He then speaks historically of his ministry, and of the question whether
man had anything to do with it. His gospel was not according to man, for he
had not received it from any man; he had not been taught it. That which he
possessed was his by the immediate revelation made to him by Jesus Christ.
And when God, who, from his mother's womb, set him apart, and had called
him by His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in him, the revelation had
at once all its own power as such. He did not consult any one. He did not
put himself into communication with the other apostles, but at once acted
independently of them, as being directly taught of God. It was not till
three years after that he went to make acquaintance with Peter, and also
saw James. The churches of Judea did not know him by sight; only, they
glorified God for the grace he had received. Moreover he was only fifteen
days in Jerusalem. He then went into Syria and Cilicia. Fourteen years
afterwards he went up to Jerusalem (we have the account in Acts 15) with
Barnabas, and took Titus with him. But Titus, Gentile as he was, had not
been circumcised; an evident proof of the liberty in which the apostle
publicly stood. It was a bold step on his part to take Titus with him, and
thus decide the question between himself and the judaising Christians. He
went up because of false brethren, who sought to spy out the liberty into
which Paul (enjoying it in the Spirit) introduced believers; and he went up
by virtue of a revelation.
We may observe here, how the communications of God may be inwardly the
guides of our conduct, although we yield to motives presented by others. In
Acts 15 we find the outward history; here, that which governed the
apostle's heart. God (in order that the thing might be decided at
Jerusalem, to shut every mouth and to maintain unity) did not allow the
apostle to have the upper hand at Antioch, or to arrange on the spot the
walk of the assembly formed in that place. Neither did He allow him to
isolate himself in his own convictions, but made him go up to Jerusalem and
communicate to the chief apostles that which he taught, so that there
should be community of testimony on this important point; and that they
also should acknowledge Paul as taught of God independently of them, and at
the same time recognise his ministry as sent of God, and that he was acting
on the part of God as much as themselves. For, although God would have him
communicate to them that which he had taught others, he received nothing
from them. The effect of his communication was, that they owned the grace
which God had granted him and the ministry he had received for the
Gentiles, and they gave to him and to Barnabas the right hands of
fellowship.
Had he gone up earlier, whatever his knowledge might have been, the proofs
of his special and independent ministry would not have existed. But he had
laboured fruitfully for many years without receiving any mission from the
other apostles, and they had to recognise his apostleship as the immediate
gift of God, as well as the truths which God had imparted to him: the
proofs were there; and God had owned this apostleship, as He had given it.
The twelve had nothing to do but to acknowledge it, if they acknowledged
God as the source of all these excellent gifts. Paul was an apostle from
God without their intervention. They could acknowledge his ministry, and in
it the God who had give them that which they themselves exercised.
Moreover Paul had always acted independently in the fulfilment of his
mission. When Peter came to Antioch, he withstood him to the face, because
he was to blamed. He was not, as to Paul, as a superior before whom his
subordinates must maintain a respectful silence. Although God had wrought
mightily in Peter, yet his companion in apostleship (faithful to Him who
had called him) could not allow the gospel to be falsified, which had been
committed to his own care by the Lord Himself. Ardent as he was, poor Peter
always cared too much about the opinion of others. Now the opinion that
prevails in the world is always that which influences the heart of man; and
this opinion is always one which gives a certain glory to man after the
flesh. Paul, taught from above and full of the power of the Spirit, who, by
revealing heavenly glory had made him feel that all which exalted the flesh
obscured that glory and falsified the gospel that declared it-Paul, who
lived and moved morally in the new creation, of which a glorified Christ is
the centre; and as firm as he was ardent, because he realised the things
that are not seen; as clear-sighted as firm, because he lived in the
realisation of spiritual and heavenly things in Christ-Paul, for whom to
win Christ thus glorified was everything, clearly sees the carnal walk of
the apostle of the circumcision. He is not deterred by man; he is occupied
with Christ who was his all, and with the truth. He does not spare one who
overturned this truth, be his position in the assembly what it might.
It was dissimulation in Peter. While alone, where the influence of heavenly
truth prevailed, he ate with the Gentiles, surrounding himself with the
reputation of walking in the same liberty as others. But when certain
persons came from James, from Jerusalem, where he himself habitually lived,
the centre where religious flesh and its customs still had (under the
patient goodness of God) so much power, he no longer dared to use a liberty
which was condemned by those Christians who were still Jewish in their
sentiments; he withdrew himself. What a poor thing is man! And we are weak
in proportion to our importance before men; when we are nothing, we can do
all things, as far as human opinion is concerned. We exercise, at the same
time, an unfavourable influence over others in the degree in which they
influence us-in which we yield to the influence which the desire of
maintaining our reputation among them exercises over our hearts: and all
the esteem in which we are held, even justly, becomes a means of evil.
[see note #2]
Peter, who fears those that came from Jerusalem, draws away all the Jews
and even Barnabas with him in his dissimulation.
Paul, energetic and faithful, through grace, alone remains upright: and he
rebukes Peter before them all. Why compel Gentiles to live as Jews in order
to enjoy full christian communion, when he, being a Jew, had felt himself
free to live as the Gentiles? Themselves Jews by nature, and not poor
sinners of the Gentiles, they had given up the law as a means of securing
the favour of God, and had taken refuge in Christ. But if they sought to
rebuild the edifice of legal obligations, in order to acquire
righteousness, why had they overturned it? Thus acting, they made
themselves transgressors in having overturned it. And more than that; since
it was in order to come to Christ-in exchange for the efficacy which they
had formerly supposed to exist in the law as a means of justification-that
they had ceased to seek righteousness by the law, Christ was a minister of
sin. His doctrine had made them transgressors! For in rebuilding the
edifice of the law, they made it evident that they ought not to have
overthrown it; and it was Christ who made them do so.
