Galatians 6

Galatians 6:1-18

V26-VI:10 Injunctions regarding our Neighbour—VI:1. ‘If any man be caught out. . .’ 2. ‘Burdens’: i.e. both spiritual trials and the moral weaknesses of ourselves and others which we must help to carry.

4. Let each man examine his own conscience, and thus find his ground for boasting in himself and not by comparison with others.

5. ‘And let him that is instructed in the Word (i.e. the Gospel) share with his teacher all his (temporal) goods’. 9. ‘. . . let us not lose heart’. 897d

11-18 Autograph Epilogue—It was St Paul’s custom to dictate his epistles to an amanuensis and only to write the last paragraph in his own handwriting as a proof of genuineness; cf. Romans 16:22; 1 Corinthians 16:21, etc. 11. ‘See with what large letters . . .’, i.e. in a large hand.

12. ‘. . . as desire to make a fair show in the flesh . . . that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ’. Fear of persecution by the synagogue was therefore a leading motive in the Galatian movement towards circumcision.

13. ‘. . . through which the world is crucified. . . .’

14. All that matters now is to be ‘a new creature’ transformed by baptism into a Son of God, being made one with Christ by the seal of the Holy Spirit.

15. ‘The Israel of God’, i.e. the Church in general.

16. St Paul orders that there be no further disputes on these matters. ‘The marks of the Lord Jesus’ are almost certainly the marks of the ill-treatment he had already received in Galatia during his first missionary journey; cf. Acts 14 passim.

17. sums up the teaching of the epistle: it is by ‘grace’ that we are saved and not by the Law; cf. Acts 15:11.