what does galatians 5:15 mean

5:1-12 Look now it is I, Paul, who am speaking to you I tell you that if you get yourself circumcised Christ is no good to you. Jesus has set us free - free from the slavery of sin, free from slavery to the law. They're just revealed by the Spirit. 5:1 Tell me this--you who want to be subject to the law, you listen to it being read to you, don't you? The allusion is to (4) Coveting is a sin which best illustrates Paul's statement, "I would not have come to know sin except through the Law" (verse 7). It is . The goal that the law aims at is not reached by trying to keep the law, but by acting with true Christian liberty (13-15).Sooner or later Christians find that they do not always do the good that their consciences tell them to do, because the sinful human nature fights against Gods Spirit within them. He said, "You've got to be born again." Is not this just the law for you! For the Jew leaven nearly always stood for evil influence. it has a, perhaps, a naivet about it in that it does trust.You know I've been burned so many times by trusting men, but I pray, "God, never make me jaundiced." Selfishness in the end does not exalt a man; it destroys him. It is thus, then, that grace uses it to give me death in my conscience before God. Please enter your email address associated with your Salem All-Pass account, then click Continue. another; But as in the end the child of the slave girl was cast out and had no share in the inheritance, so in the end those who are legalists will be cast out from God and have no share in the inheritance of grace. Accordingly he draws from this a most weighty argument against bringing in the law as the rule of life for the believer. But we, brothers, are in the same position as Isaac; we are children of promise. That's where I come in touch with God. Had Peter been right, it was evident that the gospel had put Peter in the wrong. But this is a future prophetic vision not touched on here. The apostle, as far as I know, wrote no other letter to any one of the churches of the saints. We find that offensive in our society today, but in those days, the area of Galatia was the center of the worship of Sybil, and the priests of Sybil would castrate themselves. 25 If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. These things are not allowed in the kingdom of God. It is not simply that he was brought to follow Jesus, to believe and confess His name; but God revealed His Son in him. During the Medieval period it was depicted as "Joachim and Anne Meeting at the Golden Gate", meaning Mary's conception through the chaste kiss of her parents at the Golden Gate in Jerusalem; [64] the 14th and 15th centuries were the heyday for this scene, after which it was gradually replaced by more allegorical depictions featuring an adult Mary. Consequently, without further preamble, and with an ominous silence as to their state (for, indeed, it could not be spoken of), he at once breaks the ground. And it is given to me through my faith in Jesus Christ. If it should be asked, What course must we take that the better interest may get the better? For the foundation was at stake. Those in Christ must stand firm against anyone who would try to drag them into slavery under the law (Galatians 5:1). These words are used by him emphatically; for he did not merely say Bite, which denotes an angry person, but likewise, Devour, which denotes one who persists in wickedness. Thus, whatever may be the energy that seeks souls in love, there is nothing after all like Christianity for maintaining individual responsibility intact. And you keep dealing with me until I'll finally say, "Oh, God, I'm sorry. There was no difference in the blessing of Christ: man's guilt and God's grace were alike indiscriminate. The forgiveness of your sins and your redemption is totally predicated upon the finished work of Jesus Christ upon the cross.These people were adding to it. Walk on the spiritual side of your nature. The apostle stands to the truth preached and received. "I certify you, brethren," says he, "that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. Saints they may have been; and such, we know, moved about from Jerusalem. It is the law of Christ. (vss. Chrysostom said that it is the grace of the man who could revenge himself and does not, the man who is slow to wrath. You got to keep the law. So, I think Paul could also have included here baptism or no baptism as far as the physical immersion in water. informs all of Pauls exhortations vis--vis the Galatians libertine tendencies . 25 Mar 2017 23:00:00 -0500 1896 sunday full false Wednesday Night | Galatians 5:5-6 Part 2 | Dr. Jimmy Young Note, If we should approve ourselves to be Christ's, such as are united to him and interested in him, we must make it our constant care and business to crucify the flesh with its corrupt affections and lusts. Agathosune ( G19) might, and could, rebuke and discipline; chrestotes ( G5544) can only help. For what the law is actually saying to you is that you should love God supremely and love your neighbor as yourself. But immediately after this it is added, "In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. The law was given them with all pomp and solemnity. I'd say, "Open the doors and let me off." I wish that those who are upsetting you would get themselves not only circumcised but castrated! Now, if you're walking in love, supreme love for God and supreme love for your fellow man, then there is no law. That is, the apostle, instead of regarding his despised freedom from the law as a just reproach, glories in it. So far from this being the smallest allowance of Jewish prejudice, it was itself a powerful blow against it. And your spirit being alive, again you can experience fellowship with God, the joy, the blessing of fellowshipping with God.So, "walk in the Spirit." Certainly not God, nor His plain and precious word. And who will venture to say that the indwelling Spirit of God fails to supply power to him who submits to the righteousness of God in