+I. Their first condition was one of ignorance.+--1. _Ignorance of
God._ (1) The light of nature is imperfect, because we know by it
only some few and general things of God. (2) It is weak, because it
serves only to cut off excuse, and is not sufficient to direct us in
the worship of God. (3) It is a great and grievous sin.
2. _Idolatry._--(1) When that which is not God is placed and
worshipped in the room of the true God. (2) When men acknowledge the
true God, but do not conceive Him as He will be conceived, and as He
has revealed Himself. (3) What a man loves most, cares for most, and
delights in most, that is his god. Where the heart is, there is thy
god.
+II. Their changed condition is the knowledge of God in
Christ.+--1. This is a special knowledge whereby we must acknowledge
God to be our God in Christ. 2. This knowledge must be not confused,
but distinct. (1) We must acknowledge God in respect of His presence
in all places. (2) In respect of His particular providence over us.
(3) In respect of His will in all things to be done and suffered.
3. This knowledge must be an effectual and lively knowledge, working
in us new affections, and inclinations.
+III. Their revolt is an abandonment of salvation.+--It is an
exchange of knowledge for ignorance, of the substance for the shadow,
of reality for emptiness--a return to weak and beggarly elements. It
is the substitution of ceremonies for genuine worship.
+IV. The conduct of turn-coats is an occasion of ministerial
disappointment and alarm+ (ver. 11).--Work that is in vain in respect
of men is not so before God.--_Perkins._
Vers. 8, 9. _Ignorance of God a Spiritual Bondage._--1. However
nature's light may serve to make known there is a God and that He
ought to be served, it is nothing else but ignorance, as it leaves us
destitute of the knowledge of God in Christ, without which there is
no salvation. 2. Men are naturally inclined to feign some
representation of the Godhead by things which incur in the outward
senses, from which they easily advance to give Divine worship unto
those images and representations. 3. Though the Levitical ceremonies
were once to be religiously observed as a part of Divine worship
leading to Christ, yet when the false teachers did urge them as a
part of necessary commanded worship, or as a part of their
righteousness before God, the apostle is bold to give them the name
of "weak and beggarly elements." 4. People may advance very far in
the way of Christianity, and yet make a foul retreat afterwards in
the course of defection and apostasy.--_Fergusson._
Vers. 9, 10. _God's Sabbatic Law antedated the Mosaic Law._--And
whatever of legal bondage has been linked with the observance of the
Jewish Sabbath was eliminated together with the change to the first
day of the week. This at once removes the Lord's Day from the
category of days, and also of weak and beggarly elements. The mode of
observance is learned from the Lord's words, "The Sabbath was made
for man, and not man for the Sabbath," which at the same time imply,
when rightly understood, the perpetual necessity for a
Sabbath.--_Lange._
Ver. 11. _Ministerial Anxiety_--1. Prompts to earnest efforts in
imparting the highest spiritual truths. 2. Looks for corresponding
results in consistency of character and conduct. 3. Is grieved with
the least indications of religious failure.
_MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 12-20.
_The Pleadings of an Anxious Teacher with his Pupils in Peril._
+I. He reminds them of the enthusiastic attachment of former
days.+--1. _Urges them to exercise the same freedom as he himself
claimed._ "Be as I am; for I am as ye are" (ver. 12). Though himself
a Jew, Paul had assumed no airs of superiority, and did not separate
himself from his Gentile brethren; he became as one of them. He asks
them to exercise a similar liberty; and lest they should fear he
would have a grudge against them because of their relapse, he hastens
to assure them, "Ye have not injured [wronged] me at all" (ver. 12).
2. _Recalls their extravagant expression of admiration on their first
reception of his teaching._--"Ye know how through infirmity I
preached at the first. My temptation ye despised not; but received me
as an angel of God. . . . Ye would have plucked out your own eyes,
and have given them to me" (vers. 13, 14, 15). His physical weakness,
which might have moved the contempt of others, elicited the sympathy
of the warm-hearted Galatians. They listened with eagerness and
wonder to the Gospel he preached. The man, with his humiliating
infirmity, was lost in the charm of his message. They were thankful
that, though his sickness was the reason of his being detained among
them, it was the opportunity of their hearing the Gospel. Had he been
an angel from heaven, or Jesus Christ Himself, they could not have
welcomed him more rapturously. They would have made any sacrifice to
assure him of their regard and affection.
3. _Shows he was not less their friend because he rebuked them._--"Am
I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?" (ver.
16). And now they rush, with Gallic-like fickleness, to the opposite
extreme. Because he attacks the new fancies with which they have
become enamoured, and probes them with some wholesome and unwelcome
truths, they imagine he has become their enemy. Not so; he is but
using the privilege of a true and faithful friend.
