Down an Unfamiliar Road

NEW TESTAMENT CONTEXTUAL COMMENTARY

by Dr. Robert R. Seyda

PAUL’S LETTER TO THE GALATIAN CHURCHES

CHAPTER ONE (Lesson XXI)

In another place, Professor Stevens notes that Paul couldn’t understand why the Galatians were having trouble with him and his message. Didn’t they realize that his mission and theology came as a package, they cannot be separated.¹ It all begins with Yeshua of Nazareth being the Anointed One, the Anointed One sent from God, and the Anointed One then sent him to the Gentiles to share the Anointed One’s message. It was not something Paul dreamed up. It was all about how every sinner can stand justified as right before God in Faith by Grace, not by any good works of their own. Today, we might say it would be like trying to separate the film from the camera and hope to take pictures. They go together, you can’t use one without the other. So by rejecting Paul and the Gospel – the man from his mission, they were actually rejecting God who planned this ministry for him and the Anointed One who called and commissioned him. No doubt, Paul was thinking that if they just understood this they would stop turning away from Jesus and turning back to Jesus in repentance.²

Earnest DeWitt Burton (1856-1925), Biblical scholar and president of the University of Chicago points out that the Greek verb metatithēmi is in the present tense, thereby indicating that the Galatians turning away from Paul’s Gospel was not over, it was only in progress. This would certainly prove that Paul didn’t think it was too late and hoped that his letter would stop them from turning and make them think it over and turn back around. However, the mind of Paul wavers somewhat between hope and fear, as he writes this letter, concerning to the final outcome³.⁴

Arno Gaebelein (1861-1945), also focuses on Paul’s claim that these Judaizers were perverting the Gospel by teaching that the finished work of the Anointed One was not sufficient for salvation, but that a person must add their good works by keeping of the law and becoming circumcised. It was a God-dishonoring denial of the completeness and perfection of the work of the Anointed One in His life on earth and in His death on the cross. Not only was it a perversion of the Gospel, but more than that it was the setting aside of that Gospel altogether. Unfortunately, says Gaebelein, it was almost a universal thing in Christendom in his time. People were hearing a lot about “salvation by character,” but not “salvation by Christ,” which is Satan’s invention.

Ritualism, which makes church ordinances the necessary means of salvation, is another perversion of the Gospel of Grace. The phrase one hears so much, “God has done His part and we must do our part,” is another phase of a perverted gospel. A human is a lost sinner, helpless and hopeless in themselves. They can do nothing for they are without strength.⁵ The doing is all on God’s side; all the sinner can do is to accept what the grace of God in Jesus the Anointed One offers to them. “For by His loving-favor you have been saved from the punishment of sin through faith. It is not by anything you have done. It is a gift of God. It is not given to you because you worked for it. If you could work for it, you would be proud.⁶”⁷

Cyril Emmet (1875-1923), adds another aspect as to why Paul thought the forsaking of the Gospel that he brought to the Galatians came so suddenly. In addition to the fact that it may have been soon after his last visit there or so quickly upon the arrival of the Judaizers who misled them, that Emmet adds their hastiness may have surprised Paul because it was done without any serious consideration of the consequences.⁸ And even more frustrating for the Apostle, they did not turn to a “different” Gospel message the way it may be preached by Peter, James, or John, but “another” gospel that seemed to cancel out the Gospel that Paul delivered to them. Paul’s Gospel was one based upon God’s Love, this other gospel was based upon God’s Law. The one based on Love set them free, the one based on Law would only put them back in bondage again. How could they have done that so quickly without thinking?⁹ Didn’t they realize that complete Love replaced the Law which was incomplete; a person’s works were replaced by the work of the Anointed one?

Arthur Pink (1886-1952) makes a clear and important point when he notes the central issue raised in the letter to the Galatians is not “what is the basic conduct for the believer’s life,” but “what is the basis for conduct in the believer’s life.” The proof needed to make this assertion is found here in what Paul says in verse seven that there is not another kind of gospel, even though some who would like to lead them to God by a different but wrong way. They’re trying to do this by substituting or subtracting from the Good News about the Anointed One. Furthermore, Paul was not hesitant in pointing out that it was the Judaizing troublemakers who were the ones corrupting the Gospel of Jesus the Anointed One. They wanted to take the believer’s faith in their salvation from believing in the Anointed One as their Savior to believing in the Law as their Savior.¹⁰

Lutheran theologian Otto Paul Kretzmann (1901-1975) makes note that in many prior commentaries dating back to the early church scholars, the unstableness or undependability of the Gauls (from France) and Celtics (from mainland Europe) who migrated to this part of the world was often the cause for their irrational actions. This then made them easy targets for the Judaizers. For Kretzmann, the result of this deception was twofold: First, they were disturbing and troubling the minds and consciences of the Galatians, causing them to become doubtful as to the doctrine which they were taught by Paul. Secondly, they were incidentally doing their best to distort and pervert the real Gospel of the Anointed One, the glorious message of salvation through His name. If they succeeded in their design, it would mean the end of pure evangelical preaching in the affected congregations. Kretzmann also notes, that this verse must be kept in mind at all times against the perverters of the message of sin and grace, no matter what disguise may be use. This is what the Reformers exposed in their day in order to reject the claims of the Roman Catholic Church during the Middle Ages.¹¹

Jewish writer W. A. Liebenberg looked at the Greek verb thaumazō translated as “marvel” (KJV) in verse six from a Hebrew perspective, and he parses it out to literally mean, “left speechless.”¹² In other words, when Paul first got the message of the Galatians falling prey to the Judaizers’ corrupt message, Paul was absolutely stunned for a moment or two. Of course, as soon as he could recover he wrote this blistering opening as part of a letter he sent after hearing the grieving news. It would be one thing if these Judaizers came wearing a badge identifying them as such, but they came disguised as a delegation from the Church in Jerusalem. Perhaps that’s why the Galatians didn’t listen very carefully and were so willing to comply with their message because they thought it was already approved. If this fooled people back in Paul’s day, who says it won’t fool people today?¹³

Torah Teacher Ariel ben-Lyman HaNaviy puts a different twist on the commonly held belief in what Paul meant by “another” gospel being taught by the Judaizers. Ben-Lyman makes note that pertinent to the study of Galatians is the historical fact that 1st century Judaizers were not teaching salvation by following Torah (as the emerging Church might assume). The “other gospel” that gave Paul such consternation was the prevailing Rabbinic view that only Isra’el alone shared a place in the world-to-come, that is, only Jews were granted covenant membership through Abraham. Taking this view meant that the Gentiles must first convert to Judaism before being considered full-fledged members of God’s kingdom. Looking at it this way, the Torah was not the means of salvation; “works of the Torah” (defined elsewhere in this commentary) were the prerequisite to “salvation.” In this view, the Torah was used to help maintain membership granted to native born Jews and proselytes alike. Rabbi ben-Lyman personally disagrees with this central tenets of this Rabbinic view.¹⁴

Philip Ryken has an enlightening and sobering assessment of the “other” gospel factor in today’s church. He wants to know if we can distinguish between the “true” gospel and the “other” gospels in today’s contemporary churches? In some churches, you may hear the gospel of material prosperity, which teaches that Jesus is the way to financial gain. In other churches you might hear the gospel of family values, which teaches that Jesus is the way to a happy home. Then there is the gospel of self value, which teaches that Jesus is the way to personal fulfillment. There is also the gospel of religious tradition, which teaches that Jesus is the way to respectability. There is the gospel of morality, which teaches that Jesus is the way to be a good person. What makes these other gospels so dangerous is that the things they offer are all benefits. It is good to be prosperous, to have a happy home, and to be well behaved. Yet as good as all these things are, they are not the Good News. When they become for us a sort of gospel, then we are in danger of turning away from the only Gospel there is.¹⁵

Grant Osborne reminds us of just who the Judaizers were in those days. The descriptive term “Judaizers” was used for a group of Jewish Christians who wanted to make all Christians practitioners of Judaism. Rejecting the conclusion of the Jerusalem Council in Acts fifteen, they continued to believe that Gentile converts to Christianity must become Jews before they can become Christians. Today we would call them “hardliners.” For them, becoming circumcised and following all Torah (the Mosaic law) regulations was necessary for Christians to attain salvation. In effect, they were replacing the cross with ceremony; Jesus with Moses. This group sent missionaries to the Christians in Asia Minor whom Paul evangelized on his first missionary journey,¹⁶ trying to convince them that Paul was wrong and to get them to join the Judaizing movement in the church. They were all about going back to the basics of the Jewish religion.¹⁷

NEW TESTAMENT CONTEXTUAL COMMENTARY

by Dr. Robert R. Seyda

PAUL’S LETTER TO THE GALATIAN CHURCHES

CHAPTER ONE (Lesson XX)

J. B. Lightfoot (1828-1889) agrees that during the time period Paul mentions here, many were left to deal with things that were not present when he was there, so the quickness with which they fell victim to the Judaizer’s deceit astounded him. But what happened to the Galatians is an even more disturbing matter. Some scholars see the trouble that the Judaizers were making as causing doubt in the Galatians’ minds. But Lightfoot believes it was more like rebel rousing. They were stirring up the believers against Paul for hiding certain truths that the Torah teaches. This then dissolved their allegiance to Paul as their spiritual father. So instead of continuing on the path that Paul outlined for them, the reversed course and went back in the direction they were going in, to begin with. For Lightfoot, this was the prominent thought in the Apostle Paul’s mind when he called this heresy a “turnabout,”¹ or “turncoats” as we would say today of those who become traitors to their country.²

Anglican scholar Frederic W. Farrar (1831-1902), makes a good point when he says that it appears that Paul planted the seed of the Gospel in shallow and rocky soil. And Eugène Reuss believes that these Judaizers were part of the same contingent that antagonized Paul when he was in Jerusalem,³ something they no doubt would have disputed.⁴ They also fashioned themselves to be the true disciples of the Anointed One,⁵ and in His name imposed, as a condition of salvation, circumcision and all the rites of the Law.⁶ In Antioch, they fellowshipped with the Gentiles until Peter came, and thereafter they would have little to do with them.⁷ They loved to be called “brethren,” but they gave no reciprocal greeting to the Gentile believers.⁸ So we can see why Paul wanted nothing to do with them, let alone encourage the Galatians to fellowship with these troublemakers.

