The Holy Ghost is given as the seal of faith in Christ on the accomplishment of redemption, not before nor otherwise. Even as in a natural man there is something of this struggle (the convictions of his conscience and the corruption of his own heart strive with one another; his convictions would suppress his corruptions, and his corruptions silence his convictions), so in a renewed man, where there is something of a good principle, there is a struggle between the old nature and the new nature, the remainders of sin and the beginnings of grace; and this Christians must expect will be their exercise as long as they continue in this world. For Peter is not said to have withdrawn from the Lord's table where the uncircumcised met, but from the simple matter of eating with the Gentiles. Verse 15. Be it so: such was true. Gentleness; praotes ( G4236) is the most untranslatable of words. It went on to mean canvassing for political or public office, and it describes the man who wants office, not from any motives of service. (2.) If I am a Christian, I am responsible according to that position and privilege. 17 For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. Such was the will of God the Father that had raised Christ from the dead. Strife; originally this word had mainly to do with the rivalry for prizes. 18 but if you are led by (verse 16-18) the spirit, you are not under law. Here I've got this new twist on the scripture. How wholesome is the language here, "Every one shall bear his own burden!" Undoubtedly such is the assurance of God's word to His children; and thus Galatians 5:1-26 is in contrast withRomans 7:1-25; Romans 7:1-25. You see, laws are for unprincipled people. The apostle's discerning eye at once judged by Christ and by that gospel which he had learned from Him. Anything else would have been imperfect; but still it had essentially a transitional character. It is past dispute that the things he here speaks of are the works of the flesh, or the product of corrupt and depraved nature; most of them are condemned by the light of nature itself, and all of them by the light of scripture. The result of this is, that neither God has His place, nor they. It is the spirit which has mastered its desires and its love of pleasure. But the fruit of the Spirit ( Galatians 5:22 ), Now, "walk in the Spirit, you'll not fulfill the lust of the flesh." He tells them that as many as take the ground of law works are under the curse already. "And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. But if ye bite and devour one another, [you better] take heed that ye be not consumed one of another. Self-control; the word is egkrateia ( G1466) which Plato uses of self-mastery. To be consumed, while the tendency of brotherly love is to produce mutual protection and kindness. And they ate, giving over to their fleshly appetites and in so doing, the flesh dominated. You do not need it, because the Holy Ghost thus working strengthens you unto love. ". To the Galatians there was an exception. "Here, I'll show it to you in this book." I mean, you never get it from reading the Bible and waiting upon God. When a Gentile Christian, mark, takes up such Old Testament elements, according to the Holy Ghost, it is not to him merely Judaism, but a return to his Gentile idols, little as he may think so. "The things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not. Uh-huh, you did that five minutes. He went up by revelation for the purpose of getting a condemnation in Jerusalem itself of those who would force Jewish principles on the church of God at large. Under which type did they fall Ishmael or Isaac? Love is the fulfilling of the law. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other; so that ye cannot do the things that ye would ( Galatians 5:17 ). "Christian freedom is not licence [sic] for the simple but tremendous reason that the Christian is not the man who has become free to sin, but the man, who, by the grace of God, has become free not to sin." Leave room for God, and for God alone. I tried." He cannot stop there but is bound to accept all the other rules and regulations as well. These other words are defining what the agape love actually is. And if you do, you will not be fulfilling the desires of your flesh. There is no mention here of grace, nor even of any special powers conferred by the Spirit of God. Let us not be desirous of vainglory ( Galatians 5:24-26 ), Now, these men who were coming with this teaching were really out to get notches on their belts. Here it means that tranquillity of heart which derives from the all-pervading consciousness that our times are in the hands of God. It describes not an anger which lasts but anger which flames out and then dies. Very powerful words for those who would seek justification through the law, through rules, through keeping rules, through keeping ordinances. For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath a husband." Thus it appears that the Galatians as well as the Corinthians had been similarly affected. What is good fruit in the Bible? This terminates all for me as a living man here below. Born and bred in the abominable idolatries of the heathen, they were strangers to the institutions of Israel. I said, "Oh oh oh oh oh," you see, "A little leaven leavens the whole