Chapter 2:18-21.

(Continued from page 319, Dec. 1912.)

The apostle has now fully met and answered every question that could be raised as to his apostleship:that he had been called by God; had received a message from Him to proclaim, in no sense inferior or secondary to theirs; and that all this had been recognized by themselves.

It remains for him now to declare with the same authority what the evil results are of the attempt to judaize Christianity. This he does in the last four verses of chapter 2. In turning to those verses I call special attention to his use of the personal pronoun ""I." In his address to Peter, in verses 14-17, he says "we," because he is speaking to a fellow Jew. The "we "there is not the apostolic "we," but the "we" of believing Jews. But, in verses 18-21, he says "I " as the representative and exponent of the fully revealed Christianity. Using Paul as His chosen instrument God had completed the Christian revelation. It is important for us to remember this. Paul was " set for," or "appointed to," the defense of the full Christian gospel. As under God's authority he not only proclaimed the truth specially committed to him, but exposed and withstood every effort from whatever quarter it came to frustrate, or make void the grace of God.

To judaize Christianity is to frustrate the grace of God. An attempt was being made to do this in Galatia. Paul, therefore, as called of God for the proclamation and defense of the gospel thus fully revealed, withstands the strenuous efforts of the Judaizers, and exposes the full consequences of this Judaistic movement. He shows that it means the complete destruction of Christianity as God has revealed it.

Let us see now how he does this. Let us remember that Paul speaks, in verse 18, as a representative Christian in saying, "For if I build again the things which I have destroyed, I make myself a transgressor." In effect, he says :For a Christian, whether he be a Jew or a Gentile, to return to any system the principle of which is self-help, after having given up that principle, is practically making himself a transgressor in having given it up.

We have seen how the apostle in his reasoning with Peter appeals to the fact that believing Jews have given up the principle of self-help-works of law- as the way of obtaining righteousness. They had sought and obtained righteousness on the principle of faith. Now there is abundant scripture to show that the Gentile is saved and justified in the same way as a Jew (Acts 15:11, Greek; Rom. 3:30). It is just as true of a believing Gentile as it is of a believing Jew that he has "destroyed" (set aside) the systems characterized by the principle of self-effort. No one ever becomes a Christian on that principle, except professedly. All who are really Christians become such on the principle of faith.

The Galatians had become Christians by faith, not by law-works; but Judaizers were influencing them to take it up again, and the apostle argues; That means you have concluded you went beyond what is right when you believed the gospel. In returning to what you abandoned you are in practical effect destroying what you had turned to. Your present course in going on again with the principle of human effort is, so far as you are concerned, the destruction of Christianity in its very central and foundation principle.

The apostle's exposure of the evil consequence of judaizing Christianity is forceful; he conclusively shows that returning to the principle of law-works is destroying the fundamental character of Christianity. Christianity is founded on. faith, not on human effort. Let us remember this is not an opinion of certain men which we are free to entertain or reject, but the mind of God, declared by one to whom He had given authority to declare His will. We must look at verse 18 as an authoritative interpretation of the mind of God.

In verses 19, 20 the apostle points out the twofold way in which the 'judaizing of Christianity is the destruction of it. It denies, on the one side, the Christian's relation to law, 1:e., the principle of self-help ; and, on the other, his relation to Christ. These are points of vast importance and we must carefully look at them. In verse 19, the apostle, declares that the Christian is dead to law. He not only affirms it as being the fact according to God's reckoning, but shows also how it became the fact. Let us consider it.

As long as law stood as God's public method of dealing with men there was no separation of the children of God from the general mass. The children of God in Israel were thus bound to the law under which Israel was. It was a very real bondage. The law stood there as a positive barrier in the way of their taking the full place of children. It was impossible for them to receive the adoption (the position of sons) and know and enjoy the liberty of it. In Romans 7 we are taught that this bond with the law is now broken. How was it broken. "Through the body of Christ." Christ's death has destroyed for the children of God their former bond with the law. Hence the children of God now, since Christ's death and resurrection, are dead to the law.

Here, in Galatians, the apostle teaches that the Christian's death to the law has been effected by the law itself. What does the apostle mean by this ? Some will tell us he refers to the working of the sentence of death in the conscience; but when he says, in verse 20, "I am crucified with Christ," he negatives that thought thoroughly. Being crucified with Christ is not the work of law in the conscience however important and necessary that work is. Being crucified with Christ means that when Christ died for us, God identified us with Christ in His death, so that He looks at that death as being our own death. What then is the meaning of our being through law, dead to law. Simply this:that the principle of law had its full operation in Christ's death. Christ was there in death as a substitute. The law's penalty was not set aside, but borne. The law operated to its full extent in Christ-the Substitute who received the full penalty of the law-death; and through that operation of law in Christ, God considers believers as being dead to law.

What was once a positive hindrance to a believer living unto God is now removed. The bond with law is broken, the believer is under no necessity of thinking of his own efforts, ever conscious of their futility; he is free to be engaged with God and His wondrous grace, to live no longer to self, but to God.

