"But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" Galatians 6:14

Galatians 6

Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another. For every man shall bear his own burden.

Let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things.

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.

Ye see how large a letter I have written unto you with mine own hand. As many as desire to make a fair shew in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised; only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ. For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law; but desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh.

But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature. And as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.

From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. 

Brethren, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.

_______ 

"The law of Christ directs those who live in the Spirit, and ought to be walking in the Spirit, but who have got, nevertheless, an evil nature still. And how are they to be strengthened in the new nature, and to overcome the old? He points them at once to Christ, and says, "Bear ye," etc. Such is the loving, unselfish way to fulfil the law of Christ. Interest your soul about saints in need and distress; and even if there is that which is positively evil, it will cast you upon God to bring out something from Christ suited to lift up the soul that has slipped into the mire. He first introduces the flagrant case of a person falling into sin, and then he enlarges it. If you want to know what is the path of Christ now, and the will of God, this was what Christ was doing. He came into a world full of evil and opposition to God - full of pride and vanity, and what was He doing?

"He went about doing good, healing all that were oppressed of the devil,"

etc. Though we may not be able to work miracles, yet in all that is in spirit like Christ, the moral principle of the life of Christ here below is precisely that which every believer has. If you have Christ at all, you have Christ not only for atonement, but as your life. He that believeth on the Son has everlasting life; and the everlasting life is Christ, just as truly as by being born into the world from Adam I have got an old natural life that loves evil, and which, as it grows in strength, grows in capacity for self-will. Even so, if I believe in Christ, there is this new life produced, which is developed in proportion as Christ is fed upon and looked to, and as Christ's words and ways are pondered over by the soul.

There is an assimilating power communicated thus to the believer by the Holy Ghost. The words of our Lord are spirit and life. It is not only that they produce life in the first instance, but they sustain the life, and are the means of its vigour. And this is what the Apostle Peter shows us. (1 Peter 1) He speaks of the incorruptible seed, the word of God which liveth and abideth for ever. But then he shows that the same word of God which is the means of first imparting the life through the revelation of Christ, is also the provision for strengthening and refreshing it. Therefore he exhorts them that, as new-born babes, they should desire the sincere milk of the word. The word of God which is first used to introduce the life into the soul, through the making known of Christ, is that which now keeps up the life, draws it out, brings it into healthful exercise. And here is one way -

"Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ."

This is what Christ was doing when He was here below. He did not please Himself. He never chose the path of ease; but, on the contrary, every case of wretchedness and sin and sorrow was what occupied the Lord Jesus, provided it were the will of God. When He took His place as man on earth, there was the continual exercise of communion between the Lord Jesus and His Father, the spirit of dependence upon the living God that never acted without His Father's direction. And so it should be with our souls. If we are thus laying ourselves out to bear one another's burdens, we need to wait upon God about it to know what the will of the Lord is. It is not the law nor ordinances, but "bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ." . . .

"But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world."

They were glorifying in what would exalt human nature; because in that way they could get the world and its multitudes to unite with them. In chapter iii. the cross of Christ is viewed as deliverance from the law, because Christ was thereon made a curse for us. A man who believed in Christ, who owns Him as the Son of God - would you deny that he had everlasting life? But unless such an one receives the doctrine of the cross intelligently, and applies it to his position, he is still more or less under the law, and does not understand that he is completely brought out of the old condition of things into a new ground.

In Galatians 5 the apostle applies the doctrine of the cross to the flesh, and shows that they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. Here I find that my flesh is a thing I am entitled to regard as done with before God, no less than the law.

Now, in Galatians 6, comes in the third thing, the world. You have a regular gradation - freed from the law which would affect the conscience of a godly person. Then, when a man is free from that anxiety, comes in the question of the flesh, with its affections and lusts. But this, he is told, was all judged in the cross of Christ. Therefore, as a part of the comfort God gives me, I am entitled, as a matter of faith and not of mere feeling, to know,

"They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh, with its affections and lusts."

