Galatians
2
v. 1 – “Then fourteen years after I went up
again to
Barnabas,
and took Titus with me also.”
It was fourteen years from the date of his conversion — not from the date of his
former
visit to
starting-point
of his career. It was evidently Paul’s
third visit to
that
recorded in Acts 15, at the council of
visit — Barnabas and Titus. There was something significant in this
companionship. Barnabas, a pure Jew, was the companion of the apostle in
preaching freedom from the Law. He was one of the most beautiful characters in
New Testament times, especially distinguished by the generosity of his disposition.
Titus was a Gentile Christian, not even circumcised, and may have been sent to the
council as the representative of Gentile Christians. The apostle took him there as an
illustration of Christian liberty, for the council would be obliged to decide
whether Titus was to be circumcised or not. Thus the apostle manifested
the consistency of his doctrine and his practice. This is the first mention of
Titus in Scripture; for the Galatian Epistle preceded the Second to the
Corinthians,
in which his name occurs in terms of high commendation.
The interval between his visits to
an apostle. The Acts of the Apostles supply the history of his labors
during
this time (Acts 11:26; 13:1-52; 14:28).
v. 2 - Paul came to
sent by the Church at
guidance at a
most critical epoch in Christian history.
“and communicated unto them that gospel
which I preach among the Gentiles,
but privately to them which were of
reputation, lest by any means I should run,
or had run, in vain.
A. His public exposition
the
apostles or elders exclusively; for he expounded the gospel “privately”
to
the apostles.
of it as
that which “I preach,” not which “I preached.” The conference,
therefore,
made no change upon it.
B. His private exposition.
James, and
John are called in v.9.
mutual
understanding in the interests of peace and the gospel. A private
conversation
admits of greater freedom and discursiveness in dealing with
difficult
or contested points. He was anxious for the success of the gospel,
“lest he should run in vain,” for a
misunderstanding at that critical
moment
might involve the loss of his past and future labors, by
imperiling
the free mode of his offering the gospel to the Gentiles. Grave
differences
of judgment among ministers of the gospel compromise alike its
authority
and its practical effect.
communicated,
as he expressly says, the same gospel on both occasions.
Openly he
expounded it to the Christians at
doctrinal
aspects more deeply in private.
vs. 3-5 – “But neither Titus, who was with
me, being a Greek, was compelled
to
be circumcised: And that because of
false brethren unawares brought
in,
who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ
Jesus,
that they might bring us into bondage:
To whom we gave place
by
subjection, no, not for an hour; that the truth of the gospel might
continue
with you.
Titus
was not compelled to be circumcised, Greek though he was. The
language
implies that efforts had been made to this end, not by the apostles, however, but
by “the false brethren.” But these efforts were defeated by the council. Had the
council been of the opinion of the false brethren, Titus would have been compelled
to be
circumcised. They will not allow the truth of the gospel
to be sacrificed
by men who say that circumcision is necessary to
salvation????
The false brethren would have taken advantage of the concession
to bring the
Gentiles into bondage to legal ceremonies. Who were
the false brethren? They
were persons at
only by profession, and therefore more dangerous than open
enemies. “Pharisees
at heart, these spies and traitors assume the name and garb
of believers.” These were
Christians only in profession.
They were “brought in insidiously” - False teachers
always enter the Church in
disguise (2 Peter 2:1). “These hell-scouts are skulking in every corner” (Trapp).
The policy of such persons has nothing of Christian
simplicity in it.
Their design was “To spy out our liberty which we have in
Christ.” Their
work was” inspection for a sinister purpose.” An impure
intention was at
the bottom of the movement. The liberty they threatened to
destroy was
not spiritual liberty in general, but that which was
compromised by the
demand of subjection to the ceremonial law. The liberty of
believers was a
present possession enjoyed by virtue of their union with
Christ.
The apostle Paul was firm - “To whom we gave
place by subjection, no, not
for an hour.” If he had done it once, Christian liberty would have been sacrificed.
The characteristic truth of the gospel — justification by faith without the deeds
of the Law — was now safe. It was
to “remain steadfast” with the Gentiles. Thus
truth and freedom were henceforth
to go together.
vs, 6-9 – “But of these who seemed to be
somewhat, (whatsoever they were,
it maketh no matter to me: God accepteth no
man’s person:) for they who
seemed to be somewhat in conference added
nothing to me: But contrariwise,
when they saw that the gospel of the
uncircumcision was committed unto me,
as the gospel of the circumcision was unto Peter;
(For he that wrought
effectually in Peter to the apostleship of
the circumcision, the same was mighty
in me toward the Gentiles:) And when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed
to be pillars, perceived the grace that was
given unto me, they gave to me and
Barnabas the right hands of fellowship;
that we should go unto the heathen,
and they unto the circumcision.
The apostle does not mean to disparage either the
reputation or the authority of the
other apostles. It was not his interest to do so, because
it was important for him to
show that he was even acknowledged by them. But the false
brethren had unduly
exalted the authority of the “pillar apostles,” so as to
establish a sort of papacy in
the Church. He was,
therefore, led to show that, in matters of faith, the authority
of individuals has no weight; that we are bound to lean upon God, not upon men,
even though they be persons of position and respectability.
“God accepteth no
man’s person.” He may employ whom He pleases to carry out His work, and
can
qualify them fully for the purpose. The Galatians
were “respecters of persons,”
inasmuch as they depreciated the apostle, because the
twelve were apostles before
him and enjoyed the peculiar privilege of personal
intercourse with the Lord on
earth. The apostle declares, in fact, that God did not
prefer James, or Cephas, or
John to him, much less
employ them to appoint him to apostolic office.
“They who seemed to be somewhat added
nothing to me.” At the conference
He got nothing from them; they added nothing to his
knowledge of the gospel:
he received no new instructions; they were perfectly
independent one of another.
“But
contrariwise, when they saw that I was entrusted with the gospel of the
uncircumcision,
as the gospel of the circumcision was to Peter… they gave to
me and Barnabas
the right hands of fellowship.”
The gospel is a
solemn trust – to Paul – to Peter- (or you or me – CY – 2009)
The gospel is one, though it may be addressed to different
circles of hearers. It is
not implied in the apostle’s language that there were two
separate gospels — one
for the Jews, and another for the Gentiles; for both Peter
and Paul, as we know by
their discourses
and their Epistles, were in complete harmony as to the way
of a sinner’s
salvation.
The gospel was committed to Paul, not by Peter or any other
apostle,
but by God Himself “For He that wrought effectually for
Peter
toward the
apostleship of the circumcision, the same wrought for me
toward the
Gentiles.”
“But when
James, Cephas, and John, who have the reputation of being pillars,
became aware of
the grace that was given to me, they gave to me and Barnabas
the right hands
of fellowship, that we should go to the heathen and they to the
circumcision.” They recognized him as a fellow-laborer, “for the grace
given to him,” both in respect to his success and his calling by grace to
the
apostleship.
Mark the wisdom of a division of labour. Paul was, no doubt,
mainly concerned
with the Gentiles, but usually preached first to the Jews
in all places that he visited.
Peter and John resided in their later years among the
Gentiles. But it was an
arrangement, notwithstanding, that was well calculated to
promote the growth of
Christianity at a
time of great friction between the Jewish and Gentile elements
in the Christian
Church.
Peter could not
have been universal bishop or pope, if he was the apostle
of the
circumcision; for he practically conceded to Paul the apostolate of
the largest part
of the world — the Gentile nations.
Peter was not
head of the Church, for he received exactly the same
commission as
Paul. Even James is mentioned here before Peter, evidently
because of his
permanent connection with the great center of Jewish
Christianity. It
was very important for Paul to be able to quote James on
his side.
The gospel does
not stand upon the authority of one apostle, any more
than of twelve. IT IS THE GOSPEL OF GOD!
The conduct of the
apostles in this whole transaction is worthy of
general imitation.
They first examined Paul’s doctrine and listened with
candor to his
explanations, and then gave up their particular opinions
when they became
convinced of his Divine commission.
v. 10 – “Only they would that we should
remember the poor; the same
which I also was forward to do.”
While they gave us the right hand of fellowship that we
should go to the Gentiles,
there was an agreement that we should remember the poor of
the circumcision.
Amidst controversy, there ought to be no division with
regard to the poor.
The dictates of humanity, the demands of duty, the claims
of interest, alike enforce
a due consideration of the poor, but especially of those
who belong to the
household of faith.
A common object of charity ought to have a uniting effect on people
separated by other interests or opinions.
How Paul fulfilled the engagement is abundantly manifest (1
Corinthians 16:1-2;
II Corinthians 8; Romans 15:26).
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vs. 11-14 – Paul’s rebuke of Peter at
11 “Because when Peter was come to
because he was to be blamed” - In the narrative which the apostle next proceeds
to give, several points, we may suppose, were definitely meant by him to be intimated
to his readers. Thus to those Gentile Galatians who were wavering in their attachment
to himself and to the gospel which he had preached to them, he shows his claim to
their firm affectionate adherence, on the ground of the steadfastness with which,
as before at
their rights and their equal standing with Jewish believers, when these were
assailed by "certain come from James." (v. 12) In contrast with his own
unflinching championship of their cause, were here seen vacillation and
inconsistency on the part of "Cephas;" were, then, any justified in exalting
those "pillars, James and Cephas," as certain were disposed to do, for the
sake of disparaging him? This
experience at
with suspicion Jewish or Philo-Judaic brethren, who were setting themselves to
tamper with the truth of the gospel. Crooked conduct was sure to accompany
such darkening of the truth, as on that occasion was most palpably evinced in
the case of even Barnabas, and was in open encounter before the whole Church
exposed and rebuked. And, especially, there was the grand principle that the
Law of Moses was for the Christian believer annihilated through the crucifixion
of Christ; which principle he had then held aloft in the view of the Church, and
here takes occasion to enlarge upon, because it was so directly relevant and helpful
in respect to the trouble now springing up in
hote de althen
Kaephas eis Antiocheian - but when Cephas came to
reading Κηφᾶς for Πέτρος is generally accepted. The time at which this incident
took place is in a measure determined, on the one side, by its being to all appearance
after the visit to
by the reference to Barnabas in v. 13; that is, we are naturally led to assign it to that
time of Paul's, and Barnabas's
united labors at
Acts 15:35. It can hardly have occurred subsequently to the rupture between them
which St. Luke immediately after describes. The manner in which St. Peter's coming
to
have been at all an extraordinary circumstance. It is open to us, and indeed obvious,
to conjecture that the visit was made in the course of one of those journeys of St. Peter
"throughout all parts," of which another, taking place fourteen years or more
previously, is mentioned in Acts 9:33. As the "apostle of the circumcision," he was,
we may reasonably suppose, in the habit of traversing, in company often with his
wife (I Corinthians 9:5), the
whole of those districts of
inhabited by Jews, and extending
as far as
supervision over the Jewish converts. Quite supposably, this was not his first visit
to this city. The lengthened continuance of his stay, which may be inferred from
v. 12, is thus explained. It may be assumed that it was this exercise of apostolic
superintendence that gave rise to the tradition, which gained early acceptance in the
Church (Eusebius, ' Hist. Eccl.,' 3:36), that Peter was the first Bishop of Antioch.
His presence there now, while
twelve or fourteen years later, in
the simultaneous presence of St. Peter and
at
as apostle of the circumcision. I withstood him to the face (κατὰ πρόσωπον
αὐτῷ
ἀντέστην - kata prosopon auto antestaen - according to face to him I withstoood).
I seized an opportunity at a meeting of the brethren (v. 14) of publicly confronting
him as an adversary. It seems
almost suggested that their spheres of work at
which was a very large city, were so far not identical that they were not commonly
to be seen together. The verb ἀντέστην, "set myself to oppose him," expressing
determined oppugnancy (opposition, hostility, resistance - II Timothy 3:8;
James 4:7; I Peter 5:9), strikes us
the more, as coming so soon after the "gave
us
the right hands of fellowship" of v. 7. His adopting of this mode of recalling his
straying brother instead of dealing with him in a more private manner, is indicated
with an evidently intended pointedness. His course of proceeding was both justified
and required by the public nature of St. Peter's offence, and by the necessity of
promptly exposing and beating back the aggressions which Israelitish bigotry was
always so ready to make upon the perfectly equal footing possessed by all believers,
by virtue simply of their relation
to Christ. Because he was to be blamed (ὅτι
κατεγνωσμένος ἦν) - that self censured he was; because he stood condemned).
The perfect passive verb is commonly felt to point, not so much to the censures
of bystanders, as to the glaring wrongness of his conduct viewed in itself (compare
John 3:18; Romans 14:23). The rendering to be blamed, correct so far as it reaches,
is inadequate in expressing the
sense which
offence. It is interesting to note the clear reference to this verse made in the second
century by the Ebionite author of the ' Clementine Homilies,' who (Bishop Lightfoot
observes, 'Galatians,' p. 61),
writing in a spirit of bitter hostility to
covertly attacked in the person of Simon Magus, represents St. Peter as addressing
Simon thus: "Thou hast confronted and withstood me (ἐναντίος ἀνθέστηκάς
μοι -
enantios anthestaekas moi). If thou hadst not been an adversary, thou wouldest not
have calumniated and reviled my
preaching If thou callest me condemned
(κατεγνωσμένον - kategnosmenon), thou accusest God who revealed Christ to me"
('Hom.,' 17:19). Not only is this a testimony to the authenticity of the Epistle; it
betokens also the sore feeling
which this narrative of
of its diction left behind in the
minds of a certain section of Jewish Christians.
There was no controversy between the two apostles; there was no difference of
opinion; it was only a case of indecision in acting up to one’s unchanged
convictions. Peter was self-condemned, for his conduct bore the broad mark
of inconsistency.
This course of proceeding was both justified and required by
the public
nature of St. Peter’s offence, and by the necessity of
promptly exposing and
beating back the aggressions which Israelitish bigotry was always so ready
to make upon the perfectly equal footing possessed by all believers,
by
virtue simply of
their relation to Christ.
The rebuke was public and meekly and piously
received. There is no
record of Peter’s answer but there was no
sharp contention between the
apostles.
Years later Peter speaks of his rebuker as “our beloved brother
Paul” (II Peter 3:15) It was not a
case of error of doctrine, but
inconsistency of conduct.
The scene of this interview between Peter and Paul was at
city on the Orontes, in
chiefly inhabited by Greeks, liberalized in thought by
considerable culture.
It was the second capital of Christianity,
a prominent place
as the center of Gentile Christian life.
What occurred
here would have wide results.
The time that it occurred was probably during the sojourn of Paul and Barnabas
at
the relation between Jewish and Gentile Christians (Acts
15:30-40).
Peter’s conduct was, therefore, all the more singular and
indefensible,
because it was so necessary to secure Christian liberty on
the basis of the
decrees. We cannot forget that, long before, the vision
from heaven
showed him the worthlessness of Jewish traditions (Acts
10).
THE GRACE OF GOD
IS THE TRUE SOURCE OF SALVATION
If any attempt were made to put works in the place of
faith, or to mix
works with faith as a ground of justification, or to
establish a system under
which ceremonialism was made essential to salvation, the
grace of God
were effectively frustrated.
“If righteousness
come by the Law, then Christ died without cause.”
The righteousness
must therefore be reached in another way.
It comes “by
faith,” not “by the Law” -
(Philippians 3:9).
v. 11 - IT IS
RIGHT TO REBUKE DANGEROUS FAULTS. St.
Peter was
the senior apostle, and it might seem presumptuous to
oppose him. He was
the foremost apostle, and opposition might endanger the
peace of the
Church. Many would let
deference to years and rank and fear of painful
discord prevent them from acting as
personal
considerations. There are interests of the Church that may be
ruined by a slavish fear of disturbing peace. The peace
thus secured is a
false peace. There are times
when controversy in the Church is a duty of
paramount
importance. It may be the only security against fatal error.
Yet, though then the least of evils, it is still an evil,
and should not be
undertaken
without grave reason.
NO PRIVATE
FRIENDSHIP CAN BE PLEADED AS AN EXCUSE
FOR LETTING A
PUBLIC EVIL GO UNCHECKED!
Few have such courage, and many only betake themselves to
backbiting.
If we have anything against a man, the right thing is to
tell it him to his face.
This is the only honorable course. It is due to him in
fairness. It prevents
misunderstanding,
and often saves a long and widespread quarrel.
12 “For before that certain came from James, he did eat with
the
Gentiles: but
when they were come, he withdrew and separated
himself, fearing
them which were of the circumcision.
For before that
certain came from James (Πρὸ τοῦ γὰρ ἐλθεῖν τινας ἀπὸ Ἰακώβου
-
Pro tou gar elthein tinas apo Iakobou). Since the apostle writes “from James,” and
not “from Judaea” (as Acts 15:1) or “from
suggests itself that these men had a mission from St.
James. Alford’s view
appears probable, that St. James, while holding that the Gentile
converts
were not to have the observance of the Law forced upon
them, did
nevertheless consider that the Jewish believers were still
bound to keep it.
Possibly he had sent them to
the city of their obligations in this respect. This would
be in no way
inconsistent with Acts 15:19, where the emphatic words, “them which
from the Gentiles
turn to God”, tacitly imply that the
obligations of Jewish
believers continued the same as before (compare Acts 21:18-25).
He did
eat with the
Gentiles (μετὰ τῶν ἐθνῶν συνήσθιεν
– meta ton ethnon sunaesthien).
The Greek expression is no doubt
equivalent to toi~v e]qnesi sunh>sqien (compare
Acts 11:3; see <401703>Matthew 17:3
compared with <410904>Mark 9:4). There
appears to be no ground for restricting this “caring with”
them to uniting
with them at the agape or at the Lord’s Supper. The words
in <441103>Acts
11:3, spoken some ten years before this, “Thou wentest in (Εἰσῆλθες – eisaelthes –
you entered) to men still in their uncircumcision, and didst eat with
them,” pointed
to a social participation of food rather than to one merely
religious; though, it
must be confessed, these two things were not as yet so
sharply
distinguished from each other as it was afterwards found necessary
that
they should be (I Corinthians 11:34). While thus eating
with Gentiles,
St. Peter may well have fortified his mind with the
thought, that the Lord
Jesus had been wont to hold, not merely teaching converse,
but social
intercourse also, with persons whom “the scribes and the
Pharisees”
regarded as themselves unclean and by contact polluting
(Luke 5:30;
15:2; 19:7). Christ, it is true, both Himself observed the
Law and taught His
disciples to observe it. He wore “the border” (κρασπέδου
-
kraspedou) attached
to His garment; but He did not wear the “border”
unnecessarily “enlarged.” On
the contrary, the rabbinical exaggerations of legal
prescriptions, inconsistent
with charity or with reason, he was wont emphatically to
repudiate
(Matthew ch. 23; Mark 7:1-13). But when they were come, he
withdrew and
separated himself (ὅτε δὲ ἦλθον
, ὑπέστελλεν
καὶ
ἀφώριζεν
ἑαυτόν
–
hote de aelthon, huperstellen kai aphorizen heauton - but when they came, he
began
to shrink back and
separate himself from them. ἑαυτόν is governed by ὑπέστελλεν
as well as by ὑπέστελλεν καὶ ἀφώριζεν ἑαυτόν
being equivalent to ὑπεστειλάμην
–
hupesteilamaen – I shrunk; I shunned -, the use of which middle voice is illustrated
by Acts 20:27. The Gentile converts could not but
perceive that his manner with
them was less openly cordial than heretofore. He was
no longer so ready to go to
their houses. In public, he shrank from being seen
with them on terms of frank and
equal companionship. Fearing
them which were of the circumcision
(φοβούμενος τοὺς ἐκ περιτομῆς
– phoboumenos tous ek peritomaes –
fearing the ones
of circumcision; fearing the brethren drawn from the
circumcision). If the apostle had written φοβ. τὴν περιτομῆν the expression
would have taken in the not-believing Jews as well; whereas
the preposition
ἐκ, like ἀπὸ in Acts
15:19, indicates the branch of mankind from which the
converts had come (Acts 10:45; 11:2; Colossians 4:11; Titus
1:10).
Those who came from James were not false brethren, nor even
necessarily Judaic
zealots, but certain persons whom he sent to
ceremonies on the Gentiles, but to reassure Jewish
Christians as to their right
to observe the divinely appointed usages of their fathers,
which the decrees
of the
was perfectly legitimate. Yet it is probable they pleaded
that there was no
warrant in the decision of the council for the freer
intercourse with Gentile
Christians which Peter had been practicing. The Jewish
Christians were still
to “keep the
customs,” and not to mix freely with the Gentiles (Acts 15:19).
