and _his seed_." This last word diverts the Apostle's thoughts for a
moment, and he gives a side-glance at the person thus designated in
the terms of the promise. Then he returns to his former statement,
urging it home against the Legalists: "Now this is what I mean:
a testament previously ratified by God, the Law which dates four
hundred and thirty years later cannot annul, so as to abrogate the
Promise" (ver. 17). The bearing of Paul's argument is now perfectly
clear. He is using the promise to Abraham to overthrow the supremacy
of the Mosaic law. The Promise was, he says, the prior settlement.
No subsequent transaction could invalidate it or disqualify those
entitled under it to receive the inheritance. That testament lies at
the foundation of the sacred history. The Jew least of all could deny
this. How could such an instrument be set aside? Or what right has
any one to limit it by stipulations of a later date?
When a man amongst ourselves bequeaths his property, and his will
is publicly attested, its directions are scrupulously observed; to
tamper with them is a crime. Shall we have less respect to this
Divine settlement, this venerable charter of human salvation? You
say, The Law of Moses has its rights: it must be taken into account
as well as the Promise to Abraham. True; but it has no power to
cancel or restrict the Promise, older by four centuries and a half.
The later must be adjusted to the earlier dispensation, the Law
interpreted by the Promise. God has not made _two_ testaments--the
one solemnly committed to the faith and hope of mankind, only to
be retracted and substituted by something of a different stamp. He
could not thus stultify Himself. And we must not apply the Mosaic
enactments, addressed to a single people, in such a way as to
neutralise the original provisions made for the race at large. Our
human instincts of good faith, our reverence for public compacts and
established rights, forbid our allowing the Law of Moses to trench
upon the inheritance assured to mankind in the Covenant of Abraham.
This contradiction necessarily arises if the Law is put on a level
with the Promise. To read the Law as a continuation of the older
instrument is virtually to efface the latter, to "make the promise
of none effect." The two institutes proceed on opposite principles.
"If the inheritance is of law, it is no longer of promise" (ver.
18). Law prescribes certain things to be done, and guarantees a
corresponding reward--so much pay for so much work. That, in its
proper place, is an excellent principle. But the promise stands
on another footing: "God hath _bestowed_ it on Abraham _by way of
grace_" (κεχάρισται, ver. 18). It holds out a blessing conferred by
the Promiser's good will, to be conveyed at the right time without
demanding anything more from the recipient than faith, which is just
the will to receive. So God dealt with Abraham, centuries before any
one had dreamed of the Mosaic system of law. God appeared to Abraham
in His sovereign grace; Abraham met that grace with faith. So the
Covenant was formed. And so it abides, clear of all legal conditions
and claims of human merit, an "everlasting covenant" (Gen. xvii. 7;
Heb. xiii. 20).
Its permanence is emphasized by the _tense_ of the verb relating to
it. The Greek _perfect_ describes settled facts, actions or events
that carry with them finality. Accordingly we read in vv. 15 and 17
of "a ratified covenant"--one that _stands_ ratified. In ver. 18,
"God hath granted it to Abraham"--a grace never to be recalled. Again
(ver. 19), "the seed to whom the promise hath been made"--once for
all. A perfect participle is used of the Law in ver. 17 (γεγονώς),
for it is a fact of abiding significance that it was so much later
than the Promise; and in ver. 24, "the Law hath been our tutor,"--its
work in that respect is an enduring benefit. Otherwise, the verbs
relating to Mosaism in this context are past in tense, describing
what is now matter of history, a course of events that has come
and gone. Meanwhile the Promise remains, an immovable certainty, a
settlement never to be disturbed. The emphatic position of ὁ Θεός
(ver. 18), at the very end of the paragraph, serves to heighten this
effect. "It is _God_ that hath bestowed this grace on Abraham."
There is a challenge in the word, as though Paul asked, "Who shall
make it void?"[93]
[93] Comp. Rom. viii. 33, 34; Acts xi. 17; 2 Cor. i. 21, for a
similar emphasis.
Paul's chronology in ver. 17 has been called in question. We are not
much concerned to defend it. Whether Abraham preceded Moses by four
hundred and thirty years, as the Septuagint and the Samaritan text
of Exod. xii. 40, 41 affirm, and as Paul's contemporaries commonly
supposed; or whether, as it stands in the Hebrew text of Exodus, this
was the length of time covered by the sojourn in Egypt, so that the
entire period would be about half as long again, is a problem that
Old Testament historians must settle for themselves; it need not
trouble the reader of Paul. The shorter period is amply sufficient
for his purpose. If any one had said, "No, Paul; you are mistaken. It
was six hundred and thirty, not four hundred and thirty years from
Abraham to Moses;" he would have accepted the correction with the
greatest goodwill. He might have replied, "So much the better for my
argument."[94] It is possible to "strain out" the "gnats" of Biblical
criticism, and yet to swallow huge "camels" of improbability.
[94] We gain nothing, and we may lose much, in "trying to settle
questions of Old Testament historical criticism by casual
allusions in the New Testament." (See Mr. Beet's sensible
observations, in his Commentary _ad loc._)
II. Ver. 16 remains for our consideration. In proving the
steadfastness of the covenant with Abraham, the Apostle at the same
time directs our attention to _the Person designated by it_, to whom
its fulfilment was guaranteed. "To Abraham were the promises spoken,
and to his seed--'to thy seed,' which is Christ."
This identification the Judaist would not question. He made no
doubt that the Messiah was the legatee of the testament, "the seed
to whom it hath been promised." Whatever partial and germinant
fulfilments the Promise had received, it is on Christ in chief that
the inheritance of Israel devolves. In its true and full intent, this
promise, like all predictions of the triumph of God's kingdom, was
understood to be waiting for His advent.
The fact that this Promise looked to Christ, lends additional force
to the Apostle's assertion of its indelibility. The words "unto
Christ," which were inserted in the text of ver. 17 at an early
time, are a correct gloss. The covenant did not lie between God and
Abraham alone. It embraced Abraham's descendants in their unity,
culminating in Christ. It looked down the stream of time to the last
ages. Abraham was its starting-point; Christ its goal. "To thee--and
to thy seed:" these words span the gulf of two thousand years, and
overarch the Mosaic dispensation. So that the covenant vouchsafed to
Abraham placed him, even at that distance of time, in close personal
relationship with the Saviour of mankind. No wonder that it was so
evangelical in its terms, and brought the patriarch an experience of
religion which anticipated the privileges of Christian faith. God's
covenant with Abraham, being in effect His covenant with mankind in
Christ, stands both first and last. The Mosaic economy holds a second
and subsidiary place in the scheme of Revelation.
The reason the Apostle gives for reading _Christ_ into the promise
is certainly peculiar. He has been taxed with false exegesis, with
"rabbinical hair-splitting" and the like. Here, it is said, is a fine
example of the art, familiar to theologians, of torturing out of
a word a predetermined sense, foreign to its original meaning. "He
doth not say, and to _seeds_, as referring to many; but as referring
to one, and to thy _seed_, which is Christ." Paul appears to infer
from the fact that the word "seed" is grammatically singular, and
not plural, that it designates a single individual, who can be
no other than Christ. On the surface this does, admittedly, look
like a verbal quibble. The word "seed," in Hebrew and Greek as in
English, is not used, and could not in ordinary speech be used in
the plural to denote a number of descendants. It is a collective
singular. The plural applies only to _different kinds_ of seed.
The Apostle, we may presume, was quite as well aware of this as
his critics. It does not need philological research or grammatical
acumen to establish a distinction obvious to common sense. This piece
of word-play is in reality the vehicle of an historical argument,
as unimpeachable as it is important. Abraham was taught, by a
series of lessons,[95] to refer the promise to _the single line_
of Isaac. Paul elsewhere lays great stress on this consideration;
he brings Isaac into close analogy with Christ; for he was the
child of faith, and represented in his birth a spiritual principle
and the communication of a supernatural life.[96] The true seed of
Abraham was in the first instance _one_, not many. In the primary
realisation of the Promise, typical of its final accomplishment,
it received a _singular_ interpretation; it concentrated itself on
the one, spiritual offspring, putting aside the many, natural and
heterogeneous (Hagarite or Keturite) descendants. And this sifting
principle, this law of election which singles out from the varieties
of nature the Divine type, comes into play all along the line of
descent, as in the case of Jacob, and of David. It finds its supreme
expression in the person of Christ. The Abrahamic testament devolved
under a law of spiritual selection. By its very nature it pointed
ultimately to Jesus Christ. When Paul writes "Not to seeds, as of
many," he virtually says that the word of inspiration was singular
in _sense_ as well as in form; in the mind of the Promiser, and in
the interpretation given to it by events, it bore an individual
reference, and was never intended to apply to Abraham's descendants
at large, to the many and miscellaneous "children according to flesh."
[95] Gen. xii. 2, 3; xv. 2-6; xvii. 4-8, 15-21; xxii. 16-18.
[96] Ch. iv. 21-31; Rom. iv. 17-22; comp. Heb. xi. 11, 12.
Paul's interpretation of the Promise has abundant analogies. All
great principles of human history tend to embody themselves in
some "chosen seed." They find at last their true heir, the _one
man_ destined to be their fulfilment. Moses, David, Paul; Socrates
and Alexander; Shakespere, Newton, are examples of this. The work
that such men do belongs to themselves. Had any promise assured
the world of the gifts to be bestowed through them, in each case
one might have said beforehand, It will have to be, "Not as of
many, but as of one." It is not multitudes, but men that rule the
world. "By _one man_ sin entered into the world: we shall reign in
life through _the one_ Jesus Christ." From the first words of hope
given to the repentant pair banished from Eden, down to the latest
predictions of the Coming One, the Promise became at every stage
more determinate and individualising. The finger of prophecy pointed
with increasing distinctness, now from this side, now from that, to
the veiled form of the Chosen of God--"the seed of the woman," the
"seed of Abraham," the "star out of Jacob," the "Son of David," the
"King Messiah," the suffering "Servant of the Lord," the "smitten
Shepherd," the "Son of man, coming in the clouds of heaven." In His
person all the lines of promise and preparation meet; the scattered
rays of Divine light are brought to a focus. And the desire of all
nations, groping, half-articulate, unites with the inspired foresight
of the seers of Israel to find its goal in Jesus Christ. There was
but _One_ who could meet the manifold conditions created by the
world's previous history, and furnish the key to the mysteries and
contradictions which had gathered round the path of Revelation.
Notwithstanding, the Promise had and has a _generic_ application,
attending its personal accomplishment. "Salvation is of the Jews."
Christ belongs "to the Jew first." Israel was raised up and
consecrated to be the trustee of the Promise given to the world
through Abraham. The vocation of this gifted race, the secret of its
indestructible vitality, lies in its relationship to Jesus Christ.
They are "His own," though they "received Him not." Apart from Him,
Israel is nothing to the world--nothing but a witness against itself.
Premising its essential fulfilment in Christ, Paul still reserves for
his own people their peculiar share in the Testament of Abraham--not
a place of exclusive privilege, but of richer honour and larger
influence. "Hath God cast away His people?" he asks: "Nay indeed. For
I also am an Israelite, of _the seed of Abraham_." So that, after
all, it is something to be of Abraham's children by nature. Despite
his hostility to Judaism, the Apostle claims for the Jewish race a
special office in the dispensation of the Gospel, in the working out
of God's ultimate designs for mankind.[97] Would they only accept
their Messiah, how exalted a rank amongst the nations awaits them!
The title "seed of Abraham" with Paul, like the "Servant of Jehovah"
in Isaiah, has a double significance. The sufferings of the elect
people made them in their national character a pathetic type of the
great Sufferer and Servant of the Lord, His supreme Elect. In Jesus
Christ the collective destiny of Israel is attained; its prophetic
ideal, the spiritual conception of its calling, is realised,--"the
seed to whom it hath been promised."
