Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary
Galatians 2:14

Clarke's Commentary

Verse 14. That they walked not uprightly — ουκ ορθοποδουσι. They did not walk with a straight step-they did not maintain a firm footing.

According to the truth of the Gospel — According to that true doctrine, which states that Christ is the end of the law for justification to every one that believes; and that such are under no obligation to observe circumcision and the other peculiar rites and ceremonies of the law.

If thou, being a Jew, livest — This was a cutting reproof. He was a Jew, and had been circumstantially scrupulous in every thing relative to the law, and it required a miracle to convince him that the Gentiles were admitted, on their believing in Christ, to become members of the same Church, and fellow heirs of the hope of eternal life; and in consequence of this, he went in with the Gentiles and ate with them; i.e. associated with them as he would with Jews. But now, fearing them of the circumcision, he withdrew from this fellowship.

Why compellest thou the Gentiles — Thou didst once consider that they were not under such an obligation, and now thou actest as if thou didst consider the law in full force; but thou art convinced that the contrary is the case, yet actest differently! This is hypocrisy.

Bridgeway Bible Commentary

Saved by faith alone (2:11-21)

Being assured of the fellowship of the Jerusalem leaders, Paul and Barnabas returned to Antioch (see Acts 12:25). From there they set out on their first missionary journey (see Acts 13:1-3). On returning to Antioch at the end of the journey, they came into conflict with a group of Judaisers who had come from Jerusalem. These men claimed to have the authority of James, and taught that Christians should keep the Jewish laws concerning food, circumcision and other matters. Their teaching was so persuasive that Peter, Barnabas and most of the Jews stopped eating with the Gentiles (11-13). Paul rebuked Peter publicly for his inconsistency (14).

Jews such as Paul and Peter were saved by faith in Christ, not by obedience to the law. How useless, then, to go back to something that could not save them in the first place (15-16). To put the argument another way: if Gentile Christians are wrong for not keeping the law, Jewish Christians must also be wrong for being justified apart from the law. And since Christ is the one who justifies them, he too must be wrong. Clearly, such a possibility is absurd (17). Rather, the real sin is to go back to keeping the law after being justified apart from the law (18).
The law cannot bring life; it can only condemn to death all who have broken it. Christ took this punishment for sinners by his death on the cross. When sinners turn to Jesus Christ in faith they are removed from the law’s power (for the law can have no power over those who are now ‘dead’), and given new life, the life of Christ. Having been saved by faith without the law, they now live by faith without the law (19-20). The conclusion is that if sinners can be justified by law, Christ need not have died (21).

Justification by faith

Paul often speaks of sinners being justified (GNB: put right with God). He uses the word in a legal sense, where he likens God’s act of justification to that of a judge who declares a person to be righteous, or in the right. To justify is the opposite of to condemn, which means to declare a person guilty, or in the wrong (cf. Deuteronomy 25:1; Matthew 12:37). (‘Justify’ and ‘righteous’ are different parts of the same word in the original languages of the Bible.)

Justification does not mean that God makes repentant sinners righteous in the sense that they now have some inner power that enables them to work to achieve perfection. It means that God declares them righteous. He gives them a righteousness that is not their own - a new status, a new standing, that makes them fit for the presence of a holy God (Romans 4:6-8; 2 Corinthians 5:21; 2 Corinthians 5:21). God now sees believers as being ‘in Christ’, and accepts them not because of anything they have done, but because of what Christ has done through his death and resurrection (Romans 3:27-28; Romans 4:24-25; Philippians 3:9).

Through the work of Jesus Christ, God is able to be righteous in justifying those who have faith in him. Because Jesus bore their sin, God can now declare them righteous (Romans 3:24-26; 1 Peter 2:24; 1 Peter 2:24). God does this freely by his grace, and repentant sinners accept it by faith (Romans 3:24; Titus 2:11; Titus 3:4-7).

Faith is chiefly concerned not with knowledge but with trust. It is not simply an acceptance of certain facts, but a reliance upon Jesus Christ for all that salvation means (Romans 3:22; Galatians 2:20-21; Galatians 3:26). Faith in itself does not save. It is simply the means by which sinners accept the salvation that Christ offers. The merit lies not in faith itself, but in the object of faith. Salvation is not a reward for faith, but a gift that God offers to undeserving sinners (Romans 3:25; Romans 5:15). When people by faith accept what Christ has done for them, God declares them righteous on account of Christ and assures them that they need never again fear the condemnation of sin (Romans 8:33-34; 1 John 5:12-13; 1 John 5:12-13).

Coffman's Commentaries on the Bible

But when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Cephas before them all, 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?

I said unto Cephas … before them all … This bold rebuke administered by Paul to Peter may not be taken as a relaxation of Jesus' rule that the brother having sinned should first be approached privately (see my Commentary on Matthew, Matthew 5:24). The situation was not one which pertains to any persons today, for both Paul and Peter were inspired apostles of the highest rank; and the near-unique situation demanded exactly what Paul did here. We therefore disagree with Hendriksen that here is established the principle of "rebuking publicly those who have sinned publicly," William Hendriksen, New Testament Commentary on Galatians (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1968), p. 96. unless and until the three steps commanded by Jesus in Matthew 18:15-17 have been taken. Church leaders, as recommended by Calvin, taking upon them to imitate Paul's action here, are presuming far too much. Besides, it is not certainly known that Paul had not already, in this case, taken the steps of the first and second admonitions, as he had instructed Titus to do (3:10); but no matter what Paul did, it is the instruction to Titus that more correctly fits the analogy with church leaders today. See much more on this in my Commentary on Matthew, Matthew 18:15.

Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible

But when I saw that they walked not uprightly - To walk, in the Scriptures, is usually expressive of conduct or deportment; and the idea here is, that their conduct in this case was not honest.

According to the truth of the gospel - According to the true spirit and design of the gospel. That requires perfect honesty and integrity; and as that was the rule by which Paul regulated his life, and by which he felt that all ought to regulate their conduct, he felt himself called on openly to reprove the principal person who had been in fault. The spirit of the world is crafty, cunning, and crooked. The gospel would correct all that wily policy, and would lead man in a path of entire honesty and truth.

I said unto Peter before them all - That is, probably, before all the church, or certainly before all who had offended with him in the case. Had this been a private affair, Paul would doubtless have sought a private interview with Peter, and would have remonstrated with him in private on the subject. But it was public. It was a case where many were involved, and where the interests of the church were at stake. It was a case where it was very important to establish some fixed and just principles, and he therefore took occasion to remonstrate with him in public on the subject. This might have been at the close of public worship; or it may have been that the subject came up for debate in some of their public meetings, whether the rites of the Jews were to be imposed on the Gentile converts. This was a question which agitated all the churches where the Jewish and Gentile converts were intermingled; and it would not be strange that it should be the subject of public debate at Antioch. The fact that Paul reproved Peter before “them all,” proves:

(1) That he regarded himself, and was so regarded by the church, as on an equality with Peter, and as having equal authority with him.

(2) That public reproof is right when an offence has been public, and when the church at large is interested, or is in danger of being led into error; compare 1 Timothy 5:20, “Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear.”

(3) That it is a duty to reprove those who err. It is a painful duty, and one much neglected; still it is a duty often enjoined in the Scriptures, and one that is of the deepest importance to the church. He does a favor to another man who, in a kind spirit, admonishes him of his error, and reclaims him from a course of sin. He does another the deepest injury, who suffers sin unrebuked to lie upon him, and who sees him injuring himself and others, and who is at no pains to admonish him for his faults.

(4) If it is the duty of one Christian to admonish another who is an offender, and to do it in a kind spirit, it is the duty of him who has offended to receive the admonition in a kind spirit, and with thankfulness. Excitable as Peter was by nature, yet there is no evidence that he became angry here, or that he did not receive the admonition of his brother Paul with perfect good temper, and with an acknowledgment that Paul was right and that he was wrong. Indeed, the case was so plain, as it usually is if men would be honest, that he seems to have felt that it was right, and to have received the rebuke as became a Christian. Peter, unhappily, was accustomed to rebukes; and he was at heart too good a man to be offended when he was admonished that he had done wrong. A good man is willing to be reproved when he has erred, and it is usually proof that there is much that is wrong when we become excited and irritable if another admonishes us of our faults. It may be added here that nothing should be inferred from this in regard to the inspiration or apostolic authority of Peter. The fault was not that he taught error of doctrine, but that he sinned in conduct. Inspiration, though it kept the apostles from teaching error, did not keep them necessarily from sin. A man may always teach the truth, and yet be far from perfection in practice. The case here proves that Peter was not perfect, a fact proved by his whole life; it proves that he was sometimes timid, and even, for a period, timeserving, but it does not prove that what he wrote for our guidance was false and erroneous.

If thou, being a Jew - A Jew by birth.

Livest after the manner of the Gentiles - In eating, etc., as he had done before the Judaizing teachers came from Jerusalem, Galatians 2:12.

And not as do the Jews - Observing their special customs, and their distinctions of meats and drinks.

Why compellest thou the Gentiles ... - As he would do, if he insisted that they should be circumcised, and observe the special Jewish rites. The charge against him was gross inconsistency in doing this. “Is it not at least as lawful for them to neglect the Jewish observances, as it was for thee to do it but a few days ago?” Doddridge. The word here rendered “compellest,” means here moral compulsion or persuasion. The idea is, that the conduct of Peter was such as to lead the Gentiles to the belief that it was necessary for them to be circumcised in order to be saved. For similar use of the word, see Matthew 14:22; Luke 14:23; Acts 28:19.

Calvin's Commentary on the Bible

14.But when I saw that they walked not uprightly. Some apply these words to the Gentiles, who, perplexed by Peter’s example, were beginning to give way; but it is more natural to understand them as referring to Peter and Barnabas, and their followers. The proper road to the truth of the gospel was, to unite the Gentiles with the Jews in such a manner that the true doctrine should not be injured. But to bind the consciences of godly men by an obligation to keep the law, and to bury in silence the doctrine of liberty, was to purchase unity at an exorbitant price.

The truth of the gospel is here used, by Paul, in the same sense as before, and is contrasted with those disguises by which Peter and others concealed its beauty. In such a case, the struggle which Paul had to maintain must unquestionably have been serious. They were perfectly agreed about doctrine; ⁽⁴⁶⁾ but since, laying doctrine out of view, Peter yielded too submissively to the Jews, he is accused of halting. There are some who apologize for Peter on another ground, because, being the apostle of the circumcision, he was bound to take a particular concern in the salvation of the Jews; while they at the same time admit that Paul did right in pleading the cause of the Gentiles. But it is foolish to defend what the Holy Spirit by the mouth of Paul has condemned. This was no affair of men, but involved the purity of the gospel, which was in danger of being contaminated by Jewish leaven.

Before them all. This example instructs us, that those who have sinned publicly must be publicly chastised, so far as concerns the Church. The intention is, that their sin may not, by remaining unpunished, form a dangerous example; and Paul elsewhere (1 Timothy 5:20) lays down this rule expressly, to be observed in the case of elders,

“Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear;”

because the station which they hold renders their example more pernicious. It was particularly advantageous, that the good cause, in which all had an interest, should be openly defended in presence of the people, that Paul might have a better opportunity of shewing that he did not shrink from the broad light of day.

If thou, being a Jew. Paul’s address to Peter consists of two parts. In the first, he expostulates with him for his injustice toward the Gentiles, in compelling them to keep the law, from the obligations of which he wished himself to be exempted. For, not to mention that every man is bound to keep the law which he lays down for others, his conduct was greatly aggravated by compelling the Gentiles to observe Jewish ceremonies, while he, being a Jew, left himself at liberty. The law was given to Jews, not to Gentiles; so that he argues from the less to the greater.

Next, it is argued, that, in a harsh and violent manner, he compelled the Gentiles, by withdrawing from their communion, unless they chose to submit to the yoke of the law; and thus imposed on them an unjust condition. And, indeed, the whole force of the reproof lies in this word, which neither Chrysostom nor Jerome has remarked. The use of ceremonies was free for the purposes of edification, provided that believers were not deprived of their liberty, or laid under any restraint from which the gospel sets them free.

(46) “From this portion of sacred history, we are not at liberty to conclude that either of those two apostles had fallen into error in faith; or that they differed from each other about doctrine. Unquestionably, so far as relates to doctrine, Peter was of the same opinion with Paul on this subject, that it was lawful for a Jew to live on terms of friendship with believing Gentiles. — The whole of this controversy related, not to the doctrine of Christian liberty, but to the exercise of it at different times and places; and on this point the rules of prudence were better understood by Paul than by Peter.” — Witsius.

Smith's Bible Commentary

Chapter 2

Then fourteen years later I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, and I took Titus with me also ( Galatians 2:1 ).

So Paul no doubt had been ministering in Syria and Cilicia, the area around Tarsus, his home city, his hometown, and there had been Gentiles that he had brought to the faith of Jesus Christ, Titus being one of them. Now Barnabas, one of the brethren in the church there in Jerusalem decided to go to Tarsus because there was a work of God being accomplished in Antioch and he, there were a lot of Gentiles being saved and having heard of Paul, he decided to go get Paul to help in the church in Antioch. And so he went to Tarsus, searched out Paul and invited Paul to come back and to become a minister there at Antioch.

And he brought Paul to Jerusalem in order to sort of mend things with the apostles, to show them the truth of Paul's faith. And he said,

I went up by revelation, and communicated unto them that gospel which I was preaching among the Gentiles, but I communicated it to them privately those that were reputation, lest by any means I should run, or had run, in vain ( Galatians 2:2 ).

In other words, he didn't really proclaim it openly to the church in Jerusalem because the church in Jerusalem was made up of a lot of former Pharisees and a lot of Jews who were still following the traditions of the law and who were still very observant in many aspects to the law. Jews who believed still that you could not be a Christian if you were a Gentile. Jews that still held to the fact that the only way you could be saved was by believing in Jesus Christ and then keeping the law of Moses and being circumcised. That was the basic mindset of the church in Jerusalem. And so Paul communicated in private to the apostles the gospel that he had been preaching, this gospel of grace.

But Titus, who was with me, being a Greek, was not compelled to be circumcised ( Galatians 2:3 ):

They tried to encourage it and all but Paul withstood it. For their teaching was, Hey, you've got to be circumcised in order to be saved. And so Titus was not compelled as Paul withstood them.

That because of false brethren unawares who were 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 a minute; that the truth of the gospel might continue with you ( Galatians 2:4-5 ).

So Paul was standing for you Gentiles. Paul was standing up for the gospel that has been proclaimed to you. That you don't have to become a Jew. That you don't have to keep the law of Moses. All you have to do is "believe in Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved" ( Acts 16:31 ). Put your trust in Him and God will do His work in your life and transform you by the power of the Spirit and what you can't do for yourself, God will do for you. Salvation is God's gift through your faith in Jesus.

And so Paul had this conflict but he would not give in. He would not surrender to the pressures of the apostles there in Jerusalem, not for a moment.

But of these who seemed to be somewhat ( Galatians 2:6 ),

I like this. Paul's a tough cookie. It's interesting to me how that so quickly we can lose sight of the teaching of Jesus. Jesus said, "If any man would be chief among you, let him become the servant of all" ( Mark 10:44 ). And Jesus taught His disciples that the true ministry was one of servanthood. He took the towel. He washed their feet, taking the place of a servant among them. And He said, Now do you see what I've done? Go and do likewise. "Happy are you if you do these things." That is, if you'll take the place of a servant. "If I, being your Lord, have served you, then you ought to serve one another" ( John 13:14-17 ).

But always in the church it seems that we develop some kind of a hierarchy. We develop this little circle of, of leadership where we begin to stand in awe of men. Oh, you know, look. And it is so easy to become a prey to this and think, Ho-ho-ho, I am something, you know. I am somebody. And you begin then to insulate yourself from people. And you soon lose contact with people and you soon lose contact with reality.

There is one servant of God that I highly admire. I think he's been used of God perhaps in a greater measure than almost any man living today. And when I met him, I was totally taken back by the simple, beautiful attitude of this man. And that's Billy Graham. He is the most unassuming person. All God has used him, you know, and people, oh, Billy Graham, you know, and I was that way. I would say, Oh, Billy Graham, you know and Billy Graham, you know and, and I was just, you know, just so in awe of him. And then he started talking with me and I became just totally wiped out with the beautiful openness and touchability of this man.

