Galatians 3

Notes

Ver. 1. Ye thoughtless and inconsiderate Galatians, let me, with the most tender compassion to your souls, and holy zeal for the purity of the gospel, ask you, By what artful insinuations and stratagems has Satan, or your false teachers, his instruments, so far infatuated and decoyed you from your adherence to the gospel doctrine of justification through active faith in Jesus Christ, who, in his painful sufferings and death, has been set before you in his ordinances in the most plain, distinct, and affecting manner? 2. Were ye made partakers of the Holy Ghost, either in his miraculous gifts or gracious inhabitation and influences, by the ministration of the law, and by your obedience to it? Or was it not by hearing and embracing the doctrine of faith in Christ alone for justification and complete salvation? 3. Since then ye certainly received him before many of you so much as heard of the law of Moses, and had set out in your Christian course under his light and direction, and in the exercise of faith in him for your justifying righteousness, how absurd is it to attempt finishing your religion in seeking justification by sinful performances, carnal observances, or anything correspondent to your carnal wisdom or pride! 4. After ye have suffered so much persecution and reproach from your Jewish neighbours for professing the doctrine of justification through his righteousness alone, without any obedience of yours to the law, ceremonial or moral, will ye, by your apostasy, prove all your professions and sufferings perfectly absurd and groundless? 5. Did Christ, by my ministrations, communicate to you your gifts and graces, or work the miracles attesting my mission and doctrine, through my preaching, or your performing the works of the law, in order to your justification before God? Or were they not rather conferred upon you by means of your hearing and embracing the doctrine by faith in Christ?—And was not this God's testimony that your justification is in no respect owing to the works of the law, but only to Christ and his righteousness? 6. Even as Abraham, that eminent pattern of believers, gave credit to and trusted upon God's promise of the Messiah; and what he believed and apprehended in the promised Saviour was imparted to him for his justifying righteousness. 7. Know therefore that all true believers in Christ, according to the promise, are, in a spiritual sense, the children of Abraham, whom God owns and accepts as such, that they may be blessed together with him. 8. And to manifest that there is but one method of justification of sinners to eternal life, the Holy Ghost, who knew the whole purpose of God relative to the Gentiles, intimated to Abraham, long before either circumcision or any Mosaic ceremonies were instituted, that, through the obedience and sufferings of his seed, the Messiah, all nations, Jews or Gentiles, should be justified and blessed with all spiritual blessings. 9. From whence it is evident that all men, of whatever nation or rank they be, who are partakers of a true and lively faith in Christ, and seek justification on his account, are blessed with the same blessings, and on the same foundation of active righteousness, as Abraham, that celebrated believer and friend of God. 10. And that this cannot be on account of their personal obedience to the law is evident; for all men being sinners, as many of them as remain under the covenant of works, and seek justification by their own righteousness, are fixed under the curse of God, who has expressly declared every person of mankind by law condemned to everlasting punishment who does not personally, universally, perfectly, and perpetually, in thought, word, and deed, bear, observe, and perform whatever is demanded by his law. 11. And that no man can be justified by his own personal obedience to this law as a covenant is further evident from God's appointment of another method of justification, in his declaring that the man who becomes righteous by faith enters and may continue in a state of life and salvation, and by means of faith exercised in Christ, lives in favour, and fellowship with, and conformity to God here and hereafter. 12. Now it is certain that the method of justification prescribed by the law is not of faith, but by personal, perfect, and perpetual obedience to the whole of its demands. 13. Therefore, according to these terms, none can procure himself justification, or even freedom from the condemnatory sentence of the law; but Christ, in his infinite love, has redeemed us out of the hands of offended justice, and from all the condemnation and misery incurred by our sins, by taking them upon himself, and bearing them in our stead, particularly while he hung on the cross as a most loving sufferer, forsaken almost, and devoted to death. 14. And this he did that, instead of the curse being executed upon us according to our deserts, we Gentiles might in him be blessed with the free justification and other spiritual blessings conferred upon and promised to Abraham and his Spiritual seed; and, as well as the Jews, receive, through faith in him, a plentiful communication of the Holy Ghost, as the pledge, token, and earnest of our eternal inheritance. 15. To illustrate this point by a common and familiar similitude, we know, from the very nature of a covenant of promise like that made with Abraham, that, if it be but an engagement made by short-sighted and changeable men, yet, if it be duly ratified, signed, and sealed, none can either disannul, alter, or add to it. 16. Now to Abraham and to his spiritual seed were the promises made by the all-knowing and unchangeable God, who cannot lie; and to show that these were directed to one particular sort of seed, God did not use therein the term seeds, as if all his posterity, natural and spiritual, had been meant; but seed, by which he signified his spiritual seed, and primarily Christ their saving Head. 17. Now this covenant being made with and relating to Christ, to be fulfilled and confirmed in his incarnation, obedience, and death, and being confirmed by the repeated promise and oath of an unchangeable God, and by the seal of circumcision,—the law of Moses, which was not given till about 430 years after, cannot, in any consistency with the wisdom or faithfulness of God, make void or disannul it, in order to introduce another method of justification and salvation. 18. And this plainly manifests that a right or title to eternal life cannot be obtained by the works of the law, but only by faith in Christ; for if a title to the heavenly inheritance typified by the promised earthly Canaan could be obtained by our obedience to the law, it could not be the matter of a free promise—grace and Works being in this view quite eversive the one of the other; but it is manifest that God gave it to Abraham and his seed, not through the law, but by an absolutely gracious and free promise, through the righteousness of faith, that it might be free to all men. 19. And the law of Moses was annexed to this gracious promise, not to bring in a new method of justification, but to be a mean of restraining sin and convincing men of their pollution and danger, and of their absolute need of full justification in Christ, in whom Jews and Gentiles should be united, and to cause them to look for him, the promised one, as the end of the law, for righteousness to every one that believeth. Nor was even this law, like the promise to Abraham and his seed, given immediately by God himself, but was conveyed by the ministry of angels into the hand of Moses, as the typical mediator of the Israelites, to represent their absolute need of the promised Messiah, effectually to mediate between God and them. 20. Now, a mediator is one that interposes between two parties, and does not merely transact for any one, to the exclusion of the other; but God, who delivered the law to the Israelites, and who is immutably faithful to his promise, was one party; and Gentiles as well as Jews were concerned in that antecedent, free, and absolute promise made to Abraham. 21. It is therefore absolutely impossible that the law of Moses could, in the intention of God, be opposite to the design of the gospel promise made to Abraham and his spiritual seed, or that ever God should intend to justify men by the one as well as by the other; for if any law had or could have been given by obedience to which men in their fallen condition could have been entitled to eternal life, it is certain God would have spared his Son, that singularly eminent seed of Abraham, and righteousness for justification to eternal life should have consisted in men's own conformity to that law. 22. But, on the contrary, the writings of the Old Testament have, in their general tenor, pronounced all men, Jews and Gentiles, sinners shut up under a sentence of condemnation, and absolutely incapable of making atonement for their past offences, or rendering themselves acceptable to God by any obedience of their own—that none having any ground to seek or expect justification by their own works, the free promise of pardon, life, and salvation, through faith in Christ, might be graciously fulfilled in every believer. 23. But as we are naturally strangers and enemies to this important truth, and it was anciently intimated in an obscure manner, so, till Christ, the object of faith, and the doctrine of salvation through faith in him, came to be fully manifested in the gospel, and till we were brought to believe in him, even those of us who were educated in the Jewish religion, though preserved from heathenish idolatries by the law of Moses, were held, like captives and prisoners, under its commanding, condemning, and convincing power, and shut up on every side, that we might be ready to receive Christ as revealed in the gospel with more abundant manifestation of light and grace. 24. We ought therefore to consider the moral law as a covenant, and the ceremonial law as a schoolmaster, intended to direct, lead, and scourge us to Jesus Christ, that, renouncing all dependence on our own good works for justification, we might seek it alone through faith in his meritorious obedience and sacrifice. 25. But now under the gospel, when Christ, the object of faith, and the doctrine of justification by faith in him, are fully manifested, and we are brought to believe in him, we are no longer, like children, in a state of ignorance, weakness, and servile fear, under either the moral law as a covenant or the ceremonial dispensation. 26. But all of you, Gentiles as well as Jews, who have believed in Christ alone for justification, according to the tenor of the gospel, are rendered adult children of God, and are admitted to higher privileges in the anointed Saviour, who has come in the flesh, and obtained eternal redemption for you. 27. For as many of you as have been baptized in the name, and into the faith, profession, and obedience of Jesus Christ, and, answerable to the signification of baptism, have been made partakers of spiritual union and communion with him, have not only in profession, but by faith, put on Jesus Christ as the Lord your righteousness and sanctification; and hence have no need of circumcision to recommend you to God's favour, or manifest you his children. 28. There is now, under the gospel, no distinction of nations, ranks, or sexes, with respect to spiritual privileges or blessings; but by the enlargement of God's grace all true believers are equally members of Christ's mystical body, and he is equally their Head for all spiritual and saving purposes. Circumcision therefore, which was peculiar to males, and distinguished Jews from Gentiles, is of no further use in the church. 29. And if ye be really united to Christ, and interested in and devoted to him, ye, though uncircumcised, are the true children of Abraham, and heirs of all new-covenant blessings, according to the promise made to him and his spiritual seed.

