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Synopsis of the Books of the Bible
John Nelson Darby
1800-1882
GALATIANS
Introduction & Chapter 1
The epistle to the Galatians sets before us the great source of the
afflictions and conflicts of the apostle in the regions where he had
preached the glad tidings; that which was at the same time the principal
means employed by the enemy to corrupt the gospel. God, it is true, in His
love, has suited the gospel to the wants of man. The enemy brings down that
which still bears its name to the level of the haughty will of man and the
corruption of the natural heart, turning Christianity into a religion that
suits that heart, in place of one that is the expression of the heart of
God-an all-holy God-and the revelation of that which He has done in His
love to bring us into communion with His holiness. We see, at the same
time, the connection between the judaising doctrine-which is the denial of
full redemption, and looking for good in flesh and man's will, power in man
to work out righteousness in himself for God-in those who hindered the
apostle's work, and the attacks that were constantly aimed against his
ministry; because that ministry appealed directly to the power of the Holy
Ghost and to the immediate authority of a glorified Christ, and set man as
ruined, and Judaism which dealt with man, wholly aside. In withstanding the
efforts of the judaisers, the apostle necessarily establishes the
elementary principles of justification by grace. Traces both of this combat
with the spirit of Judaism, by which Satan endeavoured to destroy true
Christianity, and of the maintenance by the apostle of this liberty, and of
the authority of his ministry, are found in a multitude of passages in
Corinthians, in Philippians, in Colossians, in Timothy, and historically in
the Acts. In Galatians the two subjects are treated in a direct and formal
way. But the gospel is consequently reduced to its most simple elements,
grace to its most simple expression. But, with regard to the error, the
question is but the more decisively settled; the irreconcilable difference
between the two principles, Judaism and the gospel, is the more strongly
marked.
God allowed this invasion of His assembly in the earliest days of its
existence, in order that we might have the answer of divine inspiration to
these very principles, when they should be developed in an established
system which would claim submission from the children of God as being the
church that He had established and the only ministry that He acknowledged.
The immediate source of true ministry, according to the gospel that Paul
preached to the Gentiles, the impossibility of uniting the law and that
gospel-of binding up together subjection to its ordinances and distinction
of days-with the holy and heavenly liberty into which we are brought by a
risen Christ, the impossibility, I repeat, of uniting the religion of the
flesh with that of the Spirit, are plainly set forth in this epistle.
The apostle begins, at the very outset, with the independence, as to all
other men, of the ministry which he exercised, pointing out its true
source, from which he received it without the intervention of any
intermediate instrument whatsoever: adding, in order to shew that the
Galatians were forsaking the common faith of the saints, "all the brethren
which are with me." Also, in opening the subject of his epistle, the
apostle declares at once, that the doctrine introduced by the judaisers
among the Galatians was a different gospel (but which was not really
another), not the gospel of Christ.
He begins then by declaring that he is not an apostle either of men or by
man. He does not come on the part of men as though sent by them, and it is
not by means of any man that he had received his commission, but by Jesus
Christ and God the Father who raised Him from the dead. It was by Jesus
Christ, on the way to Damascus; and by the Father, it appears to me, when
the Holy Ghost said, "Separate to me Barnabas and Paul." But he speaks
thus, in order to carry up the origin of his ministry to the primary source
of all real good, and of all legitimate authority.
He wishes, as usual, to the assembly, grace and peace from God in His
character of Father, and from Jesus in His character of Lord. But he adds
here to the name of Jesus, that which belongs to that character of the
gospel which the Galatians had lost sight of, namely, that Christ had given
Himself for our sins that He might deliver us from this present evil age.
The natural man, in his sins, belongs to this age. The Galatians desired to
return to it under the pretext of a righteousness according to the law.
Christ had given Himself for our sins in order to take us out of it: for
the world is judged. Looked at as in the flesh, we are of it. Now the
righteousness of the law has to do with men in the flesh. It is man as in
the flesh who is to fulfil it, and the flesh has its sphere in this world;
the righteousness which man would accomplish in the flesh is directed
according to the elements of this world. Legal righteousness, man in the
flesh, and the world, go together. Whereas Christ has viewed us as sinners,
having no righteousness, and has given Himself for our sins, and to deliver
us from this condemned world, in which men seek to establish righteousness
by putting themselves on the ground of the flesh which can never accomplish
it. This deliverance is also according to the will of our God and Father.
He will have a heavenly people, redeemed according to that love which has
given us a place on high with Himself, and a life in which the Holy Ghost
works, to make us enjoy it and cause us to walk in the liberty and in the
holiness which He gives us in this new creation, of which Jesus Himself,
risen and glorified, is the head and the glory.
The apostle opens his subject without preamble: he was full of it, and the
state of the Galatians who were giving up the gospel in its foundations
forced it out from an oppressed, and I may say, an indignant heart. How was
it possible that the Galatians had so quickly forsaken him, who had called
them according to the power of the grace of Christ, for a different gospel?
It was by this call of God that they had part in the glorious liberty, and
in the salvation that has its realisation in heaven. It was by the
redemption that Christ had accomplished and the grace that belongs to us in
Him, that they enjoyed heavenly and christian happiness. And now they were
turning to an entirely different testimony; a testimony which was not
another gospel, another true glad tidings. It did but trouble their minds
by perverting the true gospel. "But," says the apostle, reiterating his
words on the subject, "if an angel from heaven, or he [Paul himself],
preached anything besides the gospel that he had already preached to them,
let him be accursed." Observe here, that he will allow nothing in addition
to that which he had preached.
They did not formally deny Christ; they wished to add circumcision. But the
gospel which the apostle had preached was the complete and whole gospel.
Nothing could be added to it without altering it, without saying that it
was not the perfect gospel, without really adding something that was of
another nature, that is to say, corrupting it. For the entirely heavenly
revelation of God was what Paul had taught them. In his teaching he had
completed the circle of the doctrine of God. To add anything to it was to
deny its perfection; and to alter its character, to corrupt it. The apostle
is not speaking of a doctrine openly opposed to it, but of that which is
outside the gospel which he had preached. Thus, he says, there cannot be
another gospel; it is a different gospel, but there are no glad tidings
except that which he had preached. It is but a corruption of the true, a
corruption by which they troubled souls. Thus, in love to souls, he could
anathematise those who turned them away from the perfect truth that he had
preached. It was the gospel of God Himself. Everything else was of Satan.
