Galatians 5

Galatians 5:7-6

Division 4. (Galatians 5:7-26; Galatians 6:1-18.)The Practical Test of the Two Principles.

1. The blessing could not be more complete, and they had experienced the joy and power of it. This causes him again to express his astonishment at their now refusing obedience to the truth. They had been running well. Who now was hindering them? It certainly did not come from God, this new persuasion. On the other hand, the power of evil was such that a little leaven would soon leaven the whole lump. Evil, in fact, makes continual demands.

One departure from truth will necessitate many, in order that there may be perfect consistency. There can be no possible compromise in a path like this, but how great the folly of those who, having experienced the joy and power of divine grace, could now take up with that which was in its nature absolutely contrary! If he looks at them, he may well be disheartened; but in grace itself he had found his refuge. In the Lord he could have confidence that they would be none otherwise minded, and the troubler, whoever it might be, should bear his judgment. He sees easily that there was temptation enough indeed, in a certain sense, to adopt such a thing as circumcision, which would remove, as between Jews and Christians, the whole offence of the cross. The apostle puts it as a thing impossible rightly to cease, and we see the persecution of which he is thinking is on the part of the Jew; and we have seen, it was so distinctly in the history which the Acts has given us.

It was to the Jew that the cross was a scandal -the sign, as he has already told us, of One upon whom the law put its curse, of a curse needed to be taken because of the condition of those under law. How impossible for the Jew to allow that the law had nothing but a curse for man, and that the very Saviour of men, to be that, must bear the curse!

The cross was the complete condemnation of man before God. It was also complete deliverance for those who accepted the condemnation, but this was the destruction necessarily of all legal righteousness. “I would,” he says, they would even cut themselves off which trouble you." He has no possible tolerance for that which was the destruction of Christian truth and principle; his love to the souls of men made him what people would call intolerant. But, in fact, while these men would uphold the law, the very thing that the law required from man was in practice set aside. The Galatians were finding it so. They had given up their true Christian liberty, and yet, after all, were not keeping the law, for all the law was fulfilled in one word, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” They had surely realized the power of divine grace in this way, but now the effect of their legal addition to the gospel was a total change in their awn spirit. They were, as he intimates, “biting and devouring one another.” What use to talk about the law in such a state as that?

They might well be afraid lest they should “be consumed one of another;” but this is the necessary effect of law ever. The law is claim, demand, and expects, therefore, a full ability on man’s part to meet the demand.

The spirit of self-righteousness, which alone could take comfort in it on such a principle, has necessarily in it no tenderness, no recognition of one’s own infirmity and no compassion for the infirmity of others. The law itself had none and could have none. It was its business to condemn, and it did it well. If a man continued not “in all things written in the book of the law to do them,” he was under the curse. How simple, that to accept the law, then, as that under which one was, would be the destruction of all tenderness, of the very spirit which the law really required. 2. There is indeed in man everywhere the flesh and the lust of the flesh, and for a soul that does not yet realize the true deliverance that God has for us, the perfectly natural remedy is to take up with the law. It is, in fact, no remedy, but the reverse. The remedy is to “walk in the Spirit,” as he urges upon them here. “Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh,” -not as some would read it now, ye shall have no flesh, nor even, ye shall have Bo lust of it. Lust is that which gives the flesh its character; that is to say, the craving of an unsatisfied heart away from God, and this, too, remains in the Christian, as is plain from what he urges here. “For the flesh,” he says, “lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other.” He does not say, as the common version puts it: “So that ye cannot do the things that ye would,” but “So that ye should not.” He will not think of an impossibility on the part of one who walks in the Spirit. To the Spirit, clearly, nothing can be impossibility.

Still, the two remain here, as we have seen already in Romans, even in the delivered Christian; and just as in Romans, it is against the Spirit that the flesh lusts. He does not give us here the striving of self against self which was that of the man in the seventh chapter, as yet not delivered.

He is not, therefore, as some imagine, speaking simply of what was a low state on the part of the Galatians. Granted that they were in a low state, but he puts it here as a general truth, and in language, as already said, which would apply to a man in the Spirit, a delivered man. Even so, flesh and Spirit are there with all their absolute opposition to one another, and the tendency is necessarily to hinder one doing the things he would. Some have put it as if it was the will of the flesh that the Spirit here hinders, but even in the conflict of the seventh of Romans, or rather, in the state of bondage which we find there, the captive, after all, assures himself that the things that he would are the things according to God. The apostle would not allow that the will away from God is a Christian state at all; but the flesh, nevertheless will seek to assert itself, and the only remedy for the soul is the way of the Spirit; that is, as we have seen, in occupation with Christ. With Him before our eyes, there is nothing for the lust of the flesh whatever, and moreover the heart that truly knows Him finds in Him a satisfaction and rest which delivers from the corruption that is in the world through lust; but then, “if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.” The two things are in absolute and perfect contradiction one to another. The works of the flesh are now enumerated, and we must remember that if the flesh be in the Christian, he can never promise himself that they will not be found in their full dreadful character, if once there be license given to it. The apostle has no idea of a modified flesh in a Christian. There are doubtless very different characters of it, but a close brotherhood in the family of sin. The apostle puts them together in that way, -“Murder, drunkenness, revellings and such like,” very different in the extent of the evil, but if the soul’s anchorage be lost there is no possibility of telling how far it will drift. It is only the power of the Spirit that can control the flesh; and He controls it by leading us, as we have seen, in another way; but the Spirit, while the full expression of divine grace towards us, nevertheless requires the most complete subjection to Himself. God must be God.