One of our fellows who is a flight attendant for Western Airlines had Billy on his plane the other day. And so he said to him, When you're through with your duties why don't you come back and sit and talk? And so he sat down and was talking with Billy for about an hour on the plane and Billy says, Well, give me your phone number. Next time I'm out in California I'll give you a call. Maybe we can get together. With a flight attendant on Western Airlines! But that's the kind of a man he is. It's beautiful. No wonder God has used that man so mightily. No wonder God has been able to continue to use him through the years, because he has caught what it is to be a servant of God and not really placed himself in in this position of you know grandiose superiority over others.

Now as, here was this little, you know, little group in Jerusalem. They had set themselves up and you know, they're establishing themselves and Paul says of them, "But of those who seem to be somewhat,"

(whatever they were, it makes no matter to me: for God doesn't accept any man's persons:) ( Galatians 2:6 )

Years ago when I was disenchanted with the particular denomination in which I was serving, I started looking around to other denominations. I was hoping to find the perfect denomination. I was going to corrupt it by joining it. And so I went before the bishops and before the presbyteries and before the leaders of other denominations because the thing that I didn't like in the denominationalism was the establishment of the spiritual hierarchy which created a political back-scratching kind of a mode, you know, getting up the line and getting in the positions of power and then, you know, there you sit in your chair, your pompous attitude, and the whole thing. And I didn't see that in true Christianity and I was, and I was looking for more of a fellowship where, Hey, you know, we all put our pants on one leg at a time, you know, no different from each other really. And so I went before many of these august bodies of leaders. You know, just their glasses and they sit there in their chairs and they, you know, scowl at you and, and, and gave you the whole, you know, they try to intimidate you. And that's the whole game, intimidation.

They tried to intimidate Paul. Intimidate him into having Titus circumcised and you know, and having Paul backed down. "But of these who seemed to be somewhat, (whatsoever they are, it doesn't matter to me: for God accepts no man's person:)" God doesn't stand in awe of these men. God is not intimidated by them. But "the nations are as dust in the balances" in his eyes, how much less man ( Isaiah 40:15 ).

Now that's an interesting little scripture, "The nations are as dust in the balances." Many times a merchant, of course, the balances were, you know, you buy your goods, you buy them by the weights and so they had the shekel weights that they would place on the balances. They had the balanced scales. But a merchant would try to show you how honest he really was. So he would blow the dust off of the scales before he would put your merchandise on it in order that you're not buying his dust. And it was a symbolic action to just show you, Hey, I'm the most honest guy around, you know. And so this dust in the balances is a picturesque thing, people could see the merchant blowing the dust off the balance before he put your merchandise on it so you'd know that you were getting a fair deal. "The nations are like dust in the balances." God can blow them away. How much less is man?

And so God doesn't accept a man's person. God isn't intimidated by man.

for they who seemed to be somewhat in conference ( Galatians 2:6 )

you know, those who were taking the authority and speaking the words of power and all.

they added nothing to me ( Galatians 2:6 ):

I wasn't moved by them.

But contrariwise, when they saw that the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto me, and the gospel of the circumcision was committed 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 [or Peter and John], who seemed to be the pillars ( Galatians 2:7-9 ),

Ahh, oh Paul, I love you, man. "Who seemed to be the pillars,"

perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship; that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcision ( Galatians 2:9 ).

And this is great, this is a real problem that existed in the early church and this is how it was resolved. Recognizing that we each have our ministries but they are different. God has called you to the circumcision, great, go for it, Peter. God has called me to the Gentiles, great, I'll go for it. We're dealing with different kinds of people who need a different emphasis and message.

I do see the validity of denominations or at least the variety of churches. I do see the validity of the liturgical churches who are ministering to people who can relate to God best in a liturgical setting. I can see the purpose of emotional churches, the Pentecostal churches, for people who have to relate to God in a emotional, hyped sense. And I really rejoice that God is so gracious in reaching man at his different levels. And so God has reached me at my level. God has reached you at your level. And He seeks to reach every man at whatever level that man is.

If a man's made up on an emotional base and a high pitch thing, God meets him on that level because God loves him. If a man is made up of very sedate, you know, solemn kind of a way, God meets that man at his level. So that we shouldn't put down the liturgical churches nor should we put down the Pentecostal churches. But we should recognize that God is using each to meet men at both ends of the spectrum and also those who are in between in the spectrum because God loves all men and God is no respecter of man's persons. He'll meet each of us at our level.

The only problem comes when we say we have the only level or we have the best level. You know, ours is superior to theirs. God loves us more because we relate to God in a better way. No, it's the best way for me to relate to God. But there is, for some people, they could not relate to God as I relate to God. And it's interesting there are some that say, Hey, you're too emotional; and there are others that say, You're not emotional enough. Somewhere I figure I'm relating to God in the middle of the road 'cause if they hit you from both sides, you know you got to be in the middle. They hit you from just one side, you're on the end then, you know. But when they get you from both sides, you're in the middle.

So Paul agreed to disagree. God's called you, Peter, John, James, God's called you guys to the Jews, great. But God has called me to the Gentiles. You can develop your legal relationships with God, we will develop our loving relationships with God through grace. Now Paul puts in his little barb here.

Only they would that we would remember the poor ( Galatians 2:10 );

In other words, they asked us for help. Now we're going to minister to the Jews but we're needing help so don't forget the poor which, Paul said,

we've always been forward in doing ( Galatians 2:10 ).

That is, in helping the poor. Paul, you remember, many times took up offerings from the churches to give to the church in Jerusalem to help them in their poverty. So he's sort of interesting.

But when Peter was come to Antioch ( Galatians 2:11 ),

That is, the place where Paul, that was Paul's really home church in a sense. That's where Paul the base from which Paul went. The base to which Paul returned. That was his home church. "When Peter was come to Antioch,"

I withstood him to the face, because he was at fault. For before certain of the brothers came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles: but when they came down, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing those which were of the circumcision. And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that even Barnabas was carried away with their dissimulation. But when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, If you, being a Jew, were living after the manner of the Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why are you compelling the Gentiles to live as the Jews ( Galatians 2:11-14 )?

So Peter showed a vacillation here and of course, Peter was sort of famous for vacillation. He had come down to Antioch and he was eating with the Gentiles. Now the churches in those days had what they called the Agape feasts. It was sort of what we would call today a potluck. And usually once a week they would all get together for this Agape feast, everyone bringing a dish and then just sharing it all together and eating together. And then they would finish it with communion service. And it was called the love feast, the Agape feast in the early church. And it served a great purpose because many times the poor people, this was the only decent meal they got all week. Many of the Christians were slaves, undernourished. And this was the only decent meal they had.

So everybody sharing all of their food, all sitting together and eating together. And so Peter came down and he just sat with them and ate with them. But that's a no-no to a good Jew. For in eating together, you were becoming one with them and thus they were becoming one with the Gentile. And from a Judaistic standpoint, from an Orthodox standpoint, that was bad. But Peter, seeing the love of Christ, realizing, Hey, they're just brothers in the Lord, he just sat down with Gentiles and ate.

Now you remember earlier when Peter had his revelation on the housetop of Simon there in Joppa, and the sheep was let down and all kinds of unclean animals on it, the Lord said, Peter, rise, kill and eat. He said, Oh, not me, Lord, I've never eaten anything unclean. Jesus said, Don't call that unclean which I have cleansed. It happened three times. And then the Lord said, Behold at the gate there are some men who have come, go with them. Don't ask any questions.

And so Peter went down at the gate and here were three men from Caesarea and they said, Our master Cornelius, a Roman centurion, had a vision and in the vision the angel told him to send us down here and to find you and to bring you back up that you might explain to us the way of God in truth. And so Peter went with them and he came to the house of Cornelius in Caesarea.

Cornelius opened the door and said, O praise the Lord, Peter, come on in. And Peter said, Oh-oh, you know it's not lawful for me to enter your house, the house of a Gentile. But he said, God told me don't call that unclean which is cleansed. So I'll come on in, you know. Isn't that what you want to know? And so Cornelius said, Well, I was praying the other day in the afternoon about three o'clock and this angel stood here and told me to just call you and that you would tell us what we needed to know. So the ball's in your court. What do we need to know?

And so Peter started sharing with these Gentiles and a group had gathered there at Cornelius' house, group of his friends had come to hear what Peter had to say and as Peter was talking to them, the Holy Spirit fell upon them and Peter was shocked. Now these people are Gentiles. They're receiving gift of the Holy Spirit, what's going on here? And he says, Now notice fellows, I didn't do anything, you know. When we get back to Jerusalem you witness for me. I didn't do it. And he didn't want to take the responsibility and so he had the Jewish witnesses go back to Jerusalem and explain how that he wasn't really responsible. It was something that God did because he didn't want to get in trouble. Went into the house of the Gentiles to begin with.

Well, Peter, the Lord was beginning to break down some of these barriers. He came to Antioch, saw the beautiful fellowship, the love feast and joined in. But then certain brothers came down from Jerusalem, friends of James, and Peter knew that if they saw him eating with the Gentiles, he'd get reported on. Peter was eating with Gentiles, oh, no! you know, what's happening now? And so Peter pulled away and the next love feast, he sat along with a little group of Jews. Division in the body.

And the other Jews who had been eating that the church had been sort of unified, just one in Christ and experience that glorious oneness, but now this division. Peter is a part of it and because it was Peter, other Jews seeing Peter dissemble, they also dissembled and even Barnabas who had been with Paul preaching to the Gentiles, he even got swayed by this and he also changed tables. And that is when Paul stepped in and he rebuked Peter to the face in front of all of them. Said, That's not right, you came down and you began to live as a Gentile, being a Jew. And now, you're trying to compel the Gentiles to live like Jews. And he rebuked him to the face. Now he goes on to say,

We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles ( Galatians 2:15 ),

Now that is, we don't eat pork, we don't eat rabbit, we don't you know eat those foods that the law said were wrong, were sinful to eat, and we are not the sinners of the Gentiles.

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 ( Galatians 2:16 ).

So Paul said, Even we who have kept the law can only be justified through faith. By the works of the law, no one can be justified. Your obedience to the law of God would not save you. Let us say that you could keep the law of God. Written and traditional, oral. It would not save you. This is one of the problems of the Jewish people today. This is exactly what they are trusting in for their salvation, their own imperfect works of the law.

Yom Kippur is no longer a day of sacrifice for sins. It is a day of reflection for the Jew as he reflects upon his good works seeking to be justified by his works before God. But Paul said, "By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified." Justification comes through faith in Jesus Christ.

But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves are also found to be sinners, is therefore Christ the minister of sin? God forbid. For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor ( Galatians 2:17-18 ).

So Paul is talking here about his newfound faith and revelation that is justification, being accepted by God, was based upon his faith in Jesus Christ. And so he despaired of the works of the law seeking now that righteousness which is of faith through Christ. No longer following the traditions of the law. Eating if he so desired a ham sandwich. And he goes on to say, If I try to build again a relationship through the law, that which I destroyed when I came to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, then I would become a transgressor. For through the law,

For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God ( Galatians 2:19 ).

In other words, the law condemned me to death. And that's all the law has done for anybody. It condemns them to death because no one has kept the law. And the Bible says, "If you keep the whole law, and yet you violate in one point, you're guilty of all" ( James 2:10 ). Again the Bible says, "Cursed is the man who continueth not in the whole law to do all of the things that are written therein" ( Galatians 3:10 ). So if you're trying to be justified by the law and you've missed in one point at one time, anytime in your life, you're under the curse of the law which is death. So Paul said the law killed me and I'm dead to the law. But I am alive unto God.

For I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; but yet it is not I ( Galatians 2:20 ),

I'm living now a new life. My old life was predicated upon the works of the law. My old life was self-centered. My old life was filled with strife, envy, jealousy, factious spirit. No longer I. What a glorious day when our life is no longer I. No longer centered around self. But now a new center and that is Jesus Christ for my life. No longer I upon the throne. But now Jesus Christ enthroned in my heart. No longer seeking to please me, now seeking to please Jesus Christ.

The life that I now live I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me ( Galatians 2:20 ).

And so I am not the old man that I was. That man died. He was crucified with Christ. I have a new life. A new center for life. The old self-centered Chuck died, crucified with Christ. Now the God-centered Chuck lives. "Lives by the faith of Jesus Christ who loved me, and gave himself for me" that I might have this new Christ-centered life. That I might have this new relationship with God. That I might have spiritual life. Paul said,

I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness could come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain ( Galatians 2:21 ).

You remember when Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane the night before the crucifixion, Jesus knelt and prayed, "Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me" ( Matthew 26:39 ). What's He talking about? If what is possible? If the redemption of man, if salvation for man is possible by any other means, by any other agency, by any other action, let this cup pass from me. If it's possible that man could be redeemed by the law, then Jesus would not have died. God would have established the requirements and maybe one or two might have gotten in somewhere along the line if they had died soon enough.

The cross of Jesus Christ declares to all men for all times that there is only one way by which man can be redeemed and hope to see the kingdom of God. For had God been able to accomplish man's salvation through any other series of works, through the establishing of certain rules and requirements and regulations and all, had God been able to redeem man by any other way, I am certain He would have answered the prayer of Jesus. "Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not what I will, Thy will be done" ( Matthew 26:39 ).

And the fact that Jesus went ahead and suffered at the hands of man and was crucified by man is the declaration of God to all of us that there is not a possibility for salvation through works, through the works of the law, through the efforts of man. And as Paul said, "I am not frustrating the grace of God: because if righteousness could come by the law, then Christ died in vain. His death was not necessary. But righteousness cannot come to you by the law.

Righteousness cannot come to you by keeping rules and regulations. I cannot give to you a standard for righteousness and saying, Now if you do this and do this and do this and do this, you will be righteous. Unfortunately, many churches have endeavored to do this. They have their standards of holiness and they tell the women what kind of apparel is righteous and what kind is unrighteous. They tell what kind of jewelry you can wear and what kind you can't wear. They tell you how you can fix your hair the righteous way and the unrighteous way. Interesting they don't say too much about men who'd dress extremely flashy as a general rule within their groupings. But they really have a lot to say to the women. Of course, the men cannot wear gold. And they are trying and they really believe that they are being more righteous.

They look upon me and they say, Oh, look at that, you see that he has a gold watch on, and a gold ring. Oh-ho-ho, my, shameful, that man's, you know, how can he be a minister, how can he claim to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ? Wears a gold ring. Terrible. And they stand in judgment of me because I wear a gold ring.

Now if I take this ring off and I suddenly become righteous because I've taken my ring off and my watch off, now I'm standing here, I'm very righteous, you see. You ladies can become righteous by just washing your face. I mean, you know, according to their standards. If you wear make-up, that's unrighteous. No make-up, that's righteous.

And so they set out these standards and thus I say, He-hey, I don't wear my gold ring anymore, I don't wear my gold watch and I had the dentist pull out my gold teeth and I'm very righteous now. No, that doesn't make me any more righteous nor does the wearing of it make me any less righteous.

Righteousness is not a thing of wearing gold or not wearing gold, of eating meat or not eating meat, of eating ham or not eating ham. Righteousness is something that God had imputed to my account through grace because of my faith in Jesus Christ. And God looks at me and He sees me in Christ. And He sees me in the righteousness of Christ and because He sees me only in Christ, and that is my standing before God, it is, I stand before God in Christ Jesus. So He really looks not at me but He looks at Christ Jesus and He says, Hmm, that Chuck is a righteous man. I'd say, Thanks, Jesus. I appreciate that. I love your grace, O Lord. For it is through the grace of God that I have been accounted righteous before God.

Now had I not been able to be accounted righteous and I was trying, believe me, and I was very self-righteous. I was very self-righteous because I had never been to a show in all of my life. I had never been to a, Well, I did go to one dance and that was terrible. I lived in guilt for years after that thing. Oh what a terrible. Problem was I enjoyed it and that was, oh, that was terrible. I was really guilty. But I never smoked. I had never taken a drink. And so I felt very, very righteous except for that one dance.