If Paul himself brought another, let him be anathema. The pure and entire
gospel was already proclaimed, and it asserted its claims in the name of
God against all that pretended to associate itself with it. Did Paul seek
to satisfy the minds of men in his gospel, or to please men? In no wise; he
would not thus be the servant of Christ.
Chapter 2
He then speaks historically of his ministry, and of the question whether
man had anything to do with it. His gospel was not according to man, for he
had not received it from any man; he had not been taught it. That which he
possessed was his by the immediate revelation made to him by Jesus Christ.
And when God, who, from his mother's womb, set him apart, and had called
him by His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in him, the revelation had
at once all its own power as such. He did not consult any one. He did not
put himself into communication with the other apostles, but at once acted
independently of them, as being directly taught of God. It was not till
three years after that he went to make acquaintance with Peter, and also
saw James. The churches of Judea did not know him by sight; only, they
glorified God for the grace he had received. Moreover he was only fifteen
days in Jerusalem. He then went into Syria and Cilicia. Fourteen years
afterwards he went up to Jerusalem (we have the account in Acts 15) with
Barnabas, and took Titus with him. But Titus, Gentile as he was, had not
been circumcised; an evident proof of the liberty in which the apostle
publicly stood. It was a bold step on his part to take Titus with him, and
thus decide the question between himself and the judaising Christians. He
went up because of false brethren, who sought to spy out the liberty into
which Paul (enjoying it in the Spirit) introduced believers; and he went up
by virtue of a revelation.
We may observe here, how the communications of God may be inwardly the
guides of our conduct, although we yield to motives presented by others. In
Acts 15 we find the outward history; here, that which governed the
apostle's heart. God (in order that the thing might be decided at
Jerusalem, to shut every mouth and to maintain unity) did not allow the
apostle to have the upper hand at Antioch, or to arrange on the spot the
walk of the assembly formed in that place. Neither did He allow him to
isolate himself in his own convictions, but made him go up to Jerusalem and
communicate to the chief apostles that which he taught, so that there
should be community of testimony on this important point; and that they
also should acknowledge Paul as taught of God independently of them, and at
the same time recognise his ministry as sent of God, and that he was acting
on the part of God as much as themselves. For, although God would have him
communicate to them that which he had taught others, he received nothing
from them. The effect of his communication was, that they owned the grace
which God had granted him and the ministry he had received for the
Gentiles, and they gave to him and to Barnabas the right hands of
fellowship.
Had he gone up earlier, whatever his knowledge might have been, the proofs
of his special and independent ministry would not have existed. But he had
laboured fruitfully for many years without receiving any mission from the
other apostles, and they had to recognise his apostleship as the immediate
gift of God, as well as the truths which God had imparted to him: the
proofs were there; and God had owned this apostleship, as He had given it.
The twelve had nothing to do but to acknowledge it, if they acknowledged
God as the source of all these excellent gifts. Paul was an apostle from
God without their intervention. They could acknowledge his ministry, and in
it the God who had give them that which they themselves exercised.
Moreover Paul had always acted independently in the fulfilment of his
mission. When Peter came to Antioch, he withstood him to the face, because
he was to blamed. He was not, as to Paul, as a superior before whom his
subordinates must maintain a respectful silence. Although God had wrought
mightily in Peter, yet his companion in apostleship (faithful to Him who
had called him) could not allow the gospel to be falsified, which had been
committed to his own care by the Lord Himself. Ardent as he was, poor Peter
always cared too much about the opinion of others. Now the opinion that
prevails in the world is always that which influences the heart of man; and
this opinion is always one which gives a certain glory to man after the
flesh. Paul, taught from above and full of the power of the Spirit, who, by
revealing heavenly glory had made him feel that all which exalted the flesh
obscured that glory and falsified the gospel that declared it-Paul, who
lived and moved morally in the new creation, of which a glorified Christ is
the centre; and as firm as he was ardent, because he realised the things
that are not seen; as clear-sighted as firm, because he lived in the
realisation of spiritual and heavenly things in Christ-Paul, for whom to
win Christ thus glorified was everything, clearly sees the carnal walk of
the apostle of the circumcision. He is not deterred by man; he is occupied
with Christ who was his all, and with the truth. He does not spare one who
overturned this truth, be his position in the assembly what it might.
It was dissimulation in Peter. While alone, where the influence of heavenly
truth prevailed, he ate with the Gentiles, surrounding himself with the
reputation of walking in the same liberty as others. But when certain
persons came from James, from Jerusalem, where he himself habitually lived,
the centre where religious flesh and its customs still had (under the
patient goodness of God) so much power, he no longer dared to use a liberty
which was condemned by those Christians who were still Jewish in their
sentiments; he withdrew himself. What a poor thing is man! And we are weak
in proportion to our importance before men; when we are nothing, we can do
all things, as far as human opinion is concerned. We exercise, at the same
time, an unfavourable influence over others in the degree in which they
influence us-in which we yield to the influence which the desire of
maintaining our reputation among them exercises over our hearts: and all
the esteem in which we are held, even justly, becomes a means of evil.
Peter, who fears those that came from Jerusalem, draws away all the Jews
and even Barnabas with him in his dissimulation.
Paul, energetic and faithful, through grace, alone remains upright: and he
rebukes Peter before them all. Why compel Gentiles to live as Jews in order
to enjoy full christian communion, when he, being a Jew, had felt himself
free to live as the Gentiles? Themselves Jews by nature, and not poor
sinners of the Gentiles, they had given up the law as a means of securing
the favour of God, and had taken refuge in Christ. But if they sought to
rebuild the edifice of legal obligations, in order to acquire
righteousness, why had they overturned it? Thus acting, they made
themselves transgressors in having overturned it. And more than that; since
it was in order to come to Christ-in exchange for the efficacy which they
had formerly supposed to exist in the law as a means of justification-that
they had ceased to seek righteousness by the law, Christ was a minister of
sin. His doctrine had made them transgressors! For in rebuilding the
edifice of the law, they made it evident that they ought not to have
overthrown it; and it was Christ who made them do so.