[97] Rom. xi.
* * * * *
Paul is not alone in his insistence on the relation of Christ to
Abraham. It is announced in the first sentence of the New Testament:
"the book of the generation of Jesus Christ, _son of Abraham_, son
of David." And it is set forth with singular beauty in the Gospel of
the Infancy. Mary's song and Zacharias' prophecy recall the freedom
and simplicity of an inspiration long silenced, as they tell how "the
Lord hath visited and redeemed His people; He hath shown mercy to our
fathers, in remembrance of His holy covenant, the oath which He sware
_unto Abraham our father_." And again, "He hath helped Israel His
servant in remembrance of His mercy, as He spake to our fathers, _to
Abraham and to his seed_ for ever."[98] These pious and tender souls
who watched over the cradle of our Lord and stood in the dawning of
His new day, instinctively cast their thoughts back to the Covenant
of Abraham. In it they found matter for their songs and a warrant
for their hopes, such as no ritual ordinances could furnish. Their
utterances breathe a spontaneity of faith, a vernal freshness of
joy and hope to which the Jewish people for ages had been strangers.
The dull constraint and stiffness, the harsh fanaticism of the
Hebrew nature, have fallen from them. They have put on the beautiful
garments of Zion, her ancient robes of praise. For the time of the
Promise draws near. Abraham's Seed is now to be born; and Abraham's
faith revives to meet Him. It breaks forth anew out of the dry and
long-barren soil of Judaism; it is raised up to a richer and an
enduring life. Paul's doctrine of Grace does but translate into logic
the poetry of Mary's and Zacharias' anthems. The Testament of Abraham
supplies their common theme.
[98] Luke i. 54, 55, 68-73.
CHAPTER XIV.
_THE DESIGN OF THE LAW._
"What then is the law? It was added because of transgressions,
till the seed should come to whom the promise hath been made;
_and it was_ ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator.
Now a mediator is not _a mediator_ of one; but God is one.
Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for
if there had been a law given which could make alive, verily
righteousness would have been of the law. Howbeit the Scripture
hath shut up all things under sin, that the promise by faith in
Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. But before
faith came, we were kept in ward under the law, shut up unto
the faith which should afterwards be revealed. So that the law
hath been our tutor _to bring us_ unto Christ, that we might be
justified by faith."--GAL. iii. 19-24.
_What then is the law?_ So the Jew might well exclaim. Paul has been
doing nothing but disparage it.--"You say that the Law of Moses
brings no righteousness or blessing, but only a curse; that the
covenant made with Abraham ignores it, and does not admit of being
in any way qualified by its provisions. What then do you make of it?
Is it not God's voice that we hear in its commands? Have the sons
of Abraham ever since Moses' day been wandering from the true path
of faith?" Such inferences might be drawn, not unnaturally, from
the Apostle's denunciation of Legalism. They were actually drawn by
Marcion in the second century, in his extreme hostility to Judaism
and the Old Testament.
This question must indeed have early forced itself upon Paul's mind.
How could the doctrine of Salvation by Faith and the supremacy of the
Abrahamic Covenant be reconciled with the Divine commission of Moses?
How, on the other hand, could the displacement of the Law by the
Gospel be justified, if the former too was authorised and inspired
by God? Can the same God have given to men these two contrasted
revelations of Himself? The answer, contained in the passage before
us, is that the two revelations had different ends in view. They are
complementary, not competing institutes. Of the two, the Covenant of
Promise has the prior right; it points immediately to Christ. The
Legal economy is ancillary thereto; it never professed to accomplish
the work of grace, as the Judaists would have it do. Its office
was external, but nevertheless accessory to that of the Promise.
It guarded and schooled the infant heirs of Abraham's Testament,
until the time of its falling due, when they should be prepared in
the manhood of faith to enter on their inheritance. "The law hath
been our tutor for Christ, with the intent we should be justified by
faith" (ver. 24).
This aspect of the Law, under which, instead of being an obstacle
to the life of faith, it is seen to subserve it, has been suggested
already. "For I," the Apostle said, "_through law_ died to law" (ch.
ii. 19). The Law first impelled him to Christ. It constrained him
to look beyond itself. Its discipline was a preparation for faith.
Paul reverses the relation in which faith and Law were set by the
Judaists. They brought in the Law to perfect the unfinished work
of faith (ver. 3): he made it preliminary and propædeutic. What
they gave out for more advanced doctrine, he treats as the "weak
rudiments," belonging to the infancy of the sons of God (ch. iv.
1-11). Up to this point, however, the Mosaic law has been considered
chiefly in a negative way, as a foil to the Covenant of grace.
The Apostle has now to treat of its nature more positively and
explicitly, first indeed _in contrast with the promise_ (vv. 19, 20);
and secondly, _in its co-operation with the promise_ (vv. 22-24).
Ver. 21 is the transition from the first to the second of these
conceptions.
I. "For the sake of the transgressions (committed against it)[99]
the law was added." The Promise, let us remember, was complete in
itself. Its testament of grace was sealed and delivered ages before
the Mosaic legislation, which could not therefore retract or modify
it. The Law was "superadded," as something over and above, attached
to the former revelation for a subsidiary purpose lying outside the
proper scope of the Promise. What then was this purpose?
[99] Τῶν παραβάσεων: the definite article can scarcely mean less
than this.
1. _For the sake of transgressions._ In other words, the object of
the law of Moses was _to develope sin_. This is not the whole of the
Apostle's answer; but it is the key to his explanation. This design
of the Mosaic revelation determined its form and character. Here is
the standpoint from which we are to estimate its working, and its
relation to the kingdom of grace. The saying of Rom. v. 20 is Paul's
commentary upon this sentence: "The law came in by the way, in order
that the trespass (of Adam) might multiply." The same necessity is
expressed in the paradox of 1 Cor. xv. 56: "The strength of sin is
the law."
This enigma, as a psychological question, is resolved by the Apostle
in Rom. vii. 13-24. The law acts as a spur and provocative, rousing
the power of sin to conscious activity. However good in itself,
coming into contact with man's evil flesh, its promulgation is
followed inevitably by transgression. Its commands are so many
occasions for sin to come into action, to exhibit and confirm its
power. So that the Law practically assumes the same relation to sin
as that in which the Promise stands to righteousness and life. In its
union with the Law our sinful nature perpetually "brings forth fruit
unto death." And this mournful result God certainly contemplated when
He gave the Law of Moses.
But are we compelled to put so harsh a sense on the Apostle's words?
May we not say that the Law was imposed in order to _restrain_
sin, to keep it within bounds? Some excellent interpreters read
the verse in this way. It is quite true that, in respect of public
morals and the outward manifestations of evil, the Jewish law
acted beneficially, as a bridle upon the sinful passions. But
this is beside the mark. The Apostle is thinking only of inward
righteousness, that which avails before God. The wording of the
clause altogether excludes the milder interpretation. _For the sake
of_ (χάριν, Latin _gratia_) signifies _promotion_, not _prevention_.
And the word _transgression_, by its Pauline and Jewish usage,
compels us to this view.[100] Transgression presupposes law. It
is the specific form which sin takes under law--the re-action of
sin against law. What was before a latent tendency, a bias of
disposition, now starts to light as a flagrant, guilty fact. By
bringing about repeated transgressions the Law reveals the true
nature of sin, so that it "becomes exceeding sinful." It does not
make matters worse; but it shows how bad they really are. It
aggravates the disease, in order to bring it to a crisis. And this is
a necessary step towards the cure.
[100] Comp. the reference to this word in Chapter IX., p. 143.
2. The Law of Moses was therefore _a provisional
dispensation_,--"added until the seed should come to whom the promise
hath been made." Its object was to make itself superfluous. It "is
not made for a righteous man; but for the lawless and unruly" (1
Tim. i. 9). Like the discipline and drill of a strictly governed
boyhood, it was calculated to produce a certain effect on the moral
nature, after the attainment of which it was no longer needed and its
continuance would be injurious. The essential part of this effect
lay, however, not so much in the outward regularity it imposed, as
in the inner repugnancy excited by it, the consciousness of sin
unsubdued and defiant. By its operation on the conscience the Law
taught man his need of redemption. It thus prepared the platform
for the work of Grace. The Promise had been given. The coming of
the Covenant-heir was assured. But its fulfilment was far off. "The
Lord is not slack concerning His promise,"--and yet it was two
thousand years before "Abraham's seed" came to birth. The degeneracy
of the patriarch's children in the third and fourth generation
showed how little the earlier heirs of the Promise were capable of
receiving it. A thousand years later, when the Covenant was renewed
with David, the ancient predictions seemed at last nearing their
fulfilment. But no; the times were still unripe; the human conscience
but half-disciplined. The bright dawn of the Davidic monarchy
was overclouded. The legal yoke is made more burdensome; sore
chastisements fall on the chosen people, marked out for suffering
as well as honour. Prophecy has many lessons yet to inculcate. The
world's education for Christ has another millennium to run.
Nor when He came, did "the Son of man find faith in the earth"! The
people of the Law had no sooner seen than they hated "Him to whom the
law and the prophets gave witness." Yet, strangely enough, the very
manner of their rejection showed how complete was the preparation for
His coming. Two features, rarely united, marked the ethical condition
of the Jewish people at this time--an intense moral consciousness,
and a deep moral perversion; reverence for the Divine law,
combined with an alienation from its spirit. The chapter of Paul's
autobiography to which we have so often referred (Rom. vii. 7-24) is
typical of the better mind of Judaism. It is the _ne plus ultra_ of
self-condemnation. The consciousness of sin in mankind has ripened.
3. And further, the Law of Moses revealed God's will _in a veiled
and accommodated fashion_, while the Promise and the Gospel are its
direct emanations. This is the inference which we draw from vv. 19,
20.
We are well aware of the extreme difficulty of this passage. Ver. 20
has received, it is computed, some four hundred and thirty distinct
interpretations. Of all the "hard things our beloved brother Paul"
has written, this is the very hardest. The words which make up the
sentence are simple and familiar; and yet in their combination most
enigmatic. And it stands in the midst of a paragraph among the most
interesting and important that the Apostle ever wrote.
Let us look first at the latter clause of ver. 19: "ordained
through angels, in the hand (_i.e._ by means) of a mediator." These
circumstances, as the orthodox Jew supposed, _enhanced_ the glory
of the Law. The pomp and formality under which Mosaism was ushered
in, the presence of the angelic host to whose agency the terrific
manifestations attending the Law-giving were referred, impressed
the popular mind with a sense of the incomparable sacredness of the
Sinaitic revelation. It was this assumption which gave its force
to the climax of Stephen's speech, of which we hear an echo in
these words of Paul: "who received the law at the disposition of
angels--and have not kept it!"[101] The simplicity and informality of
the Divine communion with Abraham, and again of Christ's appearance
in the world and His intercourse with men, afford a striking contrast
to all this.
[101] Acts vii. 53: comp. διαταγὰς ἀγγέλων and διαταγεὶς δι'
ἀγγέλων. Stephen's last words may well have lingered in the ear
of Saul. From the lips of Stephen, they were something of an
_argumentum ad hominem_.
More is hinted than is expressly said in Scripture of the part taken
by the angels in the Law-giving. Deut. xxxiii. 2[102] and Ps. lxviii.
17 give the most definite indications of the ancient faith of Israel
on this point. But "the Angel of the Lord" is a familiar figure of
Old Testament revelation. In Hebrew thought impressive physical
phenomena were commonly associated with the presence of spiritual
agents.[103] The language of Heb. i. 7 and ii. 2 endorses this
belief, which in no way conflicts with natural science, and is in
keeping with the Christian faith.
