Bible Commentaries

NO OTHER GOSPEL

‘I marvel that ye are so soon removed from Him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.’

Galatians 1:6-8

The right of interpretation is embodied for us in what we call dogma. Many of us do not see the need of dogma, just because we are too apt to miss the true secret of Christian authority. If you are tempted to treat it as one among many influences, perhaps the best and sweetest of all, but still only a moral force working in concert with other forces, then you will find yourself pulled up short by something in it which claims an absolute title, an original and unique authority. This holds ever aloof, supreme and solitary. What is this undying kernel which repels delusion? We know well it is the personality of Jesus Christ. His authoritative personality, His permanent claims, this it is which accounts for the permeating influence exercised over the world by Christianity.

I. The heart and core of Christianity.—Dogma simply puts into words this indissoluble and unique element, which makes it impossible to account for Christianity as an appendage or element of something else. Dogma declares that the Person of the Lord and Master of Christianity holds in it all that is wanted to explain its rise, growth, power, demands, promises. Christianity is Christ, and Christ is Christianity: Christ, to the Jews, a stumbling-block, to the Greeks foolishness, but to all who believe, Christ, the sole foundation, the Author and Finisher of the faith, the one Head, the one rock, the wisdom and power of God.

II. The danger against which St. Paul fought, in its simpler form sweeps in upon us through the great width and variety of our travelling. Our tours now take us so easily far outside the frontiers of Christianity that we rub shoulders with a dozen religions; and, by the sheer force of an unguarded instinct, Christianity slips somehow into a subordinate place in our imagination. We look upon it as one religion among many, and we talk as if it had grown as the others grow. Or here at home, without travel at all, we are terribly liable to the habit of letting Christianity sink down to the level of a social influence. Christianity does so much good, and does it so much better than philanthropy, that we see and feel what a loss to the general well-being it would be if this were withdrawn, we feel that we ourselves are the better for the influence it has had over us. All this is so true, only we are observing it as a phenomenon which impresses us favourably, and never once perhaps have we gone behind the phenomenon, and asked, ‘Whence does this excellent influence spring? What does it assert? Does it simply spring out of the belief that in Christ Jesus there is to be found an authoritative supremacy which nothing short of absolute allegiance of heart to the heart and will of God can ever satisfy? Is that the motive, the cause of these effects? If so, what am I about? Can I accept and face the influence, and not accept the challenge of the creed: ‘Whom sayest thou that I, the Son of man, am?’

III. There is the challenge.—The creed is proclaimed aloud; we have heard it; what are we going to do? This will stand over against us with an importunate inquiry. Oh that with St. Peter our hearts may burn within us until passionate words break from our lips, ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God’! God grant us that to-day, by the help of the Holy Ghost, we may deliver out our faith with a new emphasis, a new force of conviction. ‘Yes, it is true; I see it; this religion is no outgrowth of human relations; no! there is but one who can explain it; I see Thee and know Thee Who Thou art; Thou art the Christ, the Holy One of God!’

—Rev. Canon Scott Holland.

‘THAT I MIGHT PREACH HIM’

‘It pleased God, … to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him.’

Galatians 1:15-16

So St. Paul recalls his Divine ordination time, his crisis of consecration to the apostolate, that office which summed up all ministerial orders in it, and out of which they were unfolded by God’s providence. Called to be an Apostle, St. Paul was called not only to inspiration, but to daily duties for others, for body as well as soul, and to patient and laborious government of one little mission-congregation after another. Deacon, presbyter, overseeing pastor of pastors, he was always all this in one, and more than this. But all other functions of his apostolate are for him overshadowed and dominated by this: he was called to preach his Lord.

I. The pastor’s message.—‘That I might preach Him.’

II. The pastor’s qualification.—‘It pleased God … to reveal His Son in me.’

III. God’s sovereignty.—‘It pleased God’—sovereign, though with a sovereignty of love. Every sight that any one of us has, or has ever had, of Christ’s supreme reality, His mighty tenderness, His finished work. His indwelling presence, is ours because—in the last analysis—‘it pleased God.’ ‘It pleased God to reveal His Son’; to lift the veil from the soul’s face, and show it the Jesus Christ not of theory only, not even of holy orthodoxy taken by itself, but of experience, of trust, of love. ‘To reveal His Son in me.’ Wonderful phrase! We might have expected to read ‘to reveal His Son to me’; but the thought, the experience, the word, goes deeper: ‘To reveal His Son in me.’ Such is that unveiling in the depths of the soul’s consciousness that the Lord, Who is Divinely and for ever objective, not ourselves, to be dealt with as not ourselves, to be appealed to and leaned upon as One Who does not mean to move and vary with us, but is the same today and for ever in Himself, is yet so seen and known by the believing spirit that He is within it. He is not an element of its personality, indeed, but He is lodged by faith in its depths, to give peace, and strength, and holiness, and heaven.

IV. Here is the open secret behind a living ministry; the spring shut up, the fountain sealed, out of which flows the pure river of power for God. ‘He revealed His Son in me.’ Shall not that secret be the possession of every minister? Shall we not humbly purpose, and then diligently seek, that nothing short of that shall animate our work and witness, till we enter, through great mercy, into the joy of our Lord? What a force, strong as it is gentle, goes with the ministry which somehow indicates that indeed the minister hath seen the Lord! The man may be anything but eloquent. His literary equipment may be far from perfect. His manner may be the very opposite of impassioned. But if it is found out that he is always speaking of Jesus Christ as the soul of his message, and speaking of Him as One Whom he knows, Whom he has seen and does see with the inner eye, as One Who is to himself a glorious—let me simply say a solid—fact: then that man, deacon or presbyter, shall be found, whether it is known here below or not, to have worked supernatural results as his Master’s implement.

