The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle to the Galatians

His condition inspired reverence in all who loved and honoured Jesus Christ. Paul's Christian brethren were moved by feelings of the tenderest respect by the sight of his wasted and crippled form. "His bodily presence is weak (2 Cor. x. 10): he looks like a corpse!" said his despisers. But under that physical feebleness there lay an immense fund of moral vigour. How should he not be weak, after so many years of wearying toil and relentless persecution and torturing pain? Out of this very weakness came a new and unmatched strength; he "glories in his infirmities," for there rests upon him the strength of Christ (2 Cor. xii. 9).

Under the expression "stigmata of Jesus" there is couched a reference to the practice of marking criminals and runaway slaves with a brand burnt into the flesh, which is perpetuated in our English use of the Greek words stigma and stigmatize. A man so marked was called stigmatias, i. e., a branded scoundrel; and such the Apostle felt himself to be in the eyes of men of the world. Captain Lysias of Jerusalem took him for an Egyptian leader of banditti. Honourable men, when they knew him better, learned to respect him; but such was the reputation that his battered appearance, and the report of his enemies, at first sight gained for him.

The term stigmata had also another and different signification. It applied to a well-known custom of religious devotees to puncture, or tattoo, upon themselves the name of their God, or other sign expressive of their devotion (Isa. xiiv. 5; Rev. iii. 12). This signification may be very naturally combined with the former in the employment of the figure. Paul's stigmata, resembling those of Jesus and being of the same order, were signs at once of reproach and of consecration. The prints of the world's insolence were witnesses of his devotion to Christ. He loves to call himself "the slave of Christ Jesus." The scourge has written on his back his Master's name. Those dumb wounds proclaim him the bondman of the Crucified. At the lowest point of personal and official humiliation, when affronts were heaped upon him, he felt that he was raised in the might of the Spirit to the loftiest dignity, even as "Christ was crucified through weakness, yet liveth through the power of God" (2 Cor. xiii. 4.)

The words I bear– not united, as in our own idiom, but standing the pronoun at the head and the verb at the foot of the sentence – have each of them a special emphasis. I– in contrast with his opponents, man-pleasers, shunning Christ's reproach; and bear he says exultantly – "this is my burden, these are the marks I carry," like the standard-bearer of an army who proudly wears his scars (Chrysostom). In the profound and sacred joy which the Apostle's tribulations brought him, we cannot but feel even at this distance that we possess a share. They belong to that richest treasure of the past, the sum of

"Sorrow which is not sorrow, but delightTo hear of, for the glory that redoundsTherefrom to human kind and what we are."

The stigmatization of Paul, his puncturing with the wounds of Jesus, has been revived in later times in a manner far remote from anything that he imagined or would have desired. Francis of Assisi in the year 1224 A.D. received in a trance the wound-prints of the Saviour on his body; and from that time to his death, it is reported, the saint had the physical appearance of one who had suffered crucifixion. Other instances, to the number of eighty, have been recorded in the Roman Catholic Church of the reproduction, in more or less complete form, of the five wounds of Jesus and the agonies of the cross; chiefly in the case of nuns. The last was that of Louise Lateau, who died in Belgium in the year 1883. That such phenomena have occurred, there is no sufficient reason to doubt. It is difficult to assign any limits to the power of the human mind over the body in the way of sympathetic imitation. Since St. Francis' day many Romanist divines have read the Apostle's language in this sense; but the interpretation has followed rather than given rise to this fulfilment. In whatever light these manifestations may be regarded, they are a striking witness to the power of the cross over human nature. Protracted meditation on the sufferings of our Lord, aided by a lively imagination and a susceptible physique, has actually produced a rehearsal of the bodily pangs and the wound-marks of Calvary.

This mode of knowing Christ's sufferings "after the flesh," morbid and monstrous as we deem it to be, is the result of an aspiration which however misdirected by Catholic asceticism, is yet the highest that belongs to the Christian life. Surely we also desire, with Paul, to be "made conformable to the death of Christ." On our hearts His wounds must be impressed. Along the pathway of our life His cross has to be borne. To all His disciples, with the sons of Zebedee, He says, "Ye shall indeed drink of My cup; and with the baptism that I am baptized withal shall ye be baptized." But "it is the Spirit that quickeneth," said Jesus; "the flesh profiteth nothing." The pains endured by the body for His sake are only of value when, as in Paul's case, they are the result and the witness of an inward communion of the Spirit, a union of the will and the intelligence with Christ.

