Galatians 3

Who loved me and gave himself. Is it true that the Eternal Word was “made flesh, and dwelt among us,” and “died for our sins,” having been constituted “a curse for us”? Sin then is ruin—immortal ruin; and our condition, if not benefited by that sacrifice, is desperate. But the Saviour, as we learn from his own lips, although given by the Father to suffer for the sins of the “whole world,” yet gave himself for his people. On this ground the apostle speaks of his Lord as “having loved him, and given himself for him.” A distinct apprehension of truths such as these brings home to the heart every kind of powerful influence, every imaginable element of awe, compunction, dread, gratitude, and tender affection, to which the human mind may be opened. I. T.—What gives to the gospel of reconciliation the true living power is that great “for me” which was the sinew and soul of the whole spiritual life of Paul. Even for me, as truly as I am a man and a sinner, but through the grace of God a believer and a redeemed one. This is the highest vaunt of faith on the recollection of the death of the Saviour, and to this vaunt the eternal gospel gives us a right, if indeed the heart is upright before God. For the greatest of sinners who ever found mercy, but not more for these than for me. Were I a hundred times poorer, more unworthy, or more wretched than I have ever known myself to be, yet so true the love which made thee die upon the cross that I can say, Thou hast died there for me! Van O.

21. If righteousness by law then.** The stupendous facts of the incarnation and the life of the Son of God, the agony and the sacrifice, the garden and the cross, have been to no purpose! There has been no “fullness of time,” no “crisis” of the world. For anything that has been done Christ need not have appeared. If the law saves now, it could have saved before. The Only-Begotten has been “given,” “set forth,” “manifested,” and especially has “died” “in vain”! T. B.

1. O FOOLISH Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before 2 whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you? This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of 3 faith? Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the 4 flesh? Have ye suffered so many things in vain? if it be yet in vain. He therefore that 5 ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of 6 the law, or by the hearing of faith? Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted 7 to him for righteousness. Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are 8 the children of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all 9 nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. 10 For 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 11 do them. But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, 12 The just shall live by faith. And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them 13 shall live in them. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse 14 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; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. 15 Brethren, I speak after the manner of men; Though it be but a man’s covenant, yet if it 16 be confirmed, no man disannuleth, or addeth thereto. Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy 17 seed, which is Christ. And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, 18 that it should make the promise of none effect. For if the inheritance be of the law, it is 19 no more of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise. Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the 20 promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator. Now a me-

21 diator is not a mediator of one, but God is one. Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.

22. But the Scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

If there is anything which can make a man fear to sin, it is the atonement in its mysterious awfulness. There is a power in the scenes of Gethsemane and Calvary which could not be surpassed or equaled if we had present before us all the torments of all the lost. The overwhelming thing about the atonement is that “God spared not his own Son.” A substituted angel would have made sin appear “exceeding sinful”; but when we go beyond the angel, and have before us the substitute, incomprehensible indeed, yet confessedly “the brightness of his Father’s glory, and the express image of his person”; when we find that his dignity is no shield against suffering, but that he is reckoned with rigidly and unflinchingly, so that the poison of death for a time overcomes him, then there is set in array before us such an exhibition of God’s thoughts of sin and determination to punish it, as leaves far behind the highest picture which the imagination can sketch of the whole earth visited with the extreme of divine incignation. If thus there is no injury done to the securities of righteousness, which indeed are strengthened; if there is no injury done to Christ, who voluntarily became our surety; if no injury is done to us, who receive redemption through his blood, where is the injustice of that atonement which was wrought out by Christ’s redeeming us from the curse of the law, as he became a curse for us? E. M.

