CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
Galatians 1:6. I marvel that ye are so soon removed.—So quickly removed; not so soon after your conversion, or soon after I left you, but so soon after the temptation came; so readily and with such little persuasion (cf. Galatians 1:7-9). It is the fickleness of the Galatians the apostle deplores. An early backsliding, such as the contrary view assumes, would not have been matter of so great wonder as if it had taken place later.
Galatians 1:8-9. Any other gospel.—The apostle is here asserting the oneness, the integrity of his gospel. It will not brook a rival. It will not suffer any foreign admixture. Let him be accursed.—Devoted to the punishment his audacity merits. In its spiritual application the word denotes the state of one who is alienated from God by sin.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Galatians 1:6-9
The One Gospel.
I. Is an introduction into the grace of Christ.—“I marvel that ye are so soon removed from Him that called you into the grace of Christ” (Galatians 1:6). The true gospel is the emphatic call of God to man to participate and revel in the grace of Christ as the element and the only means by which his salvation can be secured. The grace of Christ, with its persuasive gentleness and vast redemptive resources, is in vivid contrast to the grim formalism and impossible demands of the yoke of bondage into which the Galatians were being so foolishly seduced. There is only one gospel that can introduce the soul into the midst of saving influences and bring it into contact with the living Christ. This one fact differentiates the gospel from all mere human methods, and gives it a unique character as the only remedial agency in dealing with human sin and sorrow.
II. The perversion of the one gospel is not a gospel.—“Unto another gospel which is not another” (Galatians 1:6-7).
1. It is a caricature of the true gospel.—“And would pervert the gospel of Christ” (Galatians 1:7). The perversion is not in the one gospel, which is impossible of perversion (for truth is an incorruptible unity), but in the mind of the false teacher. He distorts and misrepresents the true gospel by importing into it his own corrupt philosophy, as the wolf did with Baron Munchausen’s horse. Beginning at the tail, it ate its way into the body of the horse, until the baron drove the wolf home harnessed in the skin of the horse. The gospel has suffered more from the subtle infusion of human errors than from the open opposition of its most violent enemies.
2. It occasions distraction of mind.—“There be some that trouble you” (Galatians 1:7). A perverted gospel works the greatest havoc among young converts. They are assailed before they reach the stage of matured stability. Their half-formed conceptions of truth are confused with specious ideas, attractive by their novelty, and mischief is wrought which in many cases is a lifelong injury. The spirit that aims at polluting a young beginner in the way of righteousness is worse than reckless; it is diabolical.
III. The propagator of a perverted gospel incurs an awful malediction.—“But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel, … let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:8-9). Let him be devoted to destruction, as one hateful to God and an enemy of the truth. The word denotes the condition of one alienated from God by persistent sin. He not only rejects the truth himself, but deliberately plots the ruin of others. He reaps the fruit of his own sowing. It is impossible to do wrong without suffering. The greater the wrong-doing, the more signal is the consequent punishment. All perversions of truth are fruitful in moral disasters. It is a mad, suicidal act for man to fight against God.
Lessons.—
1. There can be but one true and infallible gospel.
2. The best human method for moral reformation is but a caricature of the true.
3. The false teacher will not escape punishment.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Galatians 1:6-7. Remonstrance with Revolters against the Gospel.
I. The apostle reproves with meekness and tenderness of heart.
II. He frames his reproof with great wariness and circumspection.—He says not, ye of yourselves do remove to another gospel, but ye are removed. He blames them but in part, and lays the principal blame on others.
III. The revolt was a departure from the calling to the grace of Christ.—
1. They were soon carried away. This shows the lightness and inconstancy of man’s nature, especially in religion. The multitude of people are like wax, and are fit to take the stamp and impression of any religion; and it is the law of the land that makes the most embrace the gospel, and not conscience.
2. That we may constantly persevere in the profession of the true faith we must receive the gospel simply for itself.
3. We must be renewed in the spirit of our minds and suffer no by-corners in our hearts.
4. We must not only be hearers but doers of the word in the principal duties to be practised.
IV. The Galatians revolt to another gospel, compounded of Christ and the works of the law.—Here we see the curious niceness and daintiness of man’s nature that cannot be content with the good things of God unless they be framed to our minds. If they please us for a time, they do not please us long, but we must have new things. The apostle shows that, though it be another gospel in the estimation of the false teachers, it is not another, but a subversion of the gospel of Christ. There is but one gospel, one in number, and no more. There is but one way of salvation by Christ, whereby all are to be saved from the beginning of the world to the end.
