“It is vain to serve God, and what profit is there in keeping His ordinances?... Those who practice lawlessness prosper more, and though they tempt God, they remain unharmed.” It is hard to argue with this: indeed, serving God brings no special material benefit, nor does it offer...
“It is vain to serve God, and what profit is there in keeping His ordinances?... Those who practice lawlessness prosper more, and though they tempt God, they remain unharmed.” It is hard to argue with this: indeed, serving God brings no special material benefit, nor does it offer a comfortable position or a quiet, settled life. On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with simple human desires for peace and prosperity either: it is natural for a person to seek the greatest possible comfort in arranging life for oneself and one's loved ones.
The crisis comes when we link our desires to a time by which God must fulfill them. We want the reward for our service now, and we also want exemplary punishments for those who, in our view, are arrogant.
For God, however, there is still no time or space: He hears and remembers, but the day of recompense has not yet come; He has not yet brought it about. Until then, as the prophet Malachi writes, we must become His possession, which means becoming an instrument that carries out His will or, as Thérèse of Lisieux said, “I shall become His toy”: allowing Him to dispose of us as He sees fit.
In such a situation, all that remains is the right to ask Him for Bread and the Spirit: He promised that He would deny these to no one.
3
3:1 O thoughtless Galatians - He breaks in upon them with a beautiful abruptness. Who hath bewitched you - Thus to contradict both your own reason and experience. Before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been as evidently set forth - By our preaching, as if he had been crucified among you.
3:2 This only would I learn of you - That is, this one argument might convince you. Did ye receive the witness and the fruit of the Spirit by performing the works of the law, or by hearing of and receiving faith?
3:3 Are ye so thoughtless - As not to consider what you have yourselves experienced? Having begun in the Spirit - Having set out under the light and power of the Spirit by faith, do ye now, when ye ought to be more spiritual, and more acquainted with the power of faith, expect to be made perfect by the flesh? Do you think to complete either your justification or sanctification, by giving up that faith, and depending on the law, which is a gross and carnal thing when opposed to the gospel?
3:4 Have ye suffered - Both from the zealous Jews and from the heathens. So many things - For adhering to the gospel. In vain - So as to lose all the blessings which ye might have obtained, by enduring to the end. If it be yet in vain - As if he had said, I hope better things, even that ye will endure to the end.
3:5 And, at the present time, Doth he that ministereth the gift of the Spirit to you, and worketh miracles among you, do it by the works of the law - That is, in confirmation of his preaching justification by works, or of his preaching justification by faith?