Thus he stresses that what he teaches was from God himself, although it was also confirmed by his discussions with the chief Apostles.
His Argument with Peter about Peter’s Inconsistency (2.11-16).
When Peter visited Antioch he was happy to eat with the non-Jews (ignoring Jewish restrictions on ‘cleansing’ and on the eating of ‘unclean’ food), but when some Jewish Christians who stressed the need to keep the rituals of the Law of Moses arrived, he stopped eating with the non-Jews and thus led astray other Jews who were there, including Barnabas. Paul had to rebuke Peter for this on the grounds that he had no right to expect non-Jews to follow Jewish rituals, when Peter himself had been willing to forego them before the Judaisers arrived. But the main grounds for his stand was that ‘ a man is not put in the right with God by observing the Law but by putting his faith in Jesus Christ’. This is the crux of his argument, and of this letter. The moral Law can only condemn, it cannot aid salvation. The rituals are no longer necessary, because the sacrificial death of Christ has replaced them. Thus it is faith in Christ that must be central. Then he adds ‘that is why we have placed our faith in Christ Jesus, so that we might be put in the right with God by placing our faith in Christ and not by observing the Law, because by the observance of the Law no one can be put in the right with God’ (2.15-16).
The Law’s Purpose Is to Point to Christ (2.17-21).
2.17-18 Now he deals with the question - ‘Surely seeking to be ‘put in the right’ through Christ means that we are must first of all admit to being sinners. Does this not, it is asked, make Christ the promoter of sin? Paul replies, ‘Of course not. On the contrary, it is when I make the Law pre-eminent that I make myself a lawbreaker. It is the Law that shows me where I have gone wrong and accuses me of breaking the Law’. Thus if we are to speak of ‘promoting sin’ it is the Law that does that.
2.19-20 But the truth is that that is what the Law was there to do. It has, in fact, fulfilled its intended purpose. It revealed to me my sinfulness so that I recognised that it was essential for me to go, as it were, with Christ to the cross by an act of faith, to be crucified with Him Thus when I commit myself to Him in faith I accept that when He died, I died with Him. I was ‘crucified with him’. Thus the Law is now satisfied because of my death. I have paid the penalty and died to the Law. It can no longer touch me, because I have been ‘crucified along with Christ’.
But that is only the beginning. It means that I must now recognise that I have ‘died’, and that I am therefore no longer alive. That it is rather Christ who lives in me. Thus the life I now live as a human being I will live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. In other words I must now die to my past life, abjuring all that I have lived for, and recognising His love, let Him live through me by His Spirit.
2.21 So it is not Paul who sets aside the unmerited favour of God (presumably his opponents were saying that the Law was God’s ‘gift of grace’), it is the Judaisers. For if righteousness was available through keeping the law and following its rituals Christ’s death would not have been necessary, it would have been in vain. He would have died for nothing (v.21). But He did not die for nothing. He was God’s true gift of grace, and by turning back to the ritual of the Law as a means of salvation they are setting aside God’s true gift of grace, a gift arising from His unmerited favour.
Every Blessing They Have Received Was Through Faith (3.1-9)
3.1-5 These ‘foolish’ Galatians, who had had Jesus Christ as the crucified One clearly portrayed before them, should consider how they received the Spirit. Did they receive the Spirit by strictly obeying the Law, or by the response of faith which they made when they committed themselves to Christ? It was, of course, by the response of faith. Are they now going to leave that behind? Are they going to abandon the power of the Spirit so that they can go back to human efforts, struggling in desperation? Let them consider why the Spirit is still at work among them, yes even doing miracles. Is it because they ‘observe the Law’ or through their faith in what they have heard?
3.6-9 Let them consider Abraham (the hero of the Judaisers, who thought of themselves as children of Abraham). How did he obtain his acceptance before God? Genesis 15.6 tells us. ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness’. So those who are the true children of Abraham will recognise that their acceptance, like his, is based on faith. Long before the Law was given the Scripture announced the Good News in advance to Abraham, and showed that God would put the non-Jews ‘in the right’ by faith, for it said ‘all nations shall be blessed through him’. So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the one who believed.
What Then Does the Law Do and Not Do? (3.10-15).
3.10 Now let us consider what the Law does do. It pronounces a curse on those who seek to observe it. For the Scriptures say, ‘Cursed is every one who does not continue to do everything that is written in the Book of the Law’ (Deuteronomy 27.26). So as no one observes everything in it completely, everyone is cursed by it.
