This
message was given on 20 Oct. 1934
Galatians 3:1
O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched (lit. cast
the witchs spell over) you...?
The apostle says that these people
had come under a spell. Have you ever been under a spell?
I should think (without having had any experience) that
to come under a witchs spell is to wake up at some
point and realise that you have been in an unreal realm.
It may have been pleasant for the time being, like the
effect of opium, but afterwards it was revealed to have
been an illusion, an unreality, a false world, everything
had been suggesting what was not true after all. During
that time of the spell you have been deprived of your
normal state of good sense, you were not yourself, and
the effects were quite different from those which had
been presented to your mind under the spell.
To look closely into this letter to
the Galatians is to see that that is exactly what had
happened. It was a spell indeed, and a spell which meant
that they were taken out of the realm of the greatest of
all realities, and put into the realm of things which
were false and deceiving, and where they were robbed of
their true spiritual position, and placed in a false one.
What was the nature of the spell?
The Holy Spirit is very apt in His way of describing
things. The phrase: the witchs spell
could not be improved upon as a description of what had
happened to these believers. These believers had come
right out into a living place with Christ, and they had,
through faith, received the Holy Spirit. They had been
emancipated and set free from all the old thraldoms. They
had been put in a place of spiritual liberty, spiritual
ascendency, spiritual power, spiritual life, and they had
had a great enjoyment of the Lord. But, being Gentiles,
and having turned to Christ, certain things had entered
into their experience outwardly. Outwardly they had
become involved in a great deal of persecution. They had
found tremendous antagonism levelled against them.
Inwardly they had become aware of the fact of two
natures, an old and a new, that which the apostle speaks
of in this letter as the flesh and the Spirit. And, while
they had come to the place where the old and fleshly
nature was triumphed over by a life in the Spirit, they
knew only too well that the old and the fleshly nature
was not annihilated, and that to maintain their position
of ascendency, every day they must maintain a walk in the
Spirit.
The walk in the Spirit demanded a
continuous appropriation of Christ and obedience to Him.
These were two of the things which had come into their
lives, and represented a certain amount of difficulty. It
was not easy to suffer persecution. It was not always
easy to be obedient and to walk in the Spirit. It
represented a continuous yielding to the Lord.
The other thing which governed their
life entirely was that it was a life of faith. While a
life of faith brings into a wonderful realm of ever fresh
discoveries and blessing, it is a life of faith,
and the old and natural life never takes kindly to a life
of faith, but is always seeking the seen and the felt,
that which can be provided by the senses; that realm of
outward perception, as over against the life which is
entirely by faith in God. While these Galatians went on
with the Lord they had a life of knowing and enjoying the
Lord.
We all know that the Christian life
is not a picnic every day. The Word of the Lord never
promises that it will be. We are not in the playground;
we are in the school. We are not here for pleasure and
enjoyment; we are here for real business and grim
conflict. A day of unmixed pleasure and glory lies ahead
for us; in the meantime it is a life of training,
discipline, equipping for that day, and it becomes
strenuous sometimes. We would deceive nobody who is not a
believer by saying that if you become a believer you are
going to float about in the air, play upon imaginary
harps all the days of your life and never have any
trouble. You will come up against the grim realities, of
which you may be altogether unconscious at present. You
will find that you are precipitated into the battle, and
are taken into a place of deep training and discipline.
It is in that realm that we make our discoveries, and
find our wonderful enlargement. That does not mean for
one moment that while such things obtain there can be no
joy. The New Testament is a strange paradox throughout:
Sorrowing, yet always rejoicing; Rejoicing
in hope, patient in tribulation... It is a strange
contradiction, and the man of the world understands
nothing of that.
However, the Christian life is a
grim business for the time being, and the Galatians came
to recognise that, and sometimes, in common with all
other Christians at all times, the sense of the conflict
and the pressure registered itself in a costly way.
Nevertheless, ask anyone who knows the Lord best, and who
knows the cost most, whether they would give up the Lord
in order to escape the cost, and you will find that they
will give no consideration to that unless they
become tricked, which is exactly what happened here.