Edward Huxtable (1833-1893) points to the wording in verses six and seven where it read, “following a different gospel – not that there really is another gospel,”⁹ and seems to imply a change in the quality of the Gospel into a “strange new-fangled character.” The Greed adjective allos (“another” KJV) in verse seven sometimes does display this shade of meaning of something being contorted, distorted, twisted, etc. Huxtable likens it to what Paul said to the Corinthians about strange tongues and lips of strangers.¹⁰ Also, when Paul talks about a Jesus other than the real Jesus, and a different spirit than the Holy Spirit, and a different gospel from the gospel they received from him.¹¹ He also wrote to Timothy about letting anyone with a false doctrine come in and teach something different than the doctrine that Timothy learned from Paul¹².¹³ What Huxtable is driving at is that Paul suspected that this teaching of the Judaizers was no so blatantly different from his Gospel that the Galatians were able to dispute what they were saying. That’s what may have fooled them.

I remember my father, who was a preacher, telling about what was called the “Jesus Only” movement, starting in California around 1913, and then the “Latter Rain Movement,” that came sweeping through the country in 1947 right after the Second World War, and that it was the signal that the return of the Anointed One was close at hand. So there was no need for those seeking the baptism of the Holy Spirit to tarry as the Apostles did in the Upper Room, but that the gift of tongues and gifts of the Spirit could be imparted from one believer to another simply by the “laying on of hands.” After I entered the ministry in 1964 I didn’t have to wait long before other doctrines began to swirl around such as the Prosperity Gospel, The “Rhema” movement, also known as the “Word of Faith” doctrine where if you speak it, it will happen, followed by the hierarchy of demons ruling over the earth and the casting out of demon obsessing and oppressing believers. This should also serve as a warning for every believer to test these spirits to see if they harmonize with the spirit of God’s Word and the witness of the Holy Spirit in unity among believers.¹⁴

Cyrus I. Schofield (1843-1921), American Theologian and minister and writer of the Annotated Bible, makes the point that God used the Apostle Paul to call the Galatians into the grace of the Anointed One here in verse six. This is important because grace means unmerited, uncompensated favor. It’s not something one is getting paid for. Scofield believes that it is essential to get this clear. No options or factors are to be added to grace. That’s why Paul rejected good works, circumcision, adherence to the Law such as obedience to commandments. But just like oil and water, grace and works do not mix.¹⁵ This is so true, that grace cannot even begin with us until the law has reduced us to speechless guilt.¹⁶ So long as there is the slightest question of utter guilt, utter helplessness, there is no place for grace. If a person feels that they are not good enough for heaven but too good for hell, they do not seek help in God’s grace but in the “Do-it-Yourself” manual for justification. Unfortunately, that is the beginning of a dead end road to nowhere.

Scofield then goes on to note that this misconception was brought on by false apostles bringing to them a gospel different than the one Paul gave them. It wasn’t so much “another gospel,” as it was an in direct opposition to the Gospel that Paul used, by adding anything that cannot be found in the Gospel so as to make it complete in their mind. But the deception came when they claimed it was part of a revelation that Paul failed to preach. The Gospel preached by Paul was known as the “glad tidings,” that brought forgiveness, joy, peace, and salvation. Nowhere is the Law referred to as “glad tidings” of “good news.”¹⁷ As Scofield put it, “Surely that is no good news. The law, then, has but one language; it pronounces “all the world” — “good,” “bad,” and “goody-good” – “guilty!”¹⁸

Bible scholar extraordinaire William Ramsey (1851-1939), expresses his thoughts on what Paul says here in verse six about the sudden switch by the Galatians from Paul’s Gospel to the Judaizer’s enlightened version. Some, says Ramsey, try to blame this movement from Grace to Law as part of the fickleness of the Galatians. That would certainly make any changes superficial. But no large group of people changes its moral, political, or religious position because they can’t make up their minds about what they already possessed. They only change because they believe a new and better form of belief and worship is clearer and truer and more advantageous than the old one. Such a sudden redirection does not come easy.¹⁹

Ramsey is prone to believe that Paul was on many long journeys since leaving Galatia and was not that reachable by Timothy or others with the latest news. It was only after he stopped for rest either in Ephesus or Corinth that the news was waiting for him when he arrived. So the sense of the sudden, unexplained movement by the Galatians away from Paul’s Gospel of Grace to the Judaizer’s Gospel of Law was not overnight. But it was done without any consultation or any attempt to reach him for counseling before they made their decision. That’s what really bothered Paul. That’s why he is trying now to give that counseling through this letter.

Presbyterian pastor, theologian, educator, and Yale Divinity School professor, George Barker Stevens (1854-1906), suggests that the one thing that left him speechless is “how quickly you have moved away from the One who redeemed you.” It almost seems as though Paul could hardly wait to finish his greeting and tell them what he really was feeling. When we try to envision such a scene, who would be surprised at what was happening, the Galatians or Jesus? We already know that Jesus dealt with the plague of unbelief.²⁰ Stevens points out that Christian writers such as Chrysostom (349-407 AD) and German theologian Wilhelm Martin Leberecth de Wette (1780-1849) who believe that they seized hold of false doctrines that drew them away. But other scholars such as John Calvin (1509-1564), Johann Albrecht Bengel (1687-1752), and Karl Georg Wieseler (1906-1945), believe that their moving away was initiated by Paul’s departure, and yet others such as J. B. Lightfoot (1828-1889), Heinrich August Wilhelm Meter (1800-1873), and Hermann Olshausen (1796-1839) see it as something that happened not too soon after their conversion .

It is obvious that even the top theologians of centuries past were unable to agree upon one single reason why the Galatians moved away from the Anointed One. Perhaps there were some who fit into each of these categories. But in any case, the key factor is that it caused them to leave the side of Jesus to join the side of the Law. The sad thing is that God gave them a gracious invitation which they accepted but then exited unceremoniously. But there is no evidence that the Law issued them a more gracious invitation to embrace them. Didn’t they know they were freed from the prison of sin under the management of the Law by their Savior, Jesus the Anointed One, and turning around and willingly went back into bondage. Stevens marvels that the Gentile Galatians so quickly forgot that the Anointed One first went to the Jews, and when they rejected Him He turned to the Gentiles, now they were repeating the sin of the Jews and becoming just like them,²¹

NEW TESTAMENT CONTEXTUAL COMMENTARY

by Dr. Robert R. Seyda

PAUL’S LETTER TO THE GALATIAN CHURCHES

CHAPTER ONE (Lesson XIX)

In William Burkitt’s (1650-1703) commentary we read that there are three things we can learn from what Paul’s says here. First, there is nothing new or unique for us to be told that needs to be added to the Gospel. Secondly, that adding anything to the Christian faith as being necessary to be believed and practiced in order to bring salvation, is perverting the Gospel of the Anointed One, and substituting another gospel. And thirdly, there is no authority in the Christian church, in all or any of its ministries with the power to impose upon Christians anything as a necessity for salvation which is not already included in the Gospel. The Apostles themselves were given no authority to add anything to the Gospel, much less any of those that came after them. Jesus the Anointed One commanded them to teach all nations, to observe all things whatsoever He commanded.¹ If the Apostles themselves added any point of faith and practice to what the Anointed One gave and charged them to do, they would fall under the curse themselves that Paul denounces here as false teachers.²

Perhaps this is why Adam Clarke (1760-1851) gave his revivalist view of what Paul is saying here. For him, it was a matter of surprise and wonder that a people, so soundly converted to God, should have so soon a shipwreck of their faith. But when it comes to changeability, there is nothing more susceptible to modification than the human heart. We know that the interaction between different passions is continually either changing the character or giving it a different coloring. The Word of God is divine reasoning, not passion, nor the philosophy of mankind. It alone must be consulted concerning our salvation and everlasting life.³

Clarke goes on to give us some interesting insight into the lingering battle between what Jesus said in the true Gospel and what others were saying in their versions of the Gospel. Clarke notes that it is certain that in the very earliest ages of the Christian Church there were several spurious gospels in circulation, and it was the volume of these false or inaccurate renderings that motivated Luke to write his own. We have the names of more than seventy of these spurious narratives still on record, and in ancient writers, many fragments of them still remain. Many of these were collected and published by Fabricius,⁴ in his account of the apocryphal books of the Final Covenant. In some of these gospels, the necessity of circumcision, and subjection to the Mosaic law in unity with the Gospel were strongly combined. Even as early as Paul’s day he may have heard about some of these.⁵

James Haldane (1768-1742) points out that while the Gospel is the Good News of pardon, peace, and eternal life, without works, moral or ceremonial rites, but through faith in the Anointed One alone, Paul was surprised that the Galatians so quickly abandoned this Rock of Salvation for the slippery slope of adding the ceremonial laws of the Jewish faith to the Gospel. In other words, these Judaizers convinced the Galatians that while their trust in the Anointed One gave them certain assurances of salvation, it was not complete. They need to add the Law, rites, rituals, regulations, and ceremonies of Jewish customs and manners to make it absolute.

