Charles Ellicott Commentary Galatians 1

An apostle.—This title is evidently to be taken here in its strictest sense, as St. Paul is insisting upon his equality in every respect with the Twelve. The word was also capable of a less exclusive use, in which the Apostle would seem to be distinguished from the Twelve (1 Corinthians 15:5; 1 Corinthians 15:7). In this sense Barnabas and James the Lord’s brother, possibly also Andronicus and Junias in Romans 16:7, were called “Apostles.”

Not of men, neither by man.—Two distinct prepositions are used: “not of” (i.e., from) “men,” in the sense of the ultimate source from which authority is derived; “neither by” (or, through) “man,” with reference to the channel or agency by which it is conveyed. Thus we speak of the Queen as the “source” of honor, though honor may be conferred by the ministry acting in her name.

The kind of honor which St. Paul held (his Apostleship) was such as could be derived only from God; nor was any human instrumentality made use of in conferring it upon him.

His appointment to the Apostolate is connected by St. Paul directly with the supernatural appearance which met him on the way to Damascus. The part played by Ananias was too subordinate to introduce a human element into it. The subsequent “separation” of Paul and Barnabas for the mission to the Gentiles, though the act of the Church at Antioch, was dictated by the Holy Ghost, and was rather the assignment of a special sphere than the conferring of a new office and new powers.

By Jesus Christ.—The preposition here, as in the last clause, is that which is usually taken to express the idea of mediate agency. It represents the channel down which the stream flows, not the fountainhead from which it springs.

Hence it is applied appropriately to Christ as the Logos, or Word, through whom God the Father communicates with men as the divine agent in the work of creation, redemption, revelation (1 Corinthians 8:6; Hebrews 1:2, and others). It is also applied to men as the instruments for carrying out the divine purposes. The intervention of Jesus Christ took place in the vision through which, from a persecutor, St. Paul became a “chosen vessel” for the propagation of the gospel.

And God the Father—i.e., and by (or, through) God the Father; the same preposition governing the whole clause. We should naturally have expected the other preposition (“of,” or “from”), which signifies source, and not this, which signifies instrumentality; and it would have been more usual with the Apostle to say, “from God,” and “by, or through, Christ.” But God is at once the remote and the mediate, or efficient, cause of all that is done in carrying out His own designs. Of him, and through him, and to him are all things (Romans 11:36).

The Father.—This is to be taken in the sense in which our Lord Himself spoke of God as “My Father,” with reference to the peculiar and unique character of His own sonship—the Father, i.e., of Christ, not of all Christians, and still less, as the phrase is sometimes used, of all men. This appears from the context. The title is evidently given for the sake of contradistinction; and it is noticeable that at this very early date the same phrase is chosen as that which bore so prominent a place in the later creeds and the theology of which they were the expression.

Who raised him from the dead.—Compare Romans 1:4: Declared to be the Son of God with power . . . by the resurrection from the dead. The resurrection is the act which the Apostle regards as completing the divine exaltation of Christ. It is this exaltation, therefore, which seems to be in his mind.

He had derived his own authority directly from God and Christ as sharers of the same divine majesty. It was not the man Jesus by whom it had been conferred upon him, but the risen and ascended Saviour, who, by the fact of his resurrection, was declared to be the Son of God with power. So that the commission of the Apostle was, in all respects, divine and not human.

On verses 1-5:

It is no self-constituted teacher by whom the Galatians are addressed, but an Apostle who, like the chosen Twelve, had received his commission, not from any human source or through any human agency, but directly from God and Christ. As such, he and his companions who are with him give Christian greeting to the Galatian churches, invoking upon them the highest of spiritual blessings from God, the common Father of all believers, and that Redeemer whose saving work they denied and, by their relapse into the ways of the world around them, practically frustrated.

St. Paul had a twofold object in writing to the Galatians. They had disparaged his authority, and they had fallen back from the true spiritual view of Christianity—in which all was due to the divine grace and love manifested in the death of Christ—to a system of Jewish ceremonialism. And at the very outset of his Epistle, in the salutation itself, the Apostle meets them on both these points.

On the one hand, he asserts the divine basis of the authority which he himself claimed; and on the other, he takes occasion to state emphatically the redeeming work of Christ, and its object: to free mankind from those evil surroundings into whose grasp the Galatians seemed again to be falling.

All the brethren which are with me—that is, all his traveling companions. We are unable to say exactly who these were, especially since we do not know with any certainty the place from where St. Paul was writing. He may have had in his company most of those who are mentioned in Acts 20:4 as accompanying him back into Asia: Sopater, son of Pyrrhus (according to an amended reading); Aristarchus and Secundus, of Thessalonica; Gaius, of Derbe; Tychicus and Trophimus, of Asia; in any case, probably Timothy, and perhaps Titus.

It was usual for St. Paul to join with his own name that of one or another of his companions in the address of his Epistles. Thus, in the First Epistle to the Corinthians he associates Sosthenes with himself; in the Second Epistle to Corinth, and in those to the Philippians and Colossians, Timothy and Silvanus. In writing to the Galatians, St. Paul includes all his companions in his greeting, hardly with the intention of fortifying himself with their authority, for he is quite ready to take the whole defense of his own cause upon himself, but perhaps not entirely without the idea that he possessed their sympathy.

The churches of Galatia.—See the Introduction to this Epistle.

