Galatians 5:7

Gal_5:7

Ye did run well; who did hinder you, that ye should not obey the truth.

I. The concession--Ye did run well.

1. Christianity is like a race.

(1) It is laborious.

(2) It is brief.

(3) It gives the prize only to the persevering.

2. Christianity differs from a race.

(1) In other races many run, but only one wins; in this all who run faithfully shall reign triumphantly.

(2) In other races one hinders another; in this one helps another.

(3) In other races the runners obtain a perishable crown; in this one, incorruptible.

II. The expostulation--Who did hinder you?

1. Satan (1Th_2:18; Zec_3:1).

2. Heretical teachers.

3. Worldly influences. (T. Adams.)

Running

I. Christian people must be runners in the race of God, which teaches us--

1. That we must make haste without delay to keep Gods commandments (Psa_119:32; Psa_119:60).

2. That we must increase in all good duties.

3. That we must look neither right nor left, but forward (Php_3:1; Luk_9:62).

4. That we must allow no man to hinder our course.

II. Christian people must not only run, but run well.

1. The two feet by which we run are faith and a good conscience.

2. Some men are lame in one or other of their feet, and are therefore hindered.

III. Christian people must run from the beginning to the end, and finish their course so as to obtain life everlasting (1Ti_6:11; 2Ti_4:7; 1Co_9:24). For which cause they must

1. Cherish a fervent desire of eternal life.

2. Maintain a daily purpose of not sinning. (W. Perkins.)

Hindrances

I. The truth demands unhindered obedience.

II. Hindrances to obedience to the truth are always to be expected. The Galatians were too hot to last. Hindrances raise from--

1. The discovery that Christianity is a daily, practical, quiet conformity to the will of Christ, arising out of steady love to Him.

2. The use of extraordinary means to revive the pleasure of spiritual sensation or sentimentality.

3. Revived zeal for the mere external performances of religion.

4. Worldly longings and sinful habits.

5. Listening to others sneering at religion.

III. The most disastrous consequences follow upon giving way to spiritual hindrances.

1. We lose our hold on saving truth.

2. Hindrances lead to the ruin of the soul.

IV. Incessant watchfulness is necessary against such hindrances. They may come--

1. Suddenly.

2. Insidiously.

3. Therefore be always on guard. (Hadji.)

Christian advancement

He only is advancing in life whose heart is getting softer, whose blood is getting warmer and brain quicker, and whose spirit is entering into living peace. (Ruskin.)

Hindrances--Riches

Atlanta, according to fable, was an athletic yet charming maiden, who challenged all her suitors to run with her in the race. She offered to become the wife of the conqueror, but attached death as a penalty to failure. Many competed with her, and lost their lives. At last Hippomenes, the judge, Overcome by her charms, offered himself for the contest. Unseen, he took three golden apples, and they sprang forth from the goal, and skimmed along the sand. Hippomenes felt himself failing, and threw down one of the golden apples to detain the virgin. She, amazed, stopped to pick it up, while he shot ahead. She soon overtook him, when he threw another apple, which she stopped to get. Again she shot by him. One apple remained, which he threw to one side; and she, selfconfident or undecided, turned aside for it; and he reached the goal, and won the prize. The golden apples defeated her, as they have many others, in the race of life.

Hindrances--Novel reading

At a prayer-meeting on March 9th Mr. J. M. Scroggie said:--At the close of an evangelistic meeting in Inverness I saw a young lady at the church door looking very sad. I spoke to her, and she told me she was a backslider. She said she was converted ten years before, and for many years enjoyed fellowship with Christ; but she began novel-reading. For awhile she read novels and the Bible side by side, but in the end the novels had the best of it, and she laid aside the Bible. She had then no desire for private prayer, and grew cold in her Christian life. She moved from the part where she was then living, and went and sat under the preaching of Dr. Black, whose earnest words showed to her that she must either give up the novels or her hope of salvation. She added, For some weeks I have been wretched: I pointed out to her suitable portions of Gods Word, and soon the light began to dawn upon her darkened soul. She went home, fell upon her knees, and after lengthened prayer, between two anti three oclock in the morning, she was able to thank God for restoration and joy and peace in Christ.

Hindered Christians

In the heathery turf you will often find a plant chiefly remarkable for its peculiar roots; from the main stem down to the minutest fibre, you will find them all abruptly terminate, as if shorn or bitten off, and the quaint superstition of the country people alleges, that once on a time it was a plant of singular potency for healing all sorts of maladies, and therefore the great enemy of man in his malignity bit off the roots, in which its virtues resided. The plant with this odd history is a very good emblem of many well-meaning but little-effecting people. They might be defined as radicibus praemorsis, or rather inceptis succisis. The efficacy of every good work lies in its completion, and all their good works terminate abruptly, and are left off unfinished. The devil frustrates their efficacy by cutting off their ends; their unprofitable history is made up of plans and projects, schemes of usefulness that were never gone about, and magnificent undertakings that were never carried forward; societies that were set ageing, then left to shift for themselves, and forlorn beings who for a time were taken up and instructed, and just when they were beginning to show symptoms of improvement were cast on the world again. (James Hamilton, D. D.)

Spiritual declension

When visiting a gentleman in England, I observed a fine canary. Admiring his beauty, the gentleman replied, Yes, he is beautiful, but he has lost; his voice. He used to be a fine singer, but I was in the habit of hanging his cage out of the window, the sparrows came around him with their incessant chirping, gradually he ceased to sing and learned their twitter, and now all that he can do is to twitter, twitter. Oh! how truly does this represent the case of many Christians; they used to delight to sing the songs of Zion, but they came into close association with those whose notes never rise so high, until at last, like the canary, they can do nothing but twitter, twitter. (D. L. Moody.)

Religious decline

This disease is one which, like that fatal malady which leaves the cheek beautiful and the eye brilliant whilst it rapidly undermines the strength, may allow external appearances to continue specious and flattering, though the work of death is fast going on within.

I. Signs of spiritual decline.

1. Remissness in spiritual exercises.

(1) Prayer.

(2) Bible reading.

(3) Church-going.

2. Want of interest in the conversion of others.

3. Worldliness.

4. Laxness in creed.

II. The dangers of this state.

1. Difficult to restore decayed affection. If the fire be once out, almost impossible to rekindle the embers.

2. The longer any one goes on in this state, the less likely he is to retrace his steps. (H. Melvill, B. D.)

Spiritual declension insidious

It is the insidiousness of the disease which makes it so difficult to cope with, and so likely to be fatal. The resemblance is continually forced upon us, between what our medical men call consumption, and what our theologians call spiritual declension. You know very well that the presence of consumption is often scarcely suspected, till the patient is indeed past recovery. The worm has been eating out the Core of life, and yet its ravages have been overlooked, for the victim has hardly seemed to languish, and if the hectic flush may have occasionally excited a parents fears, they have been quickly allayed by the assurance that no pain was felt, and by the smile that seemed prophetic of life And even when no doubt could exist in the minds of others as to the presence and progress of the malady, it is, we might almost say, one symptom of the complaint, that it flatters the patient, so that often he may be expecting recovery even on the day of his death. Now this disease, so insidious, so flattering, so fatal, is the exact picture of spiritual decline. There is, indeed, one point of difference; but that only makes the moral malady the more formidable of the two. It may be hard to make the consumptive patient see his danger, but that disease is apparent enough to others; friends and neighbours, however unsuspicious at the first, become well aware of the painful truth, as disease is more and more confirmed. But where there is spiritual decline, it may be unsuspected to the last. Ministers and kinsmen may perceive no difference in the man; equally regular in the public duties of religion, equally large in his charities, equally honourable in his dealings, equally pure in his morals. The fatal symptoms may be all internal; and because they are not such as to draw observation, there may be no warning given by ethers; and the sick man, not examining himself, and not finding that his religious friends suppose his health to be on the decline, will be all the more likely to be persuaded of his safety, and to learn his disease, alas! only from his death. See to it, then, whether or not there be amongst you this spiritual cankerworm. You may find out by the symptoms already indicated, whether or not you are in any measure ceasing to run well. But you must be honest and bold with yourselves. The case is not one for trifling. You are not to shrink from proving yourselves diseased. Go down into your hearts; try the pulse there; use the thermometer there. Stay not upon the surface, where a thousand things may preserve the appearance of animation, and induce what may pass for the glow of life and health; but descend into yourselves, search into yourselves, and be content with no evidence but that of an increasing love of God and an increasing hatred of sin. (H. Melvill, B. D.)

Hindrances to a godly life

Christian life fitly compared to a race: soon over, and followed by a prize to the winner: a hard struggle while it lasts. But how often does one who began by running well relax his efforts and fall back! What are the causes of this--the obstacles that come in the way of Christian endeavour?

I. Corrupt heart. This remains even in the best. It inclines us to sin; and unless we resist the inclination, sin gets the mastery over us, and we are slaves. One bad habit, thus contracted, is enough to ruin the soul. Our only safety lies in the help of God, He will give His Holy Spirit to them that ask Him.

II. Bad example. We are greatly influenced by -what we see in others. Sometimes an influence is exerted purposely to corrupt us. At school. At home. Be careful in the choice of companions. Be stedfast in doing the right, even if alone.

III. Want of good guidance in youth. An un-favourable start is a terrible obstacle. But God will bestow His blessing on those who love and fear Him, wherever their lot has cast them. (R. D. B. Rawnsley, M. A.)

Warning against defection

1. A Christian life is like a course or race from earth to heaven by the way of holiness and all commanded duties, especially the exercise of faith and love; therefore we ought to carry, ourselves as those who run in a race.

2. It is very ordinary for new converts to be carried on with a greater measure of affection and zeal, and to make swifter progress than others, or they themselves afterwards, when they are of older standing; the newness of the thing, the first edge which is upon their affections, not yet blunted by change of cases and multiplicity of duties, and Gods restraining for a time the violent assault of multiplied furious temptations until they be a little confirmed and engaged in His way, together with His affording a more plentiful measure of His sensible presence at first than afterwards, all contribute to this.

3. As those who once made good progress in the ways of God may afterwards sit up, their after-carriage proving no ways answerable to their promising beginnings; so, when it thus happens, it is matter of sad regret to beholders, and of deserved reproof to the persons themselves.

4. No satisfactory reason can be given for which any, who has once entered the way of truth and holiness, should alter his course, halt in it, or make defection from it, and thereby cause the ways of God to be evil spoken of (2Pe_2:2).

5. When people fall remiss and lazy in giving obedience to known truth, they are upon the very brink and precipice of defection into contrary error, and of apostasy from the very profession of truth.

6. The serious consideration of a mans former forwardness in the ways of God, and how little reason can be given for his present backsliding and remissness, is a strong incitement to do the first works, and by future diligence to regain what he has lost by his former negligence. (James Fergusson.)

Obstructions to spiritual progress

What are the conditions which alone could frustrate the progress upon a river of a strong man and an expert rower, placed in a good and swift boat, and furnished with oars? Such an one might either not use the oars at all, or use only one of them; the result in each case would be practically much the same. In both cases the boat would drift with the stream; the only difference would be that, when one oar was vigorously applied, the boat, in addition to drifting, would move round and round in a circle, and might perhaps for a while mock the rower by the semblance of progress. In spiritual things there are those who are utterly careless and godless--dead alike to the claims of religion and to its hopes. These are they who, launched upon the stream of life, quietly drift down it, giving no thought to the life which is to come after, and seeking only to gather the few perishable flowers which grow upon the brink. And, among persons of more serious mind, there are those who are willing indeed that Christ should do all for them, but have never surrendered themselves to Him to be and do all that He requires. And there are those, on the other hand, who have surrendered the will to Christ, and are making efforts to obey Him; but because they perceive not this simple truth, that they cannot sanctify themselves, that sanctification from first to last, like justification, must be wrought for us by Him,--are constantly met by failures and disappointments, which a simple trust in Him to do all for them can alone remedy. Both these last are they who are rowing with one oar, moving indeed, but moving in a circle, and coming round always to the same point from which they started--deluding themselves for a while by the very fact of their motion with the idea that they are progressing, and often bitterly complaining, as soon as they are undeceived, that they are making no way. And, finally, there are those who are equally well contented to give all to Christ which they have to give (that is, their will), and to take all from Him which He has to give--sanctification and wisdom, as well as righteousness--who in one and the same act of faith have renounced both self-will and self-distrust. These are they who are rowing with two oars, and so realizing a true progress towards that haven where they would be. Show me a man who is both giving to Christ all he has to give, i.e., his will, and at the same time taking from Christ all Christ has to give, which is a perfect salvation from Sins guilt, power, and consequences; and I will show you a man who is growing in grace, and advancing daily in meetness for the inheritance of the saints in light. And if we find ourselves not thus growing and advancing, and yet are certainly well-disposed persons of some seriousness of mind, it is, no doubt, that we are endeavouring to push the boat forward with only one of the oars, to reach that holiness without which no man shall see the Lord, with trust in Christ alone, or with self-surrender alone. Apply the other oar simultaneously, and the bark shall at once begin to cleave the water, as an arrow cleaves the air, straight forward. (Dean Goulburn.)

Want of perseverance

The leopard does not run after his prey like other beasts, but pursues it by leaping; and if at three or four jumps he cannot seize it, for very indignation he gives over the chase. They are some who, if they cannot leap into heaven by a few good works, will even let it alone; as if it were to be ascended by leaping, not by climbing. But they are most unwise, who, having got up many rounds of Jacobs ladder, and finding difficulties in some of the uppermost--whether a-wrestling with assaults and troubles, or looking down upon their old allurements--even fairly descend with Demas, and allow others to take heaven. (T. Adams.)

Fickleness

Many are soon engaged in holy duties, easily persuaded to take up a profession of religion--and as easily persuaded to lay it down: like the new moon which shines a little in the first part of the night, but is down before half the night be gone; lightsome professors in their youth, whose old age is wrapped up in thick darkness of sin and wickedness. (W. Gurnall.)

What congregation cannot show some who have outlived their profession? Not unlike the silkworm which, they say, after all her spinning, works herself out of her bottom, and becomes a common fly. As the disciples said of the literal temple, See what manner of stones are here, so we once said of the spiritual temple; but now, not one stone upon another. (W. Gurnall.)

The nature of backsliding

Backsliding is the act of turning from the path of duty. It may be considered as--

1. Partial, when applied to true believers, who do not backslide with the whole bent of their will.

2. Voluntary, when applied to those who, after professing to know the truth, wilfully turn from it and live in the practice of sin.

