The Pulpit Commentary — Galatians — Section 217

Go<l or<l1tincd ~hould first elRpee, So Acts Antioch;" "God bath eent forth hie nn~l!l ") vii. 23, ·nr 8~ br1\.11poV.,-o ali-rtp .,.~cra.pa,cov.,.a• -the preposition ropresented by u forth ' ex- £TY/< xr&vos, " When he was well-nigh forty presses with more or less distinctness the years old;" literally," When there was being idea that the person sent belonged intimatelv completed to him a time of forty yel\rs" to the _place or the sodet,y of the person wh6 (comp. also Acts vii. 80; :uiv. 27; Luke eent him. In no one passage is it without ni. 24; i. 57). The substantive (,r'Jl..f,po,µa) its appreciable value. The verb &...olT'l'lM.,, "completion " oocurs in the se,me sense in without this second propositional edjunot of Eph. i. 10, "Dispensation of the completion l{, ie used, for exe.mple, in John xvii. 18, of the times." The apostle might appn.rcntly both of the Father sending the Son o.nd of hsve written .:,, B~ ,.,,.J\.,pC:.9., 6 xp&vos, "But Ohris~ sending his apostles" into the world," when the term was completed ; " but he pre- but without putting forward this indication fers to express it in this particular form, as of previous intimate connection. So the colouring the idea with a certain pathos of verb .,,.,-,...,,.., is used in like mo.nner of God solemn joy at the arrival of a time eo long sending his Son in Rom. viii. 3, and or the expected, eo fraught with blessing (comp&re mission of the Holy Spirit in John xiv. 26. the uee of the verb "came" in eh. iii. 25). It was, no doubt, optione.l with the writer Why the eupreme Disposer, the Father of or speaker whether he would employ a verb hie people, ohose that particular era in the denoting this partionlo.r ehade of meaning history of the human race for hie children's present in the /~ or not; but we a.re not, passing into their majority is a deeply therefore, o.t liberty to infer tho.t, when he interesting subject of inquiry. Much has chooses to employ a verb which does denote been said, as for exnmple by Neander and it, he uses it without e. distinct consciousness Gnericke in their Histories of the Church, of its specific force. In the clause before us, and by Schaff in hie History of the Apostolic therefore, e.s also in ver. 6, the writer must Church, on the preparedness of the world at be assumed to ho.ve bed in his mind at large at just that juncture for the reception least the thought of heaven as the sphere of of the gospel. It may, however, be ques- existence from which the Bon·a11d the Spirit tioned whether the apostle had this in hie were sent, as in Acts xii. 11 above cited, if mind in the reference here made to the not of eome yet closer association with the Divine prothell'mia. So fe.r ae appears, his Sender. The reference to e. previously subs view was fastened npon the history of sieting intimacy of being between the· the development of God's own people, Sender and the Sent, which we trace here in which np to this time had been nnder the the preposition IE of the compbund verb, is pedagogic custody of the Mose.ic Le.w. In- in Row. viii. 8, where the ver& employed·is' deed, in just this context he does not even ,r/µ1/,as, indice.ted in the emphatic reference advert, as he me.y be supposed to have implied in the pronoun ia11To~, "sending hiB done in eh. iii 24, to the effect produced own Son." In endeavouring next to deter- by the Law in preparing God's own people mine the import·of the expression," his Son," for the gospel, but spew only of the a.a here introduced, we a.re met by the sur- nege.ti ve aspect o( the lege.l economy ; that mise that the npostle may have written it is, of those features of " bonde.ge,'' " power- proleptically, or by anticipation; that is, as lessness," and "poverty" which marked it describing, not wbe.t Christ was before he' as a state of oppression and helplessness. was sent forth, but the glory and acoeptable- The training, probably implied in the refer- ness with the Almighty which marked him ence to its "rudiments," stands back for ae the Messie.h after his appearing in the the present out of view; the only notion world; for when, for example, in another which ie e.ctue.lly brought prominently for- place the apostle writes, " Christ Jesus ea.me ward being the comparatively degre.ded into the world to save sinners," he must be condition in which the child-proprietor was understood o.s expressing himself proleptic- for that while detained. God sent forth hill ally, designating the person who came into Bon ( iEaT<tTTEt/\•v 6 0,bs .,.1,., ,,ibv avroii). The the world by the name and office which he terms here used require to be very closely bore as among men, and not as he was before considered: they are fraught with the very he ea.me. A proleptic designation is there- essence of the gospel. The compound verb fore conceivable. But this interpretation of •!arro,,..,.J>.1v,, occurs in nine other places of the apostle's mee.ning is resisted by the the New Teate.ment, a.II of them in St. tendency of the context in the kindred· Luke's Goepel and the Acts. In six of these po.ssage in Rom. viii. 3, "God sending his· (Luke i. 53 ; XL 10, 11 ; Acts Lx. 30; xvii. own Son in the likeness of /he'jl,eah of ai71-;-" 14; xxii. 21) the f!f is well represented in for those added words betoken very strongly our English Bible by "away." In the re- that Christ was viewed by the a.post-le oe J'ln.ining three (Acts vii. 12; x.i. 22; xii. having been God's Bon before he appeo.red 11 )-" (Jacob) sent forth our fathers fir11t; " in the ftcsh. And such is the impression " 'l'hey sent forth Be.rnaltas 'i.B far as to which a reader not preoccupied with other OJt: tv, 1-31.) THE EPIS'fLE TO THE GALATIANS. 183