What a result from the weakness which, in order to please men, had returned
to those things that were gratifying to the flesh! How little did Peter
think of this! How little do many Christians suspect it! To rest upon
ordinances is to rest upon the flesh; there are none in heaven. When
Christ, who is there, is everything, it cannot be done. Christ has indeed
established ordinances to distinguish His people from the world, by that
which signified, on the one hand, that they were not of it, but dead with
Him to it, and, on the other hand, to gather them on the ground of that
which alone can unite them all-on the ground of the cross and of
accomplished redemption, in the unity of His body. But if, instead of using
them with thanksgiving according to His will, we rest upon them, we have
forsaken the fulness, the sufficiency, of Christ, to build upon the flesh,
which can thus occupy itself with these ordinances, and find in them its
fatal sustenance and a veil to hide the perfect Saviour, of whose death, as
in connection with this world and with man living in the flesh, these
ordinances so plainly speak to us. To rest upon christian ordinances is
exactly to deny the precious and solemn truth which they present to us,
that there is no longer righteousness after the flesh, since Christ is dead
and risen.
This the apostle deeply felt; this he had been called to set before the
eyes and consciences of men by the power of the Holy Ghost. How many
afflictions, how many conflicts, his task cost him! The flesh of man likes
to have some credit; it cannot bear to be treated as vile and incapable of
good, to be excluded and condemned to annihilation, not by efforts to annul
itself, which would restore it all its importance, but by a work that
leaves it in its true nothingness, and that has pronounced the absolute
judgment of death upon it, so that, convicted of being nothing but sin, it
has only to be silent. If it acts, it is only to do evil. Its place is to
be dead, and not better. We have both right and power to hold it as such,
because Christ has died, and we live in His risen life. He has Himself
become our life. Alive in Him, I treat the flesh as dead; I am not a debtor
to it. God has condemned sin in the flesh, in that His Son came in the
likeness of sinful flesh and for sin. It is this great principle of our
being dead with Christ which the apostle sets forth at the end of the
chapter (only first recognising the force of the law to bring death into
the conscience). He had discovered that to be under a law was to find
himself condemned to death. He had undergone in spirit the whole force of
this principle; his soul had realised death in all its power. He was dead;
but, if so, he was dead to the law. The power of a law does not reach
beyond life; and, its victim once dead, it has no more power over him. Now
Paul had acknowledged this truth; and, attributing to the principle of law
its whole force, he confessed himself to be dead by law-dead then to law.
But, how? Was it by undergoing the eternal consequences of its violation;
for if the law killed, it condemned too? (see 2 Cor. 3). By no means. It is
quite another thing here. He did not deny the authority of the law, he
acknowledged its force in his soul, but in death, in order that he might
live to God.
But where could he find this life, since the law only slew him? This he
explains. It was not himself in his own responsibility, exposed as he was
to the final consequences of the violation of the law-who could find life
in it! Christ had been crucified-He who could suffer the curse of the law
of God, and death, and yet live in the mighty and holy life which nothing
could take away; which made it impossible for death to hold Him, although
in grace He tasted it. But the apostle (whom this same grace had reached)
owning it according to the truth as a poor sinner in subjection to death,
and blessing the God who granted him the grace of life and of free
acceptance in Christ, had been associated with Christ in God's counsels in
His death (now realised by faith, and become true practically by Christ,
who had died and risen again, being his life). He was crucified with Him,
so that the condemnation of it was gone for Paul. It is Christ whom death
under the law had reached. The law had reached Saul the sinner, in the
Person of Him who had given Himself for him, in fact, and now Saul himself
in conscience, and brought death there-but the death of the old man (see
Rom. 7:9, 10)-and it had now no more right over
Nevertheless he lived: yet not he, but Christ, in that life in which Christ
rose from among the dead-Christ lived in him. Thus the dominion of the law
over him disappeared (while ascribing to the law all its force), because
that dominion was connected with the life in regard to which he reckoned
himself to be dead in Christ, who had really undergone death for this
purpose. And Paul lived in that mighty and holy life, in the perfection and
energy of which Christ was risen from among the dead, after having borne
the curse of the law. He lived to God, and held the corrupt life of his
flesh as dead. His life drew all its character, all its mode of being, from
the source whence it flowed.
But the creature must have an object to live for, and so it was as to
Paul's soul, it was by the faith of Jesus Christ. By faith in Jesus Christ
Paul lived indeed. The Christ who was the source of his life, who was his
life, was its object also. It is this which always characterises the life
of Christ in us: He Himself is its object-He alone. The fact, that it is by
dying for us in love that He-who was capable of it, the Son of God-has
given us thus freed from sin this life as our own, being ever before the
mind, in our eyes He is clothed with the love He has thus shewn us. We live
by faith of the Son of God, who has loved us, and given Himself for us. And
here it is personal life, the individual faith that attaches us to Christ,
and makes Him precious to us as the object of the soul's intimate faith.
Thus the grace of God is not frustrated: for, if righteousness were
established on the principle of law, Christ died in vain, since it would be
by keeping the law ourselves that we should, in our own persons, acquire
righteousness.
Chapter 3
What a loss, dreadful and irreparable, to lose such a Christ, as we, under
grace, have known Him; such a righteousness; such a love; the Son of God
our portion, our life; the Son of God devoted for us, and to us! It is
indeed this which awakens the strong feelings of the apostle: "O foolish
Galatians," he continues, "who hath bewitched you?" Christ had been
portrayed as crucified before their eyes. Thus their folly appeared still
more surprising, in thinking of what they had received, of what in fact
they were enjoying under the gospel, and of their sufferings for the sake
of that gospel. Had they received the Spirit through works done on the
principle of law, or through a testimony received by faith? Having begun by
the power of the Spirit, would they carry the thing on to perfection by the
wretched flesh? They had suffered for the gospel, for the pure gospel,
unadulterated with Judaism and the law: was it then all in vain? Again, he
who ministered to them the Spirit, and worked miracles among them, was it
through works on the principle of law, or in connection with a testimony
received by faith? Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to
him for righteousness. It was the principle established by God in the case
of the father of the faithful. Therefore they who placed themselves by
grace on the principle of faith,-they were the "children of Abraham." And
the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles through
faith, preached this gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, "In thee shall
all nations be blessed."
The epistle is necessarily elementary, for the Galatians were forsaking the
foundation, and the apostle insists on that. The great principles of the
epistle are, connected with the known presence of the Spirit, promise
according to grace in contrast with and before law, Christ the
accomplishment of the promise, the law coming in by the bye meanwhile. The
Gentiles were thus heirs in Christ, true and sole Heir of promise, and the
Jews acquiring the position of sons.
