Ye know how through infirmity of the flesh.
Preaching in the infirmity of the flesh
I. That we might not exalt our teachers unduly, who are only instruments of grace (Acts 14:15).
II. That we might ascribe the whole work of our conversion to God alone (2 Corinthians 4:7).
III. That God might by this means confound the wisdom of the world, and cause men that would be wise to become fools that they might be wise (1 Corinthians 3:18).
IV. That we might be assured that the doctrine is of God because it prevails without the strength and policy of man. (W. Perkins.)
The Gospel
I have been delighted, on a calm summer’s evening, to hear the tones of a sweet human voice borne to my ears from the other side of the valley. The shadows of the evening were around me, the birds had gone to their rest, a sadness was over the land; not a sound was heard save that voice, singing some tender Welsh air. The voice wandered among the hills, or seemed to linger in the eaves; then it trembled among the branches; by and by it became more powerful as it passed over the clear plain below. There was in it an indescribable pathos--it was a sigh swelling into a song--and it created in me unutterable longings for the perfect good, for that state in which life is musical, harmonious, and not filled with wild, discordant notes, as our present life is. The gospel resembles that voice, it comes to us trembling with Divine love; a tender, melting, pathetic voice, speaking of God and His love and His heaven, and the blessedness that shall be revealed. (Thomas Jones.)
Why no record of Paul s preaching
While we have more or less acquaintance with all the other important Churches of Paul’s founding, not a single name of a person or place, and scarcely a single incident connected with the apostle’s preaching in Galatia is preserved in either the Acts or the Epistle. This may partly be accounted for by the circumstances of the Church. The same delicacy which has concealed from us the name of the Corinthian offender may have led the apostle to avoid all special allusions in addressing a community to which he wrote in a strain of severest censure. And the historian would seem to have purposely drawn a veil over the infancy of a Church which swerved so soon and so widely from the purity of the gospel. (Bp. Lightfoot.)
The indisposition of St. Paul
Nothing is more natural than that the traversing of vast distances over the burning plains and freezing mountain passes of Asia Minor--the constant changes of climate, the severe bodily fatigue, the storms of fine and blinding sand, the bites and stings of insects, the coarseness and scantiness of daily fare--should have brought on a return of his malady to one whose health was so shattered as that of St. Paul. (Farrar.)
The climate and the prevailing maladies of Asia Minor may have been modified by lapse of centuries; and we are without the guidance of St. Luke’s medical language which sometimes throws a light on diseases alluded to in Scripture; but two Christian sufferers, in widely different ages of the Church, occur to the memory as we look on the map of Galatia. We could hardly mention any two men more thoroughly imbued with the spirit of St. Paul than John Chrysostom and Henry Martyn. And when we remember how these two saints suffered in their last hours from fatigue, pain, rudeness, and cruelty, among the mountains of Asia Minor which surround the place where they rest, we can well enter into the meaning of St. Paul’s expression of gratitude to those who received him kindly in the hour of his weakness. (Conybeare and Howson.)
Personal suffering a means of the world’s progress
The hopes of humanity do not lie in the fulness with which science discovers and employs the forces of nature. On the contrary, there is no danger which is more imminent than the appropriation of those powers by the coarsest despotism which can enslave and corrupt its subjects. It does not consist in what is called culture, because art and poetry are easily made slaves of that wealth which is willing to have its existence certified and its power acknowledge by the homage of cultivated parasites. It is not learning that can save man; for at best learning only influences a few, and is apt, in those who possess it, to degenerate into self-sufficiency and ease. Least of all do the hopes of man lie in the aggregation of wealth; for experience tells us that wealth is not only apt to be arrogant and domineering, but to form a coarse and harsh oligarchy, degraded by low tastes and prone to ferocious fears. Nor, finally, do the hopes of humanity reside in any form of polity. It may be that one form of administration is better than another, because it offers least resistance to the influence which ought to leaven society, gives a freer course to those forces which can chasten and exalt mankind. Despotism degrades us, but it does not follow that liberty purifies us. The atmosphere is cleared of its accumulated poisons by some furious storm, which does in the end bring health to the many, but bestows its benefits amidst the waste and the rain of those whom it smites. And so the moral purification of society is affected by the suffering of those whom the cleansing storm catches in its course; the victory of the most righteous cause demands the suffering and death of some among those who enter into the battle. When the stronghold of truth and virtue is to be built, the foundations are laid in the firstborn, and the youngest perishes before the walls are finished. (Paul of Tarsus.)
Affliction a means of moral influence
The sunlight falls upon a clod, and the clod drinks it in, is itself warmed by it, but lies as black as ever, and sheds out no light. But the sun touches a diamond, and the diamond almost chills itself as it sends out in radiance on every side the light that has fallen upon it. So God helps one man to bear his pain, and nobody but that one man is a whir the richer. God comes to another sufferer--reverent, unselfish, and humble--and the lame leap, and the dumb speak, and the wretched are comforted all around by the radiated comfort of that happy soul. (Phillips Brooks, D. D.)