The cup that He would have us drink with Him, is one of sorrow for the sins of men. His baptism is that of pity for the misery of our fellows, of yearning over souls that perish. It will not come upon us without costing many a pang. If we receive it there will be ease to surrender, gain and credit to renounce, self to be constantly sacrificed. We need not go out of our way to find our cross; we have only not to be blind to it, not to evade it when Christ sets it before us. It may be part of the cross that it comes in a common, unheroic form; the service required is obscure; it consists of a multitude of little, vexing, drudging sacrifices in place of the grand and impressive sacrifice, which we should be proud to make. To be martyred by inches, out of sight – this to many is the cruellest martyrdom of all. But it may be Christ's way, the fittest, the only perfect way for us, of putting His brand upon us and conforming us to His death.

Yes, conformity of spirit to the cross is the mark of Jesus. "If we suffer with Him" – so the Apostolic Churches used to sing – "we shall also be glorified together." In our recoil from the artificial penances and mortifications of former ages, we are disposed in these days to banish the idea of mortification altogether from our Christian life. Do we not study our personal comfort in an un-Christlike fashion? Are there not many in these days, bearing the name of Christ, who without shame and without reproof lay out their plans for winning the utmost of selfish prosperity, and put Christian objects in the second place? How vain for them to cry "Lord, Lord!" to the Christ who "pleased not Himself!" They profess at the Lord's Table to "show His death;" but to show that death in their lives, to "know" with Paul "the fellowship of His sufferings," is the last thing that enters into their minds. How the scars of the brave Apostle put to shame the self-indulgence, the heartless luxury, the easy friendship with the world, of fashionable Christians! "Be ye followers of me," he cries, "as I also of Christ." He who shuns that path cannot, Jesus said, be My disciple.

So the blessed Apostle has put his mark to this Epistle. To the Colossians from his prison he writes, "Remember my bonds." And to the Galatians, "Look on my wounds." These are his credentials; these are the armorial bearings of the Apostle Paul. He places the seal of Jesus, the sign-manual of the wounded hand upon the letter written in His name.

THE BENEDICTION

One benediction the Apostle has already uttered, in ver. 16. But that was a general wish, embracing all who should walk according to the spiritual rule of Christ's kingdom. On his readers specifically he still has his blessing to pronounce. He does it in language differing in this instance very little from that he is accustomed to employ.

"The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ" is the distinctive blessing of the New Covenant. It is to the Christian the supreme good of life, including or carrying with it every other spiritual gift. Grace is Christ's property. It descended with the Incarnate Saviour into the world, coming down from God out of heaven. His life displayed it; His death bestowed it on mankind. Raised to His heavenly throne, He has become on the Father's behalf the dispenser of its fulness to all who will receive it. There exalted, thence bestowing on men "the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness," He is known and worshipped as our Lord Jesus Christ.

What this grace of God in Christ designs, what it accomplishes in believing hearts, what are the things that contradict it and make it void, this Epistle has largely taught us. Of its pure, life-giving stream the Galatians already had richly tasted. From "Christ's grace" they were now tempted to "remove" (ch. i. 6). But the Apostle hopes and prays that it may abide with them.

"With your spirit," he says; for this is the place of its visitation, the throne of its power. The spirit of man, breathed upon by the Holy Spirit of God, receives Christ's grace and becomes the subject and the witness of its regenerating virtue. This benediction contains therefore in brief all that is set forth in the familiar three fold formula – "the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost."

After all his fears for his wayward flock, all his chidings and reproofs, forgiveness and confidence are the last thoughts in Paul's heart: "Brethren" is the last word that drops from the Apostle's pen, – followed only by the confirmation of his devout Amen.

To his readers also the writer of this book takes leave to address the Apostle Paul's fraternal benediction: The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brethren. Amen.

1

The text used in this exposition is, with very few exceptions, that of the Revised English Version, or its margin.

