Galatians

“ Although the Galatians had fallen away from the doctrine of Paul, baptism, the Gospel, and the name of Christ continued among them. Not all the Galatians had become perverted. There were some who clung to the right view of the Word and the Sacraments. These means cannot be contaminated. They remain divine regardless of men's opinion. Wherever the means of grace are found, there is the Holy Church, even though Antichrist reigns there. So much for the title of the epistle. ”

“ Jerome thinks that Paul is playing upon the name Galatians, deriving it from the Hebrew word Galath, which means fallen or carried away, as though Paul wanted to say, "You are true Galatians, i.e., fallen away in name and in fact." Some believe that the Germans are descended from the Galatians. There may be something to that. For the Germans are not unlike the Galatians in their lack of constancy. At first we Germans are very enthusiastic, but presently our emotions cool and we become slack. ”

“ It appears to have been prevalent with the Galatians, whose ancestors a few generations back were northern barbarians.
A strong and raw animal nature is in itself a temptation to this vice. For men exposed to cold and hardship, the intoxicating cup has a potent fascination. The flesh, buffeted by the fatigues of a rough day's work, finds a strange zest in its treacherous delights. The man "drinks and forgets his poverty, and remembers his misery no more." For the hour, while the spell is upon him, he is a king; he lives under another sun; the world's wealth is his. ”

“ Galatia, a high-lying Roman province in Asia Minor that had been invaded and taken possession of by a horde of Gauls in the 3rd century B.C., whence the name.
Galatians, Epistle to the, an epistle of St. Paul to the churches in Galatia, which was an especial favourite with Luther, as, with its doctrine of spiritual freedom in Christ, it might well be, for it corroborated the great revelation first made to him by a neighbour monk; "man is not saved by singing masses, but by the grace of God" ”

“ Lightfoot first wrote, that the Epistle was addressed to the people in the southern part of the Roman province called Galatia, who were not Galatians at all; and was not addressed to those in the northern part, who were Galatians proper, and occupied the whole of the country named from them Galatia. But I use the illustration, notwithstanding this. The controversy is not quite ended yet; and I do not feel sure that the difficulties of the Epistle itself, from Professor Ramsay’s point of view, are very much less considerable than those which Dr. Lightfoot’s view undoubtedly has to face. ”

“ It would have been a mockery for the Apostle to desire for these fickle Galatians grace and peace on other terms. As at Corinth, so in Galatia, he is "determined to know nothing save Jesus Christ and Him crucified." Above the puerilities of their Jewish ritual, above the pettiness of their wrangling [22] factions, he directs his readers' gaze once more to the sacrifice of Calvary and the sublime purpose of God which it reveals.
Do we not need to be recalled to the same sight? We live in a distracted and distracting age. ”

“ Thus the two standing types of religion, the two ways by which men seek salvation, are put in contrast with each other—faith with its blessing, law with its curse. The former is the path on which the Galatians had entered, under the guidance of Paul; the latter, that to which the Judaic teachers were leading them. ”

“ Verse 1
O foolish Galatians - O infatuated people; you make as little use of reason as those who have none; you have acted in this business as those do who are fascinated - they are led blindly and unresistingly on to their own destruction.
That ye should not obey the truth - This clause is wanting in ABD*FG, some others, the Syriac, Erpenian, Coptic, Sahidic, Itala, Vulgate MS., and in the most important of the Greek and Latin fathers. ”

“ Yet writing this epistle from the church at Rome, to the church at Corinth, he has but a single quotation from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, and but a single quotation from Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, and no reference to Galatians.
The well-known distinction of everyday application in courts of law and elsewhere, between positive and negative evidence, is to be kept in mind. Whether John’s Gospel would be quoted by any writer acquainted with it, might depend entirely upon his object in writing; and so of Galatians, or any of the books of the New Testament. ”

“ The long addition to the greeting in Galatians is absolutely unique. It is a summary of the second and central main division of the epistle, Paul's defense of his gospel. "Christ has died to free you. The Judaizers in bringing you into bondage are making of none effect the grace of Christ, manifested on the cross." That is the very core of the letter. In all of the Pauline epistles there is scarcely a passage more characteristic of the man than the first five verses of Galatians. ”

“ We have not space to follow M. Thierry in his account of the progress and fall of that strange Gaulish kingdom of Galatia. From the year 241 to the year 190 B.C., it maintained its independence unshaken, amidst the degenerate sons of Greece and the effeminate Asiatics. But the Roman power, beneath which the Gaulish race was ever doomed to bend, overtook them even amidst the mountains of Asia Minor. The Galatians had furnished some troops to Antiochus the Great, and then, for the first time, they came in contact with the eagle of the Capitol. ”

“ Thus, Paul, their founder, sends to "the Churches of Galatia" [259:7] a common letter in which he requires them to "serve one another," [259:8] and to "bear one another's burdens." [259:9] Without some species of united action, the Galatians could not well have obeyed such admonitions. Peter also, when writing to the disciples "scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia," [259:10] represents them as an associated body. "The elders," says he, "which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder....feed the flock of God which is among you taking the oversight thereof." ”

“ The Galatians were formerly in bondage to "them that are no gods." Now, he says, they are turning again to the like servitude by conforming to Mosaic legalism. They wish to come again under subjection to "the weak and poor rudiments." In Galatian heathenism Paul appears to recognise "rudiments" of truth and a certain preparation for Christianity. While Judaic rites amounted to no more than rudiments of a spiritual faith, there were influences at work in Paganism that come under the same category. Paul believed that "God had not left Himself without witness to any." ”

