Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth? This persuasion cometh not of him that calleth you. A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. I have confidence in you through the Lord, that ye will be none otherwise minded: but he that troubleth you shall bear his judgment, whosoever he be. And I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? then is the offense of the cross ceased. I would they were even cut off which trouble you. For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another. (Gal_5:7-15)
Paul now goes on to show that Christian liberty is not license to live after the flesh, but it is liberty to glorify God. Notice how he pours out his heart to them as he thinks of their defection. He says, “Ye did run well.” That is, he looks back over their earlier years and reminds himself of their first devotion and joy, how consistent they were, how they sought to glorify the Lord. But their testimony has been marred, their earlier love has been lost, they no longer are such devoted, active servants of the Lord Jesus Christ as once they were. They have been turned aside by false teaching.
“Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?” What was it that turned them aside? It was their acceptance of the idea that although they were justified by faith they could be sanctified only by the law, and that is a very common error today. A great many people think that while the law cannot justify, yet after all, when one is justified, it is obedience to the law that sanctifies. But the law is as powerless to sanctify as it was to justify. It is of no use to try to put the old nature under law. You have two natures, the old, the carnal, and the new, the spiritual. That old nature is just as black as it can be, and the new is as white as it can be. The old is just as evil as it can be, and the new is as good as it can be. It is of no use to say to the old nature, “You must obey the law,” because the carnal mind is not subject to the law of God. On the other hand, you do not need to say that to the new nature, because it delights in the law of God. So our sanctification is not of the law. These Galatians had lost sight of this.
And so in Gal_5:8 the apostle says, “This persuasion cometh not of him that calleth you.” The word translated “persuasion” might be better rendered “persuasibleness.” This persuasibleness, this readiness on your part to be persuaded by these false teachers, “cometh not of him that calleth you.” People are as easily changed in their religious views as they are in their political views. They are one thing one day, and another thing the next. They start out all right, and then the first false teacher that comes along gets their attention, and if he quotes a few Scripture verses they say, “It sounds all right; he has the Bible for it,” and so they go from one thing to another and never get settled anywhere. The apostle says that this readiness to be persuaded by human teachers is not of God. If you were walking with God you would be listening to His voice and hearing His Word, and would be kept from “overpersuasibleness.”
“A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump,” we are told in Gal_5:9. This same sentence is found in 1Co_5:6, where Paul warns the saints against the toleration of immorality in their midst. An evil man was among them. He was living in sin and they seemed powerless to deal with it, like some churches today who have never had a case of discipline for years, tolerating all kinds of wickedness. They do not dare to come out and deal with it. These Corinthians were glorying in the fact that they were broad-minded enough to overlook this man’s adultery and incest, and Paul says to them, “If you are going to do this, you must face the fact that ‘a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.’ Others looking on will say, ‘If the church of God does not take a stand against these things, why should we be so careful?’“
Here in Galatians, the apostle is not speaking of wickedness in the life but of false doctrine, and says that if they do not deal with it in the light of God’s Word they will find that it too is like leaven, and “a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump,” and the time will come when they will have lost altogether the sense of the grace of God. It is interesting to notice that in the Word of God leaven is always a picture of evil. A great many people do not see that. They talk about “the leaven of the gospel.” In Matthew where the Lord Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened” (Mat_13:33), their idea is that the three measures of meal represent the world, and the woman is the church putting the leaven, the gospel, into the world, and by-and-by the whole world will be converted. We have been at it now for nearly two thousand years, and instead of the world getting converted, the professing church is getting unconverted.