3. Final, when the mind is given up to judicial hardness. Partial backsliding must be distinguished from hypocrisy, as the former may exist when there are gracious intentions on the whole; but the latter is a studied profession of appearing to be what we are not. (C. Buck.)

Signs of backsliding

Among the evidences of backsliding are these--

1. Indifference to prayer and self-examination.

2. Trifling or unprofitable conversation.

3. Neglect of public ordinances.

4. Shunning the people of God.

5. Associating with the world.

6. Neglect of the Bible.

7. Gross immorality. (C. Buck.)

Gradual back-sliding

We warn you against little concessions, little acquiescences, little indulgences, little conformities. Each may only destroy the millionth part of the velocity; but this destruction of a millionth has only to be perpetually repeated, and the planets march is arrested, and its lustre is quenched. If vital religion be driven out of the soul, it will be as the Canaanites were to be driven before the Israelites, by little and little. (H. Melvill, B. D.)

At Preston, at Malines, at many such places, the lines go gently asunder; so fine is the angle, that at first the paths are almost parallel, and it seems of small moment which you select. But a little farther one turns a corner, or dives into a tunnel; and, now that the speed is full, the angle opens up, and, at the rate of a mile a minute, the divided convoy flies asunder; one passenger is on the way to Italy, another to the swamps of Holland; one will step out in London, the other in the Irish Channel. It is not enough that you look for the better country; you must keep the way; and a small deviation may send you entirely wrong. (J. Hamilton, D. D.)

Spasmodic religion

Nay, sometimes those motions in natural men under the gospel may be more quick, and warm, and violent for a time than the natural motion of this habit; as the motion of a stone out of a sling is quicker than that of life, but faints by degrees, because it is from a source impressed, not implanted and inherent in the nature. They are just like water heated by the fire, which has a fit of warmth, and may heat other things; but though you should heat it a thousand times, the quality not being natural, will vanish, and the water return to its former coldness. But the new heart being in the new creature causes him to walk in the statutes of God, not by fits and starts, but with an uniform and harmonious motion. (S. Charnock.)

Hindrances

(1) Worldliness:--Mrs. Hannah More once took Dr. Sprague to her window to show him what she called her Moral Prospect. Not far from her house was a little clump of trees and bushes, covering a few yards of ground. At some considerable distance was a little forest covering some acres. If one would place this small cluster between him and the larger, the latter was quite hidden from view. So, said Mrs. More, the things of time being near, seem great, and so hide from our view the things of eternity. (Rev. Dr. Plumer.)

(2) Evil company:--Saphronius, a wise teacher, would not suffer even his grown-up sons and daughters to associate with those whose character was not pure and upright. Dear father, said the gentle Eulalia to him one day, when he forbade her, in company with her brother, to visit the volatile Lucinda,--dear father, you must think us very childish if you imagine that we should be exposed to danger by it. The father took in silence a dead coal from the hearth, and reached it to his daughter. It will not burn you, my child; take it. Eulalia did so, and behold! her beautiful white hand was soiled and blackened, and, as it chanced, her white dress also. We cannot be too careful in handling coals, said Eulaiia, in vexation. Yes, truly, said the father. You see, my child, the coals, even if they do not burn, blacken; so it is with the company of the vicious. (From the German.)

(3) Neglect of prayer:--When a pump is frequently used, but little pains are necessary to obtain water; it flows out at the first stroke, because the water is high. But if the pump has not been used for a long time the water gets low, and, when it is wanted, you must pump a great while, and the stream only comes after great efforts. And so it is with prayer: if we are instant in it and faithful in it, every little circumstance awakens the disposition to pray, and desires and words are always ready. But if we neglect prayer, it is difficult for us to pray, for the water in the well gets low. (Felix Neff.)

(4) Unsubdued sins:--The horse that draws its halter with it, says the proverb, is only half escaped; so long as any remnant of a sinful habit remains in us, we make but an idle boast of our liberty; we may be caught, and by that which we drag with us. True and seasonable is the remark of Adams of Puritan times--He who will not be a mortified saint on earth shall never be a glorified saint in heaven. (C. Nell.)

(5) Unworthy trifles:--A lost pound of candy delayed a train crowded with passengers for a considerable time on June 24th, at New London, U.S. Just as the special train was about to start, a well-dressed young man went to- the guard and asked him if he would delay his train a few minutes while he went for a valuable package he had mislaid. He replied, I will, and kindly waited. The young man sped on his mission and returned without finding his package. The guard then gave the signal to start. Thinking there might have been Government bonds or priceless jewels in the missing package, he asked the young man what was in it, that he might aid him in recovering it. At first the young man declined to answer, but he finally replied, A pound of French candy. The guards chagrin at having lost time and hindered over fifty passengers for so trifling a cause may be imagined.

Various hindrances

Never censure indiscriminately; admit and praise that which is good, that you may the more effectually rebuke the evil. Paul did not hesitate to praise the Galatians, and say, Ye did run well. It is a source of much pleasure to see saints running well. To do this they must run in the right road, straight forward, perseveringly, at the top of their pace, with their eye on Christ, etc. It is a great grief when such are hindered or put off the road. The way is the truth, and the running is obedience; men are hindered when they cease to obey the truth. It may be helpful to try and find out who has hindered us in our race.

1. We shall use the text in reference to hindered believers.

I. You are evidently hindered.

(1) You are not so loving and zealous as you were.

(2) You are quitting the old faith for new notions.

(3) You are losing your first joy and peace.

(4) You are not now leaving the world and self behind.

(5) You are not now abiding all the day with your Lord.

2. Who has hindered you?

(1) Did I do it? Pray, then, for your minister.

(2) Did your fellow-members do it? You ought to have been proof against them; they could not have intended it. Pray for them.

(3) Did the world do it? Why so much in it?

(4) Did the devil do it? Resist him.

(5) Did you not do it yourself? This is highly probable.

(a) Did you not overload yourself with worldly care?

(b) did you not indulge carnal ease?

(c) Did you not by pride become self-satisfied?

(d) Did you not neglect prayer, Bible reading, the public means of grace, the Lords Table, etc.? Mend your ways, and do not hinder your own soul.

(e) Did not false teachers do it, as in the case of the Galatians? If so, quit them at once, and listen only to the gospel of Christ.

3. You must look to it, and mend your pace.

(1) Your loss has been already great. You might by this time have been far on upon the road.

(2) Your natural tendency will be to slacken still more.

(3) Your danger is great of being overtaken by error and sin.

(4) Your death would come of ceasing to obey the truth.

(5) Your wisdom is to cry for help, that you may run aright.

II. We shall use the text in reference to delaying sinners.

1. You have sometimes been set a-running.

(1) God has blessed His Word to your arousing.

(2) God has not yet given you up; this is evident.

(3) Gods way of salvation still lies open before you;

2. What has hindered you?

(1) Self-righteousness and trust in yourself?

(2) Carelessness, procrastination, and neglect?

(3) Love of self-indulgence, or the secret practice of pleasurable sins?

(4) Frivolous, sceptical, or wicked companions?

(5) Unbelief and mistrust of Gods mercy?

3. The worst evils will come of being hindered.

(1) Those who will not obey truth will become the dupes of lies.

(2) Truth not obeyed is disobeyed, and so sin is multiplied.

(3) Truth disregarded becomes an accuser, and its witness secures our condemnation.

Conclusion:

1. God have mercy on hinderers. We must rebuke them.

2. God have mercy on the hindered. We would arouse them. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

A wrong maxim

Cecil says that some adopt the Indian maxim, that it is better to walk than to run, and better to stand than to walk, and better to sit than to stand, and better to lie than to sit. Such is not the teaching of the gospel. It is a good thing to be walking in the ways of God, but it is better to be running--making real and visible progress, day by day advancing in experience and attainments. David likens the sun to a strong man rejoicing to run a race; not dreading it and shrinking back from it, but delighting in the opportunity of putting forth all his powers. Who so runs, runs well. (The Christian.)

A difficult race

The Christian race is by no means easy. We are so let and hindered in running the race that is set before us, because of--

1. Our sinful nature still remaining in the holiest saints.

2. Some easily-besetting sin (Heb_12:1).

3. The entanglements of the world, like heavy and close-fitting garments, impeding the racers speed.

4. Our weakness and infirmity, soon tired and exhausted, when the race is long or the road is rough. (G. S. Bowes.)

Hinderers

It is possible that fellow-professors may hinder. We are often obliged to accommodate our pace to that of our fellow-travellers. If they are laggards we are very likely to be so too. We are apt to sleep as do others. We are stimulated or depressed, urged on or held back, by those with whom we are associated in Christian fellowship. There is still greater reason to fear that in many eases worldly friends and companions are the hinderers. Indeed, they can be nothing else. None can help us in the race but those who are themselves running it; all others must hinder. Let a Christian form an intimate friendship with an ungodly person, and from that moment all progress is stayed; he must go back; for when his companion is going in the opposite direction, how can he walk with him except by turning his back upon the path which he has formerly trodden? (P.)

A sailor remarks

Sailing from Cuba, we thought we had gained sixty miles one day in our course; but at the next observation we found we had lost more than thirty. It was an under-current. The ship had been going forward by the wind, but going back by the current. So a mans course in religion may often seem to be right and progressive, but the under-current of his besetting sins is driving him the very contrary way to what he thinks. (Cheever.)

Hindrances to religious life

I propose to discuss some of those causes which prevent growth and development of religious life. I shall not stop to illustrate the evil influences of overt and known wickedness. I shall select, therefore, only some less apparent, but nevertheless influential causes which produce barrenness in Christian life. Let me say, preliminarily, that there are a great many persons who seem to need no special religious teachings, for one of two opposite reasons. There is one class who are so evenly adjusted in their faculties, so well balanced in mind constitutionally, and who from birth are so Christianly educated, and who are so genially affected by parents, friends, and social connections, and who have all the appointments of society so fitted round about them, that when they become Christians their life seems to be a tranquil and almost unresisting progress. Then there is another large class to whom I do not speak particularly, namely, those persons who have--I know not how, and they know not how--made a profession of religion;--I know not why, and they know not why;--but still they have done it, and are in the Church; and that is about the whole of it. Other people have their difficulties about prayer; they have none, for they do not pray. Other people have their difficulties about the sacred Scriptures; they do not read the Scriptures enough to be troubled by them. The Bible seldom troubles people who do not meddle with it. Other people have their temptations; they have none that they recognize as such. They have temptations, but they yield so easily to them that they are not disturbed by them. Those who have no religious conscience, and whose life is one of quiet compliance with circumstances as they are--it is not particularly to such that I speak to-day. The third class--which is the great middle class--consists of persons who are professedly Christian people, but who have great and almost unceasing religious difficulties.

I. The want of general technical religious culture is one obvious cause of confusion and distress. Men may enjoy little for the very same reason that some farmers reap little--because they sow little and till little. This is the natural poverty which comes from the want of religious thrift. The tendency of our age and nation is particularly to external activity, not to internal meditations. This excessive activity carries us away, and exhausts our susceptibility. How can it be-but that Christians should be weak, when there is so much to stimulate, and so little to feed them?

II. But, secondly, the endeavours which men are continually making to live a religious life while using only a part of their natures, will explain a great many difficulties which Christians experience. It is to be assumed that man is a symmetrical being in his Divinely created nature; that every part of that nature was needed, or God would not have given it, and that no man can become what God meant, who does not develop every part of himself according to the spirit of Christianity. To take every faculty or power God has given you, and bring it under Divine influences, and make it act right--that is being a Christian; and all partialisms, by just so much as they are partialisms, are, therefore, misunderstandings or misappropriations of Christian truth. Let us specify a few. First, our religion must always aim at a good and healthy condition of the body. Health is a Christian grace. It is the mother of almost all the Christian graces; so much so that in respect of multitudes, although it is not difficult for them to exercise Christian graces when they are perfectly healthy, it is almost impossible for them to do it when they are not healthy. What they supposed to be an infernal temptation was the protest of nature in themselves. Our appetites and passions are all of them to be controlled, used, sanctified--not killed. So all our social affections must be used, Christianized, and made to be a part of our Christian life. They are not to be regarded as alternatives, but as parts of true Christian experience. It is sometimes said that we are to distinguish between the natural affections and the gracious ones. I do not know of any gracious affections that are not natural ones. Natural affections, rightly directed, become, by that very rectitude, gracious. Your store, your office, your shop, your family, your neighbourhood, the street--these are not so many things that you must resist for the sake of grace. On the contrary, you must deal with them as the means of grace.

III. Thirdly, men are left in an ungrowing and barren state from an ignorance of the various influences or instruments by which religious feeling may be cultivated. Let me mention a few of those things which observation and experience have taught me to be instrumental in promoting religious feeling. I have mentioned already, and shall mention again only for the sake of completeness, secret religious exercise, as one of the things that promote Christian feeling. I will mention, next, sympathy with other minds. I have never seen a tree whose leaves sung, unless, somehow, the wind was caused to play among them; but the leaves of any tree will sing when the wind does play through them. And there are a great many hearts that do not sing because nothing moves them to sing. Then there are some persons who seem so constituted that their religious feelings almost never flow so readily as when they act for other people. They are persons of great constitutional benevolence. They make benevolence their conscience. When they go forth into life, benevolence is their guiding principle. Such persons oftentimes say, I never can have deep religious feelings by ordinary means; but when such a man was in trouble, and told me of the wants of his family--his wife and children--and I took my hat and went home with him, and mingled my tears with theirs, it did seem as if I was not a hand-breadth from heaven. I never had such a sense of the goodness of God as I had then. Probably you were never so near like God as you were then. No wonder you felt near Him. You are not far from Him when you get so near Him as to give your time and energies for the good of His needy creatures. There are many persons who are very little affected by social sympathy, or music, or art, or any of the other influences to which I have referred, but who would be amazingly lifted up if they could have certain doubts which they have concerning their religious safety purged away. Oh, how many different ways there are by which God comes into the soul! The great God, so prolific of thought, so endless in diversity of function, has a million ways by which to express Himself. He, in His power, works on the soul, not through one thing alone--not alone through steeple, nor meetinghouse, nor lecture-room, nor closet, though often and much through these; but through all things--through the heavenly bodies, and animals, and insects, and worms, and clouds, and mountains, and oceans, and rivers, and the productions of the earth; and not by these only, but by everything that affects mans comfort and happiness in this life--by store and anvil, and plane and saw, and hospital and poor-house, and music and forms of beauty, and sweet feelings and trials, and sufferings and victories over temptation, and light and darkness, and joy and sorrow, and ten thousand unnameable subtle influences that touch the human soul; by all these God reveals His greatness and goodness to us, that He may win us to Himself, and make us heirs of immortality; and, blessed be His name, not to us alone who are here, but to every one, everywhere! (H. W. Beecher.)

