Galatians 1

The Trinity is not, then, in the Bible a mere speculative mystery, too recondite to be practical. As a doctrine, each disciple avouches it on the church threshold. As an experience, it underlies the conversion of the individual. As a life, it pervades the collective churches through all lands and all ages. It is at once badge, history, and banner: a badge in baptism; a history as to the ransom, regeneration, and filial adoption of each separate disciple; and a banner as to the array and prospects of Christ’s collected disciples, moving forward as churches to subdue the world to the obedience of the faith. The Zion of God welcomes each neophyte into her fellowship under this Triune Name, and speeds forth each dispersing assembly that quits her courts with the same significant invocation. She greets the coming, she bids farewell to the parting guest in the name of the Trinity. W. R. W.

1. PAUL, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, 2 who raised him from the dead;) and all the brethren which are with me, unto the churches 3 of Galatia: grace be to you and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus 4 Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, 5 according to the will of God and our Father: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. 6 I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto 7 another gospel: which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would per- 8 vert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gos- 9 pel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have 10 received, let him be accursed. For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please 11 men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. But I certify you, 12 brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither re- ceived it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. 13 For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews’ religion, how that be- 14 yond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it: and profited in the Jews’ religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the 15 traditions of my fathers. But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s 16 womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among 17 the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood: neither went I up to Jeru- salem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again 18 unto Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode 19 with him fifteen days. But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord’s brother. 20 Now the things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not. Afterwards I came 21 into the regions of Syria and Cilicia; and was unknown by face unto the churches 22 of Judæa which were in Christ: but they had heard only, That he which persecuted 23 us in times past now preacheth the faith which once he destroyed. And they glorified 24 God in me.

THE Galatians, or Gauls, or Kelts, for the name is probably but one and the same under these different forms, are found at the earliest historic period inhabiting the greater part of Western Europe. When we first encounter them, they are a restless, migratory people, making incursions on their neighbors, and occupying new territories by conquest. In the fourth century before Christ, we see Rome itself sacked and plundered by them; shortly after, the famous temple at Delphi suffers their attack and witnesses their repulse. A detachment of this same invading body wandered away into the far east, and overran the lesser Asia. There eventually, after a series of vicissitudes, they became settled. The central portion of Asia Minor, known as Galatia, was their country; and at the time of the apostolic history gave its name to, and was itself part of, a Roman province slightly exceeding its own extent. Mingled with this invading people were a considerable number of the original Phrygian inhabitants; and, what is more important for our present purpose, a large and influential Jewish element (see map, page 94). Still, the character of the population in the main was that of the Gauls or Kelts. Its description by independent writers is full of interest for the readers of this Epistle. Cesar, the great conqueror of Gaul, describes himself as taking certain precautions, “fearing the weakness of the Gauls, because they are fickle in taking up plans, and ever fond of innovating, and therefore he thought that no trust should be put in them.” But the main feature of their character with which we are in this Epistle concerned is their restless love of change. They had received the gospel at the hands of Paul with their usual fervor and impetuosity. But, at the time of his writing this letter, they were rapidly changing to another gospel, which was not another (ch. 1:6); and the nature of that change is not without its interest. It was being brought about by Jewish influence, and was in the direction of the Mosaic rites and ceremonies. Now Cesar’s description of the Gauls is, that they are above all other people given to superstitious observances; so that here again we have a point of national character brought out.

In Acts 16:6 we read that the Apostle, who had, in company with Silas, revisited the churches previously founded by him in Lycaonia, “went through the Phrygian and Galatian country”; for so the words should be read. No more is here said. It would appear from Gal. 4:3 that his intention had been merely to pass through, but that he was detained by a sickness. He appears to have taken occasion by this detention to preach to them the gospel, and to found the Galatian churches, of which churches we have no particular account. But this was not his only visit. We find him in Acts 18:23 carrying out a more formal visitation, going through the whole country in order, confirming all the disciples. This was after an interval of at least three years; and it is to this second visit that some allusions of an instructive character, occurring in the Epistle, must be referred. In chapter 4:16 he asks them reproachingly whether he had become their enemy by telling them the truth? These words can not of course apply to that first visit; as little can they be interpreted of anything in the Epistle which the Galatians had not yet received; but their reference must be found in something that happened on the second presence of the Apostle among them. Then he must have found the evil beginning to be apparent, and have spoken to them his mind about it. A.—He wrote this letter, as we suppose, after his Second to the Corinthians, and just before the Epistle to the Romans (see page 143). There is internal evidence of this. The strain of self-vindication which marks 2 Corinthians is continued in Galatians. There is, on the part of the writer, the same sensitiveness as to the confidence which the Churches placed in him, the same affirmation of his apostolate, the same vehemence against the false teachers who depreciated his authority and perverted his gospel. Then there is a preparation for the Epistle to the Romans in the consecutive setting forth of doctrine and practice. This may be called a first draft of that more finished and rounded production; this the bold but somewhat fragmentary assertion of truths which are there more comprehensively and systematically taught. D. F.

