The Jewish Apostle's present conduct was an act of "dissimulation."

He was belying his known convictions, publicly expressed and acted

on for years. Paul's challenge assumes that his fellow-Apostle is

acting insincerely. And this assumption is explained by the account

furnished in the Acts of the Apostles respecting Peter's earlier

relations with Gentile Christianity (ch. x. 1-xi. 18; xv. 6-11). The

strength of Paul's case lay in the conscience of Peter himself. The

conflict at Antioch, so often appealed to in proof of the rooted

opposition between the two Apostles, in reality gives evidence to the

contrary effect. Here the maxim strictly applies, _Exceptio probat

regulam_.

Peter's lapse is quite intelligible. No man who figures in the New

Testament is better known to us. Honest, impulsive, ready of speech,

full of contagious enthusiasm, brave as a lion, firm as a rock

against open enemies, he possessed in a high degree the qualities

which mark out a leader of men. He was of the stuff of which Christ

makes His missionary heroes. But there was a strain of weakness in

Peter's nature. He was _pliable_. He was too much at the mercy of

surroundings. His denial of Jesus set this native fault in a light

terribly vivid and humiliating. It was an act of "dissimulation." In

his soul there was a fervent love to Christ. His zeal had brought

him to the place of danger. But for the moment he was alone. Public

opinion was all against him. A panic fear seized his brave heart. He

forgot himself; he denied the Master whom he loved more than life.

His courage had failed; never his faith. "Turned back again" from his

coward flight, Peter had indeed "strengthened his brethren" (Luke

xxii. 31, 32). He proved a tower of strength to the infant Church,

worthy of his cognomen of the _rock_. For more than twenty years he

had stood unshaken. No name was so honoured in the Church as Peter's.

For Paul to be compared to him was the highest possible distinction.

And yet, after all this lapse of time, and in the midst of so

glorious a career, the old, miserable weakness betrays him once more.

How admonitory is the lesson! The sore long since healed over, the

infirmity of nature out of which we seemed to have been completely

trained, may yet break out again, to our shame and undoing. Had Peter

for a moment forgotten the sorrowful warning of Gethsemane? Be it

ours to "watch and pray, lest we enter into temptation."

We have reason to believe that, if Peter rashly erred, he freely

acknowledged his error, and honoured his reprover. Both the Epistles

that bear his name, in different ways, testify to the high value

which their author set upon the teaching of "our beloved brother

Paul." Tradition places the two men at Rome side by side in their

last days; as though even in their death these glorious Apostles

should not be divided, despite the attempts of faction and mistrust

to separate them.

Few incidents exhibit more strongly than this the grievous

consequences that may ensue from a seemingly trivial moral error.

It looked a little thing that Peter should prefer to take his meals

away from Gentile company. And yet, as Paul tells him, his withdrawal

was a virtual rejection of the Gospel, and imperilled the most

vital interests of Christianity. By this act the Jewish Apostle

gave a handle to the adversaries of the Church which they have

used for generations and for ages afterwards. The dispute which it

occassioned could never be forgotten. In the second century it still

drew down on Paul the bitter reproaches of the Judaizing faction.

And in our own day the rationalistic critics have been able to turn

it to marvellous account. It supplies the corner-stone of their

"scientific reconstruction" of Biblical theology. The entire theory

of Baur is evolved out of Peter's blunder. Let it be granted that

Peter in yielding to the "certain from James" followed his genuine

convictions and the tradition of Jewish Christianity, and we see at

once how deep a gulf lay between Paul and the Primitive Church. All

that Paul argues in the subsequent discussion only tends, in this

case, to make the breach more visible. This false step of Peter is

the thing that chiefly lends a colour to the theory in question, with

all the far-reaching consequences touching the origin and import of

Christianity, which it involves. So long "the evil that men do lives

after them"!

Paul's rebuke of his brother Apostle extends to the conclusion of the

chapter. Some interpreters cut it short at the end of ver. 14; others

at ver. 16; others again at ver. 18. But the address is consecutive

and germane to the occasion throughout. Paul does not, to be sure,

give a verbatim report, but the substance of what he said, and in a

form suited to his readers. The narrative is an admirable prelude

to the argument of chap. iii. It forms the transition from the

historical to the polemical part of the Epistle, from the Apostle's

personal to his doctrinal apology. The condensed form of the speech

makes its interpretation difficult and much contested. We shall in

the remainder of this Chapter trace the general course of Paul's

reproof, proposing in the following Chapter to deal more fully with

its doctrinal contents.

I. In the first place, _Paul taxes the Jewish Apostle with

insincerity and unfaithfulness toward the gospel_. "I saw," he says,

"that they were not holding a straight course, according to the truth

of the gospel."

It is a _moral_, not a doctrinal aberration, that Paul lays at the

door of Cephas and Barnabas. They did not hold a different creed

from himself; they were disloyal to the common creed. They swerved

from the path of rectitude in which they had walked hitherto. They

had regard no longer to "the truth of the gospel"--the supreme

consideration of the servant of Christ--but to the favour of men, to

the public opinion of Jerusalem. "What will be said of us _there_?"

they whispered to each other, "if these messengers of James report

that we are discarding the sacred customs, and making no difference

between Jew and Gentile? We shall alienate our Judean brethren. We

shall bring a scandal on the Christian cause in the eyes of Judaism."

This withdrawal of the Jews from the common fellowship at Antioch

was a public matter. It was an injury to the whole Gentile-Christian

community. If the reproof was to be salutary, it must be equally

public and explicit. The offence was notorious. Every one deplored

it, except those who shared it, or profited by it. Cephas "stood

condemned." And yet his influence and the reverence felt toward

him were so great, that no one dared to put this condemnation into

words. His sanction was of itself enough to give to this sudden

recrudescence of Jewish bigotry the force of authoritative usage.

"The truth of the gospel" was again in jeopardy. Once more Paul's

intervention foiled the attempts of the Judaizers and saved Gentile

liberties. And this time he stood quite alone. Even the faithful

Barnabas deserted him. But what mattered that, if Christ and truth

were on his side? _Amicus Cephas, amicus Barnabas; sed magis amicus

Veritas._ Solitary amid the circle of opposing or dissembling Jews,

Paul "withstood" the chief of the Apostles of Jesus "to the face." He

rebuked him "before them all."

II. Peter's conduct is reproved by Paul _in the light of their common

knowledge of salvation in Christ_.

Paul is not content with pointing out the inconsistency of his

brother Apostle. He must probe the matter to the bottom. He will

bring Peter's delinquency to the touchstone of the Gospel, in its

fundamental principles. So he passes in ver. 15 from the outward to

the inward, from the circumstances of Peter's conduct to the inner

world of spiritual consciousness, in which his offence finds its

deeper condemnation. "You and I," he goes on to say, "not Gentile

sinners, but men of Jewish birth--yet for all that, knowing that

there is no justification for man in works of law, only[53] through

faith in Christ--we too put our faith in Christ, in order to be

justified by faith in Him, not by works of law; for as Scripture

taught us, in that way no flesh will be justified."

[53] ἐὰν μὴ has the same partially exceptive force as εἰ μὴ in

ch. i. 7, 19. Comp. Rom. xiv. 14; also Luke iv. 26, 27.

Paul makes no doubt that the Jewish Apostle's experience of salvation

corresponded with his own. Doubtless, in their previous intercourse,

and especially when he first "made acquaintance with Cephas" (ch. i.

18) in Jerusalem, the hearts of the two men had been opened to each

other; and they had found that, although brought to the knowledge of

the truth in different ways, yet in the essence of the matter--in

respect of the personal conviction of sin, in the yielding up of

self-righteousness and native pride, in the abandonment of every prop

and trust but Jesus Christ--their history had run the same course,

and face answered to face. Yes, Paul knew that he had an ally in the

heart of his friend. He was not fighting as one that beateth the

air, not making a rhetorical flourish, or a parade of some favourite

doctrine of his own; he appealed from Peter dissembling to Peter

faithful and consistent. Peter's dissimulation was a return to

the Judaic ground of legal righteousness. By refusing to eat with

uncircumcised men, he affirmed implicitly that, though believers in

Christ, they were still to him "common and unclean," that the Mosaic

rites imparted a higher sanctity than the righteousness of faith. Now

the principles of evangelical and legal righteousness, of salvation

by faith and by law-works, are diametrically opposed. It is logically

impossible to maintain both. Peter had long ago accepted the former

doctrine. He had sought salvation, just like any Gentile sinner, on

the common ground of human guilt, and with a faith that renounced

every consideration of Jewish privilege and legal performance.

By what right can any Hebrew believer in Christ, after this, set

himself above his Gentile brother, or presume to be by virtue of his

circumcision and ritual law-keeping a holier man? Such we take to be

the import of Paul's challenge in vv. 15, 16.

III. Paul is met at this point by the stock objection to the doctrine

of salvation by faith--an objection brought forward in the dispute

at Antioch not, we should imagine, by Peter himself, but by the

Judaistic advocates. _To renounce legal righteousness was in effect_,

they urged, _to promote sin--nay, to make Christ Himself a minister

of sin_ (ver. 17).

Paul retorts the charge on those who make it. _They promote sin_,

he declares, _who set up legal righteousness again_ (ver. 18). The

objection is stated and met in the form of question and answer, as

in Rom. iii. 5. We have in this sharp thrust and parry an example

of the sort of fence which Paul must often have carried on in his

discussions with Jewish opponents on these questions.

We must not overlook the close verbal connection of these verses with

the two last. The phrase "seeking to be justified in Christ" carries

us back to the time when the two Apostles, self-condemned sinners,

severally sought and found a new ground of righteousness in Him. Now

when Peter and Paul did this, they were "themselves also found[54]

to be sinners,"--an experience how abasing to their Jewish pride!

They made the great discovery that stripped them of legal merit, and

brought them down in their own esteem to the level of common sinners.

Peter's confession may stand for both, when he said, abashed by the

glory of Christ, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." Now

this style of penitence, this profound self-abasement in the presence

of Jesus Christ, revolted the Jewish moralist. To Pharisaic sentiment

it was contemptible. If justification by faith requires this, if

it brings the Jew to so abject a posture and makes no difference

between lawless and law-keeping, between pious children of Abraham

and heathen outcasts--if this be the doctrine of Christ, all moral

distinctions are confounded, and Christ is "a minister of sin!" This

teaching robs the Jew of the righteousness he before possessed; it

takes from him the benefit and honour that God bestowed upon his

race! So, we doubt not, many a Jew was heard angrily exclaiming

against the Pauline doctrine, both at Antioch and elsewhere. This

conclusion was, in the view of the Legalist, a _reductio ad absurdum_

of Paulinism.

[54] For this emphatic _found_, describing a process of moral

conviction and inward discovery, comp. Rom. vii. 10, 18, 21; the

whole passage strikingly illustrates the reminiscence of our text.

The Apostle repels this inference with the indignant μὴ γένοιτο, _Far

be it!_ His reply is indicated by the very form in which he puts the

question: "If we were _found_ sinners" (Christ did not _make_ us

such). "The complaint was this," as Calvin finely says: "Has Christ

therefore come to take away from us the righteousness of the Law,

to make us polluted who were holy? Nay, Paul says;--he repels the

blasphemy with detestation. For Christ did not introduce sin, but

revealed it. He did not rob them of righteousness, but of the false

show thereof."[55] The reproach of the Judaizers was in reality the

same that is urged against evangelical doctrine still--that it is

_immoral_, placing the virtuous and vicious in the common category of

"sinners."

[55] _Commentarii_, _in loc._

Ver. 18 throws back the charge of promoting sin upon the Legalist.

