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No.2.
pp. 141 - 146
The Berean Forward Movement need not fear a frontal attack. What has to be
watched is the appeal to charity, to not be too "narrow", etc., etc., which will surely come
as time goes on. Our safeguard is that we are under an obligation to have a "Form of
sound words" given by the Lord to the Apostle Paul, and to pass them on to "faithful men
who shall be able to teach". If we keep to this we shall be safe. The one thing that these
false brethren in Galatia detested, and which led them to stoop so low, was "the liberty"
which these Galatian Christians enjoyed "in Christ Jesus". That their insidious efforts
were unhappily successful for a time, we learn from Gal. 4: 9-11:
"But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye
again to the weak and beggary elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage?
Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have
bestowed upon you labour in vain" (Gal. 4: 9-11).
These "elements" to which these Galatians were in bondage, belonged to the status of
"children":
"Even so we, when we were children, were bondage under the elements of the world"
(Gal. 4: 3),
but from this condition they had been redeemed, and had received "the adoption of sons":
"Wherefore thou art no more a servant (a bond servant), but a son, and if a son, then
an heir of God through Christ" (Gal 4: 1-7).
"No, not for an hour."
Upon what a knife edge, sometimes, mighty issues are balanced!
"To whom we gave place by subjection, NO, NOT FOR AN HOUR; that the truth of
the gospel might continue (right through dia meno) with you" (Gal. 2: 5).
What the history of Christian witness would have been had Paul yielded is too
distressing to imagine. Thank God that this contingency did not arise--but at what a
cost!
The next reference to freedom in this epistle is in chapter 3:,
"For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is
neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female:
for ye are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3: 27, 28).
There is an allusion here to the Jewish Prayer Book, which contains the following: