Galatians 5

21-31. And now follows a remarkable passage, in which Paul carries on his argument against the Judaizers by maintaining against them the allegorical sense of that law of which they professed themselves the upholders; by maintaining, that is, that the events, and even the names, which come before us in the Old Testament history, have beneath them spiritual meanings, and are parables of Christian truths. He adopted the same strain in 1 Cor. 10, when he spoke of the mystical meaning of the history of the Jews in the wilderness; the same again in 1 Cor. 15, when he insisted on the mutual relations of Adam and of Christ. Mr. Conybeare has well remarked, “The lesson to be drawn from this whole passage, as regards the Christian use of the Old Testament, is of an importance which can scarcely be overrated.” A.

21-23. The apostle stood up for the simplicity and spirituality of the gospel against the importance to men as men of the external and done-with ritualism of the Jew. In addition to this, he threw his reasoning into the form of an allegory, that would shock and exasperate the minds of his opponents. To make Hagar and Ishmael—the bondwoman and her slave-child—a type of the Jew, and Sarah and Isaac of the Christian Gentiles, would seem to those pointed at by the parable as if a sacrilegious hand had torn down the veil of the temple, and exposed the holiest of all to the common gaze; or, rather, as if the unclean and the uncircumcised had been introduced within the sacred precincts as their proper place, and the very priests of God thrust out—“as if they had not been anointed with oil!” Consistently with this daring defiance of the national opinion, this contemptuous mockery of Jewish pretensions, put in the form of that allegorical logic in which Paul was so thorough a proficient, and the force of which on the Hebrew mind he so well knew—in consistency with this, he even presents the believing Gentiles as the seed of Abraham; tells them that the blessing of Abraham comes on them; that theirs is the promise and the inheritance through faith; that circumcision is nothing, and may be worse than nothing; that “the Israel of God” is not now “the concision,” as he calls them in another Epistle, but those who walk according to the rule that “neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.” “We are the circumcision, who worship God in the spirit, who rejoice in Jesus Christ, and have no confidence in the flesh.” T. B.

24,25. In verse 24, for “are an allegory,” read “have another meaning.” In verse 25, for “this Agar is Mount Sinai in Arabia,” read “the word Hagar is in Arabia (i. e., in the Arabic language) Mount Sinai,” which appears to have been the case. The Chaldee paraphrast of the Old Testament uses it with this meaning. A.—26. The very giving of the law is represented as a type of bondage in the stern and rugged peaks of Sinai, whereas the gospel is likened to that wondrous city of crystal, gold, and gems, which John describes in the Revelation, and which Paul elsewhere speaks of as the heavenly Jerusalem. Already, through grace, our citizenship is there, and we should make this manifest in the joyous freedom of the spiritual life. J. P. T.

31. “The bondwoman” should be “a bondwoman”; “we are not children of any bondmaid, but of the (the chosen, the well-known) freewoman.”

1. The result of the argument from the allegorical interpretation is that we are not children of a system of bondage, but of liberty, wherewith Christ made us free. In this liberty we must stand fast. A.—While the end of one dispensation and the beginning of another remained in contact, mingling together their respective influences, so that two elements were in some degree active at the same time, Paul admitted that some might conscientiously observe their accustomed formalities, provided they kept them in their proper place, using them only as helps to what was higher, and as helps to themselves, not putting them in the place of essential truth, and especially not attempting to force their observance on those who neither saw them to be obligatory nor felt them to be beneficial. With this most catholic feeling toward the conscientious on all sides, it was perfectly consistent for the apostle to resist the imposition of ceremonies simply as intolerance. Hence his call and counsel to the Galatians, “Stand fast in the liberty with which Christ has made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” T. B.