V. The apostle charges the authors of this revolt with two crimes.—
1. They trouble the Galatians, not only because they make divisions, but because they trouble their consciences settled in the gospel of Christ.
2. They overthrow the gospel of Christ. They did not teach a doctrine flat contrary. They maintained the gospel in word, and put an addition to it of their own out of the law—salvation by works. They perverted and turned upside-down the gospel of Christ.—Perkins.
The Perversion of Truth—
I. Supplants the gospel with a valueless imitation.—“Another gospel which is not another.”
II. Is contrary to the divine purpose.—“From Him that called you into the grace of Christ.”
III. Creates a gulf between the soul and God.—“I marvel that ye are so soon removed from Him.”
IV. Unsettles the faith of new converts.—“There be some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ.”
Galatians 1:6. Disappointed Hopes in Christian Work.—
1. It is the duty of Christian ministers, not only to hold out the pure truth of the gospel, but to defend it by convincing gainsayers and reproving solidly those who are carried away with contrary errors.
2. Ministers in all their reproofs are to use much wariness and circumspection, not omitting any circumstance which may justly extenuate the sin or furnish ground of hope of amendment. Hereby the bitter potion of a medicinal reproof is much sweetened and the guilty patient allured to the more thorough receiving of it.
3. The most quick-sighted may be deceived and disappointed in their expectation of good things from some eminent professors, and so may readily fall short of their hope.
4. As the dangerous consequences which follow upon error ought to be presented unto people that they may fly from it, so there are some errors in doctrine which do no less separate from God than profanity of life doth, of which errors this is one—the maintaining of justification by works.
5. It is ordinary for seducers to usher in their errors by some excellent designations, as of new lights, a more pure gospel way, and what not, as here they designate their error by the name of another gospel.—Fergusson.
Galatians 1:7. The Inviolable Unity of the Gospel.—
1. There is but one gospel, one in number and no more, and but one way to salvation, which is by faith.
2. The effect of error is to trouble the Church’s peace; peace among themselves, the patrons of error being zealous of nothing so much as to gain many followers, to attain which they scruple not to make woeful rents and deplorable schisms; inward peace of conscience, while some are perplexed and anxious what to choose and refuse until they question all truth, and others to embrace error for truth and so ground their peace on an unsure foundation.
3. The doctrine which maintains that justification is partly by Christ and partly by the merit of good works is a perverting and total overturning of the gospel, in so far as it contradicts the main scope of the gospel, which is to exalt Christ as our complete Saviour, Mediator, and Ransom, and not in part only.—Fergusson.
Galatians 1:8. The Inviolability of Christianity.
I. The import and construction of the gospel cannot be vague and indeterminate.—The character of the gospel was alleged to be its truth. This was, to the sophists of that era, a strange and novel pretension. To require faith to a testimony only so far as conformable to fact, only so far as supported by evidence, appeared to them a startling affectation. In the fixed character we recognise the true perfection of the gospel. It is the same through all ages, not changing to every touch and varying beneath every eye, but unfolding the same features and producing the same effects. Unless there was this invariableness in the Christian system, if a fixed determination of its purport is impossible, we should be at a loss in what manner to follow the conduct and imbibe the spirit of the early Christians. Those lights and examples of the Church would only ensnare us into a mien and attitude ridiculous as profane. It would be the dwarf attempting to bare a giant’s arm, a wayfaring man aspiring to a prophet’s vision. The truth as it is in Jesus is contained in that word which is the truth itself; there it is laid up as in a casket and hallowed as in a shrine. No change can pass upon it. It bears the character of its first perfection. Like the manna and the rod in the recess of the Ark, it is the incorruptible bread of heaven, it is the ever-living instrument of might, without an altered form or superseded virtue.
II. Its divine origin and authority cannot be controverted.—The history of Saul of Tarsus has often been cited with happy success in confirmation of Christianity.
1. What must have been the strength and satisfaction of conviction entertained by the writer! The conviction has to do with facts. It pertains to no favourite theory, no abstract science, but occurrences which he had proved by sensible observation and perfect consciousness. Wonders had teemed around him; but his own transformation was the most signal wonder of all. Nothing without him could equal what he discerned within.
2. As we estimate the measure and force of his convictions, inquire what weight and credibility should be allowed them. Put his conduct to any rack, his design to any analysis, and then determine whether we are not safe where he is undaunted, whether we may not decide for that on which he perils all, whether the anathema which he dares pronounce does not throw around us the safeguard of a divine benediction.
