And what was the effect of God's giving him to have an application of law in his own conscience? And I had some who were determined that they were going to convert me to their way of thinking.And I would listen to them and listen to them and listen to them; I don't really make a practice of arguing scriptures. Of course the same persons who are here in present view belonged to the church of God; but then they are not contemplated in their heavenly relationship, but as the children of promise, as we shall see in the end of this very chapter. So here Paul is "an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, that raised him from the dead.". Christ never mingles with flesh or law any more than with the world. Then we come to the closing chapter (Galatians 6:1-18); and here we find the Spirit of God calling for tenderness in dealing with those who are overtaken in a fault. The allusion is to beasts of prey falling upon and devouring one another: for wolves or dogs to worry sheep is not strange; but for sheep to distress one another is unnatural. 2 Behold, I, Paul, tell you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will profit you nothing. Remember what it must have been to one like Paul to censure the most honoured of the twelve. Causes me to become judgmental. Thus all things fall into their place, and the Spirit connects us in heart with that which God is doing and will do for the glory of Christ. It is for this freedom that Christ has set us free. As we saw it in the Corinthians applied to judge the worldliness of the saints there, so here it judges their legalism. Meanwhile another and a better sort of blessing is given, as a better Seed also is given the true Heir of all the promises of God, even Christ the Lord. You were running well. And so, I would listen to these fellows, and I listened, you know, and just said, "Well, you know, that's what the scripture says, you know," when they would quote scriptures. Carousing; this word (komos) has an interesting history. provoking one another, envying one another ( Galatians 5:26 ). How precious to have done with one's sinful self and to begin a life so perfect as Christ's! Suppose a man desires to become a naturalized subject of a country and carefully carries out all the rules and regulations of that country as they affect naturalization. This kind of love is a trusting love. The law of Christ makes the going out of love towards another, so to speak, to be his joy. The Holy Ghost is given as the seal of faith in Christ on the accomplishment of redemption, not before nor otherwise. Makrothumia ( G3115) ; this is a great word. Can you give me, you know, a hundred dollars for this watch?" There are times when I lapse into the flesh. Fifteen days. Next he turns to direct exhortation, the chief salient points of which will call for but few words. Don't revive him. No, rejoins the apostle; you are going back to heathenism. 25 Mar 2017 23:00:00 -0500 1896 sunday full false Wednesday Night | Galatians 5:5-6 Part 2 | Dr. Jimmy Young The allusion is to beasts of prey falling upon and devouring one another: for wolves or dogs to worry sheep is not strange; but for sheep to distress one another is unnatural. It is of course assumed that every Christian had been baptized. "Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?" What the Jews would have liked, no doubt, was power (and the Galatians, after all, were in danger of slipping into the same snare; for the law suits the world, as grace does not), and in the world present power and honour. Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams; for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul. (Deuteronomy 13:3.). To put a stop to coveting is to "head other sins off at the pass.". And who will venture to say that the indwelling Spirit of God fails to supply power to him who submits to the righteousness of God in Christ? And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh ( Galatians 5:24 ). The cross has sentenced the world; and this very sentence of the world is our deliverance from the world. Paul was confident the Galatians would resist the one leading them in the wrong direction. ( Matthew 27:46 ) Who was He crying to? Liberty comes first, mark; power and love afterwards. The apostle urges that all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. It was rather to have Gentile liberty secured by the twelve apostles, and that the Judaizers should be condemned by the church at Jerusalem. The most difficult thing in Christendom is for people to know what it is to be Christians, and to take this place by the faith of Christ themselves. Heretical division; this might be described as crystallized dissension. Such was the case with the Old Testament believers, and many Jewish believers then alive. Hagar's child was born from merely human impulses; and legalism is the best that man can do. My responsibility is defined by the place in which I am found. For he had shown that our purchase by Christ delivers even the Jew from subjection to the law; whilst Gentiles are set at once on the ground of grace without the intervention of any legal apprenticeship whatever, "Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods. It is wholly apart from works of law. Note, If we should approve ourselves to be Christ's, such as are united to him and interested in him, we must make it our constant care and business to crucify the flesh with its corrupt affections and lusts. But to the end of the day there remained for Paul two obligations. 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. And if you have interpreted it that way, you have completely missed the message of the scripture. He habitually measured things not so much by their bearing on Jews or Gentiles as by their effect on Christ's glory. That's the old nature, reckon that to be dead. (b) It means being teachable, being not too proud to learn ( James 1:21). In fact, what Jerusalem had done, as far as this was concerned, was to let slip men that would impose circumcision evil workers, as he in a later epistle contemptuously calls such like of the concision; for they were corrupting the Gentile churches by Judaism, instead of helping them in Christ. Galatians 5:22-23 THE END (GOAL) IS GROWING FAITH IS LOVE 2 Peter 1:5-7 PAUL'S GREAT DESCRIPTION OF LOVE 1 Corinthians 13:4-6 BOTH GOD & LOVE INCLUDE Joy Peace Forbearance Kindness Faithfulness Gentleness Self-control Faith Goodness Knowledge Self-control Perseverance Godliness Mutual affection Patient Kind Truth Protection Trust Hope Perseverance Forgive me, Lord. On the other hand, where unity becomes an object, it is never understood; and at the same time the walk of faith cannot be maintained. Hagar stands for the old covenant of the law, made on Mount Sinai, which is in fact in Arabia, the land of Hagar's