2. BEHOLD, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. 3 For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. 4 Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are 5 fallen from grace. For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. 6 For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith 7 which worketh by love. Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the 8 truth? This persuasion cometh not of him that calleth you. A little leaven leaveneth the 9 whole lump. I have confidence in you through the Lord, that ye will be none otherwise 10 minded: but he that troubleth you shall bear his judgment, whosoever he be. And I, 11 brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? then is the offence 12 of the cross ceased. I would they were even cut off which trouble you. 13 For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to 14 the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in 15 this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. But if ye bite and devour one another,

16 take heed that ye be not consumed one of another. This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, 17 and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. 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 18 the things that ye would. But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law. Now 19 the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, las- 20 civiousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, 21 heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit 22 the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentle- 23 ness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that 24 are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, 25 let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one an- 26 other, envying one another.

A SELF-WILLED, self-indulgent Christian is not to be found on the earth. Self-gratification is no gospel blessing. We must not expect it or even wish for it on earth; we must wait for it till we wake up in heaven. There our desires may roam as they will, settle where they please, and go forth as intensely as they can, for all within us there will be pure and holy, all moving in a blessed conformity to the divine will; but here liberty for our hearts is misery for our hearts; yea, it is ruin and death for us. We must bridle our desires, and we must fetter them. And even then they will destroy us, unless a mighty Spirit also bridles and fetters them. Self-denial is our duty, but it is not our safety and must not be our hope. We may set about crucifying “the flesh with its affections and lusts,” but if we expect to bind and slay this vile thing by our own power, we might almost as well leave it to itself. None can destroy sin in us but Christ the great Saviour from sin. The work is his, and when we feel that it is his, and implore him to do it, the work is done. We give him the glory, and he gives us the victory. C. B.—Wherefore, walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh; but do even the things which ye would. And ye can walk in the Spirit if ye seek for the Spirit; if ye seek him by prayer, and by reading of Christ, and the things of Christ. If we will do neither, then most assuredly we are not seeking him; if we seek him not, we shall never find him. If we find him not, we shall never be able to do the things that we would; we shall never be redeemed, never made free, but our souls shall be overcome by their evil nature, as surely as our bodies by their diseased nature; till one death shall possess us wholly, a death of body and of soul, the death of eternal misery. T. A.

1-6. The object of the gospel is both to pacify the sinner’s conscience and to purify his heart. The best way of casting out an impure affection is to admit a pure one, and by the love of what is good to expel the love of what is evil. Thus the freer the gospel, the more sanctifying is the gospel; and the more it is received as a doctrine of grace, the more will it be felt as a doctrine according to godliness. This is one of the secrets of the Christian life, that the more a man holds of God as a pensioner, the greater is the payment of service that he renders back again. T. C.

4. Before Christ came, the figures of the law had a relative value and a preparatory use; but if, after He is come, they are still depended on, they are then looked to as realities, as things which are substantial, final, and efficient, and He is rejected to whom they were to lead! T. B.—The two ways of grace and works are incompatible. It was the error of those against whom Paul deals in his Epistles to rest half upon Christ and half upon works, and therefore is he so zealous everywhere in this dispute: for they went about to mix both the covenants, and so wholly, destroyed their own interest in that of grace. T. M.—Practically many Christians are in the same position. They are as much in Moses as “in Christ.” Instead of looking at Christ till they imbibe from him strength and joy, holy aspiration and confidence Godward—instead of looking at Christ till he draws them upward, out of their selfishness, out of their sin, out of their unbelief, on toward himself, they look at faith, or they look at conversion, and wonder how they are to get it; and, as it is a very dim comfort that they derive from the Saviour, so it is a very faint reflection of his spirit and character which comes through their murky atmosphere. Hamilton.

6. There is much significance in the double negation, “Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision.” If the Judaizers were tempted to insist on the former as indispensable, their antagonists were as much tempted to insist on the latter. There may be as much formalism in protesting against forms as in using them. If religion be the loving devotion of the soul to God, resting upon reasonable faith, then all besides is at the most a means which may further it. If loving trust which apprehends the truth, and cleaves to the Person revealed to us in the gospel, be the link which binds men to God, then the only way by which these externals can be “means of grace” is by their aiding us to understand better the truth as it is in Jesus, and to cleave closer to him who is the truth. A. M.

