+I. People of all nations, all conditions, and all sexes.+
II. They who are of great birth and high condition must be put in
mind not to be high-minded, nor despise them of low degree,
+for all are one in Christ.+
+III. All believers must be of one heart and mind.+
+IV. We learn not to hate any man, but do good to all.+--Men turn
their swords and spears into mattocks and scythes, because they
are one with Christ by the bond of one Spirit.--_Perkins._
Ver. 29. _The Promise of Grace._--The specific form of the whole
Gospel is promise, which God gives in the Word and causes to be
preached. The last period of the world is the reign of grace. Grace
reigns in the world only as promise. Grace has nothing to do with law
and requisition of law; therefore, the word of that grace can be no
other than a word of promise. The promise of life in Christ Jesus is
the word of the new covenant. The difference between the Gospel of
the old covenant and that of the new rests alone on the
transcendently greater glory of its promise.--_Harless._
_Heirs according to the Promise._
+I. The basest person, if he believes in Christ, is in the place of
Abraham,+ and succeeds him in the inheritance of the kingdom of
heaven.
+II. Believers must be content in this world with any estate God may
lay upon them,+ for they are heirs with Abraham of heaven and
earth.
+III. They that believe in Christ must moderate their worldly cares+
and not live as drudges of the world, for they are heirs of God,
and are entitled to all good things promised in the covenant.
+IV. Our special care must be for heaven.+--The city of God is thy
portion, or child's part.--_Perkins._
* * * * * * * *
+CHAPTER IV.+
_CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES._
Ver. 1 +The heir, as long as he is a child.+--An infant, one under
age. +Differeth nothing from a servant.+--A slave. He is not at his
own disposal. He could not perform any act but through his legal
representative.
Ver. 2. +Under tutors and governors.+--Controllers of his person and
property.
Ver. 3. +Under the elements of the world.+--The rudimentary religious
teaching of a nonreligious character. The elementary lessons of
outward things.
Ver. 4. +God sent forth His Son.+--Sent forth out of heaven from
Himself. Implies the pre-existence of the Son. +Made of a
woman.+--Made to be born of a woman. Indicating a special
interposition of God in His birth as man. +Made under the law.+--By
His Father's appointment and His own free will, subject to the law,
to keep it all, ceremonial and moral, for us, as the Representative
Man, and to suffer and exhaust the full penalty of our violation of
it.
Ver. 5. +The adoption of sons.+--Receive as something destined or
due. Herein God makes of sons of men sons of God, inasmuch as God
made of the Son of God the Son of man (_Augustine_).
Ver. 6. +Abba, Father.+--_Abba_ is the Chaldee for father. The early
use of it illustrates what Paul has been saying (ch. iii. 28) of the
unity resulting from the Gospel; for Abba, Father, unites Hebrew and
Greek on one lip, making the petitioner at once a Jew and a Gentile.
Ver. 9. +How turn ye again+ [anew]?--Making a new beginning in
religion, lapsing from Christianity just in as far as they embrace
legalism. +To the weak and beggarly elements.+--Weak is contrasted
with power as to effects, and beggarly with affluence in respect of
gifts. The disparaging expression is applied; not to the ritualistic
externalism of heathen religions, but rather to that God-given system
of ritualistic ordinances which had served the Church in her infancy.
That which was appropriate food for a babe or sick man is feeble and
poor for a grown man in full health.
Ver. 12. +Be as I am, for I am as ye are.+--Paul had become as a
Gentile, though he was once a passionate Jew. Their natural leanings
towards Judaism they ought to sacrifice as well as he.
Ver. 13. +Ye know how through infirmity of flesh I preached.+--The
weakness may have been general debility, resulting from great
anxieties and toils. It has been supposed that Paul was feeble-eyed,
or blear-eyed (Acts xxii. 6), and that this special weakness had been
aggravated at the time now in question.
Ver. 17. +They zealously affect you, but not well.+--They keenly
court you, but not honourably. +They would exclude you+--from
everything and every one whose influence would tend to bring the
Galatians back to loyalty to the Gospel.
Ver. 20. +I desire to be present with you, and to change my
voice.+--To speak not with the stern tones of warning, but with
tender entreaties. +I stand in doubt of you.+--I am sorely perplexed,
nonplussed, bewildered, as if not knowing how to proceed.
Ver. 24. +Which things are an allegory.+--Under the things spoken
of--the two sons, with their contrast of parentage and
position--there lies a spiritual meaning.
Ver. 25. +Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her
children.+--Judaism as rejecting the light and liberty of the new
dispensation.
