NEW TESTAMENT CONTEXTUAL COMMENTARY

by Dr. Robert R. Seyda

PAUL’S LETTER TO THE GALATIAN CHURCHES

CHAPTER FIVE (Lesson LII)

Greek word study specialist Kenneth Wuest (1893-1961) notes that the liberty spoken of here in verse one does not refer to the kind of life a person lives, neither does it have reference to their words and actions, but it has to do with the method by which they conduct themselves. The Judaizers existed by depending on self-effort in a failed attempt to obey the Law. The Galatian Christians survived because they relied on the indwelling Holy Spirit for guidance and strength. Their hearts were occupied with the Lord Jesus, the details of their lives being guided by the ethics that emerged from the teaching of the apostles, both doctrinal and practical. Now, however, in swinging over to the side of the Law, they were losing that freedom of action and that flexibility of self-determination which one exercises while doing what is right. And when one does right, not because the Law forbids the wrong and commands the right, but because it is proper, because it pleases the Lord Jesus, and because of their love for Him. Paul exhorts them to remain standing fast in freedom from the Law.^[1]

When speaking about the yoke as a burden, Paul knew from personal experience what he meant. From the time Moses received the Ten Commandments until Paul’s day, Jewish Rabbis added 603 more laws for a total of 613. Of this total, 248 are “do’s,” and 365 are “don’ts.” Their desire to please and impress God with slave-like obedience led them to cover every area of life from how far they could walk on the Sabbath; not mingling olive oil with the meal-offering of a suspected adulteress; keep priests with disheveled hair from entering the Sanctuary, or eating bread made from the grain of a crop grown in a new field. These may sound trivial to us, but when you grow up believing God requires obedience to these restrictions for you to receive His favor and everlasting life, you can understand why they become so enslaving.

As a boy growing up in Germany, we lived in a village where only one farmer owned a horse. The rest pulled their wagons with regular milk-cows. I remember one day I saw him beating his horse severely because it wouldn’t pull his heavily loaded cart. I overheard one of the villagers say that the stallion used to be a racehorse and was not strong enough for work like that. In like manner, Paul tried to get the Galatian believers to see they weren’t oxen anymore, pulling around the heavy load of Mosaic Law. Now they were thoroughbreds, ready to run the race before them. So, if they get hooked up again to the heavy wagon load of Mosaic Law, they’ll be unable to pull it.

In one of his sermons, the great German reformer Martin Luther used oxen in an illustration. He pointed out that after oxen toil in the yoke all day, they are turned out in the evening to graze. However, when they can no longer pull a wagon, they are marked for slaughter.  He goes on to compare these oxen with those who seek to be justified by Mosaic Law and become “entangled with the yoke of bondage.” Once they grow old and broken-down in the service of Mosaic Law, they are then marked for judgment to receive God’s wrath and everlasting torment.[2]

In one of his sermons on Romans, chapter six, Dr. David Martin Lloyd-Jones used an illustration drawn from the days of slavery in the Southern United States. Before the Emancipation Proclamation signed by President Abraham Lincoln, slaves had no rights. Any white person could attack them and even kill them without penalty. If a slave went alone into town to shop for the plantation owner’s wife, when a white person told them to do this or that and was abusive to them, they had to drop everything and do what they commanded. Slaves were always frightened and obeyed without question.

But after the Emancipation Proclamation was published, they now had rights. They didn’t have to obey every white person’s ridiculous demands. However, when many of them walked into town and a white person started yelling at them, even though they knew they were free and had all the rights this white person had. Nevertheless, they were still scared and acted like a slave anyhow. Being a child of the 1930s, I saw this myself many times.

Lloyd-Jones then points out that this is exactly how many Christians still act. They know one thing, but they don’t know the other. They know that they have been redeemed from sin’s slavery and that they are free in union with the Anointed One. If they believed in their hearts what they knew in their head, they wouldn’t still be a slave to their sinful heart’s desires or what others think of them. While technically and in reality, you are no longer a slave to sin, since God freed you from your sins, why do you remain a slave to sinful tendencies? So, let go of those inclinations, says Lloyd-Jones, and grab hold of Jesus your Savior, He will be more than enough to keep you free.

How many times have we seen a young Christian try to pull the heavy load of church membership requirements, but just couldn’t make it? Or an elderly believer who, after years and years of faithful obedience to religious rituals and regulations, being let out to pasture because they are no longer useful to the church as an asset; they have become burdensome? Paul’s heart bled for these Galatians who didn’t see the real value of freedom in the Anointed One.  It allowed them to serve God without the taxing load of “should I or shouldn’t I; can I or can’t I; will they like it, or will they hate it?” Didn’t they realize that their freedom in our Anointed One allowed them to get closer to God than any rite could do? Didn’t he tell them that their liberty in our Anointed One gave them more excellent options to please God than any ritual could provide? Didn’t they remember when Paul taught them that their immunity from these things offered them more opportunity to give themselves to God for divine service than any regulation could allow?