It is the counterpart, not of ver. 19, but rather of ver. 17. The

"transgressor" is the sinner in a heightened and more specific

sense, one who breaks known and admitted law.[56] This word bears,

in Paul's vocabulary, a precise and strongly marked signification

which is not satisfied by the common interpretation. It is not that

Peter in setting up the Law which he had in principle overthrown,

_puts himself in the wrong_; nor that Peter in re-establishing

the Law, _contradicts the purpose of the Law itself_ (Chrysostom,

Lightfoot, Beet). This is to anticipate the next verse. In Paul's

view and according to the experience common to Peter with himself,

law and transgression are concomitant, every man "under law" is _ipso

facto_ a transgressor. He who sets up the first, constitutes himself

the second. And this is what Peter is now doing; although Paul

courteously veils the fact by putting it hypothetically, in the first

person.[57] After dissolving, so far as in him lay, the validity of

legal righteousness and breaking down the edifice of justification by

works, Peter is now building it up again, and thereby constructing a

prison-house for himself. _Returning to legal allegiance, he returns

to legal condemnation_;[58] with his own hands he puts on his neck

the burden of the Law's curse, which through faith in Christ he had

cast off. By this act of timid conformity he seeks to commend himself

to Jewish opinion; but it only serves, in the light of the Gospel,

to "prove him a transgressor," to "commend"[59] him in that unhappy

character. This is Paul's retort to the imputation of the Judaist. It

carries the war into the enemies' camp. "No," says Paul, "_Christ_ is

no patron of sin, in bidding men renounce legal righteousness. But

those promote sin--in themselves first of all--who after knowing His

righteousness, turn back again to legalism."

[56] See Grimm's _Lexicon_, or Trench's _N. T. Synonyms_, on this

word. Comp. ch. iii. 19; Rom. ii. 23-27; iv. 15; v. 14.

[57] The _I_ of this sentence is quite indefinite. On the other

hand ver. 19, with its emphatic ἐγώ γάρ, brings us into a new

vein of thought.

[58] Comp. ch. iii. 10-12, 19; Rom. iii. 20; iv. 15.

[59] This verb has, as Schott suggests, a tinge of irony.

IV. The conviction of Peter is now complete. From the sad bondage to

which the Jewish Apostle, by his compliance with the Judaizers, was

preparing to submit himself, _the Apostle turns to his own joyous

sense of deliverance_ (vv. 19-21). Those who resort to legalism, he

has said, ensure their own condemnation. It is, on the other hand,

by an entire surrender to Christ, by realizing the import of His

death, that we learn to "live unto God." So Paul had proved it. At

this moment he is conscious of a union with the crucified and living

Saviour, which lifts him above the curse of the law, above the

power of sin. To revert to the Judaistic state, to dream any more

of earning righteousness by legal conformity, is a thing for him

inconceivable. It would be to make void the cross of Christ!

And it was the Law itself that first impelled Paul along this

path. "Through law" he "died to law." The Law drove him from itself

to seek salvation in Jesus Christ. Its accusations allowed him no

shelter, left him no secure spot on which to build the edifice of

his self-righteousness. It said to him unceasingly, Thou art a

transgressor.[60] He who seeks justification by its means contradicts

the Law, while he frustrates the grace of God.

[60] Rom. vii. 7-viii. 1.

CHAPTER X.

_THE PRINCIPLES AT STAKE._

"For I through law died unto law, that I might live unto God. I

have been crucified with Christ; and _it is_ no longer I _that_

live, but Christ liveth in me: and that _life_ which I now live

in the flesh I live in faith, _the faith_ which is in the Son

of God, who loved me, and gave Himself up for me. I do not make

void the grace of God: for if righteousness is through law, then

Christ died for nought"--GAL. ii. 19-21.

Paul's personal apology is ended. He has proved his Apostolic

independence, and made good his declaration, "My Gospel is not

according to man." If he owed his commission to any man, it was to

Peter; so his traducers persistently alleged. He has shown that,

first _without_ Peter, then _in equality with_ Peter, and finally

_in spite of_ Peter, he had received and maintained it. Similarly in

regard to James and the Jerusalem Church. Without their mediation

Paul commenced his work; when that work was challenged, they could

only approve it; and when afterwards men professing to act in their

name disturbed his work, the Apostle had repelled them. He acted all

along under the consciousness of a trust in the gospel committed to

him directly by Jesus Christ, and an authority in its administration

second to none upon earth. And events had justified this confidence.

Paul is compelled to say all this about himself. The vindication of

his ministry is forced from him by the calumnies of false brethren.

From the time of the conference at Jerusalem, and still more since he

withstood Peter at Antioch, he had been a mark for the hatred of the

Judaizing faction. He was the chief obstacle to their success. Twice

he had foiled them, when they counted upon victory. They had now set

on foot a systematic agitation against him, with its head-quarters

at Jerusalem, carried on under some pretext of sanction from the

authorities of the Church there. At Corinth and in Galatia the

legalist emissaries had appeared simultaneously; they pursued in the

main the same policy, adapting it to the character and disposition of

the two Churches, and appealing with no little success to the Jewish

predilections common even amongst Gentile believers in Christ.

In this controversy Paul and the gospel he preached were bound

together. "I am set," he says, "for the defence of the gospel" (Ph.

i. 16). He was the champion of the cross, the impersonation of the

principle of salvation by faith. It is "the gospel of Christ," the

"truth of the gospel," he reiterates, that is at stake. If he wards

off blows falling upon him, it is because they are aimed through

him at the truth for which he lives--nay, at Christ who lives in

him. In his self-assertion there is no note of pride or personal

anxiety. Never was there a man more completely lost in the greatness

of a great cause, nor who felt himself in comparison with it more

worthless. But that cause has lifted Paul with it to imperishable

glory. Of all names named on earth, none stands nearer than his to

that which is "above every name."

While Paul in ch. i. and ii. is busy with his own vindication, he

is meantime behind the personal defence preparing the doctrinal

argument. His address to Peter is an incisive outline of the gospel

of grace. The three closing verses--the Χριστῷ συνεσταύρωμαιᾔ in

particular--are the heart of Paul's theology--_summa ac medulla

Christianismi_ (Bengel). Such a testimony was the Apostle's best

defence before his audience at Antioch; it was the surest means of

touching the heart of Peter and convincing him of his error. And its

recital was admirably calculated to enlighten the Galatians as to the

true bearing of this dispute which had been so much misrepresented.

From ver. 15 onwards, Paul has been all the while addressing, under

the person of Peter, the conscience of his readers,[61] and paving

the way for the assault that he makes upon them with so much vigour

in the first verses of ch. iii. Read in the light of the foregoing

narrative, this passage is a compendium of the Pauline Gospel,

invested with the peculiar interest that belongs to a confession of

personal faith, made at a signal crisis in the author's life. Let us

examine this momentous declaration.

[61] Hofmann is so far right when he makes the Apostle turn to

the Galatians in ch. ii. 15, and draws at this point the line

between the historical and doctrinal sections of the Epistle.

I. At the foundation of Paul's theology lies his conception of _the

grace of God_.

GRACE is the Apostle's watchword. The word occurs twice as often in

his Epistles as it does in the rest of the New Testament. Outside

the Pauline Luke and Hebrews, and 1 Peter with its large infusion of

Paulinism, it is exceedingly rare.[62] In this word the character,

spirit, and aim of the revelation of Christ, as Paul understood

it, are summed up. "The grace of God" is the touchstone to which

Peter's dissimulation is finally brought. _Christ_ is the embodiment

of Divine grace--above all, in His death. So that it is one and the

same thing to "bring to nought the grace of God," and "the death of

Christ." Hence God's grace is called "the grace of Christ,"--"of our

Lord Jesus Christ." From Romans to Titus and Philemon, "grace reigns"

in every Epistle. No one can counterfeit this mark of Paul, or speak

of grace in his style and accent.

[62] What is said of χάρις, applies also to its derivatives,

χαρίζομαι, κ.τ.λ.

God's grace is not His love alone; it is _redeeming love_--love

poured out upon the undeserving, love coming to seek and save

the lost, "bringing salvation to all men" (Rom. v. 1-8; Tit. ii.

11). Grace decreed redemption, made the sacrifice, proclaims the

reconciliation, provides and bestows the new sonship of the Spirit,

and schools its children into all the habits of godliness and virtue

that beseem their regenerate life, which it brings finally to its

consummation in the life eternal.[63]

[63] Eph. i. 5-9; 2 Tim. i. 9; Rom. iii. 24; Heb. ii. 9; 2 Cor.

v. 20-vi. 1; Gal. iv. 5; Tit. iii. 5-7; ii. 11-14; Rom. v. 21.

Grace in God is therefore the antithesis of _sin in man_,

counterworking and finally triumphing over it. Grace belongs to

the last Adam as eminently as sin to the first. The later thoughts

of the Apostle on this theme are expressed in Tit. iii. 4-7, a

passage singularly rich in its description of the working of Divine

grace on human nature. "We were senseless," he says, "disobedient,

wandering in error, in bondage to lusts and pleasures of many kinds,

living in envy and malice, hateful, hating each other. But when the

kindness and love to man of our Saviour God shone forth,"--then

all was changed: "not by works wrought in our own righteousness,

but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of

regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, that, justified by His

grace, we might be made heirs in hope of life eternal." The vision of

the grace of God drives stubbornness, lust, and hatred from the soul.

It brings about, for man and for society, the _palingenesia_, the new

birth of Creation, rolling back the tide of evil and restoring the

golden age of peace and innocence; and crowns the joy of a renovated

earth with the glories of a recovered heaven.

Being the antagonist of sin, grace comes of necessity into contrast

with _the law_. Law is intrinsically the opposer of sin; sin is

"lawlessness," with Paul as much as with John.[64] But law was

powerless to cope with sin: it was "weak through the flesh." Instead

of crushing sin, the interposition of law served to inflame and

stimulate it, to bring into play its latent energy, reducing the man

most loyally disposed to moral despair. "By the law therefore is the

knowledge of sin; it worketh out wrath." Inevitably, it makes men

transgressors; it brings upon them an inward condemnation, a crushing

sense of the Divine anger and hostility.[65] That is all that law

can do by itself. "Holy and just and good," notwithstanding, to our

perverse nature it becomes _death_ (Rom. vii. 13; 1 Cor. xv. 56).

It is actually "the strength of sin," lending itself to extend and

confirm its power. We find in it a "law of sin and death." So that

to be "under law" and "under grace" are two opposite and mutually

exclusive states. In the latter condition only is sin "no longer our

lord" (Rom. vi. 14). Peter and the Jews of Antioch therefore, in

building up the legal principle again, were in truth "abolishing the

grace of God." If the Galatians follow their example, Paul warns them

that they will "fall from grace." Accepting circumcision, they become

"debtors to perform the whole law,"--and that means transgression and

the curse (ch. v. 1-4; iii. 10-12; ii. 16-18).

[64] Rom. vii. 12, 14; 2 Thess. ii. 4-8; comp. 1 John iii. 4.

[65] Rom. iii. 20; iv. 15; v. 20; vii. 5, 24; Gal. ii. 16; iii.

10, 11, 19.

While sin is the reply which man's nature makes to the demands of

law, _faith_ is the response elicited by grace; it is the door of

the heart opening to grace.[66] Grace and Faith go hand in hand, as

Law and Transgression. Limiting the domain of faith, Peter virtually

denied the sovereignty of grace. He belied his confession made at

the Council of Jerusalem: "By _the grace_ of the Lord Jesus we

_trust_ to be saved, even as the Gentiles" (Acts xv. 11). With Law

are joined such terms as Works, Debt, Reward, Glorying, proper to

a "righteousness of one's own."[67] With Grace we associate Gift,

Promise, Predestination, Call, Election, Adoption, Inheritance,

belonging to the dialect of "the righteousness which is of God by

faith."[68] Grace operates in the region of "the Spirit," making for

freedom; but law, however spiritual in origin, has come to seek its

accomplishment in the sphere of the flesh, where it "gendereth to

bondage" (ch. iv. 23-v. 5; 2 Cor. iii. 6, 17).