There came down to these Galatian
believers certain men who were Jews, who pretended to be
Christians, and the most that can be said in their favour
is that they acknowledged Jesus of Nazareth as the
Messiah. That does not mean for a moment that they had
seen Him as the Eternal Son of God, and it does not mean
that anything was entailed in the setting aside of
Judaism. These Judaisers, with the Christian name, went
in the track of Paul wherever he went with the Gospel,
and worked their way through the network of Jewish
synagogues until they got into this area known as
Galatia, and began their Judaising activities in direct
contradiction to his Gospel. They found a point of
contact, and said to these believers: Now, you are having
a difficult time; this kind of life that Paul has shown
to you is a very strenuous life (we are not saying they
used these words, but this was clearly the line of
argument); this struggle and this effort to live this
life is because of a fundamental mistake! All you have to
do to be accepted with God is to observe the law! You
come to the synagogue and carry out these various
regulations of Moses; that is all that is required of
you! So many meetings a week, and so many sermons a week,
so many outward observances a week, and all is well! Gods
law is so-and-so: observe Gods law, and all is well
(a very plausible argument)! Then, you see, you are
suffering a great deal of opposition and antagonism from
without, also upon this fundamental error! You have taken
up a position which is bringing this upon you! You will
find that a great deal of that persecution will drop away
if you will simply let go this extreme position that you
have taken, this life of faith, this detachment from the
recognised and accepted religious system of the Jews; and
things will become very much easier for you because you
will be associated with that which is accepted and
recognised! Paul is all wrong, and he has led you into
this position, and these are the consequences! Our
counsel is that you should all be circumcised, have the
centre of your relationship to the historic order of
things, carry out these regulations, and you will be left
alone and escape this intense spiritual conflict,
inwardly and outwardly! You will cease to have this
inward pressure; you will not have all the strain of a
life of faith, it will become a life of sight; and the
way will become easy!
Because these Galatian believers
were conscious of the cost of the life in relation to
Christ, and were perhaps feeling badly just at that
moment (for you may be sure the devil always strikes his
blow at the weak moment) this whole proposition was like
a witchs spell. A lovely sensation crept over them:
Oh, is it not necessary for us, after all, to have all
this to meet, all this to suffer? Are we, after all,
wrong? Is it really that we have made a mistake, have
been misled? They let the doubt in, and we know what
happened. When they opened their mind to a question of a
fundamental character like that, it rushed in and became
like a spell to them, a beautiful suggestion, a wonderful
idea! The suggestion was: We need not give up anything of
Christ, but it can be so much easier if we let go what is
evidently an extreme position which we have taken! The
witchs spell did its work. They came under it, and
let go their position.
Paul wrote his letter to the
Galatians in that condition. When you look closely into
it, you see that it was a witchs spell. It was a
lie! Paul says some very strong things about this: ...though
we, or an angel from heaven, should preach unto you any
gospel other than that which we preached unto you, let
him be accursed. That is regarding these
Judaisers. This gospel which they were preaching brought
them into the category of the curse, under an anathema
from God; they were preaching an accursed gospel. With
Paul there was no myth about their position; he saw how
deadly it was as a deception, and how, under its spell
as it had been so plausibly presented just in a
time when these people were feeling the strain of things
it had worked to rob them of their true position.
That which Paul keeps continuously in view right through
this letter is the cross of the Lord Jesus. The central
and inclusive statement is this: ...before whose
eyes Jesus Christ was openly set forth crucified.
Then in the rest of the letter Paul explains what that
means.
We will look at some of these
passages, not taking them in order of their occurrence,
but rather in order of their spiritual significance.
A New Life
The first great passage is in
chapter 2 verse 20: I have been crucified with
Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ
liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh
I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God,
who loved me, and gave himself for me. What is the
declaration contained within that statement? The essence
of the utterance is this: There is a life which is not
mans natural life, which is not original human
life, but is a peculiar, particular, unique life; it is
the life of God Himself. That very life of God, eternal,
incorruptible, indestructible, divine life, is the life
which it is the Lords will for every one of His
children to possess. There the whole of the Christian
life has its beginning, its spring. What is the Gospel?
