Galatians 5 (Wednesday Evening Bible Study)

Galatians 5

• Galatians 5:1-12
• For freedom, Christ set us free. Stand firm, then, and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery. 2 Take note! I, Paul, am telling you that if you get yourselves circumcised, Christ will not benefit you at all. 3 Again I testify to every man who gets himself circumcised that he is obligated to do the entire law. 4 You who are trying to be justified by the law are alienated from Christ; you have fallen from grace. 5 For we eagerly await through the Spirit, by faith, the hope of righteousness. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision accomplishes anything; what matters is faith working through love. 7 You were running well. Who prevented you from being persuaded regarding the truth? 8 This persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. 9 A little leaven leavens the whole batch of dough. 10 I myself am persuaded in the Lord you will not accept any other view. But whoever it is that is confusing you will pay the penalty. 11 Now brothers and sisters, if I still preach circumcision, why am I still persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished. 12 I wish those who are disturbing you might also let themselves be mutilated!
  • It was Paul’s position that the way of grace and the way of law were mutually exclusive. The way of law makes salvation dependent on human achievement; those who take the way of grace simply cast themselves and their sin upon the mercy of God. Paul went on to argue that if you accepted circumcision, one part of the law, logically you had to accept the whole law
  • Suppose there are people who want to become naturalized citizens of a country and who carefully carry out all the rules and regulations of that country as these affect naturalization. They cannot stop there but are bound to accept all the other rules and regulations as well
    • So Paul argued that if a man were circumcised he had put himself under an obligation to the whole law to which circumcision was the introduction; and, if he took that way, he had automatically turned his back on the way of grace, and, as far as he was concerned, Christ might never have died
  • To Paul, all that mattered was faith, which works through love
    • That is just another way of saying that the essence of Christianity is not law but a personal relationship to Jesus Christ. The Christian faith is founded not on a book but on a person; its dynamic is not obedience to any law but love of Jesus
  • Once, the Galatians had know that; but now they were turning back to the law
    • A little leaven leavens the whole batch of dough. For the Jews, leaven nearly always stood for evil influence. What Paul is saying is: “This legalistic movement may not have gone very far yet, but you must root it out before it destroys your whole religion.”
  • Paul ends with a very blunt saying
    • Galatia was near Phrygia, and the great worship of that part of the world was of Cybele. It was the practice that priests and really devout worshipers of Cybele mutilated themselves by castration. Paul says: “If you go on in this way, of which circumcision is the beginning, you might as well end up by castrating yourselves like the priests of this goddess.” It is a grim illustration, at which we might raise our eyebrows; but it would be intensely real to the Galatians, who knew all about the priests of Cybele
• Galatians 5:13-15
• 13 For you were called to be free, brothers and sisters; only don’t use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love. 14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement: Love your neighbor as yourself. 15 But if you bite and devour one another, watch out, or you will be consumed by one another.
  • With this paragraph, Paul’s letter changes its emphasis
    • Up to this point, it has been theological; now it becomes intensely ethical. Paul had a characteristically practical mind. Even when he has been scaling the highest heights of thought, he always ends a letter on a practical note. To him, a theology was not the slightest use unless it could be lived out
    • In Romans, he wrote one of the world’s great theological treatises; and then, quite suddenly, in chapter 12 the theology came down to earth and developed into the most practical advice. The NT scholar Vincent Taylor once said “The test of a good theologian is, can he write a tract?” That is to say, after all the flights of thought, can a theologian reduce it all to something that the ordinary person can understand and do? Paul always triumphantly satisfies that test, just as here the whole matter is brought to the acid test of daily living
  • Paul’s theology always ran one danger
    • When he declared that the end of the reign of the law had come and that the reign of grace had arrived, it was always possible for someone to say; “That, then, means that I can do what I like; all the restraints of are lifted and I can follow my desires wherever they lead me. Law is gone, and grace ensures forgiveness anyway.”