3.11-12 Further the Scriptures make it clear that no one is put in the right with God through observing the Law for it says, ‘It is by faith that the righteous shall live ’ (Habakkuk 2.4). However the Law is not of faith for it says, ‘the man who DOES these things shall live by them’ (Leviticus 18.5). So the Law has a different emphasis than faith. It looks at actions rather than at man’s attitude of heart.
3.13 -14 The heart of the matter is that Christ has set us free from being under the curse of the Law by Himself being made a curse for us. The Scripture makes this clear when it says, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’ (Deuteronomy 21.23). The truth is that it is He who has set us free by the payment of a price, so that the blessing given to Abraham might come to non-Jews by faith, that is, so that we might receive the promised Spirit by faith.
What Does the Old Testament Scripture Teach? (3.15-18).
3.15 Paul now illustrates the point from life and from the Old Testament. Once an irrevocable covenant has been made, he points out, it cannot be set aside. This means that the covenant promises made to Abraham cannot be set aside by the later giving of the Law.
3.16 Notice also, he says, that the covenant is made with Abraham and ‘his seed’ (Genesis 12.7; 13.15; 24.7). Now the word for ‘seed’ is a singular collective noun, and can mean one or many. We can see from this, therefore, that God deliberately avoided a word that could be used in the plural. That was because in this case God had a single seed in mind. He had in mind Christ as ‘the seed of Abraham’ who would bring blessing to the world.
3.17 To put it another way. God, in His unmerited love and favour, gave the inheritance to Abraham by promise. The Law came four hundred and thirty years afterwards (Exodus 12.40 in the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint). It cannot therefore set aside the irrevocable promise. The promise was established long before the Law was given, so its fulfilment cannot depend on fulfilling the Law.
What Then Was the Purpose of the Law? (3.19-24) 3.19-20 What was then the purpose of the Law? It was a temporary measure, put in place to control sin until the promised Seed should come, who would bring God’s promised blessing to the world. Indeed it can be seen as inferior because intermediaries were involved. The Law came through angels (this is what the Judaisers taught) and Moses to the people, whereas Abraham received his promise directly from the one God. The latter is a pure, irrevocable promise from God. The former is a transaction carried out through intermediaries, which demonstrates its inferiority.
3.21-22 Is the Law then in opposition to the promises of God? Not at all. Indeed had it been possible to give a Law that could give life, that is how righteousness would have been provided for us. The trouble is that try as we might, we cannot keep the Law, all it does is reveal to us our sinfulness. Thus the Scripture declares that through the Law’s teaching the whole world is imprisoned by sin, so that what was promised, which is given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given, not to those who keep the Law, but to those who believe.
3.23-24 Before this faith came we were kept locked up under the Law, held under restraint until the way of faith should be revealed. But now things have changed. The Law has actually now been put in charge of us, like a teacher is put in charge of children, so as to bring us to Christ, so that we can be ‘put in the right’ by faith.
Adoption by the Father Has Replaced the Law (3.25-29)
3.25-26. However, once faith has come we are no longer under the one put in charge of us. We are no longer like young children. For in Christ Jesus we are all full sons of God through faith. Thus we are now directly under God’s control. The Law is no longer required.
3.27-29 The truth is that all who have been baptised into Christ (with all that that means to an adult of a response of genuine faith) have been clothed with Christ. It is the same for us all. It does not matter who or what we are. Whether we be Jew or non-Jew, slave or free, male or female, we are all one in Christ Jesus. And if we belong to Him, we are children of Abraham, and heirs in accordance with the promise that God gave.
(We note here that Paul has been talking all the way through about the response of faith. Thus it is clear that he sees baptism in that light, as the true response of a consenting adult to the claims of Christ).
If We Are His We Are Now All Full Sons of God (4.1-7).
4.1-2 A child might be the heir to a great estate and great power, but while he is still a child he is subject to guardians and trustees until the date set by his father, even though he is the owner of it all. He has to do as he is told and bide his time.