We have then the principle on which Abraham stood before God, and the
declaration that it was in him the Gentiles should be blessed. Thus they
who are on the principle of faith are blessed with Abraham the believer;
while the law pronounced an express curse on those who did not keep it in
every point. This use of Deuteronomy 27 has been considered elsewhere. I
would call to mind only that (the twelve tribes having been divided into
two companies of silt each, the one to announce the blessing and the other
the curse) the curses alone are recited, the blessings entirely omitted-a
striking circumstance, used by the apostle to shew the true character of
the law. At the same time the scripture plainly set forth that it was not
the works of the law that justified; for it said, "The just shall live on
the principle of faith." Now the law was not on the principle of faith, but
he who has done these things shall live by them. But was not this authority
of the law to be maintained, as being that of God? Assuredly. But Christ
had borne its curse (having redeemed and thus delivered those who-subject
before to the sentence of the law-had now believed in Him), in order that
the blessing of Abraham might reach the Gentiles through Him, so that all
believers, both Jew and Gentile, should receive the Spirit who had been
promised.
Christ had exhausted for the believer-who before was subject to the law and
guilty of having broken it-all the curse that it pronounced on the guilty:
and the law which distinguished Israel had lost its power over the Jew who
believed in Jesus, through the very act that bore the most striking
testimony to its authority. The barrier therefore no longer existed, and
the former promise of blessing could flow freely (according to the terms in
which it was made to Abraham) upon the Gentiles through the channel of
Christ, who had put away the curse that the law brought upon the Jews; and
both Jew and Gentile, believing in Him, could receive the Holy Ghost, the
subject of God's promises, in the time of blessing.
Having thus touched on this point, the apostle now treats, not the effect
of the law upon the conscience, but the mutual relationship that existed
between the law and the promise. Now the promise had been given first, and
not only given, but it had been confirmed; and, had it been but a human
covenant solemnly confirmed, it could neither be added to nor annulled. But
God had engaged Himself to Abraham by promise 430 years before the law,
having deposited, so to say, the blessing of the Gentiles in his person
(Gen. 12). This promise was confirmed to his see
(Isaac: Gen. 22), and to only one; he does not say to the seeds, but "to
the Seed," and it is Christ who is this Seed. A Jew would not deny this
last point. Now the law, coming so long after, could not annul the promise
that was made before and solemnly confirmed by God, so as to render it of
no effect. For if the inheritance were on the principle of law, it was no
more on that of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise. "Wherefore
then the law?" since the unchangeable promise was already given, and the
inheritance must come to the object of that promise, the law having no
power to change it in any way. It is because there is another question
between the soul and God, or, if you will, between God and man, namely,
that of righteousness. Grace, which chooses to bestow blessing, and which
promises it beforehand, is not the only source of blessing for us. The
question of righteousness must be settled with God, the question of sin and
of the guilt of man.
Now the promise which was unconditional and made to Christ, did not raise
the question of righteousness. It was necessary that it should be raised,
and in the first place by requiring righteousness from man, who was
responsible to produce it and to walk in it before God. Man ought to have
been righteous before God. But sin had already come in, and it was in
reality to make sin manifest that the law was brought in. Sin was indeed
present, the will of man was in rebellion against God; but the law drew out
the strength of that evil will, and it manifested its thorough contempt of
God by overleaping the barrier which the prohibition of God raised between
it and its desires.
The law was added that there might be transgressions, not (as we have seen
already, when meditating on the Romans, where this same subject is treated)
that there might be sin, but that there might be transgressions, through
which the consciences of men might be reached, and the sentence of death
and condemnation made to be sensibly felt in their light and careless
hearts. The law was therefore introduced between the promise and its
fulfilment, in order that the real moral condition of man should be made
manifest. Now the circumstances under which it was given rendered it very
obvious that the law was in no wise the means of the fulfilment of the
promise, but that on the contrary it placed man upon an altogether
different ground, which made him know himself, and at the same time made
him understand the impossibility of his standing before God on the ground
of his own responsibility. God had made an unconditional promise to the
seed of Abraham. He will infallibly perform it, for He is God. But in the
communication of the law there is nothing immediate and direct from God
simply. It is ordained by the hand of angels. It is not God who, in
speaking, engages Himself simply by His own word to the person in whose
favour the promise is to be fulfilled. The angels of glory, who had no part
in the promises (for it was angels who shone in the glory of Sinai; see
Psalm 68) invested, by the will of God, the proclamation of the law, with
the splendour of their dignity. But the God of the angels and of Israel
stood apart, hidden in His sanctuary of clouds and fire and thick darkness.
He was encompassed with glory; He made Himself terrible in His
magnificence; but He did not display Himself. He had given the promise in
person; a mediator brought the law. And the existence of a mediator
necessarily supposes two parties. But God was one; and it was the
foundation of the whole Jewish religion. There was therefore another on
whom the stedfastness of the covenant made at Sinai depended. And in fact
Moses went up and down, and carried the words of Jehovah to Israel, and the
answer of Israel who engaged themselves to perform that which Jehovah
imposed on them as a condition of the enjoyment of the effect of His
promise.
"If ye will indeed obey my voice," said Jehovah. "All that Jehovah hath
spoken we will do," replied Israel intermediately through Moses. What were
the consequences? The apostle, with touching tenderness, as it appears to
me, does not answer this question-does not deduce the necessary
consequences of his argument. His object was to shew the difference between
the promise and the law, without needlessly wounding the heart of a people
whom he loved. On the contrary, he endeavours at once to prevent any
offence that might arise from what he had said; further developing at the
same time his thesis. Was the law against the promises of God? By no means.
If a law had been given that was to impart life, then righteousness (for
that is our subject in this passage) should have been by the law. Man,
possessing divine life, would have been righteous in the righteousness that
he had accomplished. The law promised the blessing of God on the terms of
man's obedience: if it could have given life at the same time, this
obedience would have taken place, righteousness would have been
accomplished on the ground of law; they to whom the promise had been made
would have enjoyed its fulfilment by virtue of their own righteousness. But
it was the contrary which happened, for after all man, whether Jew or
Gentile, is a sinner by nature; without law, he is the slave of his
unbridled passions; under law, he shews their strength by breaking the law.
The scripture has shut up all under sin, in order that this promise, by
faith in Jesus Christ, should be accomplished in favour of those who
believe.
Now before faith came (that is, christian faith, as the principle of
relationship with God, before the existence of the positive objects of
faith in the Person, the work, and the glory of Christ as man, had become
the means of establishing the faith of the gospel), the Jews were kept
under the law, shut up with a view to the enjoyment of this privilege which
was to come. Thus the law had been to the Jews as a child's conductor up to
Christ, in order that they might be justified on the principle of faith.
