PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle to the Galatians
Findlay, George G. (George Gillanders) · 132,851 words · 186 reading sections
_The Principles At Stake._
While grace embodies Paul's fundamental conception of the Divine character, the death of Christ is the fundamental fact in which that character manifests itself. So the cross becomes the centre of Paul's theology. But it was, in the first place, the basis of his personal life. "Faith in the Son of God, who loved me and…
801 wordsSECTION 62_The Principles At Stake._
The _resurrection of Christ_ is, in Paul's thought, the other side of His death. They constitute one event, the obverse and reverse of the same reality. For Paul, as for the first Apostles, the resurrection of Jesus gave to His death an aspect wholly different from that it previously wore. But the transformation wrough…
691 wordsSECTION 63_The Principles At Stake._
[70] Rom. v. 14; 1 Cor. xv. 22, 45-48; 1 Tim. ii. 5. [71] 1 Cor. xv. 45-49; comp. Col. i. 15-17; John i. 4, 9, 15, 16. _Faith_ is the link between the past, objective sacrifice, and the present, subjective apprehension of it, by which its virtue becomes our own. Without such faith, Christ would have "died in vain." H…
664 wordsSECTION 64_The Principles At Stake._
Paul's entire theology of Redemption is contained in this mystery of union with Christ. The office of _the Holy Spirit_, whose communion holds together the glorified Lord and His members upon earth, is implied in the teaching of ver. 20. This is manifest, when in ch. iii. 2-5 we find the believer's union with Christ de…
733 wordsSECTION 65_The Galatian Folly._
CHAP. iii. 1-v. 12. "O foolish Galatians, who did bewitch you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was openly set forth crucified? This only would I learn from you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now perfected in the fles…
654 wordsSECTION 66_The Galatian Folly._
This was the first step in their backsliding. Had their eyes continued to be fixed on Calvary, the Legalists would have argued and cajoled in vain. Let the cross of Christ once lose its spell for us, let its influence fail to hold and rule the soul, and we are at the mercy of every wind of doctrine. We are like sailors…
733 wordsSECTION 67_The Galatian Folly._
[76] On βασκαίνω see the note in Lightfoot's Commentary _in loc._; also Grimm's N. T. Lexicon. "The Scripture calleth envy an 'evil eye;' ... so there still seemeth to be acknowledged in the act of envy an ejaculation or irradiation of the eye. Envy hath in it something of witchcraft.... It is the proper attribute …
661 wordsSECTION 68_The Galatian Folly._
Receiving the Spirit, the Galatian believers knew that they were the sons of God. "God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into their hearts, crying, _Abba, Father_" (ch. iv. 6, 7). When Paul speaks of "receiving the Spirit," it is this that he thinks of most of all. The miraculous phenomena attending His visitations were…
823 wordsSECTION 69_The Galatian Folly._
Such was the style of "persuasion" employed by the Judaizers. It was well calculated to deceive Jewish believers, even those best affected to their Gentile brethren. It appeared to maintain the prescriptive rights of Judaism and to satisfy legitimate national pride, without excluding the Gentiles from the fold of Chris…
777 wordsSECTION 70_The Galatian Folly._
III. Paul said he had but one question to ask his readers, that which we have already discussed. And yet he does put to them, by way of parenthesis, another (ver. 4), suggested by what he has already called to mind, touching the beginning of their Christian course: "Have ye suffered so many things in vain?" Their folly…
778 wordsSECTION 71_Abraham'S Blessing And The Law'S Curse._
"O foolish Galatians," Paul in that case might well say to us again! "Even as Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness. Know therefore that they which be of faith, the same are sons of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God justifieth the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel …
684 wordsSECTION 72_Abraham'S Blessing And The Law'S Curse._
