If it should be asked, What course must we take that the better interest may get the better? This is what the law commands, but those who want to put themselves under the law cannot do it. He granted that persons might indulge in some such thoughts about him. When the prophet speaks of any one living, it is by faith "The just shall live by faith." And they are quite zealous in their beliefs, very fervent in the proclamations of their beliefs. Here particularly the Christian is guarded against the inroads of legalism. at least as zealous for the Jews' religion as any Jew of the straitest sect. Thank You, Jesus, for Your forgiveness and for Your love and for Your grace to me.". The apostle accepts the fact in all its strength. Here it is the total judgment of flesh in its religious pretensions, and more particularly a blow to that which is an essential principle of law. And this directly follows his censure of their observance of times and seasons. Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams; for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul. (Deuteronomy 13:3.). The readiest way to destroy the spirituality of a church, and to annihilate the influence of religion, is to excite a spirit of contention. The apostle goes up to Jerusalem, not only with Barnabas, who had come from thence, but taking with him Titus, who seems not to have been there before Titus, his own valued companion in labour, but a Gentile. The gospel, not the law, owns its kindred with the promise. But meanwhile, under the gospel, there is an express promise of the blessing of the Gentiles when God spoke of the one seed, which is Christ. This is heavy. In other words, if the believer simply were one forgiven by grace, without having either life in Christ or the Holy Ghost dwelling in him, he might, perhaps, plead that he could not avoid sinning. "Yet undergirding all of Pauls admonitions regarding love and service is the reality of life lived by the Spirit, with references to the Spirit being more frequent in Galatians 5:13 to Galatians 6:10 than references to either love or service." For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision avails any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love ( Galatians 5:6 ). But when we look toward Jesus we can find freedom. Thank God Jesus Christ has set me free from my bondage to my flesh. If you are circumcised, Christ is no value to you. This is all that people's zeal and labour come to. ", At once the apostle launches into the troubled sea. But this was only provisional and parenthetic. She is as one that has no husband. 4 You are alienated from Christ, you who desire to be justified by the law. Am I going to yield to my flesh, or am I going to yield to the Spirit? What were they doing? 2. Surely now there was some link with the twelve! Galatians 5 Galatians 5:7 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but faith working through love. Flesh alas! Note, If we should approve ourselves to be Christ's, such as are united to him and interested in him, we must make it our constant care and business to crucify the flesh with its corrupt affections and lusts. What Paul is saying is, "This legalistic movement may not have gone very far yet, but you must root it out before it destroys your whole religion.". 16 This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. After all, what God had at heart was the accomplishment of His own promise in grace. He is governed by principles by which he lives. And what is the end of them? Galatians 5:15 But if ye bite and devour one another Another reason inducing to love is taken from the pernicious consequences of a contrary spirit and conduct. It was, of course, altogether just and right in itself. The apostle urges that all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. He was given, whether in power or in person, not by the law, but by the hearing of faith. They're just warmed over, put in a new coat, and declared by a fresh voice, or sometimes the voices aren't so fresh, but they're things, concepts that . He who bites has exhausted his angry passion, but he who devours has given a demonstration of extreme cruelty. Chrysostom. The apostle's discerning eye at once judged by Christ and by that gospel which he had learned from Him. In my spirit, in the realm of the Spirit. For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another ( Galatians 5:13 ). Who more zealous of the doctrines of his fathers? Jesus, the rejected Messiah, was the Son of the living God, the giver of life, the quickening Son of God. The reason is, that he has not yet come to own by faith that he has no strength any more than righteousness, and that Christ is all and in all. And this is the thing that you try to describe to people, and they don't understand. They had somehow become uneasy. He is brought into another condition. The truth is the distinctive boon and mark of Christendom. It was something painful to bear. This shows us the exceeding seriousness of a step apparently so trifling as his abstaining from further intercourse with the Gentiles in mere ordinary life. He did not forget His people Israel; but He had always the glory of Christ before Him; and