[102] A doubtful citation at the best: the reading of the LXX is
more to the point than the Hebrew text.
[103] See the quotations from Jewish writers to this effect given
by Meyer or Lightfoot.
But while such intermediacy, from the Jewish standpoint, increased
the splendour and authority of the Law, believers in Christ had
learned to look at the matter otherwise.[104] A revelation
"administered _through angels_," spoke to them of a God distant and
obscured, of a people unfit for access to His presence. This is
plainly intimated in the added clause, "by means of _a mediator_,"--a
title commonly given to Moses, and recalling the entreaty of Exod.
xx. 19; Deut. v. 22-28: "The people said, Speak thou with us, and we
will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die." These are the
words of sinful men, receiving a law given, as the Apostle has just
declared, on purpose to convict them of their sins. The form of the
Mosaic revelation tended therefore in reality not to exalt the Law,
but to exhibit its difference from the Promise and the distance at
which it placed men from God.
[104] Comp. Heb. ii. 2-4; also Col. ii. 15: "(_scil._ God) having
stripped off the principalities and powers"--the earlier forms of
angelic mediation. The writer may refer on this latter passage to
his note in the _Pulpit Commentary_, also to _The Expositor_, 1st
series, x. 403-421.
The same thought is expressed, as Bishop Lightfoot aptly shows, by
the figure of "the veil on Moses' face," which Paul employs with so
much felicity in 2 Cor. iii. 13-18. In the external glory of the
Sinaitic law-giving, as on the illuminated face of the Law-giver,
there was a fading brightness, a visible lustre concealing its
imperfect and transitory character. The theophanies of the Old
Covenant were a magnificent veil, hiding while they revealed. Under
the Law, _angels, Moses_ came between God and man. It was God who
in His own grace conveyed the promise to justified Abraham (ver.
18).[105]
[105] But the title "mediator" belongs to _Christ_, given by Paul
himself--the "one mediator between God and men, the man Christ
Jesus" (1 Tim. ii. 5). (Comp. Heb. viii. 6; ix. 15; xii. 24.)
Christ is so styled however under an aspect very different from
that in which the word appears here. "There is one mediator,"
the Apostle writes in 1 Timothy, "_who gave Himself a ransom for
all_," the one _atoning_ mediator. But Christ's manifestation of
God was direct, as that of Moses was not. His Person does not
come between men and God, like that of the Sinaitic mediator; it
brings God into immediate contact with men. Moses acted for a
distant God: Christ is Immanuel, _God with us_. On the _human_
side Christ is mediator (ἄνθρωπος Χριστὸς Ἰησοῦς); He acts for
individual men with God. On the _Divine_ side, He is more than
mediator, being God Himself.
The Law employed _a mediator_; the Promise did not (ver. 19.). With
this contrast in our minds we approach ver. 20. On the other side
of it (ver. 21), we find Law and Promise again in sharp antithesis.
The same antithesis runs through the intervening sentence. The two
clauses of ver. 20 belong to the Law and Promise respectively. "Now
a mediator is not of one:" that is an axiom which holds good of
_the Law_. "But God is one:" this glorious truth, the first article
of Israel's creed, applies to _the Promise_. Where "a mediator" is
necessary, unity is wanting,--not simply in a numerical, but in a
moral sense, as matter of feeling and of aim. There are separate
interests, discordant views to be consulted. This was true of
Mosaism. Although in substance "holy and just and good," it was
by no means purely Divine. It was not the absolute religion. Not
only was it defective; it contained, in the judgement of Christ,
positive elements of wrong, precepts given "for the hardness of
men's hearts."[106] It largely consisted of "carnal ordinances,
imposed till the time of rectification" (Heb. ix. 10). The theocratic
legislation of the Pentateuch is lacking in the unity and consistency
of a perfect revelation. Its disclosures of God were refracted in a
manifest degree by the atmosphere through which they passed.
[106] Matt. xix. 8. Comp. Ezek. xx. 25.
"But God is one." Here again the unity is moral and essential--of
character and action, rather than of number. In the Promise God spoke
immediately and for Himself. There was no screen to intercept the
view of faith, no go-between like Moses, with God on the mountain-top
shrouded in thunder-clouds and the people terrified or wantoning far
below. Of all differences between the Abrahamic and Judaic types
of piety this was the chief. The man of Abraham's faith sees God
in His unity. The Legalist gets his religion at second-hand, mixed
with undivine elements. He believes that there is one God; but his
hold upon the truth is formal. There is no unity, no simplicity of
faith in his conception of God. He projects on to the Divine image
confusing shadows of human imperfection.
GOD IS ONE: this great article of faith was the foundation of
Israel's life. It forms the first sentence of the Shemá, the "Hear, O
Israel" (Deut. vi. 4-9), which every pious Jew repeats twice a day,
and which in literal obedience to the Law-giver's words he fixes
above his house-door, and binds upon his arm and brow at the time of
prayer. Three times besides has the Apostle quoted this sentence.
The first of these passages, Rom. iii. 29, 30,[107] may help us to
understand its application here. In that place he employs it as a
weapon against Jewish exclusiveness. If there is but "_one_ God,"
he argues, there can be only _one_ way of justification, for Jew
and Gentile alike. The inference drawn here is even more bold and
singular. There is "one God," who appeared in His proper character in
the Covenant with Abraham. If the Law of Moses gives us a conception
of His nature in any wise different from this, it is because other
and lower elements found a place in it. Through the whole course
of revelation there is _one God_--manifest to Abraham, veiled in
Mosaism, revealed again in His perfect image in "the face of Jesus
Christ."
[107] Comp. 1 Cor. viii. 6; 1 Tim. ii. 5; also Mark xii. 29, 30;
Jas. ii. 19.
II. So far the Apostle has pursued the contrast between the systems
of Law and Grace. When finally he has referred the latter rather
than the former to the "one God," we naturally ask, "Is the Law then
_against_ the promises of God?" (ver. 21). Was the Legal dispensation
a mere reaction, a retrogression from the Promise? This would be
to push Paul's argument to an antinomian extreme. He hastens to
protest.--"The law against the promises? Away with the thought."
Not on the Apostle's premises, but on those of his opponents, did
this consequence ensue. It is _they_ who set the two at variance, by
trying to make law do the work of grace. "For if a law had been given
that could bring men to life, righteousness would verily in that
case have been of law" (ver. 21). That righteousness, and therefore
life, is not of law, the Apostle has abundantly shown (ch. ii. 16;
iii. 10-13). Had the Law provided some efficient means of its own for
winning righteousness, there would then indeed have been a conflict
between the two principles. As matters stand, there is none. Law
and Promise move on different planes. Their functions are distinct.
Yet there is a connection between them. The design of the Law is to
mediate between the Promise and its fulfilment. "The trespass" must
be "multiplied," the knowledge of sin deepened, before Grace can
do its office. The fever of sin has to come to its crisis, before
the remedy can take effect. Law is therefore not the enemy, but
the minister of Grace. It was charged with a purpose lying beyond
itself. "Christ is the end of the law, for righteousness" (Rom. x. 4).
1. For, in the first place, _the law cuts men off from all other hope
of salvation_.
On the Judaistic hypothesis, "righteousness would have been of law."
But quite on the contrary, "the Scripture shuts up everything under
sin, that the promise might be given in the way of faith in Jesus
Christ, to them that believe" (ver. 22). Condemnation inevitable,
universal, was pronounced by the Divine word under the Law, not in
order that men might remain crushed beneath its weight, but that,
abandoning vain hopes of self-justification, they might find in
Christ their true deliverer.
The Apostle is referring here to the general purport of "the
Scripture." His assertion embraces the whole teaching of the Old
Testament concerning human sinfulness, embodied, for example, in the
chain of citations drawn out in Rom. iii. 10-18. Wherever the man
looking for legal justification turned, the Scripture met him with
some new command which drove him back upon the sense of his moral
helplessness. It fenced him in with prohibitions; it showered on
him threatenings and reproaches; it besieged him in ever narrowing
circles. And if he felt less the pressure of its outward burdens, all
the more was he tormented by inward disharmony and self-accusation.
Now the judgement of Scripture is not uttered against this class of
men or that, against this type of sin or that. Its impeachment sweeps
the entire area of human life, sounding the depths of the heart,
searching every avenue of thought and desire. It makes of the world
one vast prison-house, with the Law for gaoler, and mankind held fast
in chains of sin, waiting for death. In this position the Apostle
had found himself (Rom. vii. 24-viii. 2); and in his own heart he
saw a mirror of the world. "Every mouth was stopped, and all the
world brought in guilty before God" (Rom. iii. 19). This condition
he graphically describes in terms of his former experience, in ver.
23: "Before faith came, under law we were kept in ward, being shut
up unto the faith that was to be revealed." The Law was all the
while standing guard over its subjects, watching and checking every
attempt to escape,[108] but intending to hand them over in due time
to the charge of Faith. The Law posts its ordinances, like so many
sentinels, round the prisoner's cell. The cordon is complete. He
tries again and again to break out; the iron circle will not yield.
But deliverance will yet be his. The day of Faith approaches. It
dawned long ago in Abraham's Promise. Even now its light shines into
his dungeon, and he hears the word of Jesus, "Thy sins are forgiven
thee; go in peace." Law, the stern gaoler, has after all been a good
friend, if it has reserved him for this. It prevents the sinner
escaping to a futile and illusive freedom.
[108] Hence the _present_ participle, συγκλειόμενοι (Revised
reading of ver. 23), in combination with the _imperfect_ of the
foregoing verb, ἐφρονρουμεθα.
In this dramatic fashion Paul shows how the Mosaic law by its ethical
discipline prepared men for a life which by itself it was incapable
of giving. Where Law has done its work well, it produces, as in the
Apostle's earlier experience, a profound sense of personal demerit, a
tenderness of conscience, a contrition of heart which makes one ready
thankfully to receive "the righteousness which is of God by faith."
In every age and condition of life a like effect is wrought upon
men who honestly strive to live up to an exacting moral standard.
They confess their failure. They lose self-conceit. They grow "poor
in spirit," willing to accept "the abundance of _the gift_ of
righteousness" in Jesus Christ.
_Faith_ is trebly honoured here. It is the condition of the gift,
the characteristic of its recipient (vv. 22, 24), and the end for
which he was put under the charge of Law (ver. 23). "To them that
believe" is "given," as it was in foretaste to Abraham (ver. 6), a
righteousness unearned, and bestowed on Christ's account (ch. iii.
13; Rom. v. 17, 18); which brings with it the indwelling of the Holy
Spirit, reserved in its conscious possession for Abraham's children
in the faith of Christ (ch. iii. 14; iv. 4). These blessings form
the commencement of that true life, whose root is a spiritual union
with Christ, and which reaches on to eternity (ch. ii. 20; Rom. v.
21; vi. 23). Of such life the Law could impart nothing; but it taught
men their need of it, and disposed them to accept it. This was the
purpose of its institution. It was the forerunner, not the finisher,
of Faith.
2. Paul makes use of a second figure to describe the office of
the Law; under which he gives his final answer to the question of
ver. 19. The metaphor of the gaoler is exchanged for that of _the
tutor_. "The law hath been our παιδαγωγὸς for Christ." This Greek
word (_boy-leader_) has no English equivalent; we have not the thing
it represents. The "pedagogue" was a sort of nursery governor,--a
confidential servant in the Greek household, commonly a slave, who
had charge of the boy from his infancy, and was responsible for his
oversight. In his food, his clothes, his home-lessons, his play, his
walks--at every point the pedagogue was required to wait upon his
young charge, and to control his movements. Amongst other offices,
his tutor might have to conduct the boy to school; and it has been
supposed that Paul is thinking of this duty, as though he meant, "The
Law has been our pedagogue, to take us to Christ, our true teacher."