2

Compare Acts xiv. 4, 14 (Barnabas and Paul); 1 Thess. ii. 6 (Paul and his comrades); Rom. xvi. 7 (Andronicus and Junias); 2 Cor. viii. 23 (Titus and others, "apostles of the churches"); 2 Cor. xi. 13 ("false apostles": Judean emissaries); also Rev. ii. 2; Heb. iii. 1; John xiii. 16. On the N.T. use of apostle, see Lightfoot's Galatians, pp. 92-101; but especially Huxtable's Dissertation in the Pulpit Commentary (Galatians), pp. xxiii. – l., the most satisfactory elucidation of the subject we have met with. Prebendary Huxtable however presses his argument too far, when he insists that St. Paul held his higher commission entirely in abeyance until the crisis of the Judaic controversy.

3

1 Cor. xv. 10; 2 Cor. iv. 2; vi. 3-10; xi. 5, 16-xii. 13.

4

2 Thess. i. 5-7; 2 Tim. iv. 18; Heb. x. 12, 13; 1 Pet. v. 10.

5

1 Cor. x. 11; Heb. ix. 26.

6

1 Cor. vii. 31; 1 John ii. 17.

7

Rom. viii. 18; Eph. i. 13, 14.

8

1 Cor. iv. 9-13; xv. 30, 32; 2 Cor. vi. 4, 10; xi. 16, 33.

9

1 Cor. iv. 3, 4; 2 Cor. v. 9-12; xii. 19.

10

2 Cor. i. 8-10; ii. 12, 13; iv. 8-11; vii. 5-7.

11

2 Cor. x. 1-11; xiii. 1-10; 1 Cor. iv. 18-21.

12

Session vi., Can. xii.

13

Session xxii., Can. vi.

14

Comp. Rom. ix. 22; 1 Cor. xii. 3; xv. 1; 2 Cor. viii. 1.

15

See ch. ii. 6-14; 1 Cor. i. 12; iii. 22; iv. 9; ix. 1-5; xv. 8-10.

16

This genitive is, however, open to the other construction, which is unquestionable in 1 Cor. i. 7; 2 Thess. i. 7; also 1 Pet. i. 7, 13. Rev. i. 1 furnishes a prominent example of the subjective genitive.

17

Acts ix. 1-19; xxii. 5-16; xxvi. 12-18.

18

Ἐπιφανεία, a supernatural appearance, such as that of the Second Advent.

19

Φωτίζω, comp. 2 Cor. iv. 6.

20

Ch. v. 11; comp. 1 Cor. ix. 20; Acts xvi. 3; xxi. 20-26; xxiii. 6.

21

Acts vii. 58; viii. 1-3; ix. 1.

22

Les Apôtres, p. 180, note 1.

23

1 Cor. xiv. 18; 2 Cor. xii. 1-6; Acts xvi. 9; xviii. 8, 9; xxii. 17, 18.

24

ἡμέραι ἱκαναί, a considerable time. The expression is indefinite.

25

Ver. 18: that is, parts of "three years," according to ancient reckoning – say from 36 to 38 A.D., possibly less than two in actual duration.

26

2 Cor. xi. 13; iii. 1-3. See the remarks on the word Apostle in Chapter I. p. 12.

27

See Rom. ix. 1; 2 Cor. i. 17, 18, 23; 1 Thess. ii. 5.

28

Acts xi. 27-30. It is significant that this ministration was sent "to the Elders."

29

For the ministry alluded to in Acts xxvi. 20 there were other, later opportunities, especially in the journey described in Acts xv. 3; see also Acts xxi. 15, 16.

30

Ver. 22. It is arbitrary in Meyer to exclude from this category the Church of Jerusalem.

31

We follow Lightfoot in reading the ποτὲ as in ch. i. 23, and everywhere else in Paul, as a particle of time.

32

The writer is compelled in this instance to depart from the rendering of the English Version, for reasons given in the sequel. See also a paper on Paul and Titus at Jerusalem, in The Expositor, 3rd series, vol. vi., pp. 435-442. The last three words within the brackets agree with the R.V. margin.

33

These fourteen years probably amounted to something less in our reckoning, – say, from 38 to 51 A.D. Some six years elapsed before Paul was summoned to Antioch.

34

Acts xiii. 2, 7, 13, 43, 45, 46, 50; xiv. 12, 14; xv. 2, 12.

35

Comp. Rom. xi. 13; xv. 16, 17.

36

Hibbert Lectures, p. 103. This testimony is the more valuable as coming from the ablest living exponent of the Baurian theory.

37

Acts xv. 28: "It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us." This was in the Early Church no mere pious official form.

