Paul has three great lines of argument, any one of which would be in itself incontrovertible. The combination of the three is overpowering. First, he has argued in chapters 1 and 2 from past history, from what all knew to have taken place. His own experience and the experience of the Galatians were known to all, however some might try to explain them away. Paul’s relations with the Jerusalem church were also an open book which all might read. Even had Paul been capable of attempting to falsify such evidence, it would have been an impossible task. There were too many Christians still alive who could have contradicted him, and the Judaizers would have been the very first to seize upon any such inconsistency or inaccuracy.
Secondly, he has argued in chapters 3 and 4 from theology, or rather from Scripture. Both by ‘general’ and by ‘special’ (i.e. rabbinic) exegesis, he has shown the utter inconsistency of the theological position of the Judaizers and of their Galatian followers. He has established beyond doubt that such retrograde teaching is contradicted by the very Torah which they claimed to teach. Promise and fulfilment meet in the Christian church, in the cross of Christ, not in the law of Moses, and the covenant with Abraham had been the great prototype and preparation for this.
But there still remains one very powerful argument – some would say, the most powerful argument of all. This is the argument from results, the appeal to the total inward moral change brought about by the ‘freedom’ of the gospel, combined with the gift of the Spirit, a change in character which all the restraints or ‘bondage’ of the Jewish law had utterly failed to produce.1 In these last two chapters Paul will hammer this home in order to clinch the matter. But he does not merely have the Judaizers in mind when he stresses the moral obligations and fruits of the gospel; he also does it lest his preaching of ‘freedom’ be misinterpreted as ‘antinomianism’ by the Gentile Galatians. If liberty becomes licence, then the worst suspicions of the Judaizers would be true and the last state of the Galatians would indeed be worse than the first.2 From every point of view, therefore, these chapters are the crown of the whole book.
At first sight, this short section may look like a simple attack on the Judaizers for their preaching of circumcision, but it goes far beyond that. It is an exposition of the true end and goal of law and gospel alike,3 and of the impotence of any outward observance to effect that which can only be achieved by the inward working of the Spirit. The true centre of gravity of the passage lies in the last clause. But Cousar may also be right in regarding it as an attempt to tone down any frantic activism, whether ‘religious’ or ‘enthusiastic’, on the part of the Galatians.
‘Look, I Paul, in person, tell you this: if you should now accept circumcision, Christ will be no good to you. I affirm solemnly again to everyone who accepts circumcision that he is thereby accepting an obligation to carry out the whole of the law. Seeing that you are trying to obtain right standing with God through obeying the law, you have already broken the bond (i.e. “of faith”) that united you to Christ; you have slipped from the level where grace operates. For we Christians wait eagerly for that righteousness which we expect as a result of faith; and all is the Spirit’s doing. Once faith is placed in Christ, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is any good; the only thing that counts is faith, working out in love’ (cf. NEB mg. ‘faith inspired by love’).
2. When Paul bursts into this passionate personal testimony, one wonders whether he has not already taken the stylus from the hand of the scribe and is writing it in his own handwriting, as he does in 6:11. It resembles the opening formula with which he introduces autograph passages elsewhere (as in 1 Cor. 16:21). 2 Thessalonians 3:17 tells us that this autographing of letters was apparently Paul’s invariable practice to guard against forgery. So we may assume that wherever ‘the grace’ occurs at the end of a letter, it at least was originally in autograph, even if not specifically stated in the context. But there is no specific reference here to Paul’s handwriting; for that, we must wait until 6:11. It therefore seems unlikely that Paul picked up the pen so early in the letter unless, as is always possible, he wrote this particular letter without the aid of an amanuensis, since none is mentioned (contrast Romans 16:22). That would make the reference in 6:11 to the size and shape of the letters more understandable; for Paul does not normally write more than ‘the grace’ in his own hand, and this will not come until 6:18. What exactly, then, is the force of the I, Paul? Perhaps it is only to lend force to the solemn affirmation which follows. When Paul says, in the next verse, martyromai, ‘I testify’, his words take on the character of a formal declaration under oath in a court of law. Paul’s lawyer’s training, apart altogether from his Jewish background, would not allow him to use such a phrase lightly. Normally in his letters such an introduction marks a point of more than usual weight and moment.
That may well be the explanation of the phrase here. But it is also possible that the words are pregnant with deeper meaning. Even Paul, the circumcised Jew, proud of all his background and traditions (cf. Phil. 3:4–6), tells them that circumcision is of no avail. Who more than he should know its value? Yet he had counted it as ‘debit’, as ‘refuse’, in comparison with Christ. Paul is never anti-Jewish even when he is in his most controversial moods. Although he does not develop in Galatians the argument for the positive values and abiding contribution of Judaism, Romans 9 – 11 shows his general position in this area clearly. Israel never had a member who loved her more dearly than Paul. Yet even such a Jewish patriot sees clearly the comparative unimportance of circumcision now; it is of no advantage to the Galatians.
The tenses of the verbs are very important in this passage. Paul says to the Galatians if you receive circumcision, ean peritemnesthe, in the present tense, not the past tense. This implies that they have not already taken the step, but are only considering it. It also means that Paul is in no way condemning those Jewish Christians who are in any case already circumcised. He does not say ‘if you are already in the position of being circumcised’, a meaning which would normally require the perfect passive of the verb. To such, Paul’s advice is quite clear in 1 Corinthians 7:17–20, where it is set in a wider context. If God’s call came to a man while he was a Jew, and therefore circumcised, then ‘let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision’ (1 Cor. 7:18a; some had tried to do this in time of persecution, cf. 1 Macc. 1:15). If the call came while he was a Gentile, and therefore uncircumcised, then ‘let him not seek circumcision’ (1 Cor. 7:18b). Paul in no way condemned the Jewish usages of the Jerusalem church. That is an important point, for he was often accused by his Judaizing foes of doing this very thing (e.g. Acts 21:21). What Paul did condemn was the attitude of mind that saw such historic practices as necessary to salvation and which tried to force them on Gentile churches as the price of fellowship at the Lord’s Table. This is an attitude of mind that the church of the twentieth century has not yet outgrown. We cannot afford to smile at the Judaizers if we ‘Judaize’ in our attitude to other Christians with different customs from our own.
That this force of the verb is not imaginary is shown by peritemnomenō, in verse 3, ‘becoming circumcised at this very moment’, where the present tense is likewise used. It would not be unfair to translate this as ‘trying to be circumcised’ or ‘wanting to be circumcised’, although there are places in the New Testament where the present participle may have either of these nuances.4 Hence the urgency of this letter. Paul may be able to stop the Galatians from what in his opinion would be an irrecoverable and retrograde step. It is beside the point to say that Abraham was circumcised, and that he indeed circumcised his ‘Gentile’ son, Ishmael, as well as his ‘Jewish’ son, Isaac (Gen. 17:23). This was a sign of God’s covenant of promise with Abraham, not the covenant of law under Moses, and so is irrelevant here.
To say Christ will be of no advantage to you, ouden ophelēsei,5 is to use a very strong expression. But, once again, Paul wants to shock the Galatians into a full realization of what they might have done. He will explain what he means in the following verses. Meanwhile, we may note the untranslatable pun in the Greek between ophelēsei, ‘be of advantage’, and opheiletēs, bound, or ‘a debtor’, in the next verse. It is somewhat of a bitter pun, but it heightens the contrast. We might attempt to bring out some of the force by saying, ‘So far from Christ helping you, you yourself will be helpless in law’s clutches.’
3–4. Paul’s point is now quite clear. If the Galatians accept circumcision, it can only be because they consider that circumcision is necessary to salvation. This would mean that they consider that Christ’s death was not enough; they are no longer trusting Christ to save them. Rather, they are hoping to save themselves by what they do. So they have in fact left the region where grace is operative; as he says, tēs charitos exepesate, you have fallen away from grace, where ‘fallen out of the realm of grace’ would be a better translation. No-one can be justified in two ways at once; we cannot be justified at the same time by faith in Christ and by our own efforts. It is ‘all or nothing’ as far as faith and grace are concerned.
Paul probably could have proved this point even if the Judaizers were limiting their demands to the one rite of circumcision. But 4:10 shows that the whole range of Jewish festivals was involved (including, of course, the Sabbath), and 2:12 makes it highly probable that the Jewish food laws were also included. For, while to Paul circumcision is primarily the ‘seal’ of God on the faith of Abraham (Rom. 4:11) and an assurance of that righteousness which was already his by faith, to the Jew of Paul’s day circumcision was something fundamentally different. To him, it was the first act of obedience to that law which would henceforth, if he was a pious Jew, rule every tiny detail of his life.6 Through complete obedience to all its precepts he hoped to win merit in God’s eyes, and so attain ‘life’. Circumcision, in Jewish eyes, was therefore more closely associated with Moses and Sinai than with Abraham and the promised land: it introduced obligation, not promise. So Paul is right when he says that to accept circumcision as obligatory is to accept the whole law as obligatory. This is a word other than that of Christ and of grace, and the Galatians must accept the full consequences of their act in voluntarily entering it.
That is why he can say, you are severed [katērgēthēte] from Christ. The vital bond of faith in God’s grace has been broken, and no other relationship with Christ is possible for the Christian. It is true that this Greek verb can also mean ‘make ineffective, nullify’ in a general sense (so BAGD). But Paul uses it in Romans 7:2 in the sense of ‘be freed from a marriage bond’, and that is a most suitable meaning here too. The NEB translates, ‘your relation with Christ is completely severed’: NIV has ‘alienated from Christ’, which gives the sense well.
5. As against this, we now find one of the clearest statements of ‘justification by faith’ in the whole letter. The hēmeis, we, is so strongly adversative that it may not be incorrect to interpret it as ‘we Christians’, as opposed to those who have fallen away from grace. It may well be that Paul uses the plural deliberately here, as though he wants to include the wavering Galatians along with himself. But the use of plural for singular, with no noticeable difference in meaning, is common enough throughout the whole New Testament. The intensive meaning ‘eagerly wait for’ seems established for apekdechometha, we wait (so BAGD); otherwise it would be tempting to translate ‘receive payment in full’, with a future reference. There is a future aspect in any case, implied not only by the verb but also by the phrase elpida dikaiōsynēs, the hope of righteousness. This does not mean that, to Paul, ‘justification’ is something still to come, and therefore something uncertain as yet. He uses the past tense of the verb ‘justified’ too often to admit that.7 Instead of hope of righteousness we should probably translate ‘that righteousness which we confidently expect’, for there is nothing uncertain about elpis, ‘hope’, in the Bible. In that case, Paul will either be referring to the continual attitude of the Christian, which is a buoyant expectation that God has in fact accepted the believer as ‘in the right’; or there may be a slight eschatological flavour,8 as though the Christian were waiting confidently for that ‘right standing’ to be finally manifest to all. It was a wise theologian who said that, in the Bible, salvation is at one and the same time past, present, and future. We have been saved, we are being saved, and we shall be saved: and yet there is no contradiction between these three. The future is the crown and consummation of the past, not something new: to talk of a ‘double justification’ is therefore incorrect (Betz).
But the weight of the verse, as far as Paul is concerned, does not fall on the second half, interesting though it may be to us. The whole stress is on the words that he has deliberately brought forward for emphasis pneumati, through the Spirit, and ek pisteōs, by faith. These are the two aspects that distinguish the Christian hope from the Jewish, for here the two approaches to God are poles apart. If circumcision was anything, it would have been not pneumati, through the Spirit, but sarki, ‘in the flesh’; and although Paul does not use the latter word here, it can hardly be absent from his mind. To the Christian, justification has nothing to do with anything ‘fleshly’ or ‘natural’; all is of God, for all is ‘the work of the Spirit’ (NEB). Paul may simply wish to contrast a ‘spiritual’ (through the Spirit) with a ‘natural’ method of justification. Or, as the NEB translation suggests, he may be emphasizing that, from start to finish, it is due to the work of the Spirit. This need not have direct reference to the work of the Spirit in ‘sanctification’. It is equally by the work of the Spirit that we are convinced of the utter impossibility of commending ourselves to God by our own activities, whether it be by attempted obedience to the Jewish law, in the case of Jews, or attempted obedience to the dictates of conscience, in the case of Gentiles. Further, it is only by the work of the Spirit that we can see Christ as our Saviour. Indeed, it might almost be said that the gift of faith is the first gift of the Spirit to the newborn soul, the gift of grace from which all the other gifts and graces follow (Eph. 2:8).