When these persons came to
Gentiles as he had done before (Acts 10.), disregarding the
isolation
established by Levitical laws. They found him, in fact, living as a Gentile,
not as a Jew. Peter at once, through the influence of fear
— probably the
fear of losing his influence with the Jewish Christians —
began to withdraw
himself from the Gentiles, discontinuing his eating with
them, without
giving one word of explanation, and attaching himself to
the Jewish
Christians, as if the old distinctions of meats were still
in force and still
sacred in his eyes. It is
not said that the “certain from James” reproached
him with his laxity. It may have been, after all, an empty
fear on his part.
Yet it was a most extraordinary desertion of a cause on the
part of one of
the “pillars” of
the Church.
Its effects upon both Jews and Gentiles at
Jewish Christians in the hyprocrisy of Peter himself. “And the other Jews
dissembled
likewise with him” — even those very
persons who rejoiced at
the decision of the council (Acts 15:31). They were, in
reality, convinced that
Christ had made all those who believed in Him alike
righteous before God with
themselves, and alike meet to be admitted to Christian
fellowship. But now, by
practically siding with those who treated their Gentile
brethren as more or less
unclean, not fit for them to associate with, they disguised
their real sentiments
from “fear’ of forfeiting the confidence and good will of
those narrow-minded
Jews. The Jewish
converts might be tempted to believe that the Mosaic Law was
still in force. “Even
Barnabas was also carried away with
their dissimulation.”
(the last man from who such conduct could have been
expected) - “Even Barnabas”-
my fellow-labourer in missionary work,” a good man, full
of the Holy Ghost
and of faith,” who once fought by my side the battle of
Gentile liberty
(Acts 15.), who had
hazarded his life by my side (Acts 15:26) — “was
carried away with
their dissimulation” ((συναπήχθη αὐτῶν τῇ ὑποκρίσει
–
sunapiaechthae auton tae hupokrisei – was led away with the hypocrisy of
them) or, with the hypocrisy of
them. The position of αὐτῶν (“of
them”) is emphatic.
hypocrisy, Barnabas would never have fallen into so grievous
a mistake in
conduct himself by the force of such a formidable example
in opposition to
his own judgment and conviction. This incident probably led
to the
separation of Barnabas from Paul (Acts 15:39), for they
never after
appear together, though the affectionate relationship
between the friends
was never broken. But the effect upon the Gentile
Christians at
must have been something almost inconceivable. They would
no more
meet with their Jewish brethren at the Lord’s Table. They
were treated as
unclean. Peter’s conduct virtually condemned their liberty,
and was an
indirect attempt to bring them under the yoke of Jewish
usages. “Why,”
says Paul, “compellest
thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?” The
compulsion was exercised by the authority of his example;
for the Gentile
Christians could not know of his dissimulation, but would
rather think he
had changed his opinion upon the subject of the relation of
the Gentiles to
the gospel. The
“compulsion” applied by Peter was a moral compulsion; he was,
in effect, withholding from
them Christian fellowship, unless they Judaized.
Put into words, his conduct said this: “If you will Judaize, I will hold
fellowship with you; if you will not, you are not
qualified for full fraternal
recognition from me.” The withholding of Christian fraternization, short of
formal Church excommunication such as 1 Corinthians 5:3-5,
is a
powerful engine of Christian influence, the use of which is
distinctly
authorized and even commanded in Scripture (Romans 16:17;
1 Corinthians 5:11; 2 Thessalonians 3:6,14; 2 Timothy 3:5; Titus 3:10;
2 John 10), and may on occasion be employed by private
Christians
on their own responsibility. But its use, when not clearly justified, is not
only a cruelty to our brethren, but an outrage upon what
the truth of the gospel. It is at our peril that we
grieve, by a cold or
unbrotherly bearing towards him, one whom we have reason
to believe
God has
“received” (Romans 14:3; 15:7). If God in Christ
owns and
loves him as a
son, we ought to frankly own and love him as a brother.
The true character of Peter’s action. It was hypocrisy; for
he acted
against his better convictions, as if it were really wrong
to eat with
Gentiles. He concealed his real convictions. No voice had
been louder at
the council in protesting against the imposition of a yoke which “neither we
nor our fathers
were able to bear.” He certainly did not “walk uprightly”
here.
Its true explanation. This is to be found in Peter’s character, which was
one of unusual strength and of unusual weakness. He was
that apostle who
was the first to recognize and the first to draw back from
great principles.
He was the first to confess Christ and the first to deny
him; the first to own
Gentile liberty, the first to disown it. “The fear of man
has bothered man
down through history”
THIS EXPERIENCE
AT
WITH SUSPICION
ANY WHO TAMPER WITH THE TRUTH OF THE
GOSPEL!
13 “And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch
that
Barnabas also was
carried away with their dissimulation.”
And the other Jews
dissembled likewise with him (Καὶ συνυπεκρίθησαν αὐτῷ καὶ
οἱ λοιποὶ
Ἰουδαῖοι
– Kai sunupekrithaesan auto kai
hoi loipoi Ioudaioi – the
rest also
play hypocrite with him ; and
the rest of the Jews dissembled likewise with him.)
“The Jews,” i.e. the Christian Jews who were at
“from James” arrived there, and who, as Cephas had done till
their coming,
associated quite frankly with the Gentile
Christians. “Dissembled with him;”
they as well as he acted in a manner which did not
faithfully represent their
own inward man. They were, in reality, convinced
that Christ had made all
those who believed in Him alike righteous before God with themselves, and
alike meet to be admitted to Christian fellowship.
But now, by practically siding
with those who treated their Gentile brethren as
more or less unclean, not fit for
them to associate with, they disguised their real
sentiments from “fear’ of
forfeiting the confidence and good will of those
narrow-minded Jews. The
apostle brands their behavior as “dissimulation” or “hypocrisy,”
because
their motive was a deceitful one. They, though, no doubt,
in a degree
unconsciously, wished to make those newly arrived Jews
suppose that they
themselves did at bottom feel as they did as to a certain
measure of
uncleanness attaching even to the believing uncircumcision.
Insomuch
that Barnabas also (ὥστε καὶ Βαρνάβας
– hoste kai Barnabas - so that even
Barnabas). The last man from whom such
conduct could have been expected!
The expression shows how deeply the apostle felt Barnabas
to have hitherto
sympathized with himself with regard to Gentile believers;
as, indeed, the
history of the Acts proves, beginning with Acts 11:21-26 to
15:12, 25.
Further, the tone of this reference to him, written three
or four years after
the occasion spoken of, as well as of that which he makes
in his First
Epistle to the Corinthians (I Corinthians 9:6), written at
nearly the
same time as this Epistle to the Galatians, shows in the
most natural
manner the high and cordial esteem with which he then
regarded him,
notwithstanding the unhappy variance which sprang up
between them soon
after the circumstances here mentioned. Again, years later
on, he
commends Mark to the consideration of the Colossians
(Colossians 4:10),
as being a cousin of Barnabas’s, this giving him a high
title to their
respect. Obviously, the disapproval which
Barnabas, it seems, being one of them, helps to explain the
sharpness of his
subsequent difference with Barnabas concerning Mark. If
long after the occurrence, does not hesitate in calm
relation to brand the
conduct of the party with the stern censure of “hypocrisy,” it
is not likely
that he denounced it with less severity at the time in the
excitement of
actual conflict. How sharply and unsparingly he could on
occasion express
himself, his Epistles elsewhere very abundantly exemplify;
and such
vehement censure, so publicly expressed, and, which made it
so especially
cutting, so justly deserved, might well leave a sore
feeling in the mind of
the whole Judaic party, including even Barnabas, making the
latter but too
ready to take umbrage when the apostle insisted, with
apparently again so
much justice, upon the want which Mark had evinced of
thoroughgoing
sympathy with the work of evangelizing the Gentiles. This
last was, in fact,
a continuation of the conflict waged with Cephas probably
but a short
while before. On this point the Acts and the Epistles
sustain each other.
Was carried away
with their dissimulation (συναπήχθη αὐτῶν τῇ ὑποκρίσει
–
sunapiaechthae auton tae hupokrisei – was led away with the hypocrisy of them.)
The position of αὐτῶν (of them) is
emphatic.
been for their hypocrisy,
Barnabas would never have fallen into so grievous
a mistake in conduct himself. The
construction of the verb συναπάγομαι
(carried)
here is the same as in II Peter 3:17;
the dative which follows in each case being
governed by the συν in the
verb: “their dissimulation” was as it
were a
mighty torrent which swept even Barnabas away with it.
14 "But when I saw
that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of
the gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, If
thou, being a Jew, livest after
the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why
compellest thou the
Gentiles to live as do the Jews?" But when I saw that they walked not uprightly
(ἀλλ ὅτε
εϊδον ὅτι οὐκ ὀρθοποδοῦσι
- all hote eidon hoti ouk orthopodousai –
but when I saw that they were not walking rightly. The strongly adversative
ἀλλὰ (but) seems to imply: But
I set myself to stem the mischief; compare
"withstood"
(v. 11). The precise force of ὀρθοποδεῖν (correct in their
attitude)
is doubtful. The verb occurs
nowhere else except in later writers, who, it is thought,
borrowed it from this passage.
Etymologically, according to the ambiguous meaning of
ὀρθός – orthos - straight, either vertically or horizontally - it may be either
"walk up-
rightly," that is,
"sincerely," which, however, is an unusual application of the notion
of ὀρθότης orthotaes - ; or, "walk
straight onward," that is, "rightly."
As the apostle
is more concerned on behalf of the
truth which he was contending for than on
behalf of their sincerity or
consistency, the latter seems the preferable view.
Compare the force of the same
adjective in ὀρθοβατεῖν
ὀρθοπραγεῖν, ὀρθοδρομεῖν
ὀρθοτομεῖν – orthobatein orthopragein, orthodromein orthotomein - etc.
According to the
truth of the gospel (πρὸς τὴν
ἀλήθειαν τοῦ εὐαγγελίου – pros
taen alaetheian tou euaggeliou - with
an eye to the truth of the gospel; toward
the truth of the well-message. Πρός, "with an eye towards," may refer to the
truth of the gospel, either as a rule for one's direction (as in
II Corinthians 5:10,
Πρὸς
ἃ ἔπραξεν – Pros ha epraxen – toward which he practices) or as a thing to
be forwarded (compare Ὑπὲρ τῆς
ἀγηθείας - Huper taes agntheias – for
the
sake of the truth, (ibid. ch.13:8). The same ambiguity attaches to the use of the
preposition in Luke 12:47.
The "truth
of the gospel," as in v. 5, is the truth
which
the gospel embodies, with especial reference to the doctrine of justification by faith.
Peter and Barnabas were acting in
a manner which both was inconsistent with their
holding of that truth, and
contravened its advancement in the world. I said unto Peter
(εϊπον τῷ
Κηφᾶ - eipon to Kaepha [Receptus,
Πέτρῳ
- Petra
- Peter] I said to Cephas.
Here again we are to read Cephas. Before
them all (ἔμπροσθεν
πάντων – emprosthen
panton). At some general meeting of the Antiochian brethren. Both
the expression
and
[of the elders] reprove in the sight of all (ἐνώπιον πάντων
ἔλεγχε – enopion
panton
elegche – in view of all be you exposing.") If thou, being a Jew
(εἰ σύ Ἰουδαῖος ὑπάρχων
– ei su
Ioudaios huparchon – if you being inherently
a
Jew; if thou, originally a Jew,
as thou art. Ὑπάρχων, as distinguished from ὤν –
denotes this, together with a reference to subsequent
action starting from this
foregoing condition. Compare, for example, its use in Galatians 1:14; Philippians 2:6.
This distinctive shade of meaning is not always
discernible. Livest after the manner
of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews (ἐθνικῶς ζῇς
καὶ οὐκ Ἰουδαι'κῶς
– ethnikos
zaes
kai ouk Ioudaikos - livest as do the Gentiles and not as the
Jews. In what
sense, and to what extent, were these words true of St.
Peter? When, in the vision
at Joppa, unclean animals together with clean were offered
to him for food, he had
answered, "Not
so, Lord; for! have never eaten anything that is common and
unclean." This shows that, up to that time, the personal teachings
of Christ when
He was upon earth had not relieved his mind of the sense
that to use certain kinds
of meat was for him an unlawful thing. The heavenly
rejoinder, "What God hath
cleansed, make not thou common," appears to have been understood by him with
reference, at least in the first instance, to human beings (Acts 10:28). There seems
to be no doubt that the habit of mind generated by long
subjection to the Levitical
Law, producing repugnance to Gentiles as habitually using
unclean meats, he
brought with him when crossing Cornelius's threshold; and
that it is quite supposable
that, in "eating
with Gentiles" while his visit to Cornelius continued, he had had no
occasion to break through those barriers of restriction
which the Law of itself
imposed. But, on the other hand, it is also quite
supposable that the answer made
to him in the vision had, if not at once, at least later,
led him on to the further
conviction that God had now made all kinds of meat lawful
for a Christian's use,
although, when consorting, as in the main he had to do,
with Jews, he would still
bow to the Levitical restrictions. The Petrine Gospel of
St. Mark appears, according
to the now by many accepted reading of καθαρίζων
– katharizon – cleansing - in the
text of Mark 7:19, to have stated that Christ in teaching, "Whatsoever from without
goeth into the
man, it cannot defile him," had said
this, "making all meats clean."
There is no question that in
he wrote this Epistle, "nothing,"
to use his own words, "is unclean of
itself" (Romans
14:14; 1 Corinthians 10:23, 25);
and we have no reason to doubt that he had "been
in the Lord Jesus
persuaded" of this long before, - at
the very outset probably of
his ministry. It is, therefore, not unlikely that this same
persuasion of the real
indifferency of all kinds of meat had been by Christ
instilled into St. Peter's mind
as well. But if it were thus in respect to the use of
meats, it would be thus also in
reference to all other kinds of purely ceremonial restriction.
Very shortly before
these occurrences at
expressed the feeling which he experienced, how intolerably
galling were the
restraints imposed by the Levitical, not to say by the
rabbinical, ceremonialism;
"a
yoke," he said, "which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear "
(Acts 15:10)
- language which seems to betoken a mind which had
spiritually been set at liberty
from the yoke. On the whole, the inference naturally
suggested by
"Thou livest
as do the Gentiles, and not as do the Jews," commends itself as the
true one; namely this - that St. Peter, not on that
occasion only, but also on others,
when thrown into contact with masses of Gentile converts,
was wont to assert his
Christian liberty; that, like as
Jews he became as
a Jew, to them under the Law as under the Law, that he might
gain the Jews,
gain them that were under the Law, so also, on the other, to them
that were without
Law he became as without Law, that he might gain also them
(I Corinthians
9:20-21). Why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as
do the Jews?
(πῶς [Receptus, τί - ti - why] τὰ
ἔθνη ἀναγκάζεις
Ἰουδαί'ζειν – pos ta ethnae anagkaxeis
Ioudaizein – the nations you are compelling to be Judiazing). In place of τί,
(why),
recent editions read, πῶς
(how), which is a more emphatic interrogatory with a tinge
of
wonderment; as if it were, "How is it possible that?' (so
I Corinthians 15:12). The
verb "Judaize" occurs in the Septuagint of Esther 8:17, "And
many of the Gentiles
had themselves circumcised and Judaized (ἰουδάι'ζον) by reason of their fear of the
Jews." It is plainly equivalent to ἰουδαι'κῶς
ζῇν. Compellest, i.e. settest thyself to
compel. The "compulsion" applied by Cephas was a
moral compulsion; he was,
in effect, withholding front them Christian fellowship,
unless they Judaized. Put
into words, his conduct said this: "If you will
Judaize, I will hold fellowship with
you; if you will not, you are not qualified for full
fraternal recognition from me."
The withholding of Christian fraternization, short of
formal Church excommunication
such as I Corinthians
5:3-5, is a powerful engine of Christian influence, the use of
which is distinctly authorized and even commanded in Scripture (Romans 16:17;
I Corinthians
5:11; II Thessalonians
3:6, 14; II Timothy
3:5; Titus 3:10;
II John 1:10),
and may on occasion be employed by private Christians on
their own responsibility.
But its use, when not clearly justified, is not only a
cruelty to our brethren, but an
outrage upon what
we grieve, by a cold or unbrotherly bearing towards him,
one whom we have
reason to believe God has "received"
(Romans 14:3; 15:7). If God in Christ owns
and loves him as a son, we
ought to frankly own and love him as a brother.
15 "We
who are Jews by nature, and not
sinners of the Gentiles,"
We who are Jews by
nature
(ἡμεῖς
φύσει Ἰουδαῖοι
– haemeis
phusei Ioudaioi –
we being Jews by nature; or, we
are Jews by nature. In point of construction, it may
be
observed that, after εἰδότες – eidotes –
knowing; having perceived - in the next
verse,
recent editors concur in inserting δέ - de. With this correction of the text, we
may either
make this fifteenth verse a separate sentence, by supplying ἐσμέν – esmen –
we are Jews by nature;
and begin the next verse with the words, "but
yet, knowing that...
even we believed,"
etc.; or we may supply in this verse “being,"
and, conjoining it with
"knowing,"
take the two verses as forming one sentence; thus: "We being Jews... yet
knowing that... even we believed," etc. For the general sense, it is quite immaterial
which mode
of construing we adopt. The Revisers have preferred the latter. The
former
makes the passage run more smoothly; but this, in construing
writings,
is by no means a consideration of weight. "We,"
that is, "I Paul, and thou
Cephas," rather
than "I Paul, and thou Cephas, with
those who are acting with thee;"
for we
read before, "I said unto Cephas," not" unto Cephas and the rest
of the Jews."
"By nature;" because we were Jews by
birth. But the two expressions, "by nature"
and "by birth," are not convertible terms, as is
evident from ch. 4:8 and Romans 2:14;
the former
covers wider ground than the latter. The prerogatives attaching to the
natural
position of a born Jew were higher than those which appertained to a
circumcised
proselyte. This is why he adds, “by
nature." "Jews;" a term of
honorable
distinction, closely by its etymology connected in the mind of a Hebrew
with the notion of "praise"
(compare Genesis 9:8; Romans 2:29); a term,
therefore,
of theocratic vaunting (Romans 2:17). And not sinners of the Gentiles (καὶ οὐκ ἐξ
ἐθνῶν
ἁμαρτωλοί - kai ouk ex ethnon
hamartoloi);
The word "sinners" must be
here
taken, not in that purely moral acceptation in which all are "sinners," but in
that mixed
sense in which moral disapproval was largely tinged with the bigoted
disdain which the theocratic Israelite felt for "the uncircumcised;" the
Levitically
purist Jew
for them who, having no "Law "(ἄνομοι – animoi), wallowed in every
kind of ceremonial pollution, "unclean," "dogs" (compare Matthew 15:27;
Philippians 3:2; Acts 2:23). As a notion correlative to
that of "Jews," the word is
used by
our Lord Himself when He spoke of His being delivered into the hands
of "sinners"
(Matthew 26:45; compare ibid. ch.20:19). As
correlative to that of
persons
fit for the society of the righteous and Levitically holy, it is used by Christ
and the
evangelists in the phrase, "publicans and sinners," in
which it is nearly
equivalent
to "outcasts."
So the apostle uses it here. With an ironical mimesis
(imitation
to ridicule) of the tone of language which a self-righteous legalist loved
to employ,
he means in effect, "not come from among Gentiles, sinful outcasts."
May not
the apostle be imagined to have quite lately heard such phrases from the
]lips of
some of those Pharisee-minded Christians to whom Cephas was unhappily
now
truckling? For the right appreciation of the train of thought which the apostle
is now
pursuing, it is important to observe that both Cephas and Paul had reason
to regard
themselves as having been, before they were justified, sinners in another
sense of
the deepest dye.
been, and
that therefore in himself he still was, a chief of sinners (ἀμαρτωλούς
ῶν
πρῶτός
εἰμι ἐγώ - hamartolous on protos eimi ego – I Timothy 1:15); and surely
the
wickedness into which Cephas precipitated himself on the morning of his
Lord's
passion must have left ever after in his mind too a similar consciousness.
