This agape love is gentle; it is good. And in the fifteenth chapter of Acts, we read how that Peter stood up and told the brethren how that the Lord had called him to go to the Gentiles to the house of Cornelius. Grace alone in such a case brings glory to God. Galatians 5 shows that spiritual liberty comes from knowing the truth. Or I can walk after the Spirit and say, "Oh Lord, it doesn't matter. Well, "sensible" help in the meaning of an appeal to nature it is; but it is a sensible help to idolatry, not to living faith. And they say, "Oh, well, I was just waiting upon the Lord and reading the Scriptures, and the Lord showed this to me." Not so; it is exclusively of grace by Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. Only they would that we should remember the poor; the same which I also was forward to do." These words are used by him emphatically; for he did not merely say Bite, which denotes an angry person, but likewise, Devour, which denotes one who persists in wickedness. There is nothing that requires more the power of grace; for even the truth itself, if severed from grace, ceases to be the truth. beasts of prey falling upon and devouring one another: for wolves Matthew 23:13; 2 Corinthians 11:20; Revelation 11:5. And any kind of a relationship with God that causes me to strive with my brother, causes me to become contentious, is really something that I'm not interested in. Was it possible, then, that any could desire to put the Gentiles under law, when they had been brought out from it themselves by the will of God, the work of Christ, and the witness of the Holy Spirit? (i) One he does not mention here but it is implicit in all his thinking. The very reverse of their system is true. That is, my mind is constantly upon fleshly things. This is what we are chiefly concerned to fight against, and that which above every thing else we should make it our business to oppose and suppress. Villages had an official who was called the superintendent of the village's eirene ( G1515) , the keeper of the public peace. For it stands written, "Rejoice, O barren one, who never bore a child; break forth into a shout of joy, O you who know not the pangs of bearing a child; for the children of her who was left alone are more than those of her who had a husband." Again I give my word to every man who gets himself circumcised that he is under obligation to keep the whole law. There are times when I lapse into the flesh. He draws particular attention to this fact ere he closes: "You see how large a letter I have written unto you with mine own hand." Practical Godliness Enforced; Works of the Flesh and of the Spirit; The Fruits of the Spirit. It is Christian ground, certainly, but not the church as such. The idea is that of a man who is so far gone in desire that he has ceased to care what people say or think. Trench says that Jesus showed agathosune ( G19) when he cleansed the Temple and drove out those who were making it a bazaar; but he showed chrestotes ( G5544) when he was kind to the sinning woman who anointed his feet. (Compare John 1:9; John 1:17.). All question of natural ties drops in death; as the cross is the disproof of any right to Christ in either. Not to the place of being ridiculous. (b) It means being teachable, being not too proud to learn ( James 1:21). But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. 19 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, 20 Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, 21 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 the kingdom of God. The comparison would take in the Old Testament saints; or the application ("even so we") is to those then alive, who had been under that state of things. Paul cautioned both sides to love one another or they would consume each other. When He had anything unfailing to do or say, He loved to appear in grace; He said it Himself, and did it for Himself. But this was only provisional and parenthetic. God reserves to Himself this great blessedness in the gospel; whereas under the law there was nothing of the kind. (14) An exhortation to the duties of charity, by the profit that follows from it, because no men proved worse for themselves than they that hate one another. It is once that I have reckoned myself to be crucified with Christ when I accepted Him. The message of redemption through the cross was offensive. When in the garden, or when on the cross, Jesus cried, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken Me?" Forgive us for the times we abuse this freedom, living more by the flesh than by the Spirit. How do they stand related? So here the Christian puts on Christ, not the law or circumcision. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, which answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. That is, walk in fellowship with God. A person doesn't lose his temper. Thus, then, God directed and ruled that the apostle should go up and have the evil condemned on the spot, and at the centre from which it had emanated. In Romans he wrote one of the world's great theological treatises, and then, quite suddenly, in Romans 12:1-21 the theology came down to earth and issued in the most practical advice. That is not the liberty that we have as Christians. (2.) These were his lineal posterity. And I'm thinking of God, and I'm thinking upon spiritual things, and the result of life and joy and peace in the holy Spirit. He sees the right, feels the good, desires the holy, but never, accomplishes. Christ's yoke is called chrestos ( G5543) ( Matthew 11:30), that is, it does not chafe. And, as this would be the best means of preserving them from fulfilling the lusts of the flesh, so it would be a good evidence that they were Christians indeed; for, says the apostle (Galatians 5:18; Galatians 5:18), If you be led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. The allusion is to Though we ought to stand fast in our Christian liberty, yet we should not insist upon it to the breach of Christian charity; we should not use it as an occasion of strife and contention with our fellow Christians, who may be differently minded from us, but should always maintain such a temper towards each other as may dispose us by love to serve one another. The solemnities of Christ's judgment await men in the day of the Lord. Now, evidently these Paul people were saying, "Well, Paul was circumcised and he's preaching circumcision. So "stand fast in that liberty wherein Christ has made you free." But he was not thus disobedient to the heavenly vision. "Well, yeah, I read that book but, you know, God showed it to me." Promise was before the law, and flowed out of the grace of God. So I must be righteous in order to have fellowship with God. Not at all, says the apostle, you are returning straight into your old heathenism without knowing it yourselves. one another is unnatural. And you develop your own little following, which really appeals to your flesh. Paul reminded Christians: " You must love your neighbour as yourself." There is now much confusion of things that differ; and so, more or less, error runs through the whole of it in all its parts; but I know not anything more ruinous than this. They were grieved to think that the Jewish church, with its twelve apostles and its elders, with its manifold links with antiquity and God's past testimony on earth, should seem separated in any measure from the apostle and his work. A double intervention comes between God and man, in contrast with the simplicity of His ways of grace. And a little leaven soon leavens the whole lump. He said. Finally, he concludes by putting the sentence of death, if I may so say, on circumcision, and all such as might adopt it. Hence the point is not at all whether we have intrinsic power, but whether He is not now abiding in us as "a Spirit of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." I admit that this was all in place and season then for Jerusalem. Unitarians. Impossible to serve two masters! They don't come to man from God.And the Jehovah Witnesses, just the Arian heresy of the early church. For the world there is nothing yet executed, any more than the great results of grace for the saints as yet appear in their fulness. "For if a man think himself to be something when he is nothing he deceiveth himself. Get Access To 3 Exclusive Articles (for FREE) Want articles like this one delivered straight to your email? It's a solemn warning to every one of us who would live after the flesh or would want to live after the flesh to know that you cannot do these things and inherit the kingdom of God. He had been trained up under the most distinguished teacher the great Rabbin Gamaliel; but "when it pleased him, who had separated him from his mother's womb, and called him by his grace, to reveal his Son in him." he does not say there shall be no flesh, nor any lust of the flesh in them if they walk spiritually; or that the flesh should not act and operate in them; or that they should do no sinful action; all which is only true of christ; and the contrary is to be found and observed in all true christians, though ever so spiritual; but that they Paul begins chapter 5 with a bold slogan of spiritual liberty: "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.". And they want to get on our case because we don't run down every night and baptize people the moment they're saved. Men were not his source, nor was man even a medium to him. Now, let us not believe or think that this liberty that we have is the liberty to do anything we might want to do in the flesh. "Wherefore, thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.". . For kindness the word is chrestotes ( G5544) . "Before faith came we [Jews] were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. And now in Christ He has accomplished it I mean already. We shall find he does not forget this elsewhere: he reasons on it in another part of the epistle. having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh? So Paul argued that if a man were circumcised he had put himself under an obligation to the whole law to which circumcision was the introduction; and, if he took that way, he had automatically turned his back on the way of grace, and, as far as he was concerned, Christ might never have died. You say that the promise is everything, and that the law cannot either set aside the promise or add other clauses to it. The warfare going on. But if you snap at one another, and devour one another, you must watch that you do not end up by wiping each other out. 3. What Paul is saying is, "This legalistic movement may not have gone very far yet, but you must root it out before it destroys your whole religion.". Why can't the Mormons tell you that? dissolution; for as no civil community, either public or private, 50.]