Now I still never smoke. I still never drank but that doesn't make me righteous and I don't look upon that. I'm not really smog and self-righteous over that. So what? That's not what makes me righteous. God accounts me righteous because I believe in Jesus Christ. And that is the basis of my standing before God. That's what Paul came to. He had tried the righteous act. He had tried the righteousness by the law. He had followed it as far as anybody could follow it. But when he came to the glorious knowledge of Jesus Christ, he gladly turned to the new righteousness which is of Christ through faith.

And so he now defends the Gentile believers in the face of all of the pressure from that leadership in Jerusalem and tells them, Stand fast in the liberty wherein Christ has set you free. Don't let men entangle you again in the bondage of a legal relationship with God. Just enjoy your loving relationship with Him.

God loves me, that's what counts. God has forgiven my sins because of my faith in Jesus Christ. That's what counts. God accounts me righteous tonight because of my faith in Jesus Christ, not because of what I do or don't do but because of my faith in Jesus Christ, God has accounted me righteous. The righteousness whereby I stand before God is complete. I can't add anything to it. And my endeavor to add anything to it only takes away from it because it then has me looking back at myself instead of looking at Jesus. And each time I look at myself I get in trouble. When I keep my eyes on Jesus I do alright. Keep your eyes on Him. Enjoy the grace of God. And that righteous standing that God has given to you through faith.

Father, we thank You tonight for this glorious gospel that we have received, the gospel of the grace of Jesus Christ. Thank You, Father, for revealing this to Paul and for Paul's steadfast faithfulness in passing it on to us. That we, Lord, of the Gentiles might have this loving relationship with You, having been forgiven all of our sins, having been accounted righteous through our faith in Jesus. Bless us now, help us now. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen. "

Contending for the Faith

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 according to the truth of the gospel: One of the truths of the gospel is that the Gentiles and, indeed, all races have salvation made available to them by the work of Jesus Christ (see 3:26-29). Even though Peter and his companions know the truth, their conduct in life is not patterned after it. Peter knows the truth but, according to verse 12, fears the Jews.

I said unto Peter before them all: When a church leader sins, be he an elder or a preacher, he should be rebuked before all (1 Timothy 5:19-20). Paul now rebukes 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?: There in Antioch, Peter has lived with the Gentiles. He has not compelled them to live as he did as a Jew until those influential Jews come from Jerusalem. Then "he withdraws and separates himself" from the Gentiles. He will hardly admit them to his fellowship unless they will adhere to the customs of the Jews. In his rebuke, Paul condemns this attitude and Peter’s actions through the rest of the chapter. This was evidently the last meeting between Paul and Peter in their work. Tradition has it that they were tried and condemned together in Rome (The People’s New Testament, Vol. 1 171).

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

C. Correction of another apostle 2:11-21

Paul mentioned the incident in which he reproved Peter, the Judaizers’ favorite apostle, to further establish his own apostolic authority and to emphasize the truth of his gospel.

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

Why did Paul not follow the procedure for dealing with an erring brother that Jesus had specified (Matthew 18:15)? He obviously knew about it (cf. Galatians 6:1). He may have done so before rebuking Peter publicly, but since the offense was public the rebuke also needed to be public. In ministry it is frequently difficult to know whether to follow Matthew 18:15 or 1 Timothy 5:20 in dealing with people who need correction. Normally we should start with a private rebuke (Matthew 18:15) and then, if unsuccessful, proceed to public confrontation (Matthew 18:16-17).

Paul probably rebuked Peter publicly because Peter’s behavior had influenced many other people. He criticized Peter for inconsistency. Peter had also cast doubt on the truth that God accepts Jews and Gentiles equally, thus playing into the hands of the Judaizers. In addition, he was insulting his Gentile brethren and acting contrary to his own convictions.

The weaker brethren in Jerusalem may have concerned Peter. The Gentile brethren in Antioch whom Peter made to look and feel like second-class Christians by his behavior concerned Paul. Peter and Barnabas may have felt they needed to become all things to all men to win some (1 Corinthians 9:22). Paul saw that their behavior was implying a difference between Jewish and Gentile Christianity. This was as much a threat to Gentile liberty as the intrusion of the false brethren (Galatians 2:4).

Peter and Paul both acknowledged the equality of Jews and Gentiles in the church (cf. Acts 11:17). However it evidently took Peter longer to see the practical implications of this truth and to apply them to his conduct.

Barclay's Daily Study Bible

Chapter 2

THE MAN WHO REFUSED TO BE OVERAWED ( Galatians 2:1-10 )

2:1-10 Fourteen years afterwards I again went up to Jerusalem with Barnabas, and I took Titus with me too. It was in consequence of a direct message from God that I went up; and I placed before them the gospel that I am accustomed to preach among the Gentiles. because I did not want to think that the work which I was trying to do, and which I had done, was going to be frustrated. This I did in private conference with those whose reputations stood high in the Church. But not even Titus, who was with me, was compelled to be circumcised, although he was a Greek. True they tried to circumcise him to please false brothers who had been furtively introduced into our society and who had insinuated themselves into our company to spy out the liberty which we enjoy in Christ Jesus, because they wished to reduce us to their own state of servitude. Not for one hour did we yield in submission to them. We took a stand that the truth of the gospel might remain with you. Now from those who are men of reputation--what they once were makes no difference to me--there is no favouritism with God those men of reputation imparted no fresh knowledge to me; but, on the other hand, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the preaching of the gospel in the non-Jewish world, just as Peter had been in the Jewish world--for he who worked for Peter. to make him the apostle of the Jewish world, worked for me too to make me the apostle to the non-Jewish world--and when they realized the grace that had been given to me, James, Cephas and John, whom all look upon as pillars of the Church, gave pledges of partnership to me and to Barnabas. in complete agreement that we should go to the non-Jewish world, and they to the Jewish world. The one thing which they did enjoin us to do was to remember the poor--the very thing that I myself was eager to do.

In the preceding passage Paul has proved the independence of his gospel; here he is concerned to prove that this independence is not anarchy and that his gospel is not something schismatic and sectarian, but no other than the faith delivered to the Church.

After fourteen years' work he went up to Jerusalem, taking with him Titus, a young friend and henchman, who was a Greek. That visit was by no means easy. Even as he wrote there was agitation in Paul's mind. There is a disorder in the Greek which it is not possible fully to reproduce in English translation. Paul's problem was that he could not say too little or he might seem to be abandoning his principles; and he could not say too much, or it might seem that he was at open variance with the leaders of the Church. The result was that his sentences are broken and disjointed, reflecting his anxiety.

From the beginning the real leaders of the Church accepted his position; but there were others who were out to tame this fiery spirit. There were those, who, as we have seen, accepted Christianity but believed that God never gave any privilege to a man who was not a Jew; and that, therefore, before a man could become a Christian, he must be circumcised and take the whole law upon him. These Judaizers. as they are called, seized on Titus as a test case. There is a battle behind this passage; and it seems likely that the leaders of the Church urged Paul, for the sake of peace, to give in, in the case of Titus. But he stood like a rock. He knew that to yield would be to accept the slavery of the law and to turn his back on the freedom which is in Christ. In the end Paul's determination won the day. In principle it was accepted that his work lay in the non-Jewish world, and the work of Peter and James among the Jews. It is to be carefully noted that it is not a question of two different gospels being preached; it is a question of the same gospel being brought to two different spheres by different people specially qualified to do so.

From this picture certain characteristics of Paul emerge clearly.

(i) He was a man who gave authority its due respect. He did not go his own way. lie went and talked with the leaders of the Church however much he might differ from them. It is a great and neglected law of life that however right we happen to be there is nothing to be gained by rudeness. There is never any reason why courtesy and determination should not go hand in hand.

(ii) He was a man who refused to be overawed. Repeatedly he mentions the reputation which the leaders and pillars of the Church enjoyed. He respected them and treated them with courtesy; but he remained inflexible. There is such a thing as respect; and there is such a thing as the grovelling, prudential bowing to those whom the world or the Church labels great. Paul was always certain that he was seeking the approval not of men but of God.

(iii) He was a man conscious of a special task. He was convinced that God had given him a task to do and he would let neither opposition from without nor discouragement from within stop him doing it. The man who knows he has a God-given task will always find that he has a God-given strength to carry it out.

THE ESSENTIAL UNITY ( Galatians 2:11-13 )

2:11-13 But when Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned. Before some men arrived from James it was his habit to eat with the Gentiles. When they came he withdrew and separated himself. because he was scared of the circumcision party. The rest of the Jews played the hypocrite along with him, so that even Barnabas was led away along with them by their hypocritical actions.

The trouble was by no means at an end. Part of the life of the early Church was a common meal which they called the Agape ( G26) or Love Feast. At this feast the whole congregation came together to enjoy a common meal provided by a pooling of whatever resources they had. For many of the slaves it must have been the only decent meal they had all week; and in a very special way it marked the togetherness of the Christians.

That seems, on the face of it, a lovely thing. But we must remember the rigid exclusiveness of the narrower Jew. He regarded his race as the Chosen People in such a way as involved the rejection of all others. "The Lord is merciful and gracious" ( Psalms 2:5). "But he is only gracious to Israelites; other nations he will terrify." "The nations are as stubble or straw which shall be burned, or as chaff scattered to the wind." "If a man repents God accepts him, but that applies only to Israel and no other nation." "Love all but hate the heretics." This exclusiveness entered into daily life. A strict Jew was forbidden even to do business with a Gentile; he must not go on a journey with a Gentile; he must neither give hospitality to, nor accept hospitality from, a Gentile.

Here in Antioch arose the tremendous problem, in face of all this could the Jews and the Gentiles sit down together at a common meal? If the old law was to be observed it was obviously impossible. Peter came to Antioch and, at first, disregarding the old taboos in the glory of the new faith, he shared the common meal with Jew and Gentile. Then came certain of the Jewish party from Jerusalem. They used James' name although quite certainly they were not representing his views, and they worked on Peter so much that he withdrew from the common meal. The other Jews withdrew with him and finally even Barnabas was involved in this secession. It was then that Paul spoke with all the intensity of which his passionate nature was capable, for he saw certain things quite clearly.

(i) A church ceases to be Christian if it contains class distinctions. In the presence of God a man is neither Jew nor Gentile, noble nor base, rich nor poor; he is a sinner for whom Christ died. If men share in a common sonship they must be brothers.

(ii) Paul saw that strenuous action was necessary to counteract a drift which had occurred. He did not wait; he struck. It made no difference to him that this drift was connected with the name and conduct of Peter. It was wrong and that was all that mattered to him. A famous name can never justify an infamous action. Paul's action gives us a vivid example of how one strong man by his steadfastness can check a drift away from the right course before it becomes a tidal wave.

THE END OF THE LAW ( Galatians 2:14-17 )

2:14-17 But when I saw that they were straying away from the right path which the gospel lays down, I said to Peter in front of them all, "If you who are a born Jew choose to live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. why are you forcing the Gentiles to live like Jews? We are by nature Jews; we are not Gentile sinners as you would call them; and we know that a man is not put right with God because he does the works which the law lays down, but through faith in Jesus Christ. Now we have accepted this faith in Jesus Christ, so that we might be right with God, and that faith has nothing to do with the works the law lays down, because no man can ever put himself right with God by doing the works the law lays down. Now if in our search to be made right with God through Christ Jesus we too become what you call sinners, are you then going to argue that Christ is the minister of sin? God forbid!"

Here at last the real root of the matter is being reached. A decision is being forced which could not in any event be long delayed. The fact of the matter was that the Jerusalem decision was a compromise, and, like all compromises, it had in it the seeds of trouble. In effect the decision was that the Jews would go on living like Jews, observing circumcision and the law, but that the Gentiles were free from these observances. Clearly, things could not go on like that, because the inevitable result was to produce two grades of Christians and two quite distinct classes in the Church. Paul's argument ran like this. He. said to Peter, "You shared table with the Gentiles; you ate as they ate; therefore you approved in principle that there is one way for Jew and Gentile alike. How can you now reverse your decision and want the Gentiles to be circumcised and take the law upon them?" The thing did not make sense to Paul.

Now we must make sure of the meaning of a word. When the Jew used the word sinners of Gentiles he was not thinking of moral qualities; he was thinking of the observance of the law. To take an example-- Leviticus 11:1-47 lays down which animals may and may not be used for food. A man who ate a hare or pork broke these laws and became as inner in this sense of the term. So Peter would answer Paul, "But, if I eat with the Gentiles and eat the things they eat, I become a sinner."

Paul's answer was twofold. First, he said, "We agreed long ago that no amount of observance of the law can make a man right with God. That is a matter of grace. A man cannot earn, but must accept the generous offer of the love of God in Jesus. Therefore the whole business of law is irrelevant." Next he said, "You hold that to forget all this business about rules and regulations will make you a sinner. But that is precisely what Jesus Christ told you to do. He did not tell you to try to earn salvation by eating this animal and not eating that one. He told you to fling yourself without reserve on the grace of God. Are you going to argue, then, that he taught you to become a sinner?" Obviously there could be only one proper conclusion, namely that the old laws were wiped out.

This is the point that had to come. It could not be right for Gentiles to come to God by grace and Jews to come to him by law. For Paul there was only one reality, grace, and it was by way of surrender to that grace that all men must come.

There are two great temptations in the Christian life, and, in a certain sense, the better a man is the more liable he is to them. First, there is the temptation to try to earn God's favour, and second, the temptation to use some little achievement to compare oneself with our fellow men to our advantage and their disadvantage. But the Christianity which has enough of self left in it to think that by its own efforts it can please God and that by its own achievements it can show itself superior to other men is not true Christianity at all.

THE LIFE THAT IS CRUCIFIED AND RISEN ( Galatians 2:18-21 )

2:18-21 If I build up again these very things that I destroyed, I simply succeed in making myself a transgressor. For through the law I died to the law that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. True, I am alive; but it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. The life that I am now living, although it is still in the flesh, is a life which is lived in faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to cancel out the grace of God; for if I can get right with God by means of the law, then Christ died quite unnecessarily.

Paul speaks out of the depths of personal experience. For him to re-erect the whole fabric of the law would have been spiritual suicide. He says that through the law he died to the law that he might live to God. What he means is this--he had tried the way of law, he had tried with all the terrible intensity of his hot heart to put himself right with God by a life that sought to obey every single item of that law. He had found that such an attempt produced nothing but a deeper and deeper sense that all he could do could never put him right with God. All the law had done was to show him his own helplessness. Whereupon he had quite suddenly abandoned that way and had cast himself, sinner as he was, on the mercy of God. It was the law which had driven him to God. To go back to the law would simply have entangled him all over again in the sense of estrangement from God. So great was the change that the only way he could describe it was to say that he had been crucified with Christ so that the man he used to be was dead and the living power within him now was Christ himself.

"If I can put myself to rights with God by meticulously obeying the law then what is the need of grace? If I can win my own salvation then why had Christ to die?" Paul was quite sure of one thing--that Jesus Christ had done for him what he could never have done for himself. The one man who re-enacted the experience of Paul was Martin Luther. Luther was a showpiece of discipline and penance, self-denial and self-torture. "If ever," he said, "a man could be saved by monkery that man was I." He had gone to Rome; it was considered to be an act of great merit to climb the Scala Sancta, the great sacred stairway, on hands and knees. He toiled upwards seeking that merit and suddenly there came to him the voice from heaven, "The just shall live by faith." The life at peace with God was not to be attained by this futile, never-ending, ever-defeated effort; it could be had only by casting himself on the love and mercy of God as Jesus Christ revealed them to men.

"Pining souls' come nearer Jesus.

And O come, not doubting thus,

But with faith that trusts more bravely

His huge tenderness for us.

If our love were but more simple,

We should take him at his word;

Arid our lives would be all sunshine,

In the sweetness of our Lord."

When Paul took God at his word, the midnight of law's frustration became the sunshine of grace.

