Charles Ellicott Commentary Galatians 6:14

"But far be it from me to glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world hath been crucified unto me, and I unto the world." — Galatians 6:14 (ASV)

God forbid that I should glory.—There is a stress upon the pronoun “I,” which, in the Greek, stands first, in emphatic contrast to the party who had been the subjects of the last verse. They make their boast in a mere external; but for me—far be it from me to make my boast in anything but the cross of Christ.

The cross of our Lord Jesus Christ—that is, “in the death and passion which Christ underwent for me.” The Apostle is aware that in this he is putting forward a startling paradox. The cross of Christ was to the Jews a stumbling-block. They attached to it only ideas of ignominy and shame, and yet it is precisely this of which the Apostle is most proud. He is proud of it as the ground of his salvation, and therefore as the cardinal object of all his hopes and aims.

By whom.—It seems better, on the whole, to adopt the marginal rendering: whereby. The antecedent is thus not Christ, but more especially the cross of Christ. It is the intense contemplation of a crucified Saviour through which the Christian dies to the world.

The world.—By this is meant here the world of sense, the sphere of outward and sensible things, at once with its manifold temptations to sin and with its inadequate methods of escaping from them—mere external rites, such as circumcision.