the moment we rise up to this blessed Seed of all blessing (the true Isaac, dead and risen really, as the son of Abraham was then in figure), the blessing of the Gentiles is secured in that one sole person, before the Jews are multiplied in their land under the new covenant, and possess the gate of their enemies. It is the obligation to God. The most illuminating thing about it is that it is commonly used in the New Testament of the attitude of God towards men ( Romans 2:4; Romans 9:22; 1 Timothy 1:16; 1 Peter 3:20). Liberty comes first, mark; power and love afterwards. comfort be destroyed, which is oftentimes done this way, though a it. Christ is your liberty and life. We invite you to crucify our flesh every day so that we may walk in step with your Spirit. The Galatians were succumbing to false teaching (7-12) III. What a subversion, not only of the truth of God revealed in the gospel, but also of redemption, which is its basis! For ye are all the children of God." They don't come to man from God.And the Jehovah Witnesses, just the Arian heresy of the early church. All this is counted a great, wise, and sensible help to devotion. You'll be disappointed. It is not a vague general expression for all saints, but implies that fleshly Israel was nothing now. Had they been occupied with Christ, they would have really loved one another, and in other respects too fulfilled the law, without thinking about themselves or it. Christianity brings everything to a climax; it also settles all questions. He begins with the works of the flesh, which, as they are many, so they are manifest. 5) Psalm 88:13 (NIV) But I cry to you for help, LORD; in the morning my prayer comes before you. But if ye bite - The word used here ( dakno), means, properly, to bite, to sting; and here seems to be used in the sense of contending and striving - a metaphor not improbably taken from dogs and wild beasts. Galatians 5 shows that spiritual liberty comes from knowing the truth. It's faith which works by love.Now Paul said, Again, you remember he said, "You did start well. It meant emulation, the desire to attain to nobility when we see it. Just let our books explain for you." The law was given them with all pomp and solemnity. I have known a divine who had a character for intelligence use these words as a motto and sanction. The Christian's faith is founded not on a book but on a person; its dynamic is not obedience to any law but love to Jesus Christ. Those that are of faith, not those who pretend to the law and do it not, are blessed with their father. No doubt also his line of procedure did not at all consort with their desires, who were sticklers for earthly order, and a line that looks safe and respectable to natural eyes. There is a warfare that goes on in the life of the believer. (a) It means being submissive to the will of God ( Matthew 5:5; Matthew 11:29; Matthew 21:5). Who in times past you walked according to the course of this world. 5:1-12 Look now it is I, Paul, who am speaking to you I tell you that if you get yourself circumcised Christ is no good to you. And God held the reins that the truth might be kept unsullied and pure; and he goes south and north as the Lord guided His servant, but not to Jerusalem to those that were apostles before him. And so, I would listen to these fellows, and I listened, you know, and just said, "Well, you know, that's what the scripture says, you know," when they would quote scriptures. (2.) Therefore law, sin, and death may not hurt you or drive you to despair. Help me, Lord, to just keep the right attitude." This is exceedingly important, and the more as I believe the scope of the allusion to Abraham and to his seed is not often appreciated. It supposed, and went forth to every creature on the ground of the total ruin of Jew and Gentile. This is the very evil which the Spirit of God so earnestly and energetically denounces here by the apostle Paul. Is it against the promise of God? Be it so: such was true. By this he plainly means free from law. "As we have said before, so I say now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received." The fleshly desires will not be dominating your life, but your life will be dominated by the Spirit, and thus, by God. He is occupied with himself. What a condemnation of themselves, that no system which ever seeks for an earthly succession can in the least make Paul answer its purpose! Now you're, you know, chopping Jesus up, and said, "Well, He is God here, and but, for a while He wasn't God and the universe was without God for a little bit here, or whatever. The law necessarily makes the man, and the man's doings, to be the prominent object. I can yield to my flesh and I can blow off steam and I can get in and I can fight and I can get into the striving and the whole issue. Those who belong to Jesus Christ have crucified their own unregenerate selves ;along with all their passions and their desires. How wholesome is the language here, "Every one shall bear his own burden!" Villages had an official who was called the superintendent of the village's eirene ( G1515) , the keeper of the public peace. What can you say to a guy? The truth of the gospel, to the apostle Paul's