The Gospel was a revelation of a long-held mystery of God, but the legal system of salvation was already out-of-date. the Anointed One came to complete what God started with Abraham and Moses. The water of life through the Gospel was filtered and pure, no mixture of other man-made taste enhancing elements were permitted. To drink such a concoction was to invite spiritual sickness and death. Paul was not so concerned about what it did to their bodies, but its harmful effect on their souls. The days of earning one’s salvation were over, now it was a gift of God through grace. So why did the Galatians so quickly discarded such a wonderful gift from God? Paul could not comprehend it.⁶

John Brown (1800-1874) feels that one of the contributing factors in the sudden turning away from the Gospel by some of the Galatians was due to the fact that they were Christians in name only. Brown states emphatically, “No man is ‘born again’ till he is ‘born of the Spirit’.”⁷ As far as he’s concerned there is very little, if anything, that exposes the religious and moral depravity of some church-goers than this. Pretending to be what something or someone you are not is bad enough, but pretending to be a child of God is even worse. This is caused by the fact that no one can ever really understand and believe and live a holy Christian life until they become a new creation through the supernatural operation of the Holy Spirit. It cannot be rationalized, manufactured, or successfully imitated. The principles of the Christian faith cannot be memorized or mimicked by constant practice. They are built from within by the power of the indwelling Spirit of God.

I like the way John Edmunds (1801-1874) paraphrases verse six: “I marvel that you are so soon changing sides.” That certainly encapsulates what was going on between the “works” crowd and the “faith” crew. And we know who the Apostle Paul was rooting for. But what caught him by surprise was their “couldn’t care less” attitude about losing him as a mentor and so willingly to let these intruders steal the joy the Gospel brought to them by faith in Jesus the Anointed One. Instead of walking forward by faith, they were backsliding into heresy.⁸ On top of that, they were forsaking the One who called them out of the sin’s slavery in heathenism into the light of sonship through the Anointed One.

It is important to keep in mind that the One who called the Apostle was not Paul himself, nor the Anointed One alone, but God Himself through the Anointed One, through Ananias, then to the Apostle Paul.⁹ This should not seem strange to us because Jesus said that He was sent to do His Father’s will, and Paul was called by the Anointed One to do the same Father’s will. So instead of these misguided Galatians thinking that they were only severing their ties with Paul, or planning to serve the Anointed One by a different way, Paul reminds them that they are disobeying their One True God. The same goes for all of us who for some reason do not feel that the Bible is relevant for today, or that the emphasis on the Anointed One’s crucifixion and resurrection as important in making people feel loved by God are doing the same thing.¹⁰

Philip Schaff (1819-1893) cautions that we must understand what Paul means by “another” gospel. The Greek adjective heteros can be used either to mean “another of the same, another kind, or any other,” when it comes to quantity. It can also be used to mean “another, one not of the same nature, form, class, kind, different,” when it comes to quality. Heteros is the root word from which we get the English word, heterosexual. Whether the person is of the male or female gender, they are both a type of human being in quantity. Yet, you can tell them apart because when it comes to procreation, one can do what the other cannot do. That’s what makes them different in quality.

Schaff agrees with Thayer’s Greek Lexicon that points to heteros as something not of the same nature, form, class, or kind. This is a different conclusion than what some other scholars came to. They say it was more of an imitation or modification of the true Gospel. In Paul’s Gospel, the work of Jesus the Anointed One led to salvation, while in the Judaizers version works of the Law facilitated one’s salvation. Schaff says that what the Judaizers produced was not deserving of the term “gospel” – namely, the Good News of love, grace, mercy, forgiveness, salvation, and everlasting life with God. Both the Law and the Anointed One, – the Word made flesh, were both ordained of God. But the Law was the prototype while the Anointed One was the finished product.¹¹

W. A. O’Conor (1820-1887) has an interesting analogy on what the Judaizers were trying to do in Galatia. As he sees it, perversion of doctrine is usually one in a long line of circumstances that succeed each other by a fixed law. Men corrupt their creed in order to bring it into consistency with their degenerate conduct. There was not enough time for this process in the case of the Galatians. Paul wonders at their change from real to token religion before a sufficient period of time elapsed for their zeal to cool, and their faith to be infringed upon by the world. He expected much better things from them.¹² This would really make suspect their change in faith to begin with. It looks like Christianity was nothing more than a substitute for heathenism for some of them.

That’s what happened after the conversion of Roman Emperor Constantine to Christianity in 312 AD ended Roman persecution of Christians and began imperial patronage of the Christian churches. A public holiday celebrated around December 25th in the family home was a time for feasting, goodwill, generosity to the poor, the exchange of gifts and the decoration of trees. This was Saturnalia, the pagan Roman winter solstice festival. So in order to get the Romans to convert to Christianity, December 25th was declared a religious church holiday in honor of the birth of Jesus the Anointed One. So a mass was started in honor of Christ. That’s how it became known as Christ-mass.

For Alvah Hovey (1820-1903), the abruptness with which Paul introduces the occasion for his Epistle reveals his intense and painful anxiety – an anxiousness mingled with surprise that was hard to express. The Greek verb thaumazō which is translated “marvel,” occurs very often in the Final Covenant, and in the KJV is frequently rendered as “wonder,” once each as “admiration” and “admire.” It may denote either a joyful or a painful surprise,¹³ a sudden and powerful emotion occasioned by something that is very admirable or very dreadful, and in either case unexpected. Whether Paul meant he was astonished at how quickly the Galatians changed their minds due to the shortness of times since he left them around 53 AD and when he wrote this letter in 56 AD or the time between when the Judaizers arrived and the Galatians yielded in some measure to their new doctrine. In any case, it happened faster than Paul would have ever expected it to.¹⁴

William Ernest Henley (1849-1903), English poet, editor, and critic. At age 12 Henley was diagnosed with tubercular arthritis that necessitated the amputation of one of his legs just below the knee; the other foot was saved only through a radical surgery performed by Joseph Lister, inventor of Listerine. As he healed in the infirmary, Henley began to write poems, including “Invictus,” the last line of which reads: “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.” Henley died at the age of 53 as the result of tuberculosis.

A Filipina living in Los Angeles named Lourdes M. Cabrera once replied to the question of why are we masters of our fate and captains of our souls by saying that we are truly masters of our faith, and captains of our souls. For every action we take, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is an eternal reality, not because there is material reaction to all actions but because we are creating the forces to push our dreams into fruition. We usually dream, and this dream we inserted an equally powerful intellectual imagination. Any thought created by the mind is an energy force that seeks its realizing what we desire. This energy forces are not seen by the naked eye, but it is laden with force and power from the emotions. once these thoughts are materialized, we receive the effect which is the realization of that dream.¹

Another individual, Zeke Le Rossignol who studied at the University of Tasmania in Australia wrote that Invictus, the poem from which it came, is meant to be a Stoic poem, as such ‘master’ should not be interpreted as ‘boss’ as this would actually be contrary to the philosophies teachings, but as more like “master of a craft” (i.e. optionality in life and in the face of circumstance), while “captain of my soul” refers to being in control of ones thoughts and feelings (via the dichotomy of control).²

But Caroline Coleman on her blog “A Chapter a Day,” looks at the incidents in Luke’s Gospel, chapter nineteen and informs us that Invictus is the Latin word for “unconquered.” But when we look at those among world leaders who push back against the tides of world opinion and the census of their own people just to look strong. As the President of Syria, the Ayatollah of Iran, and the defeated president Maduro of Venezuela demonstrate, sometimes it is good to be conquered. Why? Because sometimes we humans can be stubbornly, pigheadedly wrong. We can go charging off into the darkness, like untamed horses. We can all spot an adult who was spoiled as a child. How? Because they’re a nightmare to be with… There is something inside the human soul that needs conquering.

The Bible teaches that there is something inside each human that only the gentle loving hand of God can conquer. Why? Because we are blind to our darkness. We are blind to faults that are glaringly obvious to us when we see them in others. In addition, sometimes we can see our own faults – and yet feel helpless to change them. The harder someone tells us to change, the more we buck against them and their words.

She goes on to say that the only way we can become masters of our fate and captains of our soul is to turn ourselves over the Master of the winds and wave as the captain of our ship. After all, we do have control of our will and ability to let God and the Holy Spirit to have control of us. That way, we become victors by giving up. But we don’t need to wait until we get to the end of our rope or find ourselves in a predicament from which we cannot extract ourselves. When we let God take our stubbornness, pride, insecurity, anxiety and fears, He will exchange them for peace through His presence and wisdom.