. If therefore we would have it appear that we are Christ's, and that we are partakers of his Spirit, it must be by our walking not after the flesh, but after the spirit. On the other hand, the spirit (the renewed part of us) strives against the flesh, and opposes the will and desire of it: and hence it comes to pass that we cannot do the things that we would. He is governed by principles by which he lives. The law and the promise are both from God, but the law's use is only negative and condemnatory. To be consumed, while the tendency of brotherly love is to produce mutual protection and kindness. Thus it appears that the Galatians as well as the Corinthians had been similarly affected. And now the apostle enters on another part of his subject. "For I am as ye are: ye have not injured me at all." There is such a thing as, by patient continuance in well doing, to seek for eternal life. He does not deny that others preached it; but if so, they preached the same truth. Causes me to become judgmental. Now, what does God say about it? There is no approach to a vaunt about his dignity. They're covered by the fact that you're walking in love. The persuasion which is being exercised on you just now is not from him who calls you. Far from wishing to gain credit, either for the gospel or for his own apostolic place, in consequence of being linked with those that had been apostles before him, he insists on that very independence which they counted a reproach. All is confusion. But the fruit of the Spirit ( Galatians 5:22 ), Now, "walk in the Spirit, you'll not fulfill the lust of the flesh." Even in Christianity how much need there is to remember what the Lord warns us of inLuke 5:1-39; Luke 5:1-39 that no man accustomed to old wine straightway desires new, but says, The old is better. Impossible to find a blast more withering to all that they were aiming at. 5:13-15 As for you, brothers, it was for freedom that you were called, only you must not use this freedom as a bridgehead through which the worst side of human nature can invade you, but in love you must serve one another; for the whole law stands complete in one word, in the sentence, "You must love your neighbour as yourself." You see, it isn't a once-in-forever kind of a thing. "What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness?" You'll be disappointed. Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary 5:13-15 The gospel is a doctrine according to godliness, 1Ti 6:3, and is so far from giving the least countenance to sin, that it lays us under the strongest obligation to avoid and subdue it. We saw the second of Corinthians characterized by the most rapid transitions of feeling, by a deep and fervent sense of God's consolations, by a revulsion so much the more powerful in a heart that entered into things as few hearts have ever done since the world began. We know how feeble and slow the heart is, and how apt disciples in general are to narrow the riches of the grace and truth of God. This then is what the law brought in. The Holy Ghost is given as the seal of faith in Christ on the accomplishment of redemption, not before nor otherwise. If God had been a man, he would have wiped out this world long ago; but he has that patience which bears with all our sinning and will not cast us off. God promises the final power and glory of Israel in the earth, putting down their foes, and so forth. Hence the effect of the law in all its ramifications on man is the same. Joy; the Greek is chara ( G5479) , and the characteristic of this word is that it most often describes that joy which has a basis in religion (compare Psalms 30:11; Romans 14:17; Romans 15:13; Php_1:4 ; Php_1:25 ). The way they triumph over these wrong desires is not by putting themselves under the law, but by allowing Gods Spirit to direct their lives (16-18). If the world were the great enemy at Corinth, the law perverted is that against which the Spirit of God raises up the apostle in writing to the Galatians. "Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood.". Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. Whoever despises the facts of Christianity, as if nothing in Scripture were worthy of meditation, or of ministering to others but exercises and speculative deductions, will be found, if he do not find himself often, on the verge of dangerous delusions, both for the mind and for the walk. is the cement of it, which being loosened, threatens a Of none else could it be so said that "it Pleased God to reveal his Son in him." I am perfectly delivered, and the measure of my deliverance is Christ, and Christ raised from the dead. Don't marvel when I say, 'You've got to be born again.'" He warns against "another gospel," i.e., a different one, which was really none at all. You cannot weaken his apostleship without endangering the very gospel that you have received yourselves. "Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. He's talking about rituals and the power of rituals to make you righteous before God, and the issue is, they can't. The Jews will surely be exalted, as well as converted nationally, and they will then put down their enemies, being made the head when other nations become the tail. Galatians 5:1-15 Inductive Bible Study Notes - Teaching Guide With Questions Outline I. Christ has set us free (1-6) II. "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." 