CHAP. III.]

4

g

IF IT BE YET IN VAIN.

45

Have ye suffered || so many things in vain? if it be yet in vain.

h

5 He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?

4. "If it be yet in vain." "If it be indeed in vain," Revisers.

g Heb. x. 35, 36. 2 John 8. Or, so great.

h 2 Cor. iii. 8.

say, then the heathen man who has been converted by the power of the Spirit by seeking baptism seeks to be perfected in the flesh. If we would not fall into this error, we must hold that the sacraments are instruments of the Spirit in a far higher sense than Circumcision and the Paschal Lamb could possibly be. Baptism is not a form after the analogy of a Jewish form, but a sacrament, a thing which had nothing corresponding to it in Judaism. It is the means by which the Holy Spirit grafts us into that mystical Body which could not be conceived of till the Son of God had become incarnate, so that we should be in Him as branches of Himself the True Vine, and members of Himself the Head of the Church.

4. “Have ye suffered so many things in vain? if it be yet in vain." This implies that they had suffered persecution for the Gospel's sake, perhaps from their unbelieving brethren, perhaps from the Jews, or at the instigation of the Jews. Here, then, he tells them plainly that if they had reverted to Judaism their sufferings on behalf of Christ would have been thrown away. But he hopes better things of them, for he adds, "If it be yet in vain."

5. "He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you," &c. Was Paul an Apostle of the Law or of the Gospel? There were Apostles of the law troubling them who preached Circumcision and Justification by the works of the law. Had these men ministered unto them the life-giving Spirit, purifying their hearts, and enabling them to live to God as St. Paul had done? Had these men worked miracles among them? Had these men laid their hands upon them and imparted to them the Holy Ghost as St. Paul had done? (Acts xix. 6.)

An attempt is made to get rid of the exercise of supernatural power claimed in this verse by insinuating that the miracles were moral miracles, whose sphere was only in the heart, but such

46

i Gen. xv. 6.

Rom. iv. 3, 9,

21, 22. James

ii. 23.

| Or, imputed.

THEY WHICH ARE OF FAITH.

i

[GALATIANS.

6 Even as Abraham believed God, and it was

accounted to him for righteousness.

k

7 Know ye therefore that they which are of John viii. 39. faith, the same are the children of Abraham.

Rom. iv. 11,

12, 16.

would be no evidence of the truth of St. Paul's mission as against the Judaizers. He most assuredly did work miracles in the outward world in every place where he preached the Gospel, and why should he not allude to them here?

6. "Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness." The Apostle's argument is very close, and we should apprehend it better if we translated "faith" in the last verse as "believing."-" By the hearing of believing, even as Abraham believed God." Or we might retain the word faith, "the hearing of faith," and translate the first clause of the next verse, "Even as Abraham exercised faith," &c.

The mention of faith (ríoriç) brought to the Apostle's mind the first great instance of Justification by faith mentioned in the Word of God. The place may be paraphrased, "Doeth he it by the works of the law, or by faith? surely by faith, and with this agrees the fact that your great forefather was not justified by the works of the law, for he lived long before the law; but when he believed God, his faith was then counted for righteousness."

For the reason why God imputed Abraham's faith to Abraham for righteousness, see my notes on Romans iv., especially on verses 20, 21, 22. God imputed righteousness to Abraham when he simply exercised faith in God, in fact took Him at His word; and God's action in this respect was justified, if we may so say, for this faith which was imputed for righteousness, when it had opportunity, brought forth unequalled fruits of righteousness and obedience to God.

7-8. "Know ye therefore that they which are of faith all nations be blessed." The reader will remember the words of the Lord, how He said, “If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham." The work of Abraham was first a work of faith, a work, that is, in the soul, as the Lord says, "This is the work of God, that ye believe in him whom he hath sent," and it is a work carried on in the whole life and conduct. "We walk by faith,”—“the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of

CHAP. III.]

THEY WHICH BE OF FAITH.

47

See Rom. ix,

8 And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, "In thee shall all nations be blessed.

9 So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham.

17.

ver. 22. m Gen. xii. 3. & xviii. 18. & xxii. 18. Acts iii. 25.

the Son of God." "Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith."

8. "And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith." The uniqueness of the expression, "The Scripture foreseeing," as if Scripture was personified, has been noticed. This, as shown in Bishop Ellicott's note, is a Jewish form of expression. The Syriac translates it by God (Aloho).

"Preached before the Gospel," &c. "Hereby, too, is proved another important point. For as it perplexed them that the Law was the older, and Faith came after the Law, he removes this difficulty by shewing that faith was really anterior to the Law, as is evident from Abraham's case, who was justified before the giving of the Law. He shews, too, that what had now happened fell out according to prophecy. The Scripture, says he, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, fore-announced the Gospel unto Abraham. Attend to this point. He Himself Who gave the law had decreed even before He gave it, that the heathen should be justified by faith. And he says not 'revealed' but 'preached ' the Gospel, to signify that the Patriarch was in joy at this method of Justification, and in great desire for its accomplishment" (Chrysostom).

66

9. "So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham." They which are of faith" of course means they who believe heartily in that Seed of Abraham in Whom all the nations of the earth are to be blessed. They are blessed "with Abraham." This implies that Abraham even now, whilst in the unseen world, and before the resurrection of his body, is in a state of blessedness, and truly he must be, for the Lord describes the state of the blessed dead, that they are in Abraham's bosom. 10. "For as many as are of the works of the law are under the in the book of the law to do them." The words

curse

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UNDER THE CURSE.

[GALATIANS.

10 For as many as are of the works of the law are under n Deut. xxvii. the curse: for it is written, " Cursed is every one

28. Jer. xi. 3.

n

"Are of the works of the law," can only mean those who are under the law as a means of justification.

"Cursed is every one that continueth not." The quotation is from Deut. xxvii. 26: "Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them." In the Septuagint it is, "Cursed is every man that continues not in all the words of this law to do them." The meaning of both renderings is exactly the same. When Moses wrote, "Cursed is he that," &c., he meant every one. When he says, "confirmeth not," he means "confirmeth not to do them;" he who confirms them confirms them not only in word, but in deed, and continueth so to confirm them, for the moment he ceases practically to confirm them he is under the curse.

It will be necessary now to consider, as far as we are able, the full import of this passage.

Assuming that St. Paul means by "as many as are of the works of the law" those who are under the dispensation of the law (or who put themselves under the dispensation of the law) he must mean one of two things.

(1.) Either that all those who lived from the time of the giving of the law till the time of the preaching of the Gospel were accursed. (2.) Or that those who, when the Gospel was preached refused the way of Righteousness through Christ, and adhered to the law as the means of Justification, were accursed.

are in above all other people.

If he means the former, then we have to face this enormous difficulty, that throughout the Old Testament, Israel, the "people of the works of the law every shape and way pronounced blessed Thus it was said to those under the law: "Happy art thou, O Israel: who is like unto thee, O people saved by the Lord, the shield of thy help, and who is the sword of thine excellency!" (Deut. xxxiii. 29.) The number of passages in the Psalms to this effect is enormous. "In Judah is God known: his Name is great in Israel. In Salem also is his tabernacle, and his dwelling in Zion. There brake he the arrows of the bow, the shield," &c. (Psalm lxxvi.). Again, in Isaiah, “My beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill, and he fenced it," &c. Even carefully eliminating all the places which can be reasonably

CHAP. III.]

THE BOOK OF THE LAW.

49

that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.

referred to the glories of the Messianic times, the number of places in which God declares or implies the blessedness of Israel under the law as compared with the state of the heathen is very great indeed. And yet it may be true, perfectly true-such are the mysterious paradoxes in God's word, that a people may be blessed, and yet the curse not removed. We have an illustration of this is in the term, "children of wrath." All mankind were by nature, “children of wrath," and yet, during the ages in which the nations were treasuring up wrath against themselves, God so loved them as to be designing all the time to send them a Saviour, and preparing them in various ways to receive that Saviour. Thus a human father may have expelled a disobedient son, and yet be all the time supporting him, praying most earnestly for him, and contriving means for his recovery. Thus it may have been among the Jews. The curse may not have been formally removed, as it was by the Death and Resurrection of the Lord. It may have been mitigated. It may have been suspended. The times of that ignorance God may have winked at, as He did with the Gentiles.

But we now come to the second hypothesis, that this curse came into operation when the Gospel began to be preached, and whatever might be said of those under the law before the times of the Gospel, it became then fearfully true that as many as then rejected Christ and continued under the law, were under the curse. This the Lord Himself declares when He says: 66 Ye will not come unto "If me that ye may have life." ᎩᎾ believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins." With respect to the seeming harshness of this assertion: "Cursed is every one that continueth not," &c., we must remember that its very harshness was in mercy. It was designed, if we may so say, to drive men to the Gospel, to compel them to come in, to shut them up to the faith which was revealed. And it is to be remembered that we are in no wise judges as to what the effect of any one sin is-we cannot estimate the dishonour it may do to God, the evil it may work in the Church, the paralyzing effect on our own souls. One has said that if we could see but one sin in all its possible issues of evil, we should start back as if we saw the flames of hell fire.

E