II. Christ’s marvellous act.—“He gave Himself for our sins.” 1. To what He gave Himself. To all the privations and sorrows of human life, to obscurity and indigence, to scorn and infamy, to pain and anguish, to an ignominious and painful death. 2. The purpose for which He gave Himself. To deliver us from sin’s curse, defilement, dominion, and from the effects of sin in this world and in eternity.

III. The design of Christ’s offering.—“That He might deliver us from the present evil world.” From its evil practices, its spirit, from attachment to it, and from the condemnation to which it will be subjected.

IV. Christ’s offering was according to the will of God.—1. It was the will of God we should be saved. 2. Christ was the appointed agent. 3. The sacrifice of Christ was voluntary.—Helps.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Verses 6–9.

The One Gospel.

I. Is an introduction into the grace of Christ.—“I marvel that ye are so soon removed from Him that called you into the grace of Christ” (ver. 6). The one true Gospel is the emphatic call of God to man to participate and revel in the grace of Christ as the element and the only means by which his salvation can be secured. The grace of Christ, with its persuasive gentleness and vast redemptive resources, is in vivid contrast to the grim formalism and impossible demands of the yoke of bondage into which the Galatians were being so foolishly seduced. There is only one Gospel that can introduce the soul into the midst of saving influences and bring it into contact with the living Christ. This one fact differentiates the Gospel from all mere human methods and gives it a unique character as the only remedial agency in dealing with human sin and sorrow.

II. The perversion of the one Gospel is not a gospel.—“Unto another gospel which is not another” (vers. 6, 7).

1. It is a caricature of the true Gospel.—“And would pervert the gospel of Christ” (ver. 7). The perversion is not in the one Gospel, which is impossible of perversion (for truth is an incorruptible unity), but in the mind of the false teacher. He distorts and misrepresents the true Gospel by importing into it his own corrupt philosophy, as the wolf did with Baron Munchausen’s horse. Beginning at the tail, it ate its way into the body of the horse, until the baron drove the wolf home harnessed in the skin of the horse. The Gospel has suffered more from the subtle infusion of human errors than from the open opposition of its most violent enemies.

2. It occasions distractions of mind.—“There be some that trouble you” (ver. 7). A perverted gospel works the greatest havoc among young converts. They are assailed before they reach the stage of matured stability. Their half-formed conceptions of truth are confused with specious ideas, attractive by their novelty, and mischief is wrought which in many cases is a lifelong injury. The spirit that aims at polluting a young beginner in the way of righteousness is worse than reckless; it is diabolical.

III. The propagator of a perverted gospel incurs an awful malediction.—“But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel, . . . let him be accursed” (vers. 8, 9). Let him be devoted to destruction, as one hateful to God and an enemy of the truth. The word denotes the condition of one alienated from God by persistent sin. He not only rejects the truth himself, but deliberately plots the ruin of others. He reaps the fruit of his own sowing. It is impossible to do wrong without suffering. The greater the wrong-doing, the more signal is the consequent punishment. All perversions of truth are fruitful in moral disasters. It is a mad, suicidal act for man to fight against God.