CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
Galatians 5:2. If ye be circumcised.—Not simply as a national rite, but as a symbol of Judaism and legalism in general; as necessary to justification. Christ shall profit you nothing.—The gospel of grace is at an end. He who is circumcised is so fearing the law, and he who fears disbelieves the power of grace, and he who disbelieves can profit nothing by that grace which he disbelieves (Chrysostom).
Galatians 5:5. Wait for the hope of righteousness.—Righteousness, in the sense of justification, is already attained, but the consummation of it in future perfection is the object of hope to be waited for.
Galatians 5:6. Faith which worketh by love.—Effectually worketh, exhibits its energy by love, and love is the fulfilling of the law.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Galatians 5:2-6
Christianity Superior to External Rites.
I. External rites demand universal obedience.—“Every man that is circumcised is a debtor to do the whole law” (Galatians 5:3). The Galatians were in a state of dangerous suspense. They were on the brink of a great peril. Another step and they would be down the precipice. That step was circumcision. Seeing the imminence of the danger the apostle becomes more earnest and emphatic in his remonstrance. He warns them that circumcision, though a matter of indifference as an external rite, would in their case involve an obligation to keep the whole law. This he has shown is an impossibility. They would submit themselves to a yoke they were unable to bear, and from whose galling tyranny they would be unable to extricate themselves. Knowing this, surely they would not be so foolish as, deliberately and with open eyes, to commit such an act of moral suicide. There must be a strange infatuation in ritualistic observances that tempts man to undertake obligations he is powerless to perform, utterly heedless of the most explicit and faithful warnings.
II. Dependence on external rites is an open rejection of Christ.—“Christ shall profit you nothing; … is become of no effect unto you; ye are fallen from grace” (Galatians 5:2; Galatians 5:4). Here the result of a defection from the gospel is placed in the most alarming aspect, and should give pause to the wildest fanatic. It is the forfeiture of all Christian privileges, it is a complete rejection of Christ, it is a loss of all the blessings won by faith, it is a fall into the gulf of despair and ruin. It cannot be too plainly understood, nor too frequently iterated, that excessive devotion to external rights means the decline and extinction of true religion. Ritualism supplants Jesus Christ. “It is evident that the disciples of the Church of Rome wish to lead us from confession and absolution to the doctrine of transubstantiation, thence to the worship of images, and thence to all the abuses which at the end of the fifteenth century and at the beginning of the sixteenth excited the anger and scorn of Luther, Calvin, Zwinglius, and others. The primary faith of the Reformers is in the words of Christ. The primary faith of the ritualists is in Aristotle. If the British nation is wise, it will not allow the Roman Church with its infallible head, or the ritualists with their mimic ornaments, or those who are deaf to the teachings of Socrates and Cicero, of Bacon and Newton, to deprive them of the inestimable blessings of the gospel.”
III. Christianity as a spiritual force is superior to external rites.—
1. It bases the hope of righteousness on faith. “For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith” (Galatians 5:5). Look on this picture and on that. Yonder are the Galatians, all in tumult about the legalistic proposals, debating which of the Hebrew feasts they shall celebrate and with what rites, absorbed in the details of Mosaic ceremony, all but persuaded to be circumcised and to settle their scruples out of hand by a blind submission to the law. And here on the other side is Paul with the Church of the Spirit, walking in the righteousness of faith and the communion of the Holy Spirit, joyfully awaiting the Saviour’s final coming and the hope that is laid up in heaven. How vexed, how burdened, how narrow and puerile is the one condition; how large, lofty, and secure the other! Faith has its great ventures; it has also its seasons of endurance, its moods of quiet expectancy, its unweariable patience. It can wait as well as work (Findlay).
2. Faith is a spiritual exercise revealing itself in active love.—“Faith worketh by love” (Galatians 5:6). In Galatians 5:5 we have the statics of the religion of Christ; in Galatians 5:6 its dynamics. Love is the working energy of faith. “Love gives faith hands and feet; hope lends it wings. Love is the fire at its heart, the life-blood coursing in its veins; hope the light that gleams and dances in its eyes.” In the presence of an active spiritual Christianity, animated by love to Christ and to men, ritualism diminishes into insignificance. “In Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision” (Galatians 5:6). The Jew is no better or worse a Christian because he is circumcised; the Gentile no worse or better because he is not. Love, which is the fulfilling of the law, is the essence of Christianity, and gives it the superiority over all external rites.
Lessons.—
1. Externalism in religion imposes intolerable burdens.
2. To prefer external rites is an insult to Christ.
3. The superiority of Christianity is its spiritual character.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Galatians 5:2-4. Christianity nullified by Legalism.
I. To accept legalism is to reject Christ (Galatians 5:2; Galatians 5:4).
II. Legalism demands universal obedience to its enactments (Galatians 5:3).
III. Legalism is a disastrous abandonment of Christianity.—“Ye are fallen from grace” (Galatians 5:4).
Galatians 5:5-6. Righteousness attained by Active Faith.—
1. No personal righteousness entitles us to the blessed hope of the heavenly inheritance, but only the righteousness of Christ apprehended by faith. It is only the efficacious teaching of God’s Spirit which can sufficiently instruct us in the knowledge of this righteousness and make us with security and confidence venture our hope of heaven upon it.
2. To impose the tie of a command on anything as a necessary part of divine worship wherein the word has left us free, or to subject ourselves to such command, is a receding from and betrayal of Christian liberty.
3. The sum of a Christian’s task is faith; but it is always accompanied with the grace of love. Though faith and love are conjoined, faith, in the order of nature, has the precedency.—Fergusson.
Galatians 5:6. Religion is Faith working by Love.
I. External and bodily privileges are of no use and moment in the kingdom of Christ.—
1. We are not to esteem men’s religion by their riches and external dignities.
2. We are to moderate our affections in respect of all outward things, neither sorrowing too much for them nor joying too much in them.
II. Faith is of great use and acceptance in the kingdom of Christ.—
1. We must labour to conceive faith aright in our hearts, by the use of the right means—the word, prayer, and sacraments, and in and by the exercises of spiritual invocation and repentance.
2. Faith in Christ must reign and bear sway in our hearts and have command over reason, will, affection, lust.
3. It is to be bewailed that the common faith of our day is but a ceremonial faith.
III. True faith works by love.—Faith is the cause of love, and love is the fruit of faith.—Perkins.