—Bishop H. C. G. Moule.

Illustration

‘Is it unreasonable to say, as I find myself often saying in my soul in the pulpit “What else is there to preach about?” What am I here for if not to preach Him? These human souls, made in the Lord’s image, and for endless life, but wrecked in the Fall, in danger lest they die “the death that cannot die,” exposed every hour to temptations that may strike deep as their being, liable at any moment’s notice to overwhelming griefs—these men, these women, capable of God’s own indwelling by His grace (His grace which is in Christ Jesus and nowhere else); capable of learning the joys and Divine surprises of a present and known acceptance, a present and joyful triumph, against the devil, the world, and the flesh; capable of living in this world as not of it, and so of being its riches and its blessings—what do they want at my lips? Whether they know it or not, they want me to preach Him. They want to know Him as their peace, their light, their life, their power, their everlasting hope, full, quite full of immortality. They want Him, evidently set forth, crucified amongst them, in a Gospel which does not dismiss the Cross to the background or to the middle distance, but erects it in all its bleeding glory in the front of truth, and cannot get away from it. They want Him as their living and interior power, dwelling in their hearts by faith, as the Holy Spirit strengthens those misgiving hearts to hail their sacred King of Glory to come in.’

THE KEYNOTE OF TESTIMONY

‘Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood.’

Galatians 1:16

These words are the keynote of the Apostle’s testimony. They describe in one terse sentence his attitude as an apostle of Christ and a teacher of the Gospel. As we carefully ponder his utterances, three points emerge to which attention may be directed.

I. The true knowledge of Jesus Christ is a revelation.—It was so in St. Paul’s case, and he appeals to it to prove that the Gospel he preached was not by man, nor after man. It is interesting to find him again and again in his career appealing to this revelation.

II. Such a revelation of Christ confers a certain independence on those who receive it.—St. John says, ‘Ye need not that any man teach you’—that is, there is a point beyond which human teachers cannot go. It is not, of course, intended that a Christian is to be independent of guidance and help from his fellows; we are intended to help one another; but it remains true that that help, after all, cannot proceed beyond a certain point.

III. This independence involves responsibility.—Now that you know the truth, what are you going to do? When St. Paul knew the truth he had no question about his action. What a moment that was for the Apostle on the way to Damascus! What an awful disillusionising it must have been! But now what was he going to do? That was the question, and that is the question which comes again and again to the soul that sees the light. Am I going to be faithful to what I have seen, or am I going to shrink back from it? To all such waverers the noble reply of the Apostle for ever speaks: ‘Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood.’

—Rev. E. W. Moore.

Illustration

‘A story is told of a friend who joined the Church of Rome with Cardinals Manning and Newman, that, afterwards reading original authors in the libraries of Europe and becoming convinced that the claims of Rome to a universal supremacy were unfounded, he paid his old friend and former colleague a visit. He laid the facts before him, and when Manning had sufficiently recovered from his surprise he said to him, “And now, my lord, what are you going to do?” “To do!” said Manning. “Have you gone out of your senses? What do you mean?” “I mean,” replied the other, “that whatever else I am, I hope I am at least an honest man. I joined the Church of Rome sincerely seeking truth, and now that I find the truth is not in her I am going to leave her. ‘What are you going to do?’ is the question I would ask.” Manning waved his hands impatiently. “You must be mad!” he said. “All that you and I have to consider is the voice of the Church to-day and to believe that her voice is the voice of God to us.” So the interview ended. The one man true to his convictions, when he had the light, walked in the light; the other rested on the authority of the Church of Rome.’

ALONE WITH GOD

‘I went into Arabia.’

Galatians 1:17

There is nothing that carries on the soul, and promotes the spiritual life, like secret conversing with God. The great test of every Christian is, what time he can spend in devotion; and, what he is when he is alone with God. How shall we secure it in the full and crowded life which most of us have?

I. It will be a good thing sometimes to retire for a few days from your usual avocations. Not for bodily rest only—not as a holiday—but for more communion (during the retreat) with your hearts and with God.

II. It is a better thing to go to your own room as often as you can in the day (even if only for a few minutes), that you may commune with the Invisible and dip into the Eternal. It is astonishing how it invigorates the mind, and how different things look afterwards, and men ‘will take knowledge of you, that you have been with Jesus.’

III. But best of all is that which, at any time, and in any place, can draw the curtain of the sanctuary of thought around your heart, and catch one moment with God. A hallowed solitude even in a crowd is a wonderful secret of a quiet mind, a heavenly wisdom, and a holy walk!

Arabia touched Canaan, and the boundary of the one was the confine of the other.

—Rev. James Vaughan.

Illustration

‘The order of the events of St. Paul’s life, immediately after his conversion, as chronologically given, is not clear. In the history, as given in the Acts, there is no mention of this visit to Arabia. And the question is, whether it took place directly after his conversion and baptism; or, whether he had preached in the synagogues of Damascus before he went into Arabia? He certainly went back to Damascus and preached there; and the whole time occupied, before he went to Jerusalem, was three years. But how this time is to be divided—how much he was in Arabia, and how much in Damascus—of this we do not know. I am inclined to think he stayed a short time in Damascus after his conversion; then, for a longer period, he was in Arabia; and then he returned, having stayed a considerable time to escape the persecutions of the Jews, to Jerusalem. So the early summary of his life would be: first with Christ (only Christ); then a little with man; then in solitude with God; then work—an order full of suggestive thought and guidance.’