This letter sprung out of two circumstances, both belonging to the same growing apostasy on the part of the Galatians. They were falling from the gospel of the grace of Christ, and they were repudiating his apostolic authority. On this their twofold fault the whole Epistle is the comment. First of all, after denouncing in the plainest terms their fickleness, he proceeds to defend the apostolic character of his ministry, and its independence on human testimony. This he does by giving a history of his intercourse with the other apostles at and after his own conversion; ending with a remarkable account of an occasion at Antioch when he found himself compelled to withstand and openly rebuke Peter. The value to the Church of this narration can not be over-extremely. It has set before us the reality of the conflicts of the Apostolic Church, and the fallibility of the great leaders of it, in a way for which we can not be too thankful. A.

The Epistles to the Romans and Galatians point out the significance of Christ’s death as a propitiatory Sacrifice. They explain the reason and necessity of his death, as that which alone could enable God, consistently with his attributes of justice, holiness, and truth, to save the sinner. They illustrate the nature of the faith which justifies, by referring to examples recorded in the Old Testament Scripture (examples which show clearly that it is a practical principle, lying at the root of all right dispositions toward God), and thus assign the reason why so much stress should be laid upon faith in the matter of man’s salvation. They explain the theory of imputed sin and imputed righteousness, teaching us that men are regarded by God, not merely as individuals, but in their corporate capacity also—that all belong to one of the two great families, of which Adam and Christ respectively are covenant Heads and Representatives. They explain also the relation of the law to the Gospel, and teach us that the elder dispensation was a rudimentary discipline, by means of which those who were under it were trained for the understanding and appreciation of gospel blessings. E. M. G.

1. In the Epistle to the Galatians, when he has to maintain his gospel as being the gospel, we find the precision which marks the language of one who knows what insinuations he has to negative: “Paul, an apostle, not of men, neither by men, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead.” He declares himself to have been placed, not originally from men, nor mediately by any man’s ministry, but by the very hand of Christ, in the chair from which his instructions are delivered, and thus he attaches the authority of the commission to the instructions which are given under it. But in verses 11, 12 he goes further, and affirms that those instructions themselves were no less immediately received from the Lord Jesus than was the commission under which they were delivered. T. D. B.

3. Grace to you. Grace can pardon our ungodliness and justify us with Christ’s righteousness; it can put the Spirit of Jesus Christ within us; it can help us when we are down; it can heal us when we are wounded; it can multiply pardons, as we through frailty multiply transgressions. Bun.

—Peace. It is good and pleasant, beyond the power of tongue to tell, to be deeply and fully in the enjoyment of the divine legacy of “peace.” To be filled with peace! To have all known relations touched and calmed by it! To hear the soft, glad murmur of the cleansed and liberated conscience affirming the truth of the written word, that “there is now no condemnation,” and that “the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin”! And the gentle stirrings of the Spirit within, prompting us to cry “Abba, Father”! And to see those meetings and minglings of earth and heaven, which disclose themselves only to peaceful souls! There can be no better state of its kind than this. It is an antepast of the rest of heaven. A. R.