1-9. He begins with a vigorous interrogation—“O foolish (inconsiderate) Galatians! who hath bewitched you that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ crucified was placarded (proclaimed)?” What bewitched them, or cast an evil spell over them, was the “different gospel” of false teachers who drew them back under the law, insisted on circumcision in the flesh, required the observance of Jewish festivals, and inculcated justification by works. In the view of Paul this was a declension from liberty to bondage, and from the Spirit to the flesh; not a mere alteration or even distortion, but a downright reversal of the gospel of Christ. He fights against it with the sword of his mouth. The Galatians have been misled by their new teachers through a misuse of the Old Testament; and therefore Paul refers them to the ancient Scriptures, and shows them that the promise of grace to Abraham preceded by hundreds of years the law of works through Moses, and that the law was added really to prepare for the time of richer grace in Christ, shutting men up “unto the faith which should afterward be revealed.” All who are of faith are blessed with Abraham. D. F.

1. When Jesus shall have been set forth, or rather shall have portrayed himself, as the apostle calls it, before your eyes; when, as the result of this profound contemplation, he shall have been crucified before you; when you shall have beheld all the glory of his martyrdom, all the authority of his dying words, all the inconceivable love which mingles with this incomparable authority; when, penetrating within the veil of his sufferings, you shall have seen God himself humbled in the person of Jesus Christ to the level of our miseries, and the infinitude of love revealing itself for the first time in the infinitude of power; then, as naturally as light enters the eye and air enters the lungs, this great and unfathomable mystery of a love, without which we could not form any proper idea of God, will enter your mind. A. V.

2. The Spirit is “received,” His gifts conferred, in connection with belief in the verities of redemption. “He glorifies Christ.” Place dependence on external ritualisms, and He departs! You may make “a fair show in the flesh”; it is “a show,” and nothing else—a mere parade of empty formalities! Pardon and holiness; reconciliation and renewal; the beginning, the middle, and the end of an inward, spiritual, divine life—these, with other important correlative things, all being associated by Paul with that which the Galatian error would displace, it is not surprising that it was encountered by him with such a vehemence of resistance, and such an emphasis of rebuke. T. B.

10. Under the curse. Present obedience can neither annihilate nor lessen the guilt of what is past; though absolutely perfect, it can do no more than answer for itself. Acceptance, therefore, on the ground of that law which requires us to “love the Lord our God with all our heart,” which demands the universal and unceasing operation of this principle in every thought, word, and action, must be entirely and for ever out of the question. The blot of a single sin on a character as pure as that of an angel would seal his condemnation. N. W. T.—Cursed! It is terrible to be cursed by a man, a wicked man, without cause; but to be cursed by a Father, by a being who never errs in judgment, a being who never condemns unjustly, a being who suffered to save us, a being who has long expostulated in view of this very judgment, a being who commands the elements of the universe to execute his purposes—what must this curse be? No tongue can tell, no imagination conceive it. Christ has warned us with a solemnity that may well intimidate and arouse. It is nothing less than eternal banishment from light and life and hope to regions prepared for the devil and his angels, where the soul shall be enveloped and penetrated with a misery immense, infinite. Kirk.

11. The words “the just shall live by faith” ought to stand, “the just by faith (i. e., they that are justified by faith) shall live.” The stress of the argument here is on the contrast between those that are just by faith and those whose righteousness arises from having done the works of the law: the attainment of life being common to both. A.—In Scripture, where justification is ascribed to faith alone, there the word fait does not signify abstractedly a mere persuasion, but the obedience of a holy life performed in the strength and virtue of such a persuasion. Not that this justifies meritoriously by any inherent worth or value in itself, but instrumentally as a condition appointed by God, upon the performance of which he freely imputes to us Christ’s righteousness, which is the sole, proper, and formal cause of our justification. R. S.