38

For this use of ἀλλ' οὐδὲ compare Acts xix. 2 (here also after a question); 1 Cor. iii. 2; iv. 3. We observe a similar instance of the phrase in Æschylus, Persæ, l. 792. Ἀλλ' opposes itself to the expectation of the Judaistic "compellers," present to the mind of Paul and his readers.

39

This particle is a serious obstacle in the way of the ordinary punctuation, which attaches the following clause to ver. 3. The δὲ is similar to that of ver. 6 (ἀπὸ δὲ τ. δοκούντων); not of κατ' ἰδίαν δὲ in ver. 2, nor of θανάτον δὲ σταύρου (Phil. ii. 8), which are parenthetical qualifications. And to say, "Because of the false brethren Titus was not compelled to be circumcised," is simply an inconsequence. Would he have been compelled to be circumcised if they had not required it? This is the assumption implied by the above construction.

40

For this rendering of ποτὲ comp. ch. i. 13, 23; and see Lightfoot, or Beet, in loc.

41

Comp. Rom. ii. 11; 1 Cor. i. 27-31; xv. 9, 10; Eph. vi. 9; Col. iii. 25.

42

We cannot explain προσανέθεντο here by the ἀναθέμην of ver. 2, as though Paul wished to say, "I imparted to them my gospel; they imparted to me nothing further." Forπρος- implies direction, rather than addition. See Meyer on this verb in ch. i. 16.

43

Ch. i. 18. See Chapter V., p. 87.

44

See Rom. i. 5; 1 Cor. xv. 10; Eph. iii. 2, 7, 8; 1 Tim. i. 13.

45

Zum Evangelien d. Paulus und d. Petrus, p. 273. Holsten is the keenest and most logical of all the Baurian succession.

46

Ch. i. 12; iii. 22; ix. 5.

47

The Acts of the Apostles critically investigated, vol. ii., pp. 28, 30: Eng. Trans.

48

Paulus, vol. i., p. 130: Eng. Trans.

49

Rom. ii. 25-iii. 1.

50

Rom. i. 16; ii. 9, 10; ix. 4, 5; xi. 1, 2.

51

In his L'apôtre Paul: esquisse d'une histoire de sa pensée, an admirable work, to which the writer is under great obligation.

52

See Chapter VII. pp. 109, 110.

53

ἐὰν μὴ has the same partially exceptive force as εἰ μὴ in ch. i. 7, 19. Comp. Rom. xiv. 14; also Luke iv. 26, 27.

54

For this emphatic found, describing a process of moral conviction and inward discovery, comp. Rom. vii. 10, 18, 21; the whole passage strikingly illustrates the reminiscence of our text.

55

Commentarii, in loc.

56

See Grimm's Lexicon, or Trench's N. T. Synonyms, on this word. Comp. ch. iii. 19; Rom. ii. 23-27; iv. 15; v. 14.

57

The I of this sentence is quite indefinite. On the other hand ver. 19, with its emphatic ἐγώ γάρ, brings us into a new vein of thought.

58

Comp. ch. iii. 10-12, 19; Rom. iii. 20; iv. 15.

59

This verb has, as Schott suggests, a tinge of irony.

60

Rom. vii. 7-viii. 1.

61

Hofmann is so far right when he makes the Apostle turn to the Galatians in ch. ii. 15, and draws at this point the line between the historical and doctrinal sections of the Epistle.

62

What is said of χάρις, applies also to its derivatives, χαρίζομαι, κ.τ.λ.

63

Eph. i. 5-9; 2 Tim. i. 9; Rom. iii. 24; Heb. ii. 9; 2 Cor. v. 20-vi. 1; Gal. iv. 5; Tit. iii. 5-7; ii. 11-14; Rom. v. 21.

64

Rom. vii. 12, 14; 2 Thess. ii. 4-8; comp. 1 John iii. 4.

65

Rom. iii. 20; iv. 15; v. 20; vii. 5, 24; Gal. ii. 16; iii. 10, 11, 19.

66

Rom. iii. 24, 25; Eph. ii. 8; etc.

67

Rom. iv. 1-4; xi. 6; Gal. ii. 16; iii. 12.

68

Rom. iv. 16; viii. 28-39; xi. 5; Eph. i. 4-6; Tit. iii. 7; Acts xx. 32; Gal. iii. 18: δι' ἐπαγγελίας κεχάρισται ὁ Θεός.