10. Persuade men or God.** If once we regard the preacher, whatever his faults, as a man sent with a message to us, which it is a matter of life or death whether we hear or refuse; if we look upon him as set in charge over many souls in danger of ruin, and having allowed to him but an hour or two in the seven days to speak to them; we shall wish that the words of the messenger may be simple, even when they are sweetest, and the place from which he speaks like a marble rock in the desert, about which the people have gathered in their thirst, Ruskin.—If clergymen in our day would return to the simplicity of the gospel, and preach more to individuals and less to the crowd, there would not be so much complaint of the decline of true religion. Many of the ministers of the present day take their texts from Paul and preach from the newspapers. When they do so, I prefer to enjoy my own thoughts rather than to listen. I want my pastor to come to me in the spirit of the gospel, saying: “You are mortal; your probation is brief; your work must be done speedily. You are immortal, too. You are hastening to the bar of God; the Judge even now standeth at the door!” When I am thus admonished, I have no disposition either to muse or to sleep. Daniel Webster.

Ministers should preach feelingly, experimentally as well as exemplarily; they must speak from the heart to the heart; they must feel the worth, the weight, the sweet of those things upon their own souls that they give out to others. The highest mystery in divine rhetoric is to feel what a man speaks, and then speak what a man feels. Brooks.—It is not mere words which turn men; it is the heart mounting, uncalled, into the expression of the features; it is the eye illuminated by reason, the look beaming with goodness; it is the tone of the voice, that instrument of the soul, which changes quality with such amazing facility, and gives out in the soft, the tender, the tremulous, the firm, every shade of emotion and character. And so much is there in this, that the moral stature and character of the man that speaks are likely to be well represented in his manner. H. B.

If any work ever demanded the whole of one’s mind, it is that of a stated preacher of God’s word.

All the great things of earth, compared with what depends on this work, are deserving of no mention or thought. Kingdoms rise and fall, worlds pass away, but human minds hold on their eternal course; and whether they shall be endlessly continued in woe or bliss may be depending, more than all things else, upon the character of the preaching which they hear from Sabbath to Sabbath. What manner of men, then, should preachers of the gospel be? and how exclusive and magnificent their vocation! T. H. S.

11,12. The whole argument to the Galatians turns upon the doctrinal element of the Gospel. It is of this, therefore, that he so solemnly affirms that he was not taught it by the agency of man, but received it as direct revelation from the Lord; and this affirmation is made, not merely in respect of the general doctrine, but specifically of those parts of it which it was given to him to develop and defend: “the gospel which was preached by me”—“my gospel,” as he elsewhere calls it, the gospel under that particular aspect which he admits to be the subject of extensive doubt and complaint. The part in the progress of doctrine committed to Paul was to define, to settle, and to carry out to its practical consequences the principle of free justification in Christ, which (as a principle) was acknowledged and held before his voice was heard; and we learn from his own statements that, for this special work, not only a special commission, but a special revelation was given him by the Lord Jesus, so as to clear and settle his own mind on those points on which he was sent to clear and settle the minds of others. In this way he was a minister and a witness, not of those things which he had heard from others, nor of those things which he had only thought out for himself, but of those things which his Lord had showed him in personal visits and distinct communications, according to the announcement made at the first commencement of this peculiar intercourse: “I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness, both of those things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee.” T. D. B.

15. The phrases, “separated, sanctified, filled with the Holy Ghost, from the womb,” mean no more than that God thus early signified a special Divine purpose in the birth of the individuals thus distinguished, without tying Himself to time in the actual bestowment of their miraculous endowments. It was “from the womb” that their special designation to one great purpose was made known. The actual impulses of inspiration, or of other gifts, may have been, and doubtless were, bestowed only as occasion demanded their exercise. Facts in this and other cases bear out this view. J. S. S.

16. To reveal his Son in me.** And what a revelation was it to him!—as great proportionally to all who receive it. It is as if they had gotten a new soul, with a heaven-full of society gathered round the Son of man there revealed. It is as if some wondrous, unknown light had broken in; the whole sky is luminous. The soul is in day, for the day has dawned and the day-star is risen. God, eternity, immortality, universal love, and society—into these broad ranges it has come, and in these it

is free, having them all for its element and its conversation in them, as in heaven. The unknowing state, the old, blank ignorance that was, because of the blindness of the heart, is gone, and a wondrous knowledge opens because the heart can see. Oh, what strength and majesty and general height of being are felt in the new life begun! And this is salvation! great because it saves, not some small part of the soul, but because it saves and glorifies the sublime whole, restoring its integrity and proportion, and setting it complete in God’s own order, as in everlasting life. H. B.