[81] Matt. iii. 9; John viii. 33-59. The Apostle holds, as strongly as any Judaist, that the promise belongs to the children of Abraham. _But what makes a son of Abraham?_ "Birth, true Jewish blood, of course," replied the Judaist. The Gentile, in his view, could only come into a share of the heritage by receiving cir…
782 wordsSECTION 73_Abraham'S Blessing And The Law'S Curse._
There is nothing arbitrary, or merely forensic in this imputation. Faith is, for such a being as man, the spring of all righteousness before God, the one act of the soul which is primarily and supremely right. What is more just than that the creature should trust his Creator, the child his Father? Here is the root of a…
846 wordsSECTION 74_Abraham'S Blessing And The Law'S Curse._
[85] 2 Chron. xx. 7; Isai. xli. 8; comp. Jas. ii. 23. With Abraham's faith, the Gentiles inherit his blessing. They were not simply blessed _in_ him, through his faith which received and handed down the blessing,--but blessed _with_ him. Their righteousness rests on the same principle as his. Religion reverts to its e…
794 wordsSECTION 75_Abraham'S Blessing And The Law'S Curse._
What Paul here proves from Scripture, bitter experience had taught him. As the law unfolded itself to his youthful conscience, he approved it as "holy and just and good." He was pledged and resolved to observe it in every point. He must despise himself if he acted otherwise. He strove to be--in the sight of men indeed …
680 wordsSECTION 76_Abraham'S Blessing And The Law'S Curse._
III. But how pass from this curse to that blessing? How escape from the nemesis of the broken law into the freedom of Abraham's faith? To this question ver. 13 makes answer: "Christ bought us out of the curse of the law, having become a curse for us." _Christ's redemption changes the curse into a blessing._ We entered…
669 wordsSECTION 77_Abraham'S Blessing And The Law'S Curse._
This sentence of execration, with its shame freshly smarting, Paul has seized and twined into a crown of glory. "Hanged on a tree, crushed with reproach--_accursed_, you say, He was, my Lord, my Saviour! It is true. But the curse He bore was _ours_. His death, unmerited by Him, was our ransom-price, endured to buy us o…
356 wordsSECTION 78_The Covenant Of Promise._
"Brethren, I speak after the manner of men: Though it be but a man's testament, yet when it hath been confirmed, no one maketh it void, or addeth thereto. Now to Abraham were the promises spoken, and to his seed. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many, but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. Now this I say…
704 wordsSECTION 79_The Covenant Of Promise._
* * * * * The Apostle seeks to establish, in the first place, _the fixedness of the Abrahamic covenant_. This is the main purport of the passage. At the same time, in ver. 16, he brings into view _the Object of the covenant_, the person designated by it--_Christ_, its proper Heir. This consideration, though stated her…
659 wordsSECTION 80_The Covenant Of Promise._
"_Sweet is the memory of His name, Who blessed us in His will._" I. Now when a man has made a testament, and it has been ratified--"proved," as we should say--_it stands good for ever_. No one has afterwards any power to set it aside, or to attach to it a new codicil, modifying its previous terms. There it stands…
777 wordsSECTION 81_The Covenant Of Promise._
Its permanence is emphasized by the _tense_ of the verb relating to it. The Greek _perfect_ describes settled facts, actions or events that carry with them finality. Accordingly we read in vv. 15 and 17 of "a ratified covenant"--one that _stands_ ratified. In ver. 18, "God hath granted it to Abraham"--a grace never to …
744 wordsSECTION 82_The Covenant Of Promise._
The reason the Apostle gives for reading _Christ_ into the promise is certainly peculiar. He has been taxed with false exegesis, with "rabbinical hair-splitting" and the like. Here, it is said, is a fine example of the art, familiar to theologians, of torturing out of a word a predetermined sense, foreign to its origin…
776 wordsSECTION 83_The Covenant Of Promise._
Notwithstanding, the Promise had and has a _generic_ application, attending its personal accomplishment. "Salvation is of the Jews." Christ belongs "to the Jew first." Israel was raised up and consecrated to be the trustee of the Promise given to the world through Abraham. The vocation of this gifted race, the secret o…
590 wordsSECTION 84_The Design Of The Law._