It is no grace that will tolerate any forgetfulness of this. “Sin shall not have dominion over you, because ye are not under the law but under grace.” Grace is not toleration in any wise, and the Spirit of God can only lead those who are in full subjection in desire, at least, to Him. It is here that we need. to be able so fully to say: “Search me, O God, and try me,” to have our feet in the blessed hands of One who cleanses after His own mind as to cleansing. Of the whole category of sin here, it is said, “They that do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” That is the road to death from which the Spirit of God takes a man, not leaves him upon it. 3. The fruit of the Spirit is now brought before us. Here, too, is a brotherhood of graces. “Fruit” the apostle calls it. The flesh has its works. He will not give that the name of “fruit,” and here it is not, in fact, of work that he is speaking, but of an inward temper, the development of the divine nature, which, therefore, is in unity and peace all through. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-government, against such there is no law.” Thus, that which the law could give no power to fulfil, is found by thus walking in the Spirit, and “they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts:” that is to say, they have accepted the cross of Christ as that which is for them the judgment of it all and their separation from it. How perfect, in fact, is the judgment of self which the cross truly apprehended gives.

It is not merely the judgment of this or that about us, but the complete removal of the man in the flesh, in order that Christ may fill all the scene for us. The knowledge of the new man is that “Christ is all and in all.” Thus, it is not a process, as he puts it here, this crucifixion: it is a thing accomplished.

We may have to learn by degrees what it means. The light grows brighter upon the path as we walk in it, and we discern more clearly, no doubt, that which suits God. Thus, there is growth in apprehension as to detail, but as to principle, the thing is done at the start. It is Christ, not self that we have put on, and it is that which suits Him that we follow. As it is put in Colossians, we are to “do all things in the name of the Lord Jesus,” that is to say, as representing Him upon earth; and that means, assuredly, that from the start the flesh is crucified for us. The cross stands at the beginning of the Christian path, and the Galatians here had the Spirit. He does not question it. They were alive in the Spirit.

If so, he says, let the walk be in the Spirit also, “let us not be desirous of vain glory” which the law, if man could keep it, could not but promote, the effect necessarily following; but as to others there would be a spirit of intolerance and not of love; “provoking one another,” he says here, “envying one another.” 4. We see that he is occupied throughout here, with the practical test; a powerful method of appeal, surely, to those who had, in fact, known the blessedness which the gospel could give; far as they might now be departing from it. The law might require love indeed and did; but it could not produce it, could not even encourage such a spirit in those that followed it. You will never find the legal mind tender really of others. The apostle, therefore, presses it upon them here, that if they were, in fact, spiritual, that would be seen in their behaviour. If one were overtaken in a fault, they would restore such an one in the spirit of meekness, the very opposite of the spirit engendered by the principle which they had taken up.

They would consider themselves lest they also should be tempted; but for a mart under law, it does not do to consider himself after that fashion; it would work discouragement and despair. On the other hand, he must assure himself under law of his competence to fulfil the commandment, and therefore he must exact from others the fulfilment; assured of their competence no less than his.

Spirituality, in fact, may be claimed by those who act in a very opposite spirit to this. That is what he rebukes here. He does not mean to affirm their spirituality. He does not mean that a man has to look at himself and ask whether he is spiritual, before he can realize ability to restore another. The spirit of meekness is the very opposite of such fancied spirituality. The spiritual man is too near Christ to believe in himself; to walk in that presence has, as its surest mark, the spirit of lowliness; and if the Spirit of God bear witness in our souls in a practical way, it will not be to puff us up with the idea of Christ-likeness, but, on the contrary, to point out to us where we are unlike Him; yet here there is no spirit of discouragement or despair engendered.

If we have once learned the true judgment of ourselves before God as the cross gives it to us, we shall not expect to find anything in ourselves, and therefore shall not be disappointed; yet our resource is at hand, our strength is in Another “In Christ dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and we are filled up in Him.” There can be no want then to us, and there can be no self-confidence in those whose habitual resort is to this fountain of supply. The spirit of meekness, therefore, will go with true spirituality.