Obeying the truth

To obey the truth is to feel and act agreeably to it. It implies such a state of the heart, and such a comformation of conduct, as comports with the nature of the things revealed and believed. As, for example, the truth relates in part to the character of God, which it represents to be infinitely excellent and amiable. To obey that truth is to admire and love the Divine character, for those are the feelings appropriate to it. Is it the greatness of God that is the object of contemplation? The duty is veneration. Is it His sovereignty? The duty is submission. Is it His law? The duty is compliance with all its requisitions. Does the truth relate to the subject of sin? Then the duty is repentance. Does it relate to the Saviour? The duty is faith and trust in Him. We may learn hence the high importance, yea, necessity of apprehending and believing the truth. It cannot otherwise be obeyed. Obedience to truth not known or not credited is impossible. We may learn also the insignificance and worthlessness of mere faith and knowledge. To believe there is a God and not love Him; to have a knowledge of Christ, without trust in Him, or of sin without repenting of it, what is that worth? The obedience of the truth is religion. There can be no better definition of it, unless it be one which we find in Scriptures, viz., this faith that worketh by love. There is no other religion worth anything, or availing aught,but that which answers to this description. The obedience of error is not religion, nor is the belief of truth religion. Sincerity is not religion, nor is orthodoxy, but the obedience of the truth. To obey the truth is not anything that can be done at once, or that requires to be done only at stated periods. Religion is not a job, which, being done, there is an end of it; not a mere arrears to be paid up, or a mere score to be wiped off. The truth must be perseveringly obeyed. There is such a thing (would there were not) as declension in religion. The Galatians declined. Paul heard of it, and wrote to them on the subject. How melancholy it is that men should turn away from God, that they should grow worse, as they get nearer the grave and the judgment! If we see no indications of declension in you, yet He who sees not as man sees may. In some of you, however, even we do see them. There is a visible diminution of interest in the things of religion. And I ask you, professor of religion, what it was that hindered you. What first drew you away; how did this declension commence; and where did it commence, and how did it first manifest itself? What sin did you fall into, what duty omit, what was it that you suffered yourself to become inordinately attached to? And you who neither profess nor possess religion, I ask you what hindered you from becoming a penitent disciple of Christ at that time to which I have alluded. Although the hindrance in every case is not precisely the same, yet there is a passage of Scripture which is applicable to every case. A deceived heart hath turned him aside. Whenever one either totally or partially departs from the living God, it is because of an evil heart of unbelief that is in him. And there is another passage which applies perhaps to every case of defection. Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world. That phrase, the world, is a very comprehensive one. It includes everything which may be preferred to God. It includes persons and things. It comprehends profit, pleasure, and honour; your business, your profession, your family. One loves the world in this aspect of it, another in that. In what shape or phase of it, it drew away and destroyed Demas, I do not know. By what one of its many chains it binds you, I cannot tell; perhaps by one of such delicate materials, and so finely drawn, that it is scarcely, if at all, perceptible. (W. Nevins, D. D.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Gal 5:7-10. Ye did run well — In the race of faith, love, and obedience; in true, genuine Christianity; believing its truths, experiencing its graces, enjoying its privileges, performing its duties. The exercises of faith and holiness, enjoined in the gospel, are often in Scripture compared to the ancient athletic exercises of the Greeks, especially to the race; because in that exercise the greatest exertions of activity and strength were necessary to obtain the prize, Heb 12:1. Who did hinder you — Who hath interrupted you in that good course; that ye should not continue to obey the truth? — In this question the apostle does not ask who the person was that had put a stop to them; but he expresses his surprise and grief at their being stopped. This persuasion — Concerning the Mosaic law, and the necessity of observing it in order to your justification and salvation; cometh not of God, who calleth you — To his kingdom and glory. A little leaven — If it be suffered to continue; leaveneth the whole lump — Operates unseen, till it diffuses itself on every side: that is, a little false doctrine may soon corrupt the judgment in other points, and a small number of seduced persons may soon infect the whole church. It is a proverbial expression, in which the pernicious and infectious nature of erroneous doctrine and vicious example is set forth. Hence our Lord gave the name of leaven to the doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees, Mat 16:11-12. The same name the apostle gives to the doctrine of the Judaizing teachers in this passage, and to the incestuous person, 1Co 5:7. Yet I have confidence in you — That, on reading this, and being thus warned of your danger; you will be no otherwise minded — Than I am, and ye were, concerning the doctrine of justification by faith; but he that troubleth you — And would pervert your minds from the purity of the faith; shall bear his judgment — A heavy burden, already hanging over his head. The apostle seems to refer to one person chiefly, as endeavouring to seduce them.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES

Gal_5:9. A little leaven.—Of false doctrine, a small amount of evil influence.

Gal_5:10. He that troubleth you.—The leaven traced to personal agency; whoever plays the troubler. Shall bear his judgment.—Due and inevitable condemnation from God.

Gal_5:11. Then is the offence of the cross ceased.—The offence, the stumbling-block, to the Jew which roused his anger was not the shame of Messiah crucified, but the proclamation of free salvation to all, exclusive of the righteousness of human works.

Gal_5:12. I would they were cut off which trouble you.—Self-mutilated, an imprecation more strongly expressed in chap. Gal_1:8-9. Christian teachers used language in addressing Christians in the then heathen world that would be regarded as intolerable in modern Christendom, purified and exalted by Christ through their teachings.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Gal_5:7-12

Disturber of the Faith—

I. Checks the prosperous career of the most ardent Christian.—“Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?” (Gal_5:7). The Galatians were charmed with the truth as it fell from the lips of the apostle; it was to them a new revelation; they eagerly embraced it, it changed their lives, and they strove to conform their conduct to its high moral teachings. The apostle was delighted with the result, and commended their Christian enthusiasm. They were running finely. But the intrusion of false teaching changed all this. Their progress was arrested, their faith was disturbed, they wavered in their allegiance, and were in danger of losing all the advantages they had gained. The influence of false doctrine is always baneful, especially so to new beginners, in whom the principles of truth have not become firmly rooted. The loss of truth, like inability to believe, may be traced back to an unhealthy corruption of the mind. The great danger of unsound doctrine lies in this, that, like a cancer, it rankles because it finds in the diseased condition of the religious life ever fresh nourishment.

II. Is opposed to the divine method of justification.—“This persuasion cometh not of Him that calleth you” (Gal_5:8). The disturber of the Galatians taught a human method of salvation—a salvation by the works of the law. This was diametrically opposed to the divine calling, which is an invitation to the whole race to seek salvation by faith. The persuasion to which the Galatians were yielding was certainly not of God. It was a surrender to the enemy. All error is a wild fighting against God, an attempt to undermine the foundations that God has fixed for man’s safety and happiness.

III. Suggests errors that are contagious in their evil influence.—“A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump” (Gal_5:9). A proverbial expression the meaning of which is at once obvious. A small infusion of false doctrine, or the evil influence of one bad person, corrupts the purity of the gospel. It is a fact well known in the history of science and philosophy that men, gifted by nature with singular intelligence, have broached the grossest errors and even sought to undermine the grand primitive truths on which human virtue, dignity, and hope depend. The mind that is always open to search into error is itself in error, or at least unstable (1Co_15:33; Ecc_9:18).

IV. Shall not escape chastisement whatever his rank or pretensions.—

1. Either by direct divine judgment. “He that troubleth you shall bear his judgment, whosoever he be” (Gal_5:10). The reference here may be to some one prominent among the seducers, or to any one who plays the troubler. God will not only defend His own truth, but will certainly punish the man who from wicked motives seeks to corrupt the truth or to impair the faith of those who have embraced it. The seducer not only deceives himself, but shall suffer judgment for his self-deception and the injury he has done to others.

2. Or by excision from the Church.—“I would they were even cut off which trouble you” (Gal_5:12). An extravagant expression, as if the apostle said, Would that the Judaising troublers would mutilate themselves, as was the custom with certain heathen priests in some of their religious rites. The phrase indicates the angry contempt of the apostle for the legalistic policy, and that the troublers richly deserved to be excluded from the Church and all its privileges. The patience of the Gentile champion was exhausted, and found relief for the moment in mocking invective.

V. Does not destroy the hope and faith of the true teacher.—

1. He retains confidence in the fidelity of those who have been temporarily disturbed. “I have confidence in you through the Lord, that ye will be none otherwise minded” (Gal_5:10). Notwithstanding the insidious leaven, the apostle cherishes the assurance that his converts will after all prove leal and true at heart. He has faithfully chided them for their defection, but his anger is directed, not towards them, but towards those who have injured them. He is persuaded the Galatians will, with God’s help, resume the interrupted race they were running so well.

2. His sufferings testify that his own teaching is unchanged.—“If I preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? Then is the offence of the cross ceased” (Gal_5:11). The rancour and hostility of the legalists would have been disarmed, if Paul advocated their doctrine, and the scandalous “offence of the cross”—so intolerable to Jewish pride—would have been done away. But the cross was the grand vital theme of all his teaching, that in which he most ardently gloried, and for which he was prepared to endure all possible suffering. The value of truth to a man is what he is willing to suffer for it.

Lessons.—

1. The man who perverts the truth is an enemy to his kind.

2. The false teacher ensures his own condemnation.

3. Truth becomes more precious the more we suffer for it.

GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES

Gal_5:7-10. How Perfection is attained.—Everything in the universe comes to its perfection by drill and marching—the seed, the insect, the animal, the man, the spiritual man. God created man at the lowest point, and put him in a world where almost nothing would be done for him, and almost everything should tempt him to do for himself.—Beecher.

Gal_5:7. The Christian Life a Race.

I. Christians are runners in the race of God.—

1. They must make haste without delay to keep the commandments of God. It is a great fault for youth and others to defer amendment till old age, or till the last and deadly sickness. That is the time to end our running, and not to begin.

2. We are to increase and profit in all good duties. We in this age do otherwise. Either we stand at a stay or go back. There are two causes for this:

(1) Blindness of mind.

(2) Our unbelief in the article of life everlasting.

3. We must neither look to the right nor the left hand, or to things behind, but press forward to the prize of eternal life.

4. We must not be moved with the speeches of men which are given of us, for or against. They are lookers on, and must have their speeches. Our care must be not to heed them, but look to our course.

II. Christians must not only be runners, but run well.—This is done by believing and obeying, having faith and a good conscience. These are the two feet by which we run. We have one good foot—our religion—which is sound and good; but we halt on the other foot. Our care to keep conscience is not suitable to our religion. Three things cause a lameness in this foot: the lust of the eye—covetousness, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life.

III. Christians must run the race from the beginning to the end.—

1. We must cherish a love and fervent desire of eternal life, and by this means be drawn through all miseries and overpass them to the end.

2. We must maintain a constant and daily purpose of not sinning.—Perkins.

Bad Companions.—“Bad company,” wrote Augustine, “is like a nail driven into a post, which, after the first or second blow, may be drawn out with very little difficulty; but being once driven up to the head, the pincers cannot take hold to draw it out, which can only be done by the destruction of the wood.” Of course it is useless to define bad company. Men and women, boys and girls, feel instinctively when they have fallen in with dangerous associates; if they choose to remain amongst them they are lost. So in the high tides, barks of light draught will float over Goodwin quicksands; in summer at low tide the venturous boys and young people will play cricket thereon; but neither can remain long in the neighbourhood. The time comes when the sands are covered with but a thin surface of water, and beneath is the shifting, loose, wet earth, more dangerous and treacherous than springtide ice; and then it is that to touch is to be drawn in, and to be drawn in is death. So is it with bad company.—The Gentle Life.

Cowardly Retreat.—General Grant relates that just as he was hoping to hear a report of a brilliant movement and victory of General Sigel, he received an announcement from General Halleck to this effect: “Sigel is in full retreat on Strasburg; he will do nothing but run; never did anything else.” The enemy had intercepted him, handled him roughly, and he fled.

Gal_5:8-10. The Disintegrating Force of Error.—

1. Whatever persuasion cometh not of God, and is not grounded on the word of truth, is not to be valued, but looked upon as a delusion (Gal_5:8).

2. The Church of Christ, and every particular member thereof, ought carefully to resist the first beginnings of sin, for the least of errors and the smallest number of seduced persons are here compared to leaven, a little quantity of which secretly insinuates itself and insensibly conveys its sourness to the whole lump (Gal_5:9).

3. The minister is not to despair of the recovery of those who oppose themselves, but ought in charity to hope the best of all men, so long as they are curable; and to show how dangerous their error was by denouncing God’s judgment against their prime seducers (Gal_5:10).

4. So just is God, He will suffer no impenitent transgressor, however subtle, to escape His search, or pass free from the dint of His avenging stroke, whoever he be for parts, power, or estimation.—Fergusson.

Gal_5:9. Reform of Bad Manners.

I. We must resist and withstand every particular sin.—One sin is able to defile the whole life of man. One fly is sufficient to mar a whole box of sweet ointment. One offence in our first parents brought corruption on them and all mankind; yea, on heaven and earth.

II. We must endeavour to the utmost to cut off every bad example in the societies of men.—One bad example is sufficient to corrupt a whole family, a town, a country. A wicked example, being suffered, spreads abroad and does much hurt.

III. We are to withstand and cut off the first beginnings and occasions of sin.—We say of arrant thieves they begin to practise their wickedness in pins and points. For this cause, idleness, excessive eating, drinking and swilling, riot, and vanity in apparel are to be suppressed in every society as the breeder of many vices.—Perkins.

Gal_5:11. The Perversion of Apostolic Preaching.—There are two attempts or resolves in constant operation as to the cross. One is man’s, to accommodate to human liking and taste; the second is God’s, to raise human liking and taste to it.

I. The aim of man.—The following may be named as the principal exceptions taken to the cross by those who rejected it:—

1. It was an improbable medium of revelation.—Man can talk loudly how God should manifest Himself. Shall the cross be the oracle by which He will speak His deepest counsels to our race?

2. It was a stigma on this religion which set it in disadvantageous contrast with every other.—It was unheard of that the vilest of all deaths should give its absolute character to a religion, and that this religion of the cross should triumph over all.

3. It was a violent disappointment of a general hope.—There was a desire of all nations. And was all that the earliest lay rehearsed, all that the highest wisdom enounced, only to be wrought out in the shameful cross?

