Bible Commentaries

Religious Fickleness

Galatians 1:6

The Apostle does not speak in this letter as he speaks in almost every other Epistle. I notice the absence of the usual commendations. How the Apostle praises the Corinthians! "I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ; that in every thing ye are enriched by him... ye come behind in no gift;" and after that he lacerates them with a rod, forgetting all his encomiums. Read the Epistle to the Corinthians, compare the salutations with the anterior contents, and say where is the music. The Apostle Paul comes before the churches of Galatia with all his episcopal robes upon him: this time he is going to be an Apostle "(not of men, neither by Galatians 1:6-8

It is noteworthy that Paul does not unchurch these Celtic Christians. We have seen in our first exposition that these Galatians were the Irish men of their country. They were rude, inconstant, given to unaccountable and irrational change. The Apostle comes down upon them with great dignity; for we have observed how lacking his salutation is in many of the elements which make his superscriptions so tender and sympathetic and fraternal: yet, notwithstanding all the fractiousness, fickleness, obstreperousness, Paul does not dismiss the Galatians from the kingdom of Christ. He smites with a rod, but still says to those who are most severely lacerated, "Brethren, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit." It would have been easier to unchurch the whole crowd. Destruction is always the easiest policy. There is a demonstrativeness and pomp about it, which may attract the notice of the selfish and the foolish. Whom you cannot subdue by reason, crush with your iron heel. This was not the policy of the Apostle; this has not been the policy of God, though it has often been threatened. When the Lord has been obliged in the conduct of his providence to follow this policy he has always, in the midst of it, relented and spared the neck of his enemies. We have seen him, in our Old Testament studies, come to a king and touch his forehead with leprosy, but leave the crown on. He came very nearly there to disrobing and dismissing the blasphemous monarch. The touch on the forehead should be a hint that the crown is no longer secure when character begins to give way. What a crown it is when the leprous line is written under the first circlet of diamonds! What do we see on the man's head? The leprosy rather than the crown, or if we see the crown we say, What a mockery it Galatians 2:16-21 we have Paul at his very best:—

16. Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.

17. But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is therefore Christ the minister of sin? God forbid.

18. For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor.

19. For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.

20. I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

21. I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.

This is the Pauline eloquence, this is the Pauline theology. Is that theology abstract, speculative, metaphysical? Not at all; it is personal, experimental, the voice of consciousness, the testimony of an inward and undeniable consciousness and experience. Men do not object to theology when it is alive: men do object, blessed be God, to everything that is dead. In God there is no darkness, no death: and God has so made us that we love life, beauty, and the spirit of assured and beneficent progress.

In chapter3the Apostle is still argumentatively upon a historical basis. The Apostle shows here the solidarity of history. Paul never broke history into little morsels that had no relation to one another. History in the hands of Paul, and in the hands of every philosopher, is not a sack of peas, which will run away from one another the moment you cut the sack: history was unity, continuity, development,—touch it at any point and every other point throbbed with sympathy. It is because we forget that we belong to the creation of God, that we make little men of ourselves, and subject ourselves to all the passing winds that care to make sport of our so-called convictions and our miscalled hopes and dreams of greatness. You and I lived when the Lord said, "Let us make man": then we began. It is because we think of men and not of man, of the plural and not the plural total, that we lose rest and joy, and sense of triumph and immortality. An ancient emperor of Morocco ("It is lawful to learn from an enemy," saith the Latin proverb) said, "I have been reading the Epistles of Paul, and if ever I change my religion I will become a Christian; but I do not like one thing in Paul, he changed his religion, and I think a man ought to die in the religion in which he was born." Thus spake the old emperor of Morocco. Was he right in charging Paul with changing his religion? He was wrong. Paul never changed his religion. Christianity is the consummation of Judaism. Properly understood, we all pass from Genesis to Matthew. We must all pass from Sinai to Mount Zion; we must all go from the mountain torn with lightning to the sweet green slopes where all is quietness, or where quietness is but a variety of music. There is no change in Paul as to fundamentals in Jesus Christ; "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus; and if ye be Christ"s, then are ye Abraham's seed." Verily this man was a historical philosopher; he grasped things with both hands, and looked them through and through, and was a true man before the altar of God.

Paul did not, however, live in the "good old times" of England; he says, "Though it be but a man's covenant, yet, if it be confirmed, no man disannulleth, or addeth thereto." He did not know what was going to happen, for in England in the days of the eighth Henry a man made his will, and stated that on no account was he to be buried with papistical rites; no mass was to be said over him, he was to be buried in the faith which he had professed through a lifetime; and they buried him so. But an unhappy namesake of mine, Dr. Parker, Chancellor of Worcester, had him dug up, and his bones burned. Paul said, "Though it be but a man's covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man disannulleth or addeth thereto." These were the good old times of England1To his praise, be it said, Henry VIII. made that same Parker pay three hundred pounds fine for committing so high an offence; let good be spoken wherever it can be uttered with a clear conscience.

From a high theological argument the Apostle passes into what is difficult to distinguish from a little banter:—"Brethren, I beseech you, be as I am; for I am as ye are; ye have not injured me at all." Some have found in this an intimation of the fact, that it did not lie within the power of the Galatians to injure a man like Paul. There may be a little sub-acid in this tone; it may be that Paul is lifting himself up in religious and justifiable pride, as who should say, Brethren, it does not come within your power to injure a man called as I am, and protected by the whole armoury of heaven. Said the old bore to Aristotle, "I fear I try your patience, sir philosopher, by all this use of words." Said Aristotle, "You do not try my patience, for in truth I have not heeded one word you have uttered." It may be that something of the same kind was in the tone of the Apostle, for he could be haughty, he could by one step go to the other side of the universe from any man that offended him; none so gentle, none so austere.

Finally he gives us a new hint as to the way of reading the Scripture—"Which things are an allegory." Some men are afraid of being allegorical; these same men are afraid of everything, and therefore their fear amounts to nothing when applied to the exegesis of a mystic word. I find allegory everywhere in the Bible. There are those who would make the Bible but a box of letters, and they, forsooth, stand up and say, You read into the Bible things that are not there. I answer, Everything is in the Bible that is true, beautiful, musical, beneficent. "Which things are an allegory;" study the parable, watch the development of the times and events, and carry back the present as a light to hold over the past. Only ages to come can explain some parts of the Bible. What do we mean when we say that such and such a man, great in letters or in statesmanship or in war, must be judged by history, that is to say, must be judged by men who come centuries after? Can these men understand such great geniuses better than their contemporaries can understand them? Most undoubtedly; that is the philosophy of history. A man writing two hundred years from this date will write more completely and authoritatively about the men of to-day than the men of to-day could write even about themselves. There is a genius of history, there is a philosophical reading of the past. Let not the blind chide those who can see. God will send his Prophets and Apostles age after age, to tell what men meant who died five centuries before them.