16 "Knowing that a
man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith
of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ,
that we might be justified
by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law:
for by the works of the
law shall no flesh be justified." Knowing (εἰδότες δέ - eidotes de - yet knowing.
(see note
on v. 15); That a
man is not justified by the works of the Law (ὅτι
οὐ
δικαιοῦται
ἄνθρωπος ἐξ ἔργων
νόμον – hoti ou dikaioutai anthropos exergon
nomon - not by works of Law; or, not
by works of the Law). That is, works
prescribed
by the Law of Moses. The verb δικαιοῦται is in the present tense,
because
the apostle is stating a general principle. The sentence, Οὐ
δικαιοῦται
ἐξ ἔργων νόμου, if regard be had to the exact
sense of the proposition ἐξ, may
be
supposed to mean "does not derive righteousness from works of the
Law;"
does not
get to be justly regarded as holy, pure from guilt approvable, in
consequence
of any things
done in obedience to God's positive Law. The precise
meaning
and bearing of the aphorism (a pithy observation that contains a general
truth), will appear presently. But by the faith of Jesus Christ (ἐὰν μὴ διὰ
πίστεως
Ἰησοῦ Ξριστοῦ - ean mae dia
pisteos Iaesou Christou - but only through faith of
Jesus
Christ. Ἐὰν μή, like εἰ μή, properly means "except," "save;"
but
have
betrayed his own position if he had allowed that "works of the
Law" could ever
have any part whatever in procuring justification. Ἐὰν
μὴ
must, therefore, be
understood
here in that partially exceptive sense remarked upon in the note on
ch. 1:7 as
frequently attaching to εἰ μή, that is, it means "but
only." The apostle
plainly
intends to make the categorical affirmation that no man
gains justification
save through faith in Christ; οὐ
δικαιοῦται ἄνθρωπος
εἰ μὴ διὰ πίστεως
Ἰησοῦ
Ξριστοῦ. The variation of the proposition,
διὰ in
this clause for ἐκ in the
preceding clause, we find again in Philippians 3:9, "Not
having a righteousness
which is mine own,
that which is (ἐκ νόμου
– ek
nomou - derived from the Law)
of the Law but
that which is (διὰ
πίστεως – dia pisteos - through faith of Christ.)"
That no
real difference is here intended in the sense is shown by the use immediately
after of ἐκ in the clause, ἵνα
δικαιωθωμεν ἐκ
πίστεως Ξριστοῦ - hina dikaiothomen ek
pisteos Christos – that we might be being justified
out of the faith of Christ. For the
apostle's
present argument it is immaterial whether we are said to gain righteousness
through faith or from it. As Bishop Lightfoot, however,
observes, "Faith is, strictly
speaking,
only the means, not the source of justification. The one
proposition (διὰ)
excludes
this latter notion, while the other (ἐκ) might imply it. Besides these, we meet
also with ἐπὶ πίστει - - epi pistei - by faith - Philippians 3:9), but
never διὰ
πίστιν,
'propter
fidem,' which would involve [or, might perhaps suggest] a doctrinal error.
Compare
the careful language in the Latin of our Article XI., per
fidem, non propter
opera.'"
The genitive Ἰησοῦ
Ξριστοῦ (Jesus Christ) after πίστεως (faith) is paralleled
by ἔξετε
πίστιν Θεοῦ - echete pistin
Theou – be ye having faith in God in Mark 11:22,
and by πίστεως αὐτοῦ
- pisteos
autou – faith of Him in Ephesians 3:12.
Possibly the
genitive
was preferred here to saying εἰς Ἰησοῦν
Ξριστόν – eis
Iaesoun Christon –
in
Jesus Christ, as
verbally presenting the sharper antithesis to ἔργων νόμου – ergon
nomou – of
works of law. Even we
(καὶ ἡμεῖς
– kai
haemeis – and we; also we) ;
just as
any sinful outcast of a Gentile would have to do. Have believed in Jesus Christ
(εἰς
Ξριστὸν Ἰησοῦν ἐπιστεύσαμεν
– eis
Christon Iaesoun episteusamen – in
Christ
Jesus believe; did in Christ Jesus believe. The aorist of the verb points to the
time of
first making Christ the object of trust. The changed order, in which our
Lord's proper
name and His official designation appear in this clause compared with
the
preceding, and which, somewhat strangely, is ignored in our Authorized Version,
does not
seem to have any real significance; such variation frequently occurs in
present
instance it may have been dictated by the reversal of the order of the
ideas, πίστεως
(faith) and Ἰησοῦ
Ξριστοῦ (Jesus Christ). That we might be justified
by the faith of Christ (ἵνα
δικαιωθῶμεν ἐκ
πίστεως
Ξριστοῦ - hina dikaiothomen ek
pisteos Christou). Renouncing all thought of gaining righteousness by
(or from)
doing
works of the Law, we fixed our
faith upon Christ, in order to gain
righteousness by (or from) believing in Him.
The form of expression does not
determine the
time when they expected to become righteous; but the whole
complexion
of the argument points to their
justification following immediately
upon THEIR BELIEVING IN CHRIST! That
full recognition of fellow-believers,
which is
the hinge on which the discussion turns, presupposes their being already
righteous
through their faith. And not by the works of the Law (καὶ οὐκ ἐξ ἔργων
νόμον
– kai
ouk ex ergon nomon – and not out of works of law). This is added
ex abundanti (out
of abundant caution), to clench more
strongly the affirmation
that works of the Law have no effect in making MEN RIGHTEOUS. For by the
works of the Law shall no flesh be justified (διότι – distoi -[or
rather, ὅτι
- hoti]
οὐ
δικαιωθήσεται
ἐξ ἔργων νόμου πᾶσα
σάρξ – hou dikaiothaesetai ex ergon nomou
pasa sarx – because that no flesh shall be being
justified out of the works of the law).
This
simply repeats the affirmation in the first clause of the verse, with only an
intensified
positiveness; the future tense, "shall
be justified," expressing, not the
time at
which the act of justification takes place, but the absoluteness
of the rule
that NO HUMAN BEING
is to expect ever to be justified by works of the Law.
In Romans 3:20 we have
identically the same sentence with the addition of
"in His
sight." Instead, however, of the διότι, found in that passage, many
recent
editors here give ὅτι, there being no more difference
between διότι,
and ὅτι, than between "because that" and "because."
In both passages it looks
as if the
apostle meant to be understood as citing a locus probativus; and the
addition
of the words, "in His sight," in Romans indicates that the
authoritative
passage referred to is Psalm 143:2, which in the
Septuagint reads, Ὀτι
οὐ
δικαιωθήσεται
ἐνώπιόν σου πᾶς
ζῶν – Hoti ou dikaiothaesetai enopion sou
pas zon – for in thy sight shall no man living be
justified. The
clause, ἐξ ἔργων
νόμου
(out of the works of the Law), added in both, is a comment of the apostle's
own,
founded as it should seem upon the case of the people of
psalmist
manifestly included in his universal
statement; those who had the Law
yet lacked justification before God, EVERY ONE - those even
of them who
more or less were doing its works. This verse,
viewed as a statement of the individual
experience
of the two apostles Peter and Paul themselves, is verified with respect to
the latter
by the accounts given in the Acts of his conversion. With respect to St. Peter,
its
verification is supplied to the reflective student of the Gospels by his
realizing the
process of
feeling through which that apostle's mind passed in the several situations
thus
indicated:
Further,
the highly animated language with which, in their writings, each of these
apostles -
and St. Peter
in several passages of his First Epistle - portrays the
peace and
exulting joy which Christ's disciples experience through faith in Him, is
evidently
drawn from their own mental history. And this happy
experience
of theirs was, most
palpably, in no degree whatever derived from works
of the Law, but solely from the grace of Christ as St. Peter had
recently
intimated
at
of the
Gentiles, "God had cleansed" from the sense of guilt and
pollutedness
before him "by faith" (Acts 15:9). It is necessary here to be
quite clear as to
the nature
of those "works of the Law" which the apostle has now in his
view.
This is
determined by the preceding context. The works of the Law now in
question
were those, the observance of which characterized a man's "living as
do the
Jews" and their non-observance a
man's "living as do the Gentiles."
It was the
disregard of these works on the part of the Gentile believers which the
Jewish
Christians, whom St. Peter would fain stand well with, considered as
disqualifying
them from free association with themselves. So, again, when
St. Peter
was "living
as do the Gentiles," he was viewed as setting at nought,
not the
moral precepts of the Law, but its positive ceremonial precepts only.
It is the
making that distinction between believers living as do the Gentiles and
believers
living as do the Jews, which Peter and the brethren from James were
in effect
making, that the apostle here sets himself so sternly to reprobate.
It is with
this view that he here asserts the principle that through
faith in Christ
a man is made
righteous, and that THROUGH FAITH IN CHRIST ONLY
can
he be, these works having nothing whatever to do
with it. "You Cephas," he
says,
"and
I were living as do the Jews; no unclean sinners of Gentiles were we! And
both you
and I have been made righteous. And how? Not
through those works
of the Law, BUT THROUGH BELIEVING IN JESUS CHRIST! And these
Gentile
brethren, from whom you are now shrinking back as if they were not
good
enough for us to associate with, - they believe in
Christ as truly as we do;
they are therefore
as truly righteous as we are. It is absurd for you to try to thrust
upon them
those works of the Law; by the works of the
Law can neither they
be made righteous NOR YET WE! So
neither, on the other hand, by
disregarding
the works of the Law can either they or we be made sinners."
This last
position, that the neglect of the works of the Law does not disqualify a
fellow-Christian
for brotherly recognition, is plainly essential to his present
argument.
But this is true only of the neglect of the positive Levitical precepts
of the
Law; the
neglect of its moral precepts DOES DISQUALIFY HIM
(1 Corinthians 5:11). Does
it not seem a just inference from this course of
argument,
that no man whom we have reason to believe to be
justified by faith
in Christ is to be refused either Christian association or Church fellowship?
The
Jesus Christ –
“Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the
Law, but by the
faith of Jesus Christ”
Justification is
the immediate result of forgiveness. This great boon is the
first grace of
Christianity. Until we are forgiven and thus justified we
cannot begin to
serve God!
Throughout history
and all the world over men have been making frantic
but futile efforts
in attempting to justify self before God by works – but
the truth still
stands - “by the works of the Law shall NO FLESH be
justified” – The sickening sense of failure is the invariable result and
depicted Scripturally by such terms as “O wretched man that I am! Who
shall deliver me
from the body of this death” (Romans 7:24)
and one being
at his “wit’s end”-
(Psalm 107:27)
The meaning of the term “justification” is fixed by its opposite, “condemnation,’’
which is, not to make wicked, but to pronounce guilty. “He that justifieth the
wicked, and he
that condemneth the just, even they both are abomination to
the Lord” (Proverbs 17:15). “If
there be a controversy between men, and
they come unto
judgment, that the judge may judge them; then they shall
justify the
righteous, and condemn the wicked” (Deuteronomy
25:1).
“The judgment was
by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many
offences unto
justification of life” (Romans 5:16). The
term is thus
forensic. Justification includes more than pardon, because:
of the
penal sanction of the Law. To justify is to declare that the demands
of the Law
are satisfied, not waived. Pardon is a sovereign act;
justification,
a judicial act.
an act of
justice. But justification proceeds on the ground of a satisfaction.
One is the
remission of punishment; the other is a declaration that there is
no ground
for the infliction of punishment.
imputeth righteousness without works” (Romans 4:6-8). To impute
righteousness is to justify. To pardon a man is not to ascribe
righteousness
to him.
The terms of
Scripture require this distinction.
It would be unmeaning
to say, “No flesh shall
be pardoned by the works of the Law.” Justification
includes both pardon and acceptance with God. It includes
a title to eternal
life, and therefore is called “justification of life,” and on account of it men
are made “heirs
according to the hope of eternal life” - (Titus 3:7). This is
the “true grace of God
in which we stand.” God does more than pardon; He
“imputeth
righteousness without works.” Christ is made “the righteousness
of God” to us. We are “accepted
in the Beloved.” Yet the pardon and the
acceptance are never separated. All who are pardoned are justified, and all
who are
justified are pardoned.
THE GROUND OF
JUSTIFICATION. “A man is not justified by the
works of the
Law, but by the faith of Christ.” The whole world is
guilty before God because of the violation of this Law –
Romans (3:19)
“Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things
written in the book
of the Law to do them (ch. 3:10).
Faith is not the ground, but the instrument of our
justification. It
receives and apprehends Christ in His righteousness. We
have proved that
faith is merely the instrument of our justification when we
have proved that
the only ground
of our acceptance with God is the finished work of Christ,
and that the only grace by which we rely upon that work is
faith
Man does not get to be justly regarded as holy and pure
from guilt by any
thing done in obedience to God’s positive Law. No man gains justification
save through
faith in Jesus Christ! Faith is, strictly speaking, only the
means, not the source
of justification.
Faith is not the ground, but the instrument of our
justification. It
receives and apprehends Christ in His righteousness. We have proved that
faith is merely the instrument of our justification when we
have proved that
the only ground of our acceptance with God is the finished
work of Christ,
and that the only grace by which we rely upon that work is
faith
e]rgwn
no>mou pa~sa sa>rx). This simply repeats
the affirmation in the first
clause of the verse, with only an intensified positiveness;
the future tense,
“shall be
justified,” expressing, not the time at
which the act of justification
takes place, but the absoluteness of the rule that no human being is to
expect ever to
be justified by works of the Law.
“Hear my prayer,
O Lord, give ear to my supplications: in
thy
faithfulness
answer me, and in thy righteousness. And
enter not into
judgment with thy
servant: FOR IN THY SIGHT SHALL NO MAN
LIVING BE
JUSTIFIED.” (Psalm 143:1-2)
Through faith in Christ a man is made righteous, works
having nothing to
do with it. And
these Gentile brethren, from whom you are now shrinking
back as if they were not good enough for us to associate
with, — they
believe
in Christ as
truly as we do; they are therefore as truly righteous as we are.
It is absurd for
you to try to thrust upon them those works of the Law; by
the works of the
Law can neither they be made righteous nor yet we and
no man whom we have reason to believe to be justified by
faith in Christ
is to be refused either Christian association or Church
fellowship!
17 "But if, while we
seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found
sinners, is therefore Christ the minister of sin?
God forbid." But if, while we
seek to be justified by Christ (εἰ δὲ ζητοῦντες
δικαιωθῆναι ἐν Ξριστῷ - ei de zaetountes
dikaiothaenai en christo - but if while seeking to be justified in Christ); The present
participle,
"while seeking," that
is,"while we sought," is referred back to the time
indicated
in the words, "we
believed," of the preceding verse
- the time, that is,
when, made aware that
works of the Law could not justify, they,
Cephas and Paul,
severally set themselves to find righteousness in Christ. At that time they in heart
utterly
renounced the notion that "works of
the Law" had any effect upon a
man's
standing
before God; they saw that his doing them could not
make him righteous,
as well as
that his not doing them would not make him a sinner (see
Matthew
15:10-20). This was an essential feature of their state of mind in seeking
righteousness in
Christ. They distinguished Levitical
purity and pollution from
spiritual
and real. And the principle was not only embraced in their hearts, but,
in course
of time, it embodied itself also, as occasion served, in outward deed.
They, both
Paul and Cephas himself, were bold to "live
after the manner of Gentiles"
(v. 14),
and with Gentiles to freely associate. If this was wrong, it was most heinously
wrong; for
it would be nothing short of a presumptuous setting at nought of God's
own Law by
which they flagrantly proved themselves to be, in a fatal and damning
sense, sinners.
But it was by the gospel that they had been led to think thus and to
act thus;
in other words, by Christ Himself.
Would it not, then, follow that Christ
was a
minister to them, not of righteousness, but of sin, of damning guilt? The
participle
"seeking" does not merely
mark the time at which they were found to be
sinners,
but also and indeed much more, the course of conduct by which they
proved
themselves such. The words, "in Christ," are not
equivalent to "through
Christ," though
the former idea includes the latter; the preposition is used in the
same sense
as in the sentences:
It denotes
a state of intimate association, union,
with Christ, involving justification
by necessary
consequence. Compare Philippians 3:9, "That
I may be found in Him,
not having a righteousness
of mine own, even that which is of the Law, but that
which is through
faith in Christ." We ourselves also are found sinners (εὑρέθημεν
καὶ
αὐτοὶ ἁμάρτωλοι
–
eurethaemen kai autoi hamartoloi – we were found also
ourselves
sinners; we ourselves also were
found sinners). The word "found" hints
a certain measure of surprise (compare Matthew 1:18; Acts 8:40; Romans 7:21;
II Corinthians
10:12; 12:20). Cephas was
behaving now as if to his painful surprise
he had
found himself to have been previously acting in a most guilty manner. The
word "sinners" appears to denote
more than the state of ceremonial uncleanness
incurred
by violating the prescriptions of Levitical purity; indeed, it meant more
even as
used by thorough-going ceremonialists (as in v. 15); it points to the gross
outrage
which would in the case supposed have been put upon the majesty of
God's Law. In the
next verse "transgressor" is used as a convertible term.
"Ourselves also" - as truly as any Gentile of them all. There is a touch of
sarcasm
in the
clause, having a covert reference to St. Peter having turned his back upon
his
Gentile brethren as unfit for him to associate with; he thereby was treating
them as "sinners."
Is therefore Christ the minister of sin? (αρα Ξριστὸς
ἁμαρτίας
διάκονος – ara Christos hamartias diakonos - is Christ a minister
of
sin; consequently is Christ a dispenser of sin? Αρα is found in the New
Testament
besides only in Luke 18:8
and Acts 8:30, in both which
passages
it simply
propounds a question, without indicating whether the answer is
expected
to be negative or affirmative. The inference here is so shocking
that the
apostle is unwilling to put it forward except as a question that might
fairly be
asked upon such premisses. This gives the sentence a less
repulsive
tone than
the reading, which without an interrogative puts it thus: Ἄρα Ξριστὸς
ἁμαρτίας
διάκονος. God forbid (μὴ γένοιτο – mae genoito – may it not be
becoming; abhorred be the thought)! we
both say; but (the apostle means
his
interlocutor to understand) since it cannot without horrid
impiety be said
that Christ was
a minister to us of sin and not of righteousness, it follows of
necessity
that we did not sin against God when we set the
works of the Law
aside and sought righteousness
IN CHRIST ALONE without any respect
had to
them. The Greek phrase is one of several renderings which the Septuagint
gives to
the Hebrew word חַלָּה chali'lah, ad profana, which is frequently used
interjectionally
to relegate some thought to the category of what is utterly
abhorrent
and polluted. The Hebrew word is discussed fully in Gesenius's
'Thesaurus,'
in verb.
(once
absolutely, ch. 3:21, and once inweaved in a sentence, ch. 6:14); ten times
absolutely
in his Epistle to the Romans (3, 4, 6, etc.). It occurs also Luke 20:16.
It is
impossible to mend the vigorous rendering of our Authorized Version.
vs. 15-17 - PAUL
SHOWS THAT THE QUESTION OF JUSTIFICATION
WAS REALLY INVOLVED
IN PETER’S CONDUCT.
Peter had very properly, though a Jew, lived after the
manner of Gentiles,
and so manifested his Christian liberty. Why, asks Paul,
does he now turn
round and require Gentiles to live like Jews? Is it to be thus
insinuated that
ceremonies save
men’s souls? Is not this the vilest
bondage? Is
not the
gospel, on the
contrary, the embodiment of the truth that a man is not
justified by the
works of the Law, but by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ? If
Jewish ceremonies are still necessary to justification,
then the work of
Jesus Christ, in which we are asked to trust, cannot be
complete. Such
ceremonialism is
thus seen to be in conflict with the gospel of justification
by faith alone. To tell men that ceremonies must save them is to turn them
away from Christ as the object of trust to rites and
ceremonies as the
object. Am I to believe in the power of baptism and of the
sacraments as
administered by certain persons in order to salvation or am
I to trust my
Savior? The two methods of
salvation are totally distinct, and it is fatal to
confound them. The meaning
of all such ceremonialism is to put souls upon
a false track, so far as salvation is concerned. It is to translate man’s
justification from the true foundation in Christ’s work to the rotten
foundation of self-righteousness. Against this we must ever wage persistent
war.