What is the Christian life? It is not Judaism taking on
the title of Christianity. It is not Christianity taking
hold of Judaism. It is the possessing of Gods own
divine life. Anything short of that is not the Gospel!
Whatever substitute may be offered it is a lie, and all
lies are accursed things. The subtlety of this Judaising
movement was to set aside the real Gospel, and offer an
imitation, a substitute without the cost, something which
can be had without paying the price. Paul here says that
this life is the very foundation and basis of a true
Christian experience, and it means this: It is no longer
I, but Christ living in me. That is set right over
against Judaism, which was all external, outward. This is
inward. Christ liveth in me: and that life
which I now live... Well, Paul, how did you become
possessed of that life? In what way did you come into
that great reality of Christ living in you? I have
been crucified with Christ! What did that mean,
Paul? That meant that Judaism had to go; I was steeped in
Judaism, far more than any other of my brethren, the
apostles, Jews as they were. I excelled in my zeal for
the Jewish faith; but when I saw the Lord Jesus, and when
I saw the meaning of Christ crucified, that which had
been my very life (Judaism) became as
nothing. He became my life, and that other ceased
to have any meaning for me! Paul is here setting the life
of Judaism, which is no life, over against the life of
the indwelling Christ, which is the life.
These Judaisers came along and tried
to reverse the order, and offered the false life of
Judaism for the true life of the indwelling Christ. What
is it to be a Christian? It is to receive Gods very
life in Christ into the innermost place in our being.
Christ liveth in me, and that life which I
now live... You cannot substitute that. There is
nothing which can take the place of that. And yet there
are those who think that if they go to meetings, and keep
up their religious forms and observances, it is all well.
It is not all well! That is the devils lie! Any
religious system which is a substitute for the indwelling
Christ is an accursed thing, by reason of its very
effect.
The beginning of the Christian life
is: Christ liveth in me! How? I have been crucified
with Christ... What does that mean? That the whole
of my old life, even though it may have been religious,
is an outward thing. It does not matter how much
Christianity I may have been brought up in, or even
participated in. It does not matter how much religion
there is in my make-up, in my temperament, and it does
not matter how much I mentally assent to as to Christian
truth, my relationship with God in eternal salvation
depends entirely upon whether I have received this life
in Christ dwelling within. When I have to stand before
God and give an account, as Paul says every man must do,
no questions will be asked as to whether I was born into
a Christian family, brought up in a Christian home,
whether I went to the Sunday School or whether I went to
the services, whether I believed this or that, or
something else as a doctrine of Christianity. No such
questions will ever be put, neither will such questions
as to whether I committed this, that or some other sin,
or never did. The number of sins, and the kind of sins
will never, never be the ground of interrogation. One
question will sum up everything, and decide the whole
matter: Did you receive My gift of eternal life in Jesus
Christ as an indwelling reality through faith, on the
ground of the cross of Calvary? The Scripture hath
concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith in
Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.
A New World
The next passage is in chapter 6
verse 14: But far be it from me to glory, save in
the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the
world hath been crucified unto me, and I unto the world.
The cross again is in the forefront. We are unable to
deal with all the ground which concerns this particular
passage. We are content to take one point of application,
which is probably the most direct one. The apostle is
saying here that his glorying is in the cross of the Lord
Jesus, and that cross has represented for him his being
crucified to the world and the world to him. Of course,
that is a very inclusive, comprehensive statement, and
embraces a very great deal, but there is a particular
application of it, or a particular usage of the statement
here. These Judaisers had gone to Galatia, and had sought
to make Jewish proselytes of these Christian believers by
having them circumcised, so that they might append these
Gentile believers to the Jewish church. As we have
noticed, the point of their approach was this: If you do
that, a great deal of persecution will cease. You will
come into a realm of tolerance; at present you are
outside everything that is recognised and accepted, and
all the world is against you. Come into the fold. Come
into the accepted system of things, and you will have an
easy time. What was behind it? Paul says their object is
simply to count heads, to glory in your flesh,
to say: See how many proselytes we are making! See how
many converts we have got! No wonder Paul writes with
heat, lest these Judaisers should glory on their side in
their success, and then that these Galatians should
discover that these people were only glorying on the
ground of their having forfeited their high position.