-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)

Gann's Commentary on the Bible

Galatians 2:14

walked -- not ever as a false teacher, but by their life.

straightforward -- Literally, to walk “straight” or “uprightly.” By withdrawing from the Gentile Christians, Peter and the other Jewish believers were not walking in line with God’s Word. - MSB

truth of the gospel -- Paul uses this phrase in Galatians to describe actions that violate the truthfulness of the gospel message (see Galatians 2:5; compare Ephesians 1:13; Colossians 1:5). By withdrawing from meals with Gentiles, Peter and Barnabas effectively returned to life under the law and discredited the gospel’s promise of freedom in Christ. - FSB

Paul argues directly from the truth of the gospel. He does not mention the decision that had been taken at Jerusalem. Still, that decision made for the same result. The moment Jews and Gentiles came together, the dilemma turned up again. Paul saw that very clearly in this situation. And he pointed it out to Peter, apparently on the assumption that Peter would agree. - Ridderbos, NICNT

I said -- Paul said, Galatians 2:14-21 to Peter in rebuke.

Galatians 2:15-21 is probably a theological summary and not necessarily Paul’s exact words to Peter. Paul’s public confrontation of Peter over his hypocrisy and inconsistency further proved Paul’s independence. - Utley

before them all -- Usually church problems need to be dealt with privately, but the actions of Peter hit at the heart of the gospel. The conflict had affected the entire church at Antioch and had to be addressed publicly and decisively in order to resolve the church’s disunity (cf. 1 Timothy 5:20). - Utley

Because Peter’s sin was a public sin that was setting a bad example for the church, Paul confronted him publicly (compare the different procedure that Jesus commands regarding a private sin against an individual person, which hopefully can be corrected privately; cf. Matthew 18:15-20; James 5:19-20). - ESVSB

Peter’s apparent repentance acknowledged Paul’s apostolic authority and his own submission to the truth (cf. 2 Peter 3:15-16). - MSB

If you being a Jew --

living like a Gentile -- By eating with Gentiles and not observing Jewish food laws — Peter communicated God’s acceptance of Gentiles on equal terms with Jews, on the basis of faith in Christ (see Acts 10:34-43; Acts 11:17-18). - NLTSB

live in the manner of Gentiles -- Peter, an ethnic Jew who followed Jewish food laws (Acts 10:14; Lev 11), began to practice table fellowship with Gentile believers on account of the revelation that God can make all people clean (Acts 10:15, Acts 10:34-35). Peter’s actions demonstrate the irrelevancy of the law for those “in Christ. - FSB

Before his gradual withdrawal, Peter regularly had fellowship and ate with the Gentiles, thus modeling the ideal of Christian love and liberty between Jew and Gentile. - MSB

compellest -- Note Galatians 2:3 where Peter did not "compel" Titus; Peter is accused of inconsistency.

Gentiles to live as Jews? -- Expresses the aim of Judaizers to force non-Jewish believers to observe certain aspects of the law. - FSB

force the Gentiles to live like Jews? -- Peter was guilty of hypocrisy (Galatians 2:13) because, though he had been happily living like a Gentile (i.e., not observing food laws), he was now requiring Gentile Christians to observe Jewish table regulations if they wanted to eat with him. Such a requirement, however, would undermine the gospel itself by making justification depend on “works of the law” rather than “faith in Jesus Christ” (see Galatians 2:16). - ESVSB

By ceasing to have fellowship with Gentile believers in order to maintain Jewish practices, Peter conveyed the message that Jewish practices were important, perhaps crucial, even for Christians. - NIVZSB

Judaizers (see note on Galatians 1:7)

Judaizers insisted that Gentile Christians be circumcised, obey food laws, and observe calendar cycles in accordance with the law. In Galatians 2:14, Paul accuses Peter of trying to “Judaize” the Gentiles, using a Greek verb meaning “live in a Jewish way.” Josephus uses the word to describe how a Roman soldier captured by the Jews during the revolt (AD 66–70) avoided execution by promising to be circumcised and live as a Jew. Paul believed Gentile followers of Jesus were not required to become Jewish in that sense because the gospel transcended ethnic and social boundaries. - FSB

Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

But when I saw that they walked not uprightly,.... Or "did not foot it aright"; or "walked not with a right foot": they halted, as the Jews of old did, between two opinions, being partly for God, and partly for Baal; so these seemed, according to their conduct, to be partly for grace, and partly for the works of the law; they seemed to be for joining Christ and Moses, and the grace of the Gospel, and the ceremonies of the law together; they did not walk evenly, were in and out, did not make straight paths for their feet, but crooked ones, whereby the lame were turned out of the way; they did not walk in that sincerity, with that uprightness and integrity of soul, they ought to have done:

nor according to the truth of the Gospel; though their moral conversations were as became the Gospel of Christ, yet their Christian conduct was not according to the true, genuine, unmixed Gospel of Christ; which as it excludes all the works of the law, moral or ceremonial, from the business of justification and salvation, so it declares an entire freedom from the yoke of it, both to Jews and Gentiles. Now when, and as soon as this was observed, the apostle, without any delay, lest some bad consequences should follow, thought fit to make head against it, and directly oppose it:

I said unto Peter before them all. The Alexandrian copy, and others, and the Vulgate Latin, Syriac, and Ethiopic versions, read "Cephas", as before. The reproof was given personally and principally to Peter, though Barnabas and others were concerned with him, because he was the first in it, the chief aggressor, who by his example led on the rest; and this was given publicly before Barnabas, and the other Jews that dissembled with him, and for their sakes as well as his; before the Jews that came from James for their instruction and conviction, and before all the members of the church at Antioch, for the confirmation of such who might be staggered at such conduct; nor was this any breach of the rule of Christ, Matthew 28:15 for this was a public offence done before all, and in which all were concerned, and therefore to be rebuked in a public manner: and which was done in this expostulatory way,

if thou being a Jew; as Peter was, born of Jewish parents, brought up in the Jews' religion, and was obliged to observe the laws that were given to that people:

livest after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews; that is, he had done so, he had ate with the Gentiles, and as the Gentiles did, without regarding the laws and ceremonies of the Jews relating to meats and drinks; being better informed by the Spirit of God, that these things were not now obligatory upon him, even though he was a Jew, to whom these laws were formerly made:

why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews? he asks him, with what conscience, honour, and integrity, with what consistency with his own principles and former practice, he could compel, not by force, nor, it may be, even by persuasions and exhortations, but by his example, which was very strong and powerful, the Gentiles, to whom these laws were never given, and to observe which they never were obliged; how he could, I say, make use of any means whatever to engage these to comply with Jewish rites and ceremonies. The argument is very strong and nervous; for if he, who was a Jew, thought himself free from this yoke, and had acted accordingly, then a Gentile, upon whom it was never posed, ought not to be entangled with it: and in what he had done, either he had acted right or wrong; if he had acted wrong in eating with the Gentiles, he ought to acknowledge his fault, and return to Judaism; but if right, he ought to proceed, and not by such uneven conduct ensnare the minds of weak believers.

Henry's Complete Commentary on the Bible

      11 But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.   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.   13 And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation.   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?   15 We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles,   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.   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.   18 For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor.   19 For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.   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.   21 I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.

      I. From the account which Paul gives of what passed between him and the other apostles at Jerusalem, the Galatians might easily discern both the falseness of what his enemies had insinuated against him and their own folly and weakness in departing from that gospel which he had preached to them. But to give the greater weight to what he had already said, and more fully to fortify them against the insinuations of the judaizing teachers, he acquaints them with another interview which he had with the apostle Peter at Antioch, and what passed between them there, Galatians 2:11-14; Galatians 2:11-14. Antioch was one of the chief churches of the Gentile Christians, as Jerusalem was of those Christians who turned from Judaism to the faith of Christ. There is no colour of reason for the supposition that Peter was bishop of Antioch. If he had, surely Paul would not have withstood him in his own church, as we here find he did; but, on the contrary, it is here spoken of as an occasional visit which he made thither. In their other meeting, there had been good harmony and agreement. Peter and the other apostles had both acknowledged Paul's commission and approved his doctrine, and they parted very good friends. But in this Paul finds himself obliged to oppose Peter, for he was to be blamed, a plain evidence that he was not inferior to him, and consequently of the weakness of the pope's pretence to supremacy and infallibility, as the successor of Peter. Here we may observe,

      1. Peter's fault. When he came among the Gentile churches, he complied with them, and did eat with them, though they were not circumcised, agreeably to the instructions which were given in particular to him (Acts 10:9-16), when he was warned by the heavenly vision to call nothing common or unclean. But, when there came some Jewish Christians from Jerusalem, he grew more shy of the Gentiles, only to humour those of the circumcision and for fear of giving them offence, which doubtless was to the great grief and discouragement of the Gentile churches. Then he withdrew, and separated himself. His fault herein had a bad influence upon others, for the other Jews also dissembled with him; though before they might be better disposed, yet now, from his example, they took on them to scruple eating with the Gentiles, and pretended they could not in conscience do it, because they were not circumcised. And (would you think it?) Barnabas himself, one of the apostles of the Gentiles, and one who had been instrumental in planting and watering the churches of the Gentiles, was carried away with their dissimulation. Here note, (1.) The weakness and inconstancy of the best of men, when left to themselves, and how apt they are to falter in their duty to God, out of an undue regard to the pleasing of men. And, (2.) The great force of bad examples, especially the examples of great men and good men, such as are in reputation for wisdom and honour.

      2. The rebuke which Paul gave him for his fault. Notwithstanding Peter's character, yet, when he observes him thus behaving himself to the great prejudice both of the truth of the gospel and the peace of the church, he is not afraid to reprove him for it. Paul adhered resolutely to his principles, when others faltered in theirs; he was as good a Jew as any of them (for he was a Hebrew of the Hebrews), but he would magnify his office as the apostle of the Gentiles, and therefore would not see them discouraged and trampled upon. When he saw that they walked not uprightly, according to the truth of the gospel--that they did not live up to that principle which the gospel taught, and which they had professed to own and embrace, namely, that by the death of Christ the partition-wall between Jew and Gentile was taken down, and the observance of the law of Moses was no longer in force--when he observed this, as Peter's offence was public, so he publicly reproved him for it: He said unto him before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of the Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews? Herein one part of his conduct was a contradiction to the other; for if he, who was a Jew, could himself sometimes dispense with the use of the ceremonial law, and live after the manner of the Gentiles, this showed that he did not look upon the observance of it as still necessary, even for the Jews themselves; and therefore that he could not, consistently with his own practice, impose it upon the Gentile Christians. And yet Paul charges him with this, yea, represents him as compelling the Gentiles to live as did the Jews--not by open force and violence, but this was the tendency of what he did; for it was in effect to signify this, that the Gentiles must comply with the Jews, or else not be admitted into Christian communion.

      II. Paul having thus established his character and office, and sufficiently shown that he was not inferior to any of the apostles, no, not to Peter himself, from the account of the reproof he gave him he takes occasion to speak of that great fundamental doctrine of the gospel--That justification is only by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law (though some think that all he says to the end of the chapter is what he said to Peter at Antioch), which doctrine condemned Peter for his symbolizing with the Jews. For, if it was the principle of his religion that the gospel is the instrument of our justification and not the law, then he did very ill in countenancing those who kept up the law, and were for mixing it with faith in the business of our justification. This was the doctrine which Paul had preached among the Galatians, to which he still adhered, and which it is his great business in this epistle to mention and confirm. Now concerning this Paul acquaints us,

      1. With the practice of the Jewish Christians themselves: "We," says he, "who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles (even we who have been born and bred in the Jewish religion, and not among the impure Gentiles), knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we ourselves have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law. And, if we have thought it necessary to seek justification by the faith of Christ, why then should we hamper ourselves with the law? What did we believe in Christ for? Was it not that we might be justified by the faith of Christ? And, if so, is it not folly to go back to the law, and to expect to be justified either by the merit of moral works or the influence of any ceremonial sacrifices or purifications? And if it would be wrong in us who are Jews by nature to return to the law, and expect justification by it, would it not be much more so to require this of the Gentiles, who were never subject to it, since by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified?" To give the greater weight to this he adds (Galatians 2:17; Galatians 2:17), "But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is Christ the minister of sin? If, while we seek justification by Christ alone, and teach others to do so, we ourselves are found giving countenance or indulgence to sin, or rather are accounted sinners of the Gentiles, and such as it is not fit to have communion with, unless we also observe the law of Moses, is Christ the minister of sin? Will it not follow that he is so, if he engage us to receive a doctrine that gives liberty to sin, or by which we are so far from being justified that we remain impure sinners, and unfit to be conversed with?" This, he intimates, would be the consequence, but he rejects it with abhorrence: "God forbid," says he, "that we should entertain such a thought of Christ, or of his doctrine, that thereby he should direct us into a way of justification that is defective and ineffectual, and leave those who embrace it still unjustified, or that would give the least encouragement to sin and sinners." This would be very dishonourable to Christ, and it would be very injurious to them also. "For," says he (Galatians 2:18; Galatians 2:18), "if I build again the things which I destroyed--if I (or any other), who have taught that the observance of the Mosaic law is not necessary to justification, should now, by word or practice, teach or intimate that it is necessary--I make myself a transgressor; I own myself to be still an impure sinner, and to remain under the guilt of sin, notwithstanding my faith in Christ; or I shall be liable to be charged with deceit and prevarication, and acting inconsistently with myself." Thus does the apostle argue for the great doctrine of justification by faith without the works of the law from the principles and practice of the Jewish Christians themselves, and from the consequences that would attend their departure from it, whence it appeared that Peter and the other Jews were much in the wrong in refusing to communicate with the Gentile Christians, and endeavouring to bring them under the bondage of the law.

      2. He acquaints us what his own judgment and practice were. (1.) That he was dead to the law. Whatever account others might make of it, yet, for his part, he was dead to it. He knew that the moral law denounced a curse against all that continue not in all things written therein, to do them; and therefore he was dead to it, as to all hope of justification and salvation that way. And as for the ceremonial law, he also knew that it was now antiquated and superseded by the coming of Christ, and therefore, the substance having come, he had no longer any regard to the shadow. He was thus dead to the law, through the law itself; it discovered itself to be at an end. By considering the law itself, he saw that justification was not to be expected by the works of it (since none could perform a perfect obedience to it) and that there was now no further need of the sacrifices and purifications of it, since they were done away in Christ, and a period was put to them by his offering up himself a sacrifice for us; and therefore, the more he looked into it the more he saw that there was no occasion for keeping up that regard to it which the Jews pleaded for. But, though he was thus dead to the law, yet he did not look upon himself as with law. He had renounced all hopes of justification by the works of it, and was unwilling any longer to continue under the bondage of it; but he was far from thinking himself discharged from his duty to God; on the contrary, he was dead to the law, that he might live unto God. The doctrine of the gospel, which he had embraced, instead of weakening the bond of duty upon him, did but the more strengthen and confirm it; and therefore, though he was dead to the law, yet it was only in order to his living a new and better life to God (as Romans 7:4; Romans 7:6), such a life as would be more agreeable and acceptable to God than his observance of the Mosaic law could now be, that is, a life of faith in Christ, and, under the influence thereof, of holiness and righteousness towards God. Agreeably hereunto he acquaints us, (2.) That, as he was dead to the law, so he was alive unto God through Jesus Christ (Galatians 2:20; Galatians 2:20): I am crucified with Christ, c. And here in his own person he gives us an excellent description of the mysterious life of a believer. [1.] He is crucified, and yet he lives the old man is crucified (Romans 6:6), but the new man is living; he is dead to the world, and dead to the law, and yet alive to God and Christ; sin is mortified, and grace quickened. [2.] He lives, and yet not he. This is strange: I live, and yet not I; he lives in the exercise of grace; he has the comforts and the triumphs of grace; and yet that grace is not from himself, but from another. Believers see themselves living in a state of dependence. [3.] He is crucified with Christ, and yet Christ lives in him; this results from his mystical union with Christ, by means of which he is interested in the death of Christ, so as by virtue of that to die unto sin; and yet interested in the life of Christ, so as by virtue of that to live unto God. [4.] He lives in the flesh, and yet lives by faith; to outward appearance he lives as other people do, his natural life is supported as others are; yet he has a higher and nobler principle that supports and actuates him, that of faith in Christ, and especially as eyeing the wonders of his love in giving himself for him. Hence it is that, though he lives in the flesh, yet he does not live after the flesh. Note, Those who have true faith live by that faith; and the great thing which faith fastens upon is Christ's loving us and giving himself for us. The great evidence of Christ's loving us is his giving himself for us; and this is that which we are chiefly concerned to mix faith with, in order to our living to him.