descendants. His Spirit bears witness with my spirit that I am a child of God. The word used here ( dakno), means, properly, to bite, to sting; and here seems to be used in the sense of contending and striving - a metaphor probably taken from dogs and wild beasts. And then there's another reference also in Revelation, "but outside or the dogs and adulterers and so forth.". Being, of course, dying men, whether it be the general privileges of Israel, or the special place of the priest, all was transmitted from father to son. But it degenerated; came to mean the desire to have what someone else has, wrong desire for what is not for us. (a) Eros (compare G2037) means the love of a man for a maid; it is the love which has passion in it. . Suddenly, I have been born of the Spirit; things suddenly are illuminated. Here he takes up, not the mischievous troublers of the Gentiles, whom he does not hesitate to call "false brethren," but the highest in office he found there. All of the law is fulfilled. Of none else could it be so said that "it Pleased God to reveal his Son in him." (Read Galatians 5:13-15) The gospel is a doctrine according to godliness, 1 Timothy 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. They had been idolaters before they became Christians; and to take up Jewish principles in addition to Christ is to turn back again to their cast-off idols. But immediately after this it is added, "In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. "I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you in the grace of Christ unto another gospel: which is not another. "Have you been reading this book?" In his case the breach with man was evident; the association with heaven, and not Jerusalem, was too plain to be disputed or evaded. 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. But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another. Having brought in the true character of the Christian's life as flowing simply and solely from Christ, and from Christ crucified too, so here he takes up the Holy Ghost. For if a man "keeps the whole law, yet he offends in one point, he is guilty of all" ( James 2:10 ). You who seek to get yourselves right with God by means of legalism have got yourself into a position in which you have rendered ineffective all that Christ did for you. The readiest way to destroy the spirituality of a church, and to annihilate the influence of religion, is to excite a spirit of contention. But the fruit of the Spirit ( Galatians 5:22 ), Now, "walk in the Spirit, you'll not fulfill the lust of the flesh." There you have in a figure the two parties that are still found on the earth: the law party symbolized by Ishmael, the child of flesh; and those that cling to the grace of God, who have their pattern in Isaac, the child of promise. But responsibility is always according to the relation in which one stands, and the measure of knowledge which each possesses, or ought to possess. All that the law can do, even when yielded by the might of the Spirit of God, is to force on a soul the consciousness of being dead before God. And facts tell on their mind. That you're not going to be otherwise minded.". That would not be a good example of Christian love. 18 But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law. . And you keep dealing with me until I'll finally say, "Oh, God, I'm sorry. Josephus ascribed it to Jezebel when she built a temple to Baal in Jerusalem. The law forbids these things, but the law of love also forbids them. He mentions another fact, and of the greatest gravity, closing this part of his argument that when Peter subsequently came down into the Gentile quarters, he had been himself affected by the subtle spirit of Judaism, i.e., the chief of the twelve! For every man shall bear his own 'burden." It seems to have been something which affected his speech too, and exposed him to ridicule and to unfavourable comments where men were carnally-minded. Don't seek after it. No doubt also his line of procedure did not at all consort with their desires, who were sticklers for earthly order, and a line that looks safe and respectable to natural eyes. And when he went there, was it a question of receiving aught from the twelve? But, further, he refers in a very affecting manner to some personal circumstances how in his own body he was a witness of having nothing to do with flesh; for what God had been pleased to put upon him as serving Him in the gospel was not great power of nature, but that which made him contemptible in his preaching. Thus it appears that the Galatians as well as the Corinthians had been similarly affected. "But neither Titus [he takes occasion to say parenthetically], being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised." New American Standard Version The consequence is, "If ye are led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law;" and more than this, if we are producing the fruits of the Spirit, he can easily say, "Against such there is no law." 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. The truth of the gospel, to the apostle Paul's mind, was at stake. Such is the secret of true power. The law came in meanwhile, serving its own object, which was to bring out what was in the heart of man. The meaning is that you never can get stability in blessing until you have simply God putting forth His own power according to His own grace. it. Impurity, then, is that which makes a man unfit to come before God, the soiling of life with the things which separate us from him. Christ will never own those as his who yield themselves the servants of sin. 14 For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. What! Second, it means that we are free to follow the Spirit and produce good works that last forever because we have faith in God and obey God's word (Galatians 5:16-26). (vss. And now the apostle enters on another part of his subject. He makes one first thoroughly happy in the sense of His grace and the liberty Christ has won, and then the Holy Ghost becomes an indwelling spring of power, though His power is put forth in us only as we have Christ kept before us. Love is the sum of the whole law; as love to God comprises the duties of the first table, so love to our neighbour those of the second. But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood: neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus.". (Romans 3:1-31, Romans 10:1-21) But the act of Peter went to maintain a difference. Bite, devour, and consume are used metaphorically by Paul, giving the Galatians a good insight into the wrongfulness of their attitudes and actions toward each other. . Our conversation will always be answerable to the principle which we are under the guidance and government of: as those that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh, so