2 Mark my words! It is not only that we are put now where we can be the witness to grace in all its outgoings, but, besides that, we are where flesh might show itself. ( Matthew 27:46 ) Who was He crying to? In Paul's case there was nothing of the sort. It does not so much want the things for itself; it merely wants to take them from the other. And then concludes the chapter with a caution against pride and envy. As far as this temper prevails among Christians, they will be ready to slight and despise those whom they look upon as inferior to them, and to be put out of humour if they are denied that respect which they think is their due from them, and they will also be apt to envy those by whom their reputation is in any danger of being lessened: and thus a foundation is laid for those quarrels and contentions which, as they are inconsistent with that love which Christians ought to maintain towards each other, so they are greatly prejudicial to the honour and interest of religion itself. If I am walking in the Spirit, if I am walking in love, then there can be no law to regulate my life. Alas! God asks, and man is called to give, i.e., is called to obedience. The brethren with him ( Galatians 1:2a ) b. Nor had he conferred even then with flesh and blood; his mission as well as conversion and call were alike independent of it. Which means: Peaceable Christians realize that apart from Jehovah God, they have no lasting peacemaking ability. "Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.". Now, in the fifteenth chapter of the book of Acts, when this same issue had arisen in the church in Antioch, when certain of the brethren came down from Jerusalem and were hassling the Gentile saints in Antioch and said, "You can't be saved unless you are circumcised and keep the law of Moses," Paul and Barnabas and others from Antioch took these brothers right back to Jerusalem, because they came unto the pretense of, "We have the authority of the Jerusalem church to declare these things." As if he had said, "You must expect a struggle between flesh and spirit as long as you are in the world, that the flesh will be lusting against the spirit as well as the spirit against the flesh; but if, in the prevailing bent and tenour of your lives, you be led by the Spirit,--if you act under the guidance and government of the Holy Spirit and of that spiritual nature and disposition he has wrought in you,--if you make the word of God your rule and the grace of God your principle,--it will hence appear that you are not under the law, not under the condemning, though you are still under the commanding, power of it; for there is now no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit; and as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God," Romans 8:1-14. . A different issue ensued from their settling down in the mutual independence of the Gentile churches and the Jewish. It is the spirit which has mastered its desires and its love of pleasure. In other words: "You have gained liberty through Christ, i.e., You are above all laws as far as conscience is concerned. You do not want to become the children of Abraham in that sense, which would be the revival of the flesh. Thus, rightly understood and applied, the law and the promises, while wholly distinct, are in no way inconsistent with each other. When He gave the promise to Abraham, He said, "I will give." Yea, hence it appears that they are not under the law, but under grace; for these fruits of the Spirit, in whomsoever they are found, plainly show that such are led by the Spirit, and consequently that they are not under the law, as Galatians 5:18; Galatians 5:18. He does not even deign to fill up the sketch. But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another. It was a very unusual circumstance. By the Spirit of God, we're waiting for that hope of righteousness through faith. Just let our books explain for you." How could it be otherwise with one persecuting at the moment that he was arrested, in hot deadly opposition to God's church up to his most unexpected call from heaven? Either Luke, as a doctor, did not use or have access to pharmaceuticals, which would then require that Galatians 5 says nothing of medicine, or Dr. Luke administered pharmakeia, which, the argument goes, is medicine sorcery. "Bite" refers to the sudden action brought on by uncontrolled emotions that hurt other members of the church. That's what God accounts, the righteousness of Christ accounted to my account through my faith in Jesus Christ.Now, because I can't keep the first, I have opted for the second. How wholesome is the language here, "Every one shall bear his own burden!" He says to those who would be under the law, why do you not listen to the law? 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