The brethren with him ( Galatians 1:2a ) b. And I can choose whether or not to walk in the flesh, or then again, to commit it and walk after the Spirit. It is the sin in which material things have taken the place of God. Acts 15:1, 5 ). The goal that the law aims at is not reached by trying to keep the law, but by acting with true Christian liberty (13-15).Sooner or later Christians find that they do not always do the good that their consciences tell them to do, because the sinful human nature fights against Gods Spirit within them. When a Gentile Christian, mark, takes up such Old Testament elements, according to the Holy Ghost, it is not to him merely Judaism, but a return to his Gentile idols, little as he may think so. Don't become seekers after empty reputation; don't provoke each other: don't envy each other. 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. It was by revelation, not by summons from Jerusalem, or to acquire a title thereby. There was no consciousness of the identification of the saint with Christ. 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. He will not hear of any pretended misunderstanding. It also described the bands of the devotees of Bacchus, god of wine. So it came to mean work done for pay. But it was true from the first. Can anything prove that it is not an old creation better than this that there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female, which last at least is an absolute necessity for the perpetuation of the race? So here the Christian puts on Christ, not the law or circumcision. The noun GALATIANS has 1 sense: 1. a New Testament book containing the epistle from Saint Paul to the Galatians Familiarity information: GALATIANS used as a noun is very rare. (14) An exhortation to the duties of charity, by the profit that follows from it, because no men proved worse for themselves than they that hate one another. Flesh alas! So there's only one real fruit of the Spirit, that is love. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself ( Galatians 5:14 ). He who bites has exhausted his angry passion, but he who devours has given a demonstration of extreme cruelty. Chrysostom. Why they thought they were becoming more truly religious, more reverent in their value for Scripture. It, too, is commonly translated goodness. Help us to express our faith in love every day by loving our neighbor as ourselves. 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. Paul reminded Christians: " You must love your neighbour as yourself." But if ye bite and devour one another, [you better] take heed that ye be not consumed one of another. This is best seen by turning to Genesis 22:1-24, where both facts are found in the same context. "This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?" It is an actual result of the cross of Christ. The Greek says only "brothers," but it is not wrong to assume "sisters" in the same way that mankind includes womankind. We shall find he does not forget this elsewhere: he reasons on it in another part of the epistle. Not at all. And let's go on. It was rather to have Gentile liberty secured by the twelve apostles, and that the Judaizers should be condemned by the church at Jerusalem. 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 ). But it degenerated; came to mean the desire to have what someone else has, wrong desire for what is not for us. He said, "You've got to be born again." Men were not his source, nor was man even a medium to him. For Peter is not said to have withdrawn from the Lord's table where the uncircumcised met, but from the simple matter of eating with the Gentiles. They were only, as they supposed, beginning to cherish a becoming attitude toward the religion of the fathers, and of all who had before Christ honoured God on earth. Our conversation will always be answerable to the principle which we are under the guidance and government of: as those that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh, so those that are after the Spirit do mind the things of the Spirit,Romans 8:5. Because you have been born of the Spirit, you can see it, you can understand it; it's as plain as can be. The context behind the Galatians church We have been crucified to the requirements of the law Kill our desire or need to keep the law as a means of gaining justification Galatians 2:15-16 Being crucified to self Matthew 16:24 There is only one throne in our hearts and life, and only one person can sit on it Galatians 5:24 Paul adds a grim bit of advice. What! of You do not want to become the children of Abraham in that sense, which would be the revival of the flesh. He went simply to make the acquaintance of Peter, and abode with him how long? Christianity came into a world where sexual immorality was not only condoned, but was regarded as essential to the ordinary working of life. There is no recounting what God had done for them. Galatians 5:15 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. All this is counted a great, wise, and sensible help to devotion. Her child was born free and according to God's promise--and all his descendants must be free. He says to those who would be under the law, why do you not listen to the law? If the promise be the only means of enjoying the inheritance, what is the good of the law? It was therefore not only for him, but for the instruction of the Galatians, and of us all. It was exactly what Christ was on earth; and the expression of Christ is the prime call of the Christian. He did not forget His people Israel; but He had always the glory of Christ before Him; and the moment we rise up to this blessed Seed of all blessing (the true Isaac, dead and risen really, as the son of Abraham was then in figure), the blessing of the Gentiles is secured in that one sole person, before the Jews are multiplied in their land under the new covenant, and possess the gate of their enemies. This terminates all for me as a living man here below. It was his to bear in his body a very different brand" the marks of the Lord Jesus," the scars of the only warfare that is precious in the sight of God the Father. Again it is worth while to look at each word separately. There it is not traced to God the Father, that raised Christ from the dead; but it descends from Christ ascended to heaven (which, we shall soon see, perfectly fits in with that epistle). 