Galatians 5

Notes

Ver. 1. Since true believers are thus the children of God, and heirs of promise, and the danger of self-justifiers is so terrible, let me earnestly beseech you to abide steadfastly in the belief, profession, and practice of that holy, happy, and delightful freedom from the law as a covenant of works, and from all obligation to its ceremonial precepts, wherewith Jesus Christ, by his finished righteousness, gospel establishment, and your living faith in himself, has made you free: and let love, gratitude, and obedience to him, as well as concern for the welfare and safety of your own souls, make you to avoid all further encumbrance and oppression from the servile yoke of the law or its ceremonies. 2. For, as an inspired apostle of Christ, I, who it seems am said to preach up circumcision, solemnly assure you that, if ye receive circumcision as a thing necessary to your acceptance with God, nothing that Christ has done or suffered, or which the gospel reveals, will be of any saving advantage to you. 3. I now repeat what I have always maintained in my ministrations, with the greatest earnestness, as a most convincing truth, to every man, Jew or Gentile, who is circumcised with this view, that he is thereby obliged, under pain of eternal damnation, perfectly, without the least failure, to satisfy the whole demands of the divine law as a broken covenant of works. 4. The person, righteousness, gospel, and Spirit of Christ, will avail you nothing, who, renouncing him, seek justification before God, in whole or in part, by your own works, and thus practically renounce the gospel, and the free justification and salvation therein bequeathed. 5. For through the light and influence of the gospel, we believers, Jews or Gentiles, earnestly desire and expect, and patiently look and wait for, everlasting life, that great object of our hope, as a thing we are entitled to, and shall partake of, not for any righteousness of our own, but because of the blessed righteousness of Christ, received by faith. 6. For with respect to our union with Christ, and justification through him, neither circumcision nor other ceremonial observances, nor the want of them, do in the least promote or confirm our happiness; but we must have a true faith, receiving and resting upon Christ alone for salvation as offered in the gospel, and working in a sincere and ardent love to his person, offices, relations, Father, Spirit, Word, ordinances, ways, and people.—7. Ye, my brethren, for a time appeared cordially to believe, and earnestly to profess, this doctrine of justification through Jesus' righteousness alone. Think seriously then what has turned you aside from your faith in, and your obediential regard to, the authority of Christ, in this leading truth of the gospel, on which all the rest depend. 8. Certain it is that your present judaizing sentiments, so directly contrary to the very foundation of the gospel, are in no respect derived from God, who called you to the knowledge of Christ, and the way of salvation through him alone; nor from me, who, as his instrument, preached the very contrary to you. 9. Some corrupt influence from Satan and his instruments must then have insinuated itself among you, which, unless timely prevented, will gradually infect your whole church and whole scheme of principles. 10. Notwithstanding, therefore, my great fears about you, I would fain hope that, upon your serious consideration of what I now write, ye will perceive your danger, and the necessity of making a full and speedy stand for the truth, and of censuring the principal instruments of your present perplexity and confusion: and sure I am, that, except they repent, the righteous and terrible judgments of God will overtake them. 11. And as for myself, the furious persecution which I everywhere patiently suffer from the bigoted Jews, manifests that I never preach up circumcision as necessary to salvation, or induce any Gentile believers to receive it: for could I agree to superadd the works of the law to the merits of Christ, the chief ground of their offence at the doctrine of salvation by a crucified Saviour, and of their persecution of me for preaching it, would naturally cease. 12. I heartily wish that these new teachers, who have so grievously perplexed and disturbed you, and subverted the faith of some of you, were solemnly excommunicated from all fellowship with the church and delivered over to Satan; or that God, in his own way, would restrain them from bringing any further reproach upon his name, church, and gospel.—13. And as ye, my Christian brethren, have been by the gospel called to a glorious freedom from ceremonial observances, and from the law as a broken covenant of works, and to a noble liberty of spirit in fellowship with God as our gracious Father in Christ, abide by it as a thing more valuable than your lives, and remember to improve it, not as an encouragement to pride, passion, sensuality, or other sinful corruptions, but as an additional obligation to the most perfect obedience to the whole law of God as a rule of life, and in all kind and brotherly affection, and friendly offices one to another. 14. For all the commands of the second table, relative to the mutual duties of life, to chastity, honesty, truth, contentment, and charity, are fulfilled in loving your neighbours, as rational creatures and Christians, with such sincere and active affection as ye owe to yourselves. 15. But if, in defiance of this great commandment, ye, like ravenous beasts, rather than men or Christians, fight and quarrel, reproach and abuse one another, ye have reason to fear that the God of peace and love will abandon you to your own lusts, that, by mutual heats and feuds, ye may ruin one another in your church state, privileges, and best interests.—16. To prevent these and other dreadful irruptions of your indwelling corruption, I charge you, in the name of Christ, to labour always, and by all means to live and act towards God and men under the influence of his good Spirit, and of that supernatural habit or Principle of grace and holiness which he has produced in your heart; which seeks to prevent your yielding up yourselves to the inclinations and practices of sinful lusts. 17. For, in regenerate persons, the remains of indwelling corruption, on the one hand, struggle against and labour to suppress this inward gracious principle and all its holy actings, and even to expel the Holy Ghost from the heart;—and, on the other hand, the spiritual habit or vital principle of grace wrought in them by the Holy Ghost, as living and acting under his direction and assistance, earnestly desires and labours to effect the entire destruction of sin. And these two inward principles of sinfulness and grace being directly opposite in their nature, tendency, and actings, ye can neither commit sin with the full and deliberate consent of your heart, nor perform duties with perfect freedom, constancy, and fervour. 18. But if, under the direction and influence of the Spirit of God, according to the rule of his Word and the inclination of a blessed principle of grace, ye, in the habitual frame of your hearts and course of your lives, be led from the ways of sin into the paths of righteousness, it is manifest that ye cannot be under the law as a covenant of works, the Spirit being received only by means of the gospel; 19-21. Nor are these principles of inward sinfulness and grace more contrary than the tempers and practices which proceed from them. Those which proceed from the carnal tendency of nature are manifestly odious and wicked; such as whoredom in thought, word, or deed, whether between married or single persons, with all lewd, immodest, and wanton inclinations and behaviour; all idolatrous worshipping of false gods, or by images; all enchantments, divinations, magic, and pretended or real intimacy with evil spirits; all ill-will towards God or men; litigious contentions, bitter zeal and rancour; a swelling and revengeful temper; scoldings, wranglings, and provocations to evil; a riotous and turbulent behaviour; fundamental errors obstinately persisted in; uneasy envyings at the gifts, graces, honours, or prosperity of others; malicious and wilful attempts to take away men's lives without just cause; excessive drinking of liquors; gluttonous feasting, ranting, and raving; with many others of the like nature, which, as I formerly assured you, will, if persisted in, effectually exclude you from all fellowship with God here or hereafter. 22, 23. But in opposition to these detestable and damning works of the flesh, the effects produced by the blessed principle of divine life under the supernatural influence of the Holy Ghost, pleasing to God, and profitable to ourselves, are—universal love to God, to Christ, his words, ordinances, and people, and to our fellow-creatures; rejoicing in God through Christ, and in the happiness of our neighbours; peace of conscience, flowing from peace with God through Jesus' blood, and issuing in a peaceful temper towards our fellow Christians and creatures; a patient bearing of affronts, injuries, and offences; an affable and courteous disposition and carriage towards all with whom we have to do; a benevolent temper and beneficent practice; fidelity to every trust committed to or engagement made by us, flowing from faith in Christ, and in God through him; a meek, calm, and quiet frame of spirit; a regular moderation of our passions and appetites in meats, drinks, pleasures, or the like. Against such virtues, and the persons endowed with them, there is no law to condemn them. 24. And all they who truly belong to Christ through a living faith in him, united with, interested in, and devoted to him, are obliged earnestly to endeavour, and have been actually enabled by his Spirit, in virtue of his crucifixion, and in conformity to him therein, gradually to subdue the power and strength of indwelling sinfulness that it may not reign in their mortal body, and to break the force of their base and defiling sinfulness whether of the flesh or mind. 25. And if we are indeed quickened and made alive to God by the power of the Holy Ghost, let it be our daily and under his direction and influence, to act up to our Christian character, obligations, and advantages, by departing from all iniquity and walking in all holy conversation and godliness. 26. And as we are indebted to him for all the good that is in us, let none of us overrate our own endowments or performances, or aim at making a vainglorious show of them. Let us never, by our pride, passion, or self-seeking, provoke one another to angry resentments, nor stir up envious passions in or against each other.