But he adds, "That we might be justified of faith." The "tutor" of
ver. 24 is parallel to the "guard" of the last verse; he represents a
distinctly disciplinary influence.
This figure implies not like the last the imprisoned condition of the
subject--but _his childish, undeveloped state_. This is an advance
of thought. The Law was something more than a system of restraint
and condemnation. It contained an element of progress. Under the
tutelage of his pedagogue the boy is growing up to manhood. At the
end of its term the Law will hand over its charge mature in capacity
and equal to the responsibilities of faith. "If then the Law is a
παιδαγωγός, it is not hostile to Grace, but its fellow-worker; but
should it continue to hold us fast when Grace has come, then it would
be hostile" (Chrysostom).
Although the highest function, that of "giving life," is denied to
the Law, a worthy part is still assigned to it by the Apostle. It
was "a tutor to lead men to Christ." Judaism was an education for
Christianity. It prepared the world for the Redeemer's coming. It
drilled and moralised the religious youth of the human race. It
broke up the fallow-ground of nature, and cleared a space in the
weed-covered soil to receive the seed of the kingdom. Its moral
regimen deepened the conviction of sin, while it multiplied its
overt acts. Its ceremonial impressed on sensuous natures the idea
of the Divine holiness; and its sacrificial rites gave definiteness
and vividness to men's conceptions of the necessity of atonement,
failing indeed to remove sin, but awakening the need and sustaining
the hope of its removal (Heb. x. 1-18).
* * * * *
The Law of Moses has formed in the Jewish nation a type of humanity
like no other in the world. "They dwell alone," said Balaam, "and
shall not be reckoned amongst the nations." Disciplined for ages
under their harsh "pedagogue," this wonderful people acquired a
strength of moral fibre and a spiritual sensibility that prepared
them to be the religious leaders of mankind. Israel has given us
David and Isaiah, Paul and John. Christ above all was "born under
law--of David's seed according to flesh." The influence of Jewish
minds at this present time on the world's higher thought, whether
for good or evil, is incalculable; and it penetrates everywhere.
The Christian Church may with increased emphasis repeat Paul's
anticipation, "What will the receiving of them be, but life from the
dead!" They have a great service still to do for the Lord and for His
Christ. It was well for them and for us that they have "borne the
yoke in their youth."
CHAPTER XV.
_THE EMANCIPATED SONS OF GOD._
"But now that faith is come, we are no longer under a tutor.
For ye are all sons of God, through faith in Christ Jesus. For
as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ.
There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond
nor free, there can be no male and female: for ye all are one
_man_ in Christ Jesus. And if ye are Christ's, then are ye
Abraham's seed, heirs according to promise."--GAL. iii. 25-29.
"Faith has come!" At this announcement Law the tutor yields up his
charge; Law the gaoler sets his prisoner at liberty. The age of
servitude has passed. In truth it endured long enough. The iron of
its bondage had entered into the soul. But at last Faith is come;
and with it comes a new world. The clock of time cannot be put back.
The soul of man will never return to the old tutelage, nor submit
again to a religion of rabbinism and sacerdotalism. "We are no longer
under a pedagogue;" we have ceased to be children in the nursery,
schoolboys at our tasks--"ye are all sons of God." In such terms the
newborn, free spirit of Christianity speaks in Paul. He had tasted
the bitterness of the Judaic yoke; no man more deeply. He had felt
the weight of its impossible exactions, its fatal condemnation. This
sentence is a shout of deliverance. "Wretch that I am," he had cried,
"who shall deliver me?--I give thanks to God through Jesus Christ
our Lord; ... for the law of the Spirit of life in Him hath freed me
from the law of sin and death" (Rom. vii. 24-viii. 2).
Faith is the true emancipator of the human mind. It comes to take its
place as mistress of the soul, queen in the realm of the heart; to
be henceforth its spring of life, the norm and guiding principle of
its activity. "The life that I live in the flesh," Paul testifies,
"I live in faith." The Mosaic law--a system of external, repressive
ordinances--is no longer to be the basis of religion. Law itself,
and for its proper purposes, Faith honours and magnifies (Rom. iii.
31). It is in the interests of Law that the Apostle insists on
the abolishment of its Judaic form. Faith is an essentially just
principle, the rightful, original ground of human fellowship with
God. In the age of Abraham, and even under the Mosaic régime, in the
religion of the Prophets and Psalmists, faith was the quickening
element, the well-spring of piety and hope and moral vigour. Now
it is brought to light. It assumes its sovereignty, and claims its
inheritance. Faith is come--for Christ is come, its "author and
finisher."
The efficacy of faith lies in _its object_. "Works" assume an
intrinsic merit in the doer; faith has its virtue in Him it trusts.
It is the soul's recumbency on Christ. "Through faith in Christ
Jesus," Paul goes on to say, "ye are all sons of God." Christ
evokes the faith which shakes off legal bondage, leaving the age
of formalism and ritual behind, and beginning for the world an era
of spiritual freedom. "_In_ Christ Jesus" faith has its being; He
constitutes for the soul a new atmosphere and habitat, in which faith
awakens to full existence, bursts the confining shell of legalism,
recognises itself and its destiny, and unfolds into the glorious
consciousness of its Divine sonship.
We prefer, with Ellicott and Meyer, to attach the complement "in
Christ Jesus"[109] to "faith" (so in A.V.), rather than to the
predicate, "Ye are sons"--the construction endorsed by the _Revised_
comma after "faith." The former connection, more obvious in itself,
seems to us to fall in with the Apostle's line of thought. And it is
sustained by the language of ver. 27. _Faith in Christ_, _baptism
into Christ_, and _putting on Christ_ are connected and correspondent
expressions. The first is the spiritual principle, the ground or
element of the new life; the second, its visible attestation; and the
third indicates the character and habit proper thereto.
[109] The phrase _faith in Christ Jesus_ is a link between this
Epistle and those of the third and fourth groups. Comp. Col.
i. 4; Eph. i. 15; 1 Tim. iii. 13; 2 Tim. i. 13; iii. 15. More
frequently in this connection our "in" represents εἰς (_into_),
not ἐν as here.
I. It is _faith in Christ_ then which _constitutes us sons of God_.
This principle is the foundation-stone of the Christian life.
In the Old Testament the sonship of believers lay in shadow. Jehovah
was "the King, the Lord of Hosts," the "Shepherd of Israel." They
are "His people, the sheep of His pasture"--"My servant Jacob," He
says, "Israel whom I have chosen." If He is named _Father_, it is
of the collective Israel, not the individual; otherwise the title
occurs only in figure and apostrophe. The promise of this blessedness
had never been explicitly given under the Covenant of Moses. The
assurance quoted in 2 Cor. vi. 18 is pieced together from scattered
hints of prophecy. Old-Testament faith hardly dared to dream of such
a privilege as this. It is not ascribed even to Abraham. Only to the
kingly "Son of David" is it said, "I will be a Father unto him; and
he shall be to me for a son" (2 Sam. vii. 14).
But "beloved, now are we children of God" (1 John iii. 2). The filial
consciousness is the distinction of the Church of Jesus Christ. The
Apostolic writings are full of it. The unspeakable dignity of this
relationship, the boundless hopes which it inspires, have left their
fresh impress on the pages of the New Testament. The writers are
men who have made a vast discovery. They have sailed out into a new
ocean. They have come upon an infinite treasure. "Thou art no longer
a slave, but a son!" What exultation filled the soul of Paul and of
John as they penned such words! "The Spirit of glory and of God"
rested upon them.
The Apostle is virtually repeating here what he said in vv. 2-5
touching the "receiving of the Spirit," which is, he declared, the
distinctive mark of the Christian state, and raises its possessor
_ipso facto_ above the religion of externalism. The antithesis of
_flesh and spirit_ now becomes that of _sonship and pupilage_. Christ
Himself, in the words of Luke xi. 13, marked out the gift of "the
Holy Spirit" as the bond between the "heavenly Father" and His human
children. Accordingly Paul writes immediately, in ch. iv. 6, 7, of
"God sending forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts" to show
that we "are sons," where we find again the thought which follows
here in ver. 27, viz. that _union with Christ_ imparts this exalted
status. This is after all the central conception of the Christian
life. Paul has already stated it as the sum of his own experience:
"Christ lives in me" (ch. ii. 20). "I have put on Christ" is the same
thing in other words. In ch. ii. 20 he contemplates the union as an
inner, vitalising force; here it is viewed as matter of status and
condition. The believer is _invested with Christ_. He enters into the
filial estate and endowments, since he is _in Christ Jesus_. "For
if Christ is Son of God, and thou hast put on Him, having the Son
in thyself and being made like to Him, thou wast brought into one
kindred and one form of being with Him" (Chrysostom).
This was true of "so many as were baptized into Christ"--an
expression employed not in order to limit the assertion, but
to extend it coincidently with the "all" of ver. 26. There
was no difference in this respect between the circumcised and
uncircumcised. Every baptized Galatian was a son of God. Baptism
manifestly presupposes faith. To imagine that the _opus operatum_,
the mechanical performance of the rite apart from faith present or
anticipated in the subject, "clothes us with Christ," is to hark
back to Judaism. It is to substitute baptism for circumcision--a
difference merely of form, so long as the doctrine of ritual
regeneration remains the same. This passage is as clear a proof as
could well be desired, that in the Pauline vocabulary "baptized"
is synonymous with "believing." The baptism of these Galatians
solemnised their spiritual union with Christ. It was the public
acceptance, in trust and submission, of God's covenant of grace--for
their children haply, as well as for themselves.
In the case of the infant, the household to which it belongs, the
religious community which receives it to be nursed in its bosom,
stand sponsors for its faith. On them will rest the blame of broken
vows and responsibility disowned, if their baptized children are left
to lapse into ignorance of Christ's claims upon them. The Church
which practises infant baptism assumes a very serious obligation. If
it takes no sufficient care to have the rite made good, if children
pass through its laver to remain unmarked and unshepherded, it is
sinning against Christ. Such administration makes His ordinance an
object of superstition, or of contempt.
The baptism of the Galatians signalised their entrance "into
Christ," the union of their souls with the dying, risen Lord. They
were "baptized," as Paul phrases it elsewhere, "into His death,"
to "walk" henceforth with Him "in newness of life." By its very
form--the normal and most expressive form of primitive baptism,
the descent into and rising from the symbolic waters--it pictured
the soul's death with Christ, its burial and its resurrection in
Him, its separation from the life of sin and entrance upon the new
career of a regenerated child of God (Rom. vi. 3-14). This power
attended the ordinance "through faith in the operation of God who
raised Christ from the dead" (Col. ii. 11-13). Baptism had proved
to them "the laver of regeneration" in virtue of "the renewing of
the Holy Spirit," under those spiritual conditions of accepted
mercy and "justification by grace through faith,"[110] without
which it is a mere law-work, as useless as any other. It was the
outward and visible sign of the inward transaction which made the
Galatian believers sons of God and heirs of life eternal. It was
therefore a "putting on of Christ," a veritable assumption of the
Christian character, the filial relationship to God. Every such
baptism announced to heaven and earth the passage of another soul
from servitude to freedom, from death unto life, the birth of a
brother into the family of God. From this day the new convert was a
member incorporate of the Body of Christ, affianced to his Lord, not
alone in the secret vows of his heart, but pledged to Him before his
fellow-men. He had _put on Christ_--to be worn in his daily life,
while He dwelt in the shrine of his spirit. And men would see Christ
in him, as they see the robe upon its wearer, the armour glittering
on the soldier's breast.
[110] Rom. vi. 1, 2; Tit. iii. 4-7 ("not of _works_ ... that we
had done)."
By receiving Christ, inwardly accepted in faith, visibly assumed in
baptism, we are made sons of God. _He_ makes us free of the house
of God, where He rules as Son, and where no slave may longer stay.