So if we truly want to be the master of our fate and the captain of our soul then let Jesus the Anointed One take control of our lives. When we come to the realization that we need to let go of the wheel and let God have His way in our lives, it’s the best thing any person can do to guarantee their fate. As the Apostle Paul told the Colossians: By Jesus the Anointed One’s power all things were made: things in heaven and on earth, seen and not seen – all spiritual rulers, lords, powers, and authorities. Everything was made through Him and for Him. The Son was there before anything was made. And all things continue because of Him. Can you find anyone with more power and authority to guide your life? So why hesitate? – Dr. Robert R Seyda

OUR MOTHERS OF FAITH

The kind lady who wrote this story seems to have not signed her name on purpose. After reading this you’ll know why. The Bible tells us that having faith is believing what you cannot see. You just know by faith that it’s there. In many cases, our Mothers were believed to be there for us by faith. Let this woman’s story tell you her experience about being a Mother by Faith.

She said it all began to make sense to her one day, the blank stares, the lack of response, the way one of the kids walked into the room while she was on the phone and without even looking at her asked to be taken to the mall. Inside she was thinking, “Can’t you see I’m on the phone?” Obviously not; no one can see if she’s on the phone, or cooking, or sweeping the floor, or even standing on her head in the corner, because no one could see her at all. She was invisible! The invisible Mom!

Some days she was only a pair of hands, nothing more! Can you fix this? Can you tie this? Can you open this? Some days she felt like being an object of artificial intelligence. She was a clock, “What time is it?” She was a TV guide, “What number is the Disney Channel?” She was an Uber driver, “Please pick me up around 5:30, please.” Some days she was a crystal ball; “Where’s my other sock?, Where’s my phone?, What’s for dinner?”

She was certain that hers were the hands that once held books and the eyes that studied history, music, and Early American literature – but now they were covered with peanut butter and jelly, macaroni and cheese, pouring Kool Aid or Seven-up into glasses.

One night, a group of her friends were having dinner, celebrating the return of a friend from England. She just got back from a fabulous trip, and she telling everyone about the hotel she stayed in, the food she ate, the sights she saw, etc. While sitting there, this lady looked around at the others whose kids were already grown and were thinking of taking the same trip. She suddenly realized she was feeling sorry for herself.

It was then that her friend who just returned from England handed her a beautifully wrapped package, and said, “I brought you this just for you.” It was a book on the magnificent cathedrals of Europe. This lady wasn’t exactly sure why she was giving it to her until she read the inscription: “With admiration for the greatness of what you are building that no one sees.”

It finally all came together in the days following, when she would read – every free minute she had. And there she discovered what would become for her, four life-changing truths, after which she could pattern her work:

• No one can say who built the great cathedrals of Europe – we have no record of their names.
• These builders gave their whole lives for a work they would never see finished.
• They made great sacrifices and expected no credit.
• The passion of their building was fueled by their faith that the eyes of God saw everything.

What struck her most was a story in the book that told of a rich man who came to visit the cathedral while it was being built, and he saw a workman carving a tiny bird on the inside of a beam. He was puzzled and asked the man, “Why are you spending so much time carving that bird into a beam that will be covered by the roof, No one will ever see it?” The workman replied, “Because God sees it.”

She closed the book, feeling the missing pieces fall into place in her heart and mind. It was almost as if she heard God whispering to her, “I see you. I see the sacrifices you make every day, even when no one around you does.” No act of kindness you’ve done, no sequin you’ve sewn on a dress, no cupcake you’ve baked, no sleepovers for her daughters friends that she made a happy occasion by serving sandwiches and doughnuts, no last minute errand is too small for Me to notice and smile over. You are building a great cathedral, but you can’t see right now what it will become until I show it to you some day.

She developed right perspective after she saw herself as a great builder. As one of the people who show up at a job that they will never see finished, to work on something that their name will never be on. The writer of the book went so far as to say that no cathedrals would ever be completed in one’s lifetime because there are so few people willing to sacrifice to that degree.

When she really thought about it, she didn’t want her daughter to tell her friends that her mother was inviting her home from college for Thanksgiving, and letting them know: “My Mom gets up at four in the morning and bakes homemade pies, and then she hand bastes a turkey for three hours and presses all the linens for the table.” That would mean she was building a monument to herself. She just wanted her to come home of her own free will. And then, if there is anything more to say to her friends, she’d say, “You’re gonna love my Mom!”

To all the mothers on this coming Mother’s Day, you are building magnificent cathedrals. You must remain unseen if you’re doing it the right way. And one day, it is very possible that the world will marvel, not only at what you have built, but at the beauty it has added to the world by the sacrifices of invisible mothers like yourselves.

But keep in mind, there’s One to whom you are not invisible, and that’s your heavenly Father. Jesus said He was going away to prepare a place for all of us. But, in using our imagination, once it’s prepared, the Father will be your personal decorator. And don’t be surprised if on all the walls are pictures of you doing all the things you did for your husband, children, neighbors, friends, church and God. They will be eternal precious memories that bring you everlasting joy. – Dr. Robert R Seyda

NEW TESTAMENT CONTEXTUAL AL COMMENTARY

by Dr. Robert R. Seyda

PAUL’S LETTER TO THE GALATIAN CHURCHES

CHAPTER ONE (Lesson XVIII)

John Calvin feels that Paul did not rebuke the Galatians strong enough. They deserved much harsher language, especially in light of the terrible mistake they are making. And to make things even worse, they turned away so quickly, without any consultation, and Paul took this as a personal insult. And why not, look how long he labored and under such conditions that his health was threatened. Furthermore, they threw away the Gospel that Jesus the Anointed One gave Paul to share with them. A greater insult of the Anointed One could not be imagined. Especially since the Anointed One called them by God’s grace. For Calvin, the fact that they were called by the Anointed One through grace, this tends to heighten the criminality of their ingratitude. To revolt from the Son of God, under any circumstances, is unworthy and disgraceful; but to revolt from Him, after being invited to partake of salvation by grace, is even more despicable. His goodness to us renders our ingratitude to Him more grievous.¹

Calvin writes in another place, about how the church often tries to tolerate the imperfections of conduct in fellow believers, especially those in leadership. Some, says Calvin, exclaim that it is impossible to tolerate the vice which stalks the Church like a pestilence. Should the Church try to deal with it like the Apostle Paul is doing here in Galatians? After all, they point out, among the Corinthians, it was not just a few that erred, but almost the whole body became tainted. What course of action did the Apostle Paul take in their case? Was by the intervention of the Holy Spirit by whose witness the Church stands or falls? Does he seek to separate himself from them? Does he discard them from the kingdom of the Anointed One? Does he strike them with the thunder of a final anathema? He not only does none of these things, but he acknowledges and heralds them as God’s Church – a society of saints. Today we might call this “reverse psychology.”

Now, says Calvin, if Galatians remains tied to God’s Church under new leadership and allowed to participate the Lord’s Supper and teaching of God’s Word, who could possibly reject them when over in Corinth they are doing carnal things the Galatians would never think of doing. How, it is asked, would the Corinthians act once they learned that the Galatians abandoned the Gospel, something they would never think of doing? How much of a factor is it that the same Apostle founded both churches? Those are some of the things the Apostle Paul dealt with in what he thought was good work in both places.² Sometimes when things go bad in a church after the pastor left, it leaves them feeling like a failure with no opportunity to correct the situation. In Paul’s case, he wrote a letter.

Dutch reformer Jakob Arminius notices that Paul did not disown the believers in Galatia as children of God just because they were being misled, nor did he suggest that they were no longer churches under God’s umbrella of Holy Spirit’s protection. Rather, he took what was happening in Galatia as a sign that churches of God and the Anointed One, even those which were instituted by other Preachers and Apostles, may decline by degrees, and sometimes do drift away from the truth of the faith, from the integrity of divine worship, and from their first love,³ either by adding to the doctrines of faith that are the foundation for that which is the object of worship, and direct their worship toward their rites, rituals, regulations, and ceremonies. It can also happen when they pervert the right meaning of faith by not using Scripture to determine that which is to be worshiped, and by changing the Biblical modes and methods of worship into another form.