This opening salutation is intentionally abrupt and bare. Usually it was the Apostle’s custom to begin with words of commendation. He praises all that he can find to praise even in a Church that had offended so seriously as the Corinthians. (See 1 Corinthians 1:2; 1 Corinthians 1:4–7.) But the errors of the Galatians, he feels, go more to the root of things. The Corinthians had failed in the practical application of Christian principles; the Galatians (so far as they listened to their Judaizing teachers) could hardly be said to have Christian principles at all. The Apostle is angry with them with a righteous indignation, and his anger is seen in the naked severity of this address.

Grace . . . and peace. See Note on Romans 1:7.

God the Father. We may see by this verse how the title “Father,” originally used in the present formula to distinguish between the Divine Persons, came gradually to acquire a wider signification. God is, through Christ, the Father of all who by their relation to Christ are admitted into the position of “sons” (Romans 8:14–17; Galatians 4:5–7). Hence, where no special limitation is imposed by the context, this secondary sense may be taken as included.

And from our Lord Jesus Christ. Strictly, it would be more in accordance with the theology of St. Paul to say that grace and peace were given from the Father, by, or through, the Son. Here the one preposition from is used to cover both cases, just as by had been used in Galatians 1:1. It is equally correct to use the word “from” with reference to a mediate and to the ultimate stage in the act of procession. Water may be drawn not only from the fountain-head, but also from the running stream.

Who gave himself.—He surrendered Himself, of His own free act and will, to those who sought His death. The phrase has a parallel in Titus 2:14, and appears in its full and complete form in the Gospel saying (Matthew 20:28; Mark 10:45): “The Son of Man came to give His life a ransom for many”; and in 1 Timothy 2:6: “Who gave Himself a ransom” (the word here is a compound, which brings out more strongly the sense of vicariousness) “for all.”

For our sins.—In Greek, there are three prepositions that can only be translated by the single word “for” in English. The first has for its primary sense “concerning,” or “relating to”; it merely marks a connection or relation between two facts. The second has rather the sense “in behalf of,” or “in the interests of.” The third means strictly “in place of.” The first, as might be expected, is naturally used in respect of things; the second and third, of persons. The death of Christ was a sacrifice for sins, i.e., the sins of mankind stood in a distinct relation to it, which was really that of cause.

It was the sins of mankind that set the whole scheme of redemption in motion, and its main object was to take away those sins. The death of Christ was a sacrifice for sinners. It was a sacrifice wrought in their behalf, for their benefit. It was also a sacrifice wrought in their stead. Christ suffered so that they might not suffer. He gave His life “a ransom for (i.e., in place of) many.” The first of these meanings is represented in Greek by the preposition peri, the second by huper, and the third by anti. The distinction, however, is not always strictly maintained. We often find the death of Christ described as a sacrifice for (on behalf of) sins. This would correspond rather to our phrase “for the sake of.” The object was to do away with sins. They were, as it were, the final cause of the atonement.

It is somewhat doubtful which of the first two prepositions should be read here. By far the majority of manuscripts have peri, but the famous Codex Vaticanus, and one of the corrections of the Sinaitic Manuscript, have huper. The two prepositions are often confused in the manuscripts, and the probability in this case is that the numerical majority is right. It will then be simply stated in the text that the sins of men and the sacrifice of Christ have a relation to each other. If there had been no sin, there would have been no redemption.

Deliver us.—The deliverance the Apostle has in mind appears to be, in technical language, that of sanctification rather than that of justification. For the moment, the object of redemption is regarded as being to deliver people from sin, and not so much to deliver them from guilt, the consequence of sin. The Atonement truly has both objects, but it is the first that the Apostle has in view in this passage.

This present evil world.—The reading of the three oldest and best manuscripts tends rather to emphasize the word “evil”—“this present world, with all its evils.” A question is raised about the word translated “present,” which might probably mean “impending”; however, the Authorized Version is likely correct. “This present world” is strictly this present age. The Jews divided the history of the world into two great periods: the times before the coming of the Messiah, and the period of the Messianic reign.

The end of the first period and the beginning of the second were expected to be especially attended by troubles; and it was precisely in this transition period—the close of the older dispensation of things—that the Apostles regarded themselves as living.

The iniquities of the pagan society around them would naturally give them an intense longing for release, but the release they seek is moral and spiritual. They do not so much pray that they may be “taken out of the world” as that they may be “kept from the evil.” This the Christian way, duly accepted and followed, would accomplish. The Atonement frees people from guilt, but its efficacy does not cease there; it sets in motion a series of motives that hold Christians back from sin and constrain them to make their best efforts toward a holy life. The Galatians had lost sight of the Atonement’s power to do this and had fallen back on the notion of a legal righteousness through the vain attempt to keep the commandments of the Law.

According to the will.—The plan of redemption was willed by God, and therefore all that was done, either on the part of humankind or of its Redeemer, was a carrying out of His will.

Of God and our Father.—Or, as it might be, of our God and Father. It was the fatherly love of God for His creature, humankind, that set the work of redemption in motion; hence, in reference to the work of redemption, He is spoken of as “our Father”—i.e., the Father of mankind.

Glory.—Perhaps, properly, the glory—that is, the divine glory: that pre-eminent glory with which no other can compare.

If this is the case, then it would be better to supply “is” rather than “be.” His own peculiar glory does belong to God, and therefore the Christian ascribes it to Him as that which is already His; he does not pray for it as something unfulfilled, as, for example, he prays for the coming of God’s kingdom.

In the insertion of this brief doxology, the mind of the Apostle obeys an involuntary impulse of reverential awe. For a similar ascription in the same parenthetic form, compare Romans 9:5.

For ever and ever.—Literally, for ages of ages, a Hebraizing expression for infinite time. Commonly, time was divided only into two great world-periods; but the second is, as it were, multiplied indefinitely—“for all possible ages.”