Think of issuing a decree to blot out the name of Jehovah from all texts written on the walls of any church in Germany-Germany, the land of the Reformation; Germany, where Luther led the people away from the darkness of corruption-and think of that country attempting to blot out the name of Jehovah today! We are not converting the world very fast. Think of Russia where the gospel was introduced over fifteen hundred years ago, and today every effort is being made to destroy the testimony that remains in that land. It will take millennium after millennium if ever the world is to be saved by our testimony. But that is not our program. We read, “When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” (Luk_18:8). “As it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man” (Luk_17:26). Corruption and vileness filled the world in the days of Noah, and so today corruption and vileness fill the world. “They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all” (Luk_17:27). We see the same things happening now, and some day the Lord’s people are going, not into the ark, but they are going to be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and then the awful flood of judgment will be poured out on this poor world. The parable does not mean that the gospel will go on until the whole world is converted; it means the very opposite. The three measures of meal represented the meal offering, and the meal offering was the food of the people of God and typified Christ, our blessed, holy Savior. There was to be no leaven in the meal offering, for that was a type of evil. The leaven is the evil teaching corrupting the truth. Jesus indicated three kinds of leaven. He said, “Beware of the leaven of Herod, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, beware of the leaven of the Sadducees.” The leaven of Herod was political corruption and wickedness, that of the Pharisees was self-righteousness and hypocrisy, and that of the Sadducees was materialism. Of any of these it may be said, “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.” The thing that stops its working is to expose it to the action of fire, and when we judge these things in the light of the gospel of Christ they can work no longer.
But though Paul warns these Galatians he does not give them up. He feels sure that they will come out all right, for he knows how real they were in the beginning. “I have confidence in you through the Lord, that ye will be none otherwise minded: but he that troubleth you shall bear his judgment, whosoever he be.” What a solemn word that is! God has said, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Gal_6:7). And we are told, “There is no respect of persons with God” (Rom_2:11). How that ought to keep our hearts as we see men in high places today guilty of heinous crimes against civilization. We shudder as we see how hopeless it is for the nations to contend with these men and their evil principles. How the tyrants of earth still defy God! But, depend upon it, He is going to take things in His own hands one of these days, and judgment is coming as surely as there is a God in heaven. For God has said, regarding Abraham’s seed, “Cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee” (Gen_27:29), and the man who is dealing cruelly with Abraham’s seed is already under the curse of God. That judgment some day will fall. We can be sure of that. There is no way out, because God has decreed it. Men may trifle with God for the moment, they may question because He seems to wait a long time, but the Greeks used to say, “The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small.” In every aspect of life the truth remains that God is a God of judgment, and, “By him actions are weighed” (1Sa_2:3).
Paul then says, “And I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision”-suppose I preached all these legalistic things, would I be persecuted as I am now? Surely not. But if I did that, I would not be true to my great commission. “Why do I yet suffer persecution? then is the offense [the scandal] of the cross ceased.” What does he mean by “the scandal of the cross”? It was a scandalous end to a human life to have to die on a cross. The cross was like the gallows today. Cicero said, “The cross, it is so shameful it never ought to be mentioned in polite society.” Just as a person having a relative who had committed murder and was hung for it would not want to speak about it, so people felt about the cross in those days. Yet the Son of God died on a cross. Oh, the shame of it! The Holy One, the Eternal Creator, the One who brought all things into existence, went to that cross and died for our sins. Paul practically says, “You are setting that cross at naught if you introduce any other apparent means of salvation in place of the death Jesus died to put away sins.” And then he cries, “I would they were even cut off which trouble you.” Or literally, “I would they would cut themselves off that trouble you,” these men who would pervert the gospel of Christ.
In Gal_5:13 he comes back to the theme of liberty, “For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty”-you have been set free, you are no longer slaves, you are free men-“only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh.” Do not say, “Well, now, I am saved by grace and, therefore, am free to do as I like.” No, but, I am saved by grace and so I am free to glorify the God of all grace! I have liberty to live for God, I have liberty to magnify the Christ who died for me, and I have liberty to walk in love toward all my brethren. It is a glorious liberty this, the liberty of holiness, of righteousness. “But by love serve one another.” Having been called into this liberty be willing to be a servant. Our blessed Lord set us the example; He took that place on earth: “If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet” (Joh_13:14). Through love we delight to serve. Look at that mother caring for her little babe. She has to do many things her heart does not naturally delight in. Is her service a slavery as she waits upon her babe? Oh, no; she delights to do that which love dictates, and so in our relation to one another, how glad we ought to be to have the opportunity of serving fellow saints. “By love serve one another.”
