What precisely was the mischief, who precisely were the dangerous teachers, spoken of here so abruptly and so urgently by St Paul? It is easier to ask the question than to answer it. Some expositors have sought a solution in the fourteenth and fifteenth chapters, and have found in an extreme school of theoretical "liberty" these men of "pious language and specious pleas." But to us this seems impossible. Almost explicitly, in those chapters, he identifies himself _in principle_ with "the capable"; certainly there is not a whisper of horror as regards their principle, and nothing but a friendly while unreserved reproof for the uncharity of their practice. Here he has in his mind men whose purposes and whose teachings are nothing but evil; who are to be--not indeed persecuted but--avoided; not met in conference, but solemnly refused a further hearing. In our view, the case was one of embryo _Gnosticism_. The Romans, so we take it, were troubled by teachers who used the language of Christianity, saying much of "Redemption," and of "Emancipation," and something of "Christ," and of "the Spirit"; but all the while they meant a thing totally different from the Gospel of the Cross. They meant by redemption and freedom, the liberation of spirit from matter. They meant by Christ and the Spirit, mere links in a chain of phantom beings, supposed to span the gulf between the Absolute Unknowable Existence and the finite World. And their morality too often tended to the tenet that as matter was hopelessly evil, and spirit the unfortunate prisoner in matter, the material body had nothing to do with its unwilling, and pure, Inhabitant: let the body go its own evil way, and work out its base desires.
Our sketch is taken from developed Gnosticism, such as it is known to have been a generation or two later than St Paul. But it is more than likely that such errors were present, in essence, all through the Apostolic age. And it is easy to see how they could from the first disguise themselves in the special terminology of the Gospel of liberty and of the Spirit.
Such things may look to us, after eighteen hundred years, only like fossils of the old rocks. They are indeed fossil specimens--but of existing species. The atmosphere of the Christian world is still infected, from time to time--perhaps more now than a few generations ago, whatever that fact may mean--with unwholesome subtleties, in which the purest forms of truth are indescribably manipulated into the deadliest related error; a mischief sure to betray itself, however, (where the man tempted to parley with it is at once wakeful and humble,) by some fatal flaw of pride, or of untruthfulness, or of an uncleanness however subtle. And for the believer so tempted, under common circumstances, there is still, as of old, no counsel more weighty than St Paul's counsel here. If he would deal with such snares in the right way, he must "_turn away from them_." He must turn away to the Christ of history. He must occupy himself anew with the primeval Gospel of pardon, holiness, and heaven.
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Is the Letter to be closed here at last? Not quite yet; not until one and then another of the gathered circle has committed his greetings to it. And first comes up the dear Timotheus, the man nearest of all to the strong heart of the Apostle. We seem to see him alive before us, so much has St Paul, in one Epistle and another, but above all in his dying Letter to Timotheus himself, contributed to a portrait. He is many years younger than his leader and Christian father. His face, full of thought, feeling, and devotion, is rather earnest than strong. But it has the strength of patience, and of absolute sincerity, and of rest in Christ. Timotheus repays the affection of Paul with unwavering fidelity. And he will be true to the end to his Lord and Redeemer, through whatever tears and agonies of sensibility. Then Lucius will speak, perhaps the Cyrenian of Antioch (Acts xiii. 1); and Jason, perhaps the convert of Thessalonica (Acts xvii. 5); and Sosipater, perhaps the Berean Sopater of Acts xx. 4; three blood-relations of the Apostle, who was not left utterly alone of human affinities, though he had laid them all at his Master's feet. Then the faithful Tertius claims the well-earned privilege of writing one sentence for himself. And Gaius modestly requests his salutation, and Erastus, the man of civic dignity and large affairs. He has found no discord between the tenure of a great secular office and the life of Christ; but to-day he is just a brother with brethren, named side by side with the Quartus whose only title is that beautiful one, "_the brother_," "our fellow in the family of God." So the gathered friends speak each in his turn to the Christians of the City; we listen as the names are given: