CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
Galatians 5:9. A little leaven.—Of false doctrine, a small amount of evil influence.
Galatians 5:10. He that troubleth you.—The leaven traced to personal agency; whoever plays the troubler. Shall bear his judgment.—Due and inevitable condemnation from God.
Galatians 5:11. Then is the offence of the cross ceased.—The offence, the stumbling-block, to the Jew which roused his anger was not the shame of Messiah crucified, but the proclamation of free salvation to all, exclusive of the righteousness of human works.
Galatians 5:12. I would they were cut off which trouble you.—Self-mutilated, an imprecation more strongly expressed in chap. Galatians 1:8-9. Christian teachers used language in addressing Christians in the then heathen world that would be regarded as intolerable in modern Christendom, purified and exalted by Christ through their teachings.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Galatians 5:7-12
Disturber of the Faith—
I. Checks the prosperous career of the most ardent Christian.—“Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?” (Galatians 5:7). The Galatians were charmed with the truth as it fell from the lips of the apostle; it was to them a new revelation; they eagerly embraced it, it changed their lives, and they strove to conform their conduct to its high moral teachings. The apostle was delighted with the result, and commended their Christian enthusiasm. They were running finely. But the intrusion of false teaching changed all this. Their progress was arrested, their faith was disturbed, they wavered in their allegiance, and were in danger of losing all the advantages they had gained. The influence of false doctrine is always baneful, especially so to new beginners, in whom the principles of truth have not become firmly rooted. The loss of truth, like inability to believe, may be traced back to an unhealthy corruption of the mind. The great danger of unsound doctrine lies in this, that, like a cancer, it rankles because it finds in the diseased condition of the religious life ever fresh nourishment.
II. Is opposed to the divine method of justification.—“This persuasion cometh not of Him that calleth you” (Galatians 5:8). The disturber of the Galatians taught a human method of salvation—a salvation by the works of the law. This was diametrically opposed to the divine calling, which is an invitation to the whole race to seek salvation by faith. The persuasion to which the Galatians were yielding was certainly not of God. It was a surrender to the enemy. All error is a wild fighting against God, an attempt to undermine the foundations that God has fixed for man’s safety and happiness.
III. Suggests errors that are contagious in their evil influence.—“A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump” (Galatians 5:9). A proverbial expression the meaning of which is at once obvious. A small infusion of false doctrine, or the evil influence of one bad person, corrupts the purity of the gospel. It is a fact well known in the history of science and philosophy that men, gifted by nature with singular intelligence, have broached the grossest errors and even sought to undermine the grand primitive truths on which human virtue, dignity, and hope depend. The mind that is always open to search into error is itself in error, or at least unstable (1 Corinthians 15:33; Ecclesiastes 9:18).
IV. Shall not escape chastisement whatever his rank or pretensions.—
1. Either by direct divine judgment. “He that troubleth you shall bear his judgment, whosoever he be” (Galatians 5:10). The reference here may be to some one prominent among the seducers, or to any one who plays the troubler. God will not only defend His own truth, but will certainly punish the man who from wicked motives seeks to corrupt the truth or to impair the faith of those who have embraced it. The seducer not only deceives himself, but shall suffer judgment for his self-deception and the injury he has done to others.
2. Or by excision from the Church.—“I would they were even cut off which trouble you” (Galatians 5:12). An extravagant expression, as if the apostle said, Would that the Judaising troublers would mutilate themselves, as was the custom with certain heathen priests in some of their religious rites. The phrase indicates the angry contempt of the apostle for the legalistic policy, and that the troublers richly deserved to be excluded from the Church and all its privileges. The patience of the Gentile champion was exhausted, and found relief for the moment in mocking invective.
V. Does not destroy the hope and faith of the true teacher.—
1. He retains confidence in the fidelity of those who have been temporarily disturbed. “I have confidence in you through the Lord, that ye will be none otherwise minded” (Galatians 5:10). Notwithstanding the insidious leaven, the apostle cherishes the assurance that his converts will after all prove leal and true at heart. He has faithfully chided them for their defection, but his anger is directed, not towards them, but towards those who have injured them. He is persuaded the Galatians will, with God’s help, resume the interrupted race they were running so well.
2. His sufferings testify that his own teaching is unchanged.—“If I preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? Then is the offence of the cross ceased” (Galatians 5:11). The rancour and hostility of the legalists would have been disarmed, if Paul advocated their doctrine, and the scandalous “offence of the cross”—so intolerable to Jewish pride—would have been done away. But the cross was the grand vital theme of all his teaching, that in which he most ardently gloried, and for which he was prepared to endure all possible suffering. The value of truth to a man is what he is willing to suffer for it.
Lessons.—
1. The man who perverts the truth is an enemy to his kind.
2. The false teacher ensures his own condemnation.
3. Truth becomes more precious the more we suffer for it.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Galatians 5:7-10. How Perfection is attained.—Everything in the universe comes to its perfection by drill and marching—the seed, the insect, the animal, the man, the spiritual man. God created man at the lowest point, and put him in a world where almost nothing would be done for him, and almost everything should tempt him to do for himself.—Beecher.
Galatians 5:7. The Christian Life a Race.
I. Christians are runners in the race of God.—
1. They must make haste without delay to keep the commandments of God. It is a great fault for youth and others to defer amendment till old age, or till the last and deadly sickness. That is the time to end our running, and not to begin.
2. We are to increase and profit in all good duties. We in this age do otherwise. Either we stand at a stay or go back. There are two causes for this:
(1) Blindness of mind.
(2) Our unbelief in the article of life everlasting.
3. We must neither look to the right nor the left hand, or to things behind, but press forward to the prize of eternal life.
4. We must not be moved with the speeches of men which are given of us, for or against. They are lookers on, and must have their speeches. Our care must be not to heed them, but look to our course.
II. Christians must not only be runners, but run well.—This is done by believing and obeying, having faith and a good conscience. These are the two feet by which we run. We have one good foot—our religion—which is sound and good; but we halt on the other foot. Our care to keep conscience is not suitable to our religion. Three things cause a lameness in this foot: the lust of the eye—covetousness, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life.
III. Christians must run the race from the beginning to the end.—
1. We must cherish a love and fervent desire of eternal life, and by this means be drawn through all miseries and overpass them to the end.
2. We must maintain a constant and daily purpose of not sinning.—Perkins.
Bad Companions.—“Bad company,” wrote Augustine, “is like a nail driven into a post, which, after the first or second blow, may be drawn out with very little difficulty; but being once driven up to the head, the pincers cannot take hold to draw it out, which can only be done by the destruction of the wood.” Of course it is useless to define bad company. Men and women, boys and girls, feel instinctively when they have fallen in with dangerous associates; if they choose to remain amongst them they are lost. So in the high tides, barks of light draught will float over Goodwin quicksands; in summer at low tide the venturous boys and young people will play cricket thereon; but neither can remain long in the neighbourhood. The time comes when the sands are covered with but a thin surface of water, and beneath is the shifting, loose, wet earth, more dangerous and treacherous than springtide ice; and then it is that to touch is to be drawn in, and to be drawn in is death. So is it with bad company.—The Gentle Life.
Cowardly Retreat.—General Grant relates that just as he was hoping to hear a report of a brilliant movement and victory of General Sigel, he received an announcement from General Halleck to this effect: “Sigel is in full retreat on Strasburg; he will do nothing but run; never did anything else.” The enemy had intercepted him, handled him roughly, and he fled.
Galatians 5:8-10. The Disintegrating Force of Error.—
1. Whatever persuasion cometh not of God, and is not grounded on the word of truth, is not to be valued, but looked upon as a delusion (Galatians 5:8).
2. The Church of Christ, and every particular member thereof, ought carefully to resist the first beginnings of sin, for the least of errors and the smallest number of seduced persons are here compared to leaven, a little quantity of which secretly insinuates itself and insensibly conveys its sourness to the whole lump (Galatians 5:9).
3. The minister is not to despair of the recovery of those who oppose themselves, but ought in charity to hope the best of all men, so long as they are curable; and to show how dangerous their error was by denouncing God’s judgment against their prime seducers (Galatians 5:10).
4. So just is God, He will suffer no impenitent transgressor, however subtle, to escape His search, or pass free from the dint of His avenging stroke, whoever he be for parts, power, or estimation.—Fergusson.
Galatians 5:9. Reform of Bad Manners.
