitive.
Bewitched—Fascinated, spellbound. The spell or formula of uttered words, or the power of the eye, or of the touch, as in modern animal magnetism, enabled, as was supposed, the magician to possess the will and control the action and being of his victim. So, in popular fancy, the snake possessed the power of eye to charm the bird into his fangs.
Before whose eyes—They were fascinated away in spite of the most attractive of objects before their eyes, namely, Christ crucified.
Set forth—Forth-written, as by a public inscription or nailed-up advertisement.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–29 Ch. Gal_3:1-9. Justification by Faith, the dispensation of the…
Ch. Gal_3:1-9. Justification by Faith, the dispensation of the Spirit
1. In the concluding verses of the preceding chapter the Apostle has not been directly addressing the Galatians. He has rather been following up his rebuke to Peter by an argument—a soliloquy—ending in a reductio ad absurdum. A doctrine which practically makes the death of Christ superfluous is impious and revolting. ‘And is this the doctrine which you were lightly disposed to accept? O foolish Galatians, to what spell of sorcery have you succumbed? Christ Crucified was lifted up before you as the object of faith. Instead of looking away (Heb_12:2) from all else to Jesus Christ alone, you allowed your eyes to wander to the Law and your own works, and so yielded to the deadly fascination of these Judaizing teachers.’
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O foolish Galatians] The epithet ‘foolish’ does not refer to a national characteristic. The Galatians, like other Keltic races, were quick-witted. Their folly consisted in not seeing the inconsistency of the new teaching with their own experience (Gal_3:2) and the impious conclusion to which it inevitably led, c. Gal_2:21. Our Lord addressed the two disciples at Emmaus in the same terms—“O fools, &c.” Luk_24:25.
hath bewitched] Rather, ‘bewitched’, cast a spell over you, the allusion being to the time when they ‘so readily’ (c. Gal_1:6) transferred their allegiance to the Judaizing teachers. The change so sudden, and so senseless, seems like the effect supposed to be produced by magical arts. This verb does not occur elsewhere in N. T., though not uncommon in Classical Greek. It is used of the spell which was supposed to be cast over persons, especially children, by the influence of the evil eye—a superstition prevalent in ancient times, and still existing in the East, in Italy and among the Kelts in Brittany. The word sometimes expresses, as here, the baneful effect on the victim, sometimes the feeling of envy or jealousy on the part of the agent. There may be a combination of these two ideas here; for St Paul alludes (c. Gal_4:17, Gal_6:12) to the intense spirit of partisanship by which the Judaizers were actuated.
that ye should not obey the truth] Rightly omitted in the R.V. The clause is not found in the best MSS., and has probably been inserted from ch. Gal_5:7.
before whose eyes] ‘to whom, confronting you, Christ was set forth’.
hath been evidently set forth crucified] This of course does not imply that they had actually witnessed His Crucifixion—indeed the tense of the participle ‘crucified’ (better, ‘as having been crucified’) excludes such an explanation. One verb in the original stands for ‘hath been evidently set forth’. Render, ‘was set forth’. The same word occurs Rom_15:4, where it is rightly translated “were written before”. It is not probable that this can be the sense in this passage, first, because there is no specific mention of our Lord’s death by Crucifixion in the Messianic prophecies of the O.T.; and secondly, because in such prophecies Christ could not be said to have been described as crucified ‘before their eyes’. Two other explanations (both in a figurative sense) have been adopted, (1) ‘was described as in a picture, was pourtrayed, or delineated’. This finds favour with Theod. Mops., Luther, Calvin, and others; and (2) ‘was publicly announced, proclaimed’. The latter sense is preferred by Bp. Lightfoot, on the ground of its being “the common word to describe all public notices or proclamations”. In Judges 4 we have a similar thought—‘whose names have been posted up as of men doomed to this condemnation’.
among you] Omitted in many MSS. and in R.V. If it is retained, it may refer to the fact that the doctrine of the Cross, ‘embracing the whole mystery of redemption by grace and freedom from legal obligation’ (Alford), had been proclaimed without reserve among them, not as a passing announcement, but in the systematic teaching of the Church.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–29 (1) Foolish.—The same word as that which is used…
(1) Foolish.—The same word as that which is used in Luk_24:25, “O ye fools and slow of heart,” and in Rom_1:14, “wise and foolish,” 1Ti_6:9, and Tit_3:3, but not the same as that which is used in Mat_7:26; Mat_23:17; Luk_11:40; Rom_1:22; 1Co_1:20; 1Co_4:10; 2Co_11:19, &c. The combination, “fools and slow of heart,” helps to bring out its meaning. “Slow of heart” refers to deadness of the moral affections; “fools” and “foolish” to the absence or undisciplined condition of the reasoning faculty. The Gauls of Galatia were a people intellectually shallow and frivolous. A little reason and reflection would have kept them from so gross an inconsistency.
Bewitched you.—The Greek word for this is probably connected in origin with the Latin word from which is derived our own “fascinate,” and the idea prominent in both is that which is embodied in the popular superstition of the evil eye. This superstition lingers still, especially in some southern countries, such as Italy and Spain. In Italy it is well known under the names “jettatura,” “occhio cattivo.” In Spain its existence has been graphically illustrated by a picture of the late J. Phillip, R.A., now in the museum at Stirling.
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The metaphor here is strikingly in harmony with that which follows. The cross of Christ has been “evidently set forth” (i.e., posted up in large and bold characters) before the Galatians, but some evil fascination (that of their Judaising teachers) has drawn away their eyes from looking upon it, and held them fixed upon another object (legal observances), as baneful as the cross was salutary.
That ye should not obey the truth.—These words are omitted by the best MSS. and by all recent editors. They were, without doubt, originally a gloss, put in to explain more fully the single word “bewitched.” As an explanation they are sufficiently right, but they certainly did not form part of the text as it left the hands of St. Paul.
Evidently set forth.—This hardly brings out the full force of the metaphor, which is that of a picture or writing conspicuously and publicly exhibited.
Crucified.—This word is emphatic: “Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.”
Among you.—If these words are to be retained in the text they must, of course, be taken, not with “crucified,” but with “evidently set forth.” They will then be a repetition, intended to enhance the force of the phrase “before whose eyes”—“before whose eyes and in whose very midst Jesus Christ was set forth crucified.” But the probability is that the words ought to be omitted altogether, as they are wanting in the four most ancient MSS., as well as in a majority of the oldest versions.
III.
(1-5) Whence this strange relapse? It is not as if you were ignorant of better things. The crucified Saviour, the one great object of faith, has been preached before you in a way too plain to be mistaken. It has been written, as it were, in large characters before your eyes. It could only be some kind of evil enchantment or fascination that has prevented you from looking upon it. You have given up Christ and gone back to the Law. Yet, let me ask you—and surely no other proof is needed—all this outpouring of spiritual gifts that you have enjoyed since you became Christian, to what do you owe it? Is that due to the Law and works, or is it due to Christ and faith in Him? The one system is spiritual, the other is carnal and material. Will you begin with what is high and descend to what is low? Will you by such a declension practically admit that all the persecutions that you underwent were undergone in a mistaken cause? (I can hardly believe it.) At this present moment the gift of spiritual grace and miraculous power still in some measure continues, and where it is seen, is it not in clear connection—not with legal observances—but with faith in Christ?
In the last section of the last chapter the Apostle had been gradually working away from the historical retrospect with which he had begun to the doctrinal polemic in which he is about to engage, and now he addresses the Galatians with impassioned directness and earnestness, upbraiding them with their shameful apostasy.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1–29 O foolish Galatians (w ajnohtoi Galatai). In thus apostrophizing…
O foolish Galatians (w ajnohtoi Galatai). In thus apostrophizing them, the apostle brands their present behaviour, not any lack of intelligence on their part in general (comp. Luk_24:25) "Foolish to allow yourselves to be thus robbed of your happiness. The transporting feeling of elevation and joy with which, in Gal_2:19-21, the apostle describes himself as crucified with Christ to the Law, and as living in Christ and through Christ, makes him the more keenly sensible of the senseless folly shown by the Galatians in taking up the observance of the Law. Who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truths? (ti) uJmav ejbaskane; Receptus adds, th ajlhqeia mhqesqai); who in his envy did bewitch you? With respect to the Greek text, there is now no doubt amongst editors that the words, th ajlhqeia mhqesqai, "that ye should not obey the truth," are not genuine here, being in all probability foisted in from ver. 7. We have, therefore, to omit them and to read ejbaskanen as before oiv. jEbaskanen is a remarkable word, and calls for comment. In common Greek, baskainein tina, to treat one with malignant words, means either to slander, belie, blacken character, or to cast upon him primarily words conveying baleful spells, and then, in later usage very frequently, baleful spells of any kind, and more especially spells from the "evil eye" (Aristotle, Plutarch); in the language of old English superstition, "forelook" or "overlook." Indeed, so closely did this last notion cling to the verb, as to have suggested to Greek grammarians for its etymology, faesi kainein, "to kill with the eyes." The more scientific etymologists of recent days derive it from bazw baskw, speak; as if it were "to bespeak a man." The nouns basksnov baskania, following the senses of the verb, express the ideas, either of envious detraction or of sorcery (see Schneider; Passow; Liddell and Scott). In the New Testament the word occurs only here. In the Septuagint we meet with it in Deu_28:54, where, for the words, "His eye shall be evil towards his brother," we have Baskanei tw ojfqalmw aujtou ton ajdelfon aujtou, meaning apparently, "He shall grudge with his eye his brother;" and so again in ver. 56, the same phrase is used analogously of the tender woman, "She shall grudge with her eye her husband;" Ecc 14:6, "There is not a worse man (tou baskainontov eJauton) than he that grudges his own self;" ibid. ver. 8, "Evil is (oJ baskainwn ojfalmw) he that grudgeth with his eye. In Scripture, both in the Old Testament and the New, and in the Apocrypha, the phrases, "the eye being evil," "the evil eye," following the Hebrew, always denote envy, ill nature, niggardliness, (Deu_15:9 Deu_28:54, 56 Pro_23:6; Pro_22:9) "a bountiful eye". (Mat_20:15; Mar_7:22) Nowhere either in the Scriptures or in the Apocrypha is there any reference to "forelooking," unless perchance the me"onen, Deu_20:10 (Authorized Version, "observer of times") is etymologically connected with the Hebrew word for "eye," which, however, few critics suppose. Ignatius, "Ad Romans", 3, has Oujdepote ejbaskanate oujdena allouv ejdidaxate, "never grudged any man." This Septuagintal use of the verb presents, as the reader will observe, a somewhat different shade of meaning to any of those cited above from the lexicons. Following, however, its guidance, we may understand the apostle as here asking, "Whoso ill-natured jealousy was it that did light upon you?" and as intending to convey these two ideas:
(1) the envy of their once happy state which actuated the agent referred to; and,
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(2) by implication, the baleful effect wrought by the envier upon them. The aorist of the verb seems to point to a decisive result. He had, it is hinted, succeeded in his wish; he had robbed them of the blessedness which had excited his jealousy. In respect to the former idea, elsewhere, (Gal_4:17 "They would fain shut you out the apostle ascribes the action of their misleaders to sinister designs against their well-being. It is, indeed, this thought that inspires the extreme severity of his language above inskanov, (Gal_2:4) the ba of whom he here speaks, belonged to, or derived from, them. In short, the pathetic question here before us breathes the like indignation and vexation as that inskanen, Gal_5:7, "Ye were running on well: who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth? the last words of which passage, though not admissible here in the text, would, however, if there, form a perfectly correct explanatory clause. The more distinctly to mark the effect actually produced by the envier, very many commentators have enwoven into their interpretation of ejna besides its Septuagiutal sense, its other sense of blasting with some kind of charm: "The malignity," Chrysostom writes, "of a demon whose spirit or, "breath" had blasted their prosperous estate." Great use has been made, in particular, by many, as, e.g. Jerome and, according to Estius, by Thomas Aquinas, of the superstition of the "evil eye," which, in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, has in all ages been so rife. Bishop Lightfoot, in his interesting note on the passage, offers the following paraphrase: "Christ"s death in vain? O ye senseless Gauls, what bewitchment is this? I placarded Christ crucified before your eyes. Ye suffered them to wander from this gracious proclamation of your King. They rested on the withering eye of the sorcerer. They yielded to the fascination and were riveted there. And the life of your souls has been drained out of you by that envious gaze." It may, however, be questioned whether the apostle would have recognized his own thought in this thorough-going application of the superstition of the "evil eye." It is doubtful whether he used the verb ejbaskanen with reference to any species of sorcery at all; but if he did, he may have intended no more than this: "What envious ill-wisher has by some strange, inexplicable sorcery so wrought upon you? Or, how can I explain your behaviour, except that you have been acting under some binding spell? Surely such folly is well-nigh inconceivable with men in free possession of their own souls." But
(1) each of these two renderings of the passage is open to the objection that St. Paul, in writing ejbaskanen, either might have intended to express by the word "envious grudging," according to its Sep-tuagintal use, or he might have meant some kind of sorcery according to a common acceptation of the term, but could hardly have meant to convey both senses together.
(2) The introduction of the supposition is inconvenient, not only because there could not have really been any such ingredient in the actual circumstances of the present case, but also because its mention would serve to excuse the folly of the Galatians, as indeed Chrysostom observes that it does, rather than to enhance its censure, which latter would have been more to the apostle"s purpose.
(3) It seems especially improbable that the apostle was thinking of the "evil eye" when we consider the entire absence of its mention in the sacred writings. Before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you? (oiv kat ojfqalmouv jIhsouv Cristofh ejn uJmin ejstaurwmenov;); to whom, before your very eyes, Jesus Christ had been (literally, was) aforetime (or, openly) set forth crucified ( among you)? The genuineness of the words, ejn uJmin, "among you," is very doubtful. The Revised Greek text omits them. The words, kat ojfqalmouv, "before your very eyes," are very pointed; for the Greek expression, comp. kataswpon, (Gal_2:11) and Aristoph., "Ran.," 625, ina soi kat ojfqalmough, "that he may say it to your very face." The sense of proegrafh is much disputed. It is not clear whether the pro is the "before" of time or of place. Of the other passages in the New Testament in which this compound verb occurs, in Rom_15:4 twice, and Eph_3:3, pro is certainly, and in Jud_1:4 probably, not so certainly, (comp. RAPC 1Ma 10:36, "enrolled "before" of time. In the present passage a reference to the prophecies of the Old Testament seems out of place. It is far more suitable to the connection to suppose that the apostle is referring to his own preaching. Some commentators, retaining the words, ejn uJmin, connect them with proegrafh in the sense of "in you," comparing "Christ in you", (Col_1:27) and "written in your hearts"; (2Co_3:2) and so render the words thus: "written of, or described, before in you." But such an expression, sufficiently awkward in itself, would further be very unsuitably introduced after the words, "before your very eyes." Supposing we take the pro as of time, there is no satisfactory explanation of the ejgrafh, if understood in the sense of writing, there being no tablet (so to speak) suggested on which the writing could be conceived of as done. Grafw, it is true, means "describe" in Joh_1:45 and fw Rom_10:5; but it is still a description in writing. We are, therefore, driven to assign to the verb the notion of portraying as in a painting, a sense which in Common Greek it certainly does sometimes bear, and which attaches to it in the diagra of Eze_4:1 Eze_8:10 (Septuagint) We thus gain the sense, "had before been set forth or por trayed;" before (that is) the envier assailed you. This same sense, of portraying rather than of writing, would be also the best to give to the verb, supposing the pro to be understood as the "before" of place; which conception of the preposition Bishop Lightfoot contends for, urging the use of the verb prografein, and the nouns programma and prografh, with reference to the placards on which public notices were given of political or other matters of business. When, how ever, we consider how partial the apostle is to verbs compounded with pro of time, as is seen in his use of proaitiaomai proakouw, proamartanw proelpizw proenarcomai proepaggellomai protetoimazw proeuaggelizomai prokataggellw prokatartizw prokuroomai, propascw, not a few of which were probably compounded by himself as he wanted them, it appears highly probable that, to serve the present occasion, he here forms the compound prografw in the sense of "portraying before," the compound not existing elsewhere in the same sense. He compares, then, the idea of Christ crucified, presented to his hearers in his preaching, to a portraiture, in which the Redeemer had been so vividly and with such striking effect exhibited to his converts, that it ought in all reason have for ever safeguarded their souls against all danger from teaching of an alien character. If the phrase, ejn uJmin, be retained, it appears best, with Chrysostom and many others, to understand it as meaning, that St. Paul had presented Christ crucified in such lively colours to their view, that they had, as it were, seen him hanging on the cross in their very midst. The position of ejstaurwmenov, disconnected from jIhsouv Cristov and at the end of the sen tence, gives it intense significance. What the idea of Christ crucified was to his own self, the apostle had just before declared; for him it at once had destroyed all spiritual connection with the ceremonial Law, the Law which bade the crucified One away from itself as accursed, and also by the infinite love to himself which he beheld manifested in Christ crucified for him, had bound him to him by spiritual ties both all-constrain ing and iudissoluble. And such (he means) should have been the effect produced by that idea upon their souls. What envier of their happiness in him could, then, possibly have torn them from him? This same portraiture of "Christ crucified" which he reminds the Galatians he had in those days presented to them, he also, as he tells the, Corinthians (1Co_1:23 1Co_2:2; 2Co_5:20, 2Co_5:21) had been intent on holding up before the Greeks of Achaia; while, further, he intimates to the Romans, in his Epistle to them, how eager he was to come and at Rome also hold up Christ as him whom God had set forth to be a Propitiation, through faith, by his blood. (Rom_1:15, 16 3:25) Both to the Jew and to the Gentile, both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to wise and to unwise, this, emphatically this, was the alone and the sovereign salvation. This picturing forth of the crucified One, however, would hardly from Paul"s lips concern itself much with the outward particulars of the passion; it might have been this, in a far greater degree, in St. Peter"s presentment of it, who had been himself witness of those sufferings; but Paul, with his habits of thought, as we know them from his writings, who knew Christ as in the spirit rather than as in the flesh, would occupy himself more with the spiritual idea of the cross its embodiment of perfect meekness and gentleness and self-sacrifice, of humility. of obedience to the Father"s will, of love to all mankind, of especial care for his own, and its antagonism to the spirit of Levitical ceremonialism. "Such presentment," remarks Calvin, "as if in a picture, nay, as if actually crucified in the very midst of the hearers themselves, no eloquence, no artifice of rhetoric, can produce, unless that mighty working of the Spirit be assistant of which the apostle speaks in his two Epistles to the Corinthians (e.g. 1Co_2:4, 1Co_2:5, 1Co_2:13, 1Co_2:14; 2Co_3:3, 2Co_3:6) If any, therefore, would fain duly discharge the ministry of the gospel, let them learn not so much to apply eloquence and declamation, as to likewise so pierce into men"s consciences that these may truly feet Christ crucified and the dropping upon them of his blood. Where the Church hath painters such as these, she very little needeth any more representations in wood and stone, that is, dead images, very little any paintings; and certainly among Christians the doors of the temples were not open for the reception of images and paintings until the shepherds either had grown dumb and become mere dolls, or else did say in the pulpit no more than just a few words, and these in so cold and perfunctory a manner that the power and efficacy of the gospel ministry was utterly extinct.