What a result from the weakness which, in order to please men, had returned
to those things that were gratifying to the flesh! How little did Peter
think of this! How little do many Christians suspect it! To rest upon
ordinances is to rest upon the flesh; there are none in heaven. When
Christ, who is there, is everything, it cannot be done. Christ has indeed
established ordinances to distinguish His people from the world, by that
which signified, on the one hand, that they were not of it, but dead with
Him to it, and, on the other hand, to gather them on the ground of that
which alone can unite them all-on the ground of the cross and of
accomplished redemption, in the unity of His body. But if, instead of using
them with thanksgiving according to His will, we rest upon them, we have
forsaken the fulness, the sufficiency, of Christ, to build upon the flesh,
which can thus occupy itself with these ordinances, and find in them its
fatal sustenance and a veil to hide the perfect Saviour, of whose death, as
in connection with this world and with man living in the flesh, these
ordinances so plainly speak to us. To rest upon christian ordinances is
exactly to deny the precious and solemn truth which they present to us,
that there is no longer righteousness after the flesh, since Christ is dead
and risen.
This the apostle deeply felt; this he had been called to set before the
eyes and consciences of men by the power of the Holy Ghost. How many
afflictions, how many conflicts, his task cost him! The flesh of man likes
to have some credit; it cannot bear to be treated as vile and incapable of
good, to be excluded and condemned to annihilation, not by efforts to annul
itself, which would restore it all its importance, but by a work that
leaves it in its true nothingness, and that has pronounced the absolute
judgment of death upon it, so that, convicted of being nothing but sin, it
has only to be silent. If it acts, it is only to do evil. Its place is to
be dead, and not better. We have both right and power to hold it as such,
because Christ has died, and we live in His risen life. He has Himself
become our life. Alive in Him, I treat the flesh as dead; I am not a debtor
to it. God has condemned sin in the flesh, in that His Son came in the
likeness of sinful flesh and for sin. It is this great principle of our
being dead with Christ which the apostle sets forth at the end of the
chapter (only first recognising the force of the law to bring death into
the conscience). He had discovered that to be under a law was to find
himself condemned to death. He had undergone in spirit the whole force of
this principle; his soul had realised death in all its power. He was dead;
but, if so, he was dead to the law. The power of a law does not reach
beyond life; and, its victim once dead, it has no more power over him. Now
Paul had acknowledged this truth; and, attributing to the principle of law
its whole force, he confessed himself to be dead by law-dead then to law.
But, how? Was it by undergoing the eternal consequences of its violation;
for if the law killed, it condemned too? (see 2 Cor. 3). By no means. It is
quite another thing here. He did not deny the authority of the law, he
acknowledged its force in his soul, but in death, in order that he might
live to God.
But where could he find this life, since the law only slew him? This he
explains. It was not himself in his own responsibility, exposed as he was
to the final consequences of the violation of the law-who could find life
in it! Christ had been crucified-He who could suffer the curse of the law
of God, and death, and yet live in the mighty and holy life which nothing
could take away; which made it impossible for death to hold Him, although
in grace He tasted it. But the apostle (whom this same grace had reached)
owning it according to the truth as a poor sinner in subjection to death,
and blessing the God who granted him the grace of life and of free
acceptance in Christ, had been associated with Christ in God's counsels in
His death (now realised by faith, and become true practically by Christ,
who had died and risen again, being his life). He was crucified with Him,
so that the condemnation of it was gone for Paul. It is Christ whom death
under the law had reached. The law had reached Saul the sinner, in the
Person of Him who had given Himself for him, in fact, and now Saul himself
in conscience, and brought death there-but the death of the old man (see
Rom. 7:9, 10)-and it had now no more right over [see note #3]
Nevertheless he lived: yet not he, but Christ, in that life in which Christ
rose from among the dead-Christ lived in him. Thus the dominion of the law
over him disappeared (while ascribing to the law all its force), because
that dominion was connected with the life in regard to which he reckoned
himself to be dead in Christ, who had really undergone death for this
purpose. And Paul lived in that mighty and holy life, in the perfection and
energy of which Christ was risen from among the dead, after having borne
the curse of the law. He lived to God, and held the corrupt life of his
flesh as dead. His life drew all its character, all its mode of being, from
the source whence it flowed.
But the creature must have an object to live for, and so it was as to
Paul's soul, it was by the faith of Jesus Christ. By faith in Jesus Christ
Paul lived indeed. The Christ who was the source of his life, who was his
life, was its object also. It is this which always characterises the life
of Christ in us: He Himself is its object-He alone. The fact, that it is by
dying for us in love that He-who was capable of it, the Son of God-has
given us thus freed from sin this life as our own, being ever before the
mind, in our eyes He is clothed with the love He has thus shewn us. We live
by faith of the Son of God, who has loved us, and given Himself for us. And
here it is personal life, the individual faith that attaches us to Christ,
and makes Him precious to us as the object of the soul's intimate faith.
Thus the grace of God is not frustrated: for, if righteousness were
established on the principle of law, Christ died in vain, since it would be
by keeping the law ourselves that we should, in our own persons, acquire
righteousness.