The doctrine of the Bible is that justification is a forensic term, expressing an act of God by which he accepts a sinner as righteous in the sight of the law; that the best obedience of the sinner, even in his renewed state, is insufficient for this end; that we are justified without works, and that the works thus excluded are not merely ceremonial works, nor works wrought in unbelief, but all works whatever; that the righteousness which justifies us is that of our Divine Mediator, consisting of what he did and what he suffered; that this righteousness becomes ours upon our believing; that the efficacy of faith does not arise from the act of believing being imputed in lieu of obedience, nor from faith viewed as the source of all obedience, but from its uniting us with the Lord Jesus Christ; that in consequence of this union, the acts of the Redeemer are considered as the acts of his people, which is otherwise called the imputation of his righteousness; and that hence the believing sinner receives the absolute remission of all his sins, with a right to eternal salvation. J. W. A.—Though the word “satisfaction” is not in Scripture, the thing is everywhere there; the idea of it is inherent in Scriptural words, phrases, and images out of number. T.

13. Cross and curse go together; but so also do cross and blessing. Christ became a curse for us, in our stead, and out of love to us. If he shrank back with horror from our curse, yet through his great love he overcame this horror. He carried away all curse from the accursed earth when he carried up to the cross the world’s sin in his own body, to become a sacrifice for it, that we, instead of the curse, might inherit the blessing; for “there is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” Besser.—If thou wouldst be faithful to do that work that God has allotted thee to do for his name, labor to live in the sense of thy freedom and liberty by Jesus Christ; keep this ever before thee, that thou art a redeemed one, taken out of this world and from under the curse of the law, out of the power of the devil, and placed in a kingdom of grace and forgiveness of sins for Christ’s sake. This is of absolute use in this matter; yea, so absolute that it is impossible for any Christian to do his work Christianly without some enjoyment of it. Bun.

14. Through faith.** Faith is simply instrumental and receptive. It is the hand stretched forth to receive an infinite bounty, namely, the perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. Being a persuasion of God’s mercy, an acquiescence in God’s plan, involving a despair of our own strength and an acknowledgment of free grace, faith is above all other exercises fitted to exclude the pretense of merit, and to exalt the riches of Christ. The moment a sinner believes, he is justified. It is of all things the furthest from his thoughts that this act constitutes any claim; he scarcely makes it an object of attention; his soul is absorbed in the infinite object which it apprehends. Yet at this point of time the righteousness of Christ becomes his own; and it becomes so because faith unites him to the Surety. This is the secret of its power. It establishes the communication with the source of merit. He is thenceforth in Christ, and the righteousness of God in him. Being one with Christ, he possesses in the eye of the law the acts and merits of his Head. J. W. A.

16. Abraham, “the father of the faithful,” not of the Jews only, but of Christians also, his “spiritual seed,” was a typical or representative man in whom was set forth for the study of humanity the principle on which God intended to deal with it. Afterward, the posterity of the patriarch became this model or type, and was put through its peculiar discipline, not merely for its own sake, but for ours, “on whom the ends of the world are come.” T. B.

Verse 20 would be clearer expressed, “Now a mediator can not be of one (i. e., necessarily requires two parties), but God is one” (one in Himself, and essentially one in his purposes and actions). A. —God is one and, therefore, mediatorless. God himself, without any intervention, speaks the promise to Abraham; the promise is conveyed through no third party, as was the law. Whatever contingency might be in the law and its conveyance by a mediator who went between God and the people, there can be none with regard to the promise, the direct and unconditioned word of Jehovah himself alone. Eadie.

21,22. God who appointed Moses mediator is one and the same, unchanged, unchangeable. Can, then, the law be against the promises of God? Moses was not the author of the law; he was but the mediator. The law was God’s law, and Moses was God’s mediator; the one was enjoined, the other appointed by him. The promise was his promise. He can not by his law contradict his promise. He is one and the same, always like himself. The two divine institutions, the law and the promise, can not be inconsistent, coming as they do from the immutable God. J. B.