Ver. 1.
Beginning of the polemic part of the Epistle.
The apostle has finished his task of self-vindication, and now proceeds in regular theological method to expound and defend the doctrine of justification by faith without the deeds of the Law. "O foolish Galatians! who bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was evidently set forth in you, crucified?
I THE APOSTLE"S SEVERE REPROOF. "O foolish Galatians! who bewitched you?" Reproof is allowable and necessary, especially when it is prompted by love to God and truth and by a tender interest in the welfare of men.
1. He points to the "witcheries" of the false teachers as the only way of accounting for the sudden and inexplicable change of sentiment in Galatia. There must have been some extraordinary power of delusion or of fascination at work to throw them so completely out of the line of Christian thought. Whether it was the witchery of logic or the witchery of sanctity, it was most effective in deluding the Galatians.
2. The Galatians were foolish" in yielding to such ensnaring delusions. They were not answerable for the conduct of their deluders, but they showed an uncommon folly. The Celtic nature is quick, but unstable. The change was a senseless one.
II THE INEXCUSABLENESS OF THEIR CONDUCT. "Before whose eyes Jesus Christ was evidently set forth in you, crucified." The apostle refers to his own clear exhibition of gospel truth in Galatia, and especially to the individualizing distinctness with which the Redeemer was set before his converts as the only Hope of salvation. It was not only an exhibition, like a placard exhibited before their eyes, but it had its answering impression "within them." How, then, with such a view of Christ"s person and work, could they have opened their minds to such destructive errors?
III THE TRUE THEME OF THE GOSPEL CHRIST CRUCIFIED. Naturalistic writers give us a Christ exalted far above the average altitude of men, but a man nevertheless; rationalistic writers give us a Christ as a leader of thought or as an example of self-sacrifice and sympathy. "We preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling-block, to the Greeks foolishness; but to them that are called, Christ the Wisdom of God, and the Power of God." The death of Christ, as expressing the whole mystery of redemption, involved the whole matter in dispute. There could be no compatibility between Christ"s cross and Jewish legalism. We can, therefore, well understand why the apostle resolved to know nothing in his preaching but Christ, and him crucified.
HOMILIES BY R.M. EDGAR Vers. 1-14.
The bewitchery of Law.
Paul, having stated his position as dead to the Law and inspired by Christ, goes on in the present paragraph to appeal to the Galatians to free themselves from the bewitching power of Law, and to yield themselves to the faith in a crucified and now risen Christ, which alone secures justification and its cognate blessings. And here we notice
I HOW LAW CAN COMPETE SUCCESSFULLY WITH A CRUCIFIED SAVIOUR FOR THE HOMAGE OF THOUGHTLESS HEARTS. (Ver. 1.) Paul here declares that two attractive powers had been presented to the Galatians a crucified Christ in his own preaching, and the Law in the preaching of the Judaizers; and, to his amazement, the Law had so bewitched them as to lead them to look for salvation to Law-keeping instead of to the Saviour. And yet it only brings out the fact that there is in Law and self-righteousness a bewitchery which is continually leading souls back to bondage. It seems so natural to establish some claim by Law-keeping and ceremony that poor souls are from time to time falling into legal hope and its delusions. The superstition, which is abroad now, and leads so many to ceremonials for salvation, rests upon this foundation. It is the fascination of an evil eye which is upon the foolish votaries; they fancy they can save themselves by Law, and maintain their self-complacency and pride all the time. But it is delusion pure and simple.
II ALL THAT LAW CAN REALLY DO FOR SINNERS IS TO CONDEMN THEM. (Vers. 10, 13.) The position taken up by Law is this to condemn every one who falls short of perfect obedience. No partial obedience will be entertained for a moment. "Every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the Law to do them," is by the Law "cursed." This tremendous deliverance ought to be the death of all "legal hope." The soul who continues to hope in the Law, after such a definite utterance only proclaims his foolishness. One breach of Law is sufficient to secure the curse. The Law maintains its demand for perfect obedience, and, if this be not rendered, it can do nothing but condemn. It becomes the more amazing that any after this could be bewitched by Law.
Surely if the Law can only curse sinners, the sooner we look for salvation in some other direction than Law, the better. And to go back to Law-keeping from grace, in hope of acceptance, is clear retrogression.
III JUSTIFICATION AND ITS COGNATE BLESSINGS CAN ONLY COME BY FAITH, (Vers. 2-9, 12, 14.) The Law in the nature of things cannot justify sinners. It has no means of doing so. But God in his grace has provided a way of justification. It is through the merits of his Son. And here we must remember that imputation of merit is the commonest fact of experience. There is not one of us who does not get a start in life and a consideration extended to us which are due to the merits of others, a respected parent or some deeply interested friend. We are surrounded with a halo of glory by virtue of the character of others. Their character helps us to a position and opportunity we could not otherwise obtain. It may be called a mere association of ideas, but it is strictly the passing of merit over from man to man. In the same way Jesus Christ has come into our world, allied himself with our sinful race, merited consideration and acceptance by obedience to Law, even as far as death, and this merit of the Divine Man passes over to believers. In the Father"s sight, therefore, we are regarded as just, notwithstanding all our sin. We have been justified through faith. But besides, the believers obtain the Spirit to dwell within them, so that a process of sanctification is set up within them as soon as justification takes place. And the indwelling Spirit may manifest his presence and power in wonderful works, as appears to have been the case with these Galatians (ver. 5). So that Divine grace not only secures the justification of all who trust in Jesus, but their sanctification and spiritual power as well. Wondrous blessings are thus the outcome of Divine grace, and the heritage of those who believe. What a change from having to endure the curse of Law!
IV ABRAHAM ILLUSTRATES THE BENEFIT OF FAITH IN GOD AS CONTRASTED WITH RELIANCE ON LAW. (Vers. 6-9.) The legalists claimed Abraham as their father. One would have supposed that Abraham had been the greatest ceremonialist of the early dispensation. But the truth is that Abraham was justified and accepted by simply believing God when he promised a world-wide blessing through Abraham"s seed. The blessing came to the patriarch through simple trust in God. Those who hoped in Law-keeping, therefore, were not the true followers of Abraham. It was only those who trusted God for salvation and blessing who walked in the patriarch"s footsteps. Consequently, all the ceremonialism which tried to shelter itself under the wings of Abraham was a simple imposition. The "merit-mongers," as Luther calls them in his " Commentary," have thus no pretence of countenance from the case of Abraham. It was to simple trust in God he owed his standing before him. How needful, then, it is for us to shake ourselves free from every remnant of self-righteousness, and to look simply and implicitly to Christ alone It is by faith we stand and live. The Christ who became the curse for us by hanging on a tree, calls us to trust him for acceptance and inspiration; and in trusting him we find the promise amply redeemed. R.M.E.
HOMILIES BY R. FINLAYSON Vers. 1-14.
Appeal to experience and Scripture.
I FOOLISHNESS OF THE GALATIANS SHOWN FROM THEIR OWN EXPERIENCE.
1. Expression of astonishment in view o f their first impressions of the cross. "O foolish Galatians, who did bewitch you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was openly set forth crucified?" Paul"s address to Peter concluded with his presenting the dreadful supposition of Christ having died for nought. He with that turns to the Galatians, and calls to their recollection the memorable impression which the first presentation of Christ crucified had made on their minds. There had been, as it were, a localization of the cross among them. Christ had been so presented to them that preacher and time and place were all forgotten. There on Galatian soil was the cross erected; there was the Holy One and the Just taken and nailed to the tree; there his blood flowed forth for the remission of sins. And they were deeply affected, as if the crucifixion scene had passed before their eyes. It is a blessed fact that the evil of our nature is not insuperable that there is in the cross what can act on it like a spell. Even the greatest sinners have been arrested and entranced by the eye of the Crucified One. It is, on the other hand, a serious fact that evil can be presented to us in a fascinating form. Here the Galatians are described as those who had been bewitched. It was as if some one had exerted an evil spell on them. His evil eye had rested on them and held them so that they could not see him by whose crucifixion they had formerly been so much affected. And the apostle wonders who it could be that had bewitched them. Who had been envious of the influence which the Crucified One had obtained over them? What false representations had he made? What flattering promises had he held out? Such a one had great guilt on his head; but they also were chargeable with foolishness in allowing themselves to be bewitched by him. The Galatians were by no means stupid; they were rather of quick perception. They had the strong emotional qualities of the Celtic nature; their temptation was sudden change of feeling. They were foolish in yielding to their temptation, in not subjecting their feelings to the guidance of reason, in not using the Divine helps against their being bewitched. And the apostle, in charging home foolishness on them, would have them recall what the cross had once been in their eyes, in order to break the present spell of evil.
2. The one admission he asks of them in order to prove their foolishness. "This only would I learn from you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by the hearing of faith?" He felt that he had such a hold on them from their past experiences that he could have asked of them many admissions. With one, however, he will be content. This had reference to the reception of the Spirit. The gospel dispensation was the dispensation of the Spirit. It was by the sacrifice of Christ that the Spirit was really obtained. It was soon after the offering of that sacrifice that the Spirit was poured out, as though liberated from previous restraints. The great blessing, then, of that dispensation, obtained they it by the works of the Law, or by the hearing of faith? The Law is to be understood in the sense of the Mosaic Law, which the Judaists sought to impose on Gentile Christians. The Law and faith are here placed in opposition. Works are the characteristic of the Law; hearing is the characteristic of faith. Was it, then, by Law-working that they had received the Spirit? When would it quantitatively and qualitatively have sufficed for their receiving the Spirit? Was it not the case, too, that the great majority of them in the Galatian Churches had not been under the Law? They had not been circumcised, and yet the Spirit had been received by them. Was it not, then, by the hearing which belongs to faith? They had not tediously to elaborate a Law-righteousness. They had not to work for a righteousness at all. They had simply to hear in connection with the preaching of the gospel. They had to listen to the proclamation of a righteousness elaborated for them. And while their faith was imperfect, and could not be in itself the ground of their justification, they had, as perfectly justified, received the Spirit.
3. Two points in which their foolishness was shown at its height. "Are ye so foolish?
(1) They belied the beginning they had made. "Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now perfected in the flesh?" They began by renouncing the flesh, by confessing that, with the weak elements in their nature, they never could arrive at perfection. In despair of the flesh, then, and in order to be delivered from its weakness, they cast themselves upon the Spirit. They called in Divine help against their sinful tendencies. This was the right beginning to make. And having thus begun, they should have gone on, in dependence on the help of the Spirit, toward perfection. But they were proving untrue to the beginning they had made. They were going back to the flesh which they professed to have left behind as a source of dependence. They were now saying that it, forsooth, with all its weakness, was able. to bring about their "perfection.
(2) They stultified their sufferings. Did ye suffer so many things in vain? if it be indeed in vain." It is to be inferred that they suffered persecution. They suffered many things, though of their sufferings we have no record. They suffered for Christ, and it may have been for liberty in him. That gave a noble character to their sufferings, and promised a glorious reward. But now, with their changed relation to Christ, those sufferings had lost their character. There was no longer a Christian halo around them. They were simply a blunder, what might have been avoided. They could not hope, then, for the reward of the Christian confessor or martyr. The apostle is, however, unwilling to believe that the matter has ended with them. In the words which he appends, "if it be indeed in vain," he not only leaves a loophole of doubt, but makes an appeal to them not to throw away that which they had nobly won.
4. The one admission reverted to with special reference to the miraculous operations of the Spirit. "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?" It was God who supplied the Spirit to them. He especially supplied the power of working miracles. It is taken for granted that miracles were still being wrought in connection with the Galatian Churches. The miraculous operations of the Spirit are not more remarkable in themselves than his ordinary operations; but they were more exceptional. Being more easily appreciated, too, they were especially fitted to attract attention to Christianity, and to commend it to them that were outside. And as the Galatians had thrown doubt on their relation to Christianity, he very naturally meets them by making his appeal to the evidence of miracles. Did God give any token of his approval to those who were identified with the works of the Law to the Judaizing teachers? Was there any exceptional power possessed by them? Did not God work miracles through those who were identified with the hearing of faith through the preachers of the gospel? And was that not conclusive evidence that he was with them in their teaching?
II THE CASE OF ABRAHAM WITH REFERENCE TO JUSTIFICATION.
1. He was justified by faith. Scripture statement. "Even as Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness." There could be no question regarding the high authority of Abraham"s example. And the best way to deal with it was in connection with Scripture. What, then, was the Scripture account of Abraham"s justification? In Gen_15:6 it is said, "He believed in the Lord, and he counted it to him forrighteousness." It is not "He was circumcised, and that was reckoned unto him for righteousness." There is no mention of his justification in connection with his circumcision. Indeed, he was justified before he was circumcised. Abraham"s case, then, tells against justification by the works of the Law. On the other hand, he was a signal example of the hearing of faith. He heard God saying to him, "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father"s house, unto a land that I will show thee;" and he went forth, leaving country and kindred and home, not knowing whither he went. He heard God saying that he should have a seed numerous as the stars of heaven, and it was his crediting this as God"s word, though it conflicted with all human experience, that was reckoned unto him for righteousness. Again, he heard God commanding him to offer up the son of the promise, and, notwithstanding all the difficulties it involved, he acted upon what he heard. It is true that this was personal righteousness so far as it went. It was the right disposition towards God. Abraham approved himself before God by his faith, and by his works which evidenced his faith. But it is not said that this was his righteousness. It was not meritorious righteousness; it was simply faith grasping the Divine word which made him righteous. It was imperfect faith, and therefore could not be the ground of his justification. But the language is that "it was reckoned unto him for righteousness." Though his faith was not meritorious, was imperfect, it was reckoned unto him as though he had fulfilled the whole Law. From the moment of his hearing in faith he was fully justified. Inference. "Know therefore that they which be of faith, the same are sons of Abraham." The contention of the Judaists would be that the keepers of the Law were the true sons of Abraham. The apostle regards this Scripture as a disproof of their position. Abraham was notably a believer. He heard God speaking to him on various occasions, and it was his humbly distrusting his own judgment and listening to the voice of God for which he was commended. It was, therefore, to be known, to be regarded as indisputable, that believers, those who have faith as the source of their life, and not those who are of the works of the Law, are the true sons of Abraham.
2. The promise on which his faith rested. Scripture with preface. "And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed." The Scripture is here put in place of the Author of Scripture, and foresight is ascribed to it which is properly to be ascribed to God. The foresight of God was shown in the form in which the promise was given. It had nothing of Jewish exclusiveness about it, but was suitable to gospel times. Indeed, it could be described as the gospel preached beforehand unto Abraham. The language recalls our Lord"s words, "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it, and was glad." It was the promise of blessing without any restriction of contents. It was the promise of blessing to all nations. There was thus the same ring about it that there was about the angelic message when Jesus was born: "Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people." And God, having in view the extension of the blessing to the Gentiles, promised it in Abraham. He did not promise it in Moses, who was identified with the Law; but he promised it in Abraham, who was characteristically a believer. The being in him points to Abraham, not only as a believer, but as holding the position of the father of believers. He was thus more than an example of the mode of justification. It was in him that the blessing was given, that the connection was formed between faith and justification. It is as his seed, or sons, that it is to be obtained by us. General inference. "So then they which be of faith are blessed with the faithful Abraham." He has already shown who the sons of Abraham are, viz. "they which be of faith." Founding, then, upon that, as well as upon what he has just quoted, his conclusion is that believers are sharers with Abraham in his blessing. He not only stood in the relation of father to believers: as a believer himself, he was blessed. He had especially the blessing of justification, which has been referred to. And along with him do all believers enjoy especially the blessing of justification.