4. It was a humiliating test.—Ambition, selfishness, insincerity, licentiousness, ferocity, pride, felt that it was encircled with an atmosphere in which they were instantly interrupted and condemned. Man is desirous of doing this away as a wrongful and unnecessary impression. He would make the offence of the cross to cease:

(1) By fixing it upon some extrinsic authority.

(2) By torturing it into coalition with foreign principles.

(3) By transforming the character of its religious instructions.

(4) By applying it to inappropriate uses.

(5) By excluding its proper connections.

II. The procedure of God.—

1. It is necessary, if we would receive the proper influence of the cross, that we be prepared to hail it as a distinct revelation. Science and the original ethics of our nature do not fall within the distinct province of what a revelation intends. Its strict purpose, its proper idea, is to make known that which is not known and which could not be otherwise known. Not more directly did the elemental light proceed from God who called it out of darkness than did the making known to man of redemption by the blood of the cross.

2. When we rightly appreciate the cross, we recognise it as the instrument of redemption.—This was the mode of death indicated by prophecy. The cross stands for that death; but it is an idle, unworthy superstition that this mode of death wrought the stupendous end. It is only an accessory. We must look further into the mystery. “He His own self bore our sins in His own body on the tree.” It is that awful identity, that mysterious action, which expiates, and not the rood.

3. When our mind approves this method of salvation, it finds in the cross the principle of sanctification.—A new element of thought, a new complexion of motive, enter the soul when the Holy Spirit shows to it the things of Christ. We are new creatures. We reverse all our aims and desires. We are called unto holiness.

(1) Mark the process. We had hitherto abided in death. But now we are quickened with Him.

(2) Mark the necessity. Until we be brought nigh to it, until we take hold of it, the doctrine of the crucified Saviour is an unintelligible and uninteresting thing.

(3) Mark the effect. There is a suddenly, though a most intelligently, developed charm. It is the infinite of attraction. All concentrates on it. It absorbs the tenderness and the majesty of the universe. It is full of glory. Our heart has now yielded to it, is drawn, is held, coheres, coalesces, is itself impregnated by the sacred effluence. The offence of the cross has ceased.—R. W. Hamilton.

Gal_5:12. Church Censure.—The spirit of error may so far prevail among a people that discipline can hardly attain its end—the shaming of the person censured, and the preservation of the Church from being leavened. In which case the servants of God should proceed with slow pace, and in all lenity and wisdom, and should rather doctrinally declare the censures deserved than actually inflict the censure itself.

Judgment on the Troublers of the Church.

I. God watches over His Church with a special providence.

II. The doctrine of the apostles is of infallible certainty, because the oppugners of it are plagued with the just judgment of God.

III. Our duty is to pray for the good estate of the Church of God, and for the kingdoms where the Church is planted.—Perkins.

The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.

Division 4. (Gal 5:7-26; Gal 6:1-18.)

The Practical Test of the Two Principles.

1. The blessing could not be more complete, and they had experienced the joy and power of it. This causes him again to express his astonishment at their now refusing obedience to the truth. They had been running well. Who now was hindering them? It certainly did not come from God, this new persuasion. On the other hand, the power of evil was such that a little leaven would soon leaven the whole lump. Evil, in fact, makes continual demands. One departure from truth will necessitate many, in order that there may be perfect consistency. There can be no possible compromise in a path like this, but how great the folly of those who, having experienced the joy and power of divine grace, could now take up with that which was in its nature absolutely contrary! If he looks at them, he may well be disheartened; but in grace itself he had found his refuge. In the Lord he could have confidence that they would be none otherwise minded, and the troubler, whoever it might be, should bear his judgment. He sees easily that there was temptation enough indeed, in a certain sense, to adopt such a thing as circumcision, which would remove, as between Jews and Christians, the whole offence of the cross. The apostle puts it as a thing impossible rightly to cease, and we see the persecution of which he is thinking is on the part of the Jew; and we have seen, it was so distinctly in the history which the Acts has given us. It was to the Jew that the cross was a scandal -the sign, as he has already told us, of One upon whom the law put its curse, of a curse needed to be taken because of the condition of those under law. How impossible for the Jew to allow that the law had nothing but a curse for man, and that the very Saviour of men, to be that, must bear the curse! The cross was the complete condemnation of man before God. It was also complete deliverance for those who accepted the condemnation, but this was the destruction necessarily of all legal righteousness. "I would," he says, they would even cut themselves off which trouble you." He has no possible tolerance for that which was the destruction of Christian truth and principle; his love to the souls of men made him what people would call intolerant. But, in fact, while these men would uphold the law, the very thing that the law required from man was in practice set aside. The Galatians were finding it so. They had given up their true Christian liberty, and yet, after all, were not keeping the law, for all the law was fulfilled in one word, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." They had surely realized the power of divine grace in this way, but now the effect of their legal addition to the gospel was a total change in their awn spirit. They were, as he intimates, "biting and devouring one another." What use to talk about the law in such a state as that? They might well be afraid lest they should "be consumed one of another;" but this is the necessary effect of law ever. The law is claim, demand, and expects, therefore, a full ability on man’s part to meet the demand. The spirit of self-righteousness, which alone could take comfort in it on such a principle, has necessarily in it no tenderness, no recognition of one’s own infirmity and no compassion for the infirmity of others. The law itself had none and could have none. It was its business to condemn, and it did it well. If a man continued not "in all things written in the book of the law to do them," he was under the curse. How simple, that to accept the law, then, as that under which one was, would be the destruction of all tenderness, of the very spirit which the law really required.

2. There is indeed in man everywhere the flesh and the lust of the flesh, and for a soul that does not yet realize the true deliverance that God has for us, the perfectly natural remedy is to take up with the law. It is, in fact, no remedy, but the reverse. The remedy is to "walk in the Spirit," as he urges upon them here. "Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh," -not as some would read it now, ye shall have no flesh, nor even, ye shall have Bo lust of it. Lust is that which gives the flesh its character; that is to say, the craving of an unsatisfied heart away from God, and this, too, remains in the Christian, as is plain from what he urges here. "For the flesh," he says, "lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other." He does not say, as the common version puts it: "So that ye cannot do the things that ye would," but "So that ye should not." He will not think of an impossibility on the part of one who walks in the Spirit. To the Spirit, clearly, nothing can be impossibility. Still, the two remain here, as we have seen already in Romans, even in the delivered Christian; and just as in Romans, it is against the Spirit that the flesh lusts. He does not give us here the striving of self against self which was that of the man in the seventh chapter, as yet not delivered. He is not, therefore, as some imagine, speaking simply of what was a low state on the part of the Galatians. Granted that they were in a low state, but he puts it here as a general truth, and in language, as already said, which would apply to a man in the Spirit, a delivered man. Even so, flesh and Spirit are there with all their absolute opposition to one another, and the tendency is necessarily to hinder one doing the things he would. Some have put it as if it was the will of the flesh that the Spirit here hinders, but even in the conflict of the seventh of Romans, or rather, in the state of bondage which we find there, the captive, after all, assures himself that the things that he would are the things according to God. The apostle would not allow that the will away from God is a Christian state at all; but the flesh, nevertheless will seek to assert itself, and the only remedy for the soul is the way of the Spirit; that is, as we have seen, in occupation with Christ. With Him before our eyes, there is nothing for the lust of the flesh whatever, and moreover the heart that truly knows Him finds in Him a satisfaction and rest which delivers from the corruption that is in the world through lust; but then, "if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law." The two things are in absolute and perfect contradiction one to another.

The works of the flesh are now enumerated, and we must remember that if the flesh be in the Christian, he can never promise himself that they will not be found in their full dreadful character, if once there be license given to it. The apostle has no idea of a modified flesh in a Christian. There are doubtless very different characters of it, but a close brotherhood in the family of sin. The apostle puts them together in that way, -"Murder, drunkenness, revellings and such like," very different in the extent of the evil, but if the soul’s anchorage be lost there is no possibility of telling how far it will drift. It is only the power of the Spirit that can control the flesh; and He controls it by leading us, as we have seen, in another way; but the Spirit, while the full expression of divine grace towards us, nevertheless requires the most complete subjection to Himself. God must be God. It is no grace that will tolerate any forgetfulness of this. "Sin shall not have dominion over you, because ye are not under the law but under grace." Grace is not toleration in any wise, and the Spirit of God can only lead those who are in full subjection in desire, at least, to Him. It is here that we need. to be able so fully to say: "Search me, O God, and try me," to have our feet in the blessed hands of One who cleanses after His own mind as to cleansing. Of the whole category of sin here, it is said, "They that do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God." That is the road to death from which the Spirit of God takes a man, not leaves him upon it.

3. The fruit of the Spirit is now brought before us. Here, too, is a brotherhood of graces. "Fruit" the apostle calls it. The flesh has its works. He will not give that the name of "fruit," and here it is not, in fact, of work that he is speaking, but of an inward temper, the development of the divine nature, which, therefore, is in unity and peace all through. "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-government, against such there is no law." Thus, that which the law could give no power to fulfil, is found by thus walking in the Spirit, and "they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts:" that is to say, they have accepted the cross of Christ as that which is for them the judgment of it all and their separation from it. How perfect, in fact, is the judgment of self which the cross truly apprehended gives. It is not merely the judgment of this or that about us, but the complete removal of the man in the flesh, in order that Christ may fill all the scene for us. The knowledge of the new man is that "Christ is all and in all." Thus, it is not a process, as he puts it here, this crucifixion: it is a thing accomplished. We may have to learn by degrees what it means. The light grows brighter upon the path as we walk in it, and we discern more clearly, no doubt, that which suits God. Thus, there is growth in apprehension as to detail, but as to principle, the thing is done at the start. It is Christ, not self that we have put on, and it is that which suits Him that we follow. As it is put in Colossians, we are to "do all things in the name of the Lord Jesus," that is to say, as representing Him upon earth; and that means, assuredly, that from the start the flesh is crucified for us. The cross stands at the beginning of the Christian path, and the Galatians here had the Spirit. He does not question it. They were alive in the Spirit. If so, he says, let the walk be in the Spirit also, "let us not be desirous of vain glory" which the law, if man could keep it, could not but promote, the effect necessarily following; but as to others there would be a spirit of intolerance and not of love; "provoking one another," he says here, "envying one another."

4. We see that he is occupied throughout here, with the practical test; a powerful method of appeal, surely, to those who had, in fact, known the blessedness which the gospel could give; far as they might now be departing from it. The law might require love indeed and did; but it could not produce it, could not even encourage such a spirit in those that followed it. You will never find the legal mind tender really of others. The apostle, therefore, presses it upon them here, that if they were, in fact, spiritual, that would be seen in their behaviour. If one were overtaken in a fault, they would restore such an one in the spirit of meekness, the very opposite of the spirit engendered by the principle which they had taken up. They would consider themselves lest they also should be tempted; but for a mart under law, it does not do to consider himself after that fashion; it would work discouragement and despair. On the other hand, he must assure himself under law of his competence to fulfil the commandment, and therefore he must exact from others the fulfilment; assured of their competence no less than his. Spirituality, in fact, may be claimed by those who act in a very opposite spirit to this. That is what he rebukes here. He does not mean to affirm their spirituality. He does not mean that a man has to look at himself and ask whether he is spiritual, before he can realize ability to restore another. The spirit of meekness is the very opposite of such fancied spirituality. The spiritual man is too near Christ to believe in himself; to walk in that presence has, as its surest mark, the spirit of lowliness; and if the Spirit of God bear witness in our souls in a practical way, it will not be to puff us up with the idea of Christ-likeness, but, on the contrary, to point out to us where we are unlike Him; yet here there is no spirit of discouragement or despair engendered. If we have once learned the true judgment of ourselves before God as the cross gives it to us, we shall not expect to find anything in ourselves, and therefore shall not be disappointed; yet our resource is at hand, our strength is in Another "In Christ dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and we are filled up in Him." There can be no want then to us, and there can be no self-confidence in those whose habitual resort is to this fountain of supply. The spirit of meekness, therefore, will go with true spirituality. Let them show it, he urges, in that way. Let them "bear one another’s burdens," so they would fulfil the law of Christ, who Himself assuredly was the great burden Bearer. On the other hand, if a man thought himself to be something when nothing (when did he ever think himself to be something without being nothing?) he would deceive himself. He adds now a word against those who were, in contradiction to his own principle, building upon another man’s foundations, and indeed, rather destroying those foundations, than building upon them. "Let every man," he says, "approve his own work and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone and not in another." In the end, every one would bear his own burden.* Every Christian must at last take up his own responsibility before God, as we know. Every one must give account of himself to God. It will be the triumph of divine grace to be able to do it after the fashion in which we shall do it; and yet, nevertheless, there is enough in the thought for the utmost seriousness.

{*These are two different words in the original.}

5. He enters now upon the subject, which this opens, of divine government, a thing which is not, as we know, in the slightest contradiction with divine grace. These are things which are sometimes put as if in some sense contrary to one another; but, on the other hand, the government of God for us is expressly a Father’s government, while it is, none the less, that of One who, without respect of persons, judgeth according to every man’s work. This is, of course, a thing of the present, not of the future. The future judgment, whether with regard to saint or sinner, is in the hands of Christ. "God hath committed all judgment to Him because He is the Son of Man," but there is a government which is, none the less, the government of grace, because it is one absolutely intolerant of evil. We may repeat again that the toleration of evil is never grace. It would be a perversion of the very thought of grace to imagine this. "Be not deceived," he says, therefore, "God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap, for he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption and he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." These are principles of absolute necessity. Nothing can alter them. If a man sows a certain seed, he knows, or he should know, that he can get of that seed nothing but what is proper to it. If a man sows to his flesh, he sows, in fact, the corruption which he reaps. The very principle of self-will which must, of necessity, be in it, is a principle which is essentially that of sin. Every form of sin will come under this, and God may allow, in fact, such seed to come to harvest, in order that we may recognize its character, as we otherwise would not do. In the opposite way to that of the man who, bearing good seed, goes forth even weeping, but returns with joy, a man in this way may sow his seed rejoicing, but it will be the return that will be sorrowful. It does not follow that God cannot come in and deliver us from what would otherwise be the necessary fruit of such sowing, if only there be the true self-judgment of it in the soul; for to a Christian, the reaping of it is but in order to self-judgment, and if we will judge it first, there may be no need of reaping at all. Judge it first or last we surely must, or the thing will develop for what it is and be manifest, not to ourselves alone it may be, but to others also. On the other hand, "He that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." Blessed and wonderful reaping! The life is looked at here, of course, in its practical character, in its fruits and activities. The life itself, the life which produces this, is no matter of reaping at all, it is what we must have to be Christians. Nevertheless, we can reap it as a practical thing, and the witness of it is that, even though reaped here upon earth, it is something which has eternity in it. All that which in us here is the fruit of the divine work has necessarily its link with eternity. It is for eternity that we are preparing. There is not even just that sharp division between the present and the future for us which we are apt so to imagine. It is eternity that God has before Him, it is the things eternal with which we are conversant day by day. It is eternity, therefore, that imprints its character upon the present. It is the life everlasting which we live practically now, and let us not then, says the apostle, be "weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not." The path is through a world of trial, and therefore, though in itself all well doing has its own delight, yet the opposition to it from the world through which we pass will surely give us need of such an encouragement as this. "As we have, therefore, opportunity, let us do good unto all men, but especially," he adds, "unto them who are of the household of faith." This ends very much the practical test which he has been making of the two principles which we have seen in opposition all the way through the epistle. All the way through it is a controversy, and one from which we need not expect to escape while we are here. God’s principles lead into conflict, and, alas, not merely with the men of the world, but, it may be, as here, with the children of God themselves.