Dutch Bible Scholar Alfred E. Bouter makes a good point on what Paul says here in verse one about “remaining steadfast in one’s faith.” This Christian liberty is a precious thing, and it is constantly under attack. Many forces seek to move saints away from the center by either pushing them towards strict legalism to abstain from doing what pleased them or steering them towards an open license to do as they please. That’s why we must keep our focus based on what we see in our connection with this liberty, and that is why Paul says, “Stand firm.” When it comes to the enjoyment of these precious Christian truths, there is always this challenge to stand firm, so we will not lose them, but that we will enjoy this position of liberty in true fellowship with God. In every epistle, Paul encourages us in this sense: to hold fast.^[3] In his translation of verse one from the Aramaic Version, Andrew Roth renders it: “Therefore, you stand in the liberty of the Messiah, liberty and not subjugation, turned from the yoke of servitude.” ^[4]

Current Messianic Jewish writer Thomas Lancaster attempts to point out how Paul’s words were so easily misunderstood, even by early non-Jewish Christian leaders such as Ignatius of Antioch. He points to an epistle written by Ignatius to the Magnesians.^[5] Ignatius told them not to become insensible to God’s kindness. For if He were to treat us for the way we are acting, we would indeed be lost and undone. Therefore, upon becoming His disciples, we should learn to live in a way appropriate to Christianity. Those who say they were called to live by a specific code of conduct by any other name than Jesus the Anointed One, is not of God.  So, don’t even fool around with such things. Instead of the Bread of Heaven, what they feed you will be stale and bitter. Be salted by Him, that no one among you waxes corrupt, for, by your Savior, you will be tested. Lancaster tells us, “It is outrageous to utter the name of Jesus our Anointed One and live in Judaism. A Christian cannot remain in Judaism and remain Christian, but Jews can come into Christianity remain Christian even though they are still Jewish. For it is in Christianity that people of every tongue can believe and be gathered to God.^[6]

Lancaster responds to what Ignatius wrote by saying that this early church scholar misinterpreted the words of Paul because he misunderstood Judaism. Lancaster says to Ignatius, I beg your pardon, but this is not exactly what Paul meant. In the first place, says Lancaster, Paul spoke only to Gentile believers on this subject, not Jews. As far as Paul is concerned, it is only to the Jews that one spoke about keeping the whole Torah. Paul did not speak against the Torah or Judaism; rather, as we have learned, he addressed Gentiles who were considering undergoing a legal conversion to become Jewish. Lancaster then says to Ignatius, I beg to differ. As a Gentile, you never lived under the law to be set free from something, you never experienced like the burden of a yoke.

But in doing so, Lancaster contradicts himself. True, Paul warned the non-Jews not to become tied to the yoke of slavery produced by the Law, and by using the term “again” he equated the Jewish Law to the heathen ways to which there were formerly enslaved, but at the same time why should the Apostle only warn the non-Jews when the Jews themselves were saddled to the same yoke. And Paul makes that clear by what he says in verse two about the enslavement represented by circumcision.

American theologian and Presbyterian minister Philip G. Ryken has an interesting way of explaining our freedom from the Law through the Anointed One. Paul is concerned that the Galatians might misinterpret this freedom as being set from the moral laws that God gave to Moses and that Jesus reinforced.^[7] This is God’s eternal will for His people. The Law that the Anointed One freed us from is the one that leads to condemnation and death. But the Gospel replaced this Law because we receive forgiveness and justification by faith and grace. So that Law no longer has any control over our future with God. Not only that, but Jesus paid the price for our freedom so that we need not fear eternal punishment anymore. If we stay in union with the Anointed One and He stays in union with us, neither Satan nor the Law can touch us. The Anointed One kept the Law we could not keep, He paid the penalty we could not pay, He won the victory we could not win. Therefore, we can say with confidence that the Spirit of Life has set us free from the law of sin and death.^{[8] [9]}

[1] Wuest, Kenneth: Word Studies, op. cit., loc. cit.

[2] Luther, Martin: On Galatians, op. cit., p. 192

[3] Alfred E. Bouter: On Galatians, op. cit., pp. 65-66

[4] Andrew G. Roth, Aramaic Galatians, op. cit., loc. cit.

[5] Magnesians were residents of an area in Greece on the eastern coast of the Pagasetic Gulf in the Aegean Sea.  It is part of the larger region of Thessaly.

[6] The Epistles of St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch by Rev. J. H. Srawley, Second Edition, Revised, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1910, Chapter 10, pp. 67-68

[7] Matthew 5:17-20

[8] Romans 8:2

[9] Ryken, Philip Graham. On Galatians, op. cit., (Kindle Location 3420-3429)