Ver. 20. God is one. Winer affirms that there are 250 different interpretations of this difficult passage. But in this difficulty the volume of revelation resembles the volume of nature, having many things plain to the weakest capacity, but many things 'hard to be understood,' even by the most learned. The passage may be paraphrased as follows:—A mediator in a covenant is not the representative of one party only. Moses therefore, as mediator of the Sinai covenant, did not represent Israel alone, but God also; for as there was a mediator, God must have been one of the parties to that covenant. But as God was one of the parties, and as he changeth not, therefore the covenant of doing and living made at Sinai could not, at the end of 430 years after, change, abrogate, or disannul that covenant of promise to believers which he had confirmed in Christ, the Mediator between God as the one party, and Abraham and the Gentiles (believing Christ) as the other, 1 Ti. 2. 5; Jn. 10. 29; 17. 2, 6, 24. C.

Reflections.—Great is the folly of turning away from Jesus Christ and the doctrine of his blessed righteousness to rest on our own works for justification before God; and especially after clear manifestation of him and his truth, and suffering for his sake. It renders him and all his fulness, yea, all our profession of him, or sufferings on his account, altogether unprofitable; and is contrary to the oracles of God, and the observation and experience of every believer. But infinite is the mercy that when God's law condemned us to eternal misery for the very least transgression, Jesus obeyed the law in our stead, that we might receive the promise and inheritance of eternal life: and that, while the law excludes us from life on account of our sin, the gospel brings relief, and offers to us an almighty and all-sufficient Saviour. The law now cannot hinder, but is subservient to our redemption' through him. Yea, Moses and all the ancient types now appear figures of our incarnate Redeemer; and we Gentiles, as well as Jews, have an equal access to him and to his church, and to all the blessings of the new kingdom. Be not slack, my soul, to possess what the Lord thy God giveth thee.