Let them show it, he urges, in that way. Let them “bear one another’s burdens,” so they would fulfil the law of Christ, who Himself assuredly was the great burden Bearer. On the other hand, if a man thought himself to be something when nothing (when did he ever think himself to be something without being nothing?) he would deceive himself. He adds now a word against those who were, in contradiction to his own principle, building upon another man’s foundations, and indeed, rather destroying those foundations, than building upon them. “Let every man,” he says, “approve his own work and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone and not in another.” In the end, every one would bear his own burden.* Every Christian must at last take up his own responsibility before God, as we know. Every one must give account of himself to God. It will be the triumph of divine grace to be able to do it after the fashion in which we shall do it; and yet, nevertheless, there is enough in the thought for the utmost seriousness.
5. He enters now upon the subject, which this opens, of divine government, a thing which is not, as we know, in the slightest contradiction with divine grace. These are things which are sometimes put as if in some sense contrary to one another; but, on the other hand, the government of God for us is expressly a Father’s government, while it is, none the less, that of One who, without respect of persons, judgeth according to every man’s work. This is, of course, a thing of the present, not of the future. The future judgment, whether with regard to saint or sinner, is in the hands of Christ. “God hath committed all judgment to Him because He is the Son of Man,” but there is a government which is, none the less, the government of grace, because it is one absolutely intolerant of evil. We may repeat again that the toleration of evil is never grace.

It would be a perversion of the very thought of grace to imagine this. “Be not deceived,” he says, therefore, “God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap, for he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption and he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.” These are principles of absolute necessity. Nothing can alter them.

If a man sows a certain seed, he knows, or he should know, that he can get of that seed nothing but what is proper to it. If a man sows to his flesh, he sows, in fact, the corruption which he reaps. The very principle of self-will which must, of necessity, be in it, is a principle which is essentially that of sin. Every form of sin will come under this, and God may allow, in fact, such seed to come to harvest, in order that we may recognize its character, as we otherwise would not do. In the opposite way to that of the man who, bearing good seed, goes forth even weeping, but returns with joy, a man in this way may sow his seed rejoicing, but it will be the return that will be sorrowful. It does not follow that God cannot come in and deliver us from what would otherwise be the necessary fruit of such sowing, if only there be the true self-judgment of it in the soul; for to a Christian, the reaping of it is but in order to self-judgment, and if we will judge it first, there may be no need of reaping at all.

Judge it first or last we surely must, or the thing will develop for what it is and be manifest, not to ourselves alone it may be, but to others also. On the other hand, “He that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.” Blessed and wonderful reaping!

The life is looked at here, of course, in its practical character, in its fruits and activities. The life itself, the life which produces this, is no matter of reaping at all, it is what we must have to be Christians. Nevertheless, we can reap it as a practical thing, and the witness of it is that, even though reaped here upon earth, it is something which has eternity in it. All that which in us here is the fruit of the divine work has necessarily its link with eternity. It is for eternity that we are preparing. There is not even just that sharp division between the present and the future for us which we are apt so to imagine.

It is eternity that God has before Him, it is the things eternal with which we are conversant day by day. It is eternity, therefore, that imprints its character upon the present.

It is the life everlasting which we live practically now, and let us not then, says the apostle, be “weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not.” The path is through a world of trial, and therefore, though in itself all well doing has its own delight, yet the opposition to it from the world through which we pass will surely give us need of such an encouragement as this. “As we have, therefore, opportunity, let us do good unto all men, but especially,” he adds, “unto them who are of the household of faith.” This ends very much the practical test which he has been making of the two principles which we have seen in opposition all the way through the epistle. All the way through it is a controversy, and one from which we need not expect to escape while we are here. God’s principles lead into conflict, and, alas, not merely with the men of the world, but, it may be, as here, with the children of God themselves. 6. In the earnestness of his desire for them, the apostle, contrary to his wont, has penned all this epistle with his own hand. His custom was simply to put a salutation from his hand at the end; but in this case, he could not, as it were, trust another, or was not free to dictate to another the things that were in his heart. It was not with him, as with those of whom he was writing, a fair show in the flesh that he was making. He was not wanting followers, nor, as they, to escape persecution for the cross of Christ. He charges them openly with this.

They did not keep the law, they could not but be conscious of that. Their desire to have others circumcised was simply that they might glory in their flesh. For him all that was ended. The cross of the Lord Jesus Christ had closed for him the whole scene here; and in it the world it was that was crucified, and be himself to the world. The character of the world was thus stamped upon it. The cross was for him a shadow resting upon it.

If it had judged and cast out Christ, he who was identified with Christ before God, and had learned to identify himself thus, was one whom they had crucified. 7. Christ was beyond it all. He had seen Him, Head of a new creation; in Him circumcision availed nothing now, nor uncircumcision. These had nothing to do with new creation. They belonged to the world, to the fallen world. The Christian walk was outside them altogether, not after the Jewish pattern of legality nor the Gentile pattern of lawlessness.

There was a new rule, -a rule which made a man “a pilgrim and a stranger” here, the rule of belonging to this other scene in which already the glory of Christ was displayed. In the light of that he walked, and for such as do so he desires and pronounces upon them “peace and mercy,” (mercy of which they still had need) “and upon the Israel of God” -the true Israelite,* not the fleshly one. Here then, the matter rested for him. None need trouble him more. He bore already in his body the “brands of the Lord Jesus,” the brands of trials and sufferings undergone for Christ and which marked him as the bondman of Christ in the joyful apprehension of the love that had been shown. He closes with the constant benediction that was in his heart: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.” \