Ver. 6. Disappointed Hopes in Christian Work.—1. It is the duty of Christian ministers, not only to hold out the pure truth of the Gospel, but to defend it by convicting gainsayers and reproving solidly those who are carried away with contrary errors. 2. Ministers in all their reproofs are to use much wariness and circumspection, not omitting any circumstance which may justly extenuate the sin or furnish ground of hope of amendment. Hereby the bitter portion of a medicinal reproof is much sweetened, and the guilty patient allured to the more thorough receiving of it. 3. The most quick-sighted may be deceived and disappointed in their expectation of good things from some eminent professors, and so may readily fall short of their hope. 4. As the dangerous consequences which follow upon error ought to be presented unto people that they may fly from it, so there are some errors in doctrine which do no less separate from God than profanity of life doth, of which errors this is one—the maintaining of justification by works. 5. It is ordinary for seducers to usher in their errors by some excellent designations as of new lights, a more pure gospel way, and what not, as here they designate their error by the name of another gospel.—Fergusson.
Ver. 7. The Inviolable Unity of the Gospel.—1. There is but one Gospel, one in number and no more, and but one way to salvation, which is by faith. 2. The effect of error is to trouble the Church’s peace; peace among themselves, the patrons of error being zealous of nothing so much as to gain many followers, to attain which they scruple not to make woeful rents and deplorable schisms; inward peace of conscience, while some are perplexed and anxious what to choose and refuse until they question all truth, and others to embrace error for truth and so ground their peace on an unsure foundation. 3. The doctrine which maintains that justification is partly by Christ and partly by the merit of good works is a perverting and total overturning of the Gospel, in so far as it contradicts the main scope of the Gospel, which is to exalt Christ as our complete Saviour, Mediator, and Ransom, and not in part only.—Fergusson.
Ver. 8. The Inviolability of Christianity.
I. The import and construction of the Gospel cannot be vague and indeterminate.—The character of the Gospel was alleged to be its truth. This was, to the sophists of that era, a strange and novel pretension. To require faith to a testimony only so far as conformable to fact, only so far as supported by evidence, appeared to them a startling affectation. In the fixed character we recognise the true perfection of the Gospel. It is the same through all ages, not changing to every touch and varying beneath every eye but unfolding the same features and producing the same effects. Unless there was this invariableness in the Christian system, if a fixed determination of its purport is impossible, we should be at a loss in which manner to follow the conduct and imbibe the spirit of the early Christians. Those lights and examples of the Church would only ensnare us into a mien and attitude ridiculous as profane. It would be the dwarf attempting to bare a giant’s arm, a wayfaring man aspiring to a prophet’s vision. The truth as it is in Jesus is contained in that Word which is the truth itself; there it is laid up as in a casket and hallowed as in a shrine. No change can pass upon it. It bears the character of its first perfection. Like the manna and the rod in the recess of the Ark, it is the incorruptible bread of heaven, it is the ever-living instrument of might, without an altered form or superseded virtue.
II. Its Divine origin and authority cannot be controverted.—The history of Saul of Tarsus has often been cited with happy success in confirmation of Christianity. 1. What must have been the strength and satisfaction of conviction entertained by the writer! The conviction has to do with facts. It pertains to no favourite theory, no abstract science, but occurrences which he had proved by sensible observation and perfect consciousness. Wonders had teemed around him; but his own transformation was the most signal wonder of all. Nothing without him could equal what he discerned within. 2. As we estimate the measure and force of his convictions, inquire what weight and credibility should be allowed them. Put his conduct to any rack, his design to any analysis, and then determine whether we are not safe where he is undaunted, whether we may not decide for that on which he perils all, whether the anathema which he dares pronounce does not throw around us the safeguard of a Divine benediction.
III. Its efficacy cannot be denied.—It was not called into operation until numberless expedients of man had been frustrated. Philosophy, rhetoric, art, were joined to superstitions, radicated into all habits and vices of mankind. The very ruins which survive the fall of polytheism—the frieze with its mythological tale, the column yet soaring with inimitable majesty, the statue breathing an air of divinity—recall the fascinations which it once might boast and of the auxiliaries it could command. Yet these were but the decorations of selfishness most indecently avowed, of licentiousness most brutally incontinent, of war the most wantonly bloody, of slavery the most barbarously oppressive. And Christianity subverted these foundations of iniquity; and yet so all-penetrating is its energy, that it did not so much smite them as that they sank away before it. It reaches the human will and renews the human heart. And a thousand blessings which may at first appear derived from an independent source are really poured forth from this.
IV. The authority and force of the present dispensation of Divine truth cannot be superseded.—It is final. In it He hath spoken whose voice shall be heard no more until it “shake not the earth only but also heaven.” No other sensible manifestation can be given, the doctrine is not to be simplified, the ritual is not to be defined to any further extent, nothing more will be vouchsafed to augment its blessings or ratify its credentials. We possess the true light, the perfect gift, the brightest illumination, the costliest boon. Such a dispensation constituted to be co-existent with all future time, must resist every view which would impress a new form or foist a strange nature upon it.
V. No circumstance or agency can endanger the existence and stability of the Christian revelation.—When the security of the Gospel is to be most confidently predicted and most strongly ascertained, supernatural power is restrained—a curse encloses it round about, a “flaming sword turning every way guards this tree of life.” It shall endure coevally with man. Feeble are our present thoughts, confused our perceptions; we see everything as from behind a cloud and in a disproportion. Our convictions are more like conjectures and our speculations dreams. But we shall soon emerge from this state of crude fancies and immature ideas. Worthy sentiments and feelings will fill up our souls. Each view shall be as a ray of light striking its object, and each song the very echo of its theme. Then shall we adequately understand why apostles kindled into indignation and shook with horror at the idea of “another gospel,” and why even angels themselves must have been accursed had it been possible for them to have divulged it.—R. W. Hamilton.
A Supernatural Revelation.—There can be no doubt whatever as a matter of historic fact, that the apostle Paul claimed to have received direct revelation from heaven. He is so certain of that revelation that he warns the Galatians against being enticed by any apparent evidence to doubt it. It would be impossible to express a stronger, a more deliberate, and a more solemn conviction that he had received a supernatural communication of the will of God.—Dr. Wace, Bampton Lectures.
The Best Authority to be obeyed.—A dispute having arisen on some question of ecclesiastical discipline and ritual, King Oswi summoned in 664 a great council at Whitby. The one set of disputants appealed to the authority of Columba, the other to that of St. Peter. “You own,” cried the puzzled king to Colman, “that Christ gave to Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven: has He given such power to Columba?” The bishop could but answer, “No.” “Then I will obey the porter of heaven,” said Oswi, “lest when I reach its gates he who has the keys in his keeping turn his back on me, and there be none to open.”