THE house of Abraham was the Church of God
of that age. The division in his house, one
son, his own son, but born after the flesh, the
other after the promise, was a divinely-ordained
manifestation of the division there would be in
all ages between the children of the bondwoman,
those who served God in the spirit of bondage,
and those who were children of the free, and
served Him in the Spirit of His Son. The
passage teaches us what the whole Epistle confirms:
that the Galatians had become entangled
with a yoke of bondage, and were not standing
fast in the freedom with which Christ makes free
indeed. Instead of living in the New Covenant,
in the Jerusalem which is from above, in the
liberty which the Holy Spirit gives, their whole
walk proved that, though Christians, they were of
the Old Covenant, which bringeth forth children
unto bondage. The passage teaches us the great
truth, which it is of the utmost consequence for
us to apprehend thoroughly, that a man, with
a measure of the knowledge and experience of the
grace of God, may prove, by a legal spirit, that
he is yet practically, to a large extent, under
the Old Covenant. And it will show us, with
wonderful clearness; what the proofs are of the
absence of the true New Covenant life.
A careful study of the Epistle shows us that
the difference between the two Covenants is seen
in three things. The law and its works is
contrasted with the hearing of faith, the flesh and
its religion with the flesh crucified, the impotence
to good with a walk in the liberty and the power
of the Spirit. May the Holy Spirit reveal to us
this twofold life.
The first antithesis we find in Paul's words, "Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or the hearing of faith?" These Galatians had indeed been born into the New Covenant; they had received the Holy Spirit. But they had been led away by Jewish teachers, and, though they had been justified by faith, they were seeking to be sanctified by works; they were looking for the maintenance and the growth of their Christian life to the observance of the law. They had not understood that, equally with the beginning, the progress of the Divine life is alone by faith, day by day receiving its strength from Christ alone; that in Jesus Christ nothing avails but faith working by love.
Almost every believer makes the same mistake
as the Galatian Christians. Very few learn at
conversion at once that it is only by faith that
we stand, and walk, and live. They have no
conception of the meaning of Paul's teaching
about being dead to the law, freed from the law--
about the freedom with which Christ makes us
free. "As many as are led by the Spirit are not
under the law." Regarding the law as a Divine
ordinance for our direction, they consider themselves
prepared and fitted by conversion to take
up the fulfilment of the law as a natural duty.
They know not that, in the New Covenant, the
law written in the heart needs an unceasing faith
in a Divine power, to enable us by a Divine power
to keep it. They cannot understand that it is
not to the law, but to a Living Person, that we
are now bound, and that our obedience and holiness
are only possible by the unceasing faith in
His power ever working in us. It is only when
this is seen, that we are prepared truly to live
in the New Covenant.
The second word, that reveals the Old Covenant spirit, is the word "flesh." Its contrast is, the flesh crucified. Paul asks: "Are ye so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are ye made perfect in the flesh?" Flesh means our sinful human nature. At his conversion the Christian has generally no conception of the terrible evil of his nature, and the subtlety with which it offers itself to take part in the service of God. It may be most willing and diligent in God's service for a time; it may devise numberless observances for
making His worship pleasing and attractive; and
yet this may be all only what Paul calls "making
a fair show in the flesh," "glorying in the flesh,"
in man's will and man's efforts. This power of
the religious flesh is one of the great marks of
the Old Covenant religion; it misses the deep
humility and spirituality of the true worship of
God--a heart and life entirely dependent upon
Him.
The proof that our religion is very much that of the religious flesh, is that the sinful flesh will be found to flourish along with it. It was thus with the Galatians. While they were making a fair show in the flesh, and glorying in it, their daily life was full of bitterness and envy and hatred, and other sins. They were biting and devouring one another. Religious flesh and sinful flesh are one: no wonder that, with a great deal of religion, temper and selfishness and worldliness are so often found side by side. The religion of the flesh cannot conquer sin.
What a contrast to the religion of the New
Covenant! What is the place the flesh has there?