Meanwhile they were not without restraint; they were kept apart from the
nations, not less guilty than they, but kept separate for a justification,
the necessity of which was made more evident by the law which they did not
fulfil, but which demanded righteousness from man; thus shewing that God
required this righteousness. But when once faith had come, those until then
subject to the law were no longer under the tutelage of this law, which
only bound them until faith was come. For this faith, placing man
immediately in the presence of God, and making the believer a son of the
Father of glory, left no more place for the guidance of the tutor employed
during the nonage of one who was now set free and in direct relationship
with the Father.
The believer then is a son in immediate connection with his Father, with
God (God Himself being manifested). He is a son, because all who have been
baptised to have part in the privileges that are in Christ have put on
Christ. They are not before God as Jews or Gentiles, bond or free, male or
female; they are before God according to their position in Christ, all one
thing in Him, Christ being for all the common and only measure of their
relationship with God. But this Christ was, as we have seen, the one Seed
of Abraham: and if the Gentiles were in Christ, they entered consequently
into this privileged position; they were, in Christ, the seed of Abraham,
and heirs according to the promise made to that seed.
Chapter 4
The relative position therefore of the Jew (even though he were godly)
before the coming of Christ, and of the believing Jew or Gentile when
Christ had been revealed, is clearly set forth; and in the commencement of
chapter 4 the apostle sums up that which he had said. He compares the
believer before the coming of Christ to a child under age, who has no
direct relation with his father as to his thoughts, but who receives his
father's orders, without his accounting for them to him, as a servant would
receive them. He is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of
the father. Thus the Jews, although they were heirs of the promises, were
not in connection with the Father and His counsels in Jesus, but were in
tutelage to principles that appertained to the system of the present world,
which is but a corrupt and fallen creation. Their walk was ordained of God
in this system, but did not go beyond it. We speak of the system by which
they were guided, whatever divine light they might receive from time to
time to reveal heaven to them, to encourage them in hope, while making the
system under the rule of which they were placed yet darker. Under the law
then, heirs as they were, they were still in bondage. But when the time was
fulfilled and ripe for it, God sent forth His Son-an act flowing from His
sovereign goodness for the accomplishment of His eternal counsels, and for
the manifestation of all His character. It was God who did it. It was He
who acted. The law required man to act, and it manifested man to be just
the contrary of that which he ought to have been according to the law. But
the Son of God comes from God. He requires nothing. He is manifested in the
world in relation with men under the double aspect of a man born of woman,
and a man under law.
If sin and death came in by the woman, Christ came into this world by the
woman also. If through law man is under condemnation, Christ puts Himself
under law also. Under this double aspect He takes the place in which man
was found; He takes it in grace without sin, but with the responsibility
that belonged to it-a responsibility which He alone has met. But still the
object of His mission went much farther than the manifestation in His
Person of man without sin, in the midst of evil, and having the knowledge
of good and evil. He came to redeem those that were under the law, in order
that believers (be they who they may) should receive the adoption. Now that
the Gentile believers had been admitted to share the adoption was proved by
the sending of the Spirit who made them cry, "Abba, Father." For it is
because they are sons, that God sent the Spirit of His Son into their
heart, as well as into that of the Jews without distinction. The Gentile, a
stranger to the house, and the Jew, who under age differed in nothing from
a servant, had each taken the position of a son in direct relation with the
Father-a relation of which the Holy Ghost was the power and the witness-in
consequence of the redemption wrought in their behalf by the Son; the Jew
under the law needing it as much as the Gentile in his sins. But its
efficacy was such that the believer was not a bondman but a son, and if a
son, an heir also of God by Christ. Previously the Gentiles had been in
bondage, not indeed to the law, but to that which, in its nature, was not
God. They knew not God, and were the slaves of everything that boasted of
the name of God, in order to blind the heart of man alienated from Him who
is the true God and from His knowledge.
But what were these Gentiles, become Christians, now doing? They desired to
be again in bondage to these wretched elements, worldly and carnal, to
which they had formerly been in subjection; these things of which the
carnal man could form his religion, without one moral or spiritual thought,
and which placed the glory due to God, in outward observances which an
unbeliever and a heathen ignorant of God could call his religion and glory
in it.
As figures, which God used to bear testimony beforehand to the realities
that are in Christ, they had their true value. God knew how to reconcile
the employment of these figures, which are profitable to faith, with a
religious system that tested man in the flesh, and that served to answer
the question, whether, with every kind of help, man was able to stand
before God and to serve Him. But to go back to these ordinances made for
man in the flesh, now that God hadshewn man's incapability of becoming
righteous before Him-now that the substance of these shadows was come, was
to go back to the position of men in the flesh, and to take that standing
without any command of God that sanctioned it. It was to go back to the
ground of idolatry, that is to say, to a carnal religion, arranged by man
without any authority from God, and which in no way brought man into
connection with Him. For things done in the flesh had certainly not that
effect. "Ye observe days and months and seasons and years." This the
heathen did in their human religion. Judaism was a human religion ordained
of God, but, by going back to it when the ordinance of God was no longer in
force, they did but go back to the paganism out of which they had been
called to have part with Christ in heavenly things.
Nothing can be more striking than this statement of what ritualism is after
the cross. It is simply heathenism, going back to man's religion, when God
is fully revealed: "I fear concerning you," said the apostle, "that I have
laboured in vain." But they reproached the apostle with not being a
faithful Jew according to the law, with freeing himself from its authority.
"Be ye then," says he, "as I am; for I am as ye are" (namely, free from the
law). Ye have done me no wrong in saying so. Would to God ye were as much
so! He then reminds them of his thorn in the flesh. It was some
circumstance adapted to make him contemptible in his ministry. Nevertheless
they had received him as an angel of God, as Jesus Christ. What was become
of that blessedness? Had he become their enemy because he had told them the
truth? Zeal was good; but if it had a right thing for its object, they
should have persevered in their zeal, and not merely have maintained it
while he was with them. These new teachers were very zealous to have the
Galatians for their partisans, and to exclude them from the apostle, that
they might be attached to themselves. He laboured again, as though
travailing in birth, in order that Christ should be formed as if anew in
their hearts-a touching testimony of the strength of his christian love.
This love was divine in its character; it was not weakened by the
disappointment of ingratitude, because its source was outside the
attraction of its objects. Moses said, "Have I conceived all this people,
that I should carry them in my bosom?" Paul is ready to travail in birth
with them a second time.