4.3- 5 So it is with Christians. Before we became Christians, and thus full sons of God, we saw ourselves as slaves to the elemental spirits of the world, to mediums and fortune telling, to astrology and our ‘stars’, to ‘influences’ and ‘fate’. But when God’s full time had come He sent forth (literally ‘sent forth from out of’ i.e. from Heaven) His Son. He was born of a woman, and thus truly human, he was born under the Law, and thus under tutelage, But the difference was that He was fully obedient to the Law. And through His obedience He was able to offer Himself as a Redeemer, paying a price to set us free from the Law’s control so that we might be adopted as sons.
4.6-7 And it is because we have been so adopted and are now truly sons that God has sent forth (‘sent forth from out of’ compare verse 4) the Spirit of His Son into our hearts crying ‘Abba, Father’ (the word ‘abba’ is an Aramaic word for Father signifying a close and cosy relationship). So we are no longer slaves, but sons. And as a result we are the heirs of God with full privileges. He alone has a say in our lives.
Is It Not then Foolish to Try to Turn Back to our Former State? (4.8-11).
4.8-11 Previously we were in bondage to ‘elemental spirits’, beings that by nature are no gods, ruled by the observance of months and years, of days and seasons. We were in bondage to influences and the stars, to essential Feasts and sabbaths. But now we have risen above all that. We have come to know God. No, even better, God has come to know us, for we are ‘known by God’. How then can we go back to the old tyrants? Here Paul is suggesting that the Law as observed and interpreted by the Judaisers is to be equated with the elemental spirits of pagans. And as such it is something to be abjured.
Paul’s Concern and Longing for Them (4.12-20).
4. 12-15. Paul pleads with the Galatians to return and become as he is, because he, after all, became like them when he was among them. He points out that rather than doing him wrong they were kind to him, not disdaining his weak and disabled condition. Indeed, even though his condition must have been a trial to them, when he brought them the Good News they treated him as though he was an angel from God, yes, as though he was Christ Jesus Himself. They expressed great satisfaction and would even have given him their eyes. (This may hint at the nature of his ailment, but it may simply mean they were willing to give him what was most precious to them).
4.16 What then has caused them to change so much? Has he become their enemy because he told them the truth? (This suggests that he had had news that they had positively turned against him because of the influence of the Judaisers).
4.17 -18 The Judaisers have come among them making a great fuss of them, but their purpose is not good. They have tried to separate them off as a group from Paul and his co-workers, so that the Galatians might instead make much of the Judaisers themselves as the only real bearers of Good News. Well, it is good to be made a fuss of when the purpose is good, and this is not only true when Paul is with them, but in this case that is not the situation. Their purpose is not good.
4.19-20 Paul then stresses that he is not just arguing with them, he is agonising over them. It is as though he is again going through the birth pains of winning them to Christ and he will continue to agonise until ‘Christ be formed in you’. In other words, until the Christ they professed to have received is seen active and revealed through them by their response to Paul’s pleading. Indeed he wishes he was there so that he could sort matters out.
An Allegory from the Old Testament (4.21-31).
4.21-25 So some of the Galatians want to come ‘under the Law’, being circumcised, observing the Feasts, using ritual washings, abstaining from ‘unclean food, and so on? Well, are they deaf to what the Law actually says? For example the Law says, Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. The slave woman’s son was simply born ‘of the flesh’ as a human being in the normal way, but the free woman’s son was born as a result of God’s specific promise. This is in fact a story illustrating a point. The women represent two covenants (agreements made by God with man). The first is from Mount Sinai, bearing slave children. (For the Law makes slaves of men, making them slaves to sin and slaves to ritual). This is Hagar. Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds with the present Jerusalem which is in slavery with her children, slavery to the Law.
4.26-28 But Sara represents the new covenant, and the new heavenly Jerusalem which is ‘above’. This new Jerusalem is the ‘mother’ of Christians, and we Christians are like Isaac, being children resulting from promise. Note the use of Isaiah 54.1. The point appears to be that to be of ‘the few’ is a sign that they are of God, born of the one who ‘has a husband’, the new Jerusalem. While to be of the majority is a sign of desolation, a sign that such people are still under the old Jerusalem. The use of the second part of Isaiah in this way demonstrates that Paul saw it on the whole as applicable to the Christian church.
4.29-30 Significantly, just as the one born ‘of the flesh’ persecuted the one born according to the Spirit, so it still is. The true Christians are persecuted by the Judaisers. But the Scripture says they are to cast the Judaisers out, and have nothing to do with them, for it says, ‘Cast out the slave and her son, for the slave’s son shall not inherit with the free woman’s son’. So we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman, and should have nothing to do theologically with those who are still slaves to the Law.