Paul says: Far be it from me to glory, save in the
cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world
hath been crucified unto me, and I unto the world.
What does he mean? It does not matter to me what the
world thinks! It does not matter one wit to me the
attitude the world takes! Let it persecute! Let it say
what it likes! Let the world defame. Let the world
misrepresent. Let the world lie. Let the whole accepted
religious system say what it likes. I have been crucified
to this world! I am dead to all that, and that is dead to
me! The cross of the Lord Jesus means the emancipation
from the world in that sense.
We shall have to decide, once and
for all, as definitely as Calvary was a once and for all
thing, that we are not going to be influenced or deterred
one little bit in our utterness of abandonment to the
Lord by what the world (even the religious world) says
and does. When we recognise that, there will be triumph.
Paul was not altogether immune from the consciousness of
what was going on against him. To him very often these
things meant suffering. The attitude of the religious
world did register itself upon his sensitive spirit, but
it was settled with him quite definitely that he could
never sacrifice his position one little bit in order to
mitigate that suffering, in order to ease up that
situation, in order to be more popular with men than he
was. For him the cross meant that if he were to be
unpopular universally he was dead to the question of
popularity. We shall never be thoroughgoing Christians
until we are there.
A New Power
The third passage is in chapter 3
verses 13-14: Christ redeemed us from the curse of
the law, having become a curse for us: for it is written,
Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree: that upon the
Gentiles might come the blessing of Abraham in Christ
Jesus; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit
through faith. The witchs spell was cast to
rob of the enjoyment, the living expression of the
reality that the Holy Spirit had now become the power of
their lives. How set the enemy is against this great,
basic fact of the true Christian life!
Firstly the enemy is always seeking
to bring around that life a wrapping of death, to smother
it, to arrest and check the progress, the development,
and the activity of that divine life; to bring us again
into the realm of spiritual death, where that life is no
longer functioning. Then he is against our position, as
through the cross, outside this world, and is always
trying to bring us back into it somehow. He knows that if
he can do it he has finished our testimony, he has robbed
us of our position, he has denied the Gospel. He is dead
set against this life of which the Holy Spirit is the
energy. He is after a life in the flesh instead of the
life in the Spirit, to counter a Holy Spirit filled and
dominated life. He is the spirit of this age; he is the
spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience; he
is the great evil spirit, and he is set against the Holy
Spirit of God. So these believers were knowing something
of that historic effort of the enemy to quench the
government of the Holy Spirit.
We are in a spiritual succession to
these Galatians. The Christian life is a life with Christ
indwelling as its life. It is a life cut off by the cross
from the world and all worldly considerations. It is a
life indwelt and governed by the Holy Spirit in all
details. That is where faith comes in. That is exactly
the point where faith has its meaning. It is so much
easier for the flesh to walk according to sense than it
is to walk by faith in the Spirit. Life in the Spirit is
sometimes so intangible. It calls for such an exercise of
faith that you have to commit yourself to the Lord and go
on when you cannot see, where you have no feeling, and
believe implicitly that the Lord is not going to fail you
and let you go wrong even if He is hidden from
your view, covered from your sense; yes, oft-times deeper
than your very consciousness itself. You are living for
His glory, and as you are at liberty within your heart to
move you have to move and believe implicitly that God is
going not only to preserve you from wrong and from
mistakes, but is going to bring good out of your faith
movement with Him. That is a life of faith, and our
natures do not take to it at all kindly. It is a life in
the Spirit, as differing from a life in the flesh. The
best of the Lords people sometimes cry out: Oh,
that I might know exactly what it is the Lord is doing!