      Lastly, The apostle concludes this discourse with acquainting us that by the doctrine of justification by faith in Christ, without the works of the law (which he asserted, and others opposed), he avoided two great difficulties, which the contrary opinion was loaded with:-- 1. That he did not frustrate the grace of God, which the doctrine of the justification by the works of the law did; for, as he argues (Romans 11:6), If it be of works, it is no more of grace. 2. That he did not frustrate the death of Christ; whereas, if righteousness come by the law, then it must follow that Christ has died in vain; for, if we look for salvation by the law of Moses, then we render the death of Christ needless: for to what purpose should he be appointed to die, if we might have been saved without it?

Kelly Commentary on Books of the Bible

Galatians 1:1-24. We saw the second of Corinthians characterized by the most rapid transitions of feeling, by a deep and fervent sense of God's consolations, by a revulsion so much the more powerful in a heart that entered into things as few hearts have ever done since the world began. For as the first epistle had put down man in every form, and more particularly man as an expression of the world in its pride, so the second epistle breathes the comfort of God's restoring grace, and is characterized therefore by the strongest emotions of the heart; for he ardently loved these saints. He had felt their wrong, but at the same time had been lifted marvellously above what might be called personal feeling, and so much the more, therefore, could have the grief of love unmingled with that which really impairs its strength, and leaves its sensibilities incomparably less acute. So much the more, then, we find the working of spiritual feeling as expressed by him in the second epistle, where he speaks of God lifting up those that were cast down, as He had delivered himself from the imminent danger to which he had been exposed even as to life.

In the epistle to the Galatians we have another tone and style, a serious and grieved spirit, with feelings not less deep it may be, even more profoundly moved than in writing to the Corinthians; and for this reason, that the foundations were still more deeply affected by that which was working among the assemblies of Galatia. It was not the worldly presumption of man, nor the slight which this would inevitably cast on apostolic authority, as well as on the order of the church, on morality even, at least on Christian morality, on the comely ways of brethren one with another in private as well as in their public assemblies. In the epistle to the Galatians a deeper question was raised nothing less than the fountain of grace itself. Hence in this epistle it is not so much the laying bare the need of man of the sinner, as the vindication of that same grace of God for the saint, with the exhibition of the ruinous results to him who is drawn aside from the deep and broad groundwork that God has laid for souls in Christ. Here particularly the Christian is guarded against the inroads of legalism. If the world were the great enemy at Corinth, the law perverted is that against which the Spirit of God raises up the apostle in writing to the Galatians. Flesh alas! has an affinity for both. This epistle, as those to the Corinthians, opens with an assertion of his apostolic place. At the outset here (not there) he sets aside human intervention. Men were not his source, nor was man even a medium to him. He strikes accordingly at the root of all successional or derived authority. "Paul, an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ and," in order to make it still more evident, "by God the Father, who raised him from the dead." This is peculiar to our epistle. In the epistle to the Ephesians we shall find that the apostle claims a still higher character for all ministry. There it is not traced to God the Father, that raised Christ from the dead; but it descends from Christ ascended to heaven (which, we shall soon see, perfectly fits in with that epistle). 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. The whole legal institution depended on a people lineally descended from Abraham, as their priests on a similar succession from Aaron. Being, of course, dying men, whether it be the general privileges of Israel, or the special place of the priest, all was transmitted from father to son. In its own proper sphere and blessings Christianity knows nothing of the sort, but denies it in principle. So here Paul is "an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, that raised him from the dead."

To have been with the Messiah, the hearer of His words and the witness of His work, up to His departure, was ever a condition to those who were accustomed to the twelve apostles. The apostle himself meets that difficulty in the face, and in effect concedes to his detractors that he was not made an apostle by Christ here below. But if not called to have his place among the twelve, it was the Lord's sovereign dealing to give him a better one. There is no approach to a vaunt about his dignity. He does not even deign to fill up the sketch. He leaves it to spiritual wisdom to gather what was the evident impression of the truth.

For his own special call was an indisputable fact; and it is a great joy to the heart to think how Christianity (while it leaves the deepest and the highest space in all directions, so to speak, for the working of the Holy Ghost, while there is more room in it than anywhere else for the play both of the renewed mind and the affections that the Spirit of God gives, while, consequently, it admits of the richest possible exercises of both mind and heart), nevertheless, in its grand truths rests on the most patent and certain facts. For God considers the poor; He has regard to the simple; He has children in His eye. And facts tell on their mind. Indeed, there is no soul really above them. Whoever despises the facts of Christianity, as if nothing in Scripture were worthy of meditation, or of ministering to others but exercises and speculative deductions, will be found, if he do not find himself often, on the verge of dangerous delusions, both for the mind and for the walk.

But the apostle here does not reason about the matter. He simply states, as I have said, that his apostolic character was not only from Jesus, but from God the Father, that raised Him from the dead. it had a resurrection-source, instead of being from Christ on earth, and in relation to the work God was doing when He sent His Son here below. Along with himself he takes care expressly to couple others: "and all the brethren which are with me." Paul did not stand alone. He had the faith that could by grace cleave to God if he had not a companion; but God blesses that faith, and acts by it on the conscience of others, even on those that, alas! too often might be ready to turn aside. In this case, happily, the brethren near at hand went along with him in heart. After wishing those addressed grace and peace, as usual, he speaks of the Lord in a manner singularly in unison with the object of the epistle: "Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us" not from judgment, not from the wrath to come, but "from this present evil world." The evil that was gaining ground among the Galatian believers legalism links the soul with the world, and indeed proves it to be evil by giving present credit to the flesh, and association with all the system that is around us now. But in truth the Lord "gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father: to whom be glory for ever and ever."

At once the apostle launches into the troubled sea. There is no recounting what God had done for them. There is no mention here of grace, nor even of any special powers conferred by the Spirit of God. We shall find he does not forget this elsewhere: he reasons on it in another part of the epistle. But his heart was too agitated not to betake himself at once to the point of their danger. Consequently, without further preamble, and with an ominous silence as to their state (for, indeed, it could not be spoken of), he at once breaks the ground. "I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you in the grace of Christ unto another gospel: which is not another."

Mark how nicely every word was suited to deal with their souls. He speaks of "the grace of Christ." He warns against "another gospel," i.e., a different one, which was really none at all. It was not another, as he says. "But there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ." And then he, indignant at such a thought, makes his most solemn appeals. "But though we" Paul himself, or any that were associated with him "though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." Nor this only. "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 apostle stands to the truth preached and received. What he preached was the truth as to this matter. He does not deny that others preached it; but if so, they preached the same truth. The apostle was given to preach the truth more fully than any other. To depart from this was fatal. Nor this only. If he had preached the full truth of the gospel, he insists that they had received it. He will not hear of any pretended misunderstanding. He refuses all cover for different thoughts. In either case "let him be accursed."

And he justifies this strength of warning: "For do I now persuade men or God? Do I seek to please men? For if I yet pleased men, I should not be a servant of Christ." Impossible to serve two masters! Christ never mingles with flesh or law any more than with the world. Bondage is there; and He is a deliverer, but it is to God's glory, and for His own service in the liberty of grace.

And now the apostle enters on another part of his subject. His account proves how independent he was of the very persons whom they would have desired to have seen associated with him. It was an offence in the eyes of the Jewish Christians, and perhaps specially of the Christians that Judaize, that the apostle had been so little at Jerusalem that his intercourse was so scanty with the twelve. The apostle accepts the fact in all its strength. Far from wishing to gain credit, either for the gospel or for his own apostolic place, in consequence of being linked with those that had been apostles before him, he insists on that very independence which they counted a reproach. His is an apostleship to itself, as real as that of the twelve, but of another order, not at the same time, nor in the same manner. All sprang, no doubt, from the same God, from the same Lord Jesus Christ; but even so from God and from the Lord in other relationships. Very particularly was it marked by the manner of his call, that his apostleship had no connection with either the world or the flesh. It had nothing whatever to do even with the Lord Himself, in the days of His flesh, when acting as minister of the circumcision in the land of Judea. Invariably, where man seeks to bring in a successional apostleship, the twelve become the great model.

Hence it is that Rome, which most decidedly in principle rests on human succession (as all worldly religion must, to a certain extent, embrace the same principle) Rome, I say, seeks to derive her authority, as all know, from Peter. No person can intelligently read the New Testament without perceiving the utter fallacy of such a system; for Peter was expressly, as the next chapter of this epistle tells us, apostle of the circumcision. So were the others that seemed to be the chief. If any apostleship would have served for the Gentiles, it ought to have been Paul's then; for Paul was the apostle of the uncircumcision. What a condemnation of themselves, that no system which ever seeks for an earthly succession can in the least make Paul answer its purpose! In his case the breach with man was evident; the association with heaven, and not Jerusalem, was too plain to be disputed or evaded. Successor to Paul there is none; if so, who and where? 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. I admit that this was all in place and season then for Jerusalem.

But at the same time it is plain that the apostle Paul here starts with the instructive fact, that the very thing for which some Judaizers then blamed him was the distinctive glory of that to which the Lord had called him. "I certify you, brethren," says he, "that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. For ye have heard of my conversation in times past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it: and profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers. But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood: neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus."

Now, it is evident and to this I call your particular attention that the apostle here binds together his gospel with his apostolic place. This was the serious move of the enemy. You cannot attack such a servant without attacking his testimony. You cannot weaken his apostleship without endangering the very gospel that you have received yourselves. And this is always true in its measure, and shows the exceeding gravity of opposition where God raises up for His own special work in this world; but more particularly where, as in the apostle's case, the mere manner of his conversion, the special form of his separation unto God, bears the impress of the truth he was to preach. To impugn the one is to imperil the other. The Galatians did not think of this; people that are thus blinded by the enemy never do. To them, no doubt, it appeared as if they were zealous and sincere champions of unity. They were grieved to think that the Jewish church, with its twelve apostles and its elders, with its manifold links with antiquity and God's past testimony on earth, should seem separated in any measure from the apostle and his work. No doubt there was a difference of tone. Had a man come down from the teaching of the twelve, albeit inspired of God to write, as we know some of them were, and all of them having a most truly apostolic place, he might have been startled by the teaching of St. Paul. Can it be doubted that the special form of spiritual thought and feeling formed, for instance, by James's or Peter's teaching, yea, even by that of John, while harmonizing, where the heart was open, with the instruction of Paul, nevertheless would appear at first very different? We know how feeble and slow the heart is, and how apt disciples in general are to narrow the riches of the grace and truth of God. Even in Christianity how much need there is to remember what the Lord warns us of inLuke 5:1-39; Luke 5:1-39 that no man accustomed to old wine straightway desires new, but says, The old is better. This was at work even in those early days. It had tainted among others the Galatians; for although, in point of fact, what had converted them was the heavenly testimony of the apostle Paul, nevertheless they had in time become acquainted with Christians who had not been so favoured, perhaps from the churches in Judea. Saints they may have been; and such, we know, moved about from Jerusalem. At any rate, the Galatians, naturally fickle, were quick to take up prejudices. They had somehow become uneasy. Those that were used of Satan, both to oppose the apostle in person, and also to distrust that testimony which they had not spirituality enough to appreciate, busily insinuated doubts into the minds of these Gentile brethren, and found too ready an ear among them.

Thus the apostle had to link together the gospel of grace with his own apostolic dignity; and we do well to take heed to this remarkable fact. With the utmost simplicity he shows that his own separation from man was a part of God's ways for the purpose of making more strikingly felt the great truth that he was afterwards to proclaim. He had been himself (could they deny it?) at least as zealous for the Jews' religion as any Jew of the straitest sect. He had made as much proficiency as any of his day it may be, more. Who of his nation had advanced in Judaism beyond him? Who more zealous of the doctrines of his fathers? Therefore, it came to pass that there was nothing the apostle had not learned of which they boasted. He had been trained up under the most distinguished teacher the great Rabbin Gamaliel; but "when it pleased him, who had separated him from his mother's womb, and called him by his grace, to reveal his Son in him." Mark, again, the strength of the expression. It is not simply that he was brought to follow Jesus, to believe and confess His name; but God revealed His Son in him. And we can all see how exactly the phrase falls in with the words of our Lord given in the Acts of the Apostles; for the wonderful truth burst upon the apostle's ear from the beginning, in the Saviour's call to him from heaven. The oneness of the saints with Christ Himself is, as we all familiarly know, clearly intimated. So here it is said that God was pleased to reveal His Son in him, that he might preach the good news of Him among the heathen.

Immediately, then, as. it is added, he conferred not with flesh and blood; neither went up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before him; but went into Arabia, and returned again, not to Jerusalem, but to Damascus, the place near which he had been called at first. "Then after three years," he says, "I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter." Surely now there was some link with the twelve! Not so. He went simply to make the acquaintance of Peter, and abode with him how long? Fifteen days. Far too short a time, if it were a question of due initiation into the testimony of the twelve. But, in point of fact, he did not see the twelve. He saw Peter; but "other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother." To this he gives the most solemn asseveration: "The things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not." Thus he accepts the challenge that was given by unbelief. He heartily avows what they counted a defect; and not Only so, but with the greatest solemnity assures them that he had not seen the apostles, save only Peter, and James the brother of the Lord, and these but for a short space.

The apostleship of Paul, therefore, was entirely independent of Jerusalem and the twelve. He had derived the gospel that he preached from the Lord, and not from any of his fellow-servants who had been engaged in the work before him. Nor had he conferred even then with flesh and blood; his mission as well as conversion and call were alike independent of it. He had been called, as none could deny, in a way which not even any other apostle had ever known. Of none else could it be so said that "it Pleased God to reveal his Son in him." It was not thus that Peter or the rest were drawn to follow their Master. The language would not have been applicable when the other apostles were called. There was no question of revealing His Son in them then. The very utmost that could be said was, that God had been pleased to reveal His Son to Peter and the others. But there was no sense of union then. There was no consciousness of the identification of the saint with Christ. Accordingly, the language would have been premature and entirely beyond the conscious experience of the saints, or the real truth of the matter in the sight of God. But God took care that the call of Paul should be delayed till the whole order of the Jewish apostleship should be complete. He took care also that the twelfth apostleship should be filled up; for it is a profound mistake to suppose that Peter and the other apostles had been hasty in numbering Matthias with them, and that Paul was really the twelfth apostle according to the mind of the Lord. The truth is, that they had their relationship to the twelve tribes of Israel. This seems to have been the reason of their being twelve; and it is to me clear that our Lord establishes this as the true reference and key when He declares that, in the regeneration, the Son of Man shall sit upon the throne of his glory, and they shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. One of them fell from his place, but the vacancy was filled up directly.

Thus all had been duly prepared of God, with a far-reaching wisdom, to make the call of Paul an evidently and entirely separate thing, to make his apostleship as distinct in fact as in form; to give him fresh communications, even as to the Lord's supper, and to convey anew the very gospel that he preached as the revelation of the Son in him. The Lord did stamp the testimony of Peter as being truly the revelation of His Father. Flesh and blood had not revealed it. It was not a question of man's wit. His Father had made a revelation to Peter. What had been revealed? He revealed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God. But, I repeat, this simply was revealed to him. You cannot go farther. Jesus, the rejected Messiah, was the Son of the living God, the giver of life, the quickening Son of God. In Paul's case the Holy Ghost could go a step farther, and that step He seems to me to take. The apostle states it with perfect calmness, and without comparing others. There is no depreciating of any soul, but the plain statement of the positive truth, which after all is the best and the humblest way, that most of all magnifies God, and edifies His children. So it was, then, that the apostle presents his own wonderful relation to Christ. It was not merely that Paul was lowered by the carping Judaizers God's grace was being sacrificed. It was not merely that his apostleship was doubted God's magnifying of His own Son was set at naught. It was the ungrateful heart of man that, in its avidity after something that would bring an appearance of strength and unity, would sacrifice that, which was of heaven for what was after all connected with the earth and the flesh.