But if Christians are not under the bond of law are dead to it, they are in a new bond, in a new relation. It is not the full truth to say, We are dead to law- we are crucified with Christ. If God identified us with Christ in this death, He also identifies us with Him as alive from the dead. We therefore live; yet it is not ourselves, it is Christ living in us. What springs merely from ourselves is not life in God's, eyes. God looks upon all that as having been crucified with Christ. But the risen, living Christ is the source of life to us. We are alive as being in Him; and He in whom we live is the spring in us of all that God can own as being really life. Whatever is the expression of the living Christ, and only that, is what God counts as life. If, then, believers now are dead to law they nevertheless live; yet it is no longer themselves, it is Christ living in them. It is true, Christians are still living here in this present earthly life. They are still men of flesh and blood, but the life they live is not characterized by the principle that characterizes the life of the man who is according to the flesh. Self is the object of the mere natural man. He lives to himself. The Christ of the cross is the object of the Christian. It is the power of His love that is working in the believer. The life he lives is characterized by the power of faith, the faith that has for its object the Son of God that died in his behalf.

It is then a fundamental truth in Christianity that believers-that class of persons-are by grace dead to law; and it is also a fundamental truth that they are by grace living in a new life. I wish to be guarded, here, so as not to be misunderstood. When I say, "living in a new life," I do not mean merely they posses a new life. That is true, of course; and Christ, the risen Christ, is the source of the new life imparted. I am however not speaking of that but of the life lived-of what is the normal characteristic, the practical life of a Christian-the life he lives as a Christian.

Now I am aware of difficulties felt by many minds, and I do not wish to ignore them. But the difficulties we feel in our efforts to grasp what God has revealed as the truth do not in any way nullify the truth. What God has revealed is the truth, whether it is or is not perfectly clear to our minds. We need to submit our minds to the truth He reveals. We shall find this a first essential to grasping the truth. But let us accept what He reveals as being the truth, and we shall find the difficulties disappear.

If it be said:How little is it true of Christians what the apostle says here of "Christ living in" them! It is granted; but that does not mean that it is not true of them in any measure. There is a measure in which it is true that Christ lives in the believer from the moment of his becoming a believer. The " engrafted word " is in his soul giving the Christian character even though it be true he may have many lessons to learn as to mortifying " his members which are upon the earth."

Again, there are some who insist that "Christ living in me" is the subjective realization in the soul. But here again we must not forget that the subjective work in the soul is a matter of growth, and it, too, begins with the very commencement of the Christian life. When the love of Christ, as displayed in the cross, lays hold of the soul and the believer prostrated by it at Christ's feet as his Saviour, that soul has begun the Christian life. There is already a subjective work in his soul; but that inward work, begun there and then, will enlarge as he grows in the love of God which he has found in Christ Jesus whom now he owns to be his Lord. The love of Christ has captured him and he has begun to be transformed according to the image of Christ. As that love enlarges in his soul he grows more and more after that image. It is "from glory to glory." So then "Christ living in me "is not an attainment; nor is it an advanced blessing known and enjoyed only by a certain .class of Christians, but a common Christian blessing-a blessing every believer shares in, the measure of it varying according to the soul's growth in the knowledge of God. "Christ living in ma " is indeed subjective, but this begins with His capture of the soul, with the soul's bending the knee in love to Christ. The moment Christ is submitted to as Saviour He is owned as Lord. The normal characteristic Christian life begins then and there. In this life there are babes, young men, and fathers (i John 2:12-27).

In verse 19, the apostle is insisting that in maintaining these two fundamental principles or truths of Christianity he is not frustrating the grace of God. He very plainly implies that the Judaizers are. In insisting that salvation is by "circumcision and keeping the law of Moses " they were rejecting the grace of God. Such teaching is the denial that believers are by grace dead to law. It denies that by grace Christ is living in them, Christianity is based upon the grace of God. It is by the grace of God in Jesus Christ that the believers, whether Jews or Gentiles, are dead to law, are no longer in bondage to that principle, and are free to live to God-to live in the power of a love that has been fully displayed in the substitutionary death of the cross.

How essentially distinct in character and principle is Christianity from Judaism! Judaism demands of man his best effort. Christianity declares man condemned and helpless, and displays what God in grace has done for man. To go back to the principle of Judaism is to reject the grace of God. The apostle says, I do not do this.

Let us remember that if the Galatian saints were responsible to go with the apostle in the maintenance and practice of the truth of Christianity, so are we. It devolves on us as truly as it did on them to hold to and carry out in practice the revealed-truth that believers are dead to law; and it is as incumbent on us as it was on them, not to reject the revealed truth that " Christ living in me " through the power of His love, as made known in His atoning death, is the normal characteristic of the life a Christian lives.

As confirmatory of his statement that he did not reject the grace of God, the apostle adds this declaration:"If righteousness is by law, then Christ died without cause."Why was it necessary for Christ to die in order to provide a righteous basis on which righteousness might be reckoned to a believer, if law enabled men to produce a righteousness of their own ?Is it not a serious thing to teach, as the Judaizers do, a doctrine which implies that Christ's death was needless ?It is a complete nullification of the word of God! It is a direct denial of the testimony given in the law itself that "by works of law no flesh (no man) shall be justified." It thoroughly undermines the authority and reliability of the law, and so of the whole word of God.

We have then in these four verses the exposure of the evil consequences of judaizing Christianity- the attempt to mix grace with the principle of self-help. It is an authoritative statement of what Christianity is in its essential and fundamental character, showing how that character is completely destroyed by those who mix Christianity with the principle of Judaism.

Let Christians then take common ground with the apostle Paul in strenuously resisting the insidious inroads upon the Christian foundation which the enemies of the truth are constantly seeking to make. He has set us the example of defending the faith. In his defense of it he has put into our hands the means of preserving it. Modern judaizing is to be met with the same truth with which the apostle met it in his day. C. Crain

(To be continued.)