Ver. 26. +But Jerusalem which is above is free.+--Is the spiritual
reality which, veiled under the old dispensation, is comparatively
unveiled in the dispensation of grace, and destined to be fully and
finally manifested in the reign of glory. Christians are very
different in standing to slave-born slaves.
Ver. 27. +The desolate hath many more children than she which hath an
husband.+--The special purpose of the quotation appears to be to show
that the idea of a countless Church, including Gentiles as well as
Jews, springing out of spiritual nothingness, was apprehended under
the Old Testament as destined for realisation under the New.
Ver. 30. +Cast out the bondwoman and her son.+--Even house-room to
Judaism is not matter of right, but only by sufferance, and that so
long and so far as it leaves the Gospel undisturbed in full
possession.
_MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 1-7.
_The Nonage of the Pre-Christian World._
+I. Mankind in pre-Christian times was like the heir in his
minority.+--1. _In a state of temporary servitude, though having
great expectations._ "The heir differeth nothing from a servant,
though he be lord of all; but is under tutors and governors" (vers.
1, 2). Under the Old Testament the bond-servant had this in common
with a son, that he was a recognised member of the family; and the
son had this in common with the slave, that he was in servitude, but
with this difference, the servitude of the son was evanescent, that
of the slave was permanent. The heirship is by right of birth, but
possession and enjoyment can be reached only by passing through
servitude and attaining majority. The minor is in the hands of
guardians who care for his person and mental training, and of
stewards who manage his estate. So the world, though possessing the
promise of great blessing, was held for ages in the servitude of the
law.
2. _Subject to the restraint of external ordinances._--"Were in
bondage under the elements of the world" (ver. 3). The commandments
and ordinances imposed by the law belonged to an early and elementary
period. In their infantile externalism they stand contrasted with the
analogous things of the new dispensation, in which the believer is a
grown man who casts away childish things. The Mosaic system watched
over and guarded the infancy of the world. It exacted a rigid
obedience to its mandates, and in doing so trained mankind to see and
feel the need and appreciate the rich heritage of the covenant of
grace. Mosaism rendered invaluable service to Christianity. It
safe-guarded the writings that contained promises of future blessings
and educated the race throughout the period of its nonage.
+II. The matured sonship of mankind is accomplished through
redemption.+--1. _The Redeemer is Divinely provided and of the
highest dignity._ "God sent forth His Son" (ver. 4). The mystical
Germans speak of Christ as the ideal Son of man, the foretype of
humanity; and there is a sense in which mankind was created in Christ
Jesus, who is "the image of God, the first born of every creature."
But the apostle refers here to a loftier dignity belonging to Christ.
He came in the character of God's Son, bringing His sonship with Him.
The Word, who became flesh, was with God, and was God, in the
beginning. The Divine Son of God was sent forth into the world by the
all-loving Father to be the Redeemer of mankind and to put an end to
the world's servitude.
2. _The Redeemer assumes the nature and condition of those He
redeems._--"Made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that
were under the law" (vers. 4, 5). Christ was born of woman as other
men are, and, like them, was at first a weak and dependent babe. His
child-life has for ever beautified and consecrated child-nature. He
was born under law--not the law as a mere Jew, which would have
limited His redeeming work to the Jewish nation, but under law in its
widest application. 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. The purpose of His being
sent was "to redeem them that were under the law"--to buy them out of
their bondage. He voluntarily entered into the condition of the
enslaved that He might emancipate them.
3. _The sonship acquired through redemption is not by merit or legal
right, but by adoption._--"That we might receive the adoption of
sons" (ver. 5). The sonship is by grace, not of nature. Man lost his
sonship by sin; by grace he gets it back again. Adoption we do not
get back; we simply receive it. It is an act of God's free grace.
+III. The attainment of sonship is a conscious reality.+--1. _Made
evident by the Spirit of God witnessing in us and crying to Him as to
a Father._ "Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of
His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father" (ver. 6). God sent
forth His Son into the world of men: He sent forth the Spirit of His
Son into their individual 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.
2. _Confirmed by the heirship that results from the Divine
adoption._--"If a son, then an heir of God through Christ" (ver. 7).
The nonage, the period of servitude and subjection, is passed. It
gives place to the unrivalled privilege of a maturer spiritual
manhood, and the heirship to an inheritance of indescribable and
imperishable blessedness.