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. "Wherefore then serveth the law? We must set ourselves in good earnest both to mortify the deeds of the body, and to walk in newness of life. Being found only in Christ, it supposes the manifestation of grace; light does not in the same way that truth does. First, we must guard it, especially from those who would pressure us to follow the law. These works of the flesh, of course, are related to our body drives, so many of them. Christ on high had called him. "This persuasion, this ideas that you have, they don't really come from God, from the One who called you. 1. Things which were once a mystery and I couldn't understand are now very understandable. If we are living in the Spirit let us also keep step with the Spirit. Had Paul gone up to present his credentials to the others, he would have lowered, obscured, and done as far as in him lay to destroy the special blessedness and peculiar glory of his apostleship. Thus is seen sovereign grace, and nothing else, as well as a heavenly link instantly formed between the Lord in glory and His servant on earth. My very nature is dealt with. "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ." Well, they thought that they had me convinced to their way of thinking. Nay; he communicated unto them the gospel which he preached among the Gentiles. This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust [desires] of the flesh ( Galatians 5:15-16 ). They were better off spiritually than some other congregations to which he wrote, or possibly he did not want to deal with other needs of theirs in this letter. Here he comes to the positive blessing; for the Spirit cannot rest in what is but negative. He intimates also how vain a thing is legalism, because those that were pleading for circumcision in no case carried out their own principle. Is it against the promise of God? And here we may observe that as sin is called the work of the flesh, because the flesh, or corrupt nature, is the principle that moves and excites men to it, so grace is said to be the fruit of the Spirit, because it wholly proceeds from the Spirit, as the fruit does from the root: and whereas before the apostle had chiefly specified those works of the flesh which were not only hurtful to men themselves but tended to make them so to one another, so here he chiefly takes notice of those fruits of the Spirit which had a tendency to make Christians agreeable one to another, as well as easy to themselves; and this was very suitable to the caution or exhortation he had before given (Galatians 5:13; Galatians 5:13), that they should not use their liberty as an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. Help me, Lord. And what sort of life can this be? There's nothing that you can add to what Jesus paid. 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. As the principle of grace in us will not suffer us to do all the evil which our corrupt nature would prompt us to, so neither can we do all the good that we would, by reason of the oppositions we meet with from that corrupt and carnal principle. "Here, I'll show it to you in this book." Anything else would have been imperfect; but still it had essentially a transitional character. it is added, he conferred not with flesh and blood; neither went up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before him; but went into Arabia, and returned again, not to Jerusalem, but to Damascus, the place near which he had been called at first. The readiest way to destroy the spirituality of a church, and to annihilate the influence of religion, is to excite a spirit of contention. Who more zealous of the doctrines of his fathers? But there is more for us. Heathenism! This must be indeed confusion; as it is, there is none. "This persuasion didn't come from Him who called you." The inferior trinity is spirit, soul and body of man. The liberty we enjoy as Christians is not a licentious liberty: though Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, yet he has not freed us from the obligation of it; the gospel is a doctrine according to godliness (1 Timothy 6:3), and is so far from giving the least countenance to sin that it lays us under the strongest obligations to avoid and subdue it. Nothing more in keeping with the wants of those addressed, who had so soon turned aside from the grace of Christ to a different gospel. I mean, if you're walking in love, what rules can you lay down? Yea, hence it appears that they are not under the law, but under grace; for these fruits of the Spirit, in whomsoever they are found, plainly show that such are led by the Spirit, and consequently that they are not under the law, as Galatians 5:18; Galatians 5:18. The Christian's faith is founded not on a book but on a person; its dynamic is not obedience to any law but love to Jesus Christ. That is, walk in fellowship with God. My business is to act consistently with the new place in which grace has put me. Christianity brings everything to a climax; it also settles all questions. (Acts 15:1-41) As it is said here, "They gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship, that we should go unto the heathen and they unto the circumcision. As for me, brothers, if I am still preaching that circumcision is necessary, why am I still being persecuted? He had been trained up under the most distinguished teacher the great Rabbin Gamaliel; but "when it pleased him, who had separated him from his mother's womb, and called him by his grace, to reveal his Son in him." "Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourges every son whom He receives" ( Hebrews 12:6 ). And to try to explain to people the things of the Spirit to the natural man, to try and explain the things of the Spirit has got to be one of the most frustrating things in the world. Their lives should demonstrate the truth that their sinful nature has been crucified with Christ and has no further power over them. And so, Paul is picking up, now, the same phrase. It was the very reverse of deriving his authority from either. Is not this just the law for you! 