Ver. 5. Through the Spirit. Middleton and Bloomfield render πνεύματι, 'spiritually,' though the earlier expositors understood it of the Holy Spirit. The want of the article prefixed is the ground for the proposed rendering; and reference is made to ch. 3. 3; 5. 16, 18, 25. A careful examination and comparison of all the passages where πνεῦμα occurs without the article or an epithet, seem to confirm this interpretation.—The hope of righteousness by faith. Not 'the hope' of hereafter obtaining 'righteousness by faith'—for that the believer already possesses, Ro. 3. 22—but the 'hope of glory,' which those who are 'justified by faith' in full assurance wait for, Ro. 5. 1, 2; He. 6. 11. C.

Ver. 19. The grouping of those vices is fourfold: (1) Sins of lust (ver. 19), four. (2) Sins of impiety and superstition (ver. 20), two—to wit, idolatry and witchcraft. (3) Sins of temper (ver. 20, 21), nine. (4) Sins of appetite and indulgence (ver. 21), two;—'drunkenness and revellings' being placed last, as if in them the apostle would practically lay bare the root of all the preceding evils. Paley relates an apologue in which Satan is represented as proposing his gifts to one if he would commit murder, incest, or get drunk. He preferred getting drunk; and then committed the horrible crimes from which in sobriety he had recoiled. C.

Reflections.—Blessed are the liberties which saints, especially under the gospel, have in and through Christ: and in the most delightful manner they, by faith, live in love, and hope for glory. But it is dangerous to contemn, reject, or forsake these liberties; and infinitely dangerous to turn aside from the true doctrine of justification by free grace through the blessed righteousness of Christ, received by faith, after we have professed and seemingly believed it. It is to lose all benefit by Christ, and to bind ourselves to the impossible condition of keeping the whole law. No persecution, no seduction, ought ever to draw us into this ruinous snare. And seducers to such wickedness should be esteemed as plagues of the church, and quickly cut off from her fellowship.—True Christians should carefully avoid everything tending to strife and contention, which are so sinful and ruinous. And though believers be perfectly freed from the moral law as a covenant, they continue still, and to eternity, under it as a binding rule of conversation. Yea, if we be Christ's, we must evidence it by our earnest mortification of inward lusts and by avoiding and practically testifying against outward abominations. But in order to maintain the implanted principles of grace, or bring forth the fruits thereof in a holy life, we must live under the almighty and gracious influence of the Holy Ghost.