The Lord says: You go on with Me and trust Me. I know
what I am doing! We discover at length that the Lord did
know what He was doing. He does make it plain. He
is undoing the mischievous work of the devil from the
beginning, that work by which he put into the very nature
of man unbelief in God, doubt and questioning of God. The
Lord is destroying that by the very life of faith, and
showing to us that God is true and faithful and can be
relied upon, and He need give no evidence to our flesh of
that fact, but He proves it to those who repose faith in
Him as the faithful God. How do you know? By believing!
How do you come to see? By going on and not seeing, but
trusting God. You say it is a difficult life! Well, the
witchs spell can deliver you! You can have
something else in its place! But you will find that the
witchs spell is an illusion, and there is no
substitute for that. It is the way of a wonderful,
continuous discovery of the wonderful things of God. It
is to those who believe that God makes known His deep
secrets. Enrichment of life comes there. Paul says that
this new life in the Spirit, with the Holy Spirit as the
power of our life, comes by way of the cross.
A New Nature
Then in chapter 5 verse 24 we read:
And they that are of Christ Jesus have crucified
the flesh with the passions and the lusts thereof.
There is something about that statement which in its
implication is not pleasant for the eyes of Judaisers to
detect. What Paul is saying, in effect, is this: It is
all very well to accept the law; all very well to get
back into the externals of religion; but does that deal
with the moral issue? Are you quite sure that by that you
are going to have rest of heart over the sin question?
That was never so in Israel. The sin question was a thing
kept perpetually in view. It was never finally dealt
with. If you had watched Israel round that tabernacle,
and seen the continuous stream of sacrifices, and the
veritable river of blood daily flowing in the court of
that tabernacle, you would have known that sin was not
once and for all dealt with. You would have known that
the sin question was always in view. We may be, after
all, deluding ourselves that being outwardly religious
gives us a standing with God, but it does not deal with
the sin question. It does not deal with our very natures.
Men may find substitutes. Men may find ways and means of
trying to hush the voice of sin, and they may seem to
have effectually done it. They may have a great religious
system by which they think that they have dealt with the
sin matter by passing responsibility over to someone
else. We sing: At peace with God... It is a
false peace that is merely based upon a system of outward
religious activities. It is a false peace if it is not
found in the precious, eternal efficacy of the Blood of
Jesus Christ, Gods Son, which cleanseth us from all
sin. The apostle says to the Galatians: They may have
deceived you with their spell, and you may think that
going back to Jewish ordinances deals with the sin
question, but you know that it does not. You will go out
and discover that you are in bondage to the lusts of the
flesh all the time.
By way of the cross there is a new
nature, a nature introduced which gets the upper hand of
the old. The old is there, but it is not now reigning.
Sin has not dominion. There is another nature which rises
up and meets the old. Something has happened, and in that
something a position has been reached which is just this:
that old nature is no longer the master. It has been
crucified. It has been put into the place where it no
longer dominates. It has come under the veto of the
cross. How does it work? By the positive fact of a new
nature introduced, the divine nature in Christ. It is not
a constant effort to suppress the old, a struggle to say,
No! It is that there is a positive factor which is
working for us against the old. It does not mean that
never at any time do we make a mistake, perhaps a slip,
but we do know that there is a reactionary power at work
within us now, which registers upon that old a veto and
says with strength: Thou shalt not. It is a
new law, not imposed from without but the law of an
inward power, a new nature within. As we walk in the
Spirit that new nature grows and increases, and more and
more gets the ascendency over the old. Conformity to the
image of Gods Son is going on: a growing, an
increase in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus
Christ. The flesh, with the affections and lusts thereof,
under the power of the cross, and a new nature.
Look at the context of that last
passage, and you will see a whole long list of the
fleshly lusts and passions are mentioned, and over
against that those things which are of the Spirit. The
apostle says, in effect, to these believers: That is what
is the true Christian life, and Judaism has nothing that
can substitute that. It never deals effectively with the
sin question; but by being crucified with Christ, and
raised together with Him, the sin question is dealt with,
and there is a settled registration in our very being
that no longer is the old nature the only thing, the
unrivalled nature, and the nature which has the upper
hand; but the Spirit is making war upon the flesh.
First published in
"The Golden Candlestick" magazine - Vol. 121, from a previously unpublished manuscript.