6. In the earnestness of his desire for them, the apostle, contrary to his wont, has penned all this epistle with his own hand. His custom was simply to put a salutation from his hand at the end; but in this case, he could not, as it were, trust another, or was not free to dictate to another the things that were in his heart. It was not with him, as with those of whom he was writing, a fair show in the flesh that he was making. He was not wanting followers, nor, as they, to escape persecution for the cross of Christ. He charges them openly with this. They did not keep the law, they could not but be conscious of that. Their desire to have others circumcised was simply that they might glory in their flesh. For him all that was ended. The cross of the Lord Jesus Christ had closed for him the whole scene here; and in it the world it was that was crucified, and be himself to the world. The character of the world was thus stamped upon it. The cross was for him a shadow resting upon it. If it had judged and cast out Christ, he who was identified with Christ before God, and had learned to identify himself thus, was one whom they had crucified.

7. Christ was beyond it all. He had seen Him, Head of a new creation; in Him circumcision availed nothing now, nor uncircumcision. These had nothing to do with new creation. They belonged to the world, to the fallen world. The Christian walk was outside them altogether, not after the Jewish pattern of legality nor the Gentile pattern of lawlessness. There was a new rule, -a rule which made a man "a pilgrim and a stranger" here, the rule of belonging to this other scene in which already the glory of Christ was displayed. In the light of that he walked, and for such as do so he desires and pronounces upon them "peace and mercy," (mercy of which they still had need) "and upon the Israel of God" -the true Israelite,* not the fleshly one. Here then, the matter rested for him. None need trouble him more. He bore already in his body the "brands of the Lord Jesus," the brands of trials and sufferings undergone for Christ and which marked him as the bondman of Christ in the joyful apprehension of the love that had been shown. He closes with the constant benediction that was in his heart: "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit."

{*That is, the natural descendants of Abraham who were also spiritual. -S.R.}

F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Chapter 21

THE HINDERERS AND TROUBLERS.

Gal_5:7-12

THE Apostles controversy with the Legalists is all but concluded. He has pronounced on the question of circumcision. He has shown his readers, with an emphasis and clearness that leave nothing more to be said, how fearful is the cost at which they will accept the "other gospel," and how heavy the yoke which it will impose upon them. A few further observations remain to be made-of regret, of remonstrance, blended with expressions of confidence more distinct than any the Apostle has hitherto employed. Then with a last contemptuous thrust, a sort of coup de grace for the Circumcisionists, Paul passes to the practical and ethical part of his letter.

This section is made up of short, disconnected sentences, shot off in various directions; as though the writer wished to have done with the Judaistic debate, and would discharge at a single volley the arrows remaining in his quiver. Its prevailing tone is that of conciliation towards the Galatians (comp. chapter 18.), with increasing severity towards the legalist teachers. "See how bitter he is against the deceivers. For indeed at the beginning he directed his Censures against the deceived, calling them senseless both once and again. But now that he has sufficiently chastened and corrected them, for the rest he turns against their deceivers. And we should observe his wisdom in both these things, in that he admonishes the one party and brings them to a better mind, being his own children and capable of amendment; but the deceivers, who are a foreign element and incurably diseased, he cuts off" (Chrysostom).

There lie before us therefore in this paragraph the following considerations:

- Pauls hope concerning the Galatian Churches, his protest on his own behalf, and finally his judgment respecting the troublers.

1. The more hopeful strain of the letter at this point appears to be due to the effect of his argument upon the writers own mind. As the breadth and grandeur of the Christian faith open out before him, and he contrasts its spiritual glory with the ignoble aims of the Circumcisionists, Paul cannot think that the readers will any longer doubt which is the true gospel. Surely they. will be disenchanted. His irrefragable reasonings, his pleading entreaties and solemn warnings are bound to call forth a response from a people so intelligent and so affectionate. "For my part," he says, "I am confident in the Lord that you will be none otherwise minded (Gal_5:10), that you will be faithful to your Divine calling, despite the hindrances thrown in your way." They will, he is persuaded, come to see the proposals of the Judaisers in their proper light. They will think about the Christian life-its objects and principles as he himself does; and will perceive how fatal would be the step they are urged to take. They will be true to themselves and to the Spirit of sonship they have received. They will pursue more earnestly the hope set before them and give themselves with renewed energy to the work of faith and love (Gal_5:5-6), and forget as soon as possible this distracting and unprofitable controversy.

"In the Lord" Paul cherishes this confidence. "In Christs grace" the Galatians were called to enter the kingdom of God; {Gal_5:8; Gal_1:6} and He was concerned that the work begun in them should be completed. {Php_1:6} It may be the Apostle at this moment was conscious of some assurance from his Master that his testimony in this Epistle would not prove in vain. The recent submission of the Corinthians would tend to increase Pauls confidence in his authority over the Gentile Churches.

Another remembrance quickens the feeling of hope with which the Apostle draws the conflict to a close. He reminds himself of the good confession the Galatians had aforetime witnessed, the zeal with which they pursued the Christian course, until this deplorable hindrance arose: "You were running well finely. You had fixed your eyes on the heavenly prize. Filled with an ardent faith, you were zealously pursuing the great spiritual ends of the Christian life (comp. Gal_5:5-6). Your progress has been arrested. You have yielded to influences which are not of God who called you, and admitted amongst you a leaven that, if not cast out, will corrupt you utterly (Gal_5:8-9). But I trust that this result will be averted. You will return to better thoughts. You will resume the interrupted race, and by Gods mercy will be enabled to bring it to a glorious issue" (Gal_5:10).

There are kindness and true wisdom in this encouragement. The Apostle has "told them the truth"; he has "reproved with all authority"; now that this is done, there remains nothing in his heart but good-will and good wishes for his Galatian children. If his chiding has wrought the effect it was intended to produce, then these words of softened admonition will be grateful and healing. They have "stumbled, but not that they might fall." The Apostle holds out the hand of restoration; his confidence animates then: to hope better things for themselves. He turns his anger away from them, and directs it altogether upon their injurers.

2. The Judaisers had troubled the Churches of Galatia; they had also maligned the Apostle Paul. From them undoubtedly the imputation proceeded which he repudiates so warmly in Gal_5:11 : "And I, brethren, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still persecuted?" This supposition a moments reflection would suffice to refute. The contradiction was manifest. The persecution which everywhere followed the Apostle marked him out in all mens eyes as the adversary of Legalism.

There were circumstances, however, that lent a certain colour to this calumny. The circumcision of Timothy, for instance, might be thought to look in this direction. {Act_16:1-3} And Paul valued his Hebrew birth. He loved his Jewish brethren more than his own salvation. {Rom_9:1-5; Rom_11:1} There was nothing of the revolutionary or the iconoclast about him. Personally he preferred to conform to the ancient usages, when doing so did not compromise the honour of Christ. {Act_18:18; Act_21:17-26}

It was false that he "taught the Jews not to circumcise their children, nor to walk by the customs". {Act_21:20-26} He did teach them that these things were "of no avail in Christ Jesus"; that they were in no sense necessary to salvation; and that it was contrary to the will of Christ to impose them upon Gentiles. But it was no part of his business to alter the social customs of his people, or to bid them renounce the glories of their past. While he insists that "there is no difference" between Jew and Gentile in their need of the gospel and their rights in it, he still claims for the Jew the first place in the order of its manifestation.

This was an entirely different thing from "preaching circumcision" in the legalist sense, from heralding (κηρυσσω: verse 11) and crying up the Jewish ordinance, and making it a religious duty. This difference the Circumcisionists affected not to understand. Some of Pauls critics will not understand it even now. They argue that the Apostles hostility to Judaism in this Epistle discredits the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles, inasmuch as the latter relates several instances of Jewish conformity on his part.

What pragmatical narrowness is this! Pauls adversaries said, "He derides Judaism amongst you Gentiles, who know nothing of his antecedents, or of his practice in other places. But when he pleases, this liberal Paul will be as zealous for circumcision as any of us. Indeed he boasts of his skill in becoming all things to all men; he trims his sail to every breeze. In Galatia he is all breadth and tolerance; he talks about our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus; he is ready to become as you are; no one would imagine he had ever been a Jew. In Judea he makes a point of being strictly orthodox, and is indignant if any one questions his devotion to the Law."

Pauls position was a delicate one, and open to misrepresentation. Men of party insist on this or that external custom as the badge of their own side; they have their party-colours and their uniform. Men of principle adopt or lay aside such usages with a freedom which scandalises the partisan. What right, he says, has any one to wear our colours, to pronounce our shibboleth, if he is not one of ourselves? If the man will not be with us, let him be against us. Had Paul renounced his circumcision and declared himself a Gentile out and out, the Judaists might have understood him. Had he said, Circumcision is evil, they could have endured it better; but to preach that Circumcision is nothing, to reduce this all-important rite to insignificance, vexed them beyond measure. It was in their eyes plain proof of dishonesty. They tell the Galatians that Paul is playing a double part, that his resistance to their circumcision is interested and insincere.

The charge is identical with that of "man-pleasing" which the Apostle repelled in Gal_1:10 (see chapter 3). The emphatic "still" of that passage recurs twice in this, bearing the same meaning as it does there. Its force is not temporal, as though the Apostle were thinking of a former time when he did "preach circumcision": no such reference appears in the context, and these terms are inappropriate to his pre-Christian career. The particle points a logical contrast, as, e.g.. in Rom_3:7; Rom_9:19 : "If I still (notwithstanding my professions as a Gentile apostle) preach circumcision, why am I still (notwithstanding my so preaching) persecuted?"

Had Paul been known by the Jews to be in other places a promoter of circumcision, they would have treated him very differently. He could not then have been, as the Galatians knew him everywhere to be, "in perils from his fellow-countrymen."

The rancour of the Legalists was sufficient proof of Pauls sincerity. They were themselves guilty of the baseness with which they taxed him. It was in order to escape the reproach of the cross (Gal_5:2), to atone for their belief in the Nazarene, that they persuaded Gentile Christians to be circumcised. {Gal_6:11-12} They were the man-pleasers. The Judaisers knew perfectly well that the Apostles observance of Jewish usage was no endorsement of their principles. The print of the Jewish scourge upon his back attested his loyalty to Gentile Christendom. {Gal_6:17; 2Co_11:24} A further consequence would have ensued from the duplicity imputed to Paul, which he resents even more warmly: "Then," he says, "if I preach circumcision, the offence of the cross is done away!" He is charged with treason against the cross of Christ. He has betrayed the one thing in which he glories, {Gal_6:14} to which the service of his life was consecrated! For the doctrine of the cross was at an end if the legal ritual were re-established and men were taught to trust in the saving efficacy of circumcision above all, if the Apostle of the Gentiles had preached this doctrine! The Legalists imputed to him the very last thing of which he was capable. This was in fact the error into which Peter had weakly fallen at Antioch. The Jewish Apostle had then acted as though "Christ died in vain". {Gal_2:21} For himself Paul indignantly denies that his conduct bore any such construction.

But he says, "the scandal of the cross"-that scandalous, offensive cross, the stumbling-block of Jewish pride. {1Co_1:23} The death of Christ was not only revolting in its form to Jewish sentiment; it was a fatal event for Judaism itself. It imported the end of the Mosaic economy. The Church at Jerusalem had not yet fully grasped this fact; they sought, as far as possible, to live on good terms with their non-Christian Jewish brethren, and admitted perhaps too easily into their fellowship men who cared more for Judaism than for Christ and His cross. For them also the final rupture was approaching, when they had to "go forth unto Jesus without the camp." Paul had seen from the first that the breach was irreparable. He determined to keep his Gentile Churches free from Judaic entanglements. In his view, Calvary was the terminus of Mosaism.

This was true historically. The crime of national Judaism in slaying its Messiah was capital. Its spiritual blindness and its moral failure had received the most signal proof. The congregation of Israel had become a synagogue of Satan. And these were "the chosen people," the worlds elite, who "crucified the Lord of glory"! Mankind had done this thing. The world has "both seen and hated both Him and the Father."

Now to set up circumcision again, or any kind of human effort or performance, as a ground of justification before God, is to ignore this judgment; it is to make void the sentence which the cross of Christ has passed upon all "works of righteousness which we have done." This teaching sorely offends moralists and ceremonialists, of whatever age or school; it is "the offence of the cross."

And further, as matter of Divine appointment the sacrifice of Calvary put an end to Jewish ordinances. Their significance was gone. The Epistle to the Hebrews develops this consequence at length in other directions. For himself the Apostle views it from a single and very definite standpoint. The Law, he says, had brought on men a curse; it stimulated sin to its worst developments. {Gal_3:10; Gal_3:19} Christs death under this curse has expiated and removed it for us. {Gal_3:13} His atonement met mans guilt in its culmination. The Law had not prevented-nay, it gave occasion to the crime; it necessitated, but could not provide expiation, which was supplied "outside the law." {Rom_3:21 : χω νομου}

The "offence" of the doctrine of the cross lay just here. It reconciled man with God on an extra-legal footing. It provided a new ground of justification and pronounced the old worthless. It fixed the mark of moral impotence and rejection upon the system to which the Jewish nature clung with passionate pride. To preach the cross was to declare legalism abolished: to preach circumcision was to declare the cross and its offence abolished.

This dilemma the Circumcisionists would fain escape. They fought shy of Calvary. Like some later moralists, they did not see why the cross should be always pushed to the front, and its offence forced upon the world. Surely there was in the wide range of Christian truth abundance of other profitable topics to discuss, without wounding Jewish susceptibilities in this way.