After the explosive pneumati, through the Spirit, comes the almost equally emphatic ek pisteōs, by faith, or ‘as a result of faith’. What this means to the Christian has already been shown in the letter. Here it is clearly and decisively contrasted with en nomō, ‘by the law’, in the verse immediately above. Between these two there can be no compromise: instead of en nomō, ‘by the law’, Paul could indeed have equally well written en sarki, ‘by the flesh’, since that is what ‘trying to be justified by law’ comes down to, at the last.
6. It is part of the greatness of Paul that even in the midst of controversy he is not one-sided. Just as in 1:18 he readily admits that he did actually go to Jerusalem ‘to see Peter’, although knowing that this admission might well weaken and damage his case, so here he is not content merely to prove that circumcision is not of any avail (NIV, ‘has any value’), or ‘does no good’, or even ‘makes no difference’ (with the NEB). He readily admits that uncircumcision is equally valueless, a point often forgotten by those filled with reforming zeal, as it was probably forgotten by many a Gentile Christian. He will not allow the Gentile to boast of his uncircumcised state, any more than he will allow the Jew to boast of ‘the sign of the covenant’. Both states are now totally irrelevant ‘in Christ’; they have ceased to have either meaning or value.
This perspective might have saved the church many a quarrel, much heart-burning, and not a little mutual criticism. To him, these outward observances are all unimportant compared with faith working through love (NIV, ‘expressing itself ’) unless the participle energoumenē is to be taken as fully passive, meaning ‘worked’, or ‘produced’, in which case the NEB mg. ‘faith inspired by love’ might possibly be correct.9
Either translation of energoumenē, ‘working out’ or ‘being worked out’, therefore makes good sense. For it is the love of Christ which moves our hearts to respond to him; so in that sense it is true to say that our faith is ‘inspired by love’ (NEB mg.). But it is more usual in the New Testament to say that Christ’s love evokes a corresponding love in us (1 John 4:19) than to say that it evokes faith. It seems then as if faith working through love, or ‘expressing itself in love’ (NIV) is nearer the mark. This would link with two favourite Pauline thoughts; first, that love is the fulfilment of the law (Rom. 13:10), and secondly, that Christian faith brings with it, as a necessary corollary, the ‘fruit of the Spirit’, with which Paul will deal shortly. The first is necessary to show that there is no opposition between the moral ‘righteousness’ which the law seeks vainly to produce and the righteousness which is the free gift of God in response to faith.10 The second is necessary to show that the faith through which we are justified is not mere intellectual understanding, but a life-changing committal. Nobody soberly reading the rest of Galatians could seriously believe that there was any real conflict between James and Paul as to the nature of faith; any apparent contradiction is superficial and verbal only. Whether of course this was equally plain to James, we cannot tell; but certainly he recognized the Pauline gospel as the same as his own (2:6), when faced by it at Jerusalem.
Paul, by mentioning ‘faith working through love’, has set the tone for the whole of this last section of the letter. But in the next few verses he turns aside for another personal expostulation directed to the Galatians. It is not without interest, both because of the reference to the ‘enemy’ at Galatia, whether individual or collective, and also because of the reference to Paul’s own personal position.
‘You were running strongly: who was it who thwarted you, by stopping you from believing the truth? This sort of persuasiveness never came from the God who called you; as they say, “a little pinch of yeast sets the whole lump of dough in fermentation”. But I have a Christian confidence as far as you are concerned that you will not change your outlook. This disturber of your peace will bear his judgment, no matter how high his position. But I ask you, fellow Christians, if I am one who proclaims the need of circumcision, why am I still being harried from place to place? The stumbling-block of the cross would be gone then. Oh, if only those who trouble you would go the whole way and mutilate themselves!’
7. The metaphor in etrechete, you were running, is taken from the athletic track, which, with the theatre and amphitheatre, dominated the Greek world. No orthodox Jew could or would join in such an exercise since it involved nudity as well as worship of heathen gods. The pictures that we draw of Paul watching athletic games at Tarsus as a boy are therefore probably figments of our imagination, unless Paul, like other naughty boys, disobeyed his parents. But the imagery of the arena fascinated him, and he often uses it as a metaphor of the Christian life. Perhaps there is a deliberate reminiscence of 2:2, where Paul explains to the Jerusalem elders the gospel that he preaches ‘lest somehow I should be running or had run in vain’. The figurative use of this verb with reference to moral effort is very common throughout the whole New Testament.
If the track metaphor is still strongly felt, it is tempting to take enekopsen, ‘hinder’, as a reference to ‘foul running’ by rivals (NIV has the literal ‘cut in on you’) and translate ‘edged you off the track’ (cf. Philips, ‘put you off the course’). But although meanings like ‘knock in’ are found for this verb, there is no evidence to justify such an interpretation.11 It is probably better to take it simply as hindered, or ‘obstructed’, and assume that the force of the metaphor has weakened. When Paul says that the purpose (or perhaps result) of this ‘hindering’ was that the Galatians were hindered from obeying the truth, he uses the infinitive peithesthai, which means ‘to be persuaded’ as well as ‘to obey’. The meaning is quite clear. This persuasive Judaizing approach has pushed the Galatians away from obeying the plain truth of the gospel, whether they know it or not.
8. The choice of this particular verb, peithesthai, allows him a play on words hard to reproduce in English, for the verb is now taken up by the rare cognate noun peismonē, persuasion, or ‘persuasiveness’, used to describe the activity of the Judaizers. While Paul does not actually say here that they are plausible deceivers (which he has already hinted in 4:17), this deduction is obvious. Those who translate peismonē as ‘obedience’, referring to the ready response of the Galatians rather than to the proselytizing activity of the Judaizers, must depart from the best text for the passage in order to do so (so BAGD). In either case, the play on words remains: and it is taken up by pepoitha, ‘I have confidence’, in verse 10. Perhaps, at the risk of clumsiness, we might paraphrase the three verses as: ‘Who hindered you from being persuaded as to the truth? The sort of “persuasion” that they used is not from Christ. But I am still persuaded better things of you.’ The effect is to give the whole passage a coherence that it lacks in an English translation. Tou kalountos, him who calls you, is always God or Christ in Pauline theology; it cannot be used of the human evangelist, who is summoning others to believe, necessary though that work may be. See also note on 1:15.
9. The NIV is almost certainly right in putting verse 9 in quotation marks. It seems to be an example of Paul’s use of a proverbial saying,12 which he also quotes in 1 Corinthians 5:6. BAGD remarks on the phrase, which ‘serves to picture the influence of apparently insignificant factors in the moral and spiritual sphere’. Zymē, leaven, or ‘yeast’, is very frequently used in the Gospels, both as a symbol of the pervasiveness of evil, as it is here, and also of the pervasiveness of good, as in Matthew 13:33, though not all expositors are agreed there. A common Jewish proverbial source is sufficient to explain the similarities between gospels and letters. Such a proverb was particularly natural to Israel, for whom the use of ‘leaven’ or ‘yeast’ was forbidden in sacrifice (Exod. 34:25). Not only so, but on certain ceremonial occasions, such as the Feast of Unleavened Bread (which immediately followed Passover), the removal of all leaven from the house had become a solemn ritual (1 Cor 5:7–8), which to the Jews was a symbol of the putting away of sin. It is probable that the reason for the prohibition of the use of leaven in sacrifice came from an analogy between the ‘leavening’ activity of yeast whereby the bread ‘rises’, and the natural process of putrefaction in meat or other foods. No carrion or decayed flesh might be offered to the Lord, just as no maimed or imperfect beast might be used in sacrifice (Lev. 22:21–25). Paul’s point is that, unless checked, this Judaizing tendency, though small in itself, will permeate the whole Christian community in Galatia, and make selfoffering to God both impossible and unacceptable.
The phyrama, lump, is the shapeless mass of the ‘batch of dough’ (NIV): it literally means ‘that which is mixed or kneaded’ (so BAGD). It can also be used as in Romans 9:21 of the formless lump of clay which the potter takes up in his hand to mould into a clay vessel, but this is not Paul’s thought in Galatians.
10. Here we are faced with the usual questions as to the force and meaning of en Kyriō, in the Lord, which for the Christian was equivalent to en Christō, ‘in Christ’. Without trying to go into the full theological implications of this expression, we may note that there are two main possibilities here. The first, and simpler, is that Paul means that this confidence of his is no human confidence, but one wrought in his heart by Jesus Christ.13 This is a straightforward explanation which would suit both the context in particular and Pauline theology in general. The second, perhaps more attractive, is to translate ‘united with you in the Lord’ (so NEB). This is part of the modern trend to translate en Christō, ‘in Christ’, as ‘in union with Jesus Christ’, whether this union is seen as an individual or a collective relationship. It is possibly because of this slight difficulty in interpretation that some early witnesses to the text omit the words, en Kyriō, altogether. Paul’s confidence in the Galatians is that they will take no other view, ouden alio phronēsete. There is no difficulty with the use of the verb phroneō, perhaps best translated ‘think’: it is often used by Paul of attitudes or habits of mind. But we may well ask the meaning of allo, ‘different’. Does it mean different from Paul’s gospel, or from their original attitude, or from what he has just said? The answer is that, although the wording may be a trifle loose, there is no real conflict: these three are one. The NEB interprets well as ‘you will not take the wrong view’, although this goes beyond the Greek text.
Again, ho tarassōn, he who is troubling you, is the vague character behind the scenes, whether known or unknown to Paul, the one referred to by the indignant interrogative tis, ‘who?’, in verse 7 immediately above, which suggests that Paul was ignorant of his identity. The use of the singular for the plural may only be a rhetorical device; on the other hand, even if there were several Judaizers, there is almost certain to have been one ringleader among them.14 The verb tarassō, ‘trouble’, represents the complete antithesis of that sense of peace, coming from right relationships with God, which should be the characteristic mark of the Christian, no matter what the outward circumstances.
Paul may not know who this ringleader is, but he seems to suspect that he holds a high position, possibly in the Jerusalem church. That is the meaning of hostis ean ē, whoever he is; it does not so much refer to Paul’s ignorance of the identity of the troubler as allude to his status or rank. (NIV takes a more neutral position with ‘whoever he may be’.) Perhaps the use of hopoioi, ‘no matter who’, in 2:6 had a similar sense, though Paul is certainly not accusing in either passage any of the Jerusalem ‘apostles’ of having a direct hand in Galatian affairs.
Anyway, says Paul, such a one will bear his judgment. Because the Greek is to krima, ‘the judgment’, NEB is undoubtedly right in glossing as ‘God’s judgement’.15 Paul is thinking, not of some council at Jerusalem, where indeed such troublers were condemned, but of the day when all evangelists and teachers alike must give account before God (cf. 1 Cor. 3:10–15). The word bastasei, will bear, is interesting. It is the very word used of Christ, carrying his cross to Golgotha (John 19:17). The word is also used in Acts 15:10, in the impatient speech of Peter which turns the scale at the Jerusalem discussions. There the law is described as a zygon, ‘yoke’ (cf. Gal. 5:1), which no Jew, past or present, has been able ‘to bear’, bastasai (or possibly ‘to endure’). If the letter to the Galatians was written after the Council, it is conceivable that Paul is referring to, or at least subconsciously remembering, Peter’s strong words. However, if Paul is echoing Peter here, he is altering the sense. Do the Judaizers want to make the new converts carry the heavy burden and yoke of the law? Let them beware. In the day of judgment, they themselves will bear the far heavier burden of the wrath of God. But it is better to see both Peter and Paul referring to what were Christian ‘commonplaces’ rather than to see any direct or indirect dependence.
11. The great question here is whether anyone seriously claimed that Paul still advocated circumcision. If so, what did the claim mean? When he says, if I … still preach circumcision, Paul may mean only ‘if I were advocating it, which everybody knows that I do not’. This is certainly the simplest explanation. It is made more likely by the use of kēryssō, preach, or ‘herald abroad’. This, in Paul’s writings, is the typical verb used for the initial preaching of the gospel (cf. 2:2). Nobody could possibly think that circumcision had any place in Paul’s initial proclamation of Christ. As he says himself, if only he would allow circumcision to hold such a place, then the Judaizers would cease to harry him from pillar to post (diōkomai, am persecuted, is the very word that Paul used to describe his own bitter attacks on the church in his pre-Christian days; see 1:13). Indeed, as far as Judaism was concerned, a preaching of circumcision would remove the skandalon, the stumbling block, from the gospel. Few would mind ‘Jesus the Messiah’ being added to the law by some minor Messianic sect within Judaism: but the ‘either/or’ of Christian preaching was an impossible obstacle in their eyes.
