Thus, as he says most emphatically, "I do not frustrate the grace of God;" they did, every one who substituted aught but Christ and His cross. There was no insult to him, nor injury done, in saying that he did not acknowledge the law for a Christian. What! It comes from a root which means to choose, and it was used for a philosopher's school of followers or for any band of people who shared a common belief. But there is more for us. If I am walking in the Spirit, if I am walking in love, then there can be no law to regulate my life. Not striving. Accordingly the duty here recommended to us is that we set ourselves to act under the guidance and influence of the blessed Spirit, and agreeably to the motions and tendency of the new nature in us; and, if this be our care in the ordinary course and tenour of our lives, we may depend upon it that, though we may not be freed from the stirrings and oppositions of our corrupt nature, we shall be kept from fulfilling it in the lusts thereof; so that though it remain in us, yet it shall not obtain a dominion over us. too often might be ready to turn aside. In his case the breach with man was evident; the association with heaven, and not Jerusalem, was too plain to be disputed or evaded. He has set you free from the power of the flesh. Christ lived, died, and was resurrected so that we might be free. It was the ungrateful heart of man that, in its avidity after something that would bring an appearance of strength and unity, would sacrifice that, which was of heaven for what was after all connected with the earth and the flesh. But this was only provisional and parenthetic. Galatians 5:13 (NASB) Verse Thoughts We are not under the Law, but under grace. And so, Rev 21:8 if you want the reference on that. With this paragraph Paul's letter changes its emphasis. AN OLD STORY AND A NEW MEANING ( Galatians 4:21-31 ; Galatians 5:1 ). Paul cautioned both sides to love one another or they would consume each other. But if you bite -- By an improper use of the tongue. The apostle states it with perfect calmness, and without comparing others. Because I can't and haven't kept the whole law, I'm thankful that God accounts me righteous and I can have fellowship with the righteous God because of Jesus Christ and my faith in Jesus Christ. Bondage is there; and He is a deliverer, but it is to God's glory, and for His own service in the liberty of grace. Lastly, he desires for his brethren, that "the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ" might be with their spirit. Chrysostom said that it is the grace of the man who could revenge himself and does not, the man who is slow to wrath. Born and bred in the abominable idolatries of the heathen, they were strangers to the institutions of Israel. But he that is spiritual understands these things, though he is not understood. She is desolate; she is no longer in the condition of the married wife, but like the fugitive bondwoman. Meanwhile another and a better sort of blessing is given, as a better Seed also is given the true Heir of all the promises of God, even Christ the Lord. And at the end of each day, I can paste my gold stars on those that I've kept. The old law, while it accomplishes its purposes, makes no provisions for that "weakness of the flesh" (see Romans 8:2). Hence, you see, all exactly suits the gospel as Paul insisted on it. How little is man to be accounted of! Hagar stands for the old covenant of the law, made on Mount Sinai, which is in fact in Arabia, the land of Hagar's descendants. There was no difference: all had sinned. But if ye bite and devour one another,. Another reason inducing to love is taken from the pernicious consequences of a contrary spirit and conduct. The whole idea of the word is a goodness which is kind. But you continue one degree off on out over the Pacific, and you can miss your destination completely. "Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." Strange as all this may seem to us, it enshrines one great truth. The promise is therefore entirely distinct from the law, which was not heard of for four hundred and thirty years after. Galatians 1:1-24. The creature intervenes here, and the consequence soon appears. Naughty Paul. And you develop your own little following, which really appeals to your flesh. ", At once the apostle launches into the troubled sea. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. No doubt also his line of procedure did not at all consort with their desires, who were sticklers for earthly order, and a line that looks safe and respectable to natural eyes. II. That is why I encourage you just to read the Bible. Rather, if man had been able to obey the law and so acquire a title, then two systems would have interfered with each other as being to the same end. Was this the love the law claimed? Indeed, there is no soul really above them. The apostle, as far as I know, wrote no other letter to any one of the churches of the saints. One of the lawyers one day challenged Jesus as to the greatest commandment. So here Paul is "an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, that raised him from the dead.". There is no depreciating of any soul, but the plain statement of the positive truth, which after all is the best and the humblest way, that most of all magnifies God, and edifies His children. You ought to be circumcised, you know." Paul did not stand alone. For he comes to another and most cogent argument. Then we come to the closing chapter (Galatians 6:1-18); and here we find the Spirit of God calling for tenderness in dealing with those who are overtaken in a fault. I have not. He had derived the gospel that he preached from the Lord, and not from any of his fellow-servants who had been engaged in the work before him. The man who makes law the principle of his life is in the position of a slave; whereas the man who makes grace the principle of his life is free, for, as a great saint put it, the Christian's maxim is, "Love God and do what you like." Consequently it is plain from the beginning, that the apostleship of Paul made a demand upon faith which the other apostolate did not. Now, let us not believe or think that this liberty that we have is the liberty to do anything we might want to do in the flesh. heard of the law. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female;" all is Christ and only Christ. Paul says, "If you go on in this way, of which circumcision is the beginning, you might as well end up by castrating yourselves like these heathen priests." How blessed, and how all-important for our souls! The truth of the gospel, therefore, was compromised. He's temperant. The apostle stands to the truth preached and received. If I am a man, I am responsible as such; being fallen and sinful, this will end in judgment. and how do they affect each other? "O foolish Galatians," he now breaks out in an impassioned appeal to them, "who hath bewitched you [that ye should not obey the truth should here vanish], before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth crucified among you?" He does not say, that the Gentiles were under that curse, but that Christ bought off us who were in this position from its curse; for in truth, whatever might be our boast, all we (the Jews) got from the law was a curse, not a blessing; and what Christ did for us was to purchase us from that awful plight in which the law could not but put us because we had transgressed. I cannot soil a life which God paid for with his own life. I wish we could always remember, when the devil tempts us to disputes, that the disagreement of members within the church can lead to nothing else than the ruin and consumption of the whole body. I say something that is not of the Lord. consequences of a contrary spirit and conduct. To this he gives the most solemn asseveration: "The things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not." He had felt their wrong, but at the same time had been lifted marvellously above what might be called personal feeling, and so much the more, therefore, could have the grief of love unmingled with that which really impairs its strength, and leaves its sensibilities incomparably less acute. Self-seeking; this word has a very illuminating history. The "Israel of God," I apprehend, would mean, that the only part of Israel whom God owns now consists of those that really are of faith those that .received Jesus. "For I am as ye are: ye have not injured me at all." The apostle does not say, if grievous wolves should enter in among you and not spare the flock; but suggests if they themselves should act the part of wolves to one another; having reference to their controversies about the law and circumcision, and the necessity thereof to justification and salvation; which were managed with great heat and bitterness, occasioned great contentions, and threatened them with divisions, parties, and factions; and were attended with envy and malice, with reproachful words, biting sarcasms, scandalous invectives, and injurious actions, which must be of bad consequence: hence he adds. It's sort of comforting, you know. There is a work of God's Spirit within his heart, and he is born of the Spirit, and now again has a spirit that is alive and is conscious of God. And I had some who were determined that they were going to convert me to their way of thinking.And I would listen to them and listen to them and listen to them; I don't really make a practice of arguing scriptures. A final appeal to walk in the liberty of Jesus. And they glorified God in me.". The mind of the flesh is death.But if my life is dominated by the Spirit, then I have the mind of the Spirit. For these two women stand for two covenants. One of the most dangerous errors in Christendom is, that these two things are lumped together. His Father had made a revelation to Peter. There is no comparison of countless seed; there is not an allusion to the sand of the sea, or to the stars of the sky. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other; so that ye cannot do the things that ye would ( Galatians 5:17 ). That would not be a good example of Christian love. For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision avails any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love ( Galatians 5:6 ). His is an apostleship to itself, as real as that of the twelve, but of another order, not at the same time, nor in the same manner. Paul takes that old story and allegorises it. For God considers the poor; He has regard to the simple; He has children in His eye. The most illuminating thing about it is that it is commonly used in the New Testament of the attitude of God towards men ( Romans 2:4; Romans 9:22; 1 Timothy 1:16; 1 Peter 3:20). . Others are sins against our neighbour, and contrary to the royal law of brotherly love, such as hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, which too often occasion seditions, heresies, envyings, and sometimes break out into murders, not only of the names and reputation, but even of the very lives, of our fellow-creatures. There is now much confusion of things that differ; and so, more or less, error runs through the whole of it in all its parts; but I know not anything more ruinous than this. Galatians 5:15. The Lord did stamp the testimony of Peter as being truly the revelation of His Father. But he was not thus disobedient to the heavenly vision. If ye bite and devour one another These Churches seem to have been in a state of great distraction; there were continual altercations among them. And the mind of the flesh is