Those who called themselves "Abraham's seed" and yet were "slaves
of sin," must be driven from the place in God's household which
they dishonoured, and must forfeit their abused prerogatives. They
were not Abraham's children, for they were utterly unlike him; the
Devil surely was their father, whom by their lusts they featured. So
Christ declared to the unbelieving Jews (John viii. 31-44). And so
the Apostle identifies the children of Abraham with the sons of God,
by faith united to "the Son." Alike in the historical sonship toward
Abraham and the supernatural sonship toward God, Christ is the ground
of filiation. Our sonship is grafted upon His. He is "the vine," we
"branches" in Him. He is _the_ seed of Abraham, _the_ Son of God; we,
sons of God and Abraham's seed--"if we are Christ's." Through Him we
derive from God; through Him all that is best in the life of humanity
comes down to us. Christ is the central stock, the spiritual root of
the human race. His manifestation reveals God to man, and man also
to himself. In Jesus Christ we regain the Divine image, stamped upon
us in Him at our creation (Col. i. 15, 16; iii. 10, 11), the filial
likeness to God which constitutes man's proper nature. Its attainment
is the essential blessing, the promise which descended from Abraham
along the succession of faith.
Now this dignity belongs universally to Christian faith. "Ye are
_all_," the Apostle says, "sons of God through faith in Him." Sonship
is a human, not a Jewish distinction. The discipline Israel had
endured, it endured for the world. The Gentiles have no need to pass
through it again. Abraham's blessing, when it came, was to embrace
"all the families of the earth." The new life in Christ in which
it is realised, is as large in scope as it is complete in nature.
"Faith in Christ Jesus" is a condition that opens the door to every
human being,--"Jew or Greek, bond or free, male or female." If then
baptized, believing Gentiles are sons of God, they stand already
on a level higher than any to which Mosaism raised its professors.
"Putting on Christ," they are robed in a righteousness brighter and
purer than that of the most blameless legalist. What can Judaism do
for them more? How could they wish to cover their glorious dress with
its faded, worn-out garments? To add circumcision to their faith
would be not to rise, but to sink from the state of sons to that of
serfs.
II. On this first principle of the new life there rests a second.
The sons of God are brethren to each other. Christianity is the
perfection of society, as well as of the individual. _The faith of
Christ restores the broken unity of mankind._ "In Christ Jesus there
is no Jew or Greek; there is no bondman or freeman; there is no male
and female. You are all one in Him."
The Galatian believer at his baptism had entered a communion which
gave him for the first time the sense of a common humanity. In
Jesus Christ he found a bond of union with his fellows, an identity
of interest and aim so commanding that in its presence secular
differences appeared as nothing. From the height to which his Divine
adoption raised him these things were invisible. Distinctions of
race, of rank, even that of sex, which bulk so largely in our outward
life and are sustained by all the force of pride and habit, are
forgotten here. These dividing lines and party-walls have no power to
sunder us from Christ, nor therefore from each other in Christ. The
tide of Divine love and joy which through the gate of faith poured
into the souls of these Gentiles of "many nations," submerged all
barriers. They are one in the brotherhood of the eternal life. When
one says "I am a child of God," one no longer thinks, "I am a Greek
or Jew, rich or poor, noble or ignoble--man or woman." A son of
God!--that sublime consciousness fills his being.
Paul, to be sure, does not mean that these differences have ceased
to exist. He fully recognises them; and indeed insists strongly on
the proprieties of sex, and on the duties of civil station. He values
his own Jewish birth and Roman citizenship. But "in Christ Jesus"
he "counts them refuse" (Phil. iii. 4-8). Our relations to God, our
heritage in Abraham's Testament, depend on our faith in Christ Jesus
and our possession of His Spirit. Neither birth nor office affects
this relationship in the least degree. "As many as are led by the
Spirit of God, they are the sons of God" (Rom. viii. 14). This is the
Divine criterion of churchmanship, applied to prince or beggar, to
archbishop or sexton, with perfect impartiality. "God is no respecter
of persons."
This rule of the Apostle's was a new principle in religion, pregnant
with immense consequences. The Stoic cosmopolitan philosophy made a
considerable approach to it, teaching as it did the worth of the
moral person and the independence of virtue upon outward conditions.
Buddhism previously, and Mohammedanism subsequently, each in its own
way, addressed themselves to man as man, declaring all believers
equal and abolishing the privileges of race and caste. To their
recognition of human brotherhood the marvellous victories won by
these two creeds are largely due. These religious systems, with all
their errors, were a signal advance upon Paganism with its "gods
many and lords many," its local and national deities, whose worship
belittled the idea of God and turned religion into an engine of
hostility instead of a bond of union amongst men.
Greek culture, moreover, and Roman government, as it has often been
observed, had greatly tended to unify mankind. They diffused a
common atmosphere of thought and established one imperial law round
the circuit of the Mediterranean shores. But these conquests of
secular civilization, the victories of arms and arts, were achieved
at the expense of religion. Polytheism is essentially barbarian.
It flourishes in division and in ignorance. To bring together its
innumerable gods and creeds was to bring them all into contempt. The
_one law_, the _one learning_ now prevailing in the world, created
a void in the conscience of mankind, only to be filled by the _one
faith_. Without a centre of spiritual unity, history shows that
no other union will endure. But for Christianity, the Græco-Roman
civilization would have perished, trampled out by the feet of Goths
and Huns.
The Jewish faith failed to meet the world's demand for a universal
religion. It could never have saved European society. Nor was it
designed for such a purpose. True, its Jehovah was "the God of the
whole earth." The teaching of the Old Testament, as Paul easily
showed, had a universal import and brought all men within the
scope of its promises. But in its actual shape and its positive
institutions it was still tribal and exclusive. Mosaism planted
round the family of Abraham a fence of ordinances, framed of set
purpose to make them a separate people and preserve them from heathen
contamination. This system, at first maintained with difficulty, in
course of time gained control of the Israelitish nature, and its
exclusiveness was aggravated by every device of Pharisaic ingenuity.
Without an entire transformation, without in fact ceasing to be
Judaism, the Jewish religion was doomed to isolation. Under the Roman
Empire, in consequence of the ubiquitous dispersion of the Jews, it
spread far and wide. It attracted numerous and influential converts.
But these proselytes never were, and never could have been generally
amalgamated with the sacred people. They remained in the outer court,
worshipping the God of Israel "afar off" (Eph. ii. 11-22; iii. 4-6).
This particularism of the Mosaic system was, to Paul's mind, a proof
of its temporary character. The abiding faith, the faith of "Abraham
and his seed," must be broad as humanity. It could know nothing of
Jew and Gentile, of master and slave, nor even of man and woman; it
knows only _the soul and God_. The gospel of Christ allied itself
thus with the nascent instinct of humanity, the fellow-feeling of
the race. It adopted the sentiment of the Roman poet, himself an
enfranchised slave, who wrote: _Homo sum, et humani a me nil alienum
puto_. In our religion human kinship at last receives adequate
expression. The Son of man lays the foundation of a world-wide
fraternity. The one Father claims all men for His sons in Christ.
A new, tenderer, holier humanity is formed around His cross. Men
of the most distant climes and races, coming across their ancient
battle-fields, clasp each other's hands and say, "Beloved, if God so
loved us, we ought also to love one another."
The practice of the Church has fallen far below the doctrine of
Christ and His Apostles. In this respect Mohammedans and Buddhists
might teach Christian congregations a lesson of fraternity. The
arrangements of our public worship seem often designed expressly to
emphasize social distinctions, and to remind the poor man of his
inequality. Our native _hauteur_ and conventionality are nowhere
more painfully conspicuous than in the house of God. English
Christianity is seamed through and through with caste-feeling. This
lies at the root of our sectarian jealousies. It is largely due
to this cause that the social ideal of Jesus Christ has been so
deplorably ignored, and that a frank brotherly fellowship amongst
the Churches is at present impossible. Sacerdotalism first destroyed
the Christian brotherhood by absorbing in the official ministry
the functions of the individual believer. And the Protestant
Reformation has but partially re-established these prerogatives. Its
action has been so far too exclusively negative and _protéstant_,
too little constructive and creative. It has allowed itself to be
secularised and identified with existing national limitations and
social distinctions. How greatly has the authority of our faith and
the influence of the Church suffered from this error. The filial
consciousness should produce _the fraternal consciousness_. With the
former we may have a number of private Christians; with the latter
only can we have a Church.
"Ye are all," says the Apostle, "one (man) in Christ Jesus."
The numeral is masculine, not neuter--_one person_ (no abstract
unity),[111] as though possessing one mind and will, and that "the
mind that was in Christ." Just so far as individual men are "in
Christ" and He becomes the soul of their life, do they realise
this unity. The Christ within them recognises the Christ without,
as "face answereth to face in a glass." In this recognition social
disparity vanishes. We think of it no more than we shall do before
the judgement-seat of Christ. What matters it whether my brother
wears velvet or fustian, if Christ be in him? The humbleness of
his birth or occupation, the uncouthness of his speech, cannot
separate him, nor can the absence of these peculiarities separate
his neighbour, from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Why
should these differences make them strangers to each other in the
Church? If both are _in Christ_, why are they not _one in Christ_? A
tide of patriotic emotion, a scene of pity or terror--a shipwreck, an
earthquake--levels all classes and makes us feel and act as one man.
Our faith in Christ should do no less. Or do we love God less than
we fear death? Is our country more to us than Jesus Christ? In rare
moments of exaltation we rise, it may be, to the height at which Paul
sets our life. But until we can habitually and by settled principle
in our Church-relations "know no man after the flesh," we come short
of the purpose of Jesus Christ (comp. John xvii. 20-23).
[111] Comp. Eph. ii. 15; iv. 13; but _neuter_ in ii. 14.
The unity Paul desiderates would effectually counteract the Judaistic
agitation. The force of the latter lay in antipathy. Paul's opponents
contended that there must be "Jew and Greek." They fenced off the
Jewish preserve from uncircumcised intruders. Gentile nonconformists
must adopt their ritual; or they will remain a lower caste, outside
the privileged circle of the covenant-heirs of Abraham. Compelled
under this pressure to accept the Mosaic law, it was anticipated
that they would add to the glory of Judaism and help to maintain its
institutions unimpaired. But the Apostle has cut the ground from
under their feet. It is _faith_, he affirms, which makes men sons of
God. And faith is equally possible to Jew or Gentile. Then Judaism is
doomed. No system of caste, no principle of social exclusion has, on
this assumption, any foothold in the Church. Spiritual life, nearness
and likeness to the common Saviour--in a word _character_, is the
standard of worth in His kingdom. And the range of that kingdom is
made wide as humanity; its charity, deep as the love of God.
* * * * *
And "if you--whether Jews or Greeks--are Christ's, then are you
Abraham's seed, heirs in terms of the Promise." So the Apostle brings
to a close this part of his argument, and links it to what he has
said before touching the fatherhood of Abraham. Since ver. 18 we
have lost sight of the patriarch; but he has not been forgotten.
From that verse Paul has been conducting us onward through the legal
centuries which parted Abraham from Christ. He has shown how the law
of Moses interposed between promise and fulfilment, schooling the
Jewish race and mankind in them for its accomplishment. Now the long
discipline is over. The hour of release has struck. Faith resumes her
ancient sway, in a larger realm. In Christ a new, universal humanity
comes into existence, formed of men who by faith are grafted into
Him. Partakers of Christ, Gentiles also are of the seed of Abraham;
the wild scions of nature share "the root and fatness of the good
olive-tree." All things are theirs; for they are Christ's (1 Cor.
iii. 21-23).