In spite of this, says Arminius, they are still acknowledged, by God and the Anointed One, as God’s churches and God’s people, even as He did when they tried worshiping Him using a golden calf in the Sinai wilderness, and when they paid divine honors both to Yahweh and Baal when they offer to Moloch’s fire the children they gave birth to and raised to respect Yahweh.⁴ Not only that, but when they ordained certain ceremonies to be added to their faith in the Anointed One, and begin to call into question His resurrection.⁵ Yet even under these circumstances they are still acknowledged as the churches and the people of God in spite of their attempted communion with Him by referring to His Word to which they’ve added sacramental symbols and insignificant tokens. That’s because God does desire to remove the candlestick out of its rightful place, or send them a bill of divorcement⁶.⁷

Both Paul and Arminius see that it isn’t the church that has been corrupted, but the people who are members of that church. Arminius argues that just because a person develops cancer on their skin or in their lung, their whole body is not eliminated in order to cure the cancer. The healing source is directed toward where the cancer is located so it can be gotten rid of. The same goes for the church. There are so many healthy cells in the Body of the Anointed One that it would be unfair to get rid of all of them. The Great Physician is always ready to use His Word that can surgically remove those cells that do not belong.⁸

John Owen (1616-1683), English Protestant Nonconformist, theologian, and academic administrator at the University of Oxford, on the subject of the contrast between works and grace as the source of justification, does not see this as a war between grace and works with one excluding the other. It all comes down to which one precedes justification and which one follows justification. He believes that Paul penned the Romans and Galatians especially to prove this point. He sees the Apostle Paul laying down a fundamental saying that is the basis of his argument as to faith and works and their influence in justification.⁹

For Owen, it all started with Paul’s confrontation with Peter in Antioch. This was the turning point that caused Paul and the others to forsake their Judaism, and grab hold of the mercy of God as promised in the Gospel. This, therefore, may have been the main instance for the Holy Spirit to have this doctrine debated. No doubt that’s why Paul begins here in verse fifteen talking about how he and Peter were Jews by nature, and not foreigners to God’s Law like the Gentiles. So they took a different road in learning that no one is justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus the Anointed One. The Gentiles practiced no good works to depend on for justification. So it was the Jews who believed in Jesus the Anointed One that they might be justified by their faith in Him and not by their works in obedience to the Law.¹⁰

But there is some confusion as to what Paul meant when he said in Romans “from faith to faith.” Some have suggested that it means going from faith in the Law to faith in Jesus the Anointed One. Others have stated that it means going from faith in one’s ability to gain justification on their own, to faith that only God can establish justification through Jesus the Anointed One. That was Paul message to the Corinthians,¹¹ and he repeats it here in Galatians verse sixteen. Paul says it is clear, we know we cannot become right with God just by obeying the Law. A person is made right with God by putting their trust in Jesus the Anointed One. For that same reason, we all have put our trust in Jesus the Anointed One. We have been made right with God because of our faith in the Anointed One and not by obeying the Law. No man can be made right with God by obeying the Law alone.¹²

But Owen also saw this in another way. For him, no one would want to stand in a trial before God based solely upon their own behavior and conduct so He would be justified in granting them a right standing with Him. There would be too many personal faults, failures, and shortcomings. So our only plea for mercy would be for God to accept what Jesus did instead of what we did to cover our sins. There is no personal, inherent righteousness in the works of any believers that they can substitute for the work of the Anointed One on the cross. Our works would not stand God’s examination for purity. Even David knew this truth.¹³ So we can see that this testimony is from the Law,¹⁴ and transferred into the Gospel and urged twice by the Apostle Paul here in Galatians with the same purpose and principle. The Law came first, but only to make way for the Gospel.¹⁵

John Bunyan (1628-1688) talks about our justification through the Anointed One and how it is not bought by us or worked for by us but is imputed to us by the grace of God. That’s why it makes no sense to seek a right standing with God through the Law. Furthermore, do not make your conscience obligated to the Law thinking it will increase your chances to obtain eternal life. Not only that, but don’t try to make sense out of God’s plan of salvation using of human logic. When you get into reasoning you loose your freedom of faith believing. The more you put your faith in understanding the Law in order to help you gain an advantage in achieving a right standing with God, the more you lessen the power of the Gospel which is the power of God to bring salvation. And finally, don’t be misled by those who offer a different gospel or a modified gospel that removes the burden of pleading guilty to being a sinner, throwing oneself on the mercy of God, being repentant and asking forgiveness for one’s sins.

Bunyan then warns that by letting the Law take the place of the Gospel; conscience replaces the leading of the Holy Spirit; good works as a substitute for faith and the like. Those who are not yet firmly planted in faith have been pestered by these things for centuries. In fact, thousands saw their faith damaged, and for some, it was broken beyond repair. This is the way Satan ruined Adam and Eve’s life in the Garden of Eden, and his attempts to overthrow the God’s Church through the ages. Truth is, the Galatians were quickly misled by such attempts at amending the Gospel. The serpent actually used some who called themselves apostles and ministers of Jesus the Anointed One. But where the Lord Jesus is preached in truth, and even a small portion of His Gospel becomes known, it has proved much harder for the devil to lead them astray from the highway of holiness. Here in Galatians Paul called it “another gospel.” Not that they came with new books to be added to the Final Covenant and with greater enlightenment on who Jesus the Anointed One really was, but they took what was said in the Gospel and twisted it to fit their legal philosophy. No wonder Paul was so confused by the sudden abandonment by the Galatians of the Gospel he brought to them, for another gospel Paul would never approve of.¹⁶

NEW TESTAMENT CONTEXTUAL COMMENTARY

by Dr. Robert R. Seyda

PAUL’S LETTER TO THE GALATIAN CHURCHES

CHAPTER ONE (Lesson XVII)

These faithful church scholars then pointed out to the heretic Manes what else Paul said to the Galatians about those who came in after he left and called them false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into Apostles of the Anointed One. However, that shouldn’t surprise anyone, they told him, because Satan often transforms himself into an angel of enlightenment.¹ What a great thing it is, therefore, when true ministers are transformed into real messengers of the light of the Gospel! They also informed Manes that Paul further points out just what kind of people these Judaizers were so they could understand how they were being misled. So just as Paul expressed surprise that the Galatians were so quick to turn away from the true Gospel, so the Bishop warned his congregation that such people as Manes might do the same to them.²

What makes it even more touching, is that, as Chrysostom said in his writings, Paul would not have been so moved and devastated by their falling away were it not for the fact that he thought so highly of them to begin with. Chrysostom marveled that in Paul’s reprimand, especially after seeing how quickly and how far away they fell from the truth, that he still held a favorable and highly exalted opinion of them.³ And in another place, Chrysostom writes that any believer who is carried away after a long time is worthy of censorship, but the one who falls at the first attack and in the initial skirmish shows that they are weaklings in their faith. That’s why Paul expresses his frustration by saying “What is this, that those who deceive you do not need much time, but their first assault on the Gospel sufficed to defeat and capture you?” If Paul thought of them as mere nobodies and easily deceived, says Chrysostom, he would not have been surprised by what occurred. So it’s no wonder he fought back so hard to get them to turn around and go the way he originally showed them.⁴

Ambrosiaster, an early church commentator (366 AD), was also stunned by the Galatians’s behavior. He wondered how often does a person run away from happiness to unhappiness. No wonder Paul was astonished at the stupidity of people who deserted their place of safety and subjected themselves to the pointless grief of getting lost. Ambrosiaster likens it to a confused sailor who was safely anchored in port as a terrible storm approaches but decides to set sail and be tossed about by the strong winds and huge waves. It seems that the Galatians were acting the same way because their foolishness caused them to be cut loose from the Rock Jesus the Anointed One, and consequently be made to endure the pains of shame under the yoke of the Law with no hope of relief in sight.⁵

The way Ambrosiaster sees it, this turmoil was all caused because although what these false teachers preached was essentially additional teachings added to what all the Apostles proclaimed, nevertheless they were being turned away from the truth. So it wasn’t that Paul was being jealous, it was that he was depressed that they were such easy prey for these Judaizers. I respectfully disagree with Ambrosiaster in that Paul was jealous that the Galatians found these Judaizers so much more convincing than he was.

Augustine of Hippo was clear in his explanation of the Gospel that Paul spoke about. As he sees it, any so called gospel of human origin is false, for every human being is capable of not telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth.⁶ Whatever divine revelation that is shared by any person must first come through that person from God, not from any human source. And so the term “Gospel” cannot be applied to what is of pure human origin. Such were the claims put forward by those who sought to lead the Galatians in a different direction. God called them out from sin’s slavery into the joy of freedom in Grace through Paul, now the Judaizers were pulling away from that freedom of Grace back into sin’s terrible slavery.⁷

Medieval commentator Haimo of Auxerre feels that these Judaizers wanted to alter the Gospel by changing it from addressing eternal things of the Spirit into daily duties of the flesh under the Law. They are unable to do this by using the Gospel because the Gospel is unshakable and true. Indeed, if any gospel is so easily changed, it cannot be the true Gospel. Therefore, while there are some people who can be moved away from the correctness of the Gospel, the Gospel itself remains forever unchangeable because the One who brought it is unchangeable⁸.⁹

Theodoret, Bishop of Cyr, believes that Paul is saying that the Judaizers did not cause the Galatians to depart from the Gospel given to them by the One who then called them. For the same God who gave the Law is the One who gave the Gospel. He is the author of both. So how could they be turned away from one to the other and say that one was good and the other bad? There is no other Gospel. God would not say one thing in the Law and another thing in the Gospel. Neither would the Holy Spirit inspire Paul and the Apostles to preach one Gospel and then inspire others to preach a different gospel. The Galatians came up with no alibi or excuse for changing. For the Lord does not preach some things through us and others through the other apostles. What these Judaizers were doing was trying to get the Galatians to trade in their being yoked together with Jesus the Anointed One to then be yoked to the Law alone. The yoke of the Anointed One gave Jesus the opportunity to lead them on the path to everlasting life, while the yoke of the Law by itself led them on the path to condemnation and death.¹⁰ While I appreciate the Bishop’s point of view, Paul did call the preaching of the Judaizers “another gospel.” It was this “other” gospel that caused them to discard the yoke of Jesus for the harness of the Law.