“ The apostle exhorts the Galatians to stand fast in the liberty of the Gospel, and not by receiving circumcision bring themselves into a yoke of bondage, [172] . Shows the superior excellence of Christianity, [173] , [174] . Mentions their former steadiness, and warns them against the bad doctrine which was then preached among them, [175] . Expresses his confidence that they will yet return; and shows that he who perverted them shall bear his own punishment, [176] . States that they are called to liberty, and that love is the fulfilling of the law, [177] , [178] . ”

“ The law, therefore, "concluded all under sin" Romans 3:19,20,23. (3) The law was an ad interim dealing, "till the seed should come". Galatians 3:19. (4) The law shut sinful man up to faith as the only avenue of escape. Galatians 3:23. (5) The law was to the Jews what the pedagogue was in a Greek household, a ruler of children in their minority, and it had this character "unto" i.e. until Christ Galatians 3:24. (6) Christ having come, the believer is no longer under the pedagogue. ”

“ The importance of this Commentary on Galatians for the history of Protestantism is very great. It presents like no other of Luther's writings the central thought of Christianity, the justification of the sinner for the sake of Christ's merits alone. ”

“ And whensoever he was by himself in the desert, and the desire to eat honey rose up in him, straightway he would find a honeycomb on a rock, and he used to say, “Get thee gone from me, O evil desire, for it is written, ‘Ye shall walk in the spirit, and ye shall not perform the lust of the flesh’ ” (Galatians 5:16) ”

“ Quit yourselves like men."
How the Galatians responded to the Apostle's [301] challenge, we do not know. But it has found an echo in many a heart since. The Lutheran Reformation was an answer to it; so was the Scottish Covenant. The spirit of Christian liberty is eternal. Jerusalem or Rome may strive to imprison it. They might as well seek to bind the winds of heaven. Its home is with God. Its seat is the throne of Christ. It lives by the breath of His Spirit. The earthly powers mock at it, and drive it into the wilderness. They do but assure their own ruin. ”

“ "The Epistle to the Galatians is my epistle. To it I am as it were in wedlock. It is my Katherine." ”

“ These invaders are in one respect like those who are condemned in the Epistle to the Galatians, in another respect are very unlike them. They are "false brethren privily brought in, who came in privily" (ii. 4) ; but they have come in, not "to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage," but to "turn the grace of our God into lasciviousness." The troublers of the Galatian Church were endeavouring to contract {389} Christian liberty, whereas these ungodly men were straining it to the uttermost. ”

“ I. "The works of the flesh are these—fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness." A dark beginning! Sins of impurity find a place in every picture of Gentile morals given by the Apostle. In whatever direction he writes—to Romans or Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, or Thessalonians—it is always necessary to warn against these evils. They are equally "manifest" in heathen literature. The extent to which they stain the pages of the Greek and Roman classics sets a heavy discount against their value as instruments of Christian education. ”

“ Suddenly the Apostle turns upon his opposers (ver. 17) . The Judaizers had disturbed his happy relations with his Galatian flock; they had made them half believe that he was their enemy. The Galatians must choose between Paul and his traducers. Let them scrutinise the motives of these new teachers. Let them call to mind the claims of their father in Christ. "They are courting you," he says,—"these present suitors for your regard—dishonourably; they want to shut you out and have you to themselves, that you may pay court to them." They pretend to be zealous for your interests ”

“ Even in the perverted Galatians the apostle finds some good; and he mentions with great feeling those amiable qualities which they once possessed. The only way to encourage men to seek farther good is to show them what they have got, and to make this a reason why they should seek more. He who wishes to do good to men, and is constantly dwelling on their bad qualities and graceless state, either irritates or drives them to despair. ”

“ They forget the call of the Divine grace; they turn away from the sight of Christ crucified; nay, they are renouncing their adoption into the family of God. Paul knew something of the fickleness of human nature; but he was not prepared for this. How can men who have tasted liberty prefer slavery, or fullgrown sons desire to return to the "rudiments" of childhood? After knowing God as He is in Christ, is it possible that these Galatians have begun to dote on ceremonial, to make a religion of "times and seasons;" that they are becoming devotees of Jewish ritual? ”

“ But in his third book the same Phylarchus says that "Ariamnes the Galatian, being an exceedingly rich man, gave notice that he would give all the Galatians a banquet every year; and that he did so, managing in this manner: He divided the country, measuring it by convenient stages along the roads; and at these stages he erected tents of stakes and rushes and osiers, each containing about four hundred men, or somewhat more, according as the district required, and with reference to the number that might be expected to throng in from the villages and towns adjacent to the stage in question. ”

“ While the Galatians, in common with the whole East, speak Greek, their own language is almost identical with that of the [8] Treviri; and if through contact with the Greek they have acquired a few corruptions, it is a matter of no moment. The Africans have to some extent changed the Phenician language, and Latin itself is daily undergoing changes through differences of place and time. ”

“ When the Gospel is preached unto faith, hope, love, and patience, God gives His wonder-working Spirit. Paul reminds the Galatians of this. "God had not only brought you to faith by my preaching. He had also sanctified you to bring forth the fruits of faith. And one of the fruits of your faith was that you loved me so devotedly that you were willing to pluck out your eyes for me." To love a fellow-man so devotedly as to be ready to bestow upon him money, goods, eyes in order to secure his salvation, such love is the fruit of the Holy Spirit. ”

“ If this be the reference, then the missing idea reappears, the lost association is recovered; bodily affliction in the apostle, and the affection of the Galatians towards him, are still the connected thoughts, the only change being just what might naturally be expected to take place as the discourse proceeded, viz.:—that the ideas are more distinctly developed, and that what was previously alluded to in general terms, is now, not indeed directly stated, but specifically indicated and implied. ”