He does not know what to say. He would like to be present with them, that
he might, on seeing them adapt his words to their condition, for they had
really forsaken christian ground. Would they then, since they desired to be
under the law, hear the law? In it they might see the two systems, in the
type of Hagar and Sarah: that of law, gendering to bondage; and that of
grace, to liberty; not that only, but the positive exclusion of the child
of bondage from the inheritance. The two could not be united; the one shut
out the other. The bond-child was born according to the flesh, the
free-child according to promise. For the law and the covenant of Sinai were
in connection with man in the flesh. The principle of man's relationship
with God, according to the law (if such relations had been possible), was
that of a relationship formed between man in the flesh and the righteous
God. As to man, the law and the ordinances were only bondage. They aimed at
bridling the will without its being changed. It is all-important to
understand, that man under the law is man in the flesh. When born again,
dead and risen again, he is no longer under law, which has only dominion
over man in that he is alive here below. Read "Jerusalem which is above is
our mother"-not "the mother of us all." It is in contrast with Jerusalem on
earth, which in its principle answered to Sinai. And observe that the
apostle is not here speaking of the violation of the law, but of its
principle. The law itself puts man in a state of bondage. It is imposed on
man in the flesh, who is opposed to it. By the very fact that he has
self-will, the law and that will are in conflict. Self-will is not
obedience.
Verse 27 presents some difficulty to many minds, because it is generally
confounded with Hagar and Sarah. But it is a separate consideration,
suggested by the idea of Jerusalem above. The verse is a quotation from
Isaiah 54, which celebrates the joy and glory of the earthly Jerusalem at
the beginning of the millennium. The apostle quotes it to shew that
Jerusalem had more children during the time of her desolation than when she
had a husband. In the millennium Jehovah, the Lord, will be her husband. He
had been so before. At present she is desolate, she bears not. Nevertheless
there are more children than previously when she was married. Such were the
marvellous ways of God. All Christians are reckoned, when earth takes its
course again, as the children of Jerusalem, but of Jerusalem with no
husband and desolate, so that the Galatians were not to own it as if God
did still. Sarah was not without a husband. Here is a different order of
thought. Without a husband and desolate (so that, properly speaking, she
has none) Jerusalem has more children now than in the best days of her
career, when Jehovah was a husband to her. For, as regards the promise, the
gospel came forth from her. The assembly is not of promise. It was a
counsel hid in God, of which the promises had never spoken. Its position is
a yet higher one; but in this place the apostle's instruction does not rise
to that height. But we are also the children of promise, and not of the
flesh. Israel after the flesh had no other pretension than to be the
children of Abraham after the flesh; we are so only by promise. Now the
word of God cast out the child of the bondwoman, born after the flesh, that
he might not be heir with the child of promise. As to us, we are the
children of promise.
Chapter 5
It is in this liberty, the liberty of Christ, alluding to the free woman
and Jerusalem above, that they were to stand fast, and not put themselves
again under the yoke of the law. If they took that ground they made
themselves responsible to keep it personally and wholly, and Christ was of
no effect to them. They could not rest upon the work of Christ for
righteousness, and then hold themselves responsible to fulfil righteousness
themselves according to the law. The two things contradict each other.
Hence too it would be no longer grace on which they stood. They forsook
grace, in order to satisfy the requirements of the law. This is not the
Christian's position.
Here is the Christian's position. He does not seek for righteousness before
God as a man who does not possess it; he is the righteousness of God in
Christ, and Christ Himself is the measure of that righteousness. The Holy
Ghost dwells in him. Faith rests in this righteousness, even as God rests
in it, and this faith is sustained by the Holy Ghost, who turns the heart
that is established in that righteousness towards the glory that is its
recompense-a recompense which Christ enjoys already, so that we know what
that righteousness deserves. Christ is in the glory due to righteousness,
to the work which He accomplished. We know this righteousness in virtue of
that which He has wrought, because God has owned His work and set Him at
His right hand on high. The glory in which He is is His just reward, and
the proof of that righteousness. The Spirit reveals the glory, and seals to
us that righteousness on which faith builds. It is thus that the apostle
expresses it: "We, through the Spirit, wait for the hope [the hoped-for
glory] of righteousness by faith." To us it is faith, for we have not yet
the thing hoped for-the glory due to that righteousness which is ours.
Christ possesses it, so that we know what we hope for. It is by the Spirit
that we know it, and that we have the assurance of the righteousness which
gives us the title to possess it. It is not righteousness we wait for, but,
by the Spirit in faith, the hope that belongs to it. It is by faith; for in
Christ neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith
working by love. There must be a moral reality.
The apostle's heart is oppressed at the thought of what they were
rejecting, and the mischief this doctrine was doing. It overflows. In the
midst of his argument he interrupts himself. "Ye did run well: who has
hindered you from obeying the truth?" To be so easily persuaded of this
Judaising doctrine, which was but a fatal error, was not the work of Him
who had called them. It was not thus that through grace they had become
Christians. A little leaven corrupted the whole.
Nevertheless the apostle regains his confidence by looking higher. By
resting on the grace which is in Christ towards His own, he can re-assure
himself with regard to the Galatians. He stood in doubt when he thought of
them; he had confidence when he thought of Christ, that they would surely
not be otherwise minded. Thus delivered from the evil by grace, as in the
moral case of the Corinthians, he was ready to punish all disobedience,
when all that knew how to obey had been brought fully back to obedience; so
here also, every heart that was susceptible of the influence of the truth
would be brought back to the power of the truth of Christ; and those who,
active in evil, troubled them by false doctrine, those whose will was
engaged in propagating error, should bear their burden. It is very
beautiful to see the apostle's uneasiness, when he thinks of men-the fruit
moreover of his love for them-and the confidence which he regains as soon
as he lifts up his heart to the Lord. But his abrupt style, his broken and
unconnected words, shew how deeply his heart was engaged. The error that
separated the soul from Christ was to him more terrible than the said
fruits of practical separation. We do not find the same marks of agitation
in the epistle to the Corinthians; here the foundation of everything was in
question. In the case of the Galatians the glory of Christ the Saviour was
at stake, the only thing that could bring a soul into connection with God;
and on the other hand it was a systematic work of Satan to overthrow the
gospel of Christ as needed for the salvation of men.