Some ancient witnesses to the text omit the word eti, still. That would certainly make the sentence run more smoothly, reading, ‘If I am a circumcision-preacher’. But such smoothness makes us suspicious that the difficult word was deliberately cut out. It may be that, if kept, eti, still, refers to Paul’s pre-Christian days when he would most certainly have preached circumcision and the law with all his might to possible Gentile proselytes. ‘I preached it then,’ he says; ‘but not now.’ It can scarcely be claimed that in his early days of gospel preaching Paul found a greater place for the Jewish law and its observances than he did later, for we have seen that the lines of Paul’s preaching had hardened very early. Besides, such behaviour would have meant an avoidance of conflict in those early days with Jew and Judaizer, and this we see from Acts not to have been the case. Jewish riots follow the path of Paul across Asia Minor like a trail of bushfires. There never seems to have been any such halcyonic period of good relations as that postulated by this theory. It may be, of course, that the Judaizers pointed back to a time when Paul had been willing to circumcise Timothy (Acts 16:3) and, just possibly, even to circumcise Titus (see discussion on 2:3). They may have told the Galatians that, in those days, Paul had preached circumcision. But, even if they said this, Paul’s indignation in 2:1–5 shows that he himself would not admit for one moment the truth of such a charge. Whatever the meaning of the still, it cannot therefore be explained in this way. Probably it is to be taken in a weak sense as meaning ‘at the present moment’, with no sense of contrast with a past period when things were different.
The ‘offence of the cross’, skandalon tou staurou, ‘the staggering nature of the cross’, is a fundamental concept in Pauline theology and therefore demands consideration. In the Greek Old Testament, skandalon means a ‘trap’ or ‘snare’, and is used in parallelism with other words of the same meaning.16 In the New Testament, the word is frequently used of a temptation to sin, that which causes a person to fall. But the typical New Testament use is when it means, as here, ‘that which causes revulsion, arouses opposition’ (BAGD). The very preaching of a crucified Messiah is of course a stumbling block to the religiously minded Jew (1 Cor. 1:23). There is a slight difference here in that Paul is not thinking of the fact of the Messiah dying a death under God’s curse; rather, he is stressing that this way of salvation through the cross leaves no room for ‘merit’ to be acquired by outward observances such as circumcision or the law. Ultimately, of course, the two come to the same thing, for the nature of the Messiahship and the nature of the salvation that he brings are inextricably linked. Further, if salvation is to be altogether of grace, with nothing of merit, it is inevitable that both Gentile and Jew may find salvation in the same way: there is no longer a ‘most favoured nation’. This was a bitter pill for Israel, even for the Jewish Christian. Circumcision separated Jew from Gentile: baptism made them one in Christ (3:27–28), as it made male and female one, again unlike circumcision, which separated them. No wonder that the failure to preach circumcision was the greatest stumbling block of the gospel. Only by the gift of God’s Spirit can that which was once a stumbling block to Paul now become his greatest boast and glory (6:14). Paul once again uses here katērgētai, has been removed, better translated ‘made ineffective’ as in verse 4. In its different senses it is a favourite verb with him. The NEB, with ‘is … no more’, is hardly a strong enough translation: NIV, with ‘has been abolished’, hits the mark.
12. Here we have Paul’s final rejoinder to the Judaizers. If they are so enthusiastic about circumcision, one ‘mutilation’ of the flesh, why not go the whole way and castrate themselves, as did the indigenous eunuch priests of Asia Minor in honour of their strange, barbarous gods?17 That is the only possible meaning of apokopsontai, mutilate themselves. The language is bitter, but it is not merely a ‘coarse jest’, as is sometimes said. It is designed to set circumcision in its true light as but one of the many ritual cuttings and markings practised in the ancient world. True, God had once used circumcision as the ‘sign of the covenant’ in Israel; but, since he was not now using it in the Christian church, it had no more relevance to the Gentile Christians than any other of these strange customs. Indeed, the eunuch priests of paganism undoubtedly thought that they were acquiring great ‘merit’ by their action. In this sense at least, therefore, there is a real comparison. Whether the Galatians lived in the north or in the south of the Roman province, they could not fail to be familiar with these barbaric cultic practices; the point would therefore not be lost on them. The fact that these priests were often called ‘Galli’ might possibly have given more point when Paul was writing to the Galatians, although there is no evidence that the two names were etymologically connected.
In Philippians 3:2 Paul uses very similar language, appararently of these same Judaizers. They are ‘dogs’ in very truth (unlike the Gentiles whom they sometimes so describe); they are ‘evil workers’ in spite of all their reliance on ‘good deeds’. They are seen as ‘choppers’, or ‘mutilators’: so he scornfully calls them tēn katatomēn, ‘the mutilation’, not tēn peritomēn, ‘the circumcision’, which is an honourable term for Jews.18 It was probably because the Roman emperors confused the two practices of circumcision and ritual mutilation that they issued such stringent decrees later, forbidding Jewish circumcision. Paul would not have forbidden circumcision, but he would have agreed theologically with their judgment on its general nature.
In this letter, Paul has already dealt with the question of Christian freedom on several occasions (cf. 5:1). Now he will describe its right use and its limitations. This is partly to show, no doubt, how the new law of love, inextricably bound up with this freedom in Christ, is the true fulfilment of the law of Moses (v. 14). It is also, perhaps, partly to forestall the usual objections by the Judaizers as to the antinomian tendencies of Pauline teaching. But one suspects that another possible reason for its introduction here may be the state of local church life in Galatia. Paul seems to have had some accurate information as to the local church (4:10), and he may well have heard of a state of affairs that was anything but glorifying to Christian ‘liberty’. It may even be that the church of Galatia was just as much divided by factions as that of Corinth (cf. 1 Cor. 1:10–13). True, we do not know of the names or natures of the factions in Galatia; but if we may hazard a guess from what we know from the letter, and also from the analogy of Corinth, there was probably a faithful ‘Pauline’ group. If there had not been, it is hard to see how Paul would have heard of the new tendencies there. Also there must clearly have been a majority that favoured the Judaizers; indeed, the assumed ringleader in this movement may not have come from outside the church at all, but from within. Then, to judge from the passage before us, there may even have been a third ‘Gentile’ circle, glorifying in their ‘liberty’, which to them was licence for unlimited self-indulgence. Even if there was no such circle, in any Gentile church there were bound to be such individuals. Paul did not want the support of such a group, and he may therefore have been fighting a three-cornered battle in Galatia as in other places.19 In any case, whether this sort of ‘libertine’ group (prototype of one flank of the later Gnostic movement) existed or not, it is obvious that incipient ‘party feeling’ ran high in Galatia, and Paul would not condone that, not even in the name of gospel truth. If this third group existed, they may have accused Paul of ‘Judaizing’ tendencies, in their zeal for complete Christian emancipation: to such, Timothy’s circumcision might have seemed a complete betrayal. It is therefore just possible that 5:11, ‘if I … still preach circumcision’, might have some reference to their supposed position; but this again is pure hypothesis. Any theory that makes Paul himself a Judaizer is obviously wrong-headed, but all else is speculation.
‘Yes, fellow Christians, you have been called by God with a view to freedom, only not a freedom which is a bridgehead for unredeemed human nature; instead, be willing slaves of one another for love’s sake. For the whole of the law stands summed up in this one saying, “You are to love your fellow as you love yourself.” But if you are continually snapping at one another and eating one another alive, take care that you do not annihilate each other. What I mean is this: let your way of life be Spirit-controlled, and you will not do that for which your natural self yearns. For the yearnings of the natural self are opposed to the Spirit, and the yearnings of the Spirit are opposed to the natural self. This is because the two are utterly opposed to each other, so that you cannot do the sort of things that you want to do. But if you are continually being guided by the Spirit, then you are not under law as a system.’
13. You were called to freedom reminds us of 5:1: ‘for freedom Christ has set us free’ (NEB mg., ‘What Christ has done is to set us free’). True, says Paul; the goal of the divine calling (for kaleō, ‘call’, always implies this divine activity) is indeed freedom. But it must not become aphormēn tesarki, an opportunity for the flesh. Aphormemeans originally ‘the starting point or base of operations for an expedition’ (so BAGD); hence ‘bridgehead’ or ‘springboard’ would be a possible translation. In 2 Corinthians 11:12 the word clearly means ‘pretext’, and perhaps that is the meaning here: those who shout ‘liberty’ loudest in Galatia may well have their tongues in their cheeks. It may, however, be quite neutral in meaning, as the RSV translates it here, with opportunity. Cousar thinks that Paul adds this whole section to balance his polemical presentation of freedom in the earlier chapters, and to avoid misunderstanding.
Paul’s use of sarx, flesh, usually as opposed to pneuma, ‘spirit’, is important and characteristic. Many individual studies have been made of both words, as shown in any of the standard Bible wordbooks.20 In brief, sarx begins by meaning the physical substance ‘flesh’, like the Hebrew bā´sār, the word which it translates in the Greek Old Testament (so Abbot-Smith). From that, it comes to mean either ‘body’, as substance, although the word for this is more properly sōma, or ‘mortal’, especially in the phrase ‘flesh and blood’. From that, it is an easy transition to ‘that which is natural to mortals’ or ‘human nature’. It could be argued that this is not necessarily sinful in itself, just as sōma, ‘body’, is certainly not sinful in itself. But there are two aspects in which sarx is inadequate, even if not actually sinful. The first is that, when we say ‘human’, we now must mean ‘fallen human’: this is inevitable, in a fallen world. Thus, in so far as sarx is the ‘flesh’ of fallen humanity, it is sinful.
Secondly, at a deeper level than this, even if we could concede that ‘flesh’ was once sinless and that its ‘nature’ was once ‘unfallen nature’, it is still grossly inadequate as ‘flesh’. God is spirit, and not flesh (Isa. 31:3); his thoughts and plans are as far above our thoughts as heaven is above earth (Isa. 55:9). That is what Paul means by saying that his gospel is ‘not … from any man’ but ‘by revelation’ (1:12, NIV).As this aspect more properly falls under the heading of pneuma, ‘spirit’, it need not be further pursued here: Paul will take it up in verse 16 onwards.
When Paul says we must not use (or abuse) our Christian liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, or, as we might say, as a ‘springboard for the flesh’, he means ‘you must not use this as an opportunity to show what you are really like as humans’. We may choose to translate it by ‘lower nature’ (NEB) or ‘sinful nature’ (NIV) to make the meaning clearer; but to Paul, all fallen human nature is by definition this ‘lower nature’. We can see from the list of vices below that, while he certainly includes the grosser vices of the body in his purview – very necessary in a Gentile church – he also includes those subtler vices of the mind which we normally consider as ‘respectable’. The law, of course, was equally realistic in its approach: it was designed to stop us from behaving in a ‘natural’ manner. The modern cult of ‘self-expression’ therefore finds little support in the Bible.
Paul uses the verb, douleuete, be servants, ‘be slaves of (one another)’ very effectively as a foil to eleutheria, the freedom, which they enjoy. This is part of the whole paradox by which Paul himself, freed by Jesus Christ from bondage to the Jewish law, becomes a doulos, ‘slave’, of Christ, for love’s sake (see Rom. 1:1 ‘a servant’ and, indeed, the opening of most other letters).21 But such service is now voluntary; the only compulsion is that of love (2 Cor. 5:14). If we seek an Old Testament analogy, it is to be found in the ‘freed’ slave who refuses to leave the household of the master whom he loves, but chooses deliberately to remain a ‘slave’ for ever (Exod. 21:1–6). Indeed 6:17 may possibly even refer to the ‘ear-marking’ which was the Old Testament practice on such occasions. It is true that even in the Gentile world the ‘freedman’ still had certain obligations and duties towards his previous master; but this is not such a likely analogy, and certainly did not involve voluntary ‘slavery’.
As in verse 6 faith worked itself out ‘through love’ (di’ agapēs), so here the mutual service to which Christians are dedicated is also through love; the repetition must be intentional. Some early witnesses to the text read ‘through the love of the Spirit’. This, although quite correct theologically, reads like a later explanatory addition, and was probably not part of the original text.