We notice here how the argument has moved from just being ‘under Law’ and ‘under promise’, to being ‘of the flesh’ and ‘of the Spirit’ in readiness for what is to follow. To be under the Law is to live according to the flesh. To live truly under promise is to live according to the Spirit.
The Application (4.31-5.6)
4.31-5.1 So Christians are free, born of the free woman. How foolish they would be to again become slaves. Indeed, this is why Christ has set us free so that we might have freedom, freedom from the Law, freedom from sin. We must therefore stand firm and not again submit to slavery under the Law.
5.2-4 To submit to circumcision as a necessary rite (or any Jewish or other ordinance, or list of do’s and don’ts) is to make Christ of no advantage to us, for once we submit to such as necessary for salvation we again put ourselves under bondage. We become bound to keep the whole Law or the whole set of rules. Indeed if we seek to become ‘in the right’ with God by following the Law or by following a set of rules, we are ‘cut off’ from Christ, we have fallen away (doctrinally at least) from God’s unmerited favour (v.4). We have lost the benefit of the Spirit’s work. We no longer listen and respond to Him, but become burdened down with a burden we cannot carry, the burden of keeping the whole Law.
5.5 But for true Christians it is ‘through the Spirit’, by faith, that they await the hope of righteousness. As they look for Christ’s coming, the Christian’s ‘hope’, which will bring them perfect into the presence of God, they are to do so under the control and guidance of the Spirit, not under obedience to a list of Laws and rules.
5.6 The fact is that in Christ Jesus whether a man is circumcised or not makes no difference at all, what counts is faith that works by love . This last is important, for it removes the danger of the charge of encouraging ‘lawlessness’. Christians do not need a Law to control them because they do everything out of Christian love (see 1 Corinthians 13 for its definition).
It should be noted here that this does not mean that rules are necessarily a bad thing, nor indeed that the Law was a bad thing. As a guide for living and as a guide for knowing the mind of God they may be excellent. But where they become wrong, and indeed unchristian, is when they are used as a means of becoming acceptable to God, as a means of putting us ‘in the right’ with God. That is legalism, and Paul in Galatians condemns it out of hand. When we dechristianise people on the grounds that they do not keep the Sabbath, or do not observe certain regulations that we have decided are important, we share in the condemnation that Paul pours on the Judaisers. We may to some extent be right about their importance, but we are wrong if we make them determining factors about somebody’s Christian status. The only test of that is their faith in the crucified and risen Christ
Paul is Puzzled by their Failure and Angry At Those who have Led Them Astray (5.7-12).
5. 7-8 ‘You were running well. Who has hindered you from obeying the truth?’ (v.7) Paul is both puzzled and distressed at their change of heart, and he wants them to know that whoever it was who has caused it, it was not God. ‘This persuasion is not from Him who called you’ (v.8).
5.9 The fact is that ‘A little leaven (yeast) leavens the whole lump’ (v.9). Here he is stressing the danger that, when something like legalism begins to get a toehold, it is not long before it takes control of the whole. It spreads like yeast throughout the whole mixture. He might also be meaning that it only takes one man with false ideas to infect the group, and soon the whole group is led astray.
5.10-12 However in spite of everything Paul has confidence that in the end they will recognise that his position is the right one, because he has confidence not so much in them as ‘in the Lord’ (5.10). He also has the confidence that those who are so distressing them will bear the judgment of God, ‘whoever they are’. The fact is, he tells them, they should have recognised immediately that he was against circumcision as a required rite, for if he had not been he would not have been persecuted by the Jews. Then the cross would not have been a stumbling block to them because it would have become just a piece of theology, an added extra, just one thing among many, to be conceded to those who liked it that way. But the stumbling block of the cross was that it was revealed as the only way by which a man could get right with God. It replaced the idea that righteousness could be achieved by strict observance of the Law. This was what angered the Jews.
Freedom is Not to Be Misinterpreted as Licence. They Must Walk in Love and by the Spirit (5.13-26).
