Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father: Who gave himself for our sins - Who became a sin-offering to God in behalf of mankind, that they might be saved from their sins.
Deliver us from this present evil world - These words cannot mean created nature, or the earth and its productions, nor even wicked men. The former we shall need while we live, the latter we cannot avoid; indeed they are those who, when converted, form the Church of God; and, by the successive conversion of sinners is the Church of Christ maintained; and the followers of God must live and labor among them, in order to their conversion. The apostle, therefore, must mean the Jews, and their system of carnal ordinances; statutes which were not good, and judgments by which they could not live; Ezekiel 20:25; and the whole of their ecclesiastical economy, which was a burden neither they nor their fathers were able to bear, Acts 15:10. Schoettgen contends that the word πονηρος, which we translate evil, should be translated laborious or oppressive, as it comes from πονος, labor, trouble, etc. The apostle takes occasion, in the very commencement of the epistle, to inform the Galatians that it was according to the will and counsel of God that circumcision should cease, and all the other ritual parts of the Mosaic economy; and that it was for this express purpose that Jesus Christ gave himself a sacrifice for our sins, because the law could not make the comers thereunto perfect. It had pointed out the sinfulness of sin, in its various ordinances, washings, etc.; and it had showed forth the guilt of sin in its numerous sacrifices; but the common sense, even of its own votaries, told them that it was impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sin. A higher atonement was necessary; and when God provided that, all its shadows and representations necessarily ceased. See the note on Galatians 4:3.