But this endeavour of theirs is just what Paul is determined to frustrate. He confronts Judaism at every turn with that dreadful cross. He insists that it shall be realised in its horror and its shame, that men shall feel the tremendous shock which it gives to the moral conceit, the self-justifying spirit of human nature, which in the Jew of this period had reached its extreme point. "If law could save, if the world were not guilty before God," he reiterates, "why that death of the cross? God hath set Him forth a propitiation." And whoso accepts Jesus Christ must accept Him crucified, with all the offence and humiliation that the fact involves.

In later days the death of Christ has been made void in other ways. It is veiled in the steam of our incense. It is invested with the halo of a sensuous glorification. The cross has been for many turned into an artistic symbol, a beautiful idol festooned with garlands, draped in poetry, but robbed of its spiritual meaning, its power to humble and to save. Let men see it "openly set forth," in its naked terror and majesty, that they may know what they are and what their sins have done.

We rely on birth and good breeding, on art and education as instruments of moral progress. Improved social arrangements, a higher environment, these, we think, will elevate the race. Within their limits these forces are invaluable; they are ordained of God. But they are only law at the best. When they have done their utmost, they leave man still unsaved-proud, selfish, unclean, miserable. To rest human salvation on self-improvement and social reform is legalism over again. To civilise is not to regenerate. These methods were tried in Mosaism, under circumstances in many respects highly favourable. "The scandal of the cross" was the result. Education and social discipline may produce a Pharisee, nothing higher. Legislation and environment work from the outside. They cannot touch the essential human heart. Nothing has ever done this like the cross of Jesus Christ. He who "makes it of none effect," whether in the name of Jewish tradition or of modern progress, takes away the one practicable hope of the moral regeneration of mankind.

3. We are now in a position to estimate more precisely the character and motives of the Judaistic party, the hinderers and troublers of this Epistle.

In the first place it appears that they had entered the Galatian communities from without. The fact that they are called troublers (disturbers) of itself suggests this (Gal_5:10; Gal_1:7). They came with a professed "gospel," as messengers bringing new tidings; the Apostle compares them to himself, the first Galatian evangelist, "or an angel from heaven". {Gal_1:8-9} He glances at them in his reference to "false brethren" at an earlier time "brought into (the Gentile Church) unawares". {Gal_2:4} These men are "courting" the favour of Pauls Galatian disciples, endeavouring to gain them over in his absence. {Gal_4:17-18} They have made misleading statements respecting his early career and relations to the Church, which he is at pains to correct. They professed to represent the views of the Pillars at Jerusalem, and quoted their authority against the Apostle Paul.

From these considerations we infer that "the troublers" were Judaistic emissaries front Palestine. The second Epistle to Corinth, contemporaneous with this letter, reveals the existence of a similar propaganda-in the Greek capital at the same period. Paul had given the Galatians warning on the subject at his last visit. {Gal_1:9} There were already, we should suppose, in the Galatian societies, before the arrival of the Judaisers, Jewish believers in Christ of legalistic tendencies, prepared to welcome and support the new teachers. But it was the coming of these agitators from without that threw the Churches of Galatia into such a ferment, and brought about the situation disclosed in this Epistle.

The allusion made in Gal_2:12 to "certain from James," taken in connection with other circumstances, points, as we think, to the outbreak of a systematic agitation against the Apostle Paul, which was carried on during his third missionary tour, and drew from him the great evangelical Epistles of this epoch. This anti-Pauline movement emanated from Jerusalem and pretended to official sanction. Set on foot at the time of the collision with Peter at Antioch, the conflict is now in full progress. The Apostles denunclation of his opponents is unsparing. They "hinder" the Galatians "from obeying truth" (ver. 7); they entice them from the path in which they had bravely set out, and are robbing them of their heritage in Christ. It was a false, a perverted gospel that they taught. {Gal_1:7} They east on their hearers an envious spell which drew them away from the cross and its salvation. {Gal_2:21; Gal_3:1} Not truth, but self-interest and party-ends were the objects they pursued. {Gal_4:17; Gal_6:12-13} Their "persuasion" was assuredly not of God, "who had called" the Galatians through the Apostles voice. If God had sent Paul amongst them, as the Galatians had good reason to know, clearly He had not sent these men, with their "other gospel."

The vitiating "leaven" at work in the spiritual life of the Galatians, is not arrested, would soon "leaven the whole lump." The Apostle applies to the Judaistic doctrine the same figure under which he described the taint of immorality found in the Church of Corinth. {1Co_5:6-8} So jealous and unscrupulous, so deadly in its effect on evangelical faith and life was the spirit of Jewish legalism. The Apostle trusts that his Galatians will after all escape from this fatal infection, that they will leave "the troublers" alone to "bear the judgment" which must fall upon them (Gal_5:10). The Lord is the Keeper, and the Avenger of His Church. No one, "whosoever he be," will injure it with impunity. Let the man that makes mischief in the Church of Jesus Christ take care what he is about. The tempted may escape; sins of ignorance and weakness can be forgiven. But woe unto the tempter!

Against the wilful perverters of the gospel the Apostle at the outset delivered his anathema. For these Circumcisionists in particular he has one further wish to express. It is a grim sort of suggestion, to be read rather by way of sarcasm than in the strict letter of fulfilment. The devotees of circumcision, he means to say, might as well go a step farther. If the physical mark of Judaism, the mere surgical act, is so salutary, why not "cut off" the member altogether, like the emasculated priests of Cybele (Gal_5:12)? This mutilation belonged to the worship of the great heathen goddess of Asia Minor, and was associated with her debasing cultus. Moreover it excluded its victim from a place in the congregation of Israel. {Deu_23:1}

This mockery, though not to be judged by modern sentiment, in any case went to the verge of what charity and decency permit. It breathes a burning contempt for the Judaising policy. It shows how utterly circumcision had lost its sacredness for the Apostle. Its spiritual import being gone, it was now a mere "concision," {Php_3:2} a cutting of the body-nothing more.

Such language was well calculated to disgust Gentile Christians with the rite of circumcision. It helps to account for the implacable hatred with which Paul was regarded by orthodox Jews. It accords with what he intimated in Gal_4:9, to the effect that Jewish conformity was for the Gentiles in effect heathenish. Apart from its relation to the obsolete Mosaic covenant, circumcision was in itself no holier than the deformities inflicted by Paganism on its votaries.

The Judaisers are finally described, not merely "overthrow you." The Greek word (αναστατεω) as "troublers" and "hinderers," but as "those that unsettle you"-or more strongly still, occurs in Act_17:6; Act_21:38, where it is rendered, turn upside down, stir to sedition. These men were carrying on a treasonable agitation. False themselves to the gospel of Christ, they incited the Galatians to belie their Christian professions, to betray the cause of Gentile liberty, and to desert their own Apostle. They deserved to suffer some degrading punishment. "Full" as they were "of subtlety and mischief, perverting the right ways of the Lord," Paul did well to denounce them and to turn their zeal for circumcision to derisive scorn.

William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.

5:7 The life of faith is like running a race (cp. 1 Cor 9:24-27; Phil 3:13-14; 2 Tim 4:7-8). The law became a hindrance to the Galatians in this race rather than a help (cp. Luke 11:52).

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Gal 5:7. Ἐτρέχετε καλῶς, ye did run well) in the race of faith, as your calling required, Gal 5:8; comp. Php 3:14. This implies greater activity than to walk. He again comes to arguments calculated to conciliate and move the feelings.—τίς, who) no one, to whom you ought to have listened. So, who, Gal 3:1.—ἐνέκοψε, hindered) in running.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Gal_5:7-9. How naturallyand, in conformity with the apostles lively emotion, asyndeticallythe utterance of this axiom of the Christian character and life, which the readers had formerly obeyed, is followed by disapproving surprise at the fact that they had not remained faithful to it (Gal_5:7), and then by renewed warning against the false teachers, based on the ungodly nature (Gal_5:8) and the destructive influence (Gal_5:9) of their operations!

ἐτρέχετε καλῶς] that is, your Christian behaviouryour Christian life and effortwas in course of excellent development. A figurative mode of presenting the activity of spiritual life very frequently used by the apostle. Comp. Gal_2:2; Php_3:11.

τίς ὑμᾶς ἐνέκοψε] A question of surprise (comp. Gal_3:1): who hindered you? Comp. 1Th_2:18; Rom_15:22; 1Pe_3:7. In Polyb. xxi. 1. 12 it is used with the dative. So also Hippocr. pp. 28, 35; for it means properly: to make an incision.

τῇ ἀληθείᾳ μὴ πείθεσθαι] from obeying the truth, that is, the true gospel, according to which faith alone is that which justifies, μή is employed, as usual, after verbs of hindering. See Hermann, ad Viger. p. 810 f.; Pflugk, ad Eur. Hec. 867; Winer, p. 561 [E. T. 755]. The infinitive with μή denotes that which, so far as the will of the hinderer is concerned, shall not take place.

ἡ πεισμονὴ κ.τ.λ.] After the surprise comes the warning. ἡ πεισμονή occurs again only in Apoll. Synt. p. 195. 10, in Eustath. (Il. ι, p. 637. 5, a, pp. 21, 26, et al.; see Wetstein), and in the Fathers (Ignat. ad Romans 3 interpol.; Just. Mart. Ap. I. 53, p. 87; Epiph. Haer. xxx. 21; Chrysostom, ad 1 Thess. i. 4). Whether, however, the word is to be understood actively, as persuasion, or passively, as compliance, is a point which must be decided in the several passages by the context. In this passage it is understood as persuasion by MSS. of the Itala (suasio), Vulgate (persuasio), Erasmus, Castalio, Calvin, Beza, Cornelius a Lapide, Wolf, Michaelis, Zachariae, Koppe, Borger, Flatt, Paulus, Usteri, Schott, Hilgenfeld, Wieseler, Matthias, Holsten, and others; on the other hand, Chrysostom (οὐκ ἐπὶ τούτοις ἐκάλεσεν ὑμᾶς ὁ καλῶν, ὥστε οὕτω σαλεύεσθαι), Oecumenius (τὸ πεισθῆναι τοῖς λέγουσιν ὑμῖν περιτέμνεσθαι), Theophylact (τὸ πείθεσθαι τοῖς ἀπατῶσιν), Luther (1519 and 1524; but in 1538, and in his translation: such persuasion), and others, including Morus, Winer, Rückert, Matthies, Olshausen, Reiche, Hofmann, Reithmayr, explain it as compliance,[227] which, however, does not fit the word used absolutely. The latter rather yields the thought: The persuasion is not of your caller, is not a thing proceeding from God (see, on the contrary, 2Co_11:15). Paul would have this applied to the mode of operation of the pseudo-apostles, who worked upon the Galatians by persuasion (talking over), so that they did not remain obedient to the truth, but turned ἀπὸ τοῦ καλέσαντος αὐτοὺς ἐν χάριτι Χριστοῦ to an ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον (Gal_1:6). If it were to be taken as compliance, some more precise definition must have been appended;[228] because compliance is ungodly not in itself, but only according to the nature of the demand, the motive, and the moral circumstances generally. Some have made it to mean credulitas (Estius, Winer, Baumgarten-Crusius, and others), but the sense of the word is thus altered. The talking over, however, did not need anything added, since it is of itself, in matters of faith at any rate, objectionable; hence it was very superfluous in Luther, Grotius, and many others, to take the article as demonstrative. Moreover, the active sense is excellently adapted to the designation of God by ὁ καλῶν ὑμᾶς, inasmuch as the talking over is a mode of operating on men characteristically different from the divine calling: the former not befitting the divine dignity like the latter; the former bound up with human premeditation, art, and importunity, taking place ἐν πειθοῖς σαφίας λόγοις (1Co_2:4), counteracting free self-determination, and so forth. Comp. Soph. Fragm. 744, Dind.: δεῖνον τὸ τᾶς Πειθοῦς πρόσωπον. Aesch. Agam. 385: βιᾶται δʼ ἁ τάλαινα πειθώ. Bengel, Morus, and de Wette understand it as obstinacy (the clinging to prejudices, de Wette), making it correspond with the foregoing τῇ ἀληθείᾳ μή πείθεσθαι. So also Ewald, although translating it as self-confidence, and comparing πίσυνος. But the passages cited above from Eustathius do not make good this signification; and, in particular, Od. x. p. 785. 22, is quite improperly adduced in its favour (see Reiche, p. 79 f.). Reiche, preferring the signification compliance, takes the sentence as asking indignantly: Annon assensus, obsequium veritati praestandum e Deo est, qui vos vocavit? But why should Paul have expressed this by the singular word πεισμονή not used by him elsewhere, and not by the current and unambiguous πίστις or ὑπακοὴ τῆς πίστεως? By employing the latter, he would, in fact, have also suited the foregoing πείθεσθαι.

The καλῶν ὑμᾶς is neither Christ (Theophylact, Erasmus, Michaelis, and others) nor the apostle (Locke, Paulus), but God. See on Gal_1:6. The present participle is not to be understood of a continuing call ad resipiscentiam (Beza),a view at variance with the constant use of the absolute καλεῖν (Gal_1:6, Gal_5:13; Rom_8:30, et al.); nor does it represent the calling as lasting up to the time of their yielding compliance against the truth (Hofmann), which would be an idea foreign to the N.T. (Gal_1:6; Weiss, bibl. Theol. p. 386 f.); but it is to be taken substantivally, your caller, the definition of the time being left out of view. Comp. 1Th_5:24; Winer, p. 331 [E. T. 444]. God, the caller to everlasting salvation, has assigned to every one, by calling him at his conversion (Php_3:14), the normam totius cursus (Bengel).

μικρὰ ζύμη κ.τ.λ.] The meaning of this proverbial warning (see on 1Co_5:6) is: If the false apostles have, by means of their persuasion, succeeded in making even but a small beginning in the work of imparting to you erroneous doctrines or false principles, this will develope itself to the corruption of your whole Christian faith and life. So, taking the figure with reference to doctrine, in substance also Chrysostom, Theophylact (who, however, explain μικρὰ ζύμη too specially of circumcision), Luther, Calvin, Cornelius a Lapide, and many others, including Flatt and Matthies. It is true that the dogma of his opponents was in itself fundamentally subversive (as Wieseler objects); but its influence had not yet so far developed itself, that the ζύμη might not have been still designated relatively as μικρά. Others interpret it as referring to persons: vel pauci homines perperam docentes possunt omnem coetum corrumpere, Winer (comp. Theodoret, Jerome, Augustine, Erasmus, Grotius, Estius, Locke, Bengel, Borger, Paulus, Usteri, Schott, de Wette, Hilgenfeld, Wieseler, Hofmann, Windischmann, Reithmayr, and others); but against this it may be urged that the number of the false teachers, as it is in itself a matter of indifference, and does not acquire greater significance through their having intruded themselves from without, remains also unnoticed throughout the epistle, and the point in question was solely the influence of their teaching (comp. πεισμονή), which was the leaven threatening to spread destructively. Comp. Gal_1:7 ff., Gal_3:1.