Faith worketh. Of all the graces that be in the soul of man, faith is the most useful; and therefore, above all, labor to be rich in faith. It is a Christian’s right eye, without which he can not look for Christ; it is his right hand, without which he can not do for Christ; it is his tongue, without which he can not speak for Christ; it is his vital force, without which he can not act for Christ. Brooks.—Saving faith is that living and active principle in our minds by which, under the softening impressions of the love of God, we accept the Lord Jesus Christ as our only Saviour; spiritually feed on Him as on the bread of life; place a humble yet sure reliance upon his mercy and power; and, with full purpose and devotion of heart, submit our whole selves to his spiritual government. This is the faith which “worketh by love,” and which enables us to bring forth the pure and lovely fruits of holiness, charity, gentleness, patience, joy, and peace. Gurney.

By love. It is quite childish to talk of faith being imperfect without charity or love; as wisely might you say that a fire, however bright and strong, was imperfect without heat; or that the sun, however cloudless, is imperfect without beams. The true answer would be, it is not faith, but utter reprobate faithlessness. S. T. C.—Love makes long service short, and hard service easy. Nothing is pain that love does. And this is gospel obedience. It is faith working by love which refines duty into a grace—the commandments are exalted into privileges—ordinances become happy means of fellowship with God. Romaine.—Were a sentiment only of justice in the heart of a Christian, he would trace for himself precise limits, he would know where to stop; but, obeying because he loves, loving Him whom he can not love too much, he abandons himself to the impulse of his heart. He never says, and he never can say, it is enough. Love knows no reserve; it ever desires more; it is inflamed by its own movement; it grows by sacrifices themselves, expects to receive in the measure that it gives, and is itself its own reward; for the true reward of love is to love still more. Where, then, in its applications, shall a faith stop which resolves itself into love? A. V.

7. Many err, believing that when the soul is once converted the work is done. Vain dream! the

Christian life is a warfare, from the beginning to the end. It is quite possible to “run well for a season,” and then to drop by the wayside. Your faith will not go untried, even after God has accepted you in Christ. He will uphold you in every trial, if you keep your fidelity; but you will find it necessary at every step to watch and pray, to fear and to struggle. You will be tried by all the old seductions that formerly prevailed with you, and by all the new allurements that the ingenuity of the adversary can invent. There is no hint in Scripture of the possibility of final failure in the case of any who “fight the good fight of faith” to the end; but the Bible is full of warnings against security, against forgetfulness, against ceasing to strive earnestly. McClintock.

13. By love serve one another.** A continual confinement of attention to ourselves, or to those who by belonging to us become only a slight extension of self, belittles us. The soul takes petty proportions, sees with a narrow vision, and is warped to one-sided judgments. Finding nothing beyond self to fasten upon, affection settles back and stagnates or sours in the breast, till mere self-preservation becomes the end of living. Religion, though her hand is on the invisible world, will have hard work to save such a life from contempt. It is a spirit directly opposite to the charity and cross of Christ. F. D. H.

16. Just as the strengthening of the whole constitution of the body makes any particular and local affection disappear, so by degrees, by the raising of the character, do the lower affections become, not extinguished or destroyed by excision, but ennobled by a new and loftier spirit breathed through them. This is the account given by the apostle. He speaks of the conflict between the flesh and the spirit. And his remedy is to give vigor to the higher, rather than to struggle with the lower. “This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.” F. W. R.—So everywhere positives, not negatives. The way to get out of self-love is to love God. Do we not see what Paul was teaching the Galatians when he said, “Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh”? And to help us to this positive life we have this positive salvation, these positive things fairly revealed to us, God’s will, Christ’s love, and the eternal life. It is no hard master that stands over us. It is the King in his beauty. Before him repentance and faith become but one perfect act. When we really get the scales off our eyes and see him, the struggle of life will be over. We shall not have to leave our sins to go to him, as if they were two acts. The going of the soul to him will be itself the easy casting away of sin, the easy mastery of this world which masters us so now. P. B.