For agapē, ‘love’, see Burton, Appendix 21, among the earlier editors. There has been discussion in recent years of a possible distinction between agapē, seen as ‘unselfish, self-giving, outgoing love’, and erōs, seen as ‘selfish, acquisitive, centripetal love’. As far as the New Testament itself is concerned, the discussion is purely academic; erōs is nowhere used, while even the ‘love for the world’ which is condemned in 1 John 2:15 is described by the verb agapaō. The probable truth is that erōs was archaic, and by now virtually displaced in KoineGreek by the other word.22 Yet, since for the Christian the norm of love is the love of God, and such love is free from all the human limitations mentioned above, we may justly interpret agapein the New Testament as being love on a higher plane.
14. When Paul says that the whole law is fulfilled, peplērōtai, ‘has reached its climax’, ‘has reached its end’, he is probably punning upon two of the meanings of this Greek word. First, he means that the content of the whole law ‘can be summed up’ in the great words of Leviticus 19:18 commanding love to one’s neighbour. This was a commonplace of Jewish theology, for which great rabbinic names could be quoted, and which the Lord had used in the Gospels (Matt. 22:39).
But, apart from the aspect of the command to love as being the sum of all the commandments of the law, Paul wants to show that Christian love is actually the practical ‘carrying-out’ of the law as well. This is the answer both to the criticisms of the Judaizers and the scandalous living of some of the Gentile converts, not to mention their present party spirit, which is apparently singularly lacking in love.
Nomos, law, is in this instance the Jewish Torah with which Paul and his opponents are most directly concerned. There are, as we have seen, many places where he uses it in a wider sense, of ‘law’ either as a general system of restraints, or as a possible means of commending ourselves to God: see Burton, Appendix 14. Because tôrâ in Hebrew and nomos in Greek are far wider in meaning than the English word ‘law’, we have tended to lose something of the richness of the concept. Tôrâ, roughly speaking, means ‘instruction’ in Hebrew, while nomos in Greek covers ‘customary law’, and even ‘customs’. Nevertheless, in view of the list of virtues and vices which follows, Paul seems to be thinking of the law here in terms of a series of injunctions, which is the usual English understanding of the word. BAGD suggests ‘Jewish religion’ as a possible translation of law, whenever the definite article is used; this has much to commend it.
15. The word daknete, bite, is primarily used of snakes and animals. It can still be employed in this literal sense in Hellenistic Greek, but a more frequent use is in connection with various words meaning ‘abuse’. The common Aramaic use of ‘ekal qarşē, ‘eat the pieces of ’,23 meaning ‘criticize’, may have helped here, especially as Paul probably boasts of being Aramaic-speaking as a boy (‘a Hebrew’, Phil. 3:5). However, as daknete is used here in close connection with katesthiete, ‘gulp down’, perhaps Paul is still conscious of the original force of the metaphor as referring to conduct more fitting to wild animals than to brothers and sisters in Christ. The Old Testament, particularly the Psalter, makes free use of the ‘ravenous beast’ metaphor to describe the attitude of enemies of the people of God (Ps. 35:25, etc.). Probably the reference is to the savage, halfwild, scavenger dogs that still infest many a third-world city where they were once the only way of disposing of refuse. The NEB well translates, ‘if you go on fighting one another, tooth and nail’, which suggests a cat fight. Had it not been for the link with daknete, and the Old Testament references, we could have translated simply ‘destroy’, for the verb katesthiō often has this weakened metaphorical meaning. Whatever the origin of the metaphor, it certainly gives a lively picture of strife within the Galatian church. Paul will encourage resistance to the false gospel of the Judaizers, but never in the sense of party politics.
The word analōthēte, consumed, or ‘annihilated’, is often used of destruction by fire; the basic idea seems to be that nothing at all remains. Paul may be thinking here of beasts fighting to the death in the amphitheatre. He is of course speaking metaphorically: what he dreads is the virtual disappearance of all his work in Galatia. How far this was an actual danger, we cannot now say: if it was a real danger, it was certainly overcome, as we can see from the survival of the Galatian church, and indeed of this very letter.
16. To Paul, the answer to all such abuses lies in a way of life which is continually Spirit-controlled; then people will cease to act ‘naturally’, and so will cease to ‘fulfil themselves’.24 The use of peripateite, walk, in a moral sense is too common to need comment. When Paul says pneumati, by the spirit, or ‘in spirit’, it is not always clear whether he is referring directly to the Holy Spirit or simply means ‘spiritually’, as opposed to ‘carnally’. We may, if we choose, paraphrase as ‘a spiritual walk’ to keep this linguistic ambiguity, although, in the light of what follows, the Holy Spirit seems to be meant here.25
17. Paul’s use of epithymia, desires, or ‘yearning’, and the kindred verb, is probably connected with Genesis 4:7, and traditional Jewish interpretations of that verse, where sin’s ‘desire’ is stated to be directed to Cain, although Cain must master it. Even if this is so, however, it is only for Paul a verbal similarity, a peg upon which to hang a great theological truth. This is the fact that by nature we do not find the leadings of the Spirit of God to be congenial; indeed, they are utterly repugnant to our own ‘natural’ inclinations (1 Cor. 2:14). Paul himself in Romans 7:5–25 shows that his knowledge of our inability to do what we desire springs from the inner religious experience of the proud Pharisee. In this sense, ha ean thelete, what you would, is only to be understood of moral strivings and yearnings, not baser impulses.
18. This verse seems best taken as a summary of all that has gone before rather than as any fresh advance in the argument. There seems to be a continuous force in the present tense of agesthe, you are led, as though Paul wished to say ‘As long as you are being thus led’. Hyponomon, in accordance with the principle enunciated above, is probably to be taken in the general sense of ‘under law as a principle’, rather than in the particular sense of ‘under the law of Moses’. Of course, the difference is not great, for the one must include the other: if the Galatians (like all Spirit-led Christians) are not under law as a system, they obviously cannot be under any particular law, whether Jewish or Gentile.
There is a very valuable article under pneuma in BAGD, which helpfully outlines the various meanings of this word. Like rûaḥin the Old Testament, it has travelled far from its original meaning of ‘wind, breath’. From being the ‘breath of life’, the immaterial part that alone gives life to the sarx, ‘flesh’, it comes virtually to mean ‘self ’.26 BAGD well says ‘as the source and seat of insight, feeling, and will, generally as the representative part of the inner life of man’. This is where the abovementioned ambiguity enters: for pneumati, or en pneumati, may thus at times mean simply ‘inwardly’, or, at most, ‘spiritually’, not ‘by the Spirit’. This is especially so when there is a contrast, explicit or implied, with ‘body’ or ‘flesh’, while Romans 8:16, ‘the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit’ (or ‘to our very spirit’, following BAGD), shows the ambiguity. Since ‘spirit’ essentially means ‘very self ’, or ‘very nature’, then it may be equally used either of humans or of God.
When so used of God, the noun ‘spirit’ usually has the definite article in Greek, and often the adjective ‘holy’ as well. When the word is thus differentiated, it presents no problems. This is God’s Holy Spirit, sometimes in the New Testament called ‘the Spirit of the Lord’, or ‘the Spirit of Christ’, and even once ‘the Spirit of Jesus’ (Acts 16:7). In this sense, the Spirit is ‘that which differentiates God from everything that is not God … All those who belong to God possess or receive this Spirit and hence have a share in his life. This Spirit also serves to distinguish the Christians from all unbelievers …’ (BAGD under pneuma).
To Paul, possession of the Spirit is therefore at the same time the possession of ‘the mind of Christ’ (1 Cor. 2:16), which alone makes possible the understanding of spiritual truths. In Galatians, however, Paul is more concerned with the later fruits of the Spirit shown in Christ-like conduct than he is with the initial revelatory work of the Spirit. Christians are to ‘walk by the Spirit’ (5:16), to be ‘led by the Spirit’ (5:18), to ‘keep in step with the Spirit’ (5:25, NIV), to ‘live by the Spirit’ (5:25), to ‘sow to the Spirit’ (6:8). All these are varied metaphors for what is essentially one and the same thing, a life completely and continuously under the control and the direction of the Holy Spirit. What this means in practical terms of ethical conduct, Paul will now show in detail.
Paul now moves on to a detailed consideration of the differences produced in the human life by the presence of the Spirit. He has already given, in broad outline, the substance of his ‘moral argument’ which is the main theme of this section of the letter.27 Now, in order to point his argument, he deals with the total contrast between the ‘natural’ life and the ‘spiritual’ life and does so in embarrassing detail, no doubt very appropriate to the situation in Galatia, as in any other pagan area. First he gives a list of some of the vices typical of the paganism of his day, as he does elsewhere in his letters (e.g. Rom. 1:29–31). Lest Paul be accused of taking an unduly pessimistic view of life, it is well to remember that pagan moralists were, if anything, more severe in their strictures; indeed, some have felt that Paul is drawing on a pagan philosopher’s ‘stock list’ here. The one difference was that pagan moralists, while they also regarded these things with horror, yet regarded them as contrary to humanity’s true nature; Paul however regarded them as ‘natural’ and inevitable results.28 We can see from Corinthians how hard Paul had to fight against even the grossest of vices in the Gentile Christian churches which he founded. Indeed, it was just because of this floodtide of Gentile immorality that the Judaizers felt the observance of the law to be so necessary, a view which the despairing Galatians may have shared. Jewish Christian churches were not usually as exposed to gross vices of this sort (but see Rom. 2:22). Their typical ‘spiritual’ sins were subtler: pride, self-righteousness, hypocrisy and the like. It is therefore equally possible that Paul’s list of vices comes from a Jewish source, designed to instruct Gentile proselytes in the elements of moral behaviour: Paul the Rabbi must have know such lists well.
“What the human nature produces is plain for all to see – things like unchastity, unnatural vice, sexual excess; idolatry, magic; hostile feelings, contentiousness, jealousy, temper tantrums, canvassing for position, dissentions, factions, envy; alcoholism, wild parties, and all that sort of behaviour. I tell you in advance (as I did before) that those who do things like that will never prove to be heirs of God’s kingdom.’
The exact shade of meaning of each word is not easy to establish, although the general sense is that given here: many seem to be almost synonymous or variants on a common theme. Burton discusses them in detail, although his interpretation needs to be supplemented by more recent material, available since his time. The NEB, with others, tries to divide the vices into groups. First come three concerned with breaches of sexual law; then two concerned with ‘ritual sins’, idolatry and sorcery, which are usually linked in the Old Testament, as being so linked in pagan religions; then eight concerned with social life; then two dealing with strong drink. If, as suggested, this does indeed come from some ‘Jewish missionary handbook’, used in proselytism of Gentiles and familiar to Paul from pre-Christian days, such an orderly presentation is all the more likely. The fact that Paul ends the list with ta homoia toutois, ‘and such like’, shows us that it is by no means considered by him as exhaustive, but merely typical. If we had a complete list, we might well find that it corresponded to the ten commandments, or some other obvious division of the law.
It may be, of course, that what we have is simply the first sign of a Christian ‘catalogue’, soon to become standard through the catechetical work of the church. But the similarity of the description of pagan vices in various parts of the New Testament reads as though there had been some common original. And though the interpretation (and even the text) of the so-called ‘decree of the Council of Jerusalem’ is doubtful, there is a similar division into sections there (Acts 15:29). That this is part of a system of common ‘types’, no-one doubts; the only question is as to how far they are original with Christianity, and how far borrowed from earlier prototypes, constructed either by Jewish or by Gentile moralists. In any case, the uniqueness of the Christian understanding of sin as covering motivation as much as act (Matt. 5:28) has altered any original list beyond recognition, and made it far more searching.
19. It has been sometimes felt that there is an implied contrast in the text between ta erga, the works (of the flesh), laboriously produced, and ho karpos, ‘the fruit’ (of the Spirit), which is a spontaneous growth (v. 22), as though, for all its striving after good, this was the best of which natural humanity was capable.29 The true answer may simply be that, while the metaphor of ‘fruit-bearing’ is still vivid in the case of the pneuma, ‘Spirit’, the original metaphor latent in erga, works, is so weakened as to be lost in the case of the sarx, flesh.