"What then is the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise hath been made; _and it was_ ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator. Now a mediator is not _a mediator_ of one; but God is one. Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if the…
665 wordsSECTION 85_The Design Of The Law._
I. "For the sake of the transgressions (committed against it)[99] the law was added." The Promise, let us remember, was complete in itself. Its testament of grace was sealed and delivered ages before the Mosaic legislation, which could not therefore retract or modify it. The Law was "superadded," as something over and …
839 wordsSECTION 86_The Design Of The Law._
Nor when He came, did "the Son of man find faith in the earth"! The people of the Law had no sooner seen than they hated "Him to whom the law and the prophets gave witness." Yet, strangely enough, the very manner of their rejection showed how complete was the preparation for His coming. Two features, rarely united, mar…
724 wordsSECTION 87_The Design Of The Law._
[104] Comp. Heb. ii. 2-4; also Col. ii. 15: "(_scil._ God) having stripped off the principalities and powers"--the earlier forms of angelic mediation. The writer may refer on this latter passage to his note in the _Pulpit Commentary_, also to _The Expositor_, 1st series, x. 403-421. The same thought is expressed, …
669 wordsSECTION 88_The Design Of The Law._
GOD IS ONE: this great article of faith was the foundation of Israel's life. It forms the first sentence of the Shemá, the "Hear, O Israel" (Deut. vi. 4-9), which every pious Jew repeats twice a day, and which in literal obedience to the Law-giver's words he fixes above his house-door, and binds upon his arm and brow a…
714 wordsSECTION 89_The Design Of The Law._
Now the judgement of Scripture is not uttered against this class of men or that, against this type of sin or that. Its impeachment sweeps the entire area of human life, sounding the depths of the heart, searching every avenue of thought and desire. It makes of the world one vast prison-house, with the Law for gaoler, a…
778 wordsSECTION 90_The Design Of The Law._
This figure implies not like the last the imprisoned condition of the subject--but _his childish, undeveloped state_. This is an advance of thought. The Law was something more than a system of restraint and condemnation. It contained an element of progress. Under the tutelage of his pedagogue the boy is growing up to m…
416 wordsSECTION 91_The Emancipated Sons Of God._
"But now that faith is come, we are no longer under a tutor. For ye are all sons of God, through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ. There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female: for ye all are one _man…
691 wordsSECTION 92_The Emancipated Sons Of God._
[109] The phrase _faith in Christ Jesus_ is a link between this Epistle and those of the third and fourth groups. Comp. Col. i. 4; Eph. i. 15; 1 Tim. iii. 13; 2 Tim. i. 13; iii. 15. More frequently in this connection our "in" represents εἰς (_into_), not ἐν as here. I. It is _faith in Christ_ then which _constitut…
749 wordsSECTION 93_The Emancipated Sons Of God._
In the case of the infant, the household to which it belongs, the religious community which receives it to be nursed in its bosom, stand sponsors for its faith. On them will rest the blame of broken vows and responsibility disowned, if their baptized children are left to lapse into ignorance of Christ's claims upon the…
704 wordsSECTION 94_The Emancipated Sons Of God._
Now this dignity belongs universally to Christian faith. "Ye are _all_," the Apostle says, "sons of God through faith in Him." Sonship is a human, not a Jewish distinction. The discipline Israel had endured, it endured for the world. The Gentiles have no need to pass through it again. Abraham's blessing, when it came, …
724 wordsSECTION 95_The Emancipated Sons Of God._
Greek culture, moreover, and Roman government, as it has often been observed, had greatly tended to unify mankind. They diffused a common atmosphere of thought and established one imperial law round the circuit of the Mediterranean shores. But these conquests of secular civilization, the victories of arms and arts, wer…
745 wordsSECTION 96_The Emancipated Sons Of God._