Another thing, too, let me just point out in passing. If ever there was a man who more than another contended for the oneness of the saints in every sense, above all, for the one body of Christ, for the unity of the Spirit, it was the apostle Paul. Nevertheless, there never was one that had a deeper sense of the importance of walking, if need were, alone with God. Be assured that it is the same simplicity of faith which enters into both these things now. On the other hand, where unity becomes an object, it is never understood; and at the same time the walk of faith cannot be maintained. In short, the man who, occupied with Christ above, enters for that very reason most into the blessedness of the body of Christ here below by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, is the very one that will know in fit season what it is not to confer with flesh and blood. No doubt this might be provoking to human importance sometimes. It might seem entirely despising his brethren. "Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood."

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. What! an apostle, or at any rate one that says he is an apostle, setting aside what God inaugurated in Jerusalem, not even conferring with those whom the Lord Himself called by His personal summons here below? Here they might flatter themselves were plain tangible facts; here the amplest testimony on the Lord's part that the twelve are really His chosen apostles. But as for the apostle Paul, he says he was called, and this by his master from heaven; but by his own showing nobody heard the call of Christ but himself. One can readily conceive men of strong prejudice and of weak faith thus hesitating, especially in presence of the apostle's strong assertion of entire liberty from the law for the Gentiles. Consequently it is plain from the beginning, that the apostleship of Paul made a demand upon faith which the other apostolate did not. He was an enemy stopped in sovereign grace. He was not converted first, and then gradually led into that highest degree, but called at once to be an apostle as well as saint in a way that belonged to no one but himself. It was from and in connection with Christ in heaven. He acts on this in faith; he understands it with an energy and a brightness that increased even in his Roman prison.

But it was true from the first. "Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood." Had Paul gone up to present his credentials to the others, he would have lowered, obscured, and done as far as in him lay to destroy the special blessedness and peculiar glory of his apostleship. But he was not thus disobedient to the heavenly vision. 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. He visits Arabia and Damascus once more. Then after a certain lapse of time he does see Jerusalem, but no more than Peter and James, not the apostolic college officially. And you will observe the immense importance attached to this simple account; for all here is plain matter of fact, but pregnant with the weightiest consequences as long as the church and the gospel last here below.

"The things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not. Afterwards I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, and was unknown by face unto the churches of Judea which were in Christ." Was this then a reproach? Be it so: such was true. It was really part of God's wondrous ways with him, as indicating the true character of Christianity and of its ministry as contrasted with Judaism. It was therefore not only for him, but for the instruction of the Galatians, and of us all. If understood, it completely cut all the earthly swaddling-clothes of the heavenly church, and of the Christian. Those who lived in Jerusalem were too prone to preserve the clothes and the cradle which had their place and use at first, but had no claim to be kept up among the Gentiles. Whatever might be the apostle's tenderness toward his nation elsewhere, not an earthly link but must be snapped. Accordingly the apostle lays stress on the fact that he was "unknown by face unto the churches of Judea which were in Christ: but they had heard only, that he which persecuted us in times past now preacheth the faith which once he destroyed. And they glorified God in me."

This, be it observed, was part of God's way with him beyond all others. There was no such thing as a gradual training. The other apostles enjoyed this more. They had followed Jesus in His earthly path of presentation to Israel. They had been by degrees instructed according to the testimony which the Lord Jesus was pleased to give; and most suited it was, of course, to the time, people, and circumstances. Anything else would have been imperfect; but still it had essentially a transitional character. It was partly directed to the hearts and consciences of the Jews, partly in view of the approaching rupture of all ties with Israel.

In Paul's case there was nothing of the sort. His testimony was characteristically though not of course exclusively heavenly, as it was also the witness of grace to the fullest. How could it be otherwise with one persecuting at the moment that he was arrested, in hot deadly opposition to God's church up to his most unexpected call from heaven? Thus is seen sovereign grace, and nothing else, as well as a heavenly link instantly formed between the Lord in glory and His servant on earth. No wonder that the apostle attached the greatest moment to the facts of his conversion and call, and that, instead of hiding his lack of familiarity both with the apostles and with the churches in Judea, he glories in it. It was through no such channel that he had his apostleship. Christ on high had called him. Such was the will of God the Father that had raised Christ from the dead.

Galatians 2:1-21. But we have a good deal more. He tells us that fourteen years after he again went up to Jerusalem. He went up with Barnabas, taking Titus with him. It was by revelation, not by summons from Jerusalem, or to acquire a title thereby. And "Titus," as he says here, "who was with me, being a Greek," etc. So far from this being the smallest allowance of Jewish prejudice, it was itself a powerful blow against it. Thus, going up with Barnabas, he took Titus, a Gentile, along with him; and even so by revelation. It was rather to have Gentile liberty secured by the twelve apostles, and that the Judaizers should be condemned by the church at Jerusalem. It was the very reverse of deriving his authority from either. He went up by revelation for the purpose of getting a condemnation in Jerusalem itself of those who would force Jewish principles on the church of God at large. The legal mischief had emanated from Jerusalem: the remedy of grace must be applied by the apostles, elders, and brethren there. It was a misuse of the respect naturally accorded to some who came from Jerusalem; and so God took care to correct the evil by a formal, public, authoritative sentence of the body there, instead of a pure and simple rejection of the error among the Gentile churches, which might have looked like a schism, or at least a divergence of feeling between them and the apostle Paul. It might have been inferred that Paul was to do what he could with the Gentile churches, but that the twelve exclusively cared for the churches in Judea, he consequently having nothing to do with them. But it is not so. 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. In fact, what Jerusalem had done, as far as this was concerned, was to let slip men that would impose circumcision evil workers, as he in a later epistle contemptuously calls such like of the concision; for they were corrupting the Gentile churches by Judaism, instead of helping them in Christ.

Thus, then, God directed and ruled that the apostle should go up and have the evil condemned on the spot, and at the centre from which it had emanated. And when he went there, was it a question of receiving aught from the twelve? Nay; he communicated unto them the gospel which he preached among the Gentiles. It was not that they communicated to him the gospel they had learned from Jesus here below, but he communicated to them that gospel he was in the habit of preaching among the Gentiles. But it was in no vain glory, in no tone of superiority, though, no doubt, it was a far fuller and higher testimony than theirs; for he adds, "privately to them which were of reputation, lest by any means I should run or had run in vain." He granted that persons might indulge in some such thoughts about him. It was for the chiefs at Jerusalem to judge for themselves, and they did judge to the confusion of the apostle's adversaries. "But neither Titus [he takes occasion to say parenthetically], being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised." And what was the result of all this? Why, that though there were "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," Paul did not give place by subjection even for an hour, "that the truth of the gospel might continue with them." For the foundation was at stake. "But of these who seemed to be somewhat." Here he takes up, not the mischievous troublers of the Gentiles, whom he does not hesitate to call "false brethren," but the highest in office he found there. "Of these who seemed to be somewhat (whatsoever they were, it maketh no matter to me)." It is interesting to note the earnestness and strength with which the apostle speaks, now the question had been fairly raised. Pungent, abrupt, indignant, he none the less was led of God. "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," etc. A different issue ensued from their settling down in the mutual independence of the Gentile churches and the Jewish. "They gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship; that we should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision." They thus acted and pronounced according to the evident intention of God conveyed in the character of their apostolates respectively.

Thus, it is seen, the truth was established. The apostle Paul interferes in no way with the work which God had given the others to do. He owned and valued, in its own place, the difficult, weighty, and momentous work which God had assigned to Peter, James, and the rest; but at the same time he stood firmly humbly, of course, and lovingly, but firmly for that which the Lord had assigned to himself and his colleagues among the Gentiles; and, so far from Christ's liberty having been in the least weakened, the apostolic conclave put their seal, with the whole church at Jerusalem, upon it most heartily. (Acts 15:1-41) As it is said here, "They gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship, that we should go unto the heathen and they unto the circumcision. Only they would that we should remember the poor; the same which I also was forward to do." But this was not all. He mentions another fact, and of the greatest gravity, closing this part of his argument that when Peter subsequently came down into the Gentile quarters, he had been himself affected by the subtle spirit of Judaism, i.e., the chief of the twelve! How little is man to be accounted of! And Paul, far from deriving his apostleship or aught else from Peter, was obliged to rebuke him, and this publicly. "When Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed: 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. And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation. 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?" I call your attention particularly to this, brethren, that an act apparently so simple as Peter's ceasing to eat with the Gentiles had such a solemn character in the eye of the apostle Paul, that he considered it a question of the truth of the gospel. Are you prepared for this searching judgment of what looked a small and indifferent matter? Do your souls go along with Paul's decision? Or are you inclined toward the easy-going yieldingness of Peter? Can you seize the gravity of this?

Remember what it must have been to one like Paul to censure the most honoured of the twelve. For Peter is not said to have withdrawn from the Lord's table where the uncircumcised met, but from the simple matter of eating with the Gentiles. The truth of the gospel, to the apostle Paul's mind, was at stake. Need it be added that he was right and Peter wrong? The gospel had brought in before God this double conclusion, founded on the first Adam and the last. It supposed, and went forth to every creature on the ground of the total ruin of Jew and Gentile. There was no difference: all had sinned. And it proclaimed the full and equally blessed standing of those who received Christ. There was no difference in the blessing of Christ: man's guilt and God's grace were alike indiscriminate. There was no difference either way. (Romans 3:1-31, Romans 10:1-21) But the act of Peter went to maintain a difference. The truth of the gospel, therefore, was compromised. And there were reasons why Peter was grievously in fault, particularly as he did no longer adhere to the law, but lived as one conscious of the freedom from it which the gospel gives those who believe in a risen Christ. Why then did he want he Gentiles to live as did the Jews?

The apostle accordingly now turns to the great argument of his epistle, and the discussion of those grand principles that are characteristic to Christianity, and in full agreement with the facts that have already been brought before you. "We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles, 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 may 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." But then he goes farther. He says, "If, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is Christ therefore the minister of sin?" This would have flowed from Peter's conduct. Had Peter been right, it was evident that the gospel had put Peter in the wrong. The gospel had led Peter to treat the Jews and Gentiles all alike. The gospel had given him to sanction in his ways and words the overthrow of the partition wall. If Peter was acting rightly now, this had all been a mistake, and consequently the gospel nay, solemn to say, Christ Himself would be thus a minister of sin. Such was the serious but necessary import of Peter's act. Peter would have been horrified at such a conclusion. 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. The apostle's discerning eye at once judged by Christ and by that gospel which he had learned from Him. He habitually measured things not so much by their bearing on Jews or Gentiles as by their effect on Christ's glory. In point of fact, to bring in Christ is also best of all to secure the blessing, the privileges, the glory that God has in His grace for every one that believes. Paul was pleading for the real interests of the Jew just as much as of the Gentile; but he presses this most clenching argument that Peter's conduct involved the making Christ Himself the minister of sin; "for if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor."

Then the apostle at once explains, as annexed to this, the real state of the case. "I through the law am dead to the law." As you know, he had been under law as a Jew. And what was the effect of God's giving him to have an application of law in his own conscience? Why, to feel himself a dead man. As it is reasoned out in Romans 7:1-25, the law came, and he died. "I through law am dead to law, that I might live unto God." The law in itself never produces such a result. All that the law can do, even when yielded by the might of the Spirit of God, is to force on a soul the consciousness of being dead before God. The law is never life to the dead, but kills morally those who seem alive. "I through law am dead to law." It is thus, then, that grace uses it to give me death in my conscience before God. Thus I am dead through the law. The Spirit of God can employ it to make a man feel that all is over with him; but He goes farther in grace, and by that very law brings the man in dead to the law, and not merely condemned. He through law died to law, that he might live to God! Here he comes to the positive blessing; for the Spirit cannot rest in what is but negative. But it is life after death to law, and consequently in another sphere.

He next announces the true secret of it all: "I am crucified with Christ." It is not merely that I have found in Christ a Saviour, but I am crucified with Christ. My very nature is dealt with. All that I have as a living man in the world is gone, not, of course, as a mere matter of fact, but, what is far more important, as a matter of faith. The history of the flesh its sad and humbling history is soon over; but the history that faith opens into never closes. "I am crucified with Christ." This terminates all for me as a living man here below. "Nevertheless" astonishing to say, for it could not be natural life "nevertheless, I live." And what sort of life can this be? "Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." How precious to have done with one's sinful self and to begin a life so perfect as Christ's! "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."

I have nothing to do with the law any more, even if I had been once under it as a Jew. For the law was used with killing power; and, slain as it were in my conscience, I found in that very place Christ Himself by the grace of God, Christ that died for me; and not merely this, but Christ in whom I died. I am crucified with Christ: consequently all that remains for me is living this new life which Christ is in me. And this life is sustained by the very same person who is its source. "The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me," etc. It is not a question of my loving Him, though this is and must be true of the saints; but this would tend to throw the soul on self, and it is not the reckoning of grace. What comforts the soul, what strengthens and keeps it up, is that He "loved me, and gave Himself for me."

Thus, as he says most emphatically, "I do not frustrate the grace of God;" they did, every one who substituted aught but Christ and His cross. Every one who went back from such a gospel as this was, as far as it went, frustrating the grace of God. "If righteousness come by the law," (he does not merely say, "come of the law," but come by it,) "then Christ is dead [died] in vain." Not so; it is exclusively of grace by Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. It is wholly apart from works of law.

Accordingly, in Galatians 3:1-29 he pursues his reasoning. "O foolish Galatians," he now breaks out in an impassioned appeal to them, "who hath bewitched you [that ye should not obey the truth should here vanish], before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth crucified among you?" Observe the place the cross has here, not merely Christ's blood, but His death on the cross. As we saw it in the Corinthians applied to judge the worldliness of the saints there, so here it judges their legalism. "This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?" There are two things in the Christian; he has a life, a new life in Christ, but he has also, the Holy Ghost. The law kills instead of giving life, and puts under condemnation instead of giving that Spirit which is necessarily a spring of sonship and liberty. Having brought in the true character of the Christian's life as flowing simply and solely from Christ, and from Christ crucified too, so here he takes up the Holy Ghost. He was given, whether in power or in person, not by the law, but by the hearing of faith.

"Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh? Have ye suffered so many things in vain, if it be yet in vain? He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?" There could be but one answer. This immense privilege had no connection with law whatever. The Holy Ghost is given as the seal of faith in Christ on the accomplishment of redemption, not before nor otherwise.

Then he takes up Abraham; for this is always the stock argument of those who would bring in circumcision and the law, Abraham being emphatically the friend of God and the father of the faithful. And mark how the Holy Ghost turns Abraham into an additional and most unexpected proof of the grace of God and the truth of the gospel. Only we must carefully bear this in mind, that in the epistle to the Galatians we never rise exactly to church ground. It is Christian ground, certainly, but not the church as such. Of course the same persons who are here in present view belonged to the church of God; but then they are not contemplated in their heavenly relationship, but as the children of promise, as we shall see in the end of this very chapter. There are many present privileges and future glories that belong to the Christian; and promise is one of them. We are not to suppose that a higher and more heavenly character blots out the lesser place; of this the apostle takes advantage here. But he proves more when he says that Abraham believed God; it was plainly not a question of law. Abraham never. heard of the law. "Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Know ye therefore that they which are of faith" (not those that cry up the law) "are the children of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith," not by becoming proselytes of the gate, or entering on a legal basis, but "foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed." Later, and in a far fuller way now, the gospel was the blessed answer to this early grace. He does not say that it is the complement of it; but most decidedly it flows from the same divine spring of grace. The gospel, not the law, owns its kindred with the promise. "So then," says he, "they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham." The law holds out but never gives blessing. Those that are of faith, not those who pretend to the law and do it not, are blessed with their father.

But he goes deeply. He tells them that as many as take the ground of law works are under the curse already. Not that they have actually broken down and failed; but so incapable is man of standing before God on the principle of doing the law, that it is all over with him the moment he pretends to it. "As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them." The consequence is, that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God; and this he proves, not only from the promise, but from the prophets. When the prophet speaks of any one living, it is by faith "The just shall live by faith." Hence, you see, all exactly suits the gospel as Paul insisted on it. "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ." He does not say, that the Gentiles were under that curse, but that Christ bought off us who were in this position from its curse; for in truth, whatever might be our boast, all we (the Jews) got from the law was a curse, not a blessing; and what Christ did for us was to purchase us from that awful plight in which the law could not but put us because we had transgressed. it. And thus the blessing of Abraham could flow freely towards the Gentiles who never were there.