The general nature of the vices described will be plain from the paraphrase on p. 213 above where the definitions follow BAGD in the main, although the lines of demarcation between the vices are not always very clear. Indeed, if Paul was using some kind of traditional ‘list’, whatever its source, it may not always be necessary to look for such distinctions; it may be that the ‘piling up’ of nouns is largely for rhetorical effect. Porneia, for instance, usually translated fornication, seems in point of fact to cover most kinds of ‘natural’ sexual irregularities. Hence the deliberately vague word ‘unchastity’ used in the paraphrase. It is also used in the Old Testament to denote ‘idolatry’ in the sense of unfaithfulness to God, but it is not likely to have that metaphorical sense here, especially as idolatry appears as a separate item below. The two following words (akatharsia and aselgeia) probably describe some of the sexual perversions (such as the practice of homosexuality and lesbianism) which, as Paul reminds us in Romans 1:26–27, were common in the pagan world, and indeed often characterize the world of today. They have therefore been translated in the paraphrase as ‘unnatural vice’ and ‘sexual excess’, although their reference may well be broader. They seem to be deliberately vague, and are probably used as euphemisms here.
20. Pharmakeia, sorcery, had a special relevance for inhabitants of Asia Minor, as can be seen from the story in Acts 19:19 of the burning of the books containing ‘Ephesian Letters’, as such magic spells were called in the ancient world. If the Galatians had become entangled with some star-cult (4:10), the mention would be even more relevant here. The orthodox Jew regarded this sin with peculiar horror, as directly forbidden in the law (Exod. 22:18), and as, like sexual immorality, closely connected with idolatry, to which doubtless the Galatians had been enslaved. The word can also mean ‘poisoning’, from its etymological derivation. Both witchcraft and poisoning were apparently prevalent in the Roman world and severely dealt with by law.
Next come a group of sins which, in view of the reference to quarrels in verse 15, may possibly have had a particular relevance to the Galatian situation at the time. Here again the barriers between the vices are thin and it is not important to distinguish them sharply; it will perhaps be sufficient to single out a few of the important and characteristic words for detailed consideration. Several will recur in other such catalogues of vices elsewhere in the New Testament. For an attempted translation of each word, see the paraphrase here. Eris, strife, for instance, is clearly something like ‘a contentious temper’ (so NEB). There seems no point to be made of the fact that the singular is used of this noun while many others in the list are quoted in the plural. By the usual Greek rule, the plural, if used in such cases, should mean ‘acts of contention’, although Paul uses the plural erides in 1 Corinthians 1:11 in substantially the same sense as the singular here. It would apply very well to the ‘biting’ and ‘devouring’ taking place in Galatia (v. 15).
It is hard to see the distinction between zēlos, jealousy, used here, and phthonoi, ‘envy’, in the next verse. Both have the same basic meaning. Perhaps Paul’s use of zēlos goes back to his use of the cognate verb in 4:17–18, referring to the activity of the Judaizers. Clearly, the sense of zēlos is bad here, whatever we may decide about Paul’s usage of it in the earlier context. For phthonoi, ‘envy’, some witnesses here read phonoi, ‘murders’: but that is less likely, as not being a parallel to zēlos. Phthonoi should mean ‘acts of envy’ or ‘bursts of envy’, usually aroused by the position or good fortune of others. The concept therefore comes close to covetousness.
Eritheiai, selfishness, is well expanded by the NEB as ‘selfish ambitions’, although it more properly denotes the unfair ‘canvassing for office’ which is prompted by such ambitions for power (so BAGD). Any linguistic connection with eris, strife, is very doubtful. Distinct from it is haireseis, party spirit, which, although giving the English word ‘heresies’, probably means ‘factions’, as in 1 Corinthians 11:19. The NEB translation, ‘party intrigues’, may be a little too strong, but conveys the right idea, and would suit the presumed Galatian situation.
21. Methai (lit. ‘drunkennesses’)30 and kōmoi, ‘carousings’, probably refer primarily to the drunken orgies encouraged at festivals of the pagan gods, and secondarily to the general insobriety of pagan life. Wild parties would be the modern equivalents, not to mention drug abuse of various other kinds. We can see from 1 Corinthians 11:21 how easily such abuses could creep into Gentile churches even at the Lord’s Supper; they were, after all, characteristic of pagan worship, and old religious habits die hard.
When Paul says as I warned you before, proeipon, we are faced with the same problem as in 1:9 where the perfect tense of the same verb (proeirēkamen, ‘as we have said before’) occurred. When had Paul delivered this previous warning? We cannot assume a mere ‘epistolatory aorist’, in view of the use in the context of the present tense as well, I warn you, in deliberate contrast. In this instance, it is difficult to find an earlier context in the same letter to justify the use; nor can we assume a ‘lost’ earlier letter to the Galatians as we might perhaps in the case of Corinth. The only logical conclusion, therefore, is that Paul, in his initial evangelism of Galatia, was far from restricting himself to the ‘simple gospel’ as sometimes we erroneously suppose. He must also have given strong moral teaching verbally as well: he certainly includes it in writing in all his letters. This in itself gives the lie to the Jewish charge that Paul taught freedom from all moral restraints (Rom. 3:8). Admittedly, if the letter is regarded as being addressed to South Galatia, the narrative in Acts suggests too brief a period on the initial visit to allow much teaching (see Acts 13 and 14); but on the return journey, some such moral instruction is possible and suggested strongly by the strengthening and exhorting of Acts 14:22.
Inherit the kingdom of God; although Paul is emphatic that we cannot by ‘doing’ the works of the law enter our promised inheritance (3:12, 18), but that entry is by faith alone (3:11), yet he strongly asserts here that by ‘doing’ these very different things we can bar ourselves from the kingdom.31 That is not the paradox that it seems to us at first sight. Paul’s whole point is that those who do such things thereby show themselves to be without the transforming gift of faith which leads to the gift of the promised Spirit, which, in turn, leads to the fruits of the Spirit, the seal of our inheritance. To all these things the Christian has died already, as Paul will show below; therefore he or she shows the reality of the ‘faith that justifies’, and the reality of the new ‘life in Christ’ that is within, by a clear break with all these ‘works of darkness’, familiar though they may have been in the past. It comes as a shock when Paul, in 1 Corinthians 6:11, after a similar list of loathsome vices, says, ‘Some of you were once like that’, although he does hasten to reassure the Corinthians of their new standing in Christ. Paul only gives this ‘black list’ to remind the Galatians of what their past slavery to sin had been before the gospel brought them freedom in Christ.
The reference in what might be translated ‘will never prove to be heirs’,32 ou klēronomēsousin, probably goes back to the discussion about Abraham and his ‘offspring’ in chapter 3. Paul has shown in 4:7 that, if we are sons, then, by the same token, we are ‘heirs’, klēronomoi, or ‘fellow heirs with Christ’, as Rom. 8:17 has it. But chapter 4 had ended with the stern warning that the children of the slavewife, themselves slaves, cannot share in God’s promised wealth of glory; indeed, they are specifically excluded. So it is here: those who are ‘slaves’ to such passions show themselves to be no true-born children of God; such can never inherit the kingdom of God.
Paul’s use of basileian theou, ‘the kingdom of God’, is very interesting. The concept of the ‘kingdom of God’ is dominant in the Synoptic Gospels, especially perhaps in Matthew, who writes in a thoroughly Jewish milieu and as the heir to a long Old Testament tradition. However, the image is also used in the book of Acts. Indeed, Acts 14:22, if we are supporters of the South Galatian theory, shows us Paul teaching to these very Galatians ‘that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God’. Paul himself used the analogy more often than might be supposed; Romans 14:17 and 1 Corinthians 4:20 are two random instances out of some eight in all. Paul therefore seems to have employed the picture fairly consistently through his ministry, whether early or late, Jewish or Gentile. It is however true to say that, although present in Pauline theology, the kingdom of God is never a dominant concept. Paul prefers to speak in terms of ‘gospel’ and ‘church’, for instance, rather than ‘kingdom’. This is not of course to identify these concepts completely, but merely to say that all three belong to the same realm of ideas, in the sense that they describe the relation of God to us. Basileia, ‘kingdom’, itself would actually be better translated as ‘rule of God’ rather than ‘kingdom’ (or, with Moffatt, ‘realm of God’) which in English suggests a spatial and temporal location.33 If the recipients of the letter were ethnic Galatians of the north, and remembered the traditions of their own Celtic king Amyntas, before the Roman province was formed, the word might have even more relevance for them.
Now comes a corresponding list of spiritual qualities. Although such a roll-call exists in other parts of the New Testament (as in 2 Pet. 1:5–7) there is no such close similarity between the lists as there is in the corresponding classification of the vices. The Petrine list of qualities, for instance, is in the reverse order, with agapē, ‘love’, as the climax. This suggests that no Hebrew prototype existed here, but that these ‘positive’ lists are a Christian creation. It seems obvious that, while Judaism and Christianity might well agree on what were vices, their concept of spiritual virtues might be different.
‘But, by contrast, the harvest34 that the Spirit brings is love, joy, tranquillity, forbearance with others, kindness, generosity, reliability, humility, self-control in the realm of sex. There is no law against those who act like this. For those who belong to Christ Jesus have put their “flesh” to death, along with all its passionate desires. Now, as surely as we are living by the rule of the Spirit, let us walk by the rule of the Spirit. Let us, for instance, not be boastful, challenging and envying one another’s position.’
For the reasons leading to the choice of these particular terms in translation, BAGD has been taken as a guide. Again, as in the case of the vices, the difficulty is to know where to draw the line of demarcation between one virtue and another. In most cases, the ‘areas of meaning’ overlap considerably. Also, without giving a very expanded paraphrase, it is not easy to cover all the shades of meaning conveyed; so an attempt has been made to select the one word which seems most central to the meaning as well as appropriate to this context and to the presumed actual position in Galatia.
22. The first three aspects of the Spirit’s harvest need little comment; the second and third, chara, joy, and eirēnē, peace, are probably suggested by the typically Jewish-Christian greeting of ‘grace and peace’, charis kai eirēnē, of 1:3, although charis and chara are not directly connected. To the Christian, joy is something quite independent of outward circumstances, and its source is the Holy Spirit (see 1 Thess. 1:6 and Rom. 14:17). Agapē has been already considered; it is put first on the list as embracing all the others if rightly understood. Whether we are justified in bracketing these three as a ‘triad’ apart from the other virtues is uncertain. The list certainly does not fall into sections as readily as that of the vices did. See 1 Corinthians 13:13 for another but different triad: faith, hope, and love, with ‘love’ as the climax.
The use of karpos, fruit, as mentioned above, suggests that all these spiritual qualities, and many more, are the spontaneous product of the presence of the Spirit of Christ within the heart of the Christian. The metaphor is a very old one, natural to an agricultural people like Israel. While karpos means any kind of fruit, it is most frequently employed of the product of the fruit tree or vine. It was a principle enunciated by the Lord himself that a tree could be recognized by the fruit that it bore (Matt. 7:16); so, by the presence of these ‘fruits’, the presence of the Spirit in the hearts of the Galatians is proved. It is interesting that Paul does not here use the presence of spiritual gifts, equally coming from the Spirit, as a proof of spiritual life, although such gifts seem to have existed among the Galatians (‘works miracles among you’, 3:5). Perhaps it is because fruit of the Spirit cannot be simulated, while gifts of the Spirit can (Matt. 7:22).
Makrothymia, patience, is well paraphrased by Bruce by the coined word ‘long tempered’ as opposed to ‘short tempered’; perhaps ‘tolerance’ would give the idea better in modern English. It is the quality of ‘putting up with’ other people, even when one’s patience is sorely tried. It is interesting to speculate why Paul put this quality in such a lofty place in his list. Perhaps it was because in Galatia neither ‘party’ displayed much of this virtue. Chrēstotēs, kindness, also has the connotations of ‘goodness’ or ‘generosity’ (so BAGD), but these thoughts are already covered by other words in the list before us. The common slave-name Chrēstos comes from this root, so that the word must suggest some quality that was desired in the ideal servant, as indeed do all the other qualities listed here: it has been well said that they are a list of ‘slave virtues’. If these are the qualities of the ‘servant Messiah’, on whom Christians are called to pattern themselves, this is not surprising. Indeed, there may even be a pun based on the similar pronunciation of Christos, the Messiah, and Chrēstos, the slave name. Did the wits of Antioch intend this pun when they called this ‘reformed sect’ of Judaism ‘Christians’, hinting at ‘the goody-goodies’ (Acts 11:26)? Agathōsynē has here probably more of its colloquial meaning of ‘generosity’ than its original meaning of goodness although both interpretations are possible: prautēs, gentleness (v. 23), would then mean something like ‘humility’.