lump." It seems to have been something which affected his speech too, and exposed him to ridicule and to unfavourable comments where men were carnally-minded. The cross paid it all. He had the faith that could by grace cleave to God if he had not a companion; but God blesses that faith, and acts by it on the conscience of others, even on those that, alas! Do I seek to please men? I mean, if you're walking in love, what rules can you lay down? "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ." The idea is that of a man who is so far gone in desire that he has ceased to care what people say or think. #2 "were called" We should take great joy in the truth that we belong to the God who calls us chosen. When he declared that the end of the reign of law had come and that the reign of grace had arrived, it was always possible for someone to say, "That, then, means that I can do what I like; all the restraints are lifted and I can follow my inclinations wherever they lead me. Next he turns to direct exhortation, the chief salient points of which will call for but few words. And I'm washed and I'm cleansed and I go on. He acts on this in faith; he understands it with an energy and a brightness that increased even in his Roman prison. The law necessarily makes the man, and the man's doings, to be the prominent object. Paul now warns them about a consequence of this. Continue to work in me and through me so that I may live a life that is pleasing to You and glorifying to Your holy name, and keep me from falling back under bondage to legalistic practices, knowing that I have been set free by grace through faith in Christ's finished work on Calvary. parties, and factions; and were attended with envy and malice, That died with Christ. There was no insult to him, nor injury done, in saying that he did not acknowledge the law for a Christian. Nor is there a greater evidence of God's tender and considerate care for us than such a fact as this. When we seek to interpret a passage like this we must remember that for the devout and scholarly Jew, and especially for the Rabbis, scripture had more than one meaning; and the literal meaning was often regarded as the least important. It might have been inferred that Paul was to do what he could with the Gentile churches, but that the twelve exclusively cared for the churches in Judea, he consequently having nothing to do with them. And you keep dealing with me until I'll finally say, "Oh, God, I'm sorry. I am perfectly delivered, and the measure of my deliverance is Christ, and Christ raised from the dead. Then comes the seed, and the promise is made Yea and Amen in Him all the promises of God. Ignorant or false men had made them hanker after circumcision. "I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you in the grace of Christ unto another gospel: which is not another. "For I am as ye are." Note, 1. "Desirous of vainglory,". It is liberty and not law that the Christian stands in. It needs to be boistered by God's spirit. "What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness?" If the promise be the only means of enjoying the inheritance, what is the good of the law? Help us to express our faith in love every day by loving our neighbor as ourselves. Accordingly the apostle lays stress on the fact that he was "unknown by face unto the churches of Judea which were in Christ: but they had heard only, that he which persecuted us in times past now preacheth the faith which once he destroyed. The flesh began to rule, and man's consciousness was now filled and absorbed with the body needs and the body appetites. To put a stop to coveting is to "head other sins off at the pass.". Nor had he conferred even then with flesh and blood; his mission as well as conversion and call were alike independent of it. Galatians 5 - Standing Fast In the Liberty of Jesus A. take heed that ye be not consumed one of another; that is, either beware lest each other's particular peace and comfort be destroyed, which is oftentimes done this way, though a person's state and condition God-ward may be safe; or lest their church state should be destroyed and come to nothing, since love is the cement of it, which being loosened, threatens a dissolution; for as no civil community, either public or private, divided against itself, can stand long, so no religious one; and for want of love the Lord threatens to remove, and sometimes does remove, the candlestick out of its place. Try and stay right on course. When He gave the promise to Abraham, He said, "I will give." On this the apostle reasons. Fornication; it has been said, and said truly, that the one completely new virtue Christianity brought into the world was chastity. What can you say to a guy? Finally, he concludes by putting the sentence of death, if I may so say, on circumcision, and all such as might adopt it. So, joy is love's consciousness. It was not the worldly presumption of man, nor the slight which this would inevitably cast on apostolic authority, as well as on the order of the church, on morality even, at least on Christian morality, on the comely ways of brethren one with another in private as well as in their public assemblies. self-seeking, dissension, heretical division, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and all that is like these things, I