Christ never stands alone. "In the midst of the Church--firstborn of
many brethren" He presents Himself, standing "in the presence of God
for us." He has secured for mankind and keeps in trust its glorious
heritage. In Him we hold in fee the ages past and to come. The sons
of God are heirs of the universe.
CHAPTER XVI.
_THE HEIR'S COMING OF AGE._
"But I say that so long as the heir is a child, he differeth
nothing from a bondservant, though he is lord of all; but is
under guardians and stewards until the term appointed of the
father. So we also, when we were children, were held in bondage
under the rudiments of the world: but when the fulness of the
time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under
the law, that He might redeem them which were under the law,
that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are
sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts,
crying, Abba Father. So that thou art no longer a bondservant,
but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God."--GAL. iv.
1-7.
The main thesis of the Epistle is now established. Gentile
Christians, Paul has shown, are in the true Abrahamic succession of
faith. And this devolution of the Promise discloses the real intent
of the Mosaic law, as an intermediate and disciplinary system. Christ
was the heir of Abraham's testament; He was therefore the end of
Moses' law. And those who are Christ's inherit the blessings of the
Promise, while they escape the curse and condemnation of the Law. The
remainder of the Apostle's polemic, down to ch. v. 12, is devoted to
the illustration and enforcement of this position.
In this, as in the previous chapter, the pre-Christian state is
assigned to the Jew, who was the chief subject of Divine teaching
in the former dispensation; it is set forth under the first person
(ver. 3), in the language of recollection. Describing the opposite
condition of sonship, the Apostle reverts from the first to the
second person, identifying his readers with himself (comp. ch. iii.
25, 26). True, the Gentiles had been in bondage (vv. 7, 8). This
goes without saying. Paul's object is to show that _Judaism_ is a
bondage. Upon this he insists with all the emphasis he can command.
Moreover, the legal system contained worldly, unspiritual elements,
crude and childish conceptions of truth, marking it, in comparison
with Christianity, as an inferior religion. Let the Galatians be
convinced of this, and they will understand what Paul is going to say
directly; they will perceive that Judaic conformity is for them a
backsliding in the direction of their former heathenism (vv. 8-10).
But the force of this latter warning is discounted and its effect
weakened when he is supposed, as by some interpreters, to include
_Gentile_ along with Jewish "rudiments" already in ver. 3. His
readers could not have suspected this. The "So we also" and the "held
in bondage" of this verse carry them back to ch. iii. 23. By calling
the Mosaic ceremonies "rudiments of _the world_" he gives Jewish
susceptibilities just such a shock as prepares for the declaration of
ver. 9, which puts them on a level with heathen rites.
The difference between Judaism and Christianity, historically
unfolded in ch. iii., is here restated in graphic summary. We see,
first, _the heir of God in his minority_; and again, _the same heir
in possession of his estate_.
I. One can fancy the Jew replying to Paul's previous argument in
some such style as this. "You pour contempt," he would say, "on the
religion of your fathers. You make them out to have been no better
than slaves. Abraham's inheritance, you pretend, under the Mosaic
dispensation lay dormant, and is revived in order to be taken from
his children and conferred on aliens." No, Paul would answer: I admit
that the saints of Israel were sons of God; I glory in the fact--"who
are Israelites, whose is _the adoption of sons_ and the glory and the
covenants and the law-giving and the promises, whose are the fathers"
(Rom. ix. 4, 5). _But they were sons in their minority._ "And I
say that as long as the heir is (legally) an infant, he differs in
nothing from a slave, though (by title) lord of all."
The man of the Old Covenant was a child of God _in posse_, not
_in esse_, in right but not in fact. The "infant" is his father's
trueborn son. In time he will be full owner. Meanwhile he is as
subject as any slave on the estate. There is nothing he can command
for his own. He is treated and provided for as a bondman might be;
put "under stewards" who manage his property, "and guardians" in
charge of his person, "until the day fore-appointed of the father."
This situation does not exclude, it implies fatherly affection and
care on the one side, and heirship on the other. But it forbids
the recognition of the heir, his investment with filial rights. It
precludes the access to the father and acquaintance with him, which
the boy will gain in after years. He sees him at a distance and
through others, under the aspect of authority rather than of love. In
this position he does not yet possess the spirit of a son. Such was
in truth the condition of Hebrew saints--heirs of God, but knowing it
not.
This illustration raises in ver. 2 an interesting legal question,
touching the latitude given by Roman or other current law to the
father in dealing with his heirs. Paul's language is good evidence
for the existence of the power he refers to. In Roman and in Jewish
law the date of civil majority was fixed. Local usage may have been
more elastic. But the case supposed, we observe, is not that of a
_dead_ father, into whose place the son steps at the proper age.
A grant is made by a father _still living_, who keeps his son in
pupilage till he sees fit to put him in possession of the promised
estate. There is nothing to show that paternal discretion was limited
in these circumstances, any more than it is in English law. The
father might fix eighteen, or twenty-one, or thirty years as the age
at which he would give his son a settlement, just as he thought best.
This analogy, like that of the "testament" in ch. iii., is not
complete at all points; nor could any human figure of these Divine
things be made so. The essential particulars involved in it are
first, _the childishness of the infant heir_; secondly, _the
subordinate position in which he is placed for the time_; and
thirdly, _the right of the father to determine the expiry of his
infancy_.
1. "When we were children," says the Apostle. This implies, not a
merely formal and legal bar, but an intrinsic disqualification. To
treat the child as a man is preposterous. The responsibilities of
property are beyond his strength and his understanding. Such powers
in his hands could only be instruments of mischief, to himself most
of all. In the Divine order, calling is suited to capacity, privilege
to age. The coming of Christ was timed to the hour. The world of the
Old Testament, at its wisest and highest, was unripe for His gospel.
The revelation made to Paul could not have been received by Moses,
or David, or Isaiah. His doctrine was only possible after and in
consequence of theirs. There was a training of faculty, a deepening
of conscience, a patient course of instruction and chastening to
be carried out, before the heirs of the promise were fit for their
heritage. Looking back to his own youthful days, the Apostle sees in
them a reflex of the discipline which the people of God had required.
The views he then held of Divine truth appear to him low and
childish, in comparison with the manly freedom of spirit, the breadth
of knowledge, the fulness of joy which he has attained as a son of
God through Christ.
2. But what is meant by the "stewards and guardians" of this Jewish
period of infancy? Ver. 3 tells us this, in language, however,
somewhat obscure: "We were held in bondage under _the rudiments_ (or
_elements_) _of the world_"--a phrase synonymous with the foregoing
"under law" (ch. iii. 23). The "guard" and "tutor" of the previous
section re-appears, with these "rudiments of the world" in his
hand. They form the system under which the young heir was schooled,
up to the time of his majority. They belonged to "the world"[112]
inasmuch as they were, in comparison with Christianity, unspiritual
in their nature, uninformed by "the Spirit of God's Son" (ver. 6).
The language of Heb. ix. 1, 10 explains this phrase: "The first
covenant had a _worldly_ sanctuary," with "ordinances of flesh,
imposed till the time of rectification." The sensuous factor that
entered into the Jewish revelation formed the point of contact with
Paganism which Paul brings into view in the next paragraph. Yet rude
and earthly as the Mosaic system was in some of its features, it was
Divinely ordained and served an essential purpose in the progress of
revelation. It shielded the Church's infancy. It acted the part of a
prudent steward, a watchful guardian. The heritage of Abraham came
into possession of his heirs enriched by their long minority. Mosaism
therefore, while spiritually inferior to the Covenant of grace in
Christ, has rendered invaluable service to it (comp. ver. 24: Chapter
XIV., p. 225).
[112] Surely _the world of men_, not the cosmical elements; comp.
Col. ii. 8, 20 (where _rudiments of the world_ is parallel to
_tradition of men_); also Gal. vi. 14; Heb. ix. 1. 1 Cor. iii.
1-3 supplies an interesting parallel: those who are _babes in
Christ_, are so far carnal and walk _according to man_, animated
by _the spirit of this world_ (1 Cor. ii. 12).
3. _The will of the Father_ determined the period of this
guardianship. However it may be in human law, this right of
fore-ordination resides in the Divine Fatherhood. In His unerring
foresight He fixed the hour when His sons should step into their
filial place. All such "times and seasons," Christ declared, "the
Father hath appointed on His own authority" (Acts i. 7). He imposed
the law of Moses, and annulled it, when He would. He kept the Jewish
people, for their own and the world's benefit, tied to the legal
"rudiments," held in the leading-strings of Judaism. It was His to
say when this subjection should cease, when the Church might receive
the Spirit of His Son. If this decree appeared to be arbitrary, if
it was strange that the Jewish fathers--men so noble in faith and
character--were kept in bondage and fear, we must remind ourselves
that "so it seemed good in the Father's sight." Hebrew pride found
this hard to brook. To think that God had denied this privilege in
time past to His chosen people, to bestow it all at once and by mere
grace on Gentile sinners, making them at "the eleventh hour" equal to
those who had borne for so long the burden and heat of the day! that
the children of Abraham had been, as Paul maintains, for centuries
treated as _slaves_, and now these heathen aliens are made _sons_
just as much as they! But this was God's plan; and it must be right.
"Who art thou, O man, that repliest against God?"
II. However, the nonage of the Church has passed. God's sons are now
to be owned for such. _It is Christ's mission to constitute men sons
of God_ (vv. 4, 5).
His advent was the turning-point of human affairs, "the fulness of
time." Paul's glance in these verses takes in a vast horizon. He
views Christ in His relation both to God and to humanity, both to
law and redemption. The appearance of "the Son of God, woman-born,"
completes the previous course of time; it is the goal of antecedent
revelation, unfolding "the mystery kept secret through times
eternal," but now "made known to all the nations" (Rom. xvi. 25,
26). Promise and Law both looked forward to this hour. Sin had been
"passed by" in prospect of it, receiving hitherto a partial and
provisional forgiveness. The aspirations excited, the needs created
by earlier religion demanded their satisfaction. The symbolism of
type and ceremony, with their rude picture-writing, waited for their
Interpreter. The prophetic soul of "the wide world, dreaming of
things to come," watched for this day. They that looked for Israel's
redemption, the Simeons and Annas of the time, the authentic heirs
of the promise, knew by sure tokens that it was near. Their aged
eyes in the sight of the infant Jesus descried its rising. The set
time had come, to which all times looked since Adam's fall and the
first promise. At the moment when Israel seemed farthest from help
and hope, the "horn of salvation was raised up in the house of
David,"--_God sent forth His Son_.
1. _The sending of the Son_ brought the world's servitude to an
end. "Henceforth," said Jesus, "I call you not servants" (John xv.
15). Till now "servant of God" had been the highest title men could
wear. The heathen were enslaved to false gods (ver. 8). And Israel,
knowing the true God, knew Him at a distance, serving too often in
the spirit of the elder son of the parable, who said, "Lo these many
years do I _slave_ for thee" (Luke xv. 29). None could with free
soul lift his eyes to heaven and say, "Abba, Father." Men had great
thoughts about God, high speculations. They had learnt imperishable
truths concerning His unity, His holiness, His majesty as Creator and
Lawgiver. They named Him the "Lord," the "Almighty," the "I AM." But
His _Fatherhood_ as Christ revealed it, they had scarcely guessed.
They thought of Him as humble bondmen of a revered and august master,
as sheep might of a good shepherd. The idea of a personal _sonship_
towards the Holy One of Israel was inconceivable, till Christ brought
it with Him into the world, till _God sent forth His Son_.
