The History Of The Christian Church Volume 1, Philip Shaff 1819-1893

CHAPTER XII THE NEW TESTAMENT 351 reap also sparingly; and he that soweth bountifully shall more, and its fruits are enjoyed by nations of which neireap also bountifully (9:6). God loveth a cheerful giver ther Paul nor Luther ever heard.

(9:7). He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord (10:17).

The Epistle to the Galatians (Gauls, originally from Not he that commendeth himself is approved, but whom the borders of the Rhine and Moselle, who had migrated the Lord commendeth (10:18). My grace is sufficient for to Asia Minor) was written after Paul’s second visit to thee; for my power is made perfect in weakness (12:9). them, either during his long residence in Ephesus (a.d.

We can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth 54–57), or shortly afterwards on his second journey to (13:8). The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love Corinth, possibly from Corinth, certainly before the Episof God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with tle to the Romans. It was occasioned by the machinations you all (13:14). of the Judaizing teachers who undermined his apostolic § 91. The Epistles to the Galatians. authority and misled his converts into an apostasy from Comp. the introduction to my Com. on Gal. (1882). the gospel of free grace to a false gospel of legal bondage, Galatians and Romans discuss the doctrines of sin requiring circumcision as a condition of justification and and redemption, and the relation of the law and the gos- full membership of the church. It is an “Apologia pro vita pel. They teach salvation by free grace and justification sua,” a personal and doctrinal self-vindication. He deby faith, Christian universalism in opposition to Jew- fends his independent apostleship (Gal.1:1–2:14), and ish particularism, evangelical freedom versus legalistic his teaching (2:15–4:31), and closes with exhortations to bondage. But Galatians is a rapid sketch and the child hold fast to Christian freedom without abusing it, and to of deep emotion, Romans an elaborate treatise and the show the fruits of faith by holy living (Gal. 5–6). mature product of calm reflexion. The former Epistle is The Epistle reveals, in clear, strong colors, both the polemical against foreign intruders and seducers, the lat- difference and the harmony among the Jewish and Genter is irenical and composed in a serene frame of mind. tile apostles—a difference ignored by the old orthodoxy, The one rushes along like a mountain torrent and foam- which sees only the harmony, and exaggerated by moding cataract, the other flows like a majestic river through ern scepticism, which sees only the difference. It antica boundless prairie; and yet it is the same river, like the ipates, in grand fundamental outlines, a conflict which Nile at the Rapids and below Cairo, or the Rhine in the is renewed from time to time in the history of different Grisons and the lowlands of Germany and Holland, or churches, and, on the largest scale, in the conflict bethe St. Lawrence at Niagara Falls and below Montreal tween Petrine Romanism and Pauline Protestantism. and Quebec where it majestically branches out into the The temporary collision of the two leading apostles in ocean.

Antioch is typical of the battle of the Reformation.

It is a remarkable fact that the two races representAt the same time Galatians is an Irenicon and sounds ed by the readers of these Epistles—the Celtic and the the key-note of a final adjustment of all doctrinal and Latin—have far departed from the doctrines taught in ritualistic controversies. “In Christ Jesus neither circumthem and exchanged the gospel freedom for legal bond- cision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith age; thus repeating the apostasy of the sanguine, gen- working through love” (5:6). “And as many as shall walk erous, impressible, mercurial, fickle-minded Galatians. by this rule, peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon The Pauline gospel was for centuries ignored, misunder- the Israel of God” (6:16). stood, and (in spite of St. Augustin) cast out at last by Central Idea: Evangelical freedom.

Rome, as Christianity itself was cast out by Jerusalem of Key-Words: For freedom Christ set us free: stand old. But the overruling wisdom of God made the rule of fast therefore, and be not entangled again in the yoke of the papacy a training-school of the Teutonic races of the bondage (5:1). A man is not justified by works of the law, North and West for freedom; as it had turned the unbe- but only through faith in Jesus Christ (2:16). I have been lief of the Jews to the conversion of the Gentiles. Those crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I that live but Epistles, more than any book of the New Testament, in- Christ liveth in me (2:20). Christ redeemed us from the spired the Reformation of the Sixteenth century, and are curse of the law, having become a curse for us (3:13). Ye to this day the Gibraltar of evangelical Protestantism. were called for freedom, only use not your freedom for Luther, under a secondary inspiration, reproduced Ga- an occasion to the flesh, but through love be servants one latians in his war against the “Babylonian captivity of the to another (5:13). Walk by the Spirit, and ye shall not church;” the battle for Christian freedom was won once fulfil the lust of the flesh (5:16).