At the Manchester, Kansas Conference Oct. 1905 Chap. 1:-2:14.

Note first how the apostle insists on his apostle-ship. On this depends the authority of the teaching. It was to establish the divine authority of apostolic teaching that God imparted miraculous gifts until the whole revelation He was giving us through them was completed.

Ques. But why should he insist on his apostle-ship here more than elsewhere ?

Because false teachers had come in to subvert the truth, and when that is the case there must be a recognized authority to settle where the right is. The word of "an apostle … by Jesus Christ, and God the Father" settles everything.

Mark in verse 4 the object Christ had in giving Himself for our sins. It is not to deliver us from the wrath to come, as elsewhere, but "from this present evil world." The false doctrine which had come in among the assemblies of Galatia had for its end the linking them again with the world, as indeed all false doctrine does. The devil dreads a church that is holy and separated to Christ, because in that alone is true testimony for Christ to the world.

Ques. What was the special evil doctrine which had come in among the Galatians ?

He begins to discuss that in the next chapter, then onward, as we shall see. Here he only alludes to it.

He marvels that they should so soon be removed from Him that called them into the grace of Christ to " another gospel, which is not another." It is a perversion of it. And as the true gospel is the very glory of God, and the only true blessing of man, he twice pronounces anathema upon any being, man or angel, himself included, who would pervert it. It has become, alas, so universally perverted that, throughout Christendom, it is an exception now to hear a pure gospel. The reformation recovered it in part, but until the new reformation among Protestants of late years one seldom heard a pure gospel among them either. They had it all so mixed with law that none could you find who knew he had eternal life-who knew that he was justified from all his sins by the cross of Christ; none therefore who enjoyed "peace with God." The most pious doubted the most, for the nearer we get to God the more we feel our sinfulness and unfitness to dwell with God. It is the revelation made in the gospel of the grace of God which brings peace and liberty.

Ques. Why does Paul dwell so much on his having received nothing of the gospel which he preaches from any of those who were already apostles before him ?

Because his gospel is a further revelation, beginning, so to speak, where the others end-a revelation of things in Christ which no other had, which Christ had not taught to the twelve when He was with them upon earth, and which completes the unfolding of God's eternal counsels. After Paul there is no more to be said; there is no further revelation to be made. Col. 1:25, 26 tells us that.

The gospel of the other apostles was still connected with the Kingdom; with the earthly hope therefore; the Jewish nation in the lead, the Gentile nations after-eating the crumbs. The salvation they preach until Paul's gospel comes to the front, is still in view of earth, of the kingdom from the heavens set up here on earth. No attentive reader can fail to see the marked difference between the preaching in the first seven chapters of Acts and that which follows after. The speech and stoning of Stephen show all hope of national Jewish repentance is over, and therefore the establishment of the Kingdom for the present must be given up. Saul's conversion takes place, the new gospel is revealed to him by the Lord from heaven, and henceforth the Spirit gives him the lead. It is his gospel which marks this present dispensation. In it, baptism is in the background, as in the other it was in the forefront. In it, the full ruin of man and the full grace of God are told out, and the treasures of that grace brought to light. And, mark it well, the most ignored and obnoxious part of the Scriptures to a fallen Christendom is what comes through Paul. Satan always attacks first what in the purpose of God is first for the time being, because whatever is the purpose of God for the time being is the only true testimony.

Ques. Is not Christ always the same, and always the heart of the gospel?

Surely so. There are many things, however, concerning Christ, and very different from each other. Christ as king of the Jews, which He is yet to be, is a very different thing from Christ as Head of the
Church.

Chap. ii, 15-3:14.

Here now begins Paul's defense of the gospel which he has received from the Lord:even they, Jews, whose lives were regulated by the law and not lawless and licentious as the Gentiles, even they had
learned that their moral lives could not justify them before God. It was by the faith of Christ alone they could be justified, as any other man; "for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified." The best of men are justified before God only through and in Christ, and the worst are justified before God in the same way.

But if we are thus freely and absolutely justified by this provision, of the grace of God through the cross of His Son Jesus Christ, will it not lead us to sin ? God forbid. Christ is our Master now, and He leads not to sin. He has made us free. He has died under the sentence of the law which rested upon us, and in His death, which ends all the claims of law against us, we have died to the law, and can now live to God in blessed freedom.

You see, brethren, it is not merely that our sins have been put away by the cross of Christ, but we, ourselves, have been put to death there. To the man who knows himself, who realizes that only evil is the make up of his fallen nature, and that try as he may he cannot improve it, and that, moreover, God Himself never improves it, to that man, I say, what an unspeakable deliverance it is to know that by the act of God he himself has been "crucified with Christ." We get eternal life upon believing on the Lord Jesus Christ; we get peace upon learning that He '' was delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification;" we get deliverance, and oh how blessed a deliverance! when we learn that we have been crucified with Him. Do we all know that deliverance ? Are we earnest enough to be unable to do without it ?

Thus, the grace of God is not frustrated. It is maintained in all its glory, and its effects are seen in the holiness of life it produces.

Ques. What is the force of " Christ crucified among you ?"

It refers to the vividness with which Paul had preached the gospel among them. He had in his preaching so held up the death of Christ, as their only hope and ground of salvation, that they had no excuse for returning again to their own works; in so doing they were making the death of Christ a useless thing. Legality puts up good works for justification instead of the death of Christ for me, and again it puts up good works for sanctification instead of my death in His. Wherever legality begins there Christ ends, or is made useless. But God puts Christ everywhere. There is no place before God for the first man; all blessing is in Christ.

Law produces no persecution, for its principle is human. Grace does. Its principle is divine, and man opposes it. Paul appeals to what the Galatians had suffered on account of it. Had they then made a mistake ? When they had received Christ they had also received the Holy Spirit. Had the law ever given the Holy Spirit to men ? Brethren, do we realize that in all the gifts God has given us in Christ He is thereby displaying the honor which belongs to Christ, for whose sake He gives them, while thus blessing us beyond all that man could ever ask or think ?

Ques. Why is Abraham always spoken of as the father of faith ? Were not other men of God before him men of faith too ?

Yes, surely. Heb. 11:is witness to that; but Abraham is the first man in whom God reveals faith as the principle of justification before Him, and of separation from the world. He believed God and he was thereby accounted righteous-no sin any more to be charged against him. So we believe too, and we also are accounted righteous.

But God is righteous and holy. How then can He thus pronounce us righteous before Him whilst a multitude of sins has filled our days for which His righteous and holy law had cursed us? There is the blessed, glorious secret:"Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us." So faith is the principle of our justification, but the atoning sacrifice of our Lord is its holy ground and righteous cause. Dear brethren, is it not sufficient? Were the Galatians wise in trying to add to it? The apostle calls them "foolish."

Ques. What is the "promise of the Spirit" in ver. 14 ? Is it the Spirit Himself, or something the Spirit has promised ?

It is the Spirit Himself, who was promised before. The curse is removed; by the "one offering" of Christ we who are of faith are "perfected forever," and so God gives us His Spirit to dwell in us as the seal of that perfection; as the earnest of our glorious inheritance ahead; as the Uniter of all believers in one body; as the Communicator to our souls of all the blessings that are ours in Christ, and the Leader of the Church of God in her journey through the wilderness. May we learn to value the grace of God in this great gift of the Spirit, that we may neither grieve Him in His holiness nor quench Him in His operations.

(To be concluded in our next number).