He sent Him as "His Son." To speak of Christ, with the mystical
Germans, as the _ideal Urmensch_--the ideal Son of man, the foretype
of humanity--is to express a great truth. Mankind was created in
Christ, who is "the image of God, firstborn of all creation." But
this is not what Paul is saying here. The doubly compounded Greek
verb at the head of this sentence (repeated with like emphasis in
ver. 6) signifies "sent forth from" Himself: He came in the character
of _God's_ Son, bringing His sonship with Him. He was the Son of God
before He was sent out. He did not become so in virtue of His mission
to mankind. His relations with men, in Paul's conception, rested
upon His pre-existing relationship to God. "The Word" who "became
flesh, was with God, was God in the beginning." "He called God His
own Father, making Himself equal with God" (John v. 18): so the Jews
had gathered from His own declarations. Paul admitted the claim when
"God revealed His Son" to him, and affirms it here unequivocally.
"The Son of God," arriving "in the fulness of time," enters human
life. Like any other son of man, He is _born of a woman, born under
law_. Here is the _kenosis_, the emptying of Divinity, of which the
Apostle speaks in Phil. ii. 5-8. The phrase "born of woman," does not
refer specifically to the _virgin-birth_; this term describes human
origin on the side of its weakness and dependence (Job xiv. 1; Matt.
xi. 11). Paul is thinking not of the difference, but of the identity
of Christ's birth and our own. We are carried back to Bethlehem.
We see Jesus a babe lying in His mother's arms--_God's Son a human
infant_, drawing His life from a weak woman![113]
[113] Comp. Rom. i. 3, 4; ix. 5; 2 Cor. xiii. 4; Eph. iv. 9, 10;
Ph. ii. 6-8; Col. i. 15, 18; ii. 9; 1 Tim. iii. 16.
Nor is "born under law" a distinction intended to limit the previous
term, as though it meant a _born Jew_, and not a mere woman's son.
This expression, to the mind of the reader of ch. iii., conveys the
idea of _subjection_, of humiliation rather than eminence. "Though
He was (God's) Son," Christ must needs "learn His obedience" (Heb.
v. 8). The Jewish people experienced above all others the power of
the law to chasten and humble. Their law was to them more sensibly,
what the moral law is in varying degree to the world everywhere, an
instrument of condemnation. God's Son was now put under its power. As
a man He was "under law;" as a Jew He came under its most stringent
application. He declined none of the burdens of His birth. He
submitted not only to the general moral demands of the Divine law for
men, but to all the duties and proprieties incident to His position
as a man, even to those ritual ordinances which His coming was to
abolish. He set a perfect example of loyalty. "Thus it becometh us,"
He said, "to fulfil all righteousness."
The Son of God who was to end the legal bondage, was sent into it
Himself. He wore the legal yoke that He might break it. He took "the
form of a servant," to win our enfranchisement. "God sent forth His
Son, human, law-bound--that He might _redeem those under law_."
Redemption was Christ's errand. We have learned already how "He
redeemed us from the curse of the law," by the sacrifice of the
cross (ch. iii. 13). This was the primary object of His mission: to
ransom men from the guilt of past sin. Now we discern its further
purpose--the positive and constructive side of the Divine counsel.
Justification is the preface to _adoption_. The man "under law" is
not only cursed by his failure to keep it; he lives in a servile
state, debarred from filial rights. Christ "bought us out" of this
condition. While the expiation rendered in His death clears off the
entail of human guilt, His incarnate life and spiritual union with
believing men sustain that action, making the redemption complete and
permanent. As enemies, "we were reconciled to God by the death of
His Son;" now "reconciled, we shall be saved by His life" (Rom. v.
10). Salvation is not through the death of Christ alone. The Babe of
Bethlehem, the crowned Lord of glory is our Redeemer, as well as the
Man of Calvary. The cross is indeed the centre of His redemption; but
it has a vast circumference. All that Christ is, all that He has done
and is doing as the Incarnate Son, the God-man, helps to make men
sons of God. The purpose of His mission is therefore stated a second
time and made complete in the words of ver. 5 _b_: "that we might
_receive the adoption of sons_." The sonship carries everything else
with it--"if children, then heirs" (ver. 7). There is no room for any
supplementary office of Jewish ritual. That is left behind with our
babyhood.
2. So much for the ground of sonship. Its proof lay in the _sending
forth of the Spirit of the Son_.
The mission of the Son and that of the Spirit are spoken of in vv.
3-6 in parallel terms: "God _sent forth_ His Son--_sent forth_ the
Spirit of His Son," the former into the world of men, the latter
"into" their individual "hearts." The second act matches the first,
and crowns it. Pentecost is the sequel of the Incarnation (John ii.
21; 1 Cor. vi. 19, 20). And Pentecost is repeated in the heart of
every child of God. The Apostle addresses himself to his readers'
experience ("because _ye_ are sons") as in ch. iii. 3-6, and on
the same point. They had "received the Spirit:" this marked them
indubitably as heirs of Abraham (ch. iii. 14)--and what is more, sons
of God. Had not the mystic cry, _Abba, Father_, sounded in their
hearts? The filial consciousness was born within them, supernaturally
inspired. When they believed in Christ, when they saw in Him the
Son of God, their Redeemer, they were stirred with a new, ecstatic
impulse; a Divine glow of love and joy kindled in their breasts; a
voice not their own spoke to their spirit--their soul leaped forth
upon their lips, crying to God, "Father, Father!" They were children
of God, and knew it. "The Spirit Himself bore them witness" (Rom.
viii. 15).
This sentiment was not due to their own reflection, not the mere
opening of a buried spring of feeling in their nature. _God sent it_
into their hearts. The outward miracles which attended the first
bestowment of this gift, showed from what source it came (ch. iii.
5). Nor did Christ personally impart the assurance. He had gone, that
the Paraclete might come. Here was another Witness, sent by a second
mission from the Father (John xvi. 7). His advent is signalised in
clear distinction from that of the Son. He comes in the joint name of
Father and of Son. Jesus called Him "the Spirit of the Father;"[114]
the Apostle, "the Spirit of God's Son."
[114] Matt. x. 20; Luke xi. 13; John xiv. 16; Acts i. 4, 5.
To us He is "the Spirit of adoption," replacing the former "spirit of
bondage unto fear." For by His indwelling we are "joined to the Lord"
and made "one spirit" with Him, so that Christ lives in us (ch. ii.
20). And since Christ is above all things the Son, His Spirit is a
spirit of sonship; those who receive Him are sons of God. Our sonship
is through the Holy Spirit derived from His. Till Christ's redemption
was effected, such adoption was in the nature of things impossible.
This filial cry of Gentile hearts attested the entrance of a Divine
life into the world. The Spirit of God's Son had become the new
spirit of mankind.
_Abba_, the Syrian vocative for _father_, was a word familiar to the
lips of Jesus. The instance of its use recorded in Mark xiv. 36, was
but one of many such. No one had hitherto approached God as He did.
His utterance of this word, expressing the attitude of His life of
prayer and breathing the whole spirit of His religion, profoundly
affected His disciples. So that the _Abba_ of Jesus became a
watchword of His Church, being the proper name of the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ. Gentile believers pronounced it, conscious
that in doing so they were joined in spirit to the Lord who said, "My
Father, and your Father!" Greek-speaking Christians supplemented it
by their own equivalent, as we by the English _Father_. This precious
vocable is carried down the ages and round the whole world in the
mother-tongue of Jesus, a memorial of the hour when through Him men
learned to call God Father.
"Because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit," with this cry. The
witness of sonship follows on the adoption, and seals it. The child
is born, then cries; the cry is the evidence of life. But this is
not the first office of the Holy Spirit to the regenerate soul. Many
a silent impulse has He given, frequent and long continued may have
been His visitations, before His presence reveals itself audibly.
From the first the new life of grace is implanted by His influence.
"That which is _born of the Spirit_, is spirit." "He dwelleth with
you, and _is in you_,"[115] said Jesus to His disciples, before the
Pentecostal effusion. Important and decisive as the witness of the
Holy Spirit to our sonship is, we must not limit His operation to
this event. Deeply has He wrought already on the soul in which His
work reaches this issue; and when it is reached, He has still much
to bestow, much to accomplish in us. All truth, all holiness, all
comfort are His; and into these He leads the children of God. Living
by the Spirit, in Him we proceed to walk (ch. v. 25).
[115] John xiv. 17; the _present_ (ἐστίν) is the preferable
reading. See Westcott _ad loc._
The interchange of person in the subject of vv. 5-8 is very
noticeable. This agitated style betrays high-strung emotion. Writing
first, in ver. 3, in the language of Jewish experience, in ver. 6
Paul turns upon his readers and claims them for witnesses to the same
adoption which Jewish believers in Christ (ver. 5) had received.
Instantly he falls back into the first person; it is his own joyous
consciousness that breaks forth in the filial cry of ver. 6_b_. In
the more calm concluding sentence the second person is resumed; and
now in the individualising singular, as though he would lay hold of
his readers one by one, and bid them look each into his own heart to
find the proof of sonship, as he writes: "So that thou art no longer
a slave, but a son; and if a son, also an heir through God."
_An heir through God_--this is the true reading, and is greatly to
the point. It carries to a climax the emphatic repetition of "God"
observed in vv. 4 and 6. "_God_ sent His Son" into the world; "_God_
sent" in turn "His Son's Spirit into your hearts." God then, and
no other, has bestowed your inheritance. It is yours by His fiat.
Who dares challenge it?[116] Words how suitable to reassure Gentile
Christians, browbeaten by arrogant Judaism! Our reply is the same
to those who at this day deny our Christian and churchly standing,
because we reject their sacerdotal claims.
[116] Comp. Rom. viii. 31-35; Acts xi. 17.
What this inheritance includes in its final attainment, "doth not
yet appear." Enough to know that "now are we children of God." The
redemption of the body, the deliverance of nature from its sentence
of dissolution, the abolishment of death--these are amongst
its certainties. Its supreme joy lies in the promise of being
with Christ, to witness and share His glory.[117] "Heirs of God,
joint-heirs with Christ"--a destiny like this overwhelms thought and
makes hope a rapture. God's sons may be content to wait and see how
their heritage will turn out. Only let us be sure that we are His
sons. Doctrinal orthodoxy, ritual observance, moral propriety do
not impart, and do not supersede "the earnest of the Spirit in our
hearts." The religion of Jesus the Son of God is the religion of the
filial consciousness.
[117] John xii. 26; xvii. 24; Rev. iii. 21; Phil. i. 23; Col.
iii. 4; 1 Pet. v. 1.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE RETURN TO BONDAGE.
"Howbeit at that time, not knowing God, ye were in bondage to
them which by nature are no gods: but now that ye have come to
know God, or rather to be known of God, how turn ye back again
to the weak and beggarly rudiments, whereunto ye desire to be in
bondage over again? Ye observe days, and months, and seasons,
and years. I am afraid of you, lest by any means I have bestowed
labour upon you in vain"--GAL. iv. 8-11.
"Sons of God, whom He made His heirs in Christ, how are you turning
back to legal bondage!" Such is the appeal with which the Apostle
follows up his argument. "Foolish Galatians," we seem to hear him say
again, "who has bewitched you into this?" They forget the call of
the Divine grace; they turn away from the sight of Christ crucified;
nay, they are renouncing their adoption into the family of God.
Paul knew something of the fickleness of human nature; but he was
not prepared for this. How can men who have tasted liberty prefer
slavery, or fullgrown sons desire to return to the "rudiments" of
childhood? After knowing God as He is in Christ, is it possible that
these Galatians have begun to dote on ceremonial, to make a religion
of "times and seasons;" that they are becoming devotees of Jewish
ritual? What can be more frivolous, more irrational than this? On
such people Paul's labours seem to be thrown away. "You make me
fear," he says, "that I have toiled for you in vain."
In this expostulation two principles emerge with especial prominence.
I. First, that _knowledge of God, bringing spiritual freedom, lays
upon us higher responsibilities_. "Then indeed," he says, "not
knowing God, you were in bondage to false gods. Your heathen life was
in a sense excusable. But now something very different is expected
from you, since you have come to know God."
