Man is only the receiver; and truly, as we know, "it is more blessed to give than to receive." The allusion is to beasts of prey falling upon and devouring one another: for wolves or dogs to worry sheep is not strange; but for sheep to distress one another is unnatural. That's where I come in touch with God. For ye are all the children of God." The whole concept is: how do I establish a righteous standing before God? This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. But responsibility is always according to the relation in which one stands, and the measure of knowledge which each possesses, or ought to possess. From the nature of the subject, as well as from the language employed, we may conjecture that the Galatians had disputes among themselves; for they differed about doctrine. The sense is, if you contend with each other; and the reference is, probably, to the strifes which would arise between the two parties in the churches - the Jewish and the Gentile converts. You do not want to become the children of Abraham in that sense, which would be the revival of the flesh. And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation. "For I am as ye are: ye have not injured me at all." And so Paul is standing against this teaching in his letter to the Galatians, and in chapter five, he said. In verse 17 it is written, "In blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore." Christianity brings everything to a climax; it also settles all questions. Not striving. That they should all strive against sin; and happy would it be for the church if Christians would let all their quarrels be swallowed up of this, even a quarrel against sin--if, instead of biting and devouring one another on account of their different opinions, they would all set themselves against sin in themselves and the places where they live. The creature intervenes here, and the consequence soon appears. of And he justifies this strength of warning: "For do I now persuade men or God? A final appeal to walk in the liberty of Jesus. One of the lawyers one day challenged Jesus as to the greatest commandment. informs all of Pauls exhortations vis--vis the Galatians libertine tendencies . But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood: neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus.". It will stand. So much the more, then, we find the working of spiritual feeling as expressed by him in the second epistle, where he speaks of God lifting up those that were cast down, as He had delivered himself from the imminent danger to which he had been exposed even as to life. comfort be destroyed, which is oftentimes done this way, though a He does not charge them with anything of an openly gross or immoral nature; but what a proof that the truth of God, that the grace of Christ, is exclusive of everything but itself! His Father had made a revelation to Peter. The most difficult thing in Christendom is for people to know what it is to be Christians, and to take this place by the faith of Christ themselves. It needs to be boistered by God's spirit. Jesus has set us free - free from the slavery of sin, free from slavery to the law. For what the law is actually saying to you is that you should love God supremely and love your neighbor as yourself. and devour one another -- As wild beasts do. If I am a Christian, I acquire a new kind of responsibility. Villages had an official who was called the superintendent of the village's eirene ( G1515) , the keeper of the public peace. Love is the sum of the whole law; as love to God comprises the duties of the first table, so love to our neighbour those of the second. Even though keeping God's law cannot earn us salvation, God clearly expects us to keep His law after we've been forgiven (through repentance and baptism) for breaking it. The apostle specifies the works of the flesh, which must be watched against and mortified, and the fruits of the Spirit, which must be cherished and brought forth (Galatians 5:19; Galatians 5:19, c.) and by specifying particulars he further illustrates what he is here upon. "Here, I'll show it to you in this book." I call your attention particularly to this, brethren, that an act apparently so simple as Peter's ceasing to eat with the Gentiles had such a solemn character in the eye of the apostle Paul, that he considered it a question of the truth of the gospel. Then we come to the closing chapter (Galatians 6:1-18); and here we find the Spirit of God calling for tenderness in dealing with those who are overtaken in a fault. Invariably, where man seeks to bring in a successional apostleship, the twelve become the great model. But at the same time it is plain that the apostle Paul here starts with the instructive fact, that the very thing for which some Judaizers then blamed him was the distinctive glory of that to which the Lord had called him. but he that troubleth you shall bear his judgment, whosoever he be. All right, I'm still one of His sheep, you know. He heartily avows what they counted a defect; and not Only so, but with the greatest solemnity assures them that he had not seen the apostles, save only Peter, and James the brother of the Lord, and these but for a short space. He said, "You've got to be born again." Forgive us for the times we abuse this freedom, living more by the flesh than by the Spirit. To be under law was fatal to Jerusalem. Gentleness; praotes ( G4236) is the most untranslatable of words. Had they been occupied with Christ, they would have really loved one another, and in other respects too fulfilled the law, without thinking about themselves or it. Liberty from the law and from the bondage of the law, because that cannot make you righteous. He is a new creature in Christ. occasioned great contentions, and threatened them with divisions, An undue regard to the approbation and applause of men is one great ground of the unhappy strifes and contentions that exist among Christians. But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another. (vss. There was no question of revealing His Son in them then. It is no question now of being subject to the Jews, who shall never possess the gate of their enemies, but be peeled and scattered and few, while the gospel is going forth. Selfishness in the end does not exalt a man; it destroys him. "Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." Thus it wrought among the Galatians. Soon all will believe in Christ, and all Israel be saved. and circumcision, and the necessity thereof to justification and For ye have heard of my conversation in times past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it: and profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers. "Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.". . Paul has in mind the issue of circumcision. It describes what in regency England would have been called a rout. Do your souls go along with Paul's decision? Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage ( Galatians 5:1 ). Enmity; the idea is that of the man who is characteristically hostile to his fellow men; it is the precise opposite of the Christian virtue of love for the brethren and for all men. But his heart was too agitated not to betake himself at once to the point of their danger. Heathenism! Self-seeking; this word has a very illuminating history. One of the encouragements, as we know, which God furnished to Abraham was, that he should have a seed like the sand of the sea, and like the stars of the sky. This is the very evil which the Spirit of God so earnestly and energetically denounces here by the apostle Paul. And let's go on. "The things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not. Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary 5:13-15 The gospel is a doctrine according to godliness, 1Ti 6:3, and is so far from giving the least countenance to sin, that it lays us under the strongest obligation to avoid and subdue it. He strikes accordingly at the root of all successional or derived authority. Those who belong to Jesus Christ have crucified their own unregenerate selves ;along with all their passions and their desires. I have confidence in you through the Lord, that ye will be none otherwise minded ( Galatians 5:10 ): Now Paul is now saying, "Oh, who did hinder you, you know, and this teach and all. Thus, if we walk in the Spirit, we shall not fulfil the desires of the flesh. Paul reminded Christians: " You must love your neighbour as yourself." But God took care that the call of Paul should be delayed till the whole order of the Jewish apostleship should be complete. He tells them (Galatians 5:13; Galatians 5:13) that they had been called unto liberty, and he would have them to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ had made them free; but yet he would have them be very careful that they did not use this liberty as an occasion to the flesh--that they did not thence take occasion to indulge themselves in any corrupt affections and practices, and particularly such as might create distance and disaffection, and be the ground of quarrels and contentions among them: but, on the contrary, he would have them by love to serve one another, to maintain that mutual love and affection which, notwithstanding any minor differences there might be among them, would dispose them to all those offices of respect and kindness to each other which the Christian religion obliged them to. Those who lived in Jerusalem were too prone to preserve the clothes and the cradle which had their place and use at first, but had no claim to be kept up among the Gentiles. In Paul's case the Holy Ghost could go a step farther, and that step He seems to me to take. To be consumed, while the tendency of brotherly love is to produce mutual protection and kindness. There is no depreciating of any soul, but the plain statement of the positive truth, which after all is the best and the humblest way, that most of all magnifies God, and edifies His children. Verse 15. Galatians 5 - Standing Fast In the Liberty of Jesus A. Salem Media Group. Having begun in the spirit, you did all right in the beginning, but. Now, if you're walking in love, supreme love for God and supreme love for your fellow man, then there is no law. This is what the law commands, but those who want to put themselves under the law cannot do it. They had been lately brought by the grace of God into Christianity, where they found Jewish brethren, now made one, as it is said, in Christ. As far as this temper prevails among Christians, they will be ready to slight and despise those whom they look upon as inferior to them, and to be put out of humour if they are denied that respect which they think is their due from them, and they will also be apt to envy those by whom their reputation is in any danger of being lessened: and thus a foundation is laid for those quarrels and contentions which, as they are inconsistent with that love which Christians ought to maintain towards each other, so they are greatly prejudicial to the honour and interest of religion itself. beasts of prey falling upon and devouring one another: for wolves Not that they have actually broken down and failed; but so incapable is man of standing before God on the principle of doing the law, that it is all over with him the moment he pretends to it. And this is a universal principle. take heed that ye be not consumed one of another: The Galatians are warned earnestly and intently to view their predicament and to decide not to destroy each other spiritually. Christ has set us free! As if he had said, "You must expect a struggle between flesh and spirit as long as you are in the world, that the flesh will be lusting against the spirit as well as the spirit against the flesh; but if, in the prevailing bent and tenour of your lives, you be led by the Spirit,--if you act under the guidance and government of the Holy Spirit and of that spiritual nature and disposition he has wrought in you,--if you make the word of God your rule and the grace of God your principle,--it will hence appear that you are not under the law, not under the condemning, though you are still under the commanding, power of it; for there is now no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit; and as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God," Romans 8:1-14. Plutarch says that it has a far wider place than justice. This must be indeed confusion; as it is, there is none. But the Jerusalem which is above is free and she is our mother. But its most suggestive use is that katharos ( G2513) is used of that ceremonial cleanness which entitles a man to approach his gods. Such is the reasoning in which the apostle uses this very remarkable prophecy. beware lest you be consumed -- Destroyed. with reproachful words, biting sarcasms, scandalous invectives, It is not a question of law at all. To depart from this was fatal. Certainly not God, nor His plain and precious word. In the case of the twelve, we do find an apostle chosen to supply the gap of Judas chosen, I admit, of God, though after a Jewish sort, as Chrysostom justly remarks, for the Holy Ghost was not yet given. And then he, indignant at such a thought, makes his most solemn appeals. It is liberty and not law that the Christian stands in. Those that are of faith, not those who pretend to the law and do it not, are blessed with their father. The reason is, that he has not yet come to own by faith that he has no strength any more than righteousness, and that Christ is all and in all. He refuses all cover for different thoughts. This is best seen by turning to Genesis 22:1-24, where both facts are found in the same context. And no wonder. , . "Now to Abraham were the promises spoken, and to his seed. Writing was a somewhat laborious task in those days, and it was a kind of profession to be a writer or scribe, before printing, of course, was known. Christian churches cannot be ruined but by their own hands; but if Christians, who should be helps to one another and a joy one to another, be as brute beasts, biting and devouring each other, what can be expected but that the God of love should deny his grace to them, and the Spirit of love should depart from them, and that the evil spirit, who seeks the destruction of them all, should prevail? But the moment you bring in the law, you have two parties; and, strange to say, instead of the greater party being God, it becomes man, whose responsibility is to God. The apostle does not say, if grievous wolves should enter in among you and not spare the flock; but suggests if they themselves should act the part of wolves to one another; having reference to their controversies about the law and circumcision, and the necessity thereof to justification and salvation; which were managed with great heat and bitterness, occasioned great contentions, and threatened them with divisions, parties, and factions; and were attended with envy and malice, with reproachful words, biting sarcasms, scandalous invectives, and injurious actions, which must be of bad consequence: hence he adds. The readers ( Galatians 1:2b ) c. The greeting ( Galatians 1:3-5 ) i. The organic life of the body will be destroyed by its own members. But what does the scripture say? 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