warn you, as I have warned you before, that those who do things like that will not inherit the Kingdom of God. Christian freedom does not mean that believers may do as they like. Galatians 5:1-15 Inductive Bible Study Notes - Teaching Guide With Questions Outline I. Christ has set us free (1-6) II. Take heed that ye be not consumed - As wild beasts contend sometimes until both are slain. Rare in N.T. His Father had made a revelation to Peter. Copyright 2023, Bible Study Tools. He revealed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God. "Oh, well, He laid down His divinity before He died." When in the garden, or when on the cross, Jesus cried, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken Me?" Promise was before the law, and flowed out of the grace of God. One of the encouragements, as we know, which God furnished to Abraham was, that he should have a seed like the sand of the sea, and like the stars of the sky. The application of this is as plain as it is conclusive, for those who appealed to Abraham and bowed to the word of God. Naughty Paul. It is of course assumed that every Christian had been baptized. But if ye bite and devour one another,. Another reason inducing to love is taken from the pernicious consequences of a contrary spirit and conduct. Who would have ventured to say, without express scripture, that the old Jewish forms thus adopted by a Gentile believer have such an idolatrous character? It is predicated upon the work of God. For every man shall bear his own 'burden." The prosperity doctrines of the gnostic heresy of the early church. "The death of Christ for you isn't sufficient. It was partly directed to the hearts and consciences of the Jews, partly in view of the approaching rupture of all ties with Israel. Now, there are two ways that I can be righteous. #1 "It is for freedom" By "freedom," this verse means that we can serve others in the name of the Lord and reap the reward of joy that comes from it (Galatians 5:13-15). Strange as all this may seem to us, it enshrines one great truth. Read Galatians 5: 14-17. The sad and dangerous tendency of a contrary behaviour (Galatians 5:15; Galatians 5:15): But, says he, if instead of serving one another in love, and therein fulfilling the law of God, you bite and devour one another, take heed that you be not consumed one of another. They were grieved to think that the Jewish church, with its twelve apostles and its elders, with its manifold links with antiquity and God's past testimony on earth, should seem separated in any measure from the apostle and his work. To him a theology was not the slightest use unless it could be lived out. I cannot soil a life which God paid for with his own life. But it is life after death to law, and consequently in another sphere. He fully allows that the Lord was both made of a woman and made under the law; but what was the ultimate object in view! The comparison would take in the Old Testament saints; or the application ("even so we") is to those then alive, who had been under that state of things. He specifies the fruits of the Spirit, or the renewed nature, which as Christians we are concerned to bring forth, Galatians 5:22; Galatians 5:23. In other words, if you're going to take this as an act of righteousness to make you righteous before God, as being a part of the law, then it will be necessary for you to keep the entire law in order to be righteous before God. The truth is, that they had their relationship to the twelve tribes of Israel. By-and-by will be fulfilled the promised earthly blessing, and power, and glory for Israel like the sand and the stars. Why this: "Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, and the other by a freewoman." But if I have a whole page of gold stars but yet there's one little point over here where I blew it and I can't put a gold star, then I'm unrighteous. Aristotle defined praotes ( G4236) as the mean between excessive anger and excessive angerlessness, the quality of the man who is always angry at the right time and never at the wrong time. 3 Yes, I testify again to every man who receives circumcision, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. Christendom is built upon this footing. They were better off spiritually than some other congregations to which he wrote, or possibly he did not want to deal with other needs of theirs in this letter. I really like to say that to the Jehovah Witnesses that come to my door. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith," not by becoming proselytes of the gate, or entering on a legal basis, but "foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed." Matthew 23:13; 2 Corinthians 11:20; Revelation 11:5. That is, the apostle, instead of regarding his despised freedom from the law as a just reproach, glories in it. That's all the law is saying to you. For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision avails any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love ( Galatians 5:6 ). Christian faith and behavior are never more frustrated and disgraced than by spiteful criticisms, derogatory remarks, snide observations and poison-tongue fulminations of Christians against each other. Let him alone. As the soldier in Studdert Kennedy's poem said; For Paul it was essential that Christian freedom should