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The doctrine of their false teacthers was, that to faith in Christ, an obedience also to the law of Moses was necessary to justification; they did not deny Christ, or the doctrine of the gospel, only they pleaded for the works of the law as necessary to be superadded. The apostle calls this first owning of Christ, and embracing the doctrine of faith, a beginning
in the Spirit; their adding the necessity of obedience to the law of Moses, a being
made perfect in the flesh; and argueth the unreasonableness of it, that their justification should be begun by a more noble, and made perfect by a more ignoble cause. He calls the doctrine of the gospel,
Spirit, because (as he said in the former verse) they had received the Holy Spirit by the hearing of faith; that is, by hearing and receiving the gospel. The works of the law he calls flesh, because the ordinances of the law were (as the apostle calls them, Heb_9:10) carnal ordinances, imposed on the Jews till the time of reformation. He elsewhere calls them the rudiments of the world, Col_2:8,20; and in this Epistle, Gal_4:9, he calls them beggarly elements. For though the ordinances of the law were in their season spiritual, they being commanded by God; yet they being but temporary constitutions, never intended by God to continue longer than the coming of Christ, and the law being but a schoolmaster to lead to Christ; Christ being now come, and having died, and rose again from the dead, they became useless. Besides that God never intended them as other than rudiments and first elements, the end of which was Christ; and the observance of which, without faith in Christ, was weak and impotent, as to the noble end of justification. It spake great weakness, therefore, in the Galatians, to begin with what was more perfect, (the embracing of the gospel, and Christ there exhibited for the justification of sinners), and to end in what was more imperfect, thinking by that to be made perfect; or else the apostle here chargeth them with a defection from Christ, as Gal_4:9-11, and Gal_5:4: and so calleth them foolish, for beginning in the Spirit, (the Holy Spirit inwardly working in them the change of their hearts, and regenerating them), and then apostatizing from their profession to a carnal life. But I had rather interpret Spirit in this text, of the doctrine of the gospel, dictated by the Spirit; and with the receiving of which the Holy Spirit was given. And so their folly is argued from their thinking to be made perfect by the beggarly elements and worldly rudiments of the law, whenas they had first begun their profession of Christianity with embracing the more perfect doctrine of the gospel.