[66] Rom. iii. 24, 25; Eph. ii. 8; etc.

[67] Rom. iv. 1-4; xi. 6; Gal. ii. 16; iii. 12.

[68] Rom. iv. 16; viii. 28-39; xi. 5; Eph. i. 4-6; Tit. iii. 7;

Acts xx. 32; Gal. iii. 18: δι' ἐπαγγελίας κεχάρισται ὁ Θεός.

Grace appears, however, in another class of passages in Paul's

Epistles, of which ch. i. 15, ii. 9 are examples. To the Divine

grace Paul ascribes _his personal salvation and Apostolic call_. The

revelation which made him a Christian and an Apostle, was above all

things a manifestation of grace. Wearing this aspect, "the glory of

God" appeared to him "in the face of Jesus Christ." The splendour

that blinded and overwhelmed Saul on his way to Damascus, was "the

glory of His grace." The voice of Jesus that fell on the persecutor's

ear spoke in the accents of grace. No scourge of the Law, no thunders

of Sinai, could have smitten down the proud Pharisee, and beaten

or scorched out of him his strong self-will, like the complaint of

Jesus. All the circumstances tended to stamp upon his soul, fused

into penitence in that hour, the ineffaceable impression of "the

grace of God and of our Saviour Jesus Christ." Such confessions

as those of 1 Cor. xv. 8-10, and Eph. ii. 7, iii. 7, 8, show how

constantly this remembrance was present with the Apostle Paul and

suffused his views of revelation, giving to his ministry its peculiar

tenderness of humility and ardour of gratitude. This sentiment of

boundless obligation to the grace of God, with its pervasive effect

upon the Pauline doctrine, is strikingly expressed in the doxology of

1 Tim. i. 11-17,--words which it is almost a sacrilege to put into

the mouth of a _falsarius_: "According to the gospel of the glory of

the blessed God, wherewith _I_ was intrusted, ... who was aforetime

a blasphemer and persecutor.... But the grace of our Lord abounded

even more exceedingly. Faithful is the saying, worthy to be received

of all, 'Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners'--of whom

_I_ am chief.... In me as chief Christ Jesus showed forth all His

long-suffering.... Now to the King of the ages be honour and glory

for ever. Amen." Who, reading the Apostle's story, does not echo that

_Amen_? No wonder that Paul became the Apostle of _grace_; even as

John, "the disciple whom Jesus loved," must perforce be the Apostle

of _love_. First to him was God's grace revealed in its largest

affluence, that through him it might be known to all men and to all

ages.

II. Side by side with the grace of God, we find in ver. 21 _the death

of Christ_. He sets aside the former, the Apostle argues, who by

admitting legal righteousness nullifies the latter.

While grace embodies Paul's fundamental conception of the Divine

character, the death of Christ is the fundamental fact in which that

character manifests itself. So the cross becomes the centre of Paul's

theology. But it was, in the first place, the basis of his personal

life. "Faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for

me," is the foundation of "the life he now lives in the flesh."

Here lay the stumbling-block of Judaism. Theocratic pride, Pharisaic

tradition, could not, as we say, _get over_ it. A crucified Messiah!

How revolting the bare idea. But when, as in Paul's case, Judaistic

pride did surmount this huge scandal and in spite of the offence of

the cross arrive at faith in Jesus, it was at the cost of a severe

fall. It was broken in pieces,--destroyed once and for ever. With

the elder Apostles the change had been more gradual; they were never

steeped in Judaism as Saul was. For him to accept the faith of

Jesus was a revolution the most complete and drastic possible. As a

Judaist, the preaching of the cross was an outrage on his faith and

his Messianic hopes; now it was that which most of all subdued and

entranced him. Its power was extreme, whether to attract or repel.

The more he had loathed and mocked at it before, the more he is bound

henceforth to exalt the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. A proof of

the Divine anger against the Nazarene he had once deemed it; now he

sees in it the token of God's grace in Him to the whole world.

For Paul therefore the death of Christ imported the end of Judaism.

"I died to law," he writes,--"I am crucified with Christ." Once

understanding what this death meant, and realising his own relation

to it, on every account it was impossible to go back to Legalism. The

cross barred all return. The law that put Him, the sinless One, to

death, could give no life to sinful men. The Judaism that pronounced

His doom, doomed itself. Who would make peace with it over the

Saviour's blood? From the moment that Paul knew the truth about the

death of Jesus, he had done with Judaism for ever. Henceforth he knew

nothing--cherished no belief or sentiment, acknowledged no maxim,

no tradition, which did not conform itself to His death. The world

to which he had belonged _died_, self-slain, when it slew Him. From

Christ's grave a new world was rising, for which alone Paul lived.

But why should the grace of God take expression in a fact so

appalling as Christ's death? What has _death_ to do with grace?

It is the legal penalty of sin. The conjunction of sin and death

pervades the teaching of Scripture, and is a principle fixed in the

conscience of mankind. Death, as man knows it, is the inevitable

consequence and the universal witness of his transgression. He

"carries about in his mortality the testimony that God is angry with

the wicked every day" (Augustine). The death of Jesus Christ cannot

be taken out of this category. He died a sinner's death. He bore the

penalty of guilt. The prophetic antecedents of Calvary, the train of

circumstances connected with it, His own explanations in chief--are

all in keeping with this purpose. With amazement we behold the

Sinless "made sin," the Just dying for the unjust. He was "born of

a woman, born under law": under law He lived--and _died_. Grace is

no law-breaker. God must above all things be "just Himself," if He

is to justify others (Rom. iii. 26). The death of Jesus declares

it. That sublime sacrifice is, as one might say, the _resultant_

of grace and law. Grace "gives Him up for us all;" it meets the

law's claims in Him, even to the extreme penalty, that from us the

penalty may be lifted off. He puts Himself under law, in order "to

_buy out_ those under law" (ch. iv. 4, 5). In virtue of the death of

Christ, therefore, men are dealt with on an extra-legal footing, on

terms of grace; not because law is ignored or has broken down; but

because it is satisfied beforehand. God has "set forth Christ Jesus

a propitiation"; and in view of that accomplished fact, He proceeds

"in the present time" to "justify him who is of faith in Jesus"

(Rom. iii. 22-26). Legalism is at an end, for the Law has spent

itself on our Redeemer. For those that are in Him "there is now no

condemnation." This is to anticipate the fuller teaching of ch. iii.;

but the vicarious sacrifice is already implied when Paul says, "He

gave Himself up for me--gave Himself for our sins" (ch. i. 4).

The _resurrection of Christ_ is, in Paul's thought, the other side of

His death. They constitute one event, the obverse and reverse of the

same reality. For Paul, as for the first Apostles, the resurrection

of Jesus gave to His death an aspect wholly different from that it

previously wore. But the transformation wrought in their minds during

the "forty days," in his case came about in a single moment, and

began from a different starting-point. Instead of being the merited

punishment of a blasphemer and false Messiah, the death of Calvary

became the glorious self-sacrifice of the Son of God. The dying

and rising of Jesus were blended in the Apostle's mind; he always

sees the one in the light of the other. The faith that saves, as he

formulates it, is at once a faith that Christ died for our sins, and

that God raised Him from the dead on the third day.[69] Whichever

of the two one may first apprehend, it brings the other along with

it. The resurrection is not an express topic of this Epistle.

Nevertheless it meets us in its first sentence, where we discern

that Paul's knowledge of the gospel and his call to proclaim it,

rested upon this fact. In the passage before us the resurrection is

manifestly assumed. If the Apostle is "crucified with Christ,"--and

yet "Christ _lives_ in him," it is not simply the teaching, or the

mission of Jesus that lives over again in Paul; the _life_ of the

risen Saviour has itself entered into his soul.

[69] 1 Cor. xv. 3, 4, 11; Rom. iv. 24, 25; x. 9; 1 Thess. iv. 14.

III. This brings us to the thought of _the union of the believer with

Christ in death and life_, which is expressed in terms of peculiar

emphasis and distinctness in ver. 20. "With Christ I have been

crucified; and _I_ live no longer; it is Christ that lives in me. My

earthly life is governed by faith in Him who loved me and died for

me." Christ and Paul are one. When Christ died, Paul's former self

died with Him. Now it is the Spirit of Christ in heaven that lives

within Paul's body here on earth.

This union is first of all _a communion with the dying Saviour_.

Paul does not think of the sacrifice of Calvary as something merely

accomplished _for_ him, outside himself, by a legal arrangement

in which one person takes the place of another and, as it were,

_personates_ him. The nexus between Christ and Paul is deeper than

this. Christ is the centre and soul of the race, holding towards it

a spiritual primacy of which Adam's natural headship was a type,

mediating between men and God in all the relations which mankind

holds to God.[70] The death of Jesus was more than substitutionary;

it was representative. He had every right to act for us. He was the

"One" who alone could "die for all;" in Him "all died" (2 Cor. v. 14,

15). He carried us with Him to the cross; His death was in effect the

death of those who sins He bore. There was no legal fiction here; no

federal compact extemporised for the occasion. "The second Man from

heaven," if second in order of time, was first and fundamental in the

spiritual order, the organic Head of mankind, "the root," as well as

"the offspring" of humanity.[71] The judgement that fell upon the

race was a summons to Him who held in His hands its interests and

destinies. Paul's faith apprehends and endorses what Christ has done

on his behalf,--"who loved me," he cries, "and gave Himself up _for

me_." When the Apostle says, "I _have been_ crucified with Christ,"

he goes back in thought to the scene of Calvary; there, potentially,

all that was done of which he now realises in himself the issue. His

present salvation is, so to speak, a _rehearsal_ of the Saviour's

death, a "likeness" (Rom. vi. 5) of the supreme act of atonement,

which took place once for all when Christ died for our sins.

[70] Rom. v. 14; 1 Cor. xv. 22, 45-48; 1 Tim. ii. 5.

[71] 1 Cor. xv. 45-49; comp. Col. i. 15-17; John i. 4, 9, 15, 16.

_Faith_ is the link between the past, objective sacrifice, and the

present, subjective apprehension of it, by which its virtue becomes

our own. Without such faith, Christ would have "died in vain." His

death must then have been a great sacrifice thrown away. Wilful

unbelief repudiates what the Redeemer has done, provisionally, on

our behalf. This repudiation, as individuals, we are perfectly free

to make. "The objective reconciliation effected in Christ's death

can after all benefit actually, in their own personal consciousness,

only those who know and acknowledge it, and feel themselves in their

solidarity with Christ to be so much one with Him as to be able

to appropriate inwardly His death and celestial life, and to live

over again His life and death; those only, in a word, who truly

_believe_ in Christ. Thus the idea of substitution in Paul receives

its complement and realisation in the mysticism of his conception

of faith. While Christ objectively represents the whole race, that

relation becomes a subjective reality only in the case of those

who connect themselves with Him in faith in such a way as to fuse

together with Him into _one_ spirit and _one_ body, as to find in

Him their Head, their soul, their life and self, and He in them His

body, His members and His temple. Thereby the idea of 'one for all'

receives the stricter meaning of 'all in and with one.'"[72]

[72] Pfleiderer, _Hibbert Lectures_, pp. 65, 6. Dr. Pfleiderer's

delicate and sympathetic interpretation of Paul's teaching (in

these _Lectures_, and still more in his _Paulinism_) has made

all students of the Apostle his debtors, however much they may

quarrel with his historical criticism.

Partaking the death of Christ, Paul has come to share in _His risen

life_. On the cross he owned his Saviour--owned His wounds, His

shame, His agony of death, and felt himself therein shamed, wounded,

slain to death. Thus joined to his Redeemer, as by the nails that

fastened Him to the tree, Paul is carried with Him down into the

grave--into the grave, and out again! Christ is risen from the dead:

so therefore is Paul. He "died to sin once," and now "liveth to God;

death lords it over Him no more:" this Paul reckons equally true for

himself (Rom. vi. 3-11). The _Ego_, the "old man" that Paul once was,

lies buried in the grave of Jesus.

