III. Their revolt is an abandonment of salvation.—It is an exchange of knowledge for ignorance, of the substance for the shadow, of reality for emptiness—a return to weak and beggarly elements. It is the substitution of ceremonies for genuine worship.

IV. The conduct of turn-coats is an occasion of ministerial disappointment and alarm (ver. 11).—Work that is in vain in respect of men is not so before God.—Perkins.

Vers. 8, 9. Ignorance of God a Spiritual Bondage.—1. However nature’s light may serve to make known there is a God and that He ought to be served, it is nothing else but ignorance, as it leaves us destitute of the knowledge of God in Christ, without which there is no salvation. 2. Men are naturally inclined to feign some representation of the Godhead by things which incur in the outward senses, from which they easily advance to give Divine worship unto those images and representations. 3. Though the Levitical ceremonies were once to be religiously observed as a part of Divine worship leading to Christ, yet when the false teachers did urge them as a part of necessary commanded worship, or as a part of their righteousness before God, the apostle is bold to give them the name of “weak and beggarly elements.” 4. People may advance very far in the way of Christianity, and yet make a foul retreat afterwards in the course of defection and apostasy.—Fergusson.

Vers. 9, 10. God’s Sabbatic Law antedated the Mosaic Law.—And whatever of legal bondage has been linked with the observance of the Jewish Sabbath was eliminated together with the change to the first day of the week. This at once removes the Lord’s Day from the category of days, and also of weak and beggarly elements. The mode of observance is learned from the Lord’s words, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath,” which at the same time imply, when rightly understood, the perpetual necessity for a Sabbath.—Lange.

Ver. 11. Ministerial Anxiety—1. Prompts to earnest efforts in imparting the highest spiritual truths. 2. Looks for corresponding results in consistency of character and conduct. 3. Is grieved with the least indications of religious failure.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Verses 12–20.

The Pleadings of an Anxious Teacher with his Pupils in Peril.

I. He reminds them of the enthusiastic attachment of former days.—1. Urges them to exercise the same freedom as he himself claimed. “Be as I am; for I am as ye are” (ver. 12). Though himself a Jew, Paul had assumed no airs of superiority, and did not separate himself from his Gentile brethren; he became as one of them. He asks them to exercise a similar liberty; and lest they should fear he would have a grudge against them because of their relapse, he hastens to assure them, “Ye have not injured [wronged] me at all” (ver. 12).

2. Recalls their extravagant expression of admiration on their first reception of his teaching.—“Ye know how through infirmity I preached at the first. My temptation ye despised not; but received me as an angel of God. . . . Ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me” (vers. 13, 14, 15). His physical weakness, which might have moved the contempt of others, elicited the sympathy of the warm-hearted Galatians. They listened with eagerness and wonder to the Gospel he preached. The man, with his humiliating infirmity, was lost in the charm of his message. They were thankful that, though his sickness was the reason of his being detained among them, it was the opportunity of their hearing the Gospel. Had he been an angel from heaven, or Jesus Christ Himself, they could not have welcomed him more rapturously. They would have made any sacrifice to assure him of their regard and affection.

3. Shows he was not less their friend because he rebuked them.—“Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?” (ver. 16). And now they rush, with Gallic-like fickleness, to the opposite extreme. Because he attacks the new fancies with which they have become enamoured, and probes them with some wholesome and unwelcome truths, they imagine he has become their enemy. Not so; he is but using the privilege of a true and faithful friend.