(Continued from page 123.) Chapter 5 :7-26.

We come now to the last part of the epistle. From chapter 5:7 to the end, the apostle is occupied with the practical side of things. He sets in striking contrast the practice that is the fruit of the gospel and the practice which results from its perversion by the admixture of the leaven of legality. In the preceding part, as we have seen, he was occupied with the truth-the doctrine of Christianity -and exposed the folly of entertaining a teaching which destroyed Christianity by nullifying its fundamental and distinctive features. He showed it to be a great delusion.

But the folly of it is no less apparent when we consider the apostle's discussion of its results in practice. His incisive characterization manifests fully the delusion which the Galatian saints had been led into. Let us follow the line of his argument.

First of all, we should notice the apostle's unqualified approval of their former walk after their conversion:"Ye did run well." They not only professed to have received the gospel, they lived in its power. There was a practical sanctification resulting from their reception of the message which the apostle proclaimed among them. Their walk was in reality the exemplification of the truth by which they had been laid hold of; so truly so, that Paul warmly commends it.

But a great change had taken place. They had turned aside from the path in which they formerly walked. They were no longer obeying the truth. Their practical ways were no longer the expression of the truth they had heard of him. The apostle could not commend or sanction their changed ways, and he denounces them as disobedient to the truth (ver. 7). These new ways were not learned from him (ver. 8). They had learned them of the perverters of the gospel. A different teaching had been presented to them, and by it they had been influenced to give up right practices for wrong ones.

Paul characterizes the new and different teaching as "leaven"-as evil (ver. 9). To mix error with the truth is to destroy the truth. The admixture of Christianity and legality is the nullification of Christianity. The perversion of the gospel makes it no longer the gospel. The practice of a perverted Christianity is no longer Christian practice. Once introduce leaven into the lump and it is a leavened lump.

The apostle in thus exposing how pernicious legality is-what baneful consequences result from its adoption by Christians-does not despair of the recovery of those who have been influenced to surrender their liberty in Christ and enslave themselves to the principle of law. He is fully aware of the authority of the Lord over His own. If he thinks of those who have been deluded, he has confidence the Lord will deliver them out of their delusion and restore in them the same mind by which they were characterized when they were in obedience to the truth (ver. 10). He knows how to make a difference between the deluders and the deluded. He counts on the deliverance and recovery of the deluded, but the deluders will not escape the full responsibility of their evil work:"He that troubleth you," he says, "shall bear his judgment, whosoever he be." The apostle held the workers of evil to be accountable, and those who maintain apostolic truth and practice will do the same.
There are many who find it difficult to understand why the apostle should be so severe in his denunciation of those who, to their minds, rightly held the principle of law in high honor. Let such weigh well what the apostle says in verse n. Circumcision, as originally given of God, was a mark put on the flesh as a shadow of the cross of Christ-which is God's judgment of the flesh. When Moses gave the law by the authority of God, he incorporated circumcision. It had still the same significance. It was still a shadow of the cross. Its message was, the flesh is no good-it is without profit. The law tells you what it (the flesh) ought to be, but as it is not what it ought to be, this mark that has been put on your flesh is a sign of the judgment of God upon it-the flesh cut off in judgment.

It is because the cross of Christ expresses God's curse upon the flesh that it was a stumbling-block to the Jew. To him circumcision was a work of merit, not a sign of the curse. The cross of Christ declares God's curse upon the flesh, and for that reason the Jew was offended. The apostle asks here, "If I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? Has the offence of the cross ceased?" The offence of the cross had not ceased, and it was in enmity to the cross that circumcision was still being preached. It was the enemies of the cross of Christ that were making circumcision a work of merit. The soul of the apostle so revolts from the thought of any fellowship with these evil workers in their enmity against the cross, that in verse 12 he bursts out in expressing the desire that these perverters of the truth and troublers of the saints would cut themselves off–their work was so obnoxious, so evil!

But the apostle felt the need of convicting the Galatians of the falsity of a claim they were making. Under the leadership of these perverters of the gospel they were pleading that they were practicing the law. As we have seen, Paul insists that Christians have been called into the liberty wherewith Christ makes free. Now he shows that Christian liberty does not mean liberty for the flesh (ver. 13). The Christian being a man who has the right to take before God the place of a son, is free to serve in the spirit and power of love. In serving thus, it is not as meeting a legal demand. But without being under the principle of law he is doing-practicing-the. very things the law demands. This is liberty-the liberty of grace. Under law it was bondage, because the law requiring love, did not give it. Under grace, the love of God fills the heart-grace produces it. Such service then, is happy, holy liberty.