those that are after the Spirit do mind the things of the Spirit,Romans 8:5. Nothing is so destructive to the peace of man, and to the peace of the soul, as religious disputes; where they prevail, religion in general has little place. Can anything prove that it is not an old creation better than this that there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female, which last at least is an absolute necessity for the perpetuation of the race? And to try to explain to people the things of the Spirit to the natural man, to try and explain the things of the Spirit has got to be one of the most frustrating things in the world. In so many things. He had been brought to a place of blessing outside himself and by another, the Saviour, which in itself gives the soul motives indeed but not power; whereas, for the soul who is brought to God by the gospel, and planted in the liberty wherein Christ makes free before God, it is no more a question of flesh, but of the Holy Ghost who is given to him. Oligarchy means government by the few and can be justified by arguing that only the few are fit to govern. He said. Strange as all this may seem to us, it enshrines one great truth. ", Mark how nicely every word was suited to deal with their souls. That's where I come in touch with God. It's just, you know, too difficult. "Wherefore, thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.". There could be but one answer. The long lapse of time ought to have guarded men from mixing up the law with the promise, and thus from the appearance of annulling the promise by the law, for this would be most dishonouring to God. And you can't do this, and this, and this, and this, and this." The liberty we enjoy as Christians is not a licentious liberty: though Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, yet he has not freed us from the obligation of it; the gospel is a doctrine according to godliness (1 Timothy 6:3), and is so far from giving the least countenance to sin that it lays us under the strongest obligations to avoid and subdue it. How wholesome is the language here, "Every one shall bear his own burden!" There is a warfare that goes on in the life of the believer. After wishing those addressed grace and peace, as usual, he speaks of the Lord in a manner singularly in unison with the object of the epistle: "Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us" not from judgment, not from the wrath to come, but "from this present evil world." It was not another, as he says. Ritualism is the present most patent comment on the apostle's statement. This then is what the law brought in. Old wine is called chrestos ( G5543) , mellow. What a subversion, not only of the truth of God revealed in the gospel, but also of redemption, which is its basis! The very reverse of their system is true. It is the liberty not to do those things which the flesh once forced me to do. There was no difference: all had sinned. But when we look toward Jesus we can find freedom. Rather, if man had been able to obey the law and so acquire a title, then two systems would have interfered with each other as being to the same end. The man who makes law the principle of his life is in the position of a slave; whereas the man who makes grace the principle of his life is free, for, as a great saint put it, the Christian's maxim is, "Love God and do what you like." Had Peter been right, it was evident that the gospel had put Peter in the wrong. He tells them (Galatians 5:13; Galatians 5:13) that they had been called unto liberty, and he would have them to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ had made them free; but yet he would have them be very careful that they did not use this liberty as an occasion to the flesh--that they did not thence take occasion to indulge themselves in any corrupt affections and practices, and particularly such as might create distance and disaffection, and be the ground of quarrels and contentions among them: but, on the contrary, he would have them by love to serve one another, to maintain that mutual love and affection which, notwithstanding any minor differences there might be among them, would dispose them to all those offices of respect and kindness to each other which the Christian religion obliged them to. . Now Paul said. And how the Holy Spirit had come upon those of the house of Cornelius who had known nothing really of obedience to the law. You can't be both. 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." Christ's yoke is called chrestos ( G5543) ( Matthew 11:30), that is, it does not chafe. In other words: "You have gained liberty through Christ, i.e., You are above all laws as far as conscience is concerned. Who in times past you walked according to the course of this world. Let others talk as they will of the law, no law can censure the real fruits of the Holy Ghost, or those in whom they are found. For it is by the Spirit and by faith that we eagerly expect the hope of being right with God. Thus, it is seen, the truth was established. one another is unnatural. If any of them believe in the Crucified, they were God's Israel. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, but that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. The Spirit against the flesh. Once, the Galatians had known that, but now they were turning back to the law. For what has a risen man to do with Israel more than the nations? The apostle turns this into an admirable piece of divine reasoning in defence of the gospel. California - Do Not Sell My Personal Information. Paul had a characteristically practical mind. These are sins which will undoubtedly shut men out of heaven. For what the law is actually saying to you is that you should love God supremely and love your neighbor as yourself. All rights reserved. And so, Rev 21:8 if you want the reference on that. Nothing that God afterwards introduced annulled this. He's just whacked me with the rod. No doubt he heard Peter use it there in Acts 15 , and he said, "Stand fast in the liberty wherein Christ has set you free.". "I certify you, brethren," says he, "that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. has an affinity for both. What he preached was the truth as to this matter. If ever there was a man who more than another contended for the oneness of the saints in every sense, above all, for the one body of Christ, for the unity of the Spirit, it was the apostle Paul. "This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?" The outline of the story is as follows: Abraham and Sarah were far advanced in years and Sarah had no child. Those who lived in Jerusalem were too prone to preserve the clothes and the cradle which had their place and use at first, but had no claim to be kept up among the Gentiles.

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