And this leads to another point, the relation of the law to the promises. How do they stand related? and how do they affect each other? The apostle turns this into an admirable piece of divine reasoning in defence of the gospel. "Brethren, I speak after the manner of men; though it be but a man's covenant, yet, if it be confirmed, no man annulleth or addeth thereto." Everybody knows this. When once a covenant is "signed, sealed, and delivered," it must not be meddled with. You cannot lawfully add to it, any more than set aside its provisions. "Now to Abraham were the promises spoken, and to his seed. He saith not, And to seeds, as to many; but as to one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. And this I say, that the covenant confirmed before by God unto Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, can not annul so that it should make the promise of none effect." Such is the application. "For if the inheritance be of law, it is no more of promise:" otherwise by the condition of law you would annul the promise. That is to say, the covenant that was made between God and Abraham had reference to the seed which was coming, symbolized by Isaac, but really looking onward to Christ. Nothing that God afterwards introduced annulled this. If the law, introduced afterwards, were allowed to exercise control, the effect would be to set aside the promise. It would be first adding to it, and not only so, but annulling it. The inheritance, therefore, depends on the grace of God fulfilling His promise, not on man's accomplishment of the law, even if possible. The promise is therefore entirely distinct from the law, which was not heard of for four hundred and thirty years after. The long lapse of time ought to have guarded men from mixing up the law with the promise, and thus from the appearance of annulling the promise by the law, for this would be most dishonouring to God. We can understand a foolish man making a covenant, and the next day repenting of it, which is never true of the divine purposes. In this case it was God that gave the promise; it was He that confirmed the covenant to Christ, without saying a word about the law till four hundred and thirty years after. How impossible, therefore, to add the law to the promise! Still less is it possible to let the law set its force aside. "To Abraham were the promises made, and to his seed."

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. The argument is founded upon the unity of the seed of promise in this connection. For God does speak elsewhere, and even on this occasion, of a numerous seed. One of the encouragements, as we know, which God furnished to Abraham was, that he should have a seed like the sand of the sea, and like the stars of the sky. These were his lineal posterity. But where the Gentiles are mentioned, God only speaks of seed without reference to number.

This is best seen by turning to Genesis 22:1-24, where both facts are found in the same context. I just refer to it for a moment, because it adds much to the beauty of the reasoning in Galatians. In verse 17 it is written, "In blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore." At first sight it seems most extraordinary, if the apostle referred to such a Scripture for the proof of the importance of one seed; because, if there is anything that lies on the surface of the passage, it is the multiplicity of the seed a seed expressly said to exceed all reckoning. This, then, is not what the apostle Paul has in view, but in contrast with it. And mark the difference. When God speaks of the seed numerous as the sand or the stars, He gives them a Jewish character of blessing. "Thy seed ( i.e., the numerous seed) shall possess the gate of his enemies." God promises the final power and glory of Israel in the earth, putting down their foes, and so forth.

But immediately after this it is added, "In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. "Here we have the Gentiles expressly named, and to this the apostle refers. Mark it well. When God gives a pledge not of possessing the gate of enemies, when He speaks of the blessing of the nations, instead of the overthrow of Israel's foes, then he speaks simply of "thy seed." 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. On this the apostle reasons.

What the Jews would have liked, no doubt, was power (and the Galatians, after all, were in danger of slipping into the same snare; for the law suits the world, as grace does not), and in the world present power and honour. This the Jews are destined to have by-and-by; for the promises to Abraham are not exhausted yet. Whereas the Holy Ghost by the apostle draws attention to the contrast of "thy seed" (as one) with the numerous seed, with earthly blessing attached to them; whilst to "thy seed " simply, without reference to stars or to sand, no more is annexed than the blessing of Gentiles. This it is to which we are come now under Christianity. By-and-by will be fulfilled the promised earthly blessing, and power, and glory for Israel like the sand and the stars. The Jews will surely be exalted, as well as converted nationally, and they will then put down their enemies, being made the head when other nations become the tail. 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. Already "thy seed," the true Isaac, is given, and in that true seed the Gentiles are being blessed. It is no question now of being subject to the Jews, who shall never possess the gate of their enemies, but be peeled and scattered and few, while the gospel is going forth. The other part remains, and must be accomplished in its own day, when Israel's heart turns to the Lord. Meanwhile another and a better sort of blessing is given, as a better Seed also is given the true Heir of all the promises of God, even Christ the Lord. And, doubtless, God had all this in view when He pledged Himself with an oath to Abraham. 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.

This then is the apostle's allusion and reasoning; but he proceeds to meet a natural objection. If the promise be the only means of enjoying the inheritance, what is the good of the law? Does not this make very light of it? You say that the promise is everything, and that the law cannot either set aside the promise or add other clauses to it. What then is the end of the law? It is for the purpose of bringing in transgression, answers the apostle. This is all that people's zeal and labour come to. They spring from unbelief from undue thoughts of self, from ignorance of God, from slight thoughts of Christ. Legal activity is but labouring in the fire for vanity; and if, alas! the Christian dooms himself to such hard labour instead of resting in the faith of Christ, whom has he to blame? Certainly not God, nor His plain and precious word. He will gain transgression thereby; nothing more, nothing better. "Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator." Thus it is evident that the legal system is a parenthesis. Promise was before the law, and flowed out of the grace of God. The law came in meanwhile, serving its own object, which was to bring out what was in the heart of man. For he is a sinner; and the law called out the sin into articulate transgressions, and made it perfectly plain that the heart is only evil continually, and proves it by plain transgressions; that is all. Then comes the seed, and the promise is made Yea and Amen in Him all the promises of God. As made under the law He was for Israel; but He died and rose, and was thus free to bless a Gentile as much as a Jew. For what has a risen man to do with Israel more than the nations? All question of natural ties drops in death; as the cross is the disproof of any right to Christ in either. For Jew and Gentile were alike guilty of crucifying Him. All therefore becomes a matter of the pure grace of God; and He is pleased to bless the Gentiles in the Seed, even Christ dead and risen.

The law is of a wholly different nature, and hence was ordained of angels in the hand of a mediator. The creature intervenes here, and the consequence soon appears. For he comes to another and most cogent argument. "Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one." The meaning is that you never can get stability in blessing until you have simply God putting forth His own power according to His own grace. Leave room for God, and for God alone. Such is the only possible way in which blessing can be brought in, in order that such souls as we are should be blessed and maintained in it. And thus it is with the promise. In it there is one party, even God Himself, who gave it, and accordingly fulfils it in that Seed to whom the covenant was confirmed. But the moment you bring in the law, you have two parties; and, strange to say, instead of the greater party being God, it becomes man, whose responsibility is to God. God asks, and man is called to give, i.e., is called to obedience. Alas! we know too well the result from sinful man. Grace alone in such a case brings glory to God. Thus, clearly, in the law man becomes the prominent and responsible party, not God. This never can bring man to God any more than glory to God. The law, accordingly, never was the truth, either on God's side, or man's. It was, of course, altogether just and right in itself. Man had his duty to God, and be ought to have. done his duty; but it was precisely what he could not do, because he was a sinner. To make this evident by transgressions was the object of the law. It was to demonstrate his sinfulness, not to gain the inheritance. But this was only provisional and parenthetic. After all, what God had at heart was the accomplishment of His own promise in grace. When He gave the promise to Abraham, He said, "I will give." And now in Christ He has accomplished it I mean already. But before He sent the promised Seed, man's self-confidence needed the discipline of the intermediate thing, the law; and after infinite long-suffering on God's part, the people who undertook to obey it had to be swept out of the land for their disobedience.

The law was given them with all pomp and solemnity. It was ordained by angels, who had nothing to do with promise, which God gave direct to His friend. When He had anything unfailing to do or say, He loved to appear in grace; He said it Himself, and did it for Himself. But when men would have anything fraught with distress to His people, when through their folly confusion must ensue, contrary to all that His heart loved, then it was left to others. Thus the law was ordained by angels in the hands of a mediator. A double intervention comes between God and man, in contrast with the simplicity of His ways of grace. In grace, God in the person of His Son speaks and accomplishes ALL; and thus He is glorified from first to last. Man is only the receiver; and truly, as we know, "it is more blessed to give than to receive." God reserves to Himself this great blessedness in the gospel; whereas under the law there was nothing of the kind. Then I must repeat that God could only make claims; and man had to take the place, if he could, of giving to God of rendering his obedience. He was bound to do what he ought; but, in point of fact, all was a failure, and could be nothing else, because man was a sinner.

This then is what the law brought in. Is it against the promise of God? Not at all. Rather, if man had been able to obey the law and so acquire a title, then two systems would have interfered with each other as being to the same end. Some would have received the inheritance because of promise, and others on the ground of law. Thus the two totally opposite roads of grace and law would have been leading to the same result. This must be indeed confusion; as it is, there is none. Under law all is lost; under grace all is saved. The law and the promise are both from God, but the law's use is only negative and condemnatory. It cannot and ought not to spare sinners. The promise has another and most blessed place. It brings in deliverance for man in the accomplishment of God's purpose in Christ. This is what is found under it. Thus the law pulls down what is evil, and the promise gives what is good and builds it up. The law brings man in his nothingness into evidence, it proves that he is only a poor lost sinner. Grace brings out the faithful promise of God, and His goodness to him that deserves nothing. Thus, rightly understood and applied, the law and the promises, while wholly distinct, are in no way inconsistent with each other. Merge them, as unbelief does, and all is confusion and ruin.

Further, it is laid down, if there had been a law capable of giving life, righteousness would be by the law. But this could not be. On the contrary, "the Scripture hath concluded all under sin" not under righteousness by law. Thus, whether it be the Gentile without law, or the Jew with it, all are shut up under sin. "The scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe."

But, he adds, faith is come (that is, the testimony to be believed by man now, or the gospel). This he means here by "faith." "Before faith came we [Jews] were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For ye are all the children of God." Instead of being under a slave, with rigorous and humiliating discipline, there is now the place of a child before his Father; the Christian stands by faith of Jesus in direct relationship to God. "Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus."

This is shown still more fully in the allusion to baptism: "As many of us as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ." It is of course assumed that every Christian had been baptized. There was no doubt or difficulty on this head in these early days. There was no believer, Jew or Gentile, who had not gladly submitted to that very blessed sign of having part with Christ, and of that which is made good by Christ. "As many as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ." It is not a question of law at all. Christian baptism, contrariwise, supposes man dead; and the only death that can deliver man out of his own death is the death of Christ. Therefore, when a man is baptized, he is not, of course, baptized into his own death; there is no sense in such a thought. He is baptized into Christ's death, which is the sole means of deliverance out of his state of sin. So here the Christian puts on Christ, not the law or circumcision. He wants to get rid of the first Adam and all its appliances, not to keep it on; and therefore he puts on Christ. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female;" all is Christ and only Christ. It is not an old creation, but a new one. 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? All this vanishes in Christ; we are all one in Him; and if you are Christ's, what need to be circumcised! You do not want to become the children of Abraham in that sense, which would be the revival of the flesh. If Christ's, they were Abraham's seed already, "and heirs according to the promise;" for Christ, he had shown before, was the one true Seed; and if we are Christ's, we belong to that one true Seed, and therefore are the children of Abraham without circumcision at all. Nothing can be more conclusive than this disproof of the fleshly pretensions that were connected with Jerusalem, and were brought in under cover of Abraham, but really to the subversion of the gospel.

In Galatians 4:1-31 the relation is taken up, not of the law to the promise, but of the Christian now to the condition of the saints of old a very important point also. Here one may be very brief: "The heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all; but is under tutors and governors, until the time appointed of the father. Even so we, when we were children," etc. 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. "We, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world; but when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons." The apostle shows that, so far from bringing in Christians and putting them on the ground of the Old Testament, God is really leading those who were in that connection out of it all by redemption. He fully allows that the Lord was both made of a woman and made under the law; but what was the ultimate object in view! It was not to keep people under the law, still less could it be to put any under the law, but to bring them clean out if they had been under it before. Such was the case with the Old Testament believers, and many Jewish believers then alive. Was it possible, then, that any could desire to put the Gentiles under law, when they had been brought out from it themselves by the will of God, the work of Christ, and the witness of the Holy Spirit? What a gross inconsistency! What a subversion, not only of the truth of God revealed in the gospel, but also of redemption, which is its basis! For Christ bought off those that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons, bringing them by grace into a place of known salvation and intelligent joy in relation with our God and Father, out of that bondage and nonage which the law supposes.

But what about the Gentiles? "Because ye are sons." He does not condescend to reason about their place in the matter, but puts them at once in their due relationship. Because they were sons, God sent that blessed proof and power of their sonship. He gives freely the Holy Ghost on their acceptance of Christ's name; or, as it is here written, "He sent forth the Spirit of his Son in your hearts, crying, Abba, Father." That is, if the Holy Ghost was given as the seal of their redemption, and as the joy of the sonship, wherein they now stood, in the exercise of their nearness to God and enjoyment of His love, they cry, "Abba, Father," the very words of Christ himself (but in how different circumstances!) to His Father. "Wherefore, thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ."

Thence he advances to another point of his argument. Indeed, we may say that now he thunders on the Galatians that were dragging in the law. Did they know that for a Gentile Christian to take up Judaistic elements is in principle to go back to heathenism? Heathenism! Why they thought they were becoming more truly religious, more reverent in their value for Scripture. They thought that Christianity would be all the better for adopting the ancient forms and beautiful figures of the law. Not at all, says the apostle, you are returning straight into your old heathenism without knowing it yourselves. For he had shown that our purchase by Christ delivers even the Jew from subjection to the law; whilst Gentiles are set at once on the ground of grace without the intervention of any legal apprenticeship whatever, "Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods. But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage?" What can be conceived more serious or trenchant than such a statement as this? Impossible to find a blast more withering to all that they were aiming at. Born and bred in the abominable idolatries of the heathen, they were strangers to the institutions of Israel. They had been lately brought by the grace of God into Christianity, where they found Jewish brethren, now made one, as it is said, in Christ. Ignorant or false men had made them hanker after circumcision. What were they doing? When a Gentile Christian, mark, takes up such Old Testament elements, according to the Holy Ghost, it is not to him merely Judaism, but a return to his Gentile idols, little as he may think so.

Jewish elements were borne with in a Jew. The apostle Paul himself, inRomans 14:1-23; Romans 14:1-23, insists upon the forbearance of a Gentile even towards the Jew that might be still encumbered by his days, meats, and so on. But the moment a Gentile takes the system up, or a Jew presses it on a Gentile, it is nothing but downright heathenism. Who would have ventured to say, without express scripture, that the old Jewish forms thus adopted by a Gentile believer have such an idolatrous character? Yet how true it is, the more we look below the surface; indeed, in our day it becomes more and more palpable to the eye. Ritualism is the present most patent comment on the apostle's statement. The very defence set up, and the meanings which these men put on the forms and ceremonies of which they make Christianity so largely to consist, demonstrate their most barefaced turning back to idolatry. Do not suppose that idolatry has its character saved because Jesus is worshipped. Christianity refuses to be mingled with anything but itself. Tender and comprehensive as Christianity is, it is also the most exclusive thing that can be. Truth must necessarily be exclusive, and all who hold the truth must, in their adhesion to it and Him who is its personal expression, be exclusive too. (I mean by this, of course, exclusive of sin and falsehood.) There can be no compromise; but to be exclusive in any sense save as the expression of the truth in Christ would be in its own way an utter and heartless falsehood. There is nothing that requires more the power of grace; for even the truth itself, if severed from grace, ceases to be the truth. Being found only in Christ, it supposes the manifestation of grace; light does not in the same way that truth does. "Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." (Compare John 1:9; John 1:17.)