Bruno the Carthusian takes a somewhat different view. Not only was Paul astonished at the speed and ease by which the Galatians were misled, but was also astounded that they so quickly discarded all that he told them about God’s plan of salvation. The Gospel he preached lifted such a great weight off their shoulders, only to have them turn around and allow these Judaizers to weigh them down again. The tragedy was that none of this old burden was of any use. In a way, Paul saw them as being so insensible to the point that they became senseless. Their call to salvation through the Gospel was by grace, now they so quickly exchanged it for salvation by works that was the cause for them being so lost in the first place.¹¹

Years later, the venerable Thomas Aquinas would offer these comment:

Paul refutes their error by showing the authority of the Gospel teaching: First, by showing their instability by lightly dismissing the Gospel teaching he does three things: First, he enlarges upon the guilt of those who were misled for their instability of mind. Hence Paul says, I’m astonished. As if to say: Although you are aware of the many good things already mentioned that were given you through the Anointed One, and although I instructed you well, nevertheless you have migrated so far that you’ve completely removed yourself in such a short time from where you were to where you’ve migrated. With this word he alludes to their name, because Galatians were known as “migrants.” It’s as though Paul is calling these believers “migrants” because they moved away from what they were taught. Secondly, by commending the authority of the Gospel’s teaching, he suggests that in view of the precious value of that which they so lightly regarded the Good News, their error is seen to be so much the greater. He amplifies their guilt in contrast to that which they abandoned. For if one’s intellect withdraws and is removed from evil, it is worthy of praise and does well; but when it departs from the good, it must bear the guilt. And this is how they were removed from good. So Paul says to them: Although it is amazing that you are so quickly and so far removed, there is additional reason for wonder, namely, because you have removed yourselves from God, and from faith in Him that called you into the sharing of the eternal good which we have through Jesus the Anointed One. Thirdly, he amplifies their guilt on the part of that to which they have turned, because they have been turned not to good but to evil. Hence he says, unto another gospel, namely, of the Old Law, which is a good message only insofar as it does announce some good things, namely, temporal and carnal. Yet it is not completely perfect as is the Gospel, because it does not announce the wholesome and loftiest goods, but small and slight ones. But the New Law is perfect in the full sense a Gospel, namely, a good message can be because it announces the greatest goods, namely, heavenly, spiritual and eternal. And although it is another gospel according to the tradition of the deceivers, yet according to Paul’s preaching it is not. For it is different in the promises, but not in its representation, because the same thing is contained in the First Covenant and in the Final Covenant: in the First, indeed, it is a representation, but in the Final it is the real thing. Therefore it is another gospel if you consider the outward appearances; but as to the things that are contained and exist within, it does not qualify as another gospel.12

Reformer Martin Luther takes a pastoral approach in dealing with the situation in Galatia. He shows such patience in dealing with his seduced Galatians! He does not pounce on them but, like a father, he tries to help them see the consequences of their error. With parental affection he talks to them, yet he does it in a way that also lets them see how upset he is. On the other hand, he is highly indignant at the seducers whom he blames for the defection of the Galatians from the truth. Paul’s indignation flares up in a manner expected from any sorely disappointed father. “If anybody else comes around preaching any other Gospel than the one you received from me, let them be shunned as demonic.” What drives Paul to do what he’s doing is a spiritual rule which he himself will explain more fully later on. That’s where he says: “Brethren, if someone is entrapped by a serious mistake, those of you who spiritually strong, restore that person to spiritual health in the spirit of meekness. Always keep in mind, the same thing might happen to you.¹³”¹⁴

NEW TESTAMENT CONTEXTUAL COMMENTARY

by Dr. Robert R. Seyda

PAUL’S LETTER TO THE GALATIAN CHURCHES

CHAPTER ONE (Lesson XVI)

The Apostle Paul was very much aware of certain Messianic Jews who were going around trying to convince believers to observe all their Jewish customs and manners to reinforce their new Christian beliefs. He warned the Romans of the same thing.¹ And Paul was afraid that the Corinthians might fall into the same trap that brought down Adam and Eve. He told them, “I am afraid that you will be fooled and led away from your pure love for the Anointed One. You listen when someone comes and preaches a different Jesus than the One we preached. You believe what you hear about a different spirit and different good news than that which we preached.”²

So his message to the Galatians was that there was no other Gospel than the one he received from the Anointed One and preached to them. Paul knew that such false teaching would only bring disharmony and discord in the Church. Such preachers didn’t want the people to know what God thought, but what they thought.³ In fact, Paul called them false evangelists, who not only lied about the Gospel but also made up stories about their success.⁴ The last thing Paul wanted was for all the work he accomplished in the churches throughout Galatia to be squandered away because of false doctrine.

Kenneth Wuest gives us a very perceptive definition of what Paul meant by “another gospel.” The Apostle uses two Greek adjectives, both of which mean “another,” but distinctly “other” in kind. In verse six he uses the Greek adjective heteros, which means “not the same in nature, a different class, a different kind.” Then in verse seven, he uses the Greek word allos, which means “another of the same kind.” So the adjective heteros denotes qualitative differences, while allos quantitative differences. Therefore, heteros distinguishes one out of many, and allos denotes one along with many others.

Let’s put it in today’s language by using a modern item as an example. You go down to your local bakery to buy a pie. There in the glass case, you see a variety of pies made with various ingredients and flavors. You pick out one that reads, “Home-made Apple Pie.” But when you get it home, and after you’ve made a hot cup of coffee, taken out the vanilla ice cream, and heated the pie in the microwave, you begin to eat it. But there’s something different about it. Yes, it looks like apple pie, smells like apple pie, but when you eat it you notice an unfamiliar taste. It isn’t until you read the ingredients that you discover the crust was made of rice flour and artificial ingredients flavored to taste like apple.

So what the Apostle Paul is telling the Galatians about his Gospel and the gospel of the Judaizers is that these false prophets are trying to sell their gospel as being a new and improved version of Paul’s Gospel when in fact it is an artificial gospel at best. And for Paul, anything different from what he brought them as the Good News cannot be good at all. Actually, it is misleading and, therefore, misguiding. Paul’s doctrine of grace is God’s truth, and anything that differs in kind from it must necessarily be false doctrine.⁵

Can you imagine the listeners throughout Galatia hearing their Bishop read the opening salutation of Paul’s letter and thinking, oh my goodness, he really wants us to know that he’s the man of the hour and we are privileged to get a letter from such a highly regarded Apostle. And there’s little reason to believe they weren’t shocked by his sharp and sudden accusation of their backsliding and believing in heresy.

Paul leaves no doubt that he is overwhelmed and appalled that after all he went through to preach to them the Gospel that so completely changed their lives, now he hears they are deserting it. What hurts even more, is that they were also turning their backs on him and becoming followers of an imitation gospel. In other words, Paul felt jilted and rejected; he was truly heartbroken. That’s why he wrote this epistle, he wanted a fair debate with the Judaizers who were using his absence to say whatever they needed to say to redirect the Galatians back to their point of view.

There is an interesting allegory in Jewish literature about four men named, Azzai, Zoma, Aher, and Akiba who entered Paradise.⁶ Akiba told his three colleagues ahead of time that when they arrive at the desert mirage of pure marble, don’t yell, water, water! For God said that anyone who sounds a false alarm will not be accepted in His sight. We are told that as soon as Azzai took a look, he died, for it is said: “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.”⁷ Then Zoma took one look and became demented, for it is said: “When you find honey, eat enough to be satisfied, but don’t overeat and end up vomiting.”⁸ Then Aher looked and became disillusioned and began trying to destroy the reeds surrounding the mirage in order to get to the water. Jewish scholars explain that this was a reference to his backsliding and becoming a Christian heretic. But Akiba looked but kept going unhurt. Some say that in Paul’s mind, these were represented in the congregations throughout Galatia. But the worst of all were the ones who acted like Aher, whose full name was Elisha ben Abuyah, an erratic scholar who twisted God’s word and gave it his own meaning.

Before he came preaching this good news, these people knew nothing of God’s new plan of salvation through Jesus the Anointed One, that replaced the old plan of covering their sins by way of animal sacrifices. If Paul had not come, they may have all died unrepentant in their sins. Could it be that he travel that far as a sick man, lived under the most spartan conditions to bring them the Gospel, and now they’re about to throw it back in his face? We can almost pick up a sense of panic in Paul’s writing. It’s like listening to a counselor trying to talk someone out of a suicidal jump. What’s even more startling is that in doing such a thing they were also turning their backs on God. It would be one thing if Paul wrote this letter year’s after he last saw them, but it appears that Paul just recently talked to visitors from that area. No sooner did he depart and these false teachers arrived. Apparently, they were skillful at persuading people; these Christians were not yet mature, and the situation was very serious.

It wasn’t that these false teachers traveling through Galatia were preaching a completely different gospel involving another the Anointed One; nor were they declaring diverse doctrines offering another salvation without the Anointed One. They were simply distorting the real Gospel of Jesus the Anointed One so that it fit their own particular brand of belief. Today some are doing the same thing, but with greater insult. Instead of “adding” to the Gospel that Paul preached, as the Judaizers did in Galatia, today’s false prophets are “deducting” from that Gospel. To give an alternate interpretation to the Gospel here and there may be reconcilable, but to teach that “God is dead,” and “deny the virgin birth of Jesus,” and question or even eliminate the existence of the “Holy Trinity,” and even “doubt that the Anointed One died to atone for our sins so we can be acquitted of God’s wrath, but that His death was only to cover them up so they can’t be seen but they are still there:” and then “argue that the Bible is not the ‘inspired Word of God’ but mere stories, allegories, and myths,” is not only insulting to the message but also taints the messenger as being a reprobate.