    • But for Paul, there were always two obligations
      • One he doesn’t mention here, but it is implicit in all his thinking. It is the obligation to God. If God loved us like that, then the love of Christ puts us under constraint. I cannot bring discredit to a life which God paid for with His own life
      • There is the obligation to our neighbors. We are free, but our freedom loves its neighbor as itself
    • Christian freedom is not license, for the simple but tremendous reason that Christians are not men and women who have become free to sin, but people who, by the grace of God, have become free not to sin
  • Paul adds a grim bit of advice. “Unless you solve the problem of living together, you will make life impossible.” Selfishness in the end does not bring people respect; it destroys them
• Galatians 5:15-21
• 16 I say, then, walk by the Spirit and you will certainly not carry out the desire of the flesh. 17 For the flesh desires what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit desires what is against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you don’t do what you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19 Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, moral impurity, promiscuity, 20 idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions, 21 envy, drunkenness, carousing, and anything similar. I am warning you about these things—as I warned you before—that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
  • No one was ever more conscious of the tension in human nature than Paul
  • For Paul, it was essential that Christian freedom should mean not freedom to indulge the lower side of human nature, but freedom to walk in the life of the Spirit. He gives us a catalog of evil things
    • Sexual immorality
      • It has been said that they one completely new virtue Christianity brought into the world was chastity. Christianity came into a world where sexual immorality was not only condoned, but was regarded as an essential part of everyday life
    • Moral Impurity
      • The word that Paul uses can be used for the puss of an unclean wound, for a tree that has never been pruned, for material which has never been sorted. In its positive form, it is commonly used in housing contracts to describe a house that is left clean and in good condition. But its most significant use is that it is used of that ceremonial cleanness which entitles people to approach their gods. Moral Impurity is that which makes people unfit to come before God, the contamination of life with the things which separate us from Him
    • Promiscuity
      • It has been defined as “readiness for any pleasure. Those who practice it have been said to know no restraint, but to do whatever any whim and lack of respect may suggest. The Jewish historian Josephus ascribed it to Queen Jezebel when she built a temple to Baal in Jerusalem. The idea is of people who are so bound up in their own desire that they have ceased to care what others say or think
    • Idolatry
      • This means the worship of gods which human hands have made. It is the sin in which material things have taken the place of God
    • Sorcery
      • This literally means the use of drugs. It can mean the healing uses of drugs by a doctor; but it can also mean poisoning, and it came to be especially connected with the use of drugs for sorcery, of which the ancient world was full of
    • Hatred
      • The idea is that of the individual who is characteristically hostile to other people; it is the precise opposite of the virtue of the love of Christians for one another and for all people
    • Strife
      • Originally, this word had mainly to do with the rivalry for prizes. It can even be used in a good sense in that connection, but much more commonly it means the rivalry which has resulted in quarreling and wrangling
    • Jealousy
      • This word  that we get our word zeal from, was originally a good word. It mean emulation, the desire to attain to nobility when we see it. But it degenerated; it came to mean the desire to have what someone else has, wrong desire for what is not ours
    • Outbursts of Anger
      • The word Paul uses means bursts of temper. It describes not an anger which lasts but anger which flares up and then dies
    • Selfish Ambition
      • This word has a very illuminating history. It originally meant the work of a hired laborer. So it came to mean work done for pay. It went on to mean canvassing for political or public office, and it describes the person who wants office, not from any motives of service, but for what can be got out of it
    • Dissension
      • Literally the word means a standing apart. After one of his great victories, the British Admiral Lord Nelson attributed it to the fact that he had the happiness to command a band of brothers. Dissension describes a society in which the very opposite is the case where the members fly apart instead of coming together
    • Factions
      • This might be described as clearly focussed disagreement. The word is where we get our word heresy, and originally was not a bad word at all. It comes from the root which means to choose, and it was used for a philosopher’s school of followers or for any group of people who shared a common belief. The tragedy of life is that people who hold different views very often end up by disliking not each other’s views but each other. It should be possible to hold different views and yet remain friends
    • Envy
      • This word is a mean word. The Greek dramatist Euripides called it the greatest of all diseases. The essence of it is that it doesn’t describe the spirit which desires, nobly or ignobly, to have what someone else has, it describes the spirit which grudges the fact that the other person has these things at all. It does not so much want the things for itself; it merely wants to take them from the other. The Stoics defined it as “grief at someone else’s good”. The 4th century Church father Basil the Great called it “grief at your neighbor’s good fortune”. It is the quality not so much of the jealous but rather the embittered mind
    • Drunkenness
      • In the ancient word, this was not a common vice. The Greeks drank more wine than they did milk; even the children drank wine. But they drank it in the proportion of 3 parts water to 2 parts wine. Both Greeks and Christians would have condemned drunkenness as a thing which turned people into animals
    • Carousing
      • This word has an interesting history. It was a group of friends who accompanied the victor of the games after his victory. They danced, laughed, and sang his praises. It also described the devotees of Bacchus, god of wine. It describes what in England in the early decades of the 19th century would have been called a rout. It means unrestrained revelry, enjoyment that has degenerated and is out of control
  • When we get to the root meaning of these words, we see that life has not changed so very much
• Galatians 5:22-26
• 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. The law is not against such things. 24 Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.
