“A.C.”-Could you give me the meaning of Gal. 6:1717From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. (Galatians 6:17)? “From henceforth let no man trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.”
Paul uses these words in writing with reference to his ministry, which the false teachers were slighting. They had come clown and imposed the law in the harvest fields of Galatia, where Paul had been gathering in golden sheaves by the Gospel. He finds the work of the Gospel subverted by these Judaizes—the bane of the Gospel of Christ ever since. They had not faith to do a work for Christ themselves, and could only subvert and destroy his. “Henceforth let no man trouble me,” says Paul, as these false teachers were doing. And he then alludes, in the most touching manner, to the marks of the scourge and lash of the enemy which he bore in his flesh, proof of the reality of his ministry from and for the Lord.
As the slave or soldier of that day was branded with a hot iron in his flesh with the initials of his owner or master, so Paul could point to the marks he bore in his, living proofs of the reality of his truly being the slave or soldier of his Master. These beautiful initials of Jesus were what these false teachers could not show or appeal to, in proof of their service and ownership to his true Master and Lord. They could come and subvert the glories of His Gospel and the liberty of His people in grace, as well as His bondsman’s work, but where in the flesh had they such marks of reproach, such stigmas engraved for Him?
A.-The state of a sinner as “dead in sins” is that there is no spring in the soul to God-ward, but all the whole being going out in the will of the flesh in sin. In the Epistle to the Romans (chaps. 1-3.) the sinner is described as what we might term “alive in sins;” i.e., every movement of his heart active in the energies of sin. “Dead in sins” would be the aspect of the soul to God-ward, because there is no movement of the heart towards Him.
Christ goes in divine grace into the sinner’s place, bearing our sins. He dies, having borne them, and rises again; we are quickened together with Him and forgiven all trespasses. God thus having cleared us, counts to us in His grace all that His Son passed through. If He dies, we are “dead with Christ;” if He is buried, we are buried with Him (as in the first initiatory ordinance of baptism); if He is quickened out of death (as Man), we are quickened together with Him; if He is risen, so are we; if seated in heavenly places, we are seated there in Him (Eph. 2:66And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: (Ephesians 2:6)); if He appears in glory, so do we (Col. 3:44When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3:4)). Thus there is complete identity.
“Dead in sins” would describe the state of the sinner with regard to God. “Dead with Christ” would describe what God counts the believer in grace, Christ having identified Himself with his state when a sinner only.