CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
Galatians 3:26. Ye are all the children of God.—No longer children requiring a tutor, but sons emancipated and walking at liberty.
Galatians 3:28. Ye are all one in Christ Jesus.—No class privileged above another, as the Jews under the law had been above the Gentiles. Difference of sex makes no difference in Christian privileges. But under the law the male sex had great privileges.
Galatians 3:29. If ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed and heirs.—Christ is Abraham’s seed, and all who are baptised into Christ, put on Christ (Galatians 3:27), and are one in Christ (Galatians 3:28), are children entitled to the inheritance of promise.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Galatians 3:26-29
The Dignity of Sonship with God—
I. Enjoyed by all who believe in Christ.—“For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:26). Faith in Christ emancipates the soul from the trammels and inferior status of the tutorial training, and lifts it to the higher and more perfect relationship of a free son of God. The believer is no longer a pupil, subject to the surveillance and restrictions of the pedagogue; but a son, enjoying immediate and constant intercourse with the Father and all the privileges and dignities of a wider freedom. The higher relation excludes the lower; an advance has been made that leaves the old life for ever behind. The life now entered upon is a life of faith, which is a superior and totally different order of things from the suppressive domination of the law.
II. Is to be invested with the character of Christ.—“For as many as have been baptised into Christ have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27). For if Christ is Son of God, and thou hast put on Him, having the Son in thyself and being made like to Him, thou wast brought into one kindred and one form of being with Him (Chrysostom). To be baptised into Christ is not the mere mechanical observance of the rite of baptism; the rite is the recognition and public avowal of the exercise of faith in Christ. In the Pauline vocabulary baptised is synonymous with believing. Faith invests the soul with Christ, and joyfully appropriates the estate and endowments of the filial relationship. Baptism by its very form—the normal and most expressive form of primitive baptism, the descent into and rising from the symbolic waters—pictured the soul’s death with Christ, its burial and its resurrection in Him, its separation from the life of sin, and entrance upon the new career of a regenerated child of God (Romans 6:3-14).
III. Implies such a complete union with Christ as to abolish all secondary distinctions.—“For there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). All distinctions of nationality, social status, and sex—necessary as they may be in the worldly life—disappear in the blending of human souls in the loftier relationship of sons of God. The gospel is universal in its range and provisions, and raises all who believe in Christ to a higher level than man could ever reach under the Mosaic regimen. To add circumcision to faith would be not to rise but to sink from the state of sons to that of serfs. Christ is the central bond of unity to the whole human race; faith in Him is the realisation by the individual of the honours and raptures of that unity.
IV. Is to be entitled to the inheritance of joint heirship with Christ.—“If ye be Christ’s, then are ye … heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:29). In Christ the lineal descent from David becomes extinct. He died without posterity. But He lives and reigns over a vaster territory than David ever knew; and all who are of His spiritual seed, Jew or Gentile, share with Him the splendours of the inheritance provided by the Father. Here the soul reaches its supreme glory and joy. In Worcester Cathedral there is a slab with just one doleful word on it as a record of the dead buried beneath. That word is Miserrimus. No name, no date; nothing more of the dead than just this one word to say he who lay there was or is most miserable. Surely he had missed the way home to the Father’s house and the Father’s love, else why this sad record? But in the Catacombs at Rome there is one stone recently found inscribed with the single word Felicissima. No name, no date again, but a word to express that the dead Christian sister was most happy. Most happy; why? Because she had found the Father’s house and love, and that peace which the storms of life, the persecutions of a hostile world, and the light afflictions of time could neither give nor take away.
Lessons.—
1. Faith confers higher privileges than the law.
2. Faith in Christ admits the soul into sonship with God.
3. The sons of God share in the fulness of the Christly inheritance.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Galatians 3:26-29. Baptism.
I. The doctrine of Rome.—Christ’s merits are instrumentally applied by baptism; original sin is removed by a change of nature; a new character is imparted to the soul; a germinal principle or seed of life is miraculously given; and all this in virtue, not of any condition in the recipient, nor of any condition except that of the due performance of the rite. The objections to this doctrine are:
1. It assures baptism to be not the testimony to a fact, but the fact itself. Baptism proclaims the child of God; the Romanist says it creates him.
2. It is materialism of the grossest kind.
3. It makes Christian life a struggle for something that is lost, instead of a progress to something that lies before.
II. The doctrine of modern Calvinism.—Baptism admits all into the visible Church, but into the invisible Church only a special few. The real benefit of baptism only belongs to the elect. With respect to others, to predicate of them regeneration in the highest sense is at best an ecclesiastical fiction, said in the judgment of charity. You are not God’s child until you become such consciously. On this we remark:
1. This judgment of charity ends at the baptismal font.
2. This view is identical with the Roman one in this respect—that it creates the fact instead of testifying to it.
3. Is pernicious in its results in the matter of education.
III. The doctrine of the Bible.—Man is God’s child, and the sin of the man consists in perpetually living as if it were false. To be a son of God is one thing; to know that you are and call Him Father is another. Baptism authoritatively reveals and pledges to the individual that which is true of the race.