Jesus Christ alone, "the Lord of the Spirit" has risen from that

sepulchre,--has risen in the spirit of Paul. "If any one should

come to Paul's doors and ask, Who lives here? he would answer, Not

Saul of Tarsus, but Jesus Christ lives in this body of mine." In

this appropriation of the death and rising of the Lord Jesus, this

interpenetration of the spirit of Paul and that of Christ, there are

three stages corresponding to the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of

Eastertide. "Christ died for our sins; He was buried; He rose again

the third day:" so, by consequence, "I am crucified with Christ; no

longer do I live; Christ liveth in me."

This mystic union of the soul and its Saviour bears fruit in

the activities of outward life. Faith is no mere abstract and

contemplative affection; but a working energy, dominating and

directing all our human faculties. It makes even the flesh its

instrument, which defied the law of God, and betrayed the man to

the bondage of sin and death. There is a note of triumph in the

words,--"the life I now live _in the flesh_, I live in faith!" The

impossible has been accomplished. "The body of death" is possessed by

the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (Rom. vi. 12; vii. 23-viii. 1).

The flesh--the despair of the law--has become the sanctified vessel

of grace.

Paul's entire theology of Redemption is contained in this mystery of

union with Christ. The office of _the Holy Spirit_, whose communion

holds together the glorified Lord and His members upon earth, is

implied in the teaching of ver. 20. This is manifest, when in ch.

iii. 2-5 we find the believer's union with Christ described as

"receiving the Spirit, beginning in the Spirit;" and when a little

later "the promise of the Spirit" embraces the essential blessings

of the new life.[73] The doctrine of _the Church_ is also here. For

those in whom Christ dwells have therein a common life, which knows

no "Jew and Greek; all are one man" in Him.[74] _Justification_ and

_sanctification_ alike are here; the former being the realisation

of our share in Christ's propitiation for sin, the latter our

participation in His risen life, spent "to God." Finally, _the

resurrection to eternal life_ and _the heavenly glory_ of the saints

spring from their present fellowship with the Redeemer. "The Spirit

that raised Jesus from the dead, dwelling in us, shall raise our

mortal body" to share with the perfected spirit His celestial life.

The resurrection of Christ is the earnest of that which all His

members will attain,--nay, the material creation is to participate

in the glory of the sons of God, made like to Him, the "firstborn of

many brethren" (Rom. viii. 11, 16-23, 29, 30; Phil. iii. 20, 21).

[73] Ch. iii. 14; iv. 6, 7; v. 5; 1 Cor., vi. 17, 19; Rom. viii.

9-16.

[74] Ch. iii. 28; Col. iii. 11; Rom. xv. 5-7.

* * * * *

In all these vital truths Paul's gospel was traversed by the

Legalism countenanced by Peter at Antioch. _The Judaistic doctrine

struck_ directly, if not avowedly, _at the cross_, whose reproach

its promoters sought to escape. This charge is the climax of the

Apostle's contention against Peter, and the starting-point of his

expostulation with the Galatians in the following chapter. "If

righteousness could be obtained by way of law, then Christ died

for nought!" What could one say worse of any doctrine or policy,

than that it led to this? And if works of law actually justify men,

and circumcision is allowed to make a difference between Jew and

Greek before God, the principle of legalism is admitted, and the

intolerable consequence ensues which Paul denounces. What did Christ

die for, if men are able to redeem themselves after this fashion? How

can any one dare to build up in face of the cross his paltry edifice

of self-wrought goodness, and say by doing so that the expiation

of Calvary was superfluous and that Jesus Christ might have spared

Himself all that trouble!

And so, on the one hand, Legalism _impugns the grace of God_. It

puts human relations to God on the footing of a debtor and creditor

account; it claims for man a ground for boasting in himself (Rom. iv.

1-4), and takes from God the glory of His grace. In its devotion to

statute and ordinance, it misses the soul of obedience--the love of

God, only to be awakened by the knowledge of His love to us (ch. v.

14; 1 John iv. 7-11). It sacrifices the Father in God to the King. It

forgets that trust is the first duty of a rational creature toward

his Maker, that the law of faith lies at the basis of all law for man.

On the other hand, and by the same necessity, Legalism is _fatal to

the spiritual life in man_. Whilst it clouds the Divine character,

it dwarfs and petrifies the human. What becomes of the sublime

mystery of the life hid with Christ in God, if its existence is made

contingent on circumcision and ritual performance? To men who put

"meat and drink" on a level with "righteousness and peace and joy

in the Holy Ghost," or in their intercourse with fellow-Christians

set points of ceremony above justice, mercy, and faith, the very

idea of a spiritual kingdom of God is wanting. The religion of Jesus

and of Paul regenerates the heart, and from that centre regulates

and hallows the whole ongoing of life. Legalism guards the mouth,

the hands, the senses, and imagines that through these it can drill

the man into the Divine order. The latter theory makes religion a

mechanical system; the former conceives it as an inward, organic

life.

_THE DOCTRINAL POLEMIC._

CHAP. iii. 1-v. 12.

CHAPTER XI.

_THE GALATIAN FOLLY._

"O foolish Galatians, who did bewitch you, before whose eyes

Jesus Christ was openly set forth crucified? This only would I

learn from you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law,

or by the hearing of faith? Are ye so foolish? having begun in

the Spirit, are ye now perfected in the flesh? Did ye suffer

so many things in vain? if it be indeed in vain. He therefore

that supplieth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among

you, _doeth he it_ by the works of the law, or by the hearing of

faith?"--GAL. iii. 1-5.

At the beginning of ch. iii. falls the most marked division of this

Epistle. So far, since the exordium, its course has been strictly

narrative. The Apostle has been "giving" his readers "to know" many

things concerning himself and his relations to the Judean Church of

which they had been ignorant or misinformed. Now this preliminary

task is over. From explanation and defence he passes suddenly to the

attack. He turns sharply round upon the Galatians, and begins to ply

them with expostulation and argument. It is for their sake that Paul

has been telling this story of his past career. In the light of the

narration just concluded, they will be able to see their folly and to

understand how much they have been deceived.

Here also the indignation so powerfully expressed in the

Introduction, breaks forth again, directed this time, however,

against the Galatians themselves and breathing grief more than anger.

And just as after that former outburst the letter settled down into

the sober flow of narrative, so from these words of reproach Paul

passes on to the measured course of argument which he pursues through

the next two chapters. In ch. iv. 8-20, and again in ch. v. 1-12,

doctrine gives way to appeal and warning. But these paragraphs still

belong to the polemical division of the Epistle, extending from this

point to the middle of ch. v. This section forms the central and

principal part of the letter, and is complete in itself. Its last

words, in ch. v. 6-12, will bring us round to the position from which

we are now setting out.

This chapter stands, nevertheless, in close connection of thought

with the foregoing. The Apostle's doctrine is grounded in historical

fact and personal experience. The theological argument has behind

it the weight of his proved Apostleship. The Judaistic dispute at

Antioch, in particular, bears immediately on the subject-matter of

the third chapter. Peter's vacillation had its counterpart in the

defection of the Galatians. The reproof and refutation which the

elder Apostle brought upon himself, Paul's readers must have felt,

touched them very nearly. In the crafty intriguers who made mischief

at Antioch, they could see the image of the Judaists who had come

into their midst. Above all, it was _the cross_ which Cephas had

dishonoured, whose efficacy he had virtually denied. His act of

dissimulation, pushed to its issue, nullified the death of Christ.

This is the gravamen of Paul's impeachment. And it is the foundation

of all his complaints against the Galatians. Round this centre the

conflict is waged. By its tendency to enhance or diminish the glory

of the Saviour's cross, Paul judges of the truth of every teaching,

the worth of every policy. Angel or Apostle, it matters not--whoever

disparages the cross of Jesus Christ finds in Paul an unflinching

enemy. The thought of Christ "dying in vain" rouses in him the strong

emotion under which he indites the first verses of this chapter.

What greater folly, what stranger bewitchment can there be, than for

one who has seen "Jesus Christ crucified" to turn away to some other

spectacle, to seek elsewhere a more potent and diviner charm! "O

senseless Galatians!"

I. Here then was the beginning of their folly. _The Galatians forgot

their Saviour's cross._

This was the first step in their backsliding. Had their eyes

continued to be fixed on Calvary, the Legalists would have argued and

cajoled in vain. Let the cross of Christ once lose its spell for us,

let its influence fail to hold and rule the soul, and we are at the

mercy of every wind of doctrine. We are like sailors in a dark night

on a perilous coast, who have lost sight of the lighthouse beacon.

Our Christianity will go to pieces. If Christ crucified should cease

to be its sovereign attraction, from that moment the Church is doomed.

This forgetfulness of the cross on the part of the Galatians is

the more astonishing to Paul, because at first they had so vividly

realised its power, and the scene of Calvary, as Paul depicted

it,[75] had taken hold of their nature with extraordinary force. He

was conscious at the time--so his words seem to intimate--that it

was given him, amongst this susceptible people, to draw the picture

with unwonted effect. The gaze of his hearers was rivetted upon the

sight. It was as if the Lord Jesus hung there before their eyes.

They beheld the Divine sufferer. They heard His cries of distress

and of triumph. They felt the load which crushed Him. Nor was it

their sympathies alone and their reverence, to which the spectacle

appealed. It stirred their conscience to its depths. It awakened

feelings of inward humiliation and contrition, of horror at the curse

of sin, of anguish under the bitterness and blackness of its death.

"It was _you_," Paul would say--"you and I, for whom He died. _Our_

sins laid on Him that ignominy, those agonies of body and of spirit.

He died the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God." They

looked, they listened, till their hearts were broken, till all their

sins cried out against them; and in a passion of repentance they cast

themselves before the Crucified, and took Him for their Christ and

King. From the foot of the cross they rose new men, with heaven's

light upon their brow, with the cry _Abba, Father_ rising from their

lips, with the Spirit of God and of Jesus Christ, the consciousness

of a Divine sonship, filling their breast.

[75] The verb προεγράφη (_openly set forth_) probably means

_painted up_ rather than _placarded_. This more vivid meaning

belongs to γράφω, and there is no sufficient reason why it should

not attach to προ-γράφω. It is entirely in place here. "Jesus

Christ crucified" is not an announcement to be made, but an

object to be delineated.

Has all this passed away? Have the Galatians forgotten the shame,

the glory of that hour--the tears of penitence, the cries of joy and

gratitude which the vision of the cross drew from their souls, the

new creation it had wrought within them, the ardour of spirit and

high resolve with which they pledged themselves to Christ's service?

Was the influence of that transforming experience to prove no more

enduring than the morning cloud and early dew? Foolish Galatians!

Had they not the wit to see that the teaching of the Legalists ran

counter to all they had then experienced, that it "made the death

of Christ of none effect," which had so mighty and saving an effect

upon themselves? Were they "so senseless," so bereft of reason

and recollection? The Apostle is amazed. He cannot understand how

impressions so powerful should prove so transient, and that truths

thus clearly perceived and realised should come to be forgotten. Some

fatal spell has been cast over them. They are "bewitched" to act as

they are doing. A deadly fascination, like that of the "evil eye,"

has paralyzed their minds.

The ancient belief alluded to in the word the Apostle uses here,[76]

is not altogether a superstition. The malignity that darts out in the

glance of the "evil eye" is a presage of mischief. Not without reason

does it cause a shudder. It is the sign of a demonic jealousy and

hate. "Satan has entered into" the soul which emits it, as once into

Judas. Behind the spite of the Jewish false brethren Paul recognised

a preternatural malice and cunning, like that with which "the Serpent

beguiled Eve."[77] To this darker source of the fascination his

question, "Who hath bewitched you?" appears to point.