5.13-15 So God calls us to be free, to enjoy freedom from the bondage of the Law. But this is not to be looked on as a chance for gratifying fleshly desires. Rather it is to be seen as a chance to be free to demonstrate Christian love. Through love Christians are ‘slaves’ to each other, because their love makes them want to serve each other. Indeed paradoxically this results in fulfilling the Law, for to obey the command ‘you shall love your neighbour as yourself’, if genuinely carried out, results in fulfilling all the moral requirements of the Law and more. It means we consider other people’s happiness and satisfaction as being of equal, if not greater, concern than our own.
On the other hand, if we bite and devour each other by what we say and do, we need to beware that we do not consume each other, destroying each other’s faith and obedience to God. That is the opposite of Christian love.
5.16-25 The secret is to walk by the Spirit. If we walk by the Spirit (in full responsiveness to the Spirit’s prompting through God’s word) we will not fulfil the desires of the flesh. He will enable us to overcome every temptation that besets us. And the fact is that we desperately need Him, for in every Christian’s life a great battle is taking place, (and never more so than when it is not noticed).
5.17 The reality is that the Spirit and the flesh are at constant loggerheads. ‘For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh’. The flesh (our sinful nature) constantly tugs at us like a tug-of-war team, seeking to drag us away from what the Spirit desires, while on the other hand the Spirit seeks to drag us the other way. ‘For these are against each other, to prevent you from doing what you would’. Paul is not here saying that human flesh is, in itself, evil. He is rather saying that that flesh contains desires and longings which have to be controlled. In the Christian the Spirit will constantly act as a powerful pull away from following fleshly longings. But the flesh will constantly and fiercely pull back. The Christian certainly wants to be pure, and loving, and good and righteous, (otherwise his profession must be in doubt), but there will always be something that is seeking to drag him down, ‘the pull of the flesh’. Thus he does not always behave in the way that in his best moments he wants to. In some it will be greed for power or fame or status, in others it will be envy of those who have achieved such, in others the problem of a strong sex drive, in others a sense of self-righteousness, a desire to be recognised as ‘good’. But it will be there in all, and never more dangerous than when not recognised.
5.18 ‘But if you are led by the Spirit you are not under the Law’. This is the crux of the matter. Those who submit to the Spirit’s prompting, with the help of the Spirit’s power, live positive lives of Christian love. They do not constantly check a list to see whether they have attained the standard. They do not struggle to keep the Law so as to be acceptable to God, and live in dread of breaking it. They are not tied down by rules and regulations. They rather recognise that they are acceptable to God through the cross and so they gladly seek to keep His commandments as led by the Spirit. This is something that in their inner hearts they want to do. It is true that the flesh may sometimes pull them down, but in the end they rise again and finally overcome, because they want to please their Father.
5. 19-21 Paul then lists some of the ‘works of the flesh’. ‘The works of the flesh are obvious, immorality, impurity of thought and life, being out of control, idolatry, involvement in the occult, attitudes of enmity and hostility, division and strife, envy and jealousy, bad temper, living for self, bickering and dissension, getting into cliques, drunkenness, wild partying, and such like’. Thus he takes it much further than just sex, violence and drunkenness, it affects attitudes of minds and hearts.
5.21 Then he adds a strict warning so that he cannot be misunderstood. ‘I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God’. For how can men say they are living under the Rule of God when they so flagrantly disobey Him? And if they do not live under His earthly Rule how can they hope to live under His heavenly Rule? And they can be sure they will not.
5.22-23 Now he outlines the ‘fruit’ of the Spirit. We notice the word for fruit is singular. All these things result from the Spirit’s work within, we cannot pick and choose. ‘The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience and long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control’. This is the test of the Spirit-filled life. This is the Christian life. No one who lives like this requires a Law to control them, nor can it judge them. ‘Against such there is no Law’.
5.24 ‘For those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its affections and desires’. So, inevitably, we come back to the cross. We have been crucified with Christ, and thus we have died to sin. In intent we have put to death our earthly uncontrolled passions and desires, for this is what receiving forgiveness involves. Now as we live lives guided by the Spirit through His word these things will come under control. We will daily become more like Him, being changed from glory into glory (2 Corinthians 3.18).
5.25 ‘If the Spirit has given us life, let us also walk step by step with the Spirit’. Those who claim to have received life from the Spirit, will reveal it by a daily walk under His guidance and control. They will constantly look to Him for power, and each step will be taken hand in hand with Him. This is the life of the Spirit into which the Christian has entered.
5.26 ‘Let us have no self-conceit, no provoking of one another, no envy of one another’. These things are in direct opposition to the Spirit, regardless of how we seek to justify them.