17. While he has a distinctive nature of his own, man is a partaker and representative of every thing in the inferior creation. In him are united the material and the spiritual, the animal and the rational. He has instincts, propensities, desires, passions, by which he is allied to the animals; he has also reason, conscience, free will, by which he is allied to higher intelligences and to God. Hence the ends he is capable of choosing, and the principles by which he may be actuated, are very various. Body and soul, reason and passion, conscience and desire, often seem to be, and are, opposing forces. “The intestine war of reason against the passions,” says Pascal, “has given rise, among those who wish for peace, to the formation of two different sects. The one wished to renounce the passions and be as gods; the other to renounce reason and become beasts.” M. H.

That painful experience, of which every true believer has a keen and continual perception, is represented here by the lusting of the flesh against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, and elsewhere as the warfare of a law in the members against the law of the mind, and gives occasion to the distinction of the old man and the new, the natural (or carnal) mind and the spiritual mind. By these terms are to be understood the same man, as he is subject to the actings and strivings of two distinct and opposite principles within him—the older one of corruption, the new of holiness, both operating upon the same mind. Thus it is the same soul that formerly was unregenerate which is now regenerate. The leaven of divine grace acts upon the same mass which was unleavened. The believer puts off the old man and puts on the new, by daily warfare against “the lusts of the flesh and of the mind,” and by the practice of all holiness in the fear of God. Goode.

“Ye can not do the things that ye would.” The words as we use them and as the apostle used them have the most opposite meaning in the world. We use them as a reason why we should be satisfied, the apostle as a reason why we should be alarmed; we intend them to be an excuse, the apostle meant them to be a certain sign of condemnation. The words mean no other than this: “Ye can not be redeemed from the power of death and of Satan; the power is wanting in you, however much you may wish it; death has got you, and it will keep you for ever.” T. A.—Lust is a tyrant that wars in the soul and wars against the soul. It wars in the soul, for it abuses your affections to carry on the rebellion against heaven. It wars against your soul, for it defaces the beauty, disturbs the order, and enthralls the liberty of the soul. Instead of God’s image, there is Satan’s likeness; instead of subjection to reason, there is the rebellion of appetite and vile affections; and instead of freedom for righteousness, there is a hopeless bondage to evil. T. M.

18. What the Holy Spirit does is to lead—and to move, in order that he may lead. Do not imagine that he drives or compels. To do so would be to destroy the moral nature of the creature instead of renewing it. The Holy Spirit extends his hand to us, allures, invites, remonstrates, but never forces. Let us place our hand in his, and make ourselves over to his guidance. E. M. G.

19-21. The flesh is born of the flesh—human nature under inherited and accustomed sinfulness. It acts from self-will, and builds up a religion of self-righteousness. Its works are manifest; not its fruit, not even its work, because it has no inward harmony to produce unity of result; but its works in great profusion appear. The apostle gives not a catalogue of them, but a few specimens, describing them as the sins of sensuality, idolatry, malice, and excess.

22,23. The spirit is born of the Spirit. It is the sacred vitality and sensibility, animated and guided by the indwelling Spirit of Christ Jesus. It is known by its fruit. Men often speak of the fruits of the Spirit, but the apostle is careful to say fruit—one holy fruit or result comprising many virtues. Love is the juice of the fruit, sweet to God and man; joy, its beautiful bloom; peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, form its mellow softness; faith is its consistence, and also forms its characteristic and incomparable flavor; temperance, the rind of the fruit, binding it together, keeping it fresh, and preserving its good qualities from waste. D. F.

The spiritual life consists neither in ordinances nor in actions, nor yet, as some seem to imagine, in activities. It is closely connected with ordinances, actions, and activities, but it no more stands in these things than the life of a tree is the fruit of the tree, or the means for cultivating the tree. It does not stand in many prayers, nor in hearing many sermons, nor in studying many chapters of the Bible, nor in many acts of public worship, nor even in many communions. These are means in God’s hand of kindling the spiritual life in the soul of man, or means of feeding the flames when kindled; but they are not the flame itself, they are not the life. Paul’s compendious and noble description of the kingdom of God in the human soul runs thus: “The kingdom of God is not meat and drink”—it stands not in outward institutions but in interior affections—“but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” Nor does the spiritual life consist in actions. The actions are the result, the fruit, but they are not the life of the tree. Minds which recoil from the idea of a life devoted exclusively to ordinances are often apt to fall into this opposite error. The sum and substance of true religion in their view is merely the going about doing good. Whereas the Apostle Paul, in his enumeration, does not mention a single action, but merely a series of tempers—“love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.” E. M. G.