18 “For if I build again
the things which I destroyed, I make myself a
transgressor.” For if I build again the
things which I destroyed (εἰ
γὰρ
ἃ κατέλυσα ταῦτα πάλιν οἰκοδομῶ
- ei
gar ha katelusa pauta palin oikodomo –
if
for which I demolish these things again;
for if I am building up again the
things
which I pulled down). I make myself a transgressor (παραβάτην ἐμαυτὸν
συνίστημι
– parabataen
emauton sunistaemi – a transgressor is what I am showing
my
own self to be; transgressor myself I am commending [or, συνιστάνω – sunistano –
to put forward in a clear light is another form of the same verb]); I must be wrong
one way or
the other; if I am right now, was wrong then; and from the very nature
of the
case now in hand, wrong exceedingly; no less than an absolute transgressor.
This word "transgressor"
denotes, not one who merely happens to break, perchance
inadverdently,
some precept of the Law, but one who, perhaps in consequence of
even one
act of willful transgression, is to be regarded
as trampling upon the
authority of the Law altogether (compare Romans 2:25, 27;
James 2:9, 11,
which are
the only places of the New Testament in which the word occurs;
it is
therefore a full equivalent to the word "sinner" of v. 17). The Greek
verb συνιστάνω, is used similarly in II Corinthians 6:4; 7:11.
It is much
debated, and is certainly nowise clear, how far down in the chapter
the rebuke
addressed to St. Peter extends. If it does not reach to the end of the
chapter,
as some think it does, the break may be very well placed at the end
of this
verse. For this verse clearly relates to St. Peter, whether actually addressed
to him or
not; notwithstanding that the verbs are in the hypothetical first person
singular,
they cannot be taken as referred to
to his
case. On the other hand, with the nineteenth verse the first person is plainly
used by
emphatic ἐγὼ - ego – I - with which it opens.
v. 18 - PAUL
CONSEQUENTLY INSISTS ON THE SINFULNESS OF
THE LEGAL SPIRIT. For what we destroy in accepting the
gospel is all trust in ceremonies as grounds of salvation.
The works of the
Law are seen to be no ground of trust for justification and
salvation. If,
then, after having destroyed the self-righteous and legal
spirit, and
fled for
refuge to Jesus
as our Hope, we turn round like Peter to rebuild the edifice
of self-righteousness and legalism, we are simply making
ourselves
transgressors. We are forfeiting our liberty and piling up
fresh sin. Hence it
is of the utmost moment that we should clearly and constantly
recognize
the sinfulness of the legal spirit. It robs Jesus of
his rightful position as
Savior of
mankind. It casts away the gospel and goes back for salvation
to the Law, which can only condemn us; it makes the sacrifice
of Jesus vain
and only increases sin.
Against all legalism, consequently, we must wage
incessant war. Nothing is so derogatory to Jesus or destructive of men’s
souls. It is another gospel, but an utterly fallacious one. Unless Jesus has
the whole credit of salvation, he will not be our Savior.
He must be all or
nothing. “Other
foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is
Jesus
Christ.” (I Corinthians 3:11)
AMONG THE MANY
PURPOSES OF OUR LORD’S DEATH UPON
THE CROSS, A PRIME
ONE WAS TO WEAN US AWAY FROM ALL
IDEA OF WINNING
LIFE BY –LAW-KEEPING SO THAT WE MAY
GRATEFULLY RECEIVE
SALVATION AS THE GIFT OF FREE
GRACE!
19 “For
I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.”
For I through the Law am dead to the Law (ἐγὼ
γὰρ διὰ νόμου μόμῳ
ἀπέθανον –
ego gar dia nomou momo apethanon – for I through
law to law died; for I, for my
part,
through the Law died unto the Law.) This
ἐγὼ is not the hypothetical "I"
of
v. 18, which in fact recites the
personality of St. Peter, but is
own concrete historical personality.
And the pronoun is in a measure antithetical;
as if it were: for whatever may be your feeling, mine is
this, that I," etc. The
conjunction "for" points
back to the whole passage (vs. 15-18), which has described
the position to which
when writing to the Galatians, is
standing; he here justifies that description. "Through
the
Law;" through the Law's own procuring, through what the Law itself
did, I was
broken off from all connection with
the Law. From the words, "I have
been crucified
with Christ," in the next verse, and from
what we read in Galatians
3:13, most
especially when taken in connection
with the occurrences at
rate led to the present utterance,
and with the hankering after Judaical ceremonialism
in
the conclusion that
viewed as determining ceremonial
purity and ceremonial pollution. He is here most
immediately dealing with the
question, whether Jewish believers could freely associate
without
defilement in God's sight with Gentile believers who according
to the
Levitical Law were unclean, and
could partake of the like food with them. The notion
of becoming dead to the Law through
the cross of Christ has other aspects besides
this, as is evinced by Romans 7:1-6;
a fact which is indeed glanced at by the apostle
even here; but of the several
aspects presented by this one and the same many-faced
truth, the one which he here more
particularly refers to is that which it bore towards
the Law as a ceremonial institute.
That which the Law as a ceremonial institute did in
relation to Christ was this - it pronounced Him as crucified to be in the intensest
degree
ceremonially accursed and polluting; to be most absolutely cherem
(a devoted thing). But Christ in His death and resurrection-life is appointed by God
to be the THE
SINNER’S ONLY AND COMPLETE SALVATION! It follows that
he who by faith and sacrament is
made one with Christ, does, together with the
spiritual life which he draws from
Christ, partake also in the pollution and
accursedness
which the Law fastens upon him; he is by the Law bidden away:
he can thenceforth have no
connection with it, - the Law itself will have it so.
"But (the apostle's feeling is) the Law may
curse on as it will: I have life with
God and in God
nevertheless." This same aspect of the death of Christ as
disconnecting believers from the Law
viewed as a ceremonial institute, through
the pollutedness which the Law
attached to most especially that form of death,
is referred to in Hebrews 13:10-13. The
phrase, "I died unto the Law," is similar
to that of "being made dead to the
Law" (ἐθανατώθητε
τῷ νόμῳ - ethanatothaete
to nomo – were put to death to the law – Romans
7:4) and being "discharged
[or, 'delivered'] from the Law (κατηργήθημεν
ἀπὸ τοῦ
νόμου – kataergaetaemen
apo tou nomou – we were exempted from the Law)," which we have Romans 7:4, 6;
though the particular aspect of the
fact that the cross disconnects believers from
the Law is not precisely the same in
the two passages, since in the Romans the Law
is viewed more in its character as a
rule of moral and spiritual life (see Romans
7:7-23). That
I might live unto God (ἵνα Θεῷ ζήσω – hina Theo zaeso – that to
God
I should be living; that I might become alive unto God).
It is not likely that
ζήσω (live) is a future indicative, although we have καταδουλώσουσιν
– katadoulosousin
- they should be enslaving; bring us unto bondage after ἵνα – hina – that in v. 4, and
the form ζήσομεν – zaesomen – live; we shall be living in Romans 6:2; for the future
would most probably have been ζήσεται – zaesetai - shall be
livingas in Galatians
3:11-12; and Romans 1:17; 8:13; 10:5. It is more likely to
be the subjunctive of
the aorist ἔζησα – ezaesa , which, according to the now accepted reading of
ἔζησεν – ezaesen for ἐνέστη
καὶ ἀνέζησεν – enestae kai
anezaesen – rose and
revived, we have in Romans 14:9; where, as
well as the ζήσωμεν of I Thessalonians
5:10, it means "become alive." In verbs denoting a state of being, the aorist
frequently
(though not necessarily) means
coming into that state, as for example, ἐπτώχευσε –
epiocheuse - became poor (II Corinthians 8:9). "Living
unto God" here, as in
Romans 6:10, does not so
much denote any form of moral action towards God
as that spiritual state towards Him
out of which suitable moral action would
subsequently flow. The apostle died
to the Law, in order that through
Christ he
might come into
that vital union with God in which he might both serve Him and
find happiness
in Him; this service to God and joy in God being the "fruit-bearing"
in which the "life" is manifested (Romans 7:5-6).
vs. 17-19 – The
Attitude of All Justified Persons, in Relation to Sin
and Christ, WILL
RENOUNCE ALL LEGAL RIGHTEOUSNESS
OF WORKS OF THE
LAW OR THE FLESH.
There is no difference between Jew and Gentile at the first point of contact
between the soul and the Savior. They are alike guilty before God. They look
for justification
only in Christ. They are pronounced just by God because
they are in
Christ.
“we seek to be
justified by Christ” – “And be found in Him, not having
mine own
righteousness, which is of the Law, but that which is through
the faith of
Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” –
(Philippians 3:9)
We do not sin against God when we set the works of the Law
aside and
seek
righteousness in CHRIST ALONE! JESUS
CHRIST IN HIS
DEATH AND
RESURRECTION-LIFE IS APPOINTED BY GOD
TO BE THE
SINNER’S ONLY HOPE AND SALVATION!
v. 20 – “I am
crucified with Christ: nevertheless I
live; yet not I but
Christ liveth in
me: and the life which I now live in the
flesh I live
by the faith of
the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me”
This verse brings out into fuller
detail the several points bound up in the succinct
statement of v. 19. I am crucified with Christ (Ξριστῷ
συνεσταύρωμαι – Christo
sunestauromai - I have been crucified with Christ; I have
been crucified together
with
Christ.) I am on the cross, fastened thereto
with Christ; the object, therefore,
with Him of the Law's abhorrence and
anathema. If we ask, how and when he
became thus blended with Christ in
his crucifixion, we have the answer suggested
by himself in Romans 6:3, 6,
"Are ye ignorant, that all we who
were baptized into
Christ
Jesus were baptized into His death?" - "that our old man was
crucified with
Him?"
It was by believing in Christ and being baptized into Him; compare
Galatians 3:27, "All ye who were baptized into Christ
did put on Christ " - words
which have to be taken in connection
with the reference to "faith in
Christ" in
ibid.
v. 26. The perfect tense of the verb συνεσταύρωμαι points to a continued
state of being, following upon that
decisive crisis of his life; the apostle images
himself as still hanging on the
cross with Christ, while also sharing in His
resurrection-life; his "old man" is on the cross,
while his spirit partakes in and is
renewed by Christ's life in God (Romans 6:6, 8, 11). The pragmatism of the
passage, however, that is, its
relevancy to the subject discussed by him with
St. Peter, consists in the twofold
statement:
(1) that the Law as
a ceremonial institute has now nothing to do with him nor
he with it, except as mutually
proclaiming their
entire disseverment the one from
the other; and
(2) that
nevertheless, while thus wholly apart from the Law, he has life in God,
as he further proceeds to declare.
Nevertheless I live (ζῶ
δέ - zo de – I am living yet). Notwithstanding all the Law's
anathema, I am alive unto God (compare Romans 6:11), the object
of His love, and
an heir of His eternal life. With
this exalted blessedness of mine the Law cannot in the
slightest degree meddle, by any
determination which it will fain propound of cleanness
or uncleanness. No ceremonial
pollution of its constituting can touch this my life. My
own life and my fellow-believer's
life in God is infinitely removed from the possibility
of receiving taint of pollution
through eating (say) of blood, or suet, or pork, or
through touching a leper or the
remains of a deceased man. Nothing of this kind can
mar or stain my righteousness or my
fellow-believer's righteousness. Both he and I,
sharing in the like "life" and righteousness,
rejoice and exult together; let the Law
denounce us for unclean as loudly
and as bitterly as it will. Nay, if I were to allow
myself to be disquieted by any such
denouncement of pollution, I should, in fact,
be allowing myself to harbor
misgivings and unbelief touching the very essence
of the grace of Jesus Christ. Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me (οὐκἔτι ἐγώ ζῇ δὲ
ἐν ἐμοὶ
Ξριστός – ouketi ego zae de en emoi Christos - and yet no longer I, but
Christ
liveth in me). It was essential to the
apostle's argument that he should assert
himself
to be, in spite of the Law's anathema, "alive,"
in the full possession of life
in God; but
he hastens to qualify this assertion by explaining how entirely he owes
this life of his to Christ; and, in
his eagerness to do this, he compresses the assertion
and the qualification in one clause
so closely together as, in a way not at all unusual
with him, well-nigh to wreck the
grammatical construction. A method, indeed, has
been proposed by critics of
disposing this clause with respect to the preceding in
such a manner as to make the
sentence run quite smoothly; thus: Ζῶ δὲ οὐκέτι
ἀγώ
ζῇ δὲ ἐν ἐμοὶ
Ξριστός – Zo de ouketi ago zae de en emoi Christos: that is, as given
in the margin of the Revised English
Version, "I have been crucified with
Christ;
and
it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me." But not only
does this method
of construing altogether efface the
apostle's assertion of his being alive notwithstanding
the Law's malediction - an assertion
which agrees so thoroughly with the defiant tone
of the argument, but the abruptness of
the construction as presented in the ordinary
reading of the passage is its very
recommendation; for such uncouthness of style is
wont to show itself in
as in those old days when I prided myself on being an especial favourite of Heaven,
eminently
righteous through meritorious doings of my own, through my punctilious
observance
in particular of all that the Law prescribes for gaining and maintaining
ceremonial sanctity (compare Philippians 3:4, 6). "In those days it was I that was
alive; it is not so
now." The ἐγὼ
ἔζων – ego ezon - I was alive, of Romans 7:9,
serves again as a perfect
illustration of the phraseology of the present passage;
only we have still to bear in mind
that the apostle is at present contemplating the
ceremonial aspect of his old life,
rather than, as in the Romans, the moral; the two
being no doubt, however, in his
former Pharisee scheme of religion, essentially
conjoined. The in-being of Christ is to be
understood as blending in one the two
notions of:
·
Christ as the ground of our acceptableness before God and
of our being
alive unto God, and,
·
Christ as the motive spring of true practical well-doing
(Romans 8:10).
The two things, though notionally distinct,
cannot exist apart, but the former is the
more prominent idea
here.
And
the life which I now live in the flesh (ὃ
δὲ νῦν ζῶ
ἐν
σαρκί - ho de nun zo en sarki – which yet I am now living
in the flesh). "Life"
still denotes his spiritual state of
being, and not his moral activity, though by
inference involving this latter; as
if it were "the life which I now
possess."
The construction of ὃ ζῶ (I am living) is paralleled by the ὃ ἀπέθανεν
–
ho apethanen – He died,
"the death that He died, He died,"
and the ὃ ζῇ -
ho zae – He is living - "the life
that He liveth, He liveth," of Romans 6:10.
"Now," as well as "no
longer," stands in contrast with his old life in Judaism.
But, on the other hand, "in the
flesh," viewed in conjunction with (ἐν πίστει –
en pistei - in faith - or "by faith," must be taken
as in Philippians
1:22, that is,
as contrasted with the future life;
while we are in the flesh "we walk by
faith,
not by sight" (II Corinthians 5:7). I live by the faith of the Son of God
(ἐν πίστει ζῶ
τῇ τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ
Θεοῦ - en pistei zo tae tou huiou tou Theou –
I
live by faith, the faith which is in the Son of God). By faith, not by works of
the Levitical Law.
·
It was by faith in Christ that I first became partaker of
this life;
·
it is by faith in Christ that I continue to partake of
it;
·
letting go my faith in Christ, I partake of the life no
longer.
The especial relevancy of this
statement of the apostle's, whether with respect to
the matters agitated at
notions of acceptableness with God
as was now perplexing the Churchmen of
of uncleanness or of righteousness,
was to sin against faith in Christ, and therewith
against the very essence of a Christian's SPIRITUAL LIFE! It
was the strong
sense which the apostle had of the
absolutely fatal tendency of such relapses towards
Judaism that inspired the deep
pathos which here tinges his language. Hence the
magnificent title
by which he recites Christ's
personality, THE SON OF GOD
possessing
as such an absolutely commanding claim to his people's adherence,
which they dare not decline. Hence, too, the words which follow. Who loved me,
and gave Himself for me (τοῦ
ἀγαπήσαντός με καὶ
παραδόντος ἑαυτὸν
ὑπὲρ ἐμοῦ -
tou agapaesantos me kai paradontos heauton huper emou – the
One loving me
and giving
up Himself for the sake of me; who loved me, and gave Himself up
for
me. Fain would the reader realize to his
mind the fervid, thrilling tones and
accent of voice in which the
apostle, while uttering these words, would give vent
to the sentiment which so powerfully
swayed his whole life, and which he so vividly
describes in writing to the
Corinthians: "The love of Christ constraineth us; because
we thus judge, that one died for all,
therefore all died [namely, to all but Him] and
He died for all, that they which live should
no longer live unto themselves, but unto
Him
who for their sakes died and rose again" (II Corinthians 5:14-15). The same
appropriation of Christ's love to
His own individual self which the apostle here gives
utterance to, "who
loved me, and gave Himself up for me," may every human
creature also
express in whom only is the faith which takes hold of His love.
In fact, the apostle speaks thus for
the very purpose of prompting every individual
believer who hears him to feel and say the same.
This, he indicates, should be
their
feeling just as much as his; a sentiment just as irresistibly regulative of their life.
Why not? Do they not also owe to Him all
their hope on behalf of their souls? For the
expression, "gave
Himself up," compare ch. 1:4 and note. The Greek verb
παραδόντος – paradontos – giving up is
distinguished from the simple δόντος
–
dontos – gave himself, by its bringing more
distinctly into view the notion of
Christ's giving Himself
over into the hands of those who sought His life.
“Therefore doth my Father love me, because I
lay down my life, that I
might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down
of myself.
I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. (John 10:17-18)
Paul died to the
Law and became released from legal bondage.
Christ
died as his
surety and Paul lives through Him.
Paul became:
“Christ liveth in me” – there is a mystery surrounding the
origin of
life. There is a mystery also in regeneration – John 3:8 Yet
spiritual life is due to the quickening power of the Holy
Spirit, through the
Word, “making all
things new.” The first effect of regeneration is faith; and
the life thus begun is sustained by the indwelling of the same Spirit through
all the stages of
a sanctified experience, till it shares in
the glorified
life of
the Redeemer in
heaven
It is “the life which I now live in the flesh (body)” – it is God’s wonderful
workmanship, it is the temple of
the Holy Ghost, to be kept from defilement;
and it ought to be the willing
servant of the immortal spirit in all the various
activities of Christian life!
Faith is not merely the instrument of our justification, but the
root-principle of
our life:
(I Peter
1:5)
It is the principle which unites the soul and the Savior,
it is the conduit which carries
the mighty supplies of grace into the soul.
vs. 19-20 – WHAT IS IT TO DIE
TO LAW? Law here is not merely the
Mosaic code. It is generic. Every nation has more or less
some conception of law.
We all feel it in our conscience. To live for this, to toil simply to meet its
requirements, to be gloomy and despondent at our failure,
is to live to
Law. This by no means
implies perfect or even partial obedience to Law. It
may go with absolute failure; it is never found resulting
in the complete
harmony of Law and conduct. Now,
to die to Law is to be free from this
galling yoke. It is to be liberated from the frightful vision of an
obligation
that is imperative and yet beyond our powers — the nightmare
feeling that
we must do what
we cannot do. It is freedom, too, from the
habit of living
in regard to Law as the rule and motive of life.
Basically, the
Law is a mirror to show us ourselves and our short comings.
It points to
righteousness. To cease to live by the
law is to ignore
this guide in
the wilderness and TO BE LEFT ALONE!
This would be
RUINOUS. Modern philosophies and life styles seek to
be free form
any obligation
to the Law and expect to be free from its PENALTY – to
realize this
would be to have no new or better life and would be the
COLLAPSE AND
DEGRADATION OF ALL MORAL ORDER.
(see II Peter 2:10-22 and Jude 1:4-19 for a very accurate
description
of life in the 21st Century - CY – 2009)
If I willfully
keep my conscience in darkness and continue in errors which
I might easily
know to be such by a little thought and searching of God’s
Word, then my
conscience can offer me no excuse for I am guilty of
blindfolding the
guide which I have chosen and then knowing him to
be blindfolded,
I am guilty of THE FOLLY OF
LETTING HIM LEAD
ME INTO
REBELLION AGAINST GOD!
The Law also
strangles the life that dwells in it:
in
it.
The longer we live in it the more do we see that such a
life is fruitless. Thus
we
gradually cease to feel drawn to it. At length we confess our failure and
abandon the attempt. The
Law has then killed the life we had in it. But
we
are to mortify (put to death) the old life – Colossians 3:5 and to live
in Christ
- This life is Christ’s. It derives its power from Christ, it is swayed
by the
will of Christ, it seeks the ends of Christ, it breathes the spirit of Christ,
it is
lived in personal communion with Christ. Selfish aims and self-devised
resources
are gone, and in their place the grace of Christ is the inspiration,
and the
mind and will of Christ are the controlling influences of the new
life. This
is not a future possibility, but a present attainment. The life is now
lived in
the flesh.