(1) A curse lies on the workers of the Law. "For as many as are of the works of the Law are under a curse." So far from enjoying the blessing, they are under the curse. Having laid down this proposition, he establishes it in the most conclusive manner. Even the form of the syllogism is apparent. Major proposition. "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." The words are a quotation from Deu_27:26. They form the conclusion of the curses pronounced from Mount Ebal. The Law requires obedience to be rendered to it in every precept. And it requires obedience to all time. If a person kept all the precepts and transgressed only one, or if he transgressed one at last after having kept all for a lifetime, he would thereby be placed in a wrong relation to the Law, and would be subject to its curse, as really as though he had been a flagrant and lifelong transgressor. All are cursed who do not render whole and continued obedience to the Law. Minor proposition. "Now that no man is justified by the Law in the sight of God, is evident." Of the major proposition he did not need to offer any proof because it is Scripture; but this minor proposition, in his singular love for proof, especially from Scripture, he will not assume. It therefore becomes the conclusion of another syllogism Major proposition of second syllogism. "For, The righteous shall live by faith." This is cited from Hab_2:4, and is also cited in Rom_1:17 and Heb_10:38. The spirit of the Old Testament passage is given. The reference was to a season of danger from the Chaldeans. An announcement of deliverance was made in plain terms. "Behold," it is added, "his soul either of the Chaldean or of the heedless Jew which is lifted up is not upright in him;" i.e. priding himself in his own sufficiency, he was destitute of righteousness, and therefore it was to be presumed, from the theocratic standpoint, would perish; "but the just shall live by faith;" i.e. relying on promised help, he would be righteous, and thus obtain the theocratic blessing of deliverance. The New Testament bearing is obvious. Relying on Divine righteousness, he is righteous, and thus has title to life. Formally, what the apostle lays down here is that none but believers are justified. Minor proposition of second syllogism. "And the Law is not of faith; but, He that doeth them shall live in them." The principle of faith is reliance on the promise in order to obtain a title to life. The principle of the Law, as brought out in the quotation from Lev_18:5, is reliance on our own doing of all the precepts in order to obtain a title to life. Thus all doers must be excluded from the class of believers. And thus, by formal proof, is the minor proposition of the first syllogism established, viz. No man is justified by the Law in the sight of God. And, it being established, the conclusion of that syllogism follows, which is given in the first clause of the tenth verse, "As many as are of the works of the Law are under a curse.
(2) How the blessing is enjoyed by believers. Redemption from the curse.
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." The Jews (with whom Paul identifies himself) were under the curse of the Law for many precepts transgressed, and transgressed many times. They found a Redeemer from the curse in Christ, who redeemed them by becoming a curse for them, i.e. on their behalf, and, by implication at least, in their stead. The transference of the curse, as of sin, was quite familiar to the Jewish mind. He not only became cursed, but abstractly and more strongly he became a curse; he became the receptacle of the curse of the Law. And in his great fondness for Scripture exhibited in the whole of this paragraph, the apostle points out that this was in accordance with words found in Deu_21:23, "Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." The words did not refer to crucifixion, which was not a Jewish mode of putting to death; but referred to the hanging of the body of a criminal on a tree after death as a public spectacle. The words were applicable to Christ, because he was made a public spectacle, not only in hanging on a tree, but in being nailed to a tree. The infamy which Christ was subjected to from men was a very subordinate element in his death. There was especially the wrath which he endured from God, the hiding of the Father"s face from him as the Representative of sinners. This was the curse (all curses in one) by bearing which he became Redeemer. Twofold aim of redemption. Extension of the blessing to the Gentiles. "That upon the Gentiles might come the blessing of Abraham in Christ Jesus." The effect of the endurance of the curse was the opening of the blessing to the Gentiles. The Law, in its precepts and curse, no longer presented an obstacle. The whole meaning of the Law was realized; the whole curse of the Law was exhausted. So complete was the satisfaction rendered, that there could be no supplementing it by works of the Law. All that was needed was faith to receive the satisfaction presented in Christ, and not in the Law, for justification. Thus did the blessing attain its world-wide character, announced to Abraham. Gentiles had simply to believe, like Abraham, in order to be blessed in and with Abraham. Reception of the Spirit. "That we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith." Not only was there the extension of the blessing enjoyed among the Jews, which was eminently justification (as appears from the whole strain of this paragraph); but this extension was signalized by the sending of a richer blessing. This was the realization of the promise of the Spirit. In this the Jews were sharers. All alike were recipients of the Spirit, simply through faith. And thus the apostle, after a remarkable chain of arguments, comes back to the point from which he started. R.F.
HOMILIES BY W.F. ADENEY Ver. 1.
Bewitched.
Here, it is said, the doctrinal section of the Epistle begins, (he preceding section being historical and the concluding section hortatory. But how unlike this is to a cold abstract theological argument the opening words clearly show. St. Paul cares little for mere speculations of divinity. His object is practical, personal, earnest. Thus he expostulates rather than argues, and appeals to experience for confirmation. He is not simply shocked at a heresy; he is grieved and hurt at the unfaithfulness, the weakness, the folly of his hearers. All error that leads us away from Christ is sad and shameful.
I THE FIRST OBJECT OF THE TRUE PREACHER OF THE GOSPEL IS TO SET FORTH CHRIST CRUCIFIED.
1. He preaches Christ. Christ is Christianity. To know him is to know all. St. Paul was most anxious to make manifest the person and character and life of Christ. To demonstrate a system of doctrine or to expound a "plan of salvation" was not his method of preaching the gospel. Only show men Christ; that was enough. Even doctrinal errors would melt and vanish before that vision.
1. He preaches the crucified Christ. A crucified Christ was a King humiliated, a Lord slain; yet herein lay the essence of St. Paul"s gospel. We see Christ, not only as a beautiful character, a great Teacher, or a wise Reformer; we see him dying revealing thus his faithfulness, his purity, his love, suffering for us, sacrificed for us.
2. He preaches Christ by setting him forth openly. St. Paul says that Christ was "placarded" before the eyes of the Galatians. This suggests a vivid, pictorial style of language united to an energetic, almost dramatic, force of expression. The whole effort of the apostle was to make his hearers see Christ. No doubt the method was in some respects specially adapted to the Celtic excitability and the semi-barbarous condition of the Galatians, and was in form very different from the apostle"s manner of speaking to the cultured Athenians on the Areopagus. Yet to the Greeks at Corinth he says he determined to know nothing among them "save Jesus Christ, and him crucified." It is to be feared that of late the pulpit has lost weight through abandoning descriptive for argumentative preaching, in deference to the supposed higher intelligence of the age, but in defiance of the natural disinclination of average men for reasoning and of their susceptibility to visual imagination. Whatever may be said as to the method of doing it, it is plain that what is most wanted for the man of culture, as much as for the illiterate man, is not to understand Christian theology, but to see Christ.
II THEY WHO HAVE ONCE SEEN CHRIST CRUCIFIED SET FORTH OPENLY MUST BE "BEWITCHED" IF THEY EVER FORSAKE HIM.
1. They must have seen him. The vision by the hearer may be missed through no fault of the preacher. There must be the eyes to see. Cattle that see only the grass at their feet will not be impressed by the grandest scene of crag and moor. They who see Christ to any effect must see him spiritually, not merely as the crowd about the cross saw his bodily agony, but as St. Paul set forth the great, awful fact.
2. Such a vision of Christ will produce a profound impression. No one who saw the sea for the first time really saw it returned home the same man. There are sights that transform. Sinking deep into our hearts, they saturate our whole nature and haunt our memories for ever. Such is a true vision of Christ crucified. At the sight of the cross, Christian lost his burden, never to recover it, The Divine majesty of sorrow and love that illumines this vision, once possessing a man"s soul, should dwell with him for ever.
3. To forsake Christ after such a vision is only possible through some strange malign influence. St. Paul compares it to the blighting effect of the evil eye. To turn to the Lord from such a gracious sight as to a higher and better thing is indeed most unaccountable. If anything allures us from Christ after we have once truly seen him, it must be an irrational influence to which we weakly succumb, for no reasonable attraction can be greater than the power with which, when once lifted up before them, he draws all men to himself. W.F.A.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29 O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you?
Gal_3:1
O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you?
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A foolish Church
I. In its origin.
II. In its idea of the sustaining energy of the Church.
III. In its retrogression.
IV. In its estimate of the true position and requirements of humanity.
V. In having left its first love. (D. Allport.)
The folly of apostasy
The backslider--
I. Barters truth for falsehood.
II. Ignores the facts of consciousness and is victimized by fantastic fictions.
III. Abandons the sure means of securing the spirit for the certain means of losing Him (verse 2).
IV. Abandons a good beginning for the sake of reaching a bad conclusion (verse 3).
V. Yields willingly to persuasion what could not be extorted by persecution (verse 4).
VI. Rejects unquestionable evidence in favour of baseless assumptions (verse 5).
Christ evidently crucified
I. He placarded Christ crucified before their eyes.
II. He arrested the gaze of the spiritual loiterer.
III. He rivetted that gaze on the proclamation of his sovereign. (Bishop Lightfoot.)
The Galatians bewitched
St. Pauls metaphor is derived from the popular belief in the power of the evil eye, and the word he employs originally referred to witchery by spells and incantations; but as it occurs in actual use it denotes the blighting influence of the evil eye. This belief is not confined to the East or to ancient times, but is common in some countries of Europe even now. The word then involves two ideas--
(1) The baleful influence on the recipient.
(2) The envious spirit of the agent. (Bishop Lightfoot.)
Christ evidently set forth
Christ crucified belongs to no one age or place. In this matter period and locality are not of much account. Faith bridges over intervening land and seas, and leaps across centuries at a bound. In the modern period, in the middle ages, in the primitive times, faith sees and experiences over again what apostles saw and experienced. Faith detaches Christ crucified from geography and chronology, and throws Him on Christian consciousness where, independent of local associations and mere sequences of time, He bangs, as it were for all time, between earth and heaven as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. (Canon Liddon.)
Christ crucified, the preachers theme
It hath been told me in the ear and whispered into my very soul, that there is pardon for the greatest guilt through faith in Jesus Christ; that His precious blood shed on Calvary is able to cleanse us from every sin of every kind; and that as many as believe in Him are saved: their sins, which are many, are forgiven. I read this once; I thought it through. I heard this many times; I thought it through. But on a day I looked to Him that did hang upon the cross. It was a dark day for my spirit, and my burden was exceeding heavy. I was like a man that preferred to die rather than to live; and would have laid violent hands upon myself to end my misery, but that the dread of something after death did haunt me. I found no rest nor respite; but I heard one say, Look unto Christ, and you shall be saved. I looked; and that my sins were there and then forgiven me I do know, as I know that I am standing here and speaking to you. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Power of Christ
A burglar, not long ago, rifled an unoccupied dwelling by the seaside. He ransacked the rooms, and heaped his plunder in the parlour. There were evidences that here he sat down to rest. On a bracket in the corner stood a marble bust of Guidos Ecce Homo--Christ crowned with thorns. The guilty man had taken it in his hands and examined it. It bore the marks of his fingers, but he replaced it with its face turned to the wall, as if he would not have even the sightless eyes of the marble Saviour look upon his deeds of infamy. (Professor Phelps.)
The enchantment of error
I. The enchantment by which they had been deluded. They had been bewitched. Their eyes had been dazzled by mere appearances.
II. The circumstances under which the enchantment had been practised. The apostle significantly points out the fact that the Galatians had been led away by error, even when before their eyes Christ crucified had been clearly and distinctly set forth. The cross of Christ had been set forth in their midst.
III. The practical results of the enchantment. It had affected both their conduct and character.
1. They had not obeyed the truth. This was the truth as it was in Jesus. At first they yielded to the claims of the truth. Their thoughts, feelings, actions, were governed by the understanding and belief which they had of the truth. Now they had departed from the truth, and relinquished their hold of its doctrines.
2. In doing this they had displayed the greatest folly. They were foolish in surrendering what they did. They had given up a Divine appointment, a Divine Redeemer, and peace with God. They had turned away from the fountain of living waters.
lessons:
1. The preaching of the gospel should consist in holding up Christ crucified to the eyes of men.
2. Those who have looked to Christ should still be on their guard against false teachers. (R. Nicholls.)
The Lords Supper a picture of Christ crucified
I. The person depicted.
II. The particular aspect in which Jesus Christ is set forth. Not the Teacher, Maker, but as crucified.
III. The feelings with which Christ crucified should be contemplated. There are pictures of martyrs and other sufferers which cannot be looked upon without deep feeling. But no picture can stir our hearts like this. It is so near--Before whoso eyes. It is so real--Evidently. It is so vital to our interests--Among you. It is so transforming and elevating in its character. Only those who are stupid, senseless, beguiled--who are bewitched--can fail to be ennobled and benefited by its holy and benign influence. This picture should be contemplated with--
1. Deep seriousness.
2. Unfeigned faith.
3. Holy aspiration.
4. Adoring gratitude.
5. Catholic love and self-dedication. (W. Forsyth, M. A.)
The folly of being captivated by form, etc., after the experience of faith
I. It contradicts our clearest convictions.
II. Denies the work of the Spirit in our hearts.
III. Deteriorates our moral nature.
IV. Deprives us of our reasonable hope.
V. Attributes the mightiest operations of grace to an insufficient cause. (J. Lyth.)
The folly of forsaking the right path
There are many who have lost their way; some through ignorance, and some who have been deceived by false lights, and led away by untrustworthy guides. Many are the stories which travellers relate of the perils of leaving the right path. A visitor, recently arrived in New Zealand, ascended to the top of a mountain overgrown with the huge ferns of that country. He had climbed up by a winding road cut through the bushwood, and was advised by the rest of his party to return by the same circuitous route; but he was tempted to make a short cut, and go straight down the side of the mountain. So he started, and went on rapidly for a while, but soon he found that the ferns of New Zealand were far taller than those of England. They rose over his head. They shut out light and air. Beneath their palm-like leaves the heat was suffocating, and soon he panted for breath. To retrace his steps was impossible. He could not see in any direction, but tried to follow the rapid slope of the ground, hoping to meet some open space. But his progress amongst the innumerable tall stems of the ferns was necessarily slow, The ground was so steep, it was difficult to keep on his feet, and in the dim green twilight he felt himself getting more and more exhausted; and when, in a fainting condition, he emerged at last on a pathway, he had bitterly regretted his folly in wandering from the usual road. (Dr. Hardman.)
Pauls lament
I. Christ crucified had been declared to the Galatians.
1. Christ as the Redeemer.
2. Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
3. The whole system of Christian doctrine, including the duties, responsibilities, and privileges of believers.
4. Christ crucified had been received, believed in, loved by them.
II. They were going back.
1. Back to the slavery of the ceremonial law.
2. Back to the world, to fleshly lusts, to the devil.
3. Appeal to backsliders, reminding them of former peace and blessedness, present wretchedness.
III. Who hath bewitched you?
1. Your desires.
2. Your companions.
3. Your prejudices.
4. Your procrastination.
5. Your unbelief.
6. Your want of principle.
7. Your lack of childlike love. (A. F. Barfield.)
Men bewitched
I. The subtle danger. Epidemic of error. People calmly tolerating what shortly before they would have indignantly repudiated.
II. The only preservative--Christ crucified.
1. Set forth plainly.
2. Realized vividly.
3. Clung to simply but firmly.
III. The supreme folly of any other course. If you say, We see what the gospel can do in the way of reclaiming sinners, but we are going to try something else, you will be fools. I am always ready to try a new machine: we will try the electric light one of these days, instead of gas, when we are sure of it; but suppose it should all go out and leave us in the dark! I will wait till the invention has been tested. So it may happen with the new religious lights that men bring up, which are like dim rushlights compared with the blazing sun of gospel truth; we are not going to try anything new to the risk of our souls. We will keep to the old, old gospel, until it is worn out. When that happens, it will be time to think of something fresh. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The evil eye and the amulet
Two picturesque metaphors here, Bewitched refers to the old superstition that still lingers in many dark corners of England itself--the old superstition of the evil eye, according to which some persons had the power of hurting and even slaying with a glance. The spiritual life of the Galatian churches seemed to Paul as if it had been sucked out of them by the baleful glitter of some evil eye. Openly set forth is the technical expression to describe all public notices and proclamations; it might almost be rendered, placarded as a proclamation. The whole verse brings before us the mysterious melancholy factor religious declension, the fascinations which produce it, and seem as if they worked by some malign magic, and the one charm which guards against their power.
I. Religious declension.
1. The Church as a whole. The apostles were not cold in their graves when grievous wolves began to enter in and spoil the flock. The law seems to work almost inevitably that close on the heels of every period of earnestness and quickened life, there shall follow a period of reaction and torpor. However high the arrow is shot, the impulse that sped it on its way heavenwards soon seems to die, and gravitation begins, and down it comes again. 2 The individual. Moments of illumination are replaced by use and wont; we get into our old ruts again, and quaff once more the opium soporifics which have lulled us to sleep so often before. How strange, how sad, that this should be so universally true.
II. The fascinations which produce religious declension.
1. External. Worldly cares, occupation, treasures. Many mens Christianity trickles out without their knowing it. They are too busy to look after it, or even to notice its escape, and so, drop, drop, drop, slow and unnoticed through the leak, it slips until there is none left.
2. But the real cause lies within. No outward temptation has any power to seduce, unless we choose to allow it. If I had not combustibles in my heart, it would do me no harm to put ever so fierce a light to it. But if I carry about a keg of gunpowder within me, I must not blame the match if there comes an explosion. It is because our hearts do not find in Jesus Christ all that they crave, that we are unfaithful and turn away from Him; and it is because our hearts are foolish and bad, that they do not find in Him all that they crave. If we were as we should be, there would not be a desire in us that would not be met in our loving Lord, in His sweetness and grace. And if there were not a desire in us that was not met in our loving Lords sweetness and grace, then all these temptations might play upon us innocuously; we should walk through the fire and not be harmed.