These qualities are basically manward rather than Godward in their aspect, and most, if not all, would be directly relevant to a state of party strife in a church, whether two-sided or three-sided. Most of them are qualities of restraint and humility, to be displayed by the victor to the vanquished. That in itself suggests that Paul may fear over-violent dealing with the erring Judaizers by a victorious ‘orthodox party’ in the Galatian church, should his appeal be successful. The apostle’s exhortation in 6:1 concerning anyone ‘overtaken in any trespass’, bears this out. Once Paul has vanquished an opponent theologically, that person ceases, for Paul, to be an opponent and becomes instead an erring brother or sister in need of pastoral care (2 Cor. 2:5–8). But he knows human nature too well to expect that the Galatian reaction will necessarily be the same. Indeed, the more tempted the Galatians had been to succumb to the attack of the Judaizers, the more likely they would be to lead the ‘heresy hunt’ now, in order to justify themselves for their own past wavering.
Of the two remaining qualities, pistis, faithfulness, if translated ‘faith’, would be primarily directed to God; Paul does not speak of having ‘faith’ in fellow humans. However, it can equally well be translated, as here, ‘faithfulness’ (NEB, ‘fidelity’).35 If this is the correct rendering, it could apply to the Christian’s attitude manwards as well as Godwards. It would then refer to the Galatians’ lack of fidelity towards Paul, of which he had complained in 4:12–20.
23. The last quality, enkrateia, self-control, is neither Godward nor manward, but more properly ‘selfward’. It is usually employed to describe self-control in sexual matters; if that is its meaning here, then it looks back to the grosser vices of the list above. If there was a ‘libertine’ group at Galatia, boasting of their antinomian ‘freedom’, then they sorely needed this gift. Tōn toioutōn, such, could be amplified, with NEB, as ‘such things as these’, and the sense would be excellent. No law forbids qualities like these; such virtues are in fact the ‘keeping’, or ‘fulfilling’, of the law. But, in view of the personal nature of the reference in verse 21, hoi toiauta prassontes, ‘those who habitually behave thus’, it is better to translate personally here too, as ‘such people’, not ‘such things’. The phrase will then become ‘The law was never meant for (or “was never directed against”) people like this’. In either case, the main sense is the same,36 though NIV prefers ‘such things’.
24. Paul now gives the reason for the production of this rich spiritual harvest and for the freedom of the Christian from the law. Christians have already crucified the flesh, tēn sarka estaurōsan, ‘put the old self to death’. As before, ‘original nature’ is perhaps a strong enough equivalent for sarx: to say ‘lower nature’ (with NEB) or ‘sinful nature’ (with NIV) is to suggest that unaided humanity is actually capable of ‘higher’ things, and this Paul will not allow. The point of estaurōsan, crucified, is to link this total change in attitude, and therefore change in conduct, with the death of Christ.37 It is another way of expressing 2:20, ‘I have been crucified with Christ’ (see Commentary). There were many other words that Paul could have used, and indeed does use elsewhere, like ‘put to death’ or ‘abolish’, which would have conveyed his general meaning, but would not convey this direct connection with Christ’s death.
The words pathēmasin, passions, and epithymiais, desires, are to be taken closely together; so to translate ‘passionate longings’ is not misleading. Hebrew was chary in the use of adjectives, as were many ancient languages. Often two nouns, juxtaposed, would serve the purpose as well. Either through the Greek translation of the Old Testament, or through the persistence of old speech-habits among Greek speakers whose mother-tongue was not Greek, the same tendency to avoid adjectives appears in the New Testament, though in reduced form. Like pathos, the word pathēma has a twofold meaning, either ‘experience’ or ‘suffering’ (in a neutral sense), or ‘passion’ (in a bad sense). The epithymia, ‘longing’ (of the flesh), is taken from verse 17 above, where the cognate verb occurs. However, ‘passionate longings’ should not be restricted to sexual matters: it means anything for which the natural self longs intensely.
25. The use of pneumati, by the Spirit, or ‘in Spirit’, has the same possible ambiguity as before, in that it may have a general or a specific reference. If general, we must translate ‘spiritually’; if specific, we may follow the NEB with: ‘If the Spirit is the source of our life, let the Spirit also direct our course.’ A good colloquial translation of the latter phrase would be ‘keep in step with the Spirit’ (NIV). Again, the ei, if, does not express any sense of contingency or doubt when it is used with the indicative mood; rather it means ‘since’, as often in Paul.
26. No self-conceit: at first sight this verse might look as though its function was simply to sum up the humble and self-effacing fruits of the Spirit already mentioned. But it is more than that, if it is intended to lead to a particular application to the Galatian situation. No provoking (or challenging) of one another: this ‘spiritual’ way of life, says Paul, utterly forbids all forms of ambitious rivalry and envy. This does sound suspiciously as though there was party strife in the church of Galatia of the type familiar to us from Corinth. It may be, of course, that we need not seek for such a particular application. Paul was well acquainted with human nature, from the pastoral care of so many churches; he knew that this was a danger everywhere, and therefore cautioned them against it. The word kenodoxoi in the first part of this verse means either ‘conceited’ or ‘boastful’. Perhaps the danger was that those who had not fallen to the Judaizing error were now boasting of their superior spiritual strength, while those who had given way were phthonountes, either ‘full of envy’ or ‘jealous’. Alternatively, the trouble in Galatia may be a simple power struggle within the church; in that case, we may be wrong in looking for deeper motives, or seeing any reference to the Judaizing controversy.
Should the ‘specific’ rather than the ‘general’ interpretation suggested above be correct, then Paul is now turning to the question of how the church should deal with the repentant Judaizer, actual or imagined: compare again 2 Corinthians 2:5–11 for a similar case. The use of the singular may refer either to some known individual ringleader, probably inside the church, or may be used, with studied indifference, to describe a whole group. If it was one who claimed some special position for himself, then the application of verse 4 would be obvious, while, if the erring leader had actually been a ‘teaching elder’ in the Galatian church, then verse 6 would be full of local relevance. The great danger, however, in all New Testament exegesis is that of reading too much into the text, particularly when we are almost without knowledge as to the actual local background. However, if we do not adopt some such system of coherent interpretation, then we must assume that these closing sections are a mere theological ‘portmanteau’, into which Paul bundles a sequence of unrelated Christian injunctions. This is always possible; some of the remarks at the end of his major letters read suspiciously like such random postscripts, but it does not seem likely here.
Further, we do have the very close parallel to the situation depicted in the Corinthian correspondence, to which we have already made reference, where Paul speaks specifically of the duty of ‘winning back’ just such an erring member (2 Cor. 2:5–11). Certainly the existence of party strife in Galatia would be a close parallel to the situation at Corinth; but how far we can justifiably press the analogy is uncertain, since it is only a hypothesis.
‘Fellow Christians, even if someone is caught doing something wrong, you who are “the spiritual party” must set that person to rights in a gentle, humble way. Watch yourself; you may be tested too. Carry heavy loads for one another; that is how you will observe Christ’s law to the full. If anyone thinks himself to be a somebody (when he is really a nobody), all that he achieves is to hoodwink himself. Let each person carefully weigh up what he has actually achieved, and then he can have pride in his own work, not in someone else’s. For each will have to shoulder his own pack. But the one who is being taught Christian doctrine ought to share with the teacher all the good things that he has.’
1. The word prolēmphthē, is overtaken, can mean either ‘to be caught38 (doing something wrong)’ (so NEB mg.), or ‘trapped’, or in a more vivid sense ‘should (do something wrong) on a sudden impulse’. The latter is more graphic, but does not suit the context so well if there is a reference to Judaizing. That could hardly be described as ‘a sudden impulse’. The subject is the suitably vague anthrōpos, ‘anybody’. Whether we regard the vagueness as deliberate or not will depend upon our interpretation of the whole situation. If this is the local ringleader in the Judaizing movement, then we must agree that the tis, ‘somebody, anybody’, of verse 3 is equally specific and pointed in its reference.
Who are the pneumatikoi, you who are spiritual, or the ‘spiritually minded’? Paul may use the word at its face value as meaning, simply ‘You who are walking by the rule of the Spirit’; that would certainly fit with the previous chapter. In that case it would be a straightforward appeal to the unfallen Galatians to assist the fallen. But in view of the suggested use of the word pneumatikos as the self-chosen title (almost a ‘party title’) of those who boasted themselves of a superior spiritual position, some have suspected a deeper meaning here. It is as though Paul were saying: ‘You claim a superior spirituality? Prove it, then, by acting spiritually in this case.’ The later gnostic associations of the word are probably irrelevant here. It is quite likely that one of the groups in Galatia used this as a title. 1 Corinthians 3:1, however, uses the word in a good sense as opposed to sarkinoi, ‘earthly-minded Christians’, and nēpioi, ‘immature Christians’. So, even if it was a ‘party name’ in Galatia, there is no need to associate it as yet with the ‘immoral’ proto-gnostic group to whom some of Paul’s later injunctions are directed. Kartartizete, restore, means either ‘restore to its former condition’ or ‘complete’. The first of these meanings is highly suitable to describe the restoration of a Christian who has ‘lapsed’, whether by Judaizing or in any other way. The Gospels use the word of ‘mending nets’ (Matt. 4:21). In skopōn, look, ‘keeping an eye on’, Paul changes very vividly from the plural to the singular. It is as though he changes from the collective duty of the church to the individual duty of each member. Skopōn, while basically meaning look, has the colloquial sense of ‘look out for’, exactly like the corresponding verb in English.
2. This verse introduces yet another use of bastazete, bear, or ‘shoulder’. In 5:10 it had been used of the chief Judaizer, who will have to ‘bear’ or ‘endure’ the heavy judgment of God. Here it is again used of shouldering a heavy burden; but this time the burden has a good sense, for it is a load of responsibility and care (unless with the NEB we translate ‘Help one another to carry these heavy loads’, where the thought is the burden of shame, of the guilty sinner). In verse 5, when the verb is used with phortion, ‘burden’, the meaning is lighter still, in the sense of ‘shoulder a pack’, as a porter or pedlar might do. The last use of the word in this letter will be the most significant of all: in 6:17, Paul will say bastazō, ‘I “carry about” in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.’ The meaning of this is considered in the Commentary on pp. 238ff.
The phrase ton nomon tou Christou, the law of Christ, is arresting. This is the closest that Paul ever comes to setting ‘Christ’s law’ over against ‘Moses’ law’;39 and had it not been in the context of the special problem facing the Galatians, he might not have put it so bluntly. Yet nevertheless, in the context, anaplerōsate, fulfil, takes on an even deeper meaning. The Galatians and their teachers had been eager to keep the law of Moses; but here was a higher way by which they might not keep it but fulfil it, by keeping the law of Christ.
3. The phrase dokei tis einai, means either thinks he is something or ‘seems to be a somebody’. It reminds us of the threefold use of hoi dokountes, ‘those who were of repute’ in 2:2 and 6, describing the Jerusalem ‘apostles’. Here the reference is probably entirely general; dokei, ‘seems’, is violently contrasted with ōn, ‘actually being’, and tis, ‘a somebody’, with mēden, ‘a nothing’. A more crushing assessment could hardly be made of one who, at best, can have been nothing greater than a large frog in a small pond. But Paul is probably thinking more of the poor spiritual state of this Christian than of his real unimportance.
This is the sole use of the word phrenapatā, deceives, or ‘hoodwinks’, in the New Testament, although other similar words for ‘deceive’ abound. The cognate noun phrenapatēs, ‘deceiver’, occurs for instance in Titus 1:10 (again, of ‘the circumcision party’). Perhaps Paul’s choice of the word here is governed by the fact that such a person has been too clever. He has succeeded in taking himself in, although deceiving nobody else.