We find an astonishing confession in Church History by Eusebius (260-339 AD) where he notes that in the writings of the earliest pillars of the Church, as well as the Apostles themselves, all received and taught those things which they and others maintained through the centuries. In one of the writings of these men was the account of the heresy of Artemon (230 AD) who was a nontrinitarian in Rome who believed that Jesus was a man whom God adopted to be His Son. In fact, even Paul of Samosata the Bishop of Antioch (200-275 AD) became a believer in this adoptionism of Jesus doctrine. So it appears that the error of the Galatians in accepting another gospel kept being repeated.

Eusebius goes on to say that up until Pope Victor I (189-199 AD), the thirteenth Bishop of Rome, came to power the truth of the Gospel the Apostles preached was preserved in its original form. But once he died and Pope Zephyrinus succeeded him in 199 AD and ruled until 217 AD, the truth of the Gospel started being corrupted by the inspiration of men, not by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Even though what they begin to teach was contradicted by Holy Scriptures, as well as the writings of certain brethren older than the times of Victor, who wrote against Greek and Roman philosophers in defense of the Gospel truth, and against the heresies of their time.

Among these writers were a Christian scholar named Justin Martyr (100-165 AD); Tatian the Syrian Christian writer (120-180 AD); Titus Clement of Alexandria (150-215 AD); African scholar Miltiades (244-314 AD), and many others, all of whom ascribed divinity to Jesus the Anointed One. By that time most church scholars knew of the works by Irenaeus and Melito, and the rest, which declared that Jesus the Anointed One was both God and man. Plus, there were the psalms and hymns which were written from the beginning of the founding of the church, celebrating Jesus the Anointed One as the living Word of God, ascribing divinity to Him. Since the doctrine of the Church, then, was proclaimed for so many years, how was it possible that those who preached Paul’s Gospel up until the time of Pope Victor, in the same manner as the apostles before them, were now being replacing the inspired words of Paul and others by the ideologies of men?⁹

In 278 AD, Archelaus Bishop of Carrhae held a public dispute with a well-known heretic named Manes who was a manic follower of the Persian prophet named Mani. He was the son of the leader of a Jewish Christian sect called the Elcesaites, part of the Gnostic¹⁰ movement which prevalent at that time. But at the age of twenty-four, he saw a vision in which his “heavenly twin” told him to leave his father’s sect and preach the true message of Jesus. So he went to India where he studied Hinduism and soon his gospel was quite different than what Jesus taught. So when he came to Carrhae, a prominent city in Persia, a debate was held with Manes and top church thinkers. The main topic of the debate was obedience to the commandments in the Bible and the teachings of Jesus concerning sin. They reminded him of Paul’s warning about those who came preaching another gospel without Jesus the Anointed One.

NEW TESTAMENT CONTEXTUAL COMMENTARY

by Dr. Robert R. Seyda

PAUL’S LETTER TO THE GALATIAN CHURCHES

CHAPTER ONE (Lesson XV)

Alfred E. Bouter (born 1943) offers an interesting description of where the believer stands in relationship to their new life in the Anointed One. As he sees it, this is the basis of everything, we are on resurrection ground, but how did we get there? It is only because of the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus, without His sacrifice we have nothing, and what a tremendous sacrifice it was! He not only paid everything that was owed to God and the Law by giving His all! Who can fathom the greatness of His sacrificial gift, the immense ransom that He paid? Paul mentions to the Corinthians that even though God’s grace and salvation are free to them, it needed to be paid for.¹ Who can calculate that price? No one can. Here we see how the Lord Jesus gave Himself for our sins, we see Him as the atonement offering without which we would be eternally lost. This is a wonderful reference to the work of the Lord Jesus, the redemption that He accomplished for us. And for what purpose? Paul tells the Galatians here in verse four, “So that He could deliver us out of this present immoral world.”²

One highly respected British scholar and theologian Daniel Lancaster (born 1963), made this observation on the dialogue between Socrates, Philebus, and Protarchus which included the subject of being willing to sacrifice.³ As Lancaster sees it, for the One who sacrifices Himself for the good of others, did not sacrifice Himself that they may be saved from the persecution which He endured here on earth for their sake, but rather that they in their turn may be able to undergo similar sufferings, and like Him stand fast in the truth. While the Apostle Paul may or may not have read Plato, he certainly subscribed to this motto. No doubt that is why he admired and revered the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus the Anointed One on our behalf.

Philip Ryken (born 1966), eighth President of Wheaton College makes the point that when it comes to the facts about the Anointed One in the Gospel and His crucifixion, resurrection, cross, and an empty tomb, there is not one single word about asking for our help. The Gospel is not about what we do for God; it is about what God did for us. The Father is the One who came up with the Gospel plan. The Son is the One who made the willing sacrifice to fulfill His Father’s will. Although mankind put Jesus to death, the Father raised Him from the dead in order to provide the necessary power needed for our salvation. Therefore, all glory goes to God. If salvation is God’s work from beginning to end, then all the honor and majesty belong to Him forever. Ryken goes on to point out that if all glory goes to God, then what comes to us is only by grace. Grace is God’s favor shown to undeserving sinners as a free gift. The Jews thought that the Law was all they needed for salvation, but we know that as Christians, Jesus is all we’ll ever need.⁴

When wise young Daniel received his vision of the last days showing the Archangel Michael picking up his trumpet and announcing that all those whose names are found written in the Book will be transformed, and those who are asleep in the dust will awake to everlasting life. Daniel wrote: “And those who are wise – the people of God – will shine as brightly as the sun’s brilliance, and those who turn many to righteousness will glitter like stars forever and ever!”⁵

1:6-7a But I’m astonished that you are so suddenly turning away from God, who out of His love and mercy decided to share with you everything He has given to the Anointed One. I can’t believe that you have transferred your allegiance to follow an imitation version of the “good news,” which in fact is really “bad news.”

What Paul is describing here sounds very familiar to what the Psalmist said about the children of Israel.⁶ And the Lord complained to Isaiah that His people showed respect to Him with their mouths, and honored Him with their lips, but their hearts were far from Him. Their worship of Him is worth nothing. The teachings they now follow were made up by humans.⁷ And God told the prophet Jeremiah: “My people have done two sinful things: They have turned away from Me, the well of living waters. And they have cut out of the rock wells for water for themselves. They are broken wells that cannot hold water.”⁸

Several scholars note that among the many papyri⁹ discovered in an ancient rubbish dump near Oxyrhynchus in Egypt at the end of the 1800s, among them were letters in which one person expressed dismay at not receiving a return letter from someone they wrote to earlier. In their remarks, they used the terms, “surprised” and “distressed,” to describe their feelings of disappointment. Some also believe that what Paul is explaining here is not so much surprise or distress, but his being “perplexed” by what he heard about the Galatians’ sudden abandonment of the Gospel brought to them by a proven man of God and adopting the teachings of those with no such endorsement from God or the Anointed One. Other commentators such as Norwegian Bible scholar Nils A. Dahl concluded that Paul did not purposely leave out his ordinary greetings, but exchanged it for an expression of astonishment and disapproval. Either way, the Galatians must have known right away that Paul was not rejoicing over what he heard.¹⁰

This portrays the Galatians’ departure from the way that Paul led them to by the Gospel, is like a runner on an obstacle course headed toward the finish line and suddenly goes off course and starts running on a path that leads away from the finish line. That’s why he felt so perplexed by their decision. The path that Paul put them on was cleared of obstacles by Jesus who ran this course successfully, but the path they were now following retained all these obstacles so that the Galatians must now learn how to get over or get by each one of them in order to proceed. Unfortunately, they were not headed for the finish line but back to the starting line. It could also be seen in what we call a defector, someone who goes over the line into what is the enemy’s territory. In this case, they left God’s Gift of Salvation through Grace to go over to self-redemption through the Works of the Law. There is every indication that Paul never expected something like this to happen. So his surprise was enveloped with astonishment. This left him wondering how such a thing could happen.¹¹

A. T. Robertson (1863-1934) draws, what he calls, a picture word in explaining what Paul meant by this sudden shift by the Galatians away from the Gospel he preached to them. The Greek verb metatithēmi means “to change places, to transfer.” But it isn’t someone else who is moving them, they are transferring themselves and doing it so quickly on very short notice. To this was not some gradual shift from the time of their conversion in their position concerning God’s grace. No, it began shortly after the Judaizers came to town and tempted them with their artificial doctrine of grace. Robertson mentions that even in his day there were some Christians that fell victim to similar perverters of the Gospel. If it was an amazement to the Apostle Paul, it is equally as much of a surprise to believers today that so many are so silly and so gullible to modern descendants of these ancient charlatans.¹²