III. the amulet. Fix your eye, not on the glittering eye that would fascinate you, but on the counter charm--Christ crucified. Hearts and minds that are occupied with Him will not be at leisure for lower and grosser tastes. An empty vessel let down into the ocean will have its sides bulged in far more quickly than one that is filled. Fill your hearts, and keep them full, with Jesus Christ, and they will be able to resist the pressure of temptation. Try to see placarded on every common thing the crucified Christ. That sight will take the brightness out of many a false glitter, as a poor candle pales before the electric light, or as the sun puts even it to shame. You may be as powerless of yourself before temptations, as a hummingbird before a snake; but if you look fixedly to Him, neither the glittering eye of the serpent nor the forked tongue with its hiss will harm or frighten you. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Spiritual witchcraft
To bewitch here involves two ideas.
1. A pernicious influence exercised on the recipient.
2. The envious, jealous spirit of the agent. (Emilius Bayley, B. D.)
The fascination of the cross
A rebuke for apostasy. St. Paul tells the Galatians they have been fascinated as with the power which the Orientals ascribe to the evil eye, notwithstanding the clear representation of the wondrous love of Christs death set forth in the vivid and impressive preaching of the apostle, as in a picture The fascination of the cross should prevent the power of all other fascinations. Of many it may be asked, Who did fascinate you?
I. The fascinations which turn us from obedience to the truth.
1. Worldliness.
2. Intellectualism.
3. Novelty.
4. Self-will.
II. The fascination of the cross should destroy the power of all these. The cross should teach us--
1. Self-denial in opposition to worldliness.
2. Humility as against intellectual pride.
3. Steadfastness in place of love of novelty in doctrine.
4. Submission of our will to God.
The cross may exercise a magic charm over us. Let us always be in the circle of its influence. (Canon Vernon Hutton.)
Paraphrase of the verse
Christs death in vain? O ye senseless Gauls, what bewitchment is this? I placarded Christ crucified before your eyes. You suffered them to wander from this gracious proclamation of your King. They rested on the withering eye of the sorcerer. They yielded to the fascination and were rivetted there. And the life of your souls has been drained out of you by that envious gaze. (Bishop Lightfoot.)
The Galatians deflection
I. Consider wherein their disobedience to the truth consisted.
II. The particular aggravation with which their deflection was attended.
III. The apostles reproof. Inferences--
1. How great is the evil and danger of self-righteousness.
2. What need have even the most eminent Christians to watch against apostasy.
3. What cause of thankfulness have they who are kept stedfast in the truth. (C. Simeon, M. A.)
Importance of preaching Christ crucified
In any circumstances it is both sinful and unwise to turn away from the truth as it is in Jesus; it bespeaks us blind to our own interest, as well as regardless of the glory of God. But what rendered such conduct inexcusable in the Galatians, was the degree of evidence with which the gospel was attended, and the abundance of evangelical preaching which they enjoyed.
I. Endeavour to ascertain the import of the terms employed in the text. Not merely the setting forth of Christs bodily sufferings.
1. Christ is set forth in the gospel as the great propitiation, by which Gods righteousness might appear in the remission of sins (Rom_3:25).
2. Christ is set forth as the great expression of Divine love to a sinful and perishing world (Joh_3:16; Rom_5:8).
3. Christ is set forth in the gospel as affording the strongest proof of Gods displeasure against sin (Rom_8:3; Gal_3:13).
4. Christ crucified is set forth as the only foundation of a sinners hope (Joh_1:29; Joh_3:14-15).
5. The terms in the text further denote, the high degree of evidence which attended the ministry of the apostles, especially among the Galatians.
II. Consider the importance of setting forth Christ in the preaching of the gospel. It is a principal part of the work of the Holy Spirit to take of the things of Christ, and show them unto us; it should, therefore, be the great object of the Christian ministry to co-operate with this design.
1. To exhibit Christ crucified will tend to prove the hearts of men, and make them manifest.
2. It is the only way of giving peace to souls in distress for sin. When a sinner is brought under the terrors of the law, made to see and realize his guilt and danger, and to feel his need of a Saviour, he is apt to look inward for some qualification to recommend him to Christ; but to set forth a crucified Saviour is to point him to the only refuge, and to show him at once his remedy. All his help must come from Calvary. If we desire a more spiritual and humble frame of mind, no means are so effectual to its production as the contemplation of a crucified Redeemer.
3. It is the way to draw forth and bring into exercise all the Christian graces.
4. The preaching of Christ crucified is that which leaves all unbelievers without excuse. It will be impossible for those to plead ignorance of the way of salvation, before whose eyes this truth has been evidently set forth. If they perish it will not be for lack of knowledge, but for want of a heart to attend to the things which belong to their everlasting peace. (Theological Sketch-Book.)
Beholding the crucifixion
Jesus Christ was certainly not crucified in Galatia. Your children can tell you He was crucified at Golgotha, without the gate of Jerusalem. Nor do I suppose that many Galatians were present in Jerusalem at the time of the crucifixion, Yet the words of the apostle are very forcible--Before whose eyes, etc. These men had seen the Lord, though not in the flesh. They had seen Him crucified, and they were crucified with Him. Although Christ was set forth crucified, only in representation, in the words of truth and soberness, yet the representation was indeed a reality to them. They believed it; they saw it; they felt it. They knew its truth; they felt its power; they beheld its glory. If this be all, some of you say, that is meant by the words, then there is nothing more intended than may be seen and felt in these latter times and in this our land, Just so I mean you to understand me. There is nothing in this vision of Jesus Christ evidently set forth crucified which may not be seen in our day, and seen by you as the life of your own souls. This is not an old picture of the crucifixion, suspended in the churches of Galatia for their especial benefit, but a lively representation, having grace and power unexhausted, for all times and places, wherever on the face of the earth is to be found a company of sinners looking for salvation. But our text suggests another very solemn consideration. These Galatians, before whose eyes Jesus Christ had been evidently set forth, crucified among them, were so bewitched, notwithstanding the glorious sight which they beheld, that they did not obey the truth. This strange infatuation was not confined to the old times.
I. Explain the vision of Jesus Christ evidently set forth, crucified among you, An evident setting forth, glorious in its own evidence, and mighty in its own power; a great sight which fills the soul of men beholding, and works upon the springs of life and activity within them. It is Christ brought so near them that nothing seems nearer, everything else is distant. That voice of prayer--prayer, loving and mighty in death, sounds so near that its tones touch their hearts, and they feel it working mightily in them for their regeneration. The pitiful compassion of the Saviour is so near that He seems to weep with them and feel for them, as though He suffered to succour them, was tempted to encourage them to resist the tempter, and fought in the dreadful conflict that they, in His strength and spirit, may fight with Him, and like Him, overcome the same enemies. The shedding of His blood is so near them that it seems to sprinkle their consciences, and allay the burning sense of guilt. Penitence sees Christ set forth crucified where impenitence cannot discern Him. Looking through its tears, it sees the great sight, and instantly feels the healing virtue and soothing power of that wonderful death. But, then, ye must be penitent, ye must feel your sinfulness--that is, you must be in the condition to which the death of Christ is appropriate. Men naturally overlook things inappropriate to them, or those in which they have no concern. Thus it is that the penitent, broken-hearted sinner sees Christ when the evangelist sets Him forth crucified for sin. Have you thus seen Christ crucified for you? You saw no miraculous signs as the Galatians saw; but there are personal signs of the Spirit in changing your heart, subduing your sins, overcoming temptations, conquering the world, inspiring bright hopes, exciting fervent prayers, forming Christian graces--all the fruits of the Spirit; not, indeed, miracles, prophesyings, tongues, interpretations, gifts of healing; but better fruits in the maturity, not the infancy, of true religion--love, joy, peace, etc.
II. Propose a solemn and affecting inquiry. Has anything bewitched you (and if anything, what?) that ye do not, etc. To have had the experience of a present Christ; to have seen Him crucified before our eyes; to have felt and handled that good Word of life. And to have experienced all these things in vain! Those who have experienced these things in vain--who can they be? The man who sees the truth and does not obey it may well be regarded as bewitched, under the spell of a sorcerer, choosing what he knows is death and refusing what he knows is life. What is the spell? The preceding thoughts wilt suggest the nature of the sorcery. How did we bring Christ before the eyes of the sinner? By convincing him of the appropriateness of the Saviour and His great salvation. And this was appropriate to the sense of guilt,--humble penitence beholds Christ, and rejoices in His presence. Now let an opposite feeling, a proud feeling of self-righteousness and self-sufficiency, take possession of the heart, and the vision of Christ crucified vanishes as a dream when one awaketh. Feeling no need of Christ crucified, the soul looks no longer to Him. It has found other hope, and applied to itself a false peace. It has healed the wound slightly, and, so long as the pain is relieved, it seeks no other remedy. Just so it was with the Galatians: they listened to Jewish teachers, who told them of the ritual of Moses, the righteousness of the Pharisees, the works of the law, by the doing of which they might be saved. And so they were beguiled from the simplicity of Christ. But there are other sorcerers which infest the Christian Church, and beguile many. Whatever renders us indisposed to receive Christ, to love Him, to serve Him, blinds us to the glory of His gospel, and so removes Him further from us. There is the infatuation of the world, with its gaieties and follies; and sad infatuation it is upon some, of whom better things might have been expected. There is the infatuation of avarice, of men who make haste to be rich, who will be rich at all costs and hazards, until they destroy their own peace and make their past experience vanity, and past profession a lie. (R. Halley, D. D.)
The folly of disobeying the truth
I. What is implied in Christ being evidently set before us crucified. Christ is evidently set before us crucified--
1. In the evangelical histories of the New Testament. The whole scenery of the cross is there exhibited.
2. In the preaching of the gospel. The cross is its very essence, its sum and substance, its all and in all. We must know nothing else.
3. In the Holy Communion. There we set forth the broken Body, the shed Blood.
II. What is implied in not obeying the truth. By the truth we may understand either Christ, who is emphatically the Truth, or the gospel, which is the revelation of Gods truth. We shall consider the latter as the meaning of the text. In reference to the truth of the gospel--
1. Some reject it wholly. Revelation disbelieved and despised.
2. Many reject it practically. Do not obey its exhortations. Are hearers only. Do not yield themselves to God. Still live in unbelief and sin.
3. Others reject the truth partially. Believe general truths--obey general commands--and acknowledge general principles; but are undecided, compromising, and half-hearted.
III. The folly and bewitchment of such a course of disobedience. It is evidently folly--
1. As it is the rejection of true light. Darkness is fraught with present evil, and tends to eternal destruction.
2. It deprives of all the solid comforts of religion. No peace, or joy, or hope. Desponding, restless, miserable.
3. It exposes to the severe disapprobation of God.
4. It will end in everlasting and irremediable ruin (Heb_3:2; 1Pe_4:17-18). How important, then, that the question of the apostle be duly considered?
Who hath bewitched you?
1. Have men, by their creeds and false doctrines?
2. Has Satan, by his devices?
3. Has the world, by its allurements?
Application:
1. We urge the sinner to consider his ways--receive the truth in the love of it--and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and he shall be saved.
2. We expostulate with backsliders--and say, Why will ye die? Why forsake Christ? Oh, return.
3. We exhort the believer to buy the truth--to grow in truth--to witness to the truth--to rejoice in the truth--and stedfastly to hold fast the truth to the end. (J. Burns, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 6, 15, 19, 25 Chapter 11
Chapter 11
THE GALATIAN FOLLY.
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Gal_3:1-5.
AT the beginning of chap. 3 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 auger. 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 Gal_4:8-20, and again in Gal_5:1-12, 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 chap. 5. This section forms the central and principal part of the letter, and is complete in itself. Its last words, in Gal_5:6-12, 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 Apostles 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. Peters vacillation had its counterpart in the defection of the Galatians. The reproof and refutation which the elder Apostle brought upon himself, Pauls 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 Pauls 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 Saviours 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!"
1. Here then was the beginning of their folly. The Galatians forgot their Saviours 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, 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 riveted 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 heavens 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. 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 Christs 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 paralysed their minds. The ancient word alluded to in the word the Apostle uses here 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 demoniac 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." To this darker source of the fascination his question, "Who hath bewitched you?" appears to point.
2. Losing sight of the cross of Christ, the Galatians were furthermore rejecting the Holy Spirit of God.
This heavy reproach the Apostle urges upon his readers through the rest of the paragraph, pausing only for a moment in Gal_3:4 to recall their earlier sufferings for Christs 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? (Gal_3:3) 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 lawworks, or upon faiths hearing?" (Gal_3:5). The Apostle wished the Galatians to test the competing doctrines by their effects. The Spirit of God had put His seal on the Apostles teaching, and on the faith of his hearers. Did any such manifestation accompany the preaching of the Legalists? 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_2:3-4; 1Co_12:4-11} 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 Pauls lips, "the Holy Spirit fell" on them, as on the Jewish Church at the Pentecost, and the Gentile believers in the house of Cornelius; {Act_10:44} "the love of God was poured out in their hearts through the Holy Ghost that was given them". {Rom_5:5} 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_8:26}
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 Gal_3:5). 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 Gods will to save the Gentiles, independently of the Mosaic law. {Act_11:15-18}
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". {Gal_4:6-7} 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 mediaeval or modern Christian, the heir of sixty generations of faith or the latest converts 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 Gods indwelling Spirit the Galatians had possessed. They were "sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus". {Gal_3:26} 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". {Gal_4:7; Rom_8:17} They possessed the earnest of the heavenly inheritance, {Eph_1:14} the pledge of their bodily redemption, {Rom_8:10-23} 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 in-corruption."
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. {Act_10:44-48; Act_11:15-16} 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 Pauls teaching elsewhere shows, {Gal_3:24; Gal_3:27; Rom_6:2; Col_2:11-13; Tit_3:5} the expression, not the medium - the symbol, and not the cause, of the new birth which it might precedeor 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.
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 Judaisers. They admitted, as we have shown in chap. 9., 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 Judaisers. 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, potristic 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 ones 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 Church 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 Judaisers. "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 ascendency. Already the foundations were laid of the Catholic Church-system, which culminated in the Papacy of Rome. What Pauls 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 peoples souls, till its mediation became the sole channel and organ of the Holy Spirits influence. So it has come to pass, by a strange irony of history, that under the forms of Pauline doctrine and in the same of the Apostle of the Gentiles joined to 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 led the Galatians to perishing Jerusalem.
3. 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 (Gal_3:4), 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 Gal_3:3-4 is the same as that we find in 1Th_1:6 : "Ye received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Ghost.". {Comp. 2Th_1:4-6; Rom_8:17; 2Ti_1:8}
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 Pauls 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 Apostles 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. {Gal_2:4; Gal_4:17; Gal_6:12-13} 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 worlds glamour has bewitched him. He bids fair to "end in the flesh."
In a broader sense, the Apostles 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 and 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 Christs 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!
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv1–29 1–5. Who hath bewitched you? That they, Gentiles, instructed…
1–5. Who hath bewitched you? That they, Gentiles, instructed in the gospel, should virtually deny Christ's death by seeking justification by the law was inexplicable. Were they bewitched? Before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth. Paul, while among them, had so faithfully and vividly preached Christ crucified, that it might be said that he was pictured before their eyes. Yet, if they were justified by the law, Christ was crucified in vain.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv1, 6, 10, 15, 19, 21, 26 Gal_3:1. Who hath bewitched you?—Fascinated you, as if overlooked…
CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
Gal_3:1. Who hath bewitched you?—Fascinated you, as if overlooked by the evil eye, so that your brain is confused. The Galatians were reputed to possess acute intellects: the apostle marvelled the more at their defection. That ye should not obey the truth.—Omitted in R.V. Before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified.—In preaching, a vivid portraiture of Christ crucified has been set before you as if depicted in graphic characters impossible to mistake.
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Gal_3:3. Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?—What monstrous folly is this! Will you so violate the divine order of progress? The flesh may be easily mistaken for the Spirit, even by those who have made progress, unless they continue to maintain a pure faith (Bengel).
Gal_3:4. Have ye suffered so many things in vain?—Since ye might have avoided them by professing Judaism. Will ye lose the reward promised for all suffering?
Gal_3:5. He that worketh miracles among you.—In you, at your conversion and since.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Gal_3:1-5
The Deceptive Glamour of Error—
I. Diverts the gaze of the soul from the most suggestive truth.—“Before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified” (Gal_3:1). The cross of Christ was the great theme of Paul’s preaching. He depicted it in such vivid colours, and dwelt on every detail of the story with such intense earnestness and loving emphasis, that the Galatians were arrested, excited, charmed. They were smitten with a sense of sin. They seemed to be actors in the scene, as if their own hands had driven in the nails that pierced the sacred Victim. They were bowed with shame and humiliation, and in an agony of repentance they cast themselves before the Crucified and took Him for their Christ and King. While they looked to Jesus they were secure, but when they listened to the deceptive voice of error their gaze was diverted and the deep significance of the cross became obscured. Then backsliding began. Like mariners losing sight of their guiding star, they drifted into strange waters. The cross is the central force of Christianity; when it fades from view Christianity declines. “As the sun draws the vapours of the sea, and then paints a rainbow on them, so Christ draws men and then glorifies them. His attraction is like that of the sun. It is magnetic too, like that of the magnet to the pole. It is not simply the Christ that is the magnet; it is the crucified Christ. It is not Christ without the cross, nor the cross without Christ; it is both of them together.”