When we die to all legal hope, we are delivered from the
self-life,
and enabled to live the life of consecration to God. And
when does this life of
consecration to God come? By inspiration Christ comes and lives literally
within us by
his Spirit, so that we become in a real sense inspired persons.
(Great emphasis is to be laid on Jesus’ words “If a man love
me, he will keep
my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come
unto him, and
make our abode
with him” – John 14:23) Consequently, Paul declares that it
is not he himself who lives the consecrated life, but “Christ liveth
in me.” He
abandoned himself to the Spirit of Christ, and thus made
way for the life of
consecration. Nothing is more important, then, than this self-abandonment to
the Spirit of Christ, who is the Spirit of consecration.
(a life of simple
dependence upon
the Son of God)
Since the Law cannot save us, it must be given up as a
ground of hope. Let us
then gather round the cross of Christ, and adore the
devotion which thereby secured
our salvation, and may we magnify the grace of God
manifested in a crucified
Savior.
All make void the grace of God who live as though Christ
had never died.
Let us magnify the grace of God by regarding the death of
Christ as
all sufficient for righteousness – taking it as our own
righteousness!
21 “I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by
the Law, then
Christ is dead in vain” I do not frustrate the
grace of God
(οὐκ
ἀθετῶ τὴν χάριν
τοῦ Θεοῦ - ouk atheto taen charin tou Theou - I do not
disannul, void, frustrate the
grace of God.) As I should be doing, it;
instead
of
resting with "glorified" (1 Peter 1:8) satisfaction
in the fatherly love and
complacency with which God regards me in Christ, I began to
give anxious heed
to what the Law prescribes touching things or persons clean
or unclean, and to
deem it possible and needful to secure acceptableness with
God through works of
ceremonial performance. If it were only for one single reason
alone, I do not,
I cannot, thus slight and set at nought the state of grace with all its
attendant blessings
into which God has in Christ Jesus brought me. The "grace of God" presents that
entire notion of the kingdom of grace which the apostle sets
forth, and on which he
descants with such glowing animation, in the fifth chapter of
his Epistle to the Romans.
The term of itself stands in vivid contrast to that slavish,
anxious, never assured
working for acceptance, which characterized the Jewish
legalist, and characterizes
the legalist Christian as well. As the apostle does not write
ἐγὼ οὐκ
ἀθετῶ - ego ouk
atheto, which would mean, "I
do not set aside, not I," he is not to be read as if just
now emphasizing a personal contrast between himself, and either St. Peter or the
Judaizers with whom St. Peter was then to outward appearance
taking sides; he is
at present simply winding up his recital of his remonstrance
at
one terse argument, with which he then justified his own
position, and, as if with
a sledge-hammer, at once demolished the position of the
Judaizers. The verb ἀθετῶ
means "reject,"
"turn from as from a thing unworthy of regard;" as in :
(Mark 7:9)
(Luke 7:30),
in which last passage it indicates, but without itself fully
describing, a more aggressive
disobedience. The rendering "made
void," adopted by the Revisers, in the sense of
"disannul," is doubtless
fully authenticated by Galatians
3:15; I Timothy
5:12;
Hebrews 9:18. Since even an apostle could not "disannul" the "grace
of God"
viewed in itself, this sense of
the word, if adopted, would, as well as the perhaps
questionable rendering of our
Authorized Version, "frustrate," apply to the
previous work of Divine grace
wrought upon the apostle's own soul. But the
logical connection of the
following clause is more easily shown by our reverting
to the sense before given to the
verb, which in the New Testament is the more
usual one. For if righteousness come by the Law, then Christ is dead in vain
(εἰ γὰρ διὰ νόμου
δικαιοσύνη ἄρα Ξριστὸς
δωρεὰν ἀπέθανεν
– ei
gar dia nomou
dikaiosunae ara Christos dorean apethanen - for if through the Law is
righteousness,
then
did Christ for naught die.) This one reason is decisive. The sole reason why
the Son of God came into the world to suffer
death was:
But if sin can be purged by the
purifications of the Law, and cleanness before God
is procurable by Levitical
ceremonies, then there
was no need for this; then the
Crucifixion, for this
one end ordained and from the beginning of time prepared
for by
the Father (Revelation 13:8; 17:8),
and for this one end, of His own free
choice gone forward to, brought
about, and undergone by Christ Himself, was
a simply superfluous sacrifice. We
might have been saved, nay, have perchance
saved ourselves, without it. It is impossible to find in all Scripture a more decisive
passage
than this in proof both of the fact:
·
of the atonement and
·
of its supreme importance in the Christian system.
THIS IS EMPHATICALLY CHRIST GREAT WORK! Compared with this,
all besides is either subsidiary
or derivative, Δωρεάν
– Dorean
– gratuitously; as a
mere gift,) "for naught;" that is, without cause, there
being no call or just occasion
for it; thus:
(Ezekiel 6:10, Septuagint),
The apostle adds nothing as to the
effect of his remonstrance. It is impossible,
however, to doubt that, so
instinct as it was with the power of the Holy Spirit,
it proved successful, not only in
the healing of the mischief which had begun
to show itself in the Church at
Nothing has transpired of any
later intercourse between the two apostles. But the
thorough honesty which in the main
was one of St. Peter's great characteristics,
notwithstanding the perplexed
action in which from time to time he got involved,
through the warmth of his
sympathetic affections and his sometimes too hasty
impulsiveness, would be sure to
make him pre-eminently tractable to the voice
of a true-speaking and holy
friend; and, moreover, in the present instance,
is further evinced in his own two
Epistles, written some eight or ten years later
than this Epistle, and addressed
also in part to the same Galatian Churches;
in which he not only weaves into
his language not a few expressions and turns
of thought which have all the
appearance of being borrowed from Epistles of
speaking of them as standing on
the footing of "the other Scriptures," and of
their author as "our
beloved brother Paul" (II Peter 3:16); notwithstanding
that one of those very writings
contains the extremely plain-spoken account
of that sad fall of his at
(On
v. 21 – Trying to
gain righteousness by the Law is futile and never
ending – a
slavish, anxious, never assured working for acceptance,
which
characterized the Jewish legalist and
the legalist Christian
as well.
“for if righteousness come by the Law, then Christ is dead
in
vain” (eij
ga<r dia< no>mou dikaiosu>nh a]ra Cristo<v dwrea<n
ajpe>qanen); for if
through the Law is righteousness, then did Christ for
nought die. This one reason is
decisive. The sole reason why the Son of
God came into
the world to suffer death was to do away our sins and make
us righteous
with God. But if sin can be purged by the
purifications of the
Law, and cleanness before God is procurable by Levitical
ceremonies, then
there was no need for
this; then the Crucifixion, for this one end ordained
and from the
beginning of time prepared for by the Father, and for this one
end, of his own
free choice gone forward to, brought about, and undergone
by Christ himself,
was a simply superfluous sacrifice. We
might have been
saved, nay, have perchance saved ourselves, without it. It is impossible
to
find in all
Scripture a more decisive passage than this in proof both of the
fact of, the
atonement and of its supreme importance in the Christian
system. This is
emphatically CHRIST’S GREAT WORK
IF WE SEEK FOR
RIGHTEOUSNESS BY MEANS OF LAW WE
MAKE NO USE OF THE
GRACE OF GOD. Here are two rival methods
for obtaining righteousness. The first is wide and various,
by means of
Law, any law — the Levitical system, ascetic discipline,
rites of heathen
mysteries, Stoic philosophy, our own attempts to conform to
an outside
rule. (these are self-initiated – to put in modern terms – it is “looking deep
within” – CY – 2009) - The
second is specific, the grace of God, the grace
shown in the gospel, the
grace that comes through the sacrifice of Christ.
These two run in opposite directions.
One
leads to hell – the other leads
to heaven and
eternal life!
The mistake of
neglecting grace for Law is:
have been
avoided had we not declined to avail ourselves of God’s
method of
righteousness.
The righteousness
by Law required no special sacrifice. The
righteousness by
grace required
the death of the Son of God. How much superior must God
consider it to
be willing to pay so heavy a price in order to secure it to us!
We may be sure
that, if by any easier way the same results could have been
reached, God
would have spared his own Son. Yet they who
neglect this
grace for the
old method of Law proclaim by their actions that the great
sacrifice was
unnecessary. For themselves, too, they do make it a useless
thing. This is
the pathetic side of their error. Refusing to avail themselves
of the grace of
God, they bring it to pass that, as far as they are concerned,
Christ died in
vain.
READER – DO NOT MAKE THIS
MISTAKE!
“WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT
A MAN IF HE GAINS THE WHOLE WORLD AND LOSES HIS OWN
SOUL?” – Jesus Christ
Hence the magnificent title by which Paul recites Christ’s
personality, “the
Son of God;” possessing as such an absolutely commanding claim to His
people’s
adherence, which they dare not decline. Hence, too, the words
which follow. “Who loved me, and gave himself for me”
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ADDITIONAL
NOTES
The Judaism of the earliest
Pentecostal Church was not rabbinical. Any one who will
be at the pains of reviewing the contents of the four
Gospels with an eye to this
particular subject, cannot fail to
be struck by the frequency with which Christ in His
own conduct placed himself in even
the sharpest antagonism to the "traditions of
the eiders," and
encouraged His disciples in likewise setting them at naught. And
this He did in cases in which the
contrast of His behavior to the abject submission
to those traditions paraded by the
Pharisees must have been most striking, and have
jarred, no doubt, very often even
painfully, upon the ill-instructed religious
sensibilities of those, who had
grown up in the belief that to observe the traditions
was both seemly and pious and to
neglect them unseemly and schismatical. For
example, in daily life, neither He
nor His disciples would "baptize"
themselves
when coming home from the market,
nor even apply lustral water to their hands
before taking a meal, though there before their eyes stood tire vessels filled with
water which had been provided for the guests and which the other guests were
punctual in using. It was not without significance that in his first miracle He
withdrew the water which had been set apart for such lustrations from one
use of it which he would pronounce to be utterly frivolous and vain, to apply
it to one which should really be serviceable and beneficent. Again, many were
the restrictions which the traditions imposed upon men's actions on the sabbath –
restrictions which not only were additional to those enjoined by the Law, but also
in many cases contravened the calls of mercy and benevolence. Such restrictions
Christ very frequently, and in the most public and pointed manner, so as to directly
challenge attention to what He did, broke through, and taught His disciples to
disregard; the Pharisees being repeatedly so enraged at these transgressions of the
traditions as to endeavor in consequence to take His life. The fastings enjoined by
the traditions, He and His disciples likewise offended the Pharisees by taking no
account of. The traditions of especially one popular school of teaching allowed so
great a facility of divorce as served to disguise a frightful excess of licentiousness,
in which many of the Pharisees were themselves implicated; in opposition to
which Christ was wont publicly to declare that 'connections formed after divorces
not justified by adultery were themselves adulterous. Continually was the Lord
warning His followers against the leaven of Pharisaism, to wit:
· its ostentation in religious observances;
· its laying so much stress upon the outward act, in neglect
of the inward motive and the posture of the spirit;
of justice, mercy, and truth,
of formalism;
votaries;
All the four Gospels abound in indications of that antipathy to Pharisaism and
traditionalism which Christ both entertained Himself and was careful to instill into
the minds of His disciples. It cannot, therefore, be questioned that the disciples
who formed the first nucleus of the Christian community, especially the twelve
and the brethren of the Lord, were animated by similar sentiments of anti-Pharisaism;
and so also the
The Law of Moses, no doubt, they continued to obey, as their Master had done –
the Law of Moses, however, as construed in the more humane and spiritual sense
put upon it by the Sermon on the Mount, and not as stiffened and hardened into
intolerable cruelty by the rabbinism which the Pharisees insisted upon. Such, we
may feel certain, had been the attitude of St. Peter's mind in reference to the Law
when, years before at Joppa, he had received the summons to go and visit
Cornelius at
tastes that he submitted to the call; and when he entered the Gentile's house, the
fiber of Israelitism in his soul is seen quivering, shrinking back from the step
which he was compelled to take. "Ye yourselves know," he said to the company
of uncircumcised men among whom he
found himself, "that it is an unlawful
thing for a man that is a Jew to join
himself or to come unto one of another
nation; and yet unto me hath God showed
that I should not call any man
common or unclean." (Acts 10:28) It was painful to him as an Israelite and a
Mosaist; but God's declared will was leaving him no alternative. Now, whence
had arisen those feelings of repulsion? Partly it was, no doubt, a kind of caste
sentiment. It had been then more than two thousand years a traditional consciousness
with the Hebrew race that their circumcision lifted them to a higher level than the
rest of mankind stood upon; and the persuasion inspired them with a disdain of
uncircumcised nations, which with the most had little or no admixture of really
religious feeling, being felt by the idolatrous Ephraimites as well as by the less
unfaithful children of
repulsion from Gentiles was partly the outcome of their sense of the deep
degradation, religious and moral, in which heathen nations were sunk, steeped
as they were in idolatry; but their sense of this was greatly intensified by the
moral effect of the separation from other nations enforced by the ceremonial law.
This was effected partly by the distinction between clean and unclean animals, which,
recognized in an elementary degree as early as the time of Noah, was made in the
Levitical legislation a matter of very minutely definite prescription (Leviticus 11.);
and partly by the prohibition of eating either certain kinds of fat (Leviticus 3:17)
or blood: to partake either of the flesh of an unclean animal, or of suet or blood,
was emphatically declared by the Law, and by the long-inherited tradition of the
nation had grown to be
instinctively felt to be, "defilement" and "abomination."
There is no ground for supposing that St. Peter's shrinking back from Gentiles
as common or unclean was caused by rabbinism. Rabbinism, no doubt, added
much to the bitterness of the repulsion with these who served the traditions;
but even where there was no bondage owned to the dicta of the elders, repulsion
from the contact of a Gentile was a powerful sentiment, having its roots deep in the
instinctive sentiments of the Hebrew race and in the feelings instilled by the
peremptory enactments of the Divine Law. Now, however, in Cornelius's house,
St. Peter does not allow his spirit to be dominated by sentiments such as these.
God and Christ his Master were making it manifest, as in other ways, so especially
by the astonishing illapse of the Holy Spirit into these believing hearers of the
gospel message, that they were no longer unclean, and therefore he cannot possibly
any longer treat them as unclean. He tarried with them certain days, and, according
to the charge immediately after preferred against him and not denied, ate with them.
That he partook of the same food as they, whether of a kind forbidden by the
Mosaic Law or not, is not stated and is no necessary inference drawn from the
circumstances. He would not, we may well believe, scruple now to recline at the
same table with them; but it may be readily imagined that for a guest so highly
revered, of whose Jewish sensibilities respecting food they could not be unaware,
even if he or the six Jewish brethren who accompanied him from Joppa did not
make a point of apprising them, the wealthy centurion and his family would be
only too anxious to provide such food as both he and his fellow-visitors would
find acceptable. Thus St. Peter might have "eaten bread" with the Gentiles,
neither, on the one hand, himself breaking the Levitical Law by partaking of food
which was forbidden to him as a child of the legal covenant, nor, on the other,
declining to recognize the full
acceptableness before God and the equal brotherhood
in Christ of believers who were still in their uncircumcision. The caste feeling of
proud disdain of uncircumcised men as men of an inferior grade, and the dread of
ceremonial defilement from contact with those who were levitically unclean, dared
no longer assert themselves, could, indeed, no longer be permitted to lodge in his
bosom, in the face of the clear
proof which had been afforded that the Almighty
had in Christ adopted them as His own children equally with himself. Thus it
appears that when at
was seen partaking of social meals in company with the Gentile converts, he was
only acting in the same way as he
had acted at
Vers. 11-14. —
The apostle’s rebuke of Peter at
There is no record of this scene elsewhere in Scripture. It
is a further proof
of the apostle’s independence as well as of his devotion to
Christian liberty.
I. CONSIDER
THE CONDUCT OF PETER.
1. The seethe of
this interview between Peter and Paul —
city on the Orontes, in
chiefly inhabited by Greeks, liberalized in thought by
considerable culture.
It was the second capital of Christianity,
a prominent place as the centre of Gentile Christian life.
What occurred
here would have wide results.
2. The time. It
occurred probably during the sojourn of Paul and Barnabas
at
the relation between Jewish and Gentile Christians (<441530>Acts 15:30-40).
Peter’s conduct was, therefore, all the more singular and
indefensible,
because it was so necessary to secure Christian liberty on
the basis of the
decrees. We cannot forget that, long before, the vision
from heaven
showed him the worthlessness of Jewish traditions (<441027>Acts 10:27).
3. The
circumstances. “Before that certain came
from James, he was eating
with the Gentiles; but when they were come, he withdrew and
separated
himself, fearing them of the circumcision.” Those who came
from James
were not false brethren, nor even necessarily Judaic
zealots, but certain
persons whom he sent to
the Gentiles, but to reassure Jewish Christians as to their
right to observe
the divinely appointed usages of their fathers, which the
decrees of the
was perfectly legitimate. Yet it is probable they pleaded
that there was no
warrant in the decision of the council for the freer
intercourse with Gentile
Christians which Peter had been practising. The Jewish
Christians were still
to “keep the customs,” and not to mix freely with the
Gentiles (<441519>Acts
15:19). When these persons came to
Gentiles as he had done before (Acts 10.), disregarding the
isolation
established by Levitical laws. They found him, in fact,
living as a Gentile,
not as a Jew. Peter at once, through the influence of fear
— probably the
fear of losing his influence with the Jewish Christians —
began to withdraw
himself from the Gentiles, discontinuing his eating with
them, without
giving one word of explanation, and attaching himself to
the Jewish
Christians, as if the old distinctions of meats were still
in force and still
sacred in his eyes. It is not said that the “certain from
James” reproached
him with his laxity. It may have been, after all, an empty
fear on his part.
Yet it was a most extraordinary act of tergiversation on
the part of one of
the “pillars” of the Church.
4. Its effects upon
both Jews and Gentiles at Antioch. It involved the
Jewish Christians in the hyprocrisy of Peter himself. “And
the other Jews
dissembled likewise with him” — even those very persons who
rejoiced at
the decision of the council (<441531>Acts
15:31). The Jewish converts might be
tempted to believe that the Mosaic Law was still in force.
“Even Barnabas
was also carried away with their dissimulation.” “Even
Barnabas” — my
fellow-labourer in missionary work,” a good man, full of
the Holy Ghost
and of faith,” who once fought by my side the battle of
Gentile liberty
(Acts 15.), who had hazarded his life by my side (<441516>Acts 15:16) — “was
carried away” by the force of such a formidable example in
opposition to
his own judgment and conviction. This incident probably led
to the
separation of Barnabas from Paul (<441539>Acts 15:39), for they never after
appear together, though the affectionate relationship
between the friends
was never broken. But the effect upon the Gentile
Christians at Antioch
must have been something almost inconceivable. They would
no more
meet with their Jewish brethren at the Lord’s Table. They
were treated as
unclean. Peter’s conduct virtually condemned their liberty,
and was an
indirect attempt to bring them under the yoke of Jewish
usages. “Why,”
says Paul, “compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the
Jews?” The
compulsion was exercised by the authority of his example;
for the Gentile
Christians could not know of his dissimulation, but would
rather think he
had changed his opinion upon the subject of the relation of
the Gentiles to
the gospel.
5. The true
character of Peter’s action. It was
hypocrisy; for he acted
against his better convictions, as if it were really wrong
to eat with
Gentiles. He concealed his real convictions. No voice had
been louder at
the council in protesting against the imposition of a yoke
which “neither we
nor our fathers were able to bear.” He certainly did not
“walk uprightly.”
6. Its true
explanation. This is to be found in Peter’s character, which was
one of unusual strength and of unusual weakness. He was
that apostle who
was the first to recognize and the first to draw back from
great principles.
lie was the first to confess Christ and the first to deny
him; the first to own
Gentile liberty, the first to disown it. “The fear of man
is often as
authoritative as papal bulls and decrees.”
II. THE
REBUKE OF PAUL. “I withstood him to the face, because he
was condemned.” There was no controversy between the two
apostles;
there was no difference of opinion; it was only a case of
indecision in
acting up to one’s unchanged convictions. Peter was
self-condemned, for
his conduct bore the broad mark of inconsistency.