4. What Paul means by saying let each one test his own work, or ‘scrutinize his own achievement’, is not wholly clear. It depends upon whether we should translate strictly with the Galatian context in view, or whether we may use the presumably similar situations described in other Pauline letters as analogy. The NEB seems to translate in the first way with ‘Each man should examine his own conduct for himself; then he can measure his achievement by comparing himself with himself and not with anyone else.’ The second half of this translation perhaps deals a little too freely with the word kauchēma, reason to boast, or ‘object of boasting’ (the usual meaning in Paul); but the first half is quite possible. In Paul’s writings, however, dokimazō, test, and its cognates are often used of the scrutiny of God as applied to the work of the Christian evangelist or teacher; and this seems likely here too, especially in view of the general background of the letter. Paul may be therefore thinking at one and the same time of the work (NIV, ‘actions’) of the Judaizing teachers, which will not endure the divine scrutiny, and his own work, which will.40 This would have the advantage of introducing as well the reason for this kauchēma, ‘boasting’. The Galatians have been boasting in the ‘work’ of the Judaizers, shoddy though it was: Paul’s boasting, as we shall see, is very different.
5. Bear his own load: Paul may mean that the Judaizers would do better not to ‘count scalps’, but to see where they stand themselves, in view of the coming judgment. For, on that day, each of us must be answerable for ourselves: as J. B. Phillips says, ‘every man must “shoulder his own pack”.’ There is therefore no contradiction between this declaration of individual responsibility before the Lord and the general injunction given in verse 2, to bear one another’s burdens, where the Greek word for burdens is barē, ‘heavy loads’.
6. It is, as often, difficult to decide whether this is the final verse of this section or the opening verse of the next. As usual, it will be best to take it as a ‘bridge verse’, whichever group it is considered as falling under. The one who is katēchoumenos ton logon, taught the word, is clearly the one ‘under Christian instruction’: so it is quite legitimate to gloss the plain word, logon, as meaning ‘the faith’, with the NEB. Whether this implies as yet any highly developed catechetical system in the infant church is extremely doubtful.41 We may therefore translate it in a general sense as describing the relation between ‘teacher’ and ‘taught’, without assuming too set a pattern. If the one who led the Galatians astray had been a ‘teaching elder’ (1 Tim. 5:17), then this injunction would have special meaning; but it may of course be quite broad. When Paul says koinōneito, share, or ‘have fellowship’, it is a Christian euphemism for ‘make a financial contribution’. To Paul, this phraseology is more than an exhibition of the duty of a pupil to a teacher; such Christian giving is the only fit expression of that koinōnia, ‘sharing’, ‘fellowship’, which marks the common life in Christ.42 For the duty of supporting a teaching elder, see again 1 Tim. 5:17–18. Were the Galatians perhaps refusing financial support for an erring or even Judaizing pastor?
Paul now returns to the metaphor of 5:22, with its picture of ‘fruit of the Spirit’. While karpos, as noted there, is more commonly used of ‘fruits’, it can also be used of ‘grain’, and the metaphor here is that of a grain harvest. This again is a very old biblical simile, used frequently in the Gospels, though principally with reference to the task of evangelism. The metaphor may have been suggested to Paul’s mind by the mention of Christian giving in the verse immediately above. Paul sometimes sees ‘charity’ in terms of ‘sowing’; 2 Corinthians 9:6 is a good example.
‘Make no mistake about this: you cannot turn up your nose at God. A person will harvest exactly what he sows. I mean that the person who sows as his own nature bids him will reap a harvest of corruption from that nature; but the person who sows as the Spirit bids him will reap from that Spirit a harvest of life eternal. So let us never lose heart and give up doing what is good. When the right time comes we will reap a harvest43 – if only we do not give up now, through weariness. Well then, whenever we have opportunity, let us work for the common good, especially for the good of those who are our blood-relatives in the Christian faith.’
7. The word planasthe is one of the commonest words used in the New Testament for deceived. It does suggest, in its passive form here, that the Galatians have been ‘led astray’ in this matter by some from outside. The two clauses are sharply juxtaposed in what is really colloquial speech, not syntax: ‘Do not be led astray – you cannot mock God.’ The NEB translates myktērizetai as ‘God is not to be fooled.’ This gives the general sense, but if we can translate ‘turn up the nose at’, the original Greek meaning will be kept in English.44 This verse, both in view of its general rhythmic nature and in view of its constant recurrence in roughly similar forms, probably represents a proverb or folk saying.
8. When Paul says of a person will from the flesh reap corruption, he means more than that we must reap in this life the wild oats which we sow. To him, phthoran, corruption, is not only, or even primarily, moral decay. It is also that physical decay which inevitably awaits the human frame, whether this is described as sōma, ‘body’, or sarx, ‘flesh’, and reminds us of the fallen state of human nature (1 Cor. 15:42), only to be overcome by resurrection. Indeed, since to the Hebrew mind death was so closely connected with sin, it is doubtful if Paul would have made the sharp distinction between ‘moral’ and ‘physical’ corruption which we find so congenial to our modern thought-patterns. The physical death and decay in the world at large are to him only the consequences of the spiritual and moral death and decay that are present already. That is why in the New Testament the doctrine of resurrection is so closely connected with that of the new birth, which is itself life out of death (Eph. 2:5–6). Once the Christian is removed from the realm of sin, he or she is also removed from the realm of death, sin’s grim ally. So here the opposite of phthoran, corruption, is zoēn aiōnion, eternal life, one of the many biblical expressions for salvation. To see ‘salvation’ in terms of ‘life’ is as old as the Old Testament (e.g. Ps. 16:11, to take a random example); but in the New Testament the concept takes on a new richness, as shown in an excellent article in BAGD, since ‘life’ is no longer merely, or even primarily, physical.
9–10. While Paul never wearies of telling folk that they cannot win God’s favour by good deeds, he equally never wearies of telling them of their duty to do good. Twice in this short passage the idea recurs, with to kalon poiountes, well-doing, in verse 9, and ergazōmetha to agathon, do good, in verse 10. It is doubtful if there is any distinction intended between the two sets of words translated ‘do’ (poiein and ergazesthai) and translated ‘good’ (kalos and agathos); the only probable reason for the choice is a desire for variety. The NEB may be right, however, in translating the last phrase as ‘Let us work for the good of all’, rather than do good to all men. But this is only a minor point of interpretation, not affecting the main issue of the plain duty of a Christian.
There is only one danger that faces the ‘spiritual farmer’, for there is only one thing that can hinder this harvest. It is doubly expressed here as meenkakōmen, grow weary, and meeklyomenoi, lose heart. The word enkakeois properly ‘to despair’. ‘Giving in to evil’ or ‘giving in to difficulty’ seems to be the original idea; but it soon takes on the weaker sense ‘to grow weary’. The word eklyomai, with very different etymology, finally comes to signify almost the same thing. It seems to mean originally the opposite of ‘belt up’. As the Hebrew ‘tightened his belt’ to do work, so, when he ‘loosened his belt’, it meant he had abandoned effort. BAGD suggests ‘become slack’, which would preserve the metaphor in English; in the medical writers, when used in the passive, it means something like ‘become limp’, ‘grow weary’. As describing a disheartened farmer the picture is very graphic; as describing the disheartened Galatians, who have found so much previous ‘effort’ vain, it is equally striking. The reason for the despair is the same in either case: it is the lack of observed results.
In due season: Paul plays in this context on the meaning of kairos, ‘time’. In Greek, chronos is usually held to be ‘time in the abstract’, while kairos means ‘the right time’ for anything, and so both ‘opportunity’ and ‘due season’, although the distinction may not be absolute (so James Barr45). We shall therefore not reap our harvest until God’s right time comes. Nevertheless, now is God’s right time to do good to all, especially to our fellow Christians; we have a continual present opportunity to do good and we must not neglect it.
The words used here for ‘fellow Christians’, oikeious tēs pisteōs, those who are of the household of faith, mean in essence ‘those who are related to us by a common faith’, or ‘those who are members of our household by faith’. This is a highly compressed way of saying that they, like us, have been born into God’s family through their faith in Christ. Therefore, says Paul, they have a special family claim upon us,46 although we are debtors to all men and women. Since do good almost certainly means ‘give alms’, there may possibly be an inner meaning here: Paul may be trying to promote his collection for the Jerusalem poor, though Betz thinks this a forced interpretation.
In spite of the views of Betz, there is much in the context to make this interpretation possible, if not actually to commend it. Paul has already expressed his concern for taking a collection to aid the ‘poor saints’; if the atmosphere in Galatia is still too stormy to mention such a controversial matter directly, that need not surprise us. If this interpretation is correct, ‘teacher’ and ‘taught’ in verse 6 could then be Jewish Christian and Gentile Christian respectively. The ‘sowing’ and ‘reaping’ of verse 7 would then apply primarily to almsgiving, although Paul cannot resist giving the saying a moral ‘twist’ as he quotes it. It is obvious that the most faithful of Gentile Christians might ‘lose heart’ in doing such ‘good works’ when he saw how the Judaizers of the Jerusalem church rewarded them. Was Paul speaking as much to his own heart as to theirs? Were there times when even he almost ‘lost heart’ and wondered if he could ever win over the stubborn, narrow-minded ‘right wing’ at Jerusalem by these deeds of love? We cannot say. All we know is that neither Paul nor the Gentile churches did in point of fact flag in this unselfish, loving service: the collection was taken, and brought to Jerusalem.
The main part of the letter is now over. Paul takes the pen from his scribe (assuming that he has not written the whole letter himself) to write ‘The Grace’ in his own handwriting (cf. 2 Thess. 3:17), to assure them of the genuineness of the letter. But as he looks at the sprawling letters which he has written, he muses whimsically that they certainly make no fine outward show, and this becomes to him a parable of the whole of his life and ministry, and indeed of the Christian faith. As far as he is now concerned, there is nothing ‘fine’ in life but the cross of Christ; and he brushes the last vestiges of the Galatian quarrel from him in the knowledge of his own close relation to the crucified Messiah. On that note of peace the battle-scarred veteran ends the tortured letter.
‘See how big letters I am using now that I am writing myself. It is those who want to “show off ” and put a fine face on things who are trying to force you to get yourselves circumcised; it is only to avoid being persecuted for the sake of the cross of the Messiah. For not even those who do accept circumcision keep the law – and now they want you to get yourselves circumcised, so that they may have something to boast about in outward terms. May I never boast in anything at all, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which47 the world has been crucified as far as I am concerned, and I as far as the world is concerned. To be circumcised means nothing; to be uncircumcised means nothing; the only thing that matters is to be created anew. Peace and mercy be upon all those who make this their rule of thumb, and upon God’s Israel. In future let no-one bother me. I carry round with me Christ’s marks, stamped on my body. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, my fellow Christians. Amen.’
11. Pēlikois grammasin, with what large letters, probably refers to the sprawling untidy letters of one not a scribe by trade, and who was, perhaps, more used to writing Semitic letters than Greek. If the rest of the letter were ‘professionally’ written, then the contrast would be immediate. Most editors take pēlikois quite literally in the above sense of size. Other suggestions as to the meaning are given in BAGD under the words. It could refer to the style of writing, for instance. Those who see Paul’s recurrent illness as ophthalmia will point to the large letters often written by the half-blind. But halfliterate people also normally use large lettering, and nobody has yet accused Paul of falling into that category.48
12. The word euprosōpēsai (occurring only here in the New Testament) means make a good showing. For en sarki, in the flesh, to be taken closely with it, BAGD suggests ‘before men’.49 The Gentile would smile at the idea that circumcision could be considered by anyone to be a good showing; to him it was a barbarous and disfiguring custom, like the tattooing of a savage. But presumably Paul’s point was that Judaism wanted ‘ecclesiastical statistics’; so many circumcisions in a given year would certainly be something to boast about (Matt. 23:15). It is easy to smile at them: but ‘baptismal statistics’ can at times be just as dangerous if seen as a goal. Besides, Judaism honestly believed that mere outward circumcision achieved something; to them, it was the gateway to the covenant. Paul saw equally clearly that to accept circumcision meant that the whole ‘sting’ of the cross was gone. No longer was there an ‘either/or’ of law or grace: there was only a ‘both/and’. An eirenic age needs to remember Paul’s explosion, and the theology that lay behind it. Of course, if Gentile Christians were to be circumcised, and if they kept the law, there would be no persecution, for there would be no rift with Judaism. Compare Peter’s action in 2:12, ‘fearing the circumcision party’.