II. Confuses the mind as to the nature and value of spiritual agencies.—
1. Concerning the method of their first reception.—“Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” (Gal_3:2). Making it appear that spiritual blessings were acquired by outward observance rather than by inward contemplation and faith. Confusing the true method of moral regeneration, it arrests all growth and advancement in the spiritual life. It throws back the soul on the weary round of toilsome and hopeless human effort.
2. Concerning the purpose for which they were given.—“Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?” (Gal_3:3). It was a reversal of the divine order. Having begun in the Spirit, so they must continue, or they would be undone. It was absurd to look for perfection in the flesh, especially when they had discovered its helplessness and misery. Pharisaic ordinances could do nothing to consummate the work of faith and love; Moses could not lead them higher than Christ; circumcision could never effect what the Holy Ghost failed to do. Spiritual results can be brought about only by spiritual agencies.
3. Rendering suffering on behalf of the truth meaningless.—“Have ye suffered so many things in vain?” (Gal_3:4). The Galatians on their conversion were exposed to the fiercest persecution from the Jews and from their own countrymen incited by the Jews. No one could come out of heathen society and espouse the cause of Christ in those days, nor can he do so to-day, without making himself a mark for ridicule and violence, without the rupture of family and public ties, and many painful sacrifices. But if the truth may be so easily abandoned, all early struggles against opposition and all the educative influence and promised reward of suffering must go for nothing. It is disappointing and disastrous when a youthful zeal for religion degenerates in maturer life into apathy and worldliness, when the great principles of right and liberty, for which our fathers fought and suffered, are treated by their descendants with supine indifference.
III. Creates misconceptions as to the divine method of ministering spiritual blessing.—“He that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” (Gal_3:5). One of the most subtle effects of error is to suspend the mind in a state of hesitation and doubt. It is a dangerous mood. Confidence in the truth is shaken, and for the moment the soul has nothing stable on which to lay hold. It is the opportunity for the enemy, and damage is done which even a subsequent return to the truth does not wholly efface. Paul saw the peril of his converts, and he suggests this test—the Spirit of God had put His seal on the apostle’s preaching and on the faith of his hearers. Did any such manifestation accompany the preaching of the legalists? He takes his stand on the indubitable evidence of the work of the Spirit. It is the only safe ground for the champion of experimental Christianity (1Co_2:14-15).
Lessons.—
1. Every error is the distortion of some truth.
2. The cross is the central truth of Christianity.
3. The highest truths are spiritually discerned.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Gal_3:1. Faithful Reproof.—
1. The minister when he is called to insist upon the clearing up of truth, whether positively by showing what is revealed in Scripture or controversially by refuting errors, should mix his discourse with exhortation and reproof, to excite and quicken the affections of his hearers.
2. False teachers, who by fair words deceive the simple, are spiritual sorcerers, and error is spiritual witchcraft. As sorcerers by deluding the senses make people apprehend that they see what they see not, so false teachers, by casting a mist of seeming reason before the understanding, delude it, and make the deluded person to believe that to be truth which is not.
3. Though Christ and His sufferings are to be vividly represented and pictured by the plain and powerful preaching of the gospel, yet it does not follow they are to be artificially painted with colours on stone or timber for religious use. The graven image is a teacher of lies (Hab_2:18).—Fergusson.
The Folly of Disobedience.
I. We are wise in matters of the world, but in matters concerning the kingdom of heaven the most of us are fools, besotted and bewitched with worldly cares and pleasures, without sense in matters of religion; like a piece of wax without form, fit to take the form and print of any religion.
II. The truth here mentioned is the heavenly doctrine of the gospel, so called because it is absolute truth without error, and because it is a most worthy truth—the truth according to godliness.
III. The office of the minister is to set forth Christ crucified.—
1. The ministry of the word must be plain, perspicuous, and evident, as if the doctrine were pictured and painted out before the eyes of men.
2. It must be powerful and lively in operation, and as it were crucifying Christ within us and causing us to feel the virtue of His passion. The word preached must pierce into the heart like a two-edged sword.
3. The effectual and powerful preaching of the word stands in three things:
(1) True and proper interpretation of the Scripture.
(2) Savoury and wholesome doctrine gathered out of the Scriptures truly expounded.
(3) The application of the said doctrine, either to the information of the judgment or the reformation of the life.
IV. The duty of all believers is to behold Christ crucified.—And we must behold Him by the eye of faith, which makes us both see Him and feel Him, as it were, crucified in us.
1. By beholding Christ crucified we see our misery and wickedness.
2. This sight brings us true and lively comfort.
3. This sight of Christ makes a wonderful change in us. The chameleon takes the colours of the things it sees and that are near to it; and the believing heart takes to it the disposition and mind that was in Christ.—Perkins.
Attractiveness of Worth.—In the Paris Salon some few years ago there was a bust of the painter Baudry by Paul Dubois, one of the greatest modern sculptors. Mr. Edmund Gosse was sitting to contemplate this bust when an American gentleman strolled by, caught sight of it, and after hovering round it for some time came and sat by his side and watched it. Presently he turned to Mr. Gosse inquiring if he could tell him whose it was, and whether it was thought much of, adding with a charming modesty, “I don’t know anything about art; but I found that I could not get past that head.” Would that we could so set forth Christ that His word might be fulfilled, “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me”!
Gal_3:2-5. Searching Questions—
1. As to the mode of receiving the Spirit (Gal_3:2).
2. As to the folly of expecting advancement by substituting an inferior for a superior force (Gal_3:3).
3. As to the uselessness of suffering (Gal_3:4).
4. As to the exercise of spiritual and miraculous power (Gal_3:5).
Gal_3:4. Suffering for the Truth.—They may suffer many things for truth who afterwards fall from it. As the example of others, particular interest and general applause will make even hypocrites suffer much, so continued suffering will make even the godly faint for a time. The best, being left to themselves, in an hour of temptation, will turn their back upon truth, so that no profession, no experience or remembrance of the joy and sweetness found in the way of truth, nor their former sufferings for it, will make them adhere to it.
1. Whatever have been the sufferings for truth, they are all in vain, lost and to no purpose, if the party make defection from and turn his back upon the truth.
3. Though those who have suffered much for the truth should afterwards fall from it, we are to keep charity towards them, hoping God will give them repentance and reclaim them. All our sharpness towards them ought to be wisely tempered, by expressing the charitable thoughts we have of them.—Fergusson.
The Uses of Suffering.—
1. They serve for trial of men, that it may appear what is hidden in their hearts.
2. They serve for the correction of things amiss in us.
3. They serve as documents and warnings to others, especially in public persons.
4. They are marks of adoption, if we be content to obey God in them.
5. They are the trodden and beaten way to the kingdom of heaven.—Perkins.
Gal_3:5. Miracles confirmatory of the Truth.—
1. The Lord accompanied the first preaching of the gospel with the working of miracles that the truth of the doctrine might be confirmed, which being once sufficiently done, there is no further use for miracles.
2. So strong and prevalent is the spirit of error, and so weak the best in themselves to resist it, that for love to error they will quit truth, though confirmed and sealed by the saving fruits of God’s Spirit in their hearts.—Fergusson.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 Gal 3:7-9
Gal 3:7-9
Abraham.
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"God," says the text, "preached the Gospel to Abraham." The very oath sworn to him by his Maker was, according to the Epistle to the Hebrews, designed to show to the heirs of promise, down the whole stream of time, the immutability of God’s counsels. God forbid, cries St. Paul, that any one should think that the law—the schoolmaster who was to bring us to Christ—was against the promises of God! Though the sanctions of the two covenants might be different—a circumstance which does not in the least affect the moral obligation—the terms on which they dealt with man were the same. This development may be more complete, more uniform, more equable, more progressive, under the Gospel than under the law; but the direction of that development was ever, if not consciously towards Christ, at least towards Christianity. The life story of Abraham must have something in it that it concerns Christians of every age to know. It illustrates—
I. What faith is. Abraham to the age of St. Paul, before and above any saint in the annals of his race, was the representative of the nature of faith and its power; faith, not as opposed to reason, but as opposed to sight. It was not perfect, but it was real; it rested on the simplest virtues.
II. What it is to walk by faith. A consistent endeavour to frame the life so as to be in accordance with our convictions, so that what we are should be an expression to others of what we believe—this is what the Apostle means by walking by faith, and not by sight.
III. What it is, to the eye of such faith, to see Christ’s day. What is Christ’s day but the measure of knowledge of the will of God which it is our privilege to enjoy, and those opportunities of access to Him which all have, though all may not use? Even to us who live in the middle of that day, the light can be called neither clear nor dark. The knowledge is partial and fragmentary; the hopes, but not the eye, enter into that which is within the veil. What does Christ do for those who consciously live in the light of this day? He lifts them up from earth to heaven; sets their affections on things above; helps them to understand what that means, "Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God."
Bishop Fraser, University Sermons, p. 1.
References: Gal 3:10.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iv., No. 174. Gal 3:10-13.—S. Pearson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 72. Gal 3:11.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiv., No. 814; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 567. Gal 3:11, Gal 3:12.—Homilist, 2nd series, vol. i., p. 237.
Gal 3:13
(with Rom 5:21; 1Co 15:56; Gal 4:1, Gal 4:5; Rom 7:4)
The Saviour of Men.
Take the illustration of a drowning man, and compare it with the hapless condition of sinful men. In order to save the man there must be six conditions of success.
I. Some one from the shore must undertake to save him.
II. The helper must leave the shore and come to him, so that he can grasp him.
III. In order to come to him his deliverer must come within the sweep of the law. There is no other way of reaching him than through the current. Christ comes down close to where we are, so that men can not only see Him, but touch Him, grasp Him, take Him by the hand.
IV. The rescuer must bear the drowning man’s share of the curse of the law if he would save him. The same strain comes as before, but the man’s friend bears the strain for him. It is only on this condition that he can possibly be saved. The strength of the law which was against us had to exert its force on Christ.
V. Not only must the deliverer bear the sufferer’s share of the force of the law which sweeps him down, but he must have strength enough to stand it all and get safe back again. Christ was not submerged under the waves for long. He regains the shore. He has come through it all. He has borne the whole curse. It is all finished. And yet He lives, omnipotent to save.
VI. The saviour and the saved must be firmly bound together. The drowning man cannot be saved unless he be attached to his deliverer, and in the same way the sinner cannot be saved unless he be attached to Jesus Christ.
J. Monro Gibson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxv., p. 56.
References: Gal 3:13.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xv., No. 873. Gal 3:16-18.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. vii., p. 89. Gal 3:19.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iii., No. 123. Gal 3:19, Gal 3:20.—Church of England Pulpit, vol ii., p. 409. Gal 3:21.—E. White, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xx., p. 312. Gal 3:22.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xix., No. 1145; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. v., p. 31; J. Edmunds, Sixty Sermons, p. 351.
Gal 3:23
The Reasonableness of the Gospel.
I. There is something of a military allusion in this passage which it may be well to point out. The expression "kept under the law" denotes in the original being kept as in a citadel or garrison. It is this expression, "shut up unto the faith," which gives our text much of its power and singularity. The Law surrounded the Jews, as it were, with a rampart, effectually preventing their uniting with the rest of mankind, until their object of faith, which is Christ, or the dispensation of faith, which is the Gospel, should come in the fulness of time. But while we admit that the passage before us has a reference to the Jew, derived altogether from local and temporary circumstances, we cannot doubt that the expression "shut up unto the faith" applies to men of other lands and other generations. We regard this expression as making out to us what may be called the reasonableness of the Gospel.
II. The Gospel is a reasonable scheme—reasonable on the principle that, whatever other way is devised and tried, it is invariably found deficient, so that man remains shut up to the Gospel as his only resource. (1) The law leaves no place for repentance. (2) The law emphatically exhibits the necessity for a mediator. It will meet man like an ever-watchful adversary in his successive endeavours to appease conscience and propitiate God, driving him back and producing at least the confession that there is no alternative but eternal death or the suretyship 01 a mediator. It shuts us up to the faith and Christ crucified; it keeps us in a garrison, that we may be willing to receive and accept of salvation. We make a wrong use of the law, if it does not lead us to Christ.
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1834.
Gal 3:24
Love in the Schooling of the Law.
Over all righteousness before men the will has power, because it is a righteousness of outward acts; but the will has not power over the desires and affections, in other words over the superior faculties of which it is a servant. It can produce good deeds to a certain extent, but it cannot produce good tendencies. Our actions are in our own hand, but our hearts are not. And God’s law, which is summed up in one command, "Thou shalt love," regards not outward actions, but the direction of the heart. Therefore the will, which is powerful over so many things that lie in its department and beneath it, is utterly powerless in this, which lies out of its department and above it. It cannot fulfil the law of God. Consider how the law prepared men for the redemption of Christ.
I. Take, first, the case of the heathen, who live without a written law. In them the Fall reached its utmost depth. Conscience, bewildered and degraded, almost ceased to testify to the law of love. These were alive without the law; they knew no spiritual want, sighed for no deliverance; their being had sunk so low that the higher place from which they had fallen was hidden from them. But now comes in the written law, with its requirements, which the will of man cannot fulfil, its revelations of the higher place of love and freedom, its burdens of guilt on the awakened conscience. The sinner is by the law of God awakened and enlightened. He sees God as his object. But out of all the workings of the law in the sinner springs up not one plant of righteousness, nothing but a widening and deepening conviction of guilt, and incapacity, and danger, and death.
II. But now let us mark the effect on this man as a being of the future. To sit down in despair and die is a rare exception to his general constitution; place him in misery, and he sighs for deliverance. And the sinner, convicted under God’s law, proved incapable of fulfilling it, is thereby made to cry out for deliverance. The awakening of the desire for good proves that sin was not his natural state, but a corruption of his nature. This sorrow points to joy, this hunger to satisfaction, this thirst to refreshment. For we cannot for a moment suppose that the good and loving God should awaken by His law this sense of misery and this desire for deliverance in His creatures merely to torment them and to drive them to despair. Therefore the law of God, by its very office of convicting of sin and bringing about a longing for deliverance, does, in fact, contain, wrapped in its depths, a promise of pardon and a prospect of deliverance.
H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons, vol. iv., p. 100.
References: Gal 3:24.—H. P. Liddon, Church of England Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 70; Ibid., Christian World Pulpit, vol. xviii., p. 385; Ibid., Penny Pulpit, No. 1130; T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. ii., p. 78. Gal 3:24, Gal 3:25.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xx., No. 1196. Gal 3:25, Gal 3:26.—Homilist, vol. vii., p. 26. Gal 3:25-29.—W. Spensley, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxiii., p. 61. Gal 3:26.—Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 78. Gal 3:26, Gal 3:27.—S. Pearson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 357. Gal 3:26-28.—Bishop Westcott, Ibid., vol. xxvi., p. 113; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. viii., p. 273. Gal 3:26-29.—Bishop Westcott, Christian World Pulpit, vol. v., p. 222.
Gal 3:28
Unity in Diversity.
St. Paul makes a threefold separation of the human race into two dissimilar classes. This classification is governed by (1) the great intellectual differences and antagonisms among men, (2) the chief emotional and constitutional differences of character, and (3) the prodigious distinctions effected by external circumstances.
I. The first of these divisions was based on the great antagonism which was so admirably expressed in the Apostle’s day by the intellectual differences obtaining between the Jew and the Greek. The Jew was the type of all who in every age of the Church are by their education, mental habits, or dispositions, disposed to lay violent stress on the external sign, on the tangible symbol, on the sacramental test, on the old tradition. The Greek was the type of the class of Christian men at the present time whose mental constitution, habits, and education almost lead them, in their hatred of superstition, to discourage faith and to denounce the letter and the body and the form of truth so harshly as to shatter the costly vase which contains its fragrant essence. If these two tendencies are left to themselves unchecked and unchastised, very distant will be the day when Jew and Greek shall be one.
II. The second of the classifications is the great constitutional and emotional difference of character expressed by the antitheses of male and female.
III. The third is that great division due to differences arising out of external circumstances: the bond and the free. These three great divisions find in Christ their true counteraction. (1) There is now neither Jew nor Greek; they are both one in Christ Jesus. In like manner, if the Jew and Greek of these days will look on and up to the great uniting principle of holy life and truth in the person and sacrifice of Christ, they will clasp inseparable hands and antedate the harmonies of heaven. (2) Christ is the mediating power between the masculine and feminine mind. Christ is the wellspring of the strong motives to right action and of the deepest passions of holy love. (3) The bond and free are one in Christ. The slave lifts up his fetters, and feels that he is the Lord’s free man; the free man is bold to acknowledge himself the Lord’s slave.
H. R. Reynolds, Notes on the Christian Life, p. 44.
Gal 3:28
I. When we look at the history of the world, we learn something, even from ordinary history, of the oneness of the human race. We are one with those who are very distant from us in time. When we read the history of the men of old, we see how like they were to ourselves in their passions, in their sufferings, in their desires, and in their rejoicing. The old fathers looked not for transitory promises. If their family life was blessed, it was from looking forward in the same spirit of faith which unites us with our Saviour to the fulfilment of promises given from the very first and to the blessedness of union as children of one Father.