It does not say, "They are crucifying it," as if it were something going on; but it is done in receiving a crucified Christ. In God's sight, and now to faith also, their nature was nailed to the tree, and is done with before God; and now they have got a new nature: as St. Paul says,

"Not I, but Christ liveth in me."

The old nature that we have still exists, of course; but to faith God has already done with it in the cross of Christ; so that the business of the Christian man is to occupy himself, not with mere restraints, but with Christ; which fills the soul, by the energy of the Spirit, with all that is good, draws it out into what is lovely, and, in short, is the true power of Christian holiness. If a man is occupied with what is good, he will hate his flesh; but it is only occupation with Christ that gives the soul power thus to put the sentence of God upon the flesh. Now comes the third and last thing in Christian experience; for you will find men who know somewhat of deadness to the law and to the flesh, but who still think that it is the duty of the Christian man in this world to serve God in his generation. But how would God have Himself to be served now? Never by anything that contradicts the cross of Christ. The service of the Christian is to be founded on the cross; and what does the cross declare about the world? That it is now at open war with God. Ever since the cross of Christ, God has no alliance with the world. Before that, the world was allowed: and therefore it was not wrong for Joseph to be governor in Egypt, nor for Daniel to sit in the gate of the king of Babylon. But it is utterly ignorant to reason from what was tolerated then to what pleases God now that the cross of His Son is a fact.

God does not ignore the cross, if Christians do. The very same cross of Christ that is my salvation, my deliverance from the law and the flesh, shows me that I have no part with this world, save as a blessed stranger passing through it. We may have occupations that are all quite right; but that is not at all what you can call a thing of the world. The Lord lived here, died here, rose here, eat and drank in this world; but He never was of the world: and so it is and should be with the Christian. Our Lord did not form such a part and parcel of this world as that His appearance in it or departure from it ruffled the stream for a moment. He would not have been missed in the world; and the moment that a Christian becomes an integral part of the motive power which carries on the wheels of the world, all is out of course, as far as his allegiance to Christ goes. A Christian ought to be the means of constant blessing in this world. But how, and of what character? Bearing the testimony of Christ, of his Saviour; but as He never sought His own things - was always doing good, yet doing it as the will of His Father - always acting upon motives that were not of the world, but from above - never uniting with men's plans for the purpose of bettering man, but realizing that the world was God's enemy, and yet that God's love was sending Him into it to do them good: such was Christ, and so should it be with the Christian. A Christian's business is to be the epistle of Christ. So that the one clue and test for what comes before a person, is this: will my doing this or that be acting as an epistle of Christ? But in order to know what is consistent with an epistle of Christ, I must search His ways in the words of the Holy Ghost. There is always light in Scripture to show what is His mind for the present moment, and what it is that has passed away with the olden time, which belonged to the law and the world and to Israel, who were God's ancient witness in the world. But the Christian is the present witness of Christ, and is not of the world, although in it. This is the great means of trying our ways, and thus finding out how far we glory in the cross. That is, you have them on totally opposite principles. The cross of Christ is that which first of all crucifies the Christian to the world, puts him entirely outside it as one saved out of it; but also the world is crucified to him. There you see the world with all its unremoved guilt, ignorant of the Father, spite of the coming of the Son. So there cannot be the least common ground between a Christian and the world; any more than there could be for this country if it were at open war with any of its neighbours. If this be true, does it not show how little God's children realize their Christian position, as thus defined by the cross of Christ!

Peace made by the blood of the cross is more or less preached; but as to the moral power of the cross and its bearing upon the law, the flesh, or the world, there is hardly an atom save in the way of motive. The consequence is, that such Christians can, with a good conscience, talk about the cross, and, at the same time, still maintain what God has already judged and put away for ever. Hence the importance of full Christian deliverance is unknown - the ground-truths which ought to be understood by the babe. For the Epistle to the Galatians does not take up the highest branch of Christian truth, but rather the indispensable foundations of Christianity."

William Kelly

Excerpt from Galatians 6

Paul and “The Israel of God”: An Exegetical and Eschatological Case-Study by S. Lewis Johnson Jr.

Photo 'At the Cross' by Aaron Burden on Unsplash