"They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh,
with its desires and affections." Scripture speaks
of the will of the flesh, the mind of the flesh, the
lust of the flesh; all this the true believer has
seen to be condemned and crucified in Christ: he
has given it over to the death. He not only
accepts the Cross, with its bearing of the curse,
and its redemption from it, as his entrance into
life; he glories in it as his only power day by
day to overcome the flesh and the world. "I am
crucified with Christ." "God forbid that I should
glory save in the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ,
by which I am crucified to the world." Even
as nothing less than the death of Christ was
needed to inaugurate the New Covenant, and the
resurrection life that animates it, there is no
entrance into the true New Covenant life other
than by a partaking of that death.
"Fallen from grace." This is a third word that describes the condition of these Galatians in that bondage in which they were really impotent to all true good. Paul is not speaking of a final falling away here, for he still addresses them as Christians, but of their having wandered from that walk in the way of enabling and sanctifying grace, in which a Christian can get the victory over sin. As long as grace is principally
connected with pardon and the entrance to the
Christian life, the flesh is the only power in
which to serve and work. But when we know
what exceeding abundance of grace has been
provided, and how God "makes all grace abound,
that we may abound to all good works," we know
that, as it is by faith, so too it is by grace alone
that we stand a single moment or take a single
step.
The contrast to this life of impotence and failure is found in the one word, "the Spirit." "If ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law," with its demand on your own strength. "Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not"--a definite, certain promise--"ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh." The Spirit gives liberty from the law, from the flesh, from sin. "The fruit of the Spirit is love, peace, joy." Of the New Covenant promise, "I will put My Spirit within you, and I will cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments," the Spirit is the centre and the sum. He is the power of the supernatural life of true obedience and holiness.
And what would have been the course that the
Galatians would have taken if they had accepted
this teaching of St. Paul? As they hear his
question, "Now that ye have come to know God,
how turn ye back again into the weak and
beggarly rudiments, whereunto ye desire to be in
bondage again?" they would have felt that there
was but one course. Nothing else could help
them but at once to turn back again to the path
they had left. At the point where they had left
it, they could enter again. With any one of
them who wished to do so, this turning away from
the Old Covenant legal spirit, and the renewed
surrender to the Mediator of the New Covenant,
could be the act of a moment--one single step.
As the light of the New Covenant promise dawned
upon him, and he saw how Christ was to be all,
and faith all, and the Holy Spirit in the heart all,
and the faithfulness of a Covenant-keeping God all
in all, he would feel that he had but one thing to
do--in utter impotence to yield himself to God,
and in simple faith to count upon Him to perform
what He had spoken. In Christian experience
there may be still the Old Covenant life of
bondage and failure. In Christian experience
there may be a life that gives way entirely to the
New Covenant grace and spirit. In Christian
experience, when the true vision has been received
of what the New Covenant means, a faith that
rests fully on the Mediator of the New Covenant
can enter at once into the life which the Covenant
secures.
I cannot too earnestly beg all believers who long to know to the utmost what the grace of God can work in them, to study carefully the question as to whether the acknowledgment that our being in the bondage of the Old Covenant is the reason of our failure, and whether a clear insight into the possibility of an entire change in our relation to God, is not what is needed to give us the help we seek. We may be seeking for our growth in a more diligent use of the means of grace, and a more earnest striving to live in accordance with God's will, and yet entirely fail. The reason is, that there is a secret root of evil which must be removed. That root is the spirit of bondage, the legal spirit of self-effort, which hinders that humble faith that knows that God will work all, and yields to Him to do it. That spirit may be found amidst very great zeal for God's service, and very earnest prayer for His grace; it does not enjoy the rest of faith, and cannot overcome sin, because
it does not stand in the liberty with which Christ
has made us free, and does not know that where
the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. There
the soul can say: "The law of the Spirit of life in
Christ Jesus bath made me free from the law of sin
and death." When once we admit heartily, not only
that there are failings in our life, but that there is
something radically wrong that can be changed, we
shall turn with a new interest, with a deeper
confession of ignorance and impotence, with a hope
that looks to God alone for teaching and strength,
to find that in the New Covenant there is an actual
provision for every need.