To make this even more confusing, there seems to be uncertainty as to how much influence these false teachers were having on Paul’s converts in Galatia and the degree to which they became compliant by conforming to what they were being told to do. Paul fears that the Galatians seemed to have wanted to begin an alternate course that was often followed by Gentiles who converted to Judaism. As such, they obviously put plenty of value on this the things they were told would come their way by following the alternative path. No doubt that made Paul feel even more bewildered by their actions. Paul considered all of this quite ironic for the Galatian Gentiles seeing how God received them and counted them as being right with Him before they knew anything about the Law. So why would they now be persuaded to get involved with something that proved to be unnecessary in the first place? How could they give equal importance to the Good News of their freedom in Grace that Paul brought them with the bad news they were given on becoming prisoners of the Law by the Judaizers? No wonder Paul felt complexed and heartbroken.¹³

But just like he told the Corinthians, Paul was not writing this to shame them, but to let them know that a big mistake was being made and they needed to know how to turn things around. So what he is writing here he wrote out of love, not out of malice.¹⁴ And just as Paul wrote the Thessalonians, he also wanted to Galatians to know that God chose them because they accepted the Gospel Paul preached to them so that they could share in the glory that Yeshua was to receive as the Anointed One.¹⁵ Paul shared the same message with Timothy.¹⁶

Paul did not want the Galatians to forget that it was by the loving-favor of the Lord Jesus that they too were given the opportunity to trust God for their salvation from the punishment of sin that was coming on all the world as were others.¹⁷ This must have stuck in Paul’s mind when he later wrote the Romans where he told them the same thing.¹⁸ After all, Paul knew what he was talking about because it was what brought him into fellowship with God and the Anointed One.¹⁹

NEW TESTAMENT CONTEXTUAL COMMENTARY

by Dr. Robert R. Seyda

PAUL’S LETTER TO THE GALATIAN CHURCHES

CHAPTER ONE (Lesson XIV)

American theologian and Greek professor at Yale Divinity School, Benjamin Bacon (1860-1932), has quite a lot to say about the doctrine of our Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf, as stated here in verse four, which was one Paul “received” in his old life from the believers whom he persecuted.¹ This led to the growth of his own primitive faith in Jesus our Christ that was able to survive the assaults of Judaism. But Paul always avoids the cruder form of the “substitutionary” doctrine. In this form, Jesus is said to have died “in our place,” as opposed to Paul’s own doctrine of His death being “on our behalf.”² In non-Pauline writings of the Final Covenant it rests upon the Isaiah doctrine of the Suffering Servant.³ This doctrine of substitution is pre-Christian. It was used by the authors of second and fourth Maccabees to explain the sufferings of the Maccabæan martyrs.⁴

For Bacon, Paul seems to take special pains to avoid both the phraseology and the implications of the substitutionary theory, which conceived the suffering of Jesus in a more moral sense.⁵ But to Paul, the sinful conditions out of which the children of God must be delivered were the consequence of “their own sins.” Therefore, these provides the ultimate explanation of our Christ’s suffering so that the First Covenant description of sacrifice “for sin” becomes appropriate.⁶ In other words, the substitutionary theory is that any of us could have died on the cross for our sins. But that is not the case. Jesus did not just substitute for us. He was, in fact, the only one who qualified to die on our behalf; to do something none of us could do in order to obtain something we could never obtained – God’s forgiveness and justification.

In fact, says Bacon, the whole story of Jesus’ earthly career and destiny is for Paul something he sees as almost lost in the excelling glory of the supernatural drama of His coming, death, and resurrection. For Paul, the Gospel consists essentially of nothing else but the transaction by which the preëxistent Son of God obediently humbled Himself through human incarnation and death, and was for this reason exalted to God’s right hand.⁷ This cosmic drama is conceived under the forms of Israel’s redemption from bondage in Egypt.⁸ That’s why verse one expresses Paul’s apostleship in a nutshell, and verse four his message.⁹

Also, the Vicar of West Hendren, London, England, Cyril W. Emmet (1875-1923 AD) discusses his understanding of the present evil world and the world-to-come. The Revised English Version has the word “age” in the margin to imply that the English word “world” not only means a period of time but includes the people who live in it and its characteristic features. That’s because in Jewish theology a distinction is made between “this age,”¹⁰ and “the age to come.” There was also the “age of our Christ,” and of the “kingdom of God.” These are not just periods of time, but periods of civilization and religious thought, also called dispensations.

No doubt, says Emmet, popular thought distinguished between the two ages as successive periods of time, divided by a definite crisis, or catastrophe, but the Christian interpretation the two æons overlap. In other words, one does not abruptly stop and the other immediately begin. The idea of such a distinction in time is still with us and hope looks forward to the future unmistakable establishment of the sovereignty of God at some definite date. But the distinction between the two ages becomes rather moral and spiritual; even in this era Christians enjoy the blessings and possess the powers of the dispensation to come; they are already in a sense delivered “from this present evil world,” and made ready for the spiritual world-to-come.¹¹

As professor Vincent Cheung sees it, when Paul wrote that our Christ “gave Himself for our sins,” we may ask ourselves, “Why is this relevant?” Cheung believes that this is a good example of how a positive statement about the Gospel counteracts a false gospel, or how sound doctrine eliminates distorted teachings. We are “rescued” because our Christ “gave Himself,” and not because of our good works or how good we think we are. Once it is established that this is the Gospel of our Christ, that should settle the issue. This is because, as Paul will soon point out, if being right with God could be gained through the law, then our Christ died for nothing.¹² That is, the idea that getting right with God can be done by simply following the law, that makes the sacrifice of our Christ null and void. In other words, the one cancels out the other. However, to be a Christian is to affirm that our Christ gave Himself on behalf of our sins. This was something we could not do. Therefore, that self-righteousness being gained through the law cannot be part of the Christian Gospel, nor is anyone a Christian who can affirm that their righteousness was obtained this way.¹³

Scholar Robert H. Gundry (born 1932), whom we quoted earlier, sees the term “wicked world” (KJV) in verse four this way: It defines the peace of God and of Jesus our Christ in terms of the health and glorious living that will distinguish this life from eternal life in the age-to-come. That’s because it will be free from the evil that characterizes mortal life in this day and age. Since we’re living in the present evil age, deliverance “out of it” looks to the future for an awaited deliverance in that the crucified and resurrected Christ now lives in the believer.¹⁴

Also, “in accordance with the will of God,” means that just as a son should do what his father requests, in like manner Jesus our Christ obeyed God His Father in giving Himself up on our behalf for our sins to deliver us from this present evil age. God’s will for Him to do so leads Paul to designate God also as “our Father,” for a father looks out for the welfare of his children.¹⁵ And this benevolent fatherhood of God leads Paul to declare that eternal glory, which means the eternal praise and honor that belongs to God alone, will also be shared with us.¹⁶

What better way to end this first salutatory section than giving praise, glory, and honor to God and our Christ forever and ever? When King David announced to his people that Solomon would be building the new Temple and asked for their donations to help in the construction, before thanking them he thanked God and praised His glorious Name.¹⁷ And in the psalm written for Solomon, after describing his qualities, and extolling his future, then David turns and says, “Blessed be the LORD God, the God of Israel, the only one who does wondrous things, and blessed be His glorious Name for ever, and let the whole earth be filled with His glory; Amen, and Amen.”¹⁸ And when it came to Paul’s gratefulness for what our Christ did for him, Paul was quick to say, “Therefore, unto the King forever, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.”¹⁹

This was quite common for Paul to give God the glory in all things and for all things. He told the Romans, “For of Him and by Him and in Him are all things. To Him be the glory for the ages. Amen.”²⁰ And to the Ephesians Paul said, “In Him in whom likewise we have obtained an inheritance, having the way already marked out beforehand according to the purpose of Him who works all things after the counsel of His own will, so that we should be to the praise of his glory, those of us who first trusted in our Christ.”²¹

Richard N. Longenecker (born 1930), long-time professor of theology at Wycliffe College, notes that when Paul says here in verse four that our Christ “gave Himself for our sins,” he was either thinking of our Christ’s redemptive work,²² or of being given by God for that purpose.²³ Longenecker believes that Paul’s statements are rooted in Jesus’ own statement about the purpose of His mission.²⁴ In addition, Jesus’ statement seems to have been derived from Isaiah’s fourth Servant Song,²⁵ which our Lord used to highlight His own consciousness of being God’s Righteous Servant.²⁶ Longenecker helps us see where so much of what the Evangelists say that Jesus said is often rooted in the writings of the First Covenant.

Professor Ronald Y. K. Fung (born 1937) informs us that God’s “glory” (Greek doxa) in general denotes His divine and heavenly radiance, His loftiness and majesty, but since it appears here with article the, it may refer to that unique glory which belongs to God alone. When it is examined in this context, “the glory” may be more specifically taken as God’s fatherly character and the union of perfect wisdom, holiness, and love manifested in the redemption of mankind through our Christ according to His will

Fung continues to say that the description of this glory as being “forever and ever” implies that in the eternity which is comprised of endless successive generations, that union of wisdom, holiness, and love will continue to be a fundamental aspect of God’s glory.²⁷ So it is only right that Paul would add the word “Amen,” which enhances the force and confirms the veracity of his declaration. The declaration may contain at the same time a summons to acknowledge God’s glory and to live in its light. Seeing this is so, the listeners’ responded “Amen” to Paul’s “Amen.”²⁸ Then as the letter is read it would take on added significance as a pledge to endeavor to ascribe glory to God by their lives, as well as an endorsement of Paul’s ascription of glory to God at this point in the letter.²⁹