I. We must resist and withstand every particular sin.—One sin is able to defile the whole life of man. One fly is sufficient to mar a whole box of sweet ointment. One offence in our first parents brought corruption on them and all mankind; yea, on heaven and earth.
II. We must endeavour to the utmost to cut off every bad example in the societies of men.—One bad example is sufficient to corrupt a whole family, a town, a country. A wicked example, being suffered, spreads abroad and does much hurt.
III. We are to withstand and cut off the first beginnings and occasions of sin.—We say of arrant thieves they begin to practise their wickedness in pins and points. For this cause, idleness, excessive eating, drinking and swilling, riot, and vanity in apparel are to be suppressed in every society as the breeder of many vices.—Perkins.
Galatians 5:11. The Perversion of Apostolic Preaching.—There are two attempts or resolves in constant operation as to the cross. One is man’s, to accommodate to human liking and taste; the second is God’s, to raise human liking and taste to it.
I. The aim of man.—The following may be named as the principal exceptions taken to the cross by those who rejected it:—
1. It was an improbable medium of revelation.—Man can talk loudly how God should manifest Himself. Shall the cross be the oracle by which He will speak His deepest counsels to our race?
2. It was a stigma on this religion which set it in disadvantageous contrast with every other.—It was unheard of that the vilest of all deaths should give its absolute character to a religion, and that this religion of the cross should triumph over all.
3. It was a violent disappointment of a general hope.—There was a desire of all nations. And was all that the earliest lay rehearsed, all that the highest wisdom enounced, only to be wrought out in the shameful cross?
4. It was a humiliating test.—Ambition, selfishness, insincerity, licentiousness, ferocity, pride, felt that it was encircled with an atmosphere in which they were instantly interrupted and condemned. Man is desirous of doing this away as a wrongful and unnecessary impression. He would make the offence of the cross to cease:
(1) By fixing it upon some extrinsic authority.
(2) By torturing it into coalition with foreign principles.
(3) By transforming the character of its religious instructions.
(4) By applying it to inappropriate uses.
(5) By excluding its proper connections.
II. The procedure of God.—
1. It is necessary, if we would receive the proper influence of the cross, that we be prepared to hail it as a distinct revelation. Science and the original ethics of our nature do not fall within the distinct province of what a revelation intends. Its strict purpose, its proper idea, is to make known that which is not known and which could not be otherwise known. Not more directly did the elemental light proceed from God who called it out of darkness than did the making known to man of redemption by the blood of the cross.
2. When we rightly appreciate the cross, we recognise it as the instrument of redemption.—This was the mode of death indicated by prophecy. The cross stands for that death; but it is an idle, unworthy superstition that this mode of death wrought the stupendous end. It is only an accessory. We must look further into the mystery. “He His own self bore our sins in His own body on the tree.” It is that awful identity, that mysterious action, which expiates, and not the rood.
3. When our mind approves this method of salvation, it finds in the cross the principle of sanctification.—A new element of thought, a new complexion of motive, enter the soul when the Holy Spirit shows to it the things of Christ. We are new creatures. We reverse all our aims and desires. We are called unto holiness.
(1) Mark the process. We had hitherto abided in death. But now we are quickened with Him.
(2) Mark the necessity. Until we be brought nigh to it, until we take hold of it, the doctrine of the crucified Saviour is an unintelligible and uninteresting thing.
(3) Mark the effect. There is a suddenly, though a most intelligently, developed charm. It is the infinite of attraction. All concentrates on it. It absorbs the tenderness and the majesty of the universe. It is full of glory. Our heart has now yielded to it, is drawn, is held, coheres, coalesces, is itself impregnated by the sacred effluence. The offence of the cross has ceased.—R. W. Hamilton.
Galatians 5:12. Church Censure.—The spirit of error may so far prevail among a people that discipline can hardly attain its end—the shaming of the person censured, and the preservation of the Church from being leavened. In which case the servants of God should proceed with slow pace, and in all lenity and wisdom, and should rather doctrinally declare the censures deserved than actually inflict the censure itself.
Judgment on the Troublers of the Church.
I. God watches over His Church with a special providence.
II. The doctrine of the apostles is of infallible certainty, because the oppugners of it are plagued with the just judgment of God.
III. Our duty is to pray for the good estate of the Church of God, and for the kingdoms where the Church is planted.—Perkins.