And I'm washed and I'm cleansed and I go on. There is a work of God's Spirit within his heart, and he is born of the Spirit, and now again has a spirit that is alive and is conscious of God. Galatians 5:1 (NASB) It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery. 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. When we seek to interpret a passage like this we must remember that for the devout and scholarly Jew, and especially for the Rabbis, scripture had more than one meaning; and the literal meaning was often regarded as the least important. Help me, Lord, to just keep the right attitude." Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like ( Galatians 5:21 ): So, the such like covers a lot of things. And they glorified God in me.". And, as this would be the best means of preserving them from fulfilling the lusts of the flesh, so it would be a good evidence that they were Christians indeed; for, says the apostle (Galatians 5:18; Galatians 5:18), If you be led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now you're, you know, chopping Jesus up, and said, "Well, He is God here, and but, for a while He wasn't God and the universe was without God for a little bit here, or whatever. In so many things. 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. 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. The apostle expressly reasons on Abraham, as they were always anxious to cite Abraham, the father of circumcision. You can see the Santa Rosa and San Miguel and San Nicolas and say, "Hey, hey, all right, we're right on course." 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. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, 23 Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. Observe the place the cross has here, not merely Christ's blood, but His death on the cross. But, in point of fact, he did not see the twelve. That would not be a good example of Christian love. 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." For God does speak elsewhere, and even on this occasion, of a numerous seed. But this could not be. That's the old nature that wants its way, that wants to insist on its own way and all. It is the law of Christ. Or literally, "I wish they were castrated who trouble you. 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. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, which answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. He intimates also how vain a thing is legalism, because those that were pleading for circumcision in no case carried out their own principle. To depart from this was fatal. Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary 5:13-15 The gospel is a doctrine according to godliness, 1Ti 6:3, and is so far from giving the least countenance to sin, that it lays us under the strongest obligation to avoid and subdue it. Who put up a road-block to stop you obeying the truth? We celebrated that today in the observance of the Lord's Supper. Legal activity is but labouring in the fire for vanity; and if, alas! Here I've got this new twist on the scripture. His testimony was characteristically though not of course exclusively heavenly, as it was also the witness of grace to the fullest. The Stoics defined it as "grief at someone else's good." The salutation ( Galatians 1:1-5 ) a. But we have a good deal more. Some would have received the inheritance because of promise, and others on the ground of law. This therefore the apostle would have us by all means to watch against. Indeed, there is no soul really above them. 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. Continue to work in me and through me so that I may live a life that is pleasing to You and glorifying to Your holy name, and keep me from falling back under bondage to legalistic practices, knowing that I have been set free by grace through faith in Christ's finished work on Calvary. In other words, you did not get this from God. No, this persuasion doesn't come from Him who called you. "But of these who seemed to be somewhat." They often use drugs, potions; the potions that you'd take, you know, and it'd have their drug related experiences. The law forbids these things, but the law of love also forbids them. 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. devourthe substance by injuring, extortion, &c. (Hab 1:13; Mt 23:14; 2Co 11:20). But if you snap at one another, and devour one another, you must watch that you do not end up by wiping each other out. Such is the application. Their ears were heavy, and their eyes blinded by their legalism. And I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? "The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me," etc. Villages had an official who was called the superintendent of the village's eirene ( G1515) , the keeper of the public peace. Now take care that you do not use your wonderful . I mean, you never get it from reading the Bible and waiting upon God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, but that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. The apostle, as far as I know, wrote no other letter to any one of the churches of the saints. Everybody knows this. By this he plainly means free from law. So, "do not use your liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love," the real key is love, "serve one another.". If I preach circumcision, then why would they keep persecuting me? That is, walk in fellowship with God. AN OLD STORY AND A NEW MEANING ( Galatians 4:21-31 ; Galatians 5:1 ). Stand, therefore, in it and do not get yourselves involved all over again in a slavish yoke. The Galatian Christians should have been the most peaceful people in the province. Here he comes to the positive blessing; for the Spirit cannot rest in what is but negative. He is a new creature in Christ. But it was true from the first. 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. Thus, clearly, in the law man becomes the prominent and responsible party, not God. He wants to get rid of the first Adam and all its appliances, not to keep it on; and therefore he puts on Christ. comfort be destroyed, which is oftentimes done this way, though a 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. Besides, we have a more daily duty: "Bear ye one another's burdens." How do they stand related? It is therefore a feeling of the mind as much as of the heart; it concerns the will as much as the emotions. You ought to be circumcised, you know." There is no approach to a vaunt about his dignity. (Romans 3:1-31, Romans 10:1-21) But the act of Peter went to maintain a difference. "Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. It describes what in regency England would have been called a rout. Galatians 5:16. In the case of the twelve, we do find an apostle chosen to supply the gap of Judas chosen, I admit, of God, though after a Jewish sort, as Chrysostom justly remarks, for the Holy Ghost was not yet given. The old law, while it accomplishes its purposes, makes no provisions for that "weakness of the flesh" (see Romans 8:2). 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. Now the Galatians were unwittingly in danger of giving up the truth. Christianity came into a world where sexual immorality was not only condoned, but was regarded as essential to the ordinary working of life. 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. "Now to Abraham were the promises spoken, and to his seed. So here the Christian puts on Christ, not the law or circumcision. Thus the law pulls down what is evil, and the promise gives what is good and builds it up. It was from and in connection with Christ in heaven. How little is man to be accounted of! "The theme of love . It is quite obvious that there was a hindrance of some sort. But if not called to have his place among the twelve, it was the Lord's sovereign dealing to give him a better one. Even so we, when we were children," etc. Impurity, then, is that which makes a man unfit to come before God, the soiling of life with the things which separate us from him. 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. He went up with Barnabas, taking Titus with him. 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. This epistle, as those to the Corinthians, opens with an assertion of his apostolic place. Flesh and blood had not revealed it. against such there is no law ( Galatians 5:23 ). The truth of the gospel, to the apostle Paul's mind, was at stake. 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