We are reminded of the Apostle's memorable words spoken at Athens:
"The times of ignorance God overlooked" (Acts xvii. 30). "Ye say, We
see," said Jesus; "your sin remaineth" (John ix. 41). Increased light
brings stricter judgement. If this was true of men who had merely
heard the message of Christ, how much more of those who had proved
its saving power. Ritualism was well enough for Pagans, or even for
Jews before Christ's coming and the outpouring of His Spirit--but
for Christians! For those into whose hearts God had breathed the
Spirit of His Son, who had learned to "worship God in the Spirit and
to have no confidence in the flesh"--for Paul's Galatians to yield
to the legalist "persuasion" was a fatal relapse. In principle, and
in its probable issue, this course was a reverting toward their old
heathenism.
The Apostle again recalls them, as he does so often his children in
Christ, to the time of their conversion. They had been, he reminds
them, idolaters; ignorant of the true God, they were "enslaved to
things that by nature are no gods." Two definitions Paul has given
of idolatry: "There is no idol in the world;" and again, "The things
which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not
to God" (1 Cor. viii. 4; x. 20). Half lies, half devilry: such was
the popular heathenism of the day. "Gods many and lords many" the
Galatian Pagans worshipped--a strange Pantheon. There were their old,
weird Celtic deities, before whom our British forefathers trembled.
On this ancestral faith had been superimposed the frantic rites of
the Phrygian Mother, Cybele, with her mutilated priests; and the more
genial and humanistic cultus of the Greek Olympian gods. But they
were gone, the whole "damnéd crew," as Milton calls them; for those
whose eyes had seen the glory in the face of Jesus Christ, their
spell was broken; heaven was swept clear and earth pure of their
foul presence. The old gods are dead. No renaissance of humanism, no
witchcraft of poetry can re-animate them. To us after these eighteen
centuries, as to the Galatian believers, "there is one God the
Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus
Christ, through whom are all things, and we through Him." A man who
knew the Old Testament, to say nothing of the teaching of Christ,
could never sacrifice to Jupiter and Mercurius any more, nor shout
"Great is Diana of the Ephesians." They were painted idols, _shams_;
he had seen through them. They might frighten children in the dark;
but the sun was up. Christianity destroyed Paganism as light kills
darkness. Paul did not fear that his readers would slide back into
actual heathenism. That was intellectually impossible. There are
warnings in his Epistles against the spirit of idolatry, and against
conformity with its customs; but none against return to its beliefs.
The old heathen life was indeed a _slavery_, full of fear and
degradation. The religious Pagan could never be sure that he had
propitiated his gods sufficiently, or given to all their due. They
were jealous and revengeful, envious of human prosperity, capable
of infinite wrongdoing. In the worship of many of them acts were
enjoined revolting to the conscience. And this is true of Polytheism
all over the world. It is the most shameful bondage ever endured by
the soul of man.
But Paul's readers had "come to know God." They had touched the great
Reality. The phantoms had vanished; the Living One stood before them.
His glory shone into their hearts "in the face of Jesus Christ."
This, whenever it takes place, is for any man the crisis of his
life--when he _comes to know God_, when _the God-consciousness_ is
born in him. Like the dawn of self-consciousness, it may be gradual.
There are those, the happy few, who were "born again" so soon as they
were born to thought and choice; they cannot remember a time when
they did not love God, when they were not sensible of being "known
of Him." But with others, as with Paul, the revelation is made at an
instant, coming like a lightning-flash at midnight. But unlike the
lightning it remained. Let the manifestation of God come how or when
it may, it is decisive. The man into whose soul the Almighty has
spoken His _I AM_, can never be the same afterwards. He may forget;
he may deny it: but he has _known God_; he has seen the light of
life. If he returns to darkness, his darkness is blacker and guiltier
than before. On his brow there rests in all its sadness "Sorrow's
crown of sorrow, remembering happier things."
Offences venial, excusable hitherto, from this time assume a graver
hue. Things that in a lower stage of life were innocent, and even
possessed religious value, may now be unlawful, and the practice of
them a declension, the first step in apostasy. What is delightful in
a child, becomes folly in a grown man. The knowledge of God in Christ
has raised us in the things of the spirit to man's estate, and it
requires that we should "put away childish things," and amongst them
ritual display and sacerdotal officiations, Pagan, Jewish, or Romish.
These things form no part of the knowledge of God, or of the "true
worship of the Father."
The Jewish "rudiments" were designed for men who had not known God as
Christ declares Him, who had never seen the Saviour's cross. Jewish
saints could not worship God in the Spirit of adoption. They remained
under the spirit of servitude and fear. Their conceptions were so
far "weak and poor" that they supposed the Divine favour to depend
on such matters as the "washing of cups and pots," and the precise
number of feet that one walked on the Sabbath. These ideas belonged
to a childish stage of the religious life. Pharisaism had developed
to the utmost this lower element of the Mosaic system, at the expense
of everything that was spiritual in it. Men who had been brought up
in Judaism might indeed, after conversion to Christ, retain their old
customs as matters of social usage or pious habit, without regarding
them as vital to religion. With Gentiles it was otherwise. Adopting
Jewish rites _de novo_, they must do so on grounds of distinct
religious necessity. For this very reason the duty of circumcision
was pressed upon them. It was a means, they were told, essential
to their spiritual perfection, to the attainment of full Christian
privileges. But to know God by the witness of the Holy Spirit of
Christ, as the Galatians had done, was an experience sufficient to
show that this "persuasion" was false. It did not "come of Him that
called them." It introduced them to a path the opposite of that they
had entered at their conversion, a way that led downwards and not
upwards, from the spiritual to the sensuous, from the salvation of
faith to that of self-wrought work of law.
"Known God," Paul says,--"or rather _were known of God_." He hastens
to correct himself. He will not let an expression pass that seems to
ascribe anything simply to human acquisition. "Ye have not chosen
Me," said Jesus; "I have chosen you." So the Apostle John: "Not that
we loved God, but that He loved us." This is true through the entire
range of the Christian life. "We apprehend that for which we were
apprehended by Christ Jesus." Our love, our knowledge--what are they
but the sense of the Divine love and knowledge in us? Religion is a
bestowment, not an achievement. It is "God working in us to will and
work for the sake of His good pleasure." In this light the gospel
presented itself at first to the Galatians. The preaching of the
Apostle, the vision of the cross of Christ, made them sensible of
God's living presence. They felt the gaze of an Infinite purity and
compassion, of an All-wise, All-pitiful Father, fixed upon them. He
was calling them, slaves of idolatry and sin, "into the fellowship
of His Son Jesus Christ." The illuminating glance of God pierced to
their inmost being. In that light God and the soul met, and knew each
other.
And now, after this profound, transforming revelation, this sublime
communion with God, will they turn back to a life of puerile
formalities, of slavish dependence and fear? Is the strength of their
devotion to be spent, its fragrance exhaled in the drudgery of legal
service? Surely they know God better than to think that He requires
this. And He who knew them, as they have proved, and knows what was
right and needful for them, has imposed no such burden. He granted
them the rich gifts of His grace--the Divine sonship, the heavenly
heirship--on terms of mere faith in Christ, and without legal
stipulation of any kind. Is it not enough that God knows them, and
counts them for His children!
So knowing, and so known, let them be content. Let them seek only
to keep themselves in the love of God, and in the comfort of His
Spirit. Raised to this high level, they must not decline to a lower.
Their heathen "rudiments" were excusable before; but now even Jewish
"rudiments" are things to be left behind.
II. It further appears that the Apostle saw _an element existing in
Judaism common to it with the ethnic religions_. For he says that his
readers, formerly "enslaved to idols," are "now _turning back_ to the
weak and beggarly rudiments, to which they would fain be in bondage
_over again_."
"The rudiments" of ver. 9 cannot, without exegetical violence,
be detached from "the rudiments of the world" of ver. 3. And
these latter plainly signify the Judaic rites (see Chapter XVI.).
The Judaistic practices of the Galatians were, Paul declares, a
_backsliding toward their old idolatries_. We can only escape this
construction of the passage at the cost of making the Apostle's
remonstrance inconsequent and pointless. The argument of the letter
hitherto has been directed with concentrated purpose against Judaic
conformity. To suppose that just at this point, in making its
application, he turns aside without notice or explanation to an
entirely different matter, is to stultify his reasoning. The only
ground for referring the "days and seasons" of ver. 10 to any other
than a Jewish origin, lies in the apprehension that such reference
disparages the Christian Sabbath.
But how, we ask, was it possible for Paul to use language which
identifies the revered law of God with rites of heathenism, which he
accounted a "fellowship with demons"? Bishop Lightfoot has answered
this question in words we cannot do better than quote: "The Apostle
regards the higher element in heathen religion as corresponding,
however imperfectly, to the lower in the Mosaic law. For we may
consider both the one and the other as made up of two component
parts, the _spiritual_ and the _ritualistic_. Now viewed in their
_spiritual_ aspect, there is no comparison between the one and the
other. In this respect the heathen religions, so far as they added
anything of their own to that sense of dependence on God which is
innate in man and which they could not entirely crush, were wholly
bad. On the contrary, in the Mosaic law the spiritual element was
most truly divine. But this does not enter into our reckoning
here. For Christianity has appropriated all that was spiritual in
its predecessor.... The _ritualistic_ element alone remains to be
considered, and here is the meeting-point of Judaism and Heathenism.
In Judaism this was as much lower than its spiritual element, as
in Heathenism it was higher. Hence the two systems approach within
such a distance that they can, under certain limitations, be classed
together. They have at least so much in common that a lapse into
Judaism can be regarded as a relapse into the position of unconverted
Heathenism. Judaism was a system of bondage like Heathenism.
Heathenism had been a disciplinary training like Judaism" (Commentary
_in loc._).
This line of explanation may perhaps be carried a step further.
Judaism was rudimentary throughout. A religion so largely ritualistic
could not but be spiritually and morally defective. In its partial
apprehension of the Divine attributes, its limitation of God's grace
to a single people, its dim perception of immortality, there were
great deficiencies in the Jewish creed. Its ethical code, moreover,
was faulty; it contained "precepts given for the hardness of men's
hearts"--touching, for example, the laws of marriage, and the right
of revenge. There was not a little in Judaism, especially in its
Pharisaic form, that belonged to a half-awakened conscience, to a
rude and sensuous religious faculty. Christ came to "fulfil the
law;" but in that fulfilment He did not shrink from correcting
it. He emended the letter of its teaching, that its true spirit
might be elicited. For an enlightened Christian who had learned of
Jesus the "royal law, the law of liberty," to conform to Judaism
was unmistakably to "turn back." Moreover, it was just the weakest
and least spiritual part of the system of Moses that the legalist
teachers inculcated on Gentile Christians; while their own lives fell
short of its moral requirements (ch. vi. 12).
Mosaism had been in the days of its inspiration and creative vigour
the great opponent of idolatry. It was the Lord's witness throughout
long centuries of heathen darkness and oppression, and by its
testimony has rendered splendid service to God and man. But from the
standpoint of Christianity a certain degree of resemblance begins
to be seen underlying this antagonism. The faith of the Israelitish
people combatted idolatry with weapons too much like its own. A
worldly and servile element remained in it. To one who has advanced
in front, positions at an earlier stage of his progress lying apart
and paths widely divergent now assume the same general direction. To
resort either to Jewish or heathen rites, meant _to turn back from
Christ_. It was to adopt principles of religion obsolete and unfit
for those who had known God through Him. What in its time and for its
purpose was excellent, nay indispensable, in doctrine and in worship,
in time also had "decayed and waxed old." To tie the living spirit of
Christianity to dead forms is to tie it to corruption.