+II. He warns them against the seductive tactics of false
teachers.+--1. _Their zealous flattery was full of danger._ "They
zealously affect you, but not well; they would exclude you" (ver.
17). They are courting you, these present suitors for your regard,
dishonourably; they want to shut us out and have you to themselves,
that you may pay court to them. They pretend to be zealous for your
interests; but it is their own they seek. They would exclude you from
all opportunities of salvation--yea, from Christ Himself. The
flatterer should be always suspected. The turning away from sound
doctrine goes hand in hand with a predilection for such teachers as
tickle the ear, while they teach only such things as correspond to
the sinful inclinations of the hearers.
2. _Though genuine zeal is commendable._--"It is good to be zealously
affected always in a good thing" (ver. 18). Christian zeal must be
seen not only to correspond and to be adapted to the intellect but
must also be in harmony with the highest and profoundest sentiments
of our nature. It must not be exhibited in the dry, pedantic
divisions of a scholastic theology; nor must it be set forth and
tricked out in the light drapery of an artificial rhetoric, in
prettiness of style, in measured sentences, with an insipid
floridness, and in the form of elegantly feeble essays. No; it must
come from the soul in the language of earnest conviction and strong
feeling.
+III. He pleads with the tender solicitude of a spiritual
parent.+--"My little children, of whom I travail in birth
again, . . . I desire to be present with you, and to change my voice;
for I stand in doubt of you" (vers. 19, 20). As a mother, fearful of
losing the affection of her children for whom she has suffered so
much, the apostle appeals to his converts in tones of pathetic
persuasion. His heart is wrung with anguish as he sees the peril of
his spiritual children, and he breaks out into tender and impassioned
entreaty. And yet he is perplexed by the attitude they have taken,
and as if uncertain of the result of his earnest expostulations. The
preacher has to learn to be patient as well as zealous.
+Lessons.+--1. _Strong emotions and warm affections are no guarantee
for the permanence of religious life._ 2. _How prone are those who
have put themselves in the wrong to fix the blame on others._ 3. _Men
of the Galatian type are the natural prey of self-seeking agitators._
_GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES._
Ver. 12. _Christian Brotherhood._--Here is: 1. A loving
compellation--"Brethren." 2. A submissive address by way of
comprecation--"I beseech you." 3. A request most reasonable--"Be ye
as I am; for I am as ye are." 4. A wise and prudent preoccupation or
prevention which removes all obstructions and forestalls those
jealousies, those surmises and groundless suspicions, which are the
bane of charity and the greatest enemies to peace. "Ye have not
injured me at all."
+I. Nature herself hath made all men brethren.+--1. _This may serve
to condemn all those who look upon men under other consideration than
as men_ or view them in any other shape than as brethren. And the
very name of man and of brother should be an amulet for all mankind
against the venom of iniquity and injustice.
2. _By this light of nature we may condemn ourselves when any
bitterness towards our brother riseth in our hearts,_ and allay or
rather root it out as inhuman and unnatural. None can dishonour us
more than ourselves do, when one man hath trodden down another as the
clay in the streets, when we think ourselves great men by making our
brethren little, when we contemn and despise, hate and persecute them.
+II. Brethren as Christians professing the same faith.+--There is
such a brotherhood that neither error nor sin nor injury can break
and dissolve it.
1. _Men may err and yet be brethren._--We may be divided in opinion
and yet united in charity. Consider the difficulty of finding out
truth in all things and avoiding error, that our brother may err
rather from want of light than out of malice and wilfully and
conceive it possible we may err as foully as others.
2. _Men may sin and yet be brethren._--Charity, because she may err,
nay, because she must err, looks upon every Christian as a brother.
If he err, she is a guide to him; if he sin, she is a physician; if
he fall, she strives to lift him up, being a light to the blind and a
staff to the weak.
3. _Men may injure each other and yet be brethren._--Socrates, being
overcome in judgment, professed he had no reason to be angry with his
enemies unless it were for this, that they conceived and believed
they had hurt him. Indeed, no injury can be done by a brother to a
brother. The injury is properly done to God, who reserves all power
of revenge to Himself. "If a brother strike us," said Chrysostom,
"kiss his hand; if he would destroy us, our revenge should be to save
him." Nazianzen said to the young man who was suborned to kill him,
"Christ forgive thee, who hath also forgiven me, and died to save me."
+Lessons.+--1. _Brotherly love is pleasant and delightful._
2. _Profitable and advantageous._ 3. _So necessary that it had been
better for us never to have been than not to love the
brethren.--A. Farindon._