1. This view prevents exclusiveness and spiritual pride.
2. Protests against the notion of our being separate units in the divine life.
3. Sanctifies materialism.—F. W. Robertson.
Galatians 3:26. The Children of God.
I.
We are all children.
II.
We are all children of God.
III.
We are all children of God through faith.
IV.
We are all children of God in Christ Jesus.—Dr. Beet.
God’s Children.
I. If thou be God’s child, surely He will provide all things necessary for soul and body.—Our care must be to do the duty that belongs to us; when this is done our care is ended. They who drown themselves in worldly cares live like fatherless children.
II. In that we are children we have liberty to come into the presence of God.
III. Nothing shall hurt those who are the children of God.
IV. Walk worthy of your profession and calling.—Be not vassals of sin and Satan; carry yourselves as King’s sons.
V. Our care must be to resemble Christ.
VI. We must have a desire and love to the word of God that we may grow by it.
VII. We must have afflictions, if we be God’s children, for He corrects all His children.—Perkins.
Galatians 3:27-28. The Christly Character—
I. Acquired by a spiritual union with Christ.—“Baptised into Christ.”
II. Is a complete investiture with Christ.—“Have put on Christ.”
III. Is a union with Christ that absorbs all conventional distinctions (Galatians 3:28).
Galatians 3:27. Profession without Hypocrisy.—Hypocrisy is professing without practising. Men profess without feeling and doing, or are hypocrites in nothing so much as in their prayers. Let a man set his heart upon learning to pray and strive to learn, and no failures he may continue to make in his manner of praying are sufficient to cast him from God’s favour. Let him but be in earnest, striving to master his thoughts and to be serious, and all the guilt of his incidental failings will be washed away in his Lord’s blood. We profess to be saints, to be guided by the highest principles, and to be ruled by the Spirit of God. We have long ago promised to believe and obey. It is true we cannot do these things aright—nay, even with God’s help we fall short of duty. Nevertheless we must not cease to profess. There is nothing so distressing to a true Christian as to have to prove himself such to others, both as being conscious of his own numberless failings and from his dislike of display. Christ has anticipated the difficulties of his modesty. He does not allow such a one to speak for himself; He speaks for him. Let us endeavour to enter more and more fully into the meaning of our own prayers and professions; let us humble ourselves for the very little we do and the poor advance we make; let us avoid unnecessary display of religion. Thus we shall, through God’s grace, form within us the glorious mind of Christ.—Newman.
Teachings of Baptism.
I. Our baptism must put us in mind that we are admitted and received into the family of God.
II. Our baptism in the name of the Trinity must teach us to know and acknowledge God aright.
III. Our baptism must be unto us a storehouse of comfort in time of need.
IV. Baptism is a putting on of Christ.—Alluding to the custom of those who were baptised in the apostle’s days putting off their garments when they were baptised, and putting on new garments after baptism.
1. In that we are to put on Christ we are reminded of our moral nakedness.
2. To have a special care of the trimming and garnishing of our souls.
3. Though we be clothed with Christ in baptism, we must further desire to be clothed upon—clad with immortality.—Perkins.
Galatians 3:28. All are One in Christ.
I. People of all nations, all conditions, and all sexes.
II. They who are of great birth and high condition must be put in mind not to be high-minded, nor despise them of low degree, for all are one in Christ.
III. All believers must be of one heart and mind.
IV. We learn not to hate any man, but do good to all.—Men turn their swords and spears into mattocks and scythes, because they are one with Christ by the bond of one Spirit.—Perkins.
Galatians 3:29. The Promise of Grace.—The specific form of the whole gospel is promise, which God gives in the word and causes to be preached. The last period of the world is the reign of grace. Grace reigns in the world only as promise. Grace has nothing to do with law and requisition of law; therefore the word of that grace can be no other than a word of promise. The promise of life in Christ Jesus is the word of the new covenant. The difference between the gospel of the old covenant and that of the new rests alone on the transcendently greater glory of its promise.—Harless.
Heirs according to the Promise.
I. The basest person, if he believes in Christ, is in the place of Abraham, and succeeds him in the inheritance of the kingdom of heaven.
II. Believers must be content in this world with any estate God may lay upon them, for they are heirs with Abraham of heaven and earth.
III. They that believe in Christ must moderate their worldly cares and not live as drudges of the world, for they are heirs of God, and are entitled to all good things promised in the covenant.
IV. Our special care must be for heaven.—The city of God is thy portion, or child’s part.—Perkins.