[227] This view serves to explain the omission of the οὐκ in D*, min., Cod. lat. in Jer. and Sedul. Clar. Germ. Or. (once), Lucifer. Theodoret also appears not to have read it, as he gives the explanation: ἴδιον Θεοῦ τὸ καλεῖν, τὸ δὲ πείθεσθαι τῶν ἀκουόντων.

[228] At least ὑμῶν, which is actually read by Syr. Erp. codd. in Jer. Lucif. Aug. Ambrosiast. Sedul. Arm. has αὕτη γὰρ πεισμονή. Vömel and Hofmann seek to remove the indefiniteness by reading instead of the article the relative ἥ: which obedience. But, according to this view, ἣ πεισμ. must have been correlative to the foregoing πείθεσθαι (comp. Wis_16:2), and this consequently must have been defined not negatively, but positively, somewhat as if Paul, instead of τῇ ἀληθ. μὴ πείθεσθαι, had written ἑτέρῳ εὐαγγελίῳ πείθεσθαι. But having written τ. ἀληθ. μὴ πείθεσθαι, he must, in correlation with μὴ πείθισθαι, have continued relatively with ἣ ἀπείθεια.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Gal 5:7 . ἐνέκοψεν . The figure of a race, introduced by ἐτρέχετε , is here carried on. Hitherto they had run a smooth course of obedience to truth; who had thrown obstacles in their way?

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

7–12. Against continuing in retrogression; with sharp words against the leader and the false teachers generally

(Gal 5:7) You were running your race nobly; who hindered you, so that (to drop all metaphor) you should not obey truth? (Gal 5:8) This persuasion of yours is not from Him whose voice you once heard and can still hear. (Gal 5:9) Do not despise beginnings in evil. You know the proverb, A little leaven etc. (Gal 5:10) I, for my part, still have confidence in you in the Lord that you will not set your heart on any other than the one way and truth, but the leader of those who trouble you shall bear the burden of his judgment, whatever his present position. (Gal 5:11) I have spoken of myself, now I speak of myself again in contrast to him. I at any rate, my brothers, whatever may be said of me, am different from what I was before my conversion, and I have made no change since. The evidence that I do not now, as once, preach circumcision is that I am still persecuted. For the cross has not lost its effect of being a stumbling-block! (Gal 5:12) I wish that those who so upset you would, while they are about it, make themselves altogether eunuchs!

7. ἐνέκοψεν אABCD etc. ἀνέκοψε[135] Text. Rec. with a few cursives.

[135] Is affixed to a word it means that all the passages are mentioned where that word occurs in the New Testament.

7. ἐτρέχετε καλῶς (“Ye were running finely”). τίς, contemptuous. No one had the right to do so, Gal 3:1; cf. Rom 14:4; Jas 4:12.

ὑμᾶς ἐνέκοψεν. See notes on Textual Criticism. The metaphor of the race is continued.

Who made your way impassable? ἐγκόπτω was used originally of cutting into a road, breaking it up (not, as it seems, of cutting obstacles down into it), but “it came to mean ‘hinder’ generally (Hesych. ἐμποδίζω, διακωλύω),” Milligan on 1Th 2:18.

It always takes the accusative of the person in the N.T., but the dative which is more natural is sometimes found elsewhere.

ἀληθείᾳ: “truth” as such, 2Th 2:13. St Paul here exchanges the figure of a race for the reality of his subject.

μὴ. On the negative with verbs of hindering see Burton, Tenses, § 402, “μὴ may be used or omitted with the infinitive without difference of meaning.” In Rom 15:22 the negative is omitted after ἐνεκοπτόμην.

πείθεσθαι, Rom 2:8. G and a few Latin MSS. mentioned in Zahn add μηδενὶ πείθεσθε. Zahn strangely separates these three words from ἐνέκοψεν because of (1) the cessation of the metaphor, (2) the presence of μή, and reads ἀληθείᾳ μὴ πείθεσθαι μηδενὶ πείθεσθε “Listen to no one that ye should not listen to truth.” He refers to Blass’ Gram. Add. and Corr. p. xii., German 2nd edit. But is there any similar sentence in St Paul’s writings?

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Again he chideth the Galatians, but with an admiration, and therewithall a praise of their former race, to the end that he may make them more ashamed.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

Translate, "Ye were running well" in the Gospel race (Co1 9:24-26; Phi 3:13-14).

who, &c.--none whom you ought to have listened to [BENGEL]: alluding to the Judaizers (compare Gal 3:1).

hinder--The Greek means, literally, "hinder by breaking up a road."

not obey the truth--not submit yourselves to the true Gospel way of justification.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 7. Ye did run well] Ye once had the faith that worked by love-ye were genuine, active, useful Christians.

Who doth hinder] Who prevented you from continuing to obey the truth? Ye could only be turned aside by your own consent. St. Paul here, as in 1Co 9:24, compares Christianity to a race. See the notes on the above text.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

7. Ye did run well. The censure which the apostle administers for their present departure from the truth is mingled with approbation of their former course, for the express purpose that, by being brought to a sense of shame, they may return more speedily to the right path. The astonishment conveyed in the question, who hindered you? was intended to produce a blush. I have chosen to translate the Greek word πείθσθαι, obey, rather than believe, because, having once embraced the purity of the gospel, they had been led away from a course of obedience.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(7) Ye did run well.—Again, as in Gal_2:2, a metaphor from foot racing. The Galatians had made a good start, but suddenly changed their course.

Who did hinder you?—The metaphor here is not quite the same, but is somewhat akin to that just used. The original meaning of the word translated “hinder” is to “break up a road,” as an army before the advance of hostile forces.

The truth—i.e., the doctrine taught by St. Paul in opposition to the Judaising tenets which had been introduced into the Galatian Church.

(7-12) All was going well at first. What sudden intruder has stopped your path and led you astray? Certainly it is not God, to whom you owe your calling, that has persuaded you to such a course. You tell me that not many have fallen away. But those few are enough to infect the whole. Not that I wish to implicate all in the sin of some. Most of you I can trust to be true to me. The author of your troubles, whoever he is, shall not escape. God shall judge him. Do you turn round on me and say that I, too, have preached circumcision? The persecutions that I have to undergo from the Jews are proof that I preach it no longer. If I do preach circumcision then the other stumbling-blocks in the way of my teaching are removed. I have no need to lay stress upon a crucified Messiah. The advocates of circumcision may carry their self-mutilation a step further if they please.

This section is very abrupt in style. The thought bounds from subject to subject, not stopping to insert links of connection. At the end of the passage there is a vein of severe irony.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

7. The abruptness of thought and style is a marked feature of these two chapters. It is not always possible to trace the connexion with certainty.

Ye did run well] ‘You were running nobly’. The metaphor is taken from the stadium—a favourite one with St Paul, c. Gal_2:2; 1Co_9:24-27, &c.

who did hinder you] who was it that threw obstacles in your way? There may be a covert allusion here to some particular individual, prominent among the false teachers, to whom reference is again made Gal_5:10.

that ye should not obey the truth] The truth personified, and here equivalent to the Gospel which Paul had preached to them. These words have been transferred from this place to ch. Gal_3:1; see note there.

The verb ‘obey’ has the same root as the noun rendered ‘persuasion’ in the next verse, and they are in juxtaposition in the Greek. We have another instance of the Pauline usage pointed out in the note on Gal_5:1. It is not easy to preserve the play on the words. It may be indicated by translating, ‘that from the truth you should withhold obedience. The obedience which you are rendering cometh not from him who calleth you’.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Ye did run well,.... In the Christian race; when they first set out in a profession of religion, they embraced and held fast, and were zealously attached to the truths of the Gospel; they were in the lively exercise of grace on its proper object, and very diligent in the discharge of duty; they made great proficiency in the knowledge of divine things, and ran with cheerfulness and without weariness in the ways of Christ, and in the paths of truth and holiness. The metaphor is taken from runners in a race; see Co1 9:24 so far this is said to their commendation, but this should have been persisted in:

who did hinder you; not the apostle, or any of his brethren; no, they encouraged them to go on, and gave them all the assistance they could, to help them forward; but it was the false apostles that hindered them, who did all they could to remove them to another Gospel, and turn them aside out of the right way:

that ye should not obey the truth? of the Gospel, particularly the truth of justification by the righteousness of Christ; which they did not so cheerfully embrace, and show such a respect unto, as they had formerly done; see Gal 3:1, and which he says not by way of inquiry, but of complaint and concern; and with some indignation against the persons who had been the means of hindering their Christian progress, and with a view to reclaim the Galatians if possible.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

7 Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?

Ver. 7. Ye did run well] Why do ye now stop or step back? Tutius recurrere quam male currere, was the Emperor Philip’s symbol. (Reusner Symb.) Better run back than run amiss; for in this case, "He that hasteth with his feet, sinneth," Pro 19:2. But to run well till a man sweats, and then to sit down and take cold, may cause a consumption.

Who did let you?] Gr. "Threw a block in your way," εγκοπτειν, transversum aliquid struere.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Ye did run well - The Christian life is often represented as a race; see the notes at 1Co 9:24-26. Paul means here, that they began the Christian life with ardour and zeal; compare Gal 4:15.

Who did hinder you - Margin, “Drive you back.” The word used here (ἀνακόπτω anakoptō) means properly to beat or drive back. Hence, it means to hinder, check, or retard. Dr. Doddridge remarks that this is “an Olympic expression, and properly signifies “coming across the course” while a person is running in it, in such a manner as to jostle, and throw him out of the way.” Paul asks, with emphasis, who it could have been that retarded them in their Christian course, implying that it could have been done only by their own consent, or that there was really no cause why they should not have continued as they began.

That ye should not obey the truth - The true system of justification by faith in the Redeemer. That you should have turned aside, and embraced the dangerous errors in regard to the necessity of obeying the laws of Moses.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

This was once your faith, your profession, and according to this you directed the course of your life and actions; who hath hindered you in your course, or turned you out of your way, or given you a check in your race; and hath made you disobedient to, or to swerve from, the truth which you formerly owned and professed.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

7. Did run well—Their faith was true, their love was sincere, their works were good. The term run is the apostle’s favourite metaphor of a Christian race. He whose spirit is full of faith, and heart is full of love, will run that race with divine vigour.

Hinder—The Greek is a military term designating the impeding the march of an army by breaking up bridges and roads. The Galatian Christian army was marching at rapid rate when old Judaism blocked their course.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Vers. 7-12. In these verses the language is remarkably curt and disjointed. Their style seems to betoken, either the mind of the writer musing in painful embarrassment, uncertain how best to grapple with the case before him through imperfect knowledge of the circumstances ("Who did hinder you?"); or, possibly, the painful effort which it cost the apostle to "write with his own hand." In ver. 13 he at length takes up a line of thought which he is able to follow on with fulness and fluency.

Ye did run well (ejtrecete kalwv); full well ye were running.

"To run" is a favourite figure with St. Paul, drawn from the foot-races of the Isthmian Games or other public games common throughout the Roman empire, and applied above (Gal_2:2) to his own course of apostolic service, but here, as in 1Co_9:24-27; 2Ti_4:17; and Php_3:14, in a wider reference to the course of general Christian obedience. In vers. 5, 6 the apostle has indicated the proper character of a Christian believer"s life, as one which is animated by a faith energizing through love, and by the anticipation of attaining hereafter the awards to be rendered to the justified. Compare the general strain of thought, strikingly similar to that in the present context, pursued in Php_3:12-15. Obviously, one Important element in the comparison is the Christian"s forward advance in self-improvement, as well as his continuing prosecution of work for Christ"s cause. These characteristics had, and not long before, marked the manner of life of the Galatian Christians. Upon the recurrence of this recollection, here again, as Gal_3:1-4 Gal_4:13-16, the apostle bewails the change that had taken place. They had been so full of joy and of love in believing. (Gal_4:14, Gal_4:15) But now an incipient relinquishment of their hope in Christ had left them cheerless, and, in consequence, ready to look abroad in quest of other grounds of assured confidence; while also the thence ensuing conflicts of controversy and faction had marred their once happy mutual concord (ver. 15). The form of Christian life which the Galatian Churchmen had in those days presented to view was apparently similar to that which at an earlier date he had described as marking the Thessalonian Church, (1Th_1:3) and at a later time applauds in the Colossian. (Col_1:4-6, Col_1:8) Who aid hinder you; or, who did drive you back (tiv uJmav ejnekoye Receptus, ajnekoye). The ajnekoye of the Textus Receptus would mean, as in the margin of our English Bibles, "Who has driven or, beaten, struck you back," and would be illustrated by the use of the verb in RAPC Wis 18:23, "Standing between, he beat back the wrath," as Aaron did. But ejnekoye is the reading of all recent editors. The precise meaning of ejgkoptw does not seem to be, as some suppose, "to stop," but rather "to hamper, shackle, impede." It Act_24:4, "be tedious;" 1Th_2:18, "Satan hindered;" Rom_15:22 and, 1Pe_3:7, "hindered." So the substantive ejgkoph 1Co_9:12, "That we may cause no hindrance to clog the success of the gospel." Possibly this sense is derived from the hindrance caused to the traveller by the road being "cut into" or cut up before he goes over it. But it is more probably connected with the use of koptw in the sense of "worry," as in Demosthenes, "Olynth.," it. p. 22, "Worried from time to time by these expeditions up and down." So here, "Who was it that clogged your steps in running your race?" Not positively "arrested your steps:" this disastrous result, it was to be hoped, was not yet brought about; they were only as yet lagging in their course. This interrogation "who" does not so much demand that the evil worker shall be named and brought to light, as express the pity of it, that any one should have been able to work them so much mischief; as in Gal_3:1. Nevertheless, the author of the mischief had cause to tremble (see ver. 12, and note). That ye should not obey the truth? (th ajlhqeia T. Tr., Lightfoot, omit the th mhqesqai;); that ye should not be hearkening unto the truth (or, unto truth)? "The truth" directly cites the gospel; that is, the gospel which proclaims righteousness as theirs who believe in Christ apart from works of the ceremonial law; comp. qomai, Gal_3:5, "That the truth of the gospel might continue with you," the particular phase of the gospel there intended being clearly evinced from the circumstances referred to. "Truth," without the article, denoting "that which is true," cites the same by implication. The verb pei frequently rendered in the Authorized Version by "obey," as Rom_2:8 and Heb_13:17, properly means to lend a compliant ear to advice or persuasion; "to hearken," as Act_5:36, Act_5:37, 40 23:21 27:11. The apostle means that they were turning their ears away from the truth to listen to pernicious counsels or teaching. The verb is in the present tense with reference to the continued attention which they ought to be now giving to the gospel.