1. The rebuke was
public. Such as sin openly should be rebuked openly. It
is a necessary and difficult and much-neglected duty, and
ought always to
be discharged in a loving temper, without vanity or
haughtiness. Here it
was administered before the assembled Church at Antioch,
Jews and
Gentiles; otherwise it would have failed to influence the
Jewish converts.
Its publicity was necessary, as it was essential in the
circumstances to
establish fixed principles for all coming time.
2. The rebuke was fully
justified.
(1) Peter was
condemned by his own act.
(2) The rebuke would
prevent the Zealots from being hardened and
confirmed in their error. The Judaists would be allowed to
receive no
encouragement from Peter’s tergiversation.
(3) The Galatians
would receive a new lesson as to the relation of the
gospel to the Law. They would be made to see what it was
“to walk
uprightly according to the truth of the gospel.”
3. It was meekly
and piously received. There is no record
of Peter’s
answer. But there was no sharp contention between the
apostles. It is
pleasing to think that the rebuke did not sunder the
friendship of the two
good men. Years after Peter speaks of his rebuker as” our
beloved brother
Paul also” (<610315>2 Peter 3:15).
4. The rebuke
proves at least that Paul was on an equality with Peter. If
the rebuke had been administered by Peter to Paul, how we
should have
heard of Peter’s primacy! Yet nothing said by Paul affects
in the least the
apostolic authority and dignity of Peter. It was not a case
of error in
doctrine, but of inconsistency in conduct. “Ministers may
err and sin;
follow them no further than they follow Christ.”
Vers. 15, 16. —
The true way of salvation.
The apostle then proceeds to show that the way of salvation
is not by the
works of the Law at all, but in a quite different way. t/is
words to Peter
imply —
I. THE
NECESSITY OF JUSTIFICATION FOR BOTH JEWS AND
GENTILES. “We being Jews by nature, and not sinners from
among the
Gentiles.” He tells the Judaists the Jews had some
advantage over the
Gentiles. Yet, after all, the Jews themselves, such as Paul
and Peter, were
obliged to renounce trust in Judaism and to find their
justification in Christ
Jesus. The apostle shows the necessity of justification
elsewhere in the case
of both Jews and Gentiles (Romans 1., 2.). “All the world
is found guilty
before God” (<450319>Romans 3:19). The
charge is abundantly proved, and the
sentence has gone forth: “Cursed is every one that
continueth not in all
things written in the book of the Law to do them” (<480310>Galatians 3:10).
II. THE
NATURE OF JUSTIFICATION. “Knowing that a man is not
justified by the works of the Law, but by the faith of
Christ.” Its meaning is
to declare a person to be just. It does not mean either to
pardon or to make
just. It is a strictly judicial act. Newman admits that it
signifies, not “to
make righteous,” but” to pronounce righteous;” yet he says
it includes the
“making righteous” under its meaning. That is, the sense of
the term is
counting righteous, but the sense of the thing is
“making righteous.” This is
to make nonsense of language. To say that it means “making
righteous” is
to make justification and sanctification the same thing.
This Romish divines
actually do; yet they regard sanctification, that is, infused
or inherent
righteousness, as the ground of justification. That is,
sanctification is at
once a part of justification and the ground of it. Can a
thing be at once part
of a thing, and at the same time the ground of a thing? The
meaning of the
term “justification” is fixed by its opposite,
“condemnation,’’ which is, not
to make wicked, but to pronounce guilty. “He that
justifieth the wicked,
and he that condemneth the just, even they both are
abomination to the
Lord” (<201715>Proverbs 17:15). “If there be a controversy between men,
and
they come unto judgment, that the judge may judge them;
then they shall
justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked “(<052501>Deuteronomy 25:1).
“The judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift
is of many
offences unto justification of life” (<450516>Romans 5:16). The term is thus
forensic. Justification includes more than pardon, because:
1. The very terms
imply a difference. To pardon is to waive the execution
of the penal sanction of the Law. To justify is to declare
that the demands
of the Law are satisfied, not waived. Pardon is a sovereign
act;
justification, a judicial act.
2. Pardon is
remission of penalty, in the absence of a satisfaction. It is not
an act of justice. But justification proceeds on the ground
of a satisfaction.
One is the remission of punishment; the other is a
declaration that there is
no ground for the infliction of punishment.
3. The apostle
speaks of the blessedness of the man to whom the Lord
imputeth righteousness without works” (<450406>Romans 4:6). To impute
righteousness is to justify. To pardon a man is not to
ascribe righteousness
to him.
4. The terms of
Scripture require this distinction. It would be unmeaning
to say, “No flesh shall be pardoned by the works of the
Law.” Justification
includes both pardon and acceptance with God. It includes a
title to eternal
life, and therefore is called “justification of life,” and
on account of it men
are made heirs according to the hope of eternal life (<560307>Titus 3:7). This is
the “true grace of God in which we stand.” God does more
than pardon; he
“imputeth righteousness without works.” Christ is made “the
righteousness
of God” to us. We are “accepted in the Beloved.” Yet the
pardon and the
acceptance are never separated. All who are pardoned are
justified, and all
who are justified are pardoned.
III. THE
GROUND OF JUSTIFICATION. “A man is not justified by the
works of the Law, but by the faith of Christ.”
1. It is not by the
works of the Law.
(1) Of what Law? It is not the mere ceremonial law, though that was here
prominently in question.
(a) It is the whole
Law — the Law in the sense in which the apostle’s
readers would understand it, that Law whose violation
brings in the whole
world guilty before God (<450319>Romans
3:19).
(b) The apostle
never contrasts the works of the ceremonial with the works
of the moral law, as if to imply that we cannot be
justified by the first class,
but may by the second. The opposition is always between
works in general
and faith.
(c) He excludes as
inadequate to our justification those very “works of
righteousness” (<560305>Titus 3:5), that
is, according to Romish theology,
works done after regeneration, which may be regarded as
possessing the
highest order of excellence. He even excludes the works of
a good man
like Abraham, the father of the faithful (<450402>Romans 4:2).
(d) The objection of
<450601>Romans 6:1, that if works are not the ground of
our justification, we may live in sin, supposes that good
works of every
sort are excluded from the ground of our justification.
(2) The works, then, of the whole Law of God are excluded. Because
Scripture repeatedly asserts the fact. We are not justified
“by our own
righteousness, which is of the Law” (<500309>Philippians 3:9).
(a) The Law demands
perfect obedience, and no obedience at one time can
atone for disobedience at another (<480310>Galatians 3:10, 21; 5:3).
(b) If we are
justified by works, Christ is dead in vain. There was no need
for his death (<480221>Galatians 2:21;
5:4).
(c) Our salvation
would not in that case be of grace, but of debt
(<451106>Romans 11:6).
(d) It would give
room for boasting, which is excluded by the law of faith
(<450327>Romans 3:27).
2. Our
justification is by the faith of Christ. There are two facts here set
forth — faith and the object of faith. The faith that
justifies is distinguished
by its object, Jesus Christ. The two prepositions (ejk
and dia<), used in the
passage are designed to mark, respectively, source or cause
and
instrument.
(1) Consider the
relation of faith to our justification. Strictly speaking,
Scripture never says that faith justifies, but that we are
justified by faith.
(a) Faith is not the
ground of our justification. Yet it is said, “Abraham
believed God, and it was counted to him for (eijv) righteousness”
(<450403>Romans 4:3). This does not mean that faith is the
graciously admitted
ground of justification. For:
(a) We are never said
to be justified on account of faith (dia<
pi>stin), but through (dia<) faith or of (ejk) faith.
(b) This view of the
relation of faith to justification is not consistent
with those passages which affirm that the ground of our
justification is not anything in us or done by us; for
faith is a work
done by us, quite as much as prayer or repentance.
(g) It is not
consistent with those passages which make Christ’s
merits, his blood, his death, his cross, the ground of our
acceptance. Faith cannot, therefore, be at once the ground
and the
instrument of our justification.
(d) We are saved by
the righteousness of another, but that
righteousness is always distinguished from the faith that
apprehends
it (<450117>Romans 1:17; <500308>Philippians
3:8-11). Faith cannot,
therefore, both be and not be that righteousness.
(e) The apostle, when
he says that Abraham’s faith “was counted to
him for (eijv) righteousness” or “as righteousness,” meant merely to
say that faith, not works, secured his salvation.
The word eijv is used in two senses — “instead of” and “with a view to,”
and Ellicott is of opinion that the idea of destination is
here blended with
that of simple predication. Thus if Abraham’s faith is
equivalent to
righteousness in God’s account, it is because it is
designed to secure that
righteousness. “It was not the act of believing which was
reckoned to him
as a righteous act, or on account of which perfect
righteousness was laid to
his charge, but the fact of his trusting God to perform his
promise
introduced him to the blessing promised” (Alford).
(b) Faith is not the
ground, but the instrument of our justification. It
receives and apprehends Christ in his righteousness. We
have proved that
faith is merely the instrument of our justification when we
have proved that
the only ground of our acceptance with God is the finished
work of Christ,
and that the only grace by which we rely upon that work is
faith. For there
is a relation between justification and faith which does
not exist between
justification and every other grace.
(2) Consider
Jesus Christ as the object of faith. The
Saviour appears in
this passage under three names — Jesus Christ, Christ
Jesus, and Christ; as
if the apostle meant to emphasize at one time the loving
humanity, at
another the official work, at another simply the Saviour in
whom Jew and
Gentile alike have their meeting-place. The “faith of
Christ” includes a
reference alike to his person and his work. The emphatic
phrase, “we
believed upon Christ,” shows that faith is not a mere intellectual
belief, but
an act of trust, in which the soul goes out to him as at
once “Wisdom,
Righteousness, Sanctification, and Redemption.”
IV. THE
KNOWLEDGE OF OUR JUSTIFICATION. “Knowing that we
are justified.” There is a twofold aspect of this knowledge.
It is:
1. Doctrinal. The
apostles, both Peter and Paul, understood the true
doctrine of a sinner’s justification, as we see by their
discourses and their
writings.
2. Experimental. They
realized it in its blessed fruits. They had an assured
sense of God’s favour, and of all the blessings involved in
it.
V. THE
EFFECT OF OUR JUSTIFICATION. The only effect pertinent
to the present discussion was the new relation of the
justified sinner to the
Law. In virtue of his union with Christ, he died to the
Law. There was,
therefore, no longer any question of his submission to
legal observances, or
to “the beggarly elements” of a forsaken Judaism.
Vers. 17-19. —
An objection met.
“For if, while we are seeking to be justified in Christ” —
our union with
Christ being the spring and fount of all our blessings —
“we ourselves
also” — as well as these Galatians who are sinners and
Gentiles — “were
found to be sinners, is Christ a minister of sin? God
forbid!”
I. THE
TRUE ATTITUDE OF ALL JUSTIFIED PERSONS IN
RELATION TO SIN AND CHRIST.
1. They renounce
all legal righteousness, such as the
Judaists boast of, and
reduce themselves to the level of Gentile “sinners.” There
is no difference
between Jew and Gentile at the first point of contact
between the soul and
the Saviour. They are alike guilty before God.
2. They look for
justification only in Christ. They are pronounced just by
God because they are in Christ.
3. Because the
Jewish Christians, in renouncing the Law, reduced
themselves to the level of sinners like the Gentiles, Christ did not therefore
become a minister of sin,
because that renunciation was carried out under
his authority. Yet Peter seemed to say by his conduct that
the renunciation
was altogether wrong.
II. THE
INCONSISTENCY OF PETER’S CONDUCT. “For if I build
again” — as you, Peter, are proposing — “the very things
which I
destroyed, I am proving myself a transgressor” Because the
work of legal
reconstruction would imply that my work of demolition was
wrong. You,
Peter, prove by your conduct that your former setting aside
of the Law was
a transgression.
III. THE
LAW WAS ITSELF DESIGNED TO MAKE WAY FOR
SOMETHING BETTER THAN ITSELF. “For I through the Law died
to
the Law, that I might live unto God.”
1. The apostle’s
death to the Law. “I died to the Law.” The Law in
question is the Mosaic Law. The apostle’s readers could
understand it in
no other sense. This death came through “the body of
Christ.” “Ye also
became dead to the Law by the body of Christ” (<450704>Romans 7:4). He bore
its penalty, and was therefore no more under its curse; and
therefore, as “I
have been crucified with him “(ver. 20), so that his death
is my death, died
to the Law in him.
2. The Law itself
led directly to that death. “I through the
Law died to the
Law.” Not merely because it was a schoolmaster to lead me
to Christ or
manifested its own helplessness to justify, but because it
was through the
Law that sin wrought death in me (<450708>Romans 7:8). The Law took action
upon me as a sinner. It wrought its will upon Christ when
it seized him and
put him to death. But in that death the Law lost its
dominion over him, and
therefore over us. Thus Christ is shown to be the “end of
the Law for
righteousness.” Thus the apostle might say to Peter that
“in abandoning the
Law he did but follow the leading of the Law itself.”
3. Death to the Law
is followed by life to God as its great purpose. “I died
to the Law that I might live unto God.” It is suggestive
that this was the
very end of Christ’s death. “For in that he died, he died
unto sin once; in
that he liveth, he liveth unto God” (<450610>Romans 6:10). We are, therefore,
to reckon ourselves” alive unto God through Jesus Christ
our Lord.” This
death to the Law does not involve lawlessness or freedom
from moral
restraints; for in its very nature it involves “death” to
that sin, which is the
strength of the Law. As we live in Christ, and Christ lives
in God, our life
is wrapped up in God. Therefore we cannot “serve him any
longer in the
oldness of the letter, but in the newness of the Spirit” —
“in the newness of
life;” “bringing forth fruit unto God.”
Ver. 20. —
Fellowship with Christ in his death and in his life.
“I have been crucified: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but
Christ liveth in
me.” The apostle is showing how he died to the Law and
became released
from legal bondage; it was through his becoming a partaker
of the death of
Christ.
2. FELLOWSHIP WITH
CHRIST IN HIS DEATH. “I have been crucified
with Christ.”
1. Here is a true
identity of position. I was one with him under
Law and in
suffering and death, so that when he died I died with him.
I died in him
when he died as my surety, satisfying Divine justice for
me. Thus baptism
for me signifies “baptism unto his death” (<450604>Romans 6:4); “We are buried
with him in baptism unto death.” We are “planted in the
likeness of his
death.” All this purports the interest of the believer in
the merit of Christ’s
death.
2. It is a position
involving a threefold change of relation.
(1) “As crucified
with Christ,” I become dead to the Law, so that the Law
shall no more become “an occasion of sin” (<450705>Romans 7:5, 6).
(2) I become dead
unto sin, and therefore no more the servant of sin
(<450606>Romans 6:6-16).
(3) I become dead to
the world, and the world to me (<480614>Galatians 6:14).
II. FELLOWSHIP
WITH CHRIST IN HIS LIFE. “Nevertheless I live; yet
not I, but Christ liveth in me.” This a mystery to the
world. The apostle is
dead and is yet alive.
1. Our death with
Christ involves our life with him. “If we died with
Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him” (<450608>Romans 6:8). It is
thus we realize “the power of his resurrection” (<500310>Philippians 3:10). Thus
“we shall live with him by the power of God” (<471304>2 Corinthians 13:4).
2. It is not a life
which has its root in the apostle v himself. “Yet not I.”
We are by nature “dead” (<490201>Ephesians
2:1), and cannot quicken
ourselves. Our life is no natural principle. Neither can we
sustain this life
nor prolong its existence. This fact explains at once the
backslidings, the
fears, and the unfruitfulness of believers.
3. Christ is the
very life of the soul. “Christ liveth in me.”
(1) He is the
substance as well as the source of that life. “Because I live ye
shall live also” (<431419>John 14:19); “Christ,
who is our life” (<510304>Colossians
3:4); “He that hath the Son hath life” (<620512>1 John 5:12).
(2) This life is in
virtue of a union with him produced by the Holy Spirit.
Thus we become “one spirit” with him.
(3) Christ is the
cause of its continuance (<490415>Ephesians 4:15, 16; <431501>John
15:1-8; 7:48).
4. The blessed
fruits of this life.
(1) It is an
absolutely secure life. The life is not in the believer’s own
keeping.
(2) It involves a
near relationship to Christ (<431506>John 15:6).
(3) It is the life
at once of earth and of heaven.
5. It is a life of
which the apostle was fully conscious. He
does not say, “I
am elected,” or “I am justified,” but “I live.” He speaks
the language of
happy assurance. He knows he is spiritually alive. His confession
is a
rebuke to those who doubt the possibility of attaining to
the “full assurance
of hope.”
Ver. 20. —
The nature and conditions of Christian life.
“The life which I now live in the flesh I live in the faith
of the San of God,
who loved me, and gave himself for me.”
I. THE
NATURE OF THIS LIFE. There is a mystery surrounding the
origin of all life. There is mystery, too, in regeneration
(<430308>John 3:8). Yet
spiritual life is due to the quickening power of the Holy
Spirit, through the
Word, “making all things new.” The first effect of
regeneration is faith; and
the life thus begun is sustained by the indwelling of the
same Spirit through
all the stages of a sanctified experience, till it shares
in the glorified life of
the Redeemer in heaven.
II. THE
CONDITION OF THIS LIFE — IT IS LIFE “IN THE FLESH.”
That is, in the body. All life — physical, intellectual,
moral — is exposed to
risk of some sort. Frost or lightning may blight flower or
tree; disease may
undermine animal life; madness may attack intellectual
life. So Christian life
is exposed to many risks, simply because it is life “in the
flesh,” that is, in a
body with passions and appetites prone to evil, and in a
world with many
seductions that appeal to the senses. Yet we must not
regard the body with
ascetic aversion, as if it were the sole cause of the
soul’s embarrassments.
It is God’s wonderful workmanship; it is the temple of the
Holy Ghost, to
be kept free from defilement; and it is and ought to be the
willing servant
of the immortal spirit in all the various activities of
Christian life.
III. THE
MEDIUM OF CHRISTIAN LIFE — FAITH. Faith is not
merely the instrument of our justification, but the
root-principle of our life.
It is the principle which maintains this life in its
constant exercise. We “live
by faith;” we “walk by faith;” we “stand by faith;” we
“overcome by faith;”
we are “sanctified by faith;:” we are “kept by faith”
through the power of
God unto the final salvation. As the principle which unites
the soul and the
Saviour, it is the conduit which carries the mighty
supplies of grace into the
soul.
IV. THE
EXTERNAL SUPPORT OR NURTURE OF THIS LIFE. “The
Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”
1. All life finds
its nurture or support in sources external to itself, which it
assimilates to its own inner growth. So it is in the animal and the vegetable
worlds. Thus the soul finds its support in the Bread of
life who came down
from heaven. It is not faith that supports this life. Faith
is nothing apart
from its object.
2. It is not the
Son of God; merely who is the support of this life. He might
be only “Guide, Philosopher, and Friend,” as in Socinian
theology; but our
life could find no adequate fulcrum or paint of support in
the Son of God
thus regarded. The apostle emphasizes
(1) the love and
(2) the sacrifice of
Christ, “who gave himself for me.”
He is no Saviour to me unless he is my High Priest, my
Substitute, my
Surety.
V. THE
APOSTLE’S ASSURANCE OF HIS PERSONAL INTEREST
IN CHRIST’S WORK. He does not use terms of generality, such
as “he
gave himself for us,” but “for me.” Thus he added assurance
to his faith.
VI. THE
LIFE IN QUESTION IS DESIGNED TO BE MANIFEST. It is
life to be lived. “The life which I now live in the flesh.”
Life may be secret
in its origin, but it comes forth into visible display. We
cannot see the life
of the tiny seed-grain cast by the husbandman into the
ground, but it
gradually makes its way to the surface through all
obstacles. Thus our life
is to be an open life. We are not to “hide our light under
a bushel;” we are
not to bury our talent in the ground; but as “ye have
received Christ Jesus
the Lord, so walk ye in him.” It is the duty of the saints
to be witnesses to
the Lord; it is their privilege to glorify him; it is their
glory to reflect the
image of his blessed character.
Ver. 21. —
No frustration of Divine grace in the apostle’s teaching.
“I do not frustrate the grace of God; for if righteousness
come by the Law,
then Christ died without cause.”
