Chapters 1, 2.
HERE we have the vindication of Paul’s apostolate and of the gospel of grace against the Judaisers. It is a standing witness, on the one hand, how quickly the professing Christian is apt to surrender even the foundations of his blessedness to legalism; and on the other, of the Holy. Spirit’s care to raise the divine standard against the enemy, and rally men of faith around it. For God has here given us His own refutation of that early encroachment, so ruinous to the enjoyment of His grace, of Christ’s work, and of the believer’s standing and power. The Epistle is characterized by unusual severity of warning from first to last, and a total absence of those individual salutations in brotherly kindness which abound wherever it was possible. Not even the loose levity of the Corinthians troubled the apostle’s spirit so profoundly, as the fall of the Galatians from grace.
Chapter 1 opens with Paul, “apostle not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ, and God the Father Who raised Him out of the dead, and all the brethren with me.” The legal party objected that he was not of the twelve, nor yet ordained by them in due succession. The apostle confronts this with the fact that the Lord Jesus and God the Father expressly called him to the apostleship in an immediate way and with resurrection associations; and that all the brethren with him joined in his words now. Even his wonted form of general salutation has the stamp of the truth the Galatians were imperiling. “Grace to you and peace from God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us out of this present evil age according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory unto the ages of ages.” In verse 6-10 he bursts like lightning on their central error. “I wonder that ye so quickly change from him that called you in Christ’s grace unto a different gospel, which is not another: only there are some that trouble you and desire to pervert the gospel of Christ.” Such as preached aught else, were it himself or an angel or any, he anathematizes. It were but pleasing men, which would make him not Christ’s bondman as he was.
Next, he asserts direct revelation for the gospel he preached, affirmed already for his apostolic authority. It had shone on him, when devoted to the law and a persecutor of the church of God. But His grace revealed His Son in him, that he might preach Him among the Gentiles. The essential design was that he should not take counsel with flesh and blood, not even with the apostles before him. So he went elsewhere, and even when he did go up to Jerusalem, it was but for a short visit to Cephas, and, seeing only James the Lord’s brother, as he solemnly averred; afterward he went to Syria and Cilicia; so that he was only known in Judea by the report, to God’s glory by him, that the persecuting Saul now preached the faith he once ravaged.
In chapter 2, the apostle furnishes fresh light in this connection on his memorable visit with Barnabas to Jerusalem, when he took Titus with him. Assuredly it was to receive neither authority nor truth. He went up by revelation, which is nowhere else intimated, but characterizes his special place. Nor was it the apostles who laid before him the gospel, but he before the chiefs, privately, what he preached among the Gentiles. Could any say he was running or had run in vain? Nor was circumcising Titus entertained, whatever bondage false brethren might desire to impose. Add to the gospel, and its truth continues no more. It was seen by the reputed pillars that He Who energized Peter for the apostleship of the uncircumcision, energized Paul also for the Gentiles. God’s order for both and grace given to Paul being recognized, James and Cephas and John gave Paul and Barnabas right hands of fellowship, only with due remembrance of the poor, in which Paul was zealous too.
But from verse 11 he goes farther, and recounts his open resistance of Peter at Antioch, because he was condemned. What a rock for the church, if Christ had really resigned His place to His servant! Away with a pretension so blasphemous, ignorance so deplorable. Christ alone was and is the Rock. Peter shilly-shallied when certain came from James; “and the rest of the Jews dissembled likewise with him, so that even Barnabas was carried away with their dissimulation.” How solemnly instructive for the Galatians, and all other Christians and ourselves also! “They did not walk uprightly according to the truth of the gospel “is the unsparing censure of the apostle. What a withering rebuke of their own folly in listening to the adversaries of him and the gospel! His argument is unanswerable, and stands in abiding record. “If thou being a Jew livest Gentilely and not Jewishly, how forcest thou the Gentiles to Judaize?” It was grievous inconsistency in Peter, who on a most critical occasion, proved himself not only feeble as a reed, but false to the Lord’s charge in Acts 10 and his own faith, afraid of those he ought to have fed and guided aright. It was flinching from the common standing of justification by faith, and not by law-works, even for born Jews. But the worst of all remained; for he had left law for grace in Christ to justify him, and, in turning his back on this now, he not only made himself a transgressor, but in effect Christ a minister of sin! Paul on the contrary for the Christian says, Through law I died to the law, for all was met in Christ crucified. The sinner was in Him condemned, that he should go free, the flesh only and utterly dealt with by God for him who believes; and himself living, no longer the old I, but a new life, Christ living in me: a life in faith of the Son of God Who loved me and gave Himself up for me. Adding law makes void the grace of God; for if righteousness be through law, Christ in that case died gratuitously.
W.K.