[76] On βασκαίνω see the note in Lightfoot's Commentary _in

loc._; also Grimm's N. T. Lexicon. "The Scripture calleth envy

an 'evil eye;' ... so there still seemeth to be acknowledged in

the act of envy an ejaculation or irradiation of the eye. Envy

hath in it something of witchcraft.... It is the proper attribute

of the Devil, who is called 'The envious man, that soweth tares

among the wheat by night.'"--(Lord Bacon: _Essay_ ix.)

[77] Comp. 2 Cor. xi. 1-4, a passage closely parallel to this

context, containing what is expressed here and in Gal. i. 6, 7;

iv. 11, 17, 18.

II. Losing sight of the cross of Christ, the Galatians were

furthermore _rejecting the Holy Spirit of God_.

This heavy reproach the Apostles urges upon his readers through

the rest of the paragraph, pausing only for a moment in ver. 4 to

recall their earlier sufferings for Christ's sake in further witness

against them. "I have but one question to put to you," he says--"You

received the Spirit: how did that come about? Was it through what

you _did_ according to law? or what you _heard_ in faith? You know

well that this great blessing was given to your _faith_. Can you

expect to retain this gift of God on other terms than those on which

you received it? Have you begun with the Spirit to be brought to

perfection by the flesh? (ver. 3).... Nay, God still bestows on you

His Spirit, with gifts of miraculous energy; and I ask again, whether

these displays attend on the practice of law-works, or upon faith's

hearing?" (ver. 5).

The Apostle wished the Galatians to test the competing doctrines

by their effects. The Spirit of God had put His seal on the

Apostle's teaching, and on the faith of his hearers. Did any such

manifestation accompany the preaching of the Legalist? That is all

he wants to know. His cause must stand or fall by "the demonstration

of the Spirit." By "signs and wonders," and diverse gifts of the

Holy Spirit, God was wont to "bear witness with" the ministers and

witnesses of Jesus Christ (Heb. ii. 3, 4; 1 Cor. xii. 4-11): was

this testimony on the side of Paul, or the Circumcisionists? Did it

sustain the gospel of the grace of God, or the "other gospel" of

Legalism?

"He, the Spirit of truth, shall testify of Me," Christ had said; and

so John, at the end of the Apostolic age: "It is the Spirit that

beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth." When the Galatians

accepted the message of the cross proclaimed by Paul's lips, "the

Holy Spirit fell" on them, as on the Jewish Church at the Pentecost,

and the Gentile believers in the house of Cornelius (Acts x. 44);

"the love of God was poured out in their hearts through the Holy

Ghost that was given them" (Rom v. 5). As a mighty, rushing wind

this supernatural influence swept through their souls. Like fire

from heaven it kindled in their spirit, consuming their lusts and

vanities, and fusing their nature into a new, holy passion of love to

Christ and to God the Father. It broke from their lips in ecstatic

cries, unknown to human speech; or moved them to unutterable groans

and pangs of intercession (Rom. viii. 26).

There were men in the Galatian Churches on whom the baptism of

the Spirit conferred besides miraculous _charismata_, superhuman

powers of insight and of healing. These gifts God continued to

"minister amongst" them (_God_ is unquestionably the agent in ver.

5). Paul asks them to observe on what conditions, and to whom,

these extraordinary gifts are distributed. For the "receiving of

the Spirit" was an infallible sign of true Christian faith. This

was the very proof which in the first instance had convinced Peter

and the Judean Church that it was God's will to save the Gentiles,

independently of the Mosaic law (Acts xi. 15-18).

Receiving the Spirit, the Galatian believers knew that they were

the sons of God. "God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into their

hearts, crying, _Abba, Father_" (ch. iv. 6, 7). When Paul speaks

of "receiving the Spirit," it is this that he thinks of most of

all. The miraculous phenomena attending His visitations were facts

of vast importance; and their occurrence is one of the historical

certainties of the Apostolic age. They were "signs," conspicuous,

impressive, indispensable at the time--monuments set up for all

time. But they were in their nature variable and temporary. There

are powers greater and more enduring than these. The things that

"abide" are "faith, hope, love;" love chiefest of the three. Hence

when the Apostle in a later chapter enumerates the qualities that go

to make up "the fruit of the Spirit," he says nothing of _tongues_

or _prophecies_, or _gifts of healing_; he begins with _love_.

Wonder-working powers had their times and seasons, their peculiar

organs; but every believer in Christ--whether Jew or Greek, primitive

or mediæval or modern Christian, the heir of sixty generations of

faith or the latest convert from heathenism--joins in the testimony,

"The love of God is shed abroad in our heart by the Holy Ghost given

unto us." This mark of God's indwelling Spirit the Galatians had

possessed. They were "sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus" (ch.

iii. 26). And with the filial title they had received the filial

nature. They were "taught of God to love one another." Being sons of

God in Christ, they were also "heirs" (ch. iv. 7; Rom viii. 17). They

possessed the earnest of the heavenly inheritance (Eph. i. 14), the

pledge of their bodily redemption (Rom. viii. 10-23), and of eternal

life in the fellowship of Christ. In their initial experience of "the

salvation which is in Jesus Christ" they had the foretaste of its

"eternal glory," of the "grace" belonging to "them that love our Lord

Jesus Christ," which is "in incorruption."[78]

[78] 2 Tim. ii. 10; Eph. vi. 24 (ἀφθαρσία is _incorruption_

everywhere else in Paul: why not here?)

No legal condition was laid down at this beginning of their Christian

life; no "work" of any kind interposed between the belief of the

heart and the conscious reception of the new life in Christ. Even

their baptism, significant and memorable as it was, had not been

required as in itself a precondition of salvation. Sometimes after

baptism, but often--as in the case of Cornelius' household--before

the rite was administered, "the Holy Ghost fell" on believing souls

(Acts x. 44-48; xi. 15, 16). They "confessed with their mouth the

Lord Jesus;" they "believed in their hearts that God had raised Him

from the dead,"--and they were saved. Baptism is, as Paul's teaching

elsewhere shows,[79] the expression, not the medium--the symbol, and

not the cause, of the new birth which it might precede or follow.

The Catholic doctrine of the _opus operatum_ in the sacraments is

radically anti-Pauline; it is Judaism over again. The process by

which the Galatians became Christians was essentially spiritual. They

had begun _in the Spirit_.

[79] Ch. iii. 26, 27; Rom. vi. 2-4; Col. ii. 11-13; Tit. iii. 5.

And so they must continue. To begin in the Spirit, and then look

for perfection to the flesh, to suppose that the work of faith and

love was to be consummated by Pharisaic ordinances, that Moses could

lead them higher than Christ, and circumcision effect for them what

the power of the Holy Ghost failed to do--this was the height of

unreason. "Are you so senseless?" the Apostle asks.

He dwells on this absurdity, pressing home his expostulation with

an emphasis that shows he is touching the centre of the controversy

between himself and the Judaizers. They admitted, as we have shown in

Chapter IX., that Gentiles might _enter_ the kingdom of God through

faith and by the baptism of the Spirit. This was settled at the

Council of Jerusalem. Without a formal acceptance of this evangelical

principle, we do not see how the Legalists could again have found

entrance into Gentile Christian Churches, much less have carried

Peter and Barnabas and the liberal Jews of Antioch with them, as they

did. They no longer attempted to deny salvation to the uncircumcised;

but they claimed for the circumcised a more complete salvation, and

a higher status in the Church. "Yes, Paul has laid the foundation,"

they would say; "now we have come to perfect his work, to give

you the more advanced instruction, derived from the fountain-head

of Christian knowledge, from the first Apostles in Jerusalem. _If

you would be perfect, keep the commandments_; be circumcised, like

Christ and His disciples, and observe the law of Moses. If you be

circumcised, Christ will profit you much more than hitherto; and you

will inherit all the blessings promised in Him to the children of

Abraham."

Such was the style of "persuasion" employed by the Judaizers. It was

well calculated to deceive Jewish believers, even those best affected

to their Gentile brethren. It appeared to maintain the prescriptive

rights of Judaism and to satisfy legitimate national pride, without

excluding the Gentiles from the fold of Christ. Nor is it difficult

to understand the spell which the circumcisionist doctrine exerted

over susceptible Gentile minds, after some years of Christian

training, of familiarity with the Old Testament and the early history

of Israel. Who is there that does not feel the charm of ancient

memories and illustrious names? Many a noble mind is at this present

time "bewitched," many a gifted and pious spirit is "carried away"

by influences precisely similar. _Apostolical succession, patristic

usage, catholic tradition, the authority of the Church_--what words

of power are these! How wilful and arbitrary it appears to rely upon

any present experience of the grace of God, upon one's own reading

of the gospel of Christ, in contradiction to claims advanced under

the patronage of so many revered and time-honoured names. The man,

or the community, must be deeply conscious of having "received the

Spirit," that can feel the force of attractions of this nature, and

yet withstand them. It requires a clear view of the cross of Jesus

Christ, an absolute faith in the supremacy of spiritual principles

to enable one to resist the fascinations of ceremonialism and

tradition. They offer us a more "ornate worship," a more "refined"

type of piety, "consecrated by antiquity;" they invite us to enter

a selecter circle, and to place ourselves on a higher level than

that of the vulgar religionism of faith and feeling. It is the

Galatian "persuasion" over again. Ceremony, antiquity, ecclesiastical

authority are after all poor substitutes for faith and love. If they

come between us and the living Christ, if they limit and dishonour

the work of His Spirit, we have a right to say, and we will say with

the Apostle Paul, _Away with them!_

The men of tradition are well content that we should "begin in the

Spirit," provided they may have the finishing of our faith. To prey

upon the Pauline Churches is their ancient and natural habit. An

evangelical beginning is too often followed by a ritualistic ending.

And Paul is ever begetting spiritual children, to see himself robbed

of them by these bewitching Judaizers. "O foolish Galatians," he

seems still to be saying, What is it that charms you so much in all

this ritual and externalism? Does it bring you nearer to the cross

of Christ? Does it give you more of His Spirit? Is it a spiritual

satisfaction that you find in these works of Church law, these

priestly ordinances and performances? How can the sons of God return

to such childish rudiments? Why should a religion which began so

spiritually seek its perfection by means so formal and mechanical?

The conflict which this Epistle signalised is one that has never

ceased. Its elements belong to human nature. It is the contest

between the religion of the Spirit and that of the letter, between

the spontaneity of personal faith and the rights of usage and

prescription. The history of the Church is largely the record of

this incessant struggle. In every Christian community, in every

earnest and devout spirit, it is repeated in some new phase. When

the Fathers of the Church in the second and third centuries began

to write about "the new law" and to identify the Christian ministry

with the Aaronic priesthood, it was evident that Legalism was

regaining its ascendancy. Already the foundations were laid of the

Catholic Church-system, which culminated in the Papacy of Rome. What

Paul's opponents sought to do by means of circumcision and Jewish

prerogatives, that the Catholic legalists have done, on a larger

scale, through the claims of the priesthood and the sacramental

offices. The spiritual functions of the private Christian, one

after another, were usurped or carelessly abandoned. Step by step

the hierarchy interposed itself between Christ and His people's

souls, till its mediation became the sole channel and organ of

the Holy Spirit's influence. So it has come to pass, by a strange

irony of history, that under the forms of Pauline doctrine and in

the name of the Apostle of the Gentiles joined with that of Peter,

catholic Christendom, delivered by him from the Jewish yoke, has

been entangled in a bondage in some respects even heavier and more

repressive. If tradition and prescription are to regulate our

Christian belief, they lead us infallibly to _Rome_, as they would

have lead the Galatians to perishing Jerusalem.

