(Continued from page 95.)

Chapters 4 :21-5 :6.

It is very evident the Galatian saints had been led to believe that the law and the prophets were authority for their submission to the Judaizers who said:It is incumbent on you to be circumcised and to keep the law of Moses. In this portion of our epistle, therefore, the apostle takes up the testimony of the law and the prophets as to the children of faith:In God's dealings with them, are they on the principle of His free sovereign mercy, or on the principle of law-works for blessing ?

The apostle's unfolding here of the testimony of the law and the prophets on this momentous question is rich in instruction. It must have produced a powerful effect on the minds of the Galatians. Let us turn to his lucid and incontrovertible statement.

First, he raises this question:In the position which you have been influenced to take, are you listening to the voice of the law ? In desiring to be under law are you heeding what the law says? (ver. 21). There can be no question as to our responsibility to give due heed to what the law says. It bears the plainest possible testimony as to whether we are heirs of God on the principle of faith or of works.

What, then, is its testimony? The apostle proceeds to give it. He says, "Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a free woman "- these facts stand out clear and plain on the page of inspiration. Furthermore, the son that was born to the bondmaid "was born according to the flesh;" the son born to the free woman '' was born according to promise" (ver. 23). And what do these facts mean-being recorded as they are in the living and abiding word of God ?

The apostle, speaking with God-given authority, tells us what these facts mean. He interprets them for us. In verses 24 and 25 he tells us the women stand for two contrasted covenants-one the Abrahamic, the other the Mosaic. Now the Abrahamic covenant was a covenant of grace-a covenant in which God was sovereignly saying, I will. It was an unconditional covenant. The Mosaic covenant was a covenant of -works-with conditions therefore.

It is quite impossible to mistake the apostle's application of the recorded facts. He says, Hagar, the woman that stands for the Mosaic or legal covenant, answers to "Jerusalem, which now is, and is in bondage with her children." It is clear he is speaking of that system which we commonly call Judaism. Judaism centers in the earthly Jerusalem.

On the other hand Sarah, the woman which stands for the covenant of grace, answers to Jerusalem that is above. The heavenly Jerusalem is the city of God-the city of foundations; and the Abrahamic covenant, the covenant of grace, centers there.

Now Ishmael, the son of Hagar, represents the children of Jerusalem that now is. They are children according to the flesh. They are not children of promise, not children of the heavenly city-the city for which Abraham looked-the city which God has prepared for faith. It is Isaac, the son of Sarah, who represents the children of promise-the children of faith.

In verse 26, the apostle insists that we Christians, we believers of this present Christian age, are counted among the children of promise-the children that are connected, not with the Jerusalem below, but the Jerusalem above. She is our mother. Furthermore, just as Sarah was the free woman, and her son Isaac was not a child of bondage, so also are the children free who are the children of promise. If law means bitter servitude and bondage, grace means, not license, but holy liberty-liberty before the face of God.

Plainly, Paul is showing the Galatian saints that in listening to the Judaizers they are not listening to the law's own voice. He makes it clear that the law declares that the children of promise are connected with the Abrahamic covenant of grace; that it is in opposition to the instruction which the law itself gives to put the children of Abraham, 1:e., the children of faith, under the bondage of law to secure the blessing they are already heirs to, and the earnest and pledge of which they already possess in the Spirit which God has given them.

Now let us see how the apostle shows that the testimony of the law is fully confirmed by the prophets. To do this the prophet Isaiah is appealed to. If any question the view I here take of the apostle's interpretation and application of the recorded facts to which he refers (in order to show what the testimony of the law is in regard to the matter he has under consideration) let his appeal to Isaiah 54:1 be well considered. A little unfolding of the prophecy will be in place. Isaiah, under the figure of two women, symbolically speaks of the same two covenants of which we have been speaking. In his thought of them, occupied as he is with the open manifested results, the covenant of grace is as a childless, desolate widow. Grace apparently has not had children. During the period of the law God did not openly acknowledge her children. There were children of grace, but they were not authorized to take the place of such. Hence in the prophet's mind, formed by the Spirit, the Abrahamic covenant was apparently as a widowed, childless woman. Jehovah was, manifestly, not the husband of grace, but of law. In Isaiah 54 the prophet is anticipating the time when the then present acknowledged wife (law) will no longer be recognized, but the one which was as a desolate widow (grace) will be. As he thus anticipates the time of her recognition-her open, public, manifest recognition-he says to her,"Sing, rejoice." In calling upon her to celebrate her manifest recognition he assures her that she shall be seen to have a vast family of children, vastly exceeding in number the children of the woman (law) which for the time being is owned as the married wife.