+Lessons.+--1. _The law held the world in bondage._ 2. _The Gospel is
a message of liberty by redemption._ 3. _Redemption by Christ confers
distinguished privileges._
_GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES._
Vers. 4, 5. _Christ's Mission for the Adoption of Sons in the Fulness
of Time._
+I. The mission of Jesus Christ and the manner in which He manifested
Himself.+--"God sent forth His Son." These words present the great
fact of Christ's mission from the Father and His appearance in the
world. To denote the inexpressible dignity of Jesus, as being one
with the Father in His most essential prerogatives and perfections,
He is here styled, "His Son." He was "made of a woman." The
circumstances of His incarnation placed Him at an immeasurable
distance from all other parts of the human race. He was the immediate
production of God, by His Divine power He was conceived of the Holy
Ghost, and thereby completely exempted from the taint of original
sin. He was the holy thing born of a virgin. He was by constitution
placed in the same state as our first parents. He underwent a similar
but severer trial and maintained His innocence against all the
assaults of Satan. He was "_made_ under the law"; whereas all other
creatures are under it by the very terms of their existence, by the
condition of their nature. He was made under the _ceremonial_ law,
under the _moral_ law, under the _mediatorial_ law.
+II. The design of Christ's mission.+--"To redeem." He came not
merely to exemplify a rule of life, but to satisfy its violation; not
to explain the statutes of heaven, but to pay the penalty arising
from the curse announced against their transgression. He came
essentially to change the moral situation of mankind. Christ has
added to our original brightness; He has not only redeemed us from
the first transgression, but accumulated blessings which man, even in
innocence, could never have obtained.
+III. The fitness of the season at which Christ was
manifested.+--"The fulness of time." 1. It was the period foretold by
the prophets. Hence the general expectation of His coming. 2. It was
a period of advancement in politics, legislation, science, and arts,
and manners; an age of scepticism. 3. It was a period of toleration.
The epoch will arrive when this world shall be thought of as nothing
but as it furnished a stage for the manifestation of the Son of
God.--_Robert Hall._
Ver. 4. _The Fulness of the Time._--Christ comes when a course of
preparation, conducted through previous ages, was at last complete.
He was not the creation of His own or any preceding age. What is true
of all other great men, who are no more than great men, is not true
of Him. They receive from their age as much as they give it; they
embody and reflect its spirit. Christ really owed nothing to the time
or the country which welcomed His advent.
+I. The world was prepared politically for Christ's work.+--There was
a common language--the Greek; a common government--the Roman.
+II. There was a preparation in the convictions of mankind.+--The
epoch of religious experiments had been closed in an epoch of despair.
+III. There was a preparation in the moral experience of
mankind.+--The dreadful picture of the pagan world which St. Paul
draws at the close of the first chapter of his epistle to the Romans
is not a darker picture than that of pagan writers--of moralists like
Seneca, of satirists like Juvenal, of historians like Tacitus; and
yet enough survived of moral truth in the human conscience to condemn
average pagan practice. It led them to yearn for a deliverer,
although their aspirations were indefinite enough. This widespread
corruption, this longing for better things, marked the close of the
epoch of moral experiments.
+Lessons.+--1. _The earthly life of Christ stood in a totally
different relation towards moral truth from that of every other man._
2. _It was a life at harmony with itself and a revelation of higher
truth._ 3. _His incarnation delivers us from false views of the world
and of life, from base and desponding views of our human nature, and
from bondage.--H. P. Liddon._
_Christ Obedient to the Law._
+I. This obedience was not a matter of course,+ following upon His
incarnation. He might have lived and died, had it been consistent
with His high purpose, in sinless purity, without expressly
undertaking as He did openly to fulfil the law. It was a voluntary
act, becoming and fit for the great work He had in hand.
+II. This obedience was not only an integral but a necessary part of
His work of redemption.+--Had this not been so, redemption would have
been incomplete. Not only God's unwritten law in the conscience, but
God's written law in the tables of stone, must be completely
satisfied. It being shown, by both Gentile and Jew, that neither by
nature nor by revealed light was man capable of pleasing God, all men
were left simply and solely dependent on His free and unmerited
grace. All cases of guilt must be covered, all situations of
disobedience taken up and borne and carried triumphantly out into
perfection and accordance with the Father's will, by the Son of God
in our flesh.
+III. This obedience for man was to be not only complete,+ so that
Christ should stand in the root of our nature as the accepted man,
+but was to be our pattern,+ that as He was holy so we might be holy
also.
+IV. This obedience arose from the requirements of His office
connected with the law.+--He was the end of the law. It all pointed
to Him. Its types and ceremonies all found fulfilment in His person
and work. All has been fulfilled. All looked forward to One that was
to come--to one who has come, and in His own person has superseded
that law by exhausting its requirements, has glorified that law by
filling out and animating with spiritual life its waste and barren
places. So that God has not changed, nor has His purpose wavered, nor
are His people resting on other than their old foundation.--_Dean
Alford._