mean not freedom to indulge the lower side of human nature, but freedom to walk in the life of the Spirit. It can be used for the pus of an unclean wound, for a tree that has never been pruned, for material which has never been sifted. But this is a future prophetic vision not touched on here. We must set ourselves in good earnest both to mortify the deeds of the body, and to walk in newness of life. Paul has in mind the issue of circumcision. All rights reserved. It is to be noted that the summit of all meanings was the allegorical meaning. And he gives to us here a listing, incomplete to be sure, because he ends it by saying, "And do such things." Hence the effect of the law in all its ramifications on man is the same. I admit that this was all in place and season then for Jerusalem. He said. But its most suggestive use is that katharos ( G2513) is used of that ceremonial cleanness which entitles a man to approach his gods. But you continue one degree off on out over the Pacific, and you can miss your destination completely. He says to those who would be under the law, why do you not listen to the law? AN OLD STORY AND A NEW MEANING ( Galatians 4:21-31 ; Galatians 5:1 ). After one of his great victories Nelson attributed it to the fact that he had the happiness to command a band of brothers. For if I yet pleased men, I should not be a servant of Christ." Nothing more in keeping with the wants of those addressed, who had so soon turned aside from the grace of Christ to a different gospel. (2.) If it should be asked, What course must we take that the better interest may get the better? In our dealings with our fellow men we must reproduce this loving, forbearing, forgiving, patient attitude of God towards ourselves. 24 And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. "Before faith came we [Jews] were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Selfishness in the end does not exalt a man; it destroys him. Look at Abraham and his house; look at the maid Hagar; look at Isaac and Ishmael. No person can intelligently read the New Testament without perceiving the utter fallacy of such a system; for Peter was expressly, as the next chapter of this epistle tells us, apostle of the circumcision. beasts of prey falling upon and devouring one another: for wolves The allusion is to beasts of prey falling upon and devouring one another: for wolves or dogs to worry sheep is not strange; but for sheep to distress one another is unnatural. ", But, he adds, faith is come (that is, the testimony to be believed by man now, or the gospel). What does Galatians 5:15 Mean? Dr. Jimmy Young Buzzsprout-11368979 Thu, 22 Sep 2022 15:00:00 -0500 1898 Dr. Young,DJY,Grace Evangelical,Grace Evan,Germantown,Memphis,Collierville,Bible,Jeremiah,Church,God full false You Owe Me | Matthew 20.1-16 . Had a man come down from the teaching of the twelve, albeit inspired of God to write, as we know some of them were, and all of them having a most truly apostolic place, he might have been startled by the teaching of St. Paul. For the Jewish Rabbis a passage of scripture had four meanings. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. This is Christianity; and when the soul thankfully accepts from God this blessed liberty, the Holy Ghost is given to and acts in the believer as a Spirit of peace and power; so that if there is the flesh lusting against the Spirit, the Spirit resists this, in order that (for such is the true meaning) they should not do the things that they would. Galatians 5:15 by Grant Richison | Apr 11, 2000 | Galatians | 1 comment Read Introduction to Galatians "But if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another!" The Galatian church entered a stage of conflict because of legalistic thinking. For God does speak elsewhere, and even on this occasion, of a numerous seed. Soon all will believe in Christ, and all Israel be saved. Writing was a somewhat laborious task in those days, and it was a kind of profession to be a writer or scribe, before printing, of course, was known. After wishing those addressed grace and peace, as usual, he speaks of the Lord in a manner singularly in unison with the object of the epistle: "Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us" not from judgment, not from the wrath to come, but "from this present evil world." The prominent object strangers to the law, and the body, and the body, and in... Not stop there but is bound to accept all the promises of God towards ourselves the measure of deliverance... Which type did they fall Ishmael or Isaac as a living man here below it an. That this was all in place and season then for Jerusalem you do, you will not fulfilling... 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By ( verse 16-18 ) the spirit which has mastered its desires and its love of pleasure strengthens unto! He gave the promise be the only means of enjoying the inheritance, is! In him all the law for a Christian word had mainly to do the. Fact as this had learned from him abominable idolatries of the heathen, they were to! ; originally this word had mainly to do the whole law raised Christ from the pernicious consequences a... An anger which flames out and then dies but you continue one degree off on out over Pacific.
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