The Need to constantly Help Each Other Without Condescension (6.1-5)
While what has been described is the life of the Spirit, those who are young in it, or weak, will need help and guidance. We must therefore each seek to help the other. This is one of the unique features of the Spirit-led life, a genuine concern to help each other while not being too intrusive. The life of the Spirit is not self-centred, it is Christ-centred.
6.1 Those who are led by the Spirit will not be judgmental, but when someone fails and is ‘overtaken in any failure’ they will help to ‘restore’ them in a spirit of meekness, a spirit of selfless concern and gentleness. They will do this aware that they themselves are frail, being wary that in helping another they themselves do not fail through temptation. The Spirit does not lead us to enter places or situations which may put us to too great a test. That task should be given to those with the strength to deal with such situations.
6.2-3 ‘Bear one another’s heavy burdens, and thus fulfil the law of Christ’. Christians should help each other. This is the law of love, the law of Christ. Where someone is carrying a load too heavy to bear, those who can should unobtrusively step in and seek to assist with the burden. But this is to be done without a sense of superiority or condescension, for if we think we are somehow superior to them we are deceiving ourselves. We are in fact nothing (v.3). Indeed without the Spirit where would we be?
6.4-5 Rather than criticising or looking with superiority at the behaviour of others, what we should do is put our own behaviour to the test. Is our behaviour satisfactory? Are we up to the mark? Then we will have something to take pride in. For in the end each man has to bear his own pack not someone else’s. In the end we will be tested by what we are. (Note that in verse 2 the word for burden is ‘baros’, a weight, a heavy burden. In verse 5 it is ‘phortion’, e.g. a soldier’s pack or load, something to be carried without being too arduous).
In the End We must Face Up to the Consequences of our Behaviour (6.6-10).
6.6 Those who receive teaching should be willing to share all good things with him who teaches. Perhaps this verse should be above some pulpits. Ministers should not have to just make do when their congregations thrive. They should share in the good things that their congregations enjoy.
6.7 Now Paul concludes his arguments with the sternest of warnings. ‘Do not be deceived. God is not mocked’. How easily we can convince ourselves that ‘God is love’ so that we do not have to worry too much about our behaviour. So Paul warns us that we may be mocking God by our attitude. And he warns us that we will not get away with it. ‘Whatever a man sows, that is what he will reap’. Forgiveness gives us a new start, but to continue in sin regardless will mean that we suffer the consequences. That is an inexorable law.
6.8 ‘He who sows to the satisfaction of the desires of his flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, he who sows in response to the desires of the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life’. There is no middle way. Either the flesh is Lord, or the Spirit is Lord. The one will produce unpleasant physical and spiritual consequences in this life and finally the corruption of eternal death, the other will result in the joys and blessings of eternal life. To be free from the Law is not an excuse for lawlessness. It is to be responsive to the Spirit of God. While those who are not responsive to the Spirit of God cannot claim to be Christ’s, for their faith is a sham, as they may well discover too late.
This does not mean that the Christian cannot enjoy some of the pleasure that man’s make up provides. Kept within bounds and subject to God’s teaching and will, such pleasure is not a ‘lust of the flesh’. It is enjoyment of God’s generous provision. It is when it gets out of bounds, when the flesh gets control, that it becomes sinful.
6.9 Paul recognises that this may not be easy. It is tempting to follow the lusts of the flesh, and go beyond the bounds set by God. So he seeks to encourage the people of God, and he knows he must include himself. ‘Let us not grow weary in well doing, for in due season we will reap if we do not lose heart and give up’. Christians should ever look ahead to ‘the harvest’, the time when all their hard work will be rewarded. At times of discouragement this should act as a spur, enabling them to persevere.
6.10 But in the end we must look outside ourselves. ‘As we have the chance let us do good to all men, and especially to those who are of the household of faith’. Too much inward looking may lead to failure. What we must do is look outward to the needs of others. And this includes everyone, not just our own group. Although, because our fellow-Christians are our ‘brothers’, we should have special regard for them.
The Final Summary - What the Christian Should Glory In ( 6.11-15)
Having summarised Christian behaviour Paul now turns their attention to what they should be glorying in.
3.11 Here Paul has taken the letter from his secretary who is writing it for him, and writes in large letters so as to stress his conclusion.