III. Paul said he had but one question to ask his readers, that

which we have already discussed. And yet he does put to them, by way

of parenthesis, another (ver. 4), suggested by what he has already

called to mind, touching the beginning of their Christian course:

"Have ye suffered so many things in vain?" Their folly was the

greater in that _it threatened to deprive them of the fruit of their

past sufferings in the cause of Christ_.

The Apostle does not say this without a touch of softened feeling.

Remembering the trials these Galatians had formerly endured, the

sacrifices they had made in accepting the gospel, he cannot bear to

think of their apostasy. Hope breaks through his fear, grief passes

into tenderness as he adds, "If it be indeed in vain." The link of

reminiscence connecting vv. 3 and 4 is the same as that we find in 1

Thess. i. 6: "Ye received the word in much affliction, with joy of

the Holy Ghost."[80]

[80] Comp. 2 Thess. i. 4-6; Ph. i. 28-30; Rom. viii. 17; 2 Tim.

i. 8.

We need not seek for any peculiar cause of these sufferings; nor

wonder that the Apostle does not mention them elsewhere. Every

infant Church had its baptism of persecution. No one could come out

of heathen society and espouse the cause of Jesus, without making

himself a mark for ridicule and violence, without the rupture of

family and public ties, and many painful sacrifices. The hatred of

Paul's fellow-countrymen towards him was an additional cause of

persecution to the Churches he had founded. They were followers of

the crucified Nazarene, of the apostate Saul. And they had to suffer

for it. With the joy of their new life in Christ, there had come

sharp pangs of loss and grief, heart-wounds deep and lasting. This

slight allusion sufficiently reminds the Apostle's readers of what

they had passed through at the time of their conversion.

And now were they going to surrender the faith won by such a

struggle? Would they let themselves be cheated of blessings which

had cost them so dear? "_So many things_," he asks, "did you

suffer in vain?" He will not believe it. He cannot think that this

brave beginning will have so mean an ending. If "God counts them

worthy of His kingdom for which they suffered," let them not deem

themselves unworthy. Surely they have not escaped from the tyranny of

heathenism, in order to yield up their liberties to Jewish intrigue,

to the cozenage of false brethren who seek to exalt themselves at

their expense (ch. ii. 4; iv. 17; vi. 12, 13). Will flattery beguile

from them the treasure to which persecution had made them cling the

more closely?

Too often, alas, the Galatian defection is repeated. The generous

devotion of youth is followed by the lethargy and formalism of a

prosperous age; and the man who at twenty-five was a pattern of godly

zeal, at fifty is a finished worldling. The Christ whom he adored,

the cross at which he bowed in those early days--he seldom thinks of

them now. "I remember thee, _the kindness of thy youth_, the love

of thine espousals; how thou wentest after Me _in the wilderness_."

Success has spoiled him. The world's glamour has bewitched him. He

bids fair to "end in the flesh."

In a broader sense, the Apostle's question addresses itself to

Churches and communities untrue to the spiritual principles that

gave them birth. The faith of the primitive Church, that endured

three centuries of persecution, yielded its purity to Imperial

blandishments. Our fathers, Puritan and Scottish, staked their lives

for the crown-rights of Jesus Christ and the freedom of faith.

Through generations they endured social and civil ostracism in the

cause of religious liberty. And now that the battle is won, there

are those amongst their children who scarcely care to know what the

struggle was about. Out of indolence of mind or vanity of scepticism,

they abandon at the bidding of priest or sophist the spiritual

heritage bequeathed to them. Did _they_ then suffer so many things

in vain? Was it an illusion that sustained those heroic souls, and

enabled them to "stop the mouths of lions and subdue kingdoms"? Was

it for nought that so many of Christ's witnesses in these realms

since the Reformation days have suffered the loss of all things

rather than yield by subjection to a usurping and worldly priesthood?

And can we, reaping the fruit of their faith and courage, afford in

these altered times to dispense with the principles whose maintenance

cost our forefathers so dear a price?

"O foolish Galatians," Paul in that case might well say to us again!

CHAPTER XII.

_ABRAHAM'S BLESSING AND THE LAW'S CURSE._

"Even as Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him

for righteousness. Know therefore that they which be of faith,

the same are sons of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing

that God justifieth the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel

beforehand unto Abraham, _saying_, In thee shall all the nations

be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with the

faithful Abraham. For as many as are of the works of the law

are under a curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one which

continueth not in all things that are written in the book of

the law, to do them. Now that no man is justified in the law

in the sight of God, is evident: for, The righteous shall live

by faith; and the law is not of faith; but, He that doeth them

shall live in them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the

law, having become a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is

every one that hangeth on a tree: that upon the Gentiles might

come the blessing of Abraham in Christ Jesus; that we might

receive the promise of the Spirit through faith."--GAL. iii.

6-14.

Faith then, we have learnt, not works of law, was the condition on

which the Galatians received the Spirit of Christ. By this gate

they entered the Church of God, and had come into possession of the

spiritual blessings common to all Christian believers, and of those

extraordinary gifts of grace which marked the Apostolic days.

In this mode of salvation, the Apostle goes on to show, there was

after all nothing new. The righteousness of faith is more ancient

than legalism. It is as old as _Abraham_. His religion rested on this

ground. "The promise of the Spirit," held by him in trust for the

world, was given to his faith. "You received the Spirit, God works

in you His marvellous powers, by the hearing of faith--_even as

Abraham believed God_, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness."

In the hoary patriarchal days as now, in the time of promise as

of fulfilment, faith is the root of religion; grace invites,

righteousness waits upon the hearing of faith. So Paul declares in

vv. 6-9, and re-affirms with emphasis in ver. 14. The intervening

sentences set forth by contrast _the curse_ that hangs over the man

who seeks salvation by way of law and personal merit.

Thus the two standing types of religion, the two ways by which men

seek salvation, are put in contrast with each other--faith with

its blessing, law with its curse. The former is the path on which

the Galatians had entered, under the guidance of Paul; the latter,

that to which the Judaic teachers were leading them. So far the two

principles stand only in antagonism. The antinomy will be resolved in

the latter part of the chapter.

But why does Paul make so much of the faith of _Abraham_? Not only

because it furnished him with a telling illustration, or because the

words of Gen. xv. 6 supplied a decisive proof-text for his doctrine:

he could not well have chosen any other ground. Abraham's case was

the _instantia probans_ in this debate. "We are Abraham's seed:"[81]

this was the proud consciousness that swelled every Jewish breast.

"Abraham's bosom" was the Israelite's heaven: even in Hades his

guilty sons could claim pity from "Father Abraham" (Luke xvi. 19-31).

In the use of this title was concentrated all the theocratic pride

and national bigotry of the Jewish race. To the example of Abraham

the Judaistic teacher would not fail to appeal. He would tell the

Galatians how the patriarch was called, like themselves, out of the

heathen world to the knowledge of the true God; how he was separated

from his Gentile kindred, and received the mark of circumcision to be

worn thenceforth by all who followed in his steps, and who sought the

fulfilment of the promise granted to Abraham and his seed.

[81] Matt. iii. 9; John viii. 33-59.

The Apostle holds, as strongly as any Judaist, that the promise

belongs to the children of Abraham. _But what makes a son of

Abraham?_ "Birth, true Jewish blood, of course," replied the

Judaist. The Gentile, in his view, could only come into a share of

the heritage by receiving circumcision, the mark of legal adoption

and incorporation. Paul answers this question by raising another.

What was it that brought Abraham his blessing? To what did he owe

his righteousness? It was _faith_: so Scripture declares--"Abraham

believed God." Righteousness, covenant, promise, blessing--all turned

upon this. And _the true sons of Abraham are those who are like

him_: "Know then that the men of faith, these are Abraham's sons."

This declaration is a blow, launched with studied effect full in the

face of Jewish privilege. Only a Pharisee, only a Rabbi, knew how

to wound in this fashion. Like the words of Stephen's defence, such

sentences as these stung Judaic pride to the quick. No wonder that

his fellow-countrymen, in their fierce fanaticism of race, pursued

Paul with burning hate and set a mark upon his life.

But the identity of Abraham's blessing with that enjoyed by Gentile

Christians is not left to rest on mere inference and analogy of

principle. Another quotation clinches the argument: "In thee," God

promised to the patriarch, "shall be blessed"--not the natural seed,

not the circumcised alone--but "all the nations (Gentiles)"![82]

And "the Scripture" said this, "foreseeing" what is now taking

place, namely, "that God justifieth the Gentiles by faith." So that

in giving this promise to Abraham it gave him his "gospel before

the time (προευηγγελίσατο)." Good news indeed it was to the noble

patriarch, that all the nations--of whom as a wide traveller he

knew so much, and over whose condition he doubtless grieved--were

finally to be blessed with the light of faith and the knowledge of

the true God; and thus blessed through himself. In this prospect he

"rejoiced to see Christ's day;" nay the Saviour tells us, like Moses

and Elijah, "he saw it and was glad." Up to this point in Abraham's

history, as Paul's readers would observe, there was no mention of

circumcision or legal requirement (ver. 17; Rom. iv. 9-13). It was

on purely evangelical principles, by a declaration of God's grace

listened to in thankful faith, that he had received the promise which

linked him to the universal Church and entitled every true believer

to call him father. "So that the men of faith are blessed, along with

faithful Abraham."

[82] Gen. xii. 3: the first promise to Abraham. In this text the

Hebrew and the Greek (LXX) say, _All the tribes (families) of the

earth_. The synonymous ἔθνη, with its special Jewish connotation,

suited Paul's purpose better; and it is used in the repetition of

the promise in Gen. xviii. 18.

I. What then, we ask, was _the nature of Abraham's blessing_? In its

essence, it was _righteousness_. The "blessing" of vv. 9 and 14 is

synonymous with the "justification" of vv. 6 and 8, embracing with it

all its fruits and consequences. No higher benediction could come to

any man than that God should "count him righteous."

Paul and the Legalists agreed in designating righteousness before

God man's chief good. But they and he intended different things by

it. Nay, Paul's conception of righteousness, it is said, differed

radically from that of the Old Testament, and even of his companion

writers in the New Testament. Confessedly, his doctrine presents

this idea under a peculiar aspect. But there is a spiritual

identity, a common basis of truth, in all the Biblical teaching

on this vital subject. Abraham's righteousness was the state of

a man who trustfully accepts God's word of grace, and is thereby

set right with God, and put in the way of being and doing right

thenceforward. In virtue of his faith, God regarded and dealt with

Abraham as a righteous man. Righteousness of character springs out

of righteousness of standing. God makes a man righteous by counting

him so! This is the Divine paradox of Justification by Faith. When

the Hebrew author says, "God counted it to him for righteousness,"

he does not mean _in lieu of righteousness_, as though faith were

a substitute for a righteousness not forthcoming and now rendered

superfluous; but _so as to amount to righteousness, with a view to

righteousness_. This "reckoning" is the sovereign act of the Creator,

who gives what He demands, "who maketh alive the dead, and calleth

the things that are not as though they were" (Rom. iv. 17-22). He

sees the fruit in the germ.

There is nothing arbitrary, or merely forensic in this imputation.

Faith is, for such a being as man, the spring of all righteousness

before God, the one act of the soul which is primarily and supremely

right. What is more just than that the creature should trust

his Creator, the child his Father? Here is the root of all right

understanding and right relations between men and God--that which

gives God, so to speak, a moral hold upon us. And by this trust of

the heart, yielding itself in the "obedience of faith" to its Lord

and Redeemer, it comes into communion with all those energies and

purposes in Him which make for righteousness. Hence from first to

last, alike in the earlier and later stages of revelation, man's

righteousness is "not his own;" it is "the righteousness that is of

God, based upon faith" (Phil. iii. 9). Faith unites us to the source

of righteousness, from which unbelief severs us. So that Paul's

teaching leads us to the fountain-head, while other Biblical teachers

for the most part guide us along the course of the same Divine

righteousness for man. His doctrine is required by theirs; their

doctrine is implied, and indeed more than once expressly stated, in

his.[83]

[83] Rom. viii. 4; 1 Cor. vi. 9; Eph. v. 9; Tit. ii. 12-14; etc.

