II. He warns them against the seductive tactics of false teachers.—1. Their zealous flattery was full of danger. “They zealously affect you, but not well; they would exclude you” (ver. 17). They are courting you, these present suitors for your regard, dishonourably; they want to shut us out and have you to themselves, that you may pay court to them. They pretend to be zealous for your interests; but it is their own they seek. They would exclude you from all opportunities of salvation—yea, from Christ Himself. The flatterer should be always suspected. The turning away from sound doctrine goes hand in hand with a predilection for such teachers as tickle the ear, while they teach only such things as correspond to the sinful inclinations of the hearers.
2. Though genuine zeal is commendable.—“It is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing” (ver. 18). Christian zeal must be seen not only to correspond and to be adapted to the intellect but must also be in harmony with the highest and profoundest sentiments of our nature. It must not be exhibited in the dry, pedantic divisions of a scholastic theology; nor must it be set forth and tricked out in the light drapery of an artificial rhetoric, in prettiness of style, in measured sentences, with an insipid floridness, and in the form of elegantly feeble essays. No; it must come from the soul in the language of earnest conviction and strong feeling.
III. He pleads with the tender solicitude of a spiritual parent.—“My little children, of whom I travail in birth again, . . . I desire to be present with you, and to change my voice; for I stand in doubt of you” (vers. 19, 20). As a mother, fearful of losing the affection of her children for whom she has suffered so much, the apostle appeals to his converts in tones of pathetic persuasion. His heart is wrung with anguish as he sees the peril of his spiritual children, and he breaks out into tender and impassioned entreaty. And yet he is perplexed by the attitude they have taken, and as if uncertain of the result of his earnest expostulations. The preacher has to learn to be patient as well as zealous.
Lessons.—1. Strong emotions and warm affections are no guarantee for the permanence of religious life. 2. How prone are those who have put themselves in the wrong to fix the blame on others. 3. Men of the Galatian type are the natural prey of self-seeking agitators.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES.
Ver. 12. Christian Brotherhood.—Here is: 1. A loving compellation—“Brethren.” 2. A submissive address by way of comprecation—“I beseech you.” 3. A request most reasonable—“Be ye as I am; for I am as ye are.” 4. A wise and prudent preoccupation or prevention which removes all obstructions and forestalls those jealousies, those surmises and groundless suspicions, which are the bane of charity and the greatest enemies to peace. “Ye have not injured me at all.”
I. Nature herself hath made all men brethren.—1. This may serve to condemn all those who look upon men under other consideration than as men or view them in any other shape than as brethren. And the very name of man and of brother should be an amulet for all mankind against the venom of iniquity and injustice.
2. By this light of nature we may condemn ourselves when any bitterness towards our brother riseth in our hearts, and allay or rather root it out as inhuman and unnatural. None can dishonour us more than ourselves do, when one man hath trodden down another as the clay in the streets, when we think ourselves great men by making our brethren little, when we contemn and despise, hate and persecute them.
II. Brethren as Christians professing the same faith.—There is such a brotherhood that neither error nor sin nor injury can break and dissolve it.
1. Men may err and yet be brethren.—We may be divided in opinion and yet united in charity. Consider the difficulty of finding out truth in all things and avoiding error, that our brother may err rather from want of light than out of malice and wilfully and conceive it possible we may err as foully as others.