Here, interrupting himself, he adds, "And I, if I preach circumcision, why
am I persecuted?" It will in fact be seen that the Jews were habitually the
instigators of the persecution which the apostle suffered from the
Gentiles. The spirit of Judaism, as has been the case in all ages, the
religious spirit of the natural man, has been Satan's great instrument in
his opposition to the gospel. If Christ would put His sanction on the
flesh, the world would come to terms and be as religious as you please, and
would value itself upon its devotion. But in that case it would not be the
true Christ. Christ came, a witness that the natural man is lost, wicked,
and without hope, dead in his trespasses and sins; that redemption is
necessary, and a new man. He came in grace, but it was because man was
incapable of being restored; and consequently all must be pure grace and
emanate from God. If Christ would have to do with the old man, all would be
well; but, I repeat, He would no longer be Christ. The world then, the old
man, does not endure Him. But there is a conscience, there is a felt need
of religion, there is the prestige of an ancient religion held from one's
fathers; true perhaps in its original foundations, although perverted. Thus
the prince of the world will use carnal religion to excite the flesh, the
ready enemy, when once awakened, of the spiritual religion which pronounces
sentence upon it.
It is only to add something to Christ. But what? If it is not Christ and
the new man, it is the old man, it is sinful man; and, instead of a needed
and accomplished redemption, and an entirely new life from above, you have
a testimony that agreement between the two is possible; that grace is not
necessary, except at most as a little help; that man is not already lost
and dead in his trespasses and sins, that the flesh is not essentially and
absolutely evil. Thus the name of Christ is made subservient to the flesh,
which willingly adorns itself with the credit of His name, in order to
destroy the gospel from its very foundations. Only preach circumcision,
accept the religion of the flesh, and all difficulty will cease; the world
will accept your gospel, but it will not be the gospel of Christ. The cross
in itself (that is, the total ruin of man-man proved to be the enemy of
God), and perfect finished redemption by grace, will always be a
stumbling-block to one who desires to maintain some credit for the flesh.
"Would to God," says the apostle-for he sees the whole gospel falling into
ruin before this device, and souls destroyed-"would to God that they who
trouble you were cut off!" What have we seen since then? Where is the holy
indignation of the apostle?
He then touches on the point of the practical consequences of this
doctrine, and explains how the doctrine of perfect grace was connected,
without the law, with a walk worthy of the people of God. Ye have then been
called, he says, unto liberty: only use not your liberty for an occasion to
the flesh-which the flesh would readily do. God gave the law to convince of
sin; the flesh would use it to work out righteousness. He acts in grace,
that we may be above sin and outside its dominion: the flesh would use
grace as an occasion to sin without restraint. The Christian, truly free
from the yoke of sin, as well as from its condemnation (for Christ risen is
his life as well as his righteousness, and the Spirit is the power and
guide of his walk towards glory, and according to Christ), instead of
serving his lusts, seeks to serve others, as free to do it in love. Thus
the law itself is fulfilled, without our being under its yoke: for the
whole practical law is summed up in this word: "Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself."
If, yielding to the flesh, and attacking those who were not circumcised,
they devoured one another, they were to take heed that they were not
consumed one of another. But the apostle would give something more
positive. "This I say then," he continues, after the interruption of his
subject, "Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the
flesh." It is not by putting oneself under the law that one has power
against sin. It is the Spirit (given in virtue of the ascension of Christ
our righteousness, to the right hand of God) who is the Christian's
strength. Now the two powers, the flesh and the Spirit, are antagonistic.
The flesh strives to hinder us when we would walk according to the Spirit,
and the Spirit resists the working of the flesh to prevent it from
accomplishing its will.
But if we are led of the Spirit, we are not under the law. Holiness, true
holiness, is accomplished without the law, even as righteousness is not
founded on it. 'Nor is there any difficulty in judging between what is of
the flesh and what is of the Spirit; the apostle enumerates the sad fruits
of the former, adding the sure testimony that they which do such things
shall not inherit the kingdom of God. The fruits of the Spirit are equally
evident in their character, and assuredly against such things there was no
law. If we walk according to the Spirit, the law will find nothing to
condemn in us. And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh and its
lusts. This is what they are, inasmuch as they are Christians; it is that
which distinguishes them. If these Galatians really lived, it was in the
Spirit: let them then walk in the Spirit.
Chapter 6
Here is the answer to those who then sought, and now seek, to bring in law
for sanctification and as a guide: the strength and the rule for holiness
are in the Spirit. The law does not give the Spirit. Moreover (for it is
evident that these pretensions of observing the law had given liberty to
the pride of the flesh) the Christian was not to be desirous of vain-glory,
provoking one another, envying one another. If any one, through
carelessness, committed some fault, the Christian's part was to restore
this member of Christ, dear to Christ and to the Christian, according to
the love of Christ, in a spirit of meekness, remembering that he himself mig
ht fall. If they wished for a law, here was one: to bear each other's
burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ (that is, the rule of all His own
life here below). It is not by boasting, when one is nothing, that true
glory was acquired. It is but deceiving oneself, says the apostle, in
language which, by its simplicity, pours unspeakable contempt on those who
did so. These legalists boasted much of themselves, imposed burdens on
others; and investing themselves with their Judaic glory-that which was a
burden to others, and one which they did not help them to bear, was
vain-glory to themselves-they gloried in their Judaism, and in making
others subject to it. But what was their work? Had they laboured really for
the Lord? In no wise. Let them prove their own work; then they would have
reason to glory in what they had done themselves, if there was any
christian work of which they had been the instruments. It certainly would
not be in what they were doing then, for it was another who had done the
work of Christ in Galatia. And after all, every one should bear his own
burden.
The apostle adds a few practical words. He who was taught should, in
temporal things, succour those who taught him. Furthermore, although grace
was perfect and redemption complete, so that the believer received the Holy
Ghost as a seal thereof, God had attached infallible consequences to a
man's walk, be it after the flesh or after the Spirit. The effects followed
the cause; and they could not mock God by making a profession of grace or
Christianity, if they did not walk according to its spirit, as led, in a
word, by the Holy Ghost, who is its practical power. Of the flesh they
would reap corruption; of the Spirit, life everlasting. But, as Christians,
they must have patience in order to reap, and not grow weary of well-doing:
the harvest was sure. Let believers, then, do good to all, especially to
those of the house of God.