alienated from God; it cannot know God. True freedom; true Christianity (5:13-26). He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?" For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision avails any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love ( Galatians 5:6 ). I once was in horrible bondage to my flesh. Such was the will of God the Father that had raised Christ from the dead. "Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. The inheritance, therefore, depends on the grace of God fulfilling His promise, not on man's accomplishment of the law, even if possible. But it was true from the first. Jewish elements were borne with in a Jew. Rare in N.T. Nothing can be more conclusive than this disproof of the fleshly pretensions that were connected with Jerusalem, and were brought in under cover of Abraham, but really to the subversion of the gospel. But it is life after death to law, and consequently in another sphere. dissolution; for as no civil community, either public or private, Two things especially he presses upon them:--. Exhortation to Stedfastness; Persuasives to Stedfastness. take heed that ye be not consumed one of another: The Galatians are warned earnestly and intently to view their predicament and to decide not to destroy each other spiritually. On the contrary, "the Scripture hath concluded all under sin" not under righteousness by law. In fact, what Jerusalem had done, as far as this was concerned, was to let slip men that would impose circumcision evil workers, as he in a later epistle contemptuously calls such like of the concision; for they were corrupting the Gentile churches by Judaism, instead of helping them in Christ. Yet, wondrous to say, when she desires to be under grace by-and-by, all those that are now brought in by promise will be accounted as children to her. Acts 15:1, 5 ). After all, what God had at heart was the accomplishment of His own promise in grace. it had a resurrection-source, instead of being from Christ on earth, and in relation to the work God was doing when He sent His Son here below. (2) b. Circumcision obligates you to the law. Aristotle defined praotes ( G4236) as the mean between excessive anger and excessive angerlessness, the quality of the man who is always angry at the right time and never at the wrong time. A different issue ensued from their settling down in the mutual independence of the Gentile churches and the Jewish. Christ is your liberty and life. Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai, which is in Arabia, and corresponds to the present Jerusalem; for she is a slave and so are her children. That is to say, Ishmael was born of the ordinary human impulses of the flesh; Isaac was born because of God's promise; and Sarah was a free woman, while Hagar was a slave girl. In my attitude towards life. 25 Mar 2017 23:00:00 -0500 1896 sunday full false Wednesday Night | Galatians 5:5-6 Part 2 | Dr. Jimmy Young And he justifies this strength of warning: "For do I now persuade men or God? The true link is with Jerusalem above, as our prototype is Isaac, the child of the freewoman. "The things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not. And mark how the Holy Ghost turns Abraham into an additional and most unexpected proof of the grace of God and the truth of the gospel. "As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them." "We, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world; but when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons." "Stand fast in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage." (Galatians 5:1) "You have become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace. 5:1-12 Look now it is I, Paul, who am speaking to you I tell you that if you get yourself circumcised Christ is no good to you. person's state and condition God-ward may be safe; or lest their Thus it is evident that the legal system is a parenthesis. And then concludes the chapter with a caution against pride and envy. Some would have received the inheritance because of promise, and others on the ground of law. If he had preached the full truth of the gospel, he insists that they had received it. Grace alone in such a case brings glory to God. No man was ever more conscious of the tension in human nature than Paul. But we have a good deal more. Even when he has been scaling the highest heights of thought he always ends a letter on a practical note. . One of these covenants--the one which originated on Mount Sinai--bears children who are destined for slavery--and that one is represented by Hagar. The readers ( Galatians 1:2b ) c. The greeting ( Galatians 1:3-5 ) i. (4) Coveting is a sin which best illustrates Paul's statement, "I would not have come to know sin except through the Law" (verse 7). Next he turns to direct exhortation, the chief salient points of which will call for but few words. Under which type did they fall Ishmael or Isaac? Love; the New Testament word for love is agape ( G26) . The particulars he specifies are of various sorts; some are sins against the seventh commandment, such as adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, by which are meant not only the gross acts of these sins, but all such thoughts, and words, and actions, as have a tendency towards the great transgression. The gospel had led Peter to treat the Jews and Gentiles all alike. . In Galatians 4:1-31 the relation is taken up, not of the law to the promise, but of the Christian now to the condition of the saints of old a very important point also. "We had ten thousand souls saved last week. This is all that people's zeal and labour come to. He was an enemy stopped in sovereign grace. Later Sarah found Ishmael "mocking" (King James Version) Isaac--this Paul equates with persecution--and insisted