  • As in the previous verses Paul set out the evil things characteristic of the flesh, the lower side of human nature, so now he sets out the lovely things which are the fruit of the Spirit
    • Love
      • The NT word for love is agape. This is not a word which is commonly used in classical Greek. In Greek there are four words for love
        • Eros means the love between the sexes; it is the love which has passion in it. It is never used in the NT at all
        • Philia is the warm love which we feel for our nearest and dearest; it is love from the heart
        • Storgē rather means affection and is especially used of the love of parents and children
        • Agape means unconquerable benevolence. It means that, no matter what people may do to us by way of insult, injury, or humiliation, we will never seek anything else but their highest good. It is therefore a feeling of the mind as much as of the heart; it concerns the will as much as emotions. It describes the deliberate effore—which we can make only with the help of God—Neve to seek anything but the best even for those who seek the worst for us
    • Joy
      • The characteristic of this word is that it most often describes that joy which has a basis in religion. It is not the joy that comes from earthly things, still less from triumphing over someone else in competition. It is a joy whose foundation is God
    • Peace
      • This word had two interesting usages. It was used of the serenity which a country enjoyed under eh just and generous government of a good emperor; and it was used of the good order of a town or village. Usually in the NT it stands for the Hebrew shalom and means not just freedom form trouble but everything that makes for a person’s highest good. Here, it means that tranquillity of heart which derives from the all-pervading consciousness that our times are in the hands of God
    • Patience
      • The word is used by the writer of I Maccabees to say that it is how the Romans gained control of the world, and by that he means the Roman persistence which would never make peace with an enemy even in defeat, a kind of conquering patience. Generally speaking, the word is used of patience not in relation to things or events but in relation to people. John Chrysostom said that is the grace of those who could revenge themselves and don’t, people who are slow to anger. The most illuminating thing about it is that it is commonly used in the NT of the attitude of God towards us. If God had ben like us, He would have wiped out this world long ago; but He has that patience which puts up with all our sinning and will not reject us. In our dealings with one another, we must reproduce this loving, forbearing, forgiving, patient attitude of God toward ourselves
    • Kindness and Goodness
      • Kindness and Goodness are very closely related words. In fact, the Greek word that is translated as kindness, is often also translated as goodness. So we’re going to take them together. Kindness speaks of a person’s loving disposition toward others. People can show this temperament because God’s actions toward humanity provide the ultimate example. Goodness is an attribute that marks the collective people of God. The concept might imply a willingness to do good for others by acts of radical generosity. Such fruit addressed the difficult work of building right relationships among believers and establishing appropriate witness to unbelievers.
    • Faithfulness
      • This word is common in secular Greek for trustworthiness. It is the characteristic of people who are reliable
    • Gentleness
      • This is that most untranslatable of words. In the NT, it has three main meanings. It means being submissive to the will of God. It means being teachable, being not too proud to learn. Most often of all, it means being considerate. Aristotle defined it as the mid-point between excessive anger and excessive angerlessness, the quality of the person who is always angry at the right time and never at the wrong time. What throws most light on its meaning is that the adjective is used of an animal that has been tamed and brought under control; and so the word speaks of that self-control which Christ alone can give
    • Self-control
      • Plato uses this of self mastery. It is the spirit which has overcome and controlled its desires and its love of pleasure. It is used of the athletes discipline of the body and of the Christian’s control of sex. Secular Greek uses it of the virtue of an emperor who never lets his private interests influence the government of his people. It is the virtue which enable people to have such control of themselves that they are fit to be the servants of others
  • It was Paul’s belief and experience that Christians died with Christ and rose again to a life, new and clean, in which the evil things of the old self were gone and the lovely things of the Spirit had come to fruition