Those graces which are denominated the fruit of the Spirit are in their very nature modes of happiness. Some of them are directly consolatory, because they strike at the very root of our inward disquietudes. For instance, Faith, by realizing to the soul divine truths, carries it away above its sufferings, and so consoles. Gentleness diffuses a blessed calm over the nature. Love is the atmosphere of heaven. Long-suffering and meekness counteract all those distresses—and they are innumerable—which arise from pride, anger, and revenge. Joy drives out the soul’s pains by the expulsive power of a new dominant affection. And peace is but the scriptural name for the entire result of combined holy satisfactions in the heart. J. W. A.

24. Have crucified the flesh.** By the term “flesh,” he does not mean this mortal body, but that corrupt nature which our first parents transmitted to all their children. Its character may be seen in its works; and what these are, when fully developed, may be read in its awful catalogue. It is to crucifixion, whose intensely painful and protracted agonies the apostle himself may have witnessed, that Paul turns for a figure strong and bold enough to describe the death of sin. T. G.—When God puts his law into any soul, sin’s usurped dominion is overthrown; its power broken; its final destruction sure. The man now strives against it in all its shapes—against corrupt reason and passion both. They must be driven out, inch by inch; and at times, as in the case of David, Peter, and others, they make sudden and desperate efforts, and seem, for a season, to have regained their wonted empire; and this conflict continues to the end. The old man is crucified with the affections and lusts, but he dies not, till the believer is delivered from the burden of the flesh, and enters that world where there is sin no more. Goode.

25. The sanctifying Spirit renews the directing and commanding faculties, the fountains of moral action, enlightens the understanding with saving knowledge, rectifies the obliquity of the will, purifies the affection, and reforms the life. So that the same mind is in Christians as was in Christ; and as his conversation was, such is theirs in the world. They are said to be in the Spirit, illuminated, inclined, and enabled by the Spirit to do God’s will; and the Spirit of God to dwell in them, by his peculiar and eminent operations: They live in the Spirit! Bates.

Let us also walk in the Spirit. Let the doctrine find its unanswerable testimonies in the greater purity, nobleness, and devotedness of the Christian’s life before men. We greatly want a fresher and deeper doctrine of the Holy Spirit. We want it individually, to give vitality to our professions, and energy to our effort, and sanctity to our faith, and unconquerable constancy to our will. Christendom wants it, to heal the waste places of its foreign and its domestic heathenism, to repair the desolations of bigotry and formality, to advance the flagging march of its principles, to animate the languid piety of its churches, to invigorate pure and undefiled religion, to gather unrepenting but homesick prodigals in, to enlarge and build up and strengthen the inclosures of the Saviour’s everlasting fold. Come, then, thou Holy Spirit, the Renewer, to replenish our wasting lamps, and revive thy work in the midst of the years! Come, Guide and Teacher, to take our hands in thine, and pour light on our way and on our mind! Come as the Comforter, to heal bleeding hearts, and bind up the bruises of uncharitableness, and every sorrow! Come, Restrainer, to keep our feet, and all our hidden desires and imaginations, from evil! Come, thou Sanctifier, to purify and perfect us—unto the worship of the Father and obedience to the Son—till we are a true and accepted branch of the immortal vine—a people patient and believing, and zealous of good works! F. D. H.

26. There should be a love of true excellence out of one’s self—of all true excellence, wherever recognized; a hearty sympathy with all struggles, especially all successful struggles for eminent worth, by whomsoever made. Into every spirit which Christianity enters, it carries and settles a large infusion of this noble, disinterested zeal to see the true, the good, the magnanimous, reigning in all brother hearts. White.