13. The phrase hoi peritemnomenoi, those who receive circumcision (or perhaps just possibly ‘the circumcisers’ in the middle voice), is best taken to refer to the Jews whose habitual practice circumcision is, rather than the Gentiles who are now tempted to take the step. Admittedly this is a different sense from that of 5:3, where it must refer to the Gentile convert, but the different context here seems to warrant it. If it refers to Jews, it is employed in the sense of the more usual peritomē, ‘circumcision’, used as a synonym for the Jewish nation. This meaning would certainly suit Paul’s rebuke. The Jews themselves have failed to keep the law (Rom. 2:21): why then try to involve Gentiles in the same failure by persuading them to accept the rite that binds to the law (Acts 15:10)?
Once again comes a play on words, this time on the verb kauchāsthai, to glory, or ‘to boast’. The noun kauchēma, ‘boast’, Paul has used already in his warning in 6:4. Now he says that the only possible reason for the Hebrew proselytizing zeal (for which see Matt. 23:15) must be a desire to ‘boast’ in their outward condition of circumcision; for he has already shown that this outward rite cannot do any spiritual good.
14–15. As a counter to all this, we would expect Paul in reply to ‘boast’ in uncircumcision. But he cannot do that, for he, just as much as the Judaizers, is a circumcised Jew. Instead, he dismisses the whole subject at a far deeper level by saying that neither of these two outward states is now important, or even relevant. Paul could neither boast of being circumcised if he were a Jew, nor of being uncircumcised if he were a Gentile: the one thing that he can ‘boast’ about (or glory … in) is the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, which has made all such distinctions meaningless. It completely breaks Paul’s connection with the old ‘outward world’ (the world has been crucified to me), and gives both Jew and Gentile alike a new perspective. The only thing that matters now is that Jew and Gentile alike should be a new creation in Christ, a new sort of humanity, with a new way of looking at everything, and therefore a new way of living.
The kainektisis, new creation, is an arresting thought of Paul’s. Just as Genesis showed a creation marred and spoiled by sin, so later in prophet and apocalyptist arose the picture of a new universe, a new ktisis or creation of God (e.g. Isa. 65:17, taken up by Rev. 21:1). Here, as 2 Corinthians 5:17, the word is probably to be translated ‘creature’ (as in AV), rather than ‘creation’. That is to say, the reference is to the regenerating work of God in the individual Christian rather than to the total cosmic result thus secured.50
16. When Paul says hosoi to kanoni touto stoichēsousin, all who walk by this rule, or ‘live their lives according to this principle’, he is referring to the spiritual experience described immediately above. Such recreated people truly ‘have the mind of Christ’ (1 Cor. 2:16); they have God’s way of looking at things. Paul has already used stoicheoof the Christian ‘walk’ in 5:25, where it is found in connection with pneuma, ‘the Spirit’. With the dative as here, it usually has a more metaphorical sense, ‘hold to’, ‘agree with’, ‘follow with’, as in BAGD (‘will hold to’, in some MSS).
Upon the Israel of God: the second half of verse 16 poses a question of interpretation which hangs on the exact meaning of the introductory kai, ‘and’, left untranslated in the RSV. Does the word mean ‘and’, or ‘that is to say’ (NIV, ‘even’)? Obviously, the latter is the view of the RSV, but a strong case can be made for either view. If the word is to be translated ‘and’, then Paul’s final prayer is for God’s ‘peace’ and ‘mercy’ to be directed both towards those Gentiles who realize the unimportance of their uncircumcised state, and to Jews who likewise realize the unimportance of circumcision: the two groups are not identified. By so doing, these Israelites prove themselves to be the Israel of God, the ‘righteous remnant’. To them, circumcision is a matter of the heart, not of the body (Rom. 2:29). These two groups would link closely with the two contrasting states described in verse 15 as peritomeand akrobystia, ‘circumcision’ and ‘uncircumcision’. It would also be a fitting gesture of fellowship to ‘orthodox’ Jewish Christianity, lest they should think that they were included in Paul’s attacks on the Judaizers. It would be a full recognition of the fact that Jew and Gentile alike are fellow-heirs of the grace of life; they have ‘communion in the Messiah’; to quote a modern Jewish Christian. We may feel that it is an olive branch offered on the point of a bayonet; but it is a gesture of peace and reconciliation well fitting the closing verses of such a letter.
The other interpretation, adopted by the RSV, is bolder, but Paul is quite capable of it. This is to take kai as meaning ‘even’ (NIV), ‘that is to say’, or ‘the equivalent of ’. Linguistically, this is quite possible; the question must be solved theologically and exegetically. This would identify all who walk by this rule with the Israel of God. This is often put succinctly in the form of the statement ‘the church is the new Israel’.51 Put so bluntly, we may well wish to qualify the definition; but in broad outline, it seems to be what is propounded by Paul, and incontrovertible. In the first place, if kai does not mean ‘even’ but ‘and’, then Paul would be allowing two separate and distinct groups side by side in the kingdom of God; first, those who walk by this rule (the principle enunciated in verse 15), and, secondly, God’s Israel. But those of old Israel who do not have this ‘principle’ are thereby automatically excluding themselves from the true Israel, God’s Israel. This is the inevitable deduction from Paul’s reasoning. In other words, while there is place for the believing Christian Jew in the kingdom of God, there is no place for the unbelieving, Jew or Gentile. Paul would go even further than that. He would say that the ‘believing Jew’ belongs to God’s Israel, but that the Judaizer who does not walk by this rule does not belong. There cannot therefore be two groups within the church; there can only be one. That was why Paul was fighting at Antioch, for ‘table fellowship’ between Jewish and Gentile Christians.
Outside Galatians, in passages like Colossians 2:11 and (more strongly) Philippians 3:2–3, Paul seems to make the same identification even more clearly. But it is important to remember that, while Paul says that Christians are the ‘true Israel’ in this sense, he never says that Gentiles become Jews, nor that Jews become Gentiles; that is an illegitimate deduction. What he does say is that believing Jew and believing Gentile alike form the true ‘Israel of God’, the instrument of his purpose. It is interesting to remember, in the context of verse 16, that ‘Peace upon Israel’ is the great Old Testament blessing for God’s people (Ps. 125:5), as well as being one of the ‘eighteen benedictions’ of the early Hebrew liturgy.
17. The phase kopous parechetō, trouble me, or ‘cause me trouble’ (NIV), is very common in the colloquial Greek of the papyri. In all such instances kopous has a bad sense, meaning ‘trouble’, ‘annoyance’, ‘bother’. But Paul has used the corresponding verb kopiao already in 4:11 in the sense of ‘labour’, ‘take pains’; there the sense is good. Indeed, in several of his letters Paul uses this word of the ‘toil’ characteristic of, and inseparable from, the life of the true pastor and missionary. From such hard work, Paul never asks to be freed; he has endured it gladly for this very Galatian church, and his only fear is that it may have all been in vain. What he does want to avoid is the endless harrying of the Judaizers, with their stress on circumcision, their endless insistence on this sort of ‘stigmata’, marks or ‘signs’, borne en tosōmati, on my body, or perhaps ‘outwardly’.52 To end all this persecution once and for all, he will show the Judaizers that he too bears ‘distinguishing marks’, but they are those that show him to belong to Jesus Christ, not to Judaism. It may be that the anxious queries of the wavering Galatians are also in his mind: do they need to bear an outward sign, like circumcision, on their bodies, to be certain of salvation? He wants to set their hearts at rest, so that they too may be able to give a similar reply when they are challenged by the Judaizers. The Galatian converts, like Paul, bear the marks of Jesus already.
We have already seen the various uses of bastazoin this letter.53 It always means ‘to shoulder’, ‘to carry’, with the idea that the object so moved is bulky or heavy. Therefore, whatever the marks of Jesus are, they are not something to be borne easily or lightly. Further, Paul bears them en sōmati, ‘bodily’, or ‘outwardly’; therefore he cannot be referring simply to some spiritual state known only to himself.
But the heart of the problem lies in the question, What is the actual meaning of ta stigmata tou Iēsou, the marks of Jesus? Later Christian theology, somewhat naïvely, interpreted this as meaning that visible marks appeared on Paul’s hands, feet, and side, corresponding to Christ’s wounds, so close was his identification with his Lord. The experience of certain Christian mystics has been quoted as parallel. Without examining the question of whether such physical manifestations have actually occurred in later days, and without inquiring into the means by which they may have been produced (an enquiry which would seem to belong to the realm of abnormal religious psychology), we may safely say that such a literalistic interpretation would run counter to all Paul’s thought.
The word stigmata, in non-biblical Greek, is used to describe the ‘marks’, or ‘brands’, that distinguish a slave as belonging to a particular master, rather as cattle or sheep are ‘branded’ today. Such ‘brands’ are often mentioned in Hellenistic ‘placards’ announcing the escape of runaway slaves, and many such documents have survived among the papyri. This is the most obvious meaning; and while the Jews do not seem to have had a similar custom in Old Testament days, the practice of ‘ear marking’ a voluntary slave is a close parallel (Exod. 21:6). The word stigmata is also freely used of ‘ritual cicatrices’ such as were common to many ancient and modern religions of more ‘primitive’ type. BAGD suggests ‘tattooing’ as a modern parallel. If Paul is using the word in this sense, then he is deliberately classifying Jewish circumcision with these other ritual gashes and marks. It is daring, but 5:12 shows that Paul was perfectly capable of such an identification. We could then paraphrase it: ‘You want me to bear ritual cuts and gashes, do you? I do bear such scars already, but they are those that mark me out as Christ’s man.’
So much for the interpretation, which is clearly also that of the NEB, ‘I bear the marks of Jesus branded on my body’. But what are these brands? Almost certainly, since they are outwardly visible (the wording en tosōmati, on my body, involving this conclusion), they must be some of the scars borne by Paul as a result of his suffering for Christ’s sake. Those who favour a South Galatian destination for the letter can point to the stoning at Lystra as a very relevant example (Acts 14:19), but 2 Corinthians 11 shows us many other experiences of Paul which must have left literal ‘scars’. Stoning and flogging, whether by the scourge of the synagogue beadles, or the dreaded Roman lash, or the rods of Roman lictors, would leave unmistakable scars, reminders of suffering gladly endured for Christ’s sake, that marked out their bearer as Christ’s servant. Most of the relevant literature illustrating this possibility is quoted at the end of the excellent article in BAGD.
18. On this note of peace the letter will end, but, as his closing message, Paul adds, as often, ‘The Grace’, in a longer or shorter form. We are more familiar with the prayer in the fuller and longer form of 2 Corinthians 13:14, ‘The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.’ This rich trinitarian formula is doubtless Paul’s final development of the simple prayer that we have here, The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brethren (i.e. fellow Christians).54 Yet we cannot say that the shorter form of the prayer is less rich theologically, though its richness may be less fully expressed. Rightly understood, all the theology of the trinitarian ‘Grace’ is here too,55 for Christ is here, and central, as he must be in all expressions of the Christian faith.
He is Jesus, the name corresponding to the ‘Joshua’ of the Old Testament, the ‘saviour’ of God’s people (for so the name can be translated), who will lead them into the inheritance promised by God (Josh. 1:6). More, he is the Christ, the Messiah, the ‘chosen one’ of God’s purpose, the fulfilment of all the hopes and aspirations of the Old Testament. His nature is fully expressed as charis, grace – the free undeserved love of God showered on humankind. Christ is grace personified; but he is more than that, for he is the very grace of God become incarnate. That is why we cannot speak of ‘the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ’ without at the same time thinking of ‘the love of God’, whether we state it explicitly in so many words or not. For the Christian, this link between Christ and God is safeguarded in Paul’s shorter formula by calling Jesus Lord, the great title of God in Old Testament times. More, in many ancient witnesses, Christ is not only described at this point as kyriou, ‘Lord’, but kyriou hēmōn, ‘our Lord’; here is the sense of ‘belongingness’ that we have found to be characteristic of all Pauline thought. Lastly, this blessing is to be meta tou pneumatos hymōn, with your spirit. To the Christian, in spite of the possibility of a purely general meaning, this will also here recall the Holy Spirit, the gift of the risen Christ, the one who is the common bond of our common life in Christ, by whom alone we are newborn as adelphoi, brethren or ‘womb brothers and sisters’ in Christ. To this prayer, Paul, with full meaning, sets his Amen,56 common at the end of Hebrew blessings and prayers, from which it has passed into Christian usage (1 Cor. 14:16). But it is really an Amen to the uniqueness of Christ and the sufficiency of his cross for salvation, so that it is also an Amen to the whole letter, and indeed to Paul’s whole theological position, since God himself has already set his Amen to Christ (2 Cor. 1:20).