23,24. The school was the Mosaic dispensation, the schoolmaster was the law. But the Jewish people were the representatives of the race. In them “we all had our conversation in time past.” We lived with them at the same school, and learned with them the same lessons. The teacher did for us what he did for them. “The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ that we might be justified by faith,” “to the end that the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham who is the father of us all.” The idea of the necessity for something to be done, an actual Divine interposition in order to meet the condition of humanity—this is just the one great lesson which the schoolmaster embodied in all the forms of his emblematical teaching. It pervades everything—everything in map, prophecy, and picture-book. To impress it on the heart was the object of the previous preparatory discipline through which the Church went in its Hebrew stage—the accomplishment of that object being the production of a state of mind ready to apprehend, to recognize, and confide in the Divine miracle itself, when, “in the fullness of time,” it should be wrought and revealed. T. B. —Do this and live, the majority of moralists say to us; so also do the Scriptures of the Old Testament. That is to say, if we regard the spirituality, the perfection of the law, do what is impossible, and live; do what is impossible, or perish. It was necessary that such a morality should be taught in the world; it was necessary, also, that God should proclaim it in the old dispensation; it is still necessary that it should be preached in our days among those who resist the gospel; because the blessing must be estimated by the want, the remedy by the evil. Those who reject Jesus Christ must learn how far they are from fulfilling the conditions of their existence, and how much they need that the exigency thus created should be met by Him whom can eat all exigencies, supply all deficiencies; in a word, by Him who only can create; for the thing to be accomplished is nothing less than a creation. In this way law or morality “is a schoolmaster that leads to Christ.” A. V.

26. All children by faith.** To believe in Christ that, though he was God and with God, he became a man with men; that, though he was rich, he became poor; though he was sinless, he became a sin-offering; and that, having died and risen and ascended, he is now “exalted to be a prince and a Saviour, to give repentance and remission of sins”—to believe this, to have this revelation stand forth before the mind’s eye, as the wonder of angels, the song of the redeemed, the hope of men; it makes the man a new man, opening within him a fountain of new and tender and holy affections, producing childship, and bringing nigh to God the Father, as a brother to Christ the Son of God, the heir of all things! W. I. B.

27. The meaning is plainly this: The law having been, of course through the preaching of the gospel and the accompanying influences of the Spirit, the means of bringing the Galatians to Christ for justification by faith, they had, in this faith, been baptized into Christ, or into his name. More fully expressed, they had been baptized into the one great name, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and the result of their previous blessed change had been, that they had become, as the apostle styles them, “the children of God by faith in Jesus Christ.” As the result of that change, a change professed and sealed at their baptism, they had “put on Christ”; or, as the same apostle expresses the idea in another Epistle, they had become “conformed to the image” of Christ. “Putting on Christ” means, being made like Christ; having the same “mind which was also in him”; being “conformed to his image”; made “children of God by faith in him”; and this was effected by the Holy Ghost, using the law and its accompanying influences in bringing the Galatians to Christ for justification by faith, and in thus making them God’s believing children. “As many of you,” says the apostle, “as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ.” This, evidently, is the full meaning of the passage; it comes up fully to the dignity of the connected discourse, and it is warm with all the vital meaning of the gospel. J. S. S.

28. Neither Jew nor Greek.** The Jew wished to continue the separation between himself and all the rest of God’s great family; or, if there was to be any approximation, it must be by the Gentiles becoming Jews! Jew as he was—of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, “a Hebrew of the Hebrews”—this notion roused, as it were, the apostle’s humanity; it stirred and agitated the strong affections of his great soul; it was met by the resistance of his reason and his faith, by the

light which the healthy instincts of the one had received from the grand idea of the other. T. B.— All one. That is to say, in this high fellowship of religion, distinctions of race, of sex, and of condition—as between masters and slaves—vanish. A common sympathy sweeps away the walls of separation between man and man. The heavenly good of the gospel is of such a nature that it can be offered indiscriminately to all. The sense of a common relationship to Christ and to God melts away all differences. The brotherhood of the race is no more a philosopher’s dream; it has become a realized fact. G. P. F.