Paul had written this letter with his own hand-an unusual thing for him. He
generally employed others (as Tertius for the epistle to the Romans),
dictating to them that which he wished to say, adding the benediction with
his own hand, as certifying the correctness of that which was written (1
Cor. 16:21; 2 Thess. 3:17): a remarkable proof of the importance that the
apostle attached to his writings, and that he did not send them forth as
ordinary letters from man to man, but as being furnished with an authority
that required the use of such precautions. They were carefully invested
with the apostolic authority. In this case, full of sorrow, and feeling
that the foundations had been overthrown, he wrote the whole with his own
hand. Accordingly, in saying this, he returns immediately to the subject
which had caused him to do so.
Those who desired to make a fair show after the flesh constrained the
Gentiles to be circumcised, in order to avoid the persecution that attached
to the doctrine of the cross-to free salvation by Christ. The circumcised
were Jews, of a religion known and received even in this world; but to
become the disciples of a crucified man, a man who had been hung as a
malefactor, and to confess Him as the only Saviour-how could the world be
expected to receive it? But the reproach of the cross was the life of
Christianity; the world was judged, it was dead in its sin; the prince of
the world was judged, he had only the empire of death, he was (with his
followers) the impotent enemy of God. In the presence of such a judgment,
Judaism was honourable wisdom in the eyes of the world. Satan would make
himself a partisan of the doctrine of one only God; and those who believed
in it join themselves to their former adversaries, the worshippers of
devils, in order to withstand this new enemy who cast reproach on the whole
of fallen humanity, denouncing them as rebels against God, and as devoid of
the life which was manifested in Jesus only. The cross was the sentence of
death upon nature; and the Jew in the flesh was offended at it, even more
than the Gentile, because he lost the glory with which he had been invested
beforeothers on account of his knowledge of the only true God.
The carnal heart did not like to suffer, and to lose the good opinion of
the world, in which a certain measure of light was accepted or tolerated by
people of sense (and by sincere persons when there was no greater light to
be had), provided they did not set up pretensions that condemned everybody,
and judged everything which the flesh desired and relied on for its
importance. A compromise which more or less accepts the flesh-which does
not judge it as dead and lost, which, in however small a degree, will
acknowledge that the world and the flesh are its basis-the world will
accept. It cannot hope to strive against the truth that judges the whole
conscience, and it will accept a religion that tolerates its spirit and
adapts itself to the flesh, which it desires to spare even when painful
sacrifices must be made; provided only that the flesh itself be not
entirely set aside. Man will make himself a fakeer-sacrifice his
life-provided that it is self that does it, and that God shall not have
done the whole in grace, condemning the flesh as incapable of well doing,
having nothing good in itself.
The circumcised did not observe the law-that would have been too wearisome,
but they desired to glory in proselytes to their religion. In the world the
apostle has seen nothing but vanity and sin and death; the spirit of the
world, of the carnal man, was morally degraded, corrupt, and guilty,
boasting in self, because ignorant of God. Elsewhere he had seen grace,
love, purity, obedience, devotedness to the Father's glory and to the
happiness of poor sinners. The cross declared the two things: it told what
man was; it told what God was, and what holiness and love were. But it was
the utmost degradation in the eyes of the world, and put down all its
pride. It was another who had accomplished it at the cost of His own life,
bearing all possible sufferings; so that the apostle could give free course
to all the affections of his heart without boasting himself of anything; on
the contrary, forgetting himself. It is not self that we glory in when we
look at the cross of Christ: one is stript of self. It was He who hung upon
that cross who was great in Paul's eyes. The world which had crucified Him
was thus seen by the apostle in its true character; the Christ who had
suffered on the cross in His likewise. In that cross would the apostle
glory, happy, by this means to be dead to the world, and to have the world
ended, crucified, put to shame, as it deserved to be, for his heart. Faith
in the crucified Son of God overcomes the world.
To the believer the world has its true character; for, in fact, in Christ
Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value (all that has
passed away with a dead Christ), but a new creature, according to which we
estimate everything as God estimates it. It is to such, the true children
of God, that the apostle wishes peace. It was not Israel circumcised after
the flesh that was the Israel of God. If there were any of that people who
were circumcised in heart, who gloried in the cross according to the
sentiments of the new creature, those were the Israel of God. Moreover
every true Christian was of them according to the spirit of his walk.
Finally, let no one trouble him with regard to his ministry. He bore the
stigmata of the Lord. It is known that marks were printed on a slave with a
hot iron to indicate the person to whom he belonged. The wounds which the
apostle had received, fully shewed who was his Master. Let his right then
to call himself the servant of Christ be no more questioned. Touching
appeal from one whose heart was wounded at finding his service to the
Master whom he had loved called in question! Moreover, Satan, who imprinted
those marks, ought indeed to recognise them-those beautiful initials of
Jesus.
The apostle desires that grace be with them (according to the divine love
that animated him) as souls dear to Christ, whatever their state might be.
But there is no outpouring of heart in greetings affectionately addressed
to Christians. It was a duty-a duty of love-which he fulfilled; but for the
rest, what bonds of affection could he have with persons who sought their
glory in the flesh, and who accepted that which dishonoured Jesus and which
weakened and even annulled the glory of His cross? Without any wish of his,
the current of affection was checked. The heart turned to the dishonoured
Christ, although loving those that were His in Him. This is the real
feeling contained in the last verses of this epistle.
In Galatians we have indeed Christ living in us, in contrast with the
flesh, or I still living in flesh. But, as systematic truth, we have
neither the believer in Christ nor Christ in the believer. We have the
Christian's practical state at the end of chapter 2. Otherwise the whole
epistle is a judgment of all return to Judaism, as identical with heathen
idolatry. The law and man in the flesh were correlative; law came in
between the promise and Christ, the Seed; was a most useful testing of man,
but when really known putting him to death, and condemning him. Now this
was fully met in grace in the cross, the end in death of man in flesh, of
sin, in Christ made sin. All return to law was giving up both promise and
the work of grace in Christ, and going back again to flesh proved to be sin
and lost, as if there could be relationship with God in it, denying grace,
and denying even the true effect of law, and denying man's estate proved in
the cross. It was heathenism. And days and years, etc., took man up as
alive in flesh, was not the end of the old man in the cross in grace. We
have Christ as our life thereupon, or death would leave us of course
hopeless. But we have not the christian condition, we in Christ and Christ
in us. It is the discussion of the work that brings us there, and where man
is, and of vital importance in this respect. Man in the flesh is wholly
gone from all relationship with God, and none can be formed: there must be
a new creation.
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