In verse 15 the apostle says:While you have undertaken to practice the things the law requires, you are in reality doing the very opposite things. Instead of serving one another by love, and so fulfilling the law, you are breaking it in biting and devouring one' another. In attempting to practice law, the sinful passions of the flesh had been stirred into great activity. It was impossible for them to endure the thought of others being better than themselves. They were belittling one another in their ardent desire to commend and praise themselves.

How striking the contrast between Christian practice and that resulting from the attempt to practice law! What folly is thus manifested in the legalist! How great is the delusion of those who put themselves under the principle of law!

But let us proceed. In verse 16 the apostle says, "This, I say, then." Let us remember he is speaking with apostolic authority, giving the mind of God. What then does he give as the rule for Christian practice ? It is simply this:Walking in or by the power of, the Spirit. For while the law stirs up the lusts of the flesh into activity, the Spirit is the power in which love manifests itself. Walking in the Spirit, then, is the way to escape what the flesh would lead us to do.

The Spirit and the flesh are opposites. They are antagonistic the one to the other; and for this reason the Christian does not always do as he would. He is always exposed to the liability of not doing the things he would (ver. 17). But the Spirit is the Christian's leader and power-not the law (ver. 18). The Christian, then, needs to learn wherein the Spirit manifests His leadership. It should of course be plain to all that the works of the flesh, such as are listed here in verses 19-21, are the opposites of the Spirit's guidance. Those who are characterized by these things are not inheritors of the kingdom of God. The power of the Spirit is entirely wanting to them.

But the Spirit manifests His power in producing fruit in those who are the subjects of His guidance, examples of which are given us in verse 22. Blessed fruits! We realize that no law prohibits the doing such things. How unreservedly and unqualifiedly the Christian may yield himself to the ways that are of the Spirit of God. In so doing, his practice is Christian practice, and it is Christian practice only in the measure in which he gives to the Spirit His own place and way.

Now the Christian belongs to Christ. He is of Him. He is connected with One whose crucifixion was God's judgment on man-the whole family of the fallen first man. There, in that crucifixion, God fully judged man according to the flesh-his every passion, his every lust. On being born of the water and the Spirit, a man becomes to be of Christ. Through a saying of God being deposited in his soul in the power of the Spirit, he becomes one who henceforth belongs to Christ. By the Spirit, through faith, he is forever connected with the Christ who was crucified. For him, the man after the flesh has been crucified. He has been crucified in toto-all he is and all his passions, all his lusts (ver. 24). He stands no longer before God as a man in Adam, in the flesh. He is in Christ. By a spiritual work, a work which can be only by the Spirit of God, He is in Christ. He lives in the Spirit. What he is before the eye of God is what the Spirit has made him.

Well, then, says the apostle, " If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit" (ver. 25). To take up the practice of law is to walk in the flesh, not in the Spirit; but to walk in the Spirit is to hold the flesh to be what God has judged it to be, to judge its passions as sinful, its lusts as abhorrent to God. It is to turn from it in subjection to the Spirit's reprobation of it and follow His lead in ways that are of Him and honoring to the Christ with whom we are connected.

The Christian who presumes to put himself under law, who undertakes to put that principle into practice, is making a serious mistake. It results in his doing what the apostle counsels us not to do. Christians are admonished and exhorted not to cultivate the spirit of vain glory. The practice of law will develop that spirit. Paul here tells us not to provoke one another. Through the practice of law that is what we will do. The practice of law will foster in us the spirit of strife, of contention, of envy. But such things are not Christian practice. Christian practice is the practice of love. In Christian practice we are objects of love to one another and subjects of unselfish service.

Beloved fellow Christian, let me here exhort you to study faithfully this description of the difference
between the practice of law and the practice of Christianity. It is a divinely authorized description. Its diligent study will surely result in edification and profit.
But there are still other considerations pressed by the apostle which we must turn to. C. Crain

(To be concluded in next issue.)