Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - Galatians 3:28 - 3:28
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Gal_3:28. After ye have thus put on Christ, the distinctions of your various relations of life apart from Christianity have vanished; from the standpoint of this new condition they have no further validity, any more than if they were not in existence.
ἔνι ] is an abbreviated form for ἔνεστι (1Co_6:5; Col_3:11; Jam_1:17), not the adverbially used preposition (Hom. Od. vii. 96; Schaefer, ad Bos. p. 51; Kühner, II. § 618), as Winer, Usteri, Wieseler, and others assume, with the accent thrown back. Against this view it is decisive, that very frequently ἔνι and ἐν are used together (1Co_6:5, and frequently in Greek authors, as Xen. Anab. v. 3. 11; Herod, vii. 112), and yet there is no ἐστί added, whereby the ἔνι shows that it stands independently as a compound word = ἔνεστι or ἔνεισι . Comp. Ellendt, Lex. Soph. I. p. 591. Translate: there is not, namely, in this state of things when ye have all put on Christ, a Jew, etc. The ὑμεῖς in Gal_3:28-29 shows that the individualizing form of statement, applying to the readers, is still continued; therefore Hofmann is wrong, although consistent with his erroneous interpretation of the second person in Gal_3:26 f., in taking ἔνι as general: “in Christ,” or “now since faith has come,” on the ground that ἐν ὑμῖν is not added (which was obvious of itself from the context). As to the idea generally, comp. Col_3:11; Rom_10:12; 1Co_12:13.
ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ ] Comp. Mat_19:4. The relation here is conceived otherwise than in the previous οὐκ … οὐδὲ , namely: there are not male and female, two sexes; so that the negative is not to be supplied after καὶ (Bornemann, ad Act. xv. 1).
πάντες γὰρ κ . τ . λ .] Proof from the relation cancelling these distinctions, which is now constituted: For ye all are one, ye form a single moral person; so that now those distinctions of individuals outside of Christianity appear as non-existent, completely merged in that higher unity to which ye are all raised in virtue of your fellowship of life with Christ. This is the εἷς καινὸς ἄνθρωπος , Eph_2:15. Observe the emphatic πάντες as in Gal_3:26, and ὅσοι in Gal_3:27.
ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ ] Definition of εἷς ἐστε . They are one, namely, not absolutely, but in the definite sense of their relation as Christians, inasmuch as this unity is causally dependent on Christ, to whom they all belong and live (Gal_2:20; 2Co_5:15 f.; Rom_14:8). See Col_3:11.