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. You couldn't believe the things the Jehovah Witnesses believe, unless you read their screwy attitudes and ideas in their books. If ever there was a man who more than another contended for the oneness of the saints in every sense, above all, for the one body of Christ, for the unity of the Spirit, it was the apostle Paul. The flesh began to rule, and man's consciousness was now filled and absorbed with the body needs and the body appetites. Verse 15. You can't do anything to buy redemption. The Jews will surely be exalted, as well as converted nationally, and they will then put down their enemies, being made the head when other nations become the tail. Some would have received the inheritance because of promise, and others on the ground of law. And people to follow after me, you know. What makes you righteous before God is your faith, which works in love within your heart and life.Now, it is interesting to me how that those who opt for rules, those who opt for laws, those who want to lay down the laws upon the people, or those who want to live under the laws that are laid down upon them, always seem to be striving. done his duty; but it was precisely what he could not do, because he was a sinner. Both sides of the dispute are guilty. 18 but if you are led by (verse 16-18) the spirit, you are not under law. This therefore the apostle would have us by all means to watch against. Fornication; it has been said, and said truly, that the one completely new virtue Christianity brought into the world was chastity. The apostle himself meets that difficulty in the face, and in effect concedes to his detractors that he was not made an apostle by Christ here below. "But of these who seemed to be somewhat." When we get to the root meaning of these words, we see that life has not changed so very much. The readers ( Galatians 1:2b ) c. The greeting ( Galatians 1:3-5 ) i. And the old flesh likes to get people excited and stirred up like that. So the minute I start peddling books and saying, "Now, to really understand the Bible, you better read my books, because you'll just, you know, read the Bible, you'll be in darkness. He specifies the works of the flesh, which must be watched against and mortified, and the fruits of the Spirit, which must be brought forth and cherished, and shows of what importance it is that they be so, ver 19-24. This is exceedingly important, and the more as I believe the scope of the allusion to Abraham and to his seed is not often appreciated. And, you know, I mean, you're having now go to . Now, that righteousness depends upon the work of Jesus Christ as my sacrifice, as my substitute. Partisan strife will be fatal to the Christian community as a whole. All rights reserved. Thus, going up with Barnabas, he took Titus, a Gentile, along with him; and even so by revelation. It is liberty and not law that the Christian stands in. They're wanting to strive, they're wanting to argue; they're wanting to prove their points how that baptism is essential for salvation. But when I do fail, the Spirit is right there, and that's why I know I'm a child of God. That you're not going to be otherwise minded.". You can see the Santa Rosa and San Miguel and San Nicolas and say, "Hey, hey, all right, we're right on course." The contents of the greeting ( Galatians 1:3a ) ii. So, joy is love's consciousness. And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation. The enemy had ensnared them by crying up circumcision, in order to betray them into a link with Judaism; but they had no thought of bearing the real burden of the law. But the most famous portion of Galatians 5 contains Paul's reference to the fruit of the Spirit: 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, 23 gentleness, self-control. He takes the story involving Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael and Isaac ( Genesis 16:1-16; Genesis 17:1-27, Genesis 21:1-34), which in the Old Testament is a straightforward narrative and he allegorises it to illustrate his point. I don't think you need anything more than the Bible to really know the truth of God. And this leads to another point, the relation of the law to the promises. And what was the result of all this? The true link is with Jerusalem above, as our prototype is Isaac, the child of the freewoman. As for himself, he gloried only in the cross. For He knows our tendency to mingle law with grace in some form or measure, and treats that which was of the fathers and long before Moses, as a foreign ingredient deleterious to Christians. You can't do anything to buy forgiveness. Idolatry; this means the worship of gods which the hands of men have made. So, I think Paul could also have included here baptism or no baptism as far as the physical immersion in water. IF YOU RECEIVE CIRCUMCISION. It was, of course, altogether just and right in itself. The apostleship of Paul, therefore, was entirely independent of Jerusalem and the twelve. Christ has set us free! Fidelity; this word (pistis, G4102) is common in secular Greek for trustworthiness. He also warned them against using their liberty as a license to sin to prevent them from overreacting. There are two things in the Christian; he has a life, a new life in Christ, but he has also, the Holy Ghost. One of the most dangerous errors in Christendom is, that these two things are lumped together. Do your souls go along with Paul's decision? I wish that those who are upsetting you would get themselves not only circumcised but castrated! Uh-huh, you did that five minutes. Flesh and blood had not revealed it. It meant emulation, the desire to attain to nobility when we see it. For these two women stand for two covenants. He heartily avows what they counted a defect; and not Only so, but with the greatest solemnity assures them that he had not seen the apostles, save only Peter, and James the brother of the Lord, and these but for a short space. He had the faith that could by grace cleave to God if he had not a companion; but God blesses that faith, and acts by it on the conscience of others, even on those that, alas! Thus the apostle had to link together the gospel of grace with his own apostolic dignity; and we do well to take heed to this remarkable fact. It is eritheia ( G2052) and originally meant the work of a hired labourer (erithos).
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