Christ? Our Christianity obliges us not only to die unto sin, but to live unto righteousness; not only to oppose the works of the flesh, but to bring forth the fruits of the Spirit too. It was the very reverse of deriving his authority from either. This is what is found under it. That is, if you are circumcised ritually for the purpose of having a righteous standing before God. For every man shall bear his own 'burden." It was therefore not only for him, but for the instruction of the Galatians, and of us all. For we through the Spirit eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by faith." (Galatians 5:4-5) Such was the serious but necessary import of Peter's act. "But though we" Paul himself, or any that were associated with him "though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." And this is a universal principle. If he had preached the full truth of the gospel, he insists that they had received it. "Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." I'm still His child. , . But spite of, or rather because of, their use of law, they were self-important, without holy power, and judged instead of loving each other. Romans chapter six, "Know ye that the old man was crucified with Christ? "This persuasion didn't come from God.". So were the others that seemed to be the chief. Even as in a natural man there is something of this struggle (the convictions of his conscience and the corruption of his own heart strive with one another; his convictions would suppress his corruptions, and his corruptions silence his convictions), so in a renewed man, where there is something of a good principle, there is a struggle between the old nature and the new nature, the remainders of sin and the beginnings of grace; and this Christians must expect will be their exercise as long as they continue in this world. The Galatian Christians should have been the most peaceful people in the province. The other apostles enjoyed this more. All is confusion. Christianity is the only true democracy, because in a Christian state everyone would think as much of his neighbour as he does of himself. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith," not by becoming proselytes of the gate, or entering on a legal basis, but "foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed." I could quickly get in trouble. ". For the law was used with killing power; and, slain as it were in my conscience, I found in that very place Christ Himself by the grace of God, Christ that died for me; and not merely this, but Christ in whom I died. In fact, what Jerusalem had done, as far as this was concerned, was to let slip men that would impose circumcision evil workers, as he in a later epistle contemptuously calls such like of the concision; for they were corrupting the Gentile churches by Judaism, instead of helping them in Christ. Again, it is not a liberty to do anything I please. The persuasion which is being exercised on you just now is not from him who calls you. These concepts, these heresies that develop within the church are passed on by men. Who put up a road-block to stop you obeying the truth? When he declared that the end of the reign of 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 are lifted and I can follow my inclinations wherever they lead me. She is as one that has no husband. It therefore often happened that the Rabbis would take a simple bit of historical narrative from the Old Testament and read into it inner meanings which often appear to us fantastic but which were very convincing to the people of their day. Instead they are unkind and cruel to each other. dissolution; for as no civil community, either public or private, Being found only in Christ, it supposes the manifestation of grace; light does not in the same way that truth does. But it degenerated; came to mean the desire to have what someone else has, wrong desire for what is not for us. Now, in the fifteenth chapter of the book of Acts, when this same issue had arisen in the church in Antioch, when certain of the brethren came down from Jerusalem and were hassling the Gentile saints in Antioch and said, "You can't be saved unless you are circumcised and keep the law of Moses," Paul and Barnabas and others from Antioch took these brothers right back to Jerusalem, because they came unto the pretense of, "We have the authority of the Jerusalem church to declare these things." "A little leaven," said Paul, "leavens the whole lump." He gives us a catalogue of evil things. Paul cautioned both sides to love one another or they would consume each other. The deeds of the lower side of human nature are obvious fornication, impurity, wantonness, idolatry, witchcraft, enmity, strife, jealousy, uncontrolled temper. Get Access To 3 Exclusive Articles (for FREE) Want articles like this one delivered straight to your email? Idolatry; this means the worship of gods which the hands of men have made. And you develop your own little following, which really appeals to your flesh. You cannot weaken his apostleship without endangering the very gospel that you have received yourselves. "Nevertheless" astonishing to say, for it could not be natural life "nevertheless, I live." The apostle concludes this chapter with a caution against pride and envy, Galatians 5:26; Galatians 5:26. Everything lost then would be gained when promise has its way. Their predicament would only become worse, as evidenced by the fact that already they are biting and devouring one another instead of growing closer to one another. Galatians 5:15 - John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible BUT IF YE BITE AND DEVOUR ONE ANOTHER,.. Then I must repeat that God could only make claims; and man had to take the place, if he could, of giving to God of rendering his obedience. But you continue one degree off on out over the Pacific, and you can miss your destination completely. The law came in meanwhile, serving its own object, which was to bring out what was in the heart of man. Peace; in contemporary colloquial Greek this word (eirene, G1515) had two interesting usages. I admit that this was all in place and season then for Jerusalem. II. He through law died to law, that he might live to God! If I sow to the flesh, I shall of the flesh reap corruption; if I sow to the Spirit, I shall reap life everlasting. "To Abraham were the promises made, and to his seed.". As we go down these things here, these are the things that God will exclude from His kingdom. What! (Romans 3:1-31, Romans 10:1-21) But the act of Peter went to maintain a difference. And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation. If God had been a man, he would have wiped out this world long ago; but he has that patience which bears with all our sinning and will not cast us off. "For if the inheritance be of law, it is no more of promise:" otherwise by the condition of law you would annul the promise. Nor this only. And they say, "Oh, well, I was just waiting upon the Lord and reading the Scriptures, and the Lord showed this to me." If the promise be the only means of enjoying the inheritance, what is the good of the law? The superior Trinity is made up of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Impossible to serve two masters! Having begun in the spirit, you did all right in the beginning, but. And as, by specifying these works of the flesh and fruits of the Spirit, the apostle directs us both what we are to avoid and oppose and what we are to cherish and cultivate, so (Galatians 5:24; Galatians 5:24) he informs us that this is the sincere care and endeavour of all real Christians: And those that are Christ's, says he (those who are Christians indeed, not only in show and profession, but in sincerity and truth), have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. Uncontrolled temper ; the word Paul uses means bursts of temper. No wonder that the apostle attached the greatest moment to the facts of his conversion and call, and that, instead of hiding his lack of familiarity both with the apostles and with the churches in Judea, he glories in it. Bite, devour, and consume are used metaphorically by Paul, giving the Galatians a good insight into the wrongfulness of their attitudes and actions toward each other. Christian baptism, contrariwise, supposes man dead; and the only death that can deliver man out of his own death is the death of Christ. Dr. Jimmy Young Buzzsprout-11368979 Thu, 22 Sep 2022 15:00:00 -0500 1898 Dr. Young,DJY,Grace Evangelical,Grace Evan,Germantown,Memphis,Collierville,Bible,Jeremiah,Church,God full false You Owe Me | Matthew 20.1-16 . But then he goes farther. "Wherefore then serveth the law? Then the apostle at once explains, as annexed to this, the real state of the case. For the desires of the lower side of human nature are the very reverse of the desires of the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are the very reverse of those of the lower side of human nature, for these are fundamentally opposed to each other, so that you cannot do whatever you like. And this comes up every day in many situations, and I have actually the choice in this situation. It was really part of God's wondrous ways with him, as indicating the true character of Christianity and of its ministry as contrasted with Judaism. One of the most dangerous errors in Christendom is, that these two things are lumped together. Abraham never. The readiest way to destroy the spirituality of a church, and to annihilate the influence of religion, is to excite a spirit of contention. So the stumbling-block of the Cross is removed, is it? You see, I don't always do the things that I would. Am I going to yield to my flesh, or am I going to yield to the Spirit? And I'll argue with Him for a while. "Brethren, I speak after the manner of men; though it be but a man's covenant, yet, if it be confirmed, no man annulleth or addeth thereto." From the nature of the subject, as well as from the language employed, we may conjecture that the Galatians had disputes among themselves; for they differed about doctrine. We don't understand that word too much. Such was the case with the Old Testament believers, and many Jewish believers then alive. It seems to have been something which affected his speech too, and exposed him to ridicule and to unfavourable comments where men were carnally-minded. The mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the Spirit is life and joy and peace. done his duty; but it was precisely what he could not do, because he was a sinner. The man who practises it has been said to know no restraint, but to do whatever caprice and wanton insolence may suggest. It was not another, as he says. They don't come to man from God.And the Jehovah Witnesses, just the Arian heresy of the early church. This would have flowed from Peter's conduct. But it was in no vain glory, in no tone of superiority, though, no doubt, it was a far fuller and higher testimony than theirs; for he adds, "privately to them which were of reputation, lest by any means I should run or had run in vain." And then he, indignant at such a thought, makes his most solemn appeals. He has set you free from the power of the flesh. Dissension describes a society in which the very opposite is the case, where the members fly apart instead of coming together. To report dead links, typos, or html errors or suggestions about making these resources more useful use the convenient, Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament, International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, , . (a) It means being submissive to the will of God ( Matthew 5:5; Matthew 11:29; Matthew 21:5). Judaizers were saying that Gentiles had to join the old covenant if they wanted God's blessings and salvation (cf. It would be first adding to it, and not only so, but annulling it. There was no consciousness of the identification of the saint with Christ. The solemnities of Christ's judgment await men in the day of the Lord. In short, the man who, occupied with Christ above, enters for that very reason most into the blessedness of the body of Christ here below by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, is the very one that will know in fit season what it is not to confer with flesh and blood. Sense of duty is not power. You were running well. But his heart was too agitated not to betake himself at once to the point of their danger. That's the old nature, reckon that to be dead. Paul takes that old story and allegorises it. You remember as Paul defined love for us in I Corinthians chapter thirteen, he uses longsuffering. "Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood.". Basil called it "grief at your neighbours good fortune." Thus it appears that the Galatians as well as the Corinthians had been similarly affected. Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary 5:13-15 The gospel is a doctrine according to godliness, 1Ti 6:3, and is so far from giving the least countenance to sin, that it lays us under the strongest obligation to avoid and subdue it. It can even be used in a good sense in that connection, but much more commonly it means the rivalry which has found its outcome in quarrellings and wrangling. Such is the only possible way in which blessing can be brought in, in order that such souls as we are should be blessed and maintained in it. We are crucified unto it by grace, as the world is crucified unto us by judgment. What! Did they know that for a Gentile Christian to take up Judaistic elements is in principle to go back to heathenism? So, they went right up to settle the issue, and the church had one of the first church councils gathered to settle a dispute, a problem within the church. Now you're, you know, chopping Jesus up, and said, "Well, He is God here, and but, for a while He wasn't God and the universe was without God for a little bit here, or whatever. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. Thus, the idea is, in their contentions they would destroy the spirituality and happiness of each other; their characters would be ruined; and the church be overthrown. Was this then a reproach? The apostle accepts the fact in all its strength. it is added, he conferred not with flesh and blood; neither went up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before him; but went into Arabia, and returned again, not to Jerusalem, but to Damascus, the place near which he had been called at first. Immediately the Spirit speaks to me and says, "That was wrong." Salem Media Group. "Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood." But what about the Gentiles? It comes from a root which means to choose, and it was used for a philosopher's school of followers or for any band of people who shared a common belief. And Paul, far from deriving his apostleship or aught else from Peter, was obliged to rebuke him, and this publicly. It is for this freedom that Christ has set us free. This then is what the law brought in. You ever seen a person in love and all of the joy that they have? And he justifies this strength of warning: "For do I now persuade men or God? "Now to Abraham were the promises spoken, and to his seed. 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. There was no such thing as a gradual training. The world of spirits can never be comfortable to those who plunge themselves in the filth of the flesh; nor will the righteous and holy God ever admit such into his favour and presence, unless they be first washed and sanctified, and justified in the name of our Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God,1 Corinthians 6:11. And then there's another reference also in Revelation, "but outside or the dogs and adulterers and so forth.". Dissension; literally the word means a standing apart. The apostle now demonstrates, from the result, how destructive such proceedings in the church must ultimately prove to be. Christianity came into a world where sexual immorality was not only condoned, but was regarded as essential to the ordinary working of life. "Are ye so foolish? Greek and Christian alike would have condemned drunkenness as a thing which turned a man into a beast. Leave room for God, and for God alone. No, this persuasion doesn't come from Him who called you. "But there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ." It is past dispute that the things he here speaks of are the works of the flesh, or the product of corrupt and depraved nature; most of them are condemned by the light of nature itself, and all of them by the light of scripture. Then, further, attention is drawn to another topic his own writing of this letter. People were trying to add to it. He saith not, And to seeds, as to many; but as to one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. In its positive form (katharos ( G2513) , an adjective meaning pure) it is commonly used in housing contracts to describe a house that is left clean and in good condition. He heartily avows what they counted a defect; and not Only so, but with the greatest solemnity assures them that he had not seen the apostles, save only Peter, and James the brother of the Lord, and these but for a short space. It was rather to have Gentile liberty secured by the twelve apostles, and that the Judaizers should be condemned by the church at Jerusalem. Why not adopt what was wanting in Christianity? Further. And in the fifteenth chapter of Acts, we read how that Peter stood up and told the brethren how that the Lord had called him to go to the Gentiles to the house of Cornelius. This is what the law commands, but those who want to put themselves under the law cannot do it. They are now controlled by Gods Spirit (24-26). If I preach circumcision, then why would they keep persecuting me? Here it is the total judgment of flesh in its religious pretensions, and more particularly a blow to that which is an essential principle of law. This it is to which we are come now under Christianity. The inferior trinity is spirit, soul and body of man. In Paul's case there was nothing of the sort. And what was the result of all this?

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