“For all the law is fulfilled in one word.” It is as though he says, “You talk about the law, you insist that believers should come under the law; why don’t you stop to consider what the law really teaches?” “All the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: Thou shalt love.” The man who loves will not break any of the commandments. If I love God as I should, I will not sin against Him. Look at Joseph, exposed to severe temptation, greater perhaps than many another has gone through, and yet his answer to the temptress was, “How shall I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” He loved God and that kept him in the hour of temptation. And when it comes to dealing with our fellows, if we love our neighbors as ourselves we won’t violate the commandments. We won’t lie to one another, we won’t bear false witness, no one will commit adultery, there will be no violation of God’s law, we will not murder. No wrong will be done to another if we are walking in love. “All the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” The Holy Spirit who dwells in every believer is the Spirit of love, and the new nature is a nature which God Himself has implanted; God is love and therefore it is natural for the new nature to love. When you find a believer acting in an unloving way, doing an unkind thing, you may be sure that it is the old nature, not the new, that is dominating him at that moment. Oh, to walk in love that Christ may be glorified in all our ways! It was said of early Christians, even by the heathen about them, “Behold how they love one another!” Can that always be said of us? Or must it be said, “Behold how they quarrel; behold how they criticize; behold how they backbite one another; behold how they scandalize one another.” What a shame if such things could be said of us! “All the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: Thou shalt love.”
Now on the other hand, if one fails in this, “If ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.” If you would tear one another’s reputations to pieces, find fault with one another, quarrel with one another, be careful, for the natural result will be that you will be “consumed one of another.” Do you know why many a testimony that was once bright for God today is in ruins? It is because of a spirit of quarrelsomeness, fault-finding, and murmuring comes in among the people of God, and God cannot bless that. If you and I are guilty of that, we ought to get into God’s presence and examine our ways before Him; yea, plead with Him to search our hearts, and confess and judge every such thing as sin in His sight in order that we may be helpers and not hinderers in His service.
“If ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.” “Well,” someone says, “I always hate myself if I say anything unkind, and I make up my mind never to do it again.” The trouble is that you have not yielded that tongue of yours to the Lord Jesus Christ. You remember the word, “Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service” (Rom_12:1). A number of people have presented almost every part of their bodies except their tongues. They have kept the tongues for themselves, and they allow them to wag on and on until gradually they bring in a lot of sorrow and grief among the people of God. Won’t you say, “Lord, this tongue of mine was given me to glorify Thee; I have used it so often to find fault with others, to injure the reputation of a brother or a sister, to speak unkindly or discourteously about other people. Lord Jesus, I give it to Thee, this tongue that Thou hast bought with Thy blood. Help me to use it from this time on solely to glorify Thee. And in using it to glorify Thee, I shall be using it to bless and help others, instead of to distress and hinder them.”
You may never yet have come to Jesus, and possibly you are saying, “Is there a power such as you speak of that can lift a person above a life of sin, enabling him to so live?” Yes, there is; come to the Lord Jesus Christ, put your trust in Him, receive Him as your Savior, enthrone Him as Lord of your life, and you will find that everything will be different, everything will be new. You will have a joy, a gladness, that you have never been able to find in all the devious ways of this poor world. He says, “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me” (Rev_3:20). Fling wide the door of your heart today, and say:
Come in, my Lord, come in,
And make my heart thy home.
Come in, and cleanse my soul from sin,
And dwell with me alone.
He will be so glad to come in and take control, and everything will be made new in the light of His presence.