The Old Testament deals with the materials of character, with the

qualities and behaviour constituting a righteous man, more than

with the cause or process that makes him righteous. All the more

significant therefore are such pronouncements as that of Gen. xv.

6, and the saying of Hab. ii. 4, Paul's other leading quotation

on this subject. This second reference, taken from the times of

Israel's declension, a thousand years and more after Abraham, gives

proof of the vitality of the righteousness of faith. The haughty,

sensual Chaldean is master of the earth. Kingdom after kingdom he has

trampled down. Judah lies at his mercy, and has no mercy to expect.

But the prophet looks beyond the storm and ruin of the time. "Art

Thou not from everlasting, my God, my Holy One? We shall not die"

(Hab. i. 12). The faith of Abraham lives in his breast. The people

in whom that faith is cannot die. While empires fall, and races are

swept away in the flood of conquest, "The just shall live by his

faith."[84] If faith is seen here at a different point from that

given before, it is still the same faith of Abraham, the grasp of the

soul upon the Divine word--_there_ first evoked, _here_ steadfastly

maintained, there and here the one ground of righteousness, and

therefore of life, for man or for people. Habakkuk and the "remnant"

of his day were "blessed with faithful Abraham;" how blessed,

his splendid prophecy shows. Righteousness is of faith; life of

righteousness: this is the doctrine of Paul, witnessed to by law and

prophets.

[84] _Of faith_ qualifies _live_ in the Hebrew of the prophet,

and in the LXX, also in the quotation of Heb. x. 38. The

presumption is that it does so in Rom. i. 17, and Gal. iii. 11.

We can see no sufficient reason in these passages to the contrary.

Into what a life of blessing the righteousness of faith introduced

"faithful Abraham," these Galatian students of the Old Testament very

well knew. Twice[85] is he designated "the friend of God." The Arabs

still call him _el khalil_,--_the friend_. His image has impressed

itself with singular force on the Oriental mind. He is the noblest

figure of the Old Testament, surpassing Isaac in force, Jacob in

purity, and both in dignity of character. The man to whom God said,

"Fear not, Abraham: I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward;"

and again, "I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be thou perfect:"

on how lofty a platform of spiritual eminence was he set! The scene

of Gen. xviii. throws into striking relief the greatness of Abraham,

the greatness of our human nature in him; when the Lord says, "Shall

I hide from Abraham the thing that I do?" and allows him to make

his bold intercession for the guilty cities of the Plain. Even the

trial to which the patriarch was subjected in the sacrifice of Isaac,

was a singular honour, done to one whose faith was "counted worthy

to endure" this unexampled strain. His religion exhibits an heroic

strength and firmness, but at the same time a large-hearted, genial

humanity, an elevation and serenity of mind, to which the temper of

those who boasted themselves his children was utterly opposed. Father

of the Jewish race, Abraham was no Jew. He stands before us in the

morning light of revelation a simple, noble, archaic type of _man_,

true "father of many nations." And his faith was the secret of the

greatness which has commanded for him the reverence of four thousand

years. His trust in God made him worthy to receive so immense a trust

for the future of mankind.

[85] 2 Chron. xx. 7; Isai. xli. 8; comp. Jas. ii. 23.

With Abraham's faith, the Gentiles inherit his blessing. They were

not simply blessed _in_ him, through his faith which received

and handed down the blessing,--but blessed _with_ him. Their

righteousness rests on the same principle as his. Religion reverts

to its earlier purer type. Just as in the Epistle to the Hebrews

Melchizedek's priesthood is adduced as belonging to a more Christlike

order, antecedent to and underlying the Aaronic; so we find here,

beneath the cumbrous structure of legalism, the evidence of a

primitive religious life, cast in a larger mould, with a happier

style of experience, a piety broader, freer, at once more spiritual

and more human. Reading the story of Abraham, we witness the bright

dawn of faith, its spring-time of promise and of hope. These

morning hours passed away; and the sacred history shuts us in to the

hard school of Mosaism, with its isolation, its mechanical routine

and ritual drapery, its yoke of legal exaction ever growing more

burdensome. Of all this the Church of Christ was to know nothing. It

was called to enter into the labours of the legal centuries, without

the need of sharing their burdens. In the "Father of the faithful"

and the "Friend of God" Gentile believers were to see their exemplar,

to find the warrant for that sufficiency and freedom of faith of

which the natural children of Abraham unjustly strove to rob them.

II. But if the Galatians are resolved to be under the Law, they must

understand what this means. _The legal state_, Paul declares, instead

of the blessing of Abraham, _brings with it a curse_: "As many as are

of law-works, are under a curse."

This the Apostle, in other words, had told Peter at Antioch. He

maintained that whoever sets up the law as a ground of salvation,

"makes himself a transgressor" (ch. ii. 18); he brings upon himself

the misery of having violated law. This is no doubtful contingency.

The law in explicit terms pronounces its curse against every man who,

binding himself to keep it, yet breaks it in any particular.

The Scripture which Paul quotes to this effect, forms the conclusion

of the commination uttered by the people of Israel, according to

the directions of Moses, from Mount Ebal, on their entrance into

Canaan: "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things

written in the book of the law to do them."[86] How terribly had

that imprecation been fulfilled! They had in truth pledged themselves

to the impossible. The Law had not been kept--could not be kept on

merely legal principles, by man or nation. The confessions of the Old

Testament, already cited in ch. ii. 16, were proof of this. That no

one had "continued in all things written in the law to do them," goes

without saying. If Gentile Christians adopt the law of Moses, they

must be prepared to render an obedience complete and unfaltering in

every detail (ch. v. 3)--or have this curse hanging perpetually above

their heads. They will bring on themselves the very condemnation

which was lying so heavily upon the conscience of Israel after the

flesh.

[86] Deut. xxvii. 26; Jos. viii. 32-35. _All things_, given by

the LXX in the former passage, is wanting in the Hebrew. But the

phrase is true to the spirit of this text, and is read in the

parallel Deut. xxviii. 15.

This sequence of law and transgression belonged to Paul's deepest

convictions. "The law," he says, "worketh out wrath" (Rom. iv. 14,

15). This is an axiom of Paulinism. Human nature being what it is,

law means transgression; and the law being what it is, transgression

means Divine anger and the curse (see p. 143). The law is just;

the penalty is necessary. The conscience of the ancient people

of God compelled them to pronounce the imprecation dictated by

Moses. The same thing occurs every day, and under the most varied

moral conditions. Every man who knows what is right and will not

do it, _execrates_ himself. The consciousness of transgression

is a clinging, inward curse, a witness of ill-desert, foreboding

punishment. The law of conscience, like that of Ebal and Gerizim,

admits of no exceptions, no intermission. In the majesty of its

unbending sternness it can only be satisfied by our _continuing in

all things_ that it prescribes. Every instance of failure, attended

with whatever excuse or condonation, leaves upon us its mark of

self-reproach. And this inward condemnation, this consciousness of

guilt latent in the human breast, is not self-condemnation alone,

not a merely subjective state; but it proceeds from God's present

judgement on the man. It is the shadow of His just displeasure.

What Paul here proves from Scripture, bitter experience had taught

him. As the law unfolded itself to his youthful conscience, he

approved it as "holy and just and good." He was pledged and

resolved to observe it in every point. He must despise himself if

he acted otherwise. He strove to be--in the sight of men indeed he

was--"touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless."

If ever a man carried out to the letter the legal requirements,

and fulfilled the moralist's ideal, it was Saul of Tarsus. Yet his

failure was complete, desperate! While men accounted him a paragon of

virtue, he loathed himself; he knew that before God his righteousness

was worthless. The "law of sin in his members" defied "the law of

his reason," and made its power the more sensible the more it was

repressed. The curse thundered by the six tribes from Ebal resounded

in his ears. And there was no escape. The grasp of the law was

relentless, because it was just, like the grasp of death. Against

all that was holiest in it the evil in himself stood up in stark,

immitigable opposition. "O wretched man that I am," groans the proud

Pharisee, "who shall deliver me!" From this curse Christ had redeemed

him. And he would not, if he could help it, have the Galatians expose

themselves to it again. On legal principles, there is no safety but

in absolute, flawless obedience, such as no man ever has rendered,

or ever will. Let them trust the experience of centuries of Jewish

bondage.

Verses 11, 12 support the assertion that the Law issues in

condemnation, by a further, negative proof. The argument is a

syllogism, both whose premises are drawn from the Old Testament. It

may be formally stated thus. _Major premise_ (evangelical maxim):

"The just man lives of faith"[87] (ver. 11). _Minor_: The man of law

does not live of faith (for he lives by doing: legal maxim, ver.

12).[88] _Ergo_: The man of law is not just before God (ver. 11).

While therefore the Scripture by its afore-cited commination closes

the door of life against righteousness of works, that door is opened

to the men of faith. The two principles are logical contradictories.

To grant righteousness to faith is to deny it to legal works.

This assumption furnishes our minor premise in ver. 12. The legal

axiom is, "He that doeth them shall live in them:" that is to say,

_The law gives life for doing_--not therefore _for believing_; we

get no sort of legal credit for that. The two ways have different

starting-points, as they lead to opposite goals. From faith one

marches, through God's righteousness, to blessing; from works,

through self-righteousness, to the curse.

[87] Hab. ii. 4. For the construction, see _note_ on p. 186.

[88] Lev. xviii. 5.

The two paths now lie before us--the Pauline and the legal method of

salvation, the Abrahamic and the Mosaic scheme of religion. According

to the latter, one begins by keeping so many rules--ethical,

ceremonial, or what not; and after doing this, one expects to be

counted righteous by God. According to the former, the man begins by

an act of self-surrendering trust in God's word of grace, and God

already reckons him just on that account, without his pretending to

anything in the way of merit for himself. In short, the Legalist

_tries to make God believe in him_: Abraham and Paul are content _to

believe in God_. They do not set themselves over against God, with

a righteousness of their own which He is bound to recognise; they

commit themselves to God, that He may work out His righteousness in

them. Along this path lies blessing--peace of heart, fellowship with

God, moral strength, _life_ in its fulness, depth, and permanence.

From this source Paul derives all that was noblest in the Church of

the Old Covenant. And he puts the calm, grand image of Father Abraham

before us for our pattern, in contrast with the narrow, painful,

bitter spirit of Jewish legalism, inwardly self-condemned.

III. But how pass from this curse to that blessing? How escape from

the nemesis of the broken law into the freedom of Abraham's faith?

To this question ver. 13 makes answer: "Christ bought us out of the

curse of the law, having become a curse for us." _Christ's redemption

changes the curse into a blessing._

We entered this Epistle under the shadow of the cross. It has been

all along the centre of the writer's thought. He has found in it the

solution of the terrible problem forced upon him by the law. Law had

led him to Christ's cross; laid him in Christ's grave; and there left

him, to rise with Christ a new, free man, living henceforth to God

(ch. ii. 19-21). So we understand the purpose and the issue of the

death of Jesus Christ; now we must look more narrowly at the fact

itself.

"Christ became a curse!" Verily the Apostle was not "seeking to

please or persuade men." This expression throws the scandal of the

cross into the strongest relief. Far from veiling it or apologizing

for it, Paul accentuates this offence. His experience taught him

that Jewish pride must be compelled to reckon with it. No, he would

not have "the offence of the cross abolished" (ch. v. 11).