But this is not all. The connection of this quotation by the apostle with what he is speaking of shows that for him the children of faith and promise, whether those of Old Testament times or those of the present period of Christianity, will all be included among the children that grace will be recognized as having. That is very plainly the apostle's argument. "Jerusalem which is above is our mother" affirms our connection with the covenant of grace. The quotation from Isaiah 54:i is a justification of the affirmation. Verse 28 re-affirms it. "Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise." We Christians belong to the system of grace, which for a time appeared to be as a desolate, childless widow, but not withstanding finally rejoices in a family of countless numbers.

But if the promise of children to Abraham includes the believers of this Christian age, the antagonism between the children according to the Spirit and the children according to the flesh is the same as in the days of Sarah and Hagar. The latter contest the right of the former to belong to Abraham. How bitter the contest!

But Scripture itself decides the issue:"Cast out the bondwoman and her son:for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman " (Gen. 21:10). Scripture, then, decides that believers of the present dispensation are children of Sarah-of grace. It assures us of what our position is-that of acknowledged sons. It declares what our condition is-the liberty of sons with a Father, not the bondage of servants under a master (ver. 31).

Having completed his task of exposing the folly of the Galatian saints and showing what a delusion they had fallen under, the apostle now proceeds in chapter 5:i to exhort them to hold fast the ground where grace has put them, and to stand immovable in the liberty in which Christ has established them. Christ, the heir of all faith's blessing and portion, has come and freed His co-heirs from the bondage in which they were held. He has given them liberty -the liberty of sons. They should not turn back from this to the yoke of bondage-to law-keeping, or self-effort.

Paul will not close this part of his discussion without telling them plainly what turning back from grace to law really means (vers. 2-4). He seeks to show them that they are not profiting by Christ. In being circumcised they were going back from the real circumcision to what was but a shadow of it. Believers now have in Christ the true circumcision the real "putting off the body of the flesh" (Col. 2:11), a circumcision not made with hands. The circumcision made with hands was but a mark or sign put on the flesh-not its cutting off. The Galatians were going back from the actual thing to what was a mere sign of it; they were not realizing the benefit of what Christ had done. The benefit was in fact theirs, but they were not enjoying it.

But more. In being circumcised they were making themselves responsible to do the whole law (verse 3). Circumcision, as a sign put on the flesh, meant that the flesh naturally was unprofitable, and that to be profitable it must be what the law required-everything it required. In being circumcised therefore the Galatians were assuming the responsibility of doing the whole law. Here again we see how they were not profiting by what had been done by Christ.

Now let us mark well what the apostle tells them. He does not say, Christ has not benefitted them; but his idea is that, notwithstanding the benefit Christ has bestowed upon them, through their being circumcised and assuming the responsibility to do the whole law, they had given up the benefit, so that Christ had "become of no effect to them." It was on their part, a falling from grace. They were not standing firm in the liberty Christ had given them. Christ had set them free, and they had formerly enjoyed their liberty, but now they were not making use of it.

But, further, he points out to them the distinctive characteristic feature of Christianity that they were overlooking in turning back to law. Christianity means that self-effort is at an end; that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to believers:that with the righteousness which God righteously imputes to believers goes the complete blessing He has revealed as the portion of faith. The whole blessing is not received at once. Only a part of it is for the present bestowed. The Spirit is given us; but, while we have the Spirit, we wait for the completion of the blessing that is ours. We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God (Rom. 5:2). We do not have to acquire the glory by self-effort. It is the possession of all who are in Christ, only we wait the season of its bestowment. It is plain, therefore, that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything. It is not human works that profit, but the faith that is energized by love-the love of God. Works there will be, no doubt-an abundance of them, for faith is fruitful-but not works for the perfecting of the flesh, which the very law itself declares to be unprofitable, and which the death of Christ proclaims irretrievable and unmendable.

Faith then is the sole principle on which Christians have their blessing, whether it is the blessing already received or the blessing that is still in store for us and for which by the Spirit we wait. Works of law cannot add anything to what we already are in Christ.

What a serious mistake the Galatians were making! Thousands today are like them. Judaizers abound who need the stern apostolic rebuke of this epistle. There are multitudes of Christians who are not standing fast in Christian liberty, who will do well to give heed to the apostle's exposure of the folly and delusion into which they have fallen. C. Crain

(To be continued.)