Vers. 7-9.

The sudden swerve of the Galatians from the truth.

They had been making a hopeful progress in the truth, when they suddenly started aside through the influence of the Judaists, to the deep sorrow and unfeigned astonishment of the apostle. Mark

I THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IS A GOOD RACE. "Ye did run well." An old divine says, "To run in religion is well, to run well is better, and to accomplish the race is the best of all." It is well in its beginning; so it was emphatically in Galatia: it is well in its progress, and the apostle gives us a fine example of running in his own case pressed to the mark, for the prize" (Php_3:14) and it is well in its end. (Heb_12:1) There are three things here to be considered.

1. The course. "To obey the truth." This the Galatians were ceasing to do under alien influence. The truth of the gospel already hinted at, (Gal_2:5, Gal_2:14) as opposed to every perversion or modification, was the clearly marked course for the believer"s race; and it was truth, not merely apprehended with the intellect or admired by the imagination, but obeyed from the heart, realizing, in fact, "the obedience of faith.

2. The condition. "Looking to Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith", (Heb_12:2) for guidance, strength, acceptance, comfort, and eternal life. (Jud_1:20, 21) To use a phrase of old Berridge, "Galatian anvils might be used to hammer the doctrines of grace as thin as possible," so as eventually to check the progress of the gospel altogether; for salvation is entirely of grace, and that grace through Jesus Christ.

3. The prize is a crown of life, (Rev_2:10) a crown of righteousness, (2Ti_4:7, 2Ti_4:8) an unfading crown. (1Pe_5:4)

II HINDRANCES IN THE CHRISTIAN RACE. "Who did hinder you?" The fact is instructive that such hindrances arise; but they ought to teach us the lesson of our entire dependence on Christ for strength and protection, (Joh_15:4) and the necessity of constant watchfulness. (Mar_13:37) The apostle"s mode of asking the question, "Who did hinder you?

1. Implies astonishment at the sudden perversion of the Galatians.

2. It asserts that it did not spring from any Divine call: "It cometh not fromhim that calleth you" (Rom_9:11, Rom_9:24; 1Co_1:9 1Co_7:15) it is, indeed, inconsistent with all the purposes included in the effectual call of God.

3. The question has a conciliatory aspect; for he does not, at leastprimarily, charge the perversion upon themselves, but upon their Judaistic seducers.

4. Its answer pointed to these seducers, concerning whom we may inferthat:

(1) They were few. He does not ask the question to ascertain the name of the individual who had led them astray; but it is significant that twice over he speaks of him as an individual person, "Who (tiv) did hinder you?" "He that humbleth you." It is true that the seducers are also spoken of in the plural number: "I would they were even cut off which trouble you." The two forms of phraseology imply that they were few, but that there may have been some one man of commanding influence among them.

(2) Their influence was not grounded in argument, but in "persuasion;" for they dexterously flattered the pride of the Galatians and worked upon their devotional feelings. Religious seducers have a wonderful art of "beguiling" unwary souls "with enticing words". (Col_2:4) Christians ought, therefore, to beware of credulousness in spiritual things.

(3) Their influence, as well as their doctrine, was essentially evil, though at present it might be but "a little leaven." "Leaven" is here used in a bad sense for the principle of corruption. "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees." But the apostle here refers to persons, not to doctrines, for he could never speak of the Judaistic heresy as "a little leaven" since it superseded Christ.

(4) Their influence threatened to grow. Leaven was infectious. "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." The Judaists, by their arts and their flatteries, might yet debase the entire Christianity of Galatia,

III THE NECESSITY FOR INQUIRING INTO THE CAUSES OF RELIGIOUS BACKSLIDING.

1. The question of the apostle implies this necessity.

2. There is danger in neglecting the inquiry. The "little leaven" would thushave time to work unhindered.

3. Our inquiry ought to bear practical fruit. If we have been hindered from running well, let us seek the cause, and apply for restoring grace by prayer, repentance, and faith. (Hos_14:1) If we have been restored from falls or preserved from hindrances, let us caution others of their danger (Heb_4:1) and concern ourselves about their welfare. (Luk_22:32) and restore the fallen in a spirit of meekness. (Gal_6:1) Thus it will be manifest that to run well must be conducive to our present comfort, to our abiding usefulness, and to our future happiness.

Hindered.

I PAST ATTAINMENTS DO NOT DISPENSE WITH THE NECESSITY OF PRESENT PROGRESS. "Ye did run well." So far, so good. That was a matter el thankfulness. But it would count for nothing sgainst the unworthiness of a slackened pace. Old laurels wither. Every day has its new duties. We must not waste to-day in congratulating ourselves on the success of yesterday. The tide is against us; to rest on the oars is to be swept back. No nation can prosper on its past history if the spirit of heroism has forsaken its citizens. As Christians, we never reach the goal till we have crossed the river of death. Till then we must be ever "pressing on and bearing up," or we shall assuredly make shipwreck even after earnestly running over the longest, steepest, roughest course.

II PAST ATTAINMENTS CONDEMN US FOR NEGLECTING PRESENT PROGRESS. We are judged by our own past selves. Our history is witness against us. The past proves that we could run well. It shows that we admitted the obligation to do so. Those who have never known Christ may plead ignorance. But they who have tasted of his grace and experienced the blessings of it and used it for some work in the Christian life, are without excuse if they turn aside at last.

III PAST ATTAINMENTS MAKE THE NEGLECT OF PRESENT PROGRESS PECULIARLY SAD. It is melancholy to see a life rendered abortive from the first, but it is much more mournful to witness the failure of a life that began in promise and made good way towards success. All the hopes and toils and sacrifices of the past are wasted. How painful to be so near the goal and yet to give up the race; to sink within sight of the haven! Such a broken life, like a day opening in a cheerful dawn and passing through a bright noon to a dark and stormy night, is of all lives most deplorable. "Ye did run well; who did binder you what pathos there is in these words! Christ weft over Jerusalem sadder tears than the ruin of Sodom could call forth.

IV WE MUST BEWARE OF THE DANGER OF NEGLECTING PRESENT PROGRESS AFTER SUCCEEDING WITH PAST ATTAINMENTS. "Who did hinder you?" There must have been new hindrances and possibly surprises and unexpected checks.

1. We must not rest satisfied with the establishment of good habits. Habits may be broken.

2. We must be prepared for new difficulties. The way that is now so smooth may become suddenly rough and stony.

We know the anxious strife, the eternal laws, To which the triumph of all good is given High sacrifice, and labour without pause, Even to the death; else wherefore should the eye Of man converse with immortality?

But let us not forget that if some may hinder us there is One more mighty than all to help us. W.F.A.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Ye did run well - In the race of faith. Who hath hindered you in your course, that ye should not still obey the truth?

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

VERSE 7. Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?

This is plain speaking. Paul asserts that he teaches the same truth now which he has always taught, and that the Galatians ran well as long as they obeyed the truth. But now, misled by the false apostles, they no longer run. He compares the Christian life to a race. When everything runs along smoothly the Hebrews spoke of it as a race. "Ye did run well," means that everything went along smoothly and happily with the Galatians. They lived a Christian life and were on the right way to everlasting life. The words, "Ye did run well," are encouraging indeed. Often our lives seem to creep rather than to run. But if we abide in the true doctrine and walk in the spirit, we have nothing to worry about. God judges our lives differently. What may seem to us a life slow in Christian development may seem to God a life of rapid progression in grace.

VERSE 7. Who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?

The Galatians were hindered in the Christian life when they turned from faith and grace to the Law. Covertly the Apostle blames the false apostles for impeding the Christian progress of the Galatians. The false apostles persuaded the Galatians to believe that they were in error and that they had made little or no progress under the influence of Paul. Under the baneful influence of the false apostles the Galatians thought they were well off and advancing rapidly in Christian knowledge and living.

Martin Luther — Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1535), English translation by Theodore Graebner (Zondervan, 1939) — public domain (U.S. copyright not renewed). Text from a community e-Sword module.

Ye did run well; that is, in the race of Christianity; you set out well at first, and received the gospel in the plainness and simplicity of it, without any mixture of Jewish ceremonies: What hindered you? who stopt you? who drove you back from your belief of, and obedience to, the truth of the gospel, which you then received from me?

Here note, 1. With what holy wisdom our apostle mixes commendations with his reproofs: at the same time that he reproves them for their present backsliding, he commends them for their former forwardness; Ye did run well.

Note, 2. That ordinarily a Christian’s first ways are his best ways, his first fruits his fairest fruits: Jehoshaphat walked in the first ways of David his father, 2Ch 17:3. Commonly young converts are carried out with a greater measure of affection and zeal, and make a swifter progress in religion, than others do, at first, or they themselves do afterward when they are of older standing. These Galatians did run, yea, did run very well at first in the race of Christianity.

Note, 3. That when a person’s or a people’s progress in Christianity is not answerable to their hopeful beginnings, it is matter of regret and grief to all beholders, as well as matter of reproach and shame to he persons themselves: Ye did run well; who did hinder you? Intimating, that this their defection and apostasy was no less matter of astonishment to St. Paul, than it was of rebuke and reproach to them.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Ye were running well; who hindered you that ye should not obey the truth?

J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

7–10. Ye did run well. A figure from the Grecian games. Compare 2:2; 1 Cor. 9:24; Heb. 12:1. Who did hinder? So as to stop your running. They had ceased to run by turning from the truth.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

7-12.] He laments their deflexion from their once promising course, and denounces severely their perverters. Ye were running well (‘hoc est, omnia apud vos erant in felici statu et successu, vivebatis optime, contendebatis recta ad vitam æternam quam vobis pollicebatur verbum,’ &c. Luther): who (see ch. 3:1, the question expresses astonishment) hindered you (Polyb. xxiv. 1. 12, uses ἐγκόπτειν with a dative, διὰ τὸ τὸν Φίλιππον ἐγκόπτειν τῇ δικαιοδοσίᾳ: Ellic. quotes, in connexion with the view of the primary notion being that of hindering by breaking up a road,—Greg. Naz. Or. xvi. p. 260, ἢ κακίας ἐγκοπτομένης δυσπάθεια τῶν πονηρῶν, ἢ ἀρετῆς ὁδοποιουμένης εὐπάθεια τῶν βελτιόνων) that ye should not (μή before πείθεσθαι is not pleonastic, but the construction, so often occurring, of a negative after verbs of hindering, is in fact a pregnant one, μὴ πείθεσθαι being the result of the hindrance: q. d. ὥστε μὴ π. or καὶ ἐποίησε μὴ π. See Bernhardy, Syntax, ix. 6 b, who quotes one example very apposite to this,—ἐμποδὼν ἡμῖν γένηται τὴν θεὸν μὴ ʼξελκύσαι, Aristoph) obey the truth (i.e. submit yourselves to the true Gospel of Christ.

These words, which Chrys. omits here, have been transferred hence to ch. 3:1. See var. readd. there. On that account they are certainly genuine here)?

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

7. Ἐτρέχετε καλῶς· τίς ὑμᾶς ἐνέκοψεν ἀληθείᾳ μὴ πείθεσθαι; “Ye were running well; who hindered you from obeying truth?” As in 4:12, the apostle breaks off argument to make an appeal to the feelings of his readers by reminiscence of the former conduct of the Galatians before they fell under the influence of the judaisers. It is to this time obviously that the imperfect ἐτρέχετε refers. τίς ὑμᾶς, etc., is not a question for information but of appeal.

On the use of running as a figure for effort looking to the achievement of a result, see 2:2, Rom 9:16, 1Co 9:24-26, Php 2:16, Php 2:3:14, 2Th 3:1. It is probable that in all cases the apostle has in mind the figure of running a race, as expressly in 1Co 9:24-26. ἐνκόπτω is used by Hippocrates in the sense “to make an incision,” but with the meaning “to hinder” first in Polybius. Here, if the figure is that of a race, the word suggests a breaking into the course, getting in the way, or possibly a breaking up of the road. That Paul uses the aorist (resultative) rather than the present (conative) indicates that he is thinking of what his opponents have already accomplished in their obstructive work. The present infinitive, πείθεσθαι, on the other hand, is progressive, so that the meaning of the whole expression is, “who has succeeded in preventing you from continuing to obey truth?” and the implication is that, though they have not fully adopted the views of Paul’s opponents, they have ceased to hold firmly to that which Paul taught them. πείθεσθαι is difficult to render exactly into English. “Believe” expresses rather less, “obey” rather more, than its meaning. It denotes not merely intellectual assent, but acceptance which carries with it control of action; cf. Act 5:36, Act 5:37, Act 5:40; Rom 2:8. On the construction of πείθεσθαι (inf. with μή after verbs of hindering), see BMT 402, 483; Bl.-D. 429. The omission of the article with ἀληθείᾳ gives to it a qualitative force, and shows that, though what the apostle has in mind is doubtless the same that in 2:5 and 2:14 he calls ἡ ἀλήθεια τοῦ εὐαγγελίου, he desires to emphasise the quality of his message as truth, thus conveying the implication that they are turning from something that is true to something that is false. Cf. for similar anarthrous use of ἀλήθεια Rom 9:1, 2Co 6:7, Eph 4:21. Some authorities insert the article here (omitted by א*AB). Evidently some scribe, recognising that the reference was to the truth of the gospel, stumbled at the qualitativeness of the expression.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Ye did run [ετρεχετε] . Better, as giving the force of the imperfect, ye were running. You were on the right road, and were making good progress when this interruption occurred. Comp. chapter Gal 2:2; 1Co 9:24 - 27; Phi 3:14; 2Ti 4:7.

Well [καλως] . Bravely, becomingly, honorably to yourselves and to the church. Often in Paul. See Rom 11:20; 1Co 3:37, 38; 2Co 11:4; Gal 4:17; Phi 4:14.

Did hinder [ενεκοψεν] . See on 1Pe 3:7. Comp. 1Th 2:18; Rom 14:22.

Obey the truth [αληθεια πειθεσθαι] . The exact phrase N. T. o. Disobey [απειθουσι] the truth, Rom 2:8 : obedience [υπακοη] of the truth, 1Pe 1:22.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.