"Ye are all," says the Apostle, "one (man) in Christ Jesus." The numeral is masculine, not neuter--_one person_ (no abstract unity),[111] as though possessing one mind and will, and that "the mind that was in Christ." Just so far as individual men are "in Christ" and He becomes the soul of their life, do they realise t…
700 wordsSECTION 97_The Heir'S Coming Of Age._
"But I say that so long as the heir is a child, he differeth nothing from a bondservant, though he is lord of all; but is under guardians and stewards until the term appointed of the father. So we also, when we were children, were held in bondage under the rudiments of the world: but when the fulness of the time c…
676 wordsSECTION 98_The Heir'S Coming Of Age._
The man of the Old Covenant was a child of God _in posse_, not _in esse_, in right but not in fact. The "infant" is his father's trueborn son. In time he will be full owner. Meanwhile he is as subject as any slave on the estate. There is nothing he can command for his own. He is treated and provided for as a bondman mi…
882 wordsSECTION 99_The Heir'S Coming Of Age._
[112] Surely _the world of men_, not the cosmical elements; comp. Col. ii. 8, 20 (where _rudiments of the world_ is parallel to _tradition of men_); also Gal. vi. 14; Heb. ix. 1. 1 Cor. iii. 1-3 supplies an interesting parallel: those who are _babes in Christ_, are so far carnal and walk _according to man_, animate…
783 wordsSECTION 100_The Heir'S Coming Of Age._
He sent Him as "His Son." To speak of Christ, with the mystical Germans, as the _ideal Urmensch_--the ideal Son of man, the foretype of humanity--is to express a great truth. Mankind was created in Christ, who is "the image of God, firstborn of all creation." But this is not what Paul is saying here. The doubly compoun…
851 wordsSECTION 101_The Heir'S Coming Of Age._
2. So much for the ground of sonship. Its proof lay in the _sending forth of the Spirit of the Son_. The mission of the Son and that of the Spirit are spoken of in vv. 3-6 in parallel terms: "God _sent forth_ His Son--_sent forth_ the Spirit of His Son," the former into the world of men, the latter "into" their indivi…
843 wordsSECTION 102_The Heir'S Coming Of Age._
[115] John xiv. 17; the _present_ (ἐστίν) is the preferable reading. See Westcott _ad loc._ The interchange of person in the subject of vv. 5-8 is very noticeable. This agitated style betrays high-strung emotion. Writing first, in ver. 3, in the language of Jewish experience, in ver. 6 Paul turns upon his readers and…
431 wordsSECTION 103The Return To Bondage.
"Howbeit at that time, not knowing God, ye were in bondage to them which by nature are no gods: but now that ye have come to know God, or rather to be known of God, how turn ye back again to the weak and beggarly rudiments, whereunto ye desire to be in bondage over again? Ye observe days, and months, and seasons, …
810 wordsSECTION 104The Return To Bondage.
The old heathen life was indeed a _slavery_, full of fear and degradation. The religious Pagan could never be sure that he had propitiated his gods sufficiently, or given to all their due. They were jealous and revengeful, envious of human prosperity, capable of infinite wrongdoing. In the worship of many of them acts …
691 wordsSECTION 105The Return To Bondage.
"Known God," Paul says,--"or rather _were known of God_." He hastens to correct himself. He will not let an expression pass that seems to ascribe anything simply to human acquisition. "Ye have not chosen Me," said Jesus; "I have chosen you." So the Apostle John: "Not that we loved God, but that He loved us." This is tr…
844 wordsSECTION 106The Return To Bondage.
This line of explanation may perhaps be carried a step further. Judaism was rudimentary throughout. A religion so largely ritualistic could not but be spiritually and morally defective. In its partial apprehension of the Divine attributes, its limitation of God's grace to a single people, its dim perception of immortal…
749 wordsSECTION 107The Return To Bondage.
In thus decrying Jewish ordinances, the Apostle by implication allows a certain value to the rites of Paganism. The Galatians were formerly in bondage to "them that are no gods." Now, he says, they are turning _again_ to the like servitude by conforming to Mosaic legalism. They wish to come _again_ under subjection to …
702 wordsSECTION 108The Return To Bondage.
The Apostle in protecting Gentile liberties is no enemy to order in worship and outward life. No one can justly quote his authority in opposition to such appointments as a Christian community may make, for reasons of expediency and decorum, in the regulation of its affairs. But he teaches that the essence of Christiani…
455 wordsSECTION 109_Paul'S Entreaty._
"I beseech you, brethren, be as I _am_, for I _am_ as ye _are_. Ye did me no wrong: but ye know that because of an infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel unto you the first time: and that which was a temptation to you in my flesh ye despised not, nor rejected; but ye received me as an angel of God, _even_ as …
767 wordsSECTION 110_Paul'S Entreaty._
[119] Comp. 2 Cor. ii. 4; vii. 8. * * * * * There are considerable difficulties in the exegesis of this passage. We note them in succession as they arise:--(1) In ver. 12 we prefer, with Meyer and Lightfoot, to read, "Be as I, for I _became_ (rather than _am_) as you--brethren, I beseech you." The verses preceding an…
747 wordsSECTION 111_Paul'S Entreaty._
At the best Paul's appearance and address were none of the most prepossessing.[121] The "ugly little Jew" M. Renan calls him, repeating the taunts of his Corinthian contemners. His sickness in Galatia, connected, it would appear, with some constitutional weakness, from which he suffered greatly during his second and th…
751 wordsSECTION 112_Paul'S Entreaty._
So far the Apostle's meaning is tolerably clear. But ver. 18 is obscure. It may be construed in either of two ways, as _Paul_ or _the Galatians_ are taken for the subject glanced at in the verb _to be courted_ in its first clause: "But it is honourable to be courted always in an honourable way, and not only when I am p…
676 wordsSECTION 113_Paul'S Entreaty._
But if he is grieved at this defection, he is equally perplexed. He cannot tell what to make of the Galatians, or in what tone to address them. He has warned, denounced, argued, protested, pleaded as a mother with her children; still he doubts whether he will prevail. If he could only see them and meet them as in forme…
811 wordsSECTION 114_Paul'S Entreaty._
III. Men of the Galatian type are _the natural prey of self-seeking agitators_. However sound the principles in which they were trained, however true the friendships they have enjoyed, they must have change. The accustomed palls upon them. Giddy Athenians, they love nothing so much as "to hear and tell some new thing."…
454 wordsSECTION 115_The Story Of Hagar._
"Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law? For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, one by the handmaid, and one by the freewoman. Howbeit the _son_ by the handmaid is born after the flesh; but the _son_ by the freewoman _is born_ through promise. Which things contain an allegory: fo…
729 wordsSECTION 116_The Story Of Hagar._
Paul's Galatian allegory has greatly exercised the minds of his critics. The word is one of ill repute in exegesis. _Allegory_ was the instrument of Rabbinical and Alexandrine Scripturists, an infallible device for extracting the predetermined sense from the letter of the sacred text. The "spiritualising" of Christian …
709 wordsSECTION 117_The Story Of Hagar._
Ishmael was in truth the fruit of unbelief; his birth was due to a natural but impatient misreading of the promise. The patriarch's union with Hagar was ill-assorted and ill-advised. It brought its natural penalty by introducing an alien element into his family life. The low-bred insolence which the serving-woman, in t…
879 wordsSECTION 118_The Story Of Hagar._
[126] Kalisch, _Commentary_, on Genesis xxi. 9. The Apostle's comparison must have been mortifying in the extreme to the Judaists. They are told in plain terms that they are in the position of outcast Ishmael; while uncircumcised Gentiles, without a drop of Abraham's blood in their veins, have received the promise for…
783 wordsSECTION 119_The Story Of Hagar._
But ver. 26 sounds the note of deliverance: "The Jerusalem above is free; and she is our mother!" Paul has escaped from the prison of Legalism, from the confines of Sinai; he has left behind the perishing earthly Jerusalem, and with it the bitterness and gloom of his Pharisaic days. He is a citizen of the heavenly Zion…
903 wordsSECTION 120_The Story Of Hagar._
This passage signalises the definite breach of Christianity with Judaism. The elder Apostles lingered in the porch of the Temple; the primitive Church clung to the ancient worship. Paul does not blame them for doing so. In their case this was but the survival of a past order, in principle acknowledged to be obsolete. B…
665 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.