02.02. ESSAY NO. 2

ESSAY NO. 2

Since the Galatians had been led to doubt Paul’s apostolic authority, and as everything depended on it, he confidently affirmed in the first verse that his apostleship, independently of all human intermediar­ies, derived personally and directly from, "Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead." As if to ask, "Can Peter, James, and John have better authority than that?" He deemed this point so im­portant that he made, as we shall see, three argu­ments, covering about a third of Galatians, to estab­lish it. The salutatory sentence, consisting of five verses, full of elementary Christian doctrine, continues: "Grace to you and peace from God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, ac­cording to the will of our God and Father." This scrip­ture teaches that the grace and will of God, as exe­cuted in Christ, "Who gave himself (the ultimate in giving) a ransom for all," procure for all men who will accept it as God’s free gift the threefold blessing of redemption from sin, deliverance from this evil world, and, "The peace of God, which passeth all un­derstanding." What a blessing! Where are our tears of gratitude?

God’s Two Governments

God’s government for humanity from the begin­ning has always been a theocracy—that is, a mon­archy over which God himself is sole and absolute Monarch. However when men rebel against this gov­ernment, God suffers them, under the leadership of the archrebel Satan, to set up a provisional, secondary government, as he suffered the Jews for a time because of their "hardness of heart" to put away their wives; but from the beginning it hath not been so" (Matthew 19:8). Under Moses, God permitted, as ex­pedients, both divorce and secondary government. Though he has long since abolished the former, he still permits and uses the latter, according to his sov­ereign will. This primary spiritual government is, "The king­dom of heaven"; these secondary, worldly governments are "the kingdoms of the world." In saying to Pilate, "My kingdom is not of this world . . ." (John 18:36), Christ made a sharp distinction between the two, and made them incompatible. It was these "kingdoms of the world" (Matthew 4:8), in the aggregate that the dev­il, "the deceiver of the whole world" (Revelation 12:9), and "the god of this world" (2 Corinthians 4:4), offered Christ. These same kingdoms Paul here calls "this present evil world." Founded in rebellion to God, they all con­tain the seeds of decay and death within themselves, and as the Bible teaches, God will destroy them as such, after they have served his purpose. "That God may be all in all," this will leave only God’s eternal, spiritual kingdom in its solitary grandeur and perfec­tion.

Deliverance "from this present evil world" means much more than remission of sins, or justification, which to us Christians is always a glorious, motivat­ing, past event. Christ tells when and how justification comes: "He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment (with the world), but hath passed out of death into life" (John 5:24). "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1). We are called out of the world, and are separate from worldlings in life, in death, in resur­rection, in judgment, and in eternal destiny. We are in this world, but as strangers in a land occupied by the enemy. We "are not of this world" even as Christ is "not of this world" (John 17:14). During our so­journ on earth as colonists of heaven, "Our citizenship is in heaven; whence we also wait for a Savior" (Php 3:20). Father Abraham, as a pilgrim of’ earth seeking "a better country; that is, a heavenly," could have but little interest and part in the God-doomed Canaanitish civilization amidst which he lived a century in tents. Even so are we delivered from unequal yokings with their frustrations, from strivings after wind with their emptiness, from the waste, the brutality, and the deso­lation which so largely make up "this present evil world." All this gain and freedom on earth, with "new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteous­ness" to come. Who would not be a Christian pilgrim? A Perverted Gospel In Galatians 1:1-24, Galatians 2:1-21 (the personal part), Paul’s concern is to restore the Galatians’ con­fidence in him as an authentic apostle, qualified, and sent by God, As we have already seen, Judaizers, had persuaded them that Paul did not preach "the whole counsel of God."

After the salutation, Paul, without defining it, re­fers to a deadly perversion of gospel doctrine in their midst. Since the heresy strikes at the wisdom and throne of God, the gravity of the situation justifies his strong language: "But though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach unto you any gospel other than that which we preached unto you, let him be anathema (accursed)." Then in the next verse as if to assure them that what he was saying, instead of being the hasty, explosive words of an angry man, were the sober, measured words of a most earnest man, he de­liberately spells out the curse again. The Galatians and all men since, therefore, may know that if Gabriel from heaven, or Paul back on earth, should come to preach, they would have nothing to add to what Paul had already preached to them. How the impressible Galatians must have solemnly read on to learn the nature of their error which Paul took so seriously.

Evidently Paul’s enemies had said that he was an unprincipled, popularity-seeking opportunist. Evil men by misrepresentations, twisted meanings, and half truths can always make out a case, even when their victim is Christ or Paul. We judge from Paul’s reply, "If I were still pleasing men, I could not be a servant of Christ" (v. 10), that his traducers probably said they could sustain their indictment by the fact that he circumcised Timothy, but refused to circumcise Titus, in conformity to policy instead of conscience. For sim­plicity, compression, and completeness, this answer is an incomparable statement of the immutable, funda­mental Christian truth that the interests of men-pleasers and of Christians cannot be reconciled. May we not be thankful that since Christians unto the end of time must suffer similarly, this extreme case of such vile slander and persecution occurred long ago while Paul was still living to make his stabilizing and comforting answer?