I. THE
GRACE OF GOD IS THE TRUE SOURCE OF SALVATION.
This grace was manifested in the death of Christ, and in
the blessings
derived to believers from their union with him. The
apostle’s trust in him
only magnified the grace of God.
II. ITS
FRUSTRATION WAS POSSIBLE ON PETER’S PRINCIPLES.
If any attempt were made to put works in the place of
faith, or to mix
works with faith as a ground of justification, or to
establish a system under
which ceremonialism was made essential to salvation, the
grace of God
were effectively frustrated.
III. THE
ULTIMATE PRINCIPLE INVOLVED IN THIS
FRUSTRATION. “If righteousness come by the Law, then Christ
died
without cause.”
1. The righteousness
in question is that by which a man becomes right
with God. A man might
attain to this righteousness if he could keep or had
kept the Law of God. But he has broken the Law and is under
its curse.
The righteousness must therefore be reached in another way.
It comes “by
faith,” not “by the Law “(<500309>Philippians
3:9).
2. Christ’s
death is altogether unnecessary on the supposition of a
righteousness by the Law. Why should the Son of God have died to
procure what a sinner can win for himself by his own
personal obedience?
This closes the argument in the most effective manner.
Vers. 11-18. —
The apostolic strife at
Passing from the
Peter and he had at
among the Gentiles. In his large-heartedness he had not
only approved of it
and rejoiced in it, but, laying aside all his Jewish
prejudices, he had taken
his seat at the table of the Gentiles, and had eaten
whatever was placed
before him. But certain “false brethren” having come round,
and having
urged the imperative necessity of ceremony, he yielded to
his fears,
withdrew from Gentile society, and lived in quarantine with
the Judaizers.
It would appear also that Barnabas was entrapped into
similar vacillation;
so that there was nothing for it but for Paul to stand up
like a man and
denounce Peter for his weakness. In doing so he was
contending for the
truth of the gospel. Let us look into the subject a little
more closely.
I. CONSIDER
PETER’S LIFE OF
right, and what we should expect, for Peter to throw aside
his Jewish
narrowness, the punctiliousness about meats and drinks, and
to go in for
brotherhood with the Gentiles at their feasts. Here we have
the noble and
big-hearted apostle acting upon his own better impulses. It
is such liberty
the gospel fosters. It is the foe of that narrowness which
so often keeps
men from uniting. It is the foe of that little-mindedness
which keeps so
many in estrangement. We cannot be broader in our
sympathies or freer in
our life than the gospel makes us. It can be easily shown
that the so-called
liberties beyond its sphere are real bondages.
II. CONSIDER
PETER’S RETURN TO BONDAGE. (Vers. 12, 13.)
When the Judaizers came down from
about the necessity of the Jewish ceremonies and
scrupulosities, as to put
pressure upon the apostle; so that, taking counsel of his
fears, he
deliberately withdrew from Gentile society and shut himself
up with the
Jews. This was a sore fall. And so astute were these
brethren in their
dissimulation that Barnabas was also led away. It is well
to see clearly how
bondage sets in immediately on our abandoning principle and
acting on the
pressure of our fears. Men fancy that, when called upon to
act on principle,
they are forfeiting their liberty; but the truth is all the
other way. The free
are those who act upon the dictates of truth; the slaves
are those who have
surrendered principle because of pressure.
III. CONSIDER
PAUL’S NOBLE REPRIMAND OF PETER. (Ver. 14.)
It must have been a trial for Paul to take his stand
against his senior both in
years and in the apostolate. He must have appreciated the
delicacy of his
position in standing up against the conduct of the apostle
of the
circumcision. But he felt constrained to rebuke his brother
as by his
vacillating conduct traitorous to truth. And in no way can
we testify so
powerfully to truth as when we take the field, however
reluctantly, against
those we respect, and who are deservedly popular, but who
have somehow
erred in judgment upon some point of importance. It
requires courage and
firmness; but it always has its reward in the extension of
truth and of God’s
kingdom.
IV. PAUL
SHOWS THAT THE QUESTION OF JUSTIFICATION
WAS REALLY INVOLVED IN PETER’S CONDUCT. (Vers. 15-17.)
Peter had very properly, though a Jew, lived after the
manner of Gentiles,
and so manifested his Christian liberty. Why, asks Paul,
does he now turn
round and require Gentiles to live like Jews? Is it to be
thus insinuated that
ceremonies save men’s souls? Is not this the vilest
bondage? Is not the
gospel, on the contrary, the embodiment of the truth that a
man is not
justified by the works of the Law, but by faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ? If
Jewish ceremonies are still necessary to justification,
then the work of
Jesus Christ, in which we are asked to trust, cannot be
complete. Such
ceremonialism is thus seen to be in conflict with the
gospel of justification
by faith alone. To tell men that ceremonies must save them
is to turn them
away from Christ as the object of trust to rites and
ceremonies as the
object. Am I to believe in the power of baptism and of the
sacraments as
administered by certain persons in order to salvation? or
am I to trust my
Saviour? The two methods of salvation are totally distinct,
and it is fatal to
confound them. The meaning of all such ceremonialism is to
put souls upon
a false track, so far as salvation is concerned. It is to
translate man’s
justification from the true foundation in Christ’s work to
the rotten
foundation of self-righteousness. Against this we must ever
wage persistent
war.
V. PAUL
CONSEQUENTLY INSISTS ON THE SINFULNESS OF
THE LEGAL SPIRIT. (Ver. 18.) For what we destroy in
accepting the
gospel is all trust in ceremonies as grounds of salvation.
The works of the
Law are seen to be no ground of trust for justification and
salvation. If,
then, after having destroyed the self-righteous and legal
spirit, and fled for
refuge to Jesus as our Hope, we turn round like Peter to
rebuild the edifice
of self-righteousness and legalism, we are simply making
ourselves
transgressors. We are forfeiting our liberty and piling up
fresh sin. Hence it
is of the utmost moment that we should clearly and
constantly recognize
the sinfulness of the legal spirit. It robs Jesus of his
rightful position as
Saviour of mankind. It casts away the gospel and goes back
for salvation
to the Law, which can only condemn us; it makes the
sacrifice of Jesus vain
and only increases sin. Against all legalism, consequently,
we must wage
incessant war. Nothing is so derogatory to Jesus or
destructive of men’s
souls. It is another gospel, but an utterly fallacious one.
Unless Jesus has
the whole credit of salvation, he will not be our Saviour.
He must be all or
nothing. “Other foundation can no man lay than that is
laid, which is Jesus
Christ.” — R.M.E.
Vers. 19-21. —
The death of legal hope the life of evangelical
obedience.
Paul proceeds in the exposition of Peter’s mistake to show
that it is only
when through the Law we die to all legal hope, we can live
unto God.
When legal hope has died within us, Christ has room to live
and be the
source of our spiritual energy.
I. CONSIDER
THE DEATH OF LEGALISM. (Vers. 19, 20.) The idea of
self-righteousness or Pharisaism was and is that we can live
through the
Law. But the more careful analysis of sin leads us to see
that the Law can
only condemn and slay us. The same experience became our
Lord’s when
he became our Representative. Though obeying the Law in
every
particular, he found that, in consequence of our sin, for
which he had made
himself responsible, the Law demanded his death in addition
to his
obedience, or rather “his obedience even unto death.” Not
until he was
crucified had he satisfied the demands of Law. In his crucifixion,
therefore,
he died to the Law. It had after that no more claim upon
him. When he said
on the cross, “It is finished,” he died to the Law. Now, it
is only when we
enter into this purpose of the crucifixion, and die to all
hope from the Law,
that we are in a position to live unto God. “The death of
legal hope” is “the
life of evangelical obedience.” The legalism must die
within us before we
get into the large place of new obedience. Among the many
purposes of
our Lord’s death upon the cross, this was a prime one, viz.
to wean us
away from all idea of winning life by law-keeping, that we
may gratefully
receive it as the gift of free grace.
II. CONSIDER
THE LIFE UNTO GOD. (Vers. 19, 20.) Though legal
hope has died, so that Paul is “dead to the Law” like
Christ in Joseph’s
tomb, he is at the same time enabled to “live unto God.” In
truth it is then
that the life unto God begins. For life by the Law is life
for self; whereas
when we die to all legal hope, we are delivered from the
self-life, and
enabled to live the life of consecration to God. And when
does this life of
consecration to God come? By inspiration Christ
comes and lives literally
within us by his Spirit, so that we become in a real sense
inspired persons.
Consequently, Paul declares that it is not he himself who
lives the
consecrated life, but “Christ liveth in me.” He abandoned
himself to the
Spirit of Christ, and thus made way for the life of
consecration. Nothing is
more important, then, than this self-abandonment to the
Spirit of Christ,
who is the Spirit of consecration. This is the holocaust of
the Christian life,
the abandonment of every faculty and power to the Divine
fire, that all may
rise in sublimity to heaven.
III. CONSIDER
THE LAW OF THE NEW LIFE. (Ver. 20.) Paul has
abandoned himself to the Spirit of Christ. His life becomes
in consequence
one of simple dependence upon the Son of God: or, as
it is here put, “The
life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of
the Son of God;” or,
as the Revised Version has it, “And that life which
I now live in the flesh I
live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of
God.” The self-abandoned life
is the life of constant dependence upon the Son of God. But
this being so,
the law of Christ’s life necessarily becomes the law of the
life of
consecration. What, then, is the law of Christ’s life? It
is the law of love
leading to self-sacrifice; for of the Son of God it
is here said by Paul,
“Who loved me, and gave himself for me.” Christ, in
consecrating himself
to God, dedicated himself to our salvation. He became the
voluntary
victim; he died that we might be redeemed. Hence
self-sacrifice is the law
of the new life. Now, no other system but Christianity
secures such selfabandonment
and self-abnegation. The Hindu self-abandonment to
Brahma, for example, is abandonment to a desireless condition.
“He
remains,” it has been said, “stupidly still (immobile), his
arms in air.
Brahma is his death, and not his life.” Again, Mohammedan
selfabandonment
is crude fanaticism. “It is true,” says the same writer,
“that
Allah does not kill all the faculties of the soul as Brahma
does; but he
renders them fatalistic, fanatic, and sanguinary. He is for
his adorers the
fire which consumes them, and not their life.” The Jesuit,
again, has a selfabandonment
to the chief of his order at
judgment, affections, will, and conscience to his superior,
he allows his true
life to be killed, and his obedience is only the galvanism
of spiritual death.f3
It thus turns out that all other self-abandonments but that
to Christ are
counterfeits, and his only stands the test of experience.
He rouses us to
action, to intelligent self-sacrifice. He teaches us to
“live not unto
ourselves, but unto him who died for Us, and rose again” (<470515>2
Corinthians 5:15).
IV. IN
THIS ARRANGEMENT THERE IS NO FRUSTRATION, BUT
A MAGNIFYING OF THE GRACE OF GOD. (Ver. 21.) If
righteousness
came by ceremonialism, if ceremony were the secret of
salvation, then
assuredly the grace of God would be frustrated, and Christ
have died in
vain. If legal hopes are still legitimate, then the
crucifixion of Christ was a
mere martyrdom by mistake. On the other hand, when we have
seen
clearly, as Paul did, that the Law cannot save us, but must
be given up as a
ground of hope, then we gather round the cross of Christ,
and we adore
the devotion which thereby secured our salvation, and we
magnify the
grace of God. Legalism is the antithesis and frustration of
Divine grace;
whereas the life of consecration, which the death of all
legalism secures, is
the tree exaltation of God’s grace manifested in a
crucified Saviour. Let us
make sure, then, of the crucifixion of the legal spirit
within us, and then the
consecrated life which the contemplation of Christ
crucified inspires shall
be found to be the true way of magnifying the grace of God.
Vers. 11-21. —
Withstanding of Peter at
“But when Cephas came to
public conference at
where, it is said, they tarried. They separated
after this stay. The visit of
Peter to
mentioned as still with Paul. There was more than resistance
made to
Peter; there was the going up to him, meeting him face to
face, and
charging him with inconsistency. So significant was this,
that three such
Fathers as Origen, Chrysostom, and Jerome were only able to
get over it
by unwarrantably supposing it to be simulated. It
was Paul himself who
quoted the words, “Thou shalt not speak evil of a ruler of
thy people.” He
could not have borne himself thus to Peter if he had owed
obedience to him
as his ecclesiastical superior. But, having an independent
sphere, and being
specially entrusted with the liberty of the Gentile
Christians, he had a right
to speak freely. Nor was there impropriety in his bringing
this incident
forward here, although it reflected on Peter, seeing that
it was necessary to
put his independence beyond question, which had been called
in question in
the Galatian Churches.
I. HOW
THE OCCASION DEMANDED HIS WITHSTANDING OF
PETER. “Because he stood condemned.” He was condemned by
his own
conduct. Its inconsistency was so marked.
1. Before the
coming of certain from James, he mixed freely with the
Gentile Christians. “For
before that certain came from James, he did eat
with the Gentiles.” It is difficult to say whether, or how
far, James is
involved by the introduction of his name here. There is no
reason to
suppose that he sent these men (especially as Peter was
already on the
spot) to raise the question of intercommunion in the Church
at
had been remarkably explicit on the question of
circumcision at the public
conference in
liberated from Jewish narrowness. And those men who used
his name or
came from under his influence may have been of a more timid
type than he.
The question related to eating with the Gentiles. This
was forbidden under
the old order of things, on the ground of its being a
barrier against
heathenism. But when Jews and Gentiles were both within the
one Church,
circumstances were changed. There was no need for the
barrier being
continued. But it was difficult for those who had been
accustomed to the
barrier to regard it as done away. The difficulty had been
got over at
Antioch, but it still existed to comers from Jerusalem.
Peter had been
broadened in his ideas, and when he came to Antioch he had
no difficulty in
entering into the free communion which had been established
there. He
lived as though he had been one of the Gentiles. He made no
difference at
private meals or at the public agapae. To see a leader like
Peter following
such a course promised well for the interests of liberty.
2. On the coming of
certain from James, he gave way to fear. “But when
they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing them
that were of
the circumcision.” He drew back until he occupied a
separate position. The
influence by which he was swayed from the course which he
had been
following was fear. His fear was occasioned by the coming
of certain from
James. The objects of his fear were they of the
circumcision, i.e. Jewish
Christians, especially at Jerusalem, with whom these comers
from James
would communicate. He was afraid of what they of the
circumcision would
say. We need not be surprised at his being suddenly swayed
from a noble
course. It was of a piece with his nobly daring to walk on
the water toward
Christ, and then, when he looked on the troubled water,
crying out in fear,
“Lord, save me; I perish.” It was of a piece with his
drawing his sword in
defence of his Master, and then, when questioned by the
servants in the hall
of the high priest, denying him three times, the third time
with an oath. So
he had made a noble vindication of his conduct on a former
occasion, when
taken to task for going in to the uncircumcised and eating
with them. He
was still acting under the same noble impulse when at first
in Antioch he
freely associated with the Gentile Christians. But when he
saw certain from
James, from no unbrotherly feeling toward Paul or toward
the Gentile
Christians, but, simply afraid of how it would affect him
with them of the
circumcision, he drew back and back until he placed a
decided distance
between him and the Gentile Christians.
3. His
dissimulation was followed. “And the rest of the Jews dissembled
likewise with him; insomuch that even Barnabas was carried
away with
their dissimulation.” Peter’s conduct is characterized as
dissimulation. That
was the head and front of his offending. And a very serious
offence it was.
It was not that he was narrow-minded like the comers from
James, but that
he concealed his liberal sentiments. It was not that he had
changed his
mind, but that he acted as though he had changed his mind.
This was
serious, not only in itself, but in its consequences. For
Peter held high
position as an apostle. His influence would have carried
the rest of the
Jews forward in their free intercourse with the Gentiles.
But when he
dissembled, he carried the rest of the Jews with him in his
dissimulation.
Numbers carry influence as well as position. Even Barnabas
got into the
stream. He was a man of position. He had been under the
influence of Paul,
and with Paul had championed Gentile liberty at Jerusalem.
But when the
rest of the Jews dissembled with Peter, the consequence was
(expressed, if
not by “insomuch,” by “carried”) that he was carried away
as by a stream.
Paul was equal to the occasion. “But when I saw that they walked not
uprightly according to the truth of the gospel.” The
influence from James
was not decided enough. Peter dissembled, the rest of the
Jews followed,
even Barnabas was carried off his feet, only Paul walked,
as the expression
here is, with straight feet, — the stream did not carry him
away; for which
the Church to all time is his debtor. He saw that they were
not straightfooted,
that they were being carried away and aside from the path
of
gospel liberty. He saw what was at stake, that it was
really, as before, the
enslavement of the Gentiles; and therefore, unawed by the
reputation of
Peter, unawed by the influence of numbers, unshaken by the
desertion of
Barnabas, he to the face withstood Peter.
II. THE
WORDS WITH WHICH HE WITHSTOOD PETER. “I said
unto Cephas before them all.” It was not silent, dogged
withstanding; it
was rational withstanding. Paul had his reason,
which he stated, not only
promptly, but publicly. Peter’s offence had been public,
especially in its
consequences. It was not a case, therefore, for consulting
the feelings of
the offender. There was public procedure to be
counteracted. They all, as
well as Peter, needed to be brought back to the truth of
the gospel. And
therefore what he said, he said, not behind Peter’s back,
nor to him in
private, but to his face before them all.
1. Peter was not
acting fairly with the Gentiles. “If thou, being a Jew,
livest as do the Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, how
compellest thou the
Gentiles to live as do the Jews?” Paul proceeds upon
Peter’s practice. He
had been living up to that time in Antioch after Gentile
fashion, i.e. in
disregard of the law of meats, and not after Jewish
fashion, i.e. showing
regard to the law of meats. There was no consistency,
therefore, in
compelling the Gentiles to Judaize. That is the word
which is in the Greek
(distinct from the former mode of expression), and which
ought to have
been in the translation as guiding to the meaning. The
force put upon the
Gentiles was not the force of Peter’s example, but the
force or logic of
Peter’s position. It was not that Gentiles needed to be
circumcised in order
to have communion with Christ, which had been disclaimed at
the public
conference; but it was that they needed to be circumcised
in order to have
communion with Jewish Christians. In that respect it was
putting the
Gentiles to the necessity of Judaizing.
2. Jews as well as
Gentiles needed to believe on Christ in order to be
justified. “We being
Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles, yet
knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the
Law, save through
faith in Jesus Christ, even we believed on Jesus Christ,
that we might be
justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the
Law: because by the
works of the Law shall no flesh be justified.” Three times
is the word
“justified” used here, three times are the works of the Law
disclaimed as
the ground of justification, and three times are we said to
be justified by
faith in Christ. Paul proceeds on the fact that they (and
he includes himself)
were Jews. The Gentiles were sinners (actually); hence the
need for a
barrier being raised against Gentilism. The Jews were
privileged. There
was much in the distinction, apart from the
self-righteousness that might be
put into it, and which Paul here meets with a touch of
irony. But there was
nothing in it for justification. To be justified is to be
regarded as having met
the requirements of Law. They, Jews, saw two things with
regard to
justification. They saw that a man is not justified by
the works of the Law.
The requirements of the Law are briefly that we love the
Lord our God
with all our soul, with all our strength, and with all our
mind; and that we
love our neighbors as ourselves. This love should be
exhibited in our
works. But, as they fall far short of such a standard, they
are not the source
out of which we can be
justified. They saw also that a man is justified
through faith in Jesus
Christ. They saw where justification was not to be
found; they, beyond that, saw where it was to be found. Not
seeing it in
themselves, in their own works, they saw it in Christ. He
has met all the
requirements of Law. His work can carry a law, usable
sentence. And we
are justified by means of faith in him; not because
of the nature or degree
of our faith, but simply because of our faith bringing us
into a relationship
to Christ as our Surety, in which we are regarded as having
met all the
requirements of Law. Seeing these two things with regard to
justification,
they, Jews, acted upon them. They believed on Christ Jesus
not otherwise
than the Gentiles. They sought to be justified, not on the
ground of their
own works, but on the ground of Christ’s work. They saw
that works
could not be the ground from their own Scriptures, in which
they read, “By
the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified.”