mind, was at stake. Does not this make very light of it? All question of natural ties drops in death; as the cross is the disproof of any right to Christ in either. And so Paul is standing against this teaching in his letter to the Galatians, and in chapter five, he said. Now, it is evident and to this I call your particular attention that the apostle here binds together his gospel with his apostolic place. That would not be a good example of Christian love. In the case of the twelve, we do find an apostle chosen to supply the gap of Judas chosen, I admit, of God, though after a Jewish sort, as Chrysostom justly remarks, for the Holy Ghost was not yet given. The world of spirits can never be comfortable to those who plunge themselves in the filth of the flesh; nor will the righteous and holy God ever admit such into his favour and presence, unless they be first washed and sanctified, and justified in the name of our Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God,1 Corinthians 6:11. Verse Meaning Apparently the believers who advocated grace and the believers who advocated law bitterly opposed one another in the Galatian churches. I don't believe that." And your spirit being alive, again you can experience fellowship with God, the joy, the blessing of fellowshipping with God.So, "walk in the Spirit." The context behind the Galatians church We have been crucified to the requirements of the law Kill our desire or need to keep the law as a means of gaining justification Galatians 2:15-16 Being crucified to self Matthew 16:24 There is only one throne in our hearts and life, and only one person can sit on it Galatians 5:24 Article Images Copyright 2023 Getty Images unless otherwise indicated. The comparison would take in the Old Testament saints; or the application ("even so we") is to those then alive, who had been under that state of things. The mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the Spirit is life and joy and peace. Can anything prove that it is not an old creation better than this that there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female, which last at least is an absolute necessity for the perpetuation of the race? I just refer to it for a moment, because it adds much to the beauty of the reasoning in Galatians. As the soldier in Studdert Kennedy's poem said; For Paul it was essential that Christian freedom should mean not freedom to indulge the lower side of human nature, but freedom to walk in the life of the Spirit. The apostle now demonstrates, from the result, how destructive such proceedings in the church must ultimately prove to be. My very nature is dealt with. Fidelity; this word (pistis, G4102) is common in secular Greek for trustworthiness. And they ate, giving over to their fleshly appetites and in so doing, the flesh dominated. (i) Peshat, its simple or literal meaning. (Compare John 1:9; John 1:17.). The history of the flesh its sad and humbling history is soon over; but the history that faith opens into never closes. enjoyment that has degenerated into licence. He strikes accordingly at the root of all successional or derived authority. Not at all, says the apostle, you are returning straight into your old heathenism without knowing it yourselves. It is to be noted that the summit of all meanings was the allegorical meaning. And when he went there, was it a question of receiving aught from the twelve? Remember what it must have been to one like Paul to censure the most honoured of the twelve. We shall find he does not forget this elsewhere: he reasons on it in another part of the epistle. Nor this only. The works of the flesh. During the Medieval period it was depicted as "Joachim and Anne Meeting at the Golden Gate", meaning Mary's conception through the chaste kiss of her parents at the Golden Gate in Jerusalem; [64] the 14th and 15th centuries were the heyday for this scene, after which it was gradually replaced by more allegorical depictions featuring an adult Mary. Now, the word temperance is one we have a little difficulty with. The message of redemption through the cross was offensive. Impurity; the word that Paul uses (akatharsia, G167 is interesting. Saints they may have been; and such, we know, moved about from Jerusalem. There is no comparison of countless seed; there is not an allusion to the sand of the sea, or to the stars of the sky. You see, laws are for unprincipled people. The apostle states it with perfect calmness, and without comparing others. We are crucified unto it by grace, as the world is crucified unto us by judgment. Trench says that Jesus showed agathosune ( G19) when he cleansed the Temple and drove out those who were making it a bazaar; but he showed chrestotes ( G5544) when he was kind to the sinning woman who anointed his feet. He signed ordinarily, putting his subscription at the end, i.e., his own name, to verify it; but he did not write it. Observe the place the cross has here, not merely Christ's blood, but His death on the cross. The apostle turns this into an admirable piece of divine reasoning in defence of the gospel. Strange as all this may seem to us, it enshrines one great truth. 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