The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle to the GalatiansFindlay, George G. (George Gillanders)
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle to the Galatians
Findlay, George G. (George Gillanders)
Bible. Galatians -- Commentaries
foist something else upon you in its name." Seven times in this
context (vv. 6-11) does the Apostle reiterate, in noun or verb, this
precious word, as though he could not let it go. A strange sort
of "good news" for the Galatians, that they must be circumcised
forsooth, and observe the Jewish Kalendar! (ch. v. 2, 3; vi. 12; iv.
9, 10.)
I. In Paul's view, there is but one gospel for mankind. _The gospel
of Jesus Christ bears a fixed, inviolable character._
On this position the whole teaching of Paul rests,--and with it, may
we not add, Christianity itself? However variously we may formulate
the essentials of a Christian man's faith, we are generally agreed
that there are such essentials, and that they are found in Paul's
gospel to the Gentiles. With him the good tidings about Christ
constituted a very definite and, as we should say, _dogmatic_ body of
truth. In whatever degree his gospel has been confused and overlaid
by later teachings, to his own mind its terms were perfectly clear,
and its authority incontestable. With all its breadth, there is
nothing nebulous, nothing limp or hesitating about the theology of
Paul. In its main doctrines it is fixed and hard as adamant; and at
the challenge of this Judaistic perversion it rings out an instant
and peremptory denial. It was the ark of God on which the Jewish
troublers laid their unholy hands. "Christ's grace" is lodged in
it. God's call to mankind was conveyed by these "good tidings." The
Churches which the Apostle had planted were "God's husbandry, God's
building;" and woe to the man who tampered with the work, or sought
to lay another foundation than that which had been laid (1 Cor.
iii. 5-11). To distort or mutilate "the word of the truth of the
gospel," to make it mean now one thing and now another, to disturb
the faith of half-instructed Christians by captious reasonings and
self-interested perversions, was a capital offence, a sin against
God and a crime against humanity. Paul possesses in his gospel truth
of unspeakable value to mankind, the supreme revelation of God's
mercy to the world. And he is prepared to launch his anathema against
every wilful impugner, no matter what his pretensions, or the quarter
from which he comes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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