to their paganism. So today the sys tems of legal religion, miscalled Chris tian, are of no more value or profit before God than any of the systems of paganism. The apostle now makes a personal appeal (4:12-20), wherein he inquires if their joy, when first they had re ceived the gospel, was false? Was the blessedness they had spoken of all hypocrisy? Surely not. But, having listened to the false teachers, they were looking on him as an enemy be cause he told them the truth. They had received the gospel of their sal vation from him, they had experi enced the presence nd power of the Holy Spirit by faith in that gospel, they had experienced the joy and blessedness of fellowship with him, and all this apart from even so much as a hint concerning the law. Would they now deny the sufficiency of this gospel and attempt to add to their faith in it the works of law being urged upon them by the false teach ers ? They should remember that being under the law could secure nothing for them save a curse and condemnation. This section of the epistle concludes with a reference to the two sons of Abraham, the one from Hagar and the other from Sarah (4:21-31). “Which things contain (nor are) an allegory” (R.V.). Ishmael was the son after the flesh, the natural son, the one by the bond woman, speaking of bondage. Isaac was the son of faith, the child of promise, by the free wo man, “born after the spirit,” and per secuted by the one “born after the flesh.” Believers are “not the children of the bond woman, but of the free.” Turning to the law they would be come “children of the bond woman,” and this, because of the false teachers, the Galatian believers were being tempted to do. 0 foolish legalists, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was openly set forth crucified? Vine, “the legalist, clinging to the law, makes it impossible for himself ever to be justified before God. He admits he cannot be justified by the
law alone, but nevertheless desires to add the law to grace. The law and grace together are as powerless to justify as law alone. There can be no mixing of the two. He stands either under law, condemned, or under grace, justified. Attempting to stand under law and grace, he is found to be half condemned and half justified — an unthinkable condition. Mixing the two degrades the law and destroys grace. The majesty and perfection of the law are lost sight of, and its work and purpose frustrated, while the sweetness and blessing of grace are turned into bitterness.” Law and grace can no more be mixed than oil and water. It must be all of one or all of the other. Under law there can be only condemnation and death; under law and grace, only antinomian blindness and despair; but under grace the believer finds life, and peace, and power, and blessing. It is the gospel of the grace of God which gives true liberty (5:1-12). “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and be not entangled again in the yoke of bondage” (5:1). The word, “there fore” takes us back to what we found in the earlier part of the epistle. Christ has set us free from this pres ent evil world (1:4), from what we are by nature (2:20), from the curse of the law (3:13), and from the law itself (4:4, 5). All was bondage under the law. Peter had declared, in his address before- the council at Jeru salem (Acts 15:6-11), that the law was a yoke “which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear.” But Christ has set us free from that yoke. He was “delivered for (on account of or because of) our offienses, and was raised for (on account of or because of) our justification” (Romans 4:25). By the sacrifice of Christ the law has been forever satisfied, and the believer forever justified and made free from the yoke of bondage. It is the gospel of the grace of God alone that makes this known. Hence turning to the law ruins grace. "If ye be circumcised (if ye turn to the law in any degree), Christ shall profit 33
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