69

1 Cor. xv. 3, 4, 11; Rom. iv. 24, 25; x. 9; 1 Thess. iv. 14.

70

Rom. v. 14; 1 Cor. xv. 22, 45-48; 1 Tim. ii. 5.

71

1 Cor. xv. 45-49; comp. Col. i. 15-17; John i. 4, 9, 15, 16.

72

Pfleiderer, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 65, 6. Dr. Pfleiderer's delicate and sympathetic interpretation of Paul's teaching (in these Lectures, and still more in his Paulinism) has made all students of the Apostle his debtors, however much they may quarrel with his historical criticism.

73

Ch. iii. 14; iv. 6, 7; v. 5; 1 Cor., vi. 17, 19; Rom. viii. 9-16.

74

Ch. iii. 28; Col. iii. 11; Rom. xv. 5-7.

75

The verb προεγράφη (openly set forth) probably means painted up rather than placarded. This more vivid meaning belongs to γράφω, and there is no sufficient reason why it should not attach to προ-γράφω. It is entirely in place here. "Jesus Christ crucified" is not an announcement to be made, but an object to be delineated.

76

On βασκαίνω see the note in Lightfoot's Commentary in loc.; also Grimm's N. T. Lexicon. "The Scripture calleth envy an 'evil eye;' … so there still seemeth to be acknowledged in the act of envy an ejaculation or irradiation of the eye. Envy hath in it something of witchcraft… It is the proper attribute of the Devil, who is called 'The envious man, that soweth tares among the wheat by night.'" – (Lord Bacon: Essay ix.)

77

Comp. 2 Cor. xi. 1-4, a passage closely parallel to this context, containing what is expressed here and in Gal. i. 6, 7; iv. 11, 17, 18.

78

2 Tim. ii. 10; Eph. vi. 24 (ἀφθαρσία is incorruption everywhere else in Paul: why not here?)

79

Ch. iii. 26, 27; Rom. vi. 2-4; Col. ii. 11-13; Tit. iii. 5.

80

Comp. 2 Thess. i. 4-6; Ph. i. 28-30; Rom. viii. 17; 2 Tim. i. 8.

81

Matt. iii. 9; John viii. 33-59.

82

Gen. xii. 3: the first promise to Abraham. In this text the Hebrew and the Greek (LXX) say, All the tribes (families) of the earth. The synonymous ἔθνη, with its special Jewish connotation, suited Paul's purpose better; and it is used in the repetition of the promise in Gen. xviii. 18.

83

Rom. viii. 4; 1 Cor. vi. 9; Eph. v. 9; Tit. ii. 12-14; etc.

84

Of faith qualifies live in the Hebrew of the prophet, and in the LXX, also in the quotation of Heb. x. 38. The presumption is that it does so in Rom. i. 17, and Gal. iii. 11. We can see no sufficient reason in these passages to the contrary.

85

2 Chron. xx. 7; Isai. xli. 8; comp. Jas. ii. 23.

86

Deut. xxvii. 26; Jos. viii. 32-35. All things, given by the LXX in the former passage, is wanting in the Hebrew. But the phrase is true to the spirit of this text, and is read in the parallel Deut. xxviii. 15.

87

Hab. ii. 4. For the construction, see note on p. 186.

88

Lev. xviii. 5.

89

The Hebrew of Deut. xxi. 23 reads "a curse of God;" the LXX, "cursed by God" (κεκαταρημένος however, not ἐπικατάρατος as in Paul's phrase). The Apostle omits the two last words, not inadvertently, as Meyer supposes, for he must have had a painfully vivid remembrance of the wording of the original, but out of a reverence that made it impossible to speak of the Redeemer as "accursed by God."

90

See the able and convincing elucidation of διαθήκη in Cremer's Biblico-Theological Lexicon of N.T. Greek.

91

See Heb. ix. 16-18, where so much ingenuity has been expended to turn testament into covenant.

"Sweet is the memory of His name,Who blessed us in His will."

92

Gen. xxii. 16-18; Heb. vi. 17.

93

Comp. Rom. viii. 33, 34; Acts xi. 17; 2 Cor. i. 21, for a similar emphasis.

94

We gain nothing, and we may lose much, in "trying to settle questions of Old Testament historical criticism by casual allusions in the New Testament." (See Mr. Beet's sensible observations, in his Commentary ad loc.)