And did not Christ _become a curse_? Could the fact be denied by

any Jew? His death was that of the most abandoned criminals. By

the combined verdict of Jew and Gentile, of civil and religious

authority, endorsed by the voice of the populace, He was pronounced

a malefactor and blasphemer. But this was not all. The hatred and

injustice of men are hard to bear; yet many a sensitive man has borne

them in a worthy cause without shrinking. It was a darker dread, an

infliction far more crushing, that compelled the cry, "My God, why

hast Thou forsaken Me!" Against the maledictions of men Jesus might

surely at the worst have counted on the Father's good pleasure.

But even that failed Him. There fell upon His soul the death of

death, the very curse of sin--_abandonment by God!_ Men "did esteem

Him"--and for the moment He esteemed Himself--"smitten of God." He

hung there abhorred of men, forsaken of His God; earth all hate,

heaven all blackness to His view. Are the Apostle's words too strong?

Delivering up His Son to pass through this baptism, God did in truth

_make Him a curse_ for us. By His "determinate counsel" the Almighty

set Jesus Christ in the place of condemned sinners, and allowed the

curse of this wicked world to claim Him for its victim.

The death that befell Him was chosen as if for the purpose of

declaring Him accursed. The Jewish people have thus stigmatized

Him. They made the Roman magistrate and the heathen soldiery their

instrument in _gibbeting_ their Messiah. "Shall I crucify your King?"

said Pilate. "Yes," they answered, "crucify Him!" Their rulers

thought to lay on the hated Nazarene an everlasting curse. Was it not

written, "A curse of God is every one that hangeth on a tree?"[89]

This saying attached in the Jewish mind a peculiar loathing to the

person of the dead thus exposed. Once _crucified_, the name of Jesus

would surely perish from the lips of men; no Jew would hereafter

dare to profess faith in Him. His cause could never surmount this

ignominy. In later times the bitterest epithet that Jewish scorn

could fling against our Saviour (God forgive them!), was just this

word of Deuteronomy, _hattalúy--the hangéd one_.

[89] The Hebrew of Deut. xxi. 23 reads "a curse _of God_;" the

LXX, "cursed _by God_" (κεκαταρημένος however, not ἐπικατάρατος

as in Paul's phrase). The Apostle omits the two last words,

not inadvertently, as Meyer supposes, for he must have had a

painfully vivid remembrance of the wording of the original,

but out of a reverence that made it impossible to speak of the

Redeemer as "accursed _by God_."

This sentence of execration, with its shame freshly smarting, Paul

has seized and twined into a crown of glory. "Hanged on a tree,

crushed with reproach--_accursed_, you say, He was, my Lord, my

Saviour! It is true. But the curse He bore was _ours_. His death,

unmerited by Him, was our ransom-price, endured to buy us out of

our curse of sin and death." This is the doctrine of _the vicarious

sacrifice_. In speaking of "ransom" and "redemption," using the terms

of the market, Christ and His Apostles are applying human language

to things in their essence unutterable, things which we define in

their effects rather than in themselves. "We know, we prophesy, in

part." We know that we were condemned by God's holy law; that Christ,

Himself sinless, came under the law's curse, and taking the place of

sinners, "became sin for us;" and that His interposition has brought

us out of condemnation into blessing and peace. How can we conceive

the matter otherwise than as it is put in His own words: He "gave

Himself a ransom--The Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep?"

He suffers in our room and stead; He bears inflictions incurred by

our sins, and due to ourselves; He does this at the Divine Will, and

under the Divine Law: what is this but to "buy us out," to pay the

price which frees us from the prison-house of death?

* * * * *

"Christ redeemed _us_," says the Apostle, thinking questionless of

himself and his Jewish kindred, on whom the law weighed so heavily.

His redemption was offered "to the Jew first." But not to the Jew

alone, nor as a Jew. The time of release had come for all men.

"Abraham's blessing" long withheld, was now to be imparted, as it had

been promised, to "all the tribes of the earth." In the removal of

the legal curse, God comes near to men as in the ancient days. His

love is shed abroad; His spirit of sonship dwells in human hearts.

In Christ Jesus crucified, risen, reigning--a new world comes into

being, which restores and surpasses the promise of the old.

CHAPTER XIII.

_THE COVENANT OF PROMISE._

"Brethren, I speak after the manner of men: Though it be but a

man's testament, yet when it hath been confirmed, no one maketh

it void, or addeth thereto. Now to Abraham were the promises

spoken, and to his seed. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many,

but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. Now this I say;

A testament confirmed beforehand by God, the law, which came

four hundred and thirty years after, doth not disannul, so as to

make the promise of none effect. For if the inheritance is of

the law, it is no more of promise: but God hath granted it to

Abraham by promise."--GAL. iii. 15-18.

Gentile Christians, Paul has shown, are already sons of Abraham.

Their faith proves their descent from the father of the faithful. The

redemption of Christ has expiated the law's curse, and brought to its

fulfilment the primeval promise. It has conferred on Jew and Gentile

alike the gift of the Holy Spirit, sealing the Divine inheritance.

"Abraham's blessing" has "come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus."

What can Judaism do for them more? Except, in sooth, to bring them

under its inevitable curse.

But here the Judaist might interpose: "Granting so much as this,

allowing that God covenanted with Abraham on terms of faith, and

that believing Gentiles are entitled to his blessing, did not God

make _a second covenant with Moses_, promising further blessings

upon terms of law? If the one covenant remains valid, why not the

other? From the school of Abraham the Gentiles must pass on to the

school of Moses." This inference might appear to follow, by parity of

reasoning, from what the Apostle has just advanced. And it accords

with the position which the legalistic opposition had now taken

up. The people of the circumcision, they argued, retained within

the Church of Christ their peculiar calling; and Gentiles, if they

would be perfect Christians, must accept the covenant-token and the

unchangeable ordinances of Israel. Faith is but the first step in

the new life; the discipline of the law will bring it to completion.

Release from the curse of the law, they might contend, leaves its

obligations still binding, its ordinances unrepealed. Christ "came

not to destroy, but to fulfil."

So we are brought to the question of _the relation of law and

promise_, which is the theoretical, as that of Gentile to Jewish

Christianity is the practical problem of the Epistle. The remainder

of the chapter is occupied with its discussion. This section is

the special contribution of the Epistle to Christian theology--a

contribution weighty enough of itself to give to it a foremost

place amongst the documents of Revelation. Paul has written nothing

more masterly. The breadth and subtlety of his reason, his grasp

of the spiritual realities underlying the facts of history, are

conspicuously manifest in these paragraphs, despite the extreme

difficulty and obscurity of certain sentences.

This part of the Epistle is in fact a piece of inspired _historical

criticism_; it is a magnificent reconstruction of the course of

sacred history. It is Paul's theory of doctrinal development,

condensing into a few pregnant sentences the _rationale_ of Judaism,

explaining the method of God's dealings with mankind from Abraham

down to Christ, and fitting the legal system into its place in this

order with an exactness and consistency that supply an effectual

verification of the hypothesis. To such a height has the Apostle been

raised, so completely is he emancipated from the fetters of Jewish

thought, that the whole Mosaic economy becomes to his mind no more

than an interlude, a passing stage in the march of Revelation.

This passage finds its counterpart in Romans xi. Here the past,

there the future fortunes of Israel are set forth. Together the two

chapters form a Jewish theodicy, a vindication of God's treatment

of the chosen people from first to last. Rom. v. 12-21 and 1 Cor.

xv. 20-57 supply a wider exposition, on the same principles, of the

fortunes of mankind at large. The human mind has conceived nothing

more splendid and yet sober, more humbling and exalting, than the

view of man's history and destiny thus sketched out.

* * * * *

The Apostle seeks to establish, in the first place, _the fixedness

of the Abrahamic covenant_. This is the main purport of the passage.

At the same time, in ver. 16, he brings into view _the Object of the

covenant_, the person designated by it--_Christ_, its proper Heir.

This consideration, though stated here parenthetically, lies at the

basis of the settlement made with Abraham; its importance is made

manifest by the after course of Paul's exposition.

At this point, where the discussion opens out into its larger

proportions, we observe that the sharp tone of personal feeling with

which the chapter commenced has disappeared. In ver. 15 the writer

drops into a conciliatory key. He seems to forget the wounded Apostle

in the theologian and instructor in Christ. "Brethren," he says,

"I speak in human fashion--I put this matter in a way that every

one will understand." He lifts himself above the Galatian quarrel,

and from the height of his argument addresses himself to the common

intelligence of mankind.

But is it _covenant_, or _testament_, that the Apostle intends

here? "I speak after the manner of men," he continues; "if the case

were that of a man's διαθήκη, once ratified, no one would set it

aside, or add to it." The presumption is that the word is employed

in its accepted, every-day significance. And that unquestionably

was "testament." It would never occur to an ordinary Greek reader

to interpret the expression otherwise. Philo and Josephus, the

representatives of contemporary Hellenistic usage, read this term,

in the Old Testament, with the connotation of διαθήκη in current

Greek.[90] The context of this passage is in harmony with their

usage. The "covenant" of ver. 15 corresponds to "the blessing of

Abraham," and "the promise of the Spirit" in the two preceding

verses. Again in ver. 17, "promise" and "covenant" are synonymous.

Now a "covenant of promise" amounts to a "testament." It is the

_prospective_ nature of the covenant, the bond which it creates

between Abraham and the Gentiles, which the Apostle has been

insisting on ever since ver. 6. It belongs "to Abraham and to his

seed"; it comes by way of "gift" and "grace" (vv. 18, 22); it invests

those taking part in it with "sonship" and rights of "inheritance"

(vv. 18, 26, 29, etc.) These ideas cluster round the thought of

_a testament_; they are not inherent in _covenant_, strictly

considered. Even in the Old Testament this latter designation fails

to convey all that belongs to the Divine engagements there recorded.

In a covenant the two parties are conceived as equals in point of

law, binding themselves by a compact that bears on each alike. Here

it is not so. The disposition of affairs is made by God, who in the

sovereignty of His grace "hath granted it to Abraham." It was surely

a reverent sense of this difference which dictated to the men of

the Septuagint the use of διαθήκη rather than συνθήκη, the ordinary

term for _covenant_ or _compact_, in their rendering of the Hebrew

_berith_.

[90] See the able and convincing elucidation of διαθήκη in

Cremer's _Biblico-Theological Lexicon of N.T. Greek_.

This aspect of the covenants now becomes their commanding feature.

Our Lord's employment of this word at the Last Supper gave it the

affecting reference to His death which it has conveyed ever since

to the Christian mind.[91] The Latin translators were guided by a

true instinct when in the Scriptures of the New Covenant they wrote

_testamentum_ everywhere, not _fœdus_ or _pactum_, for this word. The

testament is a covenant--and something more. The testator designates

his heir, and binds himself to grant to him at the predetermined time

(ch. iv. 2) the specified boon, which it remains for the beneficiary

simply to accept. Such a Divine _testament_ has come down from

Abraham to his Gentile sons.

[91] See Heb. ix. 16-18, where so much ingenuity has been

expended to turn _testament_ into _covenant_.

"_Sweet is the memory of His name,

Who blessed us in His will._"

I. Now when a man has made a testament, and it has been

ratified--"proved," as we should say--_it stands good for ever_.

No one has afterwards any power to set it aside, or to attach

to it a new codicil, modifying its previous terms. There it

stands--a document complete and unchangeable (ver. 15).

Such a testament God gave "to Abraham and his seed." It was

"ratified" (or "confirmed") by the final attestation made to

the patriarch after the supreme trial of his faith in the

sacrifice of Isaac: "By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord,

that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying multiply

thy seed as the stars of heaven; ... and in thy seed shall all

the nations of the earth be blessed."[92] In human testaments

the ratification takes place through another; but God "having

no greater," yet "to show to the heirs of the promise the

immutability of His counsel" confirmed it by His own oath.

Nothing was wanting to mark the Abrahamic covenant with an

indelible character, and to show that it expressed an unalterable

purpose in the mind of God.

[92] Gen. xxii. 16-18; Heb. vi. 17.