II. There are those who are separated from us in time and in place, and there are other separations more unchristian far and much more difficult to overcome than are even these physical separations. Old distinctions may have gone down amongst us which separated bond and free, but the gulf between the rich and poor remains. How important that we should all impress upon our minds that we are one in Christ Jesus, and that this oneness can only be practically maintained by some vigorous efforts on our part to overcome the physical difficulties which are separating us from one another. We are one in our sinfulness, one in our need of a Saviour to rescue us from our sin, one in the hopes which that Saviour gives, and, as one event is waiting for all, there is one hope in one Lord, for whom we are looking forward in the steadfastness of our one faith as redeemed by our one Lord.
A. C. Tait, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvi., p. 65.
I. We are all one in Christ Jesus. In Him the dispensation is regathered. All things, St. Paul says, in heaven and in earth, are gathered together in Him. It seems as though angels who never fell are in some manner interested and concerned in that regathering. Certainly the dead, equally with the living, are so. Each separately must put on, must invest himself with, Jesus Christ. Cast your burden, and sin, and sorrow, and conscious weakness upon Christ as your Friend. Then are you inside Him. He includes, He contains, you, and in the dread day of days, when the avenger of blood looks for you, he shall find only Christ—only Jesus Christ, and Him crucified, Him risen.
II. In the exercise of that incorporation, or that union, and that oneness, will our true fellowship henceforth be found. All minor differences of place and intercourse sink at once into nothing. Place and sight may make the difference of pleasure, of comfort, of expressed communion, of conscious unity; but they make no difference whatever as to the reality, as to the essence, of union. We are all one person in Christ.
III. In the face of such union, let us learn—it is a hard lesson—let us learn to despise and trample under foot all other. What is neighbourhood? What is co-existence? Men live next door to each other, and never meet; meet, and never commune; commune, and are never one. At last a call comes. One goes forth at the summons of business, of necessity, of the Gospel, to a distant shore: seas roll between, they never see, they never hear of each other more; yet for the first time they may be one—one person—in Christ. The communion of saints is between them, and therefore the life of life, the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting.
C. J. Vaughan, Last Words at Doncaster, p. 311.
References: Gal 3:28.—Bishop Westcott, Contemporary Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 185; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. ii., p. 128; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. vi., p. 271; A. B. Evans, Church of England Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 253; A. C. Tait, Ibid., vol. viii., p. 65; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxvi., p. 405. Gal 4:1-7.—Church of England Pulpit, vol. xx., p. 289.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain On v1 Division 2. (Gal 3:1-29.)
Division 2. (Gal 3:1-29.)
The Contrast between Law and Faith.
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Paul comes now, at once, to the question of doctrine, but, as has already been said, he takes it up in a way in which we have not seen it in Romans. His historical treatment of it was indeed the plainest possible argument that he could use for those whose eyes were as dull as those of the Galatians had got to be. The broad facts of the history were there and none could deny them. God had given the promise to Abraham, a simple, unconditional promise, in which He had pledged His whole truthfulness to fulfil His word, long before the law was given at all. The argument at once brings in the authority of God Himself to settle the question.
1. He appeals to them, however, in the first place, as having received that Spirit of Christ which was the distinctive feature of Christianity. It was nothing less than a bewitchment for them now not to obey the truth, when Christ Himself -Christ crucified, as announced in the gospel, yet in the power of His grace -had been received in faith and owned by them. It was in consequence of their reception of Him that the Spirit was given. Manifestly through all the dispensation of law there was nothing like this. There was no Spirit of adoption. It had never come to any by the works of the law. It now came in universally as the result of the hearing of faith. As has often been said, if it were declared in the Old Testament that God was a Father to Israel, this was the very opposite of owning as His family those who were truly His children -for all were not of the true Israel even, that were Israelites. It was a nation in the flesh that God had been pleased to take up, and to put them in a certain relation to Himself not in that spiritual relation which Christianity implied, for as to any of this people of God, there was no settlement of the eternal question. They might drop out of this place into hell. There was no security as to those in mere Judaism. Thus the Galatians had experience of the power of the gospel and of its being a power which the Jew, as such, knew nothing of. They had suffered, too, for the gospel, as the apostle implies. Was it all a mistake? Had it been in vain? The Spirit was "ministered" manifestly through those who preached the gospel to them and who preached, as would ordinarily be the case then, with accompanying signs and wonders on God’s part, in witness to His word. Was it by the works of the law (according to that principle) that these things were wrought, or according to the opposite manner of the hearing of faith? The law said doing, not hearing. The gospel said hearing, not doing.
But in this Christianity only went back to the pattern of the one whom God had, in His wisdom, set in an unmistakable place in connection with the Jew himself. Abraham was the one through whom they expected all their blessing; but Abraham, as the record was, "believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness." In his case there were no works of the law, when the law as yet did not exist. If then in him faith was reckoned for righteousness, -if in him, God, having found no righteousness in man, took up the principle of faith for righteousness, it is evident that those who were truly his children would be accepted according to that principle. They which were of faith would be the children of Abraham. The Scripture then had expressly anticipated the justification of the nations through faith. It had preached, as it were, the gospel unto Abraham in the announcement that in him all the nations should be blessed. "In him" could not mean because of his merit, as the Jew perhaps was ready to aver; for as to him all merit had been disclaimed: but, on the contrary, that the nations should be blessed on that principle of faith which God had brought to the front, and acknowledged with regard to Abraham. They which were of faith, therefore, would be blessed with believing Abraham.
2. Now, to this the law could not be added. It was, as we have seen again and again precisely the reverse of this principle. In faith there is the renouncing of self, the turning to Another on that account. On the other hand, in the law, no question of Another comes in at all. It is "the man that doeth them shall live by them"; but then, alas, that means curse, and curse only. As many as were of the works of the law, (as many as were on that principle), were under the curse; not that law works were bad works; clearly, the very reverse; but it was written "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them." That is the principle as announced by the apostle, when yet Christianity had come. He certainly knew what he was speaking of. He certainly did not believe that Christianity had modified this in any measure, so as to make a certain amount of legal works acceptable to God. The law said "all things," and the apostle says after it, "all things." No one has title to alter this in the least. But then the curse was as manifestly on every one; and how blessed, therefore, the grace which had declared in the Old Testament itself the opposite principle, when it was said by the prophet that "the just shall live by faith." That was the plain renunciation of the law for justification in the sight of God, for "the law is not of faith," as we have seen. It is the man that doeth them: it is not the work of Another, it is the man’s own work by which he is to live. Christ, therefore is out of question here. If we will be justified upon the principle of the law, we must give up Christ.
3. But, in fact, redemption has come for us. We were, says the apostle, hopelessly under the curse of the law. That was all that it could do for us, and when Christ came, instead of there being any relinquishment of this, on the contrary, He Himself had to redeem us from the curse of the law as made Himself that curse. A strange way this may seem to be expressed in, indeed, "for it is written, Cursed is everyone that hangeth upon a tree." One would say that the mere hanging upon a tree could neither in itself be the curse, the true curse upon sin, nor, on the other hand, mark out, of necessity, those who were under the curse. It was, as we should say a thing apparently perfectly arbitrary. An innocent man might hang upon a tree, just as a man steeped in guilt to the uttermost might never hang there. Why is it then that the law expresses itself after this manner? And here we must move carefully, for mistakes have been made on different sides as to this. We have to remember that, while in itself the law was a system of earthly government, though of divine appointment, on the other hand, in its purport spiritually it went beyond this altogether. As an earthly government -the government of an earthly people -it did not in its rewards or penal sanction go beyond the earth. It never said of the keeper of its commandments, "He shall go to heaven;" nor of the convicted sinner, "He shall go to hell."* This has been often spoken of, yet needs to be fully understood; for if it is not, confusion must result. God meant that the conviction of man by it should be fully accomplished, and therefore put both penalty and reward in a sphere cognizable by him, and not in an eternity as to which he can speculate as he pleases. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die," and "the man that doeth them shall live by them," were meant to speak plainly in the common language of men; and thus speaking, the issue of the law is as plain and intelligible as its power to convict is absolutely undeniable.
{*It must be remembered that the Old Testament "hell" is "Sheol," which is hades, the place of the dead.}
The shadow of man’s condemnation by it must darken the prospect beyond death; while yet God has not tied Himself to the legal judgment. If He had, there would be no hope for any. But the curse attached to hanging upon a tree is not of necessity an eternal one. Yet if there be no way of escape it will be that for all. He who bore it for others rose out of it by His own perfection (Heb 5:7), as those for whom He bore it by that vicarious work on their behalf.
The Cross marked the character of that work as death in its full penal character, and therefore the forsaking of God; and that which for others might lose its deepest meaning, for the sacrificial victim had all its significance. An ass might be redeemed with a lamb; but the lamb devoted could not be redeemed (Lev 27:10). Is it not plain that prophetically this hanging on a tree points out the One who was indeed to be under the curse from God, and that the law waited, as it were, through all the centuries of its existence until it found finally its satisfaction in that one wonderful fulfilment, the cross of Christ? Thus alone could the blessing of Abraham come on the Gentiles; for if the Gentiles were not, in fact, under the law, (as dispensationally they were not,) yet sin must, of necessity, have the same shadow of the curse following it ever. Gentile or Jew, it could make no difference before God, and, in fact, that form which the law gave to the curse could only be the figure of a deeper thing. The blessing of Abraham could not come upon the Gentiles themselves except as that curse was removed out of the way of man by Jesus Christ, and thus alone could we receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
4. The apostle returns now back to Abraham and the promise to him, in order to show the impotence of the law to annul it. He appeals here to the moral sense of man. If he were only a man, and had made a covenant unconditionally, pledging himself to this or that, and especially, he adds, "If this covenant were confirmed, no one could disannul it" and no one could add a condition to it. Now God had made it, as is clear, in these promises to Abraham, and confirmed them, as he tells us directly, to Christ. The covenant was of promise and it was both made and confirmed, It was an absolute promise, not a conditional one. No condition, therefore, could be added without destroying its very nature. When God said "in thy Seed," it was of Christ plainly that He was speaking. As we look back at the history, we see that it was after Isaac had been delivered, as Scripture says, in a figure, from that sacrificial death from which Christ was not delivered, that God gave this. It was Christ that was in His mind. Here was the Lamb whom God would provide for the burnt-offering. Here was the ram who in the truth of it saved Isaac, as we may say, -the ram caught by its horns in the thicket: Christ thus, caught, as it were, by the very power that He had to save and bless, which His love, would not allow Him, therefore, not to put in exercise. Christ was the Seed to whom God confirmed the covenant of promise, and the law came 430 years too late to set it aside at all; but it is manifest if it were added to it, it would disannul it. The apostle dismisses both thoughts, the disannulling and the adding, the adding being, in fact, the same as disannulling. Law added would be the introduction of a contradictory principle; for if the inheritance were of the law, it would be no more of promise, whereas God gave it to Abraham by promise.
5. Naturally enough the question comes here, Why then the law? "It was added," answers the apostle, "for the sake of transgressions." Such is the expression; which means, not to keep transgressions in check, as the common thought seems to be, for Scripture itself has already told us that "where there is no law, there is no transgression." Thus it could not keep transgression in check; on the contrary, it could only produce it; that is, as we have already said, it could make sin take that form. It was added, then, for that purpose; and it was added for a certain season; not being that which could confer the blessing upon man, it must be taken out of the way, in order that the blessing might come. It was added, therefore, temporarily for a certain reason; added "till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made." There was another thing. "It was ordained by angels," but it had nothing of the glory of the new covenant as made good by Christ. The glory at Sinai, as the psalmist says, was angelic glory (Psa 68:17). God Himself was unrevealed; was behind, in the thick darkness. Or if Moses saw Him, it was but the back parts: His face could not be seen. And the very reflection of glory thus in the face of Moses made men unable to behold; it, therefore, put man only in the distance, did not bring him nigh, and thus there had to be a mediator, manifestly Moses himself; but a mediator implies two parties. "A mediator is not a mediator of one," but God was the only One who spoke in the promise to Abraham. God is One: there was no other party. All depended, therefore, in the promise, upon God Himself.
But this seems to set the law against the promise of God, men might urge. Nay, he says, in the nature of the case, a law would have had to be given which could have given life, in order that righteousness might be worked out under it. Life was what man needed. The law was the ministration of death and not of life. Righteousness, therefore, could not be by the law; and the law was not against the promise of God, but, on the contrary, shut men up to that promise for all their blessing. The Scripture which speaks of it, "hath shut up all under sin that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe."
6. This shows us, therefore, clearly the limit of the law. "Before faith came," that is, before it was God’s open and acknowledged principle of blessing, "we were kept under the law, shut up to the faith which should afterwards be revealed." That faith was made necessary by the fact of the ruin in which the law proved us to be. God must bring in blessing through Another: faith in Another must be His principle. The law thus was our schoolmaster until Christ. It had a needed lesson to teach for a time. No schooling is for all time. The schoolmaster’s work is to make us independent of himself, and the law’s work was to bring us into a place where it would no more be needful. Its very service was to shut us up to justification by faith alone, no other mode being possible. But if, then, this is to be so, "after that faith is come, we are no longer under the schoolmaster." Faith being openly proclaimed God’s principle, the law’s work is done.
7. And this is shown by the fact of the new place into which God has put His people now, "sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus;" the school of law is not the proper place for us. That does not mean that we are not to profit by the lessons which the law taught, of course. We may profit by the lessons which we learn in school without being under the schoolmaster; but under the schoolmaster, no one says "Father." The place of sons as such is manifestly somewhere else than at school. This, then, has come for us, for "as many of us as have been baptized to Christ have put on Christ." Christ is, according to the truth announced in baptism itself, the One in whom we are, therefore, before God. It is His perfection, His beauty that is seen upon us. Nothing else is seen, no earthly condition, no place of privilege beside. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." Manifestly, if each one of us is in Christ, Christ must be the same for each and all of us. There can be no distinction here. For distinction, we must look away from Christ; but if then we "are Christ’s," then "are we Abraham’s seed," in the fullest way identified with the very One in whom the blessing was to be, identified with the very Heir of blessing, and therefore heirs according to the promise, "in thy Seed:" that is Christ, in whom we are.
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 22
Galatians
THE EVIL EYE AND THE CHARM
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Gal 3:1
The Revised Version gives a shorter, and probably correct, form of this vehement question. It omits the two clauses ‘that ye should not obey the truth’ and ‘among you.’ The omission increases the sharpness of the thrust of the interrogation, whilst it loses nothing of the meaning.
Now, a very striking metaphor runs through the whole of this question, which may easily be lost sight of by ordinary readers. You know the old superstition as to the Evil Eye, almost universal at the date of this letter and even now in the East, and lingering still amongst ourselves. Certain persons were supposed to have the power, by a look, to work mischief, and by fixing the gaze of their victims, to suck the very life out of them. So Paul asks who the malign sorcerer is who has thus fascinated the fickle Galatians, and is draining their Christian life out of their eyes.
Very appropriately, therefore, if there is this reference, which the word translated ‘bewitched’ carries with it, he goes on to speak about Jesus Christ as having been displayed before their eyes. They had seen Him. How did they come to be able to turn away to look at anything else?
But there is another observation to be made by way of introduction, and that is as to the full force of the expression ‘evidently set forth.’ The word employed, as commentators tell us, is that which is used for the display of official proclamations, or public notices, in some conspicuous place, as the Forum or the market, that the citizens might read. So, keeping up the metaphor, the word might be rendered, as has been suggested by some eminent scholars, ‘placarded’--’Before whose eyes Jesus Christ has been placarded.’ The expression has acquired somewhat ignoble associations from modern advertising, but that is no reason why we should lose sight of its force. So, then, Paul says, ‘In my preaching, Christ was conspicuously set forth. It is like some inexplicable enchantment that, having seen Him, you should turn away to gaze on others.’ It is insanity which evokes wonder, as well as sin which deserves rebuke; and the fiery question of my text conveys both.
I. Keeping to the metaphor, I note first the placard which Paul had displayed.
‘Jesus Christ crucified has been conspicuously set forth before you,’ he says to these Galatians. Now, he is referring, of course, to his own work of preaching the Gospel to them at the beginning. And the vivid metaphor suggests very strikingly two things. We see in it the Apostle’s notion of what He had to do. His had been a very humble office, simply to hang up a proclamation. The one virtue of a proclamation is that it should be brief and plain. It must be authoritative, it must be urgent, it must be ‘writ large,’ it must be easily intelligible. And he that makes it public has nothing to do except to fasten it up, and make sure that it is legible. If I might venture into modern phraseology, what Paul means is that he was neither more nor less than a bill-sticker, that he went out with the placards and fastened them up.
Ah! if we ministers universally acted up to the implications of this metaphor, do you not think the pulpit would be more frequently a centre of power than it is to-day? And if, instead of presenting our own ingenuities and speculations, we were to realise the fact that we have to hide ourselves behind the broad sheet that we fasten up, there would be a new breath over many a moribund church, and we should hear less of the often warrantable sarcasms about the inefficiency of the modern pulpit.
But I turn from Paul’s conception of the office to his statement of his theme. ‘_Jesus_ was displayed amongst you.’ If I might vary the metaphor a little, the placard that Paul fastened up was like those that modern advertising ingenuity displays upon all our walls. It was a picture-placard, and on it was portrayed one sole figure--Jesus, the Person. Christianity is Christ, and Christ is Christianity; and wherever there is a pulpit or a book which deals rather with doctrines than with Him who is the Fountain and Quarry of all doctrine, there is divergence from the primitive form of the Gospel.