Now the Galatians were unwittingly in danger of giving up the truth. They were only, as they supposed, beginning to cherish a becoming attitude toward the religion of the fathers, and of all who had before Christ honoured God on earth. Venerable religion! the only system of earthly worship which had ever possessed God's sanction. Why not adopt what was wanting in Christianity? Where was the harm of taking up what saints of old submitted to? No, rejoins the apostle; you are going back to heathenism. They had been idolaters before they became Christians; and to take up Jewish principles in addition to Christ is to turn back again to their cast-off idols. Next, we are told, wherein this consisted. "Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. What! is this all? I have known a divine who had a character for intelligence use these words as a motto and sanction. And no wonder. Christendom is built upon this footing. They think that it is quite right, for the church especially, to appoint days for this and that saint; to have certain seasons to remind one of the Lord's incarnation, ministry, and crucifixion, of His resurrection, ascension, and so on. I choose the best facts; for I have no wish to rake up abuses. All this is counted a great, wise, and sensible help to devotion. Well, "sensible" help in the meaning of an appeal to nature it is; but it is a sensible help to idolatry, not to living faith. This is the very evil which the Spirit of God so earnestly and energetically denounces here by the apostle Paul. He does not charge them with anything of an openly gross or immoral nature; but what a proof that the truth of God, that the grace of Christ, is exclusive of everything but itself! Nor is there a greater evidence of God's tender and considerate care for us than such a fact as this. For He knows our tendency to mingle law with grace in some form or measure, and treats that which was of the fathers and long before Moses, as a foreign ingredient deleterious to Christians. As God has wrought for us on the cross, and delivered us from every atom of sin in Christ, so He will not allow us to mix one earthly or legal element with the revelation of His grace, which He has made ours in redemption, and proclaimed to us by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven.

Hereon the apostle puts before them another expostulation: "I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain." And this directly follows his censure of their observance of times and seasons. "Brethren, I beseech you, be as I am; for I am as ye are." They knew very well that he had nothing to do with the law or its ordinances. "Be as I am." By this he plainly means free from law. "For I am as ye are." They were, after all, Gentiles, and as such ought to have had nothing to do with the law. So he calls on them to be as free of the law as himself. For he, though a Jew, had completely done with the law, and all that pertains to it. "For I am as ye are: ye have not injured me at all." That is, the apostle, instead of regarding his despised freedom from the law as a just reproach, glories in it. There was no insult to him, nor injury done, in saying that he did not acknowledge the law for a Christian.

But, further, he refers in a very affecting manner to some personal circumstances how in his own body he was a witness of having nothing to do with flesh; for what God had been pleased to put upon him as serving Him in the gospel was not great power of nature, but that which made him contemptible in his preaching. It is evident that the thorn in the flesh was something which left him open to a slight, and made it difficult indeed for any one to understand how a man who was called to be an apostle should find it hard to convey plainly his mind in preaching. It is quite obvious that there was a hindrance of some sort. It seems to have been something which affected his speech too, and exposed him to ridicule and to unfavourable comments where men were carnally-minded. But in this he could glory. It was something painful to bear. At first he prayed the Lord to take it from him; but no! though he had prayed thrice, as his Lord had done on another and wondrous occasion, so the apostle was to have communion with Christ in this way, and learn that there is something better than the taking away of that which makes nothing of the flesh. The power of Christ must rest upon him. Thus it appears that the Galatians as well as the Corinthians had been similarly affected. And this leads him to speak of another trial. When they first knew him, there was no difficulty felt on this score; they heard him as an angel of God. It was they who had changed, not he. They had so completely lost sight of the grace of Christ, the sweetness and the bloom of it, that he travailed again for them: his soul once more passed through that which had exercised him when they were converted.

Then he gives a closing blow to those who doted about the law. He says to those who would be under the law, why do you not listen to the law? Look at Abraham and his house; look at the maid Hagar; look at Isaac and Ishmael. There you have in a figure the two parties that are still found on the earth: the law party symbolized by Ishmael, the child of flesh; and those that cling to the grace of God, who have their pattern in Isaac, the child of promise. Now, what does God say about it? Why this: "Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, and the other by a freewoman." The apostle expressly reasons on Abraham, as they were always anxious to cite Abraham, the father of circumcision. Their main support then, as they thought Abraham, had two sons; but they stood, according to Scripture, on wholly different principles. "The child of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise." How apt the illustration for exposing the judaizers! The case is hit off exactly to the life. Which son represented them? Under which type did they fall Ishmael or Isaac? Whom did their principle make them resemble?

There can be no doubt about the matter. "Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?" "Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, which answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us [all?]. For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath a husband." The application of this is as plain as it is conclusive, for those who appealed to Abraham and bowed to the word of God. Instead of going up to Jerusalem on earth, instead of endeavouring to effect a junction with the law or anything else here below, the gospel wants no such allies, but repudiates them all. The very reverse of their system is true. The true link is with Jerusalem above, as our prototype is Isaac, the child of the freewoman. Theirs was the slave's son Ishmael.

Then, bringing in the name of Jerusalem, the Spirit leads him to apply the prophecy of Isaiah, which shows that millennial Israel (in their turn abandoning self-righteousness, and made free by God's grace in Christ) will look back and count as their own those now brought in as Christians, and find far more children begotten by the gospel, in the time of their own desolation, than even when they flourished of old, and had ,all that earthly power and glory could give. Thus a decisive blow is struck at the principle of connection with the law; and it was evident that they did not truly "hear the law." Their ears were heavy, and their eyes blinded by their legalism. Nor did they understand the prophets better. To be under law was fatal to Jerusalem. Everything lost then would be gained when promise has its way. Up to the destruction of Jerusalem it was law; but now, under Christianity, Jerusalem, being rebellious and scorning promise like Ishmael, is cast out and has nothing. She is desolate; she is no longer in the condition of the married wife, but like the fugitive bondwoman. She is as one that has no husband. Yet, wondrous to say, when she desires to be under grace by-and-by, all those that are now brought in by promise will be accounted as children to her. Such is the reasoning in which the apostle uses this very remarkable prophecy. When Jerusalem is humbled by the mercy of God, and betakes herself to her Messiah and the new covenant, she will "hear the law," and the prophets will be accomplished in her blessing, and in the largeness of love the present children of promise (even Christians, as being in a certain mystical sense children of Jerusalem) will be her boast. But this will be Jerusalem, under not law but promise and liberty, restored by grace after having lost everything by the law, and reduced to utter desolation. But for us now the apostle carefully adds the principle of our heavenly character. Ours is Jerusalem above, not a city on earth. That is, he links on the heavenly character of Jerusalem for us before touching on the desolate place of Jerusalem after the flesh, or of the predicted change of heart and blessing in grace, when she will be glad to appropriate, as it were, the Christians born now after the Spirit. This closes the course of the apostle's argument.

Next he turns to direct exhortation, the chief salient points of which will call for but few words. It is liberty and not law that the Christian stands in. At the same time he insists in the most peremptory manner that our liberty in Christ is to be used for holiness. He shows that the Spirit of God dwelling in the believer gives no license for the action of the flesh. 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. He had been brought to a place of blessing outside himself and by another, the Saviour, which in itself gives the soul motives indeed but not power; whereas, for the soul who is brought to God by the gospel, and planted in the liberty wherein Christ makes free before God, it is no more a question of flesh, but of the Holy Ghost who is given to him. And who will venture to say that the indwelling Spirit of God fails to supply power to him who submits to the righteousness of God in Christ? Hence the point is not at all whether we have intrinsic power, but whether He is not now abiding in us as "a Spirit of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." Undoubtedly such is the assurance of God's word to His children; and thus Galatians 5:1-26 is in contrast withRomans 7:1-25; Romans 7:1-25. In that chapter of Romans we have a man converted indeed, but without liberty, and consequently powerless. He sees the right, feels the good, desires the holy, but never, accomplishes. The reason is, that he has not yet come to own by faith that he has no strength any more than righteousness, and that Christ is all and in all. He is afresh making efforts to improve, yet still in bondage and misery. He is occupied with himself. He feels what he ought to do, but he does it not, and thus is increasingly wretched. Sense of duty is not power. What gives power is the heart surrendering itself in everything, and thus set at liberty by Christ. I am perfectly delivered, and the measure of my deliverance is Christ, and Christ raised from the dead. This is Christianity; and when the soul thankfully accepts from God this blessed liberty, the Holy Ghost is given to and acts in the believer as a Spirit of peace and power; so that if there is the flesh lusting against the Spirit, the Spirit resists this, in order that (for such is the true meaning) they should not do the things that they would.

Accordingly he draws from this a most weighty argument against bringing in the law as the rule of life for the believer. You do not need it, because the Holy Ghost thus working strengthens you unto love. Liberty comes first, mark; power and love afterwards. And how true all this is! Make a child thoroughly happy, and you will soon see that its duty becomes comparatively light and a joy. But when one is miserable, does not every duty, even where it may be as light as a feather, feel as if it were an iron chain on you? It is no wonder that one who is thus tied and bound feels restive under it. Far otherwise is God's way with souls. He makes one first thoroughly happy in the sense of His grace and the liberty Christ has won, and then the Holy Ghost becomes an indwelling spring of power, though His power is put forth in us only as we have Christ kept before us. Thus, if we walk in the Spirit, we shall not fulfil the desires of the flesh. Such is the secret of true power. The consequence is, "If ye are led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law;" and more than this, if we are producing the fruits of the Spirit, he can easily say, "Against such there is no law." Let others talk as they will of the law, no law can censure the real fruits of the Holy Ghost, or those in whom they are found.

Then we come to the closing chapter (Galatians 6:1-18); and here we find the Spirit of God calling for tenderness in dealing with those who are overtaken in a fault. "Ye which are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted." Besides, we have a more daily duty: "Bear ye one another's burdens." It is not merely to seek in love a fallen brother, but to be the succourer of others in their difficulties. Love finds its activity in caring for those that are cast down, "and so fulfils the law of Christ." Do you want a law? Is not this just the law for you! It is the law of Christ. Thus He lived and moved here below. The law of Moses tells a man to do his duty in his own place. The law of Christ makes the going out of love towards another, so to speak, to be his joy. It was exactly what Christ was on earth; and the expression of Christ is the prime call of the Christian.

But there is more for us. He shows that God would give us a deliverance from self-importance; and what a mercy it is to be so blessed, that one can afford to forget one's self! Now, the law always brings fallen man into importance: such it must be in its principle. The law necessarily makes the man, and the man's doings, to be the prominent object. Hence the effect of the law in all its ramifications on man is the same. Thus it wrought among the Galatians. After all their vapouring about the law, they were biting and devouring one another. Was this the love the law claimed? 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. Such is the effect of Christianity, and such in perfection was Christ Himself. But spite of, or rather because of, their use of law, they were self-important, without holy power, and judged instead of loving each other. How abortive is man in the things of God! "For if a man think himself to be something when he is nothing he deceiveth himself. But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another. For every man shall bear his own 'burden." Thus, whatever may be the energy that seeks souls in love, there is nothing after all like Christianity for maintaining individual responsibility intact.

How wholesome is the language here, "Every one shall bear his own burden!" But responsibility is always according to the relation in which one stands, and the measure of knowledge which each possesses, or ought to possess. Let me press this gravely upon those who are here this night. If I am a man, I am responsible as such; being fallen and sinful, this will end in judgment. If I am a Christian, I am responsible according to that position and privilege. My responsibility is defined by the place in which I am found. If I am a mere man, a sinner, the end of that is (for responsibility is not like power, destroyed by sin) the eternal judgment of God. If I am a Christian, I acquire a new kind of responsibility. My business is to act consistently with the new place in which grace has put me. Let us never confound the two. One of the most dangerous errors in Christendom is, that these two things are lumped together. The truth is the distinctive boon and mark of Christendom. There is now much confusion of things that differ; and so, more or less, error runs through the whole of it in all its parts; but I know not anything more ruinous than this. The most difficult thing in Christendom is for people to know what it is to be Christians, and to take this place by the faith of Christ themselves. That is, the most simple and most obvious truth is just the last thing a man thinks about. And no wonder. What Satan aims at is, that people should not count themselves what they are, and that they should be always slipping into what they are not. The result of this is, that neither God has His place, nor they. All is confusion. Christ is forgotten.

But then there is another point of exhortation too; and surely we ought not to forget that there are not only the common links of love, and the willingness to succour one another, as we see, beginning with a most extreme case and ending with a general one; but still further, "Let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things;" and not only that, but also the general responsibility of the saint and in a solemn manner. It is not only that we are put now where we can be the witness to grace in all its outgoings, but, besides that, we are where flesh might show itself. And this is a universal principle. If I sow to the flesh, I shall of the flesh reap corruption; if I sow to the Spirit, I shall reap life everlasting. Eternal life is beyond doubt the gift of divine grace; but, besides, the eternal life that I have now by pure and simple faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is what I find at the end of my course as well as at the starting. There is such a thing as, by patient continuance in well doing, to seek for eternal life. Eternal life is spoken of in this double way in scripture (Romans 6:22-23); and I also press this as a truth of no small importance and but too much forgotten.

Then, further, attention is drawn to another topic his own writing of this letter. It was a very unusual circumstance. The apostle, as far as I know, wrote no other letter to any one of the churches of the saints. To the Galatians there was an exception. If he wrote to the Romans;, it was transcribed, or at any rate written, by another. He signed ordinarily, putting his subscription at the end, i.e., his own name, to verify it; but he did not write it. Writing was a somewhat laborious task in those days, and it was a kind of profession to be a writer or scribe, before printing, of course, was known. Now the apostle in writing to the Galatians was so moved in love, and so yearned over them in their danger, that he actually wrote the epistle with his own hand. He draws particular attention to this fact ere he closes: "You see how large a letter I have written unto you with mine own hand." Thus it was the ardour of love and grief; it was the earnestness of his purpose that could not bear in this instance to employ an intermediary. Just as he had shown that God in His love to man had given the promise direct, so the apostle Paul acts in his care for the saints of God where all the foundations were endangered.

Finally, he concludes by putting the sentence of death, if I may so say, on circumcision, and all such as might adopt it. He intimates also how vain a thing is legalism, because those that were pleading for circumcision in no case carried out their own principle. Bring in one part of law, and you fall under the authority of the whole. You are bound to carry it out consistently. This they never thought of doing. The enemy had ensnared them by crying up circumcision, in order to betray them into a link with Judaism; but they had no thought of bearing the real burden of the law. As for himself, he gloried only in the cross. "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world." Along with the cross goes a new creation. How blessed, and how all-important for our souls! The cross has sentenced the world; and this very sentence of the world is our deliverance from the world. We are crucified unto it by grace, as the world is crucified unto us by judgment. For the world there is nothing yet executed, any more than the great results of grace for the saints as yet appear in their fulness. The solemnities of Christ's judgment await men in the day of the Lord. But the whole matter is decided before God. And this is of immense moment to remember. Christianity brings everything to a climax; it also settles all questions. The Christian by the cross of Christ has terminated his connection with flesh, with the world, with the law. He is brought into another condition. And what is this? He is a new creature in Christ. Therefore, no wonder that he says, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ."

At the same time it is shown to be, not what it might seem, a negative power only, but along with it is the new creation into which grace forms us. "In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature." Gentiles might boast in their freedom. What ground is there for boasting in this? In Christ alone, in His cross, let us boast, and in the new creature which is by Christ. Therefore the apostle adds, ,And as many as walk according to this rule [that is, the rule of the new creation], peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God." Those that walk according to this rule would be saints in general. The "Israel of God," I apprehend, would mean, that the only part of Israel whom God owns now consists of those that really are of faith those that .received Jesus. It is not a vague general expression for all saints, but implies that fleshly Israel was nothing now. If any of them believe in the Crucified, they were God's Israel. Soon all will believe in Christ, and all Israel be saved. But this is a future prophetic vision not touched on here. The new creation is a present blessing that the soul already enjoys. It is an actual result of the cross of Christ. Consequently we have no allusion to the Lord's coming in this epistle to the Galatians. It is all devoted to the deliverance of the saint from this present evil age by the cross of Christ, and his consistent maintenance of the new nature and position of grace of the new creation in Christ Jesus.

May the truth of God sink into our hearts! Thus all things fall into their place, and the Spirit connects us in heart with that which God is doing and will do for the glory of Christ. The apostle had heard enough of circumcision: it was repulsive to him henceforth. It was his to bear in his body a very different brand" the marks of the Lord Jesus," the scars of the only warfare that is precious in the sight of God the Father. Lastly, he desires for his brethren, that "the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ" might be with their spirit. Nothing more in keeping with the wants of those addressed, who had so soon turned aside from the grace of Christ to a different gospel.