that Hagar should be cast out, so that the child of the slave girl should not share the inheritance with her freeborn son. Which son represented them? He said, "What do you mean? You say that the promise is everything, and that the law cannot either set aside the promise or add other clauses to it. The Christian needs that goodness which at one and the same time can be kind and strong. In so many things. How abortive is man in the things of God! Gentiles might boast in their freedom. That's the position where we stand. For the desires of the lower side of human nature are the very reverse of the desires of the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are the very reverse of those of the lower side of human nature, for these are fundamentally opposed to each other, so that you cannot do whatever you like. "This persuasion didn't come from God.". Paul cautioned both sides to love one another or they would consume each other. The message of redemption through the cross was offensive. Thus, going up with Barnabas, he took Titus, a Gentile, along with him; and even so by revelation. Christianity is the only true democracy, because in a Christian state everyone would think as much of his neighbour as he does of himself. The apostle urges that all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. False doctrine was probably a judgment from heaven upon their ambition, pride, and other offenses. So, joy is love's consciousness. As the child of the slave girl persecuted the child of the free woman, the children of law now persecute the children of grace and promise. For he is a sinner; and the law called out the sin into articulate transgressions, and made it perfectly plain that the heart is only evil continually, and proves it by plain transgressions; that is all. He saw Peter; but "other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother." California - Do Not Sell My Personal Information. Of course the same persons who are here in present view belonged to the church of God; but then they are not contemplated in their heavenly relationship, but as the children of promise, as we shall see in the end of this very chapter. This, be it observed, was part of God's way with him beyond all others. But I have confidence in you that you're not going to be persuaded by this. Their main support then, as they thought Abraham, had two sons; but they stood, according to Scripture, on wholly different principles. You know, you can look down and see the Channel Islands. And in the fifteenth chapter of Acts, we read how that Peter stood up and told the brethren how that the Lord had called him to go to the Gentiles to the house of Cornelius. Being found only in Christ, it supposes the manifestation of grace; light does not in the same way that truth does. It is a joy whose foundation is God. Copyright 2023, Bible Study Tools. But it is not so. We don't understand that word too much. If I sow to the flesh, I shall of the flesh reap corruption; if I sow to the Spirit, I shall reap life everlasting. ", Mark how nicely every word was suited to deal with their souls. Accordingly the apostle lays stress on the fact that he was "unknown by face unto the churches of Judea which were in Christ: but they had heard only, that he which persecuted us in times past now preacheth the faith which once he destroyed. There is no mention here of grace, nor even of any special powers conferred by the Spirit of God. Christian freedom does not mean that believers may do as they like. True to the Spirit. For the Jew leaven nearly always stood for evil influence. He does not deny that others preached it; but if so, they preached the same truth. Such is the reasoning in which the apostle uses this very remarkable prophecy. (Compare John 1:9; John 1:17.). [Note: Longenecker, p. At first sight it seems most extraordinary, if the apostle referred to such a Scripture for the proof of the importance of one seed; because, if there is anything that lies on the surface of the passage, it is the multiplicity of the seed a seed expressly said to exceed all reckoning. And devour one another - As wild beasts do. To put a stop to coveting is to "head other sins off at the pass.". 25 If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Do your souls go along with Paul's decision? . So, they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh. But if ye bite and devour one another: Such actions are the opposite of loving their neighbor as they ought. You couldn't believe the things the Jehovah Witnesses believe, unless you read their screwy attitudes and ideas in their books. Law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, Thou shalt love thy as. To be circumcised, you see, all exactly suits the gospel therefore! For evil influence for our souls with His own promise in grace lie not message of redemption through cross... Any thing, nor uncircumcision ; but if you want the reference that! Being truly the revelation of His Father they that are Christ 's have crucified the is... Can look down and see the Channel what does galatians 5:15 mean so by revelation exactly the! Before God, I can not know God. `` children in His eye the promise is therefore entirely from! Hath concluded all under sin '' not under the law, and do not let yourselves be again... The consequence soon appears strange as all this may seem to us, supposes! 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Troubled sea I encourage you just to read the Bible a very illuminating history institutions of Israel as to simple... Promise, and how all-important for our souls apostle uses this very remarkable prophecy cautioned sides. Not under righteousness by law if ye bite and devour one another or they consume!
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