III. Its efficacy cannot be denied.—It was not called into operation until numberless expedients of man had been frustrated. Philosophy, rhetoric, art, were joined to superstitions, radicated into all habits and vices of mankind. The very ruins which survive the fall of polytheism—the frieze with its mythological tale, the column yet soaring with inimitable majesty, the statue breathing an air of divinity—recall the fascinations which it once might boast and of the auxiliaries it could command. Yet these were but the decorations of selfishness most indecently avowed, of licentiousness most brutally incontinent, of war the most wantonly bloody, of slavery the most barbarously oppressive. And Christianity subverted these foundations of iniquity; and yet so all-penetrating is its energy, that it did not so much smite them as that they sank away before it. It reaches the human will and renews the human heart. And a thousand blessings which may at first appear derived from an independent source are really poured forth from this.
IV. The authority and force of the present dispensation of divine truth cannot be superseded.—It is final. In it He hath spoken whose voice shall be heard no more until it “shake not the earth only but also heaven.” No other sensible manifestation can be given, the doctrine is not to be simplified, the ritual is not to be defined to any further extent, nothing more will be vouchsafed to augment its blessings or ratify its credentials. We possess the true light, the perfect gift, the brightest illumination, the costliest boon. Such a dispensation, constituted to be coexistent with all future time, must resist every view which would impress a new form or foist a strange nature upon it.
V. No circumstance or agency can endanger the existence and stability of the Christian revelation.—When the security of the gospel is to be most confidently predicted and most strongly ascertained, supernatural power is restrained—a curse encloses it round about, a “flaming sword turning every way guards this tree of life.” It shall endure coevally with man. Feeble are our present thoughts, confused our perceptions; we see everything as from behind a cloud and in a disproportion. Our convictions are more like conjectures and our speculations dreams. But we shall soon emerge from this state of crude fancies and immature ideas. Worthy sentiments and feelings will fill up our souls. Each view shall be as a ray of light striking its object, and each song the very echo of its theme. Then shall we adequately understand why apostles kindled into indignation and shook with horror at the idea of “another gospel,” and why even angels themselves must have been accursed had it been possible for them to have divulged it.—R. W. Hamilton.
A Supernatural Revelation.—There can be no doubt whatever, as a matter of historic fact, that the apostle Paul claimed to have received direct revelation from heaven. He is so certain of that revelation that he warns the Galatians against being enticed by any apparent evidence to doubt it. It would be impossible to express a stronger, a more deliberate, and a more solemn conviction that he had received a supernatural communication of the will of God.—Dr. Wace, Bampton Lectures.
The Best Authority to be obeyed.—A dispute having arisen on some question of ecclesiastical discipline and ritual, King Oswi summoned in 664 a great council at Whitby. The one set of disputants appealed to the authority of Columba, the other to that of St. Peter “You own,” cried the puzzled king to Colman, “that Christ gave to Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven: has He given such power to Columba?” The bishop could but answer, No. “Then I will obey the porter of heaven,” said Oswi, “lest when I reach its gates he who has the keys in his keeping turn his back on me, and there be none to open.”
Latitudinarianism.—Referring to Erasmus’s temporising policy in the Reformation, Froude says: “The question of questions is, what all this latitudinarian philosophising, this cultivated epicurean gracefulness, would have come to if left to itself, or rather, what was the effect which it was inevitably producing? If you wish to remove an old building without bringing it in ruin about your ears, you must begin at the top, remove the stones gradually downwards, and touch the foundation last. But latitudinarianism loosens the elementary principles of theology. It destroys the premises on which the system rests. It would beg the question to say that this would in itself have been undesirable; but the practical effect of it, as the world then stood, would have been only to make the educated into infidels, and to leave the multitude to a convenient but debasing superstition.”
Galatians 1:9. The True Gospel to be preached and believed.
I. The repetition of these words by Paul signify that he had not spoken rashly but advisedly, whatsoever he had said before.
II. That the point delivered is an infallible truth of God.
III. That we may observe and remember what he had said as the foundation of our religion—that the doctrine of the apostles is the only infallible truth of God, against which we may not listen to Fathers, Councils, or to the very angels of God.
IV. They are accursed who teach otherwise than the Galatians had received.—As Paul preached the gospel of Christ, so the Galatians received it. The great fault of our times is that whereas the gospel is preached it is not accordingly received. Many have no care to know it; and they who know it give not unto it the assent of faith, but only hold it in opinion.—Perkins.