3. Paul repudiates
an inference from Jews needing to take up the position
of sinners along with Gentiles, in order to be justified in Christ. “But if,
while we sought to be justified in Christ, we ourselves
also were found
sinners, is Christ a minister of sin? God forbid.” He is
proceeding upon the
former statement. They, Jews, were not justified by the
works of the Law,
— that was equivalent to their being found sinners. This
name, jarring to
the ear, had formerly been applied to the Gentiles. Were
they, then, to be
classed as sinners with the Gentiles in order to be
justified in Christ? Was
that not (some might say) making Christ a minister of sin?
Such an
inference with all his heart he repudiates. God forbid. It
is no more making
Christ a minister of sin than one who comes with the means
of escape to a
man who is unconsciously perishing is the minister of
danger to him. The
first ministry that man needs is the ministry of
conviction. We must be
roused out of our self-pleasing dreams to see that we are
sinners. And
Christ is doing us a loving service when, even in his offer
of salvation, he
convicts us of sins.
4. He is rather
proved the transgressor who builds up after pulling down.
“For if I build up again those things which I destroyed, I
prove myself a
transgressor.” The connection is that, instead of Christ
being the minister
of sin, he himself would be proved the transgressor. While
not using
Peter’s name, he puts Peter’s case. Peter had pulled down,
in becoming a
Christian believer; he had abandoned Law-righteousness. Now
he was
building up again, in giving the Law a place for
justification. If he, Paul, did
that, he would be proved a transgressor. He would certainly
be a
transgressor between the time of his pulling it down and
the time of his
building it up again.
5. His own
experience carried him beyond the Law. “For
I through the
Law died unto the Law, that I might live unto God.” The Law
was the
instrument by which there was effected his death to the
Law. It showed
him to be a sinner, but that led to his seeing how the
curse was removed,
how all the claims of Law were for ever met; so that he
became a dead
man to the Law, placed
for ever beyond its power. He was a dead man to
the Law, that he might be a living man to God — in his
having his
covenant standing secured, but also in his having his being
vitalized by God
and drawn towards God.
6. He presents in
himself a threefold contrast.
(1) Crucified, and yet he lives. “I have been crucified with
Christi yet I
live.” The contrast has already been presented; here (if we
adopt the
punctuation, to which there is no decisive objection) it is
made to stand
out. How he became a dead man to the Law was by sharing
death with
Christ as his representative, even the particular form of
death, viz.
crucifixion. The
contrast was startling (to the disciples and to the
murderers) when Christ presented himself alive after his
crucifixion. “I am
he that liveth, and was dead.” This representation repeats
the contrast in
us. Nay, our crucifixion is carried down so that not in
successive moments
but in the same moment we share with Christ in his
crucifixion and in his
resurrection.
(2) Himself, and yet not himself. “And yet no longer I, but
Christ liveth in
me.” The crucifixion has not been the annihilation of self;
for it can still be
said, “I live.” It is he who, as a living man, stretches
himself, who before
was crucified. All the elements in the new life are ours as
subsisting in us.
But there has been the crucifixion of the old self. There
is a rapidity in the
thought — No longer I. It is no longer self that is
the central principle of
our life. That is a false, God-opposing self that has been,
and is being,
taken forth and crucified before our eyes. Away with self
in the place that
does not rightfully belong to it. A change has been made
from wrong to
right. It is Christ we have placed at the centre of our
life; from which
centre he rules the whole life, fills us with his own
light, and strength, and
peace, and joy, so that it is truly Christ living in us.
(3) A life in the
flesh, and yet a life of faith. “And
that life which I now
live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in
the Son of God, who
loved me, and gave himself up for me.” “We exist here in a
double
connection — first, with the transitory on one side; and,
secondly, with the
untransitory on the other. The sponge gets its food and
life from the fluid,
ever-moving waters of the sea; but it must be also fastened
to some rock
that does not move, and gives firm anchorage to it in the
waters. The bird
has wings connecting it with the air, and feet on which it
takes the ground
for rest or settles in firm hold on its perch for the sleep
of the night. Trees
get their feeding largely from the air, and the light in
which their foliage so
receptively spreads itself and their limbs so gracefully
play; but they must
have their roots also taking firm hold of the ground, by
these to be
localized and kept erect and steady in the storms. By such
feeble analogies
we conceive the double state of man, connected on one side
with infinite
mutabilities in things, and on the other with immutable
ideas and truths and
God.” The great object with which our faith brings us into
communion in
the unseen world is here said to be the Son of God, who
loved us and gave
himself for us. And what we have to do in our life in the
flesh is to draw
our life from redeeming love. What we have to do amid our
experience of
sin is to appropriate redemption. And this we have to do,
not once, but
habitually.
7. What his care
was. “I do not make void the grace of God: for if
righteousness is through the Law, then Christ died for
nought.” His care
was to magnify the grace of God in the death of Christ. He
would not
allow the Law to be sufficient for righteousness, because
that would be to
make void the grace of God in a way which was never to be
thought of,
viz. making the death of Christ superfluous. All make void
the grace of
God who live as though Christ had never died. Let us
magnify the grace of
God by regarding the death of Christ as all-sufficient for
righteousness —
taking it as our righteousness.
Ver. 11. —
A bold rebuke.
There can be no doubt that this rebuke offered by one
apostle to another
was real and earnest, and not, as
pretence. We have here, then, the startling spectacle of
the two leading
apostles in conflict. Yet it is plainly implied that they
were not opposed in
their general work. It was not their teaching nor their
normal practice, but
one particular act of weakness that occasioned the trouble.
I. APOSTLES
ARE FALLIBLE. Plainly St. Peter was to blame. If St.
Paul’s view of the gospel were correct — as we must all now
hold — St.
Peter was wrong in ceasing to eat with Gentiles. But even
if the view of the
following the more liberal course, and then abandoning it
out of deference
to the party of James. He was clearly inconsistent, and it
is evident that his
inconsistency was not due to change of conviction, but only
to culpable
weakness.
1. If an apostle fail,
who else will presume to be safe?
2. The “fear of man
that bringeth a snare” is a fruitful source of temptation
to many of the best men, especially in regard to sins
against charity. We
seem to be ashamed of our charity more than of any other
grace, and yet it
is the noblest and the most essentially Christian.
3. Distinguish between
apostolic teaching and apostolic conduct. Neither in
his preaching nor in his writing did St. Peter defend the
course he pursued
at
II. IT
IS RIGHT TO REBUKE DANGEROUS FAULTS. St. Peter was
the senior apostle, and it might seem presumptuous to
oppose him. He was
the foremost apostle, and opposition might endanger the
peace of the
Church. Many would let deference to years and rank and fear
of painful
discord prevent them from acting as
personal considerations. There are interests of the Church
that may be
ruined by a slavish fear of disturbing peace. The peace
thus secured is a
false peace. There are times when controversy in the Church
is a duty of
paramount importance. It may be the only security against
fatal error. Yet,
though then the least of evils, it is still an evil, and
should not be
undertaken without grave reason.
1. In the present
instance the question was of vital importance. It cut at the
root of the unity and brotherhood of the Church. If
Christians could not eat
together at the “agape,” the simple but all-significant meal
of the Christian
family, the Church would be broken up. This was no light
matter to be
overlooked. It demanded even the contention of apostle with
apostle. Let
us see that the importance of the cause is sufficient to
justify the painful
consequences of a controversy before opening it up.
2. The question was of
public interest. The fault of St. Peter was no secret,
nor did it only concern himself. His powerful example
affected others, till
even St. Barnabas was led away. No private friendship can
be pleaded in
excuse for letting a public evil go unchecked. In such
cases brother must
oppose brother, though his heart bleeds at the necessity.
III. REBUKE
SHOULD BE OPEN AND DIRECTLY OFFERED TO
THE OFFENDER.
courage for the new and often-suspected apostle thus to
challenge the first
man in the Church. Few have such courage, and many only
betake
themselves to backbiting. If we have anything against a
man, the right thing
is to tell it him to his face. This is the only honourable
course. It is due to
him in fairness. It prevents misunderstanding, and often
saves a long and
widespread quarrel. Such a course escapes presumption if it
is taken with
an honest conviction that the conduct opposed is wrong,
with a sincere
desire to save others from the consequences of it, with all
humility in
regard to one’s self as equally fallible and with great
kindness and charity
for the offender. Yet we are not all called to this work.
It requires a Paul to
rebuke a Peter wisely and well. — W.F.A.
Ver. 16. —
Justification by faith.
These words contain the pith and kernel of the Epistle.
Occurring in
historical narration, they strike the key-note of what is
rather an
expostulation and appeal to previous convictions than an original,
calm
argument, such as is the treatment of the same subject in
the Epistle to the
Romans.
Gentiles to Judaize, by reminding him that even they, Jews
as they were,
were not justified on account of works, but through faith
in Christ. By an
easy and natural transition this reminiscence is made the
occasion for
passing from the historical to the doctrinal part of the
Epistle. That great
truth which called forth the protest of apostle against
apostle is the truth
from which the Galatians, like the Christians at
away. It is of the essence of Christianity to them as it
was to their sister
Church, and as it will be to the Church in all ages.
I. CHRISTIANITY
BRINGS JUSTIFICATION. What is justification?
Some have understood it as “making righteous,” others as
“accounting
righteous.” It is plain that
obtained through faith (e.g. <450321>Romans 3:21). But it is equally plain that
the natural rendering of such a passage as that now before
us suggests the
idea of treating or reckoning as righteous. The inference
is that
used the expressions in both senses. And the inference from
that is, not that
he was confused in thought or consciously ambiguous, but
that he saw a
much closer connection between the two than Protestant
theology, in
revulsion from Romanism, has always made apparent.
Justification is the
immediate result of forgiveness. God cannot think a man to
be other than
he is; but he can act towards him better than he deserves,
can treat a sinner
as only a righteous man deserves to be treated. This is
justification. Now,
forgiveness is personal and moral. It is not mere remission
of penalties. It is
reconciliation and restitution. The justification which is
the consequence is
not a mere external thing. It sows the seed of positive
righteousness by
infusing the highest motive for it. If it did not do this
it would be immoral.
Justification is itself justified by its fruits. This great
boon is the first grace
of Christianity. Until we are forgiven and thus justified
we cannot begin to
serve God.
II. CHRISTIANITY
DECLARES THE FAILURE OF ATTEMPTING
TO SECURE JUSTIFICATION THROUGH WORKS OF LAW. All the
world over men have been making frantic but futile efforts
in this direction.
A sickening sense of failure is the invariable result (<450724>Romans 7:24). It is
like the vanishing of a nightmare to see that the whole
attempt is a mistake,
that God recognizes its impotence, and that he does not
expect us to
succeed in it.
1. We cannot be
justified through works of Law, because if
we do our best
we are unprofitable servants, and have only done
what we ought to have
done. The slave whose whole time belongs to his master
cannot earn
anything by working overtime. Future obedience is simply
obligatory on its
own account; it cannot atone for past negligence.
2. We cannot renew
our own nature by anything we do, seeing that we
only Work outwards from our nature. While the heart is
corrupt the
conduct cannot be justifying.
3. There is no life
in Law to infuse power for holier service. Law restrains
and represses; it cannot renew and inspire. Only love and
grace can do that.
4. Nevertheless, obedience
to the principles of the Law is not superseded
by any other method of justification. It is the justified
through faith, and
they only, who truly obey the Law, delighting to do the
will of God.
III. CHRISTIANITY
PROMISES JUSTIFICATION THROUGH FAITH
IN CHRIST.
1. Faith is the means
of justification, not the grounds of it. We are not
justified on account of faith, but through faith. Faith is
not, taken as itself, a
virtue serving just as works of Law were supposed to serve.
The one
ground of forgiveness and renewal is the grace of God in
Christ. Faith is
the means of securing this, because it unites us to Christ.
2. This faith is in
Christ, not in a creed. We may cast our thoughts about
Christ into a creed. Yet what is necessary is not the
understanding of and
assent to any doctrines, but trust in a Person.
3. The faith is active
trust. It is not only believing about Christ, but relying
on him in conduct. For example, it is like, not only
believing that a certain
pillar-box belongs to the post-office, but also dropping
one’s letter into it.
4. It is trust to
Christ in all his relations, and therefore as much the
confidence in him as our Lord and Master that directly
leads to obedience,
as passive reliance on him as a Saviour for the forgiveness
and renewal
which we can never work out for ourselves. — W.F.A.
Ver. 19. —
Dying to Law and living to God.
Here is a history of man’s experience with Law. At first
the vision of Law
crushes and terrifies. Then it works deliverance from the
life that is wholly
given up to it. This deliverance is not for antinomian
licence, but for
spiritual life in God.
I. WHAT
IS IT TO DIE TO LAW? Law here is not merely the Mosaic
code. It is generic. Every nation has more or less some
conception of law.
We all feel it in our conscience. To live for this, to toil
simply to meet its
requirements, to be gloomy and despondent at our failure,
is to live to
Law. This by no means implies perfect or even partial
obedience to Law. It
may go with absolute failure; it is never found resulting
in the complete
harmony of Law and conduct. Sow, to die to Law is to be
free from this
galling yoke. It is to be liberated from the frightful
vision of an obligation
that is imperative and yet beyond our powers — the
nightmare feeling that
we must do what we cannot do. It is freedom, too, from the
habit of living
in regard to Law as the rule and motive of life.
II. HOW
DOES LAW LEAD TO THIS RESULT? We can understand
how the gospel does it by offering forgiveness and by
calling us to a better
method of holiness. But Law also strangles the life that
dwells in it.
1. It condemns our
failure, and so shows us that it is vain to attempt to live
in it.
2. It proves itself
impotent to give us the means of fulfilling its
requirements. The
longer we live in it the more do we see that such a life is
fruitless. Thus we gradually cease to feel drawn to it. At
length we confess
our failure and abandon the attempt. The Law has then
killed the life we
had in it.
III. WHAT
IS THE OBJECT OF THIS DEATH TO LAW? Regarded by
itself it is a miserable disaster. Law points to
righteousness. To cease to
live in Law is to dismiss the discredited guide in the
wilderness and to be
left alone. By itself the result would be ruinous. But it
is only permitted in
order to clear the way for something better. We must not
rest in freedom
from Law. To be free from the obligation and free from the
penalty, and to
have no new and better life, would be the collapse and
degradation of all
moral order. That is a false and fatal gospel which
consists only in the
promise of such a result. The only reason for allowing it
is to secure the
new life in God.
1. This means
exchanging a blind submission to Law or a loving
obedience to our Father in heaven.
2. It means abandoning
the helpless command for the inspiration of a
living presence. This
is the true Christian life. It is therefore no selfish
salvation that is offered to us, but a life of
self-dedication, a losing of self in
God. Note that the Law does not lead to this result, nor
does dying to the
Law. Thus far only the way is prepared. The new life in God
flows from
the gospel of Christ. — W.F.A.
Ver. 20. —
Crucified with Christ.
not merely believing a scheme of doctrine, nor following a
certain course
of devotion, nor accepting an offered grace. It was
absolute union with
Christ in spiritual experience. Nothing is more
characteristic of the apostle
than the way in which, in almost every Epistle, he
describes the Christian
life as going step by step with the life of Christ from the
earthly humiliation
and death to the heavenly triumph. Here the most essential
elements of that
experience are pointed out, and the secret of them declared.
I. THE
ESSENTIAL CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE.
1. Crucifixion with
Christ. This is no figure of speech, meaning only that,
inasmuch as Christ died for us, we may be said to have been
crucified
representatively in him. The passionate earnestness of
his own spiritual renewal goes far beyond any such shallow
conception. He
is plainly describing what he really endured.
(1) This is death.
The old life is killed out. The passions, lusts, habits, and
associations of the life in sin, self, and worldliness are
mortified.
Christianity is not simply educational. It is first of all
militant — purging,
scourging, killing.
(2) This is
crucifixion — a painful, violent death; for it is no light matter to
destroy the life in sin, so full of pleasant attractions,
and so deeply rooted
in our inmost nature — and a judicial execution, wrought on
us by the
vindictive powers of our own treacherous passions when once
we turn
from them to faith in Christ.
(3) This is a
crucifixion with Christ. Our union with Christ necessitates this
death of the old life and brings it about. The new wine
bursts the old
bottles. Conscience and Law fail to destroy the old life,
though they reveal
its hideous deformity. But when we come to
dying Christ, entering into his experience by faith and
vivid sympathy, the
old self receives its mortal wounds. Then we can live the
former life no
longer.
2. Christ living in
us.
Christ that the ruling power in him is no longer self but
Christ. This is true
Christianity.
(1) It is life. We
die that we may live. We begin with mortifying the old life,
but we do not continue to exist in a barren asceticism. New
energies spring
up from the grave of the old life.
(2) This life is
Christ’s. It derives its power from Christ, it is swayed by the
will of Christ, it seeks the ends of Christ, it breathes
the spirit of Christ, it
is lived in personal communion with Christ. Selfish aims
and self-devised
resources are gone, and in their place the grace of Christ
is the inspiration,
and the mind and will of Christ are the controlling
influences of the new
life. This is not a future possibility, but a present
attainment. The life is now
lived in the flesh.
II. THE
SECRET Of THIS EXPERIENCE.
1. It is realized
through faith.
to destroy the old life and live himself in us depends on
our faith in him,
and is exercised just in proportion as we yield ourselves
to him in trustful
reliance and loyal obedience. No fate will make it ours, no
mechanical
influence will secure it. Intelligently, voluntarily, we
must exercise faith in
him to be joined to him in crucifixion and new life. Faith
is always the
greatest bond of union.
2. It is determined by
the love and sacrifice of Christ. Here is the motive
for our faith. The love of Christ constrains us. The gift
of himself for us
reveals and confirms his love and brings it home to our
hearts. The
explanation of the revolution in
persecutor, and the creation of the apostle, is his coming
under the
influence of these truths. To enjoy the same experience we
must
(1) fix our thoughts
on the same great, wonderful love and sacrifice of
Christ; and
(2) appropriate them
personally to ourselves. “He loved me,” etc. —
W.F.A.
Ver. 21. —
Grace frustrated.
I. IF
WE SEEK FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS BY MEANS OF LAW WE
MAKE NO USE OF THE GRACE OF GOD. Here are two rival methods
for obtaining righteousness. The first is wide and various,
by means of
Law, any law — the Levitical system, ascetic discipline,
rites of heathen
mysteries, Stoic philosophy, our own attempts to conform to
an outside
rule. The second is specific, the grace of God, the
grace shown in the
gospel, the grace that comes through the sacrifice of
Christ. These two
methods are mutually exclusive. They run in opposite
directions. The
Judaizing party was trying to combine them. The Roman
Catholics made
the same attempt when they regarded justification as the
result of works
wrought by means of grace. But, though grace does lead us
to conformity
with Law, it can only do so in its own way by changing the
heart and
planting principles of righteousness, not by assisting the
old servile effort to
keep certain external ordinances. The old stage-coach can
be of no
assistance to the express train. By so much of the distance
as you go by
road you leave the rail and therefore lose ground. The
mistake of
neglecting grace for Law is
(1) foolish, for we thus lose a help freely offered;
(2) ungrateful, for we refuse the gift of God; and
(3) dangerous, for we shall be to blame for the failure that could
have been avoided had we not declined to avail ourselves of
God’s
method of righteousness.
All attempts, then, to increase holiness by monastic rules,
regulations of a
religious order, specific vows, or restraints of formal
Church discipline are
unchristian. The higher righteousness must be attained by
the same means
through which the first elements were secured. Any other
method is poorer
and weaker. We begin with grace; we can never improve upon
grace.
II. IF
RIGHTEOUSNESS WERE ATTAINABLE BY MEANS OF
LAW, CHRIST’S DEATH WOULD HAVE BEEN TO NO PURPOSE.
1. The method of Law
was the older method. If this had been successful
there would have been no need to add another. If the Old
Testament were
enough the New Testament need never have been produced.
2. The method of Law
was the less costly method. We do not turn to more
expensive methods if no superior advantage is to be gained
by them. The
new method is only possible at the greatest possible cost.
The
righteousness by Law required no special sacrifice. The
righteousness by
grace required the death of the Son of God. How much
superior must God
consider it to be willing to pay so heavy a price in order
to secure it to us!
We may be sure that, if by any easier way the same results
could have been
reached, God would have spared his own Son. Yet they who
neglect this
grace for the old method of Law proclaim by their actions
that the great
sacrifice was unnecessary. For themselves, too, they do
make it a useless
thing. This is the pathetic side of their error. Refusing
to avail themselves
of the grace of God, they bring it to pass that, as far as
they are concerned,