3.12-13 Those who want them to be circumcised and submit to ritual ordinances do it because they want to have physical proof of their success. They want to be able to glory in it. ‘See’, they want to be able to say, ‘they have submitted to circumcision’. Then they will receive their congratulations, and there it will end.
Furthermore many of them do it because they want to avoid persecution for the cross of Christ. They are prepared to compromise rather than face up to the significance of the cross. Yet the fact is that they do not and are not able to fully obey God’s Law. So they are caught between two stools. They fail by their own standards, and they fail to recognise the glory of the cross. They make it into just another sacrificial offering, a ritual which helps them along but is only partially effective. Thus do they miss the whole point.
3.14. Paul takes another view. He does not glory in the fact that people have been circumcised (or indeed baptised (1 Corinthians 1.17)). He does not glory in the fact that they do this or that, that they observe times and seasons, ritual food laws or laws of ‘cleanliness’. He glories in only one thing, the cross that delivers and makes men free. ‘But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord, Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision (and we could replace this by infant or socially acceptable baptism in which there is no real and lasting response of faith). What counts is a new creation’. All through the epistle he has referred to Christ Jesus, or Jesus Christ. But now he wants to lay a greater emphasis. He is ‘the Lord’, Jesus Christ. In the Septuagint this Greek word is used to express God’s special name, Jahweh, and Paul makes it clear elsewhere that this is how he sees it as applied to Christ. When he uses ‘Lord’ of Jesus, it means the name that is above every name to which every knee shall bow (Philippians 2.9-11). And it is this Lord Who gave Himself up on the cross.
But his glorying is not just in the fact that ‘the Lord’ died on the cross, but also in what He accomplished there. He crucified us to the world and he crucified the world to us. In other words, all who respond to Him in a full commitment of faith die with him there. They are no longer ‘under the Law’. Indeed they no longer live their own lives at all, rather they lives responsive to, and controlled by, the Spirit of God. Furthermore the world too is put to death as far as they are concerned, for it no longer counts for anything. They want nothing more to do with it than they have to. Their eyes are totally on Christ, and it is only His will that now matters. And why is this? It is because they are now new creatures, belonging to a new creation. They are born from above.
And with that Paul gives his final salutation, describing Christians as God’s new chosen people, ‘the Israel of God’ (6.16), and saying goodbye.
IS THERE SOMETHING IN THE BIBLE THAT PUZZLES YOU?
If so please EMail us with your question and we will do our best to give you a satisfactory answer.EMailus.
FREE Scholarly verse by verse commentaries on the Bible.
GENESIS ---EXODUS--- LEVITICUS 1.1-7.38 --- 8.1-11.47 --- 12.1-16.34--- 17.1-27.34--- NUMBERS 1-10--- 11-19--- 20-36--- DEUTERONOMY 1.1-4.44 --- 4.45-11.32 --- 12.1-29.1--- 29.2-34.12 --- THE BOOK OF JOSHUA --- THE BOOK OF JUDGES --- PSALMS 1-17--- ECCLESIASTES --- ISAIAH 1-5 --- 6-12 --- 13-23 --- 24-27 --- 28-35 --- 36-39 --- 40-48 --- 49-55--- 56-66--- EZEKIEL --- DANIEL 1-7 ---DANIEL 8-12 ---
NAHUM--- HABAKKUK---ZEPHANIAH ---ZECHARIAH --- THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW ---THE GOSPEL OF MARK--- THE GOSPEL OF LUKE --- THE GOSPEL OF JOHN --- THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES --- 1 CORINTHIANS 1-7 --- 8-16 --- 2 CORINTHIANS 1-7 --- 8-13 -- -GALATIANS --- EPHESIANS --- COLOSSIANS --- 1 THESSALONIANS --- 2 THESSALONIANS --- 1 TIMOTHY --- 2 TIMOTHY --- TITUS --- HEBREWS 1-6 --- 7-10 --- 11-13 --- JAMES --- JOHN'S LETTERS --- REVELATION
--- THE GOSPELS >
Get your own Free Home PagePaul,Letter,Epistle,Galatians,Messiah,Christ,New,Testament,
Old,Testament,Genesis,Revelation,Bible,Helps,articles,
Bible,word,search,question,answer,faith,facts,repent,
Holy,Spirit,Creation,use,,old,new,testament,love,
forgiveness,Jesus,teaching