The Pulpit Commentary — Galatians — Section 37

lwo his occasions at the moment made the more convenient. But whatever his doc- trine reRlly was, it came with no authority. Such apostleship as he had at all came at last from Jerusalem, and Jerusalem disowned him! Such was the tenor of the wildest form of oppoucncy which confronted him. Se. Paul obliged w asse1·t openly hi,s higMst apostolic authority. It had become neces- sary, therefore, now that he should openly proclaim that supreme form of apostleship with which Christ had invested him. This had not been considered so essential at an earlier stage of his ministry. Four or five years R,,<TO, for example, when, in company with Silas, he first visited Greece, at which time he wrote his two letters to the Thessalonians, he had been content to still rank as one who shared his aposflolical character with a Silas or eYen a Timotheus. But the force and malignity of Judaistic oppugnancy had now risen to such a pitch as to make it necessary, in the interests of truth and for the protection of the Gentile Churches, that he should distinctly and emphatically declare to the world, not only the message which Christ had entrusted him with, but also his peculiar com- mission for the delivery of that message. And this he was doing, not out of his own mind or in pursuance of a judgment which he had himself formed as to what he onght to do, but under the sanction and no doubt immediate direction of Christ; for he held it in his power, if need arose and according as occasion required, to sustain his assertion that he was endued with this highest form of apostleship by the signal manifestation of "the signs of an apostle," both in the conferring upon obedient disciples of pheno- menally miraculous gifts, and also in the infliction on obstinate gainsayers of the truth of su pcrnatnral chastisement. The statements now made, the reader, no doubt, will at once recognize as fully borne out by the contents of the contemporaneous Epistles to the Corinthians, particularly those of the Second, which is, in fact, mainly devoted to conflicts called forth by the Judaizing movement, though not so much occupied as the Epistle to the Galatians by the discussion of the Judaistic controversy itself. Such was the position of affairs which drew forth from St, Paul the full publio announcement which he here makes of his properly apostolic office, It is probably the very first that he ma.de in an epistolary writing, and it serves to connect the Epistle to the Galatians in point of subject very closely with the two Epistles to the Corintnians. In fact, we may in this respect regard this Epistle as in a measure introductory to those other two, as well as to that which was addressed to the Romans, which was no doubt the la.test portion of this great epistolary quaternion. In Galatia St. Pau"l's doctrine impu9.ned rather than his apost'leship. We have, however, to observe that we do not owe the definite and emphatic announcement which St. Paul here makes of his proper apostola.te, especially or principally to assaults made in Galatia. directly upon his position as an apostle. The fact that such assaults were already beginning to be made there is indeed not improbable in itself, and appears to be not obscurely indicated by the tone of the very first sentence. Bnt the absence of further distinct reference in the Epistle to this particula.1· form of opponency is of itself a proof that it is not this which the apostle now feels to be his direct and chief concern. What in the Churches of Galatia. furnished the chief occasion for this apologetic state- ment was rather their incipient abandonment of the gospel which he had preached among them. '.rhat which he felt to be here the most important fact was that the message was impugned which he had brought them from Christ himself, not that his authorization as an apostle to bring it was, viewed by itself, assailed. His present chief object, to whlch his assertion of his apostleship ie only subsidiary, ia to make it distinctly felt that the message was indeed Christ's very own, and that therefore, in revolting against that, thPy were revolting from Christ.  THE EPISTLE OF