I know, of course, that doctrines--which are only formal and orderly statements of principles involved in the facts--must flow from the proclamation of the person, Christ. I am not such a fool as to run amuck against theology, as some people in this day do. But what I wish to insist upon is that the first form of Christianity is not a theory, but a history, and that the revelation of God is the biography of a man. We must begin with the person, Christ, and preach Him. Would that all our preachers and all professing Christians, in their own personal religious life, had grasped this--that, since Christianity is not first a philosophy but a history, and its centre not an ordered sequence of doctrines but a living person, the act that makes a man possessor of Christianity is not the intellectual process of assimilating certain truths, and accepting them, but the moral process of clinging, with trust and love, to the person, Jesus.
But, further, if any of you consult the original, you will see that the order of the sentence is such as to throw a great weight of emphasis on that last word ‘crucified.’ It is not merely a person that is portrayed on the placard, but it is that person _upon the Cross_. Ah! brethren, Paul himself puts his finger, in the words of my text, on what, in his conception, was the throbbing heart of all his message, the vital point from which all its power, and all the gleam of its benediction, poured out upon humanity--’Christ crucified.’ If the placard is a picture of Christ in other attitudes and in other aspects, without the picture of Him crucified, it is an imperfect representation of the Gospel that Paul preached and that Christ was.
II. Now, think, secondly, of the fascinators that draw away the eyes.
Paul’s question is not one of ignorance, but it is a rhetorical way of rebuking, and of expressing wonder. He knew, and the Galatians knew, well enough who it was that had bewitched them. The whole letter is a polemic worked in fire, and not in frost, as some argumentation is, against a very well-marked class of teachers--viz. those emissaries of Judaism who had crept into the Church, and took it as their special function to dog Paul’s steps amongst the heathen communities that he had gathered together through faith in Christ, and used every means to upset his work.
I cannot but pause for a moment upon this original reference of my text, because it is very relevant to the present condition of things amongst us. These men whom Paul is fighting as if he were in a sawpit with them, in this letter, what was their teaching? This: they did not deny that Jesus was the Christ; they did not deny that faith knit a man to Him, but what they said was that the observance of the external rites of Judaism was necessary in order to entrance into the Church and to salvation. They did not in their own estimation detract from Christ, but they added to Him. And Paul says that to add is to detract, to say that anything is necessary except faith in Jesus Christ’s finished work is to deny that that finished work, and faith in it, are the means of salvation; and the whole evangelical system crumbles into nothingness if once you admit that.
Now, is there anybody to-day who is saying the same things, with variations consequent upon change of external conditions? Are there no people within the limits of the Christian Church who are reiterating the old Jewish notion that external ceremonies--baptism and the Lord’s Supper--are necessary to salvation and to connection with the Christian Church? And is it not true now, as it was then, that though they do not avowedly detract, they so represent these external rites as to detract, from the sole necessity of faith in the perfected work of Jesus Christ? The centre is shifted from personal union with a personal Saviour by a personal faith to participation in external ordinances. And I venture to think that the lava stream which, in this Epistle to the Galatians, Paul pours on the Judaisers of his day needs but a little deflection to pour its hot current over, and to consume, the sacramentarian theories of this day. ‘O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you?’ Is it not like some malignant sorcery, that after the Evangelical revival of the last century and the earlier part of this, there should spring up again this old, old error, and darken the simplicity of the Gospel teaching, that Christ’s work, apprehended by faith, without anything else, is the means, and the only means, of salvation?
But I need not spend time upon that original application. Let us rather come more closely to our own individual lives and their weaknesses. It is a strange thing, so strange that if one did not know it by one’s own self, one would be scarcely disposed to believe it possible, that a man who has ‘tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come,’ and has known Jesus Christ as Saviour and Friend, should decline from Him, and turn to anything besides. And yet, strange and sad, and like some enchantment as it is, it is the experience at times and in a measure, of us all; and, alas! it is the experience, in a very tragical degree, of many who have walked for a little while behind the Master, and then have turned away and walked no more with Him. We may well wonder; but the root of the mischief is in no baleful glitter of a sorcerer’s eye without us, but it is in the weakness of our own wills and the waywardness of our own hearts, and the wandering of our own affections. We often court the coming of the evil influence, and are willing to be fascinated and to turn our backs upon Jesus. Mysterious it is, for why should men cast away diamonds for paste? Mysterious it is, for we do not usually drop the substance to get the shadow. Mysterious it is, for a man does not ordinarily empty his pockets of gold in order to fill them with gravel. Mysterious it is, for a thirsty man will not usually turn away from the full, bubbling, living fountain, to see if he can find any drops still remaining, green with scum, stagnant and odorous, at the bottom of some broken cistern. But all these follies are sanity as compared with the folly of which we are guilty, times without number, when, having known the sweetness of Jesus Christ, we turn away to the fascinations of the world. Custom, the familiarity that we have with Him, the attrition of daily cares--like the minute grains of sand that are cemented on to paper, and make a piece of sandpaper that is strong enough to file an inscription off iron--the seductions of worldly delights, the pressure of our daily cares--all these are as a ring of sorcerers that stand round about us, before whom we are as powerless as a bird in the presence of a serpent, and they bewitch us and draw us away.
The sad fact has been verified over and over again on a large scale in the history of the Church. After every outburst of renewed life and elevated spirituality there is sure to come a period of reaction when torpor and formality again assert themselves. What followed the Reformation in Germany? A century of death. What followed Puritanism in England? An outburst of lust and godlessness.
So it has always been, and so it is with us individually, as we too well know. Ah, brethren! the seductions are omnipresent, and our poor eyes are very weak, and we turn away from the Lord to look on these misshapen monsters that are seeking by their gaze to draw us into destruction. I wonder how many professing Christians are in this audience who once saw Jesus Christ a great deal more clearly, and contemplated Him a great deal more fixedly, and turned their hearts to Him far more lovingly, than they do to-day? Some of the great mountain peaks of Africa are only seen for an hour or two in the morning, and then the clouds gather around them, and hide them for the rest of the day. It is like the experience of many professing Christians, who see Him in the morning of their Christian life far more vividly than they ever do after. ‘Who hath bewitched you?’ The world; but the arch-sorcerer sits safe in our own hearts.
III. Lastly, keeping to the metaphor, let me suggest, although my text does not touch upon it, the Amulet.
One has seen fond mothers in Egypt and Palestine who hang on their babies’ necks charms, to shield them from the influence of the Evil Eye; and there is a charm that we may wear if we will, which will keep us safe. There is no fascination in the Evil Eye if you do not look at it.
The one object that the sorcerer has is to withdraw our gaze from Christ; it is not illogical to say that the way to defeat the object is to keep our gaze fixed on Christ. If you do not look at the baleful glitter of the Evil Eye it will exercise no power over you; and if you will steadfastly look at Him, then, and only then, you will not look at it. Like Ulysses in the legend, bandage the eyes and put wax in the ears, if you would neither be tempted by hearing the songs, nor by seeing the fair forms, of the sirens on their island. To look fixedly at Jesus Christ, and with the resolve never to turn away from Him, is the only safety against these tempting delights around us.
But, brethren, it is the crucified Christ, looking to whom, we are safe amidst all seductions and snares. I doubt whether a Christ who did not die for men has power enough over men’s hearts and minds to draw them to Himself. The cords which bind us to Him are the assurance of His dying love which has conquered us. If only we will, day by day, and moment by moment, as we pass through the duties and distractions, the temptations and the trials, of this present life, by an act of will and thought turn ourselves to Him, then all the glamour of false attractiveness will disappear from the temptations around us, and we shall see that the sirens, for all their fair forms, end in loathly fishes’ tails and sit amidst dead men’s bones.
Brethren, ‘looking _off_ unto Jesus’ is the secret of triumph over the fascinations of the world. And if we will habitually so look, then the sweetness that we shall experience will destroy all the seducing power of lesser and earthly sweetness, and the blessed light of the sun will dim and all but extinguish the deceitful gleams that tempt us into the swamps where we shall be drowned. Turn away, then, from these things; cleave to Jesus Christ; and though in ourselves we may be as weak as a humming-bird before a snake, or a rabbit before a tiger, He will give us strength, and the light of His face shining down upon us will fix our eyes and make us insensible to the fascinations of the sorcerers. So we shall not need to dread the question, ‘Who hath bewitched you?’ but ourselves challenge the utmost might of the fascination with the triumphant question, ‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?’
Help us, O Lord! we beseech Thee, to live near Thee. Turn away our eyes from beholding vanity, and enable us to set the Lord always before us that we be not moved.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 Justification is by Faith, not Works
Justification is by Faith, not Works
1-14. The Apostle upbraids the Galatians with their speedy change from faith to legal observances, reminding them of the fact that their reception of the Spirit had not been through the works of the Law, but through faith, and appealing both to the testimony of their own consciences and to the teaching of sacred history in the parallel case of Abraham.
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Paraphrase. '(1) You thoughtless Galatians have surely been bewitched. I told you plainly of Christ dying for your sins, and you accepted this salvation for your own. Why have you turned away from the Saviour? (2) Was it by obeying the Jewish Law, or by trusting in Christ, that you received those gifts of the Spirit which were so manifest among you when you first believed? (3) What folly, then, to desert the life of the Spirit for that of outward observance! (4) Why endure persecutions for the Gospel if you so lightly esteem it? (5) Have not all your spiritual gifts and the miraculous powers which are manifest among you been due entirely to your faith? (6) You read in the Scriptures that Abraham was accounted righteous on account of his faith, and your experience is an illustration of the same principle. (7) You want to be sons of Abraham. I tell you that his true spiritual children are those who have a faith like his. (8) In the promise made to him, because of his faith, you hear the principle of the Gospel announced in advance. (9) It is, therefore, those who base their lives on faith who share the blessing assured to him. (10) The Law, on the other hand, has no power to bless, but only to curse; for it pronounces a curse upon all who do not obey it in every detail. (11) How impossible salvation is on this principle the Scriptures plainly declare. (12) The Law does not rest on faith. It only justifies those who fulfil its works. (13) But Christ has come to redeem us from the curse which the Law pronounces; and He has accomplished that by taking the curse upon Himself, as His crucifixion makes evident. (14) And the purpose of His saving death was to secure that the Gentiles might receive through their faith the blessing which Abraham received through his, and gain the gift of the Spirit.'
1. Foolish] thoughtless, undiscerning, inconsistent. Bewitched] and so perverted you.
Before whose eyes] Paul had vividly (evidently, RV 'openly') portrayed the crucified Christ as Saviour.
2. This only] one question will reveal your error and inconsistency.
Received ye, etc.] Of course the latter was the case.
3. Spirit and flesh denote the characteristics of Gospel and Law respectively—the spheres to which they belong: cp. Gal_6:12. The Galatians had begun by putting their trust in Christ, and living a new life under His abiding influence. To forget this beginning and to aim not at living according to the mind of Christ, but at fulfilling the demands of a law, was to forsake the spiritual for the merely human or carnal.
4. Have ye suffered.. in vain] It was all for naught, and might better not have been endured, unless the gospel is deserving of their consistent adherence. If it be yet in vain] There was still hope that they might be reached and convinced by the appeal now made to them.
5. He that, etc.] i.e. God. Miracles] cp. 1 Corinthians 12. Doeth he it, etc.] Of course, in the latter way, or on the latter condition.
6. As Abraham] a typical case, which the Judaisers could not gainsay: cp. Gen_15:6. St. Paul declares: Our Jewish sacred Scriptures teach salvation by faith. Abraham was blessed because he trusted in God absolutely, and did His will, before the Law even existed. So men are now to trust in Christ the Son of God, living according to His will and having His life in them, now that He has made the Law unnecessary.
7. Sonship to Abraham, therefore (in the spiritual sense), is determined by faith.
8. Preached before (RV 'beforehand')] proclaimed long in advance the central principle of the Christian gospel.
9. The conclusion which follows from Gal_3:2, Gal_3:5.
10. Why men cannot be saved by legal works of merit; they must be perfect and complete, or they never can be: cp. Deu_27:26; Rom_2:13; Rom_3:20; Rom_4:4-5; Rom_8:3; Rom_10:5.
11, 12. Further scriptural confirmation: cp. Hab24. Even under the Law a man was counted righteous not because he fulfilled the demands of the Law, but because he trusted in God, of whose will the Law was the imperfect expression.
13. Redeemed] a figure drawn from the analogy of ransoming captives. Us] i.e. Jews.
The curse] the condemnation pronounced by the Law upon sin. Being made] by submitting to the shame of being crucified: cp. Deu_21:23. The Law declared that any one who died a criminal's death upon a cross was accursed. Christ died thus, and so was accursed. St. Paul associates this curse arising from ceremonial defilement with the curse which rests upon man for sins, and regards Christ as thus bearing the curse on man's behalf. Christ's death in some way availed to ransom men from the curse of the Law. God for Christ's sake then bestowed the blessing of His Spirit on all who put their trust in His Son, and sought to live in union with Him. The Law was a mere outward command, seeking to gain man's obedience by promises of reward and threats of punishment, Christ substituted loyalty to Himself for obedience to Law; and by thus introducing the personal element of love brought a powerful influence to bear upon His people, and inspired them with a new power to overcome the sin that beset them.
15-22. The principle of the Gospel—salvation by grace on condition of faith—antedates and underlies the Law.
Paraphrase. '(15) To take a familiar illustration: even a man's will, when ratified, no third party may annul or supplement. (16) Now God's gracious promise to Abraham and his descendants is realised only in and through Christ, in whom all believers are one. (17) The Law system, which arose long after the promise was made to Abraham, cannot change or nullify that promise; (18) and as salvation (the promised inheritance) must be either by obedience to the Law or by grace, the case of Abraham proves that it is by grace. (19) If, then, the Law could not save, what purpose did it serve? It had a temporary and educational purpose. It was designed to excite in men's hearts the consciousness of sin, which shows men their need of salvation, and so to point them to Christ; it was a system given not directly by God to the people, but indirectly through angels to Moses, who in his turn gave it to the nation. (20) Now when a mediator is employed, it means that there are two parties making a bargain; but in the case of Abraham there was but one party—God—making a promise out of His own free-will. (21) It is evident, then, that the Law cannot affect God's promise. The Law is subordinate to the Gospel, but it serves the ends of the Gospel—otherwise it would have been sufficient of itself, and the Gospel need never have been given. (22) And the way in which it serves the ends of the Gospel is by convicting men of sin, and forcing them to realise that they can only be saved by God's mercy through faith in Christ.'
15. Covenant] better as mg. 'testament,' or will. It is an 'inheritance' that is in question (Gal_3:18). According to Ramsay, this word 'will' as understood in the Galatian cities meant 'a provision to maintain the family with its religious obligations... The appointment of an heir was the adoption of a son, and was final and irrevocable in the Galatian territory.'
16. Thy seed, which is Christ] St. Paul here argues from the fact that the singular number is used—'seed,' not 'seeds'; but the verbal reasoning does not affect the argument. The word is collective. He regards Christ as including all who are united to Him by faith, who are the true seed of Abraham.
17. The law.. cannot disannul] the will of God is irrevocable (as is seen even in the case of the wills of men); the Law, therefore, cannot be contrary to it, but must be explained in some other way. Four hundred and thirty years] The giving of the Law is dated 430 years after Abraham's sojourn in Canaan. According to another passage (Act_7:6), the sojourn in Egypt alone was to be 400 years. But the length of the time which had elapsed is immaterial to the argument.
18. The inheritance] the blessings promised to Abraham, here understood in the sense of the spiritual blessing of salvation through Christ. Of the law.. of promise] two contrasted dispensations; salvation cannot be by both. Scripture is explicit in favour of the latter. It is better to depend upon a promise of God made unconditionally, and to read all subsequent happenings in the light of that promise, than to rest everything upon a contract made between God and man.
19. Inferior character of the Law shown (1) by its aim to make transgressions abound, cp. Rom_3:20; Rom_4:15; Rom_5:20; Rom_7:7 and (2) by its mediation through the angels and Moses: cp. Deu_33:2; Act_7:53. Ordained by angels] an addition of the rabbis to Scripture. St. Paul is justified in bringing it into his argument, as he is dealing with those who accepted the addition.
20. There is no place for a mediator where there is but one party to a transaction. Now, in issuing His promise to Abraham, God stands forth independent and alone. The point is the contrast between the conditions of the giving of the Law and of the promise. The former depends upon the fulfilling of a contract—and that man failed to do; the other is no contract, but the free gift of God.
21. It does not follow because the Law and the promise are of different rank that they are contrary.
22. Concluded all] RV 'shut up all things.' The OT. teaches what the Gospel teaches, that all need a gracious salvation. Both Law and Gospel contemplate the same ultimate end. 'The connexion of the argument is, that if the Law could give men spiritual life, and so enable them to fulfil its precepts, it would give them righteousness; but it does not pretend to do this; on the contrary, it shows the impotence of their nature by the contrast of their requirements with their performance' (Conybeare and Howson): cp. Rom_11:32.
23-29. The Law had a preparatory and disciplinary office, but it was now being fulfilled in the Gospel.
Paraphrase. '(23) Before Christ's coming it was the office of the Law to imprison men by its condemnation of sin until they should be set free by believing on Him. (24) Thus the Law was like a stem disciplinarian who made us willing and eager to receive the grace of God in the Gospel. (25) But now, in the freedom of faith and of sonship to God, we are exempt from the Law's bondage and discipline. (26, 27) Through faith we are united to Christ and are become God's children, and this is symbolised by our baptism. (28) In Him distinctions of nationality and social condition disappear; (29) in Him all believers alike become heirs of the gracious promise made to Abraham, the man of faith.'
23. Faith] i.e. the Gospel, whose principle is faith. Both Faith and Law are here personified. Kept] RV 'kept in ward,' imprisoned by the Law's verdict upon sin, awaiting the time of our deliverance through Christ.
24. Schoolmaster] cp. Rom_7:7. Tutor, or trainer, who by his chastisement for our faults made us see our need of grace and pardon. St. Paul may have been thinking of the Jewish custom of fathers daily conducting their sons to school.
25. The Law is the stern jailer or disciplinarian; Faith the liberator from bondage and chastisement. We] i.e. the Jews.
26. Ye.. all] whether Jews or Gentiles, are no longer bondsmen (cp. Rom_8:14.), but sons: see Gal_3:16. Gal_3:17-25 are a kind of parenthesis.
27. Baptized into Christ] entered by baptism into the relation of fellowship with Christ. The argument is: Baptism means union with Christ, and union with Christ means the liberty of sonship to God.
28. Such distinctions do not separate true believers. There is a unity in Christ which is deeper than differences of nationality, condition, or sex. The Greek is the Galatian. St. Paul shows his tact in using that name, as the more refined natives would probably like it.
29. Abraham's seed] his spiritual descendants. Not lineal descent from Abraham, but spiritual kinship to him through a faith like his, determines whether we are heirs of the promise made to him.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On vv1–29 O foolish Galatians, who did bewitch you, before whose…
O foolish Galatians, who did bewitch you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was openly set forth crucified? [The Galatians were of well-known intellectual capacity, and their foolishness in not detecting the fallacious reasoning of the Judaizers was hard to understand. Their conduct was so inexplicable that it seemed as if some bewitching fascination like our modern animal magnetism had been made use of, and even this explanation was hardly sufficient, for Christ had been so clearly and forcibly preached unto them, that he had been, as it were, crucified in their very presence, and before their very eyes; so that they had only to look to him to find an antidote to the Satanic poison which was destroying them-- Num_21:9 ]
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 6, 19, 21, 24, 25, 26 grace Grace (in salvation). vs. Gal 5:4; Rom 3:24.…
grace Grace (in salvation). vs. Gal 5:4; Rom 3:24. (See Scofield "Joh 1:17").
righteousness (See Scofield "Rom 10:10").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 1. The gift of the Spirit not by the…
II. CONTRASTS BETWEEN LAW AND GRACE
CHAPTER 3
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1. The gift of the Spirit not by the works of the law, but by hearing of faith. (Gal 3:1-5)
2. Righteousness not bestowed by the law, but by faith. (Gal 3:6-9)
3. The law curses; the curse born by Christ. (Gal 3:10-14)
4. The law cannot annul the covenant of promise, (Gal 3:15-18)
5. Wherefore serveth the law? (Gal 3:19-22)
6. Faith having come--no longer under the law, (Gal 3:23-25)
7. Sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus, (Gal 3:26-29)
What the law could not do and what grace has done for the believer in Christ is now unfolded. Paul addresses them as foolish, and asks, “Who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth?” Who was responsible for the awful error they were following so destructive to the whole truth of the gospel? It was the witchery of Satan; as he tells them later, “Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth? This persuasion cometh not of Him that calleth you” (Gal 5:7-8). As Christians, they possessed the Holy Spirit, as all true Christians receive Him and are sealed by the Spirit. They also enjoyed the ministry of the Spirit through the different gifts. And now he asks the question “Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” There is no promise in the law that if it is kept in obedience, that God would send His Spirit to the heart of man to be the indwelling guest and make the obedient keeper of the law the temple of the Holy Spirit. The law does not promise even the Spirit. In Eze 36:27 the promise is made, “I will put My Spirit within you”, but, as the context shows, this promise refers to the future when the remnant of Israel will turn to the Lord and the promised spiritual and national blessings are given to them through grace. The Galatians knew nothing of the law and were not under the law, for they were, by nature, idolaters. They had received the Spirit by hearing of faith. Before this great gift could ever be bestowed the Son of God had to die on the cross and be glorified (Joh 7:39). And all who receive the Lord Jesus Christ by faith, also receive the great gift of grace, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Sonship. They had received the Holy Spirit by simply believing. They were sealed by that Spirit and knew thereby that they were redeemed and the sons of God. If they possessed this seal of divine righteousness why should they add to it the works of the law? They acted, indeed, foolishly.
(Strange, unscriptural doctrines concerning the Holy Spirit are taught in different sects and parties. Some teach that the Christian should earnestly seek this gift, and the baptism with the Spirit. They claim that each individual must make a definite experience of receiving the baptism with the Spirit. This seeking includes, what they term, a full surrender, etc., and after enough seeking, surrender, giving up and praying, they claim to have received the power of the Holy Spirit. The argument here refutes this teaching. The Holy Spirit is given to every believer in Christ.)
The second argument is concerning righteousness. These false teachers made much of Abraham and the Jews honored him as the father of the nation. How did he obtain righteousness? It was not by the works of the law, for there was no law and no ordinances. “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness.” He believed and grace imputed this to him for righteousness.
This took place before his circumcision. “How was it, then, reckoned? When he was in circumcision, or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision. And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had, being yet uncircumcised; that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised; that righteousness might be imputed unto them also” (Rom 4:10-13). Thus, righteousness is apart from the law and circumcision has nothing whatever to do with salvation; neither has baptism or any other ordinance. These Judaizing teachers and perverters of the gospel probably told the Galatians about being linked with Abraham and the privilege of being the children of Abraham. Paul writes them that, as believers, they are without the works of the law and circumcision, the children of Abraham. “Know ye, therefore, that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham.” And the Scriptures, the Word of God, had anticipated this. The Word of God foresaw that, ultimately, in God’s gracious purpose, the Gentiles were to be justified by faith. The Word of God had, so to speak, preached the gospel unto Abraham, the very gospel Paul was heralding among the Gentiles. This gospel-message, preached by the Scriptures, is the announcement, “In thee shall all nations be blessed.” The logical conclusion, therefore, is “they which be of faith are blessed with believing Abraham.”
The law cannot give righteousness, but it gives man something and that is the curse. “For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse, for it is written, cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.” The law demands obedience, but it has no power to give a nature which delights in the law to keep it, nor can it bestow the power to fulfill its demands. Nothing can the law give to the sinner, but the curse. (See quotation from Deu 27:11-26. Six tribes were put on Mt. Gerizim to bless and six upon Mt. Ebal to curse. The six tribes on Gerizim were silent; they could utter no blessing, for the law cannot bless. But the tribes on Mt. Ebal uttered twelve times the word “Cursed.” This is what the law does.)
But grace had also stated the faith principle in the Old Testament. “But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, is manifest, for the just shall live by faith.” But redemption has come. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, for it is written “Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree.” If a believer then goes back to the law and puts himself under that law, tries to live by it, he puts himself under the curse. He slights the precious work of Christ, who took the curse upon Himself, so that it can no longer fall upon us. And the result of Christ having removed the curse of the law is that the blessing of Abraham might be extended to the Gentiles through Him, so that all believers, both Jews and Gentiles, should receive the promised Spirit.
In Gal 3:15-18, the priority of the grace-covenant is shown and that the law-covenant which came 430 years after cannot disannul the former covenant nor make the promise of none effect. If a covenant is made and confirmed, it cannot be rightly disannulled nor can anything be added to the same. The promises were made to Abraham; they were unconditional promises with no “if” attached to them, grace is the foundation of them. These promises were, afterward, confirmed to his seed. And that one seed (not seeds) is Christ. Isaac was a type of Him. And the original promise that all nations should be blessed in Abraham (Gen 12:1-3) had been confirmed after the promised seed, Isaac, had been upon the altar (Gen 22:18). Isaac, upon the altar and taken from the altar, was a type of Christ, His death and resurrection (Heb 11:19). The law-covenant can, therefore, not disannul the promise nor add to it. If the inheritance is of the law, it is no more of promise, but God gave it to Abraham by promise.
If, then, the law cannot give the Spirit of God, if it cannot give righteousness, if the law has no blessing for man, but pronounces a curse upon him, if it cannot, in any way, affect the original grace-covenant made with Abraham, confirmed in Isaac, then the logical question which follows is “Why did God give the law?”--”Wherefore, then, serveth the law?” (Gal 3:19). The answer is “It was added because of transgressions.” It was added not that sin might be curbed, or man might be saved by it, but that man might be constituted a transgressor and his hopeless and guilty condition fully demonstrated. It was introduced as a parenthetical thing, between the original promise and its fulfillment in Christ, in order that the moral condition of man might be manifested. (See also Rom 3:20; Rom 5:13; Rom 5:20; Rom 7:7-9.) Therefore, it was a mere addition “till the seed (Christ) should come, to whom the promise was made.” And the law was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator. “Now, a mediator is not of one; but God is one.” Angels in glory were present at Sinai (Psa 68:17); God did not reveal Himself in His glory and a mediator was needed, that is, Moses. The statement “a mediator is not of one” means that mediatorship necessitates two parties. So there were God and Israel, Moses between as the mediator. But in the promise, the covenant made with Abraham and his seed, God was the only One who spoke. Its fulfillment is not (as in the law-covenant) dependent upon a faithful God and Israel’s obedience, but on God’s faithfulness alone; all depended upon God Himself. The mediatorship of the Lord Jesus Christ is a different thing and not in view here at all. But the law is not against the promises of God. Man needed life; the law could not give that, neither can it give righteousness. All--Jews and Gentiles--were shut up under sin, so that the promise made to Abraham might be fulfilled to all believers through faith in Jesus Christ.
“Before faith came--that is, before Christ had died and faith, as the great principle for the fullest blessing, had been made known--we, the Jews, were kept under the law, shut up to the faith which should, afterwards, be revealed.” The Apostle writes of the condition of the Jews before the cross of Christ and before the faith in Him was fully revealed. Therefore, the law was their schoolmaster unto Christ, that they might be justified by faith. The law was, for the Jews, a pedagogue, just as a pedagogue in a Greek household had charge of the children during their minority. The authorized version, “the law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ,” is not correct. Upon this the statement is often made that the law is like a whip to bring us to accept Christ. But that is not the meaning. The law was the schoolmaster for the Jews unto Christ, until Christ came--the schoolmaster up to the time of Christ. Gal 3:25 makes this clear. “But after that faith is come”--faith being fully made known after the finished work of Christ and preached in the Gospel--”we are no longer under the schoolmaster.” A great change has come since the faith has been made known through the gospel. Not alone are believers no longer under the schoolmaster, but they are Sons of God. “For ye are all the sons of God by faith in Jesus Christ.” Life and righteousness, the life from above and the righteousness of God are needed for divine sonship. The law cannot give life and righteousness, but grace bestows both on the believer and makes him a son of God. Being baptized unto Christ, they had put on Christ and had assumed in profession the name of Christ; a new place given to all, “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” Inasmuch as they were Christ’s, heirs of the promise, they could not be under the law. “And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv1, 6, 10, 15, 19, 23 Salvation Is Not of Works, but by Faith.
Salvation Is Not of Works, but by Faith.
Paul appeals to the experience of the Galatians:
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v. 1. O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?
v. 2. This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the Law or by the hearing of faith?
v. 3. Are ye so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?
v. 4. Have ye suffered so many things in vain?—if it be yet in vain!
v. 5. He, therefore, that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the Law or by the hearing of faith?
The apostle here opens the doctrinal section of his epistle. But so great is his agitation over the threatened defection of the Galatians that his customary cool argumentation is here replaced with an excited chain of rhetorical questions: O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, to whom Jesus Christ, the Crucified One, was painted before your eyes? It was an evidence of senseless folly which the Galatians offered by their behavior in this instance, just as though somebody had bewitched or hypnotized them, as though they were being led astray as a result of magic. For the Cross of Jesus Christ and His atoning death, on the one hand, and the shallow legalism of the Judaistic teachers, on the other, are such great contrasts that no expression seems strong enough to describe their foolishness. The content of all Paul’s preaching had been Christ’s redemptive work; His expiatory death had been the theme of all teaching in their midst; their justification and salvation had been based upon His atonement alone: this was the picture which Paul had drawn and painted before their eyes as often as he appeared in their midst. Their present attitude, therefore, in giving ear to the seducers, seemed inexplicable unless one referred it to demoniac powers. It is always thus when people give ear to false doctrine, the folly often taking hold of them in such a way as to render them insensible to all appeals from Scriptures.
Paul here tries the one method which had any hopes of success, that of reminding them of their own experience at the time of their conversion: This alone I want to learn from you. Out of the works of the Law did you receive the Spirit or by the hearing of faith? To what agency did they ascribe the inward change which they experienced at the time of their conversion? The Spirit with all His gifts and blessings had come upon them; they had received forgiveness of sins, the assurance of the mercy of God, of their adoption as children of God. Surely not one of them would assert that this gift of the Spirit came to them as the result of their keeping the Law. The blessings of the Gospel had come to them through the preaching concerning faith. They had heard the message of redemption which wrought faith in their hearts, through the power of the Spirit; that they knew, and thus only one answer was possible.
The apostle now draws the conclusion which shows them the extent of their folly: So foolish are you? Having made a beginning by the Spirit, you now make the ending in the flesh? When they were regenerated by the power of the Spirit, they accepted the fact of their salvation through the work of Christ in simple faith, and the Spirit had free rein in their hearts, teaching them the various facts pertaining to their new state. But the promise of the splendid beginning did not continue; the end of their spiritual history threatened to be connected with things of the flesh only, with matters concerning circumcision, the various laws about purification, the observance of certain days and festivals, etc. To such matters of the Jewish ceremonial law they were attaching an importance which tended to make them eclipse the fundamental doctrines of Christianity in importance. Instead of going forward, they are losing ground in Christian knowledge so rapidly that there was danger of a speedy end, so far as their spiritual life was concerned.
Another question concerning their experience as Christians: So many things have you suffered in vain?—if it be really in vain! The Galatian Christians, like those of other provinces, had been subjected to various persecutions, most of which had been due to the jealousy and hatred of the Jews; many and various had been these experiences, and they had endured them all for the sake of the Gospel. But if they should now incline to the teaching of the Judaistic intruders, then all their sufferings would be vain and worse than useless. For their behavior would then proclaim their former resistance to have been stubborn and wanton caprice, without any foundation of Christian persuasion, without an object that would really make it worthwhile.
Paul finally refers to the situation as it obtained when he was writing this letter: He that now supplies you with the Spirit and works miraculous powers in you, does He do it by the works of the Law or by the preaching of faith? Paul had the confidence that the communication of the Spirit was still continuing in their midst, that they were being supplied bountifully from the riches of His treasures, that He was exhibiting miraculous powers among them: did any of them have the boldness to argue that these supernatural manifestations were the result of performing works of the Law and not rather such as followed the preaching of faith? If this experience has taught them nothing, then Paul would feel greatly disappointed.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 4, 6, 10, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 27 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
Paul reminds the believers in Galatia that God gave them God's Spirit when they believed the gospel by faith, not by their doing God's law.
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General Information:
Paul is rebuking the Galatians by asking rhetorical questions.
Who has put a spell on you?
Paul is using irony and a rhetorical question to say that the Galatians are acting as though someone has put a spell on them. He does not really believe that someone has put a spell on them. AT: "You behave as if someone has put a spell on you!" (See: Irony and Rhetorical Question)
put a spell on you
"done magic on you" or "done witchcraft on you"
It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly displayed as crucified
Paul speaks of his clear teaching of Jesus being crucified as if he had put on public display a picture of Jesus being crucified. And he speaks of the Galatians having heard his teaching as if they had seen the picture. AT: "You yourselves heard the clear teaching about Jesus being crucified" (See: Metaphor)
This is the only thing I want to learn from you
This continues the irony from verse 1. Paul knows the answers to the rhetorical questions he is about to ask. (See: Irony)
Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by believing what you heard?
Translate this rhetorical question as a question if you can, because the reader will be expecting a question here. Also, be sure that the reader knows that the answer to the question is "by believing what you heard," not "by doing what the law says." AT: "You received the Spirit, not by doing what the law says, but by believing what you heard." (See: Rhetorical Question)
Are you so foolish?
This rhetorical question shows that Paul is surprised and even angry that the Galatians are foolish. AT: "You are very foolish!" (See: Rhetorical Question)
by the flesh
The word "flesh" is a metonym for effort. AT: "by your own effort" or "by your own work" (See: Metonymy)
translationWords
fool
Jesus
Christ
crucify
receive
spirit
works
law
flesh
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 3:1–5:12 Paul now defends the truth of his message—that…
3:1–5:12 Paul now defends the truth of his message—that right relationship with God comes by faith in Christ alone—and proves the fallacy of the message that Gentiles must keep the law in order to be acceptable to God.
3:1-9 Paul compares the Galatians’ spiritual experience (3:1-5) with Abraham’s (3:6-9), showing that they were made right with God in the same way, through faith and not through the law (Eph 2:8-9).
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3:1 Oh, foolish Galatians! Their foolishness was both intellectual and spiritual (cp. Luke 24:25; see 1 Sam 25:1-38) as they turned away from Christ (Gal 1:6) and put faith in the law. • The Galatians were deceived by the teachers’ evil spell (cp. Gen 3:1-7)—not literal witchcraft, but enticing arguments. • For the meaning of Jesus Christ’s death was made as clear to you as if you had seen a picture of his death on the cross